LAMP. - The use of the lamp for worship is of every time and place, responding to the need to illuminate sacred buildings; and since beeswax was always very costly, recourse was easily had to oil collected in lamps of the most varied forms and decorations, because in the Church it was customary to make symbolic even what had been born of necessity. Night vigils and vespers required the lighting of numerous lamps: their use every evening indeed suggested the offering of light to God accompanied by the singing of the lucernarium (v.).
The illumination of a cathedral required no small equipment: for this reason we find at every church several "cicendelari" (from "cicindela", a small metal tube filled with oil and a wick with which the lamps were lit), one of whom had always to be in the sacristy to be ready for his office. The lamps were either isolated or grouped on the "corona pharalis", or "gabata". Their use is attested and specified already by the inventory of Cirta (Algeria) of 303 (cf. DACL, Inventaires, VII, 1, col. 1396 ff.), by the canons of Hippolytus (n. 4), by many notices scattered through the Liber Pontificalis and in a curious manner by Beroldus, Ordo of the Milanese Church of the 12th century. Following the very frequent custom among the pagans, the first Christians already used to place lamps on tombs, but unlike the pagans, they lit them to accentuate the symbolism contained therein of another life. This happened more frequently on the tombs of the martyrs. A most interesting document of this is the collection of ampullae, preserved in the basilica of Monza, brought from Rome by the abbot John to Queen Theodelinda, with the oils which, by concession of the Pope, he collected from the lamps that burned in the suburban cemeteries before the various tombs of the martyrs. In the liturgy of Holy Saturday is preserved the blessing of the new fire struck from the stone and collected by a lamp, carried in some churches, in the Easter processions and usually suspended at the side of the altar so as to take from it the fire to light the candles.
The CIC, can. 1271, establishes: "Before the tabernacle in which the Most Holy Sacrament is reserved, at least one lamp shall shine night and day, to be fed with olive oil or beeswax: where however olive oil cannot be had, it is reserved to the prudence of the local bishop to permit another oil, if possible, vegetable." The canon reflects the synodal legislation of the West from the 13th century when, through the flourishing of eucharistic worship, the custom became established of reserving the Eucharist in a public place. By decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites of 23 Feb. 1916 (no. 4334), on account of the difficulties created by the war, electric light was permitted, as likewise during the Second World War and even today for places where such difficulties persist.
Bibliography3 works
Enrico Cattaneo
ART
With the changed artistic directions in the late Middle Ages, the form of lamps also began to change, as is suggested above all by the representations of them found in frescoes and miniatures. Throughout the Romanesque and Gothic periods precious materials were frequently used, and lamps became highly refined objects of the industrial arts. For the most part they were of the suspended type: in the East there were lamps of colored glass, of alabaster, of ivory (a splendid example with a silver mount and precious stones is in the Treasury of the basilica of St. Mark in Venice) and of wrought iron (especially in Siena in the 13th-14th centuries). Portable lamps, too, however, had a vast production, and to the common type with two or three spouts for a double or triple flame, with a ring at the top through which to slip the index finger, were added more complex and elaborate examples, at times true works of art (fine examples are in the Louvre, the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and the Bargello). In Venice in the 15th century the use of lamps of blown glass became established. One should recall those most beautiful ones painted by Carpaccio in the Presentation and in the Dream of St. Ursula, and that of Basaiti in the Virgin of the Accademia.
There were also lamps of singular shape and many in bronze, in which the imagination of the Renaissance artist gave free rein in various ways. A curious example of a Venetian lamp, depicting a horse's skull carrying a child astride it, is in the National Museum of Florence; another, with a dragon that emitted the flame from its tongue, is in the Kensington Museum. In the Baroque period lamps were mainly of glass, with a metal suspension system, artistically ornamented according to the canons of that style. They served a great deal for the decoration of churches, but were often replaced by chandeliers with multiple lights and of greater decorative effect. As for the form of the latter, these range from the circular ones, very frequent in the Middle Ages (sanctuary at the Fuente del Guarrozar near Toledo 12th century; Aachen 12th century) to those of Gothic taste with spires, pinnacles and statuettes (Siena, Palazzo Pubblico, 14th century), and to the Renaissance ones composed with plastic or architectural elements frequently depicted in paintings and frescoes of the 15th and 16th centuries. During the Baroque age, chandeliers decorated with crystals or in blown glass, worked respectively in Bohemia and Murano, became increasingly fashionable.
In more recent times the l. adapted to the changing system of illumination and the ancient forms fell into disuse. - See plates LII-LIII.
Bibliography7 works
Giovanni Carandente