Candlestick (2)
Candlestick,
in Ecclesiastical Usage. As a lighted taper was placed in the hand of the newly baptized, baptism was called "Illumination." On Christmas eve so many lights were kindled that it was called the "Vigil of Lights," and the faithful sent presents of lights one to .another. An early instance of a perpetual light was that of the firehouse of St. Bridget, at Kildare, which burned unquenched from the 5th century to 1220. It may have been connected with a beacon, and the offerings made for its maintenance in part supported the poor. From the number of burning tapers which were used in churches on Easter eve, St. Gregory Nazianzen calls it the "holy night of illuminations;" while Easter day was called the "Bright Sunday," in allusion to the tapers and white robes carried by the neophytes. Tapers were also used at consecration of churches. SEE TAPER.
The triangular candy stick-called the herse in English cathedral statutes- used at the service of the Tenebrae, varied in its number of. tapers, which were nine at Nevers, twelve at Mans, thirteen at Rheims and Paris, twenty- four at Cambray and St. Quentin, twenty- five at Evreux, twenty-six at Amiens. and forty-four at Coutances. Calf hill says that in England it was called the "Judas Cross." The "Lady Candle" was the single taper left burning when all the rest, representing the Apostles, had been extinguished one by one. Sir Thomas More says that it symbolized St. Mary standing beneath the cross of Calvary. At Seville, "entre-los-Coros" is a tenebrario of bronze, twenty-five feet in height, which was 'made in 1562. Herse lights were placed round the bier of the dead, in church, upon a barrow-like structure of iron. These resemble the lights set before the tombs of martyrs in the catacombs.
⇒"Candlestick." topical outline.
