LECTION, LECTIONARY. A lection, or lesson, is a read ing from Scripture, patristic homilies or lives of saints in the Roman Catholic Church. The custom of reading extracts from the Pentateuch and prophetic books (cf. Luke iv. 16-2o, xvi. 29) in Synagogues on the Sabbath was taken over with others into the Christian divine service, additions being made from the writings of the apostles and evangelists. We find traces of such additions within the New Testament itself in such passages as Col. iv. '6; I Thess. V. 27.
There are traces of fixed lessons coming into existence in the 3rd century : Origen refers to the book of Job being read in Holy Week (Commentaries on Job, lib. i.). Allusions of a similar kind in the 4th century are frequent. John Cassian (c. 38o) tells us that throughout Egypt the Psalms were divided into groups of twelve, and that after each group there followed two lessons, one from the Old, one from the New Testament (De caenob. inst. ii. 4), implying but not absolutely stating that there was a fixed order of such lessons just as there was of the Psalms. St. Basil the Great mentions fixed lessons on certain occasions taken from Isaiah, Proverbs, St. Matthew and Acts (Hom. xiii. De bapt.).
From Chrysostom (Horn. lxiii. in Act:, etc.), and Augustine (Tract. vi. in Joann., etc.) we learn that Genesis was read in Lent, Job and Jonah in Passion Week, the Acts of the Apostles in Easter tide, lessons on the Passion on Good Friday and on the Resurrec tion on Easter Day. Nothing in the shape of a lectionary is extant 'older than the 8th century, though there is evidence that Claud ianus Mamertus made one for the church at Vienne about 450. The council of Carthage in 397 forbade anything but Holy Scrip ture to be read in church ; this rule has been adhered to so far as the liturgical epistle and gospel, and occasional additional lessons in the Roman missal are concerned, but in the divine office, on feasts when nine lessons are read at matins, only the first three lessons are taken from Holy Scripture, the next three being taken from the sermons of ecclesiastical writers, and the last three from exposi tions of the day's gospel; but sometimes the lives or Passions of the saints, or of some particular saints, were substituted for any or all of these breviary lessons.