How Church Incense Creates an Opening to Faith

The smoke of incense is ethereal, transubstantiation of hard resin to brightness, light, to memory. There are many who no longer attend religious services who have deep emotional memories tied to the scent of incense used in their childhood faith community. In many churches incense is used in greater amount or with more attention on special occasions, further tying scent to religious memory.

Incense is used in many world religions. In this article, we focus on the use of incense in Christian churches, paying particular attention to the history and variation across denominations.

Scent in the Hebrew Bible

The use of incense in Christian churches grew out of a long tradition of incense in Judaism as detailed in the Hebrew Bible. As described by Haran in their 1960 manuscript, “The Uses of Incense in the Ancient Israelite Ritual,” the “incense” (Hebrew: קְטֹרֶת‎ qetoret) of the Hebrew Bible evolved in the context of widespread use of incense in religious rites in the region. Haran outlines three specific uses for incense materials during the period:

Supplement to a Sacrifice

Here a portion of the meal offering, generally grain, was burned on the altar combined with powdered frankincense. Incense was not added to animal or bird sacrifices or prepared grains (unleavened bread) as part of the offering. It could be, as Grossman argues, that the frankincense is intended to create the “sweet savor” that uncooked flour does not have, but that is characteristic of cooked meat and bread. In this reading, the divine is connected to the Earth through aroma. Grossman notes that after Noah’s animal sacrifice following the flood, the link between aroma and connection to God is explicit, “The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: ‘Never again will I curse the ground because of humankind’” (Gen 8:21).

Spice Offering

While a number of references to incense and offerings is unclear as to whether these are separate or supplemental to a meal offering, there are a number of passages with explicit focus on offerings of incense. Most notable, each of the 12 leaders of the tribes brought “one gold dish weighing ten shekels, filled with incense,” as part of their offering of dedication at the Tabernacle’s consecration (Numbers 7). Haran goes into a long discussion of how incense was burned, noting that Egyptian practice of using long-handled or upright censers to purify and ward off evil spirits (apotropaeic ritual) had spread through Canaan and Syria before the Israelite settlement. This usage is integrated into the Hebrew Bible:

Then Moses said to Aaron, “Take your censer and put incense in it, along with burning coals from the altar, and hurry to the assembly to make atonement for them. Wrath has come out from the LORD; the plague has started.” So Aaron did as Moses said, and ran into the midst of the assembly. The plague had already started among the people, but Aaron offered the incense and made atonement for them. He stood between the living and the dead, and the plague stopped. (Numbers 16:46-48)

Altar Incense

While the burning of incense was likely restricted to the priests and generally to the sanctuary, the inner sanctuary and a special altar for incense required a special incense formulation that was not allowed to be burnt elsewhere and could only be burnt by Aaron or his descendants. This is described as:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Take fragrant spices—gum resin [most likely myrrh resin], onycha and galbanum—and pure frankincense, all in equal amounts, and make a fragrant blend of incense, the work of a perfumer. It is to be salted and pure and sacred. Grind some of it to powder and place it in front of the ark of the covenant law in the tent of meeting, where I will meet with you. It shall be most holy to you. Do not make any incense with this formula for yourselves; consider it holy to the Lord. Whoever makes incense like it to enjoy its fragrance must be cut off from their people.” (Exodus 30:34-38)

Onchya is the most historically accepted source of this ingredient is from the operculum, a defensive mechanism for gastropod molluscs used to close the shell. This has caused much controversy due to the treatment of shellfish as unclean in the Hebrew Bible. In a 2017 article in the journal Science Reports, Nongmaithem and colleagues advance an interdisciplinary argument that the operculum from the Muricidae molluscs. These molluscs were the exclusive source of the purple dye, Royal Purple. They were also the source for the biblical blue Tekhelet used in priestly garments and Jewish tzitzit, prayer shawls. Other candidates for the substance onchya are labdanum, benzoin, and Bdellium, although there are problems with each. Opercula from molluscs have been cited as the most ancient animal-derived aromatic to have extensive global use, and were traded as a valuable commodity across the Mediterranean by at least 1300 BC. The scent of opercula is reported to be similar to that of castoreum. It is still used as a perfume ingredient in India. The Nongmaithem study is unique in that they tried to process the operculum in a similar manner to the historical record and then captured and analyzed the smoke from burning the substance as incense. They found that that compounds in the smoke remained biologically active and were consistent with traditional medicine uses of the substance at the time.

