Military and religious life in the Middle Ages and at the period of the Renaissance

by P. L. Jacob

Fig. 193.—Legend of the passage of the viaticum across a wooden bridge, at Utrecht, in 1277. Some dancers having allowed the host to pass without discontinuing their dances, the bridge suddenly gave way and two hundred persons were drowned in the river.—Fac-simile of an Engraving upon Wood by P. Wolgemuth, in the “Liber Chronicarum Mundi:” Nuremberg, 1493, in folio.

5. Extreme unction has always been given to sick people in danger of death, according to the recommendation of the Apostle St. James. The material of which this sacrament is composed is the oil of the infirm, but we can see from old rituals that the place and number of the unctions have varied at different times in the administration of this sacrament (Fig. 194).

6. Orders. Besides the higher orders, which were conferred as they are in our own day, the Church included from the earliest times the four minor orders, which were bestowed, as now, upon the tonsured clerks; that is to say, the orders of porter, reader, exorcist, and acolyte.

Fig. 194.—Three Sacraments: Marriage, at full manhood; Orders, at old age; and Extreme Unction, at death. Right portion of the triptych painted on panel by Roger Van der Weyden.—Antwerp Museum. Fifteenth Century.

The consecration of abbots and abbesses, although made with a great deal of ceremony, was not considered as an ordination, but only as a benediction. The bishop, after giving the abbot the communion under the form of bread, blessed him, placed a mitre on his head, and gave him his gloves, the symbols of his rank, with the customary prayers. The abbot’s crosier and ring were bestowed upon him before the offertory. Alexander II., elected pope in 1061, was the first to confer upon abbots the privilege of wearing the mitre. Abbesses also enjoyed the right of carrying the crosier; they received it from the hands of the bishop, together with the pastoral cross and ring. In the synods and councils the abbots were only allowed to wear a mitre ornamented with orfroi (a golden fringe), but devoid of pearls and precious stones; the bishops wore the precious mitre, that is to say, one ornamented with pearls and jewels.

7. The ceremony of marriage has altered but little. In old days, however, it was celebrated at the door and not in the interior of the church. In the ninth century the priest placed jewelled crowns upon the heads of husband and wife; these crowns were made in the shape of a tower, and were afterwards kept near the altar.

Most religious ceremonies were accompanied with processions; but besides these there were great public processions varying according to the country and the diocese in which they took place. They were regulated by special liturgies, which formed a separate ritual termed processional. The procession of palms or of branches, which takes place the Sunday before Easter, in remembrance of the entry of Christ into Jerusalem, had for a long time been customary in the East, when towards the sixth or seventh century it was adopted by the Latin church, which frequently added scenic accessories, intended to make a still deeper impression on the minds of the spectators. This ancient festival was distinguished by many names; by some it was termed the Hosanna, in memory of the acclamations with which Jesus was received in Jerusalem; by others the Sunday of Indulgences, on account of the indulgences distributed by the Church on that holy day. In old times verses from the Gospels, inscribed upon a richly ornamented banner surrounded with palm-leaves, were carried in this procession, and it was frequently also accompanied by the chalice containing the host, in the midst of consecrated branches. It was, as a rule, customary that the ashes employed for the ceremony of Ash Wednesday should be those of the branches carried in the procession of the preceding year, and which were carefully preserved from year to year, and burnt when thoroughly desiccated.

In 1262 Pope Urban IV. confirmed and extended to the whole of Christendom the statute of Robert, Bishop of Liége; who, being of opinion that the ceremony of the eucharist ought to be celebrated in a more solemn manner than it was possible to do upon Holy Thursday, the day set aside for the reconciliation of penitents, had decreed that every year, on the first Thursday after Pentecost, the festival of Corpus Christi, or the Fête-Dieu should take place (Fig. 195); the office for which, the same as is used in our own day, was composed by St. Thomas d’Aquinas.