Ciborium (architecture) - Terms: Ciborium or Baldachin?

Terms: Ciborium or Baldachin?

The word "ciborium", in both senses, is said to derive from the cup-shaped seed vessel of the Egyptian water-lily nelumbium speciosum, which is supposed to have been used as a cup itself, and to resemble both the metal cup shape and, when inverted, the dome of the architectural feature, though the Grove Dictionary of Art, the Catholic Encyclopedia and other sources are somewhat dubious about this etymology, which goes back to at least the Late Antique period. An alternative is to derive the word from cibes ("food"). Both senses of the word were in use in classical times. The word "baldachin" derives from a luxurious type of cloth from Baghdad, from which name the word is derived, in English as "baudekin" and other spellings. Matthew Paris records that Henry III of England wore a robe "de preciosissimo baldekino" at a ceremony at Westminster Abbey in 1247. The word for the cloth became the word for the ceremonial canopies made from the cloth.

Bernini's St. Peter's baldachin imitates in bronze a cloth canopy above, and thus has some claim to be called a "baldachin", as it always is. A number of other Baroque ciboria, and secular architectural canopies, copied this conceit, for example Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. The voluted top of the Bernini baldachin was also copied by a number of French architects, often producing structures around an altar with no actual canopy or roof, just columns arrayed in an approximate curve (a "rotunda altar"), with only an architrave and volutes above. Examples are at the churches at Val-de-Grâce (François Mansart and Jacques Lemercier, 1660s) and Les Invalides (Jules Hardouin Mansart, 1706) in Paris, Angers Cathedral, Verdun Cathedral, Notre-Dame de Mouzon in Mouzon, Saint-Sauveur in Rennes, and the Saint-Sauveur Basilica in Dinan. These are usually called baldachins (not at Angers), and many have certainly departed from the traditional form of the ciborium. There is a Rococo German example at Worms Cathedral; many German Rococo churches used similar styles that were engaged with the apse wall, or partly so. In addition, according to the 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia articles on "Baldachin" and "Ciborium", the Catholic Church opted, apparently in the 19th century, to use officially "ciborium" only for the vessel and "baldachin" for all architectural forms. Architectural historians generally prefer to use "ciborium" at the least for all square four-column roofed forms.

• A 17th-century Orthodox ciborium from Church of Elijah the Prophet, Yaroslavl

• Scaliger Tombs, Verona. In the foreground the tomb of Mastino II and that of Cansignorio behind.

• French canopy-less "rotunda altar", with voluted top derived from Bernini, Rennes

• Votive Church, Vienna, designed in 1856

• Siena Cathedral, Siena, free-standing with no canopy

• St. Mary's Basilica, Kraków, Poland, attached to a wall, with no canopy.

• Altar-curtain in an Armenian monastery

• Copper baldachin in the Sint-Janskerk at Waalwijk (Netherlands) with the shape of leather skins, 1924