ance.

|183| Enough has already been said about the attitude of the early
Church towards traditional folk-customs. Of the position taken up by the
later mediaeval clergy we get an interesting glimpse in the "Largum Sero"
of a certain monk Alsso of Brevnov, an account of Christmas practices in
Bohemia written about the year 1400. It supplies a link between modern
customs and the Kalends prohibitions of the Dark Ages. Alsso tells of a
number of laudable Christmas Eve practices, gives elaborate Christian
interpretations of them, and contrasts them with things done by bad
Catholics with ungodly intention. Here are some of his complaints:--

Presents, instead of being given, as they should be, in memory of
God's great Gift to man, are sent because he who does not give freely
will be unlucky in the coming year. Money, instead of being given to
the poor, as is seemly, is laid on the table to augur wealth, and
people open their purses that luck may enter. Instead of using fruit
as a symbol of Christ the Precious Fruit, men cut it open to predict
the future [probably from the pips]. It is a laudable custom to make
great white loaves at Christmas as symbols of the True Bread, but
evil men set out such loaves that the gods may eat of them.

Alsso's assumption is that the bad Catholics are diabolically perverting
venerable Christmas customs, but there can be little doubt that precisely
the opposite was really the case--the Christian symbolism was merely a
gloss upon pagan practices. In one instance Alsso admits that the Church
had adopted and transformed a heathen usage: the old _calendisationes_ or
processions with an idol Bel had been changed into processions of clergy
and choir-boys with the crucifix. Round the villages on the Eve and
during the Octave of Christmas went these messengers of God, robed in
white raiment as befitted the servants of the Lord of purity; they would
chant joyful anthems of the Nativity, and receive in return some money
from the people--they were, in fact, carol-singers. Moreover with their
incense they would drive out the Devil from every corner.{55}

Alsso's attitude is one of compromise, or at least many of the old
heathen customs are allowed by him, when reinterpreted in a |184|
Christian sense. Such seems to have been the general tendency of the
later Catholic Church, and also of Anglicanism in so far as it continued
the Catholic tradition. It will be seen, howe