The Collaborative International Dictionary
Ciborium \Ci*bo"ri*um\, n.: pl. Ciboria. [LL., fr. L. ciborium a cup, fr. Gr. ? a seed vessel of the Egyptian bean; also, a cup made from its largeleaves, or resembling its seed vessel in shape.]
(Arch.) A canopy usually standing free and supported on four columns, covering the high altar, or, very rarely, a secondary altar.
(R. C. Ch.) The coffer or case in which the host is kept; the pyx.
Wiktionary
n. 1 A fixed vaulted canopy over a Christian altar, supported on four columns. 2 A covered receptacle for holding the consecrated wafers of the Eucharist.
Wikipedia
thumb|250px| Silver-gilt ciborium A ciborium (plural ciboria; Latin from the Ancient Greek κιβώριον (kibōrion)) is a vessel, normally in metal. It was originally a particular shape of drinking cup in Ancient Greece and Rome, but later used to refer to a large covered cup designed to hold hosts for, and after, the Eucharist, thus the equivalent for the bread of the chalice for the wine. The word is also used for a large canopy over the altar, which was a common feature of Early Medieval church architecture, now relatively rare.
In ecclesiastical architecture, a ciborium ("ciborion": κιβώριον in Greek) is a canopy or covering supported by columns, freestanding in the sanctuary, that stands over and covers the altar in a basilica or other church. It may also be known by the more general term of baldachin, though ciborium is often considered more correct for examples in churches. Early ciboria had curtains hanging from rods between the columns, so that the altar could be concealed from the congregation at points in the liturgy. Smaller examples may cover other objects in a church. In a very large church a ciborium is an effective way of visually highlighting the altar, and emphasizing its importance. The altar and ciborium are often set upon a dais to raise it above the floor of the sanctuary.
A ciborium is also a covered, chalice-shaped container for Eucharistic hosts. In Italian the word is often used for the tabernacle on the altar, which is incorrect in English.
Ciborium may refer to:
- Ciborium (container), normally a covered cup for holding hosts from the Christian eucharist, or a shape of Ancient Greek cup
- Ciborium (architecture), normally a canopy-like structure build over the altar of a Christian church
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Usage examples of "ciborium".
There were candles and missals, collections plates, beads, lunules, censers, thuribles, aspergillums, and ciboria.
On the table, with extra ciboria containing bread to be consecrated during the Mass, were the cruets of wine and water that would be used.
When he more closely examined the vessels he found in one pyx a number of Hosts, and so fetching thither from the church a consecrated altar-stone which it was the custom to carry when the Viaticum was taken to the dying in order that the ciborium might be decently set thereon, he covered the stone with a corporal or a friar linen cloth and reverently placed it beneath the pyx.
He knew he dared not linger to savor the feeling, but when Father Derfel had covered the ciborium again and put it back into the tabernacle, he felt a greater sense of his own sacral station than he had ever felt before, even at his anointing as king.
His free hand still clutched the ciborium, but he had tipped it in falling, and the top had come off, spilling several of the small Hosts.
The light of all the lamps and candles, and the sunlight streaming down from the windholes above, struck the ciborium and suffused the altar with a heavenly glow.
When a country fellow was collecting wood and dry leaves in a little copse hard by the city he found, wrapped up in a linen cloth beneath some dry brambles and bracken and dead branches of trees, two pyxes or ciboria containing particles which some three years before had been stolen from a neighbouring church, the one of which was used to carry the Lord's Body to the sick, the other being provided for the exposition of the Sanctissimum on the feast of Corpus Christi.
And among them there are False Witnesses, Robbers of Ciboria, Tramplers on Crucifixes, & those who bribe Beggars to make them deny God, & even people who in Mockery have baptized Dogs.
It looked rather like the ciborium used by the priest at Mass for the wafers of the Blessed Sacrament.
And among them there are False Witnesses, Robbers of Ciboria, Tramplers on Crucifixes, &.
With frantic hands, he removed the Christ-filled ciborium from the tabernacle, genuflected again before the Presence, grabbed up the Body of his God and ran for it.
Since in the other ciborium they only found some corrupted particles of the Sacramental Species, in the sight of the whole multitude the clerics who had come from the Bishop broke down the tiny tabernacle that had been improvised, scattered all the boughs and leafery which were arranged about it, extinguished the tapers, and carried the sacred vessels away with them.
At the approach to the central point of the canon of the Mass, when the priest, lifting up his hands, utters the Sursum corda, he raises the whole pattern of action together with the worshippers to the heavenly sphere, symbolized by the ciborium with the starry canopy.