§ 49.

The chapter-house (domus capitularis) was the place where, every day after prime, the convent met together for the confession and correction of faults and for the discussion of business concerning the house as a whole. At these meetings a chapter (capitulum) of the rule was read daily, and from this circumstance the name of chapter was transferred both to the meeting and the building. Here too the visitor of the monastery held his periodical inquiries, prefaced by a sermon from one of his clerks or of the senior members of the house. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as at Durham and Fountains, the chapter-house was the customary burial-place for abbots and other heads of houses. The dead bodies of monks rested in the chapter-house at Durham, and matins of the dead were sung for them here before they took their last journey through the parlour to the graveyard. The building was normally oblong in shape, undivided by columns into aisles, and was usually vaulted. At Durham, Gloucester and Reading it ended in an apse. The abbot or prior occupied a raised seat at the east end, with the principal officers on his right and left. The rest of the convent sat on stone benches round the walls; while near the centre of the floor was the desk or lectern (analogium) from which the daily lection from the martyrology and the chapter for the day were read. The breadth of the chapter-house generally corresponded to three bays of the cloister, with a doorway in the middle of the west wall and a window on either side.