Ambo

A raised platform for reading and preaching. The term first appears in the Canons of Laodicea (late 4th century AD), Canon 15 of which forbids the laity to ascend the ambo unless they serve as cantor or in the clerical rank of lector. This suggests that an ambo was an elevated platform, accessible by steps, from which scriptural texts were proclaimed and the responsorial psalm between the Epistle and Gospel was sung; the psalm response became known as the Psalmus gradualis or gradual, probably derived from the step (Lat. gradus) of the ambo. Although the term ambo does not appear before the 4th century AD, there are earlier references to an elevated place, which may also have included a reading stand, reserved for proclaiming scripture. This may have been a simple platform, similar to that described in the account of Ezra the Scribe standing on a wooden platform to proclaim the law of Moses from daybreak to midday (Nehemiah 8:4). The first Latin witness was Cyprian of Carthage (d AD 258), who mentions lectors ascending a pulpitum so that they might be both seen and heard (Epistles, xxxviii.2 and xxxix). A 4th-century collection of church law, the Syrian Apostolic Constitutions, also mentions an elevated place, the bema, reserved for the lector. Other terms used include auditorium, tribunal, exedra and lectricium.

See the Abbreviations for further details.