130 On the Church, of St. Peter, Manning ford Bruce, Wiltshire. 



The twenty-fifth volume of the Archa)ologia, already referred to \ 

 contains in a letter from Sidney Smirke, Esq., F.S.A., to Sir Henry j 

 Ellis, secretary, as an appendage to Mr. Gage's dissertation, an 

 illustration from the Church of St. John, Syracuse, giving an 

 engraving of the interior of this ancient Church, showing conse- 

 cration crosses sculptured on the walls, In a note to this letter I 

 Mr. Smirke says : — 



" Since the above was written Mr. Gage has done me the favour to refer me I 



to a Pontifical printed at Rome in 1595, and now preserved in the British I 



Museum, where the ceremony of consecrating a Church is set forth at length : j 



the Bishop is enjoined to mark with his thumb dipped in the chrism, twelve J 



crosses on the walls of the Church, and others on the door, altar, etc., etc. The | 



prints embellishing this Pontifical show the Bishop so engaged, mounted on a 1 



moveable stage six steps high, the rubric requiring that the said crosses shall be [ 

 ten palms (7ft. 5in. English measure) above the floor." * 



j 



It is curious that this is the height of the consecration crosses at [ 

 Manningford Bruce above the floor. 



From the following words of Mr. Gage, and the text of the rubric I 



on which he comments, it seems clear that the chancel veil, either 1 



instead of a screen, as apparently in the Church of St. Mellon, or j 



with a screen, as in the Greek Church, was used ordinarily in the I 

 Anglosaxon Church, and not only in Lent. " During the time the 



Bishop was depositing the relics in the altar, the veil, out of reverence, I 



was drawn, extenso veto inter eos et populum. The veil here spoken j 

 of was the curtain that anciently hung on the cancelli, or lattice of 



the choir, and was drawn during the more solemn parts of the I 

 service/'' 1 



8. Over the north door are some tantalising remains of an archaic 

 painting, apparently similar in style to some in the Utrecht Psalter. 



Besides the wear and tear of time it has been ruthlessly pecked and I 



indented in some former generation to receive a coat of plaster. I 



* Archseologia, vol. xxv., p. 277, 



1 Ibid, pp. 243, 272. See also Pontifical of Egbert, p. 45, Surtees Society. 

 Compare on veils, paper by Bev. J. Baron, D.D., F.S.A., on some early features t 

 of Stockton Church, Wilts, Proceedings of Soc. Antiq., Lond., Second Series, 

 vol. viii., No. m\, p. 236. Also above, p. 114, and p. 129, note 3 . 



