Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1877-07-06
VOL. l.. NEW SERIES, VOL. XIII.

moiifies the savage example as to order that
the nuns shall never Use bathing 'unless 1t
is prescribed by the physician" In the end
of the ninth century, Recullus, Bishop of
scissors, included cleanliness amongst the
duties he commended to his clergy in his
Instructions. The fourth section begins with
the quotation from Isaiah: ''Be We clean,
that bear the vessels of the Lord isaiah ill.,.
~. Reeulfus goes on to say: "lou must
not suppose that this refers only to the
cleansing of the chalice and paten. wherein
the body and blood of Christ are consecrated;
It refers also to personal cleanliness. We
have frail vessel, that is our body, which
We ought always 10 keep clean with the most
scrupulous care By the eleventh century
the difference between the refined and ars-
tocratic Benedictne OF the West and the
fathers of monasticism in the East had be
come as wide as the difference between gen
tleman and mudlark in modern London in
regard to bodily cleanliness. The monk
William of Malmesbury evidently shruHk
from personal nncleanliness with the horror
OF any modern historian; in his catalogue of
the different home delights and home occu-
pations which each nation had to leave be-
hind to JON other nations in the Crusades,
while saying that the Welsh lost their hunt
ing and the Danes their drinking, he charac-
terizes the Scots as "leaving their fellowship
with ice" We should have thought the
fellowship was not SO easily broken; but 1t is
curious that not long after, tins kind of tel-
lowship was still taken as one sign of saint
ship when discovered upon the dead body of
a martyr. Ii seems that the East has been
as conservative in the early cult of dirt as in
so many other things. In list of the sins
of everyday life laid down for the Christians
in Bulgaria, according to Messrs. st. Clair
and Brophy, the fourth article, AS late as 1863,
still stood thus: at is sin to wash a child
before he has come to the age of reason"
The canonical age of reason Is seven. The
Bulgarian child has a bath of salt at his birth,
but no other bath at all until seven years
alter. With the female Christian it seems to
be evan worse. The bride. on the Friday
before her marriage, takes ''for the first and
last time in her life a complete bath her
two bridesmaids may look on, but may not
share in the ablution. AlthoSSh until the
seventh year n child may not he touched with
water, the washing of face, hands, and feet.
IS permitted after that period. The cleansing
Df the whole body, however, is regarded
great sin either for male or female, with the
single exception of the bride-elect. Possibly
he dirty habit is connected with some dread
II washing away baptism. However, 1t Is
plain that in this case dirt must be consider
ID as "next to godliness." All desire to be
,lean must still be reckoned by men and wo-
men now living, as by the ancient hermits in
he Thebaid, as lust of the flesh. Accord
ng to the universal experience of mothers
md nurses in the western nations, expressed
n so many nursery rhymes and tales and
pictures, the every reverse is true. They tell
Is, and perhaps our young recollections sane
ion their assertion, that desire to remain
lirty, hatred of the bother and the pam of
being cleansed, is an instinct Of the natural
nan which reappears in each of the species
rom the day he feels the smart of soap and |
water or the rough pressure of a towel. |
The little birds never cry" said the per-
,lexed nurse to her screaming charge. BE |
ause they are never washed" the natural |
oe of soap incontinently and wittily replied. |