ABSTRACT
SINCE THE AUTHORITY OF THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH DEPENDED LARGELY on its own cultural and economic monopoly of the channel to salvation, the ability to pronounce the words that would produce God from a piece of bread was of fundamental importance.1 The eucharist was considered an arch-sacrament, and unlike baptism, marriage, and extreme unction, could not be performed by the laity, even when the recipient was at the point of death.2 In fact, it has been suggested that the interdependence of Christian clergy and Holy Communion goes so deep that the former cannot exist without the latter:
Thus, far from the conception of Christ reconciling God and man by His sacrificial death as priest and victim, the Christian priesthood was established in the Church especially for the perpetuation of the eucharistic memorial of His self-offering. As the idea of priesthood developed in relation to the episcopal sacerdotium it acquired an ecclesiastical jurisdiction with the growth of the Church and eventually became a rallying force and consolidating centre in an age of imperial disruption.3
