C. The Power of Consecrated Bread
Whether Jewish, Greek, or Roman such religious practices are determined by the belief that the divine is accessible to humans because a δαίμων is in everything: plants, rocks, metals, and not only in material substances, but in immaterial ones as well.
Such an immaterial element laden with power is, for example, a name. According to ancient belief, the name has a deep, mystic relationship to the numen of the person who bears it. Not only are the true names of gods and goddesses holy and unutterable, they must sometimes be replaced by figures and symbols that hide the true name, which only the initiates, and perhaps not even they, can know.[581] The numen can thus be indicated by numbers, signs, formulas, charms and images, the use of which was believed to establish a relationship between men and the desired spiritual power. The expected result was a blessing or, if malevolent powers were invoked with bad intentions, a curse. Thus shaping sacrificial bread in forms indicative of the character of a god or goddess, or marking it with such symbols, was a way of calling upon those powers to become effective.Christians began early to mark their eucharistic bread, a practice that is definitely reported in the Acts of Thomas, which was probably composed in the first half of the third century. Here we read: “And the apostle commanded his servant to set a table before them; and he set out a stool which they found there, and spreading a linen cloth upon it set on the bread of blessing.” Whereupon the apostle addresses a prayer to Jesus in which a mysterious “hidden Mother” is also invoked: “And when he had said this, he marked the cross upon the bread and broke it and began to distribute it.”[582] The sign of the cross was used by the early Christians as a powerful “φυλακτήριον,” a device that kept the devil at a distance and made evil demons take flight.
Crossing oneself on the forehead assured protection against the myriads of demons with which Christians felt themselves surrounded day and night; the sign of the cross summoned the superior power of Christ against the powers of darkness.[583] Thus when we read that Christians crossed the bread they ate[584] we may think of an invocation of blessing similar to a grace before meal in a Christian household today. But why cross the eucharistic bread? Was it necessary to increase its potency by the addition of the sign of the cross? Perhaps the Christians simply used this sign to distinguish bread for sacred use, since there was no difference between the bread eaten at home and that used in the Eucharist.[585] Or perhaps this is another area in which pagan and Christian practices overlap. We have seen that in Greco-Roman paganism bread could be specifically marked in two cases: either when the bread was used as a medicine, in which case the physician stamped it, or when it was a sacrificial bread, in which case the shape of the bread or its decoration indicated to whom it was dedicated. I suggest that both of these practices may have played a role in the development of Christian worship. The eucharistic bread was both an “offering” or a “sacrifice” and a spiritual medicine, one that was effective against bodily ills as well.[586]The ritual described in the Acts of Thomas is very similar to the Kollyridian service as Epiphanius describes it: here too, a wooden table is converted to holy use by being covered with a linen cloth, bread alone is used, and all eat from it. The use of the table reflects a Roman pagan custom: any table “which has been dedicated can serve the purpose of an altar.”[587] Roman literature provides many examples of tables, rather than regular altars, being used in divine services. Best known is the lectistemium (in Greek Oco^evta), when tables were set up as though for a banquet with images of the gods placed around them as if they were eating. Such a “feasting of the gods” was celebrated in Rome as early as 399 B.C.
The food placed on the tables was consumed by the priests and the people: first by the priests, whose eating was regarded as the gods’ own eating of it. When the people received their share, it was already holy food, sanctified by the fact of having lain on the table of the gods, and so bearing a particle of the divine in it. Similar practices were observed in private homes. Tertullian sarcastically tells us that at the birth of a child the Romans “invoke the aid of Lucina (Juno) and Diana; for a whole week a table is spread in honor of Juno.”[588] This table at the birth of a child is probably what Vergil referred to when in his “Messianic Eclogue” he wrote: “Begin little boy: those who do not smile on their parents neither god will honor with his table, nor a goddess with her bed.”[589] A cult, therefore, could be established whenever a table was set up and an offering was dedicated; when the table was removed, the cult was finished.This must have been the custom which was followed in the Acts of Thomas as well as by the Kollyridians. Indeed, Christians did not use permanent altars for at least two hundred years. The passage from Epiphanius is the first reference to a Christian altar; at least Epiphanius considered it as such.[590] But there is one great difference between the service described in the Ads of Thomas and the Kollyridian service: Thomas clearly dedicated the bread to Jesus, and thus his service was a Christian Eucharist, while the Kollyridian women offered the bread “in sacrifice in the name of Mary” (1.7). Epiphanius does not think that this is a Eucharist, but rather, quoting Isaiah 65.11, calls it a “table for a demon,” and what the women ate, “impious food.” He then quotes Jeremiah 7.18: “Women knead dough and their sons collect wood to make cakes for the army of heaven” (VIII.1). Epiphanius, therefore, equated the Kollyridian service with a sacrifice to the queen of heaven and thus regarded the cult as a revival of paganism in a Christian garb.
Whether the Kollyridians’ bread was similar to the bread sacrified by the Jewish women we do not know, but one thing we may assume with a fair degree of certainty: these cakes were not in erotic shapes nor were they stamped with obscene symbols. Had they been, Epiphanius would have made a great issue of it, for he uses every example he can think of to fulminate against women. But he does not even mention it. So the women used simple bread — but bread it was, the “fruit of Demeter,” sacred to Artemis, Minerva, Juno and all the great fertility goddesses of the ancient world. For bread has an awesome relationship to Gaia (earth), in whose “womb” the seed is planted in order that it may die and thus multiply, grow, and become a life-giving element. In the sacred mystery of bread, every woman could view herself as possessing a portion of the creative power of the gods, for in every act of intercourse, conception and birth, the sowing of the seed, the miracle of death and life, is repeated. When the Kollyridian women performed their solemn rites, they did so as women in the most exalted sense. Just as at the Thesmophoria or the Roman mysteries of Bona Dea, men were excluded: nothing should interfere with this deep feminine experience. It was part of Greco-Roman magical practice to require silence, often solitude, and sometimes even the protective cover of night to assure effectiveness, for any profane sound might break the spell. Strict regulations were established to exclude anything that might interfere with the solemn character of the rites.[591] TheKollyridian sacrifice was celebrated in such a holy manner in order to establish an unio mystica with the divine.