CONSIGNATORIUM. - This refers to a hall for the administration of the Sacrament of Confirmation, which in the first centuries was administered in places of worship, as St. Cyprian states: « qui in ecclesia baptizantur, praepositis ecclesiae offerantur, et per nostram orationem ac manus impositionem Spiritum Sanctum consequantur et signaculo dominico consummentur » (ep. 73, 9; CSEL, II, p. 785).
The first time the term c. is encountered to designate a special hall for the conferral of Confirmation is in the Gesù ep. Neapolitan., chap. 28 (mid-9th century); there one reads that John II, bishop of Naples from the year 646, «fecit c. albatorum» between the «fontes maiores» of bishop Soter and the church Stefania (ed. G. Waitz, in MGH, Scriptores rerum Langobard., Hannover 1878, p. 414). In Rome, near the Lateran Baptistery, the Ordines Romani indicate a locus chrismatis or chrismandi or chrismarium, that is, a special chapel, which was perhaps the one indicated as the ecclesia sancti Venantii (Ordo Romanus XI, prior to the year 1143) and not the oratory of the Holy Cross, as Duchesne (Lib. Pont., II, Paris 1892, p. 43) and Grisar (Analecta Romana, I, Rome 1899, p. 560) supposed. Another c. is attested in Rome by the sylloge of Verdun, whose compiler transcribed the epigram with the lemma: «isti versiculi scripti sunt ubi pontifex consignat infantes» (G. B. De Bossi, Inscriptiones christianae, II, Rome 1888, p. 139, n. 29). Not from literary sources, but from the monument itself, is known the c. of Salona adjacent to the Baptistery; it is a hall whose floor was adorned with mosaics representing two stags facing each other at the fountain and the inscription: «sicut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum, ita desiderat anima mea ad te Deus» (Ps. 41, 2).
In Africa Gsell reports a c. 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 gathered by F. J. Dölger in his study Die Firmung in den Denkmälern des christlichen Altertums, in Römische Quartalschrift, 19 (1905), pp. 1-19.
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Enrico Josi