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History of church seating changes
The church seats seem common, but they are a good interpretation of the evolution of the church in early modern history. During the Reformation, closed church seats became popular because they met the needs of Protestantism; from the Reformation to the early 19th century, with the development of property rights and individual freedom consciousness, it has become a common phenomenon for churches to assign exclusive seats to individuals. At the same time, the church has resisted this trend to a certain extent. are closely related
church seating – pews, auditorium seats, stackable seats
- Early forms of church seats
Today, if one walks into a church, we will see that most of the seats are wooden pews, cushioned church seats, or stackable seats, it is so common that people may think it has been so since a long long time ago.
What is less known is that the seat became a common facility in the church after the Reformation. In the 17th century, a bishop named Kennett even believed that until the Reformation, churches had no seats, the entire nave of the church was public, and there was no such space as seats that could be determined by individuals, and the position of each person is not predetermined, and no one can occupy a specific place. In the early Christian church, when religious ceremonies are held, the congregation just stands or kneels, but does not have the habit of sitting. “History of Civilization,” wrote that in the 12th century, when mass was held, “there were no chairs, and everyone stood or knelt at the most sacred moment, except for the elderly and the sick”.
The reason for this situation is that in the Christian concept, people have original sin, and in the church, the “house of God”, the comfortable posture of “sitting” obviously cannot show people’s piety of atonement. At the same time, the seating presents another problem – it challenges the basic Christian notion that all are equal before God. Obviously, everyone has a different seat position, good or bad light, not to mention the material and comfort of the seat There might be a difference, and the principle of equality before God would be violated if seated in chairs. It is therefore natural that there should be few seats in the early churches. It is true, it has been pointed out, that Saxon Stone benches (these kinds of benches are integrated with stone church walls) and movable three-legged chairs with rough workmanship appeared in English churches in the 1980s, but they were only for the elderly and the sick. This exception obviously does not violate the basic spirit of Christianity.
However, since its establishment, the church often has had to adapt to the changing social reality. This situation is also reflected in the church seat in terms of facilities. Even the clergy of the church themselves have the need for seats to relieve the fatigue when presiding over religious ceremonies. Therefore, in the Middle Ages, the foldable wooden seats used by the clergy when they rested in the church appeared, and it is vividly called miserer (ask the Lord for mercy), which means that although the priests knew that sitting is a kind of lazy behavior that disrespects God, but because they are too tired, please have mercy on the Lord.
Moreover, for the most important supporters of the church, that is, secular rulers, they also hope to have their own special position in the church. For them, this is a way to show their own dignity, and the church often makes concessions to them in exchange for their support. Saint Ambrosi, the godfather in the 4th century AD, recorded that Emperor Theodosius of the Roman Empire had a seat of his own on the altar of the church. The Latin name of the seat is solidum, which means “the throne of the emperor”. Because it violated the canon that laymen are not allowed to enter the altar, it was criticized by Ambrosi. With some concessions, there is no longer the emperor’s seat at the altar, but to set up the emperor’s seat in a prominent position near the altar.
After the disintegration of the Roman Empire, the secular power was obedient to the religious power for a long time. Therefore, the church was able to implement its doctrine and spirit more thoroughly. There are no chairs in the central hall of the church. If the believers are tired, they can sit on the ground instead of chairs. There are many historical materials to prove this. A copy in the British Museum drawing in a manuscript from the early 14th century shows a priest standing on a movable pulpit facing an audience seated on the ground, without stools or chairs. In another picture at the beginning of the 15th century, a group of people listening to the sermon in the church are depicted. Most of them are standing, and a small part is sitting on the plank, but the painting does not show any support under the plank. In 1252, Walter, Archbishop of York De Gray issued a church by-law detailing who was to repair parts of the church if they were damaged, but made no mention of pews, from which it can be inferred that, at least in the churches of the Archdiocese of York, there were no seats.
However, according to the research of the 19th-century scholar Froll, movable seats may have appeared in the central halls of some churches in the late Middle Ages. He believed that the founder of the church is a secular manor owner, out of a psychology of noble status, when they build a church, they may reserve an important place in the church for him and his family members, and later, they may also request the church to place church seating in their exclusive area. Another scholar in the 19th century, Hills, also believed that there were occasional seats in the central hall of the church in the late 14th or 15th centuries. According to the research of Richard Burne, a famous canon jurist in the 18th century, in the late Middle Ages, very few big men had the right to use a specific part of the church, where they could sit. However, the ownership of the chairs definitely belongs to the clergy of the church, because in the wills of these clergymen, it is mentioned who will inherit the ownership of these chairs.
