The Threshold Covenant; or, The Beginning of Religious Rites
by H. Clay Trumbull · English · Gutenberg #49216 · 614,179 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Threshold Covenant; or, The Beginning of Religious Rites
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE
THRESHOLD COVENANT
OR
THE BEGINNING OF RELIGIOUS RITES
BY
H. CLAY TRUMBULL
Author of “Kadesh-barnea,” “The Blood Covenant,”
“Studies in Oriental Social Life,” etc.
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1896
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT, 1896
BY
H. CLAY TRUMBULL
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE.
This work does not treat of the origin of man’s religious faculty, or of
the origin of the sentiment of religion; nor does it enter the domain of
theological discussion. It simply attempts to show the beginning of
religious rites, by which man evidenced a belief, however obtained, in
the possibility of covenant relations between God and man; and the
gradual development of those rites, with the progress of the race toward
a higher degree of civilization and enlightenment. Necessarily the
volume is not addressed to a popular audience, but to students in the
lessons of primitive life and culture.
In a former volume, “The Blood Covenant,” I sought to show the origin of
sacrifice, and the significance of transferred or proffered blood or
life. The facts given in that work have been widely accepted as lying at
the basis of fundamental doctrines declared in the Hebrew and Christian
Scriptures, and have also been recognized as the source of perverted
views which have had prominence in the principal ethnic religions of the
world. Scholars of as divergent schools of thought as Professors William
Henry Green of Princeton, Charles A. Briggs of New York, George E. Day
of Yale, John A. Broadus of Louisville, Samuel Ives Curtiss of Chicago,
President Mark Hopkins of Williams, Rev. Drs. Alfred Edersheim of Oxford
and Cunningham Geikie of Bournemouth, Professor Fréderic Godet of
Neuchatel, and many others, were agreed in recognizing the freshness and
importance of its investigations, and the value of its conclusions.
Professor W. Robertson Smith, of Cambridge, in thanking me for that
work, expressed regret that he had not seen it before writing his
“Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia.” He afterwards made repeated
mention of the work as an authority in its field, in his Burnett
Lectures on the “Religion of the Semites.”
This volume grew out of that one. It looks back to a still earlier date.
That began as it were with Cain and Abel, while this begins with Adam
and Eve. It was while preparing a Supplement for a second edition of
that volume that the main idea of this work assumed such importance in
my mind that I was led to make a separate study of it, and present it
independently. The special theory here advanced is wholly a result of
induction. The theory came out of the gathered facts, instead of the
facts being gathered in support of the theory.
Of course, these facts are not new, but it is believed that their
synthetic arrangement is. It has been a favorite method with students of
primitive religions to point out widely different objects of primitive
worship and their corresponding cults among different peoples, and then
to try to show how the ceremonials of the Hebrew and Christian
Scriptures were made up from these primitive cults. But the course of
investigation here pursued seems to show that the earlier cult was the
simple one, which has been developed in the line of the Bible story, and
that the other cults, even those baser and more degraded, are only
natural perversions of the original simple one. This is a reversal of
the usual order in studies of primitive religious rites. Here it is
first the simple, then the complex; first the one germ, then the many
varieties of growth from that germ.
As this particular subject of investigation seems to be a hitherto
untrodden field, I am unable to refer to any published works as my
principal sources of information. But I have gathered important related
facts from various directions, giving full credit in explicit
foot-notes, page by page. Many added facts confirmatory of my position
might, undoubtedly, have been found through yet wider and more
discerning research, and they will be brought to light by other gleaners
in the same field. Indeed, a chief value of this volume will be in the
fresh study it provokes on the part of those whom it stimulates to more
thorough investigation in the direction here pointed out. And if such
study shows an added agreement between some of the main facts of modern
scientific investigation and those disclosed in the Bible narrative,
that will not be a matter of regret to any fair-minded scholar.
In my earlier studies for this work, I had valuable assistance from the
late Mr. John T. Napier; and in my later researches I have been
materially assisted by Professors Herman V. Hilprecht, E. Washburn
Hopkins, William R. Lamberton, John Henry Wright, Robert Ellis Thompson,
Morris Jastrow, Jr., D.G. Brinton, Adolph Erman, W. Max Müller, W. Hayes
Ward, M.B. Riddle, Minton Warren, Alfred Gudeman, John P. Peters, M.W.
Easton, and A.L. Frothingham, Jr., President George Washburn, Rev. Drs.
Marcus Jastrow, H.H. Jessup, George A. Ford, William W. Eddy, and
Benjamin Labaree, Rev. William Ewing, Rev. Paulus Moort, Dr. Talcott
Williams, Dr. J. Solis Cohen, Dr. A.T. Clay, Dr. T.H. Powers Sailer,
Judge Mayer Sulzberger, Mr. S. Schecter, Mr. Frank Hamilton Cushing,
Captain John G. Bourke, Mr. Khaleel Sarkis, Mr. John T. Haddad, Mr.
Montague Cockle, Mr. Le Roy Bliss Peckham, the late Mr. William John
Potts, and other specialists. To all these I return my sincere thanks.
Facts and suggestions that came to my notice after the main work was
completed, or that, while known to me before, did not seem to have a
place in the direct presentation of the argument, have been given a
place in the Appendix. These may prove helpful to scholars who would
pursue the investigation beyond my limits of treatment.
Comments of eminent specialists in Europe and America, to whom the
proof-sheets of the volume were submitted before publication, are given
in a Supplement. Important additions are thus made to the results of my
researches, which are sure to be valued accordingly.
H.C.T.
PHILADELPHIA,
_Passover Week, 1896_.
CONTENTS.
------------------
I.
PRIMITIVE FAMILY ALTAR.
(1.) A BLOOD WELCOME AT THE DOOR, 3. (2.) REVERENCE FOR THE THRESHOLD
ALTAR, 10. (3.) THRESHOLD COVENANTING IN THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY, 25. (4.)
STEPPING OR BEING LIFTED ACROSS THE THRESHOLD, 36. (5.) LAYING
FOUNDATIONS IN BLOOD, 45. (6.) APPEALS AT THE ALTAR, 57. (7.) COVENANT
TOKENS ON THE DOORWAY, 66. (8.) SYMBOL OF THE RED HAND, 74. (9.) DEITIES
OF THE DOORWAY, 94.
II.
EARLIEST TEMPLE ALTAR.
(1.) FROM HOUSE TO TEMPLE, 99. (2.) SACREDNESS OF THE DOOR, 102. (3.)
TEMPLE THRESHOLDS IN ASIA, 108. (4.) TEMPLE THRESHOLDS IN AFRICA, 126.
(5.) TEMPLE THRESHOLDS IN EUROPE, 132. (6.) TEMPLE THRESHOLDS IN
AMERICA, 144. (7.) TEMPLE THRESHOLDS IN ISLANDS OF THE SEA, 148. (8.)
ONLY ONE FOUNDATION, 153.
III.
SACRED BOUNDARY LINE.
(1.) FROM TEMPLE TO DOMAIN, 165. (2.) LOCAL LANDMARKS, 166. (3.)
NATIONAL BORDERS, 177. (4.) BORDER SACRIFICES, 184.
IV.
ORIGIN OF THE RITE.
(1.) A NATURAL QUESTION, 193. (2.) AN ANSWER BY INDUCTION, 194. (3.) NO
COVENANT WITHOUT BLOOD, 196. (4.) CONFIRMATION OF THIS VIEW, 197.
V.
HEBREW PASS-OVER, OR CROSS-OVER, SACRIFICE.
(1.) NEW MEANING IN AN OLD RITE, 203. (2.) A WELCOME WITH BLOOD, 204.
(3.) BASON, OR THRESHOLD, 206. (4.) PASS-OVER OR PASS-BY, 209. (5.)
MARRIAGE OF JEHOVAH WITH ISRAEL, 212.
VI.
CHRISTIAN PASSOVER.
(1.) OLD COVENANT AND NEW, 215. (2.) PROFFERED WELCOME BY THE FATHER,
216. (3.) BRIDEGROOM AND BRIDE, 218. (4.) SURVIVALS OF THE RITE, 221.
VII.
OUTGROWTHS AND PERVERSIONS OF THIS RITE.
(1.) ELEMENTAL BEGINNINGS, 223. (2.) MAIN OUTGROWTHS, 225. (3.) CHIEF
PERVERSIONS, 228.
APPENDIX.
SIGNIFICANCE OF BLOOD IN THE MARRIAGE RITE, 243. EXHIBITING THE
EVIDENCES, 245. SUBSTITUTE BLOOD FOR DECEPTION, 248. PUBLIC PERFORMANCE
OF THE RITE, 250. BIBLE TESTIMONY, 251. WOMAN AS A DOOR, 252. SYMBOLISM
OF THE TWO SEXES, 257. SYMBOLISM OF TREE AND SERPENT, 258. COVENANT OF
THRESHOLD-CROSSING, 259. DOORKEEPER, AND CARRIER, 263. PASSING OVER INTO
A COVENANT, 266. ENGLAND’S CORONATION STONE, 268.
INDEXES.
TOPICAL INDEX, 273. SCRIPTURAL INDEX, 301.
SUPPLEMENT.
COMMENTS OF SPECIALISTS.
FROM THE REV. DR. MARCUS JASTROW, 307. FROM PROFESSOR DR. HERMAN V.
HILPRECHT, 309. FROM PROFESSOR DR. FRITZ HOMMEL, 313. FROM PROFESSOR DR.
A.H. SAYCE, 314. FROM PROFESSOR DR. W. MAX MÜLLER, 315. FROM PROFESSOR
DR. C.P. TIELE, 317. FROM PROFESSOR DR. E. WASHBURN HOPKINS, 318. FROM
THE REV. DR. WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS, 319. FROM PROFESSOR DR. JOHN P.
MAHAFFY, 324. FROM PROFESSOR DR. WILLIAM A. LAMBERTON, 326. FROM
PROFESSOR DR. DANIEL G. BRINTON, 328. FROM THE REV. DR. EDWARD T.
BARTLETT, 329. FROM PROFESSOR DR. T.K. CHEYNE, 330. ADDITIONAL FROM
PROFESSOR DR. FRITZ HOMMEL, 333.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE THRESHOLD COVENANT.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I.
PRIMITIVE FAMILY ALTAR.
------------------
1. A BLOOD WELCOME AT THE DOOR.
The primitive altar of the family would seem to have been the threshold,
or door-sill, or entrance-way, of the home dwelling-place. This is
indicated by surviving customs, in the East and elsewhere among
primitive peoples, and by the earliest historic records of the human
race. It is obvious that houses preceded temples, and that the
house-father was the earliest priest. Sacrifices for the family were,
therefore, within or at the entrance of the family domicile.
In Syria and in Egypt, at the present time, when a guest who is worthy
of special honor is to be welcomed to a home, the blood of a
slaughtered, or a “sacrificed,” animal is shed on the threshold of that
home, as a means of adopting the new-comer into the family, or of making
a covenant union with him. And every such primitive covenant in blood
includes an appeal to the protecting Deity to ratify it as between the
two parties and himself.[1] While the guest is still outside, the host
takes a lamb, or a goat, and, tying its feet together, lays it upon the
threshold of his door. Resting his left knee upon the bound victim, the
host holds its head by his left hand, while with his right he cuts its
throat. He retains his position until all the blood has flowed from the
body upon the threshold. Then the victim is removed, and the guest steps
over the blood, across the threshold; and in this act he becomes, as it
were, a member of the family by the Threshold Covenant.
The flesh of the slaughtered animal is usually given to the neighbors,
although in the case of humbler persons it is sometimes used for the
meal of the guest in whose honor it is sacrificed. It may be a larger
offering than a lamb or a goat, or it may be a smaller one. Sometimes
several sheep are included in the sacrifice. Again, the offering may be
a bullock or a heifer, or simply a fowl or a pair of pigeons. The more
costly the gift, in proportion to the means of the host, the greater the
honor to him who is welcomed.
As illustrative of this idea, a story is commonly told in Syria of a
large-hearted man who gave proof of his exceptional devotedness to an
honored guest. He had a horse which he prized as only an Oriental can
prize and love one. This horse he sent to meet his guest, in order that
it might bring him to the home of its owner. When the guest reached the
house and dismounted, he spoke warm words in praise of the noble animal.
At once the host led the horse to the house door, and cut its throat
over the threshold, asking the guest to step over the blood of this
costly offering, in acceptance of the proffered Threshold Covenant.
“If you know that one is coming whom you would honor and welcome, you
must make ready to have the blood on the threshold when he appears,”
said a native Syrian. In case an honored guest arrives unexpectedly, so
that there is no time to prepare the customary sacrifice, salt, as
representing blood, may be sprinkled on the threshold, for the guest to
pass over; or again coffee, as the Muhammadan substitute for the “blood
of the grape,”[2] may be poured on it.[3]
Crossing the threshold, or entering the door, of a house, is in itself
an implied covenant with those who are within, as shown by the earlier
laws of India. He who goes in by the door must count himself, and must
be recognized, as a guest, subject to the strictest laws of hospitality.
But if he enters the house in some other way, not crossing the
threshold, there is no such implied covenant on his part. He may then
even despoil or kill the head of the house he has entered, without any
breach of the law of hospitality, or of the moral law as there
understood.[4] Illustrations of this truth are found in the Mahabharata,
as applicable to both a house and a city.[5] “It is in accordance with
the strict law of all the law books,” of ancient India, “that one may
enter his foe’s house by _a-dvāra_, ‘not by door,’ but his friend’s
house only ‘by door.’”[6]
It would seem to have been in accordance with this primitive law of the
East that Jesus said: “He that entereth not by the door into the fold of
the sheep, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a
robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the
sheep.... I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved,
and shall go in and go out, and shall find pasture. The thief cometh
not, but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy: I came that they may
have life, and may have it abundantly.”[7]
It is possible that there is an explanation, in this law of the doorway,
or threshold, of the common practice among primitive Scandinavians of
attacking the inmates of an enemy’s house through the roof instead of by
the door;[8] also, of the custom in Greece of welcoming a victor in the
Olympian games into his city through a breach in the walls, instead of
causing him to enter by the gates, with its implied subjection to all
the laws of hospitality.[9] (See Appendix.)
Examples of the blood welcome at the threshold abound in modern Egyptian
customs. When the new khedive came to his palace, in 1882, a threshold
sacrifice was offered as his welcome. “At the entrance to the palace six
buffaloes were slaughtered, two being killed just as the khedive’s
carriage reached the gateway. The blood of the animals was splashed
across the entrance, so that the horses’ hoofs and wheels of the
carriage passed through it. The flesh was afterwards distributed among
the poor.”[10]
When General Grant was at Assioot, on the Upper Nile, during his journey
around the world, he was doubly welcomed as a guest by the American
vice-consul, who was a native of Egypt. A bullock was sacrificed at the
steamer landing, and its head was laid on one side of the gang-plank,
and its body on the other. The outpoured blood was between the head and
the body, under the gang-plank, so that, in stepping from the steamer to
the shore, General Grant would cross over it. When he reached the house
of the vice-consul, a sheep was similarly sacrificed at the threshold,
in such a way that General Grant passed over the blood in entering.[11]
It is also said in Egypt: “If you buy a dahabiyeh,” and therefore are to
cross its threshold for the occupancy of your new home on the water,
“you must kill a sheep, letting the blood flow on the deck, or side, of
the boat, in order that it may be lucky. Your friends will afterwards
have to dine on the sheep.”[12] There seems, indeed, to be a survival of
this idea in the custom of “christening” a ship at the time of its
launching, in England and America, a bottle of wine–the “blood of the
grape”[13]–being broken on the bow of the vessel as it crosses the
threshold of the deep. And a feast usually follows this ceremony
also.[14]
In Zindero, or Gingiro, or Zinder, in Central Africa, a new king is
welcomed at the royal residence with a bloody threshold offering.
“Before he enters his palace two men are to be slain; one at the foot of
the tree by which his house is chiefly supported; the other at the
threshold of his door, which is besmeared with the blood of the victim.
And it is said ... that the particular family, whose privilege it is to
be slaughtered, so far from avoiding it, glory in the occasion, and
offer themselves willingly to meet it.”[15]
Among the Arabs in Central Africa, the blood welcome of a guest at the
threshold of a home is a prevailing custom. “The usual welcome upon the
arrival of a traveler, who is well received in an Arab camp, is the
sacrifice of a fat sheep, that should be slaughtered at the door of the
hut or tent, so that the blood flows to the threshold.”[16]
On the arrival of strangers among the primitive tribes of Liberia, in
West Africa, a fowl is killed, and its blood is sprinkled at the
doorway.[17]
Receiving an honored guest with bread and salt, at the threshold of the
house he enters, is common in Russia. Bread and salt are symbolic, in
primitive thought, of flesh and blood; and this threshold welcome seems
to be a survival of the threshold sacrifice.[18]
To step over or across the blood, or its substitute, on the door-sill,
is to accept or ratify the proffered covenant; but to trample upon the
symbol of the covenant is to show contempt for the host who proffers it,
and no greater indignity than this is known in the realm of primitive
social intercourse.
2. REVERENCE FOR THE THRESHOLD ALTAR.
The threshold, as the family altar on which the sacrificial blood of a
covenant welcome is poured out, is counted sacred, and is not to be
stepped upon, or passed over lightly; but it is to be crossed over
reverently, as in recognition of Him to whom all life belongs. “On
passing the threshold,” in Arabia, “it is proper to say, ‘Bismillah,’
that is, ‘In the name of God.’ Not to do so would be looked upon as a
bad augury, alike for him who enters and for those within.”[19] In Syria
the belief prevails “that it is unlucky to tread on a threshold.” When
they receive a new member to their sect, the Bektashi derwishes of Syria
bring him to the threshold, and prayers and sacrifices are offered “on
the door-sill.”[20]
“The khaleefs of Bagdad required all those who entered their palace to
prostrate themselves on the threshold of the gate, where they had
inserted a fragment of the black stone of the temple at Meccah, in order
to render it [the threshold] more venerable to those who had been
accustomed to press their foreheads against it. The threshold was of
some height, and it was a crime to set foot upon it.” In the advice
which Nurshivan gives to his son Hormuz, he recommends him to betake
himself to the threshold of the Lord; that is, to the “presence of God,
in the same fashion in which the poor do, at the gates of the rich.
‘Since you are his slave,’ he says, ‘set your forehead on his
threshold.’”[21]
Among the Hindoos, “the threshold is ... sacred in private houses; it is
not propitious for a person to remain on it; neither to eat, sneeze,
yawn, nor spit whilst there.”[22]
A double welcome is sometimes given to one who is in an official
position. Thus, a Syrian, who held a commission from the chief officer
of customs in Upper Syria, was surprised at having two sheep sacrificed
before him as he approached the door of a house east of the Sea of
Galilee; and he graciously protested against the excessive honor shown
him. “One sheep is to welcome yourself as a man, and the other is to
welcome you as an officer of the government,” was the answer. Loyalty as
well as hospitality was indicated in these threshold sacrifices.
Sacredness attaches to the threshold in Persia. It must not be trodden
on; but it is often kissed by those who would step over it.[23]
A man should always cross himself when he steps over a threshold in
Russia; and, in some portions of the realm, it is believed that he ought
not to sit down on the threshold.[24]
High sills, or thresholds, so that one must step over, and not on, them,
are in the houses of Finland, and in the houses of many Finns in the
United States.[25] The same was true of many Teutonic houses.[26]
To shake hands across a threshold, instead of crossing it, is said, in
Finland, to ensure a quarrel.[27] To step over a threshold is, in
Lapland, to bring one under the protection of the family within, and of
its guardian deity.[28] The same is true among the Magyars.[29]
The ancient Pythagoreans quoted various maxims, supposed to be from the
sayings of their great founder, as teaching important lessons for all
time. In these maxims there were indications of a peculiar reverence for
the threshold and doorway. Thus: “He who strikes his foot against the
threshold should go back;” it were unsafe to pursue a movement so
inauspiciously begun. And, again: “The doors should be kissed fondly by
those who enter or depart.”[30]
“Treading on the threshold was ... tabooed by the Tatars.”[31] Again, on
the other side of the globe, in Samoa, to spill water on the door-step,
or threshold, when food is brought in, is a cause of anger to the
protecting deity of the family. It may drive him away.[32]
In Europe and in America it is by many counted an ill omen to tread upon
the threshold of the door on entering a house. To the present day, in
portions of Scotland, the idea popularly prevails, that to tread
directly upon the boundary lines of division between ordinary flagstones
is to endanger one’s soul; hence the very children are careful to avoid
stepping upon those lines, in their walking across the courtyards or
along the streets, in their every-day passing.
Many a person in the United States, who knows nothing of any
superstition connected with this, avoids, if possible, stepping on,
instead of over, the cracks or seams of a board walk, or even the seams
of a carpet.
All these customs seem to be a survival of the feeling that the
threshold is sacred as the primitive altar.
Apart from the reverence for the threshold demanded of those who pass
over it, there is an obvious sanctity of the threshold recognized in the
placing of images and amulets underneath it, and in the sacrifices and
offerings placed on it, as a means of guarding the dwelling within.
In the building of private houses, as well as temples, and city
gateways, in ancient Assyria, images of various kinds and sizes, “in
bronze, red jasper, yellow stone, and baked earth, ... are buried
beneath the stones of the threshold, so as to bar the entrance to all
destructive spirits.” Invocations are graven upon these figures.[33]
Herodotus mentions[34] that, in the annual feast in honor of the god
Osiris, “every Egyptian sacrifices a hog before the door of his house”
on the evening before the festival. Osiris was the god who was the judge
of the soul after death, and who in a peculiar sense stood for the truth
of the life to come. Every Egyptian desired, above all, to be in loving
covenant with Osiris, and when he would offer a welcoming sacrifice to
him, he did so before the door of his own house, as before the primitive
family altar. That it was the _blood_ poured out at the threshold which
was the essential act of covenanting in this sacrifice to Osiris, is
evidenced in the fact that the animal sacrificed was not eaten in the
family of the sacrificer, but was carried away by the swineherd who
furnished it.
