The Archbishop's Three Seats in Canterbury Cathedral

C. S. Phillips

doi:10.1017/S0003581500020692

The Archbishop's Three Seats in Canterbury Cathedral

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2012

C. S. Phillips

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The question ‘Where did the Archbishop of Canterbury sit in pre-Reformation times when officially present at divine service in his cathedral?’ is one which has had no very clear answer hitherto. There can be no dispute that his ‘throne’ par excellence—the sign and symbol of his episcopal and primatial dignity—was the so-called ‘St. Augustine's chair’ still in use at archiepiscopal enthronements—really a marble chair of early-thirteenth-century date (hereafter to be called the Marble Chair); or that a similar throne in the same position, viz. the old ‘basilican’ position of the bishop's throne behind the high altar, existed in the earlier choirs of Lanfranc and Conrad. But under the conditions which prevailed when the choir was rebuilt after the fire of 1174 this throne, however impressive symbolically, must have had such drawbacks from other points of view as to make it hard to believe that the occasions when the archbishop actually occupied it were more than very rare.

Type: Research Article
Information: The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 29 , Issue 1-2 , April 1949 , pp. 26 - 36

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003581500020692 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1949

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^{page 26 note 1} Gervase of Canterbury, Historical Works (Rolls Series), vol. i, p. 13.

^{page 27 note 1} See article by Mr.Harvey, J. H. in Archaeologia Cantiana, vol. lviii (1945), p. 35Google Scholar.

^{page 27 note 2} Probably the old throne had perished in the fire. Domesday Monachorum (f. 7 b), in recounting the ‘incident’ on Palm Sunday when Prior Alan threatened to withdraw himself and his monks if an excommunicated knight did not leave the church, tells how the archbishop was ‘celebrating mass and after the collect was sitting in the usual manner in his cathedra near the horn of the altar’. Then, ‘as the subdeacon finished the epistle and the cantors were beginning the gradual’, the prior made his protest. This was in 1181—just a year after the monks took possession of the partially rebuilt choir on Easter Eve, 1180. The cathedra mentioned was presumably a temporary affair, used pending the construetion of the eastern portion of the choir and the provision of a new throne in the former basilican position. But the resulting practice, continued over a long period, might help to account for the sparing use of the Marble Chair when it came into being.

^{page 27 note 3} Dix, Shape of the Liturgy, p. 591.

^{page 27 note 4} In Conrad's choir the shrines of the two then chief saints—Dunstan and Alphege—flanked the high altar on either side. Their position in Lanfranc's choir is not known, but it can hardly have been behind the high altar. In the Anglo-Saxon cathedral Dunstan's body was ‘buried at a great depth in the ground in front of the steps’ leading from the choir of the singers up to the presbytery. See Eadmer as quoted in Gervase of Canterbury in his tract ‘De combustione et reparatione Cantuariensis ecclesiae’, Historical Works, vol. i, p. 7 f.

^{page 27 note 5} Register Q, f. 26 b.

^{page 28 note 1} York Pontifical (Surtees Society), p. 373.

^{page 28 note 2} If (as seems likely), besides and behind the tabulae of the high altar and the altars of St. Alphege and St. Dunstan on either side of it, there was also an altar-screen with two doors (as still at Westminster Abbey) running the whole width of the presbytery, the archbishop's eclipse would have been still more complete!

^{page 28 note 3} Martène, Voyage littéraire de deux Bénédictins, vol. i, p. 157.

^{page 28 note 4} On this subject see Prof. David Knowles, The Monastic Orders in England, pp. 619 ff.

^{page 29 note 1} See Dix, as above.

^{page 29 note 2} Stone's Chronicle (ed. W. G. Searle), p. 59.

^{page 29 note 3} Sede Vacante Scrap-Book, i. 85.

^{page 29 note 4} Register Q, f. 26 b.

^{page 29 note 5} Ibid.

^{page 30 note 1} Stone's Chronicle, p. 34.

^{page 30 note 2} Ibid., p. 55.

^{page 30 note 3} Ibid., p. 62. The Officium enthronizationis Archiepiscopi, etc., contained in the Bangor and Exeter Pontificals (late 15th cent.) and printed in Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia, vol. iii, pp. 292 ff., reproduces the order outlined in Register Q above; with the addition that the archbishop at his enthronement and the mass following is to be attended by ‘three cardinal deacons and three cardinal sub-deacons’, ‘but he shall not have cardinal priests, because of the press of people round the altar’. See below, p. 31 and note. The term ‘cardinals’ for the pontifical assistants was common in France. See Dom Denys Buenner, L'Ancienne Liturgie romaine: Le rite lyonnais, p. 270.

