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Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Liquid Gases" to "Logar", Volume 16, Slice 7

VOLUME XVI SLICE VII Liquid Gases to Logar (continued 5)

Reading edition

Machinery.—The chief items are the hand presses and the machines, whether flat bed or rotary, the principal places of manufacture being Leeds, Otley and Edinburgh. Stimulated by American competition, the standard of excellence in the United Kingdom has been very considerably raised of late years. The rotary machines have only been possible since the more frequent use of aluminium and zinc, but these materials are more suitable to receive transfer than for the general use of an office, the chief reason being that corrections on stone are more easily accomplished and more lasting when done. Preliminary work is therefore frequently done on the stone and transferred to plates for the machine.

The question is very frequently asked as to how the necessary registration of the colours is secured; it may be stated for the benefit of the amateur that in hand printing this is generally done by pricking with a pair of needles through printed marks present on each stone; but in the machine this has been done in different ways, although in quite early days “pointing” or “needling” was done even on the machine. On modern machines this registration depends on the accurate cutting of the edge of the paper, of which at least one corner must be an absolute right angle. The paper is then laid on a sloping board in such a way that the longest of the two true edges gravitates into the gripper of the machine, the stops of which move slightly forward as the gripper closes; simultaneously what is called the “side lay” moves forward automatically to a given extent, and in this way at the critical moment the sheet is always in the same position in regard to the stone, which has already been firmly secured in the bed of the machine.

Quite recently a new method has come into use that is probably destined to be a great aid to the craft in its competition with other methods. This is known as offset printing; it is more a matter of evolution than invention, and proceeds from the method adopted in tin-plate decoration so much used for box-making and lasting forms of advertisement. It consists in bringing a sheet of rubber into contact with the charged stone and then setting-off the impression so obtained upon card, paper, pegamoid, cloth or other material, the elasticity of the rubber making it possible to print upon rough surfaces that have been previously unsuited to lithographic printing. Both flat bed and rotary machines are available for this system, the latter being restricted to zinc or aluminium plates, but giving a high speed, while the former can use both stones and metal plates and may be more effective for the highest grade of colour work; by both classes of machines the finest engraved note headings can be printed on rough paper, and colour work that has for so long been confined to coated or burnished papers will be available on surfaces such as the artists themselves use.

The following treatises may be referred to with advantage by those in search of more detailed information: A Complete Course of Lithography, by Alois Senefelder (R. Ackermann, London, 1819); The Grammar of Lithography, by W. D. Richmond (13th edition, E. Menken, London); Handbook of Lithography, by David Cumming (London, A. & C. Black). The first of these will only be found in libraries of importance; the others are present-day text-books.

(F. V. B.)

Illustration from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Liquid Gases" to "Logar" Volume 16, Slice 7

LITHOSPHERE (Gr. λίθος, a stone, and σφαῖρα, a sphere), the crust of the earth surrounding the earth’s nucleus. The superficial soil, a layer of loose earthy material from a few feet to a few hundreds of feet in thickness, lies upon a zone of hard rock many thousands of feet in thickness but varying in character, and composed mainly of sandstones, shales, clays, limestones and metamorphic rocks. These two layers form the lithosphere. All the tectonic movements of the solid nucleus produce changes in the mobile lithosphere. Volcanic and seismic activity is manifested, mountains are folded, levels change, fresh surfaces are exposed to denudation, erosion and deposition. The crust is thus subject to constant change while retaining its more or less permanent character.

Illustration from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Liquid Gases" to "Logar" Volume 16, Slice 7

LITHUANIANS and LETTS, two kindred peoples of Indo-European origin, which inhabit several western provinces of Russia and the north-eastern parts of Poland and Prussia, on the shores of the Baltic Sea, and in the basins of the Niemen and of the Duna. Large colonies of Lithuanian and Lettic emigrants have been established in the United States. The two races number about 3,500,000, of whom 1,300,000 are Letts. Little is known about their origin, and nothing about the time of their appearance in the country they now inhabit. Ptolemy mentions (iii. 5) two clans, the Galindae and Sudeni, who probably belonged to the western subdivision of this racial group, the Borussians. In the 10th century the Lithuanians were already known under the name of Litva, and, together with two other branches of the same stem—the Borussians and the Letts—they occupied the south-eastern coast of the Baltic Sea from the Vistula to the Duna, extending north-east towards the Lakes Vierzi-järvi and Peipus, south-east to the watershed between the affluents of the Baltic and those of the Black Sea, and south to the middle course of the Vistula (Brest Litovsk)—a tract bounded by Finnish tribes in the north, and by Slavs elsewhere.

Inhabiting a forested, marshy country the Lithuanians have been able to maintain their national character, notwithstanding the vicissitudes of their history. Their chief priest, Krive-Kriveyto (the judge of the judges), under whom were seventeen classes of priests and elders, worshipped in the forests; the Waidelots brought their offerings to the divinities at the foot of oaks; even now, the veneration of great oaks is a widely spread custom in the villages of the Lithuanians, and even of the Letts.

Even in the 10th century the Lithuanian stem was divided into three main branches:—the Borussians or Prussians; the Letts (who call themselves Latvis, whilst the name under which they are known in Russian chronicles, Letygola, is an abbreviation of Latvin-galas, “the confines of Lithuania”); and the Lithuanians, or rather Lituanians, Litva or Letuvininkaï,—these last being subdivided into Lithuanians proper, and Zhmud’ (Zmudz, Samogitians or Zemailey), the “Lowlanders.” To these main branches must be added the Yatvyags, or Yadzvings, a warlike, black-haired people who inhabited the forests at the upper tributaries of the Niemen and Bug, and the survivors of whom are easily distinguishable as a mixture with White-Russians and Mazurs in some parts of Grodno, Plotsk, Lomza and Warsaw. Nestor’s chronicle distinguishes also the Zhemgala, who later became known under the name of Semigallia, and in the 10th century inhabited the left bank of the Duna. Several authors consider also as Lithuanians the Kors of Russian chronicles, or Courons of Western authors, who inhabited the peninsula of Courland, and the Golad, a clan settled on the banks of the Porotva, tributary of the Moskva river, which seems to have been thrown far from the main stem during its migration to the north. The Krivichi, who inhabited what is now the government of Smolensk, seem to belong to the same stem. Their name recalls the Krive-Kriveyto, and their ethnological features recall the Lithuanians; but they are now as much Slavonic as Lithuanian.

All these peoples are only ethnographical subdivisions, and each of them was subdivided into numerous independent clans and villages, separated from one another by forests and marshes; they had no towns or fortified places. The Lithuanian territory thus lay open to foreign invasions, and the Russians as well as the German crusaders availed themselves of the opportunity. The Borussians soon fell under the dominion of Germans, and ceased to constitute a separate nationality, leaving only their name to the state which later became Prussia. The Letts were driven farther to the north, mixing there with Livs and Ehsts, and fell under the dominion of the Livonian order. Only the Lithuanians proper, together with Samogitians, succeeded in forming an independent state. The early history of this state is imperfectly known. During the continuous petty war carried on against Slavonic invasions, the military chief of one of the clans, Ryngold, acquired, in the first half of the 13th century, a certain preponderance over other clans of Lithuania and Black Russia (Yatvyags), as well as over the republics of Red Russia. At this time, the invasions of the Livonian order becoming more frequent, and always extending southward, there was a general feeling of the necessity of some organization to resist them, and Ryngold’s son, Mendowg, availed himself of this opportunity to pursue the policy of his father. He made different concessions to the order, ceded to it several parts of Lithuania, and even agreed to be baptized, in 1250, at Novograd Litovsk, receiving in exchange a crown from Innocent IV., with which he was crowned king of Lithuanians. He also ceded the whole of Lithuania to the order in case he should die without leaving offspring. But he had accepted Christianity only to increase his influence among other clans; and, as soon as he had consolidated a union between Lithuanians, Samogitians and Cours, he relapsed, proclaiming, in 1260, a general uprising of the Lithuanian people against the Livonian order. The yoke was shaken off, but internal wars followed, and three years later Mendowg was killed. About the end of the 13th century a new dynasty of rulers of Lithuania was founded by Lutuwer, whose second son, Gedymin (1316-1341), with the aid of fresh forces he organized through his relations with Red Russia, established something like regular government; he at the same time extended his dominions over Russian countries—over Black Russia (Novogrodok, Zditov, Grodno, Slonim and Volkovysk) and the principalities of Polotsk, Tourovsk, Pinsk, Vitebsk and Volhynia. He named himself Rex Lethowinorum et multorum Ruthenorum. In 1325 he concluded a treaty with Poland against the Livonian order, which treaty was the first step towards the union of both countries realized two centuries later. The seven sons of Gedymin considered themselves as quite independent; but two of them, Olgierd and Keistut, soon became the more powerful. They represented two different tendencies which existed at that time in Lithuania. Olgierd, whose family relations attracted him towards the south, was the advocate of union with Russia; rather politician than warrior, he increased his influence by diplomacy and by organization. His wife and sons being Christians, he also soon agreed to be baptized in the Greek Church. Keistut represented the revival of the Lithuanian nationality. Continually engaged in wars with Livonia, and remaining true to the national religion, he became the national legendary hero. In 1345 both brothers agreed to re-establish the great principality of Lithuania, and, after having taken Vilna, the old sanctuary of the country, all the brothers recognized the supremacy of Olgierd. His son, Jagiello, who married the queen of Poland, Yadviga, after having been baptized in the Latin Church, was crowned, on the 14th of February 1386, king of Poland. At the beginning of the 15th century Lithuania extended her dominions as far east as Vyazma on the banks of the Moskva river, the present government of Kaluga, and Poutivl, and south-east as far as Poltava, the shores of the Sea of Azov, and Haji-bey (Odessa), thus including Kiev and Lutsk. The union with Poland remained, however, but nominal until 1569, when Sigismund Augustus was king of Poland. In the 16th century Lithuania did not extend its power so far east and south-east as two centuries before, but it constituted a compact state, including Polotsk, Moghilev, Minsk, Grodno, Kovno, Vilna, Brest, and reaching as far south-east as Chernigov. From the union with Poland, the history of Lithuania becomes a part of Poland’s history, Lithuanians and White-Russians partaking of the fate of the Polish kingdom (see Poland: History). After its three partitions, they fell under the dominion of the Russian empire. In 1792 Russia took the provinces of Moghilev and Polotsk, and in 1793 those of Vilna, Troki, Novgorod-Syeversk, Brest and Vitebsk. In 1797 all these provinces were united together, constituting the “Lithuanian government” (Litovskaya Gubernia). But the name of Lithuanian provinces was usually given only to the governments of Vilna and Kovno, and, though Nicholas I. prohibited the use of this name, it is still used, even in official documents. In Russia, all the White-Russian population of the former Polish Lithuania are usually considered as Lithuanians, the name of Zhmud being restricted to Lithuanians proper.

