Medieval Cathedral or Catholic questions

1. Does the priest change out of everyday robes completely when doing a Mass, or just don special vestments over his daily garb? (vestments the right term?) Catholics may correct me at will, but due to plenty of reading, I think vestments is the right term, and yes, they do put the special garments over their everyday wer.
2. Would these be stored in a special room behind the, er, altar area? (which is called what?) What is this chamber like, used for? It's called the vestry and it may be off to one side, not behind the altar. In most European cathedrals I've been in (UK only), the area behind the altar is used for other purposes, like chapels, etc. To my knowledge, the vestry is used only for garment storage & for changing.
3. Would it be a place a person could hide for an hour or so? Why not?
4. Would monks be attending, helping, etc, in a cathedral - ie, one at Chartres? They might be, particularly if their community is attached to the cathedral. If you're talking Chartres specifically, I don't know.

I think this might fit better in Research.

Monks certainly would be around at Chartres. It was not an abbey, so they wouldn't live there, but Chartres was a major place of pilgrimage. Pilgrims at some period slept inside the Cathedral itself. There might also be trading taking place, if you can imagine such a thing.

Priene said:

Monks certainly would be around at Chartres. It was not an abbey, so they wouldn't live there, but Chartres was a major place of pilgrimage. Pilgrims at some period slept inside the Cathedral itself. There might also be trading taking place, if you can imagine such a thing.

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Priests and Monks would not be likely to be doing any inquisitorial actions.
I suggest a Dominican Friar.

To clarify: I wasn't talking about monks taking part in an inquisition. Just that they would have had a constant presence as visitors.

Most medieval cathedrals have cross-shaped plans. The altar is at the crossing. Generally, ordinary people would attend the mass in the largest part of the cross, while the short arms of the cross were reserved for monks, nuns, and so forth. I think the monks had the right side and the nuns the left.

In many cathedrals, (I don't remember if there was one at chartres) there is a connected sacristy, which is where the changing of the robes would take place. (I don't know whether this happened a lot) In the days before locks became common, there probably would be a guard.

If I were at chartres, and I wanted to hide...I'd probably do it in the town surrounding the cathedral. Though the cathedral now has a nice square in front of it, in medieval times it wouldnt have. The cathedral would have been the biggest open space in town. If I couldn't hide there, I would probably disguise myself as a filthy pilgrim, and find an out of the way spot on the triforium (which is the balcony-like area overlooking the main aisle.

Sarpedon said:

Most medieval cathedrals have cross-shaped plans. The altar is at the crossing.

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No, the altar is on the east end. And there may be lots of side chapels with altars.

See for example

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transept

No torture in the church/cathedral proper. That's Hollywood.

Vestments for Mass and other rites would be changed into clerical robes.

The Holy Office of the Inquisition was not something parish priests would get into. A canon or even archdeacon at a cathedral is another matter.

C

There is...

a superb book on my shelf at home, originally a children's one, but in great detail. Of course I cannot give you anything useful - someone here will know it - except that it was called ‘Cathedral’ or ‘Mediaeval Cathedral’ and was one of a series, ‘Castle’ I remember too. Shows all the interiors and structure and would give you a feeling of the inside of a Cathedral.

And if you're after information about Chartres cathedral, Philip Ball's Universe of Stone is good place to start.

An Inquisition tribunal would ordinarily not have been held in the cathedral proper. It was infinitely more likely to have been held in the room(s) of the bishop's residence where the ecclesiastical court ordinarily met, or in the largest room available in the local Dominican cloister.

Do you have any information that suggests that Inquisition tribunals were held in the cathedral at Chartres? Because that would have been very, very unusual, and I would expect that if that were the case there would be some quite extraordinary explanation for that.

IceCreamEmpress said:

An Inquisition tribunal would ordinarily not have been held in the cathedral proper. It was infinitely more likely to have been held in the room(s) of the bishop's residence where the ecclesiastical court ordinarily met, or in the largest room available in the local Dominican cloister.

Do you have any information that suggests that Inquisition tribunals were held in the cathedral at Chartres? Because that would have been very, very unusual, and I would expect that if that were the case there would be some quite extraordinary explanation for that.

