Sacramental bread

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Sacramental bread (Latin: hostia), sometimes called altar bread, Communion bread, the Lamb or simply the host, is the bread which is used in the Christian ritual of the Eucharist.

Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches[edit]

Main articles: Prosphora and Azymes

The Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches use leavened bread for the Eucharist. Thus, the sacramental bread symbolizes the Resurrected Christ. The hostia or sacramental bread, known as prosphorá or a πρόσφορον (prósphoron, "offering") may be made out of only four ingredients: fine (white) wheat flour, pure water, yeast, and salt.



Catholic Church[edit]

Detail of tongs for baking hosts




Hosts are often made by nuns as a means of supporting their religious communities. In New Zealand, however, the St Vincent de Paul Society hires individuals with intellectual disabilities to bake, cut out and sort the bread thereby offering paid employment to those who wouldn't have that option otherwise.[1] In the Latin Rite, unleavened bread is used as in the Jewish Passover or Feast of Unleavened Bread. The Byzantine Rite Eastern Catholic Churches (like the Eastern Orthodox Church) use leavened bread for Prosphora (the Greek word for Eucharistic altar bread). The Armenian Catholic Church (like the Armenian Apostolic Church), the Syro-Malabar Church and the Maronite Church have adopted the use of unleavened bread (see Liturgical Latinisation). Some traditions proscribe the use of spiced, flavored or sweetened hosts, while others allow it.[citation needed] However, both Eastern and Western traditions insist that the bread must be made from wheat. The Code of Canon Law, Canon 924 requires that the hosts be made from wheat flour and water only and recently made so that there is no danger of spoiling.


In 1995 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, wrote a letter to the Episcopal Conferences in which he expanded the Code of Canon Law, stating that low-gluten bread would be considered “valid matter” for hosts as long as no additional substances “alter[ed] the nature of the substance of the bread.”[2] Since the 2000s, hosts with gluten content that falls below the threshold of what would be considered detrimental to people with coeliac disease have been manufactured in the United States, especially in parts of Missouri and New York.[2]



In the varying Protestant denominations, there is a wide variety of practices concerning the sacramental bread used. Some, such as the Christian Congregation use leavened loaves of bread, others, such as Lutherans, continue to use unleavened wafers like the Roman Catholics, and some use matzo.[1] Reformed Christians use rolls which are broken and distributed to symbolize their belief that Christ is not physically present in the bread.[3] Among those who use the unleavened wafers, there is a great deal of variation: some are square or triangular rather than round, and may even be made out of whole wheat flour.

Latter-day Saint[edit]


See also[edit]


  1. ^
  2. ^ a b "Low-Gluten Diet Alternatives Have Reached A New Frontier: The Catholic Church". 
  3. ^ Benedict, Philip (2002). Christ's Churches Purely Reformed. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 205. ISBN 978-0300105070. 



External links[edit]