still observed among the officiating Clergy, as likewise among men and women of the different religious orders, in the more solemn service, called the High Mass. It is performed by the persons placing their hands upon each other's shoulders, and bringing their left cheeks nearly in contact with each other. The precise period when the use of the sacred instrument called a Pax was introduced, has not been clearly ascertained; some have considered it to have been in the time of Pope Innocent I., at the commencement of the fifth century, others have attributed the usage to an ordinance of Pope Leo II., A.D. 676; but Dr. Milner was of opinion that when the sexes began to be mixed together in the less solemn service, called the Low Mass, which seems to have begun to take place in the twelfth or thirteenth century, a sense of decorum dictated the use of this instrument, which was kissed first by the Priest, then by the Clerk, and lastly by the people who assisted at the service, instead of the former fraternal embrace.
No evidence has hitherto served to shew with precision at what time the use of the Pax became generally adopted in England. It is not included amongst the sacred ornaments of which an enumeration is found in the Glossary, attributed to Archbishop Ælfric, (Cott. MS. Julius, A. 11., f. 126 vo.,) nor is it mentioned in the list of the gifts of Bishop Leofric to Exeter Cathedral, in the times of the Confessor, preserved in a service-book which had belonged to that prelate, now in the Bodleian[1]. The precise import, however, of some Anglo- Saxon terms occurring in that inventory, does not appear to have been ascertained. Early in the succeeding century various ecclesiastical Constitutions were promulgated, in which the ornaments of churches are enumerated in detail, but no mention , of the Pax is found in the Constitutions of William de Bleys, Bishop of Worcester, which bear date A.D. 1229, or those of his successor Walter de Cantilupe, A.D. 1240[2].
In the Constitutions of Walter de Gray, Archbishop of York, A.D. 1250, mention is made of the "osculatorium[3]" and in those of John de Peccham, Archbishop of Canterbury, promulgated about the year A.D. 1280, it was ordained that the parishioners of every church in the diocese of Canterbury should be bound to provide certain service-books, vestments,
