[72] The Worship of the Generative Powers, p. 127.
[73] Horace: Priap. Carm., lxxxiv.
[Y] A well informed Jesuit priest once told me that several laws had been made about this time forbidding the worship of the female sexual organ, under the name of abricot or apricot. Rabelais used the word abricot fendu when speaking of the female genital organs. See his works. Was this term derived from the Biblical narrative of the genesis of the human race (the apple), or was it taken from the phallic symbol, the pomegranate? Did Moses get it from the Assyrians in the first place? I think he did.
[74] Martène and Durand: Veterum Scriptorum Amplissima Collectio, tom. vii, p. 35. Si quis praecantaverit ad fascinum, vel qualescumque praecantationes excepto symbolum sanctum aut orationem dominicam qui cantat et cui cantatur, tres quadrigesimas in pane et aqua poéniteat.
[Z] As has been pointed out elsewhere in this work, ancient peoples were essentially symbolical and materialistically symbolical at that; they were very apt to typify nature, sexually, by some object or objects which bore a resemblance real or fancied, to the sexual organs. The red halves of the ripe apricot at the insertion of the stem, look very much like the external genitalia of the human female. The significance and importance of the pomegranate in the mixed religion of the Ancient Hebrews are well brought out in rules laid down for the ornamentations and embroidery of the robes of the priests, etc., etc., Vid. Old Testament.
[75] D. Burchardi: Decretorum libri, lib. x, c. 49.
Some of these clerical references are taken from the Worship of Priapus, but, since this work is exceedingly rare and costly, and is not apt to come under the notice of the general reader, I have thought best to give the original authorities.
[76] Martène and Durand: Veterum Scriptorum Collectio Amplissima, tom. vii, col. 1377.
[77] The Chronicles of Lanercroft.
[78] Herodotus: Euterpe, 102.