The Eucharist in Eleventh-Century Jerusalem: New Evidence on the Hagiopolite Communion Rite from Arabic Christian Sources

Abstract

The article focuses on eucharistic practices in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem prior to Byzantinization. An analysis of a crucial testimony from Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida’s Adversus graecorum calumnias and a variety of Arabic Christian sources—the Martyrdom of Anthony Rawḥ, Ṣāliḥ ibn Saʿīd’s Marginal Notes, and Elias of Nisibis’s Book of Demonstration— confirm that by the eleventh century, the Melkite Church in Jerusalem had abandoned the ancient practice of receiving communion separately in two kinds (the consecrated Host in the hand and the Blood from the chalice) in favour of receiving communion simultaneously in both kinds. Yet, in contradistinction to the Constantinopolitan practice of mixing both in the chalice, in Jerusalem the pre-intincted consecrated Host was taken by the celebrant from the paten and placed directly into the communicant’s mouth. The evidence of the Martyrdom of Anthony Rawḥ further suggests that this practice arose in the late ninth or early tenth centuries.