Chapter house
A chapter house or chapterhouse is a building or room that is part of a cathedral, monastery or collegiate church in which meetings are held. When attached to a cathedral, the cathedral chapter meets there. In monasteries, the whole community often met there daily for readings and to hear the abbot or senior monks talk. When attached to a collegiate church, the dean, prebendaries and canons of the college meet there. The rooms may also be used for other meetings of various sorts; in medieval times monarchs on tour in their territory would often take them over for their meetings and audiences. Synods, ecclesiastical courts and similar meetings often took place in chapter houses.
For other uses, see Chapter house (disambiguation).History and uses[edit]
The community of monks would meet in the chapter house with the abbot to "hold chapter"; that is, "for the reading of the 'Martyrology' and the 'Necrology', for the correction of faults, the assigning of the tasks for the day, and for the exhortation of the superior, and again for the evening Collation or reading before Complin".[1] The first meeting took place in the morning, after the church services of Prime or Terce. The monks might sit along the length of the walls in strict age-order, apart from the office-holders.
The Carolingian Plan of St Gall (c. 820) is the plan for an ideal 9th century monastery, with a great variety of buildings and rooms, but none that really can be assigned the function of chapterhouse; nor is such a room mentioned by Saint Benedict. But the chapter house is mentioned in the proceedings of the Council of Aachen in 816. The church or cloister may have been used for all meetings in earlier monasteries, or there was usually a refectory (hall for eating). But by at least 1000 such a room had become normal in large monastic establishments. The east side of the cloister on which the chapter house was often located was usually the first to be constructed; it would have been begun shortly after the church walls were built.
Important examples of chapter houses from an architectural or artistic point of view can be seen at:
Non-religious use of the circular chapter house style of plan:
The former chapterhouse, now the "Spanish Chapel", at the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella in Florence