^{page 30 note 4} MS. volume of Formulae, No. 1, f. 117.

^{page 30 note 5} In this respect Grindal's enthronement had a somewhat ‘mixed’ character. The archdeaconry was vacant at the time. The royal mandate was addressed to the archdeacon, ‘if there is one’; and if the archdeaconry is vacant, to the dean and chapter. The dean and chapter appointed the vice-dean, William Darrell, as their proctor to perform the enthronement, and not as the archdeacon's proctor.

^{page 30 note 6} See order of service at Archbishop Tait's and Archbishop Benson's enthronements.

^{page 30 note 7} Register Q, f. 25 b.

^{page 30 note 8} Ibid., f. 28 b.

^{page 30 note 9} Printed in Peck, Desiderata Curiosa (London, 1735), vol. ii, P. 6.

^{page 31 note 1} Stone, p. 39.

^{page 31 note 2} Ibid., p. 46.

^{page 31 note 3} The exact force of tantum is uncertain in the absence of further evidence. Does it mean that the full ceremonial prescribed two ‘cardinal priests’ in addition to the three deacons and three subdeacons (see p. 30 above, note)? Or that (as in the case of the archbishop's fellow Primate of Lyons) the proper number was not three but seven (see Dom D. Buenner, op. cit., pp. 261 ff.)?

^{page 31 note 4} See Johnson's picture (painted in 1657), reproduced in Archaeologia, lxii (1911), p. 353. At this time the medieval arrangement of the steps presumably still remained.

^{page 31 note 5} Legg and Hope, Inventories of Christ Church, Canterbury, p. 191.

^{page 31 note 6} Ibid., pp. 240, 241.

^{page 31 note 7} Somner, , Antiquities of Canterbury (1st ed. 1640), p. 169Google Scholar.

^{page 31 note 8} Legg and Hope, p. 256.

^{page 32 note 1} See above, p. 31.

^{page 32 note 2} Legg and Hope, p. 277.

^{page 32 note 3} Ibid., p. 284.

^{page 32 note 4} A visitor to the cathedral in 1634 had described it as at that time ‘covered with sky-coloured velvet’. Quoted in Gentleman's Magazine, 1858, vol. ii, p. 485Google Scholar. Perhaps a Laudian embellishment.

^{page 33 note 1} Customary of St. Augustine's Abbey, i. 45 ff.

^{page 33 note 2} Stone, p. 108.

^{page 33 note 3} History and Antiquities of the Cathedral Church of Canterbury, p. 30.

^{page 33 note 4} Sir Gilbert supposed wrongly that these canopied stalls were for the prior and sub-prior respectively. Cf. Arch. Journ. xxxii, 86 f.

^{page 34 note 1} Somner, op. cit., Appendix XIX, p. 452 (ed. 1640).

^{page 34 note 2} Preserved in the Cathedral library. Date c. 1375. Partially destroyed 1670, but considerable parts of it survive.

^{page 34 note 3} Stone, p. 77.

^{page 34 note 4} Ibid., p. 77.

^{page 34 note 5} Ibid., p. 37.

^{page 34 note 6} Ibid., p. 52.

^{page 34 note 7} Ibid., p. 99. The archbishop of Narbonne accompanied Warwick and Bourbon on their return from a mission to the king of France. The two laymen also visited Canterbury on their outward journey and were present at vespers. ‘However, they did not stand in the stalls, but in front of the stall of the lord archbishop’ (ibid.)—i.e. presumably the Wooden Chair again.

^{page 34 note 8} Ibid., p. 107.

^{page 35 note 1} Martène, De Antiquis Ecclesiae Ritibus, vol. i, col. 364.

^{page 35 note 2} Stone, p. 112.

^{page 35 note 3} Ibid., p. 52.

^{page 35 note 4} Ibid., p. 105.

^{page 35 note 5} Dugdale, Mon. Angl. i. 67. Cf. Legg and Hope, p. 183.

^{page 36 note 1} Woodruff and Danks, Memorials of Canterbury Cathedral, p. 305.

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