XIV,] 
OF SELBORNE. 
515 
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 Avould 
disgrace a common convivial meeting,^ 
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 visiter 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 Y. and died in 1276. His constitutions 
are in Lynde wood's Provinciale, and were drawn up in the 52nd 
of Henry III. 
In the Visitatio ISTotabilis the usual punishment is fasting on 
bread and beer ; and in cases of repeated delinquency on bread 
and water. On these occasions qiiarta 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. 
" ne turpe toral, ne sordida mappa 
Corruget nares ; ne non et cantharus, et lanx 
Ostendat tibi te " 
