LUPERCALIA, a Roman festival held on Feb. 15 in honour of Lupercus, regarded as the god of fertility, in the celebration of which dogs and goats were sacrificed and their skins cut up into thongs, with which the priests ran through the city striking every one, particularly women, that threw themselves in their way.

LUPERCUS, an ancient Italian god, worshipped by shepherds as the protector of their flocks against wolves.

LUPUS, a chronic disease of the skin, characterised by the tuberculous eruptions which eat into the skin, particularly of the face, and disfigure it.

LUSATIA, a district of Germany, between the Elbe and the Oder, originally divided into Upper and Lower, belongs partly to Saxony and partly to Prussia; it swarmed at one time with Wends.

LUSIAD or LUSIADES, a poem of Camoens in ten cantos, in celebration of the discoveries of the Portuguese in the East Indies, and in which Vasco da Gama is the principal figure; it is a genuine national epic, in which the poet passes in review all the celebrated exploits and feats that glorify the history of Portugal.

LUSITANIA, the ancient name of Portugal, still used as the name of it in modern poetry.

LUSTRUM, a sacrifice for expiation and purification offered by one of the censors of Rome in name of the Roman people at the close of the taking of the census, and which took place after a period of five years, so that the name came to denote a period of that length.

LUTETIA, the ancient name of Paris, Lutetia Parisiorum, mud-town of the borderers, as Carlyle translates it.

LUTHER, MARTIN, the great Protestant Reformer, born at Eisleben, in Prussian Saxony, the son of a miner, was born poor and brought up poor, familiar from his childhood with hardship; was sent to study law at Erfurt, but was one day at the age of 19 awakened to a sense of higher interests, and in spite of remonstrances became a monk; was for a time in deep spiritual misery, till one day he found a Bible in the convent, which taught him for the first time that “a man was not saved by singing masses, but by the infinite grace of God”; this was his awakening from death to life, and to a sense of his proper mission as a man; at this stage the Elector of Saxony was attracted to him, and he appointed him preacher and professor at Wittenberg; on a visit to Rome his heart sank within him, but he left it to its evil courses to pursue his own way apart; if Rome had let him alone he would have let it, but it would not; monk Tetzel arrived at Wittenberg selling indulgences, and his indignation was roused; remonstrance after remonstrance followed, but the Pope gave no heed, till the agitation being troublesome, he issued his famous “fire-decree,” condemning Luther’s writings to the flames; this answer fired Luther to the quick, and he “took the indignant step of burning the decree in 1520 at the Elster Gate of Wittenberg, Wittenberg looking