The cathedral in the American church

Front matter

i

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

AMERICAN CHU

Preface

When organizing his Cathedral Chapter in Nebraska, Bishop Clarkson called upon the writer of this little book for help. In advocacy of the scheme which was presented to the council of the diocese for its adoption the undersigned wrote a report of a committee raised for considering the subject, going over it somewhat more fully and particularly than is common in such papers.' This circumstance has led several Bishops from time to time, as they have had the organization of the Cathedral of their dioceses in contemplation, tc advise with the writer. In this way he has been led to see a want of information on this subject, and that it is not readily accessible. In England many valuable and interesting books on the Cathedral have within this generation been published, and in our country a considerable number of papers in explanation and advocacy of the institution have been printed in periodicals and pamphlets. Every one who wishes to possess himself of the whole subject ought to read them all. But it certainly will be convenient that information on the subject should be collected within the thin covers of

VI

Preface.

this little book. This has led the writer to undertake the task of preparing it.

Having made this explanation, it may be right for him to state something of the way in which he has executed it. He has not indulged the least hesitancy in the freest use of what others have said. He has adopted their words when they have answered his purpose, and their great names seemed to add authority to their opinions; and he has appropriated their views when for any reason, such as brevity, he could not quote their language. He wishes here in this general way to disclaim all originality or pretense of it. At the same time, when the conditions of our country and generation have come into view he has expressed his own opinion with reference to them.

Many matters which might well be given a place in a book on the subject have been passed over; others which might well be given a large place have been only touched upon. This has been necessary in the writer's view of the practical usefulness of the book. He has thought that next to such a book being written it was most desirable that it should be small. He hopes, however, that it may suggest to the interested reader more than is written out at length.

J. M. W.

' Omaha, May, 1883.

Contents

I. INTRODUCTORY .....

II. HISTORICAL . .

III. DIFFERENCES

II. Historical

TT is not easy to understand the modes in which the early Church spread itself through the world, without apprehending the nature of the social and political organizations of the times. A word at the outset may be allowed to its explanation. Society was urban: the political organization was municipal. Greece especially, and Italy also were full of towns. From any lofty peak, the observer could look down on the territory lying before him and see many cities at a glance. Within limits hardly wider than one of our counties, and among a people one in blood, language, manners, and religion, he could, in a short day's journey, pass through several capitals; and as one receded from his view,

Historical.

another rose before him, so that all the whole distance his vision was full of the mighty w r alls, the glorious architecture, and the teeming life of some metropolis. The fact that the people were congregated in the cities is but a fraction of the truth. It was to his city that the citizen turned with the enthusiastic affection of home. A man's country was not a region, but a city: his patriotism did not extend over a w T ide surface of territory, but was shut up within the walls of a single town. His countrymen were not a whole nation of the same blood and language as himself, but only those who shared with him the local burghership of his native place. A man, in short, was not a Greek or an Italian, but an Athenian or a Roman. The city w r as the ruling political conception, and the form of political life was municipal. The freedman, the foreigner, even the dependent ally could not obtain citizenship by residence or even by birth in the land. He only who was the descendant of citizen-ancestors could be enfranchised except by special decree of the

Historical.

*7 whole body of citizens. To live at a distance from the city, so that it was impossible to appear habitually at the assemblage held within the walls was felt to be equivalent to a sentence of exile. And they whose homes were thus remote were reckoned as lost to the citizenship, and as of an inferior and contemned race. Nor was this true only of Greece and Italy. All the provinces of imperial Rome were full of great cities. Gibbon tells us of the twelve hundred cities of Gaul, whose southern provinces simulated the wealth and elegance of Italy. He quotes Pliny as his authority for numbering those of Spain as three hundred and sixty. Three hundred acknowledged the authority of Carthage; which capital rose under the emperors with new splendor from its ashes, and recovered all the advantages which can be separated from independent sovereignty. Under the reign of the Caesars, the proper Asia alone contained five hundred populous cities, enriched with all the gifts of nature and adorned with all the refinement of art. The capitals of Syria and

IS

Historical.

Egypt held still a superior rank in the empire. Antioch and Alexandria looked down with disdain on a crowd of dependent cities, and yielded with reluctance to the majesty of Rome itself.

