AMBRY (ARMARIUM)

A niche, usually in the wall, with or without a door, for storing or showing books, clothes, food, jewelry, money, precious objects, small statues, vessels, etc. This function was known from antiquity. In Christian usage, the ambry served for the reservation of altar bread and wine, sacred vessels, liturgical books, holy oils, relics, and the Eucharist. From the 4th century, sacred objects were kept in church (preferably in the sanctuary or high up in a nearby pillar) or sacristy. At least from the early 6th century, ambries were made in the stems of altars. After the decree Sane of innocent iii, the doors of Eucharistic ambries had locks and keys. As devotion to the Holy Eucharist grew, ambries were placed in more prominent places in church and often had barred windows. The tabernacle for reservation upon the altar (9th century) superseded the ambry from the 16th century onward. Documentary and archeological evidence of many varieties of ambry abounds all over the West from the 12th century.

Bibliography: c. du cange, Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae latinitatis, ed. l. favre, 10 v. (Niort 1883–88) 1:701–702; 3:372. l. kÖster, De custodia sanctissimae Eucharistiae (Rome 1940). e. maffei, La Réservation eucharistique jusqu' à la Renaissance (Brussels 1942). g. dix, A Detection of Aumbries (4th ed. London 1955). s. j. p. van dijk and j. h. walker, The Myth of the Aumbry: Notes on Medieval Reservation Practice and Eucharistic Devotion (London 1957) 15–66.

[s. j. p. van dijk]