OF SAINT JOHN OF DAMASCUS ON UNLEAVENED BREAD
B It is necessary for those who offer unleavened bread to know that they are offering dead flesh, and not living. For leaven is like a soul in the dough, and salt is like the mind; for the Lord, having assumed from the Ever-Virgin a body endowed with soul and mind, fittingly delivered through perfect bread the mystery of the New Testament; and having blessed it, and broken it, He said: "Take, eat: this is my body." And Luke in his holy Gospel says, "And taking bread, he gave thanks, and broke it." But behold, he says that Christ even took bread, not unleavened bread. For the fifth day had not yet arrived, but it was the thirteenth day of the moon, when there was no unleavened bread, because it was not yet being prepared. For on the fifteenth day of the moon it was commanded to eat these things. But on the fourteenth they ate only the lamb; wherefore the law calls the fourteenth day of that same month "Passover," and calls the fifteenth itself "Sabbath." If, therefore, Christ was sacrificed on the fourteenth of the moon, on the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was the feast of unleavened bread, when they ate the unleavened bread, when did He deliver these things to the apostles, which they say they received from the apostles? For Christ did not even eat the lawful Passover at that time; for after they had supped, He delivered, through the breaking of bread, the mystery of the New Testament on the fifth day of the week. But when the feast of unleavened bread occurred on the Sabbath, on the fifteenth day of the month, the Lord lay in the sepulchre. Since, therefore, there was no unleavened bread in the whole year before the feast of unleavened bread, where was the unleavened bread found at that time, when Christ supped with His disciples? Cease, you who fight against the truth. And the phrase, "And it was the Preparation of the Passover," is understood in this way: for they were preparing, namely, they were making ready, those things that pertained to the feast of the Passover. And as for that [passage], "They themselves did not enter into the praetorium, that they might not be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover," how will you understand this, if the Passover fell on the fifth day? How is it that on the Preparation they did not enter into the praetorium, but avoided this, when they had already been cleansed for the eating of the Passover?
SIXTH HERESY OF THE ARMENIANS.
The Armenians shamelessly present A unleavened bread as a dead sacrifice before God, according to the tradition of the Hebrews. Wherefore the divine Paul writes in many ways to the Corinthians, thus: “A little leaven leavens the whole lump” (I Cor. v, 6). And again: “If the first was without blame, the second would not have had a place” (Hebr. viii, 7). And to the Galatians: “You have been severed from Christ, you who are justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace” (Galat. v, 4). And again he says: “If anyone does one of the things of the law, he is cursed if he does not do them all” (Galat. iii, 10).
And the Savior in the upper room, when He wished to give the mystic supper to the disciples, did not deliver it in unleavened bread, but in perfect bread, because it was not the time of unleavened bread according to the law of the Hebrews. For B this mystery took place before the Passover, just as the holy evangelist John says: “Before the feast of the Passover” (Joan. xiii, 1). And again: “On the next day, they lead Jesus from Caiaphas into the praetorium; and they themselves did not enter, that they might not be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover” (Joan. xviii, 28).
And a certain Meletius, a man full of God and a diligent investigator of the Scriptures, having been asked about unleavened bread by some syncellus, writes to him thus: C 1. Unleavened breads are not bread, so to speak, complete and whole, nor self-sufficient, but deficient and semi-perfect things, needing the fullness of leaven. But bread is complete, self-sufficient, perfect, and most full, as one that has the whole in itself. D The unleavened bread is also called a cake (which Elias once asked of the Sunamitess [III Reg. xvii, 13]), or a *collyrida*, which the children among us commonly call a *cullicium*. Therefore, the fullness of the Jewish unleavened leaven is Christ, who, having come, fulfilled that which was deficient and imperfect in the law, and having brought this to perfection, He caused it to cease.
