Volume 1

A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood.

Date:
[between 1890 and 1899?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1088/1096 (page 1068)
    10G8 LYCAEION altogether clean. Tertullian (de Pudicit. c. 4) states that oti’enders were kept not only from the porch of the church, but from contact with any part of the building, for such sins were not “de- licta ” but “ m ')nstra.” The council of Elvira, a.d. 305 (c. 71), denies them communion even at death. By a canon of Ancyra, A.D. 314 (c. 16), those guilty before the age of twenty were to do penance as prostrators fifteen years, and then to be permitted to join in the prayers only for another five years before being admitted to full communion; if they are older than twenty, ten years are to be added to the penance; and if they exceed fifty years, then they are to be granted communion only at death. Basil (cc. 7, 62, 63) fixes their penance at either twenty or thirty years. The Fenitentials which represent the ecclesiastical code of races which had not yet cast off the vices of barbarism, Abound, as might be expected, with injunctions against unnatural lusts. In the British code the Penitential Book of Gildas (c. 1) lays down in curious detail the punishment of a presbyter or deacon who had so sinned. His penance was to extend over three years, every hour of which he was to beg pardon, and every week he was to add an extra act of penance (superpositionem) except on the fifty days after Easter: on the Lord’s day he might eat bread without stint, and some dish fattened with butter, but on other days he was to take only a British formella of dried bread (paxima- tium) and vegetables and a few eggs. His allow- ance of drink was to be a Roman hemina of milk to recruit his strength, but if he had work to do, he was to be given a Roman sextarius of skimmed (tenuclae vel bolthutae) milk : his bed was to be made without much grass; and if at the end of a year and a half he shewed deep repentance he might receive the eucharist and sing the psalms again with the brothers. By the Penitential of Theodore (I. vii. 1) boys polluting themselves were to be flogged ; and an oflence against nature oombint^d with any other crimen capitate was to be expiated only by seclusion in a monastery for life. For further particulars on a matter which does not admit of detail, but where the details are only too numerous, the reader is referred to these early Penitential Books (Theodor. I. ii. v^ii. ; Bed. iii.; Egbert, iv. v.) [G. M.] LYCARION, monk, martyr with Martha and Mary, commemorated Feb. 8 (Basil, Menol.'). [C. H.] LYDIA (1) Purple-seller of Thyatira, com- memorated Aug. 3 (Acta SS. Aug. i. 199). [C. IL] (2) Wife of Philetus, a senator, martyr, com- memorated March 27 (Basil, Menol?). [C. H.] LYING. It does not appear that the mere uttering of a falsehood, apart from any injury it might inflict, was brought under ecclesiastical censure. Tertullian, writing after he had joined the Montanists, and not likely therefore to err on the side of laxity, contrasts (de Pudicit. c. 19) the deadly sins which were visited with excom- munication with tiio.se lighter offences of daily incursion of which-discipline took no cognizance; and among these latter he enumerates thought- lessly speaxing evil, rash swearing, the breaking of a promise, and the telling of a lie from shame LYONS, COUNCIL OF or necessity. This list does not include peri’ury, which was treated as a grave canonical offence. [Oaths.] Whether and under what circum- stances it was held pardonable by any of the fathers to tamper with the truth, is a matter difficult to decide absolutel) Passages may be adduced which support a strict adherence to veracity at all times and at all hazards : on the other hand there are passages which seem to countenance equivocation or economy. What is beyond question is that they did not attempt to build up a system of accurate casuistry. That is the production of a later age. A collection of quotations bearing on the subject will be found in Jeremy Taylor (Ductor /^ubitantium, HI. ii. 5). One of the tenets which Augustine charges (contra Mendac.') the Priscillianists with uphold- ing is, that they were at liberty to forswear themselves in order to conceal their secret doc- trines. On false witness the imperial code, following the early Roman law, affixed a heavy penalty. The false accuser was to undergo the same punishment (Cod. Theod. IX. xxxix. 1, 2, 3; XVI. ii. 21) which his accusation, had it been substantiated, would have brought upon the ac- cused. This law of retaliation was to hold good (ibid. IX. i. 9, 14) whether the false charge attacked another’s reputation or property or life. The frequent mention of the same offence in the canonical law shews that the evil was wide- spread in the church. The council of Elvira, , A.D. 305 (c. 74), sentences a false witness to five years’ abstention from communion; the kindred but, in the circumstances of the early church, far graver offence of “ delatio ’’ was visited by a life- long exclusion (c. 73). [Informer.] The council of Agde, A.D. 506 (c. 37), puts false witnesses in the same category with murderers, and ex- communicates them in general terms till they repent (cf. Cone. Venet. c. 1; IV. Cone. Carthag. c. 55). The legislation with regard to libel occu- pies a chapter of the Theodosian Code (IX. xxxiv. de famosis libellis). [Libel.] [G. M.] LYONS, COUNCIL OF (Lugdunensia Con- cilia}. Of the councils of Lyons, several have been misnamed and misnumbered. 1. Said to have been held A.D. 197, because this seems to have been the year in which St. Irenaeus addressed a letter, in the name of the brethren in France, over whom he ruled, to pope Victor, on the disputed question of keeping Easter, and because Eusebius speaks in general terms of synods and meetings of bishops having been held in connection with it (E. H. v. 23-4, comp. Mansi, i. 715 and 726). 2. A.D. 475, when a priest named Lucidus is said to have retracted his errors on predestina- tion. But the only record of this is found in a .work of Faustu.s, bishop of Riez, who was him- self a semi-Pelagian. 3 and 4. A.D. 501 and 516, in which St. Avitus, of Vienne, is supposed to have taken part. But the first was a mere conference between the orthodox and the Arians (Mansi, viii. 241, comp. Pagi ad Baron. A.D. 501, n. 4), and to the second he refers him.self but casually (Ep. xxviii. comp. Mansi, ib. 537). 5. A.D. 517, where Viventiolus, bishop of Lyons, with ten others, pasted and subscribed to six canons. In the first of these, the twentieth