The Language of Holy Communion in Medieval England

Their eucharistic words teach us about their eucharistic faith

We’ve been thinking lately about the language of Anglo-Saxon England. With some help from a metaphor map, we explored the thoughts and perceptions of early-medieval Christians by examining individual metaphorical connections and metaphorical trends in Old English. I’d like to continue this exercise in close language study, but with our focus on one specific and highly significant aspect of life in medieval England: the Holy Eucharist. What can we learn from the words and phrases that Englishmen of the Middle Ages used when they were speaking, writing, and thinking about this wondrous and mysterious sacrament?¹

Eucharistic devotion in the West has changed quite a bit over the centuries, and while much of this appears to me as the healthy, gradual maturation characteristic of living beings, not all of it does. And in addition to growth, there has also been decay. Indeed, if the statistics can be trusted, the situation surrounding belief in the Holy Eucharist is dire. Language use has played a role in this, and I think that the eucharistic language of the Early and High Middle Ages is a remedy that helps us to renew our understanding of and relationship with the sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood.

Our recent emphasis on metaphor—as fundamental to the spiritual life, as essential for comprehending supernatural realities—will serve us well here, since the Eucharist has been enriched by metaphorical discourse since the very beginning: “Your fathers did eat the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.” Christ Himself shed light on the nature of the Eucharist by comparing it to something more familiar and tangible, namely, the manna that nourished the Hebrew people as they journeyed from Egypt to the Promised Land. The new manna resembles, yet far surpasses, the old.

Human nature being what it is, we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that even in the Middle Ages, the Eucharist did not always receive the love and veneration that it deserves. It is dismaying to read, for example, a description of eucharistic negligence that sounds rather modern despite being eight hundred years old: the author of Vices and Virtues, a homiletic prose dialogue written in the Middle English of the early thirteenth century, laments the “misbileaue” (misbelief) and “unwurscipe” (irreverence) of those who received the Body of the Lord “al swa unwurðliche swa me nimð ðat bread of ðæ borde” (“as unworthily as one takes the bread of the table”). The metaphorical reflections in this text show us the strong, evocative language that abounds in the literature of medieval England:

Take what you see, bread and wine in appearance; and in your thoughts believe what you see not: that is, Christ’s flesh and His blood. And know in truth, as truly as bread and wine feed the body, while in this life it dwells, so this holy corpus Domini truly feeds both soul and body unto eternal life. And as truly as the tree of Paradise was called “knowing both good and evil,” so truly bears this same tree the fruit that turns many to life, and also some to death, for [their] misbelief and [their] irreverence.

The term “eucharist,” a borrowing from Greek via Latin and French, does not appear in Vices and Virtues, and in fact, it does not appear as an English-language word in any document from the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons until sometime in the fourteenth century. English Christians of the Early and High Middle Ages had various other titles for the Holy Sacrament, and these titles give us an opportunity to consider how their eucharistic language formed their eucharistic faith—and a formidable faith it was. On the eve of the Reformation, the sacramental Body of Christ was still “the focus of all the hopes and aspirations” of the English people:

As kneeling congregations raised their eyes to see the Host held high above the priest’s head at the sacring, they were transported to Calvary itself, and gathered not only into the passion and resurrection of Christ, but into the full sweep of salvation history.²

The most standard item of eucharistic vocabulary in Old and Middle English is also one of the most unfamiliar in modern English: housel (pronounced “HOW-zuhl” and also spelled husel, housul, howsell, etc.). This word was used as a noun meaning primarily “the Eucharist” and as a verb meaning “to administer the Eucharist to.”

Actually, countless speakers and students of modern English have seen this word, but they may not have noticed it or understood its meaning. It appears in Hamlet, Act 1, scene 5, when the ghost of Prince Hamlet’s father describes his murder at the hands of “that adulterate beast” Claudius. The ghost laments that he was

Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatch’d;
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d;
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!

King Hamlet relates, with admirable horror, that the murder deprived him of a good Christian death, since he died “unhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d,” that is, without receiving the Eucharist, unprepared (without confessing his sins), and unanointed (without receiving extreme unction).

The deeper psychological and emotional effects of a word are greatly influenced by the word’s etymology and its range of meanings. In the case of “housel,” the term’s origin and multiple meanings convey powerful truths about the nature of the Blessed Sacrament. It is related to Germanic words meaning “sacrifice” or “offering,” and in Old English it was used, though perhaps infrequently, to mean “sacrifice” in a non-eucharistic sense. Over time, “housel” became more closely associated with the Holy Eucharist, but not in a restrictive way: in addition to denoting the sacred species, it referred to receiving Communion and celebrating the eucharistic sacrifice.

