Warning: This post contains material inappropriate for pietists, liturgical experimenters, Missouri Synod clergypeople, Higher Things bloggers, people who attended my last Bible class, my mother, and pretty much everyone else. Don’t read this. It’s blasphemous, poorly researched, and is going to upset anyone not named “Dave Juhl.” Maybe even him.
If you follow me on Twitter, you have seen my playful campaign against the so-called strepitus, the scare-the-wits-out-of-children noise at the end of Good Friday services in some places. It’s supposed to symbolize the closing of the grave, or the earthquake, or something. Someday I’m going to find where it comes from. My suspicion is that it’s some fairly-modern invention, and somebody thought they’d give it a Latin name to make it sound old and thereby authoritative and traditional.
I much prefer the Chief Service, which ends with Holy Communion, that has now found its way into the Lutheran Service Book Altar Book as the preferred rite for Good Friday.
But my friend Bob Waters, in leaving a punny comment here, drove me to Google it. I didn’t get very far before discovering something astonishing. I still don’t know how slamming books or doors came to be accepted liturgical practice among us (I mean, that’s the behavior found in rebellious teenage boys or bad marriages), but I now know this: Strepitus is sometimes used synonymously with crepitus (crepo, to make a rustle, noise, as the less-crass alternative to pedo, I fart). I am not making this up. It’s from a book called The Latin Sexual Vocabulary, by James Noel Adams, pp249f.
So, strepitus, in a roundabout way, means farting. Do we really want to end our Good Friday services with flatulence? Why not – it’d be more natural than throwing our books around. You want theatrical realism? O assembled congregation, smell this death, and weep!
{ 36 comments… read them below or add one }
I'm far from offended. I'd rather crepitus than strepitus any day!
For the record, I don't do that foul strepitus. And I offer BOTH the Chief Service and Vespers.
You have to listen to the BBC's Choral Evensong from last week. The strepitus was present. It was the choristers banging their choir books on the choir stalls. Sounded like a herd of elephants parading through the Quire!
You know, Esget, just when I think you can't get any lower….
you go ……….. and totally redeem yourself!"
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAH! Spectacular!
My child: this is not funny.
xxoo – Mother
Oh, but it is! You were warned against reading this, Mom. How very disappointing…
hummm….one wonders if the 4th Commandment might apply here…
When we were members of a certain very large church in Fort Wayne, the "strepitus" was the slamming of the safe. It's a BIG safe…
Pr. Esget, you are a brave man. But I've wondered for years how it is that we have, in apparently many congregations, dropped the Lord's Supper on Good Friday in favor of slamming things about and making loud noises, with the lights turned down low. I say no more.
From some traditionalist RC site (http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:RRze1Q7HNhEJ...
Roman Catholic practice
The traditional Roman Catholic Tenebrae was a celebration, after dark on the evenings of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of Holy Week, of a combination of the next day's Matins (composed of 3 nocturns each day) and Lauds, the first two hours of the Divine Office. The readings of each day's first nocturn were taken from the Book of Lamentations. Each day's office of Tenebrae contained 15 psalms, 9 readings, and one canticle, the Benedictus (Song of Zechariah). Lighting was gradually reduced throughout the service. Initially 15 candles were lit and placed on a special stand known as a hearse, which were extinguished one by one after each psalm. The last candle was hidden beneath the altar, ending the service in total darkness. In some places the use of a strepitus (Latin for "great noise") was included as part of the service. The great noise was usually generated by slamming a book closed, banging a hymnal or breviary against the pew, or stomping on the floor, symbolizing the earthquake that followed Christ's death. This custom seems to have originated as a simple signal to depart in silence. Following the great noise a single candle, which had been hidden from view, was returned to the top of the hearse, signifying the return of Christ to the world with the Resurrection.
Although it is currently not part of the official rites of the Roman Catholic Church, except for Wednesday evening in cathedrals where the Chrism Mass is celebrated on Thursday morning, Tenebrae, in recent years has regained popularity and is being revived and celebrated in traditionalist Roman Catholic communities on Spy Wednesday.
A "hearse," eh? Just watch – coming soon to a parish near you: someone driving a hearse into the church. Think of the dramatic possibilities with *that*! We could slam shut the back door – that might make the young kids and old ladies crepitus.
For an intro to the service, you could show the opening sequence of that HBO program "Six Feet Under."