The ethnographical limits of the Lithuanians are undefined, and their number is variously estimated. The Letts occupy a part of the Courland peninsula of Livonia and of Vitebsk, a few other settlements being spread also in the governments of Kovno, St Petersburg and Moghilev. The Lithuanians proper inhabit the governments of Kovno, Vilna, Suvalki and Grodno; while the Samogitians or Zhmud inhabit the governments of Kovno and Suvalki. To these must be added about 200,000 Borussians, the whole number of Lithuanians and Letts in Russia being, according to the census of 1897, 3,094,469. They are slowly extending towards the south, especially the Letts; numerous emigrants have penetrated into Slavonic lands as far as the government of Voronezh.

The Lithuanians are well built; the face is mostly elongated, the features fine; the very fair hair, blue eyes and delicate skin distinguish them from Poles and Russians. Their dress is usually plain in comparison with that of Poles, and the predominance in it of greyish colours has been frequently noticed. Their chief occupation is agriculture. The trades in towns are generally carried on by men of other races—mostly by Germans, Jews or Poles. The only exception is afforded to some extent by the Letts. The Samogitians are good hunters, and all Lithuanians are given to apiculture and cattle breeding. But the Lithuanians, as well in the Baltic provinces as in the central ones, were not until the most recent time proprietors of the soil they tilled. They have given a few families to the Russian nobility, but the great mass of the people became serfs of foreign landowners, German and Polish, who reduced them to the greatest misery. Since the Polish insurrection of 1863, the Russian government has given to the Lithuanians the land of the Polish proprietors on much easier terms than in central Russia; but the allotments of soil and the redemption taxes are very unequally distributed; and a not insignificant number of peasants (the chinsheviki) were even deprived of the land they had for centuries considered their own. The Letts remain in the same state as before, and are restrained from emigrating en masse only by coercive measures.

The Letts of Courland, with the exception of about 50,000 who belong to the Greek Church, are Lutherans. Nearly all can read. Those of the government of Vitebsk, who were under Polish dominion, are Roman Catholics, as well as the Lithuanians proper, a part of whom, however, have returned to the Greek Church, in which they were before the union with Poland. The Samogitians are Roman Catholics; they more than other Lithuanians have conserved their national features. But all Lithuanians have maintained much of their heathen practices and creed; the names of pagan divinities, very numerous in the former mythology, are continually mentioned in songs, and also in common speech.

Bibliography.—Schiemann, Russland, Polen und Livland bis ins 17te Jahrhundert (2 vols., Berlin, 1886-1887); S. Daukantas, Lietuvos Istorija (Plymouth, Pa., 1893); J. de Brye, Étude historique sur la Lithuanie (Paris, 1894); P. D. Bryantsev, Istorija Litovskago Gosudarstva (Vilna, 1899).

(P. A. K.)

Language and Literature.—The Lithuanian, Lettic or Lettish and Borussian or Old Prussian languages together constitute a distinct linguistic subdivision, commonly called the Baltic subdivision, within the Indo-European family. They have many affinities to the Slavonic languages, and are sometimes included with them in a single linguistic group, the Balto-Slavic. In their phonology, however, though not in their structure the Baltic languages appear to be more primitive than the Slavonic. Lithuanian, for example, retains the archaic diphthongs which disappear in Slavonic—Lith. véidas, “face,” Gr. εἶδος, O.S. vidŭ. Among other noteworthy phonological characteristics of Lithuanian are the conversion of k into a sibilant, the loss of h and change of all aspirates into tenues and the retention of primitive consonantal noun-terminations, e.g. the final s in Sans. Vṛkás, Lith. vīlkas, O.S. vŭlkŭ. Lettic is phonologically less archaic than Lithuanian, although in a few cases it has preserved Indo-European forms which have been changed in Lithuanian, e.g. the s and z which have become Lith. sz (sh) and ž (zh). The accent in Lithuanian is free; in Lettic, and apparently in Old Prussian, it ultimately became fixed on the first syllable.

In its morphology Lettic represents a later stage of development than Lithuanian, their mutual relationship being analogous to that between Old High German and Gothic. Both languages have preserved seven out of the eight Indo-European cases; Lithuanian has three numbers, but Lettic has lost the dual (except in diwi, “two” and abbi, “both”); the neuter gender, which still appears in Lithuanian pronouns, has also been entirely lost in Lettic; in Lithuanian there are four simple tenses (present, future, imperfect, preterite), but in Lettic the imperfect is wanting. In both languages the number of periphrastic verb-forms and of diminutives is large; in both there are traces of a suffix article; and both have enriched their vocabularies with many words of foreign, especially German, Russian and Polish origin. The numerous Lithuanian dialects are commonly divided into High or Southern, which changes ty and dy into cz, dz, and Low or Northern, which retains ty, dy. Lettic is divided into High (the eastern dialects), Low (spoken in N.W. Courland) and Middle (the literary language). Old Prussian ceased to be a spoken language in the 17th century; its literary remains, consisting chiefly of three catechisms and two brief vocabularies, date almost entirely from the period 1517-1561 and are insufficient to permit of any thorough reconstruction of the grammar.

The literary history of the Lithuanians and Letts dates from the Reformation and comprises three clearly defined periods. (1) Up to 1700 the chief printed books were of a liturgical character. (2) During the 18th century a vigorous educational movement began; dictionaries, grammars and other instructive works were compiled, and written poems began to take the place of songs preserved by oral tradition. (3) The revival of national sentiment at the beginning of the 19th century resulted in the establishment of newspapers and the collection and publication of the national folk-poetry. In both literatures, works of a religious character predominate, and both are rich in popular ballads, folk-tales and fables.

The first book printed in Lithuanian was a translation of Luther’s shorter Catechism (Königsberg, 1547); other translations of devotional or liturgical works followed, and by 1701 59 Lithuanian books had appeared, the most noteworthy being those of the preacher J. Bretkun (1535-1602). The spread of Calvinism led to the publication, in 1701, of a Lithuanian New Testament. The first dictionary was printed in 1749. But perhaps the most remarkable work of the second period was The Four Seasons, a pastoral poem in hexameters by Christian Donalitius (1714-1780), which was edited by Nesselmann (Königsberg, 1869) with a German translation and notes. In the 19th century various collections of fables and folk-tales were published, and an epic, the Onikshta Grove, was written by Bishop Baranoski. But it was in journalism that the chief original work of the third period was done. F. Kelch (1801-1877) founded the first Lithuanian newspaper, and between 1834 and 1895 no fewer than 34 Lithuanian periodicals were published in the United States alone.

Luther’s Catechism (Königsberg, 1586) was the first book printed in Lettic, as in the sister speech. In the 17th century various translations of psalms, hymns and other religious works were published, the majority being Calvinistic in tone. The educational movement of the 18th century was inaugurated by G. F. Stender (1714-1796), author of a Lettic dictionary and grammar, of poems, tales and of a Book of Wisdom which treats of elementary science and history. Much educational work was subsequently done by the Lettic Literary Society, which publishes a magazine (Magazin, Mitau, from 1827), and by the “Young Letts,” who published various periodicals and translations of foreign classics, and endeavoured to free their language and thought from German influences. Somewhat similar tasks were undertaken by the “Young Lithuanians,” whose first magazine the Auszra (“Dawn”) was founded in 1883. From 1890 to 1910 the literature of both peoples was marked by an ever-increasing nationalism; among the names most prominent during this period may be mentioned those of the dramatist Steperman and the poet Martin Lap, both of whom wrote in Lettic.

Bibliography.—Lithuanian dictionaries: Nesselmann, Wörterbuch der litauischen Sprache (Königsberg, 1851); Kurschat, Wörterbuch der litauischen Sprache (Halle, 1870-1883); A. Juszkiewicz, Litovskiy Slovar (St Petersburg, 1897, &c.); P. Saurusaitis, An Abridged Dictionary of the English-Lithuanian Languages, 2 pts. (Waterbury, Conn., 1899-1900); A. Lalis, Dictionary of the Lithuanian and English Languages (Chicago, 1903, &c.). Grammar and Linguistic: Schleicher, Handbuch der litauischen Sprache (Prague, 1856-1857); O. Wiedemann, Handbuch der litauischen Sprache (Strassburg, 1897); A. Bezzenberger, Beiträge zur Geschichte der litauischen Sprache (Göttingen, 1877); J. Schiekopp, Gramatyka litewska poczatkowa (Cracow, 1902). Literature: Nesselmann, Litauische Volkslieder (Berlin, 1853); A. Juszkiewicz, Lietùwiškos Dajnos Uzrasytos, &c. (Kazan, 1881); A. Leskien and C. Brugman, Litauische Volkslieder (Strassburg, 1882); C. Bartsch, Melodieen litauischer Volkslieder (Heidelberg, 1886); A. Juszkiewicz, Melodje ludowe litewskie (Cracow, 1900, &c.); E. A. Voi’ter, Litovskaya Khrestomatiya (St Petersburg, 1901, &c.).

Lettic dictionaries and grammars: Bielenstein, Die Lettische Sprache (Berlin, 1863-1864); id., Lettische Grammatik (Mitau, 1863); Ulmann and Brasche, Lettisches Wörterbuch (Riga, 1872-1880); A. Bezzenberger, Über die Sprache der preussischen Letten and lettische Dialekt-Studien (Göttingen, 1885); Bielenstein, Grenzen des lettischen Volksstammes und der lettischen Sprache (St Petersburg, 1892); Literature: Bielenstein Tausend lettische Räthsel (Mitau, 1881); T. Treuland, Latyshskiya Narodnyya Skazki (Moscow, 1887, &c.); K. Baron and H. Wissendorff, Latwju dainas (Mitau, 1894, &c.); V. Andreyanov, Lettische Volkslieder und Mythen (Halle, 1896).

