A synod of Paris (573) ordered litanies to be held for three days at the beginning of Lent, and the fifth synod of Toledo (636) appointed litanies to be observed throughout the kingdom for three days from December 14. The first mention of the word litany in connexion with the Roman Church goes back to the pontificate of Pelagius I. (555), but implies that the thing was at that time already old. In 590 Gregory I., moved by the pestilence which had followed an inundation, ordered a “litania septiformis,” sometimes called litania major, that is to say, a sevenfold procession of clergy, laity, monks, virgins, matrons, widows, poor and children. It must not be confused with the litania septena used in church on Easter Even. He is said also to have appointed the processions or litanies of April 25 (St Mark’s day), which seem to have come in the place of the ceremonies of the old Robigalia. In 747 the synod of Cloveshoe ordered the litanies or rogations to be gone about on April 25 “after the manner of the Roman Church,” and on the three days before Ascension “after the manner of our ancestors.” The latter are still known in the English Church as Rogation Days. Games, horse racing, junkettings were forbidden; and in the litanies the name of Augustine was to be inserted after that of Gregory. The reforming synod of Mainz in 813 ordered the major litany to be observed by all for three days in sackcloth and ashes, and barefoot. The sick only were exempted.
As regards the form of words prescribed for use in these “litanies” or “supplications,” documentary evidence is defective. Sometimes it would appear that the “procession” or “litany” did nothing else but chant Kyrie eleison without variation. There is no reason to doubt that from an early period the special written litanies of the various churches all showed the common features which are now regarded as essential to a litany, in as far as they consisted of (1) invocations, (2) deprecations, (3) intercessions, (4) supplications. But in details they must have varied immensely. The offices of the Roman Catholic Church at present recognize two litanies, the “Litaniae majores” and the “Litaniae breves,” which differ from one another chiefly in respect of the fulness with which details are entered upon under the heads mentioned above. It is said that in the time of Charlemagne the angels Orihel, Raguhel, Tobihel were invoked, but the names were removed by Pope Zacharias as really belonging to demons. In some medieval litanies there were special invocations of S. Fides, S. Spes, S. Charitas. The litanies, as given in the Breviary, are at present appointed to be recited on bended knee, along with the penitential psalms, in all the six week-days of Lent when ordinary service is held. Without the psalms they are said on the feast of Saint Mark and on the three rogation days. A litany is chanted in procession before mass on Holy Saturday. The “litany” or “general supplication” of the Church of England, which is appointed “to be sung or said after morning prayer upon Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and at other times when it shall be commanded by the ordinary,” closely follows the “Litaniae majores” of the Breviary, the invocations of saints being of course omitted. A similar German litany will be found in the works of Luther. In the Roman Church there are a number of special litanies peculiar to particular localities or orders, such as the “Litanies of Mary” or the “Litanies of the Sacred Name of Jesus.”
There was originally a close connexion between the litany and the liturgy (q.v.). The ninefold Kyrie eleison at the beginning of the Roman Mass is a relic of a longer litany of which a specimen may still be seen in the Stowe missal. In the Ambrosian liturgy, the threefold Kyrie eleison or Lesser Litany occurs thrice, after the Gloria in excelsis, after the gospel and at the end of Mass; and on the first five Sundays in Lent a missal litany is placed before the Oratio super populum, and on the same five Sundays in the Mozarabic rite before the epistle. In Eastern liturgies litanies are a prominent feature, as in the case of the deacon’s litany at the beginning of the Missa fidelium in the Clementine liturgy, immediately before the Anaphora in the Greek liturgy of St James, &c.
(F. E. W.)
