Cense

CENSE.) Probably nowhere can the actual historical progress from the primitive use of animal sacrifices to the later refinement of burning incense be more clearly traced than in the pages of the Old Testament ; but in the monuments of ancient Egypt the authentic traces of the use of incense that still exist carry us back to a much earlier date. From Meroe to Memphis the com monest subject carved or painted in the interiors of the temples is that of some contemporary Phrah or Pharaoh worshipping the presiding deity with oblations of gold and silver vessels, rich vestments, gems, the firstlings of the flock and herd, cakes, fruits, flowers, wine, anointing oil and incense. One of the best known of these representations is that carved on the memorial stone placed by Tethmosis (Thothmes) IV. (1533 B.c.) on the breast of the Sphinx at Gizeh. The tablet represents Tethmosis before his guardian deity, the sun-god Re, pouring a libation of wine on one side and offering incense on the other. The ancient Egyptians used various substances as incense, but in course of time frankin cense was specially consecrated to the worship of the gods.

In the authorized version of the Bible, the word "incense" translates two wholly distinct Hebrew words. In various pas sages in the latter portion of Isaiah (xl.—lxvi.), in Jeremiah and in Chronicles, it represents the Hebrew lebonah, more usually ren dered "frankincense"; elsewhere the original word is ketoreth (Exod. xxx. 8, 9; Lev. x. I ; Num. vii. 14, etc.), a derivative of the verb kitter (Pi.) or hiktir (Hiph.) , which verb is used, not only in Exod. xxx. 7, but also in Lev. i. 9, iii. 11, ix. 13, and many other passages, to denote the process by which the "savour of satisfaction" in any burnt-offering, whether of flesh or of incense, is produced. Sometimes in the authorized version (as in I Ki. iii. 3 ; I Sam. ii. 28) it is incorrectly made to mean the burning of incense. The expression "incense (ketoreth) of rams" in Ps. lxvi. 15 and the allusion in Ps. cxli. 2 ought both to be understood, most probably, of ordinary burnt-offerings. The "incense" (ketoreth), or "incense of sweet scents" (ketoreth sammim), called, in Exod. xxx. 35, "a confection after the art of the apothe cary," or rather "a perfume after the art of the perfumer," which was to be regarded as most holy, and the imitation of which was prohibited under the severest penalties, was compounded of four "sweet scents" (sammim), namely stacte (nataph), onycha (sheheleth), galbanum (helbenah) and "pure" or "fine" frank incense (lebonah zaccah), pounded together in equal proportions, with (perhaps) an admixture of salt (memul!ah). It was then to be "put before the testimony" in the "tent of meeting" (a trans ference of late ceremonial back to the years of sojourn in "the wilderness"). It was burnt on the altar of incense by the priest every morning when the lamps were trimmed in the Holy Place, and every evening when they were lighted or "set up" (Exod. xxx. 7, 8) . A handful of it was also burnt once a year in the Holy of Holies by the high priest on a pan of burning coals taken from the altar of burnt-offering (Lev. xvi. 12, 13) . Pure frankincense (lebonah) formed part of the meat-offering (Lev. ii. 16, vi. 15), and was also presented along with the shew bread (Lev. xxiv. 7) every Sabbath day (probably on two golden saucers; see Josh. Ant. iii. 1o, 7). The religious significance of the use of incense, or at least of its use in the Holy of Holies, is distinctly set forth in Lev. xvi. 12, 13.

The introduction of incense took place late in the history of the Jewish ritual (see Wellhausen, Geschichte Israels, i. 75 seq.) ; but evidently the idea that the odour of a burnt-offering (cf. the Kvt?r?s aiir727'7 of Od. xii. 369) is pleasing to the deity, being at least the vehicle by which the sacrifice can be successfully con veyed to its destination, was a survival of a very early belief, and underlies the biblical phrase "a savour of satisfaction" (Gen. viii. 21; Lev. i. 9 and elsewhere; cf. Eph. v. 2) . It is probable that the development of a sensuous appreciation of pleasant perfumes, and knowledge of the sources from which these could be derived, expressed itself not only in domestic habits, sanitation, etc., but also in religious ceremonial, so that the custom of adding some kind of incense to animal sacrifices naturally arose. The final stage (not reached in the Levitical ritual) was the offering of incense pure and simple.

The "marbles" of Nineveh furnish frequent examples of the offering of incense to the sun-god and his consort (2 Ki. xxiii. 5) . The kings of Assyria united in themselves the royal and priestly offices, and on the monuments they erected they are generally represented as offering incense and pouring out wine to the Tree of Life. According to Herodotus (i. 183), frankincense to the amount of i,000 talents' weight was offered every year, during the feast of Bel, on the great altar of his temple in Babylon.

The monuments of Persepolis and the coins of the Sassanians show that the religious use of incense was as common in ancient Persia as in Babylonia and Assyria. Five times a day the priests of the Persians (Zoroastrians) burnt incense on their sacred fire altars. Herodotus (iii. 97) states that the Arabs brought every year to Darius as tribute i,000 talents of frankincense. The Parsees still preserve in western India the pure tradition of the ritual of incense as followed by their race from probably the most ancient times.

The Ramayana and Mahabharata afford evidence of the em ployment of incense by the Hindus, in the worship of the gods and the burning of the dead, from the remotest antiquity. Its use was obviously continued by the Buddhists during the prevalence of their religion in India, for it is still used by them in Nepal, Tibet, Ceylon, Burma, China and Japan. These countries all received Buddhism from India, and a large proportion of the porcelain and earthenware articles imported from China and Japan into Europe consists of innumerable forms of censers. The Jains all over India burn sticks of incense before their Jina. The commonest incense in ancient India was probably frankincense. The Indian frankincense tree is found chiefly where the Buddhist religion prevailed in ancient times, in Bihar and along the foot of the Himalayas and in western India, where it particularly flour ishes in the neighbourhood of the Buddhist caves at Ajanta. Now, however, the incense in commonest use in India is benzoin. But the consumption of all manner of odoriferous resins, gum resins, roots, woods, dried leaves, flowers, fruits and seeds in India, in social as well as religious observances, is enormous. The incense sticks and pastils made at the Mohammedan city of Bijapur in the Mahratta country are celebrated all over western India.

As to the 96Ea mentioned in Homer (Il. ix. 499, and elsewhere) and in Hesiod (Works and Days, 338), there is some uncertainty whether they were incense offerings at all, and if so, whether they were ever offered alone, and not always in conjunction with animal sacrifices. That the domestic use, however, of the fragrant wood Obov (Arbor vitae) was known in the Homeric age, is shown by the case of Calypso (Od. v. 6o), and the very similarity of the word Bbov to Boos may be taken as almost conclusively proving that by that time the same wood was also employed for religious pur poses. It is not probable that the sweet-smelling gums and resins of the countries of the Indian ocean began to be introduced into Greece before the 8th or 7th century B.C., and doubtless Xii3avos or ?u43avc. r6s first became an article of extensive commerce only after the Mediterranean trade with the East had been opened up by the Egyptian king Psammetichus (c. 664-61 o B.e.) . The new Oriental word is frequently employed by Herodotus; and there are abundant references to the use of the thing among the writers of the golden age of Attic literature (see, for example, Aristoph anes, Plut. 1,114 ; Frogs, 871, 888; Clouds, 42 6 ; Wasps, 96, 861) . Frankincense, however, though the most common, never became the only kind of incense offered to the gods among the Greeks. Thus the Orphic hymns are careful to specify, in con nection with the several deities celebrated, a great variety of substances appropriate to the service of each ; in the case of many of these the selection seems to have been determined not at all by their fragrance but by some occult considerations which it is now difficult to divine.

Among the Romans the use of religious fumigations long pre ceded the introduction of foreign substances for the purpose (see for example, Ovid, Fast. i. 337 seq., Et non exiguo laurus adusta sono). Latterly the use of frankincense (mascula thura, Virg., Ecl. viii. 65) became very prevalent, not only in religious cere monials, but also on various state occasions, such as in triumphs (Ovid, Trist. iv. 2, 4), and also in connection with certain occur rences of domestic life. In private it was daily offered by the devout to the Lar f amiliaris (Plaut. Aulul. prol. 23) ; and in public sacrifices it was not only sprinkled on the head of the victim by the pontifex before its slaughter, and afterwards mingled with its blood, but was also thrown upon the flames over which it was roasted.

No perfectly satisfactory traces can be found of the use of incense in the ritual of the Christian Church during the first four centuries. (Compare Duchesne, Christian Worship [Eng., trans., 1904] , ch. ii., "The Mass in the East," v. "The Books of the Latin Rite," and xii. "The Dedication of Churches.") Its use was foreign to the synagogue services on which the worship of the primitive Christians is known to have been originally modelled ; and its associations with heathen solemnities, and with the evil repute of those who were known as "thurificati," would still fur ther militate against its employment. Various authors of the ante-Nicene period have expressed themselves as distinctly un favourable to its religious, though not, of course, to its domestic, use. Thus Tertullian, while (De Cor. Mil. io) ready to acknow ledge its utility in counteracting unpleasant smells ("si me odor alicujus loci offenderit, Arabiae aliquid incendo"), is careful to say that he scorns to offer it as an accompaniment to his heartfelt prayers (Apol. 30; cf. 42). Athenagoras also (Legat. 13) gives distinct expression to his sense of the needlessness of any such ritual ("the Creator and Father of the universe does not require blood, nor smoke, nor even the sweet smell of flowers and in cense") ; and Arnobius (Adv. Gent. vii. 26) seeks to justify the Christian neglect of it by the fact, for which he vouches, that among the Romans themselves incense was unknown in the time of Numa, while the Etruscans had always continued to be strangers to it. Cyril of Jerusalem, Augustine and the Apostolic Constitu tions make no reference to any such feature either in the public or private worship of the Christians of that time. But in the Apos tolic Canons (can. 3), the 6vµia,ua is spoken of as one of the requisites of the eucharistic service. It is easy to perceive how it should inevitably have come in along with the whole circle of ideas involved in such words as "temple," "altar," "priest," which about this time came to be so generally applied in ecclesiastical connections. At a later date Roman Catholic theologians treated it as symbolically typifying the prayers of the faithful and the virtues of the saints. Ultimately the word incense was some times used symbolically of prayer ; a usage anticipated in Rev. v. 8, viii. 3, 4 (cf. Origen, Contra Celsum, viii. 17, 20).