Hmmm. Very interesting- and appropriate, in a way. I remember a chapel service in college in which- much to the campus pastor's discomfiture- the lector pronounced the name of the high priest's father-in-law as if it contained only a single 'n'…….
What I really want to know is where you got the nifty sign from.
Ah, the miracle of Google Image Search. Query "fart" and you'll get a number of interesting images. I really wanted to use a couple of different ones, but this is a family-friendly blog.
I would have thought that as a Viking fan would would have liked the Strepitus. It is after all a lot of noise (that may smell bad, apparently) that doesn't do anything of substance – sort of like the Vikings.
Did you have to go *there*?
A theologian of the Cross is compelled to call a thing what it is.
That sounds a lot more like the Cleveland *Browns*
Oh, the Vikings aren't quite that bad.
I can't believe I just said that.
Judas H Priest,. Everybody knows how the strepitus came about. It was not a fart. Long ago and far away, in the great grandfather of my alma mater, the grand and glorious, proud and uproarious Metten Abbey, that great monkatorium of the Order of St Benedict, the single handed saviours of civilisation and otherwise bunch of swell guys, there was a certain calamity of a monk, Stercus.
Now, two things, one being that Tenebrae is not a Good Friday thing any more than Communion, but rather a three day thing for flying Judas at the airshow's sake. For another, as was noted by the Great Monk of all Monkery, Benedict himself, in his holy rule, monks are not well disposed to a wise regulation of wine with meals.
Part the second
Now. Brother Stercus was not well disposed to a wise regulation of intake of anything at meals. So he appoached the end of Tenebrae, his large frame no longer controlled by his diminished faculties, tripped over his choir stall in the dark and crashed to the floor with a great noise perhaps, according to some eye, or nose, witnesses compounded by the release of the tension of good dark bread (Johnnie Bread in the original recipe) and Bavarian sausage.
In the darkness, his similarly compromised bretheren, not knowing what happened, immediately began to consider their ontological situation. After long discussion at chapter, the whole matter, nothing remaining unclear for long under Benedictine eyes, was resolved in a simple phrase now for the ages, along with the great noise recreated in the later popular service bearing the name Tenebrae, with nothing resembling Tenebrae but the name and the candle putting out thing and the great noise:
Stercus accidit.
"And LCMS churches shall dim the lights, the priests shall disappear and offer up 'strepitus,' a sweet aroma to the Lord…."
This is the proper way to debate liturgy. Luther would approve.
Right. Luther's writings are filled with scatological remarks. When something stinks, the only thing to do is take a …
I've often thought that if you read the unexpurgated Luther to a congregation, you'd be thrown out immediately. He'd never make it on the clergy roster of the LCMS, no doubt.
Are you kidding me? I, heir to that most magnificent thing explained to me by Father Godfrey OSB himself, peritus at Vatican II leading liturgical and otherwise reformer, the institutional memory. Why, I knew Brother Stercus himself. Couldn't carry a tone in a bucket, let alone a tune, let the reader understand from our brother Guido, and I don't mean Sarducci, my theory teacher from Eastman. Also, Luther loved Johnnie Bread, tried to get Katie to bake it.
Sadly, there is usually no shortage of farting at a service in which I participate. I don't need to add the strepitus.
TMI
Y'know, this isn't doing anything for my pneumonia, but it sure is keeping me in a good mood!!!
Have you ever heard the "Great Crepitation Contest?" It is a must.
No, what/where is it?
Perhaps he is referring to this:
http://www.manolith.com/2008/11/04/battle-at-thun...
http://oldtimeradio-in-tx.homedns.org/otr/crepita...
My only thought is that while two words may be synonyms, it is not true that one can be substituted for the other in every situation. Correct? So, while Strepitus may be a synonym of Crepitus, it would not necessarily follow that in this context it would be appropriate to swap the words.
I think more work needs to be done to verify the appropriateness…
We can call it "crepitus for the rest of us." Has a certain ring.
I don't usually read articles; I just look at the pictures. Thank you for the new desktop display for my monitor.
So….now we have a new term for the those momentary moments of mental lapses — "Brain strepitus."
That'd be "Cranial Strepitus."
Oh, my dear Senior Pastor, now I understand all the hub bub! I've always known from the twinkle in your eye that there was a mischevious streak in there somewhere. I enjoy your humor, but I rather more enjoy your intellect. Remember – a beloved mother's words are always worth heeding. I note she called you "my child". Sometimes I call Josiah, "my son." It is always said with deep, abiding affection, but also when I want him to hear me clearly. Leo