2 - The minster clergy

Summary

Carved during the last decades of the fifteenth century, the choir stalls of Ripon Minster replaced the earlier set that had been damaged by the fall of the lantern tower in 1450. The tower collapse strained the minster's resources for many years, but essential masonry repairs to the tower itself, the south transept and the choir had been completed by about 1480, permitting the minster clergy to beautify the choir with new woodwork. The stalls have folding seats with misericords: adorned with fantastic images of dragons, birds, griffins, flowers, green men, pigs playing bagpipes, mermaids and much else, they provided ledges for the clergy to lean against during the portions of the liturgy when they were expected to stand rather than sit. One of the bench-ends on the south side of the choir displays a shield with three wavy-armed stars crowned by a mitre: the arms of St Wilfrid. The richness of the carving exemplifies the grandeur of the medieval minster, while the number of stalls conveys its institutional scale. There are thirty-four stalls in total, arranged just as they would have been in a cathedral or monastic choir. There were places for the minster canons and also the vicars and chantry priests, all of whom were expected to gather in the choir for the daily round of services. Together with their deacons, subdeacons and others in minor orders, the minster clergy performed a grand and elaborate liturgy not to be found in most medieval parish churches.

The minster clergy, like St Wilfrid, strongly influenced religion and society in the parish of Ripon. They struck a balance between their own liturgical requirements and those of their parishioners, but the cure of souls within the parish was not always their primary concern. At one and the same time their institution was similar in many ways to a monastery or cathedral while also resembling six parish churches fused into one. A significant development in its long history was the formal establishment in the early fourteenth century of vicars for each of the six prebends. Their task was to guarantee that the cure of souls was performed within each of the parish's six territorial divisions. The canons, who were supposed to provide for this, often did not reside in Ripon personally and did not always hire a vicar to act in their stead.