Chapter VII: Part 7

The serious abuses and crimes which caused the suppression of the order had not fortunately vitiated the whole of its members: most of the Templars were set at liberty, many of them, preserving their former rank, enrolled themselves in the Order of St. John. In this wise, as is pointed out by Wilcke, Albert de Blacas, prior of Aix, obtained the commandership of Saint-Maurice, as prior of the Hospitallers; and Frederick, grand prior of Lower Germany, retained the title in the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

The pope had specially reserved his judgment in the case of the grand master, Jacques de Molai, in that of the Visitor of France, and in those of the commanders of Guyenne and of Normandy. Several cardinals-legate, with some French bishops and doctors of the University of Paris, constituted the tribunal which was to pass the sentence in the name of the pontiff. After satisfying themselves that these four eminent knights had repeated their avowals before a second commission, the members of the tribunal, convinced of their guilt, caused a scaffold to be erected in front of Notre-Dame, and there, on Monday, March 18th, 1314, the four Templars were publicly condemned to imprisonment for life. On the scaffold the grand master and one of the others recanted their confession of guilt and protested their innocence. The cardinals, surprised at this recantation, committed the prisoners to the care of the provost of Paris, with orders to bring them before them the next day, when the tribunal had had time to deliberate on this fresh incident. But Philippe le Bel, learning what was taking place, hurriedly assembled his council, and had the grand master, and the other Templar who had similarly persisted in denying his twice-avowed guilt, burnt alive the same night. They underwent this horrible torture protesting their innocence to the last. The two remaining knights who had acknowledged their guilt were kept for some time in prison, but were afterwards set at liberty.

Other orders of knighthood, having more or less of a religious character, were founded in the Middle Ages, or during the Renaissance period: the principal were, in Spain, the Order of the Knights of Calatrava; in Germany, the Order of the Teuton Knights; the Order of the Golden Fleece in the Low Countries, in Spain, and in Austria; that of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus in Savoy; that of St. Stephen in Tuscany; and in France, those of St. Michael and of the Holy Ghost, which were merely honorary orders, although the first Order of the Holy Ghost, founded in 1352 by Louis d’Anjou, King of Jerusalem and Sicily, had for its object the re-establishment of an essentially military knighthood, as a means for bringing about a new crusade.

The Knights of Calatrava, on whom their founder, Don Raymond, Abbot of Citeaux, imposed the regulations of his own monastery, distinguished themselves by many brilliant feats of arms, particularly against the Moors of Spain and Africa (Fig. 152); and the princes in whose cause they had fought in these wars--termed, like the Crusades in the East, holy--granted them large possessions and considerable privileges. They were bound by a triple vow of poverty, obedience, and chastity, and, like the Templars, wore a red cross embroidered on a white mantle. From the days of Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella, the sovereigns of Spain have always been the grand masters of this order, which acquired and long retained a considerable amount of importance, even when it had ceased to signify anything but an indication of nobility. The order of Alcantara, which had a similar origin to that of Calatrava, ran a like career and was in like manner doomed to decay. Spain, too, was the only country that possessed a military order for ladies. After the heroic defence of Placentia against the English by the women of that city in 1390, John I., the sovereign of Castile, created in their honour the order of the Ladies of the Sash, which was united at a later period to the Order of the Belt, founded in the fourteenth century to do battle against the Moors.

The Teutonic Knights, whose order had been founded in 1128, at Jerusalem, by the German Crusaders, obeyed the rules of St. Augustin. They were subject beside to special statutes somewhat similar to those of the Knights of St. John and of the Temple, whose privileges they also enjoyed. Their first grand master, Henri Walpot, established his residence near St. Jean d’Acre.

This order was divided, like that of St. John, into knights, chaplains, and serving brethren. Its members wore a white mantle with a rather broad black cross, picked out with silver, on the left sleeve. To gain admission into the order it was necessary for the candidate to be over fifteen years of age, and to be of a strong, robust build, in order to resist the fatigues of war. Its knights, bound by a vow of chastity, were expected to avoid all intercourse with women; they were not even allowed to give their own mothers a filial kiss when they saluted them. They possessed no individual property; they always left their cell doors open, so that everybody might see what they were doing. Their arms were free from both gold and silver ornaments, and for a long period they spent their lives in great humility. Their most celebrated grand master, Hermann de Salza, received in 1210, from Pope Honorius III. and the Emperor Frederick II., whom he had reconciled, large possessions and high honours.

The Teutonic Knights conquered Prussia, Livonia, and Courland, and in 1283 became masters of the whole territory between the Vistula and the Niemen. In 1309 they abandoned Venice, where, twenty years earlier, their grand master had fixed his ordinary residence, and selected Marienburg as their head-quarters. At that date the order had reached the culminating point of its prosperity, and its sway in Germany had the most fortunate results for Prussia. But luxury soon began to undermine the religious faith of the knights; and internal struggles, caused by the elections of their grand masters, introduced fresh elements of decay into their organization.

