296 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



officiating priest, " with a few assistants and two 

 candles," raised the host and rood from the sepulchre, 

 where it had been deposited on Good Friday, and 

 carried it to the altar, amid resounding psalms and cries 

 of Kyrieleyson! After the host and rood had been 

 thurified with incense, the appointed prayers read, and 

 the responses recited, a procession was formed, and the 

 objects of adoration were carried to the main door of 

 the church. The officiating priest struck this door with 

 his foot and sang : Lift up your heads, ye gates, 

 and be ye lifted up ye everlasting doors ! The choir 

 continued : And the King of Glory shall come in ! 

 Then the bishop or other high church official struck the 

 door with a rod. 1 At this a subdeacon, dressed as the 



the sepulchre, was then usual at Canterbury. In the later portion of the Leofric 

 Missal (Warren, C) we have a dramatic incident in the Good Friday ritual at the 

 words : Partiti sunt vestimenta, when two cloths were to be torn asunder and 

 carried off by two deacons in modum furientis (p. 261). At vespers there was an 

 Adoratio Crucis. The cross was placed at some distance in front of the altar, 

 and was adored by bishop, clergy, and people in turn (p. 262). The response 

 Ec.ce lignum crucis and the hymn Crux fidelis occur as in the German forms, but, 

 while in the Augsburg ritual it is directed that the cross-bearers shall walk with 

 bare feet, in the Exeter it is ordered that the cross shall not be adored nudis 

 pedibus. In the York Missal (Surtees Society, vol. i. pp. 105-108) we have a 

 fuller ritual for the Adoratio Crucis accompanied by the sepulture : Tandem 

 adorata cruce bajulent earn duo Vicarii usque ad locum sepulchri . . . Posiea 

 Praelatus ponat flexis genibus crucem in sepulchre . . ., etc. The same ritual 

 in a somewhat amplified form will be found in the Manuale et Processionale ad 

 usum Ecclesiae Eboracensis (Surtees Society, 1875, pp. 156-161). Another version 

 of the same ceremony is contained in the Sarum Missal (Burntisland) col. 329 et 

 seq. On the whole, the English ritual is not nearly so developed as the German. 

 It may be more primitive, or the need for dramatic ritual may have been less. 

 An account of a very complete Adoratio Crucis, sepulture and resurrection, which 

 was formerly the custom at Durham will, however, be found in Davies, Rites of 

 the Cathedral of Durham, 1672, p. 52. In this case the rood appears to have been 

 kept not in the rood-loft, but inside the body of an image of the Virgin, which 

 opened from the breasts downwards. 



1 There is a somewhat similar incident in the processional for Palm Sunday 

 given in the Rituale Romanum Pauli V Pont. Max. jussu editum Romae, 1750. 

 It runs thus : "In reversione Processionis duo vel quattuor Can tores intrant in 

 Ecclesiam et clause ostio stantes versa facie ad Processionem incipiimt Versum 



