one mess called Mortress, made of milk and wastel-bread, one mess of flesh or fish, and one pittance, as the days should require; and one mess for supper; and, on six holy days in the year, one of their messes was roast meat, or fish of a better sort. These articles are particularized by Dr. Lowth, in the Life of William of Wykeham, and I suppose that ferculum, translated mess, may be the word in the original register of the bishop to which he refers. For the ignorance of the nature of ancient mortuaries imputed to Mr. Warton, it is difficult to account, this perquisite having been generally claimed on the decease or interment of every one possessed of personal chattels, and as the term is so fully illustrated in glossaries and law dictionaries, as also by Bishop Gibson, Dr. Burn, and Judge Blackstone, in their respective Commentaries. In one sense, however, this kind of payment cannot, strictly speaking, be said to have originated with the clergy, because it corresponded to the heriot, to which so many tenants of manors were subject. Sir William Blackstone, therefore, with propriety stiles a mortuary a sort of ecclesiastical heriot; and that it was a claim, introduced after the heriot, may be decisively concluded from this circumstance, that the second best of the live stock was due as a mortuary, because to the first, or best, the lord of the manor was entitled for a heriot. Almost all the parochial incumbents could, in former days, maintain a right to a mortuary; and it appears from the underwritten entry in the consistory acts of the diocese of Rochester, that, during the vacancy of the vicarage of Lewisham, this right was vested in the bishop : "A. 1467, July 27. Sequestratum apud Lewescham I equus Joh'is Stretefeld, subito defuncti, tempore vacat' vicar' ad d'num ep'um ratione vacat' ibid' pertinentem." Fol. 540, a. 1796, July. MR. URBAN, Yours, &c. I FEAR I shall forfeit the favourable opinion which, it ap pears, your correspondent W, and D. entertains of my antique lore, by his calling for my sentiments upon the longstanding controversy concerning the monastic title of Sempecta, when he shall find that I am capable of adding but very little to the stock of information which he is already possessed of on that subject. With respect to the derivation of the word Sempecta, it seems plain to me, from its sense and termination, as well as from the authority of the learned Dufresne, that it is of Greek original, being a mutilation of the word ouaiss, sive ovμrainτwg (qui cum pueris ludit, aut pueros secum habet) forsan etiam a ovunxíswę (simul nutritus). In fact, we learn from Ingulphus, that the chief and distinguishing privilege of the Sempecte was their having a youth to attend upon them, and to keep them company, when they dined separately in their respective cells in the infirmary, as they were allowed to do. "Quinquagenarius autem, in ordine Sempecta vocandus, honestam cameram in infirmitorio, de prioris assignatione accipiat, habeatque clericum seu garcionem suo servitio specialiter attendentem, qui exhibitionem vic→ tualium recipiet, de parte abbatis, modo et mensura, quibus ministratur garcioni unius armigeri in abbatis aula. Huic Sempecta unum fratrem juniorem commensalem, tam pro junioris disciplina, quam pro senioris solatio, prior quotidie assignabit." I quote the passage at length, as many of your readers may not have the Historian of Croyland at hand. W. and D. is certainly right in computing the 50 years neces sary to constitute a Sempecta, not from the time of his birth, but from that of his religious profession, or making his vows; which ceremony, according to the discipline of the century in question (for, this point varied at different periods), could not take place before the age of 14; hence the Sempecta must, at the very least, have been 64 years old. nasteriis," says the patriarch Pachomius, "non ætas quæ ritur, sed professio.' "In mo To speak now of the title itself, or rank of Sempecta. It is certain, indeed, that the patriarch Benedict, as well as the other monastic legislators, shewed a great respect to old age, ordering that the abbot should consult with the monks on particular occasions, and that the juniors should pay due deference to them, and should call them their. Nonni when they addressed them. See Reg. c. 63. It is, also inanifest, that the usual time of acquiring seniority by age, was the 50th year from the monastic profession; on which occasion a ceremony called the jubilee, in allusion to the general jubilees of the Church, and to that of the old law, Levit. xxv. was, at least during the latter centuries, performed in the monasteries of both sexes. On this occasion the jubilarian, as the person in question was called, after the performance of divine service, was conducted to the altar, when a crown of flowers was placed upon his head, and a lighted taper put into his hands, accompanied with suitable prayers and benedictions. In the end, a staff, the emblem of old age, was delivered to him, to support his feeble steps in future. Notwithstanding all this, I do not find in any of the ancient rules, or commentators on those rules, or canonists, whomsoever, either the general distribution of the religious according to their ages, in the manner that is set down by Ingulphus, or the particular rank of Sempecta, which is the subject of the present inquiry; and it seems plain to me that Dufresne and other moderns have been misled by the passage above quoted, in ascribing the regulations of a particular abbey to the whole monastic institute. Indeed, it is expressly there said, that the ordinances in question were made for his monastery of Croyland, by the celebrated abbot Turketul, who had exchanged the condition of the chancellor and victorious general of his country against the Danes, for that of an humble monk in the aforesaid monastery. The above-mentioned learned author, indeed, quotes the word Sempecte from another writer, who was by birth an Englishman, and the contemporary of