Commentaria in Leviticum
The victim of the gridiron was St. Laurence, who, chaste and pure like fine flour, kindled with the oil of mercy and divine love, was a living and burning victim to God, so that the Psalmist, looking upon him, might justly say: “Thou hast tried me by fire, and iniquity hath not been found in me,” Psalm 16:3. A hard and sharp trial indeed, but light and sweet to the fiery soul of Laurence. For, as St. Leo says, in the sermon On Laurence: “The flame of the charity of Christ could not be overcome; the fire that burnt without was duller than that which kindled within”; nay, as if by a prodigy, the outward fire kindled the inward in the mind of Laurence, the inward quenched the outward. For Laurence thirsted for this fire more than the panting hart thirsts for water, nay more than Valerian thirsted for his blood and burning. O how powerful is the flame of Christ! “My soul hath stuck close to thee, because my flesh is burnt with fire for thee, my God.”
Tempered with oil—kneaded with oil instead of water; for this the Hebrew belulot signifies.
And unleavened wafers anointed with oil.—“Wafers” (lagana) are cakes not thick but thin and spread out, such as our cakes of millet: for this the Hebrew rekikim signifies; elsewhere they are called challoth, as if the first-fruits or beginnings of the kneaded mass, as mothers, when they knead, are wont first, before they make and bake the loaves, to make cakes for the children out of the dough, to bake upon the coals. So Oleaster and Ribera.
Note: He calls them anointed with oil, not mixed with oil, but anointed with oil on the top. For Scripture so distinguishes these as to call some tempered, that is, kneaded, with oil in place of water; others it calls anointed or smeared with oil, which are not kneaded, but smeared with oil on the surface. So Abulensis and Ribera, and it is plain from the Hebrew, the Chaldee and the Septuagint.
Verse 5. If thy oblation be from the frying-pan, thou shalt divide it into little pieces, and shalt pour oil upon it.—“Into little pieces,” that the parts so divided may better soak up the oil poured over them; second, that some of them may be sacrificed to God.
Verse 8. And when he hath offered it.—The Hebrew has, he shall cause it to come near, or shall bring it, to the altar, namely the offerer himself, as is plain from the Hebrew, and most of all from the Septuagint.
He shall take a memorial out of the sacrifice.—He shall take, namely he whose office it is to take, the priest. He shall take from all the sacrifices already mentioned, namely of the oven, of the pan and of the gridiron. Again, “memorial” is everywhere here the name of that part of the meal sacrifice which was burnt and sacrificed to God, by which they testified that the whole mincha was offered to God; for the whole was reckoned to be sacrificed to God by this part of itself. See what was said on verse 2.
Verse 11. Every oblation that is offered to the Lord shall be made without leaven.—Although bread seasoned with leaven is, because of the sourness it has, more savoury and easier to digest, yet God did not will the Hebrews to use it in sacrifice, but unleavened bread. First, for the purity of the sacrifice; for unleavened bread is purer. Second, that the Hebrews might have a perpetual memory of their liberation from Egypt, when in their haste they used unleavened bread, Exodus 12:34. Wherefore unleavened bread, Deuteronomy 16:3, is called “the bread of affliction.” Mystically and tropologically, leaven signifies oldness, malice, and every vice and corruption, which vice ought to be far from the sacred things of God, 1 Corinthians 5:8. Hence in Plautus a woman lying in leaven is called swollen and angry. Second, St. Cyril, book 15 On Adoration, fol. 302, understands by leaven cunning, which is indifferent to good and to evil. And therefore leaven could be offered, but not burnt, or kindled and sacrificed: because cunning in an upright mind, says Cyril, though not rejected by God if opportunely employed for the sake of piety, is yet not reckoned as a spiritual sacrifice and a savour of sweetness.
Neither shall any leaven or honey be burnt in the sacrifice.—Honey, like leaven, is here forbidden in the sacrifice; but why?
