V
KISSING CUSTOMS
The Religious Kiss.—We have already referred to the religious usages concerning kissing, as revealed by the Bible and the records of classical nations. One of the apocryphal books of the New Testament supplements this account, by stating that John the Baptist was conceived in a chaste kiss of his parents. The kissing of holy relics, of the pope's foot and the bishop's hand, are all relics of heathen customs. Charles Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth gives the ancestry of some Christian kisses:
Kissing of images and the Pope's toe is eastern paganism. The Egyptians had it of the Assyrians, the Greeks of the Egyptians, and we of the Romans, whose Pontifex Maximus (high priest) had his toe kissed during the Empire. The Druid's kissed their High Priest's toe a thousand years before Christ.
A variant of this crept into England. Anciently the kings and queens of England ceremoniously washed the feet of beggars, and kissed them, thereby imitating Jesus, who washed the feet of his disciples. Moreover, the monarch had to kiss as many feet as the years in his or her age; presenting a gift to each, called a maunday; the day of the ceremony being called Maundy-Thursday. When she was thirty-nine, Queen Elizabeth performed this rite: that is, she smacked the feet of
