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Chancel   Listen
noun
Chancel  n.  (Arch.)
(a)
That part of a church, reserved for the use of the clergy, where the altar, or communion table, is placed. Hence, in modern use;
(b)
All that part of a cruciform church which is beyond the line of the transept farthest from the main front.
Chancel aisle (Arch.), the aisle which passes on either side of or around the chancel.
Chancel arch (Arch.), the arch which spans the main opening, leading to the chancel.
Chancel casement, the principal window in a chancel..
Chancel table, the communion table.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Chancel" Quotes from Famous Books



... ekciti, al. Chamber cxambro. Chambermaid cxambristino. Chamberlain cxambelano. Chameleon kameleono. Chamois cxamo. Chamois-leather sxamo. Champagne cxampano. Champion probatalanto. Chance hazardo. Chance (to happen) okazi. Chancel hxorejo. Chancellor kanceliero. Chandelier lustro. Change sxangxi. Changeable sxangxebla. Channel kanalo. Chant kantado. Chaos hxaoso. Chaotic hxaosa. Chapel kapelo. Chaplain ekleziulo. Chapter cxapitro. Char bruleti. Character ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... like a tomb My little parlour sounds which only now Yearned like some holy chancel with his voice. So still! so empty! Surely one might fear The walls should meet in ruinous collapse That held no more his music. Yet they stand Firm in a foolish firmness, meaningless As frescoed sepulchre some Pharaoh built But never came to sleep in; built, indeed, For—that ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne

... has passed down the aisle and sprinkled the Holy Water over us with the aspergil, the boys bearing the censers, preceding him have passed from sight with him behind the dark curtain at the Chancel door; there is a shuffling noise of the departing ...
— A Napa Christchild; and Benicia's Letters • Charles A. Gunnison

... has been the main conservative influence in the mother-tongue, holding it fast to many strong, pithy words and idioms that would else have been lost. In 1415; some thirty years after Wiclif's death, by decree of the Council of Constance, his bones were dug up from the soil of Lutterworth chancel and burned, and the ashes cast into the Swift. "The brook," says Thomas Fuller, in his Church History, "did convey his ashes into Avon; Avon into Severn; Severn into the narrow seas; they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wiclif are the emblem of his ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... difficulty in repair, too often pervious to the wet, and yet strangely picturesque, and correct too, according to great rules of architecture. It was built with a nave and aisles, visibly in the form of a cross, though with its arms clipped down to the trunk, with a separate chancel, with a large square short tower, and with a bell-shaped spire, covered with lead and irregular in its proportions. Who does not know the low porch, the perpendicular Gothic window, the flat-roofed aisles, and the ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... it was a pretty one, framed as it was by the high narrow Early English arch which opened from the belfry into the nave. First came the bowed heads of the kneeling people, and, through the beautiful old screen which separated chancel from nave, the altar shone out in strong relief against its background of soft-coloured mosaic, the rays of the western sun giving an added touch of brilliance to its decoration ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford

... kept silence as to the episode which took place at dessert. At ten o'clock that night the two adversaries were informed that the sabre was the weapon agreed upon by the seconds; the place chosen for the rendezvous was behind the chancel of the church of the Capuchins at eight o'clock the next morning. Goddet, who was at the banquet in his quality of former army surgeon, was requested to be present at the meeting. The seconds agreed that, no matter ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... beauteous breast ye may; The spirit of England none can slay! Dash the bomb on the dome of Paul's— Deem ye the fame of the Admiral falls? Pry the stone from the chancel floor,— Dream ye that Shakespeare shall live no more? Where is the giant shot that kills Wordsworth walking the old green hills? Trample the red rose on the ground,— Keats is Beauty while earth spins round! Bind her, grind her, ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke

... at any religion will reveal its truth as regards the soul of a belief. We recognize the fact outwardly in the buildings erected to celebrate its worship. Not among the Jews alone was the holy of holies kept veiled, to temper the divine radiance to man's benighted understanding. Nor is the chancel-rail of Christianity the sole survivor of the more exclusive barriers of olden times, even in the Western world. In the Far East, where difficulty of access is deemed indispensable to dignity, the material approaches are still manifold and imposing. Court within court, building after ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... died at his house at Bunhill, Nov. 15, 1674, and was interred near the body of his father, in the chancel of the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate. By his first wife he had four children, a son and three daughters. The daughters survived their father. Anne married a master-builder, and died in child-bed of her first child, which died with her; Mary lived single; Deborah left her father when ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... was all from above. Although only mid-afternoon, altar and chancel candles made a true vesper atmosphere, and the flickering wicks in the hanging lamps gave starlight. This is as it should be. The appeal of a ritualistic service is to the mystical in one's nature. Jewels and embroideries, ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... children, on the 11th. That is the day that Clement will arrive in New York, and he writes that he will come to Boston the next day—after seeing Ronald, and attending to the final arrangements about our beautiful new chancel windows—and join me at ...
— A Temporary Dead-Lock - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal."' Then, turning on the unhappy curate, he stretched out his arm and pointed his finger at him. 'Last Sunday,' he said, 'I 'eard you read those very words from the chancel steps. Go! go! I tell you, go! You are a bad man, a wolf in sheep's clothing—go!' Mr Clinton walked up to him threateningly, and the curate, with a gasp of astonishment and indignation, fled from ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham

... them long in suspense. He soon entered, dressed in his surplice, and took his place within the chancel. ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... struggling ray of light from the dying sun came in over the chancel and flooded the great room for an instant. It allowed me to get a good look at the face of the priest. As I stood there staring at him I heard him say to the old man as he bade him good-by, "Yes, tell her I'll be there in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... the 'newness,' if we may use the word, of the interior of St. Etienne, are its most remarkable features; the plain marble slab in the chancel, marking the spot where William the Conqueror was buried and disinterred (with the three mats placed in front of it for prayer), is shewn with much ceremony by ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn

... riches and grace, Silks and satins, jewels and lace; In they swept from the dazzled sun, And soon in the church the deed was done. Three prelates stood on the chancel high: A knot that gold and silver can buy, Gold and silver may yet untie, Unless it is tightly fastened; What's worth doing at all's worth doing well, And the sale of a young Manhattan belle Is not to be pushed ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... exclamation, was heard behind the chancel in the ladies' gallery, which was above the throne, a little to the right. But it caused no comment other than a momentary turning ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... have that. And, Felipe—" The Padre crossed the chancel to the small, shabby organ. "Rise, my child, and listen. Here is something you can learn. Why, see now if you cannot learn it from ...
— Padre Ignacio - Or The Song of Temptation • Owen Wister

... of Harrow Chapel as originally constructed, but time and piety have completely changed it. In 1855, Dr. Vaughan added a Chancel with an apsidal end, designed by Sir Gilbert Scott. Next, the central passage of the Chapel became a Nave, with pillars and a North Aisle. Then the South Aisle was added, and decorated with glass before which one shudders, as a Memorial to Harrow men who fell in the Crimea. ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... points out the want of sympathy between "these vast edifices" and the Protestant worship, which might as well be carried on in a barn or conventicle or square meeting-house. Hence, the nave has been blocked up with pews, the choir or transept partitioned off to serve as a parish church, roodloft and chancel screen removed, the altar displaced by a table, and the sedilia scattered about in odd corners. The contrast between old and new is strikingly presented, by way of object lessons, in a series of plates, arranged side by ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... at a signal from the sexton, had come out of the vestry and placed himself with his best man on the chancel ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... of sacred pictures manifold, A minster rich in holy effigies, And bearing on entablature and frieze The hieroglyphic oracles of old. Along its transept aureoled martyrs sit; And the low chancel side-lights half acquaint The eye with shrines of prophet, bard, and saint, Their age-dimmed tablets traced in doubtful writ! But only when on form and word obscure Falls from above the white supernal light We read the mystic characters aright, And life informs the silent portraiture, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... been in his house with the company of 'the Good Lady', and had seen him naked and covered him up, 'How, then, did you get in when all the doors were locked?' 'We can get in,' she said, 'even if the doors are locked.' Then the priest took her into the chancel of the church, locked the door, and gave her a sound thrashing with the pastoral staff, calling out 'Out with you, lady witch.' But as she could not, he sent her home, saying 'See now how foolish you are to believe in ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... by the ruined chancel pattered in the breeze, and the wheatear's last notes came from its top-most bough. Far below the waves were rocking lazily. There were other waves at Hugh Ritson's feet—the graves of dead men. Some who were buried there long ago were buried in their chains. Under the earth the fettered ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... emissaries; it needed some courage to renew such a work. I know that when the regent saw Madame de Maine and Cellamare arrested; Richelieu, Polignac, Malezieux, and Mademoiselle de Launay in the Bastille; and that wretched Lagrange-Chancel at the Sainte Marguerite, he thought all ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... oath and accept livings in the Establishment. But they indulged in many irregularities, which, during the first year of the reign of Elizabeth, were winked at by the authorities. "Some performed," says an old author, "divine service in the chancel, others in the body of the church; some in a seat made in the church; some in a pulpit, with their faces to the people; some keeping precisely to the order of the book; some intermix psalms in metre; some say with a surplice, and others without one. The table stands in the body ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... the convoy when at last the exhausted lady was helped over the stone stile that led to the churchyard. Highly picturesque was the grey structure outside, but within modernism had not done much; the chancel was feebly fitted after the ideas of the "fifties," but the faded woodwork of the nave was intact, and Magdalen still had to sit in the grim pew ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... he had been sent by the Bishop to ask if I cared to witness the lying-in-state from some private vantage-ground. I went to the cathedral, and the Bishop himself escorted me to the organ-loft, whence I could see the silent crowds move slowly in pairs past Alresca's bier, which lay in the chancel. It was an impressive sight, and one which I ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett

... and the old vestments with them to the green, she had seen something which touched her heart much more. She passed up alone under the screen, which they had spared, to see what had been done in the chancel; and as she went she heard a sobbing from the corner near the priest's door; and there, crouched forward on his face, crying and moaning quietly, was the old priest who had been rector of the church ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... chancel are of porcelain, all pictured over with figures of almost life size, very elegantly wrought and dressed in the fanciful costumes of two centuries ago. The design was a history of something or somebody, but none of us were learned enough to read the story. The old father, reposing under a stone ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... endeavoured to pass the worthy clergyman rapidly, in hopes to escape unnoticed. But the Captain, who foresaw the manifest danger of failing in such an attempt, walked gravely to meet the divine upon his walk in the midst of the chancel, and, pulling off his cap, was about to pass him after a formal reverence. But what was his surprise to view in the preacher the very same person with whom he had dined in the castle of Ardenvohr! Yet ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... she followed him, a long way up the church, to the stone screen which divided the chancel from the nave. There, in sight of Mrs. Jenkins, but so far off that she could not hear a word said, he asked her to take a seat on the steps that led up to the door in the centre of the screen. Again she obeyed, and ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... the water side. The present structure originally consisted only of a nave and chancel, and was built about the beginning of the fifteenth century, at which time the tower was erected at the charge of William Bordal, vicar of Chiswick, who died in 1435. It is built of stone and flint, as is the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 269, August 18, 1827 • Various

... Strasburg, consumed all the timberwork and threatened even the pillars and walls. However the damage was promptly repaired. In 1302 a bloody conflict between two citizens of the town, which took place in the very chancel of the church, required again ...
— Historical Sketch of the Cathedral of Strasburg • Anonymous

... was wavering—had not leisure at present! The necessity of forswearing the practise of head-taking deters the old men from becoming Christians: they fear to lose influence with their tribe. The little party then fixed upon the spot where the church should be built, a permanent bilian chancel to which a nave could be added when the additional room was required. Twenty-five pounds from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge was all the money then in hand to begin with; but very soon more was collected, and when I visited Banting ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... he hung up his pair of shoes in the chancel of Odcombe Church, and they may be there to this day for ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... strengthened to their desires. As the lights from the belfry of Old North Church revealed to Paul Revere the route the British were to take against them in the memorable beginnings at Lexington and Concord, so the light from the Great Book above its chancel rail would direct them the way ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott

... years, nearly twenty-seven of which he had been the minister of the New Rochelle church. He was eminently useful in keeping his congregation together amidst its adverse circumstances, and was greatly beloved. He was interred beneath the chancel floor of the old church; and for whose use he ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... himself were the odes and philippics of M. La Grange, written in 1720, and published in Paris in 1795, in-12, with the title Les Philippiques, Odes, par M. de la Grange-Chancel, Seigneur d'Antoniat en Perigord, avec notes historiques, critiques, et litteraires. In these poems he attacked with malignant fury the Duke of Orleans, Regent of France, and was obliged to fly for safety to Avignon. There ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... overtaken by a shower of rain as he returned home from a friend's house, where he had been passing the evening. He therefore crossed, as quickly as his corpulence would allow, the deserted little square called "The Cloister," which lies directly behind the chancel of the cathedral ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac

... demonstration. Then, as to the service—neither of us could find our way about. Instead of saying the Lord's Prayer four times, we said it once; we left out half the psalms for the day, the Rector explaining from the chancel steps that they were not fit to be read in a Christian church; we altered this prayer and that prayer; we listened to an extempore prayer for the widows and orphans of some poor fellows who have been killed in a mine ten miles from ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Passion before alluded to covers the chancel arch of the little church, and is divided into two complete sections, representing various scenes from the Passion. This arrangement, by the way, is not at all uncommon in early Italian frescoes, and, although it has been severely ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various

... church to the north of Limfiorden. The Virgin Mary, with a crown of gold on her head, and the infant Jesus in her arms, stood as if in life in the altar-piece; the holy apostles were carved on the chancel; and on the walls above were to be seen the portraits of the old burgomasters and magistrates of Skagen, with their insignia of office: the pulpit was richly carved. The sun was shining brightly into the church, and glancing on the crown of brass ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... county, and is exceptionally rich in delicate carvings and clustered pinnacles. The present building is mainly Perpendicular, but the foundation of a church here is attributed by tradition to Athelstan, who is said to have established a college of secular canons dedicated to St. Probus. The chancel screen is modern with the exception of the lower portion, which has been made up of the old fifteenth-century bench ends. A full and highly interesting account of this church, by Canon Fox Harvey, appeared in the Truro Diocesan Magazine for 1905. Above the woods of Tregothnan, on the ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath

... tablet of white marble, in the chancel of Cranham Church, is the following inscription, drawn up ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... that of the Papists. "Behold," said the angel, "the church which deceiveth the nations! Hypocrisy has built this church at her own expense; for the Papists permit, yea enjoin the breaking of any oath made to a heretic, although it were taken upon the sacrament." From the chancel we passed through key-holes to the upper end of a cell which stood apart, full of burning candles at mid-day, where we perceived a priest with his crown shaven, walking about as if he were in expectation of visitors; presently ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... Mary's church, with a beautifully carved roof, was erected in the earlier part of the 15th century, and contains the tomb of Mary Tudor, queen of Louis XII. of France. St James's church is also a fine Perpendicular building, with a modern chancel, and without a tower. All these splendid structures, fronting one of the main streets in succession, form, even without the abbey church, a remarkable memorial of the wealth of the foundation. Behind them lie picturesque gardens ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... people, with various sorts and shades of belief. Some were Free-Will and some were Hard-Shell, some were High-Church and reminded one of a Masonic Lodge working at 32 deg., while others were Low-Church and omitted crossing themselves frequently while putting down a new carpet in the chancel. ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... a reductio ad absurdum of our system. The girls seemed afraid to face anything. They would rather die than think. (I wonder why Professor Theobald lingers so up there by the chancel? The time must ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... of God were bumped up the church steps, wheeled up the aisle, and bestowed in a prominent spot before the chancel rail. Some one was playing soft music at the unseen organ, but Mary accepted soft music as a phenomenon natural to churches, and failed to connect it with human agency. Sedately she set out Theodora's bows and ruffles to the best advantage. Carefully she rearranged the floral decorations ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly

... that looked as if it might be hundreds of years old; he turned the lock with it and stepped in, walking down the small brick aisle, observing the ancient oaken seats, the quaint pulpit, and strange brasses; till, white, staring, obtrusive, and all out of taste, he saw in the chancel what he had come to look for, a great white marble monument, on the south side; four fluttering cherubs with short wings that appeared to hold up a marble slab, while two weeping figures knelt below. First was recorded on the slab the death of Augustus Cuthbert Melcombe, ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... summer morning, all the fathers and brothers had risen, and read or sung early mass in the chancel. Afterwards the Abbot had gone into the garden in order to reflect. It was still dark, but the stars shone between the olive and orange trees, and the flowers swayed in the gentle ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... famous architect, and, therefore, grossly inartistic, lacking every feature which makes for solemnity and beauty. The detail was coarse and roughly finished, the red-brick walls, as always, an offence to the eye; big texts seemed to squirm, like semi-paralysed eels, over the chancel arch and round the East window. The latter, off which Jimmy could hardly take his eyes, was a veritable triumph of the Victorian tradition. Its colouring was gruesome, its design grotesque; and yet it was a source of great pride to the congregation as a whole, having been put ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... for performing the ceremony of depositing her honoured remains in the family vault, which was in the chancel of the parish church. My father and myself followed as chief-mourners; and, during the performance of the funeral service, I believe there was not a dry eye amongst the numerous congregation who attended. Every one felt that he had sustained ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... he raised his head to gaze at the chancel, so his vow should there be recorded. He tried to look at the chancel, but ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... guns, unawares, Shook all our coffins as we lay, And broke the chancel window-squares, We thought it ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy

... 1833. The conversation, which is of the raciest description, is supposed to take place in York Minster and turns on the repairs which were made in 1832 to the famous organ-screen which separates the nave and transepts from the chancel. The question of altering the position of the screen is debated ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman

... flight of stairs, and find ourselves in a large hall, built the whole length and height of the building. Several galleries, one over another in the different stories, extend round the whole hall, and in the midst of the hall is the chancel, from which, on Sundays, the preacher delivers his sermon before an invisible audience. All the doors of the cells, which lead upon the galleries, are half opened, the prisoners hear the preacher, but they cannot see him, nor he them. The whole is a well-built machine ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... "O Lord, be merciful to——!" here his speech failed him, and he fell back lifeless on his bed. With arms reversed and muffled flags, his own men bore him through the lanes and woods he knew so well to the little church that still stands unchanged beside his home. On the floor of its chancel the brasses of his father and his grandfather mark their graves. A step nearer to the altar, unmarked by brass or epitaph, lies the grave in which, with bitter tears and cries, his greencoats laid the body of the leader whom they loved. "Never were heard such piteous cries at the death of one ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... fails. There might be to him who chose to give rein to his fancy a vision at one moment of the old ivy-covered church and the quiet graveyard, the evening sun streaming through the rich stained glass, the organ faintly heard through the long aisles and the deep chancel, and around and about the singing of some bird of late hours, and the hum of the bee as he flew by, well laden, ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee

... entrance hall forming the kitchen, as in many old Breton houses. A second frowning old gateway leads to the single street, which, passing between two rows of antique gabled houses, and under the chancel of the little parish church, conducts one to the almost interminable flight of stone steps leading to the gateway of the monastery. Upon ringing the bell a polite lay brother opens the iron-studded door, and we are admitted into a solemn, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various

... contemporary gossip. It was scarcely so cold in the church as it was without, but it looked colder. The white nave was positively arctic to the eye; and the tawdriness of a continental altar looked more forlorn than usual in the solitude and the bleak air. Two priests sat in the chancel, reading and waiting penitents; and out in the nave, one very old woman was engaged in her devotions. It was a wonder how she was able to pass her beads when healthy young people were breathing in their palms and slapping their chest; but though ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... stopped; the utilitarian of to-day would sweep away, as being serious hindrances to wheeled traffic, the two picturesque fifteenth-century erections which stand in this market-place; these, High Cross and Low Cross, one at the east end, in front of the Moot Hall, the other at the west, facing the chancel of the church, remain, to the delight of the archaeologist, as instances of the fashion in which our forefathers built gathering places in the ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... on opposite sides of the chancel were unoccupied, save by a tall young woman and a little girl, who now hurriedly took their places, and in a formal, perfunctory manner put down their heads for a supposed private prayer for a blessing on this opportunity of public worship. They very soon rose up mechanically, and looked ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker

... ago a strange parable of what I mean. I was walking through a quiet countryside with a curious, fanciful, interesting boy, and we came to a little church off the track in a tiny churchyard full of high-seeded grasses. On the wall of the chancel hung an old trophy of armour, a helmet and a cuirass, black with age. The boy climbed quickly up upon the choir-stalls, took the helmet down, enclosed his own curly head in it, and then knelt down suddenly on the altar-step; after ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the edge of it, where the trees were about to stop and the shops were about to begin, he found himself at the door of the Hymnal Supply Corporation, Limited. The premises as seen from the outside combined the idea of an office with an ecclesiastical appearance. The door was as that of a chancel or vestry; there was a large plate-glass window filled with Bibles and Testaments, all spread open and showing every variety of language in their pages. These were marked, Arabic, Syriac, Coptic, Ojibway, Irish and so forth. On the window in small white lettering were the words, HYMNAL SUPPLY CORPORATION, ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... ancestor would have deemed it an honour to run beside the stirrup of my forefathers, now dwells in the hall of the Mandeville. The spear is broken, and the banner mouldered. Nothing remains, save in the chancel of the roofless church a recumbent marble effigy, with folded hands, of that stout Sir Godfrey of Mandeville who stormed ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... anthem sounded, Silence now her dwelling finds, And the church from porch to chancel Knows no music but the wind's; Perish so all superstition! Let the world the Truth obey, Long may Peace and Love increasing, ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones

... recessional. The congregation as slowly followed. Mary loitered as long as possible, even going back for her handkerchief, which she had purposely dropped in the pew to give her an excuse to return. But her anxious glances revealed nothing. The vestry door was closed, and nobody was inside the chancel rail. ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... mighty outer gate well barred and fast, The poor old friars stirred their poor old bones, And pattering swiftly on the damp cold stones, They through the solitary chancel passed. The chancel walls looked black and dim and vast, ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... at the chancel, purified, consecrated henceforth unreservedly to Christ, Mr. Murray looked so happy, so noble, so worthy of his high calling, that his proud, fond mother thought his face was ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... the rights of the Church was much more "high" than that of Laud, would, on this account alone, have met them with resistance. But the canons used words and phrases which were intolerable to Scottish ears. They spoke of a "chancel" and they commended auricular confession; they gave the Scottish bishops something like the authority of their English brethren, to the detriment of minister and kirk-session, and they made the use of a new prayer-book compulsory, ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait

... assemblage it had ever held (she was quite sure no previous gathering could have been more august), and a smile of pride came to her lips. The great chorus, the procession, the lights, the incomprehensible combination of colors, the chancel, the flowers, her wedding gown, and Ugo's dark, glowing face rushed in and out of her vision as she leaned back in her chair and—almost forgot to breathe. The thought of Ugo grew and grew; she closed her eyes and saw him at her side as they walked proudly from the altar ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon

... such interest as herself. "Yes, I always come to the evening service now, though I won't deny as the rheumatics are very pinching at times. But, dear Lord! I never come up to the stalls near the chancel, so you ain't likely to see me. To see them Harrises always a-goin' up to the very top, it does go agen me. I don't say as it's everybody as ought to take the lowest place. The Lord knows I'm not proud, but I won't go into them chairs down by the ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... never observed an echo in that place before. Once or twice the lad's life was in peril, as when his foot slipped on the top of the church, and he was unpleasantly suspended for some time between the rafters of the ceiling and the floor of the chancel. On another occasion he had a narrow escape from drowning. It seems that on the Yare are little boats out together very slightly, for the purpose of carrying a man, his gun, and dog over the shallows of Braydon, in pursuit of the flights ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... our little friend on passing beneath its sacred portals. The length of the aisle seemed interminable to him, and on his way to the altar he felt oppressed by the scrutiny of eyes through which he was compelled to pass. Mr. Dural, the pastor, looked kindly at him, as he stood in front of the chancel, and Charlie took ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... tufts of moss. The high, beaked prow of that canoe in which the mast was placed, resembled a rude altar; and all round it was suspended a great variety of fruits, including scores of cocoanuts, unhusked. This prow was railed off, forming a sort of chancel within. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... and took occasion, from her ring which she wore on her first finger, to kiss her hand, but had not the face to offer anything more. So at last I left her there and went to my company. About 8 o'clock I went into the church at Scheveling, which was pretty handsome, and in the chancel a very great upper part of the mouth of a whale, which indeed was of a prodigious bigness, bigger than one of our long boats that belong to one of our ships. Commissioner Pett at last came to our lodging, and caused the boats to go off; so some ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... of the dukes of Milan and their families carry us into a very different realm of feeling. Medallions above the doors of sacristy and chancel, stately figures reared aloft beneath gigantic canopies, men and women slumbering with folded hands upon their marble biers—we read in all those sculptured forms a strange record of human restlessness resolved into the quiet of the tomb. The iniquities of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... Miss Anthony found time to give one sitting for a large oil portrait by William Keith, which was completed after her death in the spring of 1906 and looked down upon the audience from the chancel of the Unitarian church in San Francisco at the memorial services for her on Palm Sunday, April 8. It was shipped to her home in Rochester, N. Y., the day before the earthquake of April 18, but it escaped destruction by fire only to meet with mishap after the death of Miss Mary S. Anthony, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... John Hoadly [Footnote: Bishop Hoadly is sometimes said to have written her epitaph. In this case it must have been (like Dr. Primrose's on his Deborah) anticipatory, for Dr. Benjamin Hoadly, Bishop of Winchester, died in 1761.] raised a mural memorial to her, but "in yr entrance of the chancel [of Charlcombe Church] close to yr Rector's seat," 14th April 1768. These are not the only fresh traces of the connexion of the Fieldings with the old "Queen of the West." In June last a tablet to Fielding ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... and other places; but, such was the sum of his wickedness, he did not scruple to question and make mock of the very doctrines of the Church, alleging even that there was nothing sacred in the image of the Virgin Mary which stood in the chancel, and shut its eyes in prayer before all the congregation when the priest elevated the Host. 'Therefore,' said the prior, 'I pray you take back your son, and let him find some other road to the stake than that which runs through the ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... The basement is of rusticated Portland stone, of which the church is built, and quoins of the same material decorate the windows and angles within. It follows the lines of the period, with hardly any chancel, wide galleries on three sides standing on piers, from which columns rise to the elliptical ceiling. The part of the roof over the galleries is bayed at right angles to the curve of the central part. Monuments hang on the walls and columns, ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... quaintnesses! which I began to look at with delight, even when I was so crude a members of the congregation, that my nurse found it necessary to provide for the reinforcement of my devotional patience by smuggling bread-and-butter into the sacred edifice. There was the chancel, guarded by two little cherubims looking uncomfortably squeezed between arch and wall, and adorned with the escutcheons of the Oldinport family, which showed me inexhaustible possibilities of meaning in their blood-red hands, their death's-heads and cross-bones, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... faltered in look or speech! Never should they feed themselves upon her sorrow. She went on, smiling here and there. The low hum, the pallid lights, the murmur from the organ, all seemed cruelly accented. Her pew was third from the chancel; she was but half-way through the ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... o' dowst war hummel'd. Tha wAclls once moor look'd bright. Tha Painter, fags, a war a Plummer An Glazier too, Put vooAth his powers, (His workin made naw little scummer!) In zentences, in flourishes, and flowers. Tha chancel, church and Acll look'd new, An war ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings

... their natural shadows which I saw on the pavement, but felt sure there were some ugly figures hiding among 'em and peeping out. Thinking on in this way, I began to think of the old gentleman who was just dead, and I could have sworn, as I looked up the dark chancel, that I saw him in his usual place, wrapping his shroud about him and shivering as if he felt it cold. All this time I sat listening and listening, and hardly dared to breathe. At length I started up and took the bell-rope in my hands. At that minute there ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... they return loaded, should not, I think, be passed over in silence. — As they take their prey with their claws, so they carry it in their claws to their nest: but, as the feet are necessary in their ascent under the tiles, they constantly perch first on the roof of the chancel, and shift the mouse from their claws to their bill, that the feet may be at liberty to take hold of the plate on the wall as they ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... that were styled Rood-lofts. "Rood-loft (saith Blount), a shrine, whereon was placed the cross of Christ. The rood was an image of Christ on the cross, made generally of wood, and erected in a loft for that purpose, just over the passage out of the church into the chancel." But rood-loft sometimes also signifies a shrine, on which was placed the image or relics of a saint, because generally a crucifix, or a cross, used likewise to attend ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley

... church was filled with white people, and a number who could not gain admittance were standing about the doors. Then she went round to the side of the church, and, depositing her bouquet carefully on an old mossy gravestone, climbed up on the projecting sill of a window near the chancel. The window was of stained glass, of somewhat ancient make. The church was old, had indeed been built in colonial times, and the stained glass had been brought from England. The design of the window showed Jesus blessing ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... same characteristics in their external design, our town and village churches are very various. The simplest form, and the one most commonly found, is that of a nave and chancel, with a tower at the west end; to which plan may be added aisles and transepts, the latter often being wrongly called "cross-aisles." When the walls of the nave above the arcade rise above those of the aisles and ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... church erected in 1855, whose chancel is pierced by two narrow stained-glass windows, lifts its square belfry from out a leafy grove hard by. Here and there rustic bridges cross the rivulets that dance merrily along toward the river. In the distance are two or three primitive saw-mills, run by water-power, ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne

... buildings of a domestic nature, with which the cloisters formerly also communicated, have generally been destroyed. Mere parochial churches have commonly a tower at the west end, a nave with lateral aisles, and a chancel. Some churches have transepts; and small side chapels or additional aisles have been annexed to many, erected at the costs of individuals, to serve for burial and as chantries. The smallest class of ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam

... drew out his sword, and ran upon them, having none to second him but another man, so that, oppressed by the number of his enemies, he was beaten downe and slaine. In the meantime, Sir James being come, the English that were in the chancel kept off the Scots, and having the advantage of the strait and narrow entrie, defended themselves manfully. But Sir James encouraging his men, not so much by words as by deeds and good example, and having slain the boldest resisters, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... Within the chancel stood the Dean of Westminster, and behind him were gathered the cathedral clergy, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the scarlet and white surpliced choir, ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... worked in its vicinity, and to the railway, which the uncle of the present earl had resisted; but the railway had triumphed, and the station for Scrooby Priory was there. There was a grim church, of a blackened or weather-beaten stone, on the hill, with a few grim Amelyns reposing cross-legged in the chancel, but the character of the village was as different from the Priory as if it were in another county. They stopped at the rectory, where Miss Amelyn provided herself with certain doles and gifts, which the American girl would have augmented with a five-pound note ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... century, when Roger de Walden, Bishop of London (1405-1406), built a chantry-chapel to the north-east of the choir, and inserted a new clerestory, in the then fashionable style, in place of the original. He also made a considerable alteration in the chancel by substituting a square east-end for the circular apse, part of which was taken down and used as building material for the innovation. But de Walden's work was cut short by his death, when he had scarcely held the See of London for two years, and was buried in his Chapel ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... groom into the chancel, and stands by his side till the bride appears, when he receives the groom's hat and gloves, and stands a little way behind him. When the clergyman bids the bride and groom join hands, he gives the ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green