R. Solomon understands by honey sweet fruits, such as figs and dates; but this is foreign and strained. Philo, in his book On Victims, thinks honey was forbidden by God in sacred rites because the bee, the gatherer of honey, is an unclean animal, born from the putrid carcasses of oxen; but this is not absolutely true. For it is certain that bees are produced by bees in the hives, and that purely and chastely without coupling. I say, therefore: the reason of the forbidding of honey is the same as that of leaven; for honey is to bread like leaven: for cooked honey contracts sourness, and ferments the bread with which it is mixed. Second, honey is hostile to the stomach, both because it is windy and because it increases bile; for, as Horace says: “Sweet things turn into bile.” On the contrary, wormwood benefits the stomach; for it purges out all the dregs of the bowels. Third, honey is forbidden to the Jews because the Gentiles offered honey and sweets to Bacchus; hear Ovid:
“Cakes are made for the god, because he delights in sweet juices, and they say honey was found by Bacchus.”
Add from Plutarch, book 5 of the Symposia, question 5, that wine is spoiled by the admixture of honey, because honey has a nature most opposed to wine; whence wine, when honey has been tasted, loses its flavour; but wine was to be used in sacrifices and poured out in libation: for wine was as it were the drink of God; it was therefore fitting that honey be kept from them. The allegorical and chief reason was that it might be signified that in the sacrifice of the cross of Christ all honey, that is, all sweetness and joy, would be wanting.
The tropological reason was that it might be signified that from sacred things honey ought to be absent, that is, vain and carnal pleasure, as displeasing to God, and that those who are dissolved in the blandishments of delights or the sweetness of pleasures cannot be partakers of the mysteries of God. Hence the Pasch had to be eaten with wild lettuces, or, as the Hebrew has it, bitter herbs, because “the strictness of truth is always austere,” says Eucherius; for, as the Psalmist says, Psalm 50:19: “A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit.” For honey is a symbol, first, of the voluptuous man; second, of the flatterer, who has honey in his mouth, but hides in his tail a sting that strikes and wounds. Hence the Wise Man compares the lips of a harlot to a honeycomb, Proverbs 5:3. So Procopius, Eucherius, Radulphus, Rupert, Bede, and Cyril, book 15 On Adoration.
Verse 12. You shall offer only the first-fruits of them and gifts.—The Hebrew is, a gift, that is, an oblation of first-fruits you shall offer, of leaven namely and honey, and that for the food of the priests, as will be said in Numbers 15. The mystical reason of which is that it is the priests’ office to eat, cook and digest the sins of the people through confession, that they may pray for them, counsel them, and absolve them by the sacrament of penance: so Serranus, who by the first-fruits of leaven and honey understands confession of sins, restitution of ill-gotten goods, penance, etc. For sins themselves are honey and leaven, because they pour into man a honeyed pleasure which soon is turned into gall and leaven. To this Radulphus also alludes.
Verse 13. Whatsoever sacrifice thou offerest (mincha, as in verse 15 in the Hebrew), thou shalt season it with salt,—for salt is the seasoning of all food. Therefore, that the sacrifice, which is as it were God’s banquet, may be duly furnished, God commands that bread and fine flour be offered not unsalted but seasoned with salt. So the Gentiles also made no sacred rites without salted meal, as I said on verse 4. For without salt human life cannot subsist. For salt preserves flesh from putrefying; wine, from growing dull or turning to vinegar; it so defends dead and putrefying bodies from corruption that they last for ages; it makes food savoury and pleasing.
Hence the axiom of the ancients: “Nothing is more useful to bodies than salt and sun.”
Again, “salt is the artificial life of bloodless flesh”; for by eating into it and drying it, it preserves it from corruption; and mystically it aptly signifies the life of the spirit, which in respect of animal life is adventitious. Hence Ovid also in the Fasti:
Before this, what could win men to the gods was spelt and the shining grain of pure salt.
The ancients were wont to anoint the drunken and the delirious with oil and salt, which Aristophanes hints at in the Clouds.
Tropologically, salt is a symbol of wisdom, prudence and discretion, by which in every sacrifice and work, even of penance and mortification, [it is to be seasoned]. Hence the Apostle, Romans 12:1, admonishes that it be reasonable [service]. “Every one (a spiritual victim and pleasing to God) shall be salted with fire, and every victim shall be salted with salt,” namely with the fire of tribulation and the salt of wisdom. So Theodoret, Procopius, Radulphus, Bede, Rupert, Eucherius, and Cyril, book 15 On Adoration; for, as St. Bernard says, sermon 49 on the Canticle: “Discretion is the moderator and charioteer of virtues, affections, manners; it sets order to every virtue; order gives measure and beauty and perpetuity: take this away, and virtue will be vice.”