120 Some Earli/ Features of StocUon Church, Wilts. 



In the Greek Church a most elaborate ritual of the preparation, 

 &c., is performed out of sight of the assembly of worshippers, many- 

 prayers are said by the priest behind the screen, some of them in- 

 deed eK(f)cov(o<; aloud, but many /j,vaTiK(t)<; in silence, without the 

 utterance of a sound, and the Latin Church has also secreta. 



Why then are the doors ever opened, and the curtains undrawn, 

 and why were the hagioscopes made ? 



The answer is, for the faithful, but not necessarily for all at one 

 time. Gazing was not a matter o£ religious, still less of legal 

 obligation. Those of the faithful were invited to look who were 

 inclined to do so and felt the looking to be a help to their devotion. 



This is well expressed in Elfric's canons, which — speaking of the 

 fraction and elevation of the host — say, " Loca hwa wille," "Look 

 who will."^ The easternmost arch, on each side of the nave of 

 Stockton Church, filled up with masonry to the height of 2ft. lOin. 

 above the floor, seems to have been intended for a backing to the 

 misereres or singers^ stalls, placed immediately westward of the 

 Ka^/ceXa, north and south, for antiphonal singing, as in Greek 

 Churches, at this day. Possibly each of these arches may have 

 been occupied and ornamented by a recumbent effigy, in the attitude 

 of prayer, respecting the altar through the adjacent hagioscope, a 

 usage exemplified by an effigy still remaining in the south aisle. 



In the early services I find some resemblances to the Greek ser- 

 vices, particularly in the Anglosaxon ceremonial for the Dedication 

 of Churches published in the Archaeologia,^ but probably they are 

 not more Greek than the services of the Latin Church elsewhere at 

 that date. 



Any indications of the use of the Greek rite in the Anglosaxon 

 Church I have not found. In very early times, the See of Rome, 

 after the example of Pope Gregory the Great, was very tolerant of 

 small variations of ritual. I note two subordinate variations of the 

 Anglosaxon Church, in an eastward direction^ from the general 



1 See Elfiic's Canons, A.D. 957, c. 37, in Johnson's Ecclesiastical Laws, Canons, 

 &c., Editor's corrections and quotations in note *, vol. i., p. 404 ; Oxford, J. H. 

 Parker, 1850. 



^ Vol. XXV. 



