Such liturgical boxes as those two—No. [5958], p. 112, and No. [8327], p. 193—are of the kind known of old as the “capsella cum serico decenter ornata”—a little box beseemingly fitted up with silk—of the mediæval writers; or the “capsula corporalium”—the box in which are kept the corporals or square pieces of fine linen, a fine mediæval specimen of which is here, [No. 8329], p. 195, of the rubrics which, to this day, require its employment for a particular service, during holy week. Like its use the name of this appliance is very old, and both are spoken of in those ancient “Ordines Romani,” in the first of which, drawn up now more than a thousand years ago, it is directed: “tunc duo acolythi tenentes capsas cum Sanctis apertas, &c.;”[381] and again, in another “Ordo,” written out some little time before A.D. 1143, a part of the rubric for Good Friday requires the Pope to go barefoot during the procession in which a cardinal carries the Host consecrated the day before, and preserved in the corporals’ chest or box: “discalceatus (papa) pergit cum processione.... Quidam cardinalis honorifice portat corpus Domini præteriti diei conservatum, in capsula corporalium.”[382] About the mass of the presanctified, before the beginning of which this procession took as it yet takes place, we have said a few words at pp. [112], [113]. What is meant by the word “corporal,” we have explained, p. [194]. Here in England, such small wooden boxes covered with silks and velvets richly embroidered, were once employed for the same liturgical uses. The Exeter inventories specify them thus: “unum repositorium ligneum pro corporalibus co-opertum cum saccis de serico;”[383] “tria corporalia in casa lignea co-operta cum panno serico, operata cum diversis armis.”[384]
[381] Ed. Mabillon, Museum Italicum, t. ii. p. 8.
[382] Ib. p. 137.
[383] Oliver’s Exeter Cathedral, p. 314.
[384] Ib. p. 327.
Good Friday brings to mind a religious practice followed wherever the Greek ritual is observed, and the appliance for which, [No. 8278], p. 170, we have there spoken of at such length as to save us here any further notice of this interesting kind of frontal, upon which is shown our dead Lord lying stretched out upon the sindon or winding-sheet. Of the Cyrillian character in which the Greek sentences upon it are written, we shall have a more fitting opportunity for speaking a little further on. At Rome, in the Pope’s chapel, the frontal set before the altar for the function of Maundy Thursday, is of gold cloth figured, amid other subjects suitable to the time, with our Lord lying dead between two angels who are upholding His head, as we learn from the industrious Cancellieri’s description, in his “Settimana Santa nella cappella pontificia.”[385]
In Greece may be still found several churches built with a dome, all around which is figured, in painting or in mosaics, what is there known as and called the “Divine Liturgy,” after this manner. On the eastern side, and before an altar, but facing the west, stands our Lord, robed as a patriarch, about to offer up the mass. The rest of the round in the cupola is filled with a crowd of angels,—some arrayed in chasubles like priests, some as deacons, but each bearing in his hands either one of the several vestments or some liturgical vessel or appliance needed at the celebration of the sacred mysteries,—all walking, as it were, to the spot where stands the divine pontiff. But amid this angel-throng may be seen six of these winged ministers who are carrying between them a sindon exactly figured as is the one of which we are now speaking. How, according to the Greek ritual, this subject ought to be done, is given in the Painter’s Guide, edited by Didron.[386] Though of yore as now a somewhat similar ceremonial was always observed according to the Latin rite, in carrying his vestments to a bishop when he pontificated, never in such a procession here, in the west, was any frontal or sindon borne, as in the east.
With regard to “red” as the mourning colour, in the sindon, our own old English use joined it with “black” upon vestments especially intended to be worn in services for the dead. For especial use on Good Friday Bishop Grandison gave to his cathedral (Exeter) a black silk chasuble, the red orphrey at the back of which had embroidered on it our Lord hanging upon a green cross: “j casula de nigro serico, pro Die Paraschive, cum j orfrey quasi rubii coloris, cum crucifixo pendente in viridi cruce, ex dono Johannis Grandissono;”[387] and in the same document, among the black copes and chasubles, we find that they had their orphreys made of red: “cape nigre cum casulis—j casula de nigro velvete cum rubeo velvete in le orfrey. ij tuniculi ejusdem panni et secte. iij cape ejusdem panni et secte.”[388]
[385] P. 58.
[386] Manuel d’Iconographie Chretienne, pp. xxxvi. 229.