A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

1. Briefs are issued from the Roman court by the apostolic secretary, sealed with red wax by the fisherman’s ring. Bulls are issued by the apostolic chancellor, under a seal of lead, having on one side impressed the likeness of St. Peter and St. Paul; and, on the other, the name of the reigning pope.

2. Briefs are written upon fine and white skins. Bulls, upon those which are thick, coarse, and rude.

3. Briefs are written in Roman characters, in a legible, fair, and elegant manner. Bulls, though in Latin, are written in old Gothic characters, without line or stop, or that regard to spelling which is observed in briefs.

4. Briefs are dated “a die nativitatis;” Bulls dated “a die incarnationis.”

5. Briefs have the date abbreviated; Bulls have it given in length.

6. Briefs begin in a different form, with the name of the pope: thus “Clem. Papa XII. &c.” Bulls begin with the words “[Clemens] Episcopus servus servorum Dei;” by way of distinct heading.

7. Briefs are issued before the pope’s coronation, but Bulls are not issued till afterwards. (See on this subject, Corrad. in Praxi Dispens. lib. ii. c. 7, n. 29; Rosam de Executione Liter. Apostol. c. 2, n. 67; Cardinal de Luca. in relat. Romanæ Curiæ, discurs, 7, and other canonists.)

Notwithstanding the above-mentioned differences between Briefs and Bulls, and that greater weight is usually attached to a bull than to a brief, on account of its more formal character, still Briefs have the same authority as Bulls on all the matters to which they relate; both being equally acts of the pope, though issued from different departments of his Holiness’s government.

BURIAL. (See Cemetery, Dead.) Christians in the first centuries used to bury their dead in the places used also by the heathen, in caves or vaults by the wayside, or in fields out of their cities. The heathen used to burn the bodies of the dead, and collect the ashes in urns, but Christians thought it to be a barbarity and insult to destroy a body appointed to a glorious resurrection. They therefore restored the older and better practice of laying the remains decently in the earth. Their persecutors, knowing their feelings on this subject, often endeavoured to prevent them from burying their dead, by burning the bodies of their martyrs, as they did that of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna; or by throwing their ashes into rivers, as they did those of the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne in France, A. D. 177. And although the heathen seemed to think it unlucky and of evil omen to perform their funerals by day, carrying out their dead after night-fall, and by torch-light; the Christians used to follow their deceased friends to the grave, in the light of the sun, with a large attendance of people walking in procession, sometimes carrying candles in token of joy and thanksgiving, and chanting psalms. It was also the custom, before they went to the grave, to assemble in the church, where the body was laid, and a funeral sermon was sometimes preached. The holy communion was administered on these occasions to the friends of the deceased, for which a service, with an appropriate Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, was set forth in our own Church in the First Book of King Edward VI., and in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, A. D. 1560. The office for the Burial of the Dead used by the English Church corresponds in all respects with the offices of the primitive Church, particularly as regards the psalms, the anthem, “Man that is born of a woman,” &c., and the portions of Scripture appointed to be read.

No person can be buried in the church, or in any part of it, without the consent of the incumbent, to whom alone the common law has given this privilege, because the soil and freehold of the church is in the parson only. But upon the like ground of freehold, the common law has one exception to the necessity of the leave of the parson, namely, where a burying-place within the church is prescribed for as belonging to a manor house. By the common law of England, any person may be buried in the churchyard of the parish where he dies, without paying anything for breaking the soil, unless a fee is payable by prescription, or immemorial usage. But ordinarily a person may not be buried in the churchyard of another parish than that wherein he died, at least without the consent of the parishioners or churchwardens, whose parochial right of burial is invaded thereby, and perhaps also of the incumbent whose soil is broken; but where a person dies on his journey or otherwise, out of the parish, or where there is a family vault or burial-place in the church, or chancel, or aisle of such other parish, it may be otherwise. Burial cannot be legally refused to dead bodies on account of debt, even although the debtor was confined in prison at the time of his death.