LKOTERN
110
ZAnnoiiABY
in his archiepisoopal palace of too many ex- juror priests, detracted considerably from the effectiveness
of his ministry. The strange mixture of truth and
error, of good and evil in Le Coz's life, is partly ex-
plained by his intensely Gallican education, which
caused him to adopt with apparent sincerity and to
maintain with imconquerablo obstinacy the most
schismatic views. His Gallicanism, whicn made him
90 haughty toward the pope, found him almost cringing before the various political regimes which suc-
ceeded one another during his episcopate. In an age
full of confusion, we should give some credit to Le
Coz for sometimes having, even against the all-FK)wer-
ful Abb4 Grdgoire. defended the cause of religion in
the "Annales de la Religion", in which he was an
assiduous collaborator, and in his **Correspondance",
part of which has been published by hi j oioCTapher.
RoussEL, Jj€ Coz, Svique d Ille-et-Vilaine (Pa'.Ts, s. d.); Idem, Correfpondance de Le Cox (Paris, 1000); Pisami, Le Coz in RS- pertoire biographique de V Episcopal Constituiionnel (Paris, 1907) .
J. F. SOLLIER.
Lectern (Lecturn, Letturn, Lettern, from legere, to read), support for a book, reading-aesk, or bookstand, a solia and permanent structure upon which the Sacred Books, which were generally large and heavy, were placed when used by the ministers of the altar in liturgical functions. In early days only one such structure was employed; later, two were erected, one at the northern wall of the choir, and an- other on the opposite side. From the former the sermon was delivered by the priest, and also by the bishop, unless he spoke from nis cathedra; here decrees of synods were promulgated, censures and ex- communications pronounced, the diptychs read, the Gospel chanted by the deacon, and all those parts of the lituigy were simg which belonged to the deacon's office. The other, somewhat longer but not so high, was divided into two compartments or stories — the higher, facing the altar, was used by the sulxleacon when reading the Epistle; in the other, facing the nave, the other lessons were read. A third lectern was useu in some churches for the sermon. Some of these were built of marble, others of wood, highly adorned with silver and ^old, enamelled, and set with precious stones, covered with bronze plates and carvings in ivory. Be- sides those mentioned under Ambo, we find among the treasures of the Abbey of Saint-Riquier "lectoria tria ex marmore, aigento et auro fabricata" (P. L., CLXXrV, 1257). One in the court of the church of St. Pantalaemon in Thessalonica is held to be the oldest. On its lower part is found in relief the Ma- donna and Child, seated on a throne and surrounded by shepherds and the three Magi, and on the super- structure are symbolic representations. The upper part of the lectern in S. Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna IS old and fairly complete. Another, well preserved and richly decorated, a donation of Henry II, is at Aachen. Movable lecterns were also made of wood, bronze, or polished brass. A bronze lectern inlaid with ivory, made about the middle of the twelfth century by Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, was in the shape of an eagle whose outspread wings held the book. Eagle-shaped lecterns were also numerous in the thir- teenth and fourteenth centuries in England. Samples, but not going back later than the fifteenth century, are found at Aachen, DQsseldorf, St. Severin's at Co- logne, etc. A lectern of neatly wrought iron, in the dmpe of an X, which can be folded, is in the Mus(^ Cluny at Paris. The Carthusians of Dijon had a lec- tern which was a large column of copper, in renais- sance style, supporting a phoenix surrounded by the four animals of the Prophet Ezechiel. In some the figure of a deacon holds the book.
The Synods of MQnster (1279V Li^ge (1287). and Cambrai (1300) prescribed that the Mis.sal, enveloped in a linen cloth, should be laid on the altar. Towards the end of the thirteenth century a cu.shion came into
use. The oldest notice of a stand for the Missal ift
found in an inventory of the cathedral of Angers of
the year 1297 (Zeitschrift fOr christliche Kunst, X,
175) . All such lecterns were covered on festivals with
rich cloths of silver and gold. At the present day
lecterns are in use as Missal-stands and for the reading
of the prophecies on Holy Saturday and Pentecost
Saturday, for the chanting of the Passion, the singing of
the " Exultet ", and the reading of the lessons in choirs. DucHBSNB. Chriaiian Worahip (London, 1904), 114, 169, 353; RocKj Chiarch of our FcUkera, I (London, 1903)^ 106; Kbadb. GeschxcfUe der chrisUichen Kunstt II (FreibuiK im Br., 1897), 482; BiNTBRiM, DenkwUrdiakeUetit IV, i, 70
Francis Mershhan.
Lectionary (Lectionarium or Legenda), is a term of somewhat vague si^iificance, used with a good deal of latitude by liturgical writers. It must be remem- bered that in the early Middle Ages neither the Liturgy of the Mass, nor the Divine Office recited by moiu& and other ecclesiastics in choir, were to be found, as in the Missal and the Breviary of the present day, complete in one volume. Botn for the Mass and for the Office a variety of books were used, for it was obviously a matter of convenience when books were both bulky and costly to produce, that the prayers, e. g. which the priest had to say at the altar, should be contained in a different volume from the antiphons to be sung by the choir. The word lection- ary, then, in its wider sense, is a term which may be correctly applied to any liturgical volume containing passages to be read aloud in the services of the Church. In tlus larger signification it would include all Script- ural books written continuously, in which readings were marked, such as the " Evangeliaria" (also often known as "Tcxtus")» as well as books, known also as "Plenaria", containing both Epistles and (jos- pels combined, such as are commonly employed in a high Mass at the present day, and also those collections, either of extracts from the Fathers or of historical narrations about the martyrs and other saints, which were read aloud as lessons in the Divine Office. This wider signification is, however, pjerhaps the less usual, and in practice the term lectionary is more conmionly used to denote one of two things: (1) the book containing the collection of Scriptural readings which are chanted by the deacon, subaeacon, or a lec- tor during Mass; (2) any book from which the read- ings were taken which are read aloud in the Office of Matins, after each noctum or group of psalms. With regard to these last the practice seems to have varied greatlv. Sometimes collections were made containing just the extracts to be used in choir, such as we find them in a modern Breviary. Sometimes a large volume of patristic homilies (known also as ser-- monarium) or historical matter w^as employed^ in which certain passages were marked to lie used as lessons. This last custom seems more particularly to Imve obtained with regard to the short biographical accounts of martyrs and other saints, which in our modern Breviary form the lessons of the second noc- tum. In this connexion the word legenda in particu- lar is of common occurrence. The Bollandist Ponce- let is, consequently, inclined to draw a distinction between the *' L^enda*' and the ' Lectionarium" (see Analecta Bollandiana, XXIX^ 13). The -Legenda", also called **Passionarium", is a collection of narra- tives of variable length, in which are recounted the life, martyrdom, translation, or miracles of the saints. This usually forms a large volume, and the order of the pieces in the collection is commonly, though not necessarily, that of the calendar. A few such ' * Legen- dsB " come down from quite the early Middle Ages, out the vast majoritv of those now preserved in our libra- ries belong to the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. The earliest is the "Codex Vclseri", MS. Lat. 3514, of the Royal Library at Munich, written probably before the year 700. When these books