Old Prussian: Nesselmann, Die Sprache der alten Preussen (Berlin, 1845); id., Thesaurus linguae prussicae (Berlin, 1873); Berneker, Die preussische Sprache (Strassburg, 1896); M. Schultze, Grammatik der altpreussischen Sprache (Leipzig, 1897).

Illustration from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Liquid Gases" to "Logar" Volume 16, Slice 7

LITMUS (apparently a corruption of lacmus, Dutch lacmoes, lac, lac, and moes, pulp, due to association with “lit,” an obsolete word for dye, colour; the Ger. equivalent is Lackmus, Fr. tournesol), a colouring matter which occurs in commerce in the form of small blue tablets, which, however, consist mostly, not of the pigment proper, but of calcium carbonate and sulphate and other matter devoid of tinctorial value. Litmus is extensively employed by chemists as an indicator for the detection of free acids and free alkalis. An aqueous infusion of litmus, when exactly neutralized by an acid, exhibits a violet colour, which by the least trace of free acid is changed to red, while free alkali turns it to blue. The reagent is generally used in the form of test paper—bibulous paper dyed red, purple or blue by the respective kind of infusion. Litmus is manufactured in Holland from the same kinds of lichens (species of Roccella and Lecanora) as are used for the preparation of archil (q.v.).

Illustration from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Liquid Gases" to "Logar" Volume 16, Slice 7

LITOPTERNA, a suborder of South American Tertiary ungulate mammals typified by Macrauchenia, and taking their name (“smooth-heel”) from the presence of a flat facet on the heel-bone, or calcaneum for the articulation of the fibula. The more typical members of the group were digitigrade animals, recalling in general build the llamas and horses; they have small brains, and a facet on the calcaneum for the fibula. The cheek-dentition approximates more or less to the perissodactyle type. Both the terminal faces of the cervical vertebrae are flat, the femur carries a third trochanter, the bones of both the carpus and tarsus are arranged in linear series, and the number of toes, although commonly three, varies between one and five, the third or middle digit being invariably the largest.

Of the two families, the first is the Proterotheriidae, which exhibits, in respect of the reduction of the digits, a curious parallelism to the equine line among the Perissodactyla; in this feature, as well as in the reduction of the teeth, it is more specialized than the second family.

The molar teeth approximate to the Palaeotherium type, but have a more or less strongly developed median longitudinal cleft. The three-toed type is represented by Diadiaphorus, in which the dental formula is i.½, c.0⁄1, p.4⁄5, m.3⁄8, and the feet are very like those of Hipparion. The cervical vertebrae are of normal form, the orbit (as in the second family) is encircled by bone, the last molar has a third lobe, the single pair of upper incisors are somewhat elongated, and have a gap between and behind them, while the outer lower incisors are larger than the inner pair, the canines being small. The skull has a short muzzle, with elongated nasals. Remains of this and the other representatives of the group are found in the Patagonian Miocene. In Proterotherium, which includes smaller forms having the same, or nearly the same, dental formula, the molar teeth differ from those of Diadiaphorus by the deeper median longitudinal cleft, which completely divides the crown into an inner and an outer moiety, the two cones of the inner half being united. According to the description given by Argentine palaeontologists, this genus is also three-toed, the single-toed representative of the family being Thoatherium, in which the lateral metapodials, or splint-bones, are even more reduced than in the Equidae.

In the second family—Macraucheniidae—the dentition is complete (forty-four) and without a gap, the crowns of nearly all the teeth being of nearly uniform height, while the upper molars are distinguished from those of the Proterotheriidae by a peculiar arrangement of their two inner cones, and the elevation of the antero-posterior portion of the cingulum so as to form an extra pit on the crown. To describe this arrangement in detail is impossible here, but it may be stated that the two inner cones are closely approximated, and separated by a narrow V-shaped notch on the inner side of the crown. The elongated cervical vertebrae are peculiar in that the arch is perforated by the artery in the same manner as in the llamas.

In the Santa Cruz beds of Patagonia the family is represented by the generalized genus Oxyodontotherium (in which Theosodon may apparently be included). It comprises animals ranging up to the size of a tapir, in which the nostrils were more or less in the normal anterior position, and the cheek-teeth short-crowned, with the inner cones of the upper molars well developed and separated by a notch, and the pits of moderate depth. The last upper premolar is simpler than the molars, and the canine, which may be double-rooted, is like the earlier premolars. The radius and ulna, like the tibia and fibula, are distinct, and the metapodials rudimentary. On the other hand, in Macrauchenia, which was a much larger llama-like animal, the skull is elongated and narrow, with rudimentary nasals, and the aperture of the nose placed nearly on the line of the eyes and directed upwards, the muzzle not improbably terminating in a short trunk. Deep pits on the forehead probably served for the attachment of special muscles connected with the latter. Very curious is the structure of the cheek-teeth, which are high-crowned, with the two inner cones reduced to mere points, and the pits on the crown-surface large and funnel-shaped. In fact, the perissodactyle type is almost lost. The cervical vertebrae and limb-bones are very long, the radius and ulna being completely, and the tibia and fibula partially, united. The typical M. patagonica is a Pleistocene form as large as a camel, ranging from Patagonia to Brazil, but remains of smaller species have been found in the Pliocene (?) of Bolivia and Argentina.

The imperfectly known Scalabrinia of the Argentine Pliocene appears to occupy a position intermediate between Oxyodontotherium and Macrauchenia, having the nasal aperture situated in the middle of the length of the skull, and the crowns of the cheek-teeth nearly as tall as in the latter, but the lower molars furnished with a projecting process in the hinder valley, similar to one occurring in those of the former.

In this place may be mentioned another strange ungulate from the Santa Cruz beds of Patagonia, namely, Astrapotherium, sometimes regarded as typifying a suborder by itself. This huge ungulate had cheek-teeth singularly like those of a rhinoceros, and an enormous pair of tusk-like upper incisors, recalling the upper canines of Machaerodus on an enlarged scale. In the lower jaw are two large tusk-like canines between which are three pairs of curiously-formed spatulate incisors, and in both jaws there is a long diastema. The dental formula appears to be i.1⁄3, c.0⁄1, p.2⁄1, m.3⁄3.

Next Astrapotherium may be provisionally placed the genus Homalodontotherium, of which the teeth have much lower crowns, and are of a less decidedly rhinocerotic type than in Astrapotherium, and the whole dentition forms an even and unbroken series. The bodies of the cervical vertebrae are short, with flattened articular surfaces, the humerus has an enormous deltoid crest, suggestive of fossorial powers, and the femur is flattened, with a third trochanter. According to the Argentine palaeontologists, the carpus is of the alternating type, and the terminal phalanges of the pentedactyle feet are bifid, and very like those of Edentata. Indeed, this type of foot shows many edentate resemblances. The astragalus is square and flattened, articulating directly with the navicular, although not with the cuboid, and having a slightly convex facet for the tibia. From the structure of the above-mentioned type of foot, which is stated to have been found in association with the skull, it has been suggested that Homalodontotherium should be placed in the Ancylopoda (q.v.), but, to say nothing of the different form of the cheek-teeth, all the other South American Santa Cruz ungulates are so distinct from those of other countries that this seems unlikely. It may be suggested that we have rather to deal with an instance of parallelism—a view supported by the parallelism to the Equidae presented by certain members of the Proterotheriidae.

(R. L.*)

Illustration from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Liquid Gases" to "Logar" Volume 16, Slice 7

LITOTES (Gr. λιτότης, plainness, λιτός, plain, simple, smooth), a rhetorical figure in which emphasis is secured for a statement by turning it into a denial of the contrary, e.g. “a citizen of no mean city,” i.e. a citizen of a famous city, “A. is not a man to be neglected.” Litotes is sometimes used for what should be more strictly called “meiosis” (Gr. μείωσις, lessening, diminution, μείων, lesser), where the expressions used apparently are weak or understated, but the effect is to intensify.

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LITTER (through O. Fr. litere or litiere, mod. litière from Med. Lat. lectaria, classical lectica, lectus, bed, couch), a word used of a portable couch, shut in by curtains and borne on poles by bearers, and of a bed of straw or other suitable substance for animals; hence applied to the number of young produced by an animal at one birth, and also to any disordered heap of waste material, rubbish, &c. In ancient Greece, prior to the influence of Asiatic luxury after the Macedonian conquest, the litter (φορεῖον) was only used by invalids or by women. The Romans, when the lectica was introduced, probably about the latter half of the 2nd century B.C. (Gellius x. 3), used it only for travelling purposes. Like the Greek or Asiatic litter, it had a roof of skin (pellis) and side curtains (vela, plagae). Juvenal (iv. 20) speaks of transparent sides (latis specularibus). The slaves who bore the litter on their shoulders (succollare) were termed lecticarii, and it was a sign of luxury and wealth to employ six or even eight bearers. Under the Empire the litter began to be used in the streets of Rome, and its use was restricted and granted as a privilege (Suet. Claudius). The travelling lectica must be distinguished from the much earlier lectica funebris or feretrum, the funeral bier on which the dead were carried to their burial-place.

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LITTLE FALLS, a city and the county-seat of Morrison county, Minnesota, U.S.A., on both banks of the Mississippi river, about 88 m. N.W. of Minneapolis. Pop. (1890) 2354; (1900) 5774, of whom 1559 were foreign-born, chiefly Germans and Swedes; (1905) 5856; (1910) 6078. It is served by the Northern Pacific railway. The city is situated in a prosperous farming region, and has excellent water-power and various manufactures. Little Falls was settled about 1850, was chartered as a city in 1889 and adopted a new charter in 1902. Here was buried the Chippewa chief, Hole-in-the-Day (c. 1827-1868), or Bagwunagijik, who succeeded his father, also named Hole-in-the-Day, as head chief of the Chippewas in 1846. Like his father, the younger Hole-in-the-Day led his tribe against the Sioux, and he is said to have prevented the Chippewas from joining the Sioux rising in 1862. His body was subsequently removed by his relatives.

