Reredos
reredos
Screen of stone or wood at the back of the altar, usually ornamented with panels, niches, statues, buttresses, and other decorations and often painted in brilliant colors. The side which faces the nave is called the “retable” and the other side, the “counter-retable.” It sometimes extends across the whole breadth of the church and reaches nearly to the ceiling. Its use dates front the 12th century, when only the altar of relics had a reredos, but in the 14th century the main altar was provided with one and it became an elaborate structure, usually conforming to the architecture of the church. It is connected with the altar by means of a predella or altar step. In medieval times it was customary in some places to keep the Blessed Sacrament in a small cupboard arranged in the reredos.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Reredos
(written also lardos, from Fr. I’arrieredos), the wall or screen at the back of an altar, seat, etc. It was usually ornamented with panelling, etc., especially behind an altar, and sometimes was enriched with a profusion of niches, buttresses, pinnacles, statues, and other decorations, which were often painted with brilliant colors. Reredoses of this kind not unfrequiently extended across the whole breadth of the church, and were sometimes carried up nearly to the ceiling, as at St. Alban’s Abbey, Durham Cathedral, Gloucester Cathedral, St. Saviour’s Church, Southwark; Christ Church, Hampshire, etc. In village churches they were generally simple, and appear very frequently to have had no ornaments formed in the wall, though sometimes corbels or niches were provided to carry images, and sometimes that part of the wall immediately over the altar was panelled. Remains of these, more or less injured, are to be found in many churches, particularly at the east ends of aisles, as at St. Michael’s, Oxford; Hanwell and Enstone, Oxfordshire; Solihull, Warwickshire, etc.; and against the east wall of the transept, as in St. Cuthbert’s, Wells. It was not unusual to decorate the wall at the back of an altar with panellings, etc., in wood, or with embroidered hangings of tapestry-work, to which the name of reredos was given: it was also applied to the screen between the nave and choir of a church. The open fire-hearth, frequently used in ancient domestic halls, was likewise called a reredos. SEE ALTAR.