Dragged into endless conflicts with Lithuania and Poland, the order lost its banners, its treasure, and its principal defenders in the disastrous battle of Grümwald, in the year 1410, and would have been utterly ruined but for Henry von Plauen. After the death of this illustrious grand master, the knights, to whom the treaty of Thorn had restored their territorial possessions, lost them one after the other in the few years that elapsed between 1422 and 1436. For thirteen years Casimir IV., King of Poland, summoned into Prussia by the inhabitants, who had rebelled against the despotic sway of the knights, laid waste the country that he had undertaken to protect. The order, driven out of Marienburg and Konitz, only retained possession of Eastern Prussia, and held even that under Polish rule; its grand master, whose head-quarters were now at Königsberg, was, in fact, a prince and a councillor of Poland. As Prussia was a fief of the Church, the grand master of the Teutonic Order was bound by vow to preserve it to the Church and to his own order. Albert of Brandenburg, its last grand master, was bound by this oath, and by the triple vow of poverty, obedience, and chastity, which he had taken on entering the order. To rid himself of the fetters of these oaths he joined the Lutheran Church, and divided the possessions of his order with his uncle, the aged Sigismund, King of Poland, who for these considerations bestowed on him the title of hereditary Duke of Prussia. This was the origin of the royal family of Prussia. After this easy acquisition of title and territory, Albert of Brandenburg married the daughter of the King of Denmark. As a matter of course, the Order of the Teutonic Knights became extinct.

The Order of the Knights of the Golden Fleece was not founded till 1449. It was then instituted by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy and Count of Flanders, in order to induce the nobles of his court to join him in making war against the Turks, and to attach his subjects by closer ties to the service of the state. The crusade never took place, but the order survived, and still exists as an heraldic distinction.

This order, which was placed under the protection of St. Andrew, was originally composed of twenty-four knights of high rank and stainless character; their number was increased by the Duke of Burgundy to thirty-one, and afterwards by Charles V. to fifty-one. The election of the knights took place in the chapters of the order, and were decided by a majority of votes. The distinguishing sign of the order was a necklet of gold, enamelled with the duke’s device, which was composed of two steels and two flints interlaced, with the motto, _Ante ferit quam micat_ (It strikes before it lights). From the collar was suspended a golden sheep, or sheep’s fleece, with the inscription, _Pretium non vile laborum_ (Labour’s just reward) (Fig. 155). Since the marriage of Philippe le Beau, son of the Emperor Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy, with Jane of Aragon, in 1496, the King of Spain and the Emperor of Austria are, in their own countries, the sovereign chiefs of the order of the Golden Fleece.

Savoy also possessed an order of military knighthood which has survived till our time. When Amadeus VIII., in whose person Savoy had been raised to the rank of a duchy by the Emperor Sigismund, determined to live as a recluse, he desired to create an order of secular knighthood, with himself as its chief. He accordingly built a retreat at Ripailles, near the Lake of Geneva, as a residence for the new order, and placed it under the protection of St. Maurice, the patron saint of Savoy. The first knights, only six in number, were distinguished by a cross of white taffeta sewn on their dress. The successors of Amadeus VIII., however, so neglected the order that it was on the point of becoming extinct, when Duke Emanuel Philibert, in 1572, obtained from Gregory XIII. a bull to reconstitute it; and shortly afterwards, by a second bull, the knights of St. Lazarus and those of St. Maurice were united.

The knights took the same triple vow as the Templars; they swore fidelity to the Dukes of Savoy, and undertook to wage war against the heretics who from Geneva were continually threatening the frontiers of the duchy. The order possessed considerable property, and its head-quarters were at Nice and Turin.

The sign of the order was a white cross with flowered points, beneath which was a second cross surrounded with green, with the image of the two patron saints.

The Knights of St. Stephen, an order founded in 1562 by Cosmo de Medicis, Grand Duke of Tuscany, played an active part in the sea-fights of the Mediterranean, where they were constantly chasing the Ottoman galleys or effecting landings on the shores of the surrounding barbarian states. In the middle of the seventeenth century they boasted that they had released, since the creation of the order, upwards of five thousand six hundred Christian captives and fifteen thousand slaves.

This order, in its customs and ceremonies, was strikingly like the order of Malta; and, like it, was divided into military and ecclesiastical knights.

Several orders of military knighthood existed in France, created by its sovereigns; but their honorary character caused them to be looked upon as rewards bestowed for good service rendered to the monarchy, rather than as solemn engagements to take up arms in any definite cause. It is hardly worth while to mention the Order of the Star, which it has been attempted to trace back to King Robert and to the year 1022, but the real origin of which only dates from King John. The oldest royal military orders of knighthood are those that Louis IX. founded to encourage his nobles to join him in his expeditions beyond the seas, and to take part in the Crusades. The Order of the Cosse de Geneste, instituted in 1254, was bestowed at a later period on the sergeants of the king, a body-guard of a hundred gentlemen specially entrusted with the duty of protecting the sovereign’s person against the assassins sent by the Old Man of the Mountains. The Order of the Ship, instituted in 1269, became extinct shortly after the second crusade of St. Louis, who had conferred it, before his departure, on some of his most illustrious followers.

The Order of St. Michael was founded in 1469 by Louis XI. to fulfil a vow made by his father, who had a particular veneration for that saint, the tutelar angel and patron of France (Fig. 156). The image of St. Michael was already embroidered in gold upon the banner of the king, who created a new order of military knighthood “in honour,” say the statutes, “of the first knight who in God’s quarrel fought the ancient enemy of the human race and made him fall from heaven.” The order was composed of thirty-six knights of stainless name and arms, with the sovereign who had appointed them at their head. The collar of the order was composed of golden shells inlaid with the figure of St. Michael overthrowing Satan. The knights, besides this collar, wore on occasions of ceremony a white mantle with a hood of crimson velvet.

A, the door from which the knights issued, and then went along
the terrace marked B, out at the door marked C, and so to the
place where the new knights were initiated.

