Pulpit

The pulpit is an elevated place in churches, synagogues and mosques, preached from which the minister the Word of God and give the sermon.

The pulpit in Christian churches

The word comes from the Latin cancelli " grid barriers". In the early days of Christianity was in fact set up as Predigtort the Ambo near the barriers between the choir and nave.

The pulpit as a gallery in the service of the homily is an invention of the Preacher ( begging ) Order of the 13th century. The larger the churches and the more importance you meted out to the sermon, the higher were the pulpits and the more elaborate they were designed with figures and ornaments. The basic components are the sometimes provided with a reading desk, decorative crafted pulpit corpus of polygonal, usually octagonal floor plan, which rests on a base or carrier and leading up to the either inside the church itself or on the outside wall of a staircase, and also often decorative crafted sound cover which can be optically connected to a rear panel to the pulpit corpus. Pulpit stairs and corpus are usually separated by a door.

The position of the pulpit in the room was handled differently; acoustic reasons may have been the decisive factor, but also, where appropriate, the overall artistic concept. Often, the pulpit is mounted in the front third or in the middle of the nave, annexed to a column or between two columns or - for smaller churches - built on the long wall, usually on the Epistle side, ie in the south of the church building. Opposite the pulpit can be found on the other side of the nave often a ( larger ) crucifix.

After the Reformation, the importance of the sermon grew, elaborate pulpits in many churches were subsequently acquired. In Protestant churches that were built in the Baroque era, was often a pulpit altar catchment: The pulpit is placed above the altar at the inner end wall of the church and integrates with him in a single design of a single-or multi-storey altarpiece. This symbolizes the equivalence of word and sacrament.

The most common building material of the pulpit is wood or stone. The usually combined decorative elements are also mostly carved from wood or carved stone, but also molded in stucco. The pulpit of the corpus figurative program usually has the four evangelists or the four Western Doctors of the Church ( St. Gregory the Great, Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo and Jerome). The sounding board is often surmounted by a figure of Christ or of symbols for Christ, surrounded by cherubs with instruments of the Passion; in the Counter-Reformation and Baroque replaced the drachenbesiegende angel a figure of Christ.

An art historical special form is the so-called bridge of boats pulpit. The body in the form of a ship hull is generally fixed to the wall without a carrier. Decor are fishing nets on the body and rigging on, or as a sounding board.

In Catholic churches pulpits, if it still exists now rarely used, because the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council, the Mass liturgy redesigned. Greater importance was given back to the ambo, an elevated place, from which the word of God is read both as designed in the homily. He is usually at the front edge of the raised altar island as a appropriately, but also as artistically designed desk.

When measuring in the Tridentine rite is however often preached from the pulpit.

Especially on pilgrimage churches were built outside pulpits to preach at large crowds of pilgrims from there and be able to show the relics. The exterior pulpit can be accessible by both the church inside of a door and its own external staircase. Instead of a pulpit can also open a legacy or a balcony on a portal to serve the same purpose and is then also called outdoor pulpit.

The pulpit in mosques

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