Burse
burse
(L.L., bursa, purse or pouch)
1) A part of the set of vestments for the Mass and Benediction, being placed upon the chalice at the beginning and end of the Holy Sacrifice, and on the altar at Benediction. It contains the corporal, which is spread on the altar beneath the chalice or the ostensorium. In medieval England it was called the “corporas case.”
2) A leather case containing the pyx, in which the Holy Eucharist is brought to the sick.
3) The name for a foundation or endowment fund, especially for scholarships for candidates for the priesthood.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Burse
(Bursa, “hide”, “skin”; whence “bag” or “purse”).
A receptacle in which, for reasons of convenience and reverence, the folded corporal is carried to and from the altar. In Roman form the burse is ordinarily made of two juxtaposed pieces of cardboard about twenty-five centimetres (or ten inches) square, bound together at three edges, leaving the fourth open to receive the corporal. One outer side of the burse is of the same material and colour as the vestments with which it is used; the rest is lined with linen or silk. The use of the burse is relatively recent. When the corporal reached its present small dimensions, it was carried to the altar, sometimes in the missal, sometimes in a special receptacle, a box or bag, which finally took the present form of burse. Just when this custom began cannot be determined. “Chronicon vetus rerum Moguntinarum” (1140-1251) mentions a precious corporal-case; this may have been, however, only a box for the continual safe-keeping of the corporal. St. Charles Borromeo describes a sacculus corporalis distinct from the case in which corporals were preserved (Acta Mediolan., 1683, I, 524). From the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries the use of the burse spread, and in 1692 it was universally illicit to celebrate Mass without one (Decreta S.R.C., 1866, ad 2m).
———————————–
GIHR, The Sacrifice of the Mass (St. Louis, 1902), 264, 265 GAVANTUS-MERATI, Thesaurus sac. rituum (Venice, 1762), I, 90.
JOHN B. PETERSON Transcribed by Wm Stuart French, Jr. Dedicated to Rev. Cuthbert Allen, O.S.B.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IIICopyright © 1908 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, November 1, 1908. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Burse
was anciently a purse to hold that which was valuable; retained even now among the official insignia of the lord high chancellor of England.