Their function pertains to celebratory rituals: commemorative, initiatory and propitiatory; first in the field of religion, then later even secular, which were held on special occasions, either single or recurrent.
There were three articles at issue in the disputation (on the liturgical language, church authority over forms of worship, and scriptural warrant for propitiatory masses).
This was a manifold, therapeutic, magical, propitiatory, alchemic role which flouted the strict biblical and rabbinic prohibitions on the consumption of blood....