LITCHFIELD, a township and the county-seat of Litchfield county, Connecticut, U.S.A., about 28 m. W. of Hartford, and including the borough of the same name. Pop. of the township (1890) 3304; (1900) 3214; (1910) 3005; of the borough (1890) 1058; (1900) 1120; (1910) 903. Area of the township, 48.6 sq. m. The borough is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad. It is situated on elevated land, and is one of the most attractive of southern New England summer resorts. The principal elevation in the township is Mt. Prospect, at the base of which there is a vein of pyrrhotite, with small quantities of nickel and copper. On the southern border of the borough is Lake Bantam (about 900 acres, the largest lake in the state) whose falls, at its outlet, provide water power for factories of carriages and electrical appliances. Dairying is the most important industry, and in 1899 the county ranked first among the counties of the state in the value of its dairy products—$1,373,957, from 3465 farms, the value of the product for the entire state being $7,090,188.
The lands included in the township of Litchfield (originally called Bantam) were bought from the Indians in 1715-1716 for £15. the Indians reserving a certain part for hunting. The township was incorporated in 1719, was named Litchfield, after Lichfield in England, and was settled by immigrants from Hartford, Windsor, Wethersfield, Farmington and Lebanon (all within the state) in 1720-1721. In 1751 it became the county-seat of Litchfield county, and at the same time the borough of Litchfield (incorporated in 1879) was laid out. From 1776 to 1780 two depôts for military stores and a workshop for the Continental army were maintained, and the leaden statue of George III., erected in Bowling Green, New York City, in 1770, and torn down by citizens on the 9th of July 1776, was cut up and taken to Litchfield, where, in the house (still standing) of Oliver Wolcott it was melted into bullets for the American army by Wolcott’s daughter and sister. Aaron Burr, whose only sister married Tapping Reeve (1744-1823), lived in Litchfield with Reeve in 1774-1775. In 1784 Reeve established here the Litchfield Law School, the first institution of its kind in America. In 1798 he associated with himself James Gould (1770-1838), who, after Reeve’s retirement in 1820, continued the work, with the assistance of Jabez W. Huntington (1788-1847), until 1833. The school was never incorporated, it had no buildings, and the lectures were delivered in the law offices of its instructors, but among its 1000 or more students were many who afterwards became famous, including John C. Calhoun; Levi Woodbury (1789-1851), United States senator from New Hampshire in 1825-1831 and in 1841-1845, secretary of the navy in 1831-1834 and of the treasury in 1834-1841, and a justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1845; John Y. Mason; John M. Clayton; and Henry Baldwin (1780-1844), a justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1830. In 1792 Mrs Sarah Pierce made one of the first efforts toward the higher education of women in the United States by opening in Litchfield her Female Seminary, which had an influential career of about forty years, and numbered among its alumnae Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs Marshall O. Roberts, Mrs Cyrus W. Field and Mrs Hugh McCulloch. Litchfield was the birthplace of Ethan Allen; of Henry Ward Beecher; of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose novel, Poganuc People, presents a picture of social conditions in Litchfield during her girlhood; of Oliver Wolcott, Jr. (1760-1833); of John Pierpont (1785-1866), the poet, preacher and lecturer; and of Charles Loring Brace, the philanthropist. It was also the home, during his last years, of Oliver Wolcott (1726-1797); of Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge (1774-1835), an officer on the American side in the War of Independence and later (from 1801 to 1817) a Federalist member of Congress; and of Lyman Beecher, who was pastor of the First Congregational church of Litchfield from 1810 to 1826.
See Payne K. Kilbourne, Sketches and Chronicles of the Town of Litchfield, Connecticut (Hartford, Conn., 1859); George C. Boswell, The Litchfield Book of Days (Litchfield, 1900); and for an account of the Litchfield Female Seminary, Emily N. Vanderpoel, Chronicles of a Pioneer School (Cambridge, Mass., 1903).
LITCHFIELD, a city of Montgomery county, Illinois, U.S.A., about 50 m. N. E. of St Louis, Missouri. Pop. (1900) 5918; (1910) 5971. Its principal importance is as a railway and manufacturing centre; it is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago & Alton, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, the Illinois Central, the Wabash, and the Litchfield & Madison railways, and by electric lines connecting with St Louis and the neighbouring towns. In the vicinity are deposits of bituminous coal, fire-clay and moulding sand. There are various manufactures in the city. Litchfield was incorporated as a town in 1856, and was first chartered as a city in 1859.