An Odor of Sweetness
There is probably no practice of the Catholic Church upon which the evangelical Protestant looks with such suspicion as the use of incense. He may be deeply impressed by the magnificence of the liturgy and moved to a feeling of worship through the splendor of a solemn high Mass, although he finds it quite incomprehensible; he may accept the twinkling candles, formerly so anathematized by the Reformers; but the cloud of incense smoke rising before the altar as an accompaniment to Christian worship confounds him, stands out as our most exotic practice and links us finally and unequivocally with the mysterious and heathen Orient.
Many of the faithful may sometimes be vague in their understanding of its use and significance. Unless one has served at the altar it is quite likely that he has never even seen the product which is burned in the censer to give off the aromatic smoke and mystic fragrance. But most of us are aware that incense is a sacramental and a beautiful adjunct of the liturgy that has been lovingly handed down to us from the faithful who lived sixteen centuries ago. There is no evidence for its use in the Church during the first four centuries.
Incense has been used in nearly every religious worship and by almost all of the races of the world. Its use became wide-spread among the Babylonians where it was known as kutrinnu. Herodotus tells that a thousand talents of it were offered on the great altar of Baal at his feast. While its use was popular in Canaan it was the most commonly denounced form of idolatry in Israel. Incense was offered on brick altars and on the housetops to Baal, the sun, moon and stars. Lucian describes the sweet odors and the incense smoking without ceasing in the temples of the Syrian goddess.
The earliest references to the use of incense in any religion occurs in the notice of Sankhara, an Egyptian king of the XI dynasty. He sent out an expedition for aromatics through the desert to the Red Sea and into the land of Punt which was probably modern Somaliland. On the walls of Egyptian temples we find numerous representations of a king offering incense. Enormous quantities of the various ingredients were used for this purpose every year in the temples. Rameses III during his thirty-one year reign presented 368,461 jars and nearly two million offerings of incense, honey and oil.
Until post-Homeric times the Greeks knew only the fragrance of citrus and cedar smoke; frankincense was not used before the eighth century B.C. and is first mentioned by Euripides in The Bacchae. It was thought to have come from Phoenicia by the way of Cyprus where it was used in the cult of Aphrodite.
In the Roman religion incense, called tus, was one of the most important of the bloodless offerings. Ovid speaks of the importation of gums and resins from the Euphrates country, odoriferous herbs and woods being used in the early worship. Pliny refers to incense as a product of Hadramaut (Arabia) and says that only the Sabaei may see the tree which produces it, and of these only three thousand families through hereditary succession. Ile says that the trees are sacred and while gathering the resin or pruning the trees the men were forbidden to pollute themselves by sexual intercourse or by touching a corpse. Herodotus states that winged serpents guarded the trees and were only driven off by burning storax, another kind of tree resin. The same author describes the wide use of incense in the ancient Persian religion. It was burned five times daily in the official cult, and Herodotus writes of Darius burning three hundred talents of it upon the altar.
Although incense is not used in the modern Jewish ceremonial, in the Old Testament the Hebrew use seems to be early, if we translate the word ketoreth as incense. Strictly speaking, however, this means the odor or smoke of a burnt offering. In the sense of lebhonah or frankincense, a sweet resinous gum, it was not used by the Jews until the seventh century B.C. The first reference to it in connection with the cult of Jahweh is in Jer. 6:19-20. "They have not heard my words, and they have cast away my law. To what purpose do you bring me frankincense from Saba, and the sweet smelling cane from a far country?" Subsequent Old Testament passages indicate that it was an innovation, but once admitted it remained to become an integral part of the ceremonial and was offered, for example, when the high priest appeared in the mercy-seat, or when Aaron passed through the congregation to check the ravages of the plague with his burning incense.
