See L. C. Douët d’Arcq, “Acte d’accusation contre Robert le Coq, évêque de Laon” in Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes, 1st series, t. ii., pp. 350-387; and R. Delachenal, “La Bibliothèque d’un avocat du XIVe siècle, inventaire estimatif des livres de Robert le Coq,” in Nouvelle revue historique de droit français et étranger (1887), pp. 524-537.
LECOUVREUR, ADRIENNE (1692-1730), French actress, was born on the 5th of April 1692, at Damery, Marne, the daughter of a hatter, Robert Couvreur. She had an unhappy childhood in Paris. She showed a natural talent for declamation and was instructed by La Grand, sociétaire of the Comédie Française, and with his help she obtained a provincial engagement. It was not until 1717, after a long apprenticeship, that she made her Paris début as Electre, in Crébillon’s tragedy of that name, and Angélique in Molière’s George Dandin. Her success was so great that she was immediately received into the Comédie Française, and for thirteen years she was the queen of tragedy there, attaining a popularity never before accorded an actress. She is said to have played no fewer than 1184 times in a hundred rôles, of which she created twenty-two. She owed her success largely to her courage in abandoning the stilted style of elocution of her predecessors for a naturalness of delivery and a touching simplicity of pathos that delighted and moved her public. In Baron, who returned to the stage at the age of sixty-seven, she had an able and powerful coadjutor in changing the stage traditions of generations. The jealousy she aroused was partly due to her social successes, which were many, in spite of the notorious freedom of her manner of life. She was on visiting and dining terms with half the court, and her salon was frequented by Voltaire and all the other notables and men of letters. She was the mistress of Maurice de Saxe from 1721, and sold her plate and jewels to supply him with funds for his ill-starred adventures as duke of Courland. By him she had a daughter, her third, who was grandmother of the father of George Sand. Adrienne Lecouvreur died on the 20th of March 1730. She was denied the last rites of the Church, and her remains were refused burial in consecrated ground. Voltaire, in a fine poem on her death, expressed his indignation at the barbarous treatment accorded to the woman whose “friend, admirer, lover” he was.
Her life formed the subject of the well-known tragedy (1849), by Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé.
LE CREUSOT, a town of east-central France in the department of Saône-et-Loire, 55 m. S.W. of Dijon on the Paris-Lyon railway. Pop. (1906), town, 22,535; commune, 33,437. Situated at the foot of lofty hills in a district rich in coal and iron, it has the most extensive iron works in France. The coal bed of Le Creusot was discovered in the 13th century; but it was not till 1774 that the first workshops were founded there. The royal crystal works were transferred from Sèvres to Le Creusot in 1787, but this industry came to an end in 1831. Meanwhile two or three enterprises for the manufacture of metal had ended in failure, and it was only in 1836 that the foundation of iron works by Adolphe and Eugène Schneider definitely inaugurated the industrial prosperity of the place. The works supplied large quantities of war material to the French armies during the Crimean and Franco-German wars. Since that time they have continuously enlarged the scope of their operations, which now embrace the manufacture of steel, armour-plate, guns, ordnance-stores, locomotives, electrical machinery and engineering material of every description. A network of railways about 37 m. in length connects the various branches of the works with each other and with the neighbouring Canal du Centre. Special attention is paid to the welfare of the workers who, not including the miners, number about 12,000, and good schools have been established. In 1897 the ordnance-manufacture of the Société des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée at Havre was acquired by the Company, which also has important branches at Chalon-sur-Saône, where ship-building and bridge-construction is carried on, and at Cette (Hérault).
LECTERN (through O. Fr. leitrun, from Late Lat. lectrum, or lectrinum, legere, to read; the French equivalent is lutrin; Ital. leggio; Ger. Lesepult), in the furniture of certain Christian churches, a reading-desk, used more especially for the reading of the lessons and in the Anglican Church practically confined to that purpose. In the early Christian Church this was done from the ambo (q.v.), but in the 15th century, when the books were often of great size, it became necessary to provide a lectern to hold them. These were either in wood or metal, and many fine examples still exist; one at Detling in wood, in which there are shelves on all four sides to hold books, is perhaps the most elaborate. Brass lecterns, as in the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, are common; in the usual type the book is supported on the outspread wings of an eagle or pelican, which is raised on a moulded stem, carried on three projecting ledges or feet with lions on them. In the example in Norwich cathedral, the pelican supporting the book stands on a rock enclosed with a rich cresting of Gothic tabernacle work; the central stem or pillar, on which this rests, is supported by miniature projecting buttresses, standing on a moulded base with lions on it.
LECTION, LECTIONARY. The custom of reading the books of Moses in the synagogues on the Sabbath day was a very ancient one in the Jewish Church. The addition of lections (i.e. readings) from the prophetic books had been made afterwards and was in existence in our Lord’s time, as may be gathered from such passages as St Luke iv. 16-20, xvi. 29. This element in synagogue worship was taken over with others into the Christian divine service, additions being made to it from the writings of the apostles and evangelists. We find traces of such additions within the New Testament itself in such directions as are contained in Col. iv. 16; 1 Thess. v. 27.