2"d S. VI. 151., Nov. 20. '58.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



415 



tical observance is followed, becomes much more 

 entitled to our belief that such an observance 

 itself then existed. The question is, was there a 

 separation of sexes at church ? Whether that sepa- 

 ration was this way or that is quite beside the 

 inquiry. Over and above other passages from 

 that truly valuable liturgic work, the "Mitrale," 

 there is one which, I presume, will overcome the 

 reluctance of even F. S. A., and compel him to 

 allow that the Bishop of Cremona well knew what 

 lie was writing about, and that he tells us clearly 

 that the men and women, in his days, were always 

 separated at the great public services, such as 

 high mass, &c. About the way of taking the 

 " pax " or kiss of peace from the celebrating 

 bishop to the people at solemn high mass, Sicard 

 speaks thus : — 



"Per liunc (avchipresbyterum) descencUt pax ad popu- 

 lum, sed primb ad viros, postea ad mulieres ; quia vir est 

 caput niulieris ; verum viri et mulieres se non osculentur, 

 propter lasciviam propter quam sequestrantur, non solum 

 oscnlo carnali, sed etiam situ locali." — 31itrale, 1. iii. c. 

 viii. p. 140. 



Durandus has words to the like effect, lib. iv. 

 c. liii. n. 9. p. 202. 



That the church of Pavia, "la cattedrale di S. 

 Stefano," described by a writer of the fourteenth 

 century, " was a Lombard church, and those peo- 

 ple were wholly Greek as to their civilisation 

 and most part as to their religion," is an assertion 

 which must startle everybody who knows any- 

 thing about the history or the liturgy of that 

 period. Paulus Warnefridus, himself a Lombard 

 by blood and place of birth, the historian of his 

 people's rise and conquests, and living while they 

 still ruled in Upper Italy, knew nothing about 

 those incidents which F. S. A., more than a thou- 

 sand years afterwards, has just told us concerning 

 the learned Deacon of Aquileia's Lombard fore- 

 fathers — incidents too which have escaped the wide 

 researches of the laborious Ughelli, the author of 

 the valuable Italia Sacra. The truth is, not till the 

 Lombards had been full twenty years masters of 

 Buch a great part of Italy did their third king, 

 Autharis, cast aside his Scandinavian heathenism 

 for an error-tainted Christianity ; and not till five 

 years later did his successor Agelulphus, at the 

 persuasion of his queen, the gentle Theodolinda, 

 become a Catholic. These same Lombards -were a 

 ruthless bloodthirsty horde, made up, not of one, 

 but many tribes, taking their name, not from 

 their home-land or kindred, but "ab intaetaj ferro 

 barbae longitudine," from a length of beard about 

 which they prided themselves much. In one of 

 their own documents, which is not in Greek but 

 Latin, they speak of themselves thus : " Nos Lon- 

 gobardi scilicet Saxones, Franci, Lotharingi, Ba- 

 joarii, Suevi, Burgundiones." Whatever softening 

 influences, by way of civilisation, crept over them, 

 came from their contact, not with Greeks, but 



with Italians, and the liturgy which they followed 

 was not after any Greek, but a Latin form. At first 

 their Christianity, such as it was, showed a deep 

 stain of Arianism, a heresy as loudly anathema- 

 tised by the Greek as by the Latin portion of the 

 church. Wandering after plunder till at last they 

 settled down in North Italy, their highest archi- 

 tectural achievement must have been the making 

 of a tent. That the Lombards at any time had 

 any style of building of their own is a great mis- 

 take, and the churches raised in North Italy 

 during the short period of Lombard occupation — 

 two hundred years — were designed by Italian 

 architects, according to the then Italian taste, with 

 the Italians' money, and to answer the require- 

 ments, not of the Greek, but the Latin liturgy. 

 Those sacred edifices which arose from Lombard 

 munificence sprang out of the piety, for the most 

 part, of Lombard queens, themselves Franks by 

 birth or blood ; but even their angel-works were 

 few and far between. On taking Pavia, or as it 

 was then called Ticinum, the heathen Odoacer 

 sacked that city, and burned its churches. Its 

 then Bishop Epiphanius began, and his successors 

 finished, the building of the cathedral described 

 before (p. 361.) But all these good men, St. Epi- 

 phanius, St. Maximus, St. Ennodius, Damianus, 

 &c., who succeeded each other in the see of Pavia, 

 were distinguished bishops of the Latin church 

 which they adorned, all by their holiness of life, 

 and some by their writings ; and each in his day 

 lived in close communion with their then metro- 

 politan see of Milan. The Latin, not the Greek, 

 liturgy was followed in Pavia, and the arrange- 

 ment of its churches were, at all times, not for 

 Greek, but Latin usages. 



But F. S. A. calls out, " Did any one ever hear 

 in any Latin church of a wall separating men from 

 women, or doors through which to regard the 

 altar" (p. 193., ante)? Yes, surely. The cathe- 

 dral of Pavia was built by Latin bishops at the 

 end of the fifth and beginning of the sixth century, 

 and for the celebration of the Latin liturgy ; and 

 a writer of the fourteenth century found such a 

 wall separating men from women in that and all 

 the other churches still standing, full five hun- 

 dred years after the Lombard rule had faded 

 away. Nay, more than this, if a modern Italian 

 author may be believed, this building of S. Stefano 

 is not of the Lombard era, but of the tenth cen- 

 tury, perhaps even of the eleventh ; for this gen- 

 tleman, Sig. San Quintino, asserts in his book, 

 Deir Italiana Architettura durante la Dominazione 

 Longobarda, that Pavia and its churches were 

 burned down a.d. 924 : but let that pass. One of 

 the most learned Italian writers on the liturgy, in 

 the seventeenth century, Sarnelli, tells us expressly 

 of such a wall: — 



" L' uso perb pih comune, precisamente fra' Latini, h 

 stato la divisioue d«l sesso nella stessa nave della chiesa 



