tion being set on the Altar . . . let the Bishop take Incense . . . and, putting it into the Thurible, offer that to the Altar, and give it to the Archdeacon."1 It should be observed that at this period the Censer was not, as now, suspended by chains 2 and swung to and fro, and that the same vessel was probably set on the Altar which had been carried about by the Acolyte. Incense is mentioned by Hincmar,3 852, but in a manner which shows that its practical use was still fresh in the minds of men. He directs that "every Presbyter have a Censer and Incense, that at the time at which the Gospel is read, and when the Offertory is finished, he may put Incense over the Oblation; to wit, as at the death of the Redeemer." Yet I do not observe any notice of it in the ritual remains of Florus Magister, A.D. 837, or Walafrid Strabo, 842, Rabanus Maurus, 819, Ivo of Chartres, 1092, or John Beleth, 1162, when they describe and explain either the ceremonies of the Mass or the duties of the Subdeacon, etc., although three of them refer to the Gospel lights, which after a time were accompanied by Incense. We can hardly suppose any of them ignorant of its use, though it may not have been familiar to the earliest of them. We must therefore, I think, ascribe their silence to a sense of its unimportance. PseudoAlcuin, who wrote in the eleventh century, only mentions the Incense used on entering the Church, and in the procession of the Gospel. Rupert of Deutz, A.D. 1111, says that the Priest, when he enters and stands at the Altar, receives a Thurible "that he may burn Incense," but he does not say that he censes the Altar. Beyond this he only mentions it as burnt before the Gospel. Robertus Paululus, 1170, says that the Thurible was brought into the Church empty, but 1 Mus. Ital. tom. ii. p. 74. In the same Ordo, "The Gospel ended, . . having received (inhaled) the odour of the Incense and kissed the Gospel, he is to be led up to preach," etc., p. 73. Here we trace again the lingering influence of the early notion under which such fumigations came into use. 2 C'étoit à peu près comme nos cassolettes, dont l'usage est fort ancien dans l'Eglise, surtout pendant la célébration des Saints Mystères. On les appeloit thymiamateria ou thuribula, suffitoria; et les corps de l'encensoir est encore en effet une espèce de cassolette, qui pend à de petites chaînes ; ou plutôt c'est l'ancienne cassolette même, à laquelle, pour jeter l'encens, on a attaché de petites chaînes.-De Vert, Rem. xi. tome iv. Capit. c. vi.; Labb. tom. viii. col. 569. p. 52, * Raban. De Instit. Cler. L. i. c. 9; Hitt. col. 570; Ivo, De Reb. Eccl. ibid. col. 774; Beleth, Div. Off. Explic. c. xxxix. fol. 506. De Div. Off. Hittorp. coll. 276, 7. 6 De Div. Off. L. ii. cc. 29, 36; Hittorp. coll. 864, 7. 7 De Off. Eccl. L. ii. c. 14; Hitt. col. 1396 (ascribed to Hugo a S. Vict.) that "in some Churches the Priest went to the Altar and censed it at once." He also mentions the Incense carried before the Gospel;1 but not the censing of the Oblations. Sicardus,2 probably about thirty years later, mentions the Incense carried before the Priest as he entered, the censing of the Altar, the Gospel Incense, and the censing of the Oblations, as if they were then well known and established customs. .3 VIII. Incense, to whatever cause it may have owed its introduction, had received a symbolical interpretation by the ninth century. Thus Amalarius :3" The Thurible signifies the Body of Christ, in which is Fire; to wit, the Holy Ghost; from whom a good odour proceeds, which each of the elect wishes to snatch towards himself. The same odour shows that virtue goes out of Christ, which he who desires to live passes into his own heart." Observe the action implied, of inhaling the smoke of the Incense with the aid of the hand. When, "after the Oblation, the Incense was set on the Altar," the Priest, according to Remigius of Auxerre, A.D. 880, and as we see in the Sarum Missal, "said, Let my prayer be set forth in Thy sight as the Incense, etc.; that is to say, As the Incense is pleasant and acceptable in the sight of the people, so let my prayer be acceptable in Thy sight." Rupert5 extends this to the prayers of the whole Church :—“ Meanwhile the choir sings, Kyrie eleeson, which signifies all the prayers of the universal Church, which are the true Incense." Sicardus varies the meaning