Dear Julia, Thanks for your help. This is exactly what I needed. More careful reading shows me, too, that St. Donatian's did not become a Cathedral till 1559, when it Bruges was separated from the see of Tournai and erected as a see of its own. Sorry for the misreading. Is there a good source on secular and regular canons that sums up this kind of information? I'm pretty good on monastic history, but canons, especially secular ones, are kind of a black hole for me. Thanks, Patrick. >Dear Patrick >Praepositus does mean provost. The provost in a chapter of secular >canons was in overall charge of the lands of the chapter. Not all >secular chapters had provosts but they were normal in the >Empire throughout the middle ages, and quite common in NE France and >Flanders (at least up to the 12 th c). Cf. J. Pycke on Tournai. >St Donatian's was not a cathedral but a collegiate church. Collegiate >churches had the same sort of institutional set-up as cathedrals - >essentially the one laid down in Louis the Pious' 816 reforms (Rule >of Aachen a.k.a. Institutio Canonicorum). >The dean in a secular chapter had the particular duty of being in >charge of worship. He was always a priest whereas a provost was very >commonly no more than a deacon. Chapters without provosts (e.g. in >Normandy, following which also post-Conquest England) were headed by >deans, a system which suited chapters better because the dean was >merely primus inter pares, not a really powerful figure like a >provost (provosts could cut off canons' prebendal distributions in >the earlier middle ages, which meant that they had quite a lot of >authority over the rest of the chapter). >Hope this is a help >Julia Barrow __________________________________ Patrick J. Nugent Department of Religion Earlham College Richmond, Indiana 47374 USA (765) 983-1413 [log in to unmask] __________________________________ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%