Chapter 17

Fig 189.—Three Sacraments:Baptism, which inaugurates life;Confirmation, which strengthens childhood; andPenance, which reconciles manhood.

Left portion of the triptych painted on panel by Roger Van der Weyden (Rogier del Pasturle).—From the Antwerp Museum (Fifteenth Century).]

1.Baptism, which St. Peter had given byaspersionto the three thousand persons whom he converted by his first sermon, was also given in primitive times byimmersion; finallyinfusion(from the Latin verbinfundere, to sprinkle) was adopted in the manner in which it is practised in our own day (Figs. 189 and 190).

2.Confirmationwas administered immediately after baptism, when only adults were admitted to the latter sacrament; but when baptism was administered to new-born infants, confirmation had to be postponed till the receivers of the rite were old enough to answer for themselves—that is to say, until they were capable of distinguishing between good and evil (Fig. 189).

3. TheEucharistfrom the earliest times was administered under the name ofcommunionto those in sound health, and under the name ofviaticumto those at the point of death (Figs. 192 and 193).

Fig. 190.—The Ship of Baptism, a Flemish work of the Sixteenth Century, in chiselled gold and silver; from the Collection of M. Onghena, at Ghent.—When a child was baptized, it was the custom in the Low Countries to drink the infant’s health in a cup of spiced wine. The cup, shaped like a boat, is typical of the voyage of life: an aged knight is at the helm, two others are fencing together, a sailor adjusts the rigging, the wind fills the sail, and at the mast-head the look-out scans the horizon. The Flemish device runs thus: “A fortunate voyage to the new-born.”

The communion, that is to say the host, was received in the hand, and was administered by the communicant himself. After the sixth century women were enjoined to receive it in a white veil, termeddominical, with which they liftedit to their mouths without touching it with their hands. In 880 the Council of Rouen decreed that in future the sacrament was only to be received at the hand of the officiating priest. Until the thirteenth century the communion was always preceded by the kiss of love; the men embraced the men, and the women the women. After the distribution of bread the deacons came forward with two-handled cups of large dimensions, containing wine for the communicants, which each tasted through a golden pipe (Fig. 191).

Fig. 191.—Sacramental Cup; a work of the Twelfth Century, in silver gilt, from the Abbey of the Benedictines of Witten, near Inspruck.

Fig. 192.—The Sacrament of the Eucharist, which keeps youth holy.—Central portion of the triptych, by Roger Van der Weyden, in the Antwerp Museum (Fifteenth Century).

4.Penance, the obligatory practice of which was reduced to once a year by the fourth Lateran Council, had always for its aim the absolution from sin consequent upon confession.

Excommunication, the extreme punishment inflicted upon great sinners, was pronounced by the faint light of a wax taper, which the priest afterwards extinguished and trampled under foot. In some countries the populace used to carry a bier to the door of the excommunicated person; stones were hurled against his dwelling, and all kinds of foul abuse were heaped upon him. Of a still more solemn nature was the excommunication pronounced by the pope himself on Holy Thursday, in virtue of the bull termedIn Cœna Domini, against all who appealed to the general council against the decrees and the ordinances of the pontiffs; against the princeswho exacted unfair tribute from ecclesiastics; and against heretics, pirates, &c. A deacon read the bull from the balcony (loggia, an open tribunal) ofSt. Peter’s in the presence of the pope, who, as a symbol of anathema, dashed a lighted torch of yellow wax into the open court of the Vatican, which the assistants hastened to extinguish by trampling upon it. It was also on Holy Thursday that thereconciliationof the penitents took place, that is to say, their general absolution, to enable them to take part in the mysteries of Easter.

Fig. 193.—Legend of the passage of the viaticum across a wooden bridge, at Utrecht, in 1277. Some dancers having allowed the host to pass without discontinuing their dances, the bridge suddenly gave way and two hundred persons were drowned in the river.—Fac-simile of an Engraving upon Wood by P. Wolgemuth, in the “Liber Chronicarum Mundi:” Nuremberg, 1493, in folio.

5.Extreme unctionhas always been given to sick people in danger of death, according to the recommendation of the Apostle St. James. The material of which this sacrament is composed is theoil of the infirm, but we can see from old rituals that the place and number of the unctions have varied at different times in the administration of this sacrament (Fig. 194).

6.Orders. Besides the higher orders, which were conferred as they are in our own day, the Church included from the earliest times the four minororders, which were bestowed, as now, upon the tonsured clerks; that is to say, the orders ofporter,reader,exorcist, andacolyte.

Fig. 194.—Three Sacraments:Marriage, at full manhood;Orders, at old age; andExtreme Unction, at death. Right portion of the triptych painted on panel by Roger Van der Weyden.—Antwerp Museum. Fifteenth Century.

