Collegiate Church - History

History

In the early medieval period, before the development of the parish system in Western Christianity, many new church foundations were staffed by groups of secular priests, living a communal life and serving an extensive territory. In England these churches were termed minsters, from the Latin monasterium, although confusingly only a few were strictly monastic. In the 9th and 10th centuries many such churches adopted formal rules of governance, commonly derived from those composed by Chrodegang of Metz for Metz cathedral, and thenceforth came to be described as "collegiate"; and there were also new foundations of this type. From the 11th century onwards, the richer collegiate churches tended to be provided with new statutes establishing the college as a formal chapter such that each canon was supported by a separate endowment, or prebend; such canons being termed prebendaries. In less affluent foundations, the pooled endowments of the community were apportioned between the canons, such canons being termed portioners. Both prebendaries and portioners tended in this period to abandon communal living, each canon establishing his own house within the precinct of the church. In response to which, and generally on account of widespead concern that the religious life of collegiate communities might be insufficiently rigorous, many collegiate foundations in the 12th century adopted the Augustinian rule, and become fully monastic, as for example at Dorchester Abbey and Christchurch Priory.

Because each prebend provided a discrete source of income, in the later medieval period prebendaries increasingly tended to be non-resident, paying a vicar to undertake divine service in their place. Kings and bishops came to regard prebends as useful sources of income for favoured servants and supporters, and it was not uncommon for a bishop or archbishop also to hold half a dozen or more collegiate prebends or deaneries. From the 13th century onwards, existing collegiate foundations (like monasteries) also attracted chantry endowments, usually a legacy in a will providing for masses to be sung for the repose of the souls of the testator and their families by the collegiate clergy or their vicars. The same impetus to establish endowed prayer also led to many new collegiate foundations in this later period; under which the rectory of an existing parish church would be appropriated to the new chantry college; and a new organisational structure was developed for these bodies, by which endowment income was held collectively, and each canon received a fixed stipend conditional on being personally resident, such canons being termed fellows, led by a warden. Chantry colleges still maintained the daily divine office with the additional prime function of offering masses in intercession for departed members of the founder's family; but also typically served charitable or educational purposes, such as providing hospitals or schools.

One particular development of the chantry college principle was the establishment in university cities of collegiate foundations in which the fellows were graduate academics and university teachers. Local parish churches were appropriated to these foundations, thereby initially acquiring collegiate status. However, this form of college developed radically in the later Middle Ages after the pattern of New College, Oxford, where for the first time college residence was extended to include undergraduate students. Thereafter university collegiate bodies developed into a distinct type of religious establishment whose regular worship took place in dedicated college chapels rather than in collegiate churches; and in this form they survived the Reformation in England in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge; as also did the associated collegiate schools and chapels of Eton College and Winchester College.

In a collegiate church or chapel, as in a cathedral, the canons or fellows are typically seated separately from any provision for a lay congregation, in quire stalls parallel with the south and north walls facing inwards rather than towards the altar at the eastern end. This has influenced the design of other churches in that the singing choir is seen as representing the idea of a college. The Westminster model of parliamentary seating arrangement arose from Parliament's use of the collegiate St Stephen's Chapel Westminster for its sittings, until Westminster Palace burned down in 1834.