J.C.B.

Burial towards the West (Vol. ii., p. 408.).—­Mr. Hawker has stated very confidently that

“It was the ancient usage of the Church that the martyr, the bishop, the saint, and even the priest, should occupy in their sepulture a position the reverse of the secular dead, and lie down with their feet westward and their heads to the rising sun.”

It is true that a custom has existed in many places for nearly two centuries and a half to assign to the clergy a method of interment distinct from that adopted for the laity; and the observance of this usage is not limited to Romanists, for its continuance may be noted among members of the Church of Ireland also, at least in remote districts of that country.  With respect to this matter, however, your correspondent has entirely misapplied the term “ancient;” for until the seventeenth century there was not any difference in the mode of sepulture prescribed for priests and laymen but, most commonly, all persons entitled to Christian burial were placed with their feet toward the east, in consequence of a tradition relative to the position of our Saviour’s body in the tomb. (Haimo, Hom. pro Die Sancto Pasch.; J. Gregrory, Oriens nomen Ejus, 85., Martene, De Antiq.  Eccles.  Ritibus, tom. ii. p. 374.  Venet. 1783.) It is believed that there is no earlier authority for the sacerdotal privilege in question than a rule contained in the Rituale Romanum sanctioned by Pope Paul V. in June, 1614; viz.: 

    “Corpora defunctorum in ecclesia ponenda sunt pedibus versus altare
    majus ...  Presbyteri vero habeant caput versus altare.”—­Cap. De
    Exsequiis, p. 63.  Antwerp, 1635.

A rubric afterwards directs (p. 168.) that the bier should be so set down in the middle of the church that in every case the injunction previously given should be complied with, even from the commencement of the funeral service; and, in fact, the manner of adhering to the established practice of exhibiting in the church to the people the bodies of the deceased clergy, clad in vestments, prior to their interment (on which occasions an altar-ward posture was naturally selected for the head, in order that the remains might be more easily seen), appears to have originated the idea of the fitness of retaining an unjustifiable priestly prerogative at the time of burial.

Mr. Hawker may peruse with much advantage the first Appendix in the second edition of Eusebii Romani Epistola de Cultu Sanctorum ignotorum.  Mabillon has herein very usefully enlarged what he had said, “De Sepultura Sacerdotum,” in the preceding impression, of which a French translation was speedily published at Paris, 12mo in eights, 1698.  The text of both editions may be found together in tome i. of the Ouvrages posthumes de Mabillon et Ruinart, a Paris, 1724.

R.G.