With the “Hear, Here” series, we aim to facilitate conversations around new research in the humanities. Faculty fellows at the Institute for the Humanities will discuss a part of their current project in a short talk followed by a Q & A session.

About this talk:
Why did pure wheat bread come to be the accepted medium for God in Christian Europe? Given the difficulties of growing this grass in most of the continent, and given the popularity of other grains there, the choice of wheat for the bread in which the body of God became available to the faithful in the central Christian ritual (communion) was far from a foregone conclusion. This presentation tries to make sense of medieval Europeans' conviction that God would only become present in breads made of the purest wheat, with no admixtures of other grains or other ingredients. It argues that Christian predilections actually followed and did not create the wheat monocultures that came to characterize medieval European agriculture.

Paolo Squatriti is a 2024-25 Helmut F. Stern Faculty Fellow at the Institute for the Humanities and Professor of History and Romance Languages & Literatures.