Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/720

 696 L I T L I T for all Gaul that the &quot;litanies&quot; before Ascension be celebrated for three days ; on these days all menials are -to be exempt from work, so that every one may be free to attend divine service. The diet is to be the same as in Quadragesima ; clerks not observing these rogations are to be punished by the bishop. In 517 A.D. the synod of Gerunda provided for two sets of &quot;litanies&quot;; the first were to be observed for three days (from Thursday to Saturday) in the week after Pentecost with fasting, the second for three days from November 1. A synod of Paris (573) in its tenth canon ordered litanies to be held for three days at the beginning of Lent, and the fifth synod of Toledo (636) appointed litanies to be observed throughout the kingdom for three whole days from December 14. The first mention of the word litany in connexion with the Roman Church goes back to the pontificate of Pelagius I. (555), but implies that the thing was at that time already old. In 590 Gregory L, moved by the pestilence which had followed an inundation, ordered a &quot; litania septiformis,&quot; that is to say, a sevenfold procession of clergy, laity, monks, virgins, matrons, widows, poor, and children. He is said also to have appointed the processions or litanies of April 25 (St Mark s day), which seem to have come in the place of the ceremonies of the old Robigalia. In 747 the synod of Cloveshoe (can. 16 and 17) ordered the litanies or rogations to be gone about by all the clergy and people with great reverence, on April 25 &quot;after the manner of the Roman Church,&quot; and on the three days before Ascension &quot; after the manner of our ancestors.&quot; The latter are still known in the English Church as Rogation Days. Games, horse racing, junkettings were forbidden ; and in the litanies the name of Augustine was to be inserted after that of Gregory. The reforming synod of Mainz in 813 ordered the major litany to bs observed by all for three days, not with horses or in magnificent attire, but in sackcloth and ashes, and barefoot. The sick only were exempted from this command. As regards the form of words prescribed for use in these &quot;litanies&quot; or &quot;supplications,&quot; documentary evidence is somewhat defective. Sometimes it would appear that the &quot;procession&quot; or &quot;litany&quot; did nothing else but chant &quot; Kyrie eleison &quot; without variation. There is no reason to doubt that from an early period the special written litanies of the various churches all showed the common features which are now regarded as essential to a litany, in as far as they consisted of (1) invocations, (2) deprecations, (3) intercessions, (4) supplications. But in details they must have varied immensely. The offices of the Roman Catholic Church at present recognize two litanies, the &quot; Litania} majores &quot; and the &quot;Litaniae breves,&quot; which diifer from one another chiefly in respect of the fulness with which details are entered upon under each of the four heads mentioned above. It is said that in the time of Charlemagne the angels Orihel, Raguhel, Tobihel were invoked, but the names were removed by Pope Zacharias as really belonging to demons. In some mediseval litanies there were special invocations of S. Sapientia, S. Fides, S. Spes, S. Charitas. The major litanies, as given in the Breviary, are at present appointed to be recited on bended knee, along with the penitential psalms, in all the six week days of Lent when ordinary service is held. Without the psalms they are said on the feast of Saint Mark and on the three rogation days. They are also chanted in procession before mass on Holy Saturday. The &quot; litany &quot; or &quot; general supplication &quot; of the Church of England, which is appointed &quot; to be sung or said after morning prayer upon Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and at other times when it shall be commanded by the ordinary,&quot; closely follows the &quot; Litanice majores &quot; of the Breviary, the invocations of saints being of course omitted. A very similar German litany will be found in the works of Luther. In the Roman Church there are a number of special litanies peculiar to particular localities or orders, such as the &quot; Litanies of Mary &quot; or the &quot; Litanies of the Sacred Name of Jesus.&quot; LITHGOW, WILLIAM (c. 1583-c. 1660), a noted Scot tish traveller, was born in Lanark, where his father was a burgess, possessed of considerable heritable property. The date generally assigned to his birth is 1583 ; and he was educated at the grammar school of his native town, then celebrated as a seminary of learning. His natural disposition was probably active and restless, as even in his boyhood he tells us that he made voyages to both the Orkneys and the Shetlands, and somewhat later travelled through the Low Countries, Germany, Bohemia, and Switzer land. The final impelling cause of his leaving Scotland, however, appears to have been some savage outrage com mitted either upon himself or on one nearly connected with him, arising, it is thought, from some love affair, which gave him an intolerable disgust to home. He left his native country about 1608 or 1609, and proceeded to Paris, where he remained ten months, and then crossed the Alps to Rome and Naples; after which he wandered through Istria, Dalmatia, Albania, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Meso potamia, Palestine, and Egypt, most of his journey having been performed on foot. In the course of his travels he escaped innumerable dangers from robbers, and hardships from exposure to inclement weather. He returned to England by Sicily and Paris. Another tour which he made lay through Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, Hun gary, Germany, and Poland. On his arrival in London he became an object of interest to King James, who, on the spirit of travel again returning upon him, furnished him with commendatory letters to all kings, princes, dukes, &c., whose territories he might desire to visit. In 1619, accordingly, he went over to France, and thence passed through Portugal and Spain as far as Malaga. There he was apprehended as a spy, and after suffering the most excruciating tortures, first in prison and after wards in the Inquisition, he was at length released on the interference of the English consul, and allowed to return to England in 1621. The minute description which he gives of the terrible torture to which he was subjected is almost unequalled for horror, and, when he arrived in London, he had the appearance of a man more dead than alive. He was carried on a feather bed to Theobald s in order that King James might be an eyewitness of what he called his &quot;martyred anatomy.&quot; The whole court crowded to see him. The king commanded that the greatest care should be taken of him, and he was twice sent to Bath at his Majesty s expense. On recovering his health, he was desired by James to apply to Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, for recovery of the money and other valuables of which he had been plundered by the governor of Malaga, and for a thousand pounds in repara tion of his injuries. Gondomar gave fair promises that all his demands should be granted, but nothing was done. Whereupon, having met the ambassador at the royal levee, and reproached him with his perfidy, after high words on both sides, Lithgow furiously assailed him with his fists, in the presence of the king, the imperial ambassador, and the knights and gentlemen of the court. This, of course, was an offence which could not be passed over, and, though his boldness was generally commended, he had to suffer an imprisonment of nine weeks in the Marshalsea. His latter years are understood to have been spent in his native town, and he is said to have died somewhere about 1660. A portion of his travels appeared in a small volume in London in 1614, but the complete work was not published till 1632. It has been repeatedly reprinted. It was also translated into Dutch and published at Amsterdam in his lifetime. His other works are An Account of the Siege of Breda (1637) at which he had been