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    "source_title": "Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911)",
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    "verified_text": "lection, lectionary. the custom of reading the books of moses in the synagogues on the sabbath day was a very ancient one in the jewish church. the addition of lections (i.e. readings) from the prophetic books had been made afterwards and was in existence in our lord's time, as may be gathered from such passages as st luke iv. 16-20, xvi. 29. this element in synagogue worship was taken over with others into the christian divine service, additions being made to it from the writings of the apostles and evangelists. we find traces of such additions within the new testament itself in such directions as are contained in col. iv. 16; 1 thess. v. 27. from the 2nd century onwards references multiply, though the earlier references do not prove the existence of a fixed lectionary or order of lessons, but rather point the other way. justin martyr, describing divine worship in the middle of the 2nd century says: \"on the day called sunday all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles, or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits\" (_apol._ i. cap. 67). tertullian about half a century later makes frequent reference to the reading of holy scripture in public worship (_apol._ 39; _de praescript._ 36; _de amina_, 9). in the canons of hippolytus in the first half of the 3rd century we find this direction: \"let presbyters, subdeacons and readers, and all the people assemble daily in the church at time of cock-crow, and betake themselves to prayers, to psalms and to the reading of the scriptures, according to the command of the apostles, until i come attend to reading\" (canon xxi.). but there are traces of fixed lessons coming into existence in the course of this century; origen refers to the book of job being read in holy week (_commentaries on job_, lib. i.). allusions of a similar kind in the 4th century are frequent. john cassian (c. 380) tells us that throughout egypt the psalms were divided into groups of twelve, and that after each group there followed two lessons, one from the old, one from the new testament (_de caenob. inst._ ii. 4), implying but not absolutely stating that there was a fixed order of such lessons just as there was of the psalms. st basil the great mentions fixed lessons on certain occasions taken from isaiah, proverbs, st matthew and acts (hom. xiii. _de bapt._). from chrysostom (hom. lxiii _in act._ &c.), and augustine (tract. vi. _in joann._ &c.) we learn that genesis was read in lent, job and jonah in passion week, the acts of the apostles in eastertide, lessons on the passion on good friday and on the resurrection on easter day. in the _apostolical constitutions_ (ii. 57) the following service is described and enjoined. first come two lessons from the old testament by a reader, the whole of the old testament being made use of except the books of the apocrypha. the psalms of david are then to be sung. next the acts of the apostles and the epistles of paul are to be read, and finally the four gospels by a deacon or a priest. whether the selections were _ad libitum_ or according to a fixed table of lessons we are not informed. nothing in the shape of a lectionary is extant older than the 8th century, though there is evidence that claudianus mamercus made one for the church at vienne in 450, and that musaeus made one for the church at marseilles c. 458. the _liber comitis_ formerly attributed to st jerome must be three, or nearly three, centuries later than that saint, and the luxeuil lectionary, or _lectionarium gallicanum_, which mabillon attributed to the 7th, cannot be earlier than the 8th century; yet the oldest mss. of the gospels have marginal marks, and sometimes actual interpolations, which can only be accounted for as indicating the beginnings and endings of liturgical lessons. the third council of carthage in 397 forbade anything but holy scripture to be read in church; this rule has been adhered to so far as the liturgical epistle and gospel, and occasional additional lessons in the roman missal are concerned, but in the divine office, on feasts when nine lessons are read at matins, only the first three lessons are taken from holy scripture, the next three being taken from the sermons of ecclesiastical writers, and the last three from expositions of the day's gospel; but sometimes the lives or _passions_ of the saints, or of some particular saints, were substituted for any or all of these breviary lessons. (f. e. w.) lectisternium (from lat. _lectum sternere_, \"to spread a couch\"; [greek: stromnai] in