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XI. Additional Observations to Mr. Ashpitel's Paper on Chancels, by John Henry Parker, Esq., F.S.A. In a Letter addressed to Sir Henry Ellis, K.H., F.R.S., Director
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2012
Extract
I was unfortunately not able to attend the Meeting of our Society on the evening when my friend Mr. Ashpitel read his learned and valuable paper on Chancels, but I have since been favoured with the perusal of it, and have been requested to make some additional observations on the subject. Far be it from me to attempt to answer Mr. Ashpitel; on the contrary, I would rather confirm what he has stated and illustrate it by some notice of the practice in France and England, Mr. Ashpitel having avowedly confined his attention chiefly to Italy. He has clearly demonstrated that in this instance, as in many others, considerable errors and confusion have arisen from a different sense being given to the same word, or from a gradual change in its meaning. We were all probably aware previously that the word chancel is derived from the Latin word cancellus, or the Italian cancelli, signifying a railing or screen; but it had not occurred to us that the original use of this railing or screen was to protect the chorus or choir from the pressure and interruption of the people while they were singing; hence the two words chancel and choir are synonymous in the sense of the place for singing, but that place is not by any means necessarily the eastern limb of the church. He has shown us that in Italy this singing-place, choir, or chancel, is continually changed even in the same church at different seasons of the year.
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References
page 134 note a The church of Quimperlé in Britany is built on a very remarkable plan, the principal part of the fabric being circular, with the choir raised on a platform in the centre, and the aisles carried round it at a considerably lower level; both the nave and the apse for the altar being comparatively small and insignificant.
page 136 note a In other instances, however, the east end was originally square, as at Daglingworth, near Cirencester, a church of the ante-Norman period, which is also divided by two stone arches into three distinct portions: the Sanctuary, or place for the altar; the Choir, or place for the chorus; and the Nave, or place for the people. The same divisions may be noticed in other long narrow churches of later late, probably re-built upon old foundations, as Besselsleigh, Berkshire.
page 136 note b In the Constitution of Archbishop Gray, A.D. 1250, after directing what things the parishioners are bound to provide, it is ordered that “all other things shall belong to the rectors or vicars, according to their several ordinations; that is, the principal chancel, with the reparations thereof, as to the walls, and roofs, and glass windows, with desks and benches, and other decent ornaments, that they may sing with the Prophet, Lord, I have loved the comeliness of Thy house.”—Johnson's Canons, vol. ii. p. 177.
In the Legatine Constitution of Othobon, A.D. 1286, “And let them also cause the chancels of the church to be repaired by those who are bound to do it in the manner before expressed.”—p. 232.
In both these cases it is evident that more than one chancel to each church was usual.
page 137 note a This order for the preservation of chancels was objected to by the Puritans on these grounds: “Whether the preservation of chancels be not scandalous to many by confirming them in the superstitious opinion of the holiness of one place more than of another.”—Survey, &c. p. 40.
page 137 note b Bucer objected to the communion table being placed on the same site as the altar had stood upon, and his advice was followed by Archbishop Grindal in his Injunctions, and in the second Prayer-book of Edward VI. But in the Injunctions of 1559 Queen Elizabeth ordered the tables to be replaced where the altars had formerly stood.
page 138 note a Cardinal Wiseman mentions in his “Fabiola, or the Church in the Catacombs, ” a tradition of the Roman Church, that St. Peter used a portable wooden altar, and among the relics preserved at St. Peter's at Rome is a wooden slab or board said by tradition to have been that altar. Cranmer was probably acquainted with this tradition.
page 138 note b A few instances also remain in different parts of the country of the Puritan usage, in which the Communion- table is placed in the middle of the chancel, with seats all round it, so arranged that it was impossible to kneel at it. I remember to have seen several of these, but they are fast disappearing.
page 136 note c Staveley, in his History of Churches, says, “The chancel at the east end thereof, warranted, it is said, by an apostolick constitution.” (p. 154, 2nd edition.) In the margin he gives the Latin, but no reference. I need not remind you that the early canons of the Church, called the Apostolical Canons, were written in Greek in the second or third century. I have just read them through again carefully in John Johnson's translation, but can find no mention of this subject.
page 139 note a The variation of the axis between the nave and chancel is often very remarkable, and has given rise to various theories to account for it. The most usual cause I believe to be, that the two parts of the building were erected at different times, and the ground-plan laid out carelessly, which was frequently the case in medieval work, even when the superstructure would have led us to expect extreme care. The most remarkable instance of this deviation is the cathedral of Quimper, in Britany; here the chancel is of a different date from the rest of the church, and, I believe, there was something in the nature of the site which prevented the straight line from being followed. In some instances, however, this deviation does appear to have been intentional, and it has not been satisfactorily explained.