592 EXCAVATIONS IN AN ANCIENT 



We are, from our recollections of the classical allusions to the 

 naulus or joortorium, strongly tempted to think that the placing of 

 coins upon the corpse must have been a distinctively heathen prac- 

 tice; A curious passage which T came upon in Martene's great work 

 (' De Antiquis Ecclesiae Ritibus,' ii. 374) has caused me to attach 

 importance to the fact that, in two of the interments I have ex- 

 amined here, the number of the coins interred was five. One of 

 these interments was the first of the two in leaden coffins described 

 already, and the other was an interment of the class of which I am 

 now writing, and will be found in the appended catalogue under 

 the number xxiv. of Feb. 21, 1868. Martene's words are, 'Addit 

 anonymus Turonensis : — Quidam sortilegi contra fidem agentes 

 ponunt quinque solidos super pectus mortui, et in hoc imitantur 

 morem gentilium qui in ore mortui ponebant denarium " ut habeat 

 quern porrigat ore trientem.'^ ' I am not aware of any explanation 

 having been ofiered for the selection oifive as the number of the 

 coins which the gentiles, or those who imitated them, placed in the 

 grave. But such a passage as the one just quoted does not, even 

 when taken by itself, justify us in considering an interment with 

 coins to have been always an interment without the rites of the 

 Christian Church. Many persons act contra fidem and imitantur 

 morem gefitilium, whom, for historical purposes at least, we must 

 consider to be Christians. As probably in the case of placing of 

 charcoal in the grave, so, certainly, in that of the placing of coins 

 there, the Church exercised a wise toleration, protesting, it may be, 

 more or less directly, by the introduction of such sentences as those 

 which our Burial Service contains, against the thought that we can 

 take anything with us out of the world, but acquiescing in the 

 actual repetition and continuance of the custom. Just as the 

 custom of placing earthen vessels in tombs has survived down 

 almost to our own time in remote districts such as La Bresse and 

 Morvan in France (see Cochet, ' Archeologie Ceramique,' p. i, i860), 

 so that of placing coins on the mouth and chest of the corpse is 

 persisted in even to the present day in parts of the country similarly 



Wylie, 'Fairford Graves,' p. 29; 'Graves of Alemanni,' p. 13 ; SchaafFhausen, 'Ger- 

 manische Grabstatten am Rhein,' 1868, p. 104; Walder, ' Anzeiger fur Schweiz. 

 Alterthum,' March 1869, p. 32. For the discovery of fragments of charcoal scattered 

 throughout the entire mass of heathen tumuli, see Keller, ' Mittheilungen der Anti- 

 quarischen Gesellschaft in Ziirich,' Bd. iii. p. 66. For the use of charcoal as being 

 imperishable, see Augustine, 'De Civ. Dei,' xxi. 4. 



