LIETZMANN, lîts'man, HANS: German Protestant; b. at Düsseldorf Mar. 2, 1875. He was educated at the universities of Jena (1893) and Bonn (1894-97; lic. theol., 1896), and after teaching in a gymnasium at Bonn in 1898-99, became privat-docent at the university in the same city in 1900. Since 1905 he has been professor of church history at Jena. He has edited Kleine Texte für theologische Vorlesungen und Uebungen (Bonn, 1902 sqq.; Eng. transl., Materials for the Use of Theological Lecturers and Students, Cambridge, 1902 sqq.) and Handbuch zum Neuen Testament (in collaboration with H. Gressmann, E. Klostermann, F. Niebergall, and P. Wendland; Tübingen, 1906 sqq.), and has written: Der Menschensohn (Tübingen, 1896); Catenen, Mitteilungen über ihre Geschichte und handschriftliche Ueberlieferung (1897); Apollinaris von Laodicea und seine Schule, i. (1904); and Das Leben des heiligen Simeon Stylites (Leipsic, 1908).

LIFE AND ADVENT UNION. See ADVENTISTS, 4.

LIFTINÆ, SYNOD OF: The second Australian synod held during the reign of Carloman, apparently in 743, at Liftinae, in the sixteenth century called Lestines, the modern Eatinnes (7 m. s.e. of Mons), Belgium. Many things occur in its acts which do not really belong there, and others have scant independent value, being mere confirmations of the first Australian synod of the previous year. It marked an important step in advance, however, in that the principles of church government already fixed in the earlier synod were now more accurately defined as an adherence to primitive usage. Direct dependence on the canons of the earlier Fathers (i.e., the ecumenical councils) was expressly postulated and the attitude assumed toward unlawful marriages prepared the way for the entrance of the Roman code into the kingdom of the Franks. Still more important was the legal aspect, which was equally momentous for Church and State, inasmuch as it involved the moot question of the enormous secularization of the eighth century. They seem to have begun chiefly with Charles Martel, who invested laymen with bishoprics. After the death of Charles the process of restitution began in Austrasia, when the newly consecrated bishops were reinstated in the possessions of the Church, although the greater portion still remained in the hands of laymen as precariæ. In Neustria, on the other hand, those who held ecclesiastical estates retained their illegal property until the accession of Pepin, who gradually put an end to this state of affairs, partly by actual restitution and partly by the system of precariæ which he could revoke at pleasure, even though secularization was still practised to some extent both by him and Carloman.

The provisions of 742 and 743 are important as inaugurating a real, though limited, restitution and as guaranteeing a regular mode of procedure. At the synod Carloman reached an agreement with the bishops. Those who had received ecclesiastical fiefs from the king held them only for life, the

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bishoprics reverting to the Church at death, while the incumbents were required to pay taxes and to keep the buildings in repair. Even in case of reversion, however, the king could, if obliged by necessity, again grant a bishopric as a precaria, the clergy being obliged in the great majority of cases to obey the royal will. Yet the synod secured better conditions for the German Church than prevailed in Neustria, and neither the bishops nor the pope protested. In the latter years of his life Pepin promised that both the secular and regular clergy should retain their property, although this made no material change, the fiefs remaining in the same hands and the provisions for reversion being disregarded. Even at the end of the ninth century a great part of the property of the Church was in the hands of the king and had then been considered practically his own for a hundred years. The application of secularized ecclesiastical property, as established at Liftinæ, contributed in no small measure to the extension of the system of benefices, and this synod thus became important in its bearing on the development of the feudal system of the Middle Ages.

(A. HAUCK.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

The decisions are given in MGH., Leg., sectio ii, 1, p. 26, no. 11. Consult: G. Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, iii. 35 sqq., 8 vols., Kiel, 1844-78; P. Roth, Geschichte des Benefizialwesens, Erlangen, 1850; idem, Feudatität und Unterthanenverband, Weimar, 1863; idem, in Münchner historisches Jahrbuch, i (1865), 275; Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, iii. 525; Rettberg, KD, i. 306.