Bunches of grass dipped in blood, and touched by the king, as if made
representative of his dignity and power, are to-day placed on the
threshold, as an offering, and as averters of evil, in Equatorial
Africa. This is known there as an ancient custom. In Uganda, “every
house has charms hung on the door, and others laid on the threshold.” An
offering to the _lubare_, or local spirit, must be thrown across the
threshold, from within the house, before a native ventures to leave his
home in the morning.[35] Charms for this purpose are kept behind the
door.
One of the requirements in the Vedic law (the sacred law of the Hindoos)
was, that “on the door-sill (a bali must be placed) with a mantra
addressed to Antariksha (the air),”[36] by a house father, in his
home;[37] that is, that an offering, with an invocation to a deity,
should be a sacrifice at the threshold altar. Other references in the
Hindoo laws seem to demand bali offerings “at all the doors, as many as
they are,” in a house, and evidence the importance and sacredness
attaching to the doorway.[38]
The threshold seems to have special reverence in Northwestern India, in
connection with the seasons of seedtime and harvest. At seedtime “a cake
of cowdung formed into a cup” is placed on the threshold of the
householder; it is filled with corn, and then water is poured over it as
a libation to the deities. Cowdung is not only a means of enrichment to
the soil, but it is a gift from the sacred cow, and so, in a sense,
represents or stands for the life of the cow. It is laid on the
threshold altar as an offering of life. The libation of water is an
accompaniment of that offering; water is essential to life and growth,
and it is a gift of the gods accordingly. Seed-sowing is recognized as
an act which needs the blessing of the gods, and on which that blessing
is sought in covenant relations.
At early harvest time the first-fruits of the grain-field are not taken
to the threshing-floor, but are brought home to be presented to the gods
at the household altar, and afterwards eaten by the family, with a
portion given to the Brahmans. The first bundle of corn is deposited at
the threshold of the home, and a libation of water is made as a
completion of its offering. The grain being taken from the ear, of a
portion of this first-fruits, is mixed with milk and sugar, and every
member of the family tastes it seven times.[39]
Among the Prabhus of Bombay, at the time of the birth of a child, an
iron crowbar is placed “along the threshold of the room of confinement,
as a check against the crossing of any evil spirit.” This is in
accordance with a Hindoo belief that evil spirits keep aloof from iron,
“and even nowadays pieces of horseshoe can be seen nailed to the bottom
sills of doors of native houses.”[40] Iron seems, in various lands, to
be deemed of peculiar value as a guard against evil spirits, and the
threshold to be the place for its efficacious fixing.
Similarly, “in East Bothnia, when the cows are taken out of their winter
quarters for the first time, an iron bar is laid before the threshold,
over which all the cows must pass; for, if they do not, there will be
nothing but trouble with them all the following summer.”[41]
Among the folk customs in the line of exorcism and divination in Italy,
the threshold has prominence. “In Tuscany, much taking of magical
medicine is done on the threshold; it also plays a part in other
sorcery.”[42] A writer mentions a method of exorcism with incense, where
three pinches of the best incense, and three of the second quality, are
put in a row on the threshold of the door, and then, after other incense
is burned within the house in an earthen fire-dish, these “little piles
of incense on the threshold of the door” are lighted, with words of
invocation. This process is repeated three times over.[43]
A method of curing a disorder of the wrist prevalent in harvest time, in
North Germany, is by taking “three pieces of three-jointed straw,” and
so laying them “side by side as to correspond joint by joint,” then
chopping through the first joint into the block beneath. This “ceremony
is performed on the threshold, and ends with the sign of the cross.”[44]
Observances with reference to the threshold are numerous in Russia. “On
it a cross is drawn to keep off _maras_ (hags). Under it the peasants
bury stillborn children. In Lithuania, when a new house is being built,
a wooden cross, or some article which has been handed down from past
generations, is placed under the threshold. There also when a newly
baptized child is being brought back from church, it is customary for
its father to hold it for a while over the threshold, ‘so as to place
the new member of the family under the protection of the domestic
divinities’ [bringing it newly into the family covenant at the threshold
altar].... Sick children, who are supposed to have been afflicted by an
evil eye, are washed on the threshold of their cottage, in order that,
with the help of the Penates who reside there, the malady may be driven
out of doors.”[45]
At the annual feast known as “Death Week,” among Slavonic peoples,
marking the close of winter and the beginning of spring, the peasants in
rural Russia combine for a sacrifice to appease the “Vodyaoui,” or
aroused water-spirit of the thawing streams. They also prepare a
sacrifice for the “Domovoi” or house-spirit. A fat black pig is killed,
and cut into as many pieces as there are residents in the place. “Each
resident receives one piece, which he straightway buries under the
door-step at the entrance to his house. In some parts, it is said, the
country folk bury a few eggs beneath the threshold of the dwelling to
propitiate the ‘Domovoi.’”[46]
When a Magyar maiden would win the love of a young man, or would bring
evil on him because of his reluctance, she seeks influence over him by
means of the sacred threshold. “She must steal something from the young
man, and take it to a witch, who adds to it three beans, three bulbs of
garlic, a few pieces of dry coal, and a dead frog. These are all put
into an earthenware pot, and placed under the threshold,” with a prayer
for the object of her desire.[47]
A superstition is prevalent in Roumania, that if a bat, together with a
gold coin, be buried under the threshold, there is “good luck” to the
house.[48] Various superstitions, in connection with the bat are found
among primitive peoples.[49]
In Japan, the threshold of the door is sprinkled with salt, after a
funeral, and as a propitiatory sacrifice in time of danger.[50] Salt
represents blood.
Among the Dyaks of Borneo, a pig’s blood is sprinkled at the doorway to
atone for the sin of unchastity by a daughter of the family. Again, the
blood of a fowl is sprinkled there at the annual festival of
seed-sowing, with prayers for fecundity and fertility.[51]
“On New Year’s morning, along the coast [in Aberdeenshire] where seaweed
is gathered, a small quantity is laid down at each door of the
farm-steading [the buildings of the homestead], as a means of bringing
good luck.” And fire and salt are put on the threshold of the byre-door
before a cow leaves the building after giving birth to a calf.[52]
Of portions of Ireland, it was said, early in this century: “On the 11th
of November, every family of a village kills an animal of some kind or
other; those who are rich kill a cow or sheep, others a goose or a
turkey; while those who are poor ... kill a hen or a cock, and sprinkle
the threshold with the blood, and do the same in the four corners of the
house; ... to exclude every kind of evil spirit from the dwelling.”[53]
Holes bored in the door-sill, and plugged with pieces of paper on which
are written incantations, a broom laid across the door-sill, or “three
horseshoes nailed on the door-step with toes up,” are supposed to be a
guard against witches or evil spirits in portions of Pennsylvania
to-day.[54] Many a Pennsylvanian is unwilling to cross, for the first
time, the threshold of a new home, without carrying salt and a Bible.
Among the Indians in ancient Mexico there was an altar near the door of
every house, with instruments of sacrifice, and accompanying idols.[55]
“Threshold” and “foundation” are terms that are used interchangeably in
primitive life. The sacredness of the threshold-stone of a building
pivots on its position as a foundation stone, a beginning stone, a
boundary stone. Hence the foundation stone of any house, or other
structure was sacred as the threshold of that building. According to Dr.
H.V. Hilprecht, in the earlier buildings of Babylonia the inscriptions
and invocations and deposits were at the threshold, and later under the
four corners of the building; but when they were at the threshold they
were not under the corners, and _vice versa_. It would seem from this
that the corner-stone was recognized as the beginning, or the limit, or
the threshold, of the building. It may be, therefore, that the modern
ceremonies at the laying of a “corner-stone” are a survival of the
primitive sacredness of a threshold-laying.[56]
It would seem, moreover, as if the sanctity of the threshold as the
primitive altar were, in many places, in the course of time transferred
to the family hearth. In the primitive tent the household fire was at
the entrance way, as it is in the tents of the East to-day. Where Arabs
have camped on an Eastern desert, the place of the shaykh’s tent can
always be known by the blackened hearthstones at its entrance, or
threshold, where he welcomed guests to the hospitality of his tribe and
family by the sharing of bread and salt, or by the outpouring of the
blood of a slaughtered lamb or kid.
If, indeed, the earliest dwelling of man was a cave, rather than a tent,
the household fire was still at its entrance; and the threshold was the
hearthstone. When, in the progress of building-changes, the hearthstone
was removed to the center of the building, or of the inner court, its
sanctity went with it, as the place of the family fire. Thus, for
example, in Russia, the Domovoi, or household deity, who is honored and
invoked at the threshold, “is supposed to live behind the stove now, but
in early times he, or the spirits of the dead ancestors, of whom he is
now the chief representative, were held to be in even more direct
relations with the fire on the hearth; as were the Penates of the
Romans, who were sometimes spoken of as at the threshold, and again as
at the hearth.”[57]
A recognition of the peculiar sacredness of the threshold is shown, in
different lands, by the popular unwillingness to have the dead carried
over it on the way to burial. In India, the body of one dying in certain
phases of the moon can in no wise be carried over the threshold. The
house wall must be broken for its removal.[58] When Chinese students are
attending the competitive examinations for promotion, they are shut up
in rooms until their work is completed. If one of them dies at such a
time, “the body is removed over the back wall, as the taking out openly
through the front door would be regarded as an evil omen.”[59]
In the capital of Korea there is a small gate in the city wall known as
the “Gate of the Dead,” through which alone a dead body can be carried
out. But no one can ever enter through that passage-way.[60]
There is a recognition, in Russian folk-tales, of safety to the spirit
of one who dies in a house, if his body be passed out _under_ the
threshold of the outer door.[61]
It is not allowable to carry out a corpse through the main door of a
house in Italy. There is a smaller door, in the side wall, known as the
_porta di morti_, which is kept closed except as it is opened for the
removal of a body at the time of a funeral.[62]
In Alaska, it is deemed an evil omen for the dead to be carried over the
threshold. “Therefore the dying one, instead of being allowed to rest in
peace in his last hours, is hastily lifted from his couch and put out of
doors [or out of the house] by a hole in the rear wall” so as not to
have a corpse pass the threshold.[63]
In some communities, in both Europe and America, the coffin is passed
out of the house through the window, instead of through the door, at a
funeral. And again, the front door is closed and a window is opened at
the time of a death, in order that the spirit may pass out of the house
in some other way than over the threshold.[64]
Even though the dead may not be lifted over the threshold altar, the
dead may be buried underneath it. In both the far East and the far West,
burials under the threshold are known. And in Christian churches of
Europe, a grave underneath the altar is an honored grave for saint or
ecclesiastic.
In the Apocalypse the seer beheld “underneath the altar the souls of
them that had been slain for the word of God, and for the testimony
which they held: and they cried with a great voice, saying, How long, O
Master, the holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on
them that dwell on the earth?”[65]
3. THRESHOLD COVENANTING IN THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY.
Marriage customs in various parts of the world, in ancient and modern
times, illustrate this idea of the sacredness of the threshold as the
family altar.
In portions of Syria, when a bride is brought to her husband’s home, a
lamb or a kid is sacrificed on the threshold, and she must step across
the outpoured blood.[66] This marks her adoption into that family.
Among the wide-spreading ʾAnazeh Bed´ween, the most prominent and
extensive tribe of desert Arabs, whose range is from the Sinaitic
Peninsula to the upper Desert of Syria, “when the marriage day is fixed,
the bridegroom comes with a lamb in his arms to the tent of the father
of his bride, and then, before witnesses, he cuts its throat. As soon as
the blood falls upon the earth [and the earth is the only threshold of a
tent], the marriage ceremony is regarded as complete.”[67] “In Egypt,
the Copts sacrifice a sheep as the bride steps into the bridegroom’s
house, and she is compelled to step over the blood which flows upon the
threshold in the doorway.”[68] It is evident, moreover, that this custom
is not confined to the Copts.[69]
Blood on the threshold, as an accompaniment of a marriage, is still
counted important among Armenian Christians in Turkey. After the formal
marriage ceremony at the church, the wedded pair, with their friends,
proceed to the bridegroom’s home. “At the moment of their arrival a
sheep is sacrificed on the threshold, over the blood of which the
wedding party steps to enter the house.”[70]
In the island of Cyprus, a bridegroom is borne to the house of his bride
on the wedding morning, in a living chair formed by the crossed hands of
his neighbor friends. Dismounting at her door, “as he is about to pass
in, a fowl is brought and held down by head and feet upon the threshold
of the door; the bridegroom takes an axe, cuts off the head, and only
then may he enter.”[71]
Like customs are found among yet more primitive peoples. Thus, for
instance, with the western Somali tribes, in east Central Africa: “On
reaching the bridegroom’s house a low-caste man sacrifices a goat or
sheep on the threshold; and the bride steps over it;” and again when the
bridegroom returns from his devotions at a neighboring _masjid_ (a place
of public prayer) to claim his bride, as he reaches his threshold,
“another goat is sacrificed, and he steps over it in the same way as his
bride.”[72] Again the bridegroom himself brings the bride from her
father’s hut to his own, accompanied by young men and maidens dancing
and singing. “On reaching the new hut, the bride holds a goat or sheep
in the doorway, while the bridegroom cuts its throat in the orthodox
manner with his _jambia_ (long knife). The bride dips her finger in the
blood, smears it on her forehead, ... and then enters the _gúrí_,
stepping over the blood. The bridegroom follows her, also stepping over
the blood, and is accompanied by some of his nearest male
relatives.”[73]
There are traces of such customs, also, among the natives of South
Africa,[74] and elsewhere.
Besides the bloody sacrifices at the threshold, in the marriage
ceremony, there are, in different countries, various forms of making
offerings at the threshold, and of surmounting obstacles at that point,
as an accompaniment of the wedding covenant. All these point to the
importance and sanctity of the threshold and doorway in the primitive
mind.
A bride, in portions of Upper Syria, on reaching her husband’s house, is
lifted up so that she can press against the door-lintel a piece of
dough, prepared for the purpose, and handed to her at the time. This
soft dough, thus pressed against the plastered or clay wall, adheres
firmly, and is left there as long as it will remain. The open hand of
the bride stamps the dough as it is fixed in place, and in some cases
the finger points are pricked before the stamping, so that the blood
will appear as a sign manual on the cake of dough.[75]
When a bride reaches the door of her husband’s house, among the
fellaheen of Palestine, a jar of water is placed on her head. She must
call on the name of God as she crosses the threshold; and, at the same
moment, her husband strikes the jar from her head, and causes the water
to flow as a libation.[76]
Among the Wallachians there is a marriage rite, said to be of Latin
origin, because there was a similar rite among the old Latins. The
Wallachian bride is borne on horseback, with an accompanying procession,
to the house of the bridegroom. “At the moment when the betrothed maiden
dismounts from her steed, and is about to cross the threshold, they
present to her butter, or sometimes honey, and with this she smears the
door-posts.”[77]
An observer says of this rite: “For the same reason among the Latins,
the word for wife, _uxor_, originally _unxor_, was derived from the verb
_ungere_, ‘to anoint,’ because the maidens when they reached the
threshold of their future husbands, were similarly accustomed to anoint
the door-posts.” In support of this fanciful etymology, old-time
commentators on Terence and Virgil are cited;[78] which shows, at least,
that this ceremony at the threshold of the husband’s home has long been
recognized as of vital importance in the marriage contract and relation.
It is customary, among the Greeks in Turkey, for the mother of the
bridegroom, as he leaves his home to go for his bride on the morning of
his wedding, to lay across his pathway a girdle, over which he steps,
and to pour a libation of water before him.[79]
In the Morea, in the vicinity of Sparta, it is said that, when the bride
is brought to her new home, the mother of the bridegroom “stands waiting
at the door, holding a glass of honey and water in her hand. From this
glass the bride must drink; ... while the lintel of the door is smeared
with the remainder; ... in the meantime one of the company breaks a
pomegranate on the threshold.”[80] In Rhodes, when the newly married
couple enter the doorway of their new home, the husband “dips his finger
in a cup of honey, and traces a cross over the door.... A pomegranate is
placed on the threshold, which the young husband crushes with his foot
as he enters, followed by his wife, over whom the wedding guests throw
corn and cotton seeds and orange flower water.”[81]
On Skarpanto (Carpathos), an island lying between Rhodes and Crete, when
the bridegroom reaches the door of the bride’s house “he is greeted by
the mother of the bride, who touches the nape of his neck with a censer
containing incense.... She further gives him a present called
_embatikon_,–that is to say, ‘the gift of in-going,’–and then places on
the threshold a rug or blanket folded, with a stick resting on one of
the corners. The bridegroom advances his right foot, breaks the stick
and passes in.”[82]
Among the Morlacchi, in Dalmatia, it is, or was, a custom for a bride to
kneel and kiss the threshold of her husband’s home, before crossing it
for the first time. Her mother-in-law, or some other near relative of
her husband, at the same time presented her with a sieve full of
different kinds of grain, nuts, and small fruits, which the bride
scattered behind her back as she passed in.[83]
It is a custom in portions of Russia, when the bride is about to leave
her father’s home to meet the bridegroom, for the friends of the
bridegroom to appear at the door, and request that the bride be brought
to them. “After their request has been many times repeated, the
‘princess’ [as the bride is called] appears, attended by her relatives
and attendants, but stops short at the door. Again the bridegroom’s
friends demand the bride, but are told first to ‘cleanse the threshold;
then will the young princess cross the threshold.’” Thereupon gifts are
made by the bridegroom’s friend, and the bride crosses the threshold to
go to the bridegroom.[84]
Among the Mordvins (or, Mordevins), a Finnish people on the Volga, there
are various customs in connection with marriage, tending to confirm the
idea that the threshold is the household altar. In a ceremony of
betrothal, with a conference over the terms of dowry, a prayer is
offered to the “goddess of the homestead,” and the “goddess of the
dwelling-house;” “the girl’s father then cuts off the corner of a loaf
of bread with three slashes of a knife, salts it, and places it under
the threshold, where the Penates are believed to frequent. This is
called the ‘gods’ portion.’” Bread and salt are factors in a sacred
covenant, and their proffer to the household gods, at the threshold
altar, would seem to be an invitation to those gods to be a party to the
new marriage covenant. Again, after the terms of betrothal are agreed
on, there is the feast of “hand-striking,” or ratification of the
betrothal. On that occasion also the “gods’ portion” is offered; and “a
little brandy is spilt under the threshold. Bread and salt are once more
placed under the threshold by the bride’s father, who carries it from
the table to the household altar “on the point of the knife–under no
circumstances in his hands.”[85]
A custom of strewing the threshold of the home of a new-married couple
prevailed in Holland until recent times.[86] This was obviously a form
of offering at the household altar.
On the evening before the marriage ceremony, in the rural districts and
smaller towns of Northern Germany, the boys and girls, and others in the
neighborhood, are accustomed to appear at the door of the bride’s house,
and smash on the threshold earthen pots and jars, with loud cries of
joy. “Sometimes, whole car-loads of broken pottery have to be removed
from the door the next morning.” And when the young couple return to
their home, after the ceremony at the church, poor boys and girls are
accustomed to stretch a colored cord across the door of the house, to
prevent a passage over the threshold, unless the bridegroom throws a
handful of small coins among those who bar the way.[87]
Traces of the sacredness of the threshold altar seem to exist in the
wedding ceremonies in villages on the coast of Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
“After the marriage is solemnized, ... the bride’s guests are
entertained at her home, and the bridegroom’s at his.... When the bride
returns to her father’s house, after the marriage, broken bread of
various sorts is thrown over her before she enters. The same ceremony is
gone through with the bridegroom at his father’s door.”[88]
When a girl among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo is married, the wedding takes
place at her house. The marriage rite includes the erecting an altar
before the door of the house, and placing on it an offering of prepared
areca-nut, covered with a red cloth, the color of blood. The families of
the bride and the groom then partake of that offering in covenant
conclave.[89]
A lover, among the Woolwas, in Central America, when wooing a bride,
would bring a deer’s carcass, and a bundle of firewood, and deposit it
outside of her house door. If she accepted these, and took them over the
threshold, it was a betrothal.[90] The covenant seemed to consist in the
reaching across the threshold and accepting a proffered offering in a
spirit of loving agreement.
Among the Towkas, in the same part of the world, a bridegroom would go
with his friends to the home of his bride, carrying a bundle of gifts
for her. Sitting down outside of the door, he would call on her family
to open to him. There being no response, music would then be tried by
his friends. At this the door would be opened just far enough for him to
put a gift inside over the threshold. One by one his gifts would be
passed in, in this way, while the door opened wider and wider. When the
last gift was over the threshold, the lover would spring within, and,
seizing the bride, would carry her across the threshold, and take her to
a temporary hut erected within a charmed circle near by, while his
friends guarded him from intrusion.[91]
And thus, in various ways, among widely different primitive peoples, the
marriage customs go to show that the home threshold cannot be passed
except by overcoming a barrier of some kind, and making an offering,
bloody or bloodless, at this primal family altar. An essential part of
the covenant of union is a halting at, and then passing over, the
threshold of the new home, with an accompanying sacrifice.
4. STEPPING OR BEING LIFTED ACROSS THE THRESHOLD.
Even more widespread and prominent than the custom of offering blood, or
of making a libation, or of overcoming a special barrier, at the
threshold, or of anointing or stamping the posts or lintel of the
doorway as a sign of the covenant, at the time of a marriage, and as a
part of the ceremony, is the habit of causing the bride to cross the
threshold with care, without stepping upon it. This custom is of
well-nigh world-wide observance, and it has attracted the attention of
anthropologists and students of primitive customs. A favorite method of
explaining it has been by calling it a survival of the practice of
“marriage by capture;” but this is nothing more than an unscientific
guess, in defiance of the truth that persistent popular customs have
their origin in a sentiment, and not in a passing historic practice. The
earliest mentions of this custom, of the bride’s crossing the threshold
without stepping on it, show it as a voluntary religious rite; and there
are traces of its recognition in this light from the earliest times
until now.
