^{page 197 note 1} “Esta especie de sacerdocio que ejercian entre si los parientes á falta de clérigos, era doctrina muy ortodoxa para los juglares; y aun existia realmente en las costumbres durante la Edad Media.”

^{page 197 note 1} Cf. G. Paris, La Chanson d'Antioche provençale et la Gran Conquista de Ultramar, in the Romania, xvii, 513; xix, 562; xxii, 345: G. Baist, Spanische Literatur in Groeber's Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, ii, Abt. 2, p. 415: E. Gorra, Lingua e letteratura spagnuola (Milan, 1898), p. 311. The whole episode in the Gran Conquista parallels closely one in the Old French poem, Les Chétifs, which, like the Gran Conquista, is concerned with the Crusades and the story of the Knight of the Swan; cf. L. Gautier, Bibliographie des chansons de geste (Paris, 1897), pp. 76-77.

^{page 197 note 1} “Sind die redensarten mordre la poudre oder la poussière und ins gras beiszen, die beide einen gewaltsamen tod bezeichnen, auf diese heidnisch-christliche sitte zurückzuführen?” For this and some other references I am under obligations to Professor G. L. Kittredge.

^{page 197 note 2} “Dem Heiden ist die Erde aus dem Fleische eines göttlichen Urwesens geschaffen, der Leib Gottes, er asz sogar die aufgegriffenen Erdbrosamen, wenn ihm durch Kampf oder Mord schnelles Sterben drohte; daher stammt der Ausdrück die Erde küssen, ins Gras beiszen, mordre la poudre, la poussière.”

^{page 197 note 1} “Da die erde als das fleisch des göttlichen urriesen galt …, musste sie heilig sein und wir finden fast dieselben glauben an sie geknüpft, wie an die andern drei elemente.”

^{page 197 note 2} “Das wäre möglich, es könnte aber auf das krampfhafte öffnen und schlieszen des mundes gehn, welches wir oft bei sterbenden finden, namentlich aber auf dem schlachtfeld im todeskampf der an schweren wunden verscheidenden antreffen.”

^{page 197 note 3} “Die obenerwähnten Ausdrücke haben auf den heidnisch-christlichen Gebrauch des Mittelalters keinen Bezug, sondern bezeichnen das krampfhafte Erfassen der Scholle oder des Grases mit dem Munde, wie es bei Sterbenden auf dem Schlachtfelde vorkommt. Die Sache und ihre Bezeichnung finden wir schon bei den alten Classikern.”

^{page 197 note 1} That is, the ancient sayings started as descriptive of a real situation, and then developed the purely metaphorical sense. Cf. J. H. J. Koeppen, Erklärende Anmerkungen zu Homers Ilias (Hannover, 1820), gloss to Il. ii, 418:—“, dasz sie die Erde mit den Zähnen ergreifen beiszen möchten. Die Alten fochten zwar mit gewaltiger Muth, dasz sie aber beim Niederstürzen in die Erde beiszen, kommt nicht davon allein: es war natürlich. So beiszt einer in die Lanze, Ilias, v, 75. Es gleicht unserm ins Gras beiszen. In Homer ist diese alte Sprache schon zur poetischen geworden,” etc.

^{page 197 note 1} Cf. also Aliscans mit Berücksichtung von Wolframs von Eschenbach Willehalm, kritisch herausgegeben von G. Rolin (Leipzig, 1894, vv. 839 ff.).

