Though thus attributed here to Alcuin, who is known to have revised the Lectionary or Comes Hieronymi, the compilation 176 homilies arranged in order for all the Sundays and festivals of the ecclesiastical year; and probably was completed before the year 780.
In 1871 a new Lectionary was substituted for the previously existing one, into the merits and demerits of which it is not possible to enter here; and in 1872, by the Act of Uniformity Amendment Act, a shortened form of service was provided instead of the present form of Morning and Evening Prayer for optional use in other than cathedral churches on all days exeept Sunday, Christmas Day, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and Ascension Day; provision was also statutably made for the separation of services, and for additional services, to be taken, however, except so far as anthems and hymns are concerned, entirely out of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer.
It was equally from Jerusalem that they subsequently adopted their lectionary and arrangement of the Christian year; and a 9th-century copy of this lectionary in the Paris library preserves to us precious details of the liturgical usages of Jerusalem in the 4th century.
From the 2nd century onwards references multiply, though the earlier references do not prove the existence of a fixed lectionary or order of lessons, but rather point the other way.
Nothing in the shape of a lectionary is extant older than the 8th century, though there is evidence that Claudianus Mamercus made one for the church at Vienne in 450, and that Musaeus made one for the church at Marseilles c. 458.
