The following are the prayers for the hallowing of candles upon Candlemas-day, copied from *' The I>oc- trine of the Mass-book," 1554. The asterisks Indicate crossings : ** O Lord Jesus Cbrist, * bless thou this creature of a waxen taptr at our humble supplication, and by the virtue of the holy cross pour thou into it an heavenly benediction ; that as thou hast granted it unto man's use for the expelling of darkness, it may receive such a strength and blessing, through the token of thy holy cross, that in what places soever it be light- ed or set, the Devil may avoid out of those habitations, and tremble for fear, and fly away discouraged, and presume no more to unquiet them that serve thee, who with God," etc Then follow other prayers, in one of which occur these passages : ** We humbly beseech thee that thou wilt vouchsafe to * bless and sanctify these candles prepared unto the uses of men, and health of bodies and souls, as well on the land as the waters." "Vouchsafe ♦ to bless and * sanctify, and with the candle of heavenly benediction to lighten these tapers; which we thy servants taking in the honor of thy name (when they are lighted), desire to bear," etc. " Here let the candles be sprinkled with holy water." The service concludes with this Rubric *' When the hallowing of the candle is done, let the candles be lighted and distributed."
" The festival of St. Agatha, which commences on Candlemas-day in Sicily, strongly resembles the Fe- bruan rites. Lighted tapers form a distinguishing part of the ceremonial ; and the memory of Proserpine is still cherished, though under another superstition, by kindling a blazing pine torch near the very spot to which the mythological legend assigned the scene of Pluto's amorous force. An account of this festival will be found in Blunt's Vettiges of Andent Mcamen m Italy, ^^ — ^Bingham, Orig, Ecelea. bk. xx, c. viii, § 4 ; August!, Denkwurdi^beiten^ Thl. iii, p. 79; Siegel, Al- terthumer, iii, p. 826; Eadie, Eedea, Dictionary, s. v. ; Chambers, Book of Days, i, 212 sq. ; Brand, Popular AntiquUietf i, 24 sq.
Candlestick (n'ni3T3,m«»oraA'; Chaid.nnta^aj, nebrathtah^; Sept and N. T. Xw^vtCT, properly a kmp- tiand, as in Matt, v, 15), the candelabrum which Mo- ses was commanded to make for the tabernacle, after the model shown him in the mount. Its form is chief- ly known to us by tbe passages in Exod. xxv, 81-40 ; xxxvii, 17-r24 ; on which some additional light is thrown by the Jewish writers, and by the representa- tion of the spoils of the Temple on the arch (q. v.) of Titus at Bome, the only veritable monument extant
The Golden ^^ CandleBtiek** aa it now appean on the Ardi of
TitOB.
of the kind (Prideaux, ConnecHon, i, 168). It is called in Lev. xxiv, 4, " the pure," and in Ecclns. xxvi. Id, **the holy candlestick." So Diodorus Sicidus de- scribes it (x, 100, ed. Bip.) as " the so-called immortal light perpetually burning in the fane'* (6 60dvixroc— XiySfuvo^ Xv^voc Kal kcu6/uvoq ddtaKtivrwc Iv rtf va(f).
The material of which it was made was fine (^iro, "/wre") gold, of which an entire talent was expended on the candelabrum itself and its appendages. The mode in which the metal was to be worked is de- scribed by a term (Hl^p^, " beaten [rather turned] work," Sept. ropevrfi, Vulg. ductile) which appears to mean wnmght with the hammer, as opposed to cast by fusion. Joeephus, however, says (AtU. iii, 6, 7) that it was of casi gold (KSxt^vevfAiini), and hollow. The structure of the candelabrum, as for as it is defined in the passages referred to, oonsisted of a base Q-^^^, Joseph, fidmc ; according to Maimonides, three feet high) ; of a shaft (HS^, reedj i. e. stem) rising out of it ; of six arms, which came out by threes from two opposite sides of the shaft ; of seven lamps, which were supported on the summits of the central shaft and the six arms, terminating in seven heads all in one row [?], standing parallel to one another, one by one, in imitation of the planets (Whiston's Joeephm^ 1. c.) ; and of three difl^ent kinds of ornaments belonging to the shaft and arms. These ornaments are called by names which mean ctip9, circIeU, and biouoms: ''four bowls made like unto almonds, with their knops and their flowers." The cups (D'^Uf'^aa, Sept KparrjptQ, Vulg. ecyphi) receive, in verse 83, the epithet almomd- shaped (it being uncertain whether the resemblance was to the /not or to the fiouxri). Three such cups are allotted to every arm, but four to the shaft : two- and-twenty in all. See Bowx.. Of the four on the shaft, three are mentioned as if set severally under the spots where the three pairs of arms set out fhAn the shaft. The place of the fourth is not assigned; but we may conceive it to have been either between the base and the cup below the lowest tier of arms, or, as B&hr prefers, to have been near the summit of tbe shaft. As for the name of the second ornament, the circlets (D'^'l'n^S), the word only occurs in two other places in the Old Testament (Am. ix, 1 ; Zeph. ii, 14), in which it appears to mean the copkci of a col- umn ; but the Jewish writers generally (cited in Ugo- lini Thesaur. xi, 917) concur in considering it to mean appks in this place. Josephus, as he enumeratesybicr kinds of ornaments, and therefore two of his terms must be considered identical, may be supposed to have understood globe*, or pcmegranales (afcupiaj potinoi^