D, trumpets.

E, drums.

F, fifes and hautboys.

G, four heralds, walking two and two.

H, king-at-arms of France, walking by himself.

I, the Sieur de Bourgneuf, usher of the order, walking by
himself.

K, the Sieur du Pont, herald of the order, walking by himself.

L, three officers of the order walking abreast--viz., MM.
d’Achères, provost and master of the ceremonies; Bouthillier,
grand treasurer; and Duret-Chevry, secretary.

M, M. de Bullion, keeper of the seals of the order, walking by
himself.

N, the knights novices, walking two and two, each according to
his rank.

O, the commanders, walking also two and two, each according to
his rank.

P, the king, walking by himself, his train carried by M. le
Marquis de Gesvres; behind his majesty walks M. le Cardinal Duc
de Richelieu, by himself, an almoner carrying his train.

Fig. 157. Procession of the Knights of the Order of the Holy
Ghost crossing the courtyard of the Palace of Fontainebleau on
their way to the chapel, for the ceremony of the initiation of
new knights.]

The Order of the Holy Ghost was the last military order that the sovereigns of France themselves conferred towards the close of the sixteenth century. Both this and the Order of St. Michael were termed orders of the king. Henry III., in 1579, created the order in honour of God, and particularly in that of the Holy Ghost, under whose inspiration he had accomplished “his best and most fortunate exploits,” to use the exact words of the statutes of the order. From the day of his ascending the throne he had always intended to found this order, which had been suggested to him in his childhood by the perusal of the statutes of the first Order of the Holy Ghost, instituted at Naples, in 1352, by one of his ancestors, Louis of Anjou, King of Jerusalem and Sicily. These statutes were carefully preserved in a precious manuscript, the miniature of which represented with marvellous art all the ceremonies of the order. The manuscript was a present from the nobility of Venice to Henry III. on his return from Poland. This prince, however, borrowed but little from these ancient statutes, which had been drawn up in view of the military services which the knights of the order, three hundred in number, might be able to render towards the Crusades in Palestine. The new order of the Holy Ghost, although a military one, was destined to gather round the king, who was its supreme head, a body of a hundred knights, selected from among the most eminent and the most illustrious personages of the court, the Church, and the nobility. The insignia of the order were a collar composed of golden fleurs-de-lis, surmounted with enamelled flames, forming the initials of the king and his wife Louise of Lorraine, with a cross bearing a silver dove, emblem of the Holy Ghost. At the meetings of their order, the knights were clad in costly round-caped mantles of blue velvet spangled with fleurs-de-lis in gold (Fig. 157). These meetings, which at first were held in the Church of the Augustines at Paris, where the solemn receptions of the new members took place, were afterwards transferred to the Louvre, where they were celebrated with extraordinary pomp. It is true that the statutes enjoined on each lay knight the duty of taking arms for his sovereign whenever the latter was preparing to go to war for the defence of his dominions, or in the interest of his crown; but they were never scrupulously obeyed on this point, and the Order of the Holy Ghost, while preserving its military and religious character on all ceremonial occasions, never played any other part than one of display and heraldic pretension. The sovereigns, however, at all times showed themselves extremely jealous of the privilege of appointing its knights, and the latter for more than three centuries composed the actual guard of honour of the royal house of France.

LITURGY AND CEREMONIES.

Prayer.--Liturgy of St. James, of St. Basil, and of St.
John-Chrysostom.--Apostolical Constitutions.--The Sacrifice of
the Mass.--Administration of Baptism.--Canonical Penances.--Plan
and Arrangement of Churches.--Ecclesiastical Hierarchy.--The
Ceremony of Ordination.--Church Bells.--The Tocsin.--The Poetry
of Gothic Churches.--Breviary and Missal of Pius V.--Ceremonies
used at the Seven Sacraments.--Excommunication.--The Bull _In
Cœnâ Domini_.--Processions and Mystery Plays at the Easter
Solemnities.--Instrument of Peace.--Consecrated Bread.--The
Pyx.--The Dove.

It was the first Council of Nice, in the year 325, that gave the dignity of canonical law to the custom of prayer on bended knees, and it is a surprising fact that none of the paintings of the Catacombs represent a devotee in the act of kneeling. We, however, know from the Acts of the Apostles that from the very first days of Christianity it was sometimes customary to kneel at prayer. As for the public prayers of the early Christians, the text of the principal ones has survived unaltered to our own days. As early as the close of the first century, the younger Pliny, writing to Trajan, told him that the Christians were accustomed to assemble at daybreak to sing a hymn in honour of Christ, whom they worshipped as God. This is a valuable piece of evidence, and it is moreover corroborated by the known custom that prevailed at the same epoch in the Church of Antioch, of celebrating the Holy Trinity (Figs. 160 and 161) by singing anthems, and of glorifying Christ, the Word of God, by the intoning of canticles and psalms. St. Irenæus, who wrote in the middle of the second century, also mentions in his work against heresy, a kind of _Gloria in excelsis_, which was chanted in Greek in Christian assemblies at the consecration of the host, and which may be translated thus: “To thee all glory, veneration, and thanksgiving; honour and worship to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, now and ever, and for century upon century of infinite eternity!” The people responded, “Amen!” In the dogmatic treatises written by Tertullian, at the end of the second century, that great pagan philosopher, who had become a convert to Christianity, alludes more than once to the first attempts at a liturgy which the Church used in the administration of the sacraments. He speaks of secret meetings where the psalms were sung, the Scriptures read, and edifying discourses were delivered; he mentions public prayers on behalf of the reigning sovereign, of his ministers, and of the great functionaries of the State; he describes ceremonies, forms of prayer, and religious chants which were used according to certain rites authorised in the Latin Church, amongst which may be distinguished the _Pater_ of the New Testament, that simple and yet sublime and touching invocation of feeble humanity prostrated before the Almighty.

