God Himself, who is blessed, and liveth and ruleth all things, world without end. Amen. V. The Lord be ever with you. R. And with thy spirit." The old Gallican Benedictions were not divided like the later, and the Spanish. In the Vetus Missale Gallicanum1 of the collections, the Benediction consists of one unbroken prayer, while in the GothicoGallican it is generally in five parts, though there are instances in which it is composed of three, four, six,5 or even nine. The conclusion is always an address to the Father or the Son, but in other respects varies :-" Which do Thou vouchsafe to grant, who with the Father and the Holy Ghost (or, who in perfect Trinity) livest," etc.; "Through our Lord Jesus Christ Thy Son, who with Thee liveth," etc.; "Grant it, Saviour of the world, who with the Father and the Holy Ghost," etc.

At the beginning of the sixth century it was the custom in France for persons in full communion, but not wishing to communicate, to "go out of Church as soon as the Divine Lessons (ie. the Epistle and Gospel) were read." An attempt to stop this was first made by the Council of Agde9 in 506: -"By a special ordinance we command the Masses to be observed entire on the Lord's Day; so that the people do not presume to go out before the Priest's Blessing," which was after the consecration. In a similar order of the Council of Orleans,10 in 511, it is implied that they might leave after the Bishop's Benediction :-"Let not the people depart before the solemnity of the Mass shall be completed, and when the Bishop shall not be there, let them receive the Blessing of the Priest." It was probably found that this rule could not be enforced; for by the third Council of Orleans, 538, the people are in all cases allowed to leave before the Communion:-" Let none of the Laity depart from Masses before the Lord's Prayer is said, and if the Bishop shall be present let his Benediction be waited for." "11 Cæsarius of Arles, who died in 542, has left two homilies 12 in which he dissuades the people from leaving before the Benediction; and he is said

1 Liturg. Gall. pp. 333, 349, 365, 366, etc.

2 Ibid. pp. 189, 196, 200, etc.

3 Ibid. pp. 198, 219, 272, 273.

4 Ibid. pp. 223, 228.

6 Ibid. p. 210.

5 Ibid. pp. 192, 208.

7 Ibid. pp. 189, 200, 208, 211.

8 Cæsarius, Hom. lxxx. inter Serm. S. Aug. cclxxxi. tom. xvi. col. 1417.

9 Can. xlvii. Labb. tom. iv. col. 1391.

10 Can. xxvi. Labb. tom. iv. col. 1408.

11 Can. xxix. Labb. tom. v. col. 302.

12 Nn. cclxxxi. cclxxxii. inter S. Aug. App. iv. tom. xvi.

very often" to have kept them in by closing the doors of the Church after the reading of the Gospel.1

SECTION III.-Public Notices, and requests for the Prayers
of the People.

In the Gelasian Sacramentary and some others probably derived from it, after the Priest's blessing, "The Lord be ever with you," with its response, "And with thy spirit," the following Rubric occurs:-" After this the people are to be warned, at their seasons, of the Fasts of the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth month, or of the Scrutinia, or the Opening of the Ears, or if prayer is to be made for the Sick, or Saints' Days announced. After this the Priest communicates with the Sacred Orders, with all the people." The request of prayer for the sick in this place is in keeping with the principle on which, as we have already seen, the great intercessions were introduced between the Consecration and Communion; but the notices of Fasts, etc., do not appear equally in place here.

SECTION IV.-The Commixture.

We have already mentioned the Roman custom of putting a small piece broken off the Host into the Chalice. This rite is called the Commixtion, or Commixture. It is not primitive, but must have spread at an early period, though with great variety of observance, over both divisions of the Church, The first supposed allusion to it occurs in the Expositio Brevis ascribed to S. Germanus of Paris (A.D. 555), or to a disciple of his :-"The Confraction and Commixture of the Body of the Lord was of old set forth with such mysteries," etc. The next notice of this rite is gathered from

1 See Præf. to Serm. cclxxxi. u.s. col. 1416.

2 Murat. tom. i. col. 698. The same Rubric occurs in the Sacramentary of Gellone, now 1100 years old; and in another in the Royal Library at Paris. De Ant. Eccl. Rit. L. i. c. iv. Art. ix.

