In a church you can have (several) chapels. And in a chapel you can have (on
the whole, only one) shrine. Or you can have the shrine in the church (eg
Cuhtbert at Durham or Becket at Canterbury)
But then you have got a place (Durham, Canterbury, Compostella) in which is
sited this shrine, so you can transfer the term to the town or city (or
village, or hilltop)
Ecclesia means the whole unit, either the body of Christians in a village,
town, dioocese, country or the whole lot: capella - which is a diminutive -
is used for a small sub-unit, but that does not say (without some context)
whether it is a subunit inside a (bigger) ecclesia, or several, and a
subunit which stand alone in a field or a street or just in a churchyard or
cemetery.
Chapel, capella, comes from the Latin capa (a cape, cloak) and new OED (vol
3 p 24) relates the meaning to St Martin's cloak carried before French kings
in battle, which then needed a hutch to keep the rain off and the word slid
across with the cape (so to speak), and then started to widen (as words are
apt to do). OED gives some interesting medieval sources.
(For those without well-equppied libraries at their side, the sources
mentioned are Monk of St Gall
Vita Caroli Magni 1.4, a charter of Childebert ca 710 in Mabillon de re
Diplom. and cartularies of Charlemagne cap.v 182) {It is such small print
that I do not think our scanner would make much of it - I do not have the
CD - and the volume is so big it would probably squash the scanner.]
Thanks for making me learn something!
a.c.
Ampleforth Abbey, York
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-----Original Message-----
From: laura jacobus <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 19 January 1999 21:52
Subject: shrines
>Can anyone enlighten me as to the difference between a
>shrine and a chapel? Could the term'capella' refer to
>either in medieval times?
>
>Apologies for what seems like a pretty basic question
>
>Laura
>
>
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