Lustration

LUSTRATION. - From Lat. lustro "I make bright again" and hence "I purify," it is the purification of things and persons. This may be required: either with a view to a sacred destination of the object or person (l. consecrataria), inasmuch as the world of the "sacred" and the world of the "profane" are rigorously separated, and the passage from the one to the other cannot take place without a fitting preparation; or in order to make amends for a pollution of any kind that brings the polluted thing or person back to the normal state (l. expiatory); or in order to prevent and neutralize at the root the possible evil influences that can infest a person or a place (l. preventive).

The l. consecrataria is the one that renders fit for sacrifice the victim to be immolated or, for the exercise of his particular office, the priest or the object destined for sacred use; it is carried out by means of ablutions of water, sprinkling of purifying substances on the sacrificial victim (barley and salt in Greece and in Rome, butter in India); the l. expiatory is carried out with the sprinkling of the blood of a victim destined for this purpose (e.g., the pig in Greece, the ram in Babylon, the goat in Israel); the l. preventive is carried out with the circumambulation (v.) of the place or object to be preserved, with aspersion or immersion in water, with fumigations of resinous plants, with salt, which preserves and conserves, with fire, which illuminates and warms and which demands the ritual purity of the one who guards it or of the matter that feeds it. From the solemn five-yearly lustratory circumambulation performed in Rome by the censor, around the people assembled as an army in the Campus Martius, the word "lustrum" is derived to indicate a period of five years.

Nicola Turchi