The Church of Neo-Cesarea used from the first the liturgy of St. James, the earliest of the Eastern liturgies, until St. Basil, justly surnamed the great, for he was one of the most illustrious Fathers of the Greek Church in the fourth century, modified and shortened it. A little later it came to be known as the liturgy of St. Chrysostom, on account of the important changes introduced into it by that Father of the Church.

The canons of the Council of Laodicea, held in 364, contain many regulations for the recitation of the psalms and lessons, which, as early as the second century, according to Tertullian, were recited at _Tierce_, at _Sexte_, and at _None_, that is, at the third, sixth, and ninth hour of the day--at vespers or evening prayer, and at the prayers offered up by the bishops, whether at the ceremonies of baptism and the eucharist, or over catechumens and penitents. It was not until after the conversion of Constantine that public prayers became general in Constantinople even amongst the troops. Constantine built an oratory in his palace, where his whole court worshipped with him. He desired that his soldiers, whether Christians or pagans, should every Sunday repeat aloud certain prayers belonging to the religion of Jesus Christ. Eusebius is the historian who relates this fact. A record has been handed down of a prayer that the Emperor Maximinius declared he had received from the hands of an angel, and which he read out to his soldiers in 313, before he gave battle to Licinius, his rival for the imperial throne.

In the fourth century, it was customary nearly everywhere, in the West as well as in the East, after having sung the praises of God, to put up prayers for the reigning sovereign and the leading potentates of the civilised world. For instance, when St. Athanasius cried out in the presence of the faithful, assembled in the splendid basilica of the Cæsars, “Let us pray for the safety of the very pious Emperor Constantine,” the whole assembly answered with one resounding voice, “Christe, auxiliare Constantio!” (“Help Constantine, O Christ!”) The preceding examples, and many others that it would be easy to gather from the history of early Christianity, prove that in the fourth century, in France, in Italy, in Spain, as well as in the churches of the East and of Africa, Christian worshippers were accustomed to recite either aloud or in a low tone, a set form of prayers, to chant, or rather slowly to intone psalms, and to sing hymns. Did not St. Pacôme order his monks to recite twice a day a psalmody which was composed of psalms interspersed with prayers? Did not St. Hilary of Poictiers lay the foundations of the Gallican liturgy, as St. Ambrose did those of the Lombard liturgy, at the time that St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine revised the liturgies of the Eastern and African Churches?

It was generally the custom to follow the precepts of the so-called “Apostolical Constitutions,” a primitive work that was supposed to date from the second century. These Constitutions ordered the psalms to be recited to the congregation in the morning, at the third, the sixth, and the ninth hours of the day, at vespers, and at cockcrow, that is to say, at dawn. But the faithful, who were long prevented by persecution from openly assembling in sacred buildings, at first offered up their prayers in private, or perhaps surrounded only by their families and a few intimate friends. Tertullian tells us that each strove to show the greatest zeal in singing the praises of God. In the fourth century, the Christians both of the East and of the West were so zealously attached to their psalmody, that none would have willingly missed saying it at its appointed hour, no matter where he might happen to be. “Instead of the love songs formerly heard at all hours, and in all places,” says St. Jerome in a letter to his friend Marcellinus, “the labourer at the plough hums an _Alleluia_, the reaper, bathed in perspiration, repeats his psalmody as he rests from his toil, and the worker in the vineyard carols David’s grateful verse as he plies his curved sickle.”

Long before any churches were open to the public, the apostles “broke bread with, the faithful” in the guest chamber of private dwellings; their disciples followed their example in the subterranean cemeteries, termed Catacombs, where the early Christians used to assemble to celebrate the Lord’s Supper (Fig. 175). This sacrament, the primitive form of which is unknown to us, was not termed a _mass_ (_missa_) till the middle of the fourth century. “It was on a Sunday,” says St. Ambrose, who was the originator of the Ambrosian rite, “that I first held a mass.” The name of mass, about the meaning and origin of which the most learned Christian archæologists are by no means agreed, appears to have been derived from a Hebrew word denoting an offering or sacrifice; or perhaps rather from the Latin _missa_, from _mittere_, to send away, or to take leave of. Apostolical discipline required that the sacrament should be preceded by a discourse, and that before it was celebrated the catechumens, those who had not yet been baptized, should leave the sanctuary. “After the sermon,” says St. Augustine, “the catechumens are sent out” (_fit missa_).

There was, however, a mass for the catechumens which comprised the introductory prayers, lessons from the Old and New Testaments, and the bishop’s homily. The true mass, celebrated for the faithful alone, was specially called the eucharist. “Those are masses,” says St. Cesarius of Arles, “when the body and blood of Christ are offered up in sacrifice” (Fig. 176).

At first, mass was celebrated once a week, and always on the Sunday. In the second century, the sacrament or eucharistic offering took place three times a week, on Sunday, on Wednesday, and on Friday. In the following century, the Eastern Church decreed that it should also be celebrated on Saturday. In the West, mass was held only on Sundays, unless in exceptional cases; while in the days of St. Augustine, in the dioceses of Africa, Spain, and Constantinople, it was celebrated generally every day. It was not till the sixth century that it became usual in the Latin Church to celebrate mass every day.