The product prepared for the rites was compounded with the utmost care and it was considered holy, its use for common purposes was forbidden. "You shall not make such a composition for your own uses, because it is holy to the Lord. What man soever shall make the like, to enjoy the smell thereof, he shall perish out of his people" (Ex. 30:37-38). It must not be consumed on "strange fire," meaning fire from some other source than the coals burning on the altar, and it must not be offered by any but the priests. Eventually a separate incense altar came into use for the morning and evening burning of incense. "And Aaron shall burn sweet smelling incense upon it in the morning. When he shall dress the lamps he shall burn it; and when he shall place them in the evening, he shall burn an everlasting incense before the Lord throughout your generations" (Ex. 30:7-8).
The formula for the incense used for Jewish ceremonial at the time of Moses is as follows. "Take unto thee spices, stacte, and onycha, galbanum of sweet savour, and the clearest frankincense, all shall be of equal weight. And thou shalt make incense compounded by the work of the perfumer, well tempered together, and pure, and most worthy of sanctification. And when thou hast beaten all into a very small powder, thou shalt set of it before the tabernacle of the testimony, in the place where I will appear to thee" (Ex. 30:34-36).
According to Pharmaceutical Formulas, all these constituents are known with the exception of onycha, but it seems almost certain that in Hebrew onycha denotes the crustaceous covering of the shells of certain species of univalve shellfish found in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean; but there are also some reasons for supposing that gum benzoin was the substance in question. A Jewish recipe for the incense used before the destruction of the temple included, in addition to the aforementioned ingredients, myrrh, cassia, spikenard, saffron, costus, canella, cinnamon, soap of Carsina, and "a herb fitted to raise a fume." It is therefore apparent that the exact composition of the Levitical incense is unknown, but an average specimen used by the Church today contains from sixteen to twenty parts of olibanum, one and a half parts of benzoin, one part of cassia bark or cascarilla bark and one half part of storax. Some manufacturers include a small percentage of myrrh or even sandalwood.
Olibanum or frankincense, the principal substance used in the preparation of incense, is a gum resin known to chemists as Boswellia Resin. The name olibanum is apparently of common origin with that of gum benjamin, being derived from the Hebrew word lebhonah, meaning milk, through the Arab luban, meaning incense, according to Parry's Cyclopedia of Perfumery. Its several sources of supply are in colorful and ancient corners of the world — southern Arabia, the Punjab of India, and Somaliland from Zeyla to Cape Gardafui, known to the Romans as Promontarius Aromatum.
One of the Somali varieties of frankincense, luban maidi, is the milk of a tree which grows high up in the precipitous mountains on bare limestone, attaching itself by a mass of vegetable substance, part of the tree, and sending its roots into crevices of the rock to a tremendous depth. A few trees may be found nearer the sea. Pinnate leaves and panicles of small greenish flowers grow on the branches; the bark is rugged and the epidermis smooth and of a reddish tinge. The whole plant contains the fragrant resin which exudes even from the flowers, when wounded.
A large quantity of olibanum is collected in the southern and southeastern districts of Arabia, the famous thuriferous region which was the object of such diligent search in ancient times. This variety commands a higher price in the market than any of those exported from Africa. It is obtained largely from Boswellia Carterii, a tree named for H. J. Carter, the British naturalist, who in 1844-46 visited the libanotophoras or frankincense-yielding region of the old Sabaeans (the people of ancient Sheba), now modern Arabia.
In Arabia the gum is procured in the months of May and December. Longitudinal incisions are made in the bark of the trees when the cuticle glistens from the swollen state of the underlying part. When it first comes out the gum resembles milk and either flows to the ground to harden or hardens on the branch near the place from which it issued, depending on the degree of its fluidity.
In Somaliland about the end of February or the beginning of March, during the hot season, Bedouins visit the trees and make deep incisions. Then a narrow strip of bark is peeled off for about five inches below the wound. This is left for a month and then a fresh incision is made in the same place, only deeper. A third month passes and the operation is again repeated.
The hardened tears vary in color, according to variety, from very small drops to an agglomeration of tears the size of a hen's egg or even stalactitic pieces, six or more inches long and three or four broad, formed by the trickling down of the juice.
Benzoin or gum benjamin, another of the substances used in small proportions in Church incense, is also the resinous product of a tree which does not produce the secretion normally but must be wounded in the bark. This results in the formation of oleoresin ducts in which the secretion is produced. Actually it is a pathological secretion. And as in the case of frankincense the material is collected, when sufficiently dry, in the form of tears.
Storax is still another pathological secretion. A fluid oleoresin, it is induced by wounding the Liquidambar orientalis, a tree which grows in the southwestern portion of Asiatic Turkey. An American species, found in Honduras, is preferable to the Asiatic product, both in perfumery and in medicine.
Cascarilla bark is the bark of trees indigenous to the Bahamas, and Cassia bark comes from the Chinese cinnamon, a native of Cochin-China but cultivated chiefly in China proper.
Of the substances used in the composition of incense, olibanum is by far the most important and, as we have seen, is used in much greater proportion. Its odor, although softened and enhanced by the others, is the most noticeable and its personal aromatic fume rises at last above the blend.
The use of incense is connected primarily with the physical aspects of the sense of smell. Perfumes, pleasant odors of any sort, are agreeable to men. In ancient times they were offered to important individuals and often diffused over the roads on which they journeyed, or, as an accompaniment of food and wine, used at banquets. It was only natural to suppose that the same delectable odors would be acceptable to gods on the same principle as that by which foods which men preferred were offered to them. As men were honored with incense, to the Deity a similar honor was paid. Thus it is quite understandable that the rising smoke should be regarded as the vehicle of prayer.
As God commanded Moses to place incense "before the tabernacle of the testimony," so, as a sacramental, the Church prescribes its use in her ceremonials, although, as previously stated, its use was unknown during the first four centuries. Protestants, excepting the high church Anglicans who use it, declare that since the old laws were abrogated by Christ and that since the use of incense was not a primitive Christian practice, its use in Christian worship is invalidated. Then too they frequently contend that the Church in using incense has copied a pagan practice.
At first glance it does seem strange that the early Christians did not burn incense, particularly in light of the prophecy in Malachias which seems to point to its continued use in the new dispensation. "For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts" (Mal. 1:11). Furthermore it might seem strange, this neglect of the use of incense among the early Christians, when one recalls that it was one of the three offerings of the Magi at the birth of our Lord.
The fact that it was a Jewish usage may have tended to cause Christians to neglect it for so long, but what was probably a more powerful deterrent was its use among pagans and the common practice during the persecutions, particularly of the first century, of insisting that Christians should offer a few grains of incense on the altar of the Emperor as a mark of their renunciation of their faith. When apostates yielded in this way they were called Thurificati. Thus incense was anathema to the early Christians because of its association with paganism as well as Judaism and was not adopted into the Church's liturgy until paganism was dying out in Rome. In the light of the foregoing it is illogical to contend that the Church has copied a pagan practice.
It is not definitely known when this sacramental was introduced into the services of the Church. Its common employment in the Jewish temple and the New Testament references would suggest an early familiarity with it. St. Luke wrote: "And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense. And there appeared to them an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense" (Luke 1: 10). In Apocalypse 8: 4 we read: "And the smoke of the incense which came with the prayers of the saints ascended up before God out of the angel's hand."
The Catholic Encyclopedia states that "the earliest authentic reference to its use in the service of the Church is found in Pseudo-Dionysius," and Brightman's Eastern Liturgies says that its use is referred to in the Liturgies of Sts. James and Mark which, in their present form, are not older than the 5th century. Indeed, almost all the venerable Eastern liturgies attest to its use in the Mass, especially at the Offeratory. A seventh century Roman Ordo mentions that it was employed on Good Friday and in the procession of the bishop to the altar. A church in Antioch was presented with a thurible by a Persian king about the year 594.
During the later persecutions incense was used to honor the martyrs. As their bodies were carried to the catacombs or the crypts of the early churches for burial, small urns of incense burned in niches along the way. Later the gums and spices were burned in vessels suspended from chains and it is thought that from these evolved the swinging censers as we know them today. This custom may account for the practice of placing a few grains of frankincense with the relics of martyrs when they are entombed in altars.
