BURIAL
77
BURIAL
bishop is intoned the antiphon: In pace in idipsum
dormiam et requiescam. And this one verse is said,
'Expectans, expectavi Dominum et respexit me'; and
the chanting is so arranged that the verses are said
one by one while the first is repeated after each.
When Gloria lias been said the antiphon is repeated
but not a second time." Two impressive collects are
then said and another prayer which is headed
"Benedictio". After which "the tomb is closed ac-
cording to custom and it is fastened with a seal".
Probably this rather elaborate ceremony was a type of the funerals celebrated throughout Spain at this epoch even in the case of the lower clergy and the laity. Of the final prayer we are expressly told that it may also be used for the obsequies of a priest. Further it is mentioned that when the priest is laid out he should be clothed just as he was wont to celebrate Mass, in tunic, shoes, breeches, alb, and chasuble.
The rite of putting chrism into the bishop's mouth, as mentioned above, does not seem to be known else- where, but on the other hand, the anointing the breast of a dead person with chrism was formerly
§eneral in the Greek Church, and it seems to have een adopted at Rome at an early date. Thus in certain directions for burial and for Masses for the dead contained in the Penitential of Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury (c. 680) we meet the fol- lowing: "(1) According to the Church of Rome, it is the custom, in the case of monks or religious men, to carry them after their death to the church, to anoint their breasts with chrism, and there to cele- brate Masses for them; then to bear them to the grave with chanting, and when they have been laid in the tomb, prayer is offered for them; afterwards they are covered in with earth or with a slab. (2) On the first, tin- third, the ninth, and also the thirtieth day, let Mass be celebrated for them, and furthermore, let this be observed after a year has passed, if it be wished."
It seems natural to conjecture that the Span- ish custom of putting the chrism into the mouth of the dead may have been meant to replace the practice which certainly prevailed for a w'hile in Rome of administering the Blessed Eucharist either at the very moment of death or of leaving it with the corpse even when life was extinct. A clear example of this is forthcoming in the "Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great (II, xxiv,) and see the Appen- dix on the subject in Cardinal Rampolla's "Santa Melania Giuniore" (p. 254). There is some reason to believe that the inscription Christus hie est (Christ is here), or its equivalent, occasionally found on tomb-stones (see Leblant, Nouveau Recueil, 3) bears reference to the Blessed Eucharist placed on the tongue of the deceased. But this practice was soon forbidden.
The custom of watching by the dead (the wake) is apparently very ancient. In its origin it was cither a Christian observance which was attended with the chanting of psalms, or if in a measure adopted from paganism the singing of psalms was introduced to Christianize it. In the Middle Ages among the monastic orders the custom no doubt was pious and salutary. By appointing relays of monks to succeed one another orderly provision was made that the corpse should never be left without prayer. But among secular persons these nocturnal meetings were always and everywhere an occasion of grave abuses, especially in the matter of eating and drinking. Thus to take a single example we read among the Anglo-Saxon canons of yElfric, ad- dressed to the clergy: "Ye shall not rejoice on ac- count of men deceased nor attend on the corpse ye be thereto invited. When ye are thereto invited then forbid ye the heathen songs (tha haethenan sangas) of the laymen and their loud
cachinnations; nor eat ye nor drink where the corpse
lieth therein, lest ye be imitators of the heathenism
which they there commit" (Thorpe, Ancient Laws
and Institutes of England, 448). We may reasonably
suppose that the Office for the Dead, which consists
only of Vespers, Matins, and Lauds, without Day-
hours, originally developed out of the practice of
passing the night in psalmody beside the corpse.
In the tenth Ordo Romanus which supplies a de-
scription of the obsequies of the Roman clergy in
the twelfth century we find the Office said early in
the morning, but there is no mention of praying be-
side the corpse all night. In its general features
this Roman Ordo agrees with the ritual now prac-
tised, but there are a good many minor divergences.
For example the Mass is said while the Office is being
chanted; the Absoute at the close is an elaborate
function in which four prelates officiate, recalling
what is now observed in the obsequies of a bishop,
and the service by the grave side is much more
lengthy than that which now prevails. In the ear-
liest Ambrosian ritual (eighth or ninth century)
which Magistretti (Manuale Ambrosianum, Milan,
1905, I, 67 sqq.) pronounces to be certainly derived
from Rome we have the same breaking up of the ob-
sequies into stages, i. e. at the house of the deceased,
on the way to the church, at the church, from the
church to the grave, and at the grave side, with
which we are still familiar. But it is also clear that
there was originally something of the nature of a
wake (vigilice) consisting in the chanting of the whole
Psalter beside the dead man at his home (Magistretti,
ib., I, 70).
A curious development of the Absoute, with its reiterated prayers for pardon, is to be found in the practice (which seems to have become very general in the second half of the eleventh century) of laying a form of absolution upon the breast of the deceased. This is clearly enjoined in the monastic constitutions of Archbishop Lanfranc and we have sundry his- torical examples of it. (Cf. Thurston, Life of St. Hugh of Lincoln, 219.) Sometimes a rude leaden cross with a few words scratched thereupon was used for the purpose and many such have been re- covered in opening tombs belonging to this period. In one remarkable example, that of Bishop Godfrey of Chichester (1088), the whole formula of absolution may be found in the same indicative form which meets us again in the so-called "Pontifical of Egbert ". It is noteworthy that in the Greek Church to this day a long paper of absolution, now usually a printed form, is first read over the deceased and then put into his hand and left with him in the grave.
The only other point among the many peculiar features of medieval ritual which seems to claim special notice here is the elaborate development given to the offertory in the funeral of illustrious personages. Not only on such occasions were very generous offerings made in money and in kind, with a view, it would seem, of benefiting the soul of the deceased by exceptional generosity, but it was usual to lead his war-horse up the church fully accoutred and to present it to the priest at the altar rails, no doubt to be afterwards redeemed by a money pay- ment. The accounts of solemn obsequies in early times are full of sueli details and in particular of the vast numbers of candles burned upon the hearse; this word hearse in fact came into use precisely from the resemblance which the elaborate frame- work erected over the bier and bristling with candles bore to a harrow (hirpex, hirpieem). Of the varving and protracted services by the grave side, which at the close of the Middle Ages wire common in many parts of Germany and which in some cases busted on until a much later period, something has already been said.
Ritual of the Gkeek Church. — The full burial
