CONSIGNATORIUM. — This term refers to a room for the administration of the Sacrament of Confirmation. In the early centuries, this sacrament was administered in places of worship, as St. Cyprian affirms: «those who are baptized in the church are presented to the church’s leaders, and through our prayer and the laying on of hands they receive the Holy Spirit and are perfected with the Lord’s seal» (Ep. 73, 9; CSEL, II, p. 785).
The first instance in which the term *consignatorium* is used to denote a special room for the conferral of Confirmation appears in the *Gesta ep. Neapolitan.*, chap. 28 (mid-9th century); it records that John II, Bishop of Naples from the year 616, «made a *consignatorium* of the alborate» between the «fontes maiores» of Bishop Sotero and the Stefania church (ed. G. Waitz, in MGH, *Scriptores rerum Langobard.*, Hanover 1878, p. 414). In Rome, near the Lateran Baptistery, the *Ordines Romani* mention a *locus chrismalis* or *chrismandi* or *chrismarium*, that is, a special chapel, which may have been the one referred to as the *ecclesia sancti Venantii* (Ordo Romanus XI, prior to the year 1143) and not the oratory of the Holy Cross, as supposed by Duchesne (Lib. Pont., II, Paris 1892, p. 43) and Grisar (Analecta Romana, I, Rome 1899, p. 560). Another *consignatorium* is attested in Rome by the *sylloge* of Verdun, whose compiler transcribed the epigram with the lemma: «These verses are written where the pontiff signs the infants» (G. B. De Rossi, *Inscriptiones christianae*, II, Rome 1888, p. 139, no. 29). Not from literary sources, but from the monument itself, we know of the *consignatorium* of Salona adjacent to the Baptistery; it is a room whose floor was adorned with a mosaic depicting two stags facing a fountain and the inscription: «As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God» (Ps. 41:2).
In Africa, Gsell notes a *consignatorium* at Morsott, one at Tipasa, and one at Tigzirt (S. Gsell, *Les monuments antiques de l'Algérie*, II, Paris 1901, pp. 154, 234, 319, 303).
The inscriptions relating to Confirmation were collected by F. J. Dölger in his study *Die Firmung in den Denkmälern des christlichen Altertums*, in *Römische Quartalschrift*, 19 (1905), pp. 1–19.