LECTERN (also iettc•u, /citron, from OF. luttrin, lettron, leutrin. Fr. /O•in, from AIL. lcetrinuw, lertram. reading-desk. from Ok. ton, lcktInn. couch). A reading-desk or stand, movable or stationary, from which the Scrip ture lessons (leehaws). which form a part of the va,lous Church services. are chanted or read. The term is properly applied only to the class mentioned as independent of the pulpit. Such lecterns were either fixed or movable; when fixed they were sealed to the pavement in the centre of the choir and were made of wood or metal—ordinarily brass or latter). The light, movable lecterns. usually of iron or wood, are less decorative. The lectern is of very an cient nse, from the early Christian period to the present in the different Christian d•nomina tions. especially the Catholic and Episcopal. It is made of very various materials—gold, silver. bronze. bras:. marble (plain or inlaid). or wood. It either had an independent. base or stand. or else was part of the pulpit (q.v.), or ambone. None of the lecterns in precious metal have been preserved, but descriptions of such stands. in the Liber Pontificalis, shows them to have been in early use. and to have been flanked with candelabra. The earliest preserved are the stationary marble lecterns on pulpits in Italy. as on those of San Lorenzo and the Araorli in Rome. Richer are the lecterns on pulpits of the Pisan Tuscan school of the twelfth. thirteenth.
and fourteenth centuries, especially those carved by the Pisan sculptors Nieeola and Giovanni. In these examples an eagle with outspread wings supported the hooklike slab, and it rested upon a composite group of the three other living creatures, symbols of the Evangelists, the Angel, the Lion. and the Ox. Usually only the eagle was carved under the book, and this became the nor mal type of lectern preserved to the present time. So usual was it to make the eagle the central ornament that the medieval name for this choir lectern was ordinarily aquila ; but sometimes the pelican was substituted (wooden lectern of fif teenth century at Zammel). This was often the ease in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with the weakening of the old religious traditions, when other figures were substituted, such its grif fins, angels, or men, contrary to true iconography. Sometimes, as in the ease of the iron lectern at Tolima' Cathedral, there is no figured decora tion. During the Gothic. and Renaissance periods the churches of Central and Northern Europe were decorated with beautifully carved lecterns, and even in Italy there were many inlaid with intarsia, or carved, in connection with the choir-stalls, like that of Verona (Santa Maria in Organo).