chancel
Part of the choir near the altar of a church, where the officiating clergy stand. The name is derived from cancellus, the screen which formerly divided the choir from the nave. Saint Clement’s, Rome, still preserves the sixth-century screens of the choir and presbyterium. The word sanctuary is now used for the railed enclosure about the altar . In cathedrals the part between sanctuary and nave is called choir. Anglicanm usage retains the term chancel which was used in England before the Reformation.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Chancel
The chancel is part of the choir near the altar of a church, where the deacons or sub-deacons stand to assist the officiating priest. It was originally railed off by cancelli or lattice work, from which the name is derived. The term is now generally confined to parish churches, and such as have no aisles or chapels round the choir. In some churches, in addition to the principal chancel, there are others at the ends of the side-aisles. The Latin word cancellus was commonly used for the low screen which marked the separation of the presbyterium and choir from the rest of the church. In a later time the name chancel came to be applied to the presbyterium itself. Very few chancels, however, of the early period have been preserved in place. A clear idea of the normal arrangement can be had in St. Clement’s at Rome, where the sixth-century screens of the choir and presbyterium were simply removed from the lower church and set up in the twelfth-century church above. In St. Clement’s the chancel screen of the presbyterium coincided with the chord of the apse, and the altar also stood upon this line; the approaches had therefore to be constructed on either side of the altar. The chancels of the presbyterium are surmounted by a light colonnade for the support of curtains. The term was used in England before the Reformation, and the Anglicans still retain it. Among English Catholics it is now little used, that portion of the church near the altar, separated by rails from the nave, being designated the sanctuary. In cathedrals and conventual churches, where space is required to accomodate the canons or the religious, a portion of the church between the sanctuary and the nave is taken for the purpose; it is not, however, called the chancel, but the choir.
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BOND, Gothic Architecture in England (London, 1906); FLETCHER, A History of Architecture (London, 1903); ATKINSON, Glossary of English Architecture (London, 1906).
THOMAS H. POOLE. Transcribed by Douglas J. Potter Dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IIICopyright © 1908 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, November 1, 1908. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Chancel
(Lat. cancelli, from cancer, a lattice), in modern usage, part of a church set off from the rest by a railing. SEE CANCELLUS. Modern French writers use the word cancel in its original sense of a lattice or screen, as they apply it to the screen (transenna) which separates the choir or side chapels from the nave or main body of the church. In English Protestant churches the term chancel is applied mostly to that part of the smaller churches cut off from the nave by the cancel, or, rather, the railing where formerly the cancel stood. The original term choir (q.v.) is retained in the larger churches and cathedrals. The chancel is reserved for the use of the clergy in the administration of their offices during divine service. In the German churches the term “kanzel” is applied to the pulpit, which projects from the side of a gallery, that all in the church may easily hear.
“By the rubric of the Church of England before the Common Prayer, it is ordained that” the chancels shall remain as they have done in times past, “that is to say, distinguished from the body of the church in manner aforesaid; against which distinction Bucer and bishop Hooper (at the time of the Reformation) inveighed vehemently, as tending only to magnify the priesthood; but though the king and the Parliament yielded so far as to allow the daily service to be read in the bode of the church, if the ordinary thought fit, yet they would not suffer the chancel to be taken away or altered.” See Bingham, Orig. Eccl. bk. 8, ch. 3; Hook, Church Dictionary, s.v.; Guericke, Manual of Antiquities, p. 104 (Engl. transl.).