AZ'YMITES (it, a priv. Mtn. Zynie, leaven). The opprobrious name given by the Eastern to the Western Church, arising from a difference about the use, in the Lord's Supper, of leavened or unleavened bread. Alichael Cikru larius, Patriarch of Constantinople ( 1043-1059 ) , made this one of his counts against the West ern Church, and ever since it has been so con sidered. The Western, or Latin branch. insisted that unleavened bread might be used, and the Greek Church stigmatized the Latins as 'Azy mites,' because they did not use leaven. The Latins retorted with •P•o-zymites: also mentarians hut the terms, intended for re proach, soon passed, with the whole discussion. into history as useless additions to polemical nomenclature.
in the 'Longer Catechism of the Eastern Church,' prepared by Plilgeet, approved by the holy Synod in 1839, and the most authoritative doctrinal standard of the Orthodox Grteco-Rus sian Church, question 328 is: "Of what kind should be the bread for the Sacrament?" and the answer is: "Such as the name itself of the bread. the holiness of the Alystery, and the example of Jesus Christ and the Apostles all require: that is, leavened, pure, wheaten bread" (cf. Seim if, Creeds of Christendom, ii. 496).
The exact time when the Latin Church first employed unleavened bread in the Eucharist to the exclusion of the leavened, is undetermined, and, perhaps, undeterminable; but surely this use can he traced to the Ninth Century. The
canons of earlier councils, e.g. of the Council of Toledo (G93) and of Chelsea (787), upon the bread merely prescribe that it should be a !pe el:111y prepared loaf, but not that it should be leavened or unleavened. Cf. art. "Elements," in Smith and Cheetham, Diet: ('heist. Antiq.
second letter in the Greo Roman alphabet. The Phoenician character had a closed loop, which in the Aramaic alphabets opened out, assuming the shape seen in the square Hebrew and the Arabic. let ter. There were two complete loops in the Greek . form, from which was developed the prevalent cursive form B. The minusucle b of our alphabet is from the majuscule Latin of the niedival manuscripts, and its relation in form to the capi tal letter-is obvious. It is found as early as the First. Century of our era, scratched on the walls I if buildings in Pompeii. In time the upper loop was lost, and the letter assumed practically its present form. The Hebrew name for the letter is befit, 'a house,' because the original pic tographic form was the outline of a house or tent. This word appears as /3ira, bC.ta, in the Greek alphabet, and is retained in our word alpha-bet. See ALPHABET ; LETTERS.