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Elevation of the Host, with vision of St John of Matha, painting by Juan Carreño de Miranda, 1666. In Eastern and Western Christian liturgical practice, the elevation is a ritual raising of the consecrated Sacred Body and Blood of Christ during the celebration of the Eucharist.
A retable is a structure or element placed either on or immediately behind and above the altar or communion table [1] of a church. At the minimum, it may be a simple shelf for candles behind an altar, but it can also be a large and elaborate structure. A retable which incorporates sculptures or paintings is often referred to as an altarpiece.
In the first several centuries of large Christian churches being built, the altar tended to be further forward (towards the congregation) in the sanctuary than in the later Middles Ages (a position to which it returned in the 20th century) and a large altarpiece would often have blocked the view of a bishop's throne and other celebrants, so decoration was concentrated on other places, with ...
Later, the number of steps was increased. It became the norm that the main altar of a church should be raised above the level of the sanctuary by three steps, while side altars had a single step. The papal altar in St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican is approached by seven steps. [31] An odd number was always chosen.
The plan of the interior is a Greek cross, with the altar in the center, modelled after Byzantine churches. More traditional Latin features, the choir and the disambulatory, were added around the altar. The light in interior of the church is unusually dim, due to the height of the windows above the altar, and this contributes to the mystical ...
The floor at the east end was lowered by removing the three steps leading up to the altar so the painting would not obscure the chapel's stained glass windows, and wooden fittings – oak panelling, and a communion rail and reredos installed in 1906 to designs by Detmar Blow were also removed. [4]
Altar in Roskilde Cathedral beneath by a carved reredos. An altar is a table or platform for the presentation of religious offerings, for sacrifices, or for other ritualistic purposes. Altars are found at shrines, temples, churches, and other places of worship.
Typical early Christian Byzantine apse with a hemispherical semi-dome in the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe Typical floor plan of a cathedral, with the apse shaded. In architecture, an apse (pl.: apses; from Latin absis, 'arch, vault'; from Ancient Greek ἀψίς, apsis, 'arch'; sometimes written apsis; pl.: apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi ...