The pax or pax board was an object used in the Middle Ages and Renaissance for the kiss of peace in the Catholic Mass. Direct kissing among the celebrants and congregation was replaced by each in turn kissing the pax, which was carried around to those present. A wide range of materials were used, and the form of the pax was also variable but normally included a flat surface to be kissed. Often the pax was held out with a long handle attached, and it seems to have been given a wipe with a cloth between each person. Some paxes are very elaborate and expensive objects, and most survivals fall into this class, but the great majority were probably very simple wood or brass pieces. It was usual to include an image, usually of or including the Virgin Mary or Jesus Christ. The pax began to replace actual kisses in the 13th century, apparently because of a range of concerns over the sexual, social and medical implications of actual kissing. It is first documented in England, and the 17th-century historian of the Mass, Cardinal Giovanni Bona, associated the introduction with the Franciscan Order. The person holding the pax said "Pax tecum" and received the response "Et cum spiritu tuo" ("Peace to you", "And with your spirit"). The pax gradually fell out of general use, though the Catholic Encyclopedia in 1911 said it was still practised when "prelates and princes" were involved, but "not to others except in rare cases established by custom". In the 20th century the physical kiss, now more often a handshake, was revived in the Mass (though reduced in practice again during the COVID pandemic). Pax was the Latin name, with osculatorium, osculum pacis and instrumentum pacis as alternatives. Pax was also used in English, in which they were also called a pax board and pax-brede, or paxbrede. Another Latin term was pacificale, still sometimes used in Italian and German. The modern term pax tablet may be used, especially by church historians, where art historians mostly favour pax. Osculatory is used in some 19th-century sources, and some claim that this refers to a pendant form, worn round the neck by the priest. This does not appear in most modern scholarship, though given a one-line entry by Oxford Art Online. Translators unfamiliar with the concept may introduce still further names into English. Kusstafel ('kiss-board') is one of the German names.
History The kiss of peace was included in the Mass of the Western Church from the 2nd century at least, and the Eastern Church had its equivalent. The kiss was only supposed to be exchanged between members of the same sex, but numerous references to inter-sex kissing show that this continued to be a possibility. An exception to this was the Nuptial Mass for weddings, where the priest kissed the bridegroom, who then kissed the bride. Other exceptions were masses in the days before Easter, when the association with the treacherous kiss of Judas might be too strong, and the kiss of peace was omitted entirely. The pax board, as a substitute for the kiss of peace, is first mentioned in 1248 in the statutes of the Archbishop of York, and seems to have been an English invention, perhaps restricted to England until the next century. The statutes of a synod of the Diocese of Exeter in 1287, and an inventory of Saint Paul's Cathedral in London of 1297 provide the next mentions. By 1328 the post-mortem inventory of the possessions of Queen Clementia of Hungary, widow of King Louis X of France, included "ung portepais d'argent" ('a silver pax'). Early texts of the major work Rationale divinorum officiorum by Guillaume Durand, Bishop of Mende in southern France, which was circulating from 1286, do not mention the pax. However, the first vernacular translation, in French from 1382, has an inserted mention of "la paix porter". A synod in Prague in 1355 is the first mention from the Holy Roman Empire; the synod recommended that the pax should be introduced if congregations were reluctant to exchange actual kisses. Other evidence, including surviving paxes, shows it spread at least to Italy, Germany and Spain, and was probably standard in Western European churches by the Reformation. In Protestantism the pax, and all thought of actual kisses, was abandoned as useless and undesirable symbolic distractions from faith, although the pax was not singled out for much special disparagement in Protestant polemics, with the exception of Richard Baxter, who gave it among a list of other irrational violations of the Second Commandment, saying:
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