RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Lord's Supper
prayer of Humble Access, the Comfortable Words, and the position and wording of the confession and absolution presuppose the reception of the communion by the bulk of the congregation. The canon is much shortened, following the Roman closely in the essential part, and the Lord's Prayer, as scarcely ever elsewhere, follows the communion. The Gloria in excelsis retained its ancient position in the first Prayer-book of Edward VI., but was afterward moved to the end of the service, as an act of thanksgiving. See also Common Peayeh, Book of.
V. Certain Points of Interest not Already Treated: In the primitive Church, the newly baptized were immediately admitted to communion; and with the growing frequency of infant baptism the same custom was still maintained. Cyprian (De lapsis, ix.) speaks of children who at the outset of their lives have received " the meat and drink of the Lord," and similar
i. Infant evidence may be collected from the Communion. Apostolic Constitutions, Dionysius the Areopagite, Paulinus of Nola (d. 431), and Gennadius of Marseilles (c. 492). The necessity of communion to salvation being taught on the basis of John vi. 53, this argument is applied to the communion of infants by Augustine and by Innocent I. But evidences of the practise are not confined to the first six centuries, as some have contended; on the contrary, they come down as late as the twelfth, in which Paschal II. (1118) prescribes that the two elements are to be separately administered " except to infants and those who are so weak that they can not swallow the bread," and Robertus Paululus speaks of the custom as extant, although beginning to disappear. A synodal ordinance of Odo, bishop of Paris, in 1175, and a canon of the Synod of Bordeaux in 1255 attest its cessation in France, the latter prescribing the administration of blessed bread (see Eulogia) instead of the Host. It is a question whether the existence of the custom can be shown in Germany later than the twelfth century. The Council of Trent ruled finally {Sessio XXI. chap. 4) that children below the age of reason were bound by no necessity to sacramental communion of the Eucharist, " although antiquity is not to be condemned for observing this custom in certain places and times." The Greek Church has retained the practise to the present day. The Evangelical churches, making admission to communion dependent on spiritual maturity as evidenced by a special examination, have naturally not retained it. (Georg Rietschel.)
In the early Church it was customary to carry the consecrated elements immediately after service to the sick and to prisoners; and two passages in Tertullian (Ad uxorem, II., v.; De oratione, xix.) seem to imply the custom of communicating at home under the species of bread even apart from illness. Later we find the consecrated
2. Commu- bread carried on journeys and used as
nion of an amulet, a practise against which
the Sick, more than one council legislated. With
the introduction of communion in one
kind, it became usual to carry the consecrated bread
to the sick immediately after mass or from the
tabernacle in which it was reserved; and the strict
enforcement of the rule of fasting communion made it desirable as obviating the necessity of the priest's having to celebrate in the afternoon or evening for a person in sudden danger of death. In the Church of England a special service is provided for the celebration of the communion in the sick-room, somewhat shorter than the usual form; but in recent years, with the growth of the practise of reservation, the elements are not infrequently carried from the church and administered with a brief form of prayer. The Lutheran Church freely allows private communion, while the Reformed discourages it. In the pre-Reformation Church the principal requirements for a worthy reception of the sacrament were freedom from sin and fasting from the previous midnight. Both of these are strictly required in the Roman Catholic Church at the present day. The former is imposed as a matter of absolute necessity in the case of mortal 3. Require- sin, when confession must invariably ments for precede communion; in practise con- Communi- fession is usually recommended to incants. frequent communicants, even though they may not be conscious of having committed a mortal sin since their last communion. The question of the frequency of communion is one which has been much discussed at different times. It is generally admitted that in the Apostolic Age it was received, if not daily, at least on Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday. As the zeal of the days of persecution diminished, it became less frequent, and Chrysostom had to rebuke those who communicated only once a year. In Africa as late as Augustine's day once a week was the usual minimum. The second Synod of Tours (850) required at least three times a year; but by the Lateran Council of 1215 the Church had come to limit the actual requirement to once a year, at Easter. In the sixteenth century the frequency once more increased, under the influence of Ignatius and Philip Neri, and was spoken of as highly desirable by the Council of Trent. The Jansenist and Quietist movements in France (especially through Arnauld's treatise De la frequente communion) tended to diminish it once more, and the laxity of modern times makes it usual for even fairly devout people to communicate at most once a month. In the Anglican communion, after the Reformation, the frequency of administration fell in most places to four times a year, or at most once a month, until the High-church revival of the nineteenth century restored it to normally once a week and in many places daily, with a consequent increase in the frequency of communion. In the other Protestant churches the quarterly administration is the most usual. The requirement of fasting, for which there is early evidence, was prescribed as a matter of reverence. In modern Roman Catholic practise the exceptions which excuse from it are serious illness and the necessity of protecting the sacred species from profanation or of completing the mass in the case of a sudden indisposition of the celebrant. This rule also is increasingly emphasized in the Anglican Communion under present conditions, but does not occur in the other Reformation churches, which content themselves with requiring
Lord's Supper Lorimer