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LITTLE FALLS, a city of Herkimer county, New York, U.S.A., on the Mohawk river, 21 m. E.S.E. of Utica. Pop. (1890) 8783; (1900) 10,381, of whom 1915 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 12,273. It is served by the New York Central & Hudson River, the West Shore, the Utica & Mohawk Valley (electric), and the Little Falls & Dolgeville railways (the last named being 13 m. long and running only to Salisbury Center and by the Erie canal). The Mohawk river falls here by a series of rapids 45 ft. in less than a mile, furnishing water power. Among the manufactures are cotton yarn, hosiery and knit goods, leather, &c. In 1905 the city’s factory products were valued at $4,471,080. The city has one of the largest cheese-markets in the United States. The manufacture of flour and grist-mill products was formerly an important industry; a mill burned in 1782 by Tories and Indians had supplied almost the entire Mohawk Valley, and particularly Forts Herkimer and Dayton. Near the city is the grave of General Nicholas Herkimer, to whom a monument was erected in 1896. Little Falls was settled by Germans in 1782, and was almost immediately destroyed by Indians and Tories. It was resettled in 1790, and was incorporated as a village in 1811 and as a city in 1895.

See George A. Hardin, History of Herkimer County (Syracuse, 1893).

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LITTLEHAMPTON, a seaport and watering-place in the Chichester parliamentary division of Sussex, England, at the mouth of the Arun, 62 m. S. by W. from London by the London, Brighton & South Coast railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 7363. There is a beach of firm sand. The harbour is easily accessible in all weathers, and has a small general trade.

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LITTLE ROCK, the capital of Arkansas, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Pulaski county, situated near the centre of the state and on the S. bank of the Arkansas river, at the E. edge of the Ozark foothills. Pop. (1890) 25,874; (1900) 38,307, of whom 14,694 were of negro blood, and 2099 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 45,941. Little Rock is served by the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the St Louis South Western, and the St Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern railways and by river boats. It occupies a comparatively level site of 11 sq. m. at an altitude of 250 to 400 ft. above sea-level and 50 ft. or more above the river, which is crossed here by three railway bridges and by a county bridge. The city derived its name (originally “le Petit Roche” and “The Little Rock”) from a rocky peninsula in the Arkansas, distinguished from the “Big Rock” (the site of the army post, Fort Logan H. Roots), 1 m. W. of the city, across the river. The Big Rock is said to have been first discovered and named “Le Rocher Français” in 1722 by Sieur Bernard de la Harpe, who was in search of an emerald mountain; the Little Rock is now used as an abutment for a railway bridge. The state capitol, the state insane asylum, the state deaf mute institute, the state school for the blind, a state reform school, the penitentiary, the state library and the medical and law departments of the state university are at Little Rock; and the city is also the seat of the United States court for the eastern district of Arkansas, of a United States land office, of Little Rock College, of the St Mary’s Academy, of a Roman Catholic orphanage and a Roman Catholic convent, and of two schools for negroes—the Philander Smith College (Methodist Episcopal, 1877), co-educational, and the Arkansas Baptist College. The city is the seat of Protestant Episcopal and Roman Catholic bishops. Little Rock has a Carnegie library (1908), an old ladies’ home, a Florence Crittenton rescue home, a children’s home, St Vincent’s infirmary, a city hospital, a Catholic hospital, a physicians’ and surgeons’ hospital and the Arkansas hospital for nervous diseases. A municipal park system includes City, Forest, Wonderland and West End parks. Immigration from the northern states has been encouraged, and northern men control much of the business of the city. In 1905 the value of factory products was $4,689,787, being 38.8% greater than the value in 1900. Cotton and lumber industries are the leading interests; the value of cotton-seed oil and cake manufactured in 1905 was $967,043, of planing mill products $835,049, and of lumber and timber products $342,134. Printing and publishing and the manufacture of foundry and machine shop products and of furniture are other important industries. Valuable deposits of bauxite are found in Pulaski county, and the mines are the most important in the United States.

Originally the site of the city was occupied by the Quapaw Indians. The earliest permanent settlement by the whites was about 1813-1814; the county was organized in 1818 while still a part of Missouri Territory; Little Rock was surveyed in 1821, was incorporated as a town and became the capital of Arkansas in 1821, and was chartered as a city in 1836. In 1850 its population was only 2167, and in 1860 3727; but in 1870 it was 12,380. Little Rock was enthusiastically anti-Union at the outbreak of the Civil War. In February 1861, the United States Arsenal was seized by the state authorities. In September 1863 the Federal generals William Steele (1819-1885) and John W. Davidson (1824-1881), operating against General Sterling Price, captured the city, and it remained throughout the rest of the war under Federal control. Constitutional conventions met at Little Rock in 1836, 1864, 1868 and 1874, and also the Secession Convention of 1861. The Arkansas Gazette, established at Arkansas Post in 1819 and soon afterwards removed to the new capital, was the first newspaper published in Arkansas and one of the first published west of the Mississippi.

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LITTLETON (or Lyttelton), EDWARD, Baron (1589-1645), son of Sir Edward Littleton (d. 1621) chief-justice of North Wales, was born at Munslow in Shropshire; he was educated at Oxford and became a lawyer, succeeding his father as chief-justice of North Wales. In 1625 he became a member of parliament and acted in 1628 as chairman of the committee of grievances upon whose report the Petition of Right was based. As a member of the party opposed to the arbitrary measures of Charles I. Littleton had shown more moderation than some of his colleagues, and in 1634, three years after he had been chosen recorder of London, the king attached him to his own side by appointing him solicitor-general. In the famous case about ship-money Sir Edward argued against Hampden. In 1640 he was made chief-justice of the common pleas and in 1641 lord keeper of the great seal, being created a peer as Baron Lyttelton. About this time, the lord keeper began to display a certain amount of indifference to the royal cause. In January 1642 he refused to put the great seal to the proclamation for the arrest of the five members and he also incurred the displeasure of Charles by voting for the militia ordinance. However, he assured his friend Edward Hyde, afterwards earl of Clarendon, that he had only taken this step to allay the suspicions of the parliamentary party who contemplated depriving him of the seal, and he undertook to send this to the king. He fulfilled his promise, and in May 1642 he himself joined Charles at York, but it was some time before he regained the favour of the king and the custody of the seal. Littleton died at Oxford on the 27th of August 1645; he left no sons and his barony became extinct. His only daughter, Anne, married her cousin Sir Thomas Littleton, Bart. (d. 1681), and their son Sir Thomas Littleton (c. 1647-1710), was speaker of the House of Commons from 1698 to 1700, and treasurer of the navy from 1700 to 1710. Macaulay thus sums up the character of Speaker Littleton and his relations to the Whigs: “He was one of their ablest, most zealous and most steadfast friends; and had been, both in the House of Commons and at the board of treasury, an invaluable second to Montague” (the earl of Halifax).

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LITTLETON, SIR THOMAS DE (c. 1407-1481), English judge and legal author, was born, it is supposed, at Frankley Manor House, Worcestershire, about 1407. Littleton’s surname was that of his mother, who was the sole daughter and heiress of Thomas de Littleton, lord of Frankley. She married one Thomas Westcote. Thomas was the eldest of four sons of the marriage, and took the name of Littleton, or, as it seems to have been more commonly spelt, Luttelton. The date of his birth is uncertain; a MS. pedigree gives 1422, but it was probably earlier than this. If, as is generally accepted, he was born at Frankley Manor, it could not have been before 1407, in which year Littleton’s grandfather recovered the manor from a distant branch of the family. He is said by Sir E. Coke to have “attended one of the universities,” but there is no corroboration of this statement. He was probably a member of the Inner Temple, and lectured there on the statute of Westminster II., De Donis Conditionalibus. His name occurs in the Paston Letters (ed. J. Gairdner, i. 60) about 1445 as that of a well-known counsel and in 1481/2 he received a grant of the manor of Sheriff Hales, Shropshire, from a Sir William Trussel as a reward for his services as counsel. He appears to have been recorder of Coventry in 1450; he was made escheator of Worcestershire, and in 1447/8 was under-sheriff of the same county; he became serjeant-at-law in 1453 and was afterwards a justice of assize on the northern circuit. In 1466 he was made a judge of the common pleas, and in 1475 a knight of the Bath. He died, according to the inscription on his tomb in Worcester cathedral, on the 23rd of August 1481. He married, about 1444, Joan, widow of Sir Philip Chetwind of Ingestrie in Staffordshire, and by her had three sons, through whom he became ancestor of the families holding the peerages of Cobham (formerly Lyttelton, q.v.) and Hatherton.

His Treatise on Tenures was probably written after he had been appointed to the bench. It is addressed to his second son Richard, who went to the bar, and whose name occurs in the year books of the reign of Henry VII. The book, both historically and from its intrinsic merit, may be characterized as the first text-book upon the English law of property. The law of property in Littleton’s time was mainly concerned with rights over land, and it was the law relating to this class of rights which Littleton set himself to digest and classify. The time was ripe for the task. Ever since the Conquest regular courts of justice had been at work administering a law which had grown out of an admixture of Teutonic custom and of Norman feudalism. Under Henry II. the courts had been organized, and the practice of keeping regular records of the proceedings had been carefully observed. The centralizing influence of the royal courts and of the justices of assize, working steadily through three centuries, had made the rules governing the law of property uniform throughout the land; local customs were confined within certain prescribed limits, and were only recognized as giving rise to certain well-defined classes of rights, such, for instance, as the security of tenure acquired by villeins by virtue of the custom of the manor, and the rights of freeholders, in some towns, to dispose of their land by will. Thus, by the time of Littleton (Henry VI. and Edward IV.), an immense mass of material had been acquired and preserved in the rolls of the various courts. Reports of important cases were published in the “year books.” A glance at Statham’s Abridgment, the earliest digest of decided cases, published nearly at the same time as Littleton’s Tenures, is sufficient to show the enormous bulk which reported cases had already attained as materials for the knowledge of English law.

Littleton’s treatise was written in that peculiar dialect compounded of Norman-French and English phrases called law French. Although it had been provided by a statute of 36 Edward III. that viva voce proceedings in court should no longer be conducted in the French tongue, “which was much unknown in the realm,” the practice of reporting proceedings in that language, and of using it in legal treatises, lingered till a much later period, and was at length prohibited by a statute passed in the time of the Commonwealth in 1650. Unlike the preceding writers on English law, Glanville, Bracton and the authors of the treatises known by the names of Britton and Fleta, Littleton borrows nothing from the sources of Roman law or the commentators. He deals exclusively with English law.

