2nd–5th centuries

The Eucharist in the early Church: real presence and sacrifice

The baptized brought the "eucharistic sacrifice," and the bishop said the prayer of thanksgiving; by the mid-3rd century the Eucharist was limited to bread and wine, and the agape separated from communion (Hall). Ignatius called the bread the "medicine of immortality," Irenaeus called it a Eucharist "of two realities, earthly and heavenly," and the language of body and blood was so realistic that pagans accused Christians of cannibalism. Pelikan stresses that until the 9th century the real presence was not a matter of controversy and the Fathers had the concepts neither for a purely symbolic interpretation nor for explaining a change. Cyprian gave one of the clearest pre-Nicene interpretations of the Eucharist as a sacrifice of remembrance that does not repeat Calvary. In the 4th–5th centuries Ambrose established in the West the teaching that the bread and wine are changed by the power of Christ's word, and Cyril of Alexandria derived Christology from the Eucharist.