Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (review)

Abstract

In this revisionist study Andrew McGowan examines the varied and scattered body of evidence for the early use of foods other than bread and wine in Christian ritual meals. In doing so, he persuasively argues against previous scholarly approaches that identify a normative model of early eucharistic practice and are based in liturgical and theological concerns that exclude alternatives to bread and wine practices as heretical, late, and deviant. Instead, McGowan identifies an early and constant strain of "dissident" eating (78) not only among Christians but also Jews and pagans in the ancient and late ancient Mediterranean. This essentially ascetic inclination manifests itself among some Christians by their rejection of a bread and wine eucharist which represents pagan sacrificial foods and sacrificial culture, in favor of vegetables, cheese, milk and honey, and--most often--bread and water in the eucharistic meal. Thus McGowan argues that, for ascetic Christian eaters, "eucharist" is not simply a distinctive meal with a sacral character that separates it from everyday eating, but part of an entire way of life in which all eating expresses opposition to and separation from the world.