Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 2.djvu/174

150 On the second seal of St. Bernard the Pax is singularly introduced, as it would seem, with some symbolical import. It appears by his letters to Pope Eugenius III. in the year 1151, that he had been obliged, in consequence of forgeries of his seal, to cause a new one to be made bearing his figure and name. The matrix is now preserved in the Museum of Antiquities at Rouen, and a representation of it has been published, with a descriptive notice by M. Deville. The abbot of Clairvaulx appears in this portraiture in the monastic dress, his head tonsured and bare, for St. Bernard strongly reprobated the vain desire of abbots in his times to assume the mitre: in his left hand he bears a pastoral staff with a plain crook, and in his right hand an object which, there can be little doubt, was intended to represent the Pax with the handle usually adapted to it: Mabillon, however, supposed this object to be a book, and M. Deville at first conjectured that it might be a church door.

Le Brun, as Dr. Milner stated in the observations to which reference has been made, attributed the general disuse of the Pax to certain jealousies which were found to arise amongst individuals about priority in having it presented to them. This remark may deserve notice as affording an illustration of the passage in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, where speaking of the seven deadly sins and of pride, the general root from which they spring, he says, "ther is a privee spice of pride, that waiteth first to be salewed, or he wol salew, all be he lesse worthy than that other is; and eke he waiteth to sit, or to go above him in the way, or kisse the Pax, or ben encensed, or gon to offring before his neighbour, and swiche semblable thinges ." The Pax was not amongst those ornaments of churches which were at first suppressed at the Reformation. Its use was prescribed by the Royal Ecclesiastical Commissioners of Edward VI., and even rendered more ostensible than it had previously been, as appears by the Injunctions published at the deanery of Doncaster, A.D. 1548, ordaining that "the Clarke shall bring down the Paxe, and, standing without the church-door, shall say loudly to the people these words, This is a token of joyful peace, which is betwixt God