Tenebrae

[Doug Millison]

An article in the new issue of New York Review of Books starts off with a
discussion of Tenebrae; unfortunately the article, by Eamon Duffy, called "A
Deadly Misunderstanding", a review of 
Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews by James Carroll)  is not on
the Web now).

I don't recall if this came up in the MDMD.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14506a.htm

"Tenebræ is the name given to the service of Matins and Lauds belonging to
the last three days of Holy Week.  [...] All this suggests, as Kutschker has
remarked, that the Office of these three days was treated as a sort of
funeral service, or dirge, commemorating the death of Jesus Christ. [...]
The noise made at the end of Tenebræ undoubtedly had its origin in the
signal given by the master of ceremonies for the return of the ministers to
the sacristy. A number of the earlier Ceremoniales and Ordines are explicit
on this point. But at a later date others lent their aid in making this
knocking. For example Patricius Piccolomini says: "The prayer being ended
the master of ceremonies begins to beat with his hand upon the altar step or
upon some bench, and all to some extent make a noise and clatter." This was
afterwards symbolically interpreted to represent the convulsion of nature
which followed the death of Jesus Christ. "

Tim Ware gives us this in his web guide to M&D:
"Tenebrae
>From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable:
(Lat., darkness, gloom). In the Western Church the Mattins and Lauds of the
following day sung on the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of Holy Week. The
lights [wicks--GET IT?] of 15 candles are extinguished one by one at the end
of each psalm, the last after the Benedictus. The Miserere is then sung in
darkness. The ritual goes back to the 8th century and symbolizes
dramatically Christ's Passion and Death. "