The church slowly developed customs of reserving some portion of the eucharistic sacrifice for the sake of the dying. Today’s custom of placing this portion in a tabernacle for prayer and adoration by the faithful cannot be traced back much beyond the year 1,000, much to almost everyone’s surprise. There is simply no historical evidence of the Blessed Sacrament being present in a church for the purpose of having the faithful visit it or pray before it earlier in the church’s history. People did visit, of course, but the center of their attention was the altar, symbol of Christ’s sacrifice and the touchpoint between heaven and earth. Shrines and devotional altars abounded in medieval churches, but anything we might describe as a Blessed Sacrament chapel would be hard to find.
Amazingly, the Eucharist was first kept in private houses for the purpose of Holy Communion at home.
As for church, the custom gradually developed of suspending a vessel shaped like a dove somewhere in the church, often over the altar. In the hovering bird, a few hosts, enough to satisfy the pastoral needs of the dying, would be secreted. The priest would lower the dove on a pulley as needed, but it wasn’t a focus of devotion by visitors to the church. It was simply a way of reassuring bishops who were nervous about safeguarding the Eucharist. The dove solution caught on in England and France after Crusaders came in contact with the custom in their travels in the Orthodox
East. —Rev. James Field, Copyright © J. S. Paluch Co.