medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Salvete omnes!
With regard to collegiate chapels:
This usage of 'chapel' is an interesting one, which has been discussed by
JH Denton in his "English Royal Free Chapels" (Manchester, 1970), which
pretty much does what it says on the tin. The collegiate nature of St
Stephen's and St George's is rather a red herring when it comes to
their naming (and a collegium certainly could be something pretty
lowly, but again terminology
doesn't necessarily help; in Scotland, the clergy of collegiate colleges were
practically always called 'chaplains', and only rarely 'canons', regardless of
dignity).
If I remember rightly, Denton points out that 'chapel' ends up (by
C14?) to be used for two almost canonically opposite cases. Firstly, in
the more
familiar usage, it is a wee church attached to something else, or a chapel
within a parish subordinate to a parish church, in which cases it is capella
rather than ecclesia precisely because it does not have full parochial rights.
Secondly, however, it can be used to mean almost the opposite: a church
free from ordinary (episcopal) jurisdiction, or at any rate with
peculiar liberties,
like (I think) the Ste-Chapelle and English royal free chapels. And
then again,
one must distinguish between particular chapels in royal patronage
(not all of
which are free chapels, anyhow), and the royal clerical establishments, the
'capelle regie', which also tend to acquire hefty privileges... The French,
English and Scottish 'capelle regie' all end up functioning as 'royal
dioceses',
directly subject to Rome. (Oddly in the Scottish case this is tied to a
particular chapel in 1501 when James IV endows Stirling to be the
concrete home
of the Capella Regia. As far as I know, this is rather unusual among royal
ecclesiastical institutions, though if anyone can correct me on this I would
be very interested to hear more.)
Denton has more detail on English matters. For France,
C. Billot, ‘Les Stes-Chapelles (xiiie-xvie siècles). Approche comparée de
fondations dynastiques’, Revue d’histoire de l’église de France lxxiii
(1987)
is interesting. Incidentally, if anyone out there can provide more references
about the Ste-Chapelle's constitutional organisation and its liturgy, I'd love
to have them!
Oh, the Denton reference has just been posted.
Pax et bonum,
Helen Brown
--
Helen Brown (Miss)
Doctoral student
Scottish History Department,
University of Edinburgh,
17 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh
Veritas liberabit.
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