The book is written on a definite system, and is the first attempt at a scientific classification of rights over land. Littleton’s method is to begin with a definition, usually clearly and briefly expressed, of the class of rights with which he is dealing. He then proceeds to illustrate the various characteristics and incidents of the class by stating particular instances, some of which refer to decisions which had actually occurred, but more commonly they are hypothetical cases put by way of illustration of his principles. He occasionally refers to reported cases. His book is thus much more than a mere digest of judicial decisions; to some extent he pursues the method which gave to Roman law its breadth and consistency of principle. In Roman law this result was attained through the practice of putting to jurisconsults hypothetical cases to be solved by them. Littleton, in like manner, is constantly stating and solving by reference to principles of law cases which may or may not have occurred in actual practice.

In dealing with freehold estates Littleton adopts a classification which has been followed by all writers who have attempted to systematize the English law of land, especially Sir M. Hale and Sir William Blackstone. It is indeed the only possible approach to a scientific arrangement of the intricate “estates in land” known to English law. He classifies estates in land by reference to their duration, or in other words by reference to the differences between the persons who are entitled to succeed upon the death of the person in possession or “tenant.” First of all, he describes the characteristics of tenancy in fee simple. This is still as it was in Littleton’s time the largest interest in land known to the law. Next in order comes tenancy in fee tail, the various classes of which are sketched by Littleton with brevity and accuracy, but he is silent as to the important practice, which first received judicial recognition shortly before his death, of “suffering a recovery,” whereby through a series of judicial fictions a tenant in tail was enabled to convert his estate tail into a fee simple, thus acquiring full power of alienation. After discussing in their logical order other freehold interests in land, he passes to interests in land called by later writers interests less than freehold, namely, tenancies for terms of years and tenancies at will. With the exception of tenancy from year to year, now so familiar to us, but which was a judicial creation of a date later than the time of Littleton, the first book is a complete statement of the principles of the common law, as they for the most part still exist, governing and regulating interests in lands. The first book concludes with a very interesting chapter on copyhold tenures, which marks the exact point at which the tenant by copy of court roll, the successor of the villein, who in his turn represented the freeman reduced to villenage by the growth of the manorial system, acquired security of tenure.

The second book relates to the reciprocal rights and duties of lord and tenant, and is mainly of historical interest to the modern lawyer. It contains a complete statement of the law as it stood in Littleton’s time relating to homage, fealty and escuage, the money compensation to be paid to the lord in lieu of military service to be rendered to the king, a peculiar characteristic of English as distinguished from Continental feudalism.

Littleton then proceeds to notice the important features of tenure by knight’s service with its distinguishing incidents of the right of wardship of the lands and person of the infant heir or heiress, and the right of disposing of the ward in marriage. The non-military freehold tenures are next dealt with; we have an account of “socage tenure,” into which all military tenures were subsequently commuted by a now unrecognized act of the Long Parliament in 1650, afterwards re-enacted by the well-known statute of Charles II. (1660), and of “frankalmoign,” or the spiritual tenure by which churchmen held. In the description of burgage tenure and tenure in villenage, the life of which consists in the validity of ancient customs recognized by law, we recognize survivals of a time before the iron rule of feudalism had moulded the law of land in the interests of the king and the great lords. Finally he deals with the law of rents, discussing the various kinds of rents which may be reserved to the grantor upon a grant of lands and the remedies for recovery of rent, especially the remedy by distress.1

The third and concluding book of Littleton’s treatise deals mainly with the various ways in which rights over land can be acquired and terminated in the case of a single possessor or several possessors. This leads him to discuss the various modes in which several persons may simultaneously have rights over the same land, as parceners:—daughters who are co-heiresses, or sons in gavelkind; joint tenants and tenants in common. Next follows an elaborate discussion upon what are called estates upon condition—a class of interests which occupied a large space in the early common law, giving rise on one side to estates tail, on another to mortgages. In Littleton’s time a mortgage, which he carefully describes, was merely a conveyance of land by the tenant to the mortgagee, with a condition that, if the tenant paid to the mortgagee a certain sum on a certain day, he might re-enter and have the land again. If the condition was not fulfilled, the interest of the mortgagee became absolute, and Littleton gives no indication of any modification of this strict rule, such as was introduced by courts of equity, permitting the debtor to redeem his land by payment of all that was due to the mortgagee although the day of payment had passed, and his interest had become at law indefeasible. The remainder of the work is occupied with an exposition of a miscellaneous class of modes of acquiring rights of property, the analysis of which would occupy too large a space.

The work is thus a complete summary of the common law as it stood at the time. It is nearly silent as to the remarkable class of rights which had already assumed vast practical importance—equitable interests in lands. These are only noticed incidentally in the chapter on “Releases.” But it was already clear in Littleton’s time that this class of rights would become the most important of all. Littleton’s own will, which has been preserved, may be adduced in proof of this assertion. Although nothing was more opposed to the spirit of Norman feudalism than that a tenant of lands should dispose of them by will, we find Littleton directing by his will the feoffees of certain manors to make estates to the persons named in his will. In other words, in order to acquire over lands powers unknown to the common law, the lands had been conveyed to “feoffees” who had full right over them according to the common law, but who were under a conscientious obligation to exercise those rights at the direction and for the exclusive benefit of the person to whose “use” the lands were held. This conscientious obligation was recognized and enforced by the chancellor, and thus arose the class of equitable interests in lands. Littleton is the first writer on English law after these rights had risen into a prominent position, and it is curious to find to what extent they are ignored by him.

Bibliography.—The work of Littleton occupies a place in the history of typography as well as of law. The earliest printed edition seems to be that by John Lettou and William de Machlinia, two printers who probably came from the Continent, and carried on their business in partnership, as their note to the edition of Littleton states, “in civitate Londoniarum, juxta ecclesiam omnium sanctorum.” The date of this edition is uncertain, but the most probable conjecture, based on typographical grounds, places it about the latter part of 1481. The next edition is one by Machlinia alone, probably about two or three years later than the former. Machlinia was then in business alone “juxta pontem quae vulgo dicitur Fleta brigge.” Next came the Rohan or Rouen edition, erroneously stated by Sir E. Coke to be the earliest, and to have been printed about 1533. It was, however, of a much earlier date. Tomlins, the latest editor of Littleton, gives reasons for thinking that it cannot have been later than 1490. It is stated in a note to have been printed at Rouen by William le Tailleur “ad instantiam Richardi Pynson.” Copies of all these editions are in the British Museum. In all these editions the work is styled Tenores Novelli, probably to distinguish it from the “Old Tenures.”

There are three early MSS. of Littleton in the University Library at Cambridge. One of these formerly contained a note on its first page to the effect that it was bought in St Paul’s Churchyard on July 20, 1480. It was therefore in circulation in Littleton’s lifetime. The other two MSS. are of a somewhat later date; but one of them contains what seems to be the earliest English translation of the Tenures, and is probably not later than 1500.

In the 16th century editions of Littleton followed in rapid succession from the presses of Pynson, Redmayne, Berthelet, Tottyl and others. The practice of annotating the text caused several additions to be introduced, which, however, are easily detected by comparison of the earlier copies. In 1581 West divided the text into 746 sections, which have ever since been preserved. Many of these editions were printed with large margins for purposes of annotation, specimens of which may be seen in Lincoln’s Inn Library.

The practice of annotating Littleton was very general, and was adopted by many eminent lawyers besides Sir E. Coke, amongst others by Sir M. Hale. One commentary of this kind, by an unknown hand of earlier date than Sir E. Coke’s, was edited by Cary in 1829. Following the general practice of dealing with Littleton as the great authority on the law of England, “the most perfect and absolute work that ever was written in any human science,” Sir E. Coke made it in 1628 the text of that portion of his work which he calls the first part of the institutes of the law of England, in other words, the law of property.

The first printed English translation of Littleton was by Rastell, who seems to have combined the professions of author, printer and serjeant-at-law, between 1514 and 1533. Many English editions by various editors followed, the best of which is Tottyl’s in 1556. Sir E. Coke adopted some translation earlier than this, which has since gone by the name of Sir E. Coke’s translation. He, however, throughout comments not on the translation but on the French text; and the reputation of the commentary has to some extent obscured the intrinsic merit of the original.

See E. Wambaugh, Littleton’s Tenures in English (Washington, D.C., 1903).

1 These two books are stated, in a note to the table at the conclusion of the work, to have been made for the better understanding of certain chapters of the Antient Book of Tenures. This refers to a tract called The Old Tenures, said to have been written in the reign of Edward III. By way of distinguishing it from this work, Littleton’s book is called in all the early editions “Tenores Novelli.”

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LITTRÉ, MAXIMILIEN PAUL ÉMILE (1801-1881), French lexicographer and philosopher, was born in Paris on the 1st of February 1801. His father had been a gunner, and afterwards sergeant-major of marine artillery, in the French navy, and was deeply imbued with the revolutionary ideas of the day. Settling down as a collector of taxes, he married Sophie Johannot, a free-thinker like himself, and devoted himself to the education of his son Émile. The boy was sent to the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where he had for friends Hachette and Eugène Burnouf. After he had completed his course at school, he hesitated for a time as to what profession he should adopt, and meanwhile made himself master, not only of the English and German languages, but of the classical and Sanskrit literature and philology. At last he determined to study medicine, and in 1822 entered his name as a student of medicine. He passed all his examinations in due course, and had only his thesis to prepare in order to obtain his degree as doctor when in 1827 his father died, leaving his mother absolutely without resources. He at once renounced his degree, and, while attending the lectures of P. F. O. Rayer and taking a keen interest in medicine, began teaching Latin and Greek for a livelihood. He carried a musket on the popular side in the revolution of February 1830, and was one of the national guards who followed Charles X. to Rambouillet. In 1831 he obtained an introduction to Armand Carrel, the editor of the National, who gave him the task of reading the English and German papers for excerpts. Carrel by chance, in 1835, discovered the ability of his reader, who from that time became a constant contributor, and eventually director of the paper. In 1836 Littré began to contribute articles on all sorts of subjects to the Revue des deux mondes; in 1837 he married; and in 1839 appeared the first volume of his edition of the works of Hippocrates. The value of this work was recognized by his election the same year into the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. At this epoch he came across the works of Auguste Comte, the reading of which formed, as he himself said, “the cardinal point of his life,” and from this time onward appears the influence of positivism on his own life, and, what is of more importance, his influence on positivism, for he gave as much to positivism as he received from it. He soon became a friend of Comte, and popularized his ideas in numerous works on the positivist philosophy. At the same time he continued his edition of Hippocrates, which was not completed till 1862, published a similar edition of Pliny’s Natural History, and after 1844 took Fauriel’s place on the committee engaged on the Histoire littéraire de la France, where his knowledge of the early French language and literature was invaluable.