In the Vedic Sutras, or the sacrificial rules of the ancient Hindoo
literature, it is specifically declared that a bride, on entering her
husband’s home, shall step across the threshold, and not upon it. She is
not lifted over the door-sill, but she voluntarily crosses it. Thus it
is said: “When (the bridegroom with his bride) has come to his house, he
says to her, ‘Cross (the threshold) with thy right foot first; do not
stand on the threshold.’”[92] In this ancient ceremony, grains of rice
are poured on the heads of the bridegroom and his bride.[93] This modern
custom has, therefore, a very early origin. And again: “He makes her
enter the house (which she does) with her right foot. And she does not
stand on the threshold.”[94]
Putting the right foot forward seems to be a matter of importance in
various primitive religions. “Put your right foot first” is a maxim
ascribed to Pythagoras.[95] In his description of the proportions of a
temple, the Roman architect Vitruvius said: “The number of steps in
front should always be odd, since, in that case, the right foot, which
begins the ascent, will be that which first alights on the landing of
the temple.”[96] A Muhammadan is always careful to put his right foot
first in crossing over the threshold of a mosk.[97]
Among the Albanians, when the bride is taken to the home of the
bridegroom, accompanied by the _vlam_, or “the friend of the
bridegroom,” it is said that “particular care is taken that the
threshold should be crossed with the right foot foremost.”[98] Here, as
in India, the crossing of the threshold is a voluntary act. The bride is
not lifted over, but crosses of her own accord. If she be veiled, the
lifting is a necessity.
In Madagascar, “on entering a house, especially a royal house, it is
improper to use the left foot on first stepping into it. One must ‘put
one’s best (or right) foot foremost.’”[99]
The bride, in Upper Syria, is sometimes carried across the threshold of
the bridegroom’s house by friends of the bridegroom.[100] She, of
course, is veiled.
When the bride reaches the outer gate of her husband’s residence, in
Egypt, the bridegroom meets her, enveloped as she is in her cashmere
shawl, clasps her in his arms, and carries her across the threshold, and
up to the doorway of the female apartments.[101]
In portions of Abyssinia, the bridegroom carries his bride from her home
to his, bearing her across the threshold as he enters his house.[102]
So, also, it is among the more primitive tribes in West Africa. The
bride is carried over the threshold in a rude chair, or on the shoulders
of her friends, into her new home.[103]
There are traces of a similar custom in the marriage ceremonies of
ancient Assyria.[104]
Again, it is said to be found among the Khonds of Orissa,[105] the
Tatars,[106] and the Eskimos.[107]
In ancient Greece[108] and in ancient Rome[109] the lifting of the bride
over the threshold of her new home was an important part of the marriage
ceremony. Classic writers had their explanations of this custom, as
certain modern anthropologists have theirs, but the origin of the
ceremony was earlier than they imagined.
In unchanging China the use of fire on the threshold altar, in
connection with the marriage ceremony, is continued to the present day.
The bride is borne in a sedan-chair to the house of the bridegroom,
accompanied by a procession of friends and musicians. “On arriving at
the portal of the house, the bridegroom taps the door of the sedan-chair
with his fan, and in response, the instructress of matrimony, who
prompts every act of the bride, opens the door and hands out the still
enshrouded young lady, who is carried bodily over a pan of lighted
charcoal, or a red-hot coulter laid on the threshold, while at the same
moment a servant offers for her acceptance some rice and preserved
prunes.”[110]
Again, it is burning straw that is thrown upon the door-sill, and is
half extinguished before the Chinese bride is led to step across it. The
instructress says at this point:
“Now, fair young bride, the smoke bestride;
This year have joy, next year a boy.”[111]
Fire, like blood, stands for life in the primitive mind; and fire, like
blood, has its place on the altar. Indeed, as the first threshold altar
was the hearthstone, it was the place of the household fire. The
sacredness of the domestic fire is recognized in all the Hindoo
religious literature; and a Hindoo couple, on beginning their married
life, must have a care to enter a new home bringing their sacred altar
fire with them.[112] In ancient Greece, the mother of the bride
accompanied her daughter to the threshold of her new home, bearing a
flaming torch “kindled at the parental hearth, according to custom
immemorial.”[113] A torch was similarly borne in the Roman marriage
ceremonies.[114] This custom is referred to in the term “hymen’s torch,”
or the “nuptial torch.” “In Cicero’s time, they did not distinguish the
hearth-fire from the Penates, nor the Penates from the Lares.”[115] The
bride, in India, in China, in Greece, and in Rome, worshiped at the
altar-fire of her new home.
A connecting link between the altar fire and the nuptial torch is found
in a marriage custom of the Erza, of the Mordvins, in Russia. On the eve
of the wedding day the bridegroom’s family make ready for the bride. “A
thick candle, and several thinner ones, have ... been made ready for the
occasion. The bridegroom’s father lights the smaller ones before the
holy pictures [in use in families of the Greek Church], but sets up the
large one on the threshold. It is called ‘the house candle.’” The father
then prays for the new couple.[116]
A survival of an ancient Slavic custom, of covenanting together by
crossing together an altar fire, would also seem to exist in Russia in
the practices of young people at the “Midsummer Day” festival. A Russian
writer says of these festivals: “More than once have I had an
opportunity of being present at these nightly meetings, held at the end
of June, in commemoration of a heathen divinity. They usually take place
close to a river or pond; large fires are lighted, and over them young
couples, bachelors and unmarried girls, jump barefoot.”[117]
There is a custom of wooing among the Moksha, of the Mordvins, that
brings the threshold-altar idea into prominence. The parents of the
wooer first make gifts, at their home, to the household goddesses.
“These gifts consist of dough figures of domestic animals, which are
placed under the threshold of the house and of the outside gate, while
prayer is made to the goddesses and to deceased ancestors. The father
[of the bridegroom] then cuts off a corner of a loaf placed on the
table, and at the time of the offering scoops out the inside and fills
it with honey. At midnight he drives in profound secrecy to the house of
the bride elect, places the honeyed bread on the gate-post [of her
house], strikes the window with his whip, and shouts: ‘_Seta!_ I,
_Veshnak Mazakoff_, make a match between thy daughter and my son _Uru_.
Take the honeyed bread from thy gate-post, and pray.’”[118] The images
of domestic animals would here seem to stand for the slaughtered animals
formerly offered at the threshold altar; and the linking of the altars
of the two homes by offerings and prayer would seem to indicate the
desire for a sacred covenant. When the bride is received at the
bridegroom’s house, a notch is cut “with an ax in the door-post to mark
the arrival of a new addition to the family.”
Among the Erza, of the same province, the bride, on the day of “the
girl’s feast,” preceding her marriage, “takes mould [earth] from under
the threshold [of her parental home] with her finger-tips, and thrusts
it into her bosom,” as she goes out to seek a farewell blessing from her
friends. In the bridegroom’s home, meanwhile, a lighted candle is placed
on the threshold of the door; and, in some regions, when he and his
friends go to the bride’s house to bring her to his home, he and they
are met at the door by her parents with the covenanting bread and salt,
and the words, “Be welcome, come within.” As the bride is borne out of
her old home to go to her new one, she and her party “all halt and bow
to the gate, for there, or in the courtyard, is the abode of the god
that protects the dwelling-place. The following prayer is made to him:
‘_Kardas Sarks_, the nourisher, god of the house, do not abandon her
that is about to depart; always be near her just as thou art here.‘”
When she reaches her new home, she is carried (over the threshold), in
the arms of some of her party, into the house of the bridegroom,
carrying a lighted candle.[119]
The custom survived in portions of Scotland, as recently as the
beginning of this century, of lifting a bride over the threshold, or the
first step of the door. A cake of bread, prepared for the occasion, was,
at the same time, broken by the bridegroom’s mother over the head of the
bride. The bride was then led directly to the hearth, and the poker and
tongs, and sometimes the broom, were put into her hands “as symbols of
her office and duty.”
Lifting the bride over the threshold has been practiced in recent times,
in England, Ireland, and the United States.[120]
Both bride and bridegroom were carried, on the shoulders of their
elders, across the threshold of their new home, and laid on their bridal
bed, in the marriage ceremonies of some of the tribes of Central
America. And again the bridegroom carried his bride in this way.[121] In
either case, it was the crossing of the threshold without stepping on it
that was the thing aimed at.
5. LAYING FOUNDATIONS IN BLOOD.
In the building of a house, as a new home, the prominence given to the
laying of the threshold, or to its dedicating by blood, is another
indication, or outcome, of its altar-like sacredness. In Upper Syria a
sacrifice is often made at the beginning of the building of a new house,
and again at the first crossing of its threshold. “When a new house is
built,” among the Metâwileh, “the owner will not reside in it until,
with certain formalities, a black hen has been carried several times
round the house and slaughtered within the door,” as if in covenant
dedication of the house.[122]
Among the Copts in Egypt, when the threshold of a new house is laid, the
owner slaughters a sheep or a goat on the threshold, and steps over the
blood, as if in covenant for himself and his household with Him to whom
all blood, as life, belongs. Then he divides the sacrificed victim among
his neighbors; and they in turn come and step across the blood on the
threshold, invoking as they do so a blessing on the new house and its
owner, while coming into covenant with him.[123]
The foundation-stone of a new building is, in a sense, the threshold of
that structure. Hence to lay the foundations in blood is to proffer
blood at the threshold. Traces of this custom are to be found in the
practices or the legends of peoples wellnigh all the world over.[124]
Apparently the earlier sacrifices were of human beings.[125] Later they
were of animals substituted for persons. The idea seems to have been
that he who covenanted by blood with God, or with the gods, when his
house, or his city, was builded, was guarded, together with his
household, while he and they were dwellers there; but, if he failed to
proffer a threshold sacrifice, his first-born, or the first person who
crossed the bloodless threshold, would be claimed by the ignored or
defied deity.
There is, indeed, a suggestion of this idea in the curse pronounced by
Joshua, when he destroyed the doomed city of Jericho, against him who
should rebuild its walls, he not being in covenant with and obedient to
the Lord. “Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and
buildeth this city Jericho: with the loss of his firstborn shall he lay
the foundation thereof, and with the loss of his youngest son shall he
set up the gates of it.”[126] A later record tells of the fulfilment of
this curse. It says of the reign of Ahab: “In his days did Hiel the
Bethel-ite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof with the loss
of Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof with the loss of
his youngest son Segub; according to the word of the Lord, which he
spake by the hand of Joshua the son of Nun.”[127]
Human sacrifices, in order to furnish blood at the foundations of a
house, or of a public structure, have been continued down to recent
times, or to the present, in some portions of the world; and there are
indications in popular tradition that they were frequent in a not remote
past.
It is said that at the building of Scutari, in Asia Minor, “the workmen
were engaged on its fortifications for three years, but the walls would
not stand. Then they protested that the only possible way to succeed was
to lay under or in them a living human being. They accordingly laid hold
of a young woman who brought them dinner, and immured her.”[128]
According to a story in China, when the bridge leading to the site of
St. John’s College, in Shanghai, was in process of building, an official
present took off his shoes, as indicating his rank, and threw them into
the stream, in order to stay the current, and enable the workmen to lay
the foundations. Finding this unavailing, he took off his garments and
threw them in. Finally he threw himself in, and as his life went out the
workmen were enabled to go on with their building. To this day the
belief is general that that structure stands fast because of this
sacrifice.[129]
“When the walls of Algiers were built of blocks of concrete [by
Muhammadans], in the sixteenth century, a Christian captive named
Geronimo was placed in one of the blocks and the rampart built over and
about him. Since the French occupation of Algiers a subsidence in the
wall led to an examination of the blocks, and one was found to have
given way. It was removed, and the cast of Geronimo was discovered in
the block. The body had gone to dust, and the superincumbent weight had
crushed in the stone sarcophagus.”[130]
A story told among the Danes is, that “many years ago, when the ramparts
were being raised round Copenhagen, the wall always sank, so that it was
not possible to get it to stand firm. They therefore took a little
innocent girl, placed her in a chair by a table, and gave her playthings
and sweetmeats. While she thus sat enjoying herself, twelve masons built
an arch over her, which, when completed, they covered with earth to the
sound of drums and trumpets. By this process the walls were made
solid.”[131]
“Thuringian legend declares that to make the castle of Liebenstein fast
and impregnable, a child was bought for hard money of its mother, and
walled in. It was eating a cake while the masons were at work, the story
goes, and it cried, ‘Mother, I see thee still;’ then later, ‘Mother, I
see thee a little still;’ and as they put in the last stone, ‘Mother,
now I see thee no more.’”[132]
A similar story is told of a Slavic town on the Danube. A plague
devastated it, and it was determined to build it anew, with a new
citadel. “Acting on the advice of their wisest men, they sent out
messengers before sunrise one morning in all directions, with orders to
seize upon the first living creature they should meet. The victim proved
to be a child (_Dyetina_, archaic form of _Ditya_), who was buried alive
under the foundation-stone of the new citadel. The city was on that
account called Dyetinets [or Detinetz], a name since applied to any
citadel.”[133]
It is even said that “when, a few years ago, the Bridge Gate of the
Bremen city walls was demolished, the skeleton of a child was found
imbedded in the foundations.”[134]
A Scottish legend tells that St. Columba found himself unable to build a
cathedral on the island of Iona unless he would secure its stability and
safety by the blood of a human sacrifice. Thereupon he took his
companion, Oran, and buried him alive at the foundations of the
structure, having no trouble after that.[135]
And it is said that under the walls of the only two round towers of the
ancient Irish examined, human skeletons were found buried.[136]
Until the transfer of Alaska to the United States, in 1867, by the
Russian government, human sacrifices at the foundation of a new house
were common in that portion of America. The ceremonies are thus
described by one familiar with them: “The rectangular space for the
building is ... cleared, a spot for the fireplace designated, and four
holes dug, wherein the corner posts are to be set.... A slave, either
man or woman who has been captured in war or is even a descendant of
such a slave, is blindfolded and compelled to lie down face uppermost,
in the place selected for the fireplace [the site of the domestic
altar]. A sapling is then cut, laid across the throat of the slave, and,
at a given signal, the two nearest relatives of the host sit upon the
respective ends of the sapling, thereby choking the unhappy wretch to
death. But the corner posts must receive their baptism; so four slaves
are blindfolded, and one is forced to stand in each post-hole, when, at
a given signal, a blow on the forehead is dealt with a peculiar club
ornamented with the host’s coat of arms.” It is said that even to the
present time, on the building of a house in Alaska, “the same ceremonies
are enacted, with the exception of the sacrifices, which are prevented
by the United States authorities.”[137]
In Hindoostan, Burmah, Tennasserin, Borneo, Japan, Galam, Yarriba,
Polynesia, and elsewhere, there are modern survivals of this
foundation-laying in blood.[138] It would seem, indeed, to have been
wellnigh universal as a primitive usage.
Popular ballads give other indications of such customs, in various
lands. “In a song, of which there are several versions, of the building
of the bridge of Arta, it is told how the bridge fell down as fast as it
was built, until at last the master-builder dreamed a dream that it
would only stand if his own wife were buried alive in the foundations.
He therefore sends for her, bidding her dress in festival attire, and
then finds an excuse to make her descend into the central pile,
whereupon they heap the earth over her, and thus the bridge stands
fast.”[139]
“In another song the same story is told of the Bridge of Tricha, with
the difference only that it is a little bird that whispers in the
architect’s ear how the pile may be made to stand. A similar
superstition connected with the building of the monastery Curtea de
Argest, in Wallachia, forms the subject of a fine poem by the Roumanian
poet Alexandri.”[140]
There is an indication of a like custom among the Vlachs in Turkey, as
shown in their folk-poetry. The ballad of the “Monastery of Argis” tells
of such an incident, in which the master-builder Manoli plays a
part.[141]
Various substitutes for human offerings at the laying of a
foundation-stone, or a threshold, have been adopted in different
countries. Thus, in modern Greece, “after the ground has been cleared
for the foundations of a new house, the future owner, his family, and
the workmen attend, together with the _pappas_ [the priest] in full
canonicals, accompanied by incense, holy water, and all due accessories.
A prayer is said, and those present are aspersed, and the site is
sprinkled with the consecrated water. Then a fowl or a lamb, which you
have noticed lying near with the feet tied together, is taken by one of
the workmen, killed and decapitated, the _pappas_ standing by all the
while, and even giving directions; the blood is then smeared on the
foundation-stone, in the fulfilment of the popular adage that ‘there
must be blood in the foundation.’”[142]
The modern Greek term for this ceremony, _stoicheionein_, would seem to
indicate a sacrifice to the deity of the threshold, or the foundation.
“The Bulgarians, it is said, when laying a house foundation, take a
thread, and measure the shadow of some casual passer-by. The measure is
then buried under the foundation-stone, and it is expected that the man
whose shadow has been thus treated will soon become but a shade
himself.... Sometimes a victim is put to death on the occasion; the
foundations being sprinkled with the blood of a fowl, or a lamb, or some
other species of scapegoat.”[143]
Among the Russian peasants the idea prevails that the building of a new
house “is apt to be followed by the death of the head of the family for
which the new dwelling is constructed, or that the member of the family
who is the first to enter it will soon die. In accordance with a custom
of great antiquity, the oldest member of a migrating household enters
the new house first; and in many places, as, for instance, in the
Government of Archangel, some animal is killed and buried on the spot on
which the first log or stone is laid.”[144]
The “upper corner” of a house, in Russia, is peculiarly sacred, having
even more honor than the doorway threshold in the ordinary home. Yet
this upper corner seems to be in a sense the real threshold, or
foundation corner, of the building. A cock is the ordinary victim
sacrificed “on the spot which a projected house is to cover.” The head
of this cock is buried “exactly where the ‘upper corner’ of the building
is to stand.” And this corner is thenceforward a sacred corner. Opposite
to it is the stove. It is called the “great” and the “beautiful” corner.
The family meal is eaten before it, and every one who enters the cottage
makes obeisance toward it. Formerly ancestral images are supposed to
have been in that corner, and now holy pictures are there.[145] It would
seem to be in accordance with this idea that the foundation-stone, or
threshold, of a new building, which in civilized lands is now laid with
imposing ceremonies, is known as the “corner-stone.” Yet the
“corner-stone” of a modern building is sometimes at the corner of the
central doorway.[146]
It is worthy of note that in ancient Egypt the one door of an ordinary
dwelling-house was placed at one side, or end, of the front wall, and
not in the center; so that the corner-stone of the building was
literally a portion of the threshold.[147] The same was true of many an
old-time New England house; the “front door” was at the left-hand side
(as one approached the house) of the gable end. Thus the threshold of
the door was often the corner-stone.
Ancient Romans were accustomed to place statues and images, instead of
living persons, under the foundations of their buildings, as has been
shown by recent researches in and about Rome.[148] In one instance,
where a fine statue of colossal size and in perfect preservation was
unearthed, at the foundations of a convent which was being enlarged, “by
order of the monks, it was buried again,” as if in deference to the
primitive belief that it was essential to the stability of the
structure.[149]
There is a Swedish tradition “that under the altar in the first
Christian churches a lamb was usually buried, which imparted security
and duration to the edifice.”[150] And, “according to Danish accounts, a
lamb was buried under every altar, and a living horse was laid in every
churchyard before a human corpse was laid in it. Both lamb and horse are
to be seen occasionally in the church- or grave-yard, and betoken death.
Under other houses pigs and hens were buried alive.”[151]
A new sacrificial stone, or altar of sacrifice, laid on the summit of a
Mexican temple, in 1512, was consecrated by Montezuma by the blood of
more than twelve thousand captives.[152]
When the new railroad was built between Jaffa and Jerusalem, a few years
ago, there were sacrifices of sheep at its beginning. And there were
similar sacrifices at the foundations of the Turkish building, at the
Columbian Exposition at Chicago.
In all these facts or legends, blood on the threshold of the building,
in the foundation-stones of the structure, is shown to have been deemed
an essential factor in a covenant with, or in propitiation of, the deity
of the place.
6. APPEALS AT THE ALTAR.
Because the threshold is recognized as an altar, nearness to the altar
is nearness to God, or to the gods worshiped at that altar. Hence
appeals are made and justice is sought at the gate, or at the threshold,
as in the presence of deity.
To present one’s self at the tent doorway, or to lay hold of the
supports, or cords, at the entrance of an Arab’s “house of hair,” is
recognized as an ever-effective appeal for hospitality in the East. Even
an enemy can thus secure the protection of the home sanctuary.[153]
In the excavation of Tell-el-Hesy, in Southwestern Palestine, supposed
to cover the remains of ancient Lachish,[154] Dr. Petrie discovered
various ornamented door-jambs. In one case a simple volute on a pilaster
slab suggested to Dr. Petrie “a ram’s horn nailed up against a wooden
post;” and “he sees in this the origin of the type of the ‘horns of the
altar,’[155] so often mentioned in temple architecture.”[156] If Dr.
Petrie be correct in this thought, the horns of the altar were first of
all at the house doorway, above the threshold altar.
One of the fundamental laws of the Afghans makes it incumbent on a host
to “shelter and protect any one who in extremity may flee to his
threshold, and seek an asylum under his roof.” Property or life must be
sacrificed in his behalf, if need be. “As soon as you have crossed the
threshold of an Afghan you are sacred to him, though you were his deadly
foe, and he will give up his own life to save yours.” A favorite poem of
the Afghan, entitled, “Adam Khan and Durkhani,” tells of a son who
killed his father because that father had betrayed a refugee who sought
the sanctuary of his threshold. And all Afghans honor the memory of that
son.[157]
Among the Arabs of the Syrian desert, when a man would leave his own
tribe and join himself to another, he takes a lamb or a goat with him,
and presents himself at the entrance of the tent of the shaykh of the
tribe he would find a home in. Slaying the animal there, and allowing
its blood to run out on the ground at the threshold of the tent, he
makes his appeal to the shaykh to accept him as a member of his tribe,
or as a son by adoption. And this appeal has peculiar force, as a voice
by blood.[158]
When a man among these tribes is in peril of his life, pursued by an
enemy, he can similarly make an appeal for sanctuary at the threshold
altar of a shaykh’s tent, with a like outpouring of the blood of an
animal brought by him; and protection must be granted him by the shaykh.