As time passed on, and as the number of worshippers increased, the number of masses was considerably augmented, particularly on great festivals and during Holy Week. The same priest was at liberty to perform several, but after each he was bound to purify his fingers in a chalice, the contents of which were afterwards poured into a fitting vessel and consumed at the final mass, either by the priests themselves, by the deacons and clerks, or by those of the laity who were in a state of grace. At first all masses were sung, or rather chanted; they were all public, and could only be celebrated in diocesan or parish churches. Necessity, however, soon instituted inferior or _private_ masses, thus named because they were held in one of the lesser shrines or chapels, on an ordinary day, or before a small congregation.

The bishops, the apostles’ successors, were alone entitled, during the first two centuries, to administer the solemn rites of baptism. The priests, under the authority of the bishop, were the assistant-ministers of this sacrament. The deacons could only confer it when authorised by special episcopal sanction. In cases of urgent necessity, laymen were permitted to baptize, provided they were of irreproachable morals and had been confirmed. In the Latin Church as well as in the East, public baptism was only solemnised during the vigils of Easter and Pentecost; in the Gallican Church, at Christmas, as in the case of King Clovis. Private baptism might be administered at any period whenever it was deemed necessary.

On the day set apart for baptism, the chosen catechumens met in the church at noon to undergo a final examination (Fig. 177); at midnight they again assembled there, the paschal taper and the water were consecrated, and the officiating priest asked the catechumens if they renounced the _devil_, the _world_, and its _pomps_. They made answer, Yes. The priest then required of them a profession of Christian faith, carefully prepared beforehand, after which they underwent a short examination on the articles of the Creed. When these preliminaries were completed the deacon presented to the priest the catechumens stripped of their clothing, but covered with a veil. Each then stepped into a large vessel of water and was dipped thrice (Fig. 178); at each immersion the bishop invoked one of the persons of the Holy Trinity, a custom that prevailed till the sixth century in the Western Church, and till the eighth in that of the East. After the immersion the assisting deacon anointed the catechumen’s forehead with holy oil, and the priest put on him the _chrismal_, a flowing white robe which he wore for eight days. Thus clad, and holding lighted tapers, the new Christians went in procession from the place of baptism to the basilica. Before mass they received the sacrament of confirmation; they were then given a mixture of honey and milk, a symbol of their entrance into the promised land, that is to say, into the highway of Gospel privileges. Whatever the age of the newly baptized might be, they were termed children (_pueri_, _infantes_).

Baptism by sprinkling, as practised now, was not unknown to the primitive church, but it was only adopted in urgent cases, when immersion might be dangerous to the catechumen, or when it was expedient to baptize many at one time. In the ninth century baptism by sprinkling had become customary, and it soon became the only method in use.

The dogmas of Christianity would have been a dead letter for most of the neophytes, unless they had been accompanied by a rigorous and constant discipline. The Church foresaw this, and showed its sternness, though at the same time it held out indulgences to the penitent. It established a kind of scale of punishments, whose severity were proportionate to the gravity of the crimes committed. The privilege of oblation was taken from the lesser culprits--that is to say, they were neither allowed to place offerings on the altars nor to receive the eucharist; the more hardened and rebellious sinners were excluded from the communion of the faithful, and were not permitted to take part in public worship; those who had been guilty of actual crime, or who had shown themselves to be incorrigible, were expelled from the sanctuary, and their names were expunged from the list of Christians.

These more rigorous measures, however, might be modified according to the repentance of the offender or at the discretion of the bishop, the sole and sovereign judge in all such matters. _Canonical penance_ was usually only inflicted for great public crimes, such as idolatry, adultery, and homicide; and, moreover, certain classes of individuals--children, young girls, married women, old men, priests, clerks, and monarchs--were only subject to it under the most careful restrictions; while in every case it was necessary to give legal and accurate proof of the alleged offence. When the period of canonical penance was over, if the criminal showed signs of repentance, the bishop, or even an ordinary priest in case of absolute necessity, was empowered to reconcile him with the Church.

As public worship in the early Church was slow to exhibit itself as a settled institution, so the more solemn and the more imposing it became from the moment that it took its lofty position under the protectorate of Constantine the Great. Then suddenly sprung up a number of Christian places of worship and imposing churches, amongst which we may mention the basilica of Tyre, restored and inaugurated in 315; that of St. John of Lateran, constructed in Rome in 324, with the remains of the temples once raised to the false gods of paganism; and other sanctuaries in the same city, which were consecrated by the Pope St. Damasius. The rites used at the consecrations of the early churches are unknown to us, but each inauguration had its solemn anniversary.

The position, the form, and the arrangement of the early churches were not left to the whims of their founders and architects, even when these churches were small and hidden for the most part in the catacombs, in forests, and in deserts. In the second book of the “Constitutions” of Pope Clement (chaps. 55 and 61), we read the following directions: “Let the church be of a long shape, like a ship, and facing the east.” Here, therefore, in the first century of the church, is an authentic proof of the orientation of the early Christian sacred edifices.

