416 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2"* S. VI. 151., Nov. 20. '58. 



con muro, b tavolato; dove nella niano sinistra di que' 

 ch' entravano in chiesa erano ammesse le donne dalla dia- 

 conessa e nella mano destra gli huomiui dall' ostiario." — 

 Antica Basilicografia, p. 42. 



That such an old and praiseworthy liturgical 

 usage was still followed in Italy up to the latter 

 end of the seventeenth century, when this distin- 

 guished prelate lived, is clear from what he says a 

 little farther on, p. 44. : " Anche a nostri di nelle 

 chiese ben regelate si osserva quest a divisione ; se 

 bene in diverse maniere, usando alcuni un riparo 

 di legnaiue," &c. Those " doors through which to 

 regard the altar," and that seem to awaken so 

 much surprise in F. S. A., were, lean assure him, 

 very common at one time, and to be found, for 

 the space of three hundred years, in all churches 

 belonging to the Friars Preachers, as we learn 

 from Cassitto, one of their body, in his valuable 

 Avork on the Ritual of his Order : — 



" Ho detto, che entravano gli uomiui pei la porta des- 

 tra (delle chiese) e le donne per la sinistra, perchfe tali 

 porte corrispondevano alia nave destra e sinistra, nella 

 prima delle quali riraanevano gli uomini, ciofe nell' aus- 

 trale, e uell' altra ch' era la settentrionale, stavano le 

 donne. — Per 1' ordinazione fetta nel Capitolo Geuerale di 

 Treveri del 1249 — il Coro doveva esser in moiio situato che 

 i Frali in eatrarvi non potessero esser veduti dai secolari.e 

 che nella divisione che li rendeva cosi invisibili, si adat- 

 tassero alcune finestiine che si aprissero in tempo dell' 

 elevazione del Corpo del Signore sollanto, perchfe restasse 

 adorato dai secolari. — La Liturgia Domenicana, da L. V. 

 Cassitto, t. i. pp. 20, 21. 



I need not point out that besides its mention 

 of those openings or windows through which to 

 regard the altar, may be seen how strongly the 

 separation of the sexes at mass and other public 

 services is marked in the above passage. 



Whether Chaucer's Wife of Bath was or was 

 not a widow at the time made no difference ; for 

 the rubric, as well in England as elsewhere in the 

 Latin church, at the period when our poet wrote, 

 required all women, as they sat, so to go up apart 

 from the men at offering time. Sicard says : "Et 

 primo quidem offerant.viri — deinde feminte," (3Ii- 

 trale, p. 115.); and Durandus : " viri ante mulieres 

 offerunt," (1. iv. c. xxx. n. 36. p. 145.) A remnant 

 of this very usage is still kept up, as I shall have 

 immediate occasion to notice, in at least one church 

 of North Italy. 



That St. Charles Borromeo sought, not to origi- 

 nate, but to bring back again the liturgical obser- 

 vance of a separation of the sexes, is clear from 

 his own words. None knew better than himself 

 that Milan owed its actual ritual, not to any 

 fancied Oriental prototype, but to the modelling 

 hand of the great St. Ambrose. Now the Ambro- 

 sian liturgy shaped, and yet shapes, its rubrics on 

 the assumption that the men should be apart from 

 the women at all the public services of religion. 

 A functionary of the metropolitan church in the 

 twelfth century, Beroldus, while noticing the so- 

 lemn rites of the holy week, says : — 



"Et slant ex una parte masculi et ex altera parte 

 feminae, masculi a meridie et feminie ab aquilone." — Ordo 

 et Ceremonice Ecc. Amhrosiance 3IedioIaHensis, a.d. 1130, 

 ed. JIuratori ; Antiquitates Italica Medii ^vi, t. iv. p. 

 872. fol. Milan, 1741 ; Dissert. 57. 



The old Ambrosian rite is still followed at 

 Milan ; and every Sunday, at the high mass in 

 the cathedral, as I myself witnessed only three 

 years ago, two from among a number of old men 

 called " vegloni " go up at offertory-time and 

 make an offering of bread and wine ; and after 

 them two old women, or " veglonas," do the same : 

 thus to this day showing what was the olden usage 

 for men and women to go up separately, because 

 they prayed separate at all the more solemn ser- 

 vices. 



Instead of being able to find anything which, 

 according to F. S. A., " seems to have been a lurk- 

 ing feeling on the part of many (or any) of the 

 old writers that some separation ought to exist," 

 we read in their works the plainest proofs that it 

 did exist : they speak not in the optative but in- 

 dicative mood: they tell us of it as a well-known 

 fact, not give utterance to any wish or feeling of 

 their own about the matter. 



But F. S. A. asks (p. 195.), Second. "Is it the 

 fact that the present custom of separating the 

 sexes obtains now only among the Genevan or 

 Dutch Calvinists ; and where it has existed in 

 other countries (as it did in our own in the seven- 

 teenth century), is it or is it not of Puritan ori- 

 gin ? " To this I answer. No. There are several 

 Catholic country congregations in England where 

 the separation of the sexes is, and has been time 

 out of mind, observed. There are, too, several pa- 

 rishes belonging to the Protestant Establishment 

 in which this same apostolic, mediaeval, old Eng- 

 lish ritual usage is yet followed ; and by the kind- 

 ness of Mr. F. A. Carrington I am enabled to 

 state, that "In the church of Ogbourne St. George, 

 Wiltshire, at present, of Burbage in the same 

 county, till the new church was opened in 1855, 

 and at Berkeley church in Gloucestershire at pre- 

 sent, except the higher class of families who sit 

 in separate pews, the male portion of the congre- 

 gation occupied and occupy the pews at the east 

 end of the nave, the females the pews at the west 

 end of the nave. In most villages it is the same." 

 This form of division is the one noticed by a rubric 

 in the Pontifical bequeathed by Bishop Lacy to 

 his cathedral of Exeter, about the middle of the 

 fifteenth century. If the country readers of " N. 

 & Q." would follow the good example of Mr. 

 Carrington, and communicate what they know of 

 the practice of their respective neighbourhoods, I 

 make no doubt we should learn that the separa- 

 tion of the sexes still obtains in very many places, 

 all through England. In one place at least, and 

 perhaps we may learn in others, this same princi- 

 ple of division was made to reach even the dead ; 

 for we gather from a valuable contribution to " N. 



