Sacrarium (Piscina, Lavatorium)

SACRARIUM (Piscina, Lavatorium). - A small underground cistern covered by a movable stone, placed in a corner of a sacred place or of the sacristy or behind the altar, which communicates with the outside through a drain pipe or ends in an uncemented pit for the absorption of the water.

It serves to receive the water of the ablutions, the baptismal water after the administration of the Sacrament, the water in which the purificators and corporals have been washed, the sacred ashes coming from burned sacred things (for example, from the cotton used in the holy unctions). All this out of reverence for things once blessed or consecrated (Durandus, Rat., I, IV, chap. 55). For the East there is a testimony on the matter from the 6th century in the following canonical resolution, given by John Bar Cursus, bishop of Tell-Mahré (519-58): « Aque ablutionia rerum sacrarum in locum decentem, in fossam profundam prociantur et occultentur » (text reported by Hanssens, op. cit. in bibl., III, p. 533).

In medieval churches, beside the altar, on the Epistle side, there was very often found in the wall a niche called piscina, artistically made with a basin fitted at the base with an orifice for the free drainage of the water; it served for the ablution of the priest's hands after Holy Communion (beginning from the 14th century it became customary to drink the ablution); it is prescribed, for example, by the Synod of Würzburg of 1298, can. 3, and by the Cistercian general chapter of 1601.

With the term s., in the Middle Ages, there was also designated the church, the presbytery, the wall cupboard, or the place for keeping the pyx containing the Holy Eucharist, the sacristy or the « pastophoria » of the Eastern rite (cf. Didascalia et Constitutiones Apostolorum, II, 57, 3; VIII, 13, 17) and sometimes the book called Ordinarius.

Pietro Siffrin