XIV.] OF SELBORNE. 207 



he therefore enjoins them for the future to see that the plate, 

 cloths, and vestments, be kept bright, clean, and in decent order : 

 and, what must surprise the reader, adds that he expects for the 

 future that the sacrist should provide for the sacrament good 

 wine, pure and unadulterated ; and not, as had often been the 

 practice, that which was sour, and tending to decay : he says 

 farther, that it seems quite preposterous to omit in sacred matters 

 that attention to decent cleanliness, the neglect of which would 

 disgrace a common convivial meeting. 1 



Item 33rd says that, though the relics of saints, the plate, 

 holy vestments, and books of religious houses, are forbidden by 

 canonical institutes to be pledged or lent out upon pawn ; yet, 

 as the visitor finds this to be the case in his several visitations, 

 he therefore strictly enjoins the prior forthwith to recall those 

 pledges, and to restore them to the convent ; and orders that all 

 the papers and title deeds thereto belonging should be safely 

 deposited, and kept under three locks and keys. 



In the course of the Visitatio Notabilis the constitutions of 

 Legate Ottobonus are frequently referred to. Ottobonus was 

 afterwards Pope Adrian V. and died in 1276. His constitutions 

 are in Lyndewood's Provinciale, and were drawn up in the 52nd 

 of Henry III. 



In the Visitatio Notabilis the usual punishment is fasting on 

 bread and beer ; and in cases of repeated delinquency on bread 

 and water. On these occasions quarto, feria, et sexta feria, are 

 mentioned often, and are to be understood of the days of the 

 week numerically on which such punishment is to be inflicted. 



first in orders, twice met with similar circumstances attending the sacra- 

 ment at two churches belonging to two obscure villages. In the first he 

 found the inside of the chalice covered with birds' dung ; and in the other 

 the communion-cloth soiled with cabbage and the greasy drippings of a 

 gammon of bacon. The good dame at the great farm-house, who was to 

 furnish the cloth, being a notable woman, thought it best to save her clean 

 linen, and so sent a foul cloth that had covered her own table for two or 

 three Sundays before. 



1 " ne turpe toral, ne sorclida mappa 



Corruget nares ; ne non et cantharus, et lanx 



Ostendat tibi te , ." 



