[Footnote 119:  See on such subjects Del Signore’s Institut.  Hist.  Eccles. with notes by Prof.  Tizzani Cap.  V. Sec. 19 seq.]

[Footnote 120:  See Comm. ad Ord.  Rom.  Mabillonii tom. 2, Mus.  Ital. p. 95.]

[Footnote 121:  According to the Ordo Romanus, children after baptism on this day were to take no food or milk before Communion “and on all days of Easter-week let them go to Mass, and let their parents offer for them, and let all communicate”.  As Cabassutius proves in his notitia Ecclesiastica saeculi primi, they used to receive the B. Sacrament under the form of wine alone.  The bishop dipped his finger into the sacred blood, and then put it into the mouth of the child a practice observed in modern times in some parts of the East, according to the learned Maronite Abraham Ecchellensis; afterwards a little milk and honey was put into their mouths, as an emblem (according to John the deacon) of the promised land, to which they were called.  This custom of giving communion to children was not of necessity for salvation, as Cardinal Noris proves in Vindiciis Augustinianis Sec. 4, and the Council of Trent observes.  In some places an abuse crept in of putting the milk and honey into the consecrated chalice, but it was prohibited by an African Council.]

[Footnote 122:  In the 4th century, S. Basil writing to the clergy of Neocesarea observes, that the litanies, which they then used, were introduced after the time of S. Gregory Thaumaturgus (Epist. 63).  In Gaul about the year 452, S. Mamertus bishop of Vienne appointed solemn litanies to be recited on the three rogation days.  “At Rome,” say Palmer, “no doubt litanies were in use at an early period, since we find that in the time of Gregory the great (A.D. 590), the appellation of litany had been so long given to processional supplications, that it was then familiarly applied to those persons who formed the procession”.  Vol. 1, p. 271.  That holy Pontiff gave the following directions; “Let the litany of the clergy set out from the church of S. John the Baptist, the litany of the men from the church of the holy martyr Marcellus, the litany of the monks from the church of SS John and Paul:  the litany of the handmaids of God from the church of the blessed martyrs Cosmas and Damian, the litany of the married women from the church of the blessed protomartyr Stephen; the litany of the widows from the church of the blessed martyr Vitalis, the litany of the poor and children from the church of the blessed martyr Cecilia”.  Vita S. Gregorii a Joanne Diacono, lib. 1, c. 42.  That the litanies were recited on holy-saturday appears from several ancient rites quoted by Marlene (De Ant.  Eccl.  Ritibus, lib. 4, c.  XXV, and lib. 1, c.  I, art. 18).  Palmer, wishing to defend the liturgy of the church of England, maintains the antiquity of litanies, but pretends that the invocations of saints were not originally contained in them, but were added to them in the west about the eighth century