The method of construction of the primitive churches, however, according to the liturgical regulations of the period, is still an obscure question, and one surrounded with uncertainty. It has been surmised, with much probability, that the subterranean chapels of the catacombs of Rome were the models of the first churches; and such is the opinion of the most learned archæologists. It was from the very depths of these sepulchral caverns that Christian art, bursting forth into open day after the long series of persecutions, built its crypts and its churches after the types of its hidden shrines, at first in the transmural cemeteries, and afterwards, towards the end of the third century, in the midst of the Christianized populations and in the very centre of their cities. In 303, the date of the decree of Diocletian closing the Christian places of worship, there were already forty churches and chapels in Rome. The shape of these primitive sanctuaries is not well known; they were probably in general of one uniform pattern, specially adapted to the liturgical ceremonies of the day, though considerations of safety, the capabilities of the site, and other imperious necessities, no doubt frequently obliged their architects to depart from precedent and to vary the character of their construction. It was not until the reign of Constantine that Christian edifices began to assume the attributes of size, magnificence, and majestic boldness of outline. It was then that the emperor erected basilicas in the interior of his Lateran and Vatican palaces for the first time, and consecrated to the worship of the true God those immense edifices in which art was the humble handmaid of religion and bathed itself in the ineffable splendours of the faith.

The crypts or chambers (_cubicula_) of the Catacombs were reproduced in the full light of day in the early churches; they were of a quadrilateral shape, with three arched naves, and three vaulted recesses (_arcosolia_) which served at once as tombs for the holy confessors and shrines for the celebration of the eucharist. These sanctuaries were generally of greater length than breadth, after the analogy of the ship or vessel (_navis_), this mysterious symbolism finding favour with the early Christians.

_Crucial_ churches, that is to say, churches in the shape of a cross, were, however, not uncommon, as well as round, pentagonal, hexagonal, and octagonal buildings. But whatever their shape, they differed essentially from the pagan temples, as much in their general internal arrangement as in their size, which continued to increase in proportion as Christianity waxed in magnitude and influence. The basilicas were divided into three principal parts: the vestibule, or portico (in Greek, _pronaon_), the central area (in Greek, _naos_--in Latin, _navis_, whence the term nave), and the apse or choir (in Greek, _ieratrion_), reserved for the officiating priests. The portico was supported by two, five, or seven columns, and projected from the front wall. An iron rod furnished with rings ran across the columns, and from it were suspended curtains of cloth or hanging tapestries which could be drawn or closed at will. Beneath this portico the penitents, termed _strati_ (prostrated), were accustomed to kneel, and from that position they could hear the psalmody and the sermon without actually witnessing the ceremony. The larger basilicas had frequently three porticos instead of one (Fig. 179), the central one facing the west, and the two side ones the north and south. A large vessel (_malluvium_) full of water was placed in the centre of the portico, in which each member of the congregation before entering the church purified his face and hands. The clergy alone entered by the middle entrance (_aula_); the worshippers entered by the two side portals, the men by that to the right and the women by that to the left; this division of the sexes was maintained within the building also. The internal main area was subdivided into three or five naves. The central nave was always left open and free, but in the others, partitions six feet high completely divided off the catechumens, the penitents, the virgins consecrated to God, the monks, and the mass of the congregation. At the end of the nave was the choir (in Greek _bêma_), in front of which stood the _solea_ (the cellar or wine-press, in allusion to what was called the vineyard of the Lord), surrounded by a chancel, an open-work partition, in the centre of which one or more gates opened into the interior. One or sometimes two stands (called _pulpitum_, pulpit), intended for the public reading of the epistles, the Scriptures, and the holy books, were erected in front of the gates of the choir. In Rome, and probably in Constantinople, Milan, Trèves, and in all the larger imperial cities, there was in front of the choir, between the stalls of the secular clergy and those of the holy virgins and monks, a space (_senatorium_) reserved for the dignitaries and the noble families of the place. The _solea_ was occupied by the sub-deacons and the minor clerks, whose duty it was to intone the psalmody. One or two sacristies (_secretaria_) were placed at the sides of the _solea_. The sanctuary (Figs. 180 and 181), in which the holy sacrifice took place, was surrounded with iron or wooden railings, and communicated through one or three doors with the naves. The farther end of the choir was semicircular in shape, and is now called the apse (in Greek, _kongche_, a muscle or cockle-shell; in Latin, _absida_; in French, _chevet_); around it were placed seats, amongst them that of the bishop, which was raised above the altar, and was visible to the whole congregation. The altar, which was draped and surmounted with the _ciborium_ (a canopy of a cupola shape--Italian, _baldacchino_), was always placed in the centre of the apse (Figs. 182 and 183). Such, was the material framework, the normal arrangement of the Greek and Latin liturgy towards the end of the sixth century.

No pope was more capable than Gregory the Great (590–604) of uniting the different and scattered elements of which the liturgy was composed. To him is due the merit of having been the first to put forth a revised issue of the books of religious service, and who impressed the stamp of his genius on the Roman Catholic ceremonial. Before him, however, Pope Gelasius had collected the prayers used in the administration of the sacraments, and had prepared the first missal or book of masses. The latter was remodelled and corrected by Gregory. The same pope gave a more orthodox and popular form to the Antiphonary (_Antiphonarium_), sometimes called _Cantatorium_ and _Graduale_, a collection of anthems for every mass in the year; he amended and remodelled in the most skilful and learned manner the anthems that were badly selected and ill scored--endeavouring, after the example set by Solomon, to impart a harmonious and dignified character to sacred music which it did not previously possess. It is tolerably certain that the church chant dates from this period, and that notation by _neumes_, a method the present age does not understand, of marking the rhythm and the modulations of the voice, cannot be traced farther back than the pontificate of Gregory the Great. John Diacre, who has written the life of this illustrious pope, says that he has seen the school of choristers, founded at Rome by St. Gregory, officiating in full splendour. The founder of this famous school continued to give lessons to the pupils in spite of his old age, his attacks of gout, and his other infirmities, even when he was no longer able to stand or sit upright. Reclining on a narrow and very hard bed, he infused emulation into the minds of the idle and reproved the disobedient.

