A Semi-choir of Minoresses.
When there was a shrine of a noted saint[68] it was placed in the presbytery, behind the high-altar; and here, and in the choir aisles, were frequently placed the monuments of the abbots, and of founders and distinguished benefactors of the house; sometimes heads of the house and founders were buried in the chapter-house.
It would require a more elaborate description than our plan will admit to endeavour to bring before the mind’s-eye of the reader one of these abbey churches before its spoliation;—when the sculptures were unmutilated and the paintings fresh, and the windows filled with their stained glass, and the choir hung with hangings, and banners and tapestries waved from the arches of the triforium, and the altar shone gloriously with jewelled plate, and the monuments[69] of abbots and nobles were still perfect, and the wax tapers burned night and day[70] in the hearses, throwing a flickering light on the solemn effigies below, and glancing upon the tarnished armour and the dusty banners[71] which hung over the tombs, while the cowled monks sat in their stalls and prayed. Or when, on some high festival, the convent walked round the lofty aisles in procession, two and two, clad in rich copes over their coarse frocks, preceded by cross and banner, with swinging censers pouring forth clouds of incense, while one of those angelic boy’s voices which we still sometimes hear in cathedrals chanted the solemn litany—the pure sweet ringing voice floating along the vaulted aisles, until it was lost in the swell of the chorus of the whole procession—Ora! Ora! Ora! pro nobis!
The Cloister was usually situated on the south side of the nave of the church, so that the nave formed its north side, and the south transept a part of its eastern side; but sometimes, from reasons of local convenience, the cloister was on the north side of the nave, and then the relative positions of the other buildings were similarly transposed.
The Chapter-house was always on the east side of the court. In establishments of secular canons it seems to have been always multi-sided[72] with a central pillar to support its groining, and a lofty, conical, lead-covered roof. In these instances it is placed in the open space eastward of the cloister, and is usually approached by a passage from the east side of the cloister court. In the houses of all the other orders[73] the chapter-house is rectangular, even where the church is a cathedral. Usually, then, the chapter-house is a rectangular building on the east side of the cloister, and its longest axis is east and west; at Durham it has an eastern apse.[74] It was a large and handsome room, with a good deal of architectural ornament;[75] often the western end of it is divided off as a vestibule or ante-room; and generally it is so large as to be divided into two or three aisles by rows of pillars. Internally, rows of stalls or benches were arranged round the walls for the convent; there was a higher seat at the east end for the abbot or prior, and a desk in the middle from which certain things were read. Every day after the service called Terce, the convent walked in procession from the choir to the chapter-house, and took their proper places. When the abbot had taken his place, the monks descended one step and bowed; he returned their salutation, and all took their seats. A sentence of the rule of the order was read by one of the novices from the desk, and the abbot, or in his absence the prior, delivered an explanatory or hortatory sermon upon it; then from another portion of the book was read the names of brethren, and benefactors, and persons who had been received into fraternity, whose decease had happened on that day of the year; and the convent prayed a requiescant in pace for their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed this life. Then members of the convent who had been guilty of slight breaches of discipline confessed them, kneeling upon a low stool in the middle, and on a bow from the abbot, intimating his remission of the breach, they resumed their seats. If any had a complaint to make against any brother, it was here made and adjudged.[76] Convent business was also transacted. The woodcut gives an example of the kind. Henry VII. had made grants to Westminster Abbey, on condition that the convent should perform certain religious services on his behalf;[77] and in order that the services should not fall into disuse, he directed that yearly, at a certain period, the chief-justice, or the king’s attorney, or the recorder of London, should attend in chapter, and the abstract of the grant and agreement between the king and the convent should be read. The grant which was thus to be read still exists in the British Museum; it is written in a volume superbly bound, with the royal seals attached in silver cases; it is from the illuminated letter at the head of one of the deeds in this book[78] that our woodcut is taken. It rudely represents the chapter-house, with the chief-justice and a group of lawyers on one side, the abbot and convent on the other, and a monk reading the grant from the desk in the middle.
Monks and Lawyers in Chapter-house.
Lydgate’s “Life of St. Edmund” (Harl. 2,278) was written A.D. 1433, by command of his abbot—he was a monk of St. Edmund’s Bury—on the occasion of King Henry VI. being received—