of the Censer:-"The Thurible signifies either preaching that is apt to move men to prayer, or the flesh of the Lord." Of the Incense carried before the Gospel, he says, "By the smoke of the Incense is signified the good report of the preacher (ie. of the Gospeller), which ought to be a savour of life unto life." Durandus, A.D. 1286, with other explanations:-" By the Thurible is aptly signified the heart of man, which ought to be open above to receive, and closed below to retain, the fire of charity, and the frankincense of devotion, or most sweet prayer, or of good examples tending upwards;-which is signified by the smoke proceeding from it."8 1 De Off. Eccl. L. ii. c. 20; col. 1399. 2 Mitrale, L. iji. cc. ii. iv. vi. coll. 92, 6, 107 120; Par. 1855. 3 De Eccl. Off. L. iii. c. 18; Hitt. col. 412. 4 In pseudo-Alcuin, De Div. Off. Hitt. col. 281. 5 De Div. Off. L. i. c. 29; Hitt. col. 865. 6 Mitrale, L. i. c. xiii. co'. 48. 8 Ration. L. iv. c. vi. n. 6. 7 Lib. iii. c. iv. col. 107. SECTION VII. Of the Place and Position of the Holy Table. 1 d SHALL STAND IN THE BODY.]-I. This order, which was inserted in the Rubric at the Revision of 1552, ruled the place of the Table "at the Communion-time;" but not at other times. It was therefore, in 1559, supplemented by an Injunction which directs that "the holy Table in every Church be... set in the place where the Altar stood . . . and so to stand, saving when the Communion of the Sacrament is to be distributed; at which time the same shall be so placed in good sort within the Chancel, as whereby the Minister may be more conveniently heard," etc. As the Sacrament was then administered, this would be very inconvenient with a small Chancel; and accordingly the Bishops in their "Interpretations" went in such a case to the Rubric:-"That the Table be removed out of the Choir into the body of the Church, before the Chancel door; where either the Choir seemeth to be too little, or at great feasts of receiving. And the end of the Communion to be set up again, according to the Injunctions."2 By "the place where the Altar stood," we must not understand its exact site. It only meant somewhere within that part of the Chancel which had been, and in many Churches still was, raised by steps above the rest. There is an order of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1561-"That the steps which be as yet at this day remaining . . . be not stirred nor altered . . . and if in any Chancel the steps be transposed, that they be not erected again, but that the place be decently paved, where the Communion Table shall stand out of the times of receiving the Communion." Within this space they might set it where they liked, and hence it is that in the present day we find the Holy Tables in the Royal Chapel and Trinity College, Dublin, placed close to the North wall, and that in the Royal Chapel, Whitehall, close to the South wall. The Injunction, however, was very imperfectly obeyed, and there is reason to think that in most Churches the Table was allowed to remain at all times in the place which it occupied at the Celebration. As the Injunctions of Elizabeth have no legal force, the present position of the Holy Table, which is put almost universally as they direct," where the Altar stood," must be referred to the understood will of the Ordinary, to whom the Injunctions have without doubt been always a 3 1 Doc. Ann. vol. i. p. 234. 3 2 Ibid. p. 238. Heylyn, Eccles. Restaur. vol. ii. p. 360, note. 4 Stephen's Notes on the B. C. P. vol. ii. p. 1127. guide, as in earlier times they were an authority. It is also under the sanction of the Bishops that we never remove the Table from its usual place for the Celebration, though a strict obedience to the Rubric might sometimes require it. This practice prevailed commonly for above three quarters of a century. The motive is not stated in the Rubric, but is readily gathered from other documents. The Injunctions of Elizabeth, as above quoted, allege the convenience of the hearers, and this is repeated in the 82d Canon of 1604, which, also like the Bishops' Interpretation and the Rubric, permits the Table to be placed for the occasion either in the Church or Chancel. The Injunction further ordered, " after the Communion done from time to time the same Holy Table to be placed where it stood before." The Canon, in its English form, merely