Note 11 — Chapter I

The rabbinical device of mixtures is fully explained in Buxtorf's Lexicon, col. 1657, Ed. Basil (1639), or in Kitto's Biblical Encyclopædia, under the article "Sabbath." The Talmud had a special treatise called Tractatus Mixtorum, which taught how, for instance, dwellings might be mixed or mingled so as to avoid technical breaches of the Sabbatical law. Planks were laid across intervening residences, so that houses at a very great distance might be brought into touch and connexion, and thus regarded as one common dwelling for a number of people who wished for a common feast on the Sabbath. This was called Mixtio conclavium. It was simply one of those wretched devices to which casuistry always leads; something like the rules for banquets on fast days, which we find in Lacroix, Manners of the Middle Ages, p. 170, where a most sumptuous Episcopal banquet is described. It was given on a fast day, therefore no flesh is included; but its place was amply supplied by rare fish and other dainties: see G. T. Stokes, Ireland and Anglo-Norman Church, p. 143.