Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/416

 398 L E D L E D read from the prophets, though the system of prophetic lessons at least had not yet reached the fixity of the later ritual. For obvious reasons the reading of Scripture at public worship was continued by the Christian Church with certain modifications (1 Thess. v. 27; Col. iv. 16). An authority so early as Justin Martyr (ApoL, i. 67) states that in the Christian assemblies of his day &quot; the memoirs of the apostles, or the writings of the prophets, are read as long as time permits.&quot; What we are precisely to understand by these &quot;memoirs of the apostles&quot; is doubtful; but the evidence we have, fragmentary though it is, may be said to make it certain that neither in his day, nor for many years afterwards, was the canon of sacred books to be read in public worship rigidly fixed, and still less were definite portions of Scripture appointed to be read on particular days of the ecclesiastical year. Traces of the office of reader as distinct from that of deacon begin to appear in Tertullian (De Prsescr., 41), who makes frequent allusions to the public reading of both Old and New Testament Scriptures (ApoL, 39 ; De Prsescr., 36 ; De An., 9), but says nothing that can be construed as implying anything like a fixed table of lessons. Towards the end of the 4th century, however, indications of a widely spread custom of reading the Scriptures according to a uniform and rigid scheme became frequent ; and the practice even then was spoken of as ancient. Thus Chrysostom and Augustine both show incidentally that the Acts of the Apostles were publicly read between Easter and Pentecost and then laid aside, while Genesis was read in Lent. In the Apostolical Con stitutions (ii. 57) a very methodical service is enjoined ; it prescribes two lessons from the Old Testament by a reader ; the Psalms of David are then to be sung, next the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles of Paul, and finally (by a deacon or presbyter) the gospels, are to be read. The labours of Scholz and Tischendorf have brought to light a large body of MS. Greek lectionaries ranging between the 7th and the 10th century, from which, when fully collated, it will probably be possible to ascertain with precision the order of yearly lections contemplated within the circles to which the documents respectively belong. Most of them contain gospel lessons only; the rest lessons from the Acts and the epistles. The Evangellon and Apostolos of the modern Greek Church has a proper gospel and epistle, not only for every Saturday and Sunday, but for every day of the week. The order of (continuous) lessons for the five ordinary week days cannot be traced with certainty further back than to the 10th century, but those for the Sundays, also for the most part continuous, can be traced, so far as the gospels at least are concerned, to the 8th, and large coincidences with the Armenian lectionary lead to the in ference that much had been already fixed before 595. Of Western lectionaries the earliest is probably the Liber Comitis sive Lectlonarius, which used to be attributed to Jerome. On the whole it does not observe a lectio contimia, but is characterized rather by free selection of suitable passages for each Sunday. Next in chronological order is the Tabula, drawn up by Victor of Capua (546) ; it was printed by Gerbert in his Monum. Vet. Lilurg. Alem. in 1777. It also has no trace of lectio contimia. The same remark applies to the Luxueil lectionary, edited by Mabillon in the De Liturgia Gallicana (Migne, Patr., Ixxii.) ; it is assigned by Mabillon to the end of the 7th century, and certainly is not later than the time of Charlemagne ; besides the usual gospel and epistle, it prescribes a lesson from the Old Testament. The earliest allusion seeming to imply an order of lectors or readers as one of the standing orders of the church occurs, as already mentioned, in a solitary passage in Tertullian. In Cyprian, allusions much less ambiguous are frequent. The Apostolic Constitutions give a form of prayer to be used at the ordination of lectors by the imposition of hands. In the modern Greek Church the functions of the Anagnostes are strictly confined to the reading of the epistle, that of the gospel being reserved for the deacon. In the old Catholic Church, the ordination of lectors was by publicly placing the Bible in their hands, with some such formula of exhortation as is prescribed in can. 8 of the fourth council of Carthage. By the council of Trent the order of lector was recognized as one of the minor orders of the Roman Catholic Church, but it has no actual independent existence, being regarded merely as a necessary step in promotion to a higher office. LEDA. See CASTOR AND POLLUX. LEDRU-ROLLIN, ALEXANDER AUGUSTE (1807-1874), was the grandson of a celebrated quack-doctor of the reign of Louis XV., who took the name of Comus, and made a large fortune in curing or attempting to cure epilepsy by magnetism. He himself was born in the house of Scarron at Fontenay-aux- Roses, on February 2, 1807, was educated at Paris, and had just been entered at the Paris bar, when the revolution of July 1830 broke out. He soon made himself a great name as an advocate, and was engaged on the republican side in all the great political trials of the next ten years. He also wrote many political tracts, and edited more than one republican newspaper, so that when he was elected as deputy for Le Mans in 1841 he was expected to take up an advanced republican position in the chamber. From this time to the outbreak of the revolution of February 1848 he was regarded as the chosen leader of the working men of France, and spoke and wrote in favour of liberty of labour and universal suffrage. It was in the speeches of himself and his friends Lamartine and Louis Blanc at Lille, Dijon, and Chalons at working men s banquets during the latter months of 1847 that the revolution of 1848 was most clearly foreshadowed and prepared. When it did actually break out, it was Ledru-Rollin who overthrew the project of making the duchess of Orleans regent, and obtained the nomination of a provisional government, In this provisional government he was clearly pointed out by his influence among the working men for the ministry of the interior. When he resigned on June 24, 1848, he found that his four months of office had lost him his old leadership, as the conscientious performance of such an office inevitably would, but he had the credit of having for the first time established a working system of universal suffrage. He tried to regain his old influence, but in vain, and at the election of president in December had but 370,000 votes. The earlier months of 1849 he spent in protesting against the policy, especially the Roman policy, of the president Louis Napoleon Bonaparte and his ministry, which culminated in his moving their impeachment. His motion being defeated on June 12 by 289 to 8, he on June 13 headed what he called a peaceful demonstration, and his enemies an appeal to arms, which was soon dispersed. Ledru-Rollin himself escaped to London, where he signed the manifestoes of the revolutionary committee of Europe with Kossuth, Mazzini, Riige, and sometimes Desatz. He also employed his leisure in writing a work on the Decadence cV Angleterre, in which he attempted to deduce the necessary fall of England from its aristocratic form of government and the misery of the lower classes. In 1870 he returned to Paris, but though elected in three departments he refused to sit in the national assembly of 1871. In 1874 he con sented to sit for the department of Var, and spoke at length on June 3 on an electoral scheme, upholding the one great aim and achievement of his life, universal suffrage. The effort was too much for his health; he steadily grew weaker and weaker, and died on December 31, 1874. Perhaps the best succinct description of his character and political position in the sixteen short months of his real