3 See the remarks in Part 1. Ch. xv. Sect. v. p. 476, and the references in foot-note there. See also Part II. Ch. vi. Sect. xv. at the end, p. 653. 4 Printed by Martene, L. i. c. iv. Art. xii. Ord. i. tom. i. p. 168. I strongly suspect, however, that for commixtio we ought to read comminutio or communicatio, or that the words et commixtio are an interpolation, as the Body only is mentioned, and the context dwells on the Confraction only, and there is no reference (that I can discover) to the Commixture in the old Gallican Sacramentaries. The Gallican name for it at this period would also be, almost to a certainty, identical with the Spanish, i.e. con

Spain, where, in 633, the Council of Toledo1 speaks of "the Conjunction of the Bread and Cup," as an action following the Lord's Prayer. A double Commixture was practised at Rome for some centuries, ending apparently with the eighth. When the Pope celebrated he reserved of the consecrated Bread, partly for his own use, and partly to be sent to the other Churches of his jurisdiction. A particle of this Bread (which was called Fermentum, Leaven) was put by the Celebrant into the Chalice after the Embolís of the Lord's Prayer, but before the Fraction, while he said, "The Peace of the Lord be with you alway." See the next Section. But this Commixture of the presanctified Bread was followed by another of a part of the newly consecrated:-" When he (the Pope) shall have communicated, he puts of that same Holy Thing, which he has bitten, into the Cup saying, 'May the Commixture and consecration of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ be made to us who receive (profitable) unto eternal life.""2 It is this second Commixture which survives in the present ritual of the Church of Rome. For some time, however, it took place in some Churches at that part of the service in which the particle of the Sancta had been immersed. Thus Amalarius,3 827, says that in his time "some first put of the Holy Thing into the Chalice, and afterwards said Pax Domini; others on the contrary reserved the immersion, until the Peace and Fraction of the Bread were performed." He must suppose that a piece of the newly consecrated Bread was broken off in the first case before the prescribed Fraction; as, when he goes on to appeal to the Roman directory, he does not seem aware that the first Commixture in that was of presanctified Bread. "If," saith he, "this is so done in the Roman Church, from them also may be learned what the Bread twice put into the Cup means."

junctio. Many writers have produced what they consider an earlier reference still; viz., from the 17th Canon of the First Council of Orange, A.D. 441:"Cum capsa et calix offerendus est (the MSS. read inferendus), et admixtione Eucharistiæ consecrandus."-Can. xvii. Labb. tom. iii. col. 1450. The reader will probably agree with Dupin, that "the only sense it is capable of is this,—that when they consecrate the Chalice or Plate, they must celebrate the Sacrament in those vessels."-Biblioth. Cent. v. Councils, vol. i. p. 681; Engl. transl.

1 Can. xviii. Labb. tom. iv. col. 1711.

2 Ord. Rom. i. n. 19, corrected from Ord. ii. n. 13; Mus. Ital. tom. ii. pp. 14, 50.

3 De Eccl. Off. L. iii. c. 31; Hittorp. col. 432. Very similar is the language of a passage found in some MSS. of Rabanus, De Instit. Cler. L. i. c. xxxiii.; Hitt. col. 586.

The Milanese1 Liturgy prescribes the following form to be said by the Celebrant at the Commixture:-" May the Commixture of the consecrated Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ profit us, eating and taking, unto life and joy eternal." The Mozarabic-"Holy Things unto holy; and may the Conjunction of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ be to us taking and drinking for pardon; and to the faithful departed be granted for rest." The present Roman form varies a little from that given above:--" May this Commixture and consecration of the Body and Blood," etc. As the consecration has taken place before, a difficulty presents itself here, which has met with no satisfactory solution.3 The English Liturgies were free from this objection:"May the most holy Commixture of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus be made to me and all receiving, health of mind and body, and a salutary preparation for laying hold on eternal life." This form was far the more common in the middle ages in the Churches of France and Germany.5

4

Mystical reasons for the Commixture are given by many Latin writers: It is "to denote the conjunction of the Body and Soul in the Resurrection of Christ;"6"to signify that the Body of Christ is not without the Blood, nor the Blood without the Body;" "7" that one Sacrament is made out of

1 Pamel. tom. i. p. 304.

2 Leslie, pp. 6, 232. Sancta Sanctis would of course originally mean "Holy Things for the holy," i.e. for holy persons; but here it is connected with the Conjunction, and the sense changed. In some Gallican Missals the words were altered to Sancta cum Sanctis, to suit the new sense. One example (from Rheims, 1491) is very remarkable, as the formula clearly borrows from Spain, if not from an earlier Gallican tradition :-" Holy things with holy; and may the Conjunction of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ be to all who eat and drink, salvation unto life eternal." -Martene, L. i. c. vi. Art. ix. n. ii.