In the Roman rite incense is burned at solemn high Mass, solemn blessings, functions, choral offices, processions and absolutions for the dead. There are two cases when it is used but not burned — the five grains put into the Pascal candle and, as mentioned before, the grains put into the sepulchre of consecrated altars.
At Mass it is blessed before it is burned. Before the Introit the priest blesses it, saying: "Mayest thou be blessed by Him in Whose honor thou art to be burnt. Amen." Between the Offering of the Chalice and the Lavabo the priest again blesses the incense, saying: "By the intercession of blessed Michael the Archangel, who standeth at the right hand of the altar of incense, and of all His elect, may the Lord vouchsafe to bless this incense, and to receive it for an odor of sweetness. Through Christ our Lord. Amen." The sweet odor of the burning confection rising heavenward is a natural symbol of prayer ascending to God. "Let my prayer be directed as incense in Thy sight, the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice," sings David (Psalm 140: 2). Indeed these words form a portion of the prayer said by the priest as he incenses the altar.
Allied with the condemnation of our use of incense is the criticism generally levelled at the Church by her separated brethren regarding the complexity of her ceremony. It is contended that the forms of worship are much more elaborate than in the Apostolic Church; that they are contrary to the practices of the early Christians generally; that Christ was concerned with men's souls primarily, and not with ceremonies and doctrines. It is most certainly true that Christ came to this earth to save souls, but the forms by which His Church worships Him are in full accord with the principles He taught.
Outwardly the Mass may seem complex and vastly different from the simple Last Supper, but precisely what was done at the Last Supper is done during the Mass. The simplicity of the Mass in the primitive Church was due largely to necessity and not to choice. It was said in private houses, or in the catacombs, with the constant threat of torture and death before the eyes of the faithful. And yet, a very early fresco on a wall in one of the catacombs under Rome depicts a priest standing at a small altar, his hands over a small loaf in the familiar position of Consecration. There is also a cup on the altar. From the mouth of the priest, in crude lettering on a ribbon or scroll, emerge the words "this is my body." The whole picture bears a striking resemblance to the present day performance.
Thus the growth and development of the Church founded by Christ must, over a period of nearly two thousand years, affect her in all aspects of her being, but fundamentally and essentially she remains the same. Throughout the years, in the sacramental work for the saving of souls, she has employed not only the arts of man but also many elements of inanimate creation. There is scarcely anything in nature which she has not brought into her service that it may speak for itself of the sacred Mystery — colorful flowers, the wax of the bee, the yellow grain, precious metals and rare stones, the fruit of the vine, spotless linen, salt, water — and incense. Frankincense, "pure and holy," which the Lord commanded Moses to put "before the tabernacle of the testimony," the same delectable substance which the Magi offered as one of their treasures to the new-born King on that first Christmas; frankincense, one of the first gifts to our Lord Jesus and, from the hands of Nicodemus, the last. Twice was it offered to the Incarnate Son of God, and twice is it offered in the Mass which He instituted.
From the "tabernacle of the testimony" down through the long centuries, to the most magnificent as well as the humblest of altars of the New Dispensation; "from the rising of the sun even unto the going down, in every place" incense is offered in His name — burns the sweet confection "compounded by the work of the perfumer, pure and most worthy of sanctification."
In all the years man has discovered no finer odor for our Lord than that which emanates from the substance of the incense tree. "Mayest thou be blessed by Him in Whose honor thou art to be burned," says the priest. The tears of a wounded tree are twice blessed in the Mass. Twice blessed therefore is the creature of nature which, being wounded, gives up its fragrant tears in honor of Him who wept over Jerusalem; in honor of Him who was wounded and shed His precious blood for the whole world; in honor of Him whose unbounded love extends to all nature. All nature in turn serves Him, but the tears of olibanum are twice blessed.
© American Ecclesiastical Review
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