Altars in Churches.
By the Rev. Geo. S. Tyack, b.a.
The altar, although it is the most important and most conspicuous article of church furniture, is not one that provides much material for gossip of the quaint and curious kind. And this is natural: a decent reverence having protected the Christian “Holy of Holies” from the vagaries that have sometimes invented grotesque customs in connection with other parts of the church. This feeling of sanctity arises most obviously from the fact that on the altar the sacred mystery of the Eucharist is offered; but in early times it was intensified by the knowledge that beneath that altar rested the remains of some saint or martyr. In the first ages it was so far customary thus to commemorate the church’s departed heroes, that confessio, or martyrion (that is, the grave of a confessor or martyr), became recognized names for the altar.
In later times the custom was reversed; the altar was no longer reared over the bones of the saint, but the body of anyone whom the church specially wished to honour was buried beneath the altar; and even now, when interments within churches are forbidden, the same natural feeling often finds expression in the burial of a parish priest immediately without the east wall, as near as possible to the altar that he served.
Probably it was the thought of security guaranteed by the sacredness of the altar which suggested to the monks of Canterbury the making of a grated vault beneath the high altar of the cathedral, in which to store their treasures. Here, before the Reformation, was kept a collection of gold and silver vessels, so large and costly, that in the opinion of Erasmus, Midas and Crœsus would seem but beggars in presence of it. This altar was itself lavishly adorned, and all its glory had not disappeared in the days of Archbishop Laud, one of whose offences was the adorning of it with “a most idolatrous costly glory cloth.”
For richness of material no altar that the world has seen could well excel the one erected in the Cathedral of S. Sophia by the Emperor Justinian. It was “a most inimitable work, for it was artificially composed of all sorts of materials that either the earth or the sea could afford, gold, silver, and all kinds of stones, wood, metals, and other things; which being melted and mixed together, a most curious table was framed out of this universal mass.” The result, one cannot but think, with all its splendour, must have been somewhat barbaric. Other altars we read of in the early ages made of gold, or of pure silver, and others, like that presented to a church by Pulcheria according to Sozomen, adorned with gold and precious stones.
There seems never to have been any very definite rule in force as to the material of which an altar should be made. It is true that the Council of Epaone (A.D. 517) decreed that “no altar should be consecrated except it were of stone;” but in practice, metal and wooden altars still continued to be used, both in the east and the west.
The custom of having a tabernacle permanently on the altar for the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament did not become usual until the twelfth century, but as early as the middle of the ninth century, Leo IV. mentions a pyx suspended for the same purpose above it. In fact we find traces as far back as the sixth of the use of pyxes in the form of doves made of gold or silver; and in England this custom continued until the Reformation. The pyx at Durham Cathedral, which hung from a hook still to be seen in the roof, was in the form of a pelican “in her piety,” that is, feeding her young with her heart’s blood; a figure which has been copied in the lectern now in use.
As the usual ornaments of the altar and its ministers became more numerous and more costly, it was inevitable that the question of responsibility for their provision should arise. Such a dispute came for settlement before Walter de Gray, Archbishop of York (1216-1256) in 1253, and he drew up a catalogue of such necessary things as the parishioners were to provide.
It will perhaps surprise some people to know that the custom of placing vases of flowers on the altar, so far from being a modern innovation, is one of the most ancient ways of adorning it. S. Augustine speaks of a young man taking a flower from an altar in an oratory dedicated to S. Stephen; and elsewhere we read of flowers, skilfully interwoven, as a decoration of the altar.
Anciently altars had no covering, except the linen clothes placed on the top, but as early as the sixth century Gregory of Tours speaks of a silk pall as a covering for one. It was in the eighth century, however, and by the influence of Pope Leo III., that altar-cloths came generally into use. The name for this in the Roman Missal is Pallium, or pall, and that name is still preserved in our English Coronation Service, where the gift of a pall is prescribed as part of the oblation to be made by the Sovereign. In accordance with this direction, and the custom of her ancestors, Queen Victoria, at her coronation, made an offering of a pall of cloth-of-gold, which was presented at the altar steps.
In marked contrast to the reverence shown to the altar in almost all ages and places, is a custom that for some couple of centuries existed at S. Ives in Huntingdonshire. A certain Dr. Robert Wilde, dying there in 1678, left a sum of £50, the interest of which was to be annually expended in the purchase of Bibles, each of which was not to exceed 7s. 6d. in price. The following extraordinary method of distributing these volumes was also enjoined. Six boys and six girls of the parish having been selected, were to stand at the altar and cast thereon with three dice, those making the highest aggregate number of points to have the Bibles. The occasion was to be further improved by the preaching of an appropriate sermon by the Vicar, for which he was to receive the sum of 10s. A piece of ground, now known as “Bible Orchard,” was bought with the legacy, and the distribution has duly taken place ever since in accordance with the donor’s wishes, except that in recent years a small table has been placed at the chancel step for the dice throwings, and the desecration of the altar avoided.
So strange a custom, however good the founder’s intention, could scarcely begin, much less take root, and live among us now; when we see on every hand efforts to treat God’s altar-throne with the reverence, and to adorn it with such dignity, as becomes it. And we may surely see in the revived life and widened usefulness of the English Church of to-day, a fulfilment of the Divine promise, “Them that honour Me, I will honour.”