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I doubt that you would have any inquisitorial procedings in a cathedral, though apparently an episcopal vicar could burn people if he got all his ducks in a row:

http://books.google.com/books?id=RO...a=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#PPA3,M1

bylinebree said:

Hi, I need some info from those of you who are Catholic, or know about cathedrals, please.

Setting: Medieval Europe (France)
Setup: Female character is entering a cathedral by way of a secret tunnel - to spy on an Inquisition tribunal. She's going to sneak into one of the back rooms & use a peep-hole there, for an hour or so. She's considering taking some of the garments there to use as a disguise.

Questions:
1. Does the priest change out of everyday robes completely when doing a Mass, or just don special vestments over his daily garb? (vestments the right term?)
2. Would these be stored in a special room behind the, er, altar area? (which is called what?) What is this chamber like, used for?
3. Would it be a place a person could hide for an hour or so?
4. Would monks be attending, helping, etc, in a cathedral - ie, one at Chartres?

Thanks for forebearing with a non-Catholic!

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As a kid, I was a choir boy at a Cathedral that was built around gothic lines, ie: flying butrresses, gargoyes on the roof line, enormous open space and lots of stained glass. This was in 1960 not 1360 but I doubt things changed much in intervening 600 years.

Note that a cathedral is a church in which the bisop of the diocesse presides so it tends to be a big deal.

To the left of the altar were a couple of doors, one led to a side chapel and one smaller door lead to the sancristy (sp) where they got the wine and bread ready for mass. That's where the priest's robes were kept, including the arch bisop's stuff. It was always kept locked mostly so that the altar boys (14 and 15 year olds) wouldn't get into the communion wine when no one was looking.

The choir boys had their own room to the right of the altar. All our robes were kept on hangers in this sort of open closet. It was never locked. The choir boys were from age 8 to about 13 which is about the top age since our voices broke about that point.

I doubt that your female protag could sneak into the sancristy. However maybe she can disquise herself as a 13 year old choir boy. Hey Shakespeare was big on that sort of thing!

By way of back ground, athough we were choir boys, we were still boys and most of us were thorough going little shits. We swore extravagantly though we never blasphemed. We were always getting into fist fights but never in the church, always out side in the church yard behind some of the larger monuments which conviently screened our activities from view. I don't know whether we could have out sung the Vienna Boys Choir but I bet we could have beaten the crap out of them.

The head choir boy would be the oldest boy with the best voice like "Jack" in Lord of the Flies. If your female protag pops in as a new choir boy, she better have a good story for "Jack", otherwise she'll get dragged out into the side church yard when the priests aren't looking (trust me they never looked) and administered a good thumping.

I concur that the actual inquisition would not take place in the cathedral - the Bishop's palace adjacent to the cathedral, much more likely.

bylinebree said:

Hi, I need some info from those of you who are Catholic, or know about cathedrals, please.

[
1. Does the priest change out of everyday robes completely when doing a Mass, or just don special vestments over his daily garb? (vestments the right term?) Yes. And keep in mind that different color vestaments are used at different seasons and events.
2. Would these be stored in a special room behind the, er, altar area? (which is called what?) What is this chamber like, used for? It is called the sacristy and yes, most likely the vestments would be stored there.
3. Would it be a place a person could hide for an hour or so? I suppose; the sacristy is seldom used except prior to and just after Mass
4. Would monks be attending, helping, etc, in a cathedral - ie, one at Chartres? Yes

Thanks for forebearing with a non-Catholic!

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You probably have all the answers but just in case.....answers in blue above.

Just a side note if you're looking for more information about the Inquisition: You might want to search for Bernard Gui and his writings. He was the inquisitor at Toulouse from 1307 to 1323, and wrote a famous how-to manual for inquisitors. If you've ever read Umberto Eco's book The Name of the Rose, he is a character in that book and one scene is actually a re-enactment of Gui's inquisition handbook.

Apologies for the misinformation I posted. I've only been to the UK and it's true -- the place where they change is currently called the vestry, but it wasn't during the middle ages.

And didn't inquiries about anything of a disciplinary nature often take place in the Chapter House?

