Christian Altar

Christian Altar

the table or raised surface on which the eucharist is consecrated.

I. Names Of The Altar . —

1. Trapeza ( Τράπεζα , a Table ; As in  1 Corinthians 10:21). This is the term most commonly used by the Greek fathers and in Greek liturgies; sometimes simply The table by pre-eminence, but more frequently with epithets expressive of awe and reverence. St. Basil in one passage (Ep. 73) appears to contrast the tables of the orthodox with the altars of Basilides. Sozomen says ( Hist.  Ecclesiastes 9:2, p. 368) of a slab which covered a tomb that it was fashioned as if for a holy table — a passage which seems to show that he was familiar with stone tables.

2. Thusiasterion ( Θυσιαστήριον , The Place Of Sacrifice ), the word used in the Sept. for Noah's altar ( Genesis 8:20), and both for the altar of burnt-sacrifice and then altar of incense under the Levitical law, but not for heathen altars.

This word in  Hebrews 13:10 is referred by some commentators to the Lord's table, though it seems to relate rather to the heavenly than to the earthly sanctuary. In Ignatius, too, it can scarcely designate the table used in the eucharist. But by this word Eusebius ( Hist. Eccles. 10:4, 44) describes the altar of the great church in Tyre, and again ( Panegyr. s. f.), he speaks of altars erected throughout the world. Athanasitus, or Pseudo- Athanasius ( Disp. Contra Arium ) . explains the word "table" by this term. This name rarely occurs in the liturgies. It not unfrequently designates the enclosure within which the altar stood, or bema (see Mede, Works , p. 382 sq.).

3. The Copts call the altar Hilasterion ( Ἱλαστήριον ), the word applied in the Greek Scriptures to the mercy-seat, or covering of the ark; but in the Coptic liturgy of St. Basil they use the ancient Egyptian word Pimanershoiishi , which in Coptic versions of Scripture answers to the Greek Thusiasterion.

4. The word Bomos ( Βωμός ) is used in Scripture and in Christian writers generally for a heathen altar (so  1 Maccabees 1:54;  1 Maccabees 1:59). The word is, however, applied to the Levitical altar in  Sirach 1:12, the work of a gentilizing writer. It is generally repudiated by early Christian writers except in a figurative sense: Clement of Alexandria (Stromata, 7:717) and Origen (Contra Celsum, 8:389) declare that the soul is the true Christian altar (bomos), the latter expressly admitting the charge of Celsus that the Christians had no material altars. Yet in later times it was sometimes used for the Christian altar.

5. The expression Mensa Domini , or Mensa Dominica , is not uncommon in the Latin fathers, especially Augustine. An altar raised in honor of a martyr frequently, bore his name; as "mensa Cypriani." The word Mensa is often used for the slab which formed the top of the altar.

6. Ara is frequently applied by Tertullian to the Christian altar, though not without some qualification. Yet it is repudiated by the early Christian apologists on account of its heathen associations. In rubrics, Ara designates a portable altar or consecrated slab. Ara is also used for the substructure on which the mensa, or altar proper, was placed.

7. But by far the most common name in the Latin fathers and in liturgical diction is Altare , a "high altar," from Altus. This is the Vulgate equivalent of Thusiasterion. So Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine. Yet Cyprian speaks (Ep. 59, § 15) of "diaboli altaria," so uncertain was the usage. In the Latin liturgies scarcely any other name of the altar occurs than altarne. The plural, altaria, is also occasionally used by ecclesiastical writers, as invariably by classical authors, to designate an altar. The singular altarium occurs in late writers, but is also used in a wider sense for the bema, or sanctuary; so also altaria.

8. In most European languages, not only of the Romanesque family, but also of the Teutonic and Slavonic, the word used for the Lord's table is derived, with but slight change, from Altare. In Russian, however, another word, Prestol , properly a throne, is in general use.

II. Parts Composing Altars . — In strictness the table or tomb-like structure constitutes the altar — the steps on which it is placed, and the ciborium, or canopy which covered it, being accessories.