For this reason, the children of the Jews, having ignored this with an envious soul, still unlawfully eat unleavened bread; and for that reason their imitators, the Judaizing Armenians and Jacobites, foolishly partake of these things, as if they were participants in the most wicked heresy of Apollinaris. For he said that Christ took only a body, without soul and without mind, which is the same as being dead. Those, therefore, who eat unleavened bread as an antitype of the body of Christ, eat a dead flesh, and not one that is living, ensouled, and endowed with mind. For the leaven instead of a soul...[alt-version omitted]
while the salt is in the likeness of the mind. Since the unleavened bread possesses neither, it is something dead and foolish. Therefore, those who eat unleavened A bread walk in the darkness of the Law. And how can they have communion with Christ, who do not exist in the light of His grace? For those who walk in the light of His grace eat as bread the body of Christ, and drink His undefiled blood; and in this way they have communion with one another, and with Christ and our God, being cleansed from every sin. For in unleavened bread there is no living power at all, because it is dead. But in the bread—that is to say, in the body of Christ—there are three things that are living and provide life to those who worthily eat: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; for John also bears witness to this word: "There are three that bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood, and these three are one," B that is to say, one in the body of Christ. And this became manifest at the time of the crucifixion, when the water and the blood flowed from His side, when His flesh was pierced by a lance; three things flowed forth. The living and holy Spirit remained in His deified flesh, which we, eating in the bread that is changed by the Spirit into the flesh of Christ, live in Him, as if eating living and deified flesh. Likewise also His blood is living and very warm, since the blood and water of Christ gushed forth from the living flesh through the Spirit, and was most warm; this is a thing which cannot happen in those who eat unleavened bread.
And oh, the absurdity! While eating dead leaven, they boast and say to us: "We do not knead the flour with salt, leaven, and water, as you do, to make a leavened oblation; but with water alone and flour, we prepare the unleavened bread by fire, and in these three C we make a pure sacrifice." These three things, then—the water, and the flour, and the fire—for what are they accepted, and whose antitypes do you think they are? Clearly, they are the antitypes of the Lord's body. But the Beloved did not say: "There are three that bear witness, the water, the flour, and the fire," but: "The Spirit, and the water, and the blood, and these three are one," that is to say, the body of Christ, as it was said before. And if you take these to refer to the uncreated and incorporeal nature of the holy Trinity, you fall into error, plunging into the heresy of the Theopaschites, who say that the divinity of the Word suffered along with His flesh. For the Trinity—the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit—was not incarnate all at once, D so that you might contemplate these three things: the water, as you say, and the flour, and the fire, and make the unleavened bread as an antitype of it, and offer it as a sacrifice. But the one of the Trinity, the Son and Word of God, having been incarnate from the pure flesh of the holy Virgin, became man, and having fulfilled all those things pertaining to the economy, was crucified in the flesh, His divinity not having suffered. Therefore, having been crucified in the flesh, He delivered to us to eat through the bread His own flesh, which lives in the holy Spirit, thus saying: "Take, ea
eat; this is my body which is broken for you for the remission of sins." B 2. It must be known, therefore, that no Church received from Christ or His holy apostles the custom of eating or offering leavened flour [azymes]; since neither did Christ our God Himself, at the time of His passion, eat the legal Pascha. Hear what John says: "Before the feast of the Pascha, Jesus knowing that his hour was come that he should pass out of this world to the Father; and when supper was done, the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray him." And when, he says, "his hour was come"—that is, when the time for Him to be betrayed was at hand—"the twelve apostles sat down with him. And he said to them: With desire I have desired to eat this Pascha with you, before I suffer." You see, "before I suffer," He says. Since therefore it was necessary for Him to suffer on the day of the legal Pascha, on which the lamb was slaughtered by the Jews, it was altogether destined that the Pascha would be celebrated by the god-slayers on the day of Preparation, as John again says: "Because it was