Commenting on post-New Testament animal sacrifices within some Christian groups, David Grumett and Rachel Muers wrote the following:
In the Armenian Church, an ancient sacrificial liturgy known as the matal (or madagh), meaning ‘something tender’, has persisted to the present day. This was a continuation of pagan practice promoted by Gregory and later church leaders following the country’s conversion to Christianity, but in revised Christian form. The sacrifice has typically been offered on several occasions through the year: Easter, all other dominical feasts, the feasts of famous saints, and to commemorate the faithful departed. At Easter a lamb has traditionally been offered, while at other times cows, bulls, goats or sheep have also been used, and even doves or pigeons in cases of scarcity or poverty (1).
Nerses Shnorhali, an Armenian bishop and future catholicos, despatched an intriguing epistle in the mid twelfth century to his priests in the Hamayk province of Syrian Mesopotamia defending the matal against its detractors. It appears that Syriac Christian critics in the area had accused the Armenians of following Jewish practice, especially in the case of the Easter sacrifice of the lamb. Nerses’ apologia therefore proceeds by distinguishing various ritual points of the Easter matal from those of the Passover sacrifice of the Jews. He writes:
They selected a lamb a year old, and a male: our lamb is one month old, or, as a rule, more or less; and we never consider whether it is male or female. They carried it five days beforehand to their houses: we take ours on the same day or whenever occasion suits. They sacrifice at eventide on the old Pascha: we at dawn of the new Pascha. They ate it standing up, and by night: but we sitting down, and by day. They ate it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs: we with leavened bread and without herbs. Likewise the rest of their victims were offered for the living: but those which we offer are in memory of the deceased, in order that by feeding the poor, we may find the mercy of God (2)
Later in his epistle, Nerses warns his priests: ‘Let no one venture to smear the upper lintels of his door with the blood of the lamb … for that is a Jewish custom, and the person who does it renders himself liable to an anathema’ (3) Although the rebuttal of accusations of Judaizing occupies most of Nerses’ text, he also is at pains to distinguish the matal from the old pagan sacrificial rites. In a passage inveighing against both Jewish and pagan traditions, he states that the matal was
not indeed according to Jewish tradition, God forbid! For he who shares their practices shall be accursed. But instead of the vain ingratitude of offering sacrifices of the creatures made by God to the demons, as the heathen were used to do, it was made lawful to transfer the sacrifices into the name of the true God, and to devote to him as the creator his own creatures, in the same way as the first fathers had also done prior to the law, I mean, Abel, Noah and Abraham (4).
Nerses here locates sacrifice ‘prior to the law’ as a universal human activity continuous with worship. It is not therefore to be rejected but rather offered to ‘the true God’. The three Old Testament readings appointed for the matal are instructive in this regard: although the first two, Leviticus 1.1–13 and 2 Samuel 6.17–19, situate sacrifice in Israelite context, the third passage, Isaiah 56.6–7, proclaims that the sacrifices of ‘foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord’ will also be pleasing to God: ‘Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’ . . . In his defence of the matal, Nerses also appeals to similar practices elsewhere in Christendom, referring to a lamb sacrifice made in the Roman Church as well as ‘all over the Church of the Franks, with greater care and diligence than we exercise’. In Gaul, Nerses claims, the reservation and consumption of the lamb sacrifice happened as part of the Eucharistic celebration itself. He describes the proceedings as follows:
After they have roasted the lamb, they lay it in the tabernacle under the sacrifice on the day of the Pascha; and after they have communicated in the Mystery, the priest divides, and gives a portion to each; and they eat it up in the church itself before they partake of any ordinary food (5).