Use of Incense and Scented Oil in Christian Antiquity

In their richly described and carefully argued 2006 book Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination, Brown University’s Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of History and Religion Susan Ashbrook Harvey argues that the broader neglect of the olfactory sense in western thought supports the overemphasis of sight and hearing in the historical analysis of early western Christianity. We must, Harvey argues, attend to the role of scent, “… if we are to grasp more fully how the ancients understood the body as a whole body, and bodily experience as a necessary component of religion, and indeed, of human life.”

Harvey provides a review of the role of scent in Mediterranean antiquity, placing the ascetism of early Christianity back into the context of scent and scented materials as a core component of religion, magic, medicine, and daily life. Harvey notes that far from removing scent from their religious experience, asceticism developed an olfactory culture that treated, “… incense as the marker of sacrifice, the process of human-divine interaction; and perfume as the marker of divine presence, signifying the condition of blessing or grace.”

The evolution of incense and perfume in Christianity was not on display in the earliest periods of Christianity. Harvey write, “Alone of the ancient Mediterranean religions, early Christianity followed the customs neither of animal sacrifice nor of incense offerings. These omissions of practice are striking because both were integral to Jewish Temple cult as well as to the many pagan cults of the Mediterranean world out of which Christianity emerged.” Instead, early Christian leaders used embodied olfactory understanding of their audience as symbols of their special relationship to God through Christ. Harvey notes a passage from Paul’s letters to the Corinthians as archetypal of this endeavor to convert the physical sense of smell based on sacrifice in pagan traditions and from the Hebrew Bible into a solely spiritual experience mediated by Christ.

“But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. And who is equal to such a task?”

— 2 Corinthians 2:14-16

The move away from the use of incense in sacrifice in the early Christian communities was accelerated by persecution in the Roman Empire. A demand to burn incense as a sacrifice to Roman gods was often the test put to Christians under threat of execution. Those who agreed to participate in the pagan rites in order to avoid punishment or death were labeled “incense burners.”

While the teachings of Christian leaders in the first to third centuries C.E. called for avoidance of any but the “useful” scents of healing and hygiene, followers were presented with a rich supplementary, imaginative narrative of scent defined by the sweet smell of God and heaven as described in the many “apocryphal” or "pseudepigraphical" texts written from the 2nd century B.C.E. to the 4th century C.E.. Harvey writes, “In stark contrast to the austerity of life and worship that dominated the rhetoric of early Christian sermons, treatises, and letters, extracanonical literature offered a feast for the sensory imagination. Thick with sensory descriptions patently moral in the implications such descriptions carried, these texts allowed the ancient sensory imagination full rein as a means of religious instruction.”

Harvey includes three examples of the olfactory descriptions included in these texts. In I Enoch, which is a narrative of a tour of heaven given to Enoch by the archangel Michael, a passage tells of seeing a throne surrounded by fragrant trees on one of the peaks of the seven mountains of northwest heaven:

‘There was one tree such as I have never at all smelled; there was not a single one among those or other (trees) which is like it; among all the fragrances nothing could be so fragrant; its leaves, its flowers, and its wood would never wither forever; its fruit is beautiful and resembles the clustered fruits of a palm tree. At that moment I said, 'This is a beautiful tree, beautiful to view, with leaves so handsome, and blossoms (so) magnificent in appearance.

The archangel Michael explained to Enoch that this was the throne of God to be used on Judgment Day. The tree would be given to the righteous to plant in the holy place, following which:

Then they shall be glad and rejoice in gladness, and they shall enter into the holy (place); its fragrance shall (penetrate) their bones, long life will they live on earth, Such as your fathers lived in their days.