It is as though he had laid hold of the “horns of the altar.” So, again,
when a man would be reconciled with an enemy who has cause for bitter
hostility, he goes to the tent of that enemy and sacrifices an animal at
the threshold, with an appeal for forgiveness. This offering of a
threshold sacrifice secures his safety.
In other portions of Arabia this same idea finds a different but similar
expression. “With bare and shaven head the offender appears at the door
of the injured person, holding a knife in each hand, and, reciting a
formula provided for the purpose, strikes his head several times with
the sharp blades. Then drawing his hands over his bloody scalp, he wipes
them on the door-post. The other must then come out and cover the
suppliant’s head with a shawl [covering the offense, in covering the
offender], after which he kills a sheep, and they sit down together at a
feast of reconciliation.”[159]
A record on a Babylonian clay tablet, of the twenty-eighth year of
Nebuchadrezzar, affirms that “on the second day of the month of Ab” a
certain “Imbiʿa shall bring his witness to the gate of the house of the
chief Bel-iddin, and let him testify” as to a certain matter.[160] The
gate of the chief man, or local magistrate, would here seem to have been
the recognized court of justice.
In the palace ruins at Persepolis and Susa, the great doorways show, in
their architecture, the influence of Babylonia, Assyria, and Egypt. And
in the relief sculpture of those doorways there is seen a representation
of “the king sitting on his throne rendering justice at his palace
gate.”[161]
At one of the gates of modern Cairo, the writer has seen a venerable
Arab sitting in judgment on a case submitted to him by the contestants.
And such a scene may be often witnessed at the gates of an Oriental
city.
In accordance with this primitive idea, it became a custom in India for
one who would obtain justice from another to seat himself at the door of
a house, or a tent, and refuse to move from that position until he
starved to death, unless his claim were heeded. If the suitor died at
the door, or the household altar, the sin of his death rested upon the
householder. The suitor’s blood cried out against the evil-doer.
Even to the present time appeals at the household altar are made in
blood, in portions of India. A case recently before the British court in
Kathiawar involved an illustration of such an appeal. One of the
Charaus, a caste of heralds, had become responsible with his life,
according to custom, for the repayment of a loan made to a land owner.
The land owner delayed payment, and seemed disposed to avoid it. “The
herald and his brother, with their old mother for a sacrifice, went to
the door of the debtor’s house and demanded payment, as their family
honor was at stake. When the land owner would not pay, the herald struck
off the head of his mother with his sword before the door, the brother
at the same time wounded (intending to kill) the debtor, and the two
brothers sprinkled the mingled blood of the sacrifice on the
householder’s door-posts. The land owner, smitten by public infamy and
the guilt of the matricide, starved himself to death.”[162] References
to this responsibility of the heralds are found in the Mahabharata.[163]
Even where the primitive custom of sacrificing at the doorway has died
out, there sometimes seems to be a survival of it in popular
phraseology. Talcott Williams, of Philadelphia, relates an incident of
his experiences in Morocco, which illustrates this. He says: “As I was
riding through the Soko at Tangier on a morning in June, 1889, a servant
stopped me, and said: ‘Four men, from near Azila (a town on the seacoast
of Morocco, about thirty miles away), are waiting for you at the gate of
the house of Mr. Perdicarus, and they have killed a sheep.’ ‘What have
they killed a sheep for?’ said I. ‘Oh!’ said the servant, ‘I don’t mean
that they have actually killed a sheep, but they are sitting at the
gate, asking for your help, and expect you to aid them in their trouble,
because they have heard that you have influence with the American
consul, and are a man of importance in your own country, and we call
that “killing a sheep.”’ I think he added ‘at the gate,’ but my memory
is not perfectly clear at this point. I rode on to the house of my
friend, where I was stopping, and found there the kinsman of a sheikh,
who had been imprisoned by the American consul. They seized my horse’s
bridle, and, with the usual Oriental signs of respect, refused to let me
dismount until I had heard them and their plea for help.
“I was told by my own servant and the other Orientals there, that this
plea ‘at the gate,’ accompanied as it was by the readiness to ‘kill a
sheep,’ was one which no man in Morocco would dream of disregarding. I
made some inquiry on the subject afterwards, and found that the habit of
sitting at the gate waiting for a man of supposed influence or
authority, while absent, to return to his house, often actually
accompanied, though less frequently at present, by the slaughter of a
sheep, whose blood is poured across the road over which he must pass,
was a form used only in cases of dire necessity, and one to which a man
with whom other pleas would avail nothing, felt compelled to give
attention. I am glad to add that in my own case this ancient rite was
not without its fruits to those who had used it.”[164]
See the Bible references to this idea. Moses stood “in the gate of the
camp,” at a crisis hour in Israel’s history, when he would execute
judgment in the Lord’s cause.[165] All Israel was aroused to do judgment
against the sinning Benjamites because of the appeal of the dying woman
who fell at the door of the house, “with her hands upon the
threshold.”[166] Boaz “went up to the gate,” to meet the elders there,
when he would covenant to do justice by Ruth and the kinsman of
Naomi.[167] Absalom sat in “the way of the gate” when he would show
favor to those who came there with their appeals for justice.[168] And
when Absalom was dead, David as king was again sitting in the gate.[169]
Zedekiah, the king of Judah, was sitting in the gate of Benjamin when
Ebed-melech appealed to him in behalf of Jeremiah.[170] Daniel’s post of
honor in Babylon was “in the gate of the king,” as a judge in the king’s
name.[171]
Wisdom, personified, says of him who would seek help where it is to be
obtained:
“Blessed is the man that heareth me,
Watching daily at my gates,
Waiting at the posts of my doors.”[172]
The Lord’s call to Israel, through the prophets, was: “Establish
judgment in the gate,”[173] and “Execute the judgment of truth and peace
in your gates.”[174] A reference to a just and righteous man is to “him
that reproveth in the gate.”[175]
Lazarus in his need is laid daily at the gate of the rich Dives, seeking
help.[176] So, again, the poor man who was a cripple from his birth was
“laid daily at the door of the temple ... called Beautiful, to ask alms
of them that entered into the temple.”[177]
It is written in the Mosaic law, that, when a bondman would bind himself
and his family in permanent servitude to his loved master, “his master
shall bring him unto God [or to the place of judgment and of covenant],
and shall bring him to the door, or unto the door-post; and his master
shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall [thenceforward]
serve him forever;”[178] or, as it is elsewhere said, the master shall
thrust the awl “through his ear, unto [or into] the door.”[179] Here,
apparently, the master and servant appeal together at the household
altar, in witness of their sacred covenant.
The high court of Turkey is still called the “Sublime Porte,” the
“Exalted Gateway;” and the subjects of the Sultan seek imperial favor at
his palace door. He, or his representative, administers justice there,
to those who are waiting at his gate.
A promise to Abraham was: “Thy seed shall possess the gate of his
enemies.”[180] And again Jesus says of his Church, that “the gates of
Hades shall not prevail against it.”[181] In both these cases “gates”
are obviously equivalent to the power of those who are within the gates.
Thus, also, when the overthrow of a city is foretold in prophecy, it is
said, that “the gate is smitten with destruction.”[182]
7. COVENANT TOKENS ON THE DOORWAY.
Because the threshold of the doorway is the primitive altar of the
household, the doorway itself is, as it were, a framework above the
altar; and the side-posts and lintel of the doorway fittingly bear
tokens or inscriptions in testimony to the sacredness of the passage
into the home sanctuary. It would seem that originally the blood poured
out in sacrifice on the threshold was made use of for marking the
door-posts and lintel with proofs of the covenant entered into between
the in-comer and the host; and that afterwards other symbols of life,
and appropriate inscriptions, were substituted for the blood itself.
There are survivals in the East, at the present time, of the original
method of blood-marking the frame of the doorway; and there are traces
of its practice in ancient times in both the East and the West.
President Washburn, of Robert College, Constantinople, says:[183] “I
remember, after the great fire in Stamboul, in 1865, going over the
ruins, and coming to a house that the fire had spared; a sheep had been
sacrificed on the threshold, and a hand dipped in the blood and struck
upon the two door-posts.”
This appears, also, in the installing of a Chief Rabbi in modern
Jerusalem. In the welcome to the Hakham Bâshi, or the “First in
Zion,”[184] “the multitude of those gathered together accompany him to
his house, but before he sets the sole of his foot upon the threshold of
the outer gate [or court] one of the shokheteem [or official
slaughterers] slays a perfect beast, and pronounces the sacrificial
blessing, and all those present answer, Amen. Then the rabbi, the Hakham
Bâshi, steps over the beast which has been slain, and the shokhet dips
the two palms of his hands into the blood, and marks first the vessels
of the rabbi’s house. And, with his hands stained with blood, he forms
the semblance of a hand above the lintel of the door;–in their trust
that this thing is good [the proper thing] for the evil eye;–and the
flesh of the beast they distribute to the poor.”[185]
A custom in this same line is noted among the Jews in Morocco, in
connection with wedding observances. “Whilst the bullock, or other
animal, is being slaughtered for the evening’s festivities, a number of
boys dip their hands in the blood, and make an impression of an
outspread hand on the door-posts and walls of the bride’s house;”
supposedly “for the purpose of keeping off the ‘evil eye,’ and thus
ensuring good luck to the newly married couple.”[186]
There are indications of such a custom in ancient times. Layard says of
his researches in Assyria: “On all the slabs forming entrances in the
oldest palaces of Nimroud, were marks of a black fluid resembling blood,
which appeared to be daubed on the stone. I have not been able to
ascertain the nature of this fluid; but its appearance cannot fail to
call to mind the Jewish ceremony of placing the blood of the sacrifice
on the lintel of the doorway.”[187]
In ancient Egypt there were inscriptions, together with the name of the
owner, on the side-posts and lintels of the dwellings. “Besides the
owner’s name,” says Wilkinson,[188] “they sometimes wrote a lucky
sentence over the entrance of the house, for a favorable omen, as ‘The
Good Abode,’ the _múnzel mobárak_ of the modern Arabs, or something
similar; and the lintels and imposts of the doors in the royal mansions
were frequently covered with hieroglyphics, containing the ovals and
titles of the monarch. It was, perhaps, at the dedication of the house,
that these sentences were affixed; and we may infer, from the early
mention of this custom among the Jews, that it was derived from
Egypt.”[189]
When it is understood that the inscribing, on the doorways, of
dedications to protecting deities, was common among primitive peoples,
it would seem to be in accordance with that custom that the Hebrews were
commanded to dedicate their doorways to the one living God. It is said
of the words of the covenant of God with his people, as recorded in
Deuteronomy 6 : 4–9 and 11 : 13–21, “Thou shalt write them upon the door
posts of thy house, and upon thy gates.” To this day, among stricter
Jews, these covenant words inscribed on parchment, and enclosed in a
cylinder of glass, or a case of metal or of wood, are affixed to the
side-posts of every principal door in the house. This case and
inscription are called the “mezuza.” On the outside of the written
scroll, the divine name, _Shaddai_,–“the Almighty,”–is so inscribed that
it may be in sight through an opening in the case or cylinder. This name
stands for “the Guardian of the dwellings of Israel,” whose protection
is thus invoked above the primitive altar of the household on the
threshold of the entrance way.[190]
“Every pious Jew, as often as he passes the mezuza, touches the divine
name with the finger of his right hand, puts it to his mouth and kisses
it, saying in Hebrew, ‘The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy
coming in, from this time forth, and for evermore;’[191] and when
leaving on a business expedition he says, after touching it, ‘In thy
name, _kuzu bemuchsaz kuzu_ (=God), I go out and shall prosper.’”[192]
In some cases the covenant words are inscribed directly upon the
door-posts, instead of being written on parchment and enclosed in a
case.
On the lintels of the ancient synagogues in Palestine there were
sculptured symbolic figures, such as the paschal lamb, a pot of manna, a
vine, or a bunch of grapes, together with inscriptions; and the
door-posts were ornamented more or less richly.[193] Evidences of this
are still abundant.
Speaking of the writing over the door and all round the room at the
office of the consul in Sidon, Dr. Thomson says that Muhammadans “never
set up a gate, cover a fountain, build a bridge, or erect a house,
without writing on it choice sentences from the Koran, or from their
best poets. Christians also do the same.”[194] These writings are deemed
a protection against harm from evil spirits.
In Persia, both the Muhammadans and the Armenians inscribe passages from
their sacred books above their doorways, with ornamental adornings, in
“strange, fantastic patterns.”[195] The palace doorways in ancient
Persia were inscribed and ornamented in a high degree.[196]
At the present time, in China, coins are put under the door-sill at the
time of its laying, and charms are fastened above the door;[197] the
gods of the threshold are invoked at the doorway by shrines and
inscriptions, while sentences, as in ancient Egypt, are written on the
side-posts and lintel.[198] At the festival of the fifth month of the
Chinese year, “charms, consisting of yellow paper of various sizes, on
which are printed images of idols, or of animals, or Chinese characters,
are pasted upon the doors and door-posts of houses, in order to expel
evil spirits.” In times of pestilence, sentences written in human blood
are fastened on the door-posts for protection from disease.[199]
Describing a ceremony on a large Chinese junk when starting out on a
long voyage, an observer tells of the sacrifice of a fowl in honor of
the divinity called Loong-moo, or the Dragon’s Mother. A temporary altar
was erected at the bow of the vessel, as its beginning, or threshold,
and the blood of the sacrificed fowl was shed there. Pieces of silver
paper were “sprinkled with the blood [of the fowl], and then fastened to
the door-posts and lintels of the cabin.”[200] The cabin door is the
home door of the voyager.
Above the house door of almost every home, in large portions of Japan,
there is suspended the shimenawa, or a thin rope of rice straw, which is
one of the sacred symbols of ancient Shintoism. Above the doors of high
Shinto officials, this symbol is of great size and prominence. Its
presence is as a sign of a covenant with the gods.[201]
The Greeks certainly recognized the entrance of the house as the place
for an altar to the protecting deity. “Before each house stood, usually,
its own peculiar altar of Apollo Agyieus, or an obelisk rudely
representing the god himself;” and that over the house door, “for good
luck,” or as a talisman, “an inscription was often placed.”[202] And on
occasions, as when a bride entered her husband’s house, the doorway was
“ornamented with festive garlands.”[203] Theocritus refers to a Greek
custom of smearing the side-posts of the gateway with the juice of magic
herbs, as a method of appeal to the guardian deity to influence the
heart of the dweller within toward the suppliant at the door.[204]
Roman householders affixed to the lintels and side-posts of their doors
the spoils and trophies taken by them in battle. Branches, and wreaths
of bay and laurel, were hung by them in the doorway on a marriage
occasion; and lamps and torches were displayed at their doors at other
times of rejoicing; while cypresses were shown there at the time of a
death.[205]
Texts of Scripture, and other inscriptions, as a means of invoking a
blessing at the doorway, are frequently found at the present time above
the entrance of houses in South Germany.
In Central America and in South America the blood of sacrificial
offerings was smeared on the doorways of houses as well as of temples,
as a means of covenanting with the local deities. Illustrations of this
are found in the records and remains of Peru[206] and Guatemala.[207]
In both Europe and America, the practice of nailing horseshoes on the
side-posts of a doorway, for “good luck,” or as a means of guarding the
inmates of the house from evil, is very common. So lately as the
seventeenth century it was said: “Most houses of the West End of London
have the horseshoe on the threshold.”[208] Even at the threshold of
Christian churches, in recent years, the symbol of the horseshoe was to
be found as a means of protection.[209] The horseshoe is often to be
found on a ship’s mast. At the present time, horseshoes of various
sizes, for use as doorway guards against evil, are found on sale in
Philadelphia, and other centers of civilization.
8. SYMBOL OF THE RED HAND.
It would seem that, in primitive practice, the hand of the covenanter
dipped in the sacrificial blood on the threshold, and stamped on the
door-posts and lintel, was the sign-manual of the covenant between the
contracting party or parties, and God, or the gods, invoked in the
sacrifice. Illustrations of this custom, as still surviving in the East,
have been given, from Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Morocco.[210]
Naturally, therefore, the sign-manual by itself came to stand for, or to
symbolize, the covenant of the threshold altar; and the stamp of the red
hand became a token of trust in God or the gods covenanted with in
sacrifice, and of power or might resulting from this covenant relation.
Wherever the red hand was shown, or found, it was a symbol of covenant
favor with Deity, and it came to be known, accordingly, as the “hand of
might.”
In the region of ancient Babylonia, also, the red-hand stamp is still to
be seen on houses and on animals, apparently as the symbol of their
covenant consecration by their owner. Dr. Hilprecht says: “Over all the
doors of the rooms in the large khan of Hillah, on the Euphrates, partly
built upon the ruins of ancient Babylon, I noticed the red impression of
an outspread hand, when I was there in January, 1889. Several white
horses in our caravan from Bagdâd to Nippur had the stamp of a red hand
on their haunches.”
This symbol is much used in Jerusalem. Referring to its frequency, Major
Conder says: “The ‘hand of might’ is another Jewish belief which may be
supposed to have an Aryan origin. This hand is drawn on the lintel or
above the arch of the door. Sometimes it is carved in relief, and before
one house in the Jews’ quarter, in Jerusalem, there is an elaborate
specimen, carefully sculptured and colored with vermilion. Small glass
charms, in the form of the hand, are also worn, and the symbol is
supposed to bring good luck. The Jewish and Arab masons paint the same
mark on houses in course of construction; and, next to the
seven-branched candlestick, it is probably the commonest house-mark in
Jerusalem.”[211]
A Jerusalem Jew thus tells of its use among a portion of his
co-religionists in that city: “Our brethren the Sephardeem [the Spanish
Jews], like all the remnant of the sons of the East, consider the
semblance of a hand as good against the power of the evil eye in a man.
And they draw this shape upon the doors of their houses with a red
finger. So, too, they place upon the heads of their children a hand
wrought in silver, saying that this hand–or this picture of the five
fingers–is noxious to the man who delights to bring the evil upon the
child, or upon those dwelling in the house. So, again, when men quarrel,
the one sets his five fingers before the other’s evil eye, saying that
this sign neutralizes the evil.”[212]
This sign of the hand is “found on the houses of Jews, Muslims, and
Christians, in various parts of Palestine.” It is generally painted on
or above the door, often in blue; but frequently, especially when a Jew
or a Muhammadan enters a new house, a lamb is sacrificed at the door,
and the stamp of the hand in the fresh blood is affixed to the post or
to the walls.[213] No one claims to know the origin of this symbol, but
all recognize its importance.
In its ruder form the figure of the hand is much like a five-branched
candlestick. Indeed, it has sometimes been mistaken for that symbol.
This was the case when such a figure was noticed, not long ago, by Dr.
Noetling, on Jewish houses in Safed, and reported to a European journal.
This symbol is sometimes called the “Hand of Moses.” A similar figure on
Muslim houses is said to represent the “Hand of the Prophet;” while in
Syria, among Christians, it is called the _Kef Miryam_, the “Virgin
Mary’s Hand.”[214] Obviously these terms suggest the idea of power
through divinely derived strength.
One of the sights in the Mosk of St. Sophia, in Constantinople, is the
stamp of a red hand. It is said that when Sultan Muhammad II. entered
this sanctuary as a conqueror, he dipped his right hand in the blood of
the slaughtered Christians, and stamped it on the wall, as if to seal
his victory, and to pledge his covenant devotion to his God.[215]
Whether this story be fact or legend, it is a witness to the idea of
such a custom in the minds of Oriental peoples.
An open hand is, or was, a common symbol on a banner, as also on a
prayer-rug, in both Turkey[216] and Persia. At the annual festival in
Persia in commemoration of the death of Hossein, son of Alee, two large
banners, each surmounted with an open hand, are borne in front of the
representation of the tomb of Hossein; and the same symbol appears in
various ways during the celebration.[217]
“In the East Indies, to this day, the figure of a hand is the emblem of
power and governmental sway. When the Nabob of Arcot was the viceroy of
five provinces, if he appeared in public there were carried before him
certain little banners, each with a hand painted on it, and a larger
banner with five hands.”[218]
Siva, the destroyer, in the Hindoo triad, is also the re-creator; since
death is only the entrance into a new life. One of Siva’s well-known
symbols is a hand, which is a token of might and life.
The uplifted open hand was prominent on or above the doors in ancient
Carthage.[219] And a traveler in Northern Africa, writing of the Jews in
Tunis, near the site of Carthage, says: “What struck me most in all the
houses was the impression of an open bleeding hand on every wall of each
floor. However white the walls, this repulsive sign was to be seen
everywhere. A Jewess never goes out here without taking with her a hand
carved in coral or ivory–she thinks it a talisman against the ‘evil
eye,’ or ‘_mal occhio_.’... When his children’s pictures or horses are
praised, the Tunisian Jew extends his five fingers, or pronounces the
number ‘five;’ he tries by this means to prevent the praise doing
damage.”[220]
This symbol of the open hand is frequently found above the graves in the
vicinity of Tunis. It is also seen in old Jewish cemeteries in Europe,
as, for instance, in Prague.[221]
An open hand, in stone, or metal, or enamel, or bone, used as a talisman
or an amulet, to guard the wearer against evil, was in common use in
ancient Egypt. Specimens of these can be seen in museums in Europe and
America to-day.
It is a noteworthy fact that the uplifted hand is prominent in the
representation of the deities of Babylonia, Assyria, Phenicia, and
Egypt, especially of the gods of life, or of fertility, who have
covenant relations with men. And the same is true of the representations
of sovereigns, in the ancient East, who are supposed to be in peculiar
covenant relations with the gods.
