Pie
Pie
is a table or rule which was used in the old Roman offices previous to the Reformation, showing in a technical way how to find out the service which is to be read upon each day, and corresponds to what the Greeks called , or the index (literally a plank, by metonymy a painted table or picture); and because indexes or tables of books were formed into square figures resembling pictures or painters’ tables hung up in a frame, these likewise were called , or, being marked only with the first letters of the word, , or pies. Pie is the familiar English name for the Romish pica (ordinal, or service-book), which perhaps cam’e from the ignorance of the friars, who have thrust in many barbarous words into the liturgies. Some say that the word pye is derived from littera picata, a great black letter in the beginning of some new order in the prayer, and among printers that term is still used, the pica type. See Procter. Book of Common Prayer; Eadie, Eccles. Cyclop. s.v