12 - Entrances and Exits

Summary

In the pursuit of the whole, salutation was the beginning, salvation the end.

John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400-1700

Baptism and Eucharist, those two great sacraments of ‘equal authority and obligation', were administered to Christians at either end of their earthly journey, the final Eucharist received before extreme unction. Their reception at the beginning and at the close of life was reflected in the church building itself, baptism performed at the west of the nave, Eucharist celebrated at the east in the chancel. Baptism promoted friendship, kinship, the family of the Church and the family within the community and was seen as a salutation and a welcoming. The Eucharist, which represented a sacrifice made for the salvation of man, was a departure and a farewell.

Fonts

Infant baptism admitted the child into the family of God. Outside the immediate family circle into which the child had been born were kith and kin to whom there were powerful and emotional ties. These were strengthened by a spiritual bond which arose from the rites of baptism and, later, confirmation. Godparents and sponsors may have represented affiliations which were already present but, as spiritual kindred, were now bound even more tightly to the inner family as the newer, more tenuous, connections of godparenthood were underpinned and reinforced, so much so that godparents regarded godchildren as part of their own kin. Godparents represented the communal rather than the natural family, and, through them, the child was linked to the wider world outside the family circle. During the baptism, it was the godparents who made promises on the child's behalf when it was released from original sin, the child being too young to do so; and it was to the godparents at the end of the baptismal ceremony that the child was returned by the priest, rather than to the parents.

By the late Middle Ages, the rite of infant baptism was bestowed on children by affusion, and smaller, higher, fonts were in use rather than watertanks and tubs. The water was hallowed twice a year, once on the eve of Easter and once on the eve of Whitsun, and, although changed after each christening, it could still lie in the font for a considerable time.