Chapter VIII: Act 1906: , specifying as it does cheques alone, appears to exclude documents (3)

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--_A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages_ (in two parts, left unfinished), by Dr W. I. Bleek (London, 1869); _A Sketch of the Modern Languages of Africa_, by R. N. Cust (1882); _Comparative Grammar of the South African Bantu Languages_, by Father J. Torrend (1894; mainly composed on a study of the languages of the Central Zambezi, interesting, but erroneous in some deductions, and incomplete). In Sir H. H. Johnston's _The Kilimanjaro Expedition_ (1884), _British Central Africa_ (1898), and _The Uganda Protectorate_ (1902-1904), there are illustrative vocabularies; and in _George Grenfell and the Congo_ (1908) the Congo groups of Bantu speech are carefully classified, also the Fernandian and Cameroon. In the numerous essays of Carl Meinhof on the original structure of the Bantu mother-speech, and on existing languages in East and South-East Africa, in the _Mittheilungen des Seminaers fuer Orientalische Sprachen_, Berlin (also issued separately through Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1899), and also in his _Grundzuege einer vergleichenden Grammatik der Bantusprachen_ (Berlin, 1906), a vast amount of valuable information has been collected, but Meinhof's deductions therefrom are not in every case in accord with those of other authorities. The _Swahili-English Dictionary_, by Dr L. Krapf (London, 1882), contains a mass of not well-sorted but invaluable information concerning the Swahili language as spoken on the coast of East Africa, especially regarding many words now becoming obsolete. A similar mine of information is to be found in _An Encyclopaedic Dictionary of the Mananja_ (Mang'anja) _Language of British Central Africa_, by the Rev. D. C. Scott (1891). Other admirable works are the _Dictionary of the Congo Language_, by the Rev. Holman Bentley (1891), and _The Folklore of Angola_, and a _Grammar of Kimbundu_, by Dr. Heli Chatelain. The many handbooks and vocabularies written and published by Bishop Steere on the languages of the East African coast-lands are of great importance to the student, especially as they give forms of the prefixes now passing out of use. The _Introductory Handbook of the Yao Language_, by the Rev. Alexander Hetherwick, illustrates very fully that peculiar and important member of the East African group. Vocabularies of various Congo languages have been compiled by Dr. A. Sims; more important works on this subject have been published by the Rev. W. H. Stapleton (_Comparative Handbook of Congo Languages_), and by Rev. John Whitehead (_Grammar and Dictionary of the Bobangi Language_ (London, 1899). E. Torday has illustrated the languages of the Western Congo basin (_Kwango_, _Kwilu_, northern _Kasai_) in the _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_. There is a treatise on the _Lunda_ language of the southwestern part of the Belgian Congo, in Portuguese, by Henrique de Carvalho, who also in his _Ethnographia da Expedica[o] portugueza [v.03 p.0363] ao Muata Yanvo_ goes deeply into Bantu language questions. The _Duala_ language of Cameroon, has been illustrated by the Baptist missionary Saker in his works published about 1860, and since 1900 by German missionaries and explorers (such as Schuler). The German work on the Duala language is mostly published in the _Mittheilungen des Seminaers fuer Orientalische Sprachen_ (Berlin); see also Schuler's _Grammatik des Duala_. The Rev. S. Koelle, in his _Polyglotta Africana_, published in 1851, gave a good many interesting vocabularies of the almost unknown north-west Bantu borderland, as well as of other forms of Bantu speech of the Congo coast and Congo basin. J. T. Last, in his _Polyglotta Africana Orientalis_, has illustrated briefly many of the East African dialects and languages, some otherwise touched by no one else. He has also published an excellent grammar of the _Kaguru_ language of the East African highlands (Usagara). The fullest information is now extant regarding the languages of _Uganda_ and _Unyoro_, in works by the missionaries of the Church Missionary Society (Pilkington, Blackledge, Hattersley, Henry Duta and others). Mr Crabtree, of the same mission, has collected information regarding the _Masaba_ dialects of Elgon, and these have also been illustrated by Mr C. W. Hobley, and by Sir H. H. Johnston (_Uganda Protectorate_), and privately by Mr S. A. Northcote. Mr A. C. Madan has published works on the _Swahili_ language and on the little-known _Senga_ of Central Zambezia and _Wisa_ of North-East Rhodesia (Oxford University Press). Jacottet (Paris, 1902) has in his _Grammaire Subiya_ provided an admirable study of the _Subiya_ and _Luyi_ languages of Barotseland, and in 1907, Edwin W. Smith (Oxford University Press) brought out a _Handbook of the Ila Language_ (Mashukulumbwe). The Rev. W. Govan Robertson is the author of a complete study of the _Bemba_ language. Mrs Sydney Hinde has illustrated the dialects of _Kikuyu_ and _Kamba_. F. Van der Burgt has published a _Dictionary of Kirundi_ (the language spoken at the north end of Tanganyika). _Oci-herero_ of Damaraland has chiefly been illustrated by German writers, old and new; such as Dr Kolbe and Dr P. H. Brincker. The northern languages of this Herero group have been studied by members of the American Mission at Bailundu under the name of _Umbundu_. Some information on the languages of the south-western part of the Congo basin and those of south-eastern Angola may be found in the works of Capello and Ivens and of Henrique de Carvalho and Commander V. L. Cameron. The British, French and German missionaries have published many dictionaries and grammars of the different _Secuana_ dialects, notable amongst which is John Brown's _Dictionary of Secuana_ and Meinhof's _Study of the T[vs]i-venda_. The grammars and dictionaries of Zulu-Kaffir are almost too numerous to catalogue. Among the best are Maclaren's _Kafir Grammar_ and Roberts' _Zulu Dictionary_. The works of Boyce, Appleyard and Bishop Colenso should also be consulted. Miss A. Werner has written important studies on the Zulu click-words and other grammatical essays and vocabularies of the Bantu languages in the _Journal of the African Society_ between 1902 and 1906. The Tebele dialect of Zulu has been well illustrated by W. A. Elliott in his _Dictionary of the Tebele and Shuna languages_ (London, 1897). The _Ronga_ (_Tonga_, _Si-gwamba_, _Hlengwe_, &c.) are dealt with in the _Grammaire Ronga_ (Lausanne, 1896) of Henri Junod. Bishop Smyth and John Mathews have published a vocabulary and short grammar of the _Xilenge_ (Shilenge) language of Inhambane (_S.P.C.R._, 1902). The journal _Anthropos_ (Vienna) should also be consulted.

