Church chalices survived because secular gold cups got melted down
A stemmed cup on a foot is an ordinary shape, and for centuries nobles drank from precious versions of it at feasts. Most of those secular cups vanished into the melting pot once they went out of fashion. The ones kept by churches endured, which is partly why the word chalice now suggests an altar rather than a banquet.
The word comes from the Latin calix, meaning cup, itself from the Greek kylix. The Roman calix was loosely defined, usually a bowl on a stem and foot, with or without handles. The Greek kylix, as modern scholars use the term, was a much wider and shallower bowl with two horizontal handles, the wine cup seen again and again in paintings of drinking parties. Over time the word narrowed until it meant mainly the cups used in Christian worship, while the same shape in everyday settings became a goblet, a term still alive in the trade name Paris goblet for plain rounded wineglasses.
Chalices hold the sacramental wine of the Eucharist in Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran and other churches, and have done so since the early Church. The earliest often had big bowls and two upright handles, echoing classical drinking cups. Over the centuries the bowl shrank and the base widened for stability, and church rules came to govern how chalices were made and blessed. Some traditions still require at least the inside to be gilded. Late medieval pieces such as the Royal Gold Cup show how a single vessel could move between secular and sacred use.
East and West developed different styles. Western chalices often have a knob where stem meets cup, making it easier to lift during the elevation, and Catholic cups of recent centuries tend to be narrow; newly ordained priests commonly receive one from their family. Eastern chalices are rounder, since a portion of the bread is placed in the wine and the faithful receive both from a spoon, and in Russian Orthodox practice communicants often kiss the base. Orthodox monks may own nothing, yet a monk ordained as a priest may keep a chalice.
As for the cup of the Last Supper, the New Testament gives it no special importance, and a 1908 Catholic reference work concluded no reliable tradition about it survives.
Source: Chalice
