English MonasteriesThompson, A. Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton)
History
English Monasteries
Thompson, A. Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton)
Monasteries -- England
§ 35. The Sunday procession, after making stations at each of the
eastern chapels in turn, came down the aisle into the transept next
the cloister, and, having visited the altars there, passed into the
cloister through the eastern processional doorway in the nave. It
returned through the western processional doorway. If, as at Durham,
there was a chapel at the west end of the church, the procession would
enter it by the doorway at the end of one aisle, and leave it by the
other. The western chapel at Durham, as at Glastonbury, was the Lady
chapel. It was known at Durham as the Galilee because the celebrant,
entering it in front of the convent at the end of the procession on
Sunday, the feast of the Resurrection, symbolised our Lord going before
His disciples into Galilee. The name Galilee was also applied, as at
Ely, or in the Cistercian churches of Byland and Fountains, to porches
in front of the western doorway of a church. The final station of
the procession was in the middle of the nave before the rood-screen.
Here the convent stood in two long rows, the position of each member
being regulated by stones inserted in the floor of the nave at equal
intervals: such stones still remain beneath the grass at Fountains,
and are known to have existed elsewhere. Meanwhile, the celebrant
sprinkled the chief nave altar, which stood against the middle of
the screen, and was at Durham enclosed at the sides and in front by
wooden screens, which formed a chapel or 'porch.' On either side of
the altar was a doorway through the screen, above which was the great
rood or crucifix, with a figure of St Mary on one side and St John
on the other: at Durham there were also figures of archangels. The
rood-screen was flanked by screens across the aisles, so that the
western part of the nave was entirely shut off from the quire and from
the eastern processional doorway. The eastern part of the south aisle
at Durham was screened off as a chantry chapel, and there were also two
enclosed chapels further west, beneath opposite arches of the nave,
one of which was visited on the way to the Galilee, and the other in
returning. There was frequently, as at St Albans, a row of chapels
beneath the arches, while in some cases, as at Ely and Peterborough,
where the nave projected some distance west of the cloister, more
altars were provided in a transept at the west end. After the station
at the rood altar and its neighbouring chapels had been concluded,
the convent passed through the two doorways in the rood-screen, and,
reuniting in the bay beyond, entered the quire through the doorway in
the middle of the _pulpitum_. In many churches, as at Norwich, the
_pulpitum_ was formed by two parallel stone screens carrying the loft
and occupying a bay of the nave. At Malmesbury it enclosed the bay west
of the crossing, and its eastern screen is the reredos of the present
parish altar. At Durham and Canterbury, where the quire was east of the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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