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Brenda Cook wrote: >Canons do not have to be priests, in 12th C at least. Dear Brenda, you are quite right that canons did not have to be priests in this period --apparently they did not even have to be clergy of any sort. as i mentioned, the Vidame of Chartres, who was most definitely a layman, married and a knight, charged with overseeing the property of the Bishop, was, apparently, also an _ex officio_ canon. orderic vitalis mentions a certain physician (forgot his name) who was a canon of Chartres, and who also happened to be married and was not, apparently, a cleric of any kind. i believe i've found another example of a married canon there (Paganus of Mongerville) who ran afoul of Ivo --though perhaps for other reasons as well, as the fellow was in the crew of the Viscounts/LePuisets. feeling i have is that one could probably find all sorts of (to us) weird and unusual situations before things became "regularized" --which is a large part (though not all) of what guys like Ivo were about doing. >The Chapter of Notre Dame, Paris seems (if the witness lists in Lastereye (sp ?) are any guide - and what else is there?-) to suggest that the Chapter consisted of : The Dean & 3 Archdeacons, 3 Canons who were Priests, 3 Canons who were Deacons, 3 Canons who were Sub-Deacons (and at this date I believe Sub-Deacons were in Minor not Major Orders) and 3 Acolytes. So that LESS THAN HALF the college were fully ordained priests - Two things here: the charters published by Robert de Lasteyrie in his beautiful _Cartulaire Générale de Paris_ (1887) are something of a mélange taken from _fonds_ all over the Paris region, and the few whichhe publishes from that of the Cathedral, while they are important, are by no means the only charters which have survived from the early period--nor even the only ones which have been published. The "cartulary" of the cathedral (4 vols.) had been published in the 1840's by Benjamin Guerard --who *may* have been de Lasteyrie's teacher at the Ecole des Chartes (though de Lasteyrie was also a very significant art historian). Second: as far as i know, the situation at Paris is about the same as that at Chartres, document-wise, in that no surviving list of *all* of the canons of either place seems to have survived from before --i don't know-- perhaps the end of the middle ages. the witness list in any given charter (from anywhere), unless it *specifically* states otherwise, may not be taken to have been witnessed by *all* of the canons of a given place --just those who happened to be present. even one which says "published in plenea capitula (or somesuchlike phrase)" does not necessarily mean that *all* of the canons were present at a plenary meeting. the diocese of Chartres (the only place i really know much about) was the largest in France, and its chapter numbered more than 65 canons and dignataries (and i have no idea how many might have been "ordained priests"). Paris was not as large --though certainly a good-sized diocese-- but surely its chapter numbered more than 30. the number of canons was dependant upon the number of prebends available, which in turn was a function of, not just the size, but also the wealth of the diocese. The only way i know for sure to find out how large the chapter there might have been is to tediously go through the literature which deals with the documents from a later period. (though, now that i think of it, Guerard probably makes a stab at an estimate in the long introduction to his ed. of the cartulary.) and, don't forget that at Paris --and in several other chapters of various sorts-- you had institutional _ex officio_ canons: the Abbot of St. Victor's was an ex officio canon (cf. the act of Louis VI "founding" st. V.); and, i believe that the Abbot of the collegial of St. John's at Chartres (reformed by St. Ivo) was the same in that chapter. a common way for a "reforming" institution to be supported. >the Archdeacons may have been just that - ARCH Deacons. well, they certainly were just Archdeacons, and my guess is that there were more than three at Paris, though different dioceses were of different sizes and Archdeconries were essentially the ecclesistical geographic administrative units of the diocese (chartres had 5 or six, i believe). someone in a charter witness list *might* be styled "Archdeacon of [the church of] Paris", in which case it is a question of what, at chartres, is called (later) the "Grand Archdeacon", first among equals, whose archdeaconry consisted of the City and it's immediate environs out to a distance of several miles, perhaps. the other archdeacons took the name of the seat of their archdeaconries --e.g., there was one at Josas, i believe. the archdeaconries were subdivided into deaconries, each of which had its own "seat" in a local town or village. i've got a map --19th c., but well founded on medieval documents-- of the Chartres diocese on my nascent Chartres site which gives you something of the idea of how that diocese was divided up ecclesiastically: http://ariadne.org/centrechartraine/maps/map.jpg (warning: large file --300+k-- so that it can be blown up and fully read). Jo Ann MacNamara wrote: >The anchorites enclosed in the church walls were probably living, like Julian of Norwich in comfortable little establishments built against the church wall with a single entrance into the church itself rather than to the outside world. In Holland and Belgium, it is common to see shops and houses built in similar fashion, using the church walls as part of the structure... these accretions of structures of all sorts "growing" on the cathedral or major church of a town or city were, apparently, *much* more common --universal probably --than we might think, looking at the present state of the buildings. "netoyage" was a favorite passtime of the 19th c. French; the cathedral of Chartres was sterilized in the 1860's --not just the houses abbuting the cathedral were cleaned out, but also the Chapter library (on the NE) and the 13th c. hospital (on the SW) went to the town dump by the business men of the local chamber of commerce, so that the cathedral could be better appreciated by the increasing numbers of tourists. > I repeat, I do not want to overdo this but there are a lot of things we don't know and I think it is very worth our while to look at these unexplained situations as opportunities to question our assumptions and even the claims of some of our sources. i'm of the opinion that this premise cannot be overdone. best to all from here, christopher well, what do you know, there's a copy of de Lasteyrie's Cartulaire for sale on the web --at a very reasonable price, too: http://ariadne.org/centrechartraine/books/books4sale.html ____________________________________________________________________ Get free email and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1