74 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2°^ S. No 82., July 25. '57 



(Jites — speaking an unintelligible language, and 

 ignorant of Christianity ; and then he goes on to 

 say, " they were reduced to Christianity, but are 

 to this day discernible from other Spaniards." Is 

 there any reference to this in other works on 

 Spain ? Vabloy ap Harby. 



SEPARATION OF SEXES IN CHURCHES. 



(2"'» S. iii. 108. 178.; iv. 54.) 



To answer briefly some of the Queries of F. S. 

 A., I would observe, 



1. That the Apostolic Constitutions are un- 

 doubtedly genuine and authentic, so far as they 

 really contain what was held in the second and 

 third centuries to have been established by the 

 Apostles. These Canons or Constitutions are well 

 known to have existed before the Council of Nice, 

 which followed and conformed to them. They are 

 also cited as apostolical by St. Epiphanius : 'AWd 

 Kot oi ' ATr6(TTo\oi (paffip iv rp Atard^ft Tp KoAowjuei/j? " k. 

 T. A. (Hares. xh\.) They probably originated in 

 the East, but were equally valued and followed in 

 the West. 



2. I am not aware that any of the Latin Fa- 

 thers make mention of the separation of the sexes 

 in churches. 



3. I strongly suspect, though 1 cannot prove, 

 that this practice does prevail in several Roman 

 Catholic churches, without any reference to their 

 vicinity to Protestants. I know of several in 

 England, where I am certain that the practice is 

 followed, in accordance with the spirit and custom 

 of the primitive Church, and without the slightest 

 reference to what may prevail in other commu- 

 nions. I may here mention that St. John Chry- 

 sostom merely testifies what no one contests, that 

 at first the sexes were not separated. Still we 

 have sufficient evidence that this practice pre- 

 vailed very early. It is well known that the kiss 

 of peace was given by the men to the men only, 

 and by the women to the women ; for which the 

 sexes must have been placed separately. Fleury, 

 in his Manners of the Christians, describing the 

 arrangement of the faithful in the church, informs 

 us, that the " Hearers were seated in order ; the 

 men on one side, and the women on the other ; 

 and to be more separated, the women went up in 

 the high galleries, if there were any " (J xl.). 

 The historian Socrates moreover records of the 

 holy Empress Helen, that she always prayed in 

 the part appropriated to the women : iv njJ yvuai- 

 Koiv rdy/xari (lib. i. cap. 17.). 



5. In all, or most of our old English country 

 churches, there is the women's door on the north 

 side, by which they entered and quitted the 

 church, and the men's door in like manner on the 

 south side. In these churches the old benches 

 are often met with, much more ancient than the 



pews which disfigure the upper portions of them ; 

 and it is evident that the women always took their 

 places on the north side, which in many old 

 churches they still do : and this must have been 

 the practice long before the change of religion, 

 and the abomination of pews. F. C. H. 



Col Macerone (1" S. x. 153.; xi. 35.) — Read- 

 ing in the British Museum, I was startled to see 

 my own name in "N. & Q," and still more when 

 I found that the tendency of the passage was to 

 deny to my father's brother (Colonel Maceroni) 

 the privilege of existence. Will you allow me to 

 establish the first step for any future researches 

 with regard to him by assuring you that he was 

 no fiction. He was born in England of an Italian 

 father and English mother. He lived in England 

 till about thirteen ; in Italy from that to about 

 thirty, and in England for the rest of his life. 

 He negociated between the Allies and Paris at the 

 Capitulation, and about that time it was that he 

 returned to England, as his Italian fortunes had 

 been bound up with those of Marshal Murat (I 

 have no papers by me and am writing from me- 

 mory). He died July 25, 1846. It is necessary, 

 perhaps, in order that my signature may not ap- 

 pear to deny my relationship, to explain that my 

 great-grandfather, in consequence of a family 

 disagreement, changed the spelling of his name 

 from Maceroni to Maclrone, and that when my 

 uncle went to Italy and found that nearly all his 

 Italian relations spelt their name Maceroni, he 

 returned to the old way, while his brother, my 

 father, remaining in England, still continued to 

 spell his name as his father and grandfather had 

 done before him. George Augustus Macironb. 



Thomas Potter (2"^ S. iv. 41.) — There can be 

 no doubt, I think, that your well-informed cor- 

 respondent, D., has successfully vindicated Wilkes 

 from the authorship of The Essay on Woman. He 

 has not, however, taken notice of Walpole's state- 

 ment {Memoirs of Reign of George III., i. 310.), 

 that Wilkes and Potter " had formerly composed 

 this indecent patchwork in some of their baccha- 

 nalian hours : " but after reading D.'s evidence as 

 to the date of its composition, I think every unpre- 

 judiced mind must be satisfied of Wilkes' entire 

 freedom from any participation in its authorship. 

 The object of my present note is, however, to di- 

 rect your correspondent's attention to a statement 

 (probably a slander of Walpole's) of which he has 

 taken no notice, but which is certainly curious 

 with reference to Potter's claim to the authorship 

 and Warburton's conduct in the House of Lords : 



" Bishop Warburton," sa\'s Walpole (i. 312.), " who had 

 not the luck, like Lord Lj'ttelton, to have his conversion 