The consecration of abbots and abbesses, although made with a great deal of ceremony, was not considered as an ordination, but only as a benediction. The bishop, after giving the abbot the communion under the form of bread, blessed him, placed a mitre on his head, and gave him his gloves, the symbols of his rank, with the customary prayers. The abbot’s crosier and ring werebestowed upon him before the offertory. Alexander II., elected pope in 1061, was the first to confer upon abbots the privilege of wearing the mitre. Abbesses also enjoyed the right of carrying the crosier; they received it from the hands of the bishop, together with the pastoral cross and ring. In the synods and councils the abbots were only allowed to wear a mitre ornamented withorfroi(a golden fringe), but devoid of pearls and precious stones; the bishops wore the precious mitre, that is to say, one ornamented with pearls and jewels.

7. The ceremony ofmarriagehas altered but little. In old days, however, it was celebrated at the door and not in the interior of the church. In the ninth century the priest placed jewelled crowns upon the heads of husband and wife; these crowns were made in the shape of a tower, and were afterwards kept near the altar.

Most religious ceremonies were accompanied with processions; but besides these there were great public processions varying according to the country and the diocese in which they took place. They were regulated by special liturgies, which formed a separate ritual termedprocessional. The procession of palms or of branches, which takes place the Sunday before Easter, in remembrance of the entry of Christ into Jerusalem, had for a long time been customary in the East, when towards the sixth or seventh century it was adopted by the Latin church, which frequently added scenic accessories, intended to make a still deeper impression on the minds of the spectators. This ancient festival was distinguished by many names; by some it was termed theHosanna, in memory of the acclamations with which Jesus was received in Jerusalem; by others theSunday of Indulgences, on account of the indulgences distributed by the Church on that holy day. In old times verses from the Gospels, inscribed upon a richly ornamented banner surrounded with palm-leaves, were carried in this procession, and it was frequently also accompanied by the chalice containing the host, in the midst of consecrated branches. It was, as a rule, customary that the ashes employed for the ceremony of Ash Wednesday should be those of the branches carried in the procession of the preceding year, and which were carefully preserved from year to year, and burnt when thoroughly desiccated.

In 1262 Pope Urban IV. confirmed and extended to the whole of Christendom the statute of Robert, Bishop of Liége; who, being of opinion that the ceremony of the eucharist ought to be celebrated in a more solemnmanner than it was possible to do upon Holy Thursday, the day set aside for the reconciliation of penitents, had decreed that every year, on the first Thursday after Pentecost, the festival of Corpus Christi, or theFête-Dieushould take place (Fig. 195); the office for which, the same as is used in our own day, was composed by St. Thomas d’Aquinas.

Fig. 195.—Procession of the Host, in Paris: “The procession proceeds from the Maison aux Piliers, the ancient Hôtel de Ville, to the Place de Grève. To the left may be seen Jean Juvénal des Ursins, on his knees before the host, which is carried on a species of litter by a couple of monks of the Sainte-Chapelle, and surrounded by the clerks of the brotherhood crowned with wreaths of roses and carrying large lighted tapers.... To the right, and towards the banks of the Seine, and in front of the floating piles of wood, is the great Croix de Grève. On the other side of the Seine may be seen the Cathedral of Notre-Dame.”—From a Miniature in the Manuscript of the “Hours of Juvénal des Ursins,” presented by M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot to the town of Paris, and burnt in 1871 in the conflagration of the Hôtel de Ville.

Fig. 196.—Solemn Procession made on the 7th September, 1513, by the clergy and inhabitants of Dijon, to obtain from Our Lady the relief of the town, at that time besieged by the Swiss. The ceremony was afterwards renewed every year at the same epoch; it was termed the “Festival of Our Lady of the Swiss.”—Tapestry of the Sixteenth Century, in the Dijon Museum.—From a copy in the possession of M. Ach. Jubinal.

The procession termedLitanies majeures, first instituted in 589 by Pope Pelagius II., owed its origin to a plague that desolated Rome after an inundation of the Tiber.

In 474 St. Mamert, Archbishop of Vienne, in Dauphiny, in order to thank God for having delivered his diocese from the scourges which desolated it, and from the wild beasts which ravaged it, founded the procession ofRogations, which took place during the three days which precede the feast of the Ascension. This procession was ordered for the whole of France by the Council of Orleans in 511; but it only came into use at Rome towards the close of the eighth century, under Pope Leo III.

Fig. 197.—Pentecost.—Fac-simile of a Miniature from the “Psalmody of St. Louis.”—Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century, in the National Library, Paris.

The procession which precedes the mass of Ascension Thursday is of the highest antiquity; but nowhere was it carried out with greater ceremony, or attended by a larger number of pilgrims, than at the church built in Palestine by St. Helen, mother of Constantine, on the very spot where the ascension took place, and where still might be seen on the stonethe last footprints of our Saviour, as He left this earth and ascended to heaven.