(H. H. J.)

[1] _Bantu_ (literally _Ba-ntu_) is the most archaic and most widely spread term for "men," "mankind," "people," in these languages. It also indicates aptly the leading feature of this group of tongues, which is the governing of the unchangeable root by prefixes. The syllable _-ntu_ is nowhere found now standing alone, but it originally meant "object," or possibly "person." It is also occasionally used as a relative pronoun--"that," "that which," "he who." Combined with different prefixes it has different meanings. Thus (in the purer forms of Bantu languages) _muntu_ means "a man," _bantu_ means "men," _kintu_ means "a thing," _bintu_ "things," _kantu_ means "a little thing," _tuntu_ "little things," and so on. This term _Bantu_ has been often criticized, but no one has supplied a better, simpler designation for this section of Negro languages, and the name has now been definitely consecrated by usage.

[2] In Luganda and other languages of Uganda and the Victoria Nyanza, and also in Runyoro on the Victoria Nile, the word for "fowl" is _enkoko_. In Ki-Swahili of Zanzibar it is _kuku_. In Zulu it is _inkuku_. In some of the Cameroon languages it is _lokoko_, _ngoko_, _ngok_, and on the Congo it is _nkogo_, _nsusu_. On the Zambezi it is _nkuku_; so also throughout the tribes of Lakes Nyasa and Tanganyika, and most dialects of South Africa.

[3] From this statement are excepted those tongues classified as "semi-Bantu." In some languages of the Lower Niger and of the Gold Coast the word for "fowl" is generally traceable to a root _kuba_. This form _kuba_ also enters the Cameroon region, where it exists alongside of _-koko_. _Kuba_ may have arisen independently, or have been derived from the Bantu _kuku_.

[4] Whence the many _nyanza_, _nyanja_, _nyasa_, _mwanza_, of African geography.

[5] In using the forms Uganda, Unyoro, the writer accepts the popular mis-spelling. These countries should be called Buganda and Bunyoro, and their languages Luganda and Runyoro.

[6] It is an important and recently discovered fact (delineated in the work of the Baptist missionaries and of the Austrian traveller Dr. Franz Thonner) that the Congo at its northern and north-eastern bend, between the Rubi river and Stanley Falls, lies outside the Bantu field. The _Bondonga_ and _Wamanga_ languages are not Bantu. They are allied to the _Mbuba-Momfu_ of the Ituri and Nepoko, and also to the _Mundu_ of the Egyptian Sudan. The Mundu group extends westward to the Ubangi river, as far south as 3deg 30' N. See _George Grenfell and the Congo_, by Sir Harry Johnston; and _Dans la Grande Foret de l'Afrique equatoriale_, by Franz Thonner (1899).

[7] These features are characteristic of almost all the Negro languages of Africa.

[8] This does not preclude the _aspiration_ of consonants, or the occasional local change of a palatal into a guttural.

[9] As already mentioned, a somewhat similar concord is also present as regards the _suffixes_ of the Fula and the Kiama (_Tem_) languages in Western Africa, and as regards the _prefixes_ of the Timne language of Sierra Leone; it exists likewise in Hottentot and less markedly in many Aryan, Semitic and Hamitic tongues.

[10] An apparent but not a real exception to this rule is in the second person plural of the imperative mood, where an abbreviated form of the pronoun is _affixed_ to the verb. Other phases of the verb may be occasionally emphasized by the repetition of the governing pronoun at the end.

[11] The full hypothetical forms of the prefixes as joined with definite articles--_Ngumu_, _Mbaba_, _Ngimi_, _Ngama_ and so on--are added in brackets. Forms very like these are met with still in the Mt. Elgon languages (Group No. 3) and in _Subiya_ group (No. 32).

[12] This is prominently met with in East Africa, and also in the various Bechuana dialects of Central South Africa, where it takes the form of _n_ at the end of words.

[13] Or perhaps _nga-ba-ntu_ (afterwards _na-ba-_, _aba-_); the form _ngabantu_ is actually met with in Zulu-Kaffir: also _ngumuntu_.

[14] Likewise _ba-_ may have meant "two" (Bantu root _Bali_ = two); a dual first and then a plural.

[15] _Wa-_ in Luganda. In Lusoga (north coast of Victoria Nyanza) _Wa-_ becomes _[Gamma]a_ (_Gha_).

[16] _Mi_ is possibly a softening of _ngi_, _ni_; _ngi_ becomes in some dialects _nji_, _ndi_, _ni_ or _mbi_; there is in some of the coast Cameroon languages, and in the north-eastern Congo, a word _mbi_, _mba_ for "I," "me," which seems to be borrowed from the Sudanian Mundu tongues. The possessive pronoun for the first person is devired from two forms, _-ami_ and _-angi_ (_-am_, _-angu_, _-anji_, _-ambi_, &c.).

[17] An exception to this rule is the verbal particle _li_ or _di_, which means "to be."

[18] Or _-ira_, _-era_.

[19] This form may also appear as _[vs]a_, as for instance _aka_--to be on fire becomes _a[vs]a_, to set on fire.

