Helmut F. Stern Faculty Fellow
he/him
About
"The Matter of Bread, 300-1000 CE"
Like many Christians today, first millennium CE Christians commemorated Jesus’ time on earth by ritually eating bread. Since they often disagreed about what meaning to ascribe to their eucharistic ritual, and since Christianity was a textual, literate religion, late Roman and early medieval Christians have left us voluminous traces of their theological debates over what it meant to consume consecrated bread in church. Understandably, most histories of the eucharist focus on these texts, and therefore on theology. The Matter of Bread aims to extend first millennium eucharist studies from the theological into the ecological realm. By deploying art historical, archaeological, and especially archaeobotanical sources I reconstruct the material history of the eucharist and assess the environmental impact in western Eurasia of Christian demand for “pure” bread.
Paolo Squatriti is a Professor of History and Romance Languages & Literatures.
