Holy water and the aspergillum

Water blessed by a priest, kept in fonts at the doors of Catholic churches and sprinkled on the people with a sprinkler called the aspergillum.

Catholic symbols. Also called asperges, aspergillum, aspersorium, holy water font, holy water meaning, holy water sprinkler.

Meaning

Holy water is one of the sacramentals, the Catholic Encyclopedia (1912) says, and one of the most often used. It is kept in stoups or fonts at church entrances, in portable vessels for blessings and in fonts at home. The sprinkling of the congregation is called the Asperges, from the first word of the psalm sung with it, or the Vidi aquam in Eastertide. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal allows the blessing and sprinkling of water on Sundays, especially in the Easter season, in place of the Act of Penitence, “to recall Baptism”. The sprinkler is the aspergillum, or aspersorium; the French call it a goupillon, from goupil, the Old French for a fox. The Greek Church, the encyclopedia adds, blessed its holy water at the beginning of each lunar month. Britannica lists holy water in Eastern Orthodoxy, some Lutheran synods and Anglicanism as well as Roman Catholicism, and says Orthodox believers commonly drink it after it is blessed.

Origin and history

The Apostolic Constitutions, compiled about 400, attribute the use of holy water to the Apostle Matthew, but the Catholic Encyclopedia finds no earlier historical witness than the fifth century. The fourth-century Pontifical of Serapion blesses water and oil during Mass. In the early Church a clerk at the church door sprinkled the faithful as they came in and was called hydrokometes, “introducer by water”. In the ninth century Pope Leo IV ordered every priest to bless water each Sunday and sprinkle the people, and Hincmar of Reims added that people might carry some home to sprinkle their houses, fields, vineyards and cattle. Water was not blessed on Easter Sunday or Pentecost, because the baptismal water had been blessed the night before and the faithful took that home instead. The Asperges itself has been in use at least since the tenth century.

The sprinkler

In the Middle Ages holy water was not taken from the font except with an aspersorium chained beside it. The oldest pictures show a branch dipped into the water. About the thirteenth century, the Catholic Encyclopedia says, the sprinkler took its modern form, “a stick surmounted by a rose covered with bristles”, and its handles came to be richly ornamented.

Fonts at the door

Holy water stoups stand inside church entrances. In medieval England they were set in niches near the door and called “holy water stones”. At Saint-Sulpice in Paris the stoups are two valves of a giant clam, given by the Republic of Venice to Francis I. Baptismal water was the most revered of all: in some places, the Catholic Encyclopedia says, people kept water from the Baptismal font at home all year, believing it free from all corruption.

Sources

Holy Water, Henri Leclercq, “Holy Water”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1910, The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907–1912), via New Advent, Holy Water
Holy Water Fonts, Henri Leclercq, “Holy Water Fonts”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1910, The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907–1912), via New Advent, Holy Water Fonts
Asperges, John Wynne, “Asperges”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1907, The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907–1912), via New Advent, Asperges
Sacramentals, Henri Leclercq, “Sacramentals”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907–1912), via New Advent, Sacramentals
General Instruction of the Roman Missal, §308, The Holy See (vatican.va), no. 51
Holy water (Britannica), Encyclopaedia Britannica, “holy water”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Article text

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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research

Added October 9, 2026. Last updated October 10, 2026.

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