Other accounts confirm that a ceremonial meal of lamb was taken at the papal court during the twelfth century (6). The Frankish practices enthusiastically described seem unlikely to have been widespread, however, although at least two ninth-century writers refer to them (7) Yet it is clear that similar transformations of pagan sacrificial practices had been a feature of other earlier medieval Sacrifice and slaughter Western Christian regions, including Britain . . . The continuation of animal sacrifice by Orthodox Christians in several other countries has been noted sporadically. These include Georgia, Bulgaria, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Ethiopia (8). Of special interest, however, is the more recent work of Stella Georgoudi examining the persistence of sacrificial rituals in twentieth-century Greece (9). The sacrifices are offered on particular Christian festivals, notably those of Saints Athanasius (18 January), George (23 April), Elias (20 July) and Paraskevi (26 July). The sacrificial animal might be presented before an icon of the saint for whom it is to be offered, or even left inside the church to sleep the night before its sacrifice, and blessed by the priest before its departure. The sacrifices are made outside the church building, often during mass or immediately afterwards, or during the vespers marking the beginning of a festival. The animal’s head is turned towards the east, just as churches are oriented by their altars. Following the slaughter, participants dip a finger in the blood and trace the sign of the cross on their forehead. All inedible body parts are buried to prevent scavenging by animals, especially dogs, who according to Matthew’s gospel must not be given what is sacred (10). Before the meal begins, the priest or sometimes the bishop stands over the boiling cauldrons to bless the meat (11). Then the climax of the proceedings is reached: a lavish feast served from the cauldrons ‘bubbling with meat, spices, grains and vegetables, including rice, wheat or gruel, garbanzo beans, onions, garlic, and tomatoes’, supervised by the churchwardens and heralded by the tolling of the church bells (12). Although these multiple ritual elements are not all formally codified, they point in combination to a ritual patterning of the slaughter and an understanding of the slaughtered animal as an offering to God. The slaughter can therefore reasonably be described as a sacrifice, even though no part of the animal is burnt as a direct offering to God (13).
Notes for the Above
(1) A. Sharf, ‘Animal Sacrifice in the Armenian Church’, Revue des études arméniennes 16 (1982), pp. 417–49 (418–21).
(2) ‘Epistle of Nerses Shnorhali’, in Rituale Armenorum: Being the Administration of the Sacraments and the Breviary Rites of the Armenian Church together with the Greek Rites of Baptism and Epiphany, eds F.C. Conybeare and A.J. Maclean (Oxford: Clarendon, 1905), pp. 77–85 (78–79).
(3) ‘Epistle of Nerses Shnorhali’, p. 83.
(4) ‘Epistle of Nerses Shnorhali’, p. 79
(5) ‘Epistle of Nerses Shnorhali’, p. 82.
(6) Joseph Tixeront, « Le rite du matal », in Mélanges de patrologie et d’histoire des dogmes (Paris: Gabalda, 1921), pp. 261–78 (277–78).
(7) Tixeront, « Le rite du matal », pp. 276–77
(8) William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium (London: Harper, 2005), pp. 169, 340–41; Cérès Wissa-Wassef, Pratiques rituelles et alimentaires des coptes (Cairo: Institut français d archéologie orientale du Caire, 1971), p. 332; F.C. Conybeare, ‘The Survival of Animal Sacrifice Inside the Christian Church’, American Journal of Theology 7 (1903), pp. 62–90 (89).
(9) Stella Georgoudi, ‘Sanctified slaughter in modern Greece: the “kourbánia” of the saints’, in Cuisine of Sacrifice, pp. 183–203.
(10) Mt. 7.6
(11) The presence and key role of clergy is attested in M.D. Girard, « Les ‘madag’ ou sacrifices arméniens », Revue de l’orient chrétien 7 (1902), pp. 410–22.
(12) Georgoudi, ‘Sanctified slaughter’, p. 190.
(13) Georgoudi, ‘Sanctified slaughter’, pp. 195–96
Source: David Grumett and Rachel Muers, Theology on the Menu: Asceticism, Meat and Christian Diet (London: Routledge, 2010), 109-10, 112-13, notes have been renumbered.
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