Ingulphus, namely, Ordericus Vitalis ; but with him it occurs in quite a different sense from that of Ingulphus, not as signifying ancient monks, but the youthful companions of a secular prince. He has also discovered the original Greek word vairas in Palladius's Lausiac History of the Eastern Solitaries, so called from its being dedicated to Lausius, the governor of Cappadocia, written at the beginning of the fifth century, but there it occurs, not as signifying the solitaries themselves, but the young disciples who, in some instances, attended upon them. It is probable, however, that this very passage, which has always been in much vogue amongst recluses, might have furnished Turketul both with the name of Sempecta, and the idea of the peculiar privilege which he conferred upon those whom he appointed to be called by that name. The reasons of this abbot's peculiar veneration for the ancients in his convent, whose names, to the number of five, Ingulphus records, we are informed, were, that they had instructed him in his religious observances, and that they were the only remaining members of the old monastery of Croyland, whose companions had suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Danes in the heroical manner which Ingulphus describes. We are struck at the amazing ages to which three of this number are said to have attained. Clarenbuld died at the age of 168, alias 148, Swazling at the age of 142, and Turgar having completed his 115th year. With respect to peculiar appellations, and observances of smaller consequence, it is to be observed, that certain differences have obtained in different monasteries even of the same institute. Thus, in one or two of the convents of our St. Paul's supposed to be built on the site of Diana's Temple. 468 nation, lately flourishing on the Continent, the ancient title of Forsooth instead of Dame or Madam (which Johnson only supposes to haye once been " a word of honour in address to women"), continued to be applied to the senior nuns at a certain period from the time of their profession.---N. B. The said word Nun, of which Johnson gives no etymology at all, is derived from the above repeated word Nonnus (in fœmineo genere Nonna), quasi Donnus, or Domnus, instead of Dominus. The monks of the ancient orders are still addressed by the title of Domni (by contraction Dom.) in the place of Domini; and the nuns of the ancient orders are still called Dames. 1796, Aug. Yours, &c. J. MILNER, CXXVIII. St. Paul's Church supposed to be built on the site of Diana's Temple, MR. URBAN, TRADITION, or ancient chronicle, or some other source of information, mentions St. Paul's church as built on the site of an ancient temple of Diana. Was it with regard to this legendary record that the curious offering took place, of which Mr. Pennant takes notice? I transcribe the passage from the second edition of his interesting account" Ŏf London," p. 367. "The most singular offering was that of a fat doe in winter, and a buck in summer, made at the high altar, on the day of the commemoration of the saint, by Sir William de Baude and his family, and then to be distributed among the Canons resident. This was in lieu of 22 acres of land in Essex, which did belong to the canons of this church. Till Queen Elizabeth's days, the doe or buck was received solemnly, at the steps of the high altar, by the dean and chapter, attired in their sacred vestments, and crowned with garlands of roses. They sent the body of the bucke to baking, and had the head, fixed on a pole, borne before the crosse in the procession, until they issued out of the West doore, where the keeper that brought it blowed the deathe of the bucke, and then the horners, that were about the citie, presently answered him in like manner; for which paines they had each man, of the dean and chapter, fourpence in money, and their dinner, and the keeper that brought it was allowed, during his abode there, for his service, meate, drinke, and lodging, and five shillings in money at his going away, together with a loafe of breade having the picture of St. Paul upon it." I cannot help imagining, Mr. Urban, that the custom here detailed, or some appendage to it, is referred to by Erasmus, in his Ecclesiasta, lib. 1. He says, "Apud Anglos mos est Londini, ut certo die populus in summum templum, Paulo sacrum, inducat longo hastili impositum CAPUT feræ (damas illi quidem appellant, vulgus capros, quum re vera sit hircorum genus cornibus palmatis in ea insula abundans), cum inan:œno sonitu cornuum venatoriorum. Hac pompa præceditur ad summum altare-dicas omnes afflatos furore Delio!" Either the account of Erasmus is, however, inaccurate, or it has an allusion to some sportive addition to the homage described by Pennant, probably made by the choristers, who were the lordlings of misrule, and masters of revelry in that their day, and under whose direction the theatrical interludes and entertainments, consisting in general of mixed or unmixed buffoonery, were exhibited. But we cannot help recollecting the ancient ceremonies of the Latonian huntress, as probably passing on this very spot, at which boys might officiate. "Setosi caput hoc apri tibi, Delia, parvus, Stow, in his Survey of London (black-letter edition, 1618), speaks of the crosse in Cheape as ornamented with the statue of the goddess, to which the adjoining cathedral had been formerly dedicated. This cross had in old times been ornamented with symbols of Popery, which the zeal of reformation mutilated in the time of Edward the sixth. On the subject of this cross, Stow observes, that "there was set up a curious wrought tabernacle of grey marble, and in the same an alabaster image of Diana, and water, conveyed from the Thames, trilling from her naked breast for a time, but now decayed." P. 484. Another passage is more directly applicable to the subject of this letter: "Some have noted that, in digging the foundation of this new worke, namely, of a chappel on the South side of *Stow's Survey of London. |