A Brief Account of Altars in the Church of England

(quoted from a 4-page pamphlet purchased at St. Mary’s Church in Brook)

The first reference to altars in connection with Christian worship is possibly in Hebrews 13.10. “Our altar is one from which the priests of the sacred tent have no right to eat.” Certainly they were written about by St. Ignatius (A.D. 35-107), Bishop of Antioch.

At first they would have been the domestic wooden tables to be found in the homes of the early Christians, round which they would gather to celebrate the Eucharist. Later on it became usual to celebrate the Eucharist on the tombs of martyrs, so stone altars became customary. After the persecutions, bodies of martyrs were placed under the altars and, until 1977, all Roman Catholic altars contained relics.

In early times the altar was free standing in the church and the celebrant stood on the far side facing the congregation (the Westward position). Only later in the 8^th and 9^th centuries was the altar moved to the Eastern wall of the church with the celebrant having his back to the congregation (the Eastward position). A further position became customary at the reformation when wooden tables were once more used, placed with their long axis running from East to West and the celebrant standing on the North side. This was to obviate any suggestion of a priestly ormediatorial function. It is a position still used today in some Evangelical churches.

At the reformation, altars came under attack owing to controversy concerning the doctrine of the sacrifice of the Mass of which the stone altar was taken as a natural symbol. (The Book of Common Prayer does not use the word ‘altar’ but the law of England and, therefore, the Church of England, sanctions its use.) In 1550 (Edward VI’s reign) all altars were ordered to be removed from churches and wooden Communion tables substituted.

In 1553 Edward died and Mary came to the throne. She tried to restore Roman Catholic practices and so altars were re-instated. However, she died in 1558 and, with the accession of Elizabeth, altars once more had to be removed. (Edwin Sandys, Bishop of Worcester, wrote, “In your churches and chapels all altars be utterly taken down and clean removed even unto the foundation, and the place where they stand paved, and the wall whereunto they joined whitened over and made uniform with the rest, so as no breach or rupture appear.”) In the accounts for 1559 for a church in Somerset we read: “For taking down the rood Vd. For expenses for the plucking down of the images Vid. For taking down the altar iis.” Any remaining altars ran the risk of being smashed by the Puritans.

They were very heavy so would probably have been placed in the nearest convenient spot, i.e., the churchyard. Doubtless they hoped that, before long, times would change once more and that it would be possible to replace them in the church but these times were long in coming. As recently as 1845 the Court of Arches deemed that a stone altar was not a communion table within the meaning of the rubric of the Prayer Book, and ordered that the one just installed in St. Sepulchres, Cambridge, be removed to the churchyard.