From this, we can know that before the Reformation, except for the seats for the elderly and the weak, and the seats for the priest when he was tired, it was difficult to find other seats in the church. Only in the late Middle Ages, there may have been very few chairs used by important people, which were movable and owned by the church. Therefore, before the Reformation, there were no fixed, privately owned seats in the nave of the English church. It should be true. The reason for this situation is that the religious power is still too powerful compared to the secular power. Therefore, it is not easy to find space for secular rights in the church. It is worth mentioning that Priests presiding over religious ceremonies on the altar retain the privilege of sitting on chairs to rest, which shows the superiority of the medieval priest class relative to other social classes. It can be seen that the situation of medieval church seats is related to the characteristics of the times and religious customs
2. The impact of the Reformation and the concept of individual rights in early modern times on church pews
The Reformation had a profound impact on the evolution of church seats. First, movable seats for ordinary believers appeared in churches more commonly, because the Reformation made preaching more valued by people, and its time was also significantly prolonged. In this way, if believers are still standing for a long time in the church, it will undoubtedly make it difficult for them to bear physical fatigue. Therefore, increasing church seats was a must.
Another trend deserves more attention: At that time, not only did the number of movable seats increase significantly, but also a closed seat that was fixed on the church floor and isolated from the others with partitions appeared. It was a pew. After the Reformation in the 16th century, the word pew appeared more and more frequently in the records of church archives. Some scholars in the early 20th century believed that the word pew appeared in 1520, but according to other records, the word pew appeared as early as 1390. However, the meaning and historical evolution of this word are very complicated. In the 19th century, Alfred Ray Hills, a scholar of teaching history, pointed out that this word sometimes refers to a bench, which has a similar meaning to the word bench. He also thinks that pew in the early times only refers to a bench with a backrest. However, in more cases, the word pew contains the meanings of “fixed” and “closed”. Some pointed out that it is probably derived from the Latin word podium, which means “the part above the foundation”, which shows that it is integrated with the church and fixed, unlike the early rough three-legged seat, which is movable. At the same time, the word may also be related to Old French puiet and Dutch puye, both of which mean “box”. In the works of the famous poet Milton in the 17th century, this word was also used for the description of the sheepfold, which also obviously means “closed”. In a work of the 17th century, it is written that the pew is adjacent to “benches” (long seats), which clearly distinguishes ordinary stools from the pew. This shows that in the 16th and 17th centuries, on most occasions, pew referred to a closed, comfortable seat fixed on the church floor. In the 1832 edition of Samuel Johnson’s English dictionary, the term is clearly interpreted as a closed pew in a church. While 1832 was precisely the period when closed church pews were most popular in England. In modern times, opened pews have dominated the church again. Correspondingly, the interpretation of the word pew in various modern English dictionaries is basically “a wooden bench with a backrest in a church”. It can be seen that this word also bears the historical changes of church seats.
- The church’s attitude and countermeasures towards closed seats
In fact, the closed pews’ fast development is inseparable from the church’s acquiescence. The emergence of closed pews has brought inequality in the secular society into the church. But the church is largely tolerant of such inequality, as the 20th-century British historian Richard Toney said, class privilege and class oppression are not alien to religion.
The reason why this phenomenon exists is fundamentally because there is a gap between the ideal and the reality of the church. To maintain and develop the church, it must gain the support of more people, especially those who have wealth and status in the diocese. Obviously, these people want to have comfortable closed seats in the church in order to show their high status, and if the church refuses their request, they risk losing their donations and other support.
But on the other hand, there is an obvious contradiction between the ideal of the church and the pursuit of a secular society. There is a passage in the “Bible” that can be conveniently used to oppose the unfairness of seat allocation in the church. The “Book of James” Says: “If a man with a gold ring and fine clothes enters your synagogue, and a poor man also goes in with dirty clothes; they will look at the rich man and say, ‘Sit here and take a good seat’, and say to the poor man, ‘Stand there’, or ‘Sit under my footstool’, isn’t it true that you treat people with partiality and judge people with malice?” For the closed seats, it is a crime when measured by Christian ethics, and it is completely incompatible with many principles of Christianity, such as everyone is equal before God, everyone is guilty before God, and the church is a place where believers communicate. At the same time, individual rights in the church’s excessive extension of the seat will also damage the authority of the church. Therefore, from the 16th to the 19th centuries, priests still attacked the private rights of the church seat from time to time. For example, Sir Simon Dege emphasized that the height of the partitions of the closed seat should be suitable so as to supervise the behavior of individuals. In 1631, a man named Weever pointed out that the closed seats of the church had become high and comfortable, and believed that this atmosphere must not last long and must be changed. Pocklington’s book “The Altar of Christ” considers high and closed seats as blasphemy, as the Pharisees against God. Warren, the bishop of Norwich, visited his church in 1636 criticized the behavior of believers using cushions on the seats, and also proposed that the seats should not be too high to avoid blocking the sight. A case of the ecclesiastical court in the 17th century stipulated that the seats of the church were not private property and could not be used for sale and transaction.
