Eulogia
(Greek eulogia, “a blessing”).
The term has been applied in ecclesiastical usage to the object blessed. It was occasionally used in early times to signify the Holy Eucharist, and in this sense is especially frequent in the writings of St. Cyril of Alexandria. The origin of this use is doubtless to be found in the words of St. Paul (1 Corinthians 10:16); to poterion tes eulogias ho eulogoumen. But the more general use is for such objects as bread, wine, etc., which it was customary to distribute after the celebration of the Divine Mysteries. Bread so blessed, we learn from St. Augustine (De pecat. merit., ii, 26), was customarily distributed in his time to catechumens, and he even gives it the name of sacramentum, as having received the formal blessing of the Church: “Quod acceperunt catechumeni, quamvis non sit corpus Christi, sanctum tamen est, et sanctius quam cibi quibus alimur, quoniam sacramentum est” (What the catechumens receive, though it is not the Body of Christ, is holy — holier, indeed, than our ordinary food, since it is a sacramentum). For the extension of this custom in later ages, see ANTIDORON; BREAD, LITURGICAL USE OF.
The word eulogia has a special use in connexion with monastic life. In the Benedictine Rule monks are forbidden to receive “litteras, eulogias, vel quaelibet munuscula” without the abbot’s leave. Here the word may be used in the sense of blessed bread only, but it seems to have a wider signification, and to designate any kind of present. There was a custom in monasteries of distributing in the refectories, after Mass, the eulogiae of bread blessed at the Mass.
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ARTHUR S. BARNES Transcribed by Gerald M. Knight
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VCopyright © 1909 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, May 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, CensorImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Eulogia
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(1.) A term used in reference to the consecrated bread of the Eucharist. In the early Church, at the end of mass, the loaves offered by the faithful (not consecrated) were blessed by the celebrant, and distributed as a sign of communion, as they now are in the Greek Church, to those who had not communed, and formerly to catechumens who were not admissible. They were called eulogies or antidora, compensations, by the Council of Antioch in 341.
(2.) was one of the early titles of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and appears to have been taken from the language of Paul when he says, “The cup of blessing which we bless” . Down to the time of Cyril and Chrysostom, is used synonymously with , but after the fifth century the term was appropriated to the bread set apart from the oblations for the poor and the clergy. To this custom we may refer the origin of private masses, and of communion in one kind.
(3.) The practice of giving the eulogia also tends to explain the custom of non-communication which sprang up in the Church about the same time. The faithful who did not communicate retired from the assembly before the celebration of the Lord’s Supper began, but not without receiving the benediction of the minister. The fideles were soon divided into two classes communicantes and non-communicantes of which the Church knew nothing in earlier ages. The Council of Nantes, about A.D. 890, ordered the presbyters to keep some portions of the oblations in a proper vessel, so that those persons who were not prepared to communicate might, on every festival and Lord’s day, receive some of the euloqia, previously blessed with a proper benediction. Bingham, Orig. Eccl. book 10, chapter 2, 16; book 15, chapter 4, 3; Riddle, Christ. Antiquities, pages 545, 578.