Thus, on the seal of Ur-Gur, the earliest ruler of “Ur of the
Chaldees,”[222] the ruler and his attendants appear with uplifted hands
before the moon-god Sin, who in turn is represented with his hand
uplifted, as if he were making covenant with them.[223] It is the same
with the sun-god Shamash and his worshipers.[224]
When a king of ancient Babylon was recognized as having a right to the
throne, he must lift up his hand and clasp the hand of the image of
Bel-Merodach, in order to show that he had “become the adopted son of
the true ruler of the city.” This giving and taking of the hand was a
symbol of covenanting in Babylonia. In this way a child was adopted into
a family, and a husband and a wife covenanted to become one.[225]
The god Asshur, and his worshipers, kings or princes, are similarly
represented in Assyria with the hand uplifted. And it is the same there
with other deities and their worshipers.[226] In Phenicia, and its
colonies, the same idea has prominence.[227]
Deities of ancient Egypt are frequently represented with the uplifted
hand, and their accepted worshipers appear before them with the right
hand uplifted.[228] As showing that this is not the attitude of
supplication or of adoration, like the bowed form, the crossed arms, or
the upturned palms, it is to be noted that in the representation of
Amenophis IV., or Khuen-aten, with his family, before the aten-ra or the
solar disk, the worshipers stand with their right hands uplifted, while
the sun-god reaches down a series of open hands, as if in covenant
proffer to the uplifted hands below.[229]
In the county of Roscommon, in Ireland, there is a stone known as “a
druidical altar,” which the common people say was thrown there by the
giant Fin-mac-Coole, “the print of whose five fingers, they say, is to
be seen on it.” The hand-print is pointed to confidently as the proof of
authenticity, as if it were the veritable signature of the giant.[230]
Among the ruins in Central America, there were found at the doorways and
on the walls of many of the ruined buildings of Yucatan the stamp of a
red hand on the plaster or on the stone. “They were the prints of a red
hand, with the thumb and fingers extended, not drawn or painted, but
stamped by the living hand, the pressure of the palm upon the stone. He
who made it had stood before it alive, ... and pressed his hand,
moistened with red paint, hard against the stone. The seams and creases
of the palm were clear and distinct in the impression.” As showing the
idea prevalent among the natives of that region with reference to the
source and meaning of these signs-manual, the Indians of Yucatan said
that the stamp was of “the hand of the owner of the building,” as if he
had affixed it to his dwelling in token of his covenant with its
guardian deity; and, again, it was thought that “these impressions were
placed there in a formal act of consecration to the gods.”[231]
There is a clear recognition of this idea in many Bible references to
the lifting up of the hands unto God, as if in covenant relations with
him. Thus, Abraham says to the king of Sodom, “I have lift up my hand
unto the Lord;”[232] as if he would say, I have pledged myself to him. I
have given him my hand. And the Psalmist says: “I will lift up my hands
in thy name.”[233] God himself says, by his prophet: “I will lift up
mine hand to the nations;”[234] that is, I will covenant with them.[235]
And so in many another case. Indeed, the Assyrian word for swearing
(_nish_) is literally “lifting up the hand;”[236] and the Hebrew word
_nasa_ means to lift up the hand or to swear.[237] The uplifted hand in
a judicial oath seems to be a survival of the same thought, that an
appeal is thus made to God, as one’s covenant God.
Again, there may be a reference to the “hand of might” in a covenant
relation, in those passages where God is spoken of as bringing his
people out of Egypt by “a strong hand,” or “a mighty hand,” and as
dealing with them afterwards in the same way.[238]
An uplifted hand is a symbol found also on the stepped pyramid temples
of Polynesia.[239]
This sign of the red hand is still a familiar one among the aborigines
of America. It is stamped on robes and skins, and on Indian tents.[240]
Schoolcraft says of it: “The figure of the human hand is used by the
North American Indians to denote supplication to the Deity or Great
Spirit, and it stands in the system of picture-writing as the symbol for
strength, power, or mastery, thus derived [through a covenant relation].
In a great number of instances which I have met with of its being
employed, both in the ceremonial of their dances and in their pictorial
records, I do not recollect a single one in which this sacred character
is not assigned to it.”[241]
A frequent use of the hand-print among the American Indians is as “a
symbol applied to the naked body after its preparation and decoration
for sacred and festive dances.” These preparations are “generally made
in the arcanum of the medicine, or secret lodge, or some private place,
and with all the skill of the priest’s, the medicine-man’s, or the
juggler’s art. The mode of applying it in these cases is by smearing the
hand of the operator with white or colored clay, and impressing it on
the breast, the shoulder, or other part of the body. The idea is thus
conveyed that a secret influence, a charm, a mystic power, is given to
the dancer, arising from his sanctity, or his proficiency in the occult
arts.” Schoolcraft, speaking of this custom, says: “The use of the hand
is not confined to a single tribe or people. I have noticed it alike
among the Dacotah, the Winnebagoes, and other Western tribes, as among
the numerous branches of the red race still located east of the
Mississippi River, above the latitude of 42°, who speak dialects of the
Algonquin language.”[242]
Is there possibly any connection with this idea in the custom of “the
laying on of hands,” as a symbol of imparting virtue or power to one
newly in covenant relations with those who are God’s representatives, so
frequently referred to in the Bible?[243] This would seem to be
indicated by the power imparted to an Egyptian king by the touch of the
uplifted hand of the deity, as shown in the representations on the
monuments of Egypt. It was known as “the imposition of the Sa,” or
increased vitality.[244]
A remarkable illustration of the use of the red-hand print among
American Indians is given in the story of a famous Omaha chief, who,
when dying, enjoined it upon his followers to carry his body to a
prominent look-out bluff above the Missouri River, and bury him there,
full armed, on the back of his favorite war-horse, who was to be buried
alive, that he might watch from that place the passing of the whites up
and down the river. It would seem as if he wanted to be known as dying
in the faith of his covenant relations with the Great Spirit, for
himself and for his people.
Because of this request, in the presence of his assembled tribe “he was
placed astride his horse’s back, with his bow in his hand, and his
shield and quiver slung; with his pipe and his medicine bag; with his
supply of dried meat, and his tobacco pouch replenished; ... with his
flint and steel, and his tinder, to light his pipe by the way. The
scalps that he had taken ... were hung to the bridle of his horse. He
was in full dress and equipped; and on his head waved ... his beautiful
head-dress of the war-eagle’s plumes.” As he stood thus on the threshold
of the life beyond, when the last funeral honors were performed by the
medicine-men, “every warrior of his band painted the palm and fingers of
his right hand with vermilion, which was stamped and perfectly impressed
on the milk-white sides of his devoted horse,”–as if in covenant pledge
of fidelity to their chief in the sight of the Great Spirit.[245]
There is another phase of the red-hand symbolism among the American
Indians, which has been noted by Frank H. Cushing, who is so experienced
and careful an observer of their customs and ceremonies. This phase
connects the symbol directly with the idea of life and its transmission.
Mr. Cushing says:[246]
“By reference to the paintings (and writings, to some extent) of such
men as Catlin and Stanley, and to the works of Schoolcraft, Matthews,
Bourke, and others, you will find that the red-hand symbol was painted
on the lodges, sometimes on the clothing and person, and sometimes on
the shields of various of the hunter tribes of the plains,–as, for
example, of the Ioways, Sauks and Foxes, Sioux, Arickarees, Cheyennes,
Arapahos, and Comanches. Precisely what the significance of the symbol
was, with these peoples and others like them, I am not able to say, save
that in some cases it was connected with war, in others with treaties,
and in yet others as expressive of power. There were yet other meanings
attached to the sign; but neither the former significances nor these
latter were, I take it, as definite or fixed [with the hunter tribes] as
with the more advanced and settled tribes of the farther south.
“Of these tribes, the typical Pueblos and the peoples more or less
directly influenced by them–such as the Jicarillas on the north and
east, and the Apaches to the south and west[247]–made frequent use of
not only the red-hand symbol, but also of the black-hand symbol. I have
seen both, not only in the modern but also in the very ancient
pueblos–as those of the Pecos, and those of the great cliff-dweller
towns in the Chelly and other canyons. In the Pecos ruins, to give a
special example, I copied beautiful hand-paintings and prints from the
rafters, as well as from the walls of ordinary dwelling-rooms. Sometimes
these paintings were in red, but more often in black. They invariably
represented the hands of women, as could be seen by their delicacy and
smallness of outline and by their shapeliness. There was, I think, a
reason for this, which the following facts will explain.
“It was my good fortune to witness, early in the eighties, a ceremonial
celebrating the attainment to puberty, or womanhood, of a young girl of
the Jicarilla Apaches. The latter people are not to be confounded with
the Apaches proper. They are a mixed people, descended not only from the
Apaches, but also the Comanches, and in large part also from the Pueblos
of the north, the so-called Tañoans of whom the Pecos people were a
branch. It was clear from the character of the masks and other
paraphernalia used in the ceremonials I witnessed, that the latter were
almost, if not quite, wholly derived from the pueblo, rather than from
the wilder, ancestry of the Jicarillas who performed them.
“The ceremonial in question was performed by four medicine-men, or
priests, as one might call them, within and around a rectangular
enclosure of evergreen boughs set in the plain near to the village.
Inside of this enclosure, which was designed to screen from view the
more secret operations of the priest dancers in question, stood a little
conical skin lodge, the snow-white top of which appeared above the
screen of evergreen, and within which the young girl, over whom these
rites were being enacted, was ensconced, together with one or two old
women of the tribe. As I have said before, each of the priests, on
appearing (and this they did successively; that is, the first on the
first day, the second on the second day, and so on), wore a conical mask
or helmet, which entirely concealed, not only the face, but also the
head. This mask was painted black or red, and upon the face of it
appeared one of these hand symbols. Unfortunately, I did not see the
mask as worn by the first priest, but, as worn by the second priest on
the morning of the second day, it bore upon its face the symbol of the
red hand; and as worn upon the third day, this symbol recurred, but, if
I remember aright, was surrounded by an outline of another color, either
black or yellow, whilst the hand painted on the mask as worn on the
fourth day was black surrounded by white, that it might stand out more
conspicuously; and in turn, below it, were two or more dots alternating
with dotted circles.
“My means of communicating with these people were but limited, but on
learning that the ceremonials they were performing were designed to
celebrate the attainment to maturity, or womanhood, of a virgin, I had
little difficulty in understanding the significance of the succession of
these various hand symbols. I recognized in the ceremonial as a whole
the dramatic epitomization, to state it briefly, of the four ages of a
woman’s life. Thus the white hand (which I was told had been painted on
the mask of the first day) symbolized her infancy and girlhood, the
consummation of which was effected by the first day’s ceremonial
performed by the medicine-man of the white hand.
“The red hand was obviously significant of this girl’s attainment to
young womanhood, the color in this case symbolizing the blood of her
perfected life. I imagine that the black hand painted on the mask as
worn during the third day’s ceremonial was significant of not only the
betrothal of the girl, which was said to have taken place during that
day of the ceremonial, but also of her prospective maternity; the change
of color, in the hand, from red to black, being naturally a symbolic
representation of the change from red to black in blood that has been
exposed to the sunlight and dried, and has thus become black, and is no
longer virgin. Likewise the hand painted on the mask as worn during the
fourth day’s ceremonial, which was wholly black, doubtless represented
the fuller life of not only a matron but a grandmother. From this I
would infer that the signs of the red and black hands found in the
ruined pueblos like those of Pecos, and on the cliffs at the mouths of
caves, or in the houses of the cliff villages, symbolized respectively
virginity, and maternity or betrothal.
“What would seem to indicate the correctness of this conclusion is the
fact that, as I have mentioned before, there were below the signs of the
black hand of the last day’s ceremonial of the Jicarillas dots and
dotted circles. It is well known that these dots and dotted circles
represent, primarily, grains of corn, male and female; and, secondarily,
children, male and female. Their occurrence, then, below the painted
black hand or symbol of maternity, would indicate that in this case they
represented the children and perhaps grandchildren, male and female, of
the matron it was hoped this young girl might become.
“The hand symbol as occurring amongst the Zuñi, with whom, of course, I
am much more familiar, has not only some such significances as these,
but also many others,–the significance of a given symbol depending upon
the ceremonial with which it is associated, and particularly upon the
coloring which is given to it, the colors being as various as are the
well-known seven sacramental colors employed to symbolize the seven
regions of the world by the priesthood of these people.
“I will only add, that the hand symbol painted upon the walls of the
estufas, or Kiva temples, or upon the little sacred sand mounds, which
are made to symbolize mythic mountains of the six regions during the
ceremonials of initiation performed once every four years over the new
children of the pueblo, are designed to signify the various ritualistic
precepts which are taught to the children according as they are held to
pertain to one or another of these little sand mounds or so-called
mountains of generation.
“In the case above described I was told, although I did not myself see
it, that the symbol of the red hand was painted by the side of the
entrance to the little tent in which the girl sat through the
ceremonials, and that later the same symbol in black was added to the
other side of the entrance to this tent. In the case of the Pueblos the
position of the hand symbols depends, as, no doubt, you have already
inferred, upon the sort of ceremonial which is being performed in
connection with them.
“It would seem, however, that the placing of these symbols at the
_entrance_ of the cave villages would correspond to such usages as I
have above described as pertaining to the Jicarilla ceremonial, and that
the painting of them on the rafters of rooms in ancient pueblos had a
like connection; for it must be remembered that in the older pueblos
there were no doorways proper [hence no thresholds]. The rooms were
entered by means of ladders through scuttles in the roof.”[248]
A hand-print is a signature. A hand-print in blood is a pledge of life
in a sacred covenant. A hand-print in the blood of life is symbolic of a
covenant of life with a view to the transmission of life. When a woman
of Korea is married, she affixes her sign manual to the covenanting
contract by placing her hand on the paper and having “the outline drawn
round the fingers and wrist with a fine brush dipped in Chinese ink,” or
again she employs “the simpler process of smearing her hand with black
paint, and hitting the document with it.[249]
Formal documents have often been signed by a hand stamp, or a finger
stamp, in blood or in ink. The monks of the convent of St. Catharine at
Mt. Sinai, for instance, show a copy of the certificate of protection
given to them by the Prophet of Islam, the signature to which is an
impression of Muhammad’s open hand. A letter to Muhammad Issoof, from
the king of Mysore, in 1754, was sealed with the king’s seal, “and on
the back was stamped the print of a hand, a form equivalent, with the
Mysoreans, to an oath.”[250]
The very term “sign manual,” employed for a veritable signature, may
point to an origin in this custom. Indeed, may it not be that the large
red seal attached to important documents, at the present time, is a
survival of the signature and seal of the bloody hand?
9. DEITIES OF THE DOORWAY.
Originally the covenant sacrifice at the threshold was with the one God
of life. But as monotheism degenerated into polytheism, the idea came to
prevail of different deities in different portions of the door, or of
different deities in different districts of country or in different
offices of life.
Each gate of an Assyrian city was dedicated to a special god, and named
after it,–as the gate of Bel, the gate of Beltis, the gate of Anu, the
gate of Ishtar. At the entrance-way of every gate gigantic winged bulls
with human heads stood on guard, accompanied by winged genii.[251] And
the central doorway to the king’s palace was similarly guarded.[252] In
every house a special deity was appealed to at different portions of the
doorway; Nergal on the top of the wall and beneath the threshold; Ea and
Merodach in the passage to the right and left of the gate.[253]
The idea of an offering, or of a dedication, to the local divinity, at
the time the threshold is laid, is of wide acceptance. In India, “the
god Vāttu, or Vāttuma [a son of Vishnoo], is said to recline and live in
the threshold, changing his position every month.... On the day when the
door-frame and threshold of a new house or temple are fixed, the
_Vāttuma santhe_ [the tribute to Vāttuma] is offered.”[254]
In China, “Shintu and Yuhlui are named as two tutelar gods to whom the
guardianship of the house is entrusted; and either the names or
grotesque representations of these ‘gods of the threshold’ are at the
gate of the house, with shrines to them upon the left of the entrance
way.”[255]
It is said of these “Chinese gods of the threshold,” that “in full
stature, and presumably in primeval strength, they flank the doors of
monasteries and the entrances to the halls of justice. Much reduced in
size and perched high on shelves, they face each other in the vestibules
of the Chinese home; and in their most diminutive aspect they become
little images, occasionally two-headed, which are carried about the
person as charms, or hang from the eaves of Chinese houses.”[256]
Over the doors of almost all the houses of Japan are to be seen small
prints of the “gigantic _Ni-o_, the Booddhist Gog and Magog,” who are
supposed to guard the entrance way of the holy places.[257] Private
buildings as well as public need this spiritual protection.
The inscriptions at the doorways of the houses of ancient Egypt showed
that every building was “placed under the protection of a tutelary
deity.” This custom “is retained by the modern Egyptians in the
protecting genius said to preside over the different quarters of
Cairo.”[258]
Tertullian, a Christian Father who wrote before the close of the second
century, in warning believers against the seducements of idolatry,
emphasized the clustering of deities at the doors and gates in the
religions of Greece and Rome.[259] He says that “among the Greeks ... we
read of Apollo Thyræus (that is, of the door), and the Antelii (or,
Anthelii) demons, as presiders over entrances;” while among the Romans
there are other “gods of entrances; Cardea (Hinge-goddess), called after
hinges; and Forculus (Door-god) after doors; and Limentinus
(Threshold-god) after the threshold; and Janus (Gate-god) himself after
the gate.”
Although a Christian might not recognize these gods as gods, he is told
to beware lest he seem to give them honor by adorning his gates with
lamps or wreaths. “Indeed, a Christian will not even dishonor his own
gate with laurel crowns,” says Tertullian, “if so be he knows how many
gods the devil has attached to doors.” And his words of warning are:
“Since there are beings who are adored in entrances [doorways], it is to
them that both the lamps and laurels will pertain. To an idol you will
have done whatever you shall have done to an entrance [or doorway].” “If
you have renounced [heathen] temples, make not your own gate a [heathen]
temple.” Yet, in proof of the prevalence of this heathen custom among
Christians, Tertullian testifies: “‘Let your works shine,’ says He; but
now all our shops and gates shine! You will now-a-days find more doors
of heathens without lamps and laurel-wreaths than of Christians.”
In Guatemala, in Central America, “the god of houses” is called
Chahalka; and the blood of sacrifices to him is sprinkled on the door of
the houses as an assurance of his protection.[260]
It was much the same in the Old World as in the New. In ancient and in
modern times, and in widely different portions of the world, there are
indications that the threshold of the home was the primitive altar; and
that the side-posts and lintel of the doorway above the threshold bore
symbols or inscriptions in proof of the sacredness of the entrance to
the family home, and in token of an accomplished covenant with its
guardian God, or gods.
-----
Footnote 1:
See Trumbull’s _Blood Covenant_, passim.
Footnote 2:
See Trumbull’s _Blood Covenant_, pp. 191 f., 370; also Frazer’s
_Golden Bough_, I., 183–185.
Footnote 3:
These facts I have obtained at different times in personal
conversations with intelligent natives of Syria and of Egypt. It will
be seen, later, how they are verified in the record of similar customs
elsewhere.
Footnote 4:
See Hopkins’s _Religions of India_, p. 362 f.
Footnote 5:
_Ibid._, with references to Mahabharata, II., 21, 14, 53; X., 8, 10.
Footnote 6:
_Ibid._, with references to Laws of Manu, IV., 73, and to Gaut. 9 :
32.
Footnote 7:
John 10 : 1, 2, 9, 10.
Footnote 8:
See Lund’s _Every-day Life in Scandinavia in the Sixteenth Century_,
p. 16, with note 36; also, the _Njals Saga_.
Footnote 9:
See Smith’s _Dict. of Greek and Roman Antiq._, s. vv. “Athletae” and
“Olympic Games;” also Gardner’s _New Chapters in Greek History_, p.
299.
Footnote 10:
See London _Folk-Lore Journal_, I., 92.
Footnote 11:
These facts were given me by a member of the vice-consul’s family, who
witnessed the ceremony. The preparations were made before the arrival
of General Grant; and they were not prominent in the sight of himself
or party. They were simply the customs of the country.
Footnote 12:
Prof. A.H. Sayce, in London _Folk-Lore_, I., 523.
Footnote 13:
Comp. with p. 5, _supra_.
Footnote 14:
Comp. with p. 71 f., _infra_.
Footnote 15:
Bruce’s _Travels_, Bk. II., p. 514.
Footnote 16:
Baker’s _Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia_, p. 137; comp. 126 f.
Footnote 17:
On the testimony of a Liberian colored clergyman.
Footnote 18:
See, for example, Sir Robert Ker Porter’s _Travels_, p. 36 f.
Footnote 19:
Palgrave’s _Personal Narrative of a Journey through Central and
Eastern Arabia_, I., 51.
Footnote 20:
Conder’s _Heth and Moab_, pp. 290, 293.
Footnote 21:
D’Herbelot’s _Bibliothèque Orientale_, s. v. “Bab,” p. 157.
Footnote 22:
Roberts’s _Oriental Illus. of Scrip._, p. 149.
Footnote 23:
Morier’s _Second Journey through Persia_, p. 254.
Footnote 24:
Ralston’s _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 137.
Footnote 25:
On the testimony of a Finnish American.
Footnote 26:
Lund’s _Every-day Life in Scandinavia in the Sixteenth Century_, p. 12
f.
Footnote 27:
Jones and Kropf’s _Folk-Tales of Magyars_, p. 410, note.
Footnote 28:
_Ibid._, p. 410 f.
Footnote 29:
_Ibid._, p. 259.
Footnote 30:
_Fragmenta Philosophorum Græcorum_ (ed. Mullach), I., 510.
Footnote 31:
See “Marriage Customs of the Mordvins,” in London _Folk-Lore_, I.,
459, note; also, Bergeron’s “Voyage de Calpin,” cap. 10, cited in
Burder’s _Oriental Customs_ (2d ed.), p. 24.
Footnote 32:
Turner’s _Samoa_, p. 37.
Footnote 33:
See Maspero’s _Life in Ancient Egypt and Assyria_, pp. 195, 219.
Footnote 34:
Rawlinson’s _History of Herodotus_, II., 47, 48.
