# The holy water stoup

**Acquasantiera**

**Known today as.** The basin of holy water at the door of a church, and the small stoups kept in homes.

Kind: Sacramental

## What was it used for?

The faithful dip their fingers and sign themselves on entering, recalling their baptism, and at home on rising and going to bed.

## What does modern science say?

Found in every Catholic church.

## What lore surrounds it?

Stoups were sometimes carved with serpents and monsters, evil held at the threshold by blessed water.

## What did the older authorities say?

**The Catholic Encyclopedia.** The Catholic Encyclopedia traces the stoup to “the fountain for ablutions, cantharus, or phiala, placed in the centre of the atrium of the basilica,” where the faithful “washed their hands and feet in accordance with a rite probably derived from Judaism.” In the West “there were scarcely any stationary fonts prior to the eleventh century.” It records a font at Angers whose inscription says “that none save clerics and nobles had the privilege of dipping their fingers therein,” fonts in the Pyrenees “reserved for the use of the despised race of Cagots,” a special font for lepers at Saint-Savin, and the giant clam-shells of Saint-Sulpice, “the Republic of Venice having presented them to Francis I.” In England the medieval fonts were “stoups,” or “holy water stones,” “a stone basin partly sunk in the wall.”

## Sources

- *The Catholic Encyclopedia* (New York, 1907–1914), “Fonts, Holy Water.” newadvent.org/cathen/07433a.htm

---

*The holy water stoup.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/holy-water-stoup

Historical description, not medical advice.