Pyx
pyx
(Greek: pyxos, box-tree)
A vessel in which the Sacred Host is either preserved or carried. It is made of precious metal, gold or silver, and if made of silver, is usually gold-plated. The pyx, or ciborium, is the ordinary receptacle for the preservation of the Sacred Host in the tabernacle. A smaller pyx is used for carrying the Blessed Sacrament to the sick. This is a small round case and should be gold-plated at least inside. It suffices for from one to four or five hosts.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Pyx
The word pyx (Lat., pyxis, which transliterates the Greek, pyxis, box-wood receptacle, from pyxos, box-tree) was formerly applied in a wide and general sense to all vessels used to contain the Blessed Eucharist. In particular it was perhaps the commonest term applied to the cup in which the Blessed Sacrament actually rested when in the Middle Ages it was suspended above the altar. Thus the Custumal of Cluny in thc eleventh century speaks of the “deacon taking the golden pyx (auream pyxidem) out of the dove (columba) which hangs permanently above the altar”. In later times however it has come about that the term pyx is limited in ordinary usage to that smaller vessel of gold, or silver-gilt, in which the Eucharist is commonly carried to the sick. Such vessels are sometimes made flat like a watch, sometimes mounted upon a little stand like a miniature ciborium. From the resemblance in size and shape the word pyx is also used to denote the small silver vessel or custode in which the Sacred Host is commonly kept in the Tabernacle, that it may be transferred thence to the monstrance when the Blessed Sacrament is exposed for the service of Benediction. In the Middle Ages pyxes for carrying the Eucharist to the sick were not unfrequently made of ivory. In spite of synodal decrees it is to be feared that there were many churches both in medieval and later times which preserved no proper pyx for taking Viaticum to the sick. In these cases the custom seems to have prevailed, even if it was not officially tolerated, of carrying the Host wrapped in a corporal in a burse which was suspended round the priest’s neck or even of placing it between the leaves of a breviary.
The “pyx-cover”, or “pyx-cloth”, of which we sometimes read in medieval inventories, was a veil which hung over the pyx as it was suspended above the altar, and it was consequently a cloth of considerable size. At the present day the pyx when carried secretly to the sick, as is the case in most Protestant and many Catholic countries, is generally carried in a burse or pyx-bag, i.e. a silken bag suspended round the priest’s neck within which the pyx is wrapped in a diminutive corporal used for that purpose.
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CORBLET, Histoire du Sacrement de l’Eucharistie (Paris, 1885), I, 379-90; OTTE, Handbuch der kirchlichen Kunst-Arch ologie (Leipzig, 1883), I, 236-40; ROHAULT DE FLEURY, La Messe, V (Paris, 1R87), 57-94, with plates; BUMPUS, Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Terms (London, 1910), pp. 251-252.
HERBERT THURSTON Transcribed by Wm Stuart French, Jr.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIICopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, June 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Pyx
(, the box-tree; hence a box, properly boxwood), the sacred vessel used in the Roman Catholic Church to contain the consecrated eucharistic elements, which are preserved after consecration, whether for the communion of the sick or for the adoration of the faithful in the churches. Already in the 4th century the host was kept in a special vessel, but this vessel was not called by its present name until the Councils of Tours and York in 1179. Its use was enjoined by pope Innocent III, in 1215, and by Odo of Rouen, in 1266, to be over or near an altar. The form of the Pyx has varied very much at different times. Anciently it was sometimes of the form of a dove, which was hung suspended over the altar. More commonly, however, it was, as its name implies, a simple box. Up to the 13th century the material was ivory, but subsequently, when it became rare, it was generally made of the precious metals, or at least of metal plated with gold or silver. At present, the pyx is commonly cup-shaped, with a close-fitting cover of the same material. The interior is ordered to be of gold, or at least plated with gold. Like all other sacred ntensils connected with the administration of the Eucharist, it must be blessed by a bishop, or priest delegated by a bishop. See Walcott, Sacred Archceol. s.v.; Siegel, Christliche Alterthumer (see Index in vol. iv); Barnum, Romanism, p. 476; Elliott, Romanisim; Chambers’s Encyclop . sv. SEE CIBORIUM.