High Altar will have three or more steps. There should be an uneven number.
The top step before the altar forms a platform on which the celebrant stands while he says Mass. This is the foot-pace or suppedaneum.[1] It should be as long across as the width of the altar, and so wide in front that the celebrant may genuflect on it without having to put his foot outside it. The lower steps go round the foot-pace, not only in front, but at the sides, so that one can go up to it from either side as from the front. The steps of a fixed altar should be of stone; but the foot-pace ought to be of wood.[2]
On one altar in the church (in smaller churches generally on the High Altar) is the tabernacle in which the Blessed Sacrament is reserved.[3] This is a box, with doors opening outwards, in the middle of the altar, leaving enough room in front of it for the vessels and other things used at any ceremony. It must be an iron safe fixed solidly to the altar and so to the ground, or to the wall of the church. Inside, the tabernacle is gold or gilt; it is lined with white linen or silk, and has a corporal on which the ciborium stands. Often at the back of the altar, on either side of the tabernacle, there is one or more raised steps, on which the candles or vases of flowers are placed. These are the gradines. Before the tabernacle in which the Sanctissimum is reserved, a lamp should always burn.[4] This generally hangs from the roof. There may be several lamps, uneven in number.
The altar is covered with three cloths. Under these the Pontifical requires that there be a cere-cloth (chrismale) of waxed linen, at least immediately after consecration. The cere-cloth is not counted as one of the three altar-cloths. It is allowed to fold one cloth in two, and so to use it for the two lower altar-cloths. The upper cloth should be as wide as the altar, and long enough to reach to the ground on either side.
In front of the altar hangs the frontal (antependium) of the colour of the office, the same as the celebrant's vestments. The tabernacle must also have a veil of the same colour, or of cloth of gold or silver. But, where the Sanctissimum is reserved, the tabernacle veil may not be black. In this case, at Requiems it should be purple. The frontal may then be either black or purple (p. 133). If the altar is of some precious substance it may dispense with a frontal. There is no permission ever to dispense with the tabernacle veil where the Sanctissimum is reserved, though this abuse often occurs at Rome.
On the altar, in the middle, stands a cross, sufficiently
- ↑ Italian, “predella.”
- ↑ S.C.R. 3576, ad I (15 iun 1883).
- ↑ Cod., c. 1268-1269.
- ↑ Cod., c. 1271. The glass of the lamp should be white. There is no justification for any other colour. The Caer. Ep. requires many lamps in the church, three before the High Altar and at least five before the Blessed Sacrament (Lib. I, cap. xii, § 17). In England we have long prescribed a lawful custom of burning one lamp only before the tabernacle.
