Ciborium sm Large cup, usually gold or silver , which contains the sacred forms for the communion of the faithful, according to the Catholic rite . Today, the snowflakes are usually shorter than the calyces to distinguish them from them.
Use
Cup or large cup with lid acuminado design, is used to store the hosts already consecrated during the Eucharist. It is placed on the altar or in the tabernacle. Its use displaced in the Middle Ages that of other reliquaries, such as the pyx. It is also said that this Sacred Vessel as it is also known can be of any metal.
History
The oldest type of those known today seems to be that of the dove (Eucharistic columba) that was suspended from the canopy or leaned on a plaque and thus came to be used until well into the Gothic era (in the monastery of Santo Domingo de One of the 13th century silos is preserved ). But cylindrical ivory or metal boxes called turres were also used from the 5th to the 10th century. From the 11th century onwards, the cylindrical or prismatic pyx with a conical or pyramidal cover, respectively, no longer standing, already mounted on a support such as chalices, was adopted and since the 16th centuryIt has the globose shape, typical of the current snowflakes. To administer the Sanguis (the Blood of Christ), when this practice was admitted in the usual way, some tubes of gold, silver or tin, called calamus, phistula or siphon, were used in the Church of the West and in the East, a teaspoon with which a particle of the host moistened in the Sanguis was given.
