COMES (liber comitis, liber comicus). — The C. was originally meant simply to be a book for private spiritual reading, containing a collection of texts from Holy Scripture and from other devout authors. This is precisely what the word c. means, namely “companion”; it was used both of persons and of things. For example, the “paidagogos,” or educator of the young, was called by the Romans comes, because he was to accompany the boy entrusted to him everywhere. Likewise, the book that was to accompany the Christian throughout his life, his spiritual “vade mecum,” was called C. (Cf. C. Du Cange, Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae latinitatis, new ed., Paris 1937, p. 422).
But the word C. soon came to acquire a particular technical sense in the field of liturgy and, in this sense, designated the book containing the passages of Holy Scripture to be read at Mass throughout the liturgical year. The best-known collection to bear this name is the one that medieval liturgists attribute to St. Jerome and that Alcuin revised at the command of Charlemagne (v. CARLOMAGNO, liturgical reform).
The earliest printed editions of this C., such as J. Pamelius, Liturgicon ecclesiae latinae, Cologne 1571, p. 1 ff.; G. M. Tomasi, Opera omnia, ed. A. F. Vezzosi, V, Rome 1750, pp. 297 ff.; PL 30, 487–532, etc., reported only the incipit and explicit of the individual passages, since these were well known to everyone. From this method of publication, however, arose among not a few later authors the idea that the word c. designated exclusively an “index” of the passages, that is, a “capitulare”; but this is incorrect. The C. was a book containing the complete text of the individual passages, as is clearly shown by recent editions, such as, for example, that of Alcuin’s C., edited by A. Wilmart, Le lectionnaire d'Alcuin, Rome 1937 (an offprint from the Ephemerides liturgicae). It should nevertheless be noted that, besides the term c., many other designations existed for the various types of books containing the passages for Mass (v. EPISTOLARIO; EVANGELIARIO; LEZIONARIO).
Giuseppe Löw
« AS IF », PHILOSOPHY of. — Title of VAIHINGER, HANS (v.) and summary formula (als ob or also vie senn) of the interpretation he attempted of Kantian philosophy. By means of this complicated conjunction, Vaihinger wished to express precisely the so-called “method of fictions,” which is of great importance, to a greater or lesser extent, in all the sciences, and to show the enormous role played in the conception of the world and of life by the appearance of representations and judgments founded on false convictions. He characterized this philosophy as “positivist idealism.”