Ambo
JOHN A. MCGUCKIN
The Ambo (Gk. “crest of a hill”) was the raised platform in the middle of church from which the scriptures and litanies were read. In early times it was not often used for preaching, though St. John Chrysostom was an exception to the rule (Socrates, Church History 6.5). In the Eastern Christian world a pathway (Solea) from the sanctuary (Bema) to the Ambo was often established, which eventually came to be similarly raised.
Several examples of Byzantine Ambo remain (e.g., Byzantine Museum, Athens; the gardens of Hagia Sophia Cathedral, Istanbul) which are polygonal raised platforms with steps leading up (in the Middle Ages it became the western “pulpit”). The Ambo in St. Mark’s Venice is a rare late- Byzantine “double-decker,” where the gospel was read from the upper section and the epistle from the lower. Byzantine emperors, after the 6th century, were crowned from the Ambo of Hagia Sophia church, a lost masterpiece described by the poet Paul the Silentiary. In the modern presentation of most Orthodox churches the Ambo shrank back and was conflated with the smaller area of raised Solea immediately in front of the Iconostasis.
REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Delvoye, C. (1966) “Ambo.” In K. Wessel (ed.) Reallexicon zur byzantinischer Kunst, vol. 1, cols. 126–33. Stuttgart: Hiersemann.
Hickley, D. (1966) “The Ambo in Early Liturgical Planning: A Study with Special Reference to the Syrian Bema,” Heythrop Journal 7: 407–27. Krautheimer, R. (1979) Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture. London: Penguin. Leclercq, H. (1904) “Ambon.” In F. Cabrol and H. Leclercq (eds.) Dictionnaire d’archeologie chretienneetdeliturgie, vol. 1. Paris, pp. 1330–47.