[1] A branch of the line continued in Poitou during the 13th century,
and ruled in LaMarche till 1303. Hugh de la Marche, whose betrothed
wife, Isabella of Angoulême, King John of England seized (thus
bringing upon himself the loss of the greater part of his French
possessions), was a nephew of Guy of Lusignan. He ultimately married
Isabella, after the death of John, and had by her a number of sons,
half-brothers of Henry III. of England, who came over to England,
amongst other foreign favourites, during his reign.
LUSSIN, a small island in the Adriatic Sea, in the Gulf of Quarnero,
forming together with the adjacent islands of Veglia and Cherso an
administrative district in the Austrian crownland of Istria. Pop. (1900)
11,615. The island is 24 m. in length, is of an average breadth of 1.64
m., being little more than 300 yds. wide at its narrowest point, and has
an area of 29 sq. m. The chief town and principal harbour is
Lussinpiccolo (pop. 7207), which is the most important trading centre in
the Quarnero group. The town has become a favourite winter resort, its
climate resembling that of Nice. To the south-east of it is Lussingrande
(pop. 2349), with an old Venetian palace and a shipbuilding wharf. The
island was first peopled at the end of the 14th century. Its inhabitants
are renowned seamen.
LUSTRATION, a term that includes all the methods of purification and
expiation among the Greeks and Romans. Among the Greeks there are two
ideas clearly distinguishable--that human nature must purify itself
([Greek: katharsis]) from guilt before it is fit to enter into communion
with God or even to associate with men, and that guilt must be expiated
voluntarily ([Greek: hilasmos]) by certain processes which God has
revealed, in order to avoid the punishment that must otherwise overtake
it. It is not possible to make such a distinction among the Latin terms
_lustratio_, _piacula_, _piamenta_, _caerimoniae_, and even among the
Greeks it is not consistently observed. Guilt and impurity arose in
various ways; among the Greeks, besides the general idea that man is
always in need of purification, the species of guilt most insisted on by
religion are incurred by murder, by touching a dead body, by sexual
intercourse, and by seeing a prodigy or sign of the divine will. The
last three spring from the idea that man had been without preparation
and improperly brought into communication with God, and was therefore
guilty. The first, which involves a really moral idea of guilt, is far
more important than the others in Hellenic religion. Among the Romans we
hear more of the last species of impurity; in general the idea takes the
form that after some great disaster the people become convinced that
guilt has been incurred and must be expiated. The methods of
purification consist in ceremonies performed with water, fire, air or
earth, or with a branch of a sacred tree, especially of the laurel, and
also in sacrifice and other ceremonial. Before entering a temple the
worshipper dipped his hand in the vase of holy water ([Greek:
perirrhanterion], _aqua lustralis_) which stood at the door; before a
sacrifice bathing was common; salt-water was more efficacious than
fresh, and the celebrants of the Eleusinian mysteries bathed in the sea
([Greek: halade, mystai]); the water was more efficacious if a firebrand
from the altar were plunged in it. The torch, fire and sulphur ([Greek:
to theion]) were also powerful purifying agents. Purification by air was
most frequent in the Dionysiac mysteries; puppets suspended and swinging
in the air (_oscilla_) formed one way of using the lustrative power of
the air. Rubbing with sand and salt was another method. The sacrifice
chiefly used for purification by the Greeks was a pig; among the Romans
it was always, except in the Lupercalia, a pig, a sheep and a bull
(_suovetaurilia_). In Athens a purificatory sacrifice and prayer was
held before every meeting of the ecclesia; the Maimacteria,[1] in honour
of Zeus Maimactes (the god of wrath), was an annual festival of
purification, and at the Thargelia two men (or a woman and a man) were
sacrificed on the seashore, their bodies burned and the ashes thrown
into the sea, to avert the wrath of Apollo. On extraordinary occasions
lustrations were performed for a whole city. So Athens was purified by
Epimenides after the Cylonian massacre, and Delos in the Peloponnesian
War (426 B.C.) to stop the plague and appease the wrath of Apollo. In
Rome, besides such annual ceremonies as the _Ambarvalia_, _Lupercalia_,
_Cerialia_, _Paganalia_, &c., there was a lustration of the fleet before
it sailed, and of the army before it marched. Part of the ceremonial
always consisted in leading or carrying the victims round the impure
persons or things. After any disaster the _lustratio classium_ or
_exercitus_ was often again performed, so as to make certain that the
gods got all their due. The _Amburbium_, a solemn procession of the
people round the boundaries of Rome, was a similar ceremonial performed
for the whole city on occasions of great danger or calamity; the
_Ambilustrium_ (so called from the sacrificial victims being carried
round the people assembled on the Campus Martius) was the purificatory
ceremony which took place after the regular quinquennial census
(_lustrum_) of the Roman people.
See C. F. Hermann, _Griechische Altertümer_, ii.; G. F. Schömann,
_ib._ ii.; P. Stengel, _Die griechischen Kultusaltertümer_ (1898);
Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii. p. 200 (1885); P. E. von
Lasaulx, _Die Sühnopfer der Griechen und Römer_ (1841); J. Donaldson,
"On the Expiatory and Substitutionary Sacrifices of the Greeks," in
_Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh_, xxvii., 1876; and
the articles by A. Bouché-Leclercq in Daremberg and Saglio,
_Dictionnaire des antiquités_, and by W. Warde Fowler in Smith's
_Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities_ (3rd ed., 1891).