[20] In choosing this common root _tanda_, and applying it to the above various terminations, the writer is not prepared to say that it is associated with all of them in any one Bantu language. Although _tanda_ is a common verb in Zulu, it has not in Zulu _all_ these variations, and in some other language where it may by chance exhibit all the variations its own form is changed to _londa_ or _randa_.

BANVILLE, THEODORE FAULLAIN DE (1823-1891), French poet and miscellaneous writer, was born at Moulins in the Bourbonnais, on the 14th of March 1823. He was the son of a captain in the French navy. His boyhood, by his own account, was cheerlessly passed at a lycee in Paris; he was not harshly treated, but took no part in the amusements of his companions. On leaving school with but slender means of support, he devoted himself to letters, and in 1842 published his first volume of verse (_Les Cariatides_), which was followed by _Les Stalactites_ in 1846. The poems encountered some adverse criticism, but secured for their author the approbation and friendship of Alfred de Vigny and Jules Janin. Henceforward Banville's life was steadily devoted to literary production and criticism. He printed other volumes of verse, among which the _Odes funambulesques_ (Alencon, 1857) received unstinted praise from Victor Hugo, to whom they were dedicated. Later, several of his comedies in verse were produced at the Theatre Francais and on other stages; and from 1853 onwards a stream of prose flowed from his industrious pen, including studies of Parisian manners, sketches of well-known persons (_Camees parisiennes_, &c.), and a series of tales (_Contes bourgeois_, _Contes heroiques_, &c.), most of which were republished in his collected works (1875-1878). He also wrote freely for reviews, and acted as dramatic critic for more than one newspaper. Throughout a life spent mainly in Paris, Banville's genial character and cultivated mind won him the friendship of the chief men of letters of his time. He was also intimate with Frederick-Lemaitre and other famous actors. In 1858 he was decorated with the legion of honour, and was promoted to be an officer of the order in 1886. He died in Paris on the 15th of March 1891, having just completed his sixty-eighth year. Banville's claim to remembrance rests mainly on his poetry. His plays are written with distinction and refinement, but are deficient in dramatic power; his stories, though marked by fertility of invention, are as a rule conventional and unreal. Most of his prose, indeed, in substance if not in manner, is that of a journalist. His lyrics, however, rank high. A careful and loving student of the finest models, he did even more than his greater and somewhat older comrades, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset and Theophile Gautier, to free French poetry from the fetters of metre and mannerism in which it had limped from the days of Malherbe. In the _Odes funambulesques_ and elsewhere he revived with perfect grace and understanding the _rondeau_ and the _villanelle_, and like Victor Hugo in _Les Orientales_, wrote _pantoums_ (pantuns) after the Malay fashion. He published in 1872 a _Petit traite de versification francaise_ in exposition of his metrical methods. He was a master of delicate satire, and used with much effect the difficult humour of sheer bathos, happily adapted by him from some of the early folk-songs. He has somewhat rashly been compared to Heine, whom he profoundly admired; but if he lacked the supreme touch of genius, he remains a delightful writer, who exercised a wise and sound influence upon the art of his generation.

Among his other works may be mentioned the poems, _Idylles prussiennes_ (1871), and _Trente-six ballades joyeuses_ (1875); the prose tales, _Les Saltimbanques_ (1853); _Esquisses parisiennes_ (1859) and _Contes feeriques_; and the plays, _Le Feuilleton d'Aristophane_ (1852), _Gringoire_ (1866), and _Deidamia_ (1876).

See also J. Lemaitre, _Les Contemporains_ (first series, 1885); Sainte-Beuve, _Causeries du lundi_, vol. xiv.; Maurice Spronck, _Les Artistes litteraires_ (1889).

(C.)

BANYAN, or BANIAN (an Arab corruption, borrowed by the Portuguese from the Sanskrit _vanij_, "merchant"), the _Ficus Indica_, or _Bengalensis_, a tree of the fig genus. The name was originally given by Europeans to a particular tree on the Persian Gulf beneath which some Hindu "merchants" had built a pagoda. In Calcutta the word was once generally applied to a native broker or head clerk in any business or private house, now usually known as sircar. _Bunya_, a corruption of the word common in Bengal generally, is usually applied to the native grain-dealer. Early writers sometimes use the term generically for all Hindus in western India. _Banyan_ was long Anglo-Indian for an undershirt, in allusion to the body garment of the Hindus, especially the Banyans.

_Banyan days_ is a nautical slang term. In the British navy there were formerly two days in each week on which meat formed no part of the men's rations. These were called banyan days, in allusion to the vegetarian diet of the Hindu merchants. _Banyan hospital_ also became a slang term for a hospital for animals, in reference to the Hindu's humanity and his dislike of taking the life of any animal.

BAOBAB, _Adansonia digitata_ (natural order _Bombaceae_), a native of tropical Africa, one of the largest trees known, its stem reaching 30 ft. in diameter, though the height is not great. It has a large woody fruit, containing a mucilaginous pulp, with a pleasant cool taste, in which the seeds are buried. The bark yields a strong fibre which is made into ropes and woven into cloth. The wood is very light and soft, and the trunks of living trees are often excavated to form houses. The name of the genus was given by Linnaeus in honour of Michel Adanson, a celebrated French botanist and traveller.

BAPHOMET, the imaginary symbol or idol which the Knights Templars were accused of worshipping in their secret rites. The term is supposed to be a corruption of _Mahomet_, who in several medieval Latin poems seems to be called by this name. J. von Hammer-Purgstall, in his _Mysterium Baphometis relevatum, &c._, and _Die Schuld der Templer_, revived the old charge against the Templars. The word, according to his interpretation, signifies the baptism of _Metis_, or of fire, and is, therefore, connected with the impurities of the Gnostic Ophites (_q.v._). Additional [v.03 p.0364] evidence of this, according to Hammer-Purgstall, is to be found in the architectural decorations of the Templars' churches.

