A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

In the statutes of the old cathedrals, by chapter is also understood, a sort of court held by one or more of the canons, sometimes even by the non-capitular officers, for the administering the ordinary discipline of the church, fining absentees, &c.

The word chapter is occasionally applied abroad to boards of universities or other corporations.

The assemblies of the knights of the orders of chivalry, (as of the Garter, Bath, &c.,) are also called chapters.

CHAPTER HOUSE. The part of a cathedral in which the dean and chapter meet for business. Until the thirteenth century, the chapter house was always rectangular. Early in that century it became multagonal, generally supported by a central shaft, and so continued to the latest date at which any such building has been erected. The greatest cost was expended on the decoration of the chapter house, and there is little even in the choir of our cathedrals, of greater beauty than such chapter houses as Lincoln, Salisbury, Southwell, York, and Howden. That of old St. Paul’s in London, to judge by the plates in Dugdale’s History of St. Paul’s, must have been very beautiful. It stood in an unique position, in the centre of a cloister. For the plan of the chapter house, in the arrangement of the conventual buildings, see Monastery. Some have imagined that the idea of the circular or polygonal chapter houses was derived from the circular baptisteries abroad.

CHARGE. This is the address delivered by a bishop, or other prelate called ordinary, at a visitation of the clergy under his jurisdiction. A charge may be considered, in most instances, rather in the light of an admonitory exhortation, than of a judgment or sentence; although the ordinary has full power in the charge to issue authoritative commands, and to cause them to be obeyed, by means of the other legal forms, for the exercise of his ordinary jurisdiction. It appears also that the clergy are legally bound by their oath of canonical obedience, and by their ordination vows, reverently to obey their ordinary. It is customary for archdeacons, and other ecclesiastics having peculiar jurisdiction, to deliver charges. Archdeacons have a charge of the parochial churches within the diocese to which they belong, and have power to hold visitations when the bishop is not there.—Burn. (See Visitation.)

CHARTREUX. (See Carthusians.)

CHASIBLE. (Chasuble, Casula.) The outermost dress formerly worn by the priest in the service of the altar, but not now used in the English Church, though prescribed under the title of Vestment, in the rubric of King Edward VI.’s First Book, to be worn by the priest or bishop when celebrating the communion, indifferently with the cope. In the time of the primitive Church, the Roman toga was becoming disused, and the pænula was taking its place. The pænula formed a perfect circle, with an aperture to admit the head in the centre, while it fell down so as completely to envelope the person of the wearer. A short pænula was more common, and a longer for the higher orders; it was this last which was used by the clergy in their services. The Romish Church has altered it much by cutting it away laterally, so as to expose the arms, and leave only a straight piece before and behind. The Greek Church retains it in its primitive shape, under the title of φαινόλιον, or φινώλιον: the old brasses in England also show the same form, some even since the Reformation. And many tombs of bishops in the 13th century, and later, show it in a graceful and flowing form.

CHERUB, or (the plural) CHERUBIM, a particular order of angels. When God drove Adam and Eve out of Paradise, “he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” (Gen. iii. 24.) When Moses was commanded by God to make the ark of the covenant with the propitiatory, or mercy-seat, he was (Exod. xxv. 19, 20) to make one cherub on the one end, and another cherub on the other end; the cherubims were to stretch forth their wings on high, and to cover the mercy-seat with them; and their faces were to look one to the other. Moses has left us in the dark as to the form of these cherubims. The Jews suppose them to have been in the shape of young naked men, covered for the sake of decency with some of their wings; and the generality of interpreters, both ancient and modern, suppose them to have had human shapes. But it is certain that the prophet Ezekiel (i. 10, and x. 14) represents them quite otherwise, and speaks of the face of a cherub as synonymous with that of an ox or calf; and in the Revelation (iv. 6) they are called ζῶα, beasts. Josephus (Antiq. lib. iii.) says that they were a kind of winged creatures, answering to the description of those which Moses saw about the throne of God, but the like to which no man had ever seen before. Grotius, Bochart, and other learned moderns, deriving the word from charab, which in the Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic, signifies to plough, make no difficulty to suppose that the cherubim here spoken of resembled an ox, either in whole or in part. The learned Spencer supposes them to have had the face of a man, the wings of an eagle, the back and mane of a lion, and the feet of a calf. This he collects from the prophetical vision of Ezekiel (i.), in which the cherubims are said to have four forms, those of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. There is something in this mixed form, according to that author, which is very suitable to the regular character which God bore among the Jews, and the peculiar circumstances of the time. The Israelites were then in the wilderness, and encamped in four cohorts; and the Hebrews have a tradition, that the standard of the tribe of Judah and the associated tribes carried a lion, the tribe of Ephraim an ox, the tribe of Reuben a man, and the tribe of Dan an eagle. God therefore would sit upon cherubims bearing the forms of these animals, to signify that he was the Leader and King of the four cohorts of the Israelites. The same writer, in another place, makes the cherubims of the mercy-seat to be of Egyptian extraction; for Porphyry, speaking of the priests of Egypt, says, “Among these, one god is formed like a man as high as the neck, and they give him the face of some bird, or of a lion, or of some other animal; and again, another has the head of a man, and the other parts of other animals.” Add to this, that the Apis of the Egyptians was worshipped under the figure of an ox. Nor can any other reason, he thinks, be assigned why God should order the cherubims to be fashioned in the shape of different animals, particularly the ox, but that he did it out of indulgence to the Israelites, who, being accustomed to such kinds of representations, not only easily bore with them, but ardently desired them. The cherubims of the mercy-seat, Bochart supposes to have had a mystical and symbolical relation to God, the angels, the tabernacle, and the people. As to God, they represented his great power according to that of the Psalmist, (xcix. 1,) “The Lord reigneth, let the people tremble; he sitteth between the cherubims, let the earth be moved.” They represented likewise the nature and ministry of angels. By the lion’s form is signified their strength, generosity, and majesty; by that of the ox, their constancy and assiduity in executing the commands of God; by the human shape, their humanity and kindness; and by that of the eagle, their agility and speed. As to the tabernacle, the cherubims denoted that the holy place was the habitation of the King of heaven, whose immediate attendants the angels are supposed to be. Lastly, with respect to the people, the cherubims might teach them that God, who sat between them, was alone to be the object of their worship. Upon this subject see the curious and interesting, though somewhat painful dissertation of Mr. Parkhurst in his Hebrew and Greek Lexicons.

By many it has been considered that the four symbols, applied from very ancient times to the four evangelists, are derived from the cherubic figures. The cherubims are also described in Rev. iv. 7.

It is surely derogatory to right ideas of religion, to suppose that these mysterious symbols were derived from the images of heathen idolatry, in order to indulge the prejudices of the Israelites. This would be to encourage idolatry, against which the Divine vengeance was so markedly directed. It is much more consistent and probable to believe that the corresponding symbols of Egyptians and Assyrians (the latter so wonderfully illustrated by the late discoveries at Nineveh) were derived from patriarchal traditions; distortions of that pure worship of God which was derived to the whole world from Noah. This solution will account for many of those extraordinary resemblances between heathen and Jewish customs, which have been stumbling-blocks to neologists, especially in our day.