Back in the dark ages when I was an altar boy, there were two rooms one to the left of the altar and one to the right. The right one was the sacristy where the elements and other "equipment" - chalices, cruets, etc were kept and where the priest vested for Mass. The room to the left of the altar was the altar boy's vesting room and, as someone pointed out, the cassocks and surplices ( the white, short-sleeved grament worn over the floor length cassock) were stored on hangers. In our church, which was fairly large and laid out in Gothic style with two transcepts, each with a side altar, a narrow hallway connected the two rooms making it possible to walk from one side of the building to the other without crossing the altar.

There was also a cool basement corridor that one entered in the back behind the steps to choir loft. It tunneled under the church and emerged near the altar boy's room. I always felt a little uneasy walking it...like it was the catacombs or something and I might encounter a corpse. (I had an active imagination.) It would have been easy for someone to enter the church from the rear, slip down the stairs and emerge behind the altar. Most old buildings have these kind of passageways. I've encountered them in old downtown office buildings as well.

Good Luck

bylinebree said:

To Mike Martyn: The nobleman they're trying is a baron, so it IS a big deal.

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I don't think a baron would surrender to the Inquisition without a pretty big fight. It might take a crusade to get him.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Albigenses

http://xenophongroup.com/montjoie/albigens.htm

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/gui-cathars.html

bylinebree said:

If you were a good Catholic girl of the 13th century, and the Church arrested your dear father for joining an "unlawful sect" how would you feel about your beloved (and I mean that) Church? Your religion?
We all know that the Inq. was horrible, of course. But thanks for a little role-playing, and some theological perspective (and personal thoughts) here.

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The modern models of religion probably don't apply well to the 13th century. For one thing, though the Church was "holy, catholic and apostolic"...it was not anything like a modern ideologically-based "faith"...the Church was an ideal form, personified as a woman and set up in opposition to other ideal forms (such as Synegogia, who was portrayed as blindfolded). In local terms, there were plenty of cultic goings on that functioned as much as a part of local industry...very different from our modern image where the "goodness" of a person relates to their ideological purity. For example, your character might have an uncle who was a priest and had a role in the cathedral (such as a canon), but who also had a more or less official wife and some children. His goodness and holiness would flow from his participation in the rites of the cathedral, not from his ideological correctness.
But suppose her father...some sort of noble apparently...has what are in fact modern ideological ideas of goodness (assuming he is going to join the Cathars). One of his points would be that purity and goodness come from the ideological correctness of not having anything to do with the evils of the world such as wives and children (including -- I guess -- his daughter) and eating and drinking.
Perhaps his daughter would make the correct medieval choice and tell her "Corrupt" priestly uncle that her father was going to join that nutty purity sect and wreck all their lives. Moreover, assuming the Inquisition is hard at work...said daughter has a lot of evidence (such as the last two decades of slaughter..assuming we are in about 1230) that the time is not right for a modern ideological interpretion of religious goodness.

But suppose her father...some sort of noble apparently...has what are in fact modern ideological ideas of goodness (assuming he is going to join the Cathars).

The Cathars' ideology doesn't map well to any modern ideology I know of. It was a movement that was very much of its time.

bylinebree, have you read the book The Perfect Heresy by Stephen O' Shea? Because he talks a lot about the conflicts that resulted when someone in, or some part of, a family joined the Cathars and other family members did not.

IceCreamEmpress said:

But suppose her father...some sort of noble apparently...has what are in fact modern ideological ideas of goodness (assuming he is going to join the Cathars).

The Cathars' ideology doesn't map well to any modern ideology I know of. It was a movement that was very much of its time.

bylinebree, have you read the book The Perfect Heresy by Stephen O' Shea? Because he talks a lot about the conflicts that resulted when someone in, or some part of, a family joined the Cathars and other family members did not.

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I was thinking the Cathars are more like a modern ideology in the sense that it was an all-or-nothing leap into accepting a lot of evaluations of goodness and purity and a view of how the world worked. In those ways the Cathars were more like a modern "faith"...than the diverse and often purely local and contingent workings of the medieval church.
In a sense, modern people have no need for an Inquisition since the internalized inquisitors of ideology keep them within some ideologically defined bounds without much need for external punishment. Each modern person is his own inquisitor in terms of ideological correctness.