chalice with _his_ paten." Sometimes there was
lettering around the flat edge of the paten. Chalices were-composed
of three parts: the cup, the ball or knop, and the stem, with the
foot. The original purpose of having this foot hexagonal in shape
is said to have been to prevent the chalice from rolling when it
was laid on its side to drain. Under many modifications this general
plan of the cup has obtained. The bowl is usually entirely plain,
to facilitate keeping it clean; most of the decoration was lavished
on the knop, a rich and uneven surface being both beautiful and
functional in this place.

Such Norman and Romanesque chalices as remain are chiefly in museums
now. They were usually "coffin chalices"--that is, they had been
buried in the coffin of some ecclesiastic. Of Gothic chalices, or
those of the Tudor period, fewer remain, for after the Reformation,
a general order went out to the churches, for all "chalices to be
altered to decent Communion cups." The shape was greatly modified
in this change.

In the thirteenth century the taste ran rather to a chaster form
of decoration; the large cabochons of the Romanesque, combined
with a liquid gold surface, gave place to refined ornaments in
niello and delicate enamels. The bowls of the earlier chalices
were rather flat and broad. When it became usual for the laity to
partake only of one element when communicating, the chalice, which
was reserved for the clergy alone, became modified to meet this
condition, and the bowl was much smaller. After the Reformation,
however, the development was quite in the other direction, the bowl
being extremely large and deep. In that period they were known
as communion cups. In Sandwich there is a cup which was made over
out of a ciborium; as it quite plainly shows its origin, it is
naively inscribed: "This is a Communion Coop." When this change in
the form of the chalice took place, it was provided, by admonition
of the Archbishop, in all cases with a "cover of silver... which
shall serve also for the ministration of the Communion bread." To
make this double use of cover and dish satisfactory, a foot like
a stand was added to the paten.

The communion cup of the Reformation differed from the chalice,
too, in being taller and straighter, with a deep bowl, almost in
the proportions of a flaring tumbler, and a stem with a few close
decorations instead of a knop. The small paten served as a cover
to the cup, as has been mentioned.