medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
> > Have you ever wondered why a cathedral has a nave, and what that was used
> for?
>
>
> ideological reasons aside, i always assumed that it was to hold great masses
> of folk, who assembled there especially on special feast days.
One should not underestimate the importance of processions in naves. Particularly
in monastic churches which, unlike cathedrals, were not absolutely required by
definition to accommodate a lay congregation. There are, in particular, some quite
long Cistercian naves, which would specifically not have had to accommodate any
lay use. There are, I believe, in the pavement of the nave at Fountains in Yorkshire
the remains of markers to aid the monks in stopping the procession before the rood
screen before re-entering the choir. As for parochial involvement in monastic
churches, I am more familiar with this from English examples, but there certainly
was a movement in the later Middle Ages to provide the parish with a separate
church, or at least a chapel attached to the outer nave wall, in order to separate
parochial and monastic spaces, but if Saint-Hilaire is 12th-century in origin, this
would be substantially earlier than any example I know of in England. Surely the
cartulary of Saint-Pierre would be helpful in determining whether there was a parish
attached to the abbey church.
Cheers,
Jim Bugslag
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