Altar Visibility in Large Gothic Cathedrals with Choirs

[PilgrimMichelangelo]

Here is a little comparison essay between rood screens and iconostasis from the Orthodox West website: https://www.orthodoxwest.com/rood-brannen

Note his explanation of the symbology as a demarcation between earth and heaven.

 

[stpurl]

I think you underestimate what the laity could and couldn’t understand. Countries were a lot more fluid, and people, even people in the back of beyond, often could speak more than one dialect (for example Scots, which is not the Gaelic, but a dialect related to Medieval English, was spoken by Mary Stuart; along with ‘regular’ English, French, Italian, and Latin). Henry VIII spoke Welsh along with French, Latin, and English.

Even the poor could speak ‘broad’ speech but get along with say English, French, Dutch, if they lived near the coast of England as well as Irish/Gaelic, Breton, some Spanish. French speaking people usually had some German or Dutch or Spanish or Italian facility depending on where they lived. When it comes right down to it, a vocabulary of 600-800 words and some hand gestures can get you pretty far. You don’t need complex syntax or ‘big words’; there are a lot of cognates among the Romance languages. And Latin was the original source for these cognates. Plus, repetition was pretty important and people weren’t usually bombarded with all kinds of other activities, internet etc. They could really focus on what they HEARD, and understand, and retain.

Too often people think that people in the old days were just like us; and they think if a person today lived such a ‘limited life’ where they didn’t READ or didn’t have the 2 years of ‘language’ in school etc that they were ignorant and obviously didn’t know anything about anything; but the person who lived a few hundred years ago actually did know quite a bit more than today’s person gives him/her credit for.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I’m not sure why you would take issue with my pointing out that the priest was the person who instructed the villagers about what went on in the Mass.

If they were from somewhere else, the priest where they previously lived would have instructed them in what they needed to know about the Mass.

They did not have access to all sorts of other sources of information for understanding the Mass. As I said, many people in the 1400s could not read (this is a fact), and even those who could read would usually have limited access to books, unless they were either rich or a scholar.

The priests in those days had primary responsibility for the catechesis of most of their flock, the exceptions being the handful of young people who would get sent off to some sort of monastery school for more in-depth study.

One did not watch a Mass and somehow understand what was going on by osmosis or go look it up in a book. They were taught about it. By priests.

With respect to the Latin language, some people have criticized the video on the basis that Mass at the time portrayed in the video was not universally in Latin and may well have been in a local language. I am not an expert on the history of the Mass in Europe, so I am just repeating what others have said about the video, but it seems possible given the number of different rites around at that time. If people were used to hearing Mass in a language they more commonly used, then there would have been even less reason for them to know or learn any Latin unless they were rich and/or preparing for a professional career in which Latin was used (priest, doctor, lawyer, professor etc).

 

[stpurl]

By priests and also by sisters and nuns, and by the lord and lady of the manor, by their parents and by their employers too.

Little Jehan and Louise, or young Murdoch and Ellen, or Tom and Betsy, or Diego and Isabel, would be taught by the parents to pray the paternoster and ave from earliest childhood. They would hear from strolling minstrels and jongleurs Mystery Plays, hear church settings sung, and as they grew learn also by heart from older children, their employer, their parents etc the more complicated credo.

Older boys with a good ear would assist at Mass and they’d often pass on their knowledge.

Again, parents were good teachers. They had learned the basics of the faith from their parents, reinforced by priests and religious and usually by the rest of the villages. Up through the 1400s from the 9th century when Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor, England and most of mainland Europe were Christian, or were being actively evangelized. from the conquest in `1066 with the Norman ‘fusion’ even the Scandinavians were Christianized. So pretty much by the 12th century when universities were beginning to flower, you had a population which had been catechized for a few generations, passing on the basics of the faith.

Those kids I mentioned? They could go from country to country and start saying Pater Noster qui es in caelis and whether the listener was French, German, Italian, English—they would know what was being said. They would go into a church in whatever country and they would know what was being offered, whose sacrifice they were attending, and what the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, was being offered.

 

[GordonP]

Older boys with a good ear would assist at Mass and they’d often pass on their knowledge.

Boys would not assist at Mass until the late 1600s or early 1700s. Before Trent, there were no altar boys, or lay altar servers of any age.

 

[stpurl]

Right. I was thinking more of the boys who were promised to the church as prospective priests/monks from childhood who assisted in the choir. My bad!

 

[Cirdan_XII]

Seating was limited, and the parishioners would be absorbed in their own private devotions until they heard the bell for the elevation, when they would attempt to see the host and chalice.

In some Orthodox churches this is still the case today.

 

[Cirdan_XII]

Even the poor could speak ‘broad’ speech but get along with say English, French, Dutch, if they lived near the coast of England as well as Irish/Gaelic, Breton, some Spanish. French speaking people usually had some German or Dutch or Spanish or Italian facility depending on where they lived. When it comes right down to it, a vocabulary of 600-800 words and some hand gestures can get you pretty far. You don’t need complex syntax or ‘big words’; there are a lot of cognates among the Romance languages. And Latin was the original source for these cognates. Plus, repetition was pretty important and people weren’t usually bombarded with all kinds of other activities, internet etc. They could really focus on what they HEARD, and understand, and retain.

Also, our present concept of language is relatively modern. It didn’t really come about until the age of printing when book and pamplets would be mass produced. before that there was more of a language continuum. You could have walked from say Normandy to the south of Spain and the language difference from village to village to village would have been minimal, and nowehere would you have been able to draw a clear line saying this is where one language finishes and the next begins.

The advent of printing meant that people were increasingly exposed to the langauge of the place the printer came from (typically the capital city) and by osmosis this would have slowly influenced people’s speech, so unifying the language within the area and making the difference more obvious when you transitioned from one area to the next.