The issue of worship seating is not only a hot topic of debate among religious and secular people, but also a complex legal issue. First of all, the church recognizes that parishioners have a “prescription right” to their seats. “Prescription right” is an important concept in Anglo-American law, which refers to the acquisition or loss of a certain right due to the passage of time. We are more familiar with what is more important is the situation of losing rights. For example, if a person whose civil rights are infringed fails to file a lawsuit within the statutory statute of limitations, he may lose his rights. On the issue of church seats, it belongs to the situation of acquiring rights, that is, “acquiring statute of limitations” “(positive prescription). If the church believes that a resident has the “prescription right” to obtain a seat, it may issue a faculty to the resident at the request of the resident. Generally speaking, parishioners are granted the right to ordinary seats of ordinary locations and low comfort is very easy. As long as a person owns a house in a parish and lives long enough, he has the right to obtain a seat in the church for his own use for a long time. In 1594, a person proposed to the church that he had sat in a certain pew in the church for five years, during which no one raised an objection, he claimed the right to this pew on the basis of this, and as a result, the consent of the church was obtained, and a certificate issued by the church was obtained. For this reason, Hills believes that in early modern times, individuals’ pursuit of exclusive rights to seats was often easily satisfied. As long as a person took a fancy to an open space in the church, he could apply for it for him and his family to establish a pew in a church without the need to provide any evidence. Bennett also believes that, in the early 17th century, it was easy to obtain a charter from the church to establish a pew at a certain site in a church.
However, for those seats with large areas, good location, and high comfort in the church, it is not so easy to obtain rights. The church has very strict control over the distribution of these seats, usually only to those who have power and wealth. In 1595, Lancashire issued an order formally stipulating that churches have the power to allocate seats according to the status of parishioners. Dege, a canonist scholar in the 18th century, also held the same view. This means that those in the church closed seats with a good location and a large area that are usually allocated to people with high social status. The relevant records of the church also show that the owner of the best seat is often honored as Sir or Master. In fact, from the 16th to the 19th century, it was often the squire who obtained the right to use such a high-end seat. In the 1840s, Thomas Maudsley, a representative of the British Oxford Movement, believed that the secular squire politics had affected the administrator of the parish in many rural areas. Obviously, this is incompatible with the “everyone is equal in the family of God” advertised by the church. Therefore, some people will inevitably question the church’s power to issue seat charters. Jurisprudentially it is said that the pews in the church are the common property of all parishioners, and the church is only exercising this right on behalf of the parishioners, so there is no sufficient reason to prove that the church has the right to issue a charter to a specific person. However, although the church sometimes uses this power to favor the rich, there is still a reason for this power, because parishioners will inevitably quarrel over the use of seats, and there must be an institution to adjudicate and settle such quarrels, and this institution is naturally the church. Therefore, although the power of the church to allocate seats cannot be perfectly maintained legally, a case of the ecclesiastical court in 1825 still stipulates that in “special circumstances” the church can issue a charter to the church. A parishioner builds a seat. Also declares that the charter is primarily for the convenience of the residents.
We can look at the right of the church to allocate seats in this way: on the one hand, it is indeed necessary for the normal operation of the church and church affairs, but on the other hand, it is a means for the church to strengthen its own influence and dominance. From the 17th to the 19th century judging from the discourses of many canon jurists and the examples of court trials, the tendency of the church to strengthen this kind of power is very obvious. Dege pointed out very pertinently that the church seats are owned by all the church members only in name, and the power to allocate seats is still in the hands of the priest. Therefore, parishioners’ rights to seats are naturally restricted. Some canon law scholars argue that parishioners’ right to church seats is not a property right in a complete sense, but a form of easement. Easement (i.e., a usufruct right that exists over the property of others) is different from rights to houses and land.
Not only did parishioners have no right to the allocation of high-end seats, even if they wanted to obtain the right to use ordinary seats, but they also had to meet an important prerequisite, that is, the users of the seats must be responsible for the repairs of the seats. In one case a parishioner in Worcestershire claimed a right to a pew in Abberley church on the grounds that he had a “statute of limitations” which was not upheld by the court because he did not undertake to repair the pew. In fact, most parishioners do not repair it themselves. The so-called repair means paying for the repair cost. In the church archives of the 16th century, there are records of many church members paying for the repair cost. Based on this premise, the church still holds the power to control.
There are indeed many difficulties in the laws and cases related to church seats. For example, why the church has the power to issue charters and how reasonable the right of limitation is, are quite difficult legal issues, and there will naturally be many debates on this. In the 18th century Watson, a canon jurist, raised objections to the right of limitation, arguing that it does not apply to church pews. Due to many doubts in jurisprudence, in judicial practice, it is not easy for the church to fully control the right to allocate church pews. A case from 1594 showed that it was an unresolved question whether a parishioner had the right to object to a church dispensation. In another case, a parishioner who had used a seat for 40 years was told by the church that he had to pay for the seat. He refused, and the church arranged for another person to occupy his seat, which he sued in church court and won.
However, if we put aside these troublesome jurisprudential issues for a while, and investigate from a higher perspective, it is not difficult to see that this is a manifestation of the intricate relationship between church and society, secularism, and theology. In order to maintain its attractiveness to the ruling class and the people, but on the other hand, it must maintain control over religious affairs and reject secular power from interfering too much in church affairs. From the end of the Reformation to the beginning of the 19th century, the struggle between religion and secularism for the rights to church seats was in such a swinging state, maintaining a balance. However, it should be pointed out that after entering the 19th century, with the vigorous development of the Industrial Revolution This fragile balance was broken, and the church seats once again became the focus of contention between the church and the secular.
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