Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Paul: An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical SketchDimock, Arthur
History
Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Paul: An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch
Dimock, Arthur
St. Paul's Cathedral (London, England)
contained effigies of himself and of his second wife, Constance of
Castile. He had also a chantry.
=Bishop Robert de Braybroke.=--On Courtenay's translation to
Canterbury, Braybroke became bishop (1382-1404). A thoroughly
practical reformer, he held out the threat of the greater
excommunication because "in our Cathedral not only men but women also,
not on common days alone but especially on Festivals, expose their
wares as it were in a public market, and buy and sell without
reverence for the holy place.... Others play at ball or other unseemly
games, both within and without the church, breaking the beautiful and
costly painted windows, to the amazement of the spectators." He also
attempted to regulate residence. Owing to the increased value of the
corporate or common property divided amongst the residentiaries or
_stagiarii_, residence was no longer reckoned a burden, but sought
after. To keep the number down to two the canons in residence would
admit no fresh colleague unless he spent during his first year from
six hundred to a thousand merks in feasting and other useless
expenditure. Braybroke put a check to this abuse, and by the
arbitration of the king the practice of Salisbury was taken as a
model.[14] It was after his death (October 15, 1414) that the Use of
St. Paul in the religious services was superseded by the Use of Sarum.
The Petty or Minor Canons now received their charter of corporation
immediately after the death of Anne of Bohemia, wife of Richard II.
Apparently when Becket's representative ventured on his dangerous
errand, deed of excommunication in hand, the canons' vicars or vicars
choral sang the services. In Braybroke's time we find a body
intermediate between the canons and their vicars. They were twelve in
number, were required to have good voices, and to understand the art
of singing, and by their charter were to pray for their royal
benefactor, as well as for the repose of the souls of his wife and
ancestors. The first ranked as Sub-dean, taking for many purposes the
dean's place in his absence, and the two next were the Cardinals. The
Sacrist, the Almoners, and the Divinity Lecturers endowed by Bishop
Richard de Gravesend and Thomas White were appointed from among them.
They enjoyed their own common hall, and elected their own warder and
steward; and two years after incorporation, drawing up their own
Statutes, provided that they were to be read in Hall every quarter,
and that no one was to shuffle his feet during the reading.[15]
The vicars choral either now or later had dwindled down to six, and
seem to have been only in minor orders. The Petty Canons had their own
endowments; but if the canons had to pay their own vicars, we need not
be surprised at this diminution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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