Harvey argues that this and other examples from the apocryphal texts convey a coherent olfactory cosmology; heaven is filled with good smells and good smells on Earth are a gift from heaven. They write, “Whatever was near to God, whatever was sent or given by God—these were known by their wondrous smells, exquisite fragrances that bestowed life upon all they touched.”

The cultural, political, and ultimately liturgical and theological world of the Christians went through a dramatic turn in the 4th century C.E. Christianity was legalized in 313 C.E. when its followers comprised only a small portion of the Empire’s population. By the end of the century, Christianity was declared the state religion. All religions except for Judaism were banned from public life. While much remained the same, Christianity emerged from its persecuted and ascetic past in part by embracing the material concerns of empire. During the 4th century, the church integrated imperial pageantry and imagery, including through a burst of artistic and architectural efforts. Harvey states that by the 5th century, incense, which was once proscribed in religious ritual, was heavily used in all manners of Christian life, including in the liturgy and paraliturgical activities (e.g. veneration of relics and pilgrimages).

This shift was not due to any official change in doctrine, but an accumulation of practice changes driven by assimilation into the broader cultural use of incense. This was not a one way adoption of dominant culture, but incorporation to serve a purpose. Harvey writes, “… Christians used incense and holy oils in ways deeply familiar to ancient Mediterranean traditions. But they chose to employ such practices, where formerly they had eschewed them, specifically to articulate Christian identity and to serve the tasks Christian rituals were designed to accomplish.” One of the central theological arguments of the period was that the incarnation of Christ infused all of the material with God, such that Christ did his work of salvation through the body, and consequently, humans could meet God through the experience of their own bodies, through their senses, often through smelling. Harvey writes,

“Properly instructed through ecclesial word and deed, believers could then extend the religious uses of scents by adding them to domestic or paraliturgical devotional activities and by associating mundane smells with their ritual counterparts. By such actions the orientation of the liturgical context prevailed far beyond the physical confines of church sanctuary and official ceremony, profoundly linking the events and activities of daily life to the salvation drama enacted within the liturgy itself.”

If early Christian leaders acknowledged the necessity of encountering scent in daily life and urged followers to avoid indulgence in this life while focusing on a fragrant heaven, the post-Constantinian church did the opposite; the use of the senses in the liturgy was intended to refocus daily engagement with the sense on the divine.

Holy Oil

While incense was not used in the early Christian church, holy oil was used throughout its history. Anointment with sacred oil (chrism) is the action that defines one as a Christian more than the water of baptism. Christ “the Annointed One” receives his name from chrism. In some texts, the fragrance of the oil is noted as marking the presence of the Holy Spirit, which is what effects the transformation in the individual through anointment. The scented holy oil (myron) applied post-immersion could be perceived by congregants as an invisible transformation of the baptized person. While scent was not a central aspect of holy oil at the start of the post-Constantinian era, by the Byzantine era, the specific spice combinations (up to 50 ingredients) became a central focus for holy oil. Harvey argues that the scented oil was the divine taking initiative to meet with human, whereas incense was associated with sacrifice, an effort by humans to meet with the divine.

Incense

The document use of incense grew more slowly, with growing prominence in 5th century Christian writings. Harvey highlights the processional focus of Christian liturgy during the period. Celebrants would process through the city followed by their congregation and then into the church, the sanctuary, to the altar. As a result of growing political power, the liturgical rituals employed a range of devices, including scented candles and incense in censers to declare their presence and win converts. This use, along with other liturgical uses during the period, retained the sacrificial connotation of incense in the broader Mediterranean culture. In a critical passage for the book, Harvey writes:

Late antique Christian piety deflected the signification of incense away from its sacrificial function to an epistemological one, wherein the relation between sense perception and religious knowledge became the primary focus. That is, incense became important for its role in the development of smell as a category of religious experience, significant for what it revealed, as distinct from what it established or reinforced, about the nature of human-divine relation.