orders the Tables to be properly kept and covered, "and so stand," except at Communion-time; but the Latin implies a fixed place for them when not in use: -suoque certo loco consistant.1 The Convocation of 1640, after citing the order of Elizabeth, "that the Holy Tables should stand in the place where the Altars stood," and asserting that they had "accordingly been continued in the Royal Chapels of three famous and pious Princes, and in most Cathedral and some Parochial Churches," thus expressed its own mind on the subject: "Therefore we judge it fit and convenient that all Churches and Chapels do conform themselves in this particular to the example of the Cathedral or Mother Churches, saving always the general liberty left to the Bishop by law, during the time of administration of the Holy Communion."2 From this it appears that Convocation did not consider a removal of the Table at Communiontime always of obligation, but that the Bishops had power to decide whether circumstances made it desirable or not. question had, in fact, been considered before the King in Council several years before, on the occasion of a complaint from five parishioners of S. Gregory's, near the Cathedral of S. Paul, that the Dean and Chapter (who had a peculiar jurisdiction over that Church) had "removed the Communion Table... from the middle of the Chancel to the upper end," The order then made decreed that "for so much as concerns the liberty of the . . . Common Prayer Book or Canon, for placing the Communion Table in any Church or Chapel with most conveniency, that liberty is not so to be understood as if it were ever left to the discretion of the Parish, much etc. 1 Can. lxxxii. Synodalia, vol. i. p. 211. This less to the particular fancy of any humorous person, but to the judgment of the Ordinary, to whose place and function it doth properly belong to give direction in that point, both for the thing itself and the time when, and how long, as he may find cause."1 This also was the ground on which Bishop Davenant in 1637 assumed the right to decide this question:-"In things of this nature, to judge and determine what is most convenient belongs not to private persons, but to those that have Ecclesiastical authority."2 It is probable, however, that until near the period of the Great Rebellion, the Altar, if at the East end, was in almost every case removed to what was considered a more convenient place, whenever the Sacrament was celebrated. In fact, we even find the practice enforced by the leading Bishops of the period, who in their Visitation Articles repeatedly inquire whether at the Celebration the holy Table is "placed in such convenient sort within the Chancel or Church as that the Minister may be best heard in his prayer and administration, and that the greater number may communicate."3 There was nevertheless at the same time a growing sense of the evils that resulted from the prevailing practice, however justifiable it might be in the abstract, and great efforts were made during the latter part of Charles's reign to give the holy Table one fixed position, both in and out of Divine Service. The first step towards it was to discountenance its removal to the body of the Church. There is a letter extant (1633) from Laud to Williams (then Bishop of Lincoln), from which we find that Charles had himself a strong desire to suppress that practice :-" Though the Canon say the people may receive the Communion in the Chancel or in the body of the Church, yet he (the King) likes not that the Ordinary (to whose discretion this disjunctive is left) should suffer it to be in the body of the Church; both because the people usually sit in their seats, and cannot be discerned whether they kneel or no while they receive, and because the Minister cannot possibly come with any convenience at them which are placed farthest in their seats, to deliver the Sacrament to them, unless every other seat should be left void." It is 1 Doc. Ann. vol. ii. p. 239. 2 Laud's Works, vol. vi. p. 61, note u; Oxf. 1857. 3 E.g. Bancroft in 1605, Abbot in 1616, Doc. Ann. vol. ii. pp. 110, 168; Laud. in 1628, 35, 37, Works, vol. v. pp. 405, 21, 39. 4 Works, vol. vi. p. 350. This arrangement naturally excited the ridicule of the enemies of the Reformation, who profanely called the holy Table an oyster-board, or oyster-table, from its standing free on all sides |