HKB
generally used in other Biblical manuscripts. There is, of course, no place in a Lectionary for divisions by κεφάλαια, for the so-called Ammonian sections, or for the canons of Eusebius.
The division of the New Testament into Church-lessons was, however, of far more remote antiquity than the employment of separate volumes to contain them. Towards the end of the fourth century, that golden age of Patristic theology, Chrysostom recognizes some stated order of the lessons as familiar to all his hearers, for he exhorts them to peruse and mark beforehand the passages (περικοπαί(95)) of the Gospels which were to be publicly read to them the ensuing Sunday or Saturday(96). All the information we can gather favours the notion that there was no great difference between the calendar of Church-lessons in earlier and later stages. Not only do they correspond in all cases where such agreement is natural, as in the proper services for the great feasts and fasts, but in such purely arbitrary arrangements as the reading of the book of Genesis, instead of the Gospels, on the week days of Lent; of the Acts all the time between Easter and Pentecost(97); and the selection of St. Matthew’s history of the Passion alone at the Liturgy on Good Friday(98). The earliest formal Menologium, or Table of proper lessons, now extant is prefixed to the Codex Cyprius (K) of the eighth or ninth century; another is found in the Codex Campianus (M), which is perhaps a little later; they are more frequently found than the contrary in later manuscripts of every kind; while there are comparatively few copies that have not been accommodated to ecclesiastical use either by their original scribe or a later hand, by means of noting the proper days for each lesson (often in red ink) at the top or bottom or in the margin of the several pages. Not only in the margin, but even in the text itself are perpetually interpolated, mostly in vermilion or red ink, the beginning (ἀρχή or αρχ) and ending (τέλος or τελ) of each lesson, and the several words to be inserted or substituted in order to suit the purpose of public reading; from which source (as we have stated above, p. 11) various readings have almost unavoidably sprung: e.g. in Acts iii. 11 τοῦ ἰαθέντος χωλοῦ of the Lectionaries ultimately displaced αὐτοῦ from the text itself.
We purpose to annex to this Chapter a table of lessons throughout the year, according to the use laid down in Synaxaria, Menologies, and Lectionaries, as well to enable the student to compare the proper lessons of the Greek Church with our own, as to facilitate reference to the manuscripts themselves, which are now placed almost out of the reach of the inexperienced. On comparing the manner in which the terms are used by different scribes and authors, we conceive that Synaxarion (συναξάριον) is, like Eclogadion, a name used for a table of daily lessons for the year beginning at Easter, and that these have varied but slightly in the course of many ages throughout the whole Eastern Church; that tables of Saints’ day lessons, called Menologies, (μηνολόγιον), distributed in order of the months from September (when the new year and the indiction began) to August, differed widely from each other, both in respect to the lessons read and the days kept holy(99). While the great feasts remained entirely the same, different generations and provinces and even dioceses had their favourite worthies, whose memory they specially cherished; so that the character of the menology (which sometimes forms a larger, sometimes but a small portion of a Lectionary) will often guide us to the country and district in which the volume itself was written. The Parham Evangelistarium 18 affords us a conspicuous example of this fact: coming from a region of which we know but little (Ciscissa in Cappadocia Prima), its menology in many particulars but little resembles those usually met with(100).