the Parasceve [Preparation]. For that was a great sabbath day," on which, at that time, the fourteenth of the moon in the first month of the year happened by chance to fall. For the cycle of the sun was seventeen, and of the moon was five. So that, lest He be betrayed and not manage to deliver His own Pascha to the disciples, reclining at supper late and in the deep of night—on the evening, I say, of the fifth day—He did indeed eat, but it was His own Pascha, before the feast of the Unleavened Bread. And this is evident from the fact that He reclined. For this was not commanded by the law; since the law had ordered the Jews to eat the Pascha with haste, standing, and girded, and shod, holding staves in their hands. Yet He brought the legal Pascha to an end by fulfilling and observing it at the time He devoted to C preaching, and He delivered His own [Pascha] by dining. Wherefore, after He had supped, having taken bread and broken it, He delivered to the apostles the mystery of the new covenant and of His service, on the fifth night, in which He was also betrayed. D 3. But it must be known that on the day when the god-slayers crucified the Lord, on that same day they slaughtered the lamb and ate the legal Pascha; and this is clear from John saying: "And they went not into the hall, that they might not be defiled, but that they might eat the Pascha," at the time when, on the one day, Christ was slain for us along with the lamb. But what does he say? "And taking bread, he gave thanks, and broke it." Behold, Luke also says that Christ took bread, and not unleavened bread. For behold, since it was still the fifth day, because the moon was still thirteenth; and there was no unleavened bread, because it was not yet prepared. For it was ordained by law to eat it on the fourteenth of the moon.
A The Law calls the fourteenth day of the first month the Pascha, but the fifteenth day it calls the first [day] of unleavened bread, and a Sabbath. If, therefore, Christ was sacrificed on the fourteenth of the moon, on the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was the feast of unleavened bread, when did He eat the unleavened bread, and when did He deliver it to the apostles to perform in the New Testament? For the imitators and rivals of the Jews say that we received from the apostles the practice of making unleavened bread. For Christ did not reach the time to eat the legal Pascha at that moment. And that this is indeed true, that the things said by us might be more firmly believed, I would have you hear what laws Moses gave, and what he ordained in the Law concerning the Pascha and unleavened bread. "These, he says, are the solemnities of the Lord, which you shall call holy in their own seasons: in the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, between the evenings, is the Pascha to the Lord; and on the fifteenth day of this month is the solemnity of unleavened bread B to the Lord. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread." Behold, learn also from the legislation of Moses that the time for eating unleavened bread had not yet arrived. For after the supper on the day of the fifth [day of the week], Christ delivered the mystery of the New Testament through the breaking of bread. But when the feast of unleavened bread, the Sabbath, was on the fifteenth day of the month, He lay buried in the tomb. Since, then, there was no unleavened bread before the feast of unleavened bread throughout the whole year—for the Jews ate unleavened bread for seven days and only then, as Moses ordained, beginning their table on the fifteenth day of the first month—how then could unleavened bread have been found when Christ took supper with His disciples? Hear what the apostles say in the C seventy-third canon: "If any bishop, presbyter, or deacon, or any of the number of the clergy fasts with the Jews, or celebrates the feast with them, or receives from them the gifts of their feasts, such as unleavened bread or anything of the sort, let him be deposed." Moreover, the Sixth Synod, which was assembled under Constantine, the grandson of Heraclius, having legates who occupied the place of our holy father Agatho, bishop of Rome, among whom was the divine Gregory of Agrigentum, set forth the sense of the chapters against unleavened bread in a sacred constitution, expressed in these words: "Let no one who is enrolled in the sacred order, nor any layman, receive and eat unleavened bread from the Jews." If it had been delivered by the apostles that unleavened bread should be eaten, the holy Agatho, bishop of Rome, and the divine Gregory D of Agrigentum would have withstood this canon boldly and would by no means have consented to this holy and divine canon. Therefore, he who prepares and offers unleavened bread is in mind a Jew and a scoundrel, who is of the same mind as they are, violating the institutes of the apostles and the Fathers, as the discourse has demonstrated.