An elaborate criticism of Hammer-Purgstall's arguments was made in the _Journal des Savans_, March and April 1819, by M. Raynouard, a well-known defender of the Templars. (See also Hallam, _Middle Ages_, c. i. note 15.)

BAPTISM. The Gr. words [Greek: baptismos] and [Greek: baptisma] (both of which occur in the New Testament) signify "ceremonial washing," from the verb [Greek: baptizo], the shorter form [Greek: bapto] meaning "dip" without ritual significance (_e.g._ the finger in water, a robe in blood). That a ritual washing away of sin characterized other religions than the Christian, the Fathers of the church were aware, and Tertullian notices, in his tract _On Baptism_ (ch. v.), that the votaries of Isis and Mithras were initiated _per lavacrum_, "through a font," and that in the _Ludi Apollinares et Eleusinii_, _i.e._ the mysteries of Apollo and Eleusis, men were baptized (_tinguntur_, Tertullian's favourite word for baptism), and, what is more, baptized, as they presumed to think, "unto regeneration and exemption from the guilt of their perjuries." "Among the ancients," he adds, "anyone who had stained himself with homicide went in search of waters that could purge him of his guilt."

The texts of the New Testament relating to Christian baptism, given roughly in chronological order, are the following:--

A.D. 55-60, Rom. vi. 3, 4; 1 Cor. i. 12-17, vi. 11, x. 1-4, xii. 13, xv. 29; Gal. iii. 27.

A.D. 60-65, Col. ii. 11, 12; Eph. iv. 5, v. 26.

A.D. 60-70, Mark x. 38, 39.

A.D. 80-90, Acts i. 5, ii. 38-41, viii. 16, 17, x. 44-48, xix. 1-7, xxii. 16; 1 Pet. iii. 20, 21; Heb. x. 22.

A.D. 90-100, John iii. 3-8, iii. 22, iii. 26, iv. 1, 2.

Uncertain, Matt, xxviii. 18-20; Mark xvi. 16.

The baptism of John is mentioned in the following:--

A.D. 60-70, Mark i. 1-11.

A.D. 80-90, Matt. iii. 1-16:; Luke iii. 1-22, vii. 29, 30; Acts i. 22, x. 37, xiii. 24, xviii. 25, xix. 3, 4.

A.D. 90-100, John i. 25-33, iii. 23, x. 40.

It is best to defer the question of the origin of Christian baptism until the history of the rite in the centuries which followed has been sketched, for we know more clearly what baptism became after the year 100 than what it was before. And that method on which a great scholar[1] insisted when studying the old Persian religion is doubly to be insisted on in the study of the history of baptism and the cognate institution, the eucharist, namely, to avoid equally "the narrowness of mind which clings to matters of fact without rising to their cause and connecting them with the series of associated phenomena, and the wild and uncontrolled spirit of comparison, which, by comparing everything, confounds everything."

Our earliest detailed accounts of baptism are in the _Teaching of the Apostles_ (c. 90-120) and in Justin Martyr.

The _Teaching_ has the following:--

1. Now concerning baptism, thus baptize ye: having spoken beforehand all these things, baptize into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in living water.

2. But if thou hast not living water, baptize into other water; if thou canst not in cold, in warm.

3. But if thou hast not either, pour water upon the head thrice, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

4. Now before the baptism, let him that is baptizing and him that is being baptized fast, and any others who can; but thou biddest him who is being baptized to fast one or two days before.

The "things spoken beforehand" are the moral precepts known as the two ways, the one of life and the other of death, with which the tract begins. This body of moral teaching is older than the rest of the tract, and may go back to the year A.D. 80.

Justin thus describes the rite in ch. lxi. of his first _Apology_, (c. 140):--

"I will also relate the manner in which we dedicated ourselves to God when we had been made new through Christ. As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, and undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to pray and entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their sins that are past, we praying and fasting with them. Then they are brought by us where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated. For in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water."

In the sequel Justin adds:--

"There is pronounced over him who chooses to be born again, and has repented of his sins, the name of God the Father and Lord of the universe, he who leads to the laver the person that is to be washed calling Him by this name alone. For no one can utter the name of the ineffable God, and this washing is called Illumination (Gr. [Greek: photismos]), because they who learn these things are illuminated in their understandings. And in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and in the name of the Holy Ghost, who through the prophets foretold all things about Jesus, he who is illuminated is washed."

In ch. xiv. of the dialogue with Trypho, Justin asserts, as against Jewish rites of ablution, that Christian baptism alone can purify those who have repented. "This," he says, "is the water of life. But the cisterns which you have dug for yourselves are broken and profitless to you. For what is the use of that baptism which cleanses the flesh and body alone? Baptize the soul from wrath, from envy and from hatred; and, lo! the body is pure."

In ch. xliii. of the same dialogue Justin remarks that "those who have approached God through Jesus Christ have received a circumcision, not carnal, but spiritual, after the manner of Enoch."

In after ages baptism was regularly called illumination. Late in the 2nd century Tertullian describes the rite of baptism in his treatise _On the Resurrection of the Flesh_, thus:

1. The flesh is washed, that the soul may be freed from stain.

2. The flesh is anointed, that the soul may be consecrated.

3. The flesh is sealed (_i.e._ signed with the cross), that the soul also may be protected.

4. The flesh is overshadowed with imposition of hands, that the soul also may be illuminated by the Spirit.

5. The flesh feeds on the body and blood of Christ, that the soul also may be filled and sated with God.

6. He also mentions elsewhere that the neophytes, after baptism, were given a draught of milk and honey. (The candidate for baptism, we further learn from his tract _On Baptism_, prepared himself by prayer, fasting and keeping of vigils.)

Before stepping into the font, which both sexes did quite naked, the neophytes had to renounce the devil, his pomps and angels. Baptisms were usually conferred at Easter and in the season of Pentecost which ensued, and by the bishop or by priests and deacons commissioned by him.