Incense in the Church of England.

The Missal of the Roman Church, however, enjoins incensation before the introit, at the gospel and again at the offertory, and at the elevation, in every high mass ; the use of incense also occurs at the exposition of the sacrament, at consecrations of churches and the like, in processions, in the office for the burial of the dead and at the exhibition of relics. On high festivals the altar is censed at vespers and lauds. There is reason to believe that notwith standing the order for the use of incense at every celebration, it was used in British churches only on high festivals, and then only in rich churches down to the period of the Reformation, and that the ritual of the mass remained unchanged until the death of Henry VIII. (Jan. 28, 1547)• On Whitsunday 1549 the first Prayer Book of Edward VI. came into use under the first Act of Uniformity (2 and 3 Ed. VI. ch. 1) which required its exclusive use in public worship so as to supersede all other forms of service. Another Act (3 and 4 Ed. VI. ch. 1o) required the old service books to be delivered up to be destroyed. The first Prayer Book does not contain any direction to use or any mention of incense. It is a controverted question whether incense did or did not con tinue to be in ceremonial use under the first Prayer Book or during the rest of Edward VI.'s reign. No evidence has hitherto been discovered which justifies us in answering this question in the affirmative. The second Prayer Book of Edward VI. (1552), published under the authority of the second Act of Uniformity (5 and 6 Ed. VI. ch. I), contains no reference to incense. Edward VI. died July 6, 1553. Queen Mary by statute (1 Mary, sess. 2, ch. 2) abolished the Prayer Book, repealed the Acts of Uniformity and restored "divine service and administration of sacraments as were most commonly used in England in the last year of Henry VIII." The ceremonial use of incense thus became again an undoubted part of the communion service in the Church of Eng land. A proclamation issued (Dec. 6, 1553) directed the church wardens to obtain the proper ornaments for the churches; and the bishops in their visitations inquired whether censers had been furnished for use. Mary died Nov. 17, 1558. On June the second Prayer Book of Edward VI. (with a few alterations having no reference to incense) was again established, under the authority of the third Act of Uniformity (1 Eliz. ch. 2), as the exclusive service book for public service. There is no evidence of the ceremonial use of incense under Elizabeth's Prayer Book, or under the present Prayer Book of 1662 (established by the fourth Act of Uniformity, 13 and 14 Charles II., ch. 4) until the middle of the 19th century; and there is no doubt that as a cere mony of divine worship, whether at the Holy Communion or at other services, it was entirely disused. There are a good many instances recorded of what has been called a fumigatory use of frankincense in churches, but this use of incense—which was utilitarian and not symbolical—must be carefully distinguished from its ceremonial use. In the general revival of Church cere monial which accompanied and followed the Oxford Movement incense was not forgotten, and its ceremonial use in the pre Reformation method has been adopted in a number of churches since 185o. Its use has been condemned as an illegal ceremony by the ecclesiastical courts. In 1868 Sir Robert Phillimore (Dean of the Arches) pronounced the ceremonial use of incense to be illegal in the suit of Martin v. Mackonochie (2 A. and E.L.R. 116). The case was carried to the Privy Council on appeal, but there was no appeal on the question of incense. Again, in 187o, the ceremonial use of incense was condemned by Sir Robert Phil limore in the suit of Sumner v. Wix (3 A. and E.L.R. 58).

Notwithstanding these decisions, it was insisted by those who defended the revival of the ceremonial use of incense that it was a legal custom of the Church of England. The question was once more elaborately argued in May 1899 before an informal tri bunal consisting of the archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Temple) and the archbishop of York (Dr. Maclagan), at Lambeth Palace. On July 31, 1899, the archbishops decided that the liturgical use of incense was illegal. The Lambeth "opinion," as it was called, failed to convince the clergy against whom it was directed any better than the judgments of the ecclesiastical courts, but at first a considerable degree of obedience to the archbishops' view was shown. Various expedients were adopted, as, e.g., the use of in cense just before the beginning of service, by which it was sought to retain incense without infringing the law as laid down by the archbishops. There remained, nevertheless, a tendency on the part of the clergy who used incense, or desired to do so, to revert to the position they occupied before the Lambeth hearing—that is, to insist on the ceremonial use of incense as a part of the Catholic practice of the Church of England which it is the duty of the clergy to maintain, notwithstanding the decisions of ec clesiastical judges or the opinions of archbishops to the contrary.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. See art. "Incense," Encyclopaedia Biblica; P. Bibliography. See art. "Incense," Encyclopaedia Biblica; P. Morrisroe, art. "Incense" in the Catholic Encyclopaedia (from the modern Roman Catholic point of view) ; J. A. MacCulloch, art. "Incense," in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (with many refs.) ; E. G. Atchley, History of the Use of Incense in Divine Worship (1909) . See also PERFUMES.