planctusn.

a1612 W. Fowler Wks. (1914) I. 327 Wheare art thow, echo, who suld my planctus heare? que faict madonna, when I theme despley?

1864 E. B. Browning Essays 91 We have touched his ‘oration’, so called, nearer than our subject could permit us to do any of Gregory [Nazianzen]'s, because the ‘Planctus’ involves an imagined situation, is poetical in its design.

1901 Jrnl. Germanic Philol. 3 417 From the various German Lamentations he [sc. A. Schönbach] culls eighteen versicles, mostly quatrains, which occur most frequently and of which the first thirteen are in form and in content a free version of the Latin Planctus.

1903 E. K. Chambers Mediæval Stage II. iii. xviii. 32 The metrical hymns are often of the nature of planctus or laments put in the mouths of the Maries as they approach the sepulchre... These planctus add greatly to the vividness and humanity of the play.

1940 G. Reese Mus. Middle Ages (1941) vii. 198 These planctus, with Latin texts, are believed actually to date from the 7th century and to be compositions, perhaps, of St. Eugenius.

1954 New Oxf. Hist. Music II. vi. 193 Although some of the most famous of the planctus of the Passion are solo stanzas, spoken by the Virgin Mary, yet there are a number in dialogue form, the speakers being most frequently Mary and St. John.

1997 Hist. Today (Nexis) July The planctus recounting the sack of the Benedictine monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno in 881 is still sung in the abbey on October 10th each year.