Ciborium (architecture) - History

History

The ciborium arose in the context of a wide range of canopies, both honorific and practical, used in the ancient world to cover both important persons and religious images or objects. Some of these were temporary and portable, including those using poles and textiles, and others permanent structures. Roman emperors are often shown underneath such a structure, often called an aedicula ("little house"), which term is reserved in modern architectural usage to a niche-like structure attached to a wall, but was originally used more widely. Examples can be seen on many coins, the Missorium of Theodosius I, the Chronography of 354, and other Late Antique works. The Holy of holies of the Jewish Temple of Jerusalem, a room whose entrance was covered by the parochet, a curtain or "veil", was certainly regarded as a precedent by the church; the naos containing the cult image in an Egyptian temple is perhaps a comparable structure.

The free-standing domed ciborium-like structure that stood over what was thought to be the site of Jesus's tomb within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem was called the aedicula (or "edicule"), and was a key sight for pilgrims, often shown in art, for example in the Monza Ampullae. This structure, erected under Constantine the Great, may itself have been important in spreading the idea of ciboria over altars. The later structure now in its place is far larger, with solid stone walls; the silver plaques covering the old structure were apparently used to make coins to pay the army defending Jerusalem against Saladin in the desperate days of 1187. Ciboria were placed over the shrines of martyrs, which then had churches built over them, with the altar over the spot believed to be the site of the burial. They also served to shelter the altar from dust and the like from high ceilings that could only rarely be reached.

Possibly the earliest important example over an altar was in the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome, also donated by Constantine, looted by the Visigoths in the 5th century and now replaced by a large Gothic structure (see below). This is described as a fastigium in the earliest sources, but was probably a ciborium. Like most major early examples it was "of silver", whose weight is given, presumably meaning that decorated silver plaques were fixed to a wood or stone framework. Unsurprisingly no early examples in precious metal have survived, but many are recorded in important churches. Possibly the earliest ciborium to survive largely complete is one in Sant'Apollinare in Classe in Ravenna (not over the main altar), which is dated to 806-810, though the columns of the example at Sant'Ambrogio appear to date from the original 4th-century church.

The ciborium commissioned by Justinian the Great for Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and described by Paulus Silentarius is now lost. It was also of silver, nielloed, surmounted by "a globe of pure gold weighing 118 pounds, and golden lilies weighing 4 pounds, and above these a golden cross with precious and rare stones, which cross weighed 80 pounds of gold". The roof had eight panels rising to the globe and cross.

The Early Medieval Eastern Orthodox church "directed that the eucharist be celebrated at an altar with a ciborium, from which hung the vessel in which the consecrated host was kept", the vessel sometimes being in the form of a dove. Early depictions of the Last Supper in Christian art, showing the Communion of the Apostles, show them queueing to receive the bread and wine from Christ, who stands under or beside a ciborium, presumably reflecting contemporary liturgical practice. An example of this type is in mosaic in the apse of the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev, under a very large standing Virgin.

According to the 8th-century saint and Patriarch Germanus I of Constantinople: "The ciborium represents here the place where Christ was crucified; for the place where He was buried was nearby and raised on a base. It is placed in the church in order to represent concisely the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Christ. It similarly corresponds to the ark of the covenant of the Lord in which, it is written, is His Holy of Holies and His holy place. Next to it God commanded that two wrought Cherubim be placed on either side (cf Ex 25:18) —for KIB is the ark, and OURIN is the effulgence, or the light, of God."

Examples in Orthodox manuscripts mostly show rounded dome roofs, but surviving early examples in the West often placed a circular canopy over four columns, with tiers of little columns supporting two or more stages rising to a central finial, giving a very open appearance, and allowing candles to be placed along the beams between the columns. The example by the Cosmati in the gallery is similar to another 12th-century Italian ciborium now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and that in the Basilica di San Nicola in Bari. By the Romanesque, gabled forms, as at Sant'Ambrogio, or ones with a flat top, as at the Euphrasian Basilica (illustrated) or St Mark's, Venice, are more typical.

In Gothic architecture the gabled form already used at Sant'Ambrogio returns, now with an elaborate spire-like pinnacle. Probably the most elaborate is the one in the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome, designed by Arnolfo di Cambio and later painted by Barna da Siena. The columns here and at San Paolo Fuori le Mura are still re-used classical ones, in porphyry at San Paolo and Sant'Ambrogio (Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna has its porphry columns, with no canopy surviving). Most of the surviving early examples are in stone in basilica churches, especially in Rome and other parts of Italy; it is unclear how common examples, perhaps in wood, once were in smaller churches.

• Small Pre-Romanesque ciborium, from Italy.

• Basilica di San Nicola in Bari

• Santa Maria Assunta
  Lugnano in Teverina
  Italy, by the Cosmati

• San Paolo Fuori le Mura, Rome

• Basilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome, by Arnolfo di Cambio