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Concept
Collegiate church
Summary
In Christianity, a collegiate church is a church where the daily office of worship is maintained by a college of canons, a non-monastic or "secular" community of clergy, organised as a self-governing corporate body, headed by a dignitary bearing a title which may vary, such as dean or provost. In its governance and religious observance a collegiate church is similar in some respects to a cathedral, although a collegiate church is not the seat of a bishop and has no diocesan responsibilities. Collegiate churches have often been supported by endowments, including lands, or by tithe income from appropriated benefices. The church building commonly provides both distinct spaces for congregational worship and for the choir offices of the canons.
In the early medieval period, before the development of the parish system in Western Christianity, many new church foundations were staffed by groups of secular priests, living a communal life and serving an extensive territory. In England these churches were termed minsters, from the Latin monasterium, although only a few were truly houses of monks. In the 9th and 10th centuries many such churches adopted formal rules of governance, commonly derived from those composed by Chrodegang of Metz for Metz cathedral, and thenceforth came to be described as "collegiate"; and there were also new foundations of this type.
Originally, the endowments of these foundations were held in a common treasury from which each canon received a proportion for their subsistence, such canons being termed portioners; but from the 11th century onwards, the richer collegiate churches tended to be provided with new statutes establishing the priests of the college as canons within a formal chapter such that each canon was supported by a separate endowment, or prebend; such canons being termed prebendaries. A few major collegiate bodies remained portionary – such as Beverley Minster and the cathedral chapters of Utrecht and Exeter – but in less affluent foundations, the pooled endowments of the community continued to be apportioned between the canons.
Official source
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