Young—Or do Prophet arum. 
15 
lectiones 74 on the fourth Sunday of Advent; as the fourth lectio 
on Christmas eve; 75 as all three lectiones in ferial Matins on any 
day of the week preceding Christmas ; 76 and as the sixth lectio on 
the day of the Circumcision. 77 I can cite no evidence of its use 
outside the season of Christmas. 
But with these variations in content and in liturgical position 
we are concerned only incidentally, for these matters have no im¬ 
portant bearing upon the dramatic development under considera¬ 
tion. Let us, then, return to an examination of the complete and 
normal form of the lectio as printed above from the lectionary of 
Arles (Ms. 1018). 78 
The lectio opens with a direct arraignment of the Jews for their 
perverse disbelief in Christ’s Messiahship. Since the Jews stub¬ 
bornly demand evidence, the preacher grimly proposes to fetch testi¬ 
mony from their own law. He first summons Isaiah, bidding him 
testify concerning Christ. As if receiving a response directly from 
Isaiah in person, the preacher reports the prophet’s utterance. 
Similarly are summoned the prophets Jeremiah, Daniel, Moses, 
David, and Habbakuk. After each summons, the preacher reports 
the prophet’s utterance, and adds a few words of elucidation. 
With the taunt that he might readily extend this succession of 
prophets from the Old Testament, the preacher passes on to the 
premonitions regarding Christ in the New Testament, quoting ut¬ 
terances from Simeon, Zacharias, Elisabeth, and John. With a 
74 Breviarium ad usum insignis Ecclesice Sarum, edited by F. Procter and 
C. Wordsworth, Cambridge, 1882, pp. cxxxv-cxliii. 
76 See E. Mart§ne, Tractatus de Antiqua Ecclesice Disciplina, Lyons, 1706, 
p. 78. 
76 At Laon. See U. Chevalier, Ordinaires de I’figlise cathedrale de Laon, Paris, 
1897, pp. 33-43. 
77 Bibl. Nat., Ms. lat. 16309, Breviarium Santonense saec. xiv, fol. 40v-41v. 
In this case the liturgical lectio contains only the following parts of the sermon 
Vos inquam: the opening sentences of the introduction, the prophecies of Virgil, 
Nebuchadnezzar, and the Sibyl, and the conclusion. The excerpt from the 
sermon Vos inquam found in the same manuscript (fol. 31r) for use as the sixth 
lectio on Christmas has been printed above. 
78 From the present study I omit all investigation of the sources of the Latin 
lectio before us. The probability that the sermon Vos, inquam, convenio is in¬ 
fluenced *by Greek sermons of dramatic content is discussed in the able mono¬ 
graph of Giorgio La Piana, Le Rappresentazioni Sacre nella Letteratura Bizan- 
tina, Grottaferrata, 1912, pp. 283-302, 308-309. Once given the sermon Vos, 
inquam, convenio, the Western development of this composition into drama 
appears to me to be independent of Byzantine influence. The opposing opinion 
of La Piana in the case of the Ordo Prophetarum from Limoges, I consider 
below, pp. 86-37. 