ADMONITION ON THE EPISTLE TO ZACHARIAS AND THE CHAPTER WHICH FOLLOWS IT
A 652 Petrus Pantinus of Brussels published at Antwerp in the year 1601, in 8vo, the Epistle to Zacharias, along with the chapter or homily which follows it, *On the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ*, after St. John Damascene’s oration *On the Holy Sabbath*, having found these three short works in a manuscript of Antonio Covarrubias, from whom he even took this title for the epistle: *An Epistle of the Same, sent to Zacharias, bishop of the Doari, concerning the holy body and blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ*. Fronton du Duc subsequently had both the epistle and the oration, along with the homily *On the Holy Sabbath* and certain other things, appended in both Greek and Latin to the end of the second and third Parisian editions of the years 1603 and 1619. Many manuscript codices ascribe the epistle and oration to our John Damascene just as the printed editions do. The only one I have found, the Royal [codex] no. 2428, suggests another author, Peter Mansur, and thus a man related to John Damascene; indeed, in that codex there is a beginning of the epistle that is missing in the others.
And certainly, very serious arguments persuade us that our John wrote neither the epistle nor that homily. For since it was a matter of religion for him not to deviate even slightly from the decrees and sayings of the ancients, it was far from him to assert that the Lord’s body which rose from the dead was as lacking in blood as it was in corruption. For it is known that no one among the Greek Fathers ever uttered such a thing, and it aligns too much with the sense of Origen, whom no one understood better or loathed more than John Damascene. Furthermore, in *De Fide* bk. IV, ch. 1, he teaches that the same flesh which had suffered rose again, and that *nullam partium quæ a natura datæ sunt, defuisse*, no part that was given by nature was missing, as much with regard to the body as to the soul, *οὐ σῶμα, οὐ ψυχή*. He does indeed list the parts of the soul which Christ preserved, but this is to eliminate the fictions of the Monophysites. He did not, therefore, believe the flesh was left behind, just as the author of the epistle and oration seems to assert by citing the testimony of Nazianzen, which his commentators have understood and interpreted far better: not that blood was left behind, which in the last chapter of his *Dialectica*, in *De Fide* bk. IV, ch. 12, and elsewhere, he determined along with all sensible people to be the most noble portion of the human body, of which it is constituted, along with the three other humors.
B But furthermore, this other opinion of the author of the epistle and homily is monstrous, namely, that although the Lord’s body in heaven lacks blood, yet the blood itself, living and life-giving, with which his veins were once imbued, and which was poured out in the passion, and—as he imagined for himself—not taken up in the resurrection, nevertheless exists under the species of wine on the altar and is consumed by the faithful. God forbid that I should even suspect my Damascene, who was the most accurate of Greek theologians, of not being inept, of having set forth such monstrosities. Besides, if John Damascene had been the parent of these short works, he would never have omitted in the book *De Fide Orthodoxa*, where he argues about the sacrament of the Eucharist and describes the transmutation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ by the example of foods that are converted into the substance of an animal, that which is inculcated not without affectation in the epistle and homily, namely, that just as food increases and grows our body, so too do the bread and wine, being transmuted, increase the body of Christ, *εἰς ἐπαύξησιν τοῦ σώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ γίνεται ἓν σῶμα, καὶ οὐ δύο. Ἐν τῇ ἐπαυξήσει τοῦ Κυριακού σώματος*. If, indeed, in the book *De Fide Orthodoxa* he gathers and puts back together whatever he had built up and inculcated in various lucubrations on the dogmas of the faith.
Finally, the words that are read at the beginning of the epistle, *Σημαίνομεν τῇ ὑμετέρᾳ ἀγάπῃ*, "We signify to your charity or love," do not sufficiently reflect the humble modesty of our John toward men adorned with episcopal dignity, and they hint that it was written by a bishop rather than a monk or priest. I do not think it was Peter, Metropolitan of Damascus, by whose name it is certain that our Damascene composed certain short works, and who, under the Caliph Walid, had his tongue cut out and was sent into exile because he had refuted the errors of the Arabs and Manichaeans in his writings.
