Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/835

 LAMB

LAMB

ing retired to private life and having become the prey of his creditors, he condemned himself to what he calls " literary hard-labour in order to exist and pay his debts". The most famous of these prose works was the "Histoire des Girondins" (18-17). Lamar- tine had long been taking part in politics, and had been elected a member of Parliament in 1833. He displayed astonishing aliility as an extempore speaker, his bril- liancy and grace being joined to fluency and action, and he waged a formidable opposition against the government of Louis-Philippe. The " Histoire des Girondins" was an episode in this: it was written with the desire to glorify the principles and the men of the French Revolution, without, however, approving their crimes. Immediately becoming popular the author shared in the provincial government at the downfall of the monarchy (18-18). But his popularity was ephemeral and the Coup d'etat of 2 December, 1851, caused his return to literature for the remainder of his life. He died quietly, almost forgotten.

In hira France lost a great poet; Lamartine may be reproached with not paying sufficient attention to the poetic vocation for which he affected an aristocratic disdain. Hence his lack of revision and fauUiness of plot, whenever his plot requires detailed thinking out, as in his longer compositions; hence also his careless- ness in rhyme and sometimes even in syntax. Even when he writes, Lamartine is an improviser who aban- dons himself to nature. But on the other hand he displays great simplicity, imagination, ease, fullness, and melody.

When the "Meditations" first appeared they re- vealed to France an entirely new kind of poetry, one which, according to the phrase of the author, " cessait d'etre un jeu sterile de I'esprit pour renaitre fille de l'enthou.siasme et de I'inspiration". In fact, despite the softness of the sentiments to which he abandoned his heart, he was a writer of rare elevation. No poet has sung of God with more Christian love than he in his earliest works; though in later life he became a mere spiritualist, he returned in his old age to the re- ligion of his youth, and died the death of a Christian. But at every period he loved to see the Creator through the transparent veil of the creature and to sing to Him hymns of adoration.

De M.\zade. Lamartine, sa vie politique et litteraire (Paris. 1870): Ollivier, LamaWine (1874): dePomairols, Lamartine (Pang, 1889): Chamborant de Perlssat, Lamartine Inconnu, 1892; Deschanel, Lamartine (Paris, 1893).

Georges Bertin.

Lamb, P.-isch.\l, a lamb which the Israelites were commanded to eat with peculiar rites as a part of the Passover celebration. The Divine ordinance is first recorded in Exodus, xii, 3-11, where Yahweh is repre- sented as giving instructions to Moses to preserve the Hebrews from the last of the plagues inflicted upon the Egyptians, viz. the death of the firstborn. On the tenth day of the first month each family (or group of families, if they are small) is commanded to take a lamb without blemish, male, of one year, and keep it until the fourteenth day of the month, and sacrifice it in the evening. The blood of the lamb must be sprinkled on the transom and doorposts of the houses in which the paschal meal is taken. The lamb should be roasted and eaten with unleavened bread and wild lettuce.

The whole of the lamb must be consumed — head, feet, and entrails — and if anything remain of it until morning it must be burned with fire. The Israelites are commanded to eat the meal in haste, with girded loins, shoes on their feet, and staves in their hands, "for it is the Phase (that is. Passage) of the Lord". The blood of the lamb on the doorposts served as a sign of immunity or protection against the destroying hand of the Lord, who smote in one night all the first- born in the land of Egypt, lioth man and beast. This

ordinance is repeated in al)ridged form in Numbers, xix, 11, 12, and again in Deuteronomy, xvi, 2-6, where sheep and oxen are mentioned instead of the lamb.

That the Paschal Lamb prefigured symbolically Christ, "the Lamb of God", who redeemed the world by the shedding of His blood, and particularly the Eueharistic banquet, or new Passover, has always remained the constant belief of Christian tradi- tion.

Lesetre in Vigouroux, Dictionnaire de la Bible, a. v. Pdque. For a critical discussion of the Old Testament sources, see RIouLTON in Hastings, Dictionary of the liitile, s. v.

James F. Driscoll.

Lamb, The, in Early Christian Symbolism. — One of the few Christian symbols dating from the first century is that of the Good Shepherd carrying on His

Gilded Glass in the V.a.tican Library

Showing the Lamb standing on Mt. Sion

Found in the Catacombs

shoulders a lamb or a sheep, with two other sheep at His side. Between the first and the fourth century eighty-eight frescoes of this type were depicted in the Roman catacombs.

The signification which may be attached to this symbol, according to Wilpert's interpretation, is as follows. The lamb or sheep on the shoulders of the Good Shepherd is a symbol of the soul of the deceased being borne by Our Lord into heaven; whereas the two sheep accompanying the Shepherd represent the saints already enjoying eternal bliss. This interpreta- tion is in harmony with an ancient liturgical prayer for the dead of the following tenor: "We pray God . . . to be merciful to him in judgment, having redeemed him by His death, freed him from sin, and reconciled him with the Father. May He be to him the Good Shepherd and carry him on His shoulders [to the fold]. May He receive him in the following of the King, and grant him to participate in eternal joy in the society of the saints" (Muratori, "Lit. Rom. Vet.", I, 751). In catacomb frescoes this petition is represented as al- ready granted ; the deceased is in the company of the saints.

Another cycle of catacomb paintings (not numer- ous) represents a lamb, or a sheep, with ti milk-pail either on its back or suspendetl from a pastoral staff. A unique fresco of this order shows a shepherd milking a .sheep, while still another shows a milk-pail on an altar between two sheep. The frescoes of this tj'pe (of the sheep and milk-pail) were, until recently.