One other fact remains to be noted. Within the walls of each of these cities were the schools of philosophy, the political assembly, the sharp activities of commerce, the glorious works of art, and the magnificent temples and the worship of the gods. They who lived in the midst of all this urban culture, excitement and strife could but grow in mental vigor, sensitiveness of spirit, and eagerness for what was new. On the other hand, they who were shut out and condemned to the drudgery of daily and endless toil, born to labor, and with children doomed to the same hard lot, grew with the years and the generations more and more stolid; clinging unreasoningly to the past, and unready to adopt what was unwonted and new.

When they to whom the august command was given to go into all the world and preach

Historical.

the Gospel to every creature, set about its obedience, they followed of necessity the lines on which they found society organized. They passed through the fields and villages and the scanty and stolid populations there into the city. They did so because here the multitudes were gathered. The simple fact of numbers brought them here. And these multitudes, by education, culture, refinement, and long, daily and anxious reasoning about the soul, its nature and destiny, had outgrown the mythology of their fathers, and were ready to hear, heed and accept a new solution of the mysteries of life, death, and immortality. To whom but to these populations, unsatisfied by the guesses of philosophers confessing their ignorance by altars to the unknown God and in their impotence seeking after the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him, — to whom of all men but these wandering, anxious, troubled souls could the revelation of the Gospel be first brought ? But an itinerant Apostleship, that blessed one city for a little while, and then, before what there had

Historical.

been won was well assured, was under the necessity of passing on to another, was unequal to the exigencies. Nor could Bishops with jurisdiction over a wide region in which were many cities accomplish the task. We have seen that each of these cities was a whole country unto its citizens, and commanded of them a patriotism as enthusiastic and narrow as the love of home. A local, stationary, resident, and municipal Episcopate was the only institution which could effectually work upon such populations. A Bishop of Greece or Italy was impossible. The autonomy of a Church in each city was a necessity by reason of the nature of every municipality.

This preliminary but essential fact being explained, we may go on to inquire how the actual work was conducted. The way of it was what we should expect. Going to his own city, the Bishop established himself in a certain place of residence and ministration. Here he gathered about him his priests and deacons in numbers according to circumstances; all living together, their hearts aflame

Historical.

with a common zeal, their intense activities devoted to a common work. They were all ruled by the Bishop as the head of the community and fountain of authority. Here with the aid of those he trusts he lays out the work, apportioning it among his clergy, and allotting to each his task and sending him on his peculiar mission. Almost may we see him now standing on the steps of the altar in the light of the early morning, his priests and deacons, w r orkers and converts all about him, and hear him send them forth with some such words as ours in the hymn,

"Oft in danger, oft in woe, Onward Christians, onward go."

Only, to the little company of eager and heroic souls it is not a mere sentiment, but a very real fight he bids them to, and to an almost present victory of martyrdom he cheers them on.

They go into the streets and markets and schools and houses and to the very doors of the temples of the gods they would cast down.

Historical.

They arrest any who will be detained by the story of the Crucified; and beg, persuade and constrain him to listen to the new doctrine. They bring one and another home to the Bishop, who teaches these wondering souls in the mysteries of the strange faith, ministers to the distress of their spirits, baptizes them at the font, confirms them in their vows, and receives them at the altar.

Nor is this all that goes on in these sacred precincts. These missionaries come to the Holy Father with their reports of what, out in the world, they have seen and heard and done and tried to do. He learns from them of movements of the people, the policies of the government, the feelings of the higher classes, whether they incline to the cause or threaten it with violence. He plans measures to meet each overture, whether of friendliness or malice. And, alike if it be storm or sunshine without, he keeps calm and sacred this common home of all his people; where all the ways of all their work begin and end; whither after all toils and dangers

Historical.

and persecutions they turn their weary feet for rest and their weary hearts for solace; and where is the altar at which as the High Priest their Bishop offers the holy sacrifice. That home was in those days the Cathedral. It was not only the first Church in order of time; it held a primacy among- all the institutions of the Christian State and was the focus of all the work of all the diocese.

The above account is generally applicable to Asia, Africa and southern Europe. In Saxon England the circumstances were somewhat different. There were few towns. The population was sparsely scattered over the country. Each family with its branches and dependents living by itself held wide tracts of land and much of the country lay vacant. The people w r ere devoted to agriculture and pasturage. Their manners were rude and simple, and they were disinclined to the exactions of compact society. The polity was loose and easy; the country was divided among many tribes, with indefinite, democratic constitutions. Each had its king, but he was

Historical.

king in little else than name, except for purposes of defense and war.

