PROTHESIS (Gr. 7rpbOeo•tc, a setting forth, from 7rportOEvau, to set forward or before)  , in the liturgy of the Orthodox Eastern Church, the name given to the act of " setting forth " the oblation, i.e. the arranging of the bread on the paten, the signing of the cross (a-clipayQ'e1v) on the bread with the sacred spear, the mixing of the chalice, and the veiling of the paten and 1 chalice (see F . E . Brightman, Liturgies Eastern and Western, 1896) . The term is also used, architecturally, for the place in which this ceremony takes place, a chamber on the north side of the central apse in a Greek church, with a small table . During the reign of Justin II . (565-574) this chamber was located in an apse, and another apse was added on the south side for the diaconicon (q.v.), so that from his time the Greek church was triapsal . In the churches in central Syria the ritual was apparently not the same, as both prothesis and diaconica are generally rectangular, and the former, according to De Vogue, constituted a chamber for the deposit of offerings by the faithful . Consequently it is sometimes placed on the south side, if when so placed it was more accessible to the pilgrims . There is always a much wider doorway to the prothesis than to the diaconicon, and there are cases where a side doorway from the Typhlomolge rathbuni . central apse leads direct to the diaconicon, but never to the prothesis .