INCENSE 721 for example, Aristophanes, Pint., 1114; Frogs, 871, 888; Clouts, 426 ; Wasps, 96, 861). Frankincense, however, though the most common, never became the only kind of incense offered to the gods among the Greeks. Thus the Orphic Hymns are careful to specify, in connexion with the several deities celebrated, a great variety of substances appropriate to the service of each ; in the case of many of these the selection seems to have been determined not at all by their fragrance but by some occult considerations which it is now difficult to divine. Among the Romans the use of religious fumigations long preceded the introduction of foreign substances for the purpose (see, for example, Ovid, Fast. i. 337 sq., " Et non exiguo laurus adusta sono "). Latterly the use of frankin cense (" mascula thura," Virg., Ed. viii. 65) became very prevalent, not only in religious ceremonials, but also on various state occasions, such as in triumphs (Ovid, Trist. iv. 2, 4), and also in connexion with certain occurrences of domestic life. In private it was daily offered by the de vout to the lar familiaris (Plaut., Aulul., prol., 23) ; and in public sacrifices it was not only sprinkled on the head of the victim by the pontifex before its slaughter, and afterwards mingled with its blood, but was also thrown upon the fl unes in which it was roasted. No perfectly satisfactory traces can be found of the use of incense in the ritual of the Christian Church during the first four centuries. It obviously was not contemplated by the author of the epistle to the Hebrews ; its use was foreign to the synagogue services on which, and not on those of the temple, the worship of the primitive Christians is well known to have been originally modelled ; and its associa tions with heathen solemnities, and with the evil repute of those who were known as " thurificati," would still further militate against its employment. Various authors of the ante-Xicene period have expressed themselves as distinctly unfavourable to its religious, though not of course to its domestic, use. Thus Tertullian, while (De Cor. Mil., 10) ready to acknowledge its utility in coun teracting unpleasant smells ("si me odor alicujus loci offendent, Arabiae aliquid incendo "), is careful to say that he scorns to offer it as an accompaniment to his heartfelt prayers (ApoL, 30, cf. 42). Athenagoras also (Legal., 13) gives distinct expression to his sense of the needlessness of any such ritual ("the Creator and Father of the universe does not require blood, nor smoke, nor even the sweet smell of flowers and incense ") ; and Arnobius (Adv. Gent., vii. 26) seeks to justify the Christian neglect of it by the fact, for which he vouches, that among the Romans themselves incense was unknown in the time of Numa, while the Etruscans had always continued to be strangers to it. Cyril of Jerusalem, Augustine, and the Apostolic Constitutions make no reference to any such feature either in the public or private worship of the Christians of that time. The earliest mention, it would seem, occurs in the Apostolic Canons (can. 3), where the @vfj.ia/j.a is spoken of as one of the re quisites of the eucharistic service. It is easy to perceive how it should inevitably have come in along with the whole circle of ideas involved in such words as " temple," " altar," " priest," which about this time came to be so generally applied in ecclesiastical connexions. Evagrius (vi. 21) mentions the gift of a flu/itarr/ptov by Chosroes the king of Persia to the church of Jerusalem ; and all the Oriental liturgies of this period provide special prayers for the thu- rification of the eucharistic elements. The oldest Ordo Roman us, which perhaps takes us back to within a century of Gregory the Great, enjoins that in pontifical masses a aubdeacon, with a golden censer, shall go before the bishop as he leaves the secretarium for the choir, and two, with censers, before the deacon gospeller as he proceeds with the gospel to the ambo. And less than, two centuries after wards we read an order in one of the capitularies of Hiuc- mar of llheims, to the effect that every priest ought to be provided with a censer and incense. That in this portion of their ritual, however, the Christians of that period were not universally conscious of its direct descent from Mosaic institutions may be inferred perhaps from the " benediction of the incense" used in the days of Charlemagne, which runs as follows : " May the Lord bless this incense to the extinction of every noxious smell, and kindle it to the odour of its sweetness." Even Thomas Aquinas (p. iii. qu. 83, art. 5) gives prominence to this idea. The character and order of these historical notices oE incense would certainly, were there nothing else to be con sidered, justify the conclusion which has been generally adopted, that its use was wholly unknown in the worship of the Christian Church before the 5th century. On the other hand, we know that in the first Christian services held in the catacombs under the city of Rome, incense was burnt as a sanitary fumigation at least. Tertullian also distinctly alludes to the use of aromatics in Christian burial : " the Sabaeans will testify that more of their merchandise, and that more costly, is lavished on the burial of Christians, than in burning incense to the gods." And the whole ar gument from analogy is in favour of the presumption of the ceremonial use of incense by the Christians from the first. It is natural that little should be said of so obvious a practice until the fuller development of ritual in a later age. The slighting references to it by the Christian fathers are no more an argument against its existence in the pri mitive church, than the similar denunciations by the Jewish prophets of burnt offerings and sacrifices are any proof that there were no such rites as the offering of incense, and of the blood of bulls and fat of rams, in the worship of the temple at Jerusalem. There could be no real offence to Christians in the burning of incense. Malachi (i. 11) had already foretold the time when among the Gentiles, in every place, incense should be offered to God. Gold, with myrrh and frankincense were offered by the Persian Magi to the infant Jesus at his birth ; and in Revelation viii. 3, 4 the image of the offering incense with the prayers of the saints, before the throne of God, is not without its significance. If also the passage in Ambrose of Milan (on Luke i. 11), where he speaks of " us " as " adolentes altaria " is to be translated "incensing the altars," and taken literally, it is an unequivocal testimony to the use of incense by the Christian Church in, at least, the 4th century. The Missal of the Roman Church now enjoins incensa- tion before the introit, before the gospel, and again at the offertory, in every high mass ; the use of incense also occurs when the sacrament is exhibited, at consecrations of churches and the like, in processions, in the office for the burial of the dead, and at the exhibition of relics. On high festivals the altar is censed at vespers and lauds. In the Church of England the use of incense was gradu ally abandoned after the reign of Edward VI., until the ritualistic revival of the present day. Its use, however, has never been abolished by law. A " Form for the Consecra tion of a Censer" occurs in Bancroft s Form of Dedication and Consecration of a Church or Chapel (1685). In various works of reference (as, for example, in Notes and Queries, 3d ser., vol. viii. p. 11) numerous sporadic cases are men tioned in which incense appears to have been burnt in churches ; the evidence, however, does not go so far as to show that it was used during divine service, least of all that it was used during the communion office. At the coronation of George III., one of the king s grooms appeared "in a scarlet dress, holding a perfuming pan, burning perfumes, as at previous coronations."
XIL QI
