place. The altar
is a raised structure on which propitiatory offerings are placed. In the
Christian church the altar is a table or slab on which the instruments
of the Eucharist are displayed.

[Side note: The Altar.]

The early Christian altars were portable structures of wood, and the
Church of Rome still allows the use of an altar of this description,
although a consecrated stone, containing an authentic relic and regarded
as the true altar, must be placed upon the wooden table. The slab
forming the altar was sometimes supported on pillars, but more
frequently on solid masonry, and previous to the Reformation it was
marked with five crosses cut into the top, in allusion to the five
wounds of Christ. From the period that stone altars were introduced it
was usual to enclose within them the relics of saints, so that in some
cases they were the actual tombs of saints. In England the altars were
generally taken down about the year 1550, set up again in the beginning
of the reign of Queen Mary, and again removed in the second year of
Queen Elizabeth. In the church of Porlock, Somerset, the original high
altar has been preserved, though not in use, being placed against the
north wall of the chancel. In Dunster Church, in the same county, there
is a solid stone altar, said to have been the original high altar, and
in the ruined church of S. Mary Magdalene at Ripon, the high altar has
escaped destruction. Of chantry altars we have several left, including
those at Abbey Dore, Herefordshire; Grosmont, Monmouthshire; Chipping
Norton, Oxon.; Warmington, Warwick; S. Giles's, Oxford; Lincoln
Cathedral, and many others; and it is rare to find a Gothic church
without some traces of altars in their various chapels, oratories or
chantries.

The altar is, of course, an adoption by the Christian church of a pagan
aid to worship, and at S. Mary's church, Wareham, which is thought to
stand on the site of a Roman temple, are some pieces of stone considered
by antiquaries to be portions of a pagan altar, on which burnt offerings
were placed.

Above many Christian altars was placed a piece of sculpture or a
painting representing some religious subject. These altar pieces
sometimes consist of two pictures, when they are called "diptyches," and
sometimes of three pictures, when they are called "triptyches," and
both forms usually fold up or are provided with shutters. They are often
rare examples of the Flemish and other schools of painti