Since the fifth century, the holy duties and the canonical prayers to which the liturgy consecrated the different hours of the day have been known under the name of _offices_, or _canonical hours_ (Fig. 184), and of _breviaries_. In Tertullian we already meet with the words _Tierce_, _Sexte_, and _None_. St. Cyprian, St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Jerome, and many other fathers of the Church, assigned certain hours at which to recite the different offices, in such a manner that before the close of the fourth century psalmody seems to have been already regulated in the principal churches of the East. The practice of the Western churches differed, it is true, from that of the churches of the East; many differences even were to be found in the dioceses of the same country. But, during the earlier centuries, it was everywhere customary to perform the principal offices at night, which was divided into four watches of three hours each: these hours were measured by a water-clock, termed clepsydra. The first watch commenced at sunset (_ad vesperas_), the second at midnight, the third at cockcrow, the fourth at dawn. Towards the fifth century the piety of the early Christians having somewhat abated, it soon became customary not to go to church till the fourth watch, when the whole psalmody, that is to say, the twelve psalms, as there were three psalms in each watch, was got through at one repetition. Hence the name of matins (_matutinæ_). It would seem that the monks themselves, who were more conservative of ancient rites than the secular priests, commenced about this period to chant the _Nocturn_ and the _Laud_ at the morning hours. Rome alone rigorously preserved the distinction between the offices of the day and those of night.

The _Petites Heures_ were known as _Tierce_, _Sexte_, and _None_; _Prime_, the first of the canonical hours, was not instituted till the twelfth century, but the other three appear to date from the earliest institution of Christianity. St. Cyprian, who lived in the third century, says that prayers were said at _Tierce_ in honour of the descent of the Holy Ghost, at _Sexte_ in memory of the Crucifixion, and at _None_ to commemorate the death of Christ. Half a century earlier Tertullian wrote that, independently of the mystic traditions consecrated by prayer, the Church, in establishing the canonical hours, wished to conform to the secular division of the day.

Vespers (_Vespera_), so called from the star _Vesper_, which rises as the sun is setting, also dates from the origin of the liturgy. The hour of vespers was called _lucernarium_, because it was necessary to light the lamps at the performance of that service. A hymn exists entitled “_Ad incensum lucernæ_,” that is, “To the lighting of the lamp.” The Latins as well as the Greeks, until the eighth century, celebrated vespers after sunset; but since that period the usage of Rome, where vespers were said immediately after _Nones_, prevailed and became universal. Milan, however, still adhered to the primitive form of the rite; vespers were commenced as soon as the evening star appeared above the horizon, and terminated by torchlight. Until the fifth century vespers were the last prayers of the day, and included the psalms, which were said separately in the following century, as a last service, termed _Compline_, and which at first only contained three psalms--it was not till the ninth century that the thirtieth psalm was added.

The principal libraries of Europe possess several large manuscript volumes written on vellum, as remarkable for their illuminations (Fig. 185) as for the beauty of their calligraphy; they are termed the _Evangeliarium_, the _Lectionarium_, and the _Liber Benedictionis_, and were frequently bound with great magnificence. They belonged to different churches and dioceses which, while generally following the rules of the dogmatic liturgy established by the councils, used several modifications of their own invention. Some of these modifications were important ones, and were due either to local feeling and the peculiarities of the congregation, or arose during the anniversaries, the commemorative festivals of the diocesan ritual. The use of the _Evangeliarium_ dates from St. Jerome. Before him each of the four Gospels formed a separate book, and the four were of different liturgical importance. St. Jerome collected them, arranged them in their proper order, and added marginal notes of the daily offices.

A hierarchical order with defined powers and privileges existed from the date of the first establishment of Christianity. In his sixth epistle to the Magnesians, St. Ignatius, who had been a disciple of St. Peter, says, “I exhort you to behave, in all things, with that spirit of concord which comes from God; and to look upon the bishop as the representative of God himself in your midst, upon the priests as forming the august senate of the apostles, and upon the deacons as those to whom is intrusted the ministry of Jesus Christ.” The faithful bowed the head to none but the bishop, to ask his blessing; and in the church the bishop occupied a seat raised above that of the priests. The bishops wore a tunic and _pallium_, or long mantle, a chasuble or dalmatic, and a circlet of gold or polished metal upon the head. The latter was subsequently replaced by the mitre, which for some time was made of cloth, and was a circular pointed cap split at the top (Fig. 186). The primitive insignia of office worn by the bishops were the episcopal ring and the pastoral staff, made of wood, ivory, or metal. They are mentioned as wearing sandals for the first time in the ninth century, and gloves in the twelfth. The bishop of Rome, the first among his brethren (_primus inter pares_), wielded over the whole Church a supremacy formally enunciated by St. Irenæus, a disciple of St. Polycarp, a contemporary of the apostles. Originally, however, he wore no distinguishing mark of his pre-eminent rank; but towards the fifth century, the term “pope” began to be exclusively applied to him.

After the reformation of his clerks (_clerici_) by the famous Bishop of Hippona, the former were called _canonici_, whence the term chanoines, because they led a life in conformity with the canons of the Church. In Africa, in Spain, and in Gaul these canonical clerks lived together and boarded with the bishop, and devoted themselves to science, literature, art, music, and especially to calligraphy. They thus formed a sort of religious school, whence their title of scholastics (_scholastici_)--a title which they well deserved during the reign of Charlemagne, but which they had ceased to merit at the time of Charles the Bold. The priests attached to each church constituted what was termed the assembly of the presbytery (_presbyterium_), or the ecclesiastical senate of the bishop of the diocese (_senatus ecclesiæ episcopi_). It was permissible for the clerks at an early age to enter the minor degrees of their calling, such as those of porter, exorcist, reader, and acolyte; but they were not allowed to assume the higher grades until they had reached a ripe age. The minimum age for the diaconate was thirty years; for the priesthood, thirty-five; ordination, from the fourth century upwards, took place four times a year. We learn from St. Cyprian, who lived in the third century, that from that date it was decreed that this ceremony should only take place in the churches, publicly, at mass.

Before choristers were regularly introduced many churches had _psalmists_, who constituted a distinct minor order. These psalmists were succeeded by chanting clerks. In the reign of the Emperor Justinian, the metropolitan church of Constantinople possessed twenty-six choristers and a hundred and ten readers. In the fifteenth canon of the Council of Laodicea we read that “none but the canonical choristers are allowed to sing in the church.” The congregation, however, still kept to the custom of joining their voices to those of the choristers.

At first there no doubt existed a special dress worn during the hours of service, but it is supposed that it was only in its colour, which was white, that this dress differed from that worn by the deacons and the priests in everyday life. The maniple (_manipulum_) and the stole (_stola_), accessories to the alb, which was the original vestment worn by the priest, were not adopted and consecrated by the liturgy till the third or fourth centuries. The deacons only wore the stole during the sacrament, but the priests wore it continuously, as a mark of their sacerdotal dignity. The use of the chasuble was subsequent to that of the stole, the alb, and the dalmatic. The chasuble is first mentioned in the twenty-seventh canon of the Fourth Council of Toledo (in 527 A.D.).

Prior to the fifth century, the clergy were obliged to wear no distinctive dress in private life. As in the days of the Apostles, the bishops, the priests, the clerks, the deacons, and the choristers wore tunics and sandals, as prescribed by the Saviour in the Gospel of St. Mark (vi. 9). They covered themselves with a square piece of black or brown cloth, which was draped around the figure, and was fastened by neither hook nor tie; beneath it was a plain tunic of a dark colour. In the fifth century Pope Celestinus disapproved of this costume, which caused the followers of Christ to be confounded with the Stoic philosophers. In the sixth century the laity had abandoned the Roman style of costume, and wore short dresses, copied from those of the barbarians who had become the rulers of Gaul; but the Church, careful of the dignity of its ministers, refused to adopt this expensive alteration. Henceforward a broad distinction was established between the dress of the clergy and that of the laity. The Council of Agde (506 A.D.) ordered all clerks to wear clothes and shoes of a peculiar cut, in conformity with their religious profession. Two later councils forbade them the use of the Roman military cloak (_sagum_) and of purple-coloured stuffs. Gregory the Great forbade his household to wear any dress but the long toga, as the one essentially appropriate to the people of the Church. This costume, with scarcely any modification, was worn by all orthodox ecclesiastics, through all the changes of the Middle Ages, until the seventeenth century.

The priest, when in the exercise of his holy functions, was not expected to make any change in his dress. Still, from the fourth to the ninth century everything seems to show that his proper costume was always white, or at least that it was so during the celebration of the highest ceremonies. St. Chrysostom, feeling the approach of death, and being anxious to partake of the holy sacrament, called for his white vestments, and distributed those he was wearing, even to his shoes, among his assistants. The customs and traditions of the West conformed in this to those of the East. The neophyte was stripped of his worldly garments, he was clad in a white or religious robe (_habitus religionis_), and was then considered fit to perform his duties. Sometimes, however, the white robes of the sovereign pontiff were adorned with bands of gold or purple. White was not mixed with other tints in the dress of the clergy till towards the ninth century; the five hues admitted by religious symbolism date only from the twelfth century.

Charlemagne, who was proud of his thorough acquaintance with the liturgy, who esteemed it an honour to wear, on high occasions, the green chasuble embroidered with gold, and to chant the epistles before the assembled congregations, took the greatest pains with all the ceremonies of the Church; and it is an undoubted fact that the pomp with which they were afterwards celebrated was inaugurated by him.

Charlemagne and his successors, Louis the Affable and Charles the Bald, did not, however, content themselves with merely attending to ceremonial pomp; they did their best to introduce a principle of unity in conformity with the Roman liturgy. At the commencement of the eighth century Pope Adrian I., having sent to Charlemagne an antiphonary scored by St. Gregory himself, the Emperor ordered all the churches in his dominions to adopt the Gregorian chant. Thenceforward the ancient Gallican liturgy almost disappeared, and when Charles the Bald was desirous of comparing together the Greek, Roman, and Gallican liturgies, he was obliged to summon ecclesiastics from Toledo to officiate in his presence according to the Gallican rite. Charles preferred the Roman ritual; but notwithstanding this, each diocesan cathedral, each separate abbey, introduced into the Gallo-Roman liturgy various accessory forms differing more or less from one another.