Material of Altars
Although no documents are extant to indicate the material of which altars were made in the first centuries of Christianity, it is probable that they were made of wood, like that used by Christ at the Last Supper. At Rome such a wooden table is still preserved in the Lateran Basilica, and fragments of another such table are preserved in the church of St. Pudentiana, on which St. Peter is said to have celebrated Mass. During the persecutions, when the Christians were forced to move from one place to another, and Mass was celebrated in crypts, private houses, the open air, and catacombs, except when the arcosolia were used, it is natural to suppose that they were made of wood, probably wooden chests carried about by the bishops, on the lid of which the Eucharistic Sacrifice was celebrated. Optatus of Mileve (De Schismate Donatistarum) reproves the Donatists for breaking up and using for firewood the altars of the Catholic churches, and Augustine of Hippo (Epist. clxxxv) reports that Bishop Maximianus was beaten with the wood of the altar under which he had taken refuge.
Gregory of Nyssa speaks of the consecration of an altar made of stone (De Christi Baptismate). Pulcheria, sister of Theodosius II, presented an altar of gold to the Basilica of Constantinople; St. Helena gave golden altars ornamented with precious stones to the church which was erected on the site where the Cross had been concealed for three hundred years; the Popes Sixtus III (432-440) and St. Hilary (461-468) presented several altars of silver to the churches of Rome. Since wood is subject to decay, the baser metals to corrosion, and the more precious metals were too expensive, stone became in course of time the ordinary material for an altar.
The Roman Breviary (9 November) asserts that St. Sylvester (314-335) was the first to issue a decree that the altar should be of stone. But of such a decree there is no documentary evidence, and no mention is made of it in canon law, in which so many other decrees of this Pope are inserted. Moreover, it is certain that after that date altars of wood and of metal were erected. The earliest decree of a council which prescribed that an altar which is to be consecrated should be of stone is that of the provincial council of Epeaune (Pamiers), France, in 517. The present discipline of the Church requires that for the consecration of an altar it must be of stone.
Read more about this topic: Altar (Catholicism)
Famous quotes containing the words material and/or altars:
“We soon saw, as he saw, that he was not to be pardoned or rescued by men. That would have been to disarm him, to restore to him a material weapon, a Sharp’s rifle, when he had taken up the sword of the spirit,—the sword with which he has really won his greatest and most memorable victories. Now he has not laid aside the sword of the spirit, for he is pure spirit himself, and his sword is pure spirit also.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Goddesses never die. They slip in and out of the world’s cities, in and out of our dreams, century after century, answering to different names, dressed differently, perhaps even disguised, perhaps idle and unemployed, their official altars abandoned, their temples feared or simply forgotten.”
—Phyllis Chesler (b. 1941)