The altar itself was composed of two portions — the supports, whether legs or columns, in the table form, or slabs in the tomb-like, and the mensa, or slab which formed the top. The expression cornu altaris (horn of the altar), often used in rituals, appears to mean merely the corner or angle of the altar, no known example showing any protuberance at the angles or elsewhere above the general level of the mensa, although in some instances the central part of the surface of the mensa is slightly hollowed. By the cornu evangelii is meant the angle to the left of the priest celebrating; by cornu epistole that to the right. These phrases must, however, it would seem, date from a period subsequent to that when the Gospel was read from the ambo.

III. Tomb-Altars . — The change from wood to stone as the material of altars in the early Church was not only for reasons of durability and elegance, but probably grew in part out of the necessities of the times, especially the. celebration of worship in the catacombs of Rome; and this in turn gave rise to the custom, especially prevalent there, of combining an altar and a tomb together. Hence the form gradually changed from the flat table, or Mensa , to the chest, or Arca.

It was, however, not only in Rome that the memorials of martyrs and altars were closely associated. The eighty-third canon of the African Code (A.D. 419) orders that the altaria which had been raised everywhere by the roads and in the fields as memorice martyrum should be overturned when there was no proof that a martyr lay beneath them, and blames the practice of erecting altars in consequence of dreams and "inane revelations." The most clear proofs of the prevalence of the practice of placing altars over the remains of martyrs and saints at an early period are furnished by passages in Prudentius. The practice of placing the altar over the remains of martyrs or saints may probably have arisen from a disposition to look upon the sufferings of those confessors of the faith as analogous with that sacrifice which is commemorated in the eucharist; and the passage in  Revelation 6:9," I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the Word of God," no doubt encouraged or instigated the observance. The increasing disposition to venerate martyrs and their relics fostered this practice. (See Tomb-Altar).

It is difficult to find the date at which it became customary to incise crosses, usually five in number, on the mensa of an altar; but they are found on the portable altar which was buried with St. Cuthbert (A.D. 687). Two are to be seen on the oaken board to which the plating of silver was attached, and two on the plating itself, but it is quite possible that originally there were five on each. In the order for the dedication of a church in the sacramentary of Gregory the Great, the bishop consecrating is desired to make crosses with holy water on the four corners of the altar; but nothing is said of incised crosses.

The practice of making below the mensa a cavity to contain relics, and covering this by a separate stone let into the mensa, does not appear to be of an early date.

IV. Structural Accessories Of The Altar — Usually, though not invariably, the altar was raised on steps, one, two, or three in number. From these steps the bishop sometimes preached. Beneath the steps it became customary, from the 4th century, at least, at Rome and wherever the usages of Rome were followed, to construct a small vault called confessio. This was originally a mere grave or repository for a body, as in the Church of St. Alessandro, near Rome, but gradually expanded into a vault, a window or grating below the altar allowing the sarcophagus in which the body of the saint was placed to be visible.

In the Eastern Church a piscina is usually found under the altar. What the antiquity of this practice may be does not seem to be ascertained; but it may have existed in the Western Church, since in a Frankish missal, in consecrating an altar, holy water is to be poured ad basem.

The altar was often enclosed within railings of wood or metal, or low walls of marble slabs. These enclosures were often mentioned by early writers under the names ambitus altaris, circuitus altaris; the railings were called cancelli, and the slabs transennae.

Upon these enclosures columns and arches of silver were often fixed, and veils or curtains of rich stuffs suspended from the arches. Pope Leo III gave ninety-six veils, some highly ornamented, to be so placed round the ambitus altaris and the presbyterium of St. Peter's at Rome. For the canopy over the altar, (See Ciborium).

V. Appendages Of The Altar . — In ancient times, a feeling of reverence prevented anything from being placed upon the altar but the altar-cloths and the sacred vessels with the elements. Even in the 9th century Leo IV (De Cura Pastorall, § 8) limited the objects which might lawfully be placed on the altar to the shrine containing relics, or perchance the codex of the Gospels, and the pyx, or tabernacle in w