s also used for the act of communicating the sacrament of the eucharist, or the Lord's supper.

The fourth council of Lateran decrees, that every believer shall receive the communion, at least at Easter; which seems to import a tacit desire, that they should do it oftener; as, in effect, they did it much oftener in the primitive days. Gratian, and the master of the sentences, prescribe it as a rule for the laity, to communicate three times a-year, at Easter, Whitsuntide, and Christmas. But in the 13th century, the practice was adopted, never to approach the eucharist, except at Easter; and the council thought fit to enjoin it then by a law, lest their coldness and remissness should go farther still. And the council of Trent renewed the same injunction, and recommended frequent communion without enforcing it by an express decree.

In the ninth century the communion was still received by the laity in both kinds; or, rather the species of bread was dipped in the wine, as is owned by the Romanists themselves. (Acta SS Benedict. Sec. III). M. de Marca observes, that they received it at first in their hands, Hilt. de Bearn, and believes the communion under one kind alone to have had its rise in the West under Pope Urban II. in 1096, at the time of the conquest of the Holy Land. And it was more solemnly enjoined by the council of Constance in 1414. The twenty-eighth canon of the council of Clermont enjoins the communion to be received under both kinds, distinctly; adding, however, two exceptions; the one of necessity, the other of caution, nisi per necessitatem et cautelam; the first in favour of the sick, the second of the abstemious, or those who had an aversion for wine.

It was formerly a kind of canonical punishment, for clerks guilty of any crime, to be reduced to lay communion, i.e. only to receive it as the laity did, viz. under one kind.

They had another punishment of the same nature, though under a different name, called foreign communion; to which the canons frequently condemned their bishops and other clerks. This punishment was not any excommunication, or deposition; but a kind of suspension from the function of the order, and a degradation from the rank they held in the church. It had its name because the communion was only granted to the criminal on the foot of a foreign clerk, i.e. being reduced to the lowest of his order, he took place after all those of his rank, as all clerks, &c., did in the churches to which they did not belong. The second council of Agda orders every clerk that absents himself from the church to be reduced to foreign communion.

Communion Service, in the liturgy of the church of England, the office for the administration of the holy sacrament, Communion sacrament, extracted from several ancient liturgies, as those of St Basil, St Ambrose, &c.

Compact. By the last rubric, part of this service is appointed to be read every Sunday and holiday, after the morning prayer, even though there be no communicants.