It was on account of this strict feeling regarding kisses exchanged by man and woman that the early Christians subjected themselves to fierce attacks and slander, because of the kisses that were exchanged as a symbol of religious union at the Love-Feasts of the first disciples. “But, in 397, the Council of Carthage thought fit to forbid all religious kissing between the sexes, notwithstanding St. Paul’s exhortation, ‘Greet ye one another with a kiss of charity.’”
MEDIÆVAL KISSES
Among many other refinements of the ancients, the mediæval nations lost the sense of the sacredness of kissing between the sexes. England was apparently the greatest sinner in this respect; for it appears to have been customary on visiting to kiss the host’s wife and daughters. Indeed, up to a comparatively recent time, kissing on every occasion was almost as prevalent and permissible as handshaking is at the present day. In the sixteenth century it was customary in England for ladies to reward their partners in the dance with a kiss; and for a long time the minister who united a couple in the holy bonds of matrimony had the privilege of kissing not only the bride but even the bridesmaids! No wonder the ministry was the most popular profession in those days.
“It is quite certain,” says a writer in the St. James’s Magazine (1871), “that the custom of kissing was brought into England from Friesland, as St. Pierius Wensemius, historiographer to their High Mightinesses, the states of Friesland, in his Chronicle, 1622, tells us that the pleasant practice of kissing was utterly ‘unpractised and unknown in England till the fair Princess Romix (Rowena), the daughter of King Hengist of Friesland, pressed the beaker with her lippens, and saluted the amorous Vortigern with a kusjen’ (little kiss).”
Having recovered this lost art, however, the English lost no time in making up for neglected opportunities. Erasmus writes in one of his epistles: “If you go to any place (in Britain) you are received with a kiss by all; if you depart on a journey, you are dismissed with a kiss; you return, kisses are exchanged ... wherever you move, nothing but kisses. And if you, Faustus, had but once tasted them,—how soft they are, how fragrant! on my honour, you would wish not to reside here for ten years only, but for life!!!”
Bunyan, however, frowned on this practice, and inquired most pertinently—and impertinently—why the men only “salute the most handsome and let the ill-favoured alone?”
Pepys, in his Diary for 1660, gives this account of some Portuguese ladies in London: “I find nothing in them that is pleasing; and I see they have learnt to kiss, and look freely up and down already, and I do believe will soon forget the recluse practice of their own country.”
One of the luckiest of mortals was Bulstrode Whitelock, who at the Court of Christine of Sweden was asked to teach her ladies “the English mode of salutation; which, after some pretty defences, their lips obeyed, and Whitelock most readily!”
The following extraordinary kissing story is told in Chambers’s Journal for 1861:—
“When the gallant cardinal, Count of Lorraine, was presented to the Duchess of Savoy, she gave him her hand to kiss, greatly to the indignation of the irate churchman. ‘How, madame,’ exclaimed he, ‘am I to be treated in this manner? I kiss the queen, my mistress, who is the greatest queen in the world, and shall I not kiss you, a dirty little duchess? I would have you know I have kissed as handsome ladies, and of as great or greater family than you.’ Without more ado he made for the lips of the proud Portuguese princess, and, despite her resistance, kissed her thrice on her mouth before he released her with an exultant laugh.”