Niche, also notably known in the Roman Church as a type of small throne of gilded wood or precious fabric topped by a canopy or a dome with plumes and decorative feathers. In religious services, the Blessed Sacrament is placed in a niche where it is exposed to the worshippers for public veneration.

Niches are mentioned in antiquity, that is to say, pavilions under which images of the gods were placed and carried. It is said in Amos , verses 25 and 26 , that the Israelites , in their voyage through the desert, carried the tent or the pavilion of their god Moloch, the image of their idol, and the heavenly star of their god . And Saint Stephen in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 7 verse 43 , levels the same criticism at them. It is speculated with enough basis that Moloch and these other pagan divinities that they carried in the desert, were carried in niches on the shoulders of men or in covered chariots, as it is known that the Pagans sometimes did with their gods in procession or in public marches. Some people also believe that those small golden temples of the goddess Diane that were sold at Ephesus were portable temples or niches for the devotion of pilgrims.

The custom of carrying the figures of gods under tents and in covered litters came from the Egyptians. Herodotus, Book IV , talks about a festival in honor of the goddess Isis, where her statue was carried on a four-wheeled chariot hauled by the priests of the goddess. The same author, talking about another of Egypt’s deities, says that the priests carry it from one temple to another in a small gilded wood chapel. Saint Clement of Alexandria, Stromata Book V , talks about an Egyptian procession where two golden dogs, a hawk, and an ibis are carried. The same Father, in Protrepticus page 49 , reports the satirical words of Menander, who ridiculed these wandering divinities that could not remain in place. Macrobius, The Saturnalia Volume II , says that the Egyptian priests carry the statue of Jupiter of Heliopolis on their shoulders, as the Roman gods were carried in the ceremonies of the circus games. And Philo of Byblos, cited by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, Book I , recounts that Agrueros, a Phoenician divinity, was carried in a covered niche on a chariot drawn by animals.

According to Quintus Curtius, the Egyptian priests placed Jupiter Ammon on a golden gondola, from which plates of silver dangled, by whose movements they judged the will of the god and responded to those who consulted them. Sulpicius Severus says the Gauls walked their gods through the countryside covered in a white veil. Tacitus, De Moribus Germanorum, speaks of an unknown goddess who lived on an island in the Ocean; one keeps for her, he says, a covered chariot, which no one dares approach other than her sacrificer. When the goddess has entered it, two harnessed heifers drive the chariot where it is wanted, he says, after which the heifers bring it back to its forest. These are examples of gods carried in niches and on chariots.  

With regard to the small portable temples that were also types of niches , Diodorus of Sicily speaks of them — as well as Victor in his description of Rome, and to all appearances these small temples of Diana of Ephesus, that the goldsmith Demetrius sold, were niches where the figure of this goddess was represented . Calmet, Dictionnaire de la Bible . [1]

1. The reference is to Augustin Calmet (1672-1757), Dictionnaire historique, critique, chronologique, géographique et littéral de la Bible (Paris, 1730). For a later, condensed, English translation, see Dictionary of the Holy Bible (Boston, 1832).