§ 32.
The presbytery or space west of the altar
in churches of the Norman period varied in length
from two bays to four. At its west end a step (
gradus
presbyterii) divided it from the quire, which, as already
noted, occupied the length of the crossing and the
eastern bay or bays of the nave. The quire was an
oblong enclosure cut off from the nave, aisles and
transepts by screens on three sides, against which the
stalls of the convent were arranged. It had three
doorways. The western entrance, in the middle of the
pulpitum or quire screen, was called the lower entry
(
introitus inferior). The upper entries (
introitus
superiores) or quire-doors (
ostia chori) were lateral
entrances in the screens next the transepts, on
either side of the presbytery step, and were the way
by which the convent came into quire. When the
Sunday procession left the high altar, it passed out of
the quire by the upper entry on the side furthest
from the cloister, and returned, after making the
circuit of the church and cloister-buildings, through
the lower entry in the
pulpitum. The stalls in the
quire were occupied according to seniority. In an
abbey church, the abbot sat against the western
screen, on the south side of the lower entry, while the
prior sat in the corresponding stall on the north.
Where a prior was head of the house, he sat in the
southern stall and the sub-prior in the northern. In
the middle of the quire was the lectern, where, as at
Durham, 'the Moncks did singe ther Legends at
Mattins and other tymes.' On certain festivals, the
epistle and gospel were chanted from the
pulpitum
at the west end of the quire. In these general arrangements,
allowing for the divergences in the ritual of
the various orders, there was very little difference
between the interior of a monastic quire and that of
a church of secular canons. Where medieval stall-work
remains, as at Winchester and Chester, or in
the collegiate quires of Lincoln, Beverley, and Ripon,
the similarity is at once apparent; but monastic
quires were effectually isolated from the nave by the
rood-screen west of the
pulpitum, an arrangement
which, though not unknown, was very rare in collegiate
churches.