Such are the leading features of the rite in Tertullian, and they reappear in the 4th century in the rites of all the orthodox churches of East and West; Tertullian testifies that the Marcionites observed the particulars numbered one to six, which must therefore go back at least to the year 150. About the year 300, those desirous of being baptized were (a) admitted to the catechumenate, giving in their names to the bishop. (b) They were subjected to a scrutiny and prepared, as to-day in the western churches the young are prepared for confirmation. The catechetic course included instruction in monotheism, in the folly of polytheism, in the Christian scheme of salvation, &c. (c) They were again and again exorcized, in order to rid them of the lingering taint of the worship of demons. (d) Some days or even weeks beforehand they had the creed recited to them. They might not write it down, but learned it by heart and had to repeat it just before baptism. This rite was called in the West the _traditio_ and _redditio_ of the symbol. The Lord's Prayer was communicated with similar solemnity in the West [v.03 p.0365] (_traditio precis_). The creed given in Rome was the so-called Apostles' Creed, originally compiled as we now have it to exclude Marcionites. In the East various other symbols were used. (e) There followed an act of unction, made in the East with the oil of the catechumens blessed only by the priest, in the West with the priest's saliva applied to the lips and ears. The latter was accompanied by the following formula: "Effeta, that is, be thou opened unto odour of sweetness. But do thou flee, O Devil, for the judgment of God is at hand." (f) Renunciation of Satan. The catechumens turned to the west in pronouncing this; then turning to the east they recited the creed. (g) They stepped into the font, but were not usually immersed, and the priest recited the baptismal formula over them as he poured water, generally thrice, over their heads. (h) They were anointed all over with chrism or scented oil, the priest reciting an appropriate formula. Deacons anointed the males, deaconesses the females. (i) They put on white garments and often baptismal wreaths or chaplets as well. In some churches they had worn cowls during the catechumenate, in sign of repentance of their sins. (j) They received the sign of the cross on the brow; the bishop usually dipped his thumb in the chrism and said: "In name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, peace be with thee." In laying his hands on their heads the bishop in many places, especially in the West, called down upon them the sevenfold spirit. (k) The first communion followed, with milk and honey added. (l) Usually the water in the font was exorcized, blessed and chrism poured into it, just before the catechumen entered it. (m) Easter was the usual season of baptism, but in the East Epiphany was equally favoured. Pentecost was sometimes chosen. We hear of all three feasts being habitually chosen in Jerusalem early in the 4th century, but fifty years later baptisms seem to have been almost confined to Easter. The preparatory fasts of the catechumens must have helped to establish the Lenten fast, if indeed they were not its origin.

Certain features of baptism as used during the earlier centuries must now be noticed. They are the following:--(1) Use of fonts; (2) Status of baptizer; (3) Immersion, submersion or aspersion; (4) Exorcism; (5) Baptismal formula and trine immersion; (6) The age of baptism; (7) Confirmation; (8) _Disciplina arcani_; (9) Regeneration; (10) Relation to repentance; (11) Baptism for the dead; (12) Use of the name; (13) Origin of the institution; (14) Analogous rites in other religions.

1. _Fonts._--The New Testament, the _Didach[=e]_, Justin, Tertullian and other early sources do not enjoin the use of a font, and contemplate in general the use of running or living water. It was a Jewish rule that in ablutions the water should run over and away from the parts of the body washed. In acts of martyrdom, as late as the age of Decius, we read of baptisms in rivers, in lakes and in the sea. In exceptional cases it sufficed for a martyr to be sprinkled with his own blood. But a martyr's death in itself was enough. Nearchus (_c._ 250) quieted the scruples of his unbaptized friend Polyeuctes, when on the scaffold he asked if it were possible to attain salvation without baptism, with this answer: "Behold, we see the Lord, when they brought to Him the blind that they might be healed, had nothing to say to them about the holy mystery, nor did He ask them if they had been baptized; but this only, whether they came to Him with true faith. Wherefore He asked them, Do ye believe that I am able to do this thing?"

Tertullian (_c._ 200) writes (_de Bapt._ iv.) thus: "It makes no difference whether one is washed in the sea or in a pool, in a river or spring, in a lake or a ditch. Nor can we distinguish between those whom John baptized (_tinxit_) in the Jordan and those whom Peter baptized in the Tiber." The custom of baptizing in the rivers when they are annually blessed at Epiphany, the feast of the Lord's baptism, still survives in Armenia and in the East generally. Those of the Armenians and Syrians who have retained adult baptism use rivers alone at any time of year.

The church of Tyre described by Eusebius (_H.E._ x. 4) seems to have had a font, and the church order of Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem (_c._ 311-335), orders the font to be placed in the same building as the altar, behind it and on the right hand; but the same order lays down that a font is not essential in cases of illness for "the Holy Spirit is not hindered by want of a vessel."

2. _Status of Baptizer._--Ignatius (_Smyrn._ viii.) wrote that it is not lawful to baptize or hold an _agap[=e]_ (Lord's Supper) without the bishop. So Tertullian (_de Bapt._ xvii.) reserves the right of admitting to baptism and of conferring it to the _summus sacerdos_ or bishop, Cyprian (_Epist._ lxxiii. 7) to bishops and priests. Later canons continued this restriction; and although in outlying parts of Christendom deacons claimed the right, the official churches accorded it to presbyters alone and none but bishops could perform the confirmation or seal. In the Montanist churches women baptized, and of this there are traces in the earliest church and in the Caucasus. Thus St Thekla baptized herself in her own blood, and St Nino, the female evangelist of Georgia, baptized king Mirian (see "Life of Nino," _Studia Biblica_, 1903). In cases of imminent death a layman or a woman could baptize, and in the case of new-born children it is often necessary.

