LAMENTATIONS. – Five poems on the destruction of Jerusalem, to which the Septuagint prefixed the title 8°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°, which also passed into the Vulgate: Threni id est Lamentationes. In the Hebrew Bible the brief collection is indicated simply by the first word of the composition (“èkhâl”), as also happens with the books of the Pentateuch.
In the Talmud (Bâbâ' Bâthrâ 15a) the five poems are called qînôth; qînâh denotes a song or funeral dirge and entails a particular poetic metre, usually employed in an elegiac composition.
A more notable difference between the Hebrew Bible and the Greek-Latin versions concerns the place occupied by the little book. In the Hebrew text it appears in the third part, among the Kethûbîm, whereas in Greek and Latin it is connected with the book of Jeremiah, following it as an appendix. Neither of these arrangements, especially the Hebrew one, is original. The earliest ecclesiastical writers (Origenes, Melito of Sardis) who speak of the Hebrew canon group the Lamentations with the larger book of Jeremiah. The same is done by the Jew Flavius Josephus (C. Ap., I, 40). St Jerome in his Prologus Galeatus is the first to document that some (nonnulli) placed the Lamentations among the Hagiographa. While the Greek-Latin arrangement, apart from the question of authorship, respects a chronological sequence, the Hebrew-rabbinic arrangement is due to the liturgical use of reading the book during the fast of the 9°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°, instituted to commemorate the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC.
For this reason the little book has been placed among the other four of well-determined liturgical use (Song of Songs, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Esther), which with the Lamentations form the five mĕgillôth “scrolls.” On the other hand, the diversity of the Greek translator demonstrates that the little book was never perfectly united with that of Jeremiah.
The content of the five poems is simple, developing a supremely tragic theme. Ideas often repeat themselves; expressions of pain or bewilderment alternate; for this reason it is difficult to present a summary of the individual poems, lacking any genuine logical development of concepts. From the Lamentations there emerges a very perfect theological idea of God, in harmony with the theology of the Old Testament. God is the protagonist of history, which owes nothing to chance or blind fatalism. The concept of guilt and collective responsibility is developed at length. As regards the problem of suffering, a solution similar to that proposed in the book of Job can be glimpsed. Alongside the idea of punishment, the purifying value of suffering is also presented.
Literarily, the little book is usually highly esteemed. It is admitted, however, that the uniqueness of the subject, however grand, and the rigid alphabetic scheme have at times stifled poetic imagination and obscured formal beauty.
Jewish and Christian tradition, unanimous until the beginning of the 18th century, pointed to Jeremiah as the author of the Lamentations. Now, instead, among non-Catholics the contrary opinion is dominant (Driver, Sellin, Koenig, Locher, Eissfeldt, Oesterley-Robinson, Pfeiffer, Rudolph, Weiser, Haller, etc.). Among Catholics there are no lack of those who defend the traditional opinion (Knabenbauer, Ricciotti, Wiesmann, Paffrath), but some limit the Jeremian authorship to certain poems (Göttsberger, Höpf-Miller-Metzinger) or are inclined to reject it (Nikel, Clamer, Nötscher, Dennefeld).
It must be acknowledged that the tradition, however unanimous, does not appear to be so authoritative. The Hebrew arrangement says nothing against Jeremian authorship, because it is secondary. On the other hand, the testimony of the Talmud (Bābha' Bāthra' 15a) is too late and joined to other implausible assertions to command unconditional assent. Even the testimony of Flavius Josephus (Antiq. Jud., X, 78) loses some of its value because he relates the Lamentations to the notice in 2 Chron 35:25. The title prefixed by the Greek version is an excellent indication of the antiquity of the opinion, but it offers many doubts regarding its authenticity.
Intrinsic examination does not reveal contacts that necessitate identity of author with the book of Jeremiah; but neither can it be affirmed that the three or four texts on which the opponents insist (1:9,11; 2:9,20; 4:17,20; 5:7) exclude Jeremiah as author. If the difference in the alphabetic order (inversion of 'aṁ-pēh) between poems 2-4 and poem 1, and the particular character of the final prayer, which is not alphabetic, can be considered—as seems reasonable—as signs of diversity of authorship, Jeremiah can reasonably be attributed, for intrinsic reasons, the group 2-4.
Angelo Penna
THE “LAMENTATIONS” IN LITURGY AND SACRED SONG. – In Jewish liturgy the modulated reading of the “Lamentations,” at least since the destruction of the Second Temple, has been the obligatory reading and is performed on the 9th of the month of 'Abh (July-August). The text chanted by Jews who go to the famous “Wailing Wall,” the last remnant of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, is not taken from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, but composed by the rabbis as a paraphrase and in the same style.
In Catholic liturgy, from the beginnings of the organization of the canonical hours, the “Lamentations” are read on the last three days of Holy Week. The final lamentation, entitled Oratio Jeremiae, closes without division the first nocturn of the “Tenebrae” of Holy Saturday; the other four are progressively distributed among the first three lessons of the first nocturn; the end of each pericope is marked by the refrain: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, return to the Lord your God.” A lengthy responsory sung by the choir follows each reading.
The melodic formula upon which the text of the Lamentations is recited is more expressive than the common modulation used for the readings of the Divine Office: in the Lamentations, it is a true musical recitative. A letter of the Hebrew alphabet, sung to a brief and uniform vocalization, begins each new stanza (in the original Hebrew text, the successive letters of the alphabet begin the first word of the successive verses). The stanzas are recited to a formula of a psalmodic type; the intonation is repeated after the various cadences; the reciting tone is unique (A); two kinds of medial cadences are possible, depending on the length of the text; the final cadence, like the medial cadences, is of a tonic structure. The Prayer of Jeremiah, in addition to the common formula of the Lamentations, also has an ornate recitative with cursive or tetrasyllabic cadences and with two reciting tones (A and D).
Musical recitatives adapted to the text of the Lamentations are numerous in manuscripts. At first, they began to be notated in the very codex used throughout the year for the biblical readings of the choir: thus the Codex Amiatinus (8th century), the oldest complete codex of the Vulgate, indicates with dots, commas, and other simple neumes, in Beneventan-Tuscan notation of a later date, a recitative not very different from that published in the Vatican edition. The melody now diffused by the Vatican edition is the most frequent in manuscripts (antiphonaries, Bibles, Breviaries) and seems the most ancient. Others have been published but are no longer legitimate in liturgical use.
D. Hesbert notes the poverty of the Beneventan repertoire, which used the same formula for the Exultet and for the Lamentations, a psalmodic recitative of the fourth mode analogous to that of the Te Deum and the Gloria in excelsis, XV of the Vatican edition (cf. Palego. Mus., XIV, p. 417-18). The same Beneventan tradition also offers the same recitative for the "Prayers" in general: thus the Oratio Jeremiae was sung like the prayer of Jonah or that of Azariah.
The North African bishop Verecundus (c. 550) states that the Oratio Jeremiae was included among the biblical songs sung in Africa, Spain, and Gaul (cf. Verecundus, Commentariorum super cantica ecclesiast. libri IX, in Spicilegium Solemense SS. Patrum, IV, Paris 1588, p. 40; cf. also Brev. mozarab.: PL 86, 367). A Spanish melody is found in the Antiphonary of Silos, in Aquitanian notation, and in the Beneventan Bible of Naples (Biblioteca nazionale, VII AA. 3); it is also adapted to the Exultet (cf. Rass. greg., 9 [1910], p. 129). Mozarabic notation is found for the Lamentations in at least the following three codices: Bible of San Pedro de Cardena, ff. 236-238 (Seminary of Burgos); Bible of León (ff. 50-52); Bible of Oña (cf. G. Prado, El canto mozarabe, Madrid 1929, p. 26). In Milan, the Lamentations are sung on the Friday before Palm Sunday; the melody is found in cod. Ambros. E. 51 infer. of the 12th century.
The relationship of the various Latin melodies of the Lamentations to Hebrew chant is not yet clearly defined. It seems that there exists a common melodic foundation in all dispersed synagogues, to be linked not with the melody of the Vatican edition, but with others now lost (cf. A. E. Milgram Saboath, The day of delight, Philadelphia 1946, p. 473; A. Z. Idelsohn, Jewish music, New York 1948, pp. 51-56).
Polyphonists of the 15th and 16th centuries, with less liturgical criteria, took possession of the Lamentations, simple declamatory readings, to transform them into true motets, using the same contrapuntal procedures employed for a Kyrie or a responsory, thus suppressing the opposition of the soloist (the reader) and the choir: it is true, however, that Palestrina had his Lamentations performed by 5-6 voices from 5-6 soloists and not by the entire choir. The polyphonic Lamentations, published in 1506 by Petrucci in Venice, are anonymous. In the collection of Le Roy et Ballard (Paris 1557), the names of Arcadelt, Pierre de la Rue, Antoine Févin, etc., appear. The book of Lamentations dedicated by Palestrina to Sixtus V in 1588 replaced, for the service of the Papal Chapel, the Lamentations in use since 1515 and composed by Eléazar Genet known as "il Carpentras." Various revisions in the repertoire of Holy Week brought forth in the Sistine Chapel new compositions of both Lamentations and the subsequent responsories, due to Victoria, Ingegneri, Allegri, etc.
LA METTRIE, Julien-Offroy de. "Physician and philosopher, b. at St-Malo on 25 Dec. 1709, d. at Berlin on 11 Nov. 1751. He served as a military physician in Paris from 1742. Risking imprisonment in the Bastille for his work Histoire naturelle de l’âme (The Hague 1745), he took refuge with Frederick II. Other works of his include: L’Homme machine (Leiden 1748), L’Homme plante (Potsdam 1748), and Réflexions sur l’origine des animaux (Berlin 1750).
La Mettrie is among the most conscious theoreticians of 18th-century materialism. Organized matter contains within itself a principle of movement that differentiates it, and the various degrees of animal life derive from the degree of this differentiation. Thought is merely a property of organized matter (as, for example, electricity is); every activity is created by need (man, having more needs than other beings, occupies the highest point of evolution); every eudaimonistic solution arises solely from atheism. Even every relationship of social life is outside spiritual resolutions: materialism is, for La Mettrie, the only antidote to misanthropy.
LAMMI, Giovanni. "Scholar and theologian, b. at S. Croce in Valdarno on 9 Feb. 1697, d. at Florence on 6 Feb. 1770. He studied law, mathematics, history, literature, and philosophy, and, eager for knowledge, visited libraries and museums in many European countries. From 1773 until his death, he held the chair of ecclesiastical history at the University of Florence, esteemed by the Grand Duke, who appointed him his theological consultant. Of a combative character and slightly sympathetic to Jansenism, he engaged in many controversies.
His prodigious erudition touched upon the most varied subjects. Among his theological works are remembered: De recta Patrum Nicaenorum fide (Venice 1730) against G. Clerc; De recta Christianorum in eo quod mysterium divinae Trinitatis attinet sententia II. 6 (Florence 1733), in which he demonstrates the independence of the mystery from Greek-Oriental philosophy. The De eruditione Apostolorum (ibid. 1738) occasioned a controversy, to which he replied with Esame di alcune asserzioni del S. Ant. Alamanno (ibid. 1749). He also wrote: S. Ecclesiae Florentinae monumenta (ibid. 1738). Many of his works are of a secular nature.