Monstrance
A vessel of gold or silver with a glass window at its centre, usually ringed with rays like the sun, in which the consecrated host is shown for adoration and carried in procession.
Meaning
Monstrance and its other name, ostensorium, both come from Latin words meaning “to show”, Britannica notes. In the Catholic Church, and in some other churches, the monstrance holds a consecrated host in a small holder, the lunette, behind the glass. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains why: the Church offers the Eucharist “the cult of adoration” outside Mass as well as during it, keeping the consecrated hosts, “exposing them to the solemn veneration of the faithful, and carrying them in procession”. The monstrance is used at Eucharistic adoration and at Benediction, when the priest blesses the people with the host in the monstrance. Some churches keep perpetual adoration, with the host always exposed, often in a chapel of its own.
Origin and history
The monstrance can be no older than the custom of showing the host, which Herbert Thurston, in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1911), could not place before the thirteenth century. Some vessels may date from then, among them an octagonal monstrance at Bari inscribed “Hic Corpus Domini”. The first monstrances held the host upright in a cylinder of crystal; later the window was made just the size of the host and surrounded “like the sun” with rays, a shape Thurston dates to the fifteenth century and calls by far the commonest. Britannica dates both steps later: first use in France and Germany in the fourteenth century, and the present shape, a round pane of glass set in a cross or ringed with metal rays, in the sixteenth.
England had its own form. In the great cathedrals, Lincoln and Salisbury among them, the host was set behind a crystal door in the breast of a figure of Christ. Spain made monstrances of enormous size: the one in Toledo Cathedral is more than twelve feet high, took more than a hundred years to complete, and carries 260 statuettes, one said to be made of gold that Columbus brought from the New World. Before the Reformation the Scots called a monstrance a “eucharist”, the English a “monstre” or “monstral”.
The sun and the cross
The rays are the monstrance’s most recognised feature, and the Catholic Encyclopedia gives the rules that went with them: the orb and rays should be at least of silver or silver-gilt, and it is recommended that a cross stand on top. The same encyclopedia traces the rays to a practical aim, drawing every eye to the host at the centre. The host shown above a cup, without the vessel, is the Chalice and host.
Read next
- Next in Catholic symbolsChalice and hostA cup with a round wafer above it: the chalice and host of the Mass, the Catholic sign of the Eucharist and of the priesthood.
- The same shape in HeraldryMarks of cadencySmall marks added to a coat of arms to show a son’s place among his brothers. In England a label marks the eldest son, a crescent the second, a mullet (a star) the third, and so on to the ninth. Scotland differences arms with borders instead.
See also
Keys of St Peter, Papal tiara, Rosary, Immaculate Heart of Mary, Miraculous Medal, Marian cross.
Sources
- Ostensorium (Monstrance), Herbert Thurston, “Ostensorium (Monstrance)”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1911, The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907–1912), via New Advent, Ostensorium
- monstrance, The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, “monstrance”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, monstrance
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 1373–1381, Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part Two, “The Sacrament of the Eucharist”, Holy See (vatican.va), no. 1378
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles, crosses or stars.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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