The organization of the Church consisted with that of the society and the State. The Bishop entering upon the work of converting a tribe fixed his seat, his bishopstool as it was called, at any convenient place of his choice and with no regard to population. Sometimes, as for instance at Ely, he planted it by itself in a vacant region; the religious colony afterwards drawing the people around it. Accordingly he was the Bishop not of a city but of a tribe. This is illustrated by his style. On the continent, as we have seen, the Episcopate, consistent with the structure of society and of the civil polity, was urban, and the Bishops were called after their city, as the Bishop of Jerusalem, of Antioch, of Rome. On the Island, on the other hand, society being rural and the polity tribal, the Episcopate accordingly was rural and the Bishops took their style from their people. For instance, there was a tribe called the Somersaetas, from which the name Somerset comes. The Bishop

Historical.

whose seat was at Wells, was the Bishop not of Wells but of the Somersaetas. There was also the tribe of the West Saxons who had the royal city of Winchester. Their Bishop was not the Bishop of Winchester but of the West Saxons.

But however interesting this difference in circumstances, the work in Britain was the same as eleswhere and was carried on in the same way. The Bishop going into a wide territory, among a rude tribe, made choice of the place where he should live and whence he and his helpers should carry on their work. Here he built the Church, houses, gardens, farms and all necessary conveniences for his clerical colony. Here he gathered about him his priests and deacons in considerable numbers, giving them homes in his own houses and supporting them from his revenues. The life was not necessarily celibate, nor under one roof nor at one table; but it was in community. He was the head of the family and he ruled it as an abbot his monastery. He apportioned the work among his clergy, giv-

Historical.

ing to each his place, office and task. To this one he gave this circuit to travel in the country of the tribe, and to another that: to one he appointed this station or mission and to another that; and so on through all the work of the diocese. Among the rude and scattered population, the service was more desultory than it was in the midst of the intense life of the thronged city, but there was the same vigor, the same discipline, the same brave and eager spirit which was never wearied by toil nor daunted by danger or persecution. As the work was the same among the rural people of Britain as among the urban population of Greece and Italy, namely, their conversion to the cross, so too the manner of it was the same, namely, the Bishop and his clergy collected in one community and home, about one altar, and thence going forth among those to whom they were sent. The sphere of duty whose center was here embraced all ministrations, charities, instructions, and interests; and the service which went forth hence was circumscribed only by the boun-

Historical.

daries of the whole diocese. For four centuries this was the polity of the Church. Everywhere the Bishop was the fountain of authority, alike where society was urban and he was the Bishop of a city, and where it was rural and he was the Bishop of a tribe. He gathered his clergy about him in a great center: from thence he sent them forth, thither they returned: their goings and comings, their work and their life ever under his direct, personal, particular direction. This center was the Cathedral, and this polity was the diocesan system.

The first step of departure from the diocesan system was taken one way on the Continent, and another in England. Let that step be first traced in the cities of Southern Europe, Asia and Africa. When the work was well advanced within the walls the Bishop sent his clergy into the dependent region. We have already remarked the character of the people there. For generations, bent to toil and shut out of the means of education, they were slow, stolid, tenacious of what

Historical.

they were used to, and unready for what was new to them. This showed itself in their conversion: they were content with the faith of their fathers. The worship of Jupiter and Juno, Venus, Mercury, and the other gods, satisfied the needs of their dull hearts, and the old mythology answered all their inquiries after the life beyond death. The work of their conversion was hard, slow: it had none of the excitement and vivacity of the city. The first measures in their behalf were desultory and irregular. The manner of it was on this wise. From time to time, as occasion offered, and as the other work allowed, men were sent out from the city to declare the message of the Gospel to these dull ears and heedless minds. Very little impression was made for a long time. The least vigorous and successful of the missions to the heathen in our day make their way much more rapidly. Indeed, long after the cities had accepted the new faith, the country clung to the old, so that the name of the rural people, pagcuii, came to have the meaning of our word pagan.

Historical.

When at last Christianity was proclaimed by Constantine, and the country people almost by constraint submitted to the new doctrine, the work was carried on among them with more method. The Bishop sent his men out to them weekly or daily, and kept the communication open. When converts in some numbers were gathered at one point, so that it was inconvenient to reach them and supply their needs from the city, excursions were abandoned, and the Bishop appointed one or more of his clergy to remain among them. The passing to and fro between the station and the Cathedral kept going on, and their relations were the closest: the clergy returning frequently to the Bishop to report their progress, receive directions, and be relieved by others. He still directed the work of each and the method of it. But after a time these relations were relaxed. The priest appointed to a mission held his place longer and longer, came into the city less frequently, formed local attachments, and at last made his permanent home there. Meanwhile, within the walls the

Historical.

Church, its people, worship, charities, and relations to society and the government grew to such proportions as to absorb the time and thoughts of the Bishop. He no longer attended personally to the wants of the missions, and relaxed his supervision of them. This went on farther and farther, until he preserved little more than a visitorial power over them. At first there grew up independence; then there was isolation. Left altogether to themselves the priest and his people assumed to own all the property and to have rights separate and corporate of their own. Instead of one society with the Bishop at its head directing the work, leading the worship, and administering all the affairs of the diocese at the one Cathedral, another detached, independent, isolated society grew up which was a corporation apart from other bodies and altogether competent to all its own needs. This was a parish.

It must not be supposed that the parish is peculiarly a rural institution. The same process by which it grew up in the country

Historical.

was also going on in the city. When Christianity became the religion of the people, the Cathedral could not contain the multitudes which thronged its courts. Churches in various parts of the city were built. By the relics of the saints, the sanctity of their priests, and the learning of their doctors they drew to themselves the veneration of the people. Their dependence upon the Cathedral was impracticable for many reasons; and soon, though they were within the walls of the city, they too became separate, independent, isolated corporations.

And yet in the midst of all this new growth the Cathedral remained the center of the diocesan administration and service; having a precedence of all churches because it was the Bishop's seat, and relations which no other church could share. Indeed one of the most astonishing facts in history is the universal prevalence in all parts of the Catholic Church until the last century of this institution.

Let us trace now the first step of departure from the purely diocesan system as it was

Historical.

taken in England. This step was not directly to the parochial system. The polity of the Church passed through an intermediate process before the local organism was developed. This, like most other changes, grew out of the circumstances of society. When the people of Britain were brought from paganism into the Church, the business of ministering to their spiritual wants became excessive. We have seen that the populations were sparsely scattered over a wide region; it was therefore inconvenient to reach all the people of the diocese from the one Cathedral. To meet these conditions, religious communities were planted in the different parts of the diocese. Each of these societies built its Church, as large and imposing as its means allowed and not infrequently as grand as the Cathedral. Its members numbered from ten or a dozen to fifty; their life was in community, although not necessarily monastic. To each a district was allotted, with cure of souls therein, and with right to tithes and churchdues from all the inhabitants. From this their home, they radiated through the region com-

Historical.

mitted to them, carrying their ministrations from house to house and from family to family, and conducting their work in all respects as the Bishop and his clergy had carried on theirs at and from the Cathedral. These Churches were the Minsters of England, and this was the minster system. The scheme was like that of associate missions in our Church conceived, explained, and advocated in many earnest and learned papers, but never realized in any large and permanent way. Those who have given themselves the - pleasure of reading the life of Doctor Breck, lately published, may, from his plans for the Nashotah and Seabury Missions, gain a vivid conception of the essence of the English Minster. The Cathedral and the Minster were both missionary establishments, having a considerable number of clergy, who went forth from their common home into the region round about, and generally carrying on the same work in the same way. Their systems differed in this: there was one Cathedral in the diocese, with the Bishop at its head: there were several minsters in

Historical.

one diocese, each with a dean or abbot at its head.

The first relaxation of the minster-system in England was the concession which was made in the tenth century, that a thane who had a Church with a burial place, might pay one third of his tithe to his own Church and the other two thirds to the Minster; but if he had a Church without a burial place (a chapel, as we should now call it) he must support his clerk himself. The clerk by degrees acquired a shrift district, perhaps influenced or determined by the extent of the thane's territory.

Archdeacon Stopford thus described the manner in which the Minsters were gradually supplanted by the parochial clergy.

"The decline of the minster system is difficult to be traced but easy to be conceived. Once it was granted that thanes might have the privilege of burial for their own Churches, it was inevitable, except under strong restraint, that a new and powerful interest should grow up in rivalry to the Minsters;

Historical.

and when that was working, the Norman Bishops came in with the strong desire to convert the ancient Minsters into 'regular' monasteries, such as had already grown up abroad. For this purpose it was necessary to divest the minsters of the cure of souls. It was in the power of the Norman Bishops to promote the change by a popular measure, most accordant with the policy of the conquerors, of granting the right of burial to every thane's Church. Such a method would inevitably accomplish the result; and yet would leave no record behind except the result. No record but the result remains. The ancient minsters became 'regular' monasteries, withdrawn alike from the cure of souls and the jurisdiction of the Bishop; and the thane's clerks became the parochial and diocesan clergy."

