LORD'S SUPPER (Lat. Cæna Domini, Fr. La Sainte Cène, Ger. Abendmahl), one of the sacraments of the Christian religion, in the observance of which Christians commemorate the death of the Founder of their religion. It is so called because the Lord Jesus Christ instituted the rite when he took his last meal with his disciples. It has also the names of eucharist and communion, and is celebrated by all Christian bodies however much their views may differ as to its nature and efficacy, except the Quakers. It was instituted at the time of the Jewish passover, as we read in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, the two former agreeing very closely in their accounts, while that of Luke has features of its own. A brief statement to the same effect is in 1 Cor. xi. There is no corresponding section in the fourth gospel, though in John vi Christ speaks of the eating of his flesh and the drinking of his blood. In all the churches founded by the Apostles the Lord's Supper was introduced. In the 1st and 2d centuries this rite was celebrated in connection with the agapæ or love-feast. After the 3d century, when the congregations became more numerous, the agapæ ceased, and the Lord's Supper was from thence celebrated separately in the churches, in such a way that all present could partake, with the exception of catechumens (that is, Christians not yet baptized) and unbelievers. These were obliged to withdraw when the celebration of the Lord's Supper commenced, because
was considered as a mysterious act, which was to be withheld from profane eyes. The deacons carried the bread of life to those whom sickness or imprisonment had prevented from being present at the meeting of the congregation. It was always believed to possess a peculiar efficacy, and ideas of the awful and mystical were associated with it. From the first Christians ascribed supernatural power to the rite, and the consecrated bread and wine were regarded as more than mere bread and wine, and as having became, in some mystical way, the body and blood of our Saviour.
In the early Church there was no definite
dogmatic formulation of the change undergone
by the sacred elements, but in the 9th century, in consequence of the attacks of Berengarius (q.v.) on the doctrine of the Real Presence, the term transubstantiation, commonly ascribed to Paschasius Radbertus, first came into use to describe metaphysically the real and objective change of the elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. This term was adopted by the Council of Rome in 1079, and confirmed in 1215, in the Fourth Lateran Council, by Innocent III, and has ever since been employed by the Roman Catholic Church as the authentic expression of her faith in the doctrine of the Eucharist. The Council of Trent in the 16th century laid it down as of faith to confess the “change of the whole substance of the bread into the body, of the whole substance (substantiæ) of the wine into the blood [of Christ], only the appearances (species) of bread and wine remaining; which change the Catholic Church most fitly calls Transubstantiation.” The Roman Catholic Church holds that the Eucharist has been both a sacrament and a sacrifice from the beginning. This, she declares, is evident from Christ's words of institution, as narrated in the synoptic gospels, and from Saint Paul's words in his first Epistle to the Corinthians. And unbroken testimony from the Apostles through the Fathers of the Church, she further avers, bears ample evidence to her claim; besides this, she claims that her own witness as the duly divinely appointed guardian of the deposit of revelation and its infallible interpreter commissioned to teach all nations is sufficient seal to the truth of the doctrine. As a sacrament it is the true body and blood of Christ under the appearance of bread and wine to be partaken by the faithful as a means of grace and union with Christ; as a sacrifice it is the unbloody oblation of the body and blood of Christ by a duly appointed minister, that is, priest, by whom alone the elements can be consecrated. Such she declares has been the Christian teaching and practice from the beginning. The reception of the sacrament under both kinds, that is, under the forms of both bread and wine, was general until the Middle Ages, when communion under one kind, bread alone, began to be adopted, partly to avoid the danger of spilling the consecrated wine and partly to counteract a growing heresy that Christ was not received whole and entire under either kind alone. The Council of Constance, in the 15th century, made it universally obligatory to communicate under one kind to meet the heresy of Huss and Jerome of Prague.