§ 116. EUCHARISTIC PRACTICE AND SUPERSTITION, 725
tury to the distribution of both the bread and the wine to the laity are Rupert of Deutz and pope Pascal II. Pascal urged that this custom be forever preserved. 1 But it is evident that there was already at that time divergence of practice. The Englishman, Robert Pullen, d. ab. 1150, refers to it and condemned the dipping of the host into the wine as a Judas communion, with reference to John 13 : 26.2
By the middle of the thirteenth century the feeling had grown strong enough for a great authority, Alexander of Hales, to condemn the giving of the cup to the laity and on the doctrinal ground that the whole Christ is in each of the ele ments. As a means of instructing the people in this doctrine he urged that the cup be denied. But Albertus Magnus, his contemporary, has no hint justifying the practice.3 Thomas Aquinas followed Alexander, giving as his chief reason the danger of profanation by spilling the sacred contents of the chalice. It is sufficient, he said, for the priest to partake of the cup, for the full benefit accrues by the participation of a single element, communio sub una specie.^ Christ distributed bread only and not drink to the five thousand.
The usage gradually spread. The chapter of the Cister cians in 1261 forbade monks, nuns, and lay brethren of the order to take the cup. The few councils which expressed themselves on the subject were divided.5
The council of Constance threatened with excommunica-
1 Migne, 163. 142. See Smend, p. 7, for other witnesses. Smend's book is a most thorough piece of work and is indispensable in the study of the subject. With the exception of some quotations, I depend upon him for the contents of these paragraphs.
2 Called intinctio. Hugo of St. Victor and Peter the Lombard were among the first to condemn the practice. Also the synod of London, 1175, Hefele, V. 688. See also V. 224 for the action of the synod of Clermont, 1095.
3 Albertus makes no mention of the matter in his De eucharistia and Com. on the Sentences. Peter Rokyzana, at the council of Basel in the fifteenth century, appealed to him in his argument for giving the cup to the laity.
4 Th. Aq., III. 80. 12, Migne, IV". 808 sq., nihil derogat perfections hujus sacr., sipopulus sumat corpus sine sanguine dummodo sacerdos consecrans sumat utrumque. So also Bonaventura, Sent., IV. 11. 2.
5 The synod of Lambeth, 1281, seems to have forbidden the cup to the laity; the synod of Exeter. 1287, to have positively enjoined it.
726 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
tion all who distributed the wine to the laity. It spoke of many "perils and scandals" attending the distribution of the wine. Gerson, who voted for the enactment, urged the danger of spilling the wine, of defilement to the sacred vessels from their contact with laymen's hands and lips, the long beards of laymen, the possibility of the wine's turning to vinegar while it was being carried to the sick, or being corrupted by flies, or frozen by the cold, the difficulty of always pur chasing wine, and the impossibility of providing cups for ten thousand or twenty thousand communicants on Easter. The council of Trent reaffirmed the withdrawal of the cup as an enactment the Church was justified in making. Gregory II. had commanded the use of a single chalice at communion.1
Some strange customs came into vogue in the distribution of the wine, such as the use of a reed or straw, which were due to veneration for the sacred element. Many names were given to this instrument, such as fistula, tuba, canna, siphon, pipa, calamus. The liturgical directions required the pope to drink through a fistula on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. He still follows this custom at the public mass. The practice maintained itself in some parts of the Lutheran Church as in Hamburg and vicinity, and Branden burg down to the eighteenth century.2
Another custom was the practice of cleaning the mouth with a rinsing cup of unconsecrated wine, after one or both the elements had been received, and called in German the Spulkelch. A synod of Soissons of the twelfth century enjoined all to rinse their mouths after partaking of the ele ments. Peckham, archbishop of Canterbury, 1281, enjoined priests to instruct the people that in partaking of the bread they were partaking of the whole Christ, and that what was given them in the cup was only wine, given that they
1 See Migne, 89. 525. For an interesting account of the different shapes of the chalice, see Enc. Brit., XIX. 185 sq. The earlier chalices had two handles and a small base, those of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries no handles and a broad base. Some of the later chalices were very capacious.
2 See the interesting details given by Smend, pp. 18 sqq.