^{page 197 note 2} Cf. Gautier, La chevalerie, p. 807, s. v. Communion. “Dans le fascicule ix de ses Éludes d'histoire et de bibliographie, Mgr. Haigneré conteste le sens que nous avons attribué au ‘benoit pain—Ki fu saines sur l'autel saint Germain,’ et avec lequel le comte Guillaume, sur le champ de bataille d'Aliscans, fait faire la première communion à son neveu Vivien. [Cf. Gautier's earlier pronouncement on this subject in his edition of the Chanson de Roland, note to verse 2023: “Dans Aliscans la communion de Vivien est réellement sacramentelle; Guillaume, par un étonnant privilège, a emporté avec lui une hostie consacrée, et c'est avec cette hostie qu'il console et divinise les derniers instants de son neveu.”] Il s'agissait, suivant nous, d'une communion vraiment eucharistique: mais Mgr. Haigneré n'est pas de cet avis: ‘Ce que Guillaume, dit-il, tire de son aumônière et dépose sur les lèvres de Vivien déjà blanchies par la mort, c'est tout simplement, comme le trouvère le nomme à deux reprises, du pain bénit.’ Nous avons d'abord estimé qu'il y avait de graves présomptions en faveur de la thèse de Mgr. Haigneré; mais deux textes, l'un du Covenans Vivien, l'autre d'Aliscans, semblent nous donner décidément raison. Dans le Covenans, Vivien lui-meme s'écrie au moment d'entrer dans la bataille: ‘Mes à Deu pri le Pere tot puissant—Que de cest siecle ne soie deviant—Q'aie parlé à Guillaume le franc,—De l’saint cors Deu soie communiant’(v. 1565-68). Même précision dans Aliscans, et cela dans le récit du même épisode. Quand Guillaume trouve Vivien mort, il s'écrie: ‘Las! que ne ving tant com il fu vivant.—De l'pain que j'ai fu acomenianz,—De l'verai cors Damledeu par covant.’(Aliscans, v. 804-806).—Il convient d'observer qu'alors même qu'il s'agirait seulement de pain bénit, l'acte de Vivien pourrait, sans trop d'inexactitude, être appelé une première communion. Les eulogies ou le pain bénit étaient entourées par nos pères d'un respect aussi grand que l'eucharistie elle-même, et ‘l'on exigeait pour les recevoir une disposition à peu près analogue à celle qui est nécessaire pour s'approcher de la sainte communion’(Dictionnaire encyclopédique de la théologie catholique de Wetzer et Welte, art. Eulogies).”

To a friend, the Rev. C. F. Aiken of the Catholic University of Washington, I am indebted for the following additional information. “The passage in Aliscans has doubtless reference to the ancient practice of administering holy communion by pious laymen. In early times they were allowed to take it to the absent ones at home, even to take it with them on long journeys and voyages. Lay administering of communion was forbidden by Hincmar in the Council of Paris in 829, also by Leo IV in the same century. But as late as the 12th century the councils held at Rome and at London allowed pious laymen to administer communion in cases of urgent need. See Corblett, Histoire du sacrement de V eucharistie, vol. I, p. 286.” For a further note on the persons duly empowered to administer communion, see Addis and Arnold, A Catholic Dictionary (London, 1884), s. v. Communion. Among other things it is there stated that “In times of persecution, the faithful took the Blessed Sacrament away with them, so that even women gave themselves communion at home (Tertullian, Ad Uxor., ii, 5). Ordinarily, the deacons conveyed the Holy Communion to the sick, but sometimes even laymen did so (Euseb., H. E. vi, 44). Pius V, in modern times, is said to have allowed Mary Queen of Scots to receive communion from her own hands in prison (Billuart, De Euch. diss. vii, a. 3).” See Cardinal Wiseman's novel of early Christian times, Fabiola, chapter xxii of Part Second, in which even a young acolyte is described as carrying the Viaticum to administer it to others: cf. Ibid. chapter xxxiii, and see also the Life of J. T. Vénard, translated by Lady Herbert, for a recent instance of lay transmission of the Eucharist. A modern reference to the mediæval symbolical communion is seen in J. H. Shorthouse's novel, Sir Percival (cf. Dublin Review, 121, 80).

^{page 197 note 1} Cf. also J. Dunlop, History of Prose Fiction (London, 1896, a new ed. by H. Wilson), vol. i, p. 284, note, and The Tablet (London, 1886), vol. xxxv of the New Series, p. 98 and p. 258. The second of these notes in The Tablet is in the form of a letter from a correspondent in Jersey City Heights, N. J. It cites on the subject the authority of St. Alphonsus and of Benedict XIV, and appends this very recent example: “I remember hearing from the late Bishop Lynch of Charleston of a Confederate officer (a convert to the faith), who was mortally wounded in one of the battles around Richmond, and confessed to a fellow soldier—who, by the way, was not even a Catholic—with injunction to repeat his confession to a priest, saying that he did this because he felt a natural inclination to unburden his mind and hoped for the grace of a perfect contrition.”

^{page 197 note 1} On these examples cf. Gautier, La chevalerie (Paris, 1890), pp. 43 ff.; Id., La Chanson de Roland (15th ed.), note to v. 2023; Id., Les épopées françaises (2nd ed.), tome iii, p. 324; Rev. W. Sylvester, O. S. C., The Communions, with Three Blades of Crass, of the Knights-Errant, in The Dublin Review, vol. 121, pp. 80 ff.

