> Off the top of my head, this looks like part of the normal
> grab bag of Easter tithe offerings (milk, cheese, eggs) requested in
> episcopal statutes of the period, so I don't know if any particularly
> "Easter-eggy associations are intended.
> Sounds like we're perilously near the Christian/"pagan" debate
> again!
A thing to be avoided.
So what about hot cross buns? I have seen a record of 1581 of witnesses
deposing that on Good Fridays before the Reformation, members of a certain
Catholic fraternity had distributed cakes to the poor at their chapel door.
The chapel was in the yard of the church of St Peter Port. These cakes were
described as "gaches qui estoient parties en quatre" ("cakes which were
divided in four"). They were so divided, perhaps, in imitation of the host
wafer. They may even have been unconsecrated mass wafers themselves, of the
sort distributed on Palm Sundays in some places in England (see Duffy _The
Stripping of the Altars_ pp. 24f.)
Would anybody care to be bolder than me, and associate these cakes with our
modern hot cross buns?
Darryl
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Dr D.M. Ogier
Island Archives Service
29 Victoria Road
St Peter Port
Guernsey GY1 1HU
British Isles
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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