Tabernaculum
Ciborium

Another style of ciborium has the form of a tabernaculum, a ‘little house’. This one has four pilars holding up as if in the heavens a little gabled house. It refers to the dwelling of God among people. Like the ciborium, this little house in the basilica of San Clemente, Rome, makes the same theological statement: the gift of the Spirit brooding over the gifts placed on the altar. The Blessed Sacrament is reserved in a wall ambry whose gabled roof is seen in the right of the photo.