From this sketch of the history of early Christianity, framed in order to display to view the place which the Cathedral held in the work of converting the heathen, and its relations to the Bishop, the clergy and the

Historical.

diocese, we pass now to a matter somewhat more nearly related to our subject: the constitution, namely, by which the clergy of the Cathedral were associated and their affairs administered. While the Bishop and clergy of each of these institutions framed and enjoyed statutes of their own enactment, there was a powerful and well understood system of law, — what we may call common law, which these statutes could not contravene, and could modify only in some particulars. This explains the fact of the similarity of the organization and administration of all cathedrals, throughout the Catholic Church before the Reformation.

Our present purpose is with the common features of these institutions, and not with what may be peculiar to any one of them. And it is of the constitutions of these bodies as they were fixed and settled after the parish had become a recognized and most important institution, that is to say, in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and their vicissitudes afterwards down to our own times, rather than with what they were and what

Historical.

they did in the earlier times, that we now shall speak.

The distinctive title of the cathedral clergy is "Canon." It is from the same Latin word, taken in the sense of a list or catalogue of articles or persons. It was the custom to put up in the porch of the church a tablet on which the names of its clergy were inscribed. By a process common in the growth of language, the name of this list or catalogue of the priests of the cathedral was given to them, and they were called Canons. Other explanations of the derivation of the word have been given, but this seems the most natural. It came into use in the sixth century.

The number of the Canons was different in different cathedrals and at different times. There seem to have been at Wells in the tenth century only four or five, in the twelfth at first ten and then twenty-two; afterwards the number was raised to fifty. At St. Paul's, London, there were thirty, and at Lincoln, fifty-two.

For a long time and until perhaps the mid-

3§

Historical.

die of the eighth century, all the estates of the Church were held together; and all of the clerical body, the Bishops, the Canons, and all the other clergy were supported out of the common funds. These estates and funds were often spoken of as belonging to the Bishop. Thus at the council of Tours in 813 " the Canons and clerks of the cities " are spoken of as "dwelling in the Bishops' houses;" and it is provided that "food and clothing they are to receive according to the means of the Bishop." The Canons lived in community, with the Bishop at their head as the primary and active authority. This however does not mean that they lived in common: in England until at or very near the conquest each lived in his own house, and often he was married. But devoted to the same life, drawing their support from one treasury, and subject to the government of the Bishop, they formed what w T e may call a close corporation. After a time and speaking generally we may say in the twelfth century, the revenues of the churches being very considerably increased,

Historical.

the number of the Canons enlarged, and the duties of the Bishop various and engrossing, the estates of the Cathedral were graduallypartitioned between them. The Bishop took to himself certain of them for his own use and administration, and left others to the Canons. He remained the active head of the body, vigorously and personally ruling it; but they no longer lived in his houses and out of his supplies; they had homes, a treasury and an administration of their own. It was the first step, and a natural step to take as the society began to become complex, in that long course of development which ended in the isolation of the Episcopate and the Cathedral.

Then another step was taken in the same direction. Just as the common estates of the Church were divided between the Bishop and the Canons, the estates which had been assigned to the society of the Canons were again divided into two parts: one part consisted of the common estates which were appropriated to the expenses of the general establishment;

4 o

Historical.

the other part consisted of the other estates which were divided among the Canons, each individually having and holding his own separate from his brethren. For instance, the Canons of Wells had, say four estates, A, B, C, and D. They retained the estate A as the property of the society for the common use and benefit; and they set the estate B apart by itself for one Canon; they set the estate of C apart for another Canon, and they set the estate of D apart for a third Canon. A Canon as a member of the body had an interest in the estate A in common with his brethren, and he also held the estate B separate for his own individual use and benefit. He was a member of the Cathedral corporation and as such enjoyed the corporate estates; and he w T as a corporation by himself and as such held his separate estate and applied its rents and profits to his personal use and benefit. On these separate estates there were a Church, a schoolhouse for the people of* the township in which the benefice was situated, and a house for the