The following from Fosbroke is pertinent: “Plutarch derives the word ‘Pontifex’ from sacrifices made upon bridges,—a ceremony of the highest antiquity. These priests are said to have been commissioned to keep the bridges in repair, as an indispensable part of their office. This custom no doubt gave birth to the chapel on London bridge, and the offerings were of course for repairs.” In another place he mentions “the annexation of chapels to almost all our bridges of note.”—(“Cyclopædia of Antiquities,” London, 1843, vol. i. pp. 62, 146, article “Bridges.”)
“Gottling (Gesch. d. Rom. Staatsv. p. 173) thinks that ‘Pontifex’ is only another form for ‘pompifex,’ which would characterize the pontiffs only as the managers and conductors of public processions and solemnities. But it seems far more probable that the word is formed from pons and facere, ... and that consequently it signifies the priest who offered sacrifices upon the bridge.”—(“Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities,” William Smith, LL. D., Boston, 1849, article “Pontifex.”)
“Les Romains avaient réuni en collége sacerdotal leurs constructeurs de ponts.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Elie Réclus, Paris, 1885, p. 116.)
Among the Romans—who were the great architects of the European world, and whose aqueducts, baths, roads, and bridges have never been approached in strength or beauty by those of any other nation about them—it was to be expected that the title of the great priest should be Pontifex Maximus, on the same principle that among the Todas of the Nilgherris, who are pre-eminently a pastoral race, the chief medicine man or priest is called Palal, “meaning the Great Milker.”—(See for these statements “Les Primitifs,” Réclus, p. 260, article “Les Monticules des Nilgherris.”)
The legends of the Middle Ages, all over Europe, from South Germany to Scandinavia, are filled with references to bridges, mills, and churches, but especially bridges, built by the Devil exclusively or by his assistance; and in every case there is the suggestion of human sacrifice having been offered.
“As a rule, the victims were captive enemies, purchased slaves or great criminals.... Hence, in our own folk-tales, the first to cross the bridge, the first to enter the new building or the country, pays with his life, which meant falls a sacrifice.... In folk-tales we find traces of the immolation of children; they are killed as a cure for leprosy, they are walled up in basements.... Extraordinary events might demand the death of kings’ sons and daughters, nay, of kings themselves.”—(“Teutonic Mythology,” Grimm, vol. i. p. 46.)
“When the Devil builds the bridge, he is either under compulsion from men or is hunting for a soul; but he has to put up with the cock or chamois, which is purposely made to run first across the new bridge,” or “they make a wolf scamper through the door” of the new church, or a goat.—(Idem, vol. iii. p. 102.)
“When the new bridge at Halle, finished in 1843, was building the common people fancied a child was wanted to be walled into the foundations.”—(Idem, vol. iii. p. 1142.)
“In modern Greece, when the foundation of a new building is being laid, it is the custom to kill a cock, a ram, or a lamb, and to let its blood flow on the foundation-stone, under which the animal is afterwards buried. The object of the sacrifice is to give strength and stability to the building. But sometimes, instead of killing an animal, the builder entices a man to the foundation-stone, secretly measures his body or a part of it, or his shadow, and buries them under the foundation-stone, or he lays the foundation-stone on the man’s shadow. It is believed that the man will die within a year.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 144.)
It is not our purpose to carry this part of the discussion farther. The curious may consult Grimm, who shows the frequency with which human victims were walled up alive in new castles, ramparts, bridges, and other structures. As time passed on and man grew wiser, there was a substitution of a coffin as a symbol of the human victim; in stables a calf or a lamb was buried alive under the main door, sometimes a cock or a goat; under altars, a live lamb; in newly opened graveyards, a live horse. All this testimony points conclusively to the fact that every such structure was begun at least under auspices from which all traces and suggestions of heathenism had not yet been eliminated; consequently we shall not be very much in error in deciding that there was some survival of a religious rite in the peculiar ceremony insisted upon at crossing the bridge of Montluc, or that it, as all others, was built by architects who still adhered to the old cultus, and had influence enough with the rustic population to secure the incorporation of certain features of a sacred character belonging to the superseded ritual, and which have come down to us, or almost to us, in a more or less mutilated and distorted condition.