Armstrong — Stone Cha/ices, so called. 



319 



elaboration, and that there was room for a paper dealing more fully 

 with the matter. 



In this paper I attempt, by bringing together such materials as I 

 can collect concerning the chalices used by the early Church, to show 

 the extreme unlikelihood of these stone vessels having been originally 

 intended for chalices, and at the same time, by comparing them with 

 stone lamps used in other countries, both in former times and to-day, 

 to point out the similarities between them and the probability that 

 our Irish stone vessels were intended for the same purpose. There 

 are five of these stone vessels in the collection of the Eoyal Irish 

 Academy in the National Museum, which Mr. Coffey has kindly 

 allowed me to have drawn and to make use of for the purposes of my 

 paper. To deal first v,'ith the materials from which chalices were 

 made in the early days of the Church, there is the legend in the 

 Tripartite Life of St. Patrick " that the saint gave his servant four 

 glass chalices. 



Chalices of glass were in common use on the Continent up to the 

 ninth century, though after that period they gradually fell into 

 disuse.^ There is a fine glass chalice preserved in the Vatican 

 Museum, supposed to be of the third or fourth century ; it is figured 

 by le Chanoine Eeusens in his " Manuel d'Archeologie Chretienne," 

 p. 105 ; on the same page he also figures two other glass chalices 

 which he describes as " deux calices anciens, egalement de verre, 

 ft remontant a, la meme epoque." 



In England there is a glass cup preserved by the Musgraves at 

 Edenhall, Cumberland, which is known as the " Luck of Edenhall," 

 and has been called a chalice. 



There are some ecclesiastical decrees on the subject of the materials 

 from which chalices were to be made. Gratian, in his " Collection of 

 Decrees,"- quotes two decrees. The first is that of the Concilium 

 Triburiense, held in Germany in the year 895. The object of this 

 decree was to condemn the use of wooden chalices ; and at the same 

 time it seems to object to the use of vessels other than gold or silver, 

 since it quotes an alleged decree of Urban II., ordering all vessels 

 to be of either gold or silver. The decree runs as follows : — 

 " Vasa, quibus sacrosancta conficiuntur misteria, calices sunt et 



1 Tertullian : Cyprianus Gallus: Addis and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, 1893, 

 p. 153. 



- Corpus Juris Canonici, Editio Lipsiensis secuuda Decretum Magistri 

 Gratiani. Pars Prior, p. 1306. Decreti Tertia Pars de Consecrationc Dist. 



I. C. XLIV. 



