ALTAR, is also used among Christians for the communion-table.
In the primitive church, the altars were only of wood; as being frequently to be removed from place to place. But the council of Paris, in 509, decreed that no altar should be built but of stone.—At first there was but one altar in each church; but the number soon increased; and from the writings of Gregory the Great, who lived in the sixth century, we learn, that there were sometimes in the same church 12 or 13. In the cathedral of Magdeburg there are no less than 49 altars.
The altar is sometimes sustained on a single column, as in the subterranean chapels of St Cecilia, at Rome, &c.; and sometimes by four columns, as the altar of St Sebastian of Crypta Arenaria; but the customary form is, to be a massive of stone-work, sustaining the altar-table. These altars bear a resemblance to tombs:
to this purpose, we read in church-history, that the Altar-thane primitive Christians chiefly held their meeting at the tombs of the martyrs, and celebrated the mysteries of religion upon them; for which reason, it is a standing rule to this day in the church of Rome, never to build an altar, without inclosing the relics of some saint in it.