Holy Smoke (History)

[Komorikid]

From Dan

[Mick Harper]

An interesting little snippet from the MedtextList:


I read in a 13th century text about an exposed baby put in a basket "with salt near him, a sign that he had not been baptized", can somebody explain that to me?

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Salt was placed on the mouth in baptism in the west until Vatican II. The earliest evidence comes from N. Africa around the fifth century (for the catechumenate; see Augustine's Confessions 1.11.17), and it was probably used throughout the west by the 13th century. Salt was used to ward off corruptibility. It was explicitly connected to wisdom in the liturgy, but was also thought to ward off demons (I believe it comes just before the exorcism) and to symbolize eternal life.

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In the early church, adults preparing for baptism went through a sequence of ceremonies involving teaching, anointing, exorcisms. In the Latin church they were also given salt. In the middle ages infant baptism became the usual kind, and the ceremonies that had formerly gone on through much of Lent were collapsed into a single baptismal ceremony. The giving of salt was one ancient element that survived in the medieval ceremony.