International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Agnes Kriza
University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; 
[e-mail]
The Life-Giving Body of Christ: 
The Leaven Debate and Byzantine Sanctuary Decoration
Christopher Walter described the apse decorations of the Sophia churches of Ohrid and 
Kiev as “the eleventh-century watershed” in the history of Byzantine art: the beginning of the 
transformation of Byzantine sanctuary program in the course of which it became increasingly more 
ritualized. Although there is a striking coincidence in time with the Schism in 1054, Alexei Lidov’s 
suggestion about the link between the conflict with Rome and the new iconographic processes has 
been largely rejected or overlooked. Although one of the focal points of the medieval disagreement 
between the two Churches was the Eucharist, especially the symbolical question of the leaven in 

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the Eucharistic bread, art historians, theologians and historians argue that the leaven debate was 
dogmatically irrelevant, serving only as a pretext in a church political conflict. Accordingly, recent 
scholarly consensus is that there were multiple factors – liturgical, theological and social – which 
influenced Byzantine sanctuary iconography after the first Millennium, amongst which the Anti-
Latin Eucharistic debate is one, but definitely not the most important. 
In this paper, I challenge this stance and suggest a reconsideration of the so-called Azyme 
Controversy: although it seemingly touched upon only formal and ritual questions, it was a complex 
debate which brought to the surface some fundamental disagreements between the West and the 
East regarding the Eucharist. An overlooked aspect of the Azyme Controversy revolved around the 
principal Byzantine concept of Christ’s Life-giving body as the source of deification of man. The 
foundations of this doctrine was elaborated by Cyril of Alexandria and constituted the basis of the 
Eucharistic theology of Symeon the New Theologian, whose biographer and follower was Niketas 
Stethatos, a protagonist of the leaven debate. Consequently, what the Byzantines defended in this 
symbolical debate is their doctrine of theosis which is inseparably intertwined with the Eucharist 
in Symeon’s theology: the leaven is the soul “in the dough of our human nature” which was taken 
by Christ to deify the human nature completely. So the unleavened Host cannot be an antitype 
of Christ’s body as it is dead, without living force and unable to deify. The texts of the Azyme 
Controversy suggest that this debate was not only relevant, but became the main stimulator of 
Byzantine theological thought, as well as an important driving force of liturgical and iconographic 
developments after 1054.
Accordingly, the principal message of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine apse decoration after the 
Schism is that it is only the leavened bread, the life-giving body of Christ which elevates the deified 
human nature to the right of the Father. This message is expressed by an emphasized central axis 
leading the eye up from the real altar through the painted altar with leavened bread in the centre 
of the Communion of the Apostles to the gold-robed Christ of the Ascension. In later decorations, 
this central axis is further emphasized by another painted altar: the Church Fathers in the lower 
register, hitherto frontally depicted, turn towards it, some holding the scroll with the text of the 
Anaphora prayer, others the Eucharistic lance. The Melismos, the naked living Child-Christ on this 
altar, strikingly reflects Niketas Stethatos’s words: when Christ’s flesh “being pierced by the lance… 
the living and Holy Spirit remained in his deified flesh, which in eating… we live in him”.