It was about 1844 that he started working on his great Dictionnaire de la langue française, which was, however, not to be completed till thirty years after. In the revolution of July 1848 he took part in the repression of the extreme republican party in June 1849. His essays, contributed during this period to the National, were collected together and published under the title of Conservation, révolution et positivisme in 1852, and show a thorough acceptance of all the doctrines propounded by Comte. However, during the later years of his master’s life, he began to perceive that he could not wholly accept all the dogmas or the more mystic ideas of his friend and master, but he concealed his differences of opinion, and Comte failed to perceive that his pupil had outgrown him, as he himself had outgrown his master Saint-Simon. Comte’s death in 1858 freed Littré from any fear of embittering his master’s later years, and he published his own ideas in his Paroles de la philosophie positive in 1850, and at still greater length in his work in Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive in 1863. In this book he traces the origin of Comte’s ideas through Turgot, Kant and Saint-Simon, then eulogizes Comte’s own life, his method of philosophy, his great services to the cause and the effect of his works, and finally proceeds to show where he himself differs from him. He approved wholly of Comte’s philosophy, his great laws of society and his philosophical method, which indeed he defended warmly against J. S. Mill, but declared that, while he believed in a positivist philosophy, he did not believe in a religion of humanity. About 1863, after completing his Hippocrates and his Pliny, he set to work in earnest on his French dictionary. In the same year he was proposed for the Académie Française, but rejected, owing to the opposition of Mgr. Dupanloup, bishop of Orleans, who denounced him in his Avertissement aux pères de famille as the chief of the French materialists. He also at this time started with G. Wyrouboff the Philosophie Positive, a review which was to embody the views of modern positivists. His life was thus absorbed in literary work till the overthrow of the empire called on him to take a part in politics. He felt himself too old to undergo the privations of the siege of Paris, and retired with his family to Britanny, whence he was summoned by M. Gambetta to Bordeaux, to lecture on history, and thence to Versailles to take his seat in the senate to which he had been chosen by the department of the Seine. In December 1871 he was elected a member of the Académie Française in spite of the renewed opposition of Mgr. Dupanloup, who resigned his seat rather than receive him. Littré’s Dictionary was completed in 1873. An authoritative interpretation is given of the use of each word, based on the various meanings it had held in the past. In 1875 Littré was elected a life senator. The most notable of his productions in these years were his political papers attacking and unveiling the confederacy of the Orleanists and legitimists, and in favour of the republic, his republication of many of his old articles and books, among others the Conservation, révolution et positivisme of 1852 (which he reprinted word for word, appending a formal, categorical renunciation of many of the Comtist doctrines therein contained), and a little tract Pour la dernière fois, in which he maintained his unalterable belief in materialism. When it became obvious that the old man could not live much longer, his wife and daughter, who had always been fervent Catholics, strove to convert him to their religion. He had long interviews with Père Millériot, a celebrated controversialist, and was much grieved at his death; but it is hardly probable he would have ever been really converted. Nevertheless, when on the point of death, his wife had him baptized, and his funeral was conducted with the rites of the Catholic Church. He died on the 2nd of June 1881.

The following are his most important works: his editions of Hippocrates (1839-1861), and of Pliny’s Natural History (1848-1850); his translation of Strauss’s Vie de Jésus (1839-1840), and Müller’s Manuel de physiologie (1851); his edition of the works of Armand Carrel, with notes (1854-1858); the Histoire de la langue française, a collection of magazine articles (1862); and his Dictionnaire de la langue française (1863-1872). In the domain of science must be noted his edition, with Charles Robin, of Nysten’s Dictionnaire de médicine, de chirurgie, &c. (1855); in that of philosophy, his Analyse raisonnée du cours de philosophie positive de M. A. Comte (1845); Application de la philosophie positive au gouvernement (1849); Conservation, révolution et positivisme (1852, 2nd ed., with supplement, 1879); Paroles de la philosophie positive (1859); Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive (1863); La Science au point de vue philosophique (1873); Fragments de philosophie et de sociologie contemporaine (1876); and his most interesting miscellaneous works, his Études et glanures (1880); La Verité sur la mort d’Alexandre le grand (1865); Études sur les barbares et le moyen âge (1867); Médecine et médecins (1871); Littérature et histoire (1875); and Discours de réception à l’Académie française (1873).

For his life consult C. A. Sainte-Beuve, Notice sur M. Littré, sa vie et ses travaux (1863); and Nouveaux Lundis, vol. v.; also the notice by M. Durand-Gréville in the Nouvelle Revue of August 1881; E. Caro, Littré et le positivisme (1883); Pasteur, Discours de réception at the Academy, where he succeeded Littré, and a reply by E. Renan.

(H. M. S.)

Illustration from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Liquid Gases" to "Logar" Volume 16, Slice 7

LITURGY (Low Lat. liturgia; Gr. λεῖτος, public, and ἔργον, work; λειτουργός, a public servant), in the technical language of the Christian Church, the order for the celebration and administration of the Eucharist. In Eastern Christendom the Greek word λειτουργία is used in this sense exclusively. But in English-speaking countries the word “liturgy” has come to be used in a more popular sense to denote any or all of the various services of the Church, whether contained in separate volumes or bound up together in the form of a Book of Common Prayer. In this article the liturgy is treated in the former and stricter sense. (For the ancient Athenian λειτουργίαι, as forms of taxation, see Finance.)

In order to understand terms and references it will be convenient to give the tabular form the chief component parts of a liturgy, selecting the Liturgy of Rome as characteristic of Western, and that of Constantinople as characteristic of Eastern, Christendom; at the same time appending an explanation of some of the technical words which must be employed in enumerating those parts.

Order of the Roman Liturgy

Ordinary of the Mass.

1. Introit, or as it is always called in the Sarum rite, “Office,” a Psalm or part of a Psalm sung at the entry of the priest, or clergy and choir.

2. Kyrie eleison, ninefold, and sometimes lengthily farsed representing an older, now obsolete, litany.

3. Collect, i.e. the collect for the day.

4. Prophetic lection, now obsolete, except on the Wednesday and Saturday Ember Days, Good Friday and Easter Even, and Wednesday after fourth and sixth Sundays in Lent.

5. Epistle.

6. Gradual. A few verses from the Psalms, the shrunken remainder of a whole Psalm.

7. Sequence. A hymn now obsolete except on Feast of the Seven Dolours, Easter, Pentecost, Corpus Christi and at Masses for the dead.

8. Gospel.

9. Creed.

10. Collect, now obsolete, though the unanswered invitation, “Let us pray,” still survives.

11. Offertory. A verse or verses from the Psalms sung at the offering of the elements.

12. Secret. A prayer or prayers said at the conclusion of the Offertory.

13. Sursum Corda. “Lift up your hearts,” with following versicles.

14. Preface. There are now ten proper or special prefaces and one common preface. In older missals they were extremely numerous, almost every Sunday and Holy-day having one assigned to it. Many of them were very beautiful. In older missals, Nos. 13, 14 and 15 were sometimes arranged not as the concluding part of the Ordinary, but as the opening part of the Canon of the mass.

15. Sanctus, or Tersanctus, or Triumphal Hymn, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” &c., ending with the Benedictus, “Blessed is he that cometh,” &c.

Canon of the Mass.

1. Introductory prayer for acceptance. Te igitur, &c.

2. Intercession for the living. Memento, Domine famulorum, &c.

3. Commemoration of apostles and martyrs. Communicantes et memoriam, &c.

4. Prayer for acceptance and consecration of offering. Hanc igitur oblationem, &c.

5. Recital of words of institution. Qui pridie quam pateretur, &c.

6. Oblation. Unde et memores, &c.

7. Invocation. A passage difficult of interpretation, but apparently meant to be equivalent to the Eastern Epiklesis or invocation of the Holy Ghost. Supplices te rogamus, &c.

8. Intercession for the dead. Memento etiam, Domine, famulorum, &c.

9. Lord’s Prayer, with a short introduction and the expansion of the last petition into a prayer known as the “Embolismus.”

10. Fraction, i.e. breaking of the host into three parts, to symbolize the death and passion of Christ.

11. Commixture, i.e. placing a small portion of the consecrated bread into the chalice symbolizing the reunion of Christ’s body and soul at the resurrection.

12. Agnus Dei, i.e. a three-fold petition to the Lamb of God.

13. Pax, i.e. the kiss of peace. The ancient ritual of the Pax has become almost obsolete.

14. Three prayers, accompanying the Pax and preliminary to communion.

15. Communion of priest and people (if any), a short anthem called “Communio” being sung meanwhile.

16. Ablution of paten and chalice.

17. Post-communion, i.e. a concluding prayer.

18. Dismissal.

The Canon of the Mass strictly ends with No. 9; Nos. 10-18 being an appendix to it.

Liturgy of Constantinople

Mass of the Catechumens. After preparation and vesting.

1. The Deacon’s Litany.

2. Three Anthems with accompanying prayers.

3. Little Entrance, i.e. ceremonial bringing in of the Book of the Gospels.

4. The Trisagion, i.e. an anthem with an accompanying prayer different from the Latin Sanctus or Tersanctus.

5. Epistle.

6. Gospel with a prayer preceding it.

7. Bidding prayer.

8. Prayer for catechumens.

9. Dismissal of catechumens.

10. Spreading of the corporal.

Mass of the Faithful.

11. Prayers of the faithful.

12. Cherubic Hymn, “Let us who mystically represent the Cherubim, &c.” not represented in the Latin liturgy.

13. Great Entrance, i.e. of the unconsecrated elements with incense and singing and intercessions.

14. Kiss of Peace.

15. Creed.

16. The Benediction, i.e. 2 Cor. xiii. 14.

17. Sursum corda.

18. Preface.

19. Sanctus, or Tersanctus, or “Triumphal Hymn.”

20. Recital of Words of Institution, prefaced by recital of the Redemption.

21. The oblation.

22. The invocation or Epiklesis.

23. Intercession for the dead.

24. Intercession for the living.

25. The Lord’s Prayer.

26. Prayer of humble access (a) for people (b) for priest.

27. Elevation with the invitation “Holy things to holy people.”

28. Fraction.

29. Commixture.

30. Thanksgiving.

31. Benediction.

In both these lists many interesting features of ceremonial, the use of incense, the infusion of warm water (Byzantine only), &c., have not been referred to. The lists must be regarded as skeletons only.

