CHAPTER VII
VARIOUS KINDS OF KISSES
It has been previously shown by numerous examples that kissing occupies a prominent place in certain ceremonies. It would be easy to multiply instances of this.
We know from Roman law that the so-called osculum interveniens, which concerned gifts, was exchanged between engaged couples. The law enacts that, in the event of one of the contracting parties dying before the marriage, only a moiety of the presents are to be returned, provided a kiss was exchanged at the betrothal, but, if no kiss had been exchanged, all the presents were to be returned.[23]
The kiss was regarded as the introduction, as it were, to matrimonial cohabitation—initium consummationis nuptiarum; it was symbolical of marriage—viri et mulieris conjunctio. Certain ancient jurists have even discussed the question whether a married woman who has suffered herself to be kissed by a stranger has not thereby rendered herself guilty of adultery.
The decree of the Roman law which, so far as I know, still partly holds good in Greece, is met with again in the Latin countries during the Middle Ages. It was incorporated in the law of the Visigoths (Lex Romana Visigothorum), and migrated thence to the different old Spanish fueros and the old French law, in which the word osculum was also used in the learned form oscle. It was likewise admitted into the law of the Lombards, and Italy is most probably the West European country where donatio propter osculum has been longest retained. We find, even down to our own times, traces of the same in customary laws.
This is probably the only ceremonial kiss that has received legal sanction; but wherever elsewhere we may turn our eyes and investigate old ceremonies, we constantly find the kiss a necessary and important part.
Its usage was, for instance, general at weddings. Thomas Platter, who studied at the University of Montpellier at the end of the sixteenth century, tells us, in his “Diary,” that the majority of marriages took place in private, without witnesses, through fear of witchcraft; though the wedding feast, on the contrary, was celebrated in public with a vast concourse of guests, and with many merry episodes. At the conclusion of the feast the bride was divested of her bridal array, amidst jokes and raillery, smart young bachelors having to take off her garters; and when at last she sat up in bed, clad only in linen, then all the guests, male and female, came and kissed her on the mouth, and the kisses were followed by facetious compliments and good wishes.
Moreover, at the later ceremony of dubbing a knight, the newly-made knight of the Golden Fleece was kissed by the master of the ceremonies, and had afterwards to kiss all the senior knights present.
At certain academical functions the kiss also formed part of the festal ceremony; in the seventeenth century the Dean, when degrees were conferred, kissed all the new doctors and masters.