Libellus of Mark of Ephesus on the Eucharistic Consecration1 (scripsit June 17–19, 1439) (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Eucharist in the East and the West: Ambrose, Augustine, Dionysius, Maximus, and Ephrem
2021
In a brief survey of texts on the Eucharist by Ambrose, Augustine, Dionysius, Maximus, and Ephrem, I bring out the difference between the Eastern Orthodox and the western Catholic understanding of the Eucharist. I conclude that the materiality of the Eucharist underlie the difference, not to unite but to signify sacrifice beyond signification of symbols.
The paper examines the typological identification of the Eucharist with the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden in the thought of St. Gregory of Nyssa. The paper focuses on his conception of the Eucharist as the antidote to the corrupting effects the fruit has on human nature. Whereas the forbidden fruit is seen as causing corruption of the body and ultimately death, the Eucharist is viewed as reversing these effects, becoming a medicine of immortality. The paper will apply a methodological framework developed by Ann Astell in Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 2006). Astell argues that four major spiritualities of the Middle Ages—Cistercian, Franciscan, Dominican, and Jesuit—saw the Eucharist as instilling the virtue opposite to the particular vice represented by the eating of the forbidden fruit. For example, if the sin was interpreted as pride, reception of the Eucharist became an act of humility. This paper points to Gregory as evidence that the basic typological relationship between the forbidden fruit and the Eucharist was also operative in the patristic era. However, in the case of Gregory, the typological opposition takes the form of an effect-and-remedy rather than vice-and-virtue. Key texts that examined are On the Making of Man, On the Soul and the Resurrection, and The Great Catechism.