Evan Freeman

In the Byzantine Divine Liturgy, the clergy prayed at the Epiklesis that God would send down his Holy Spirit to transform the Eucharistic bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Yet as early as the fifth century, there is evidence that Christians doubted this invisible transformation. Byzantine artists drew on biblical narratives of the Spirit’s descent to illustrate the Eucharistic mystery. In the Early Byzantine period, gold and silver doves hung above altars and fonts to represent the Spirit’s descent. In the post-Iconoclastic period, spatial icons near altars served similar functions. This paper presents four such images: the Annunciation, Pentecost, the Hetoimasia, and the Ascension. It argues that these images encouraged worshippers to visualize the Spirit’s descent and the transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.

The celebration of the Eucharist was central to the religious life of the Byzantine Empire.1 But even in Byzantium, before the dawn of the modern age, the notion that the Eucharistic bread and wine were Christ’s actual body and blood could apparently be a little hard to swallow. Historical sources from as early as the fifth century suggest that some Christians had doubts. In the sayings of Abba Daniel, one of the desert fathers of Egypt who died in 449, a sceptical monk comments, ‘The bread which we receive is not really the body of Christ, but a symbol’. When the monk is attending the Divine Liturgy on the following Sunday with two other monks, they all see a vision: ‘Their eyes were opened and when the bread was placed on the holy table, there appeared as it were a little child to these three alone.