of the horns of goats believed to have been slain by Diana; while at Miletus was an altar composed of the blood of victims sacrificed (Paus. v. 13. 6). The altar at Phorae in Achaea was of unhewn stones (Paus. vii. 22. 3). The altar used at the festival in honour of Daedalus on Mt. Cithaeron was of wood, and was consumed along with the sacrifice (Paus. ix. 3. 4). Others of bronze are mentioned. But these were exceptional, the usual material of an altar was marble, and its form, both among the Greeks and Romans, was either square or round; polygonal altars, of which examples still exist, being exceptions. When sculptured decorations were added they frequently took the form of imitations of the actual festoons with which it was usual to ornament altars, or of symbols, such as crania and horns of oxen, referring to the victims sacrificed. As a rule, the altars which existed apart from temples bore the name of the person by whom they were dedicated and the names of the deities in whose service they were, or, if not the name, some obvious representation of the deity. Such, for example, is the purpose of the figures of the Muses on an altar dedicated to them, now to be seen in the British Museum. An altar was retained for the service of one particular god, except where through local tradition two or more deities had become intimately associated, as in the case of the altar at Olympia to Artemis and Alpheus jointly, or that of Poseidon and Erechtheus in the Erechtheum at Athens. The most remarkable instance of multiple dedication was, however, at Oropus, where the altar was divided into five parts, one dedicated to Heracles, Zeus and Paean Apollo, a second to heroes and their wives, a third to Hestia, Hermes, Amphiaraus and the children of Amphilochus, a fourth to Aphrodite Panacea, Jason, Health, and Healing Athene, and the fifth to the Nymphs, Pan, and the rivers Archelous and Cephissus (Paus. i. 34. 2). Such deities were styled σύμβωμοι, each having a separate part of the altar (Paus. i. 34. 2). Other terms are ἀγώνιοι, or ὁμοβώμιοι. Deities of an inferior order, who were conceived as working together—e.g. the wind gods—had an altar in common. In the same way, the “unknown gods” were regarded as a unit, and had in Athens and at Olympia one altar for all (Paus. i. 1. 4; v. 14. 5; cf. Acts of Apostles, xvii. 18). An altar to all the gods is mentioned by Aeschylus (Suppl. 222). Among the exceptional classes of altars are also to be mentioned those on which fire could not be kindled (βωμοὶ ἄπυροι), and those which were kept free from blood (βωμοὶ ἀναίμακτοι), of which in both respects the altar of Zeus Hypatos at Athens was an example. The ἑστία was a round altar; the ἐσχάρα, one employed apparently for sacrifice to inferior deities or heroes (but ἐσχάρα Φοίβον, Aesch. Pers. 205). In Rome an altar erected in front of a statue of a god was always required to be lower than the statue itself (Vitruvius iv. 9). Altars were always places of refuge, and even criminals and slaves were there safe, violence offered to them being insults to the gods whose suppliants the refugees were for the time being. They were also taken hold of by the Greeks when making their most solemn oaths.
Ancient America.—As a single specimen of an altar, wholly unrelated to any of the foregoing, we may cite the ancient Mexican example described by W. Bullock (Six Months in Mexico, London, 1824, p. 335). This was cylindrical, 25 ft. in circumference, with sculpture representing the conquests of the national warriors in fifteen different groups round the side.[1]
Portable altars and tables of offerings were used in pre-Christian as well as in Christian ritual. One such was discovered in the Gezer excavations, dating about 200 b.c. It was a slab of polished limestone about 6 in. square with five cups in its upper surface. Another from the same place was a small cubical block of limestone bearing a dedication to Heracles. They have also been found in Assyria. Pocket altars are still used in some forms of worship in India. See the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1852, p. 71.
Altars in the Christian Church
I. The Early Church.—The altar is spoken of by the early Greek and Latin ecclesiastical writers under a variety of names:—τράπεζα, the principal name in the Greek fathers and the liturgies; θυσιαστήριον (rarer; used in the Septuagint for Hebrew altars); ἰλαστήριον; βωμός (usually avoided, as it is a word with heathen associations); mensa Domini; ara (avoided like βωμός, and for the same reason); and, most regularly, altare. After the 4th century other names or expressions come into use, such as mensa tremenda, sedes corporis et sanguinis Christi.
The earliest Christians had no altars, and were taunted by the pagans for this. It is admitted by Origen in his reply to Celsus (p. 389), who has charged the Christians with being a secret society “because they forbid to build temples, to raise altars.” “The altars,” says Origen, “are the heart of every Christian.” The same appears from a passage in Lactantius, De Origine Erroris, ii. 2. We gather from these passages that down to about A.D. 250, or perhaps a little later, the communion was administered on a movable wooden table. In the Catacombs, the arcosolia or bench-like tombs are said (though the statement is doubtful) to have been used to serve this purpose. The earliest church altars were certainly made of wood; and it would appear from a passage in William of Malmesbury (De Gest. Pontif. Angl. iii. 14) that English altars were of wood down to the middle of the 11th century, at least in the diocese of Worcester.
The cessation of persecution, and consequent gradual elaboration of church furniture and ritual, led to the employment of more costly materials for the altar as for the other fittings of ecclesiastical buildings. Already in the 4th century we find reference to stone altars in the writings of Gregory of Nyssa. In 517 the council of Epaone in Burgundy forbade any but stone pillars to be consecrated with chrism; but of course the decrees of this provincial council would not necessarily be received throughout the church.
Pope Felix I. (A.D. 269–274) decreed that “mass should be celebrated above the tombs of martyrs”—an observance probably suggested by the passage in Revelation vi. 9, “I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God.” This practice developed into the medieval rule that no altar can be consecrated unless it contain a relic or relics.
The form of the altar was originally table-shaped, consisting of a plane surface supported by columns. There were usually four, but examples with one, two and five columns are also recorded. But the development of the relic-custom led to the adoption of another form, the square box shape of an “altar- tomb.” Transitional examples, combining the box with the earlier table shape, are found dating about 450. Mention is made occasionally of silver and gold altars in the 5th to the 8th centuries. This means no doubt that gold and silver were copiously used in its decoration. Such an altar still remains in Sant' Ambrogio at Milan, dating from the 9th century (see fig. 1).
II. The Medieval Church.—It will be convenient now to pass to the fully-developed altar of the Western Church with its accessories, though the rudiments of most of the additional details are traceable in the earlier period.
In the Roman Catholic Church, which preserves in this respect the tradition that had become established during the middle ages, the component parts of a fixed altar in the liturgical sense are the table (mensa), or super-altar, consisting of a stone slab; the support (stipes), consisting either of a solid mass or of four or more columns; the sepulchrum, or altar-cavity, a small chamber for the reception of the relics of martyrs. The support, in the technical sense, must be of stone solidly joined to the table; but, if this support consist of columns, the intervals may be filled with other materials, e.g. brick or cement. The altar-slab or “table” alone is consecrated, and in sign of this are cut in its upper surface five Greek crosses, one in the centre and one in each corner. These crosses must have been anointed by the bishop with chrism in the ritual of consecration before the altar can be used. Crosses appear on the portable altar buried with
- ↑ Bullock also says (p. 354) that the altar in the church of the Indian village of S. Miguel de los Ranchos which he visited was “of the same nature as those in use before the introduction of Christianity.”
