Word Finder - ambo

definition

A raised platform in an early Christian church, as well as in the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Eastern Catholic churches.

example

1918, ‘It will get better somehow,’ he thought, and went to the ambo. On going up the steps and turning to the right he saw the priest. — Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, tr. Louise & Aylmer Maude (Oxford 1998, page 438)

definition

A stationary podium used for readings and homilies.

The gospel and epistle are still read from the ambo in the Ambrosian rite at Milan.

The position of the ambo was not absolutely uniform; sometimes in the central point between the sanctuary and the nave, sometimes in the middle of the church, and sometimes at one or both of the sides of the chancel.

The normal ambo, when the church contained only one, had three stages or degrees, one above the other, and it was usually mounted by a flight of steps at each end.

The inconvenience of having a single ambo led to the substitution of two separate ambones, between which these various functions were divided, one on the south side of the chancel being for the reading of the gospel, and one on the north for reading the epistle.

In the Russian Orthodox Church the term "ambo" is used of the semicircular steps leading to the platform in front of the iconostasis, but in cathedrals the bishop has an ambo in the centre of the church.

In the Uniate Greek Catholic Church the "ambo" has become a table, on which are placed a crucifix and lights, before the doors of the iconostasis; here baptisms, marriages and confirmations take place.

Some early ambones are found in Ravenna, and in the south of Italy are many fine examples; the epistle ambo in the cathedral at Ravello (1130), which is perhaps the earliest, shows a Scandinavian influence in the design of its mosaic inlay, an influence which is found in Sicilian work and may be a Norman importation.

The two ambones in the cathedral of Salerno, which are different in design, are magnificent in effect and are enriched with sculpture as well as with mosaic. In the gospel ambo in the cathedral of Ravello (1272), and also in that of the convent of the Trinita della Cava near Salerno, the spiral columns inlaid with mosaic stand on the backs of lions.

In the epistle ambo at Salerno and the gospel ambones at Cava and San Giovanni del Toro in Ravello, the columns support segmental arches carrying the ambones; the epistle ambo at Ravello and all those in Rome are raised on solid marble bases.

This antiphon received the name either because it was sung on the steps of the altar or while the deacon was mounting the steps of the ambo for the reading or singing of the Gospel.

The cathedral (dedicated to St Nicholas the Pilgrim, a Greek assassinated at Trani in 1094 and canonized by Urban II.), on a raised open site near the sea, was consecrated, before its completion, in 1143; it is a basilica with three apses, a large crypt and a lofty tower, the latter erected in1230-1239by the architect whose name appears on the ambo in the cathedral of Bitonto, Nicolaus Sacerdos.

The oldest Ordo Romanus, which perhaps takes us back to within a century of Gregory the Great, enjoins that in pontifical masses a subdeacon, with a golden censer, shall go before the bishop as he leaves the secretarium for the choir, and two, with censers, before the deacon gospeller as he proceeds with the gospel to the ambo.