While containing the Sacred Species it should be covered with small white veil of silk or cloth of gold, and may not be handled except by sacred ministers; when empty and purified it may be touched by all clerics (Cong. of Rites, Jan., 1907), and by lay persons if specially authorized. In Eastern Churches the paten commonly used for the distribution of Communion, and the Blessed Sacrament is reserved in gold or silver boxes covered with silk and suspended from the altar-canopy in accordance with ancient custom.
During the first three centuries the Blessed Eucharist was not generally reserved in churches owing to the danger of profanation and the persecutions, but the faithful sometimes kept the Sacred Species in Silver boxes in their homes for the purpose of receiving it at the time of death (St. Jerome, De Afr. Pers., I; Tertullian, On Prayer 14 etc.). In the fourth century there are evidences that it was reserved in churches, but only for the sick. In the fifth and sixth centuries reservation was more common, and the method adopted varied with time and place. The vessels which the Sacred Species was kept were called indiscriminately capsa, pyxis, cuppa, turris, columba, and ciborium, and were themselves preserved either in a chamber in the sacristy (secretarium), in a niche in the wall or pillar (ambry), under an altar, or in other places designated by the words diaconium, pastophorium, vestiarium, etc. Subsequently it became the practice to reserve the Blessed Sacrament in dove-shaped receptacles (columb) or in little towers (turres), the former being suspended by chains from the ciborium or canopy of the altar, and the latter being usually placed in the Armarium. In the sixteenth century the columbæ and the towers began to disappear, and gave way to the tabernacle and the custom which is now universal throughout the Western Church. . Ancient vessels of reservation may still be seen in the treasuries of continental cathedrals at Milan, Cologne, Rouen and elsewhere.
From: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03767a.htm
From: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03767a.htm
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