Footnote 35:
Mackay’s _Mackay of Uganda_, pp. 112 f., 177.
Footnote 36:
See “Sacred Laws of the Aryas,” II., 2, 4, in _Sacred Books of the
East_, II., 107.
Footnote 37:
“A _bali_ is an offering of any sort, such as a handful of rice, flung
to birds or spirits or waters, or to any supernatural beings. A
_mantra_ is a Vedic text, a verse muttered during a religious
ceremony; often used in incantations, or in legitimate services to a
god.”–PROF. DR. E.W. HOPKINS.
Footnote 38:
See “Sacred Laws of the Aryas,” V., 12, in _Sacred Books of the East_,
II., 200, 233.
Footnote 39:
See Sir Henry M. Elliot’s _Races of the Northwestern Provinces of
India_ (Beames’s ed.), I., 197.
Footnote 40:
See report of a meeting of the Bombay Anthropological Society, in
London _Folk-Lore Journal_, VI., p. 77.
Footnote 41:
Jones and Kropf’s _Folk-Tales of Magyars_, p. 410 f., note.
Footnote 42:
Leland’s _Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition_, p. 282.
Footnote 43:
_Ibid._, p. 321 f.
Footnote 44:
Jones and Kropf’s _Folk-Tales of Magyars_, p. 332 f.
Footnote 45:
Ralston’s _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 136 f.
Footnote 46:
See “Death Week in Russia,” in _The Spectator_ (London), for June 18,
1892.
Footnote 47:
Jones and Kropf’s _Folk-Tales of Magyars_, p. 332.
Footnote 48:
On the testimony of a native Roumanian.
Footnote 49:
See, for example, Turner’s _Samoa_, pp. 21, 56 f., 74 f., 216, 241;
also Strack’s _Der Blutaberglaube_ (4th ed.), p. 39.
Footnote 50:
Griffis’s _Mikado’s Empire_, pp. 467, 470; also, Isabella Bird’s
_Untrodden Tracks in Japan_, I., 392.
Footnote 51:
St. John’s _Life in the Far East_, I., 64, 157 f.
Footnote 52:
See London _Folk-Lore Journal_, II., 330 f.
Footnote 53:
Dr. Strean in Mason’s _Statistical Account, or Parochial Survey of
Ireland_, II., 75.
Footnote 54:
See J.G. Owens on “Folk-Lore from Buffalo Valley, Central
Pennsylvania,” in _Journal of American Folk-Lore_, IV., 126.
Footnote 55:
B. Biaz’s “Memoirs:” cited in Spencer’s _Descriptive Sociology_, II.,
23.
Footnote 56:
See pp. 51, 55, _infra_.
Footnote 57:
See Ralston’s _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 120.
Footnote 58:
See Du Bois’s _Description of the Character, Manners, and Customs of
the Peoples of India_, II., 27. Compare pp. 5–7, _supra_.
Footnote 59:
Nevius’s _China and the Chinese_, p. 60.
Footnote 60:
Landor’s _Corea or Cho-sen_, p. 118.
Footnote 61:
See Ralston’s _Russian Folk-Tales_, p. 28 f.
Footnote 62:
On the testimony of Professor Dr. A.L. Frothingham, Jr.
Footnote 63:
Julia McNair Wright’s _Among the Alaskans_, p. 313.
Footnote 64:
Comp. Plutarch’s _Roman Questions_, Q. 5.
Footnote 65:
Rev. 6 : 9–10.
Footnote 66:
On the testimony of an eye-witness.
Footnote 67:
Palmer’s _Desert of the Exodus_, I., 90.
Footnote 68:
Burckhardt’s _Bed. u. Wahaby_, p. 214, note.
Footnote 69:
Lane’s _Modern Egyptians_, II., 293.
Footnote 70:
Garnett’s _Women of Turkey and their Folk-Lore_ (“Christian Women”),
p. 239.
Footnote 71:
Rodd’s _Customs and Lore of Modern Greece_, p. 101.
Footnote 72:
Capt. King’s “Notes” in London _Folk-Lore Journal_, VI., 121, 123.
Footnote 73:
Capt. King’s “Notes” in London _Folk-Lore Journal_, VI., 121, 123.
Footnote 74:
Shooter’s Kafirs of Natal, pp. 71–78; and Andersson’s _Lake Ngami_, p.
220 f.
Footnote 75:
On the testimony of a native eye-witness. See, also, Conder’s _Heth
and Moab_, p. 285.
Footnote 76:
See article by P.J. Baldensperger, in _Quarterly Statement_ of
Palestine Exploration Fund for April, 1894, p. 136.
Footnote 77:
Heuzey’s _Le Monte Olympe et L’Acarnanie_, p. 278.
Footnote 78:
See citations from Donatus, on the “Hecyra” of Terence, I., 2, 60, and
Servius on Virgil’s “Aeneid,” IV., 459, in Heuzey’s _Le Monte Olympe
et Acarnanie_, p. 278; also, Marquardt’s _Privatleben der Römer_, p.
53.
Footnote 79:
Garnett’s _Women of Turkey_ (“Christian Women”), p. 82.
Footnote 80:
Rodd’s _Customs and Lore of Modern Greece_, p. 95 f.
Footnote 81:
Rodd’s _Customs and Love of Modern Greece_, p. 99 f.
Footnote 82:
_Ibid._, p. 102.
Footnote 83:
Wood’s _Wedding Day in all Ages and Countries_, II., 46.
Footnote 84:
See Ralston’s _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 277 f.
Footnote 85:
See “Marriage Customs of the Mordvins,” in London _Folk-Lore_, I.,
422–427; also P. von Stenin, in _Globus_, LXV., 181–183.
Footnote 86:
Wood’s _Wedding Day in all Ages and Countries_, II., 13.
Footnote 87:
On the testimony of Dr. H.V. Hilprecht.
Footnote 88:
Walter Gregor in London _Folk-Lore Journal_, I., 119 f.
Footnote 89:
St. John’s _Life in the Forests of the Far East_, I., 62.
Footnote 90:
See Bancroft’s _Native Races_, I., 663.
Footnote 91:
See Bancroft’s _Native Races_, I., 732–734.
Footnote 92:
“Grihya-Sutras,” or Rules of Vedic Domestic Ceremonies, in _Sacred
Books of the East_, XXX., 193.
Footnote 93:
_Ibid._
Footnote 94:
_Ibid._, p. 263.
Footnote 95:
_Fragmenta Philosophorum Græcorum_ (ed. Mullach), I., 510.
Footnote 96:
Gwilt’s _Architecture of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio_, p. 89.
Footnote 97:
See Hughes’s _Dictionary of Islam_, art. “Masjid;” also Lane’s _Modern
Egyptians_, I., 105; and Conder’s _Heth and Moab_, p. 293 f.
Footnote 98:
Rodd’s _Customs and Lore of Modern Greece_, p. 104.
Footnote 99:
Sibree, on “Malagasy Folk-Lore and Popular Superstition” in London
_Folk-Lore Record_, II., p. 37.
Footnote 100:
As told me by a native eye-witness.
Footnote 101:
Burckhardt’s _Arabic Proverbs_, p. 137 f.
Footnote 102:
Bruce’s “Travels,” VII., 67 (ed. 1804); cited in McLennan’s _Studies
in Ancient History_, p. 188.
Footnote 103:
On the testimony of a colored clergyman from Liberia.
Footnote 104:
See Maspero’s _Life in Ancient Egypt and Assyria_, p. 232.
Footnote 105:
Campbell’s “Personal Narrative;” cited in McLennan’s _Studies in
Ancient History_, p. 14.
Footnote 106:
Pinkerton’s “Collection,” VI., 183; cited in _Ibid._, p. 177.
Footnote 107:
Hayes’s “Open Polar Sea,” p. 432; cited in Lubbock’s _Origin of
Civilization_ (Am. ed.), p. 78.
Footnote 108:
Rous’s _Archæologia Attica_, Lib. IV., cap. 7.
Footnote 109:
See “Roman Questions,” Q. 29, in Goodwin’s _Plutarch’s Morals_, II.,
220 f.; also Godwyn’s _Rom. Hist. Anthol._, Lib. II., § 2; citation of
authorities in Becker’s _Gallus_, p. 161, and in Marquardt’s
_Privatleben der Römer_, I., 53 f.
Footnote 110:
Douglas’s _Society in China_, p. 201. See, also, Williams’s _Middle
Kingdom_, I., 790; Gray’s _China_, I., 205; and “Marriage Ceremonies
of the Manchus,” in London _Folk-Lore_, I., 487.
Footnote 111:
Adele M. Fielde’s _Corner of Cathay_, p. 39.
Footnote 112:
“Grihya-Sutras,” or Rules of Vedic Domestic Ceremonies, in _Sacred
Books of the East_, XXX., 193, 201.
Footnote 113:
Guhl and Koner’s _Life of the Greeks and Romans_, p. 192.
Footnote 114:
See “Roman Questions,” Q. 1, 2, in Goodwin’s _Plutarch’s Morals_, I.,
204; also authorities cited in Becker’s _Gallus_, p. 162 f., and
Marquardt’s _Privatleben der Römer_, I., 53 f.
Footnote 115:
See Coulange’s _Ancient City_, pp. 29–41, 55–58, with citations.
Footnote 116:
See “Marriage Customs of the Mordvins,” in London _Folk-Lore_, I.,
437. See, also, the reference to burning incense on the threshold in
Tuscany, at p. 17 f., _supra_.
Footnote 117:
See Kowalewsky’s “Marriage among the Early Slavs,” in London
_Folk-Lore_, I., 467.
Footnote 118:
From “Marriage Customs of the Mordvins,” in London _Folk-Lore_, I.,
423, 447.
Footnote 119:
From “Marriage Customs of the Mordvins,” in London _Folk-Lore_, I.,
434–443.
Footnote 120:
Napier’s _Folk-Lore in the West of Scotland_, p. 51; also Wood’s
_Wedding Day in all Ages and Countries_, II., 59 f.
Footnote 121:
See Bancroft’s _Native Races_, I., 662, 703, 730–734.
Footnote 122:
On the testimony of the Rev. William Ewing, a missionary in Palestine.
Footnote 123:
A daughter of a native Copt described to me this ceremony, as she
witnessed it at the building of her father’s house in 1878. He was
formerly a Coptic priest, but was now a Protestant Christian.
Footnote 124:
See Tylor’s _Primitive Culture_, I., 104–108.
Footnote 125:
Strack’s _Der Blutaberglaube_, p. 68.
Footnote 126:
Josh. 6 : 26.
Footnote 127:
1 Kings 16 : 34.
Footnote 128:
See article “On Kirk-Grims” in _The Cornhill Magazine_ for February,
1887, p. 196.
Footnote 129:
On the testimony of a native Chinese clergyman.
Footnote 130:
See article “On Kirk-Grims” in _The Cornhill Magazine_ for February,
1887.
Footnote 131:
See article “On Kirk Grims” in _The Cornhill Magazine_, for February,
1887, p. 191.
Footnote 132:
Tylor’s _Primitive Culture_, I., 104 f.
Footnote 133:
Ralston’s _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 128.
Footnote 134:
See article “On Kirk-Grims” in _The Cornhill Magazine_ for February,
1887, p. 191.
Footnote 135:
See Gomme’s article on “Traditions Connected with Buildings,” in _The
Antiquary_, III., 11.
Footnote 136:
See Coote’s “A Building Superstition,” in London _Folk-Lore Journal_,
I., 22 f.
Footnote 137:
See W.G. Chase’s “Notes from Alaska,” in _Journal of American
Folk-Lore_, VI., 51.
Footnote 138:
See Tylor’s _Primitive Culture_, I., 104–108.
Footnote 139:
Rodd’s _Customs and Lore of Modern Greece_, p. 168 f.
Footnote 140:
_Ibid._
Footnote 141:
Garnett’s _Women of Turkey_ (“Christian Women”), p. 22.
Footnote 142:
Rodd’s _Customs and Lore of Modern Greece_, p. 148.
Footnote 143:
See Ralston’s _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 126.
Footnote 144:
_Ibid._, p. 127.
Footnote 145:
Ralston’s _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 135 f.
Footnote 146:
This is the case with the Church House in Philadelphia,–the
“corner-stone” of which was laid while this page was writing.
Footnote 147:
See Erman’s _Life in Ancient Egypt_, p. 175.
Footnote 148:
See Coote’s “A Building Superstition,” in London _Folk-Lore Journal_,
I., 22.
Footnote 149:
Lanciani’s _Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries_, p. 225
f.
Footnote 150:
See article “On Kirk-Grims” in _The Cornhill Magazine_ for February,
1887, p. 192.
Footnote 151:
_Ibid._, p. 195.
Footnote 152:
See Bancroft’s _Native Races_, V., 471.
Footnote 153:
See Trumbull’s _Studies in Oriental Social Life_, pp. 98, 112–131.
Footnote 154:
See Josh. 10 : 3–35; 12 : 11; 15 : 39; 2 Kings 14 : 19; 18 : 14–19,
etc.
Footnote 155:
See, for example, 1 Kings 2 : 28.
Footnote 156:
See Bliss’s _Mound of Many Cities_, p. 77 f.
Footnote 157:
See “Afghan Life in Afghan Songs,” in Darmesteter’s _Selected Essays_,
p. 117.
Footnote 158:
On the testimony of a native Syrian of wide experience in the region
referred to.
Footnote 159:
W. Robertson Smith’s _Religion of the Semites_, p. 319.
Footnote 160:
_Strassmaier Nabuchodonosor_, No. 183.
Footnote 161:
Dieulafoy’s “L’art antique de la Perse;” cited in Babelon’s _Manual of
Oriental Antiquities_, p. 152.
Footnote 162:
See _The Times_ (London) for July 12, 1894.
Footnote 163:
See Hopkins’s _Religions of India_, p. 361, note.
Footnote 164:
In a personal letter to the Author.
Footnote 165:
Exod. 32 : 26.
Footnote 166:
Judg. 19 : 25–30.
Footnote 167:
Ruth 4 : 1–10.
Footnote 168:
2 Sam. 15 : 2–4.
Footnote 169:
2 Sam. 19 : 8.
Footnote 170:
Jer. 38 : 7–9.
Footnote 171:
Dan. 2 : 49.
Footnote 172:
Prov. 8 : 34.
Footnote 173:
Amos 5 : 15.
Footnote 174:
Zech. 8 : 16.
Footnote 175:
Isa. 29 : 21.
Footnote 176:
Luke 16 : 19, 20.
Footnote 177:
Acts 3 : 3, 10.
Footnote 178:
Exod. 21 : 5, 6.
Footnote 179:
Deut. 14 : 17.
Footnote 180:
Gen. 22 : 17.
Footnote 181:
Matt. 16 : 18.
Footnote 182:
Isa. 24 : 12.
Footnote 183:
In a personal letter to the Author.
Footnote 184:
See Finn’s _Stirring Times_, I., 102 f.
Footnote 185:
A.M. Luncz, in _Jerushalayim_, p. 17.
Footnote 186:
_Home and Synagogue of the Modern Jew_, p. 30.
Footnote 187:
_Nineveh and its Remains_ (Am. ed.), II., 202.
Footnote 188:
_Ancient Egyptians_, I., 346, 361 f.
Footnote 189:
Comp. Deut. 6 : 9 and 20 : 5.
Footnote 190:
See art. “Mezuza,” by Ginsburg, in Kitto’s _Cycl. of Bib. Lit._
Footnote 191:
Psa. 121 : 8.
Footnote 192:
See art. “Mezuza,” by Ginsburg, in Kitto’s _Cycl. of Bib. Lit._
Footnote 193:
See, for example, _Memoirs of Survey of Western Palestine_, I.,
230–234, 257 f., 398–402, 407 f., 416 f.
Footnote 194:
_The Land and the Book_, I., 140 f.
Footnote 195:
See Sir Robert Ker Porter’s _Travels_, I., 440.
Footnote 196:
See, for example, Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Persia_, pp.
127, 129, 294, 357; also, Benjamin’s _Persia and the Persians_, pp.
17, 58, 61.
Footnote 197:
Doolittle’s _Social Life of the Chinese_, II., 75, 310 f.
Footnote 198:
Williams’s _Middle Kingdom_, I., 731.
Footnote 199:
Adele M. Fielde’s _Pagoda Shadows_, p. 88.
Footnote 200:
Gray’s _China_, II., 271. Comp. with p. 8.
Footnote 201:
Hearn’s _Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan_, II., 397; also, Isabella
Bird’s _Unbeaten Tracks in Japan_, II., 287.
Footnote 202:
See Becker’s _Charicles_, p. 260, with citations; also, Guhl and
Koner’s _Life of the Greeks and Romans_, p. 80.
Footnote 203:
Becker’s _Charicles_, p. 487.
Footnote 204:
Theocritus, _Idyl_ II., 63.
Footnote 205:
See articles “Ara” and “Janua,” in Smith’s _Dict. of Greek and Roman
Antiquities_, with reference to classical authorities.
Footnote 206:
See Réville’s _Native Religions of Mexico and Peru_, p. 183.
Footnote 207:
See Rowan in “Ximenes,” p. 183; cited in Spencer’s _Des. Soc._, II.,
22.
Footnote 208:
Aubrey’s “Miscellanies;” cited in _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for 1823, Pt.
II., p. 412.
Footnote 209:
See _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for 1867, Pt. I., pp. 307–322.
Footnote 210:
See p. 62 f., _supra_.
Footnote 211:
_Heth and Moab_, p. 275 f.
Footnote 212:
A.M. Luncz, in _Jerushalayim_, p. 19.
Footnote 213:
On the testimony of the Rev. W. Ewing, a missionary in Palestine.
Footnote 214:
In _Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palæstina Vereins_, VIII., 335 ff.
Footnote 215:
See De Amicis’s _Constantinople_, p. 185.
Footnote 216:
One of these old-time prayer-rugs with the open hand embroidered on
it, is in the possession of Dr. Hilprecht.
Footnote 217:
See Morier’s _Second Journey through Persia_, pp. 75–184.
Footnote 218:
Rosenmüller’s _Das Alte und Neue Morgenland_, II., 92 f.
Footnote 219:
See, for example, Perrot and Chipiez’s _History of Art in Phœnicia_,
I., 54, 263.
Footnote 220:
De Hesse-Wartegg’s _Tunis: The Land and the People_, p. 127.
Footnote 221:
On the testimony of Professor Dr. Morris Jastrow, Jr.
Footnote 222:
Gen. 11 : 31; 15 : 7.
Footnote 223:
Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Chald. and Assy._, I., 38; see,
also, p. 84.
Footnote 224:
_Ibid._, I., 203.
Footnote 225:
Sayce’s _Social Life among the Assyrians and Babylonians_, p. 52 f.
Footnote 226:
Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art. in Chald. and Assy._, I., p. 196.
See, also, pp. 87, 143, 212; II., 99, 111, 169, 211, 215, 227, 231,
257, 261, 266, 267, 273, 275, 279. See, also, _Collection de Clercq_,
passim.
Footnote 227:
Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Phœnicia_, I., 53, 54, 69, 320;
II., 61, 113, 161, 228, 247, 248, 255, 257.
Footnote 228:
Wilkinson’s _Anc. Egypt_, III., 3, 8, 24, 48, 53, 100, 192, 208, 218,
228, 232, 235, 240, 362, 370, 425.
Footnote 229:
_Ibid._, III., 53.
Footnote 230:
Mason’s _Statistical Account or Parochial Survey of Ireland_, II.,
322.
Footnote 231:
Stephens’s _Incidents of Travel in Yucatan_, I., 177 f.
Footnote 232:
Gen. 14 : 22.
Footnote 233:
Psa. 63 : 4.
Footnote 234:
Isa. 49 : 22.
Footnote 235:
Comp. Exod. 6 : 8; Num. 14 : 30; Neh. 9 : 15.
Footnote 236:
See Tallquist’s _Die Sprache Contracte Nabû-Nâ’ido_, p. 108.
Footnote 237:
See Gesenius’s _Heb. Lex._, s. v. “Nasa.”
Footnote 238:
See, for example, Exod. 3 : 19; 13 : 3, 14, 16; 32 : 11; Deut. 3 : 24;
4 : 34; 5 : 15; 6 : 21; 7 : 8, 19; 9 : 26; 11 : 2, etc.; 2 Chron. 6 :
32; Ezek. 20 : 34; Dan. 9 : 15.
Footnote 239:
Ellis’s _Polynesian Researches_, II., 207, illustration.
Footnote 240:
Stephens’s _Incidents of Travels in Yucatan_, II., 46 f.
Footnote 241:
Stephens’s _Incidents of Travel in Yucatan_, Appendix, II., 476–478.
Footnote 242:
_Ibid._, II., 477.
Footnote 243:
See Gen. 49 : 8–17; Num. 27 : 22 f.; Acts 4 : 4; 6 : 6; 8 : 18; 13 :
3; 19 : 6; Heb. 6 : 2; 1 Tim. 4 : 14.
Footnote 244:
See, for example, “a scene in the hypostyle hall at Lûxor,” in
Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilization_, p. 111.; also, illustration in
Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Anc. Egypt_, I., 45.
Footnote 245:
Catlin’s “Eight Years amongst the North American Indians,” II., pp.
5–7; cited in Donaldson’s _George Catlin Indian Gallery_, p. 263.
Footnote 246:
In a personal letter to the Author.
Footnote 247:
See Bourke’s _Medicine Men of the Apaches_, Ninth Annual Report of the
Bureau of Ethnology.
Footnote 248:
Variae nationes, inter quas Americæ aborigines sunt, sanguinem
menstrualem sacrissimum atque in eo boni malique vim esse putant, quia
non solum modo omnis sanguinis vita ipsa sit, sed vitae humanae
germina vel ova quibus species hominum transmittuntur in se contineat.
Quod quam verum sit quantamque vim ad foedieris liminis notionem
principalem intellegendam habeat infra videtur.
For illustrations of this truth see H. Ploss’s _Das Weib in der Natur.
und Völkerkunde_ (2d ed.), I., chap. 39; Strack’s _Der Blutaberglaube_
(4th ed.), pp. 14–18; Spivak’s _Menstruation_, pp. 6–12; and Frazer’s
_Golden Bough_, I., 170; II., 225–240. These illustrations are
gathered from Asia, Africa, Europe, America, and the Islands of the
Sea; and they include citations from Pliny, the Talmud, the Christian
Fathers, medieval writers, and down to writers of this century.
“Apud populum Novæ Zelandæ creditur sanguinem utero sub tempus
menstruale effusum continere germina hominis; et secundum præcepta
veteris superstitionis panniculus sanguine menstruali imbutus
habebatur sacer (_tapu_), haud aliter quam si formam humanam
accepisset. Mulierum autem mos est hos panniculos intra juncos
parietum abdere: et hâc de causâ paries est domûs pars adeo sacra ut
nemo illi innixus sedere audeat. Opinio animis N. Zelandorum
insita–nempe sanguinem menstruum germina humanæ speciei
continere–opinionibus hodiernis convenit: multi enim physiologiæ
scientissimi credunt rumpi vesiculam gräafianam, et ex illâ ova delabi
circa tempora menstrualia.”–Shortland’s _Traditions and Superstitions
of the New Zealanders_, p. 292.
Footnote 249:
Landor’s _Corea or Cho-sen_, p. 156.
Footnote 250:
Orme’s _Hist. of Milit. Trans. of British in Indostan_, V., 348.
Footnote 251:
Maspero’s _Life in Anc. Egypt and Assyria_, pp. 198–200.
Footnote 252:
_Ibid._, p. 204.
Footnote 253:
_Ibid._, p. 220.
Footnote 254:
Roberts’s _Oriental Illustrations of the Scriptures_, p. 148 f.
Footnote 255:
Williams’s _Middle Kingdom_, I., 731.
Footnote 256:
See McDowell’s “A New Light on the Chinese,” in _Harper’s Magazine_
for Dec., 1893, with illustration of “The Gods of the Threshold.”
Footnote 257:
Isabella Bird’s _Unbeaten Tracks in Japan_, I., 117, 273.
Footnote 258:
Wilkinson’s _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_, I., 362
f., and note.
Footnote 259:
See Tertullian “On Idolatry,” and “On the Soldier’s Chaplet,” in
_Ante-Nicene Christian Library_, XI., 164 f., 353.
Footnote 260:
Tr. Rowan, in “Ximenes,” p. 183; cited in Spencer’s _Descrip. Soc._,
II., 22.
-----
II.
EARLIEST TEMPLE ALTAR.
1. FROM HOUSE TO TEMPLE.
A temple is only a more prominent house. As a house was the dwelling of
the earlier priest of his household, who was in covenant for himself and
his family with the guardian deity of that household; so, afterwards, a
temple was a dwelling for the deity guarding an aggregation of families,
and for the priests who stood between him and the community.
This is no new or strange truth; it is obvious. “In the Vedas, Yama, as
the first man, is the first priest too; he brought worship here below as
well as life, and ‘first he stretched out the thread of
sacrifice.’”[261] The fire-altar of the home was first the center of
worship in the family in India;[262] as later the fire-altar was the
center of the worship of the community.
The same cuneiform characters in old Babylonian stand for great house,
for palace, and for temple;[263] as similarly, in ancient Egypt, the
same hieroglyph represented house or temple,–a simple quadrangular
enclosure, with its one doorway.[264]
The oldest form of an Egyptian temple known to us through the
inscriptions of the Ancient Empire indicates that the prehistoric houses
of worship in that land were mere hovels of wood and lattice-work, over
the doors of which was a barbaric ornamentation of bent pieces of
wood.[265] The private house became the public temple.
“The design of the Greek temple in its highest perfection was ... a
gradual development of the dwelling-house.”[266] Palace and temple were,
indeed, often identical in ancient Greece.[267]
Strictly speaking, there were no temples in ancient Persia, any more
than in early India. But the fire-altars that were first on the home
hearth, or threshold, were made more and more prominent on their
uplifted stepped bases, until they towered loftily in the sight of their
worshipers.[268]
It is the same Hebrew word, _ohel_, that stands for the “tent” of
Abraham, and for the “Tent” or Tabernacle of the congregation of
Israel.[269]
In China “temple architecture differs little from that of the
houses.”[270] The house of a god is as the house of a man, only grander
and more richly ornamented. And Japanese antiquaries say that the
architecture of Shinto temples is on the model of the primeval Japanese
hut. The temples of Ise, the most sacred of the Shinto sanctuaries, are
said to represent this primitive architecture in its purest form.[271]
The father of the family was the primitive priest in the Samoan Islands,
and his house was the first place of worship. Then “the great house of
the village,” or the place of popular assembling, was used as a temple;
and afterwards there were special temple structures with attendant
priests.[272]
The transition from house to temple seems to have been a gradual one in
the primitive world. The fire-altar of the family came to be the
fire-altar of the community of families. The house of a king became both
palace and temple, and so again the house of a priest; for the offices
of king and of priest were in early times claimed by the same
person.[273]
2. SACREDNESS OF THE DOOR.
In all stages of the transition from house to temple, the sacredness of
the threshold, of the door, of the entrance-way, of the gate, was
recognized in architecture and in ceremonial. Often the door, or the
gate, stood for the temple, and frequently the threshold was an altar,
or an altar was at the threshold.
There are, indeed, reasons for supposing that the very earliest form of
a primitive temple, or sanctuary, or place of worship, was a rude
doorway, as covering or as localizing the threshold altar. This would
seem to be indicated by prehistoric remains in different parts of the
world, as well as in the later development of the idea in the earlier
historic ages. The only exception to this was where, as in India or
Persia, the fire-altar on an uplifted threshold stood alone as a place
of worship.
Two upright stone posts, with or without an overlaying stone across
them, and with or without an altar stone between or before them, are
among the most ancient remains of primitive man’s handiwork; and a
similar design is to be recognized, all the way along in the course of
history, down to the elaborate doorway standing by itself as a memorial
of the revered dead,[274] or to the monumental triumphal arch as an
accompaniment of the highest civilization. And the very name of door, or
gate, attaches persistently to the loftiest temple and to the most
exalted personage. As the earliest altar was the threshold, the earliest
temple was a doorway above the altar at the threshold.
When the first dwellers on the plains of Chaldea, after the Deluge,
gathered themselves for the building of a common structure reaching
God-ward,[275] they, in their phraseology, called that structure Bab-el,
or Bâb-ilu, or Bâbi-ilu, the Door of God.[276] Ancient Egyptians called
the sovereign head of their national family “_Per-ao_” (Pharaoh), the
exalted House, or Gate, or Door;[277] as to-day the Sultan, who is
spiritual father of the faithful Muhammadans, and autocrat of his realm,
is widely known as the “Sublime Porte,” or the Exalted Door.[278] The
modern Babists, in Persia and beyond, look up to their spiritual head as
the “Bab,” or the “Door.”[279] “Throughout the East this word [‘Bab’]
signifies the court of a prince [as a ruler by divine right].... The
threshold of the gate is used in the same sense, and frequently it is
qualified by some epithet of nobility, loftiness, or goodness.”[280]
Jesus Christ did not hesitate to say of himself as the Way to God: “I am
the Door: by me if any man enter in he shall be saved.”[281]
In China, Japan, Korea, Siam, and India, a gate, or doorway, usually
stands before Confucian and Booddhist and Shinto temples, but apart from
the temple, and always recognized as of peculiar sacredness. These
doorways, in many places, are painted blood-color.[282] They stand “at
the entrance of temple grounds, in front of shrines and sacred trees,
and in every place associated with the native _kami_”–or gods.[283] Yet,
again, in all these countries, the temple gateway is a main feature, or
a prominent one, in the chief sanctuaries.[284]
Swinging doors, or gates, are represented, in the religious symbolism of
ancient Babylonia, as opening to permit the god Shamash, or the sun, to
start out on his daily circuit of the heavens.[285] A door, or a
doorway, appears as a shrine for a god in various cylinders from this
region; and the god is shown standing within it, just beyond the
threshold.[286] Indeed, the doorway shrine is a common form on the
Babylonian and the Assyrian monuments, as a standing-place for the gods,
and for the kings as representative of the gods.[287] Illustrations of
this are found on the Balawat gates,[288] and the sculptures on the
rocks at Nahr-el-Kelb[289]–which is itself a gateway of the nations,
between the mountains and the sea, on the route between Egypt and
Canaan, and both the East and the West.
In ancient Egypt the doorway shrine of the gods was prominent, as in
Babylonia.[290] Moreover, a false door was represented in the earlier
mastabahs, or tombs, of the Old Empire of Egypt. This representation of
a door was toward the west, in which direction Osiris, the god of the
under-world, was supposed to enter his realm as the sun went down. On or
around this false door were memorial inscriptions, and prayers for the
dead; and before it was a table, or altar, for offerings to the _ka_, or
soul, of the dead.[291] Gradually this false door came to be recognized
as the monumental slab, tablet, or stele, on which were inscribed the
memorials of the deceased. As a doorway or a niche, square-topped, or
arched, it was the shrine of the one worshiped; and as a panel, or
independent stele, it was the place of record of the object of
reverence.
“Even at the beginning of the Middle Empire the door form disappeared
completely, and the whole space of the stone was taken up with the
representation of the deceased sitting before a table of offerings,
receiving gifts from his relatives and servants. Soon afterwards it
became the custom to round off the stone at the top, and when, under the
New Empire, pictures of a purely religious character took the place of
the former representations, no one looking at the tomb stele could have
guessed that it originated from the false door.”[292]
A “false door” was, in ancient Egypt, a valued gift from a sovereign to
an honored subject. Doors of this kind were sometimes richly carved and
painted, and were deemed of priceless value by the recipient.[293]
In Phenicia,[294] Carthage,[295] Cyprus,[296] Sardinia,[297]
Sicily,[298] and in Abyssinia,[299] a like prominence was given to the
door as a door, in temple and in tomb, and as a niche for the figure of
a deity or for the representation of one who had crossed the threshold
of the new life. And the door-form is a sacred memorial of the dead in
primitive lands in various parts of the world, from the rudest trilithon
to the more finished structures of a high civilization.[300]
In primitive New Zealand the gateway, or doorway, of a village, a
cemetery, or a public building, is both a sacred image and a sacred
passage-way. It is in the form of a superhuman personage, and it has its
guardians on either hand.[301]
A doorway with an altar between its posts was a symbol of religious
worship in ancient Mexico, as in the far East.[302]
It would seem that the “mihrab,” or prayer niche, pointing toward
Meccah, in Muhammadan lands, and the Chinese honorary portals and
ancestral tablets,[303] as well as the niches for images of saints in
churches or at wayside shrines, or for heroes in public halls, in
Christian lands, are a survival of the primitive doorway in a tomb.
And wherever the door is prominent as a door, the threshold is
recognized and honored as the floor of the door, and as the primitive
altar above which the door is erected. To pass through the door is to
cross over the threshold of the door.
3. TEMPLE THRESHOLDS IN ASIA.
In all the modern excavations in the region of Babylonia and Assyria,
including Tello, Nippur, Sippara, Borsippa, Khorsabad, and Nineveh, it
has been found that the threshold, or foundation-stone, of the temple
doorway is marked with inscriptions that show its peculiar sanctity;
while underneath it, or near it, are frequently buried images and
symbols and other treasures in evidence of its altar-like sacredness. On
this point evidence has been furnished by Botta,[304] Bonomi,[305]
Layard,[306] George Smith,[307] Lenormant,[308] and yet more fully by
Dr. Hilprecht, in his later and current researches.
Bonomi suggests that the word “teraphim,” as an image of a household
divinity, has its connection with the threshold or the boundary limit;
and that the phrase “thy going out, and thy coming in,” which is common
in Egyptian, Babylonian, and Hebrew[309] literature, has reference to
the threshold and its protecting deities.[310] The outgoing and the
incoming are clearly across the threshold and through the door.
The inscriptions of Nebuchadrezzar II., concerning his building of the
walls of Babylon, comprise various references to the foundations, to the
thresholds, and to their guardians. He says: “On the thresholds of the
gates I set up mighty bulls of bronze, and mighty snakes standing
upright.”[311] Again of the gates of Imgur-Bêl and Nimitti-Bel, of these
walls of Babylon, he says: “Their foundations I laid at the surface
(down at) the water, with pitch and bricks. With blue enameled tiles
which were adorned with bulls and large snakes, I built their interior
cleverly. Strong cedars I laid over them as their covering (or roof).
Doors of cedarwood with a covering of copper, a threshold (_askuppu_)
and hinges of bronze, I set up in their gates. Strong bulls of bronze,
and powerful snakes standing upright, I set upon (or at) their threshold
(_sippu_). Those gates I filled with splendor for the astonishment of
all mankind.”[312]
In a similar manner Nebuchadrezzar describes his work at the gates of
“the royal castle of all mankind,” at Babylon,[313] and of his
palace.[314] In connection with the shrine or chapel of Nebo (Ezida),
within the walls of the temple of Merodach, in Babylon, he says: “Its
threshold (_sippu_), its lock and its key, I plated with gold, and made
the temple shine daylike.”[315] When he built Ezida (the “eternal
house”), the temple of Borsippa, Nebuchadrezzar says: “The bulls and the
doors of the gate of the sanctuary, the threshold (_sippu_), the lock,
the hinge, I plated with _zarîru_”[316] (an unknown metal, a kind of
bronze).
References to the foundations, to the thresholds, to the gates and
doorways, and to bulls and upright serpents, as the guardians of the
threshold of the temples and palaces of Babylonia and Assyria, are
numerous on unearthed cylinders and tablets, and always in such a way as
to indicate their peculiar sacredness. In the recent unearthing, at
Nippur, of a small building or shrine, between two great temples, an
altar was found in the eastern doorway.
It is to be borne in mind that many early temples in Babylonia, as in
Mesopotamia, in Egypt, in Mexico, Central America, and Peru, and in the
South Sea Islands, were in the form of a stepped pyramid, or a staged
tower, with either inclined planes or stairways from each lower stage to
the next higher, and with an altar, or a sanctuary or shrine, at the
summit.[317] Herodotus, describing one of these temples in Babylon, says
that the altars, larger and smaller, were outside the temple.[318]
Light is thrown on the dream of Jacob at Bethel by the shape of the
ancient temple in the East. In his vision it was probably not a ladder,
but a conventional stepped-temple structure, with its stairways rising
heavenward, and its sanctuary, that Jacob saw.[319] The angel ministers
were passing up and down the steps, in the service of the Most High God,
who himself appeared above the structure. When Jacob waked he said:
“Surely the Lord is in this place [or sanctuary]; and I knew it not....
How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and
this is the gate of heaven;” and he took the stone which had been his
pillow at the threshold of that sanctuary, and set it up for an altar
pillar.[320]
In the literature and legends of Babylonia, as of other portions of the
ancient world, there is prominent the idea that an entrance into the
life beyond this, as in the entrance into this life, the crossing of a
threshold from the one world to the other, from the earlier state and
the passing of a door, or gate, marks the change to the later, from the
sacred to the more sacred. This is peculiarly illustrated in the famous
legend of Ishtar’s descent into the under-world in order to bring back
to earth her lover Dumuzi.
The Hades of the Babylonians was surrounded by seven high walls, and was
approached through seven gates, each of which was guarded by a pitiless
warder. Two deities ruled within it–Nergal, “the lord of the great
city,” and Beltis-Allat, “the lady of the great land,”–whither
everything which had breathed in this world descended after death. Allat
was the actual sovereign of the country; and even the gods themselves
could enter her realm only on the condition of submitting to death, like
mortals, and of humbly avowing themselves her slaves.[321] “The
_threshold_ of Allat’s palace stood upon a spring, which had the
property of restoring to life all who bathed in it or drank of its
waters.” Yet it was needful that another life should be given for one
who would be reborn into this life, after crossing the threshold of the
regions beyond.[322]
In the descent of the goddess Ishtar into Allat’s realm, in pursuit of
her lover Dumuzi, Ishtar was gradually stripped of her garments and
adornings at the successive gates, until she appeared naked, as at
birth, at the final threshold of the new state.[323] But she was held
captive by Allat until Ea, chief among the gods, exerted himself in her
behalf, and sent his messenger to secure for both Ishtar and Dumuzi the
waters of life which were underneath the threshold of Allat’s
realm,–which must be broken in order to their outflowing.[324]
There would seem to be a reference to this primitive idea of the waters
of life flowing from under the threshold of the temple, in the vision of
the prophet Ezekiel, writing in Babylonia, concerning restored Jerusalem
and its holy temple. “Behold, waters issued out from under the threshold
of the house eastward, for the forefront of the house was toward the
east: and the waters came down from under, from the right side of the
house, on the south of the altar.” (Evidently the altar in this temple
was near the threshold.) These flowing waters from under the threshold
were life-giving. “Upon the bank of the river,” as it swelled in its
progress, “were very many trees on the one side and on the other;” and
it was said of this stream: “It shall come to pass, that every living
creature which swarmeth, in every place whither the rivers come, shall
live; and there shall be a very great multitude of fish: for these
waters are come thither, ... and every thing shall live whithersoever
the river cometh.”[325] In a curse pronounced against Assyria by the
prophet Zephaniah, it was declared that “drought shall be in the
thresholds,”[326] instead of life-giving waters.
So, again, the waters of the life-giving Jordan flow out from the
threshold of the grotto of Pan, a god of life.[327] And both at the
beginning of the Old Testament, and at the close of the New, the waters
of life start from the sanctuary of the Author of life.[328]
This Dumuzi of Babylonia has linkings with Tammuz of Syria, with Osiris
of Egypt, and with Adonis of Greece, and there are correspondences in
all these legends in the references to the door and the threshold of the
under-world and the life beyond. Thus, for instance, the Lord’s prophet
counts as most heinous of all idolatries the transfer of the weeping
worship of Tammuz from the door in the hole of the temple wall to the
door of the temple sanctuary.[329]
At the right hand of the entrance of the larger temple unearthed at
Nineveh by Layard, a sculptured image of the Assyrian king, with his arm
uplifted, was on a doorway stele just outside. And an altar for
offerings was in front of that image. Altars
were found similarly situated, just outside the doorway, in a smaller
temple in the same region.[330]
An exceptional reverence is shown to the doorway and threshold of their
sanctuary, or temple, by the sect of the Yezidis, in the neighborhood of
ancient Nineveh, at the present time. Describing an evening service
which he attended, Layard says: “When the prayers were ended, those who
marched in procession kissed, as they passed by, the right side of the
doorway leading into the temple, where a serpent is figured on the
wall.” Again, “Soon after sunrise, on the following morning, the sheikhs
and cawals offered up a short prayer in the court of the temple.... Some
prayed in the sanctuary, frequently kissing the threshold and holy
places within the building.”[331]
When the sacred ark of the Hebrews was captured by the Philistines, and
brought into the house of the god Dagon, the record is: “When they of
Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face
to the ground before the ark of the Lord. And they took Dagon, and set
him in his place again. And when they arose early on the morrow morning,
behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of
the Lord; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands lay cut
off upon the threshold.” It is added, in our present Bible text:
“Therefore neither the priests of Dagon, nor any that come into Dagon’s
house, tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod, unto this day.”[332]
It would seem, from the words “unto this day,” that this added statement
was a gloss by a later writer or copyist. The original force of the
wonder was in Dagon’s being overthrown at his very shrine, falling
maimed on the threshold altar of his temple. But the suggestion of the
gloss is that the unwillingness of the Philistines to tread on the
threshold of the temple (which appears to have been of primitive origin)
did not exist among the worshipers of Dagon prior to this incident. The
Septuagint adds,[333] concerning the later practice of the Philistines
at the threshold, “because leaping they leap over it.”
Leaping over the threshold is at times spoken of in the Bible as if it
had a taint of idolatry. Thus Zephaniah, foretelling, in the name of the
Lord, the divine judgments on idolaters, says: “In that day I will
punish all those that leap over the threshold.”[334] This is explained
in the Targum as “those that walk in the customs of the Philistines.”
Yet the Bible sometimes refers to the temple threshold as a fitting
place of worship, and its recognition as a holy altar as commendable.
Ezekiel prophesies that the restored Prince of Israel “shall worship at
the threshold of the gate”[335] of the Lord’s house; and he sees, in
vision, “the glory of the Lord ... over the threshold of the
house.”[336] Again the Lord complains of the profanation of his temple
by idolaters “in their setting of their threshold by my threshold, and
their door-post beside my door-post, and there was but the wall between
me and them.”[337]
That it was the threshold or doorway of the tabernacle which was counted
sacred, is evident from the wording of the Levitical laws concerning the
offering of blood in sacrifices. “This is the thing which the Lord hath
commanded, saying, What man soever there be of the house of Israel, that
killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat, in the camp, or that killeth it without
the camp, and hath not brought it _unto the door of the tent of
meeting_, to offer it as an oblation unto the Lord before the tabernacle
of the Lord: blood shall be imputed unto that man; he hath shed blood;
and that man shall be cut off from among his people: to the end that the
children of Israel may bring their sacrifices, which they sacrifice in
the open field, even that they may bring them unto the Lord, _unto the
door of the tent of meeting_, unto the priest, and sacrifice them for
sacrifices of peace offerings unto the Lord. And the priest shall
sprinkle the blood _upon the altar of the Lord at the door of the tent
of meeting_, and burn the fat for a sweet savour unto the Lord....
Whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that
sojourn among them, that offereth a burnt offering or sacrifice, and
bringeth it not _unto the door of the tent of meeting_, to sacrifice it
unto the Lord; even that man shall be cut off from his people.”[338]
It was _at the doorway_ of the tent of meeting that Aaron and his sons
were consecrated to the holy priesthood;[339] and it was there that the
bullock was sacrificed, and its blood was poured out as an offering at
the base of the altar.[340] It was _at the doorway_ of that tent, above
the threshold, that the pillar of cloud descended in token of the Lord’s
presence, when Moses met the Lord there in loving communion, while the
people stood watching from the doorways of their own tents.[341] The
altar of burnt offering, at the base or foundation of which the blood of
the offerings was outpoured, was itself at the doorway of the tent of
meeting, and he who offered a sacrifice to the Lord offered it at that
threshold.[342]
A post of honor in the temple was as a guardian of the threshold, as was
also the place of a keeper of the gate. In the assignment of the priests
and Levites to service, by Jehoiada the priest, in the days of Athaliah,
a third part of them were in attendance at the “threshold,” and a third
part “at the gate of the foundation.”[343] Later, in the days of Josiah
and Hilkiah, the guardians of the threshold had the care of the money
collected for the repairs of the Lord’s house.[344] And a keeper of the
threshold, or of the door, of the house of God, was always mentioned
with honor.[345] When the Psalmist contrasts the house of God with the
tents of wickedness, he speaks of the honor of a post at the temple
threshold, not of the humble place of a temple janitor, when he says:
“For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand [elsewhere].
I had rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God,
Than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.”[346]
In the Temple at Jerusalem, the altar of burnt offering was before the
threshold of the Holy Place; and those who came with sacrifices must
stop at that threshold, and proffer the blood of their offering to the
priests, who then reverently poured it out at the altar-threshold’s
base.[347]
When offerings were accepted for the repairs of the temple, in the days
of Jehoash, king of Judah, it is said that “Jehoiada the priest took a
chest, and bored a hole in the lid of it, and set it beside the altar,
on the right side as one cometh into the house of the Lord. And the
priests that kept [or guarded] the threshold put therein all the money
that was brought into the house of the Lord.”[348] This would seem to
decide the position of the altar as at the threshold, where “one cometh
into the house of the Lord.”
An altar stood at the doorway, or before the door, of temples of later
date in Phenicia and Phrygia, as shown on contemporary medals and
coins.[349] And so in temples in other lands.
Among the early Christian remains unearthed in Asia Minor are
indications of the former position of an altar on the threshold of a
sanctuary. At the site of ancient Aphrodisias, “some of the sarcophagi
of the Byzantine age are richly wrought, and although many are of
Christian date, they appear to have retained the pagan devices.” At the
end of one of these sarcophagi “appears an altar burning in front of a
door,” standing indeed on the very threshold.[350]
An oath of peculiar sacredness among Hindoos is at the threshold of a
temple, as at its primal altar. “Is a man accused of a great crime? He
goes to the temple [threshold], makes his prostrations; he pauses, then
steps over it, declaring at the same time that he is not guilty of the
crime laid to his charge. It is therefore very common to ask a person
who denies anything that he is suspected to have done, ‘Will you step
over the threshold of the temple?’”[351]
Among the stories told in India of judgments at the temple threshold, is
one of a thieving goldsmith, who had secreted himself in a pagoda of
Vishnoo, in order to take from the sacred image one of its jewel eyes.
Having obtained the precious stone, he waited for the opening of the
pagoda doors in the morning, in order to escape with his booty. But as
he attempted to cross the threshold, when the door was opened, he was
stricken with death by Vishnoo “at the very threshold.”[352] Justice was
administered at the very seat of justice.
Bloody sacrifices are still known at the temple thresholds in India,
notwithstanding the prejudice of Hindoos against the shedding of blood.
Within recent times an English gentleman, in an official position in
India, discovered a decapitated child at the very door of a celebrated
pagoda; and an investigation showed that a father had there sacrificed
his son to avert an impending evil.[353]
When a famous idol was destroyed in the temple of Somnauth, during the
Muhammadan conquest of India, pieces of the shattered image were sent by
the conquerors to the mosks of Meccah, Medina, and Ghuznee, to be thrown
down at the thresholds of their gates, there to be trodden under foot by
devout and zealous Mussulmans.[354] The accursed idol fragments might be
trampled on at the threshold, even while the threshold itself was
counted sacred.
In Muhammadan mosks generally the threshold is counted sacred. Across
the threshold proper, at the beginning of the sacred portion of the
interior, “is a low barrier, a few inches high.”[355] Before this
barrier the worshiper stops, removes his shoes, and steps over it, with
the right foot first. In some smaller mosks a rod above the outer
door-sill stands for this barrier.
Describing his visit to one of the mosks in Persia, Morier says: “Here
we remarked the veneration of the Persians for the threshold of a holy
place.... Before they ventured to cross it, they knelt down and kissed
it, whilst they were very careful not to touch it with their feet.”[356]
On the tomb of the kings of Persia, at Com, the inscription appears:
“Happy and glorious the believing one who in reverence bows his head
upon the threshold of this gate, in imitation of the sun and moon.[357]
All that _he_ will ask with faith in this gate, shall be as the arrow
that reaches the mark.”[358] And on the tomb of Alee, son-in-law of
Muhammad and one of his successors, there stands the declaration: “The
angel messenger of the truth, Gabriel, kisses every day the threshold of
thy gate; for that is the only way by which one can come to the throne
of Muhammad.”[359]
Even among Christians in this primitive region, this reverence for the
threshold as the earliest altar of the temple and the church manifests
itself in various ways. Dr. Grant, an American missionary, tells of
seeing the Nestorian Christians kissing the threshold of the church on
entering the sanctuary for the Lord’s Day service.[360]
At Baveddeen, near Bokhara, is the tomb of Baha-ed-deen Nakishbend, the
national saint of Turkestan, which is a place of pilgrimage second only
to the tomb of Muhammad. “In the front of the tomb,” as a threshold, “is
the famous _senghi murad_,” the “stone of desire,” “which has been
tolerably ground away, and made smooth, by the numerous foreheads of
pious pilgrims that have been rubbed upon it.”[361]
A peculiar sacrifice in Tibet is the disemboweling of a devotee in the
presence of a great multitude, as an act of worship. An altar on which
this act is performed is erected for the occasion “in front of the
temple gate.”[362]
In the more sacred shrines of Japan and Korea, Shinto or Booddhist
temples, pilgrim worshipers are permitted to go no farther than the
threshold of the inner sanctuary. There they may deposit their offerings
and may prostrate themselves in prayer, but they cannot pass beyond.
At Kitzuki, “the most ancient shrine of Japan,” multitudes of pilgrims
gather for worship. They are coming and going ceaselessly, but all pause
before the threshold of the inner sanctuary. “None enter there: all
stand before the dragon-swarming doorway, and cast their offerings into
the money-chest placed before the threshold; many making contributions
of small coin, the very poorest throwing only a handful of rice into the
box. Then they clap their hands, and bow their heads before the
threshold, and reverently gaze through the hall of prayer at the loftier
edifice, the holy of holies beyond it. Each pilgrim remains but a little
while, and claps his hands but four times; yet so many are coming and
going that the sound of the clapping is like the sound of a
cataract.”[363] The same is true of “the great Shrines of Isé, chief
Mecca of the Shintō faith,”[364] of those of famous Nikkō, and of other
centers of worship.[365]
4. TEMPLE THRESHOLDS IN AFRICA.
The oldest temple discovered in Egypt is little more than a doorway with
an altar at its threshold, and with a stele on either side of the altar.
This temple is near the base of the stepped pyramid of Meydoom, dating
back probably to the beginning of the fourth dynasty.[366]
Later, in Egypt, as in early Babylonia, the doorway, above the
threshold, had peculiar sacredness, in the temples and in the approaches
to the under-world. The pylon, or propylon, of an Egyptian temple, was a
monumental gateway before the temple, and exalted honor attached to it.
It frequently gave its name to the entire temple.[367] The side towers
of this gateway are said to have represented Isis and Nephthys, and the
door itself between these towers stood for Osiris, the judge of the
living and the dead.[368]
There was indeed a temple in Thebes which bore the name of “Silver
Threshold.” This temple “is mentioned in the time of the twenty-first
dynasty; and it cannot have been earlier than the eighteenth dynasty,
when silver was growing cheaper in Egypt.”[369] But the prominence of
the “threshold” in the designation of the “temple” is aside from the
question of the time of the use of silver.
“The winged sun disk was placed above all the doors into the temples,
that the image of Horus might drive away all unclean spirits from the
sacred building.”[370] These overshadowing wings marked the special
sacredness of the doors beneath them.
When an Egyptian priest opened the door of the shrine–the holy of holies
of the temple–he must prostrate himself at the threshold in reverent
worship. “According to the Theban rite, ... as soon as he saw the image
of the god he had to ‘kiss the ground, throw himself on his face, throw
himself entirely on his face, kiss the ground with his face turned
downward, offer incense,’ and then greet the god with a short
petition.”[371] This priestly worship was at the threshold of the
shrine.
The Egyptian idea of the future life, and of the world beyond this, had
marked correspondences with the Babylonian. Osiris presided over the
under-world, as, indeed, he was the chief object of worship in
this.[372] He had been slain in a conflict with evil, and in his new
life he was the friend and helper of those who struggled against
evil.[373] He was in a peculiar sense the door of the life beyond this,
“Osiris, opening the ways of the two worlds;”[374] and those who passed
that door safely were identified with himself in the under-world.[375]
A closed door toward the west, in a tomb, represented the deceased on
his way to Osiris.[376] And as shown in the “Book of the Dead” the
approach to Osiris was by a series of doors, which could be passed only
by one who showed his identification with Osiris, and his worthiness as
such.[377] At the entrance to the Hall of the Two Truths, or of the
Two-fold Maāt,[378] as the place of final judgment, the deceased was
challenged by the threshold of the door, by the two side-posts, by the
lock, by the key, and by the door itself; and he could not pass these
unless he proved his oneness with Osiris by his knowledge of their names
severally.[379]
A saint’s tomb, called a _wely_, is a common place of worship in Egypt.
Sometimes a mosk is built over it, and sometimes it serves as a
substitute for a mosk, where no mosk is near. “At least one such
building forms a conspicuous object close by, or within, almost every
Arab village;” and these tombs are frequently visited by those who would
make supplication for themselves, or intercession for others, or who
would do a worthy act, and merit a correspondent blessing. “Many a
visitor, on entering the tomb, kisses the threshold, or touches it with
his right hand, which he then kisses.”[380] Similar customs prevail in
Arabia and Syria.
At Carthage, which was a Phenician colony but which impressed its
character on northern Africa, the chief temple gave prominence to the
threshold, rising in steps as an altar before a statue of the Queen of
Heaven. Virgil, describing the arrival of Æneas at the court of Queen
Dido, says:
“There stood a grove within the city’s midst,
Delicious for its shade; where when they came
First to this place, by waves and tempest tossed,
The Carthaginians from the earth dug up
An omen royal Juno had foretold
That they should find, a noble horse’s head;
Thus intimating that this race would shine,
Famous in war, and furnished with supplies
For ages. Here the great Sidonian queen
A temple built to Juno, rich in gifts,
And in the presence of the goddess blessed.
A brazen threshold rose above the steps,[381]
With brazen posts connecting, and the hinge
Creaked upon brazen doors.”[382]
The churches of Abyssinia always stand on a hill, and in a grove–like
the temple at Carthage. “When you go to the church you put off your
shoes before your first entering the outer precinct.... At entry, you
kiss the threshold and two door-posts, go in and say what prayer you
please; that finished you come out again, and your duty is over.”[383]
The yard of an Abyssinian church has been compared to “the _lucus_ or
sacred grove of the pagan temple.” “The church itself is square, and
built of stone with beams stuck in to support them. At the porch, the
wooden lintels, which the pious kiss with intense earnestness,–in fact,
kissing the walls and lintels of a church is a great feature in
Abyssinian devotion, so much so that, instead of speaking of ‘going to
church,’ they say ‘kissing the church,’–are carved with quaint and
elaborate devices.”[384]
At Yeha, near Aksum, are the remains of a ruined temple, within the area
of which a church was at one time built. “In front of the vestibule
stood two rude monoliths, at the base of one of which is an altar with a
circular disk on it, presumably, from the analogy of those at Aksum, for
receiving the blood of slaughtered victims.” Obviously, the altar of
this temple was at its threshold.
Marriages are said to be celebrated in Abyssinia at the church door–the
wedding covenant being thus made before the threshold altar.[385]
And so in the earlier temples of Egypt, of Carthage, and of Abyssinia,
and in Christian and Muhammadan places of worship, the doorway is held
sacred, and, most of all, the threshold, or “floor of the door.”
5. TEMPLE THRESHOLDS IN EUROPE.
Traces of the primitive sacredness of the doorway and the threshold, in
places of worship, are to be found in Europe, ancient and modern, as in
Asia and Africa.
The term “threshold” occurs in such prominence in connection with
temples, in the earliest Greek literature, as to show that its primitive
meaning included the idea of altar, or of sanctuary foundation. Thus the
House of Zeus on Olympus is repeatedly spoken of as the “House of the
Bronze Threshold.”[386] In these references, “the nature of the
occurrences, the uniformity of the phrase, the position of the words in
the verse, all point to this as an old hieratic phrase, and the meaning
evidently is, ‘the house that is stablished forever.’”[387]
This term “bronze threshold” occurs more than once in reference to the
temple-palace of Alcinoüs.[388] Tartarus is described as having gates of
iron and a “bronze threshold.”[389] Night and day meet as they cross the
“great threshold of bronze;” and Atlas upholds heaven at the threshold
of the under-world.[390]
The treasures of Delphi are described as “within the stone threshold of
the archer god, Phoebus Apollo, in Rocky Pytho.”[391] And he who seeks
counsel at that oracle is spoken of as one who crosses “the stone
threshold.”[392]
In Sophocles’ “Oedipus at Colonus” the Athenian warns the stranger
Oedipus that he is on holy ground, in the realm of Poseidon, and that
the spot where he now treads is “called the brazen threshold of the
land, the stay of Athens.”[393] In other words, the bronze threshold is
an archaic synonym for the enduring border, or outer limit, of spiritual
domain.
This prominence given to the threshold in earlier Greek literature is
not, it is true, continued in later writings; yet there are traces of it
still in occasional poetic references to the “threshold of life,” and
the “threshold of the year,” and the “threshold of old age.” When Homer
refers “to houses, to rooms in houses, or to courtyards, the ‘threshold’
is constantly spoken of: a man steps over a threshold, stands at a
threshold, sits at a threshold, etc. And so important is the threshold
that its material is almost regularly mentioned; it is ash, oak, stone,
bronze, etc. In later times all these locutions disappear; men go
through doorways, enter, stand in porches, etc., instead.”[394] Yet it
is the archaic use that points to the primitive prominence of the
threshold.
In historic times, however, as in earlier, the altar of sacrifice was to
be found, in Grecian and Roman temples, near the threshold of the door.
While there were smaller altars, for the offering of incense and
bloodless sacrifices, in the interior of temples, the larger and more
important altars, for the offering of animal sacrifices, whether of
beasts or of men, were before the temple, in front of the
threshold,–_bomoi pronaoi_.[395]
A ruined temple of Artemis Propylæa, at Eleusis, shows the main altar
immediately before the threshold, between the antæ. The altar of the
temple of Apollo at Delphi was in a like position; as shown in the fact
that “when Neoptolemus is attacked by Orestes in the vestibule of the
temple at Delphi, he seizes the arms which were suspended by means of
nails or pins from one of the antæ, takes his station upon the altar,
and addresses the people in his own defense.”[396]
When the “priest of Jupiter, whose temple was before the city” of
Lystra, would have given divine honors to Paul and Barnabas, he brought
the garlanded oxen “unto the gates,” to sacrifice them there. At the
gate of the city, within which the supposed gods were to be found,
seemed the proper place of sacrifice.[397]
There are references in classic story, as in Babylonian legends, in
Phenician and Syrian beliefs, and in the Hebrew prophetic visions, to
life-giving waters flowing out from under the threshold of the
sanctuary. In the garden of the palace-temple of Alcinoüs “are two
springs, the one ripples through the whole garden, the other opposite it
gushes under the threshold of the courtyard to the lofty house, and from
it the citizens draw their water.”[398] On “the apple-growing shores of
the Hesperides,” where Atlas upholds “the holy threshold of heaven,”
according to the poets, “springs of ambrosia pour from the chamber of
Zeus, from his bedside,” and give a rich blessing to the life-giving
earth.[399] And of Delphi it is said: “Going toward the temple we come
upon the spring Cassotis: there is a low wall about it, and you ascend
to the spring through the walls. The water of this Cassotis they say
sinks underground, and in the shrine of the god [Apollo] makes the woman
prophetic [is inspiration to her.]”[400]
In the early churches of Europe, the threshold marked a sacred boundary
of the edifice, to cross which indicated a certain covenant right to
participate in the privileges of the house of God. As the structure of
the churches changed, in the progress of the centuries, the threshold of
the sanctuary came to be in a different portion of the building, or
series of buildings; but its sacredness remained, wherever it was
supposed to be. The term “altar” also changed, from the border line of
the place of worship, to the holy table within the sanctuary.
Speaking of the growth of the early church buildings, Bingham says: “In
the strictest sense, including only the buildings within the walls, they
were commonly divided into three parts: (1.) The _narthex_ or
ante-temple, where the penitents and catechumens stood. (2.) The _naos_
or temple, where the communicants had their respective places. And (3.)
the _bēma_ or sanctuary, where the clergy stood to officiate at the
altar. But in a larger sense there was another ante-temple or _narthex_
without the walls, under which was comprised the propylæa, or
_vestibulum_, the outward porch; then the _atrium_ or area, the court
leading from that to the temple, surrounded with porticos or
cloisters.... There were also several _exedræ_, such as the baptistery,
the _diaconicum_, the _pastophoria_, and other adjacent buildings, which
were reckoned to be either without or within the church, according as it
was taken in a stricter or a larger acceptation.”[401]
In the early churches, the place of baptism was outside of the church
proper, or the _naos_, it is said. “There is nothing more certain than
that for many ages the baptistery was a distinct place from the body of
the church, and reckoned among the _exedræ_, or places adjoining to the
church.”[402] “The first ages all agreed in this, that, whether they had
baptisteries or not, the place of baptism was always without the
church.”[403] Even in mediæval times, in the churches of England,
baptisms were on the outer side of the threshold of the church proper,
“the child being held without the doors of the church”[404] until
baptized. In many churches of Europe at the present time the baptismal
font is at or near the door of the church.
In 1661, a formal reply of the Church of England bishops to a request of
the Presbyterians that the font might be placed before the congregation,
that all might see it, was: “The font usually stands, as it did in
primitive times, at or near the church door, to signify that baptism was
the entrance into the church mystical.”[405]
Marriages, like baptisms, were at the church porch or outside of the
threshold. “The old missals direct the placing of the man and the woman
at the church door during the service, and that at the end of it they
shall proceed within up to the altar.”[406] The idea would seem to be
that a holy covenant like marriage, which is the foundation of a new
family, must be solemnized at the primitive family altar,–the threshold.
Describing the marriage rites of Germany in the middle ages,
Baring-Gould says: “In a Ritual of Rennes, of the eleventh century, we
find a rubric to this effect: ‘The priest shall go before the door of
the church in surplice and stole, and ask the bridegroom and bride
prudently whether they desire to be legally united; and then he shall
make the parents give her away, according to the usual custom, and the
bridegroom shall fix the dower, announcing before all present what
(witthum) he intends to give the bride. Then the priest shall make him
betroth her with a ring, and give her an honorarium of gold or silver
according to his means. Then let him give the prescribed benediction.
After which, entering into the church, let him begin mass; and let the
bridegroom and bride hold lighted candles, and make an oblation at the
offertory; and before the Pax let the priest bless them before the altar
under a pall or other covering [the wedding canopy], according to
custom; and lastly, let the bridegroom receive the kiss of peace from
the priest, and pass it on to his bride.’”[407]
“In ancient times the people of France were married, not within the
church at the altar as now, but at the outer door. This was the case in
1599, in which year Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry II., was married to
Philip II. of Spain; and the Bishop of Paris performed the ceremony at
the door of the cathedral of Notre Dame. Another instance of this kind
occurred in 1599 in France. Henrietta Maria was married to King Charles
by proxy at the door of Notre Dame, and the bride, as soon as the
ceremony was over entered the church, and assisted at [attended]
mass.”[408]
“The pre-Reformation rule was to begin the marriage service at the door
of the church. In his ‘Wyf of Bathe,’ Chaucer [in the days of Edward
III.] refers to this custom:–
‘Housbandes atte chirche dore I have had fyve.’
This old usage was abandoned by authority in the time of Edward VI. Yet
there is reason for thinking that it was not entirely given up. “There
is a poem of Herrick’s, written about 1640, which is entitled, ‘The
Entertainment or Porch Verse at the Marriage of Mr. Hen. Northly.’”[409]
“When Edward I. married Marguerite of France, in 1299, he endowed her at
the door of Canterbury Cathedral.” Selden declares that “dower could be
lawfully assigned only at the door;” and Littleton affirms to the same
effect.[410]
“At Witham in Essex it is, or was, the custom to perform the first part
of the marriage service at the font [near the door]. When the Rev. A.
Snell was appointed to the benefice in 1873, he spoke to a bridegroom
about this usage, and he (the bridegroom) particularly requested that he
might be married at the font, as he liked old customs.”[411]
Another survival of the primitive rite of threshold covenanting seems to
be shown in certain customs observed in various parts of Europe, which
look like the substitution of an altar-stone for a threshold altar, in
the marriage ceremony.
“Thus in the old temple of Upsal [in Sweden], wedding couples stood upon
a broad stone which was believed to cover the tomb of St. Eric.”[412]
Corresponding customs in other regions would go to show that the earlier
practice was to leap over the stone, as a mode of threshold covenanting,
instead of standing on it. The latter was a change without a reason for
it.
For instance, just outside “the ruined church, or abbey, of Lindisfarne,
is the socket or foot-stone, in which was mortised a ponderous stone
cross, erected by Ethelwold, and broken down by the Danes. This socket
stone is now called the “petting stone,” and whenever a marriage is
solemnized in the neighborhood, after the ceremony the bride is obliged
to step upon it; and if she cannot stride to the end thereof, the
marriage is deemed likely to prove unfortunate an
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