Standardization of Ritual Offerings: The Eucharist, Human Sacrifice and Monetization

Ritual and standardization are practically synonymous. The differences lie largely in how they are perceived by those enacting either in practice. In this paper, we offer a novel perspective of the standardization of religious ritual by addressing the Eucharist as one example of a sacrificial ritual transformed and strengthened over time as a direct result of systematic (and dogmatic) standardization. The Eucharist is a ritual explicitly reflective of Christ’s self-sacrifice. In this regard it is also the ultimate act of sacrifice within the Christian tradition. It is regularly integrated into the daily life of Christians through the symbolic consumption of Christ’s flesh and blood through the Eucharistic rite during Mass. Using this example, we examine how sacrificial practices can be subject to processes of substitutions and reorganizations into standardized, culturally embedded formats. The Eucharist memorializes a fundamentally significant human sacrifice by way of standardized ritualized language and accoutrements that in themselves contain multiple references to related values. By formalizing the ritual language of the Christian Church in rituals such as this, uniform and thereby transmittable messages were implemented and eventually cemented. This substantially aided the spread of Christian ritual doctrine during the Middle Ages and standardization was key to this process.