In the ode that Paul the Silentiary wrote for the opening ceremony at St. Sophia (563 A.D.), he speaks of silver discs, hanging from chains and pierced to receive vessels of ‘fire-wrought’ glass, shaped like the butt of a spear (οὐρίαχος) (Lethaby’s Santa Sophia, p. 50 seq.).[[67]]
We have here in these lamps what is probably the first mention of a new use for our material—one which became before long, for a time, the dominant one. In the ‘spear-butt’ shaped lamps of St. Sophia we may see the prototypes of the conical oil-cups of the Saracens.
Glass, however, was never held in great honour in the ceremonies of the Christian Church. Chalices and patens of glass are indeed mentioned in the Liber Pontificalis as in use at the end of the second century: St. Jerome writes of ‘the Lord’s blood being borne in a vessel of glass,’ and some early miracles have reference to the making good of glass that had been broken. Of a ninth-century saint we are told that his Eucharistic vessels were first of wood, then of glass, and finally of pewter! In later times the use of so fragile a material fell out of use, and was even forbidden by the Church.
In shape it would seem that these early chalices resembled the Greek cantharus. Of this form is what is perhaps the oldest example of a metal chalice that has survived—the cup found at Gourdon, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale. We have, or rather had, another example of this type in the golden chalice inlaid with jewels which was formerly preserved at Monza. In fact, this form is especially characteristic of early Byzantine art; we see such vases represented over and over again on marble reliefs and mosaics. Now in the British Museum there are two vases, distinctly of this cantharus shape; they are of blue, somewhat bubbly glass, with fluted body: one which is perfect was found at Amiens ([Plate XII.]); the other, from the Slade collection, has lost its handles. These vases may well date from the sixth century, and they may very probably have served as chalices.
Let us now turn to some of the rare specimens of early glass to be found in the treasuries of churches, chiefly in the north of Italy.
At Rome, in the church of St. Anastasia, is a bowl of opaque glass, with ornaments in relief, mounted on a metal foot. This claims to be the chalice used by St. Jerome.
More famous is the sacro catino preserved in the cathedral of St. Lorenzo at Genoa. There is no reason to doubt the story that this bowl fell to the share of a Genoese when the town of Cæsarea was sacked by the Crusaders in the year 1101. It seems to have suffered no diminution in sanctity from a want of uniformity in the tradition as to its earlier history.[[68]] The sacro catino is a shallow hexagonal bowl with feet and handles; the slight ornaments on the surface are finished with a tool. It was carried off to Paris during the revolutionary war, and then discovered to be not an emerald, as had been always maintained, but a piece of admirably tinted glass, containing, however, a few air-bubbles. The bowl was broken before its return to Genoa, and the pieces are now united by a filigree mounting of gold.
VASE OF BLUE GLASS, PROBABLY A CHALICE
ABOUT FIFTH CENTURY, A.D.