C Theophanes, moreover, recounts the martyrdom of Peter of Maiuma, whom he narrates was praised by our Damascene in a panegyric oration, when he had been killed by the Mahommedans for the faith. There was another Peter Damascenus, whose ascetic works are preserved in libraries, not yet edited, who was a simple monk and lived among the Byzantine Greeks. He lived in the year of the world 6665, or 1157 of Christ, as he himself testifies at the end of the third book with these words which I have excerpted from the Royal codex 2994, fol. 122: *Ὁ γὰρ νικήσας χάριτι Χριστοῦ τὰ ὀκτὼ πάθη ταῦτα φησὶν, ἐνίκησε καὶ τὰ λοιπά πάντα, ἅτινα προεγράφησαν ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ βιβλίῳ ὑπὸ τοῦ συγγράψαντος αὐτὸν Πέτρου ταπεινοῦ μοναχοῦ τοῦ Δαμασκηνοῦ, κατ' αὐτὸ σχέ. ἔτος, ἰνδ. ε'*. Nam qui gratia Christi octo vitia superavit, reliqua etiam omnia superavit, quæ libro primo descripta sunt ab ejus auctore Petro humili monacho Damasceno, hoc ipso anno 6665, indict. 5. That another was the writer of the epistle and the little oration, I will not affirm. It suffices for me to have indicated some Syrians of the same name.
A Or Palestinians. For the author reveals himself to be an inhabitant of Palestine, where he brings forth a portion of the Liturgy of Saint James, or that of Jerusalem. Michael Glycas, indeed, in his letters to Nectarius and Joannicius, cited that epistle as if it were John of Damascus’s: but he is an author of too recent an age for the points I have brought forward to be raised by his testimony. Yet, that Michael Glycas is not different from Michael Sicydita, who, at the close of the twelfth century, taught that Christ’s body was subject to corruption in the Eucharist, I have learned at last from that most erudite man, M. Boivin, the second most worthy keeper of the Royal Library, who, having examined with the greatest diligence the ninety-two epistles which Royal codex 1403 contains, added this observation—more precious than gold—which he most kindly communicated to me: “MICHAEL GLYCAS. This is the Michael Glycas who wrote the Annals from the creation of the world down to his own age. He flourished in the twelfth century during the reign of the Emperor Manuel Comnenus, around the year 1150. Nicetas Choniates calls him Sicydita: Gesner names him Sicidota. Hence, by a corrupt or rather rashly changed word among the critics, he was called Siceliotes, and from a Byzantine was made a Sicilian. Therefore, this error in the Royal edition of Glycas’s Annals must be corrected, and one must read on the very title page of the book, *Toû kyrou Michaēl Glyka Sikyditou*—of Master Michael Glycas the Sicydite. *Sykon* among modern Greeks was said for *sykidion*, a fig, a little fig. Hence the surname *Sykidōtēs*. See Nicetas Choniates, Royal edition, pages 96, 97, and 332. I think our Michael assumed the name Glycas when he donned the monastic habit, as was the custom.” Thus far the observation of the learned M. Boivin, who further shows, from the political verses found in that same codex—which Michael had offered to Manuel as he returned from being defeated by the Hungarians—that he acknowledged that the crimes were real for which he had been blinded and sentenced to prison. *O kath’ autas tas praxeis mou tên kakōsin hypestēn*, etc. Thus Glycas, or Sicydita, when he had prolonged his life to the times of Alexius, brother of Isaac Angelus Comnenus, near the end of the twelfth century, under the patriarch George Xiphilinus, added to these old errors [the claim] that Christ’s body in the Eucharist was just as subject to corruption as it was while Christ was acting on earth before his own resurrection. In truth, he derived his authority chiefly from the epistle of John of Damascus to Zacharias, and there is no doubt that this gave him the occasion for error, although he also cited other passages of the Fathers, liturgies, and histories, from which he inferred that the broken and divided host was broken and divided as the Lord’s body in exactly the same way as meat in a butcher’s shop. I shall not add the worse things which Choniates recounts in *Alexius*, book I, and in the *Panoplia* (MS, book XXVII), for example, that Christ’s body feels pain and suffers at the breaking of the host, that it