Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 1.djvu/406

ALTAR the church of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, at Ravenna. The interior of the Lateran Ciborium was covered with gold, and from the centre hung a chandelier (farus) "of purest gold, with fifty dolphins of purest gold weighing fifty pounds, with chains weighing twenty-five pounds".



Suspended from the arches of the ciborium, or in close proximity to the altar, were "four crowns of purest gold, with twenty dolphins, each fifteen pounds, and before the altar was a chandelier of gold, with eighty dolphins, in which pure nard was burned". Seven other altars were erected in the basilica, probably to receive the oblations; Duchesne notes the coincidence of the number of subsidiary altars with the number of deacons in the Roman Church (Liber Pont., I, 172, and note 33, 191). This splendid canopy was carried away by Alaric in 410, but a new ciborium was erected by the Emperor Valentinian III at the request of Pope Pope Sixtus III (432–440). Only fragments of a few of the more ancient ciboria have been preserved to our time, but the ciborium of Sant' Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna (ninth century), reproduces their principal features.

IV. .—In his description of the Basilica of Tyre the historian Eusebius says (Hist. Eccl., X, iv) that the altar was enclosed "with wooden lattice-work, accurately wrought with artistic carving", so that it might be rendered "inaccessible to the multitude". The partition thus described, which separated the presbyterium and choir from the nave, was the cancellus or chancel. In a later age the name "chancel" came to be applied to the presbyterium itself. Portions of a number of ancient chancels have been found in Roman churches, and from reconstructions made with their help by archaeologists a good idea of the early chancel may be obtained. Two of these restored chancels, made from fragments found in the oratories of Equizio and in the Church of San Lorenzo, show the style of workmanship, which consisted of geometrical designs. Chancels were made of wood, stone, or metal.

V. .—Constantine the Great, according to the "Liber Pontificalis", erected in St Peter's, in front of the presbyterium, six marble columns adorned with vine-traceries. Whether these columns were originally conacted by an architrave is uncertain, but in the time of Pope Sergius III (687–701) this feature existed. They seem to have served for no special object, and therefore were probably intended to add dignity to the presbyterium. In the Church of the Resurrection at Jerusalem, also erected by Constantine, there were twelve similar columns, corresponding with the number of the Apostles. The iconostasis of the Greek Church and the rood-screen of Gothic churches are evidently traceable to this ornamental feature of the two fourth-century basilicas. The iconostasis, like the chancel in the Latin Church, separated the presbyterium from the nave. Its original form was that of an open screen, but from the eighth century, owing to the reaction against iconoclasm, it began to assume its present form of a closed screen decorated with paintings. A colonnade of six columns (seventh century) in the Cathedral of Torcello gives an idea of the colonnades in the Constantinian basilicas referred to.

VI. .—During the first age of Christianity the faithful were allowed, when persecution was imminent, to reserve the Eucharist in their homes. (See .) This custom gradually disappeared in the West about the fourth century. The Sacred Hosts for the sick were then kept in churches where special receptacles were prepared for them. These receptacles mere either in the form of a dove which hung from the roof of the ciborium, or, where a ciborium did not exist, of a tower (the turris Eucharistica) which was placed in an armarium. In a drawing of the thirteenth-century altar of the Cathedral of Arras an arrangement is seen which is evidently a reminiscence of the suspended dove in those countries where the ciborium had disappeared: the Eucharistic tower is suspended above the altar from a staff in the form of a crosier. The more ordinary receptacle for this purpose, up to the seventeenth century, was the armarium near, or an octagon-shaped tower placed on the Gospel side of, the altar. Tabernacles of the latter kind were generally of stone or wood; those of the dove class of some precious metal. Our present form of tabernacle dates from the end of the sixteenth century.

VII. .—No special formula for the consecration of altars was in use in the Roman Church before the eighth century. In substance, however, what we understand by consecration was practiced in the fourth century. This original form of consecration consisted in the solemn transfer of the relics of a martyr to the altar of a newly erected church. The translation of the bodies of Sts. Gervasius and Protasius, made by St. Ambrose, is the first recorded example of the kind. (See .) But such translations of the mortal remains of martyrs were at this time, and long afterwards, of rare occurrence. Relics, however, by which we must understand objects from a martyr's tomb (the brandea mentioned above), were regarded with only a less degree of respect than the bodies of the martyrs themselves, and served as it were to multiply the body of the saint. This reverence for objects associated with a martyr gave rise to the custom of entombing such relics beneath the altars of newly erected churches, until it ultimately became the rule not to dedicate a church without them. An early example of this practice was the dedication of the basilica Romana by St. Ambrose with pignora of St. Peter and St. Paul brought from Rome (Vita Ambros., by Paulinus, c. xxxiii). St. Gregory of Tours (Lib. II, de Mirac., I, P. L., LXXI, 828) mentions the dedication of the Church of St. Julian in his episcopal city with relics of that saint and of another. When relics of the saints could not be procured, consecrated Hosts and fragments of the Gospels were sometimes used;