TheCityWorships 237
All churches, except perhaps private chapels, had some sort of barrier or
physical demarcation separating the choir of the clergy from the nave of
the laity. This division reflected the clergy and people’s condominium of
ownership. The people stood or knelt to pray outside in the nave, which was
free of the modern clutter of pews. Medieval screens provided more than
visual access to the choir; the central door allowed processions to leave and
enter (fig. 30 ). The clergy came to the people’s side for rites like the blessing
of candles on Candlemas, and the people entered the choir for the marriage
blessing.^10 In the nave, the parishioners had great freedom of movement and
expression, in part because they literally owned it. Much to the irritation of
clerics, people wandered onto the clergy’s side of the screen to venerate altars
and relics or simply to gawk.^11 The screen was not an impassible barrier; its
door did not have a lock. Benvenuta Bojani once received Communion at a
Dominican church on the feast of the order’s founder. As she made her
thanksgiving, Saint Dominic himself appeared and healed her of a disability
in her legs. He then led her and two other pious women through the door
of the screen into the choir, much to the displeasure of the sacristan (who
could not see the saint). Benvenuta went directly to the high altar, where she
professed a vow of chastity to God. Other women in the church, inspired by
her example, crowded into the choir after her. After giving thanks there at
the side altars of the Blessed Virgin and Saint Dominic, Benvenuta cast away
her staff and walked home. Her hagiographer complained that her presence
in the choir was ‘‘contrary to custom,’’ but it was hardly unusual.^12
Nearly every church of the communal period was built with its apse
toward the east. When a bishop blessed a church, he pronounced the conse-
cratory prayers toward the east and the rising sun, positioning himself along
the west-east axis of the building.^13 When they assembled, the people and
clergy faced toward the east, toward the high altar. When Christians turned
to the east in western Europe, they also turned toward the Holy Land and
the city of Jerusalem, the place where the Savior died, rose, and would re-
turn.^14 Their posture showed that they expected the completion of salvation
history and the end of time. The assembly was a people on the march in
time and space; they did not pray turned in on themselves. So universal and
normative was this positioning in cosmic space and sacred time, even during
private prayer, that during the inquisition investigation of the popularly can-
onized Saint Armanno Pungilupo, the witness Bonfandino wondered
- See Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare,ms lxxxiv(xiicent.), fols. 73 v– 74 v.
- Cremona Cath. Stat. ( 1247 ), 40 ,p. 458.
- Corrado of Cividale,Vita Devotissimae Benevenutae, 3. 29 ,p. 157.
- Sicardo,Mitrale, 1. 2 , col. 17. On Sicardo’s views on the Mass, see Mary M. Schaefer, ‘‘Twelfth-
Century Latin Commentaries on the Mass: Christological and Ecclesiological Dimensions’’ (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Notre Dame, 1983 ). - Richard C. Trexler,The Christian at Prayer: An Illustrated Prayer Manual Attributed to Peter the Chanter
(d. 1197 )(Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1987 ), 38.