^{page 197 note 1} Cf. Rev. W. Sylvester, The Dublin Review, vol. 121, p. 91 f.: “The ordinary accounts of the Red King's burial in Winchester Cathedral state, as every one knows, that the body of the tyrant was ‘buried as the corpse of a wild beast, without funeral rites or weeping eyes’ (S. R. Gardiner, Student's History, i, 122, London, 1894). Gaimar, on the other hand, speaks of the celebration of many masses and of an unusually stately service. Professor Freeman refuses credence to the reported ceremonial in his elaborate comparison of the contemporary narratives; and it is, therefore, the more noteworthy that he raises not the slightest doubt as to the veracity of the king's reception of symbolic communion. ‘Such a strange kind of figure, ‘he writes indeed,’ of the most solemn act of Christian worship was not unknown;’ and he recalls, in a note, a striking passage from Dr. Lingard's description of the battle of Azincourt in 1415: ‘At the same moment Sir Thomas Erpingham threw his warder into the air; and the men, falling on their knees, bit the ground, arose, shouted, and ran towards the enemy. This singular custom (Dr. Lingard adds in a note) had been introduced by the peasants of Flanders before the great victory which they gained over the French cavalry at Courtray in 1302. A priest stood in front of the army, holding the consecrated host in his hand; and each man, kneeling down, took a particle of earth in his mouth, as a sign of his desire and an acknowledgment of his unworthiness, to receive the sacrament'” (Dr. Lingard, History of England, 3d ed., vol. v, p. 27; E. A. Freeman, The Reign of William Rufus, Oxford, 1882, vol. ii, p. 331).

^{page 197 note 1} Cf. H. Pigeonneau, Le Cycle de la Croisade (Saint-Cloud, 1877), p. 249; G. Paris, Romania, xvii, 525 ff.

^{page 197 note 1} Cf. The Dublin Review, vol. 121, p. 92.

^{page 197 note 1} Cf. G. Paris, La littérature française au moyen age (Paris, 1890, p. 49): apropos of the cycle of crusading poems, “ils n'avaient guère de la poésie que la forme, au fond ils étaient de l'histoire…. A cet élément historique s'est jointe, dans les poèmes que nous avons, l'invention pure et simple des jongleurs français.” With regard to these same crusading epics, C. Nyrop, Storia dell’ epopea francese (trans, by E. Gorra, Turin, 1888), p. 215, remarks: “i più antichi trattano di personaggi contemporanei e delle loro azioni, e devonsi perciò piuttosto considerare come una specie di cronache rimate, le quali—dentro certi limiti—possono pretendere ad autorità storica. Inoltre essi non sono usciti dal popolo, non si fondano sopra qualche tradizione popolare, ma sono invece composti da poeti, che si tengono oltremodo stretti agli avvenimenti. Questo vale però soltanto per i due primi poemi, “Antioche” e “Jérusalem,” considerati però nella loro forma più antica, perchè più tardi furono rimaneggiati e ampliati con l'aggiunta di leggende d'ogni maniera.” It is precisely because we have not the primitive forms of these poems that it is dangerous to draw any conclusion from them with respect to such a question as that involved in the presence of the symbolical communion in one of them. Yet the first Crusade antedates the custom.

^{page 197 note 2} Cf. Nyrop, l. c., p. 419; Gautier, Bibliographie des Chansons de geste (Paris, 1897), p. 56; H. Pigeonneau, Le cycle de la Croisade (Saint-Cloud, 1877), p. 144.

^{page 197 note 1} Paris, La littérature française au moyen age, 2nd ed., p. 61.

^{page 197 note 1} In the Deutsches Heldenbuch, iii, 299, the lines read:

^{page 197 note 1} The use of bread in the lay form of communion probably savored in general of mere superstition or of heresy. Cf. this reference to an heretical use in Cæsarius Heisterbacensis, Illustrium Miraculorum et Historiarum Memorabilium Lib. XII (Cologne, 1599: Liber Quintus, De Daemonihus, ch. xix, p. 347): “Nam quidam Abbas Hispanus ordinis nostri per nos transiens, qui cum episcopo et ecclesiarum praelatis eiusdem heretici errores damnauit, eum dixisse referebat, quod quilibet in mensa sua, et de pane suo quo vesceretur, conficere posset corpus Christi. Erat autem idem maledictus faber ferrarius.”

^{page 197 note 1} The Dublin Review, 121, p. 82.

^{page 197 note 1} Cf. the instance in the Spanish Poema de Alfonso XI and that related by Lingard.

^{page 197 note 1} The Pseudo-Turpin has a Roland death-scene, of course, but one in which there is no necessity for the symbolical communion. Cf. this passage: “Orlando had that morning received the blessed Eucharist and confessed his sins before he went to battle, this being the custom with all the warriors at that time, for which purpose many bishops and monks attended the army to give them absolution “(History of Charles the Great and Orlando Ascribed to Archbishop Turpin translated from the Latin, etc., London, 1812, i, 43-4).