Harvey devotes a chapter to olfaction and Christian knowing, discussing at length how Christian thinkers in late Antiquity worked to reconcile ancient Greek philosophy with their emerging focus on the corporeal nature of Christian faith. Throughout this period, the challenge of reconciling the dualism between body and soul/mind and the incarnation remained central. Olfaction played a key role in communicating a potential resolution of the paradox that God is both not of the world and infused with it. This anonymous Syriac hymn quoted by Harvey illustrates the centrality of olfaction:

The sight of You delights. Your smell is sweet, Your mouth is holy. . . ./ How sweet is Your breath, how lovely Your baby state./ Your eyes are merry with delight at all who kiss You, /Your lips distil the fragrance of life,/ While balsam flows from Your fingertips./ Your eyes are lovely/ As they gaze on Your mother/ Who can set eyes on You and not breathe in Your fragrance?/ Even Your dribble causes onlookers to wonder,/ And Your manifest form amazes rational beings./ Your tiny hands are clasped,/ Your feet are kicking,/ How lovely You are in every way./ Even Your mouth's murmur tells of Your Father./ How gorgeous is Your beauty, how sweet [Your] smell -/Your mouth is very honey,/ O infant God

Harvey’s argument regarding the growing sense of embodiment in the human-divine interaction through olfaction in late antiquity reaches its appropriate peak in a section entitled, “Excursus: On the Sinful Woman in Syriac Tradition.” In this version from Mark, we see how anointing Jesus with perfume achieves a sacred effect that cannot be compared to its material value, even if this value is given to the poor (Deut 15:11):

And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they scolded her. But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.” (Mark 14:3-9)

The precious perfumed oil is not a gift to please God in the normal sense of a sacrifice. Instead, the anointment is a recognition by a woman of Jesus’ divine nature as well as of his mortality and impending death combined with an expression of repentance. The statement from Jesus, “She has done a beautiful thing to me” is alternatively translated as “good work,” “good deed,” or “beautiful thing.” Beautiful is a fitting translation for a relational, redemptive act that brings the divine and human together through scent. Harvey provides a detailed discussion of how Syriac homilies (4th century C.E. and later) enriched the sensory description and cultural meaning of this story to explain and clarify the way in which scent was used to mediate the divine-human interaction. The final anonymous homily in the discussion emphasizes the way in which the ritual anointment and medium of perfume transformed the woman:

The ointment which had made her body sweet she changed, and by the means of Jesus' feet, she caused him to touch her soul and perfume it. . . . the fragrance of her perfume was sweet, and the repentance she breathed out in her thoughts was even more so, which, for Jesus, was sweeter than any scent.

Protestant Reformation and a Return to Asceticism

Counter-Reformation and Jesuit Approach to Scent

In their 2016 article, ”’Ravishing Odors of Paradise: Jesuits, Olfaction, and 17th-Century North America,” Andrew Kettler argued that 17th-century C.E. Jesuit missionary struggles to win converts from among members of tribal nations in New France, the St. Lawrence Valley, and later the Pays d'en Hau led them to pursue multi-sensorial approaches to communicating the divine to potential converts. This occurred as Jesuits were resisting both Reformation dogma that sought to remove the “lower” senses of taste and smell from religious practice and broader European efforts at sewage management and other hygiene efforts that were reducing the role of scent in public life. Kettler notes that Native American adoption of Christian practices was not a binary exercise, but a social sampling process by which specific fragments of Christian faith and practices would be trialed and adopted, modified, or discarded. They write:

In the late seventeenth century, Jesuit and Native American appreciation for odor persisted within these improvised and fragmentary cross-cultural middle grounds partially created through mutual appreciation of the knowledge which could be cultivated through scenting.

The use of scent to negotiate middle grounds between peoples is salient given the use of scented oil and incense as a medium, ritual as a channel, through which the middle grounds of the divine-human interaction has been negotiated for millennia.