dion. halic. xii. 9), in ancient rome, a propitiatory ceremony, consisting of a meal offered to gods and goddesses, represented by their busts or statues, or by portable figures of wood, with heads of bronze, wax or marble, and covered with drapery. another suggestion is that the symbols of the gods consisted of bundles of sacred herbs, tied together in the form of a head, covered by a waxen mask so as to resemble a kind of bust (cf. the straw puppets called argei). these symbols were laid upon a couch (_lectus_), the left arm resting on a cushion (_pulvinus_, whence the couch itself was often called _pulvinar_) in the attitude of reclining. in front of the couch, which was placed in the open street, a meal was set out on a table. it is definitely stated by livy (v. 13) that the ceremony took place \"for the first time\" in rome in the year 399 b.c., after the sibylline books had been consulted by their keepers and interpreters (_duumviri sacris faciendis_), on the occasion of a pestilence. three couches were prepared for three pairs of gods--apollo and latona, hercules and diana, mercury and neptune. the feast, which on that occasion lasted for eight (or seven) days, was also celebrated by private individuals; the citizens kept open house, quarrels were forgotten, debtors and prisoners were released, and everything done to banish sorrow. similar honours were paid to other divinities in subsequent times--fortuna, saturnus, juno regina of the aventine, the three capitoline deities (jupiter, juno, minerva), and in 217, after the defeat of lake trasimenus, a lectisternium was held for three days to six pairs of gods, corresponding to the twelve great gods of olympus--jupiter, juno, neptune, minerva, mars, venus, apollo, diana, vulcan, vesta, mercury, ceres. in 205, alarmed by unfavourable prodigies, the romans were ordered to fetch the great mother of the gods from pessinus in phrygia; in the following year the image was brought to rome, and a lectisternium held. in later times, the lectisternium became of constant (even daily) occurrence, and was celebrated in the different temples. such celebrations must be distinguished from those which were ordered, like the earlier lectisternia, by the sibylline books in special emergencies. although undoubtedly offerings of food were made to the gods in very early roman times on such occasions as the ceremony of _confarreatio_, and the _epulum jovis_ (often confounded with the lectisternium), it is generally agreed that the lectisternia were of greek origin. in favour of this may be mentioned: the similarity of the greek [greek: theoxenia], in which, however, the gods played the part of hosts; the gods associated with it were either previously unknown to roman religion, though often concealed under roman names, or were provided with a new cult (thus hercules was not worshipped as at the ara maxima, where, according to servius on _aeneid_, viii. 176 and cornelius balbus, _ap._ macrobius, _sat._ iii. 6, a lectisternium was forbidden); the sibylline books, which decided whether a lectisternium was to be held or not, were of greek origin; the custom of reclining at meals was greek. some, however, assign an etruscan origin to the ceremony, the sibylline books themselves being looked upon as old italian \"black books.\" a probable explanation of the confusion between the lectisternia and genuine old italian ceremonies is that, as the lectisternia became an almost everyday occurrence in rome, people forgot their foreign origin and the circumstances in which they were first introduced, and then the word _pulvinar_ with its associations was transferred to times in which it had no existence. in imperial times, according to tacitus (_annals_, xv. 44), chairs were substituted for couches in the case of goddesses, and the lectisternium in their case became a sellisternium (the reading, however, is not certain). this was in accordance with roman custom, since in the earliest times all the members of a family sat at meals, and in later times at least the women and children. this is a point of distinction between the original practice at the lectisternium and the epulum jovis, the goddesses at the latter being provided with chairs, whereas in the lectisternium they reclined. in christian times the word was used for a feast in memory of the dead (sidonius apollinaris, _epistulae_, iv. 15). see article by a. bouche-leclercq in daremberg and saglio, _dictionnaire des antiquites_; marquardt, _romische staatsverwaltung_, iii. 45, 187 (1885); g. wissowa, _religion und kultus der romer_, p. 355 seq.; monograph by wackermann (hanau, 1888); c. pascal, _studii di antichita e mitologia_ (1896).",
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