History of azyme

The unleavened bread that Jews eat at Passover is called the azyme; in contrast the leavened bread that members of the Greek Orthodox Church eat at communion is called the enzyme.

Pasche is the feast of azyme, the bread of proposition while Passover, the feast of sweet bread (or unleavened bread).

The use of azyme bread seems to have begun, almost insensibly, from the frequent inter-communion between Italo-Greeks and their Roman neighbors.

For the Greeks, the use of unleavened bread was a Jewish practice, contrary to the Gospel, heretical and vain. The Greeks maintained that the leavened bread symbolized the animated body of Christ.

Byzantine polemicist argued that using unleavened bread was itself a ‘Judaizing’ practice, indicating a lack of recognition that the New Testament had. In 1051, when the Jews of Bari revolted, the Christian citizens of the town retaliated by burning down the Jewish quarter because Byzantine associated unleavened bread with the Jewish commemoration of Passover.

The word azyme appearing briefly in English language in the fourteenth century and then vanishing until the sixteenth century.

At the end of nineteenth century biochemists gave new life to this term when they gave the name enzyme to proteins that cause biochemical reactions similar to those produced by leavening agents.
History of azyme