... is somewhat more interesting than we expected to see; it is a Basque rather than a French church, has a very high chancel and altar and no transepts, and the altar is marked by a striking profusion of color and of gilding, which does not degenerate into the tawdry and which lights up vividly under the entering noon light. The chapels at the sides are similarly decorated. Dark oaken balconies, elaborately ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... journeying to The Hague and to Salisbury, and as preaching at the Savoy Chapel. It must have solaced his latter days to reflect that he had survived to welcome the Restoration. He died, from what is reasonably surmised to have been typhus fever, on the 16th of August, 1661, and lies buried in the chancel of the church to which he last ministered, at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... chancel-casement, and upon that grave of mine, In the early, early morning the summer sun'll shine, Before the red cock crows from the farm upon the hill, When you are warm-asleep, mother, and all ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... Lovel pointed in the direction of the sound,—toward the door of the chancel at the west end of the building, where a carved window let in a flood of moonlight upon ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... of voices among the people in the pews: they were in a sacred edifice without being exactly at church, and they might talk; now and then a muffled, nervous laugh escaped. A delicate scent of flowers from the masses in the chancel mixed with the light and the prevailing silence. There was a soft, continuous rustle of drapery as the ladies advanced up the thickly carpeted aisles on the arms of the young ushers and compressed themselves ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... ancient churches, not collegiate, a screen between the nave and chancel was so called, which had on the top of it a large projection, whereon were placed certain images, especially those which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various

... of the former; and as the buildings in this part of the village were few, the whole of the bridal train entered the tower, unobserved by the eyes of the curious. The clergyman was waiting in the chancel, and as each of the young men led the object of his choice immediately to the altar, the double ceremony began without delay. At this instant Mr. Aristabulus Dodge and Mrs. Abbot advanced from the rear of the gallery, and coolly took their seats in its front. ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... of St. Paul is large, with a nave and a south aisle, divided by early English piers and arches. A stone pulpit, ornamented with gilt tracery, on a blue ground, has been removed in favour of an oak one, with the chancel. The church of St. Peter has an old Norman door, a fine antique front, and some curious ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... chancel Space around the altar of a church for the clergy and sometimes the choir, often enclosed by a ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... They had further beautified the place with a huge board of the royal arms, and with Moses and Aaron in white cauliflower wigs presiding over the tables of the Commandments. Four long dark, timber pews and numerous benches, ruthlessly constructed out of old carvings, occupied the aisle, and the chancel was more than half filled with the lofty "closet" of the Great House family. Hither the Delavie family betook themselves, and on her way Betty was startled by the recognition, in the seat reserved for the servants, of a broad back and curled wig ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... or mint, is also Sansovino's, as are the fascinating little Loggetta beneath the campanile, together with much of its statuary, the giants at the head of Ricco's staircase opposite, and the chancel bronzes in S. Mark's, so that altogether this is peculiarly the place to inquire into what manner of man the Brunelleschi of Venice was. For Jacopo Sansovino stands to Venice much as that great architect to Florence. He found it lacking certain ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... Church, a cruciform structure from designs furnished by the late Prince Consort. Before a private Chapel was added at Osborne the Royal Family often attended. The aisles which contain seats for the Royal Household are divided from the Chancel by ornamented arcades. The north aisle is converted into a Mortuary Chapel in memory of Prince Henry of Battenberg. Mural tablets to Princess Alice, the Duke of Albany, and a medallion bust to the Prince Consort have been erected by Her late Majesty; also a medallion to Sir Henry ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various

... particular woman—that is, of course, supposing that any particular one would be so little particular as to be willing to marry me. How embarrassing it would be, now," he argued, "if, when you were turning away from the chancel after the ceremony, you should look at one of the bridesmaids and see the woman whom you really should have married! How distressing that would be! You couldn't very well stop and say: 'I am very sorry, my dear, but it seems I have made a mistake. That young woman on the right has a most interesting ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis

... was sickening, and I came near to flying before the close of the service. The others had the same sensations and temptations, and it is a wonder that Wilkins did not meet with some dreadful humiliation before he got the collection back into the chancel. It was a terrible strain on us, and his horrid unconsciousness that he was anything but perfect, and that the rest of us were anything more than so many paving stones to be walked on, was aggravating to a degree. Nothing unusual happened, however, and the service came to an ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... by an ingenious device, Barton preserved a splendid representation of the twelve apostles in a chancel window. He arrived just at the moment that a drunken glazier had convinced the mob that they were made saints by the Babylonish harlot, and that therefore their similitudes, as popish rags, ought to be destroyed. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... 53d year of his age, and was bury'd on the north side of the chancel, in the great church at Stratford, where a monument, as engrav'd in the plate, is plac'd in the wall. On his ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... the brilliant plumage of this bird who was at liberty. She crossed the courtyard, and, followed by Modeste, entered the chapel, where she sank upon her knees. The mystic half-light of the place, tinged purple by its passage through the stained windows, seemed to enlarge the little chancel, parted in two by a double grille, behind which the nuns could hear the service ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... tense little fingers in the darkness searching for his. Their hands were icy cold when the clasp came. Together they stood in a niche of the wall near the chancel rail. It was dark and a cold draft of air blew across their faces. He could not see, but there was proof enough that she had opened the secret panel in the wall, and that the damp, chill air came from the underground passage, which led to a point outside ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... wander away among the mysterious aisles; for there is nothing in this world so fascinating as a Gothic minster, which always invites you deeper and deeper into its heart both by vast revelations and shadowy concealments. Through the open-work screen that divides the nave from the chancel and choir, we could discern the gleam of a marvellous window, but were debarred from entrance into that more sacred precinct of the Abbey by the vergers. These vigilant officials (doing their duty all the more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... her voice distinctly audible in the chancel. Whether the Chaplain felt himself lauded for the manner in which he had read the prayer, or was quick to guess the cause of that unusual response, it is not necessary to decide. Certain, however, were two or three distinct snickers ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... horrible of me, but I just can't help it. I always misgauge. Last time it was the chancel of St. John's Cathedral. I nearly stampeded morning prayer—" He paused to catch his breath. "What an effort. The energy barrier, you know. Frightfully hard to make the jump." He broke off sharply, staring out the window. "Dear me! Are ...
— PRoblem • Alan Edward Nourse

... ii., pp. 375, 441.).—I have been able to get the following particulars respecting Steele's burial-place. Steele was buried in the chancel of St. Peter's church, Caermarthen. The entry stands thus in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various

... when he got to Lowick, and he went into the curate's pew before any one else arrived there. But he was still left alone in it when the congregation had assembled. The curate's pew was opposite the rector's at the entrance of the small chancel, and Will had time to fear that Dorothea might not come while he looked round at the group of rural faces which made the congregation from year to year within the white-washed walls and dark old pews, hardly with more change than we see ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... the golden gates, which, in Russian churches, close in the sanctuary or chancel, and are only entered by the clergy. He was thus out of reach of the cruel iron-tipped staff, which the Tzar could only strike furiously on the pavement, crying out, 'Rash monk, I have spared you too long. Henceforth I will be to you ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... decked as for no Christian festival this Sabbath morning. The garlands that twined about the old Norman columns, the clumps of primroses and violets that sprung at their feet, as at the roots of gigantic beeches, the branches of palm and black-thorn that transformed the chancel to a bower: probably for more than knew it, these symbols of the joy and beauty of earth had simpler, more instinctive, meanings than those of any arbitrary creed. For others in the church besides Narcissus, no ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard

... consists of a western tower, nave, north and south porches and transepts, and chancel. There are no aisles. As Prebendary of the Prebend of Leighton Ecclesia in Lincoln Cathedral, George Herbert was entitled to an estate in the parish, and it was no doubt a portion of the increase of this property that he devoted to the repairing and beautifying of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various

... into St. Paul's Cathedral and retired—their stock in trade was safe. But the flames closed round upon the Cathedral: they seized on Paternoster Row, so that the booksellers like the rest were fain to fly: and presently towering to the sky flamed up the lofty roof of nave and chancel and tower. Then with an awful crash the flaming timbers fell down into the church below. Even the Cathedral was burned with the rest, and ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... made sumptuous for the occasion. Its carved and painted roof was picked out anew. The space within the chancel was lined and hung with crimson velvet, the communion-table covered with ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... adjoined Prince Vladimir's summer palace, long since destroyed, and still preserves its gallery for women and servants, and a box for the ladies of the household. Everything about it is nine hundred years old, except the roof and the upper portion of the walls. The archaic frescoes of angels in the chancel, which date from the same period, and are the best in Kieff, were the only objects which the deacon could find to expound, to enhance the "tea-money" value of his services in putting on his best gown and unlocking the door, and he performed his duty meekly, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... the old oak pews next the chancel were curiously carved. One had a ladder and a hammer and nails on it. Another a number of round flat things, and when you counted them you found that there were thirty. Another had a curious thing—I could not tell what, ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... allowed themselves to be seduced into attending the obnoxious nuptials, and shedding the light of the family countenance upon the ill-doing pair. Very austere and forbidding they looked as they seated themselves, reprobatively, in a pew far removed from the chancel, and their light was no better than ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... people chosen into the lot of God, ye are priests and ministers of God, nay, ye are called the very Church of God, as though the laity were not to be called churchmen. Ye, being preferred to the laity, sing psalms and hymns in the chancel, and, serving the altar and living by the altar, make the true body of Christ, wherein God Himself has honoured you not only above the laity, but even a little higher than the angels. For to whom of His angels has He said at any time: ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury

... Aunt Candace when I wasn't in the choir. Bess Anderson was just finishing a voluntary as we two went up the aisle together. I hadn't thought of making a sensation, I thought only of Marjie. Passing around the end of the chancel rail I gently led her by the arm up the three steps to the choir place, and turning, faced all the town as I went to my seat beside my father. I was as happy as a lover can be; but I didn't know how much of all this ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... