WRIGHT Out, In, Out: Jesus' Blessing 203
this essay note was taken of the place of Mk 10.13-16 par. in early
Reformed and Anglican orders. Luther himself from his first German
Taufbilchlein of 1523 incorporated the Markan passage. Indeed, he
adopted the text with a special zeal as the clear example and command of
the Lord for infants to be baptized.^53
If we then ask the derivation of this almost invariable early Protestant
usage, the answer lies in the pre-baptismal order for the making of a
catechumen which had come to function almost as the preliminary phase
of the baptismal occasion as a whole, but carried out not inside the church
at the font but outside the church door. This is abundantly attested in the
earliest printed baptismal liturgies and throughout the sixteenth century
and beyond in the Roman Church.^54 It can be seen in the Sarum baptismal
order, which was in widespread use in England on the eve of the Refor-
mation. As part of the Or do ad faciendum Catechumenum, Mt. 19.13-15
was read after two prayers, the first of which was said with the priest's
hand on the infant's head, and immediately before the Effeta ceremony (or
Ephphatha; cf. Mk 7.13).^55 Only later is the child taken into the church for
baptism. The connexions suggest that the Gospel pericope of Jesus' laying
hands on children (Matthew and Mark) was enlisted as dominical warrant
not for the baptism but, with precise equivalence, for the imposition of
hands in their admission as catechumens. This is how scholars generally
understand the place of this brief Gospel lection in what had become by
the late medieval era a strange recruitment into the infant catechumenate
immediately before baptism.^56 It can be tracked further back to the eighth
to tenth centuries.^57
- Bruno Jordahn, 'Der Taufgottesdienst im Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart', in
K.F. Miiller and W. Blankenburg (eds.), Leiturgia: Handbuch des Evangelischen
Gottesdienstes, V: Der Taufgottesdienst (Kassel: Johannes Stauda-Verlag, 1970), pp.
349-640, at pp. 357, 371-72,420-21. - See A. Dold, Die Konstanzer Ritualientexte in ihrer Entwicklung von 1482-
1721 (Liturgiegeschichtliche Quellen, 5-6; Munster in Westf.: Aschendorffsche Ver-
lagsbuchhandlung, 1923), pp. 9,18,23,34; H.J. Spital, Der Taufritus in den deutschen
Ritualien von den ersten Drucken bis zur Einfuhrung des Rituale Romanum (Liturgies-
geschichthiche Quellen und Forschungen, 47; Munster in Westf.: Aschendorffsche Ver-
lagsbuchhandlung, 1968), pp. 89-91; Jordahn, 'Der Taufgottesdienst', pp. 371-72. - J.D.C. Fisher, Christian Initiation: Baptism in the Medieval West (ACC, 47; Lon-
don: SPCK, 1965), pp. 5,164; W. Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia EcclesiaeAnglicanae, I
(London: William Pickering, 1846), p. 11; Pocknee, The Gospel Lection', p. 499. - E.g. Fisher, Medieval West, pp. 4-5, following Pocknee 'The Gospel Lection',
pp. 498-99. - C. Lambot, North Italian Services of the Eleventh Century (Henry Bradshaw