2000 - Portable Altars in Malta

The Christian altar is the table on which the sacrifice of the mass is offered. No mass may be celebrated without an altar or at least an altar stone. Throughout the centuries there have been considerable developments in church practice and leg islation regarding the form, position, material of the altar and its consecration.

The Portable Altars' publication is the catalogue raisonne that accompanied the Foundation's 9th exhibition. It illustrates a unique type of altar fascinating both in its function and form. The Portable altar stone is in the true sense of the word a square slab containing holy relics, big enough to accommodate the base of the chalice. The term Portable Altar, however also signifies the larger movable and often domestic structures that contain these consecrated altar stones. The publication offers an in-depth study of these domestic types that often took the form of a bureau or cabinet, used by the more well - to- do families when celebrating a religious ceremony.

The articles mainly deal with the varied types of portable altars and their significant uses. One of particular importance and interest features a portable altar that was used on a galley of the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of St John. No other exemplar has so far been traced in any maritime museum or known collection elsewhere.

The Catalogue entries fill in the gap in our knowledge of domestic portable altars in Malta as they provide in writing, for the first time ever, considerable information, from family sources and other investigations on recent history, of these altars

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