sacristanus

Latin sacer meant holy, set apart, consecrated. The sacristia — sacristy — was the chamber where the church's holy objects were kept: vestments embroidered with gold thread, silver chalices, reliquaries containing bones of saints, illuminated Gospel books. The sacristanus was the keeper of all this: a person entrusted with objects whose monetary and spiritual value was immense.

Medieval sacristans were often monks of considerable seniority. In a great abbey like Cluny or Canterbury, the sacristan managed not just the sacristy but the treasury, the library (where illuminated manuscripts were housed), and sometimes the construction and repair of the church fabric. The Sacrist of Ely Cathedral, appointed from the 12th century, managed the entire fabric of the building for 800 years.

The Reformation in England dissolved the great abbeys and scattered their contents. Sacristans of dissolved monasteries watched as centuries-accumulated sacred objects were inventoried, melted down, or dispersed. Henry VIII's commissioners who dissolved the monasteries worked through sacristies room by room. The Dissolution was, in part, the undoing of every medieval sacristan's lifetime of work.

Today sacristans serve in Catholic, Anglican, and Eastern Orthodox churches. Their role is primarily liturgical preparation: laying out vestments, filling cruets with water and wine, preparing the thurible with incense. The position carries its medieval dignity — not everyone may touch the altar vessels — but its scope is smaller than in the age of monastery treasuries.