There are six main families or groups of liturgies, four of them being of Eastern and two of them of Western origin and use. They are known either by the names of the apostles with whom they are traditionally connected, or by the names of the countries or cities in which they have been or are still in use.

Group I. The Syrian Rite (St James).—The principal liturgies to be enumerated under this group are the Clementine liturgy, so called from being found in the eighth book of the Apostolic Constitutions, which claim in their title, though erroneously, to have been compiled by St Clement, the 1st-century bishop of Rome; the Greek liturgy of St James; the Syriac liturgy of St James. Sixty-four more liturgies of this group have existed, the majority being still in existence. Their titles are given in F. E. Brightman’s Liturgies, Eastern and Western (1896), pp. lviii.-lxi.

Group II. The Egyptian Rite (St Mark).—This group includes the Greek liturgies of St Mark, St Basil and St Gregory, and the Coptic liturgies of St Basil, St Gregory, St Cyril or St Mark; together with certain less known liturgies the titles of which are enumerated by Brightman (op. cit. pp. lxxiii. lxxiv.). The liturgy of the Ethiopian church ordinances and the liturgy of the Abyssinian Jacobites, known as that of the Apostles, fall under this group.

Group III. The Persian Rite (SS. Adaeus and Maris).—This Nestorian rite is represented by the liturgy which bears the names of SS. Adaeus and Maris together with two others named after Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius. This group has sometimes been called “East-Syrian.” The titles of three more of its now lost liturgies have been preserved, namely those of Narses, Barsumas and Diodorus of Tarsus. The liturgy of the Christians of St Thomas, on the Malabar coast of India, formerly belonged to this group, but it was almost completely assimilated to the Roman liturgy by Portuguese Jesuits at the synod of Diamper in 1599.

Group IV. The Byzantine Rite.—The Greek liturgies of St Chrysostom, St Basil and St Gregory Dialogus, or The Presanctified, also extant in other languages, are the living representatives of this rite. The Greek liturgy of St Peter is classified under this group, but it is merely the Roman canon of the Mass &c., inserted in a Byzantine framework, and seems to have been used at one time by some Greek communities in Italy. To this group also belongs the Armenian liturgy, of which ten different forms have existed in addition to the liturgy now in general use named after St Athanasius.

We now come to the two western groups of liturgies, which more nearly concern the Latin-speaking nations of Europe, and which, therefore, must be treated of more fully.

Group V. The Hispano-Gallican Rite (St John).—This group of Latin liturgies, which once prevailed very widely in Western Europe, has been almost universally superseded by the liturgy of the Church of Rome. Where it survives, it has been more or less assimilated to the Roman pattern. It prevailed once throughout Spain, France, northern Italy, Great Britain and Ireland. The term “Ephesine” has been applied to this group or family of liturgies, chiefly by English liturgiologists, and the names of St John and of Ephesus, his place of residence, have been pressed into service in support of a theory of Ephesine origin, which, however, lacks proof and may now be regarded as a discarded hypothesis. Other theories represent the Gallican to be a survival of the original Roman liturgy, or as an importation into Western Europe from the east through a Milanese channel. The latter is Duchesne’s theory (Christian Worship, London, 1904, 2nd ed., p. 94).

We must be content with mentioning these theories without attempting to discuss them.

The chief traces of oriental influence and affinity lie in the following points:—(1) various proclamations made by the deacon, including that of “Silentium facite” before the epistle (Migne, Pat. Lat. tom. lxxxv. col. 534); (2) the presence of a third lesson preceding the epistle, taken from the Old Testament; (3) the occasional presence of “preces” a series of short intercessions resembling the Greek “Ektené” or deacon’s litany; (4) the position of the kiss of peace at an early point in the service, before the canon, instead of the Roman position after consecration; (5) the exclamation “Sancta sanctis” occurring in the Mozarabic rite, being the counterpart of the Eastern “Τὰ ἄγια τοῖς ἁγίοις,” that is “holy things to holy people”; (6) traces of the presence of the “Epiklesis,” that is to say, the invocation of the Holy Spirit, in its Eastern position after the words of institution, as in the prayer styled the Post-pridie in the Mozarabic service for the second Sunday after the octave of the Epiphany: “We beseech thee that thou wouldest sanctify this oblation with the permixture of thy Spirit, and conform it with full transformation into the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Migne, Pat. Lat. tom. lxxxv. col. 250). On the other hand the great variableness of its parts, and the immense number of its proper prefaces, ally it to the Western family of liturgies.

We proceed now to give a more detailed account of the chief liturgies of this group.

1. The Mozarabic Liturgy.—This was the national liturgy of the Spanish church till the close of the 11th century, when the Roman liturgy was forced upon it. Its use, however, lingered on, till in the 16th century Cardinal Jimenes, anxious to prevent its becoming quite obsolete, had its books restored and printed, and founded a college of priests at Toledo to perpetuate its use. It survives now only in several churches in Toledo and in a chapel at Salamanca, and even there not without certain Roman modifications of its original text and ritual.

Its date and origin, like the date and origin of all existing liturgies, are uncertain, and enveloped in the mists of antiquity. It is not derived from the present Roman liturgy. Its whole structure, as well as separate details disprove such a parentage, and therefore it is strange to find St Isidore of Seville (Lib. de Eccles. Offic. i. 15) attributing it to St Peter. No proof is adduced, and the only value which can be placed upon such an unsupported assertion is that it shows that a very high and even apostolic antiquity was claimed for it. A theory, originating with Pinius, that it may have been brought by the Goths from Constantinople when they invaded Spain, is as improbable as it is unproven. It may have been derived from Gaul. The Gallican sister stood to it in the relation of twin-sister, if it could not claim that of mother. The resemblance was so great that when Charles the Bald (843-877) wished to get some idea of the character of the already obsolete Gallican rite, he sent to Toledo for some Spanish priests to perform Mass according to the Mozarabic rite in his presence. But there is no record of the conversion of Spain by Gallican missionaries. Christianity existed in Spain from the earliest times. Probably St Paul travelled there (Rom. xv. 24). It may be at least conjectured that its liturgy was Pauline rather than Petrine or Johannine.

2. Gallican Liturgy.—This was the ancient and national liturgy of the church in France till the commencement of the 9th century, when it was suppressed by order of Charlemagne, who directed the Roman missal to be everywhere substituted in its place. All traces of it seemed for some time to have been lost until three Gallican sacramentaries were discovered and published by Thomasius in 1680 under the titles of Missale Gothicum, Missale Gallicum and Missale Francorum, and a fourth was discovered and published by Mabillon in 1687 under the title of Missale Gallicanum. Fragmentary discoveries have been made since. Mone discovered fragments of eleven Gallican masses and published them at Carlsruhe in 1850. Other fragments from the library at St Gall have been published by Bunsen (Analecta Ante-Nicaena, iii. 263-266), and from the Ambrosian library at Milan by Cardinal Mai (Scriptt. Vet. Vat. Coll. iii. 2. 247). A single page was discovered in Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, published in Zeitschrift für Kath. Theologie, vi. 370.

These documents, illustrated by early Gallican canons, and by allusions in the writings of Sulpicius Severus, Caesarius of Arles, Gregory of Tours, Germanus of Paris and other authors, enable us to reconstruct the greater part of this liturgy. The previously enumerated signs of Eastern origin and influence are found here as well as in the Mozarabic liturgy, together with certain other more or less minute peculiarities, which would be of interest to professed liturgiologists, but which we must not pause to specify here. They are the origin of the Ephesine theory that the Gallican liturgy was introduced into use by Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons (c. 130-200) who had learned it in the East from St Polycarp, the disciple of the apostle St John.

3. Ambrosian Liturgy.—Considerable variety of opinion has existed among liturgical writers as to the proper classification of the “Ambrosian” or “Milanese” liturgy. If we are to accept it in its present form and to make the present position of the great intercession for quick and dead the test of its genus, then we must classify it as “Petrine” and consider it as a branch of the Roman family. If, on the other hand, we consider the important variations from the Roman liturgy which yet exist, and the traces of still more marked variation which confront us in the older printed and MS. copies of the Ambrosian rite, we shall detect in it an original member of the Hispano-Gallican group of liturgies, which for centuries underwent a gradual but ever-increasing assimilation to Rome. We know this as a matter of history, as well as a matter of inference from changes in the text itself. Charlemagne adopted the same policy towards the Milanese as towards the Gallican church. He carried off all the Ambrosian church books which he could obtain, with the view of substituting Roman books in their place, but the completion of his intentions failed, partly through the attachment of the Lombards to their own rites, partly through the intercession of a Gallican bishop named Eugenius (Mabillon, Mus. Ital. tom. i. Pars. ii. p. 106). It has been asserted by Joseph Vicecomes that this is an originally independent liturgy drawn up by St Barnabas, who first preached the Gospel at Milan (De Missae Rit. 1 capp. xi. xii.), and this tradition is preserved in the title and proper preface for St Barnabas Day in the Ambrosian missal (Pamelius, Liturgicon, i. 385, 386), but it has never been proved.

We can trace the following points in which the Ambrosian differs from the Roman liturgy, many of them exhibiting traces of Eastern influence. Some of them are no longer found in recent Ambrosian missals and only survive in earlier MSS. such as those published by Pamelius (Liturgicon, tom. i. p. 293), Muratori (Lit. Rom. Vet. i. 132) and Ceriani (in his edition, 1881, of an ancient MS. at Milan). (a) The prayer entitled “oratio super sindonem” corresponding to the prayer after the spreading of the corporal; (b) the proclamation of silence by the deacon before the epistle; (c) the litanies said after the Ingressa (Introit) on Sundays in Lent, closely resembling the Greek Ektené; (d) varying forms of introduction to the Lord’s Prayer, in Coena Domini (Ceriani p. 116) in Pascha (Ib. p. 129); (e) the presence of passages in the prayer of consecration which are not part of the Roman canon and one of which at least corresponds in import and position though not in words to the Greek Invocation: Tuum vero, est, omnipotens Pater, mittere, &c. (Ib. p. 116); (f) the survival of a distinctly Gallican formula of consecration in the Post-sanctus “in Sabbato Sancto.” Vere sanctus, vere benedictus Dominus noster, &c. (Ib. p. 125); (g) the varying nomenclature of the Sundays after Pentecost; (h) the position of the fraction or ritual breaking of bread before the Lord’s Prayer; (i) the omission of the second oblation after the words of institution (Muratori, Lit. Rom. Vet. i. 133); (k) a third lection or Prophetia from the Old Testament preceding the epistle and gospel; (l) the lay offering of the oblations and the formulae accompanying their reception (Pamelius, Liturgicon, i. 297); (m) the position of the ablution of the hands in the middle of the canon just before the words of institution; (n) the position of the “oratio super populum,” which corresponds in matter but not in name to the collect for the day, before the Gloria in Excelsis.