is *anoun kai apsychon*—mindless and soulless—in every fragment, and that the whole body is not received by every individual among the faithful. These things, indeed, are not made sufficiently certain from the epistles cited to Nectarius and Joannicius. However, long before Sicydita, or even before Peter Mansur, it was already a question long ago B whether Christ’s body, existing on the altar, was free from corruption: and this was because of the Monophysites and especially the Gaianites, who asserted that that natural body was, from its very conception, immune from corruption and any suffering whatever. Anastasius Sinaita, in the *Hodegos*, chap. 23, in order to refute this heresy, brings forth as an example the most holy bread of the Eucharist, which is itself also the body of Christ; and he thus challenges the heretic: “Tell me, I beseech you, if, just as the divinity, so also Christ’s body was free from corruption from the beginning of the union, is this *hautē hē koinōnia tou panagiou sōmatos kai haimatos Christou*—the communion of the most holy body and blood of Christ—which you offer and of which you are a partaker, truly the body and blood of Christ, or is it bare bread, such as is sold from door to door? Or does it merely play the part and [bear the] figure of the body of Christ, just like the sacrifice of the goat which was offered by the Jews?” As the Gaianite admits it is the true body and blood of Christ, Anastasius adds: “Come now, bring us something from the communion of your Church, as if it were orthodox above all other churches in the world, and we will place this most holy body and blood of Christ in a vessel with all honor. And if within a few days it becomes corrupted and changed, it will be necessary for you to concede one of two things: either that what you receive is not the true body of Christ, but only a figure and, as it were, a substitute, or that because of your perverse faith the Holy Spirit has not descended upon it, or that *hoti phtharton esti sōma Christou pro tēs anastaseōs*—that Christ’s body before the resurrection was subject to corruption; as it had been sacrificed, delivered to death, wounded, divided, chewed, etc.” An educated man, whom I do not think to be anyone other than Ammonius, doctor of the Church of Alexandria, had used the same kind of argument a hundred years before, assuming the person of Paul of Samosata, to whom, in turn, the Incorrupticola, having assumed the name of Dionysius of Alexandria, responds in that discourse which has already been published many times in the *Bibliotheca PP.* and among the general councils. This mode of disputing against those heretics, therefore, gave rise to that question which Peter Mansur attempts to solve in the homily: namely, how it can be that, although Christ’s body is now immortal and incorrupt, it is yet broken by the hands of priests and ground by the teeth of the faithful; which indeed are arguments for corruption. Furthermore, Michael Glycas, in epistle 34, which is to Joannicius, cites Isidore of Pelusium, *houtōs en epistolais legonta*—speaking in his epistles in this manner: “*Hōsper to sōma tou Kyriou hypopeson tois odousi tou hadou, phthoran men tēnikauta edexato, diaphtoran de ouk eiden: houtō kai nyn auto to sōma tou Kyriou tois odousin hypopipton tois hēmeterois, phthoran men homoiōs hyphistatai, diaphtoran de ouk egnō, all’ eutheōs aphthartizomenon tē tēs psychēs ousia didotai monon, alla kai eis aiōna symparamenei tais tōn dikaiōn psychais*—Just as the Lord’s body, when it had fallen into the teeth of Hades, received corruption at that time, but did not see decay; so also now, the body of the Lord itself, falling under our teeth, undergoes corruption in the same way, but knew no decay, but, being immediately made incorrupt, it is given not only with the substance of the soul, but it also remains forever with the souls of the just.” I would almost assert that Peter Mansur, when he was writing the epistle, proposed to himself this teaching of Isidore to explain. These authors were [cited] by Michael Sicy-
