Also 6 -comitaunce, -comytaunce, 7 -commitance. [ad. med.L. concomitāntia (whence also in 16th c. F.), f. concomitānt-em: see CONCOMITANT and -ANCE.]
1. The fact of being concomitant, or of accompanying each other; subsistence together; co-existence.
a. 1535. More, On the Passion, Wks. 1335/2. By concomytaunce are there also both the father and the holye Goste.
1676. Hale, Contempl., I. 55. By accident, and by way of concomitance.
1834. Fraser’s Mag., IX. 696. The concomitance of voice and music.
1846. Mill, Logic, I. viii. § 6. In inferring causation from concomitance of variations, the concomitance itself must be proved by the Method of Difference.
b. quasi-concr. An instance of this. † c. concr. An accompaniment (obs.).
1652. W. Hartley, Inf. Baptism, 3. Not ushered in with its proper ingredients and due concommitances.
a. 1677. Barrow, Serm. (1683), II. xx. 289. Some advantageous circumstances and concomitances.
1861. Q. Rev., CX. 381. The concomitances, or sequences, or causes and effects of nature, are not connected together by our experience in any such way.
2. Theol. The coexistence of the body and blood of Christ in each of the eucharistic elements (esp. in the bread).
a. 1535. More, On the Passion, Wks. 1335/1. The bodye vnder the forme of bread immediately … and the bloude by concomitaunce.
a. 1603. T. Cartwright, Confut. Rhem. N. T. (1618), 127. They doe shamefull wrong vnto the Church, to father this new fangled word of Concomitance of it.
1660. Jer. Taylor, Duct. Dubit., II. iii. ix. § 27. Why the priest should be obliged to drink the chalice, and cannot be excused by concomitance … cannot easily be imagined.
1857. P. Freeman, Princ. Div. Service, II. 79. That doctrine of ‘Concomitance’ … on which the withdrawal from the Christian West of the Eucharistic Cup was professedly based or justified.
1880. Littledale, Plain Reasons, xxviii. 78. Touching the doctrine of concomitance, it is not a directly revealed truth, but at best a guess, a mere possible inference from one reading, not free from doubt, of the single text, 1 Cor. xi. 27.
3. Math. Exact correspondence of functional transformation between two sets of variables: see CONCOMITANT B. 3.
