Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/359

 s. v. MAY 5, im] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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the laws of Ina thus :
 * Glossarium,' s.v. 'Gabella,' Spelman quotes

" Si quis componat de virgata terrse vel amplius ad gabtum et araverit, si dominus velit terram illani tenere ad gablum, vel opus : non necesse est hoc excipi si nulla domus commissa sit."

A man might take a farm of thirty acres or more ; he might plough it and reap his crops ; and yet if he had no house, no gavel or property tax was payable. The house alone was the measure of his fiscal obliga- tions, as it was the measure and the source of all his agrarian rights. He was assessed in the rate-book by the number of forks, or, which was the same thing, by the number of bays which his house contained.

At what period the house became a measure of the land I have been unable to determine. I have searched the works of the Roman gromatici in Lachmann's edition, and found no trace of the custom there. But nowhere do I find houses or building-plots mentioned by these authors. The adjust- ment of taxation was not a thing which con- cerned them or their art. The rule which I have discovered seems to have been of wide application, for even the old Swedish laws declare that "tompt ar ackers inodhir," the toft is the mother of the land. Ihre,* who quotes these words, with the reference, says : " Pro area villse est etiara mensura arese in agro." This is a good definition, and we may well adopt it. As the area of a man's house was, so was the measure of his land. I have already shown what the proportion of arable land to house-room was, and how the mone- tary units were connected with that pro- portion. S. O. ADDY.

THE "BLOOD OF HAILES."

(Continued from 9 th S. iv. 377.) IT is now time to consider a little more closely the origin of this relic, and to see if we can trace it on its journey through Europe ; and, first of all, it is necessary to call to mind that drops of the holy Blood belonged to two categories. The first derived by tradition from the story of Longirms and the opening of the side of Christ by his spear, and included that said to have been saved by the Virgin in a vase during the Deposition ; the second derived from cither- images of the crucifixion which had been struck and had bled, or from Hosts which had been profaned. The long mediaeval list of these latter traces back to the crucifix said to have been struck by some Jews at Berytus

Grimm, ' Rechtsalterthumer,' 1854, p. 539.
 * 'Lexicon Suio-Gothicum,' ii. 922. See also

in A.D. 765 ; while the former must be referred to the discovery at Mantua, in A.D. 804, of a small leaden chest which contained a vase inscribed "JesuChristiSanguis" and a man's body, which the Mantuans, we are told, re- cognized to be that of Longinus.

We learri that Leo III., stimulated by the reverent curiosity of his friend the Emperor Charlemagne concerning the wondrous dis- covery, went to Mantua ; thence, having satis- fied himself regarding its genuineness, he journeyed into France to visit that emperor. As the political conditions then obtaining at Rome happened to be far from pleasant, the Pope's iourney to Mantua may have been dictated partly by other motives ; but that concerns us not.

Later on some portion of this precious relic was taken by the Emperor himself into France ; and, accordingly, we find the Franciscan convent of Saintes* possessing some of it in 1460, and Pius II. (Picco- lomini) informing the prior there that it is not contrary to the faith to believe that there may subsist in the world some particles of the blood shed at Calvary, and left as a record of Christ's passion. That Pontiff also authorized the superiors there to punish those who drew away the faithful from venerating the precious relic held in their convent.

The descriptions which have reached us of the "Blood of Hailes" leave us in no doubt that this relic belonged to the category deriving not from any profaned Host or miraculous crucifix, but from Calvary. Never- theless, as has been already noted, the great Dominican theologian of the thirteenth cen- tury had expressed his opinion that blood of this kind did not exist, and he gave as his characteristic reason that at the moment of Christ's resurrection, perforce, the spilled blood was reunited to the resuscitated body ('Sum ma/ iii. 54).

Now this view of Thomas Aquinas proved to have grave consequences : Firstly, it tended to depreciate the value of these much- revered relics; and, secondly, it embittered the antagonism between the rival orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic. The contro- versies resulting therefrom were still being waged in 1463-4, when we find three Francis- cans (one of whom was FrancescodellaRovere, afterwards Sixtus IV.) taking part at Rome in a debate with three famous Dominicans concerning this point. Their arguments lasted three days; but instead of smoothing the waves, the debate left them more turbulent

Xanthona, dep. Charente.