3 Some, as Le Brun, Godeau, Hardouin, say that the consecration of the Body and Blood means the consecrated Body and Blood, the abstract being used for the concrete; others, that the two species impart to each other some kind of mutual consecration, alleging that consecrare is simul sacrare. See Le Brun, Explic. P. v. Art. v. tom. ii. p. 574; De Vert, De la Messe, P. i. c. viii. tom. iii. p. 346.

4 Maskell, Anc. Lit. p. 114.

See examples in Martene, L. i. c. iv. Art. xii. pp. 190, 194, 204, 208, etc. Add De Plove, Expos. 5tæ P. Miss. When the Roman form is given, it is put second as an alternative, pp. 185, 192, etc. For a long period this formula was only prescribed in the books designed to direct and help the private devotion of the Priests at the Celebration; and to this day it is not said by the Carthusians.-Romsée, Sens. Miss. App. Art. i. § iv.

Micrologus, c. 17, Hittorp. col. 741; Durand. L. iv. c. li. n. 17; Nicol. de Plove, Expos. 5tæ Part. Miss. So Innocent III., Gabriel Biel, etc. 7 Durand. L. iv. c. li. n. 17.

the species of Bread and Wine," Merati2 says, "though neither is the Body without the Blood in the consecrated Host, nor the Blood without the Body in the Chalice; nevertheless because the Body is consecrated separately under the species of Bread, and the Blood under the species of wine, therefore it has been decreed that the one be mixed with the other."

In the Greek and Oriental Churches the Commixture, or rather Intinction, serves to the Communion of the laity, and probably originated in a fear lest particles of the holy Bread, which being leavened is naturally friable, should fall to the ground during the distribution. Another conjecture is that it was introduced by S. Chrysostom, in consequence of a woman, who was addicted to the Macedonian heresy, having conveyed away the holy Bread which she had received from his hand. However this may be, it is certain, from its general use among the Orthodox, Nestorians, and Jacobites, that it was a common practice by the beginning of the fifth century. In S. James the Priest first breaks the Bread into two parts, and dips that in his right hand into the Chalice, saying, "The union of the all-holy Body and precious Blood of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ." Then after crossing that in his left hand, and signing the other part with it, he puts some into each Cup, saying, "A holy portion of Christ, full of grace and truth, of the Father and the Holy Ghost, to whom be the glory and the power for ever and ever." In S. Basil' and S. Chrysostom, the Priest dividing the holy Bread into four parts, puts one of them into the Cup, saying, "The fulness of faith of the Holy Ghost." In the Syro-Jacobite rite, a mystical meaning is given to the act by the form that accompanies it :-"Thou, Lord, hast mingled Thy Divinity with our humanity," etc. There is no similar interpretation of it in the Nestorians or Coptic Liturgies.

I have said that the Commixture is not truly primitive. There is no mention of it in any ecclesiastical writer for several centuries after Christ. It is not prescribed in the

1 Durand. u.s. Biel, sect. lxxxi. fol. clxxxiii. fa. 2, who, however, thinks this a poor reason.

2 P. ii. tit. x. tom. i. p. 330.

3 Goar, note 179, p. 152, from Arcudius, L. iii. c. 53, and Ligaridius. They assume that the intinction and use of the spoon began together. But the Armenians do not use a spoon to this day. See p. 704.

4 Assem. tom. v. p. 54; Liturg. Patr. pp. 34, 35.

5 Goar. p. 175.

7 Renaud. tom. ii. p. 41.

9 Ibid. tom. i. pp. 23, 36, 51.

6 Ibid. p. 82.

8 Renaud. tom. ii. p. 596.