4. Celtic Liturgy.—We postpone the consideration of this liturgy till after we have treated of the next main group.

VI. The Roman Rite (St Peter).—There is only one liturgy to be enumerated under this group, viz. the present liturgy of the Church of Rome, which, though originally local in character and circumscribed in use, has come to be nearly co-extensive with the Roman Catholic Church, sometimes superseding earlier national liturgies, as in Gaul and Spain, sometimes incorporating more or less of the ancient ritual of a country into itself and producing from such incorporation a sub-class of distinct Uses, as in England, France and elsewhere. Even these subordinate Uses have for the most part become, or are rapidly becoming, obsolete.

The date, origin and early history of the Roman liturgy are obscure. The first Christians at Rome were a Greek-speaking community, and their liturgy must have been Greek, and is possibly represented in the so-called Clementine liturgy. But the date when such a state of things ceased, when and by whom the present Latin liturgy was composed, whether it is an original composition, or, as its structure seems to imply, a survival of some intermediate form of liturgy—all these are questions which are waiting for solution.

One MS. exists which has been claimed to represent the Roman liturgy as it existed in the time of Leo I., 440-461. It was discovered at Verona by Bianchini in 1735 and assigned by him to the 8th century and published under the title of Sacramentarium Leonianum; but this title was from the first conjectural, and is in the teeth of the internal evidence which the MS. itself affords. The question is discussed at some length by Muratori (Lit. Rom. Vet. tom. i. cap. i. col. 16). Assemani published it under the title of Sacramentarium Veronense in tom. vi. of his Codex Liturg. Eccles. Univ.

A MS. of the 7th or 8th century was found at Rome by Thomasius and published by him in 1680 under the title of Sacramentarium Gelasianum. But it was written in France and is certainly not a pure Gelasian codex; and although there is historical evidence of Pope Gelasius I. (492-496) having made some changes in the Roman liturgy, and although MSS. have been published by Gerbertus and others, claiming the title of Gelasian, we neither have nor are likely to have genuine and contemporary MS. evidence of the real state of the liturgy in that pope’s time. The most modern and the best edition of the Gelasian Sacramentary is that by H. A. Wilson (Oxford, 1894).

The larger number of MSS. of this group are copies of the Gregorian Sacramentary, that is to say, MSS. representing or purporting to represent, the state of Roman liturgy in the days of Pope Gregory the Great. But they cannot be accepted as certain evidence for the following reasons: not one of them was written earlier than the 9th century, not one of them was written in Italy, but every one north of the Alps; every one contains internal evidence of a post-Gregorian date in the shape of masses for the repose or for the intercession of St Gregory and in various other ways.

The Roman liturgy seems to have been introduced into England in the 7th, into France in the 9th and into Spain in the 11th century, though no doubt it was known in both France and Spain to some extent before these dates. In France certain features of the service and certain points in the ritual of the ancient national liturgy became interwoven with its text and formed those many varying medieval Gallican Uses which are associated with the names of different French sees.

The chief distinguishing characteristics of the Roman rite are these: (a) the position of the great intercession for quick and dead within the canon, the commemoration of the living being placed just before and the commemoration of the departed just after the words of institution; (b) the absence of an “Epiklesis” or invocation of the Holy Ghost upon the elements; (c) the position of the “Pax” or “Kiss of Peace after the consecration” and before the communion, whereas in other liturgies it occurs at a much earlier point in the service.

Liturgies of the British Islands.

Period I. The Celtic Church.—Until recently almost nothing was known of the character of the liturgical service of the Celtic church which existed in these islands before the Anglo-Saxon Conquest, and continued to exist in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall for considerable though varying periods of time after that event. But in recent times a good deal of light has been thrown on the subject, partly by the publication or republication of the few genuine works of Patrick, Columba, Columbanus, Adamnan and other Celtic saints; partly by the discovery of liturgical remains in the Scottish Book of Deer and in the Irish Books of Dimma and Mulling and the Stowe Missal, &c.; partly by the publication of medieval Irish compilations, such as the Lebar Brecc, Liber Hymnorum, Martyrology of Oengus, &c., which contain ecclesiastical kalendars, legends, treatises, &c., of considerable but very varying antiquity. The evidence collected from these sources is sufficient to prove that the liturgy of the Celtic church was of the Gallican type. In central England the churches, with everything belonging to them, were destroyed by the heathen invaders at the close of the 5th century; but the Celtic church in the remoter parts of England, as well as in the neighbouring kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland, retained its independence for centuries afterwards.

An examination of its few extant service-books and fragments of service-books yields the following evidence of the Gallican origin and character of the Celtic liturgy: (a) the presence of collects and anthems which occur in the Gallican or Mozarabic but not in the Roman liturgy; (b) various formulae of thanksgiving after communion; (c) frequent biddings or addresses to the people in the form of Gallican Praefationes; (d) the Gallican form of consecration, being a prayer called “Post-Sanctus” leading up to the words of institution; (e) the complicated rite of “fraction” or “the breaking of bread,” as described in the Irish treatise at the end of the Stowe Missal, finds its only counterpart in the elaborate ceremonial of the Mozarabic church; (f) the presence of the Gallican ceremonial of Pedilavium or “Washing of feet” in the earliest Irish baptismal office.

For a further description of these and other features which are characteristic of or peculiar to the Celtic liturgy the reader is referred to F. E. Warren’s Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church (Oxford, 1881).

Period II. The Anglo-Saxon Church.—We find ourselves here on firmer ground, and can speak with certainty as to the nature of the liturgy of the English church after the beginning of the 7th century. Information is drawn from liturgical allusions in the extant canons of numerous councils, from the voluminous writings of Bede, Alcuin and many other ecclesiastical authors of the Anglo-Saxon period, and above all from a considerable number of service-books written in England before the Norman Conquest. Three of these books are missals of more or less completeness: (1) the Leofric Missal, a composite 10th- to 11th-century MS. presented to the cathedral of Exeter by Leofric, the first bishop of that see (1046-1072), now in the Bodleian library at Oxford; edited by F. E. Warren (Oxford, 1883); (2) the missal of Robert of Jumièges, archbishop of Canterbury (1051-1052), written probably at Winchester and presented by Archbishop Robert to his old monastery of Jumièges in the neighbourhood of Rouen, in the public library of which it now lies; edited by H. A. Wilson (London, 1896); (3) the Red Book of Derby, a MS. missal of the second half of the 11th century, now in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

A perusal of these volumes proves what we should have expected a priori, that the Roman liturgy was in use in the Anglo-Saxon church. This was the case from the very first. That church owed its foundation to a Roman pontiff, and to Roman missionaries, who brought, as we are told by Bede, their native liturgical codices with them (Hist. Eccles. lib. ii. cap. 28). Accordingly, when we speak of an Anglo-Saxon missal, we mean a Roman missal only exhibiting one or more of the following features, which would differentiate it from an Italian missal of the same century. (a) Rubrics and other entries of a miscellaneous character written in the vernacular language of the country. (b) The commemoration of national or local saints in the kalendar, in the canon of the mass and in the litanies which occur for use on Easter Even and in the baptismal offices. (c) The presence of a few special masses in honour of those local saints, together with a certain number of collects of a necessarily local character, for the rulers of the country, for its natural produce, &c. (d) The addition of certain peculiarities of liturgical structure and arrangement interpolated into the otherwise purely Roman service from an extraneous source. There are two noteworthy examples of this in Anglo-Saxon service-books. Every Sunday and festival and almost every votive mass has its proper preface, although the number of such prefaces in the Gregorian sacramentary of the same period had been reduced to eight. There was a large but not quite equal number of triple episcopal benedictions to be pronounced by the bishop after the Lord’s Prayer and before the communion. This custom must either have been perpetuated from the old Celtic liturgy or directly derived from a Gallican source.

Period III. Anglo-Norman Church.—The influx of numerous foreigners, especially from Normandy and Lorraine, which preceded, accompanied and followed the Conquest, and the occupation by them of the highest posts in church as well as state had a distinct effect on the liturgy of the English church. These foreign ecclesiastics brought over with them a preference for and a habit of using certain features of the Gallican liturgy and ritual, which they succeeded in incorporating into the service-books of the church of England. One of the Norman prelates, Osmund, count of Séez, earl of Dorset, chancellor of England, and bishop of Salisbury (1078-1099), is credited with having undertaken the revision of the English service-books; and the missal which we know as the Sarum Missal, or the Missal according to the Use of Sarum, practically became the liturgy of the English church. It was not only received into use in the province of Canterbury, but was largely adopted beyond those limits—in Ireland in the 12th and in various Scottish dioceses in the 12th and 13th centuries.

It would be beyond our scope here to give a complete list of the numerous and frequently minute differences between a medieval Sarum and the earlier Anglo-Saxon or contemporaneous Roman liturgy. They lie mainly in differences of collects and lections, variations of ritual on Candlemass, Ash Wednesday and throughout Holy Week; the introduction into the canon of the mass of certain clauses and usages of Gallican character or origin; the wording of rubrics in the subjunctive or imperative tense; the peculiar “Preces in prostratione”; the procession of Corpus Christi on Palm Sunday; the forms of ejection and reconciliation of penitents, &c. The varying episcopal benedictions as used in the Anglo-Saxon church were retained, but the numerous proper prefaces were discarded, the number being reduced to ten.

Besides the famous and far-spreading Use of Sarum, other Uses, more local and less known, grew up in various English dioceses. In virtue of a recognized diocesan independence, bishops were able to regulate or alter their ritual, and to add special masses or commemorations for use within the limits of their jurisdiction. The better known and the more distinctive of these Uses were those of York and Hereford, but we also find traces of or allusions to the Uses of Bangor, Lichfield, Lincoln, Ripon, St Asaph, St Paul’s, Wells and Winchester.

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