Fig. 198.—The Adoration of the Magi.—From a pax attributed to Maso Finiguerra (Fifteenth Century), preserved at Florence. One of the kings is on his knees, and has taken off his crown to present incense and myrrh to the Infant Jesus; the others are riding towards the manger, escorted by their varlets and pages, and followed by a long caravan; there are angels on the roof playing the viol and the lute.

In fact, in the Middle Ages there were an immense number of festivals which gave rise to processions (Fig. 196) and to other religious ceremonies. It must not be forgotten that all great festivals were indifferently termed Easters. The anniversary of the resurrection of Jesus Christ was the great Easter, and in order to prepare worthily for it, the body was purified by baths, and the hair and the beard were cut, as tokens of the care with which the Christian ought to preserve the purity of his soul, and to remove the vices that infect the unregenerated man. The Nativity, Epiphany, Ascension, and Pentecost were also called Easter. In some churches, at Great Easter,dramatic representations were given of the mysteries the festival celebrated. A procession was undertaken to a tomb cut in a rock. Three women and two men in Israelitish dress represented the three Marys and the disciples John and Peter, and others dressed in white, with crowns on their heads and wings on their shoulders, played the part of the angels who communed with them.

Pentecost(Fig. 197), or theEaster of Roses, was accompanied with the same dramatic and religious accessories. In many churches during mass, at the wordsVeni, Sancte Spiritus, a sudden blast of the trumpet was given to recall the great noise in the midst of which the Holy Ghost descended upon the apostles. Sometimes, indeed, to add to the scenic imitation of the mystery, tongues of fire fell from the roof, or a shower of red rose-leaves took place; and doves, emblems of the Holy Ghost, were allowed to flutter about the church.

Fig. 199.—Knife with which the consecrated bread was cut; on the blade may be read on one side a prayer for a blessing on the food, on the other a thanksgiving, both with music (Sixteenth Century).—Collection of M. Ach. Jubinal, Paris.

Fig. 200.—Altar of the ancient Cathedral of Arras (Thirteenth Century), now destroyed; from a picture of the Sixteenth Century preserved in the sacristy of the Cathedral of Arras.—The angels on the top of the columns bear the instruments of the Passion. Along the summit of the screen are placed six reliquaries containing the relics of different saints; they form a retinue for Jesus, the chief of all martyrs. The tabernacle is not a heavy square case, but a suspended casket borne by an angel, who appears to descend from heaven. Higher up three angels collect in the mysterious cup of the Grail the blood which flows from the feet and hands of the crucified Jesus.

At high festivals the mass was followed by the ceremony of the offering, at which all present were expected to deposit a coin in a plate, and kiss the emblem of good-will presented to them (Fig. 198). This offering was in memory of an ancient custom. The offerings, which in the primitive Church the faithful were accustomed to make every day, consisted of bread and wine. They were placed before the altar at the commencement of the second part of the mass, after the reading of the Gospel and of the Apostles’ Creed. The capitularies of the early Frankish kings prescribed that neophytes were to offer bread and wine at least every Sunday. Until the eighth or ninth century, some authors assert that for the sacrifice of themass, either leavened or unleavened bread was used indifferently; but since that period leavened bread has only been in use in the Eastern Church. From this epoch, also, the offered bread was no longer used except fordistribution to the people, as a symbol of the communion, and it then took the name ofeulogyorconsecrated bread(Fig. 199). These pieces of bread, which the assisting priests and deacons offered successively at the altar upon white napkins, were of a round shape. They were termedhoops,crowns, andwheels. The custom of offering bread and wine whilst holding a lighted taper in the hand has been handed down, and still exists at burials in many dioceses.

The altar where the offerings were made was surmounted by a cupola (calledciborium) sustained by four columns, between which were curtains, which were closed during part of the service to hide the sacred mysteries about to take place (Fig. 200). In the middle of the cupola, above the altar, a hollow dove, made of gold or silver, was suspended (Fig. 201); in this the eucharist for the sick was kept. This silver dove was replaced at a later period by the tabernacle.

Fig. 201.—Dove suspended above the altar, containing the eucharistic box (Thirteenth Century).—“Studies upon the Archæology of the Altar,” by Laib and Schwarz.

We have thus seen that time has only brought about slight modifications in the liturgy of the Church; on the other hand, we can satisfy ourselves that nothing is left to conjecture or hypothesis; the most searching criticism only affirms the truths of tradition. M. Paul Allard, a distinguished writer, has expressed this in a very happy manner in his work, “Subterranean Rome.” “For two centuries,” he says, “the soil of Rome has been searched and dug up with indefatigable ardour, in the hope of discovering the source of the first Christian institutions, the very origin of the Church, catacombs have been thrown open to the day, thousands of inscriptions have been laid bare, and rare and precious paintings have been copied, or are still to be seen. From these subterranean labours, which have left nothing to conjecture, the history of the origin of Christianity has emerged, complete and renovated, but differing in nothing from that which tradition has handed down to us, and which, confirmed as to a great number of points, has been shaken in none.”

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