RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Ohaplain Chapter
Chaplains are attached to parliamentary bodies and to state and national societies. Their duties in congress, the state legislatures, and the British parliament are mainly connected with the religious service at the beginning of each day's session. In the case of societies they preach before the body once a year and say grace at the annual banquet. Prisons, almshouses, asylums, and similar institutions also have chaplains, who commonly live in the building and conduct regular services. Where a chaplain is a man of the right stamp, he is of the utmost help to the officers, as he can do much to promote good feeling between them and the subordinates, beneficiaries, or inmates, as the case may be, for he is by education and manner of life the equal of the chief, and by profession and intercourse the friend of all the rest. It is good policy in a government or institution to make this branch of service attractive to the clerical profession, and to maintain it by strict discipline.
Bibliography: L. Ferraris, Prompta bibliotheca canonica, s.v " capellanus, " Venice, 1782-94; Z. B. van Espen, Jus ecclesiasticumuniversum, part 2, tit. .3, chap. 2, Louvain, 1700; D, Bouix, Troctotos de Parocho, pp. 426 sqq., 444 sqq., 645 sqq., Paris, 1856; A. L. Richter, Lehrbuch des . . Kirchenrechts, ed. W. Kahl, p. 468, Leipsic, 1886; E. Friedberg, Lehrbuch des Kirchenrechts, pp. 175 sqq., ib.
CHAPMAN, (J) WILBUR: Presbyterian; b. at Richmond, Ind., June 17, 1859. He was educated at Lake Forest University (B.A., 1879) and Lane Theological Seminary (1882), and was pastor of the First Reformed Church, Albany, N. Y., from 1883 to 1888. He was pastor of Bethany Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, in 1888-93, and then engaged in evangelistic work imtil 1899, when he became pastor of the Fourth Presbyterian Church, New York City, where he remained imtil 1903. In the latter year he was chosen executive secretary of the General Assembly's Committee on Evangelistic Work for the Presbyterian Church. His works include : Ivory Palaces of the King (Chicago, 1893); Received Ye the Holy Ghost ? (1894); " And Peter " (1895); Present-Day Parables (Cleveland, O., 1900); Revivals and Missions (New York, 1900); Present-Day Evangelism (1903); Fishing for Men (Chicago, 1904); and Samuel Hopkins Hadley of Water Street (New York, 1906); Another Mile (1908).
CHAPTER.
Origin and Development of the Common Life (§ 1). In the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (§ 2). Canons (§ 3).
Modern Organization (§ 4). Officers (§ 5).
Legal Provisions and Duties (§ 6). In Protestant Churches (§ 7).
A chapter is an eccledastical corporation of a collegiate nature, whose principal function is to provide for public worship in the cathedral or other church to which it is attached. The origin of chapters may be traced back to the early period when the bishop had for a council or senate his presbyterium, i.e., the total number of the priests and deacons belonging to his own particular church. The further development has been largely influenced since the fourth century by the extension of monastic institutions in some degree to the secular
clergy. Eusebius of Vercelli and Augustine established a community life for their clergy under one roof, and at Hippo there was even a I. Origin monastic vow of poverty. These exand Devel- amples were imitated in Africa, Spain, opment of and Gaul; in the last-named the exthe Com- pression mensa canonica was used mon Life, as early as Gregory of Tours. The phrase is explained by the fact that all the clergy of a church were inscribed in a special list (matricula or canon), from which regularly appointed clergy were known as canonici. This use of the term occurs in the canons of the Synod of Laodicea (c. 360), and in the sixth century was general in the Frankish kingdom. The mensa canonica, accordingly, was the common table of the clergy of a particular church, and the vita canonica their life in common. There was originally no reference in the term to any rule of hfe, as some have thought from another use of the word canon. By the middle of the eighth century, this community life for the clergy had become very general throughout the Frankish kingdom, usually following the regulations laid down by Chrodegang of Metz for his clergy. At the Synod of Aachen in 816 Louis the Pious caused a new code of rules to be drawn up, based on Chrodegang's, as that had been on the Benedictine rule, and relating to churches other than cathedrals which had several clergy, later known as collegiate churches. According to both rules, the clergy lived with the bishop or other superior in a prescribed house (claustrum) , and were required to recite together the canonical hours and to render obedience to their head. In this capacity, besides the bishop, the archdeacon appears in Chrodegang's rule, the provost in that of Aachen. The organization differed from the monastic system in being conditioned by differences of clerical rank and by the permission of private property. In the ninth and early tenth centuries, this became the approved form of clerical life in cathedrals and other larger churches, and the name chapter was applied to the organization. In the rule of Chrodegang capitulum designated originally the chapter to be read at the daily gatherings of the clergy, then the place in which the reading occurred, then the gathering, and finally the community as a whole.
As a result of the gradual redistribution of the revenues which had originally served for the maintenance of the community life, and the permission of separate residences (mansiones) for individual clergy, the vita canonica decayed during the eleventh century in many churches where it had formerly obtained. There were, however, numerous efforts directed to its restoration, in the spirit of the new ascetic movement and on the theory that the possession of private property had caused 2. In the the decay. Supported by men like Eleventh Hildebrand, Peter Damian, and Gerand hoh of Reichersberg, and favored by Twelfth the popes, these efforts were decidedly Centuries, successful, and led to an enforcement of the common life by the Lateran Council of 1059 imder Nicholas II., which extended the community principle to property. In the later