Cathedral

Cathedral of Mexico City.

Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York

A cathedral is a Christian temple where the bishop of the diocese has his seat or chair, therefore, it is the main or major church of each diocese or particular church. The episcopal seat or chair is the place from where each bishop presides over the Christian community, teaching the content of the faith and the doctrine of the Catholic Church. He also administers certain sacraments and orders. The see or chair symbolizes the government function of the bishop.

The Orthodox Christian Church refers to its cathedrals as great church, although it is often translated as cathedral.

History

Cathedral of Santa Maria de Toledo in Spain.

The cathedrals arose as a new construction or as an evolution of a primitive monastic church elevated to the status of seat of the bishop. Missionary activities, ecclesiastical power and demographic issues are what have been determining which churches deserved and still deserve the title of cathedral, at the same time that different dioceses arose, merged or were suppressed.

Metropolitan Basilica and Primate Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and San Pedro de Bogotá.

At first, the church that was the seat of the bishop and head of the other churches in the diocese did not have a special typology. During the first centuries of Christianity and the Middle Ages (IV centuries to XI) cathedrals were not too different from other centers of worship, such as monastic churches or temples dedicated to martyrs. It is from the XI century when the cathedral acquires a configuration and dimensions that differentiate it from other temples. This peaked during the 13th centuries, XIV, XV and part of the XVI, coinciding with the rise of Gothic art. At that time, the cathedrals acquired, in addition to the characteristic that defines them, which is being an episcopal seat, other connotations in which the image and prestige of the cities in which they were built intervened, determining a real race to be made of these temples grandiose and monumental buildings. To this day, the idea of a cathedral continues to be assimilated with the Gothic style.

Basilica Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption of Popayán.

Metropolitan Cathedral of Buenos Aires.

Later, the appearance of the Protestant Reformation and another series of factors determined that the cathedrals were moderating their size and magnificence, although they continued to be unique and imposing buildings, adapting to changes in taste and different artistic styles.

Uses

Metropolitan Cathedral of the city of Badajoz (Spain), example of cathedral-fortress, unique in its genre and time.

At first, inside the cathedrals, in addition to the liturgy, studies were taught, especially in theology, grammar and Latin. This was the origin of the schools or cathedral studies, one of the first forms of regulated study, which evolved little by little to give rise to the current universities.

Names

Manila Cathedral in the Philippines.

Helsinki Cathedral in Finland.

Another common name for the cathedral was the Latin expression domus dei ('house of God'). The words domus (house) and dominus (lord) share the same origin. From this Latin root derive the German terms dom and Italian duomo. In Spanish, the cathedral is sometimes called seo ('la sede'), as in Aragonese and Catalan (seu). Also in Portuguese and Galician the word has that origin (sé).

In Strasbourg (in the Alsace region of France), and many other places in Germany, and several in England, the cathedral is known as münster (German) or minster (English), from the Latin monasterium, since all cathedrals always have at their service a chapter or group of clergy who, on many occasions (especially in the past), have lived in community, and Hence, many cathedrals have a cloister and chapter house.

One of the earliest uses of the term ecclesia cathedralis appears in the acts of the Council of Tarragona in 516. Another name for a cathedral is ecclesia mater, which emphasizes the role of mother that said church has with respect to the rest of the diocese. Because it was the most important, it was also known as ecclesia major.

Other types of large Christian temples in Western Europe are abbeys and co-cathedrals. It is called 'co-cathedral' to a religious building that has the rank of cathedral, but subordinate to another cathedral temple considered main, in those dioceses that, for historical reasons or due to transfer or increase in population, have two or more venues. Examples of co-cathedrals are those of Santa María in Cáceres, or those of the same name in Guadalajara, Logroño, Castellón, Mérida and that of San Pedro in Soria, all of them in Spain.

The term pro-cathedral is used when a church is temporarily elevated to the status of cathedral of a diocese while the final one is being defined or built, for example, St Mary's Pro-Cathedral (Dublin) or the St John's Pro-Cathedral (Perth). While that of proto-cathedral is given to an old cathedral of a bishopric transferred to another see, for example the Proto-Cathedral of Santa María (Los Ángeles).

References in literature

Basilica Cathedral of Notre Dame (Paris).

Murder in the Cathedral, by T. S. Eliot, tells of the assassination of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170 by order of his king, for refusing to submit to the Clarendon Constitutions.

Victor Hugo centers the plot of his novel Our Lady of Paris on the Parisian cathedral.

The book The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett is an imaginary account of the construction of a cathedral in the fictional English town of Kingsbridge during the Middle Ages.