LEAD. - Lead was used in antiquity for the most varied purposes: for pipes, crosses, weights, tokens, ampoules, small plates, brooches, funerary urns, etc.
The *Philosophumena* recounts that Christians were condemned around the year 1200–1201 to the lead mines; St. Cyprian also mentions faithful Christians sent to the lead mines. Lead coffers were used for the transportation of corpses; such coffers have been found in Alexandria, where they were used to return the bodies of Jews to Palestine. In the *Passio* of the saints Claudius, Nicostratus, etc., it is said that the bodies of these martyrs were enclosed in leaden loculi, just as the bodies of the martyrs Abdon and Sennen were deposited by a certain Quirinus in a leaden chest (*P. Franchi de' Cavalieri, I Santi Quattro, in Note Agiografiche, 4 [Studi e testi, 24], Rome 1912, p. 62*). Lead sarcophagi from the Christian era have often been discovered in France, Spain, and Dalmatia, at Manastirine, Salona, and in a Christian lead sarcophagus found in ancient Sala at Rabat in Morocco, the lid bears five Greek crosses (*R. Thouvenot, Sarcofago chrétien découvert à Rabat, in Comptes rendus de l'Acad. des Inscr. et belles lettres, 1949, pp. 257–243*). The *Liber Pontificalis* also repeatedly mentions that corpses were transported in lead coffers (ed. Duchesne, I, 288, 306); that of Agapitus from Constantinople to Rome, and that of Narses in the opposite direction. Many imperial and papal lead seals are known, including one of Pope Honorius I found at Carthage (*A. L. Delattre, in Riv. di arch. crist., 4 [1927], p. 345*). In the Berlin Museum, on a lead plaque found at Rhodes, nearly the entire Psalm 79 is inscribed in Greek (*A. Rahlfs, Septima-*).
The terms *fratres barbati bullantes* (or *plumbantes* or *de plumbo*) and *barbati plumbi* appear sporadically.
1555