Origin 50 to 300 CE
The cup that holds the wine at the Eucharist. In Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran practice it is consecrated, reserved for that use, and handled under rules, who may touch it, how it is purified after the service, where it is kept. Materials are regulated: the interior of the cup is required to be non-absorbent, which in practice means precious metal or metal gilt.
Whether the laity receive from the chalice at all has been a live argument for eight hundred years. Western practice withdrew the cup from the laity in the medieval period and restored it after the Second Vatican Council; the Hussite movement of fifteenth-century Bohemia took the chalice as its emblem precisely because it was demanding the cup back.
Facts
Use
Who May Handle ItClergy or ordained officiants only 1 Sourced to the subject's own accountHandled at the altar by the ordained and by ministers deputed for the purpose ConsecrationSourced to the subject's own accountConsecrated in a rite before use 1 Origins
Origin Period Attributions
TraditionSourced to the subject's own account Learn More
The Cup Set Apart for One Use Only
The chalice is the cup that holds the wine at the Eucharist, and what distinguishes it from any other vessel is that it is consecrated and reserved.
A consecrated vessel
In Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran practice the chalice is set apart for the Eucharist and used for nothing else, and in the traditions that consecrate it a bishop blesses it with chrism, after which it may be handled only by those permitted to do so. The rule that the interior be of precious metal, or gilt, follows from what it contains, since the wine is held to become the blood of Christ, and the care taken with the cup is a statement about that belief. It is purified after the rite with particular attention so that nothing consecrated is lost.
Form and restriction
The chalice has a bowl, a knop on the stem to steady the grip, and a wide foot, a form settled for practical and reverent handling rather than for ornament, though the great historic examples are among the finest work of the goldsmith. Whether the laity receive from the chalice at all has been a point of division: the medieval Western church withdrew the cup from the laity, and its restoration to them was one of the demands of the Reformation and later of the liturgical reform, so the vessel itself carries a long argument about who may drink from it.
Why the Cup Must Be Gold, and Who May Touch It
Canon law is specific about the chalice in a way it is not about most sacred objects, the interior surface that touches the consecrated wine must be gold or gilded, never bare base metal.
The gilding rule and what enforces it
A chalice may be silver, pewter or another metal on the outside, but the cup itself is gilt, and if the gilding wears through with use it must be re-gilded before the vessel is used again, a job sent to a specialist goldsmith rather than done in-house. This is a practical rule as much as a symbolic one, base metal reacts with wine over repeated use in a way gold does not. A damaged or deconsecrated chalice is not discarded or melted down casually, parishes more often retire an old chalice to a sacristy collection, a diocesan museum, or occasionally return it to the community that donated it.
Who is permitted to handle it
A consecrated chalice is traditionally handled only by an ordained minister or an instituted acolyte, not by lay servers, though post conciliar practice has relaxed this in many dioceses for extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist. Historically a bishop consecrated a new chalice with an anointing of chrism, a rite now generally simplified to a blessing. The shape has varied by period, the wide shallow medieval cup giving way to the taller, narrower stem and foot form still used today, a change driven partly by the paten resting directly on the cup between uses.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Disciplines That Use This
The cup of the elemental quarter of water.
Element Of
The cup is given to the laity by rubric, and the Articles name the withholding of it as an abuse.
The chalice of the Byzantine liturgy, from which the faithful receive the body and blood together by spoon.
The cup is given to the laity, which was one of the first practical changes of the Lutheran reformation and remains one of its marks.
The cup of the eucharist, required to be of noble material and blessed before use.
Held Differently
Baptist, Denominations Most Baptist congregations serve the cup in individual glasses rather than from a common chalice, a nineteenth century change that spread on hygienic grounds and settled into practice.
Rejected Here
With no elements there is no cup, and the church holds no vessel set apart for one.
Friends keep no outward sacrament of bread and cup, holding communion to be inward and continuous, so no vessel is set apart for it.
Implement Of
Why this is disputed. Whether any real liturgical rite called a Black Mass, using a consecrated or parodic chalice, was ever actually performed as later polemical and literary accounts describe is doubted by most historians; the fullest circumstantial evidence, the 1680 Affair of the Poisons investigation in France, is itself disputed testimony obtained under torture and inducement. Much of the popular Black Mass, including its use of a chalice, descends instead from nineteenth century fiction, notably Joris-Karl Huysmans's novel La Bas, rather than from an attested medieval or early modern practice.
Instances
A eucharistic cup; the claimed Grail of the Last Supper.
Why this is disputed. Chretien de Troyes's earliest account describes the grail as a wide, deep serving dish rather than a cup, and Robert de Boron's later verse is what first identifies it as the vessel of the Last Supper. Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival departs furthest, describing it as a stone. The now-familiar image of a chalice is a later medieval harmonization of these differing accounts rather than the form any single early source gives it.
Related To
Intinction is what churches use instead of the shared chalice, or alongside it.
The paten is paired with the chalice and consecrated with it.
Sources
1. General Instruction of the Roman Missal, third typical edition
Congregation for Divine Worship, Congregation for Divine Worship, 2002Nos. 327-332, on the material of sacred vesselsthe holders' own accountView the Source 2. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005on the chalice and the Eucharistic vesselsView the Source The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th edition
The Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.