3. _Immersion or Aspersion._--The _Didach[=e]_ bids us "pour water on the head," and Christian pictures and sculptures ranging from the 1st to the 10th century represent the baptizand as standing in the water, while the baptizer pours water from his hand or from a bowl over his head. Even if we allow for the difficulty of representing complete submersion in art, it is nevertheless clear that it was not insisted on; nor were the earliest fonts, to judge from the ruins of them, large and deep enough for such an usage. The earliest literary notices of baptism are far from conclusive in favour of submersion, and are often to be regarded as merely rhetorical. The rubrics of the MSS., it is true, enjoin total immersion, but it only came into general vogue in the 7th century, "when the growing rarity of adult baptism made the Gr. word [Greek: baptizo]) patient of an interpretation that suited that of infants only."[2] The _Key of Truth_, the manual of the old Armenian Baptists, archaically prescribes that the penitent admitted into the church shall advance on his knees into the middle of the water and that the elect one or bishop shall then pour water over his head.

4. _Exorcism._--The _Didach[=e]_ and Justin merely prescribe fasting, the use of which was to hurry the exit of evil spirits who, in choosing a _nidus_ or tenement, preferred a well-fed body to an emaciated one, according to the belief embodied in the interpolated saying of Matt. xvii. 21: "This kind (of demon) goeth not forth except by prayer and fasting." The exorcisms tended to become longer and longer, the later the rite. The English prayer-book excludes them, as it also excludes the renunciation of the devil and all his angels, his pomps and works. These elements were old, but scarcely primitive; and the archaic rite of the _Key of Truth_ (see PAULICIANS) is without them. Basil, in his work _On the Holy Spirit_, confesses his ignorance of how these and other features of his baptismal rite had originated. He instances the blessing of the water of baptism, of the oil of anointing and of the baptizand himself, the use of anointing him with oil, trine immersion, the formal renunciation of Satan and his angels. All these features, he says, had been handed down in an unpublished and unspoken teaching, in a silent and sacramental tradition.

5. _The Baptismal Formula._--The trinitarian formula and trine immersion were not uniformly used from the beginning, nor did they always go together. The _Teaching of the Apostles_, indeed, prescribes baptism in the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, but on the next page speaks of those who have been baptized into the name of the Lord--the normal formula of the New Testament. In the 3rd century baptism in the name of Christ was still so widespread that Pope Stephen, in opposition to Cyprian of Carthage, declared it to be valid. From Pope Zachariah (_Ep._ x.) we learn that the Celtic missionaries in baptizing omitted one or more persons of the Trinity, and this was one of the reasons why the church of Rome anathematized [v.03 p.0366] them; Pope Nicholas, however (858-867), in the _Responsa ad consulta Bulgarorum_, allowed baptism to be valid _tantum in nomine Christi_, as in the Acts. Basil, in his work _On the Holy Spirit_ just mentioned, condemns "baptism into the Lord alone" as insufficient. Baptism "into the death of Christ" is often specified by the Armenian fathers as that which alone was essential.

Ursinus, an African monk (in Gennad. _de Scr. Eccl._ xxvii.), Hilary (_de Synodis_, lxxxv.), the synod of Nemours (A.D. 1284), also asserted that baptism into the name of Christ alone was valid. The formula of Rome is, "I baptize thee in the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit." In the East, "so-and-so, the servant of God, is baptized," &c. The Greeks add _Amen_ after each person, and conclude with the words, "Now and ever and to aeons of aeons, amen."

We first find in Tertullian trine immersion explained from the triple invocation, _Nam nec semel, sed ter, ad singula nomina in personas singulas tinguimur_: "Not once, but thrice, for the several names, into the several persons, are we dipped" (_adv. Prax._ xxvi.). And Jerome says: "We are thrice plunged, that the one sacrament of the Trinity may be shown forth." On the other hand, in numerous fathers of East and West, _e.g._ Leo of Rome, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Theophylactus, Cyril of Jerusalem and others, trine immersion was regarded as being symbolic of the three days' entombment of Christ; and in the Armenian baptismal rubric this interpretation is enjoined, as also in an epistle of Macarius of Jerusalem addressed to the Armenians (_c._ 330). In Armenian writers this interpretation is further associated with the idea of baptism into the death of Christ.

Trine immersion then, as to the origin of which Basil confesses his ignorance, must be older than either of the rival explanations. These are clearly aetiological, and invented to explain an existing custom, which the church had adopted from its pagan medium. For pagan lustrations were normally threefold; thus Virgil writes (_Aen._ vi. 229): _Ter socios pura circumtulit unda._ Ovid (_Met._ vii. 189 and _Fasti_, iv. 315), Persius (ii. 16) and Horace (_Ep._ i. 1. 37) similarly speak of trine lustrations; and on the last mentioned passage the scholiast Acro remarks: "He uses the words _thrice purely_, because people in expiating their sins, plunge themselves in thrice." Such examples of the ancient usage encounter us everywhere in Greek and Latin antiquity.

6. _Age of Baptism._--In the oldest Greek, Armenian, Syrian and other rites of baptism, a service of giving a Christian (_i.e._ non-pagan) name, or of sealing a child on its eighth day, is found. According to it the priest, either at the door of the church or at the home, blessed the infant, sealed it (this not in Armenia) with the sign of the cross on its forehead, and prayed that in due season ([Greek: en kairoi euthetoi]) or at the proper time (Armenian) it may enter the holy Catholic church. This rite announces itself as the analogue of Christ's circumcision.

On the fortieth day from birth another rite is prescribed, of _churching_ the child, which is now taken _into_ the church with its mother. Both are blessed by the clergy, whose petition now is that God "may preserve this child and cause him to grow up by the unseen grace of His power and made him worthy _in due season_ of the washing of baptism." As the first rite corresponds to the circumcision and naming of Jesus, so does the second to His presentation in the temple. These two rites really begin the catechumenate or period of instruction in the faith and discipline of the church. It depended on the individual how long he would wait for initiation. Whenever he felt inclined, he gave in his name as a candidate. This was usually done at the beginning of Lent. The bishop and clergy next examined the candidates one by one, and ascertained from their neighbours whether they had led such exemplary lives as to be worthy of admission. In case of strangers from another church certificates of character had to be produced. If a man seemed unworthy, the bishop dismissed him until another occasion, when he might be worthier; but if all was satisfactory he was admitted, in the West as a _competens_ or _asker_, in the East as a [Greek: photizomenos], _i.e._ one in course of being illumined. Usually two sponsors made themselves responsible for the past life of the candidate and for the sincerity of his faith and repentance. The essential thing was that a man should come to baptism of his own free will and not under compulsion or from hope of gain. Macarius of Jerusalem (_op. cit._) declares that the grace of the spirit is given in answer to our prayers and entreaties for it, and that even a font is not needful, but only the wish and desire for grace. Tertullian, however, in his work _On Baptism_, holds that even that is not always enough. Some girls and boys at Carthage had asked to be baptized, and there were some who urged the granting of their request on the score that Christ said: "Forbid them not to come unto Me" (Matt. xix. 14), and: "To each that asketh thee give" (Luke vi. 30). Tertullian replies that "We must beware of giving the holy thing to dogs and of casting pearls before swine." He cites 1 Tim. v. 22: "Lay not on thy hands hastily, lest thou share in another's sins." He denies that the precedents of the eunuch baptized by Philip or of Paul baptized _without hesitation_ by Simon (to which the other party appealed) were relevant. He dwells on the risk run by the sponsors, in case the candidates for whose purity they went bail should fall into sin. It is more expedient, he concludes, to delay baptism. Why should persons still in the age of innocence be in a hurry to be baptized and win remission of sins? Let people first learn to feel their need of salvation, so that we may be sure of giving it only to those who really want it. Especially let the unmarried postpone it. The risks of the age of puberty are extreme. Let people have married or be anyhow steeled in continence before they are admitted to baptism. It would appear from the homilies of Aphraates (_c._ 340) that in the Syriac church also it was usual to renounce the married relation after baptism. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his _Catecheses_, insists on "the longing for the heavenly polity, on the goodly resolution and attendant hope" of the catechumen (_Pro. Cat._ ch. 1.). If the resolution be not genuine, the bodily washing, he says, profits nothing. "God asks for nothing else except a goodly determination. Say not: How can my sins be wiped out? I tell thee, by willing, by believing" (ch. viii.). So again (_Cat._ 1. ch. iii.) "God gives not his holy treasures to the dogs; but where he sees the goodly determination, there he bestows the seed of salvation.... Those then who would receive the spiritual saving seal have need of a determination and will of their own.... Grace has need of faith on our part." In Jerusalem, therefore, whither believers flocked from all over Christendom to be buried, the official point of view as late as A.D. 350 was entirely that of Tertullian. Tertullian's scruples were not long respected in Carthage, for in Cyprian's works (_c._ 250.) we already hear of new-born infants being baptized. In the same region of Africa, however, Monica would not let her son Augustine be baptized in boyhood, though he clamoured to be. She was a conservative. In the Greek world thirty was a usual age in the 4th century for persons to be baptized, in imitation of Christ. It is still the age preferred by the Baptists of Armenia. But it was often delayed until the deathbed, for the primitive idea that mortal sins committed after baptism were sins against the Holy Spirit and unforgivable, still influenced men, and survived among the Cathars up to the 14th century. The fathers, however, of the 4th century emphasized already the danger of deferring the rite until men fall into mortal sickness, when they may be unconscious or paralysed or otherwise unable to profess their faith and repentance, or to swallow the viaticum. Gregory Theologus therefore (_c._ 340) suggests the age of three years as suitable for baptism, because by then a child is old enough, if not to understand the questions put to him, at any rate to speak and make the necessary responses. Gregory sanctions the baptism of infants only where there is imminent danger of death. "It is better that they should be sanctified without their own sense of it than that they pass away unsealed and uninitiated." And he justifies his view by this, that circumcision, which foreshadowed the Christian seal ([Greek: sphragis]), was imposed on the eighth day on those who as yet had no use of reason. He also urges the analogue of "the anointing of the doorposts, which preserved the first-born by things that have no sense." On such grounds was justified the transition of a baptism which began as a spontaneous act of [v.03 p.0367] self-consecration into an _opus operatum_. How long after this it was before infant baptism became normal inside the Byzantine church, we do not exactly know, but it was natural that mothers should insist on their children being liberated from Satan and safeguarded from demons as soon as might be. The change came more quickly in Latin than in Greek Christendom, and very slowly indeed in the Armenian and Georgian churches. Augustine's insistence on original sin, a doctrine never quite accepted in his sense in the East, hurried on the change.

7. _Confirmation._--In the West, however, the sacrament has been saved from becoming merely magical by the rite of confirmation or of reception of the Spirit being separated from the baptism of regeneration and reserved for an adult age. The English church confirms at fifteen or sixteen; the Roman rather earlier. The catechetic course, which formerly preceded the complete rite, now intervenes between its two halves; and the sponsors who formerly attested the worthiness of the candidate and received him up as _anadochi_ out of the font, have become god-parents, who take the baptismal vows vicariously for infants who cannot answer for themselves. In the East, on the contrary, the complete rite is read over the child, who is thus confirmed from the first. The Roman church already foreshadowed the change and gave a peculiar salience to confirmation as early as the 3rd century, when it decreed that persons already baptized by heretics, but reverting to the church should not be baptized over again, but only have hands laid on them. It was otherwise in Africa and the East. Here they insisted in such cases on a repetition of the entire rite, baptism and confirmation together. The Cathars (_q.v._) of the middle ages discarded water baptism altogether as being a Jewish rite, but retained the laying on of hands with the _traditio precis_ as sufficient initiation. This they called the spiritual baptism, and interpreted Matt. xxviii. 19, as a command to practise it, and not water baptism.

8. _Disciplina arcani._--The communication to the candidates of the Creed and Lord's Prayer was a solemn rite. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his instruction of the catechumens, urges them to learn the Creed by heart, but not write it down. On no account must they divulge it to unbaptized persons. The same rule already meets us in Clement of Alexandria before the year 200. In time this rule gave rise to what is called the _Disciplina arcani._ Following the fashion of the pagan mysteries in which men were only permitted to gaze upon the sacred objects after minute lustrations and scrupulous purifications, Christian teachers came to represent the Creed, Lord's Prayer and Lord's Supper as mysteries to be guarded in silence and never divulged either to the unbaptized or to the pagans. And yet Justin Martyr, Tertullian and other apologists of the 2nd century had found nothing to conceal from the eye and ear of pagan emperors and their ministers. In the 3rd century this love of mystification reached the pitch of hiding even the gospels from the unclean eyes of pagans. Probably Mgr. Pierre Battifol is correct in supposing that the _Disciplina arcani_ was more or less of a make-believe, a bit of belletristic trifling on the part of the over-rhetorical Fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries.[3] It is in them that the atmosphere of mystery attains a maximum of intensity. They clearly felt themselves called upon to out-trump the pagan _Mystae_. Yet it is inconceivable that men and women should spend years, even whole lives, as catechumens within the pale of the church, and really remain ignorant all the time of the Trinitarian Epiclesis used in baptism, of the Creed, and above all of the Lord's Prayer. Wherever the _Disciplina arcani_, _i.e._ the obligation to keep secret the formula of the threefold name, the creed based on it and the Lord's Prayer, was taken seriously, it was akin to the scruple which exists everywhere among primitive religionists against revealing to the profane the knowledge of a powerful name or magic formula. The name of a deity was often kept secret and not allowed to be written down, as among the Jews.

9. _Regeneration._--The idea of regeneration seldom occurs in the New Testament, and perhaps not at all in connexion with baptism; for in the conversation with Nicodemus, John iii. 3-8, the words "of water and" in v. 5 offend the context, spiritual re-birth alone being insisted upon in vv. 3, 6, 7 and 8; moreover, Justin Martyr, who cites v. 5, seems to omit them. Nor is there any mention of water in ch. i. 13, where, according to the oldest text, Christ is represented as having been born or begotten not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

In 1 Pet. i. 3, it is said of the saints that God the Father begat them anew unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus, and in v. 23 that they have been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible through the word of God. But here again it is not clear that the writer has in view water baptism or any rite at all as the means and occasion of regeneration. In the conversation with Nicodemus we seem to overhear a protest against the growing tendency of the last years of the 1st century to substitute formal sacraments for the free afflatus of the spirit, and to "crib, cabin and confine" the gift of prophecy.

The passage where re-birth is best put forward in connexion with baptism is Luke iii. 22, where ancient texts, including the _Gospel of the Hebrews_, read, "Thou art my beloved Son, this day have I begotten Thee." These words were taken in the sense that Jesus was then re-born of the Spirit an adoptive Son of God and Messiah; and with this reading is bound up the entire adoptionist school of Christology. It apparently underlies the symbolizing of Christ as a fish in the art of the catacombs, and in the literature of the 2nd century. Tertullian prefaces with this idea his work on baptism. _Nos pisciculi secundum_ [Greek: ICHTHUN] _nostrum Jesum Christum in aqua nascimur_. "We little fishes, after the example of our _Fish_ Jesus Christ, are _born_ in the water." So about the year 440 the Gaulish poet Orientius wrote of Christ; _Piscis natus aquis, auctor baptismatis ipse est_. "A fish born of the waters is himself originator of baptism."

But before his time and within a hundred years of Tertullian this symbolism in its original significance had become heretical, and the orthodox were thrown back on another explanation of it. This was that the word [Greek: ICHTHUS] is made up of the letters which begin the Greek words meaning "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour." An entire mythology soon grew up around the idea of re-birth. The font was viewed as the womb of the virgin mother church, who was in some congregations, for example, in the early churches of Gaul, no abstraction, but a divine aeon watching over and sympathizing with the children of her womb, the recipient even of hymns of praise and humble supplications. Other mythoplastic growths succeeded, one of which must be noticed. The sponsors or _anadochi_, who, after the introduction of infant baptism came to be called god-fathers and god-mothers, were really in a spiritual relation to the children they took up out of the font. This relation was soon by the canonists identified with the blood-tie which connects real parents with their offspring, and the corollary drawn that children, who in baptism had the same god-parent, were real brothers and sisters, who might not marry either each the other or real children of the said god-parent. The reformed churches have set aside this fiction, but in the Latin and Eastern churches it has created a distinct and very powerful marriage taboo.

10. _Relation to Repentance._--Baptism justified the believer, that is to say, constituted him a saint whose past sins were abolished. Sin after baptism excluded the sinner afresh from the divine grace and from the sacraments. He fell back into the status of a catechumen, and it was much discussed from the 2nd century onwards whether he could be restored to the church at all, and, if so, how. A rite was devised, called _exhomologesis_, by which, after a fresh term of repentance, marked by austerities more strict than any Trappist monk imposes on himself to-day, the persons lapsed from grace could re-enter the church. In effect this rite was a repetition of baptism, the water of the font alone being omitted. Such restoration could in the earlier church only be effected once. A second lapse from the state of grace entailed perpetual exclusion from the sacraments, the means of salvation. As has been remarked above, the terror of post-baptismal sin and the fact that only one restoration was allowable influenced many as late as the 4th century to remain catechumens all their lives, and, like Constantine, to receive baptism on the [v.03 p.0368] deathbed alone. The same scruples endured among the medieval Cathars. (See PENANCE and NOVATIANUS.)