Intinction Has Led To Removal Of The Cup From The Laity

Respect the sacramental table to which you have approached, the bread of which you have partaken, the cup in which you have communicated, being consecrated by the sufferings of Christ.5

5. Note that this allusion implies that Communion in both Kinds was given separately, as in the Anglican Church, not by intinction, as in the present Orthodox Eastern Church.

Philip Schaff and Henry Wace | eds., S. Cyril of Jerusalem, S. Gregory Nazianzen, vol. 7, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1894).

Gregory Nazianzen | “Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen,” in S. Cyril of Jerusalem, S. Gregory Nazianzen, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow, vol. 7, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1894), 40.31 (p. 371).

The first mention of intinction in the West, is at Carthage in the fifth century. We know it was practised in the seventh century and by the twelfth it had become general, to give place to the withdrawal of the chalice altogether in the West.

Henry R. Percival | “The Canons of the 318 Holy Fathers Assembled in the City of Nice, in Bithynia,” in The Seven Ecumenical Councils, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, vol. 14, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1900), 31.

All forms of intinction had virtually disappeared in the W. by c. 1200. The third form (dipping the Host into the consecrated wine) has been sporadically revived in modern times in the Anglican Communion as a method both of reservation and of giving Communion to the sick.

F. L. Cross and Elizabeth A. Livingstone | eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), s.v. “Intinction.”

Subscribe to the Heidelblog today!


One comment

  1. I am told the Oxford Movement revived the practice of intinction in their romantic throwback to the high Middle Ages. Some PCA churches have recently adopted the practice as well.

Comments are closed.