differ in the slightest, I do not doubt, but they do not differ in the whole from Anastasius, as regards the corruption of the Eucharist of Christ's body, in that they censured that it should have the same condition in the sacrament as it had before the resurrection. But if anyone inquires by what reason they understood the fraction of Christ's body to occur, since according to the tradition of the Church, which Nyssenus attests (chap. 27, Orat. Catech.), although it appears to be broken, nevertheless it is whole in every particle, and remains whole in itself; or as the divine Eutychius says in Nicetas Choniates in *Alexius Comnenus*, lib. III, man receives the whole sacrosanct body and blood of the Lord, even if he has received a part. To these things it must be said that the sense of Anastasius and others was that the accidents of bread and wine, after transubstantiation has occurred, affect the body and blood of the Lord just as they once affected the substance of the bread and wine. Wherefore, as the bodily substance is judged to be one while the quantity is divided, so they opined that the bread's body of Christ is divided and broken when the quantity is divided; A since by another miracle that whole thing lies concealed under each particle. This sense had its defenders among the Latins, especially those who disputed against Berengarius. Furthermore, among the Greeks, Samonas, Archbishop of Gaza—and thus a Palestinian—in a dialogue with Achmed the Saracen, elegantly explains the division of the Eucharistic bread with the example of a mirror, which, when divided into fragments, the individual parts none the less represent the same appearance: he adds also the example of the voice, which the ears of individual listeners receive equally. In the same way, he says, the holy body of Christ which sits at the right hand of the Father, remains the same in itself; but where the bread is consecrated and transmutated by divine power through the descent of the most holy Spirit, although it is divided, nevertheless it is preserved whole and sound in every fragment. Wherefore, when the sacrificed bread, which is the sacrosanct body of Christ, is cut into parts, do not think that this B body is divided, or distracted, or separated. For it is immortal and incorrupt, and cannot be consumed. But this division is of the sensible accidents only, after consecration. These things are most exact and consistent with the tradition and doctrine of both Churches. I would here like to warn the reader that the first part of the dialogue of Samonas consists of the entire dialogue of Theodore Abucara. The opinion of some of those Greeks that the Lord's body in the Eucharist suffers corruption, finally became obsolete from the time when Sicydita was condemned, and Nectarius of Jerusalem refutes this in his book, page 205, where, after having recounted that a consecrated host had been found on the island of Crete, which had contracted a blackness due to the dampness of the place, but had breathed forth a most sweet odor when it had been dried upon the embers on the sacred disk, he subjoins this: C "This miracle is a most manifest proof of that great and, above nature, extraordinary mystery, in which the accidents alone of the holy bread are corrupted, while the substance of the bread, once converted and transubstantiated by the invocation of the holy Spirit into the true body of Christ, undergoes no corruption, but remains incorrupt as the proper body of Christ. For how could those putrefied accidents of the bread, which were scarcely visible to the sight, have sent forth such great fragrance, after having cast off the moisture which it had?" He subjoins that he himself was a witness of this prodigy, and had then handled this most holy bread with his own hands.
EPISTLE of the most holy Peter Mansur to Zacharias, bishop of Doara
D Even if we are separated in body, nevertheless we are most joined in mind by the spirit; we therefore embrace and greet your God-imitating goodness, and concerning the Lord's body, of which we are participants, we signify to your love that we cannot by any means say there are two bodies of Christ, but that his body is one. And just as the infant born from a woman is complete, yet as it eats and drinks it grows by natural power, and even if it grows, two bodies do not result, but it remains one; so much the more, by the operation of the holy Spirit, is the bread and the wine for the increase