Thus, the notion of sacrifice is encoded within the very word “housel,” which binds the Eucharist as spiritual nourishment to religious sacrifice in general and, more specifically, to the sacred liturgical sacrifice through which this nourishment is produced. A term that memorably conveys this association would be beneficial in any age, and in our own would perhaps have an especially salutary effect.

There is a striking tendency in medieval English to use “God,” without any qualifying words, as a name for Christ. This usage is now officially deemed “obsolete,” and indeed, it clashes quite strongly with the speech patterns of modern English, despite being theologically sound. I find its forceful simplicity refreshing, and one could hardly find a more concise way to affirm the hypostatic union.

Medieval eucharistic terminology displaying this same tendency includes “God’s flesh,” “the flesh and blood of God’s body,” and Godes lichama, this last meaning in modern English “God’s body” or, perhaps more accurately, “God’s living body.” These titles are surely due for a revival. I for one would benefit from more frequently contemplating the Blessed Sacrament not only as corpus Christi but as corpus Dei, that is, as the sacrificial flesh of the Savior but also as the eternal and glorious Body of God—uncreated Light, infinite Love, and the very Principle of all that exists.

The idea of Holy Communion as preparation for death was far more pronounced in medieval England than it is today:

The reception of communion was not the primary mode of lay encounter with the Host. Everyone received at Easter, and one’s final communion, the viaticum or “journey money” given on the deathbed, was crucially important to medieval people.... For most people, most of the time the Host was something to be seen, not to be consumed.³

Infrequent Communion was the norm in this society, even for some religious. The clergy who attended the eleventh-century Council of Aenham expected the laity to receive three times per year, and the Laws of Cnut, issued around the same time and drafted by Archbishop Wulfstan, likewise mentioned thrice-yearly Communion. The thirteenth-century document Ancrene Wisse (i.e., Anchoresses’ Guide) states that anchoresses, like lay brothers, should receive Communion only fifteen times per year, since “me let leasse of þe þing þet me haueð ofte” (“one values less the thing which one has often”).⁴

For ordinary Catholics of medieval England, the Eucharist was not consumed as a daily (or weekly, or maybe even monthly) Bread, and it naturally acquired greater prominence as viaticum—sanctifying Bread for that final and supremely important voyage toward the setting sun of earthly life. Thus, one of the Old English titles for the Blessed Sacrament was wegneste, meaning “provision for the journey” or, more literally, “way food.”

Ælfric of Eynsham died in the early eleventh century, not long before the end of the Anglo-Saxon era. He was a priest, an abbot, and a prolific writer whose works account for a large portion of surviving Old English texts. In one of his homilies, he recounts a vision that is disturbing to modern sensibilities, but in an age when so much disorder and confusion afflict the eucharistic life of the Church, I think it’s important for us to confront thoughts and experiences from the Age of Faith. In addition to vividly conveying theological truths, the passage gives us an opportunity to reflect on the gravity and intensity with which Anglo-Saxon Christians approached a mystery so awe-inspiring as Holy Communion.

Two monks prayed of God some manifestation concerning the holy housel, and after the prayer assisted at Mass. Then saw they a child lying on the altar at which the Mass-priest was celebrating Mass, and God’s angel stood with a hand-knife, waiting until the priest should break the housel.

One senses an allusion here to the sacrifice of Isaac: “And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.” Isaac, however, survived his sacrificial journey. In the monks’ dramatic encounter with veiled sacramental realities, as in the monumental drama of Calvary which the sacrament recalls, the Victim is not spared. The angel wielded the mystical knife against the child

and poured its blood into the cup. Afterwards, when [the two monks] went to the housel, it was changed to bread and to wine, and they partook of it, thanking God for that manifestation.

1. Much of the information in this article is built upon the doctoral research, completed in 1932, of Sister Mary Joseph Cravens, and the article itself is an adapted version of essays that I wrote about a year ago for New Liturgical Movement.

2. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580, p. 91.

3. Stripping of the Altars, p. 95.

4. The author also stipulates the days on which the anchoresses will communicate: “(i) Mid-winter Dei, (ii) Tweofte Dei [Twelfth Day, i.e., Epiphany], (iii) Condelmeasse Dei, (iiii) a Sunnedei mid-weibitweonen [midway between] thet ant Easter, other Ure Leafdi Dei [or Our Lady’s Day, i.e., the Annunciation], yef he is neh the Sunnedei, forthe hehnesse, (v) Easter Dei, (vi) the thridde Sunnedei th’refter [the third Sunday after Easter], (vii) Hali Thursdei, (viii) Witsunne Dei, (ix) Midsumer Dei, (x) Seinte Marie Dei Magdaleine, (xi) the Assumptiun, (xii) the Nativite, (xiii) Seinte Mihales Dei, (xiii) Alle Halhene Dei [All Saints’ Day], (xv), Seint Andrews Dei.” See Ancrene Wisse: Part Eight, edited by Robert Hasenfratz.