Eucharistic Materiality and Lay Liturgical Experience in the Early Middle Ages

By late antiquity the eucharist had ceased to have any direct connection to a meal, being now framed by verbal, spatial, material and institutional aspects of ritualization, by theologies proposed though homilies and mystagogy, and by canonical regulation about eucharistic participation. In the period up to the Carolingian reforms, we lose sight of the laity's eucharistic participation - it is rarely referred to in textual sources and their participation can only be inferred from visual representations. The notion of the 'affordances' of material objects is a useful tool when considering lay ritual and sensorial experience of the eucharist; this paper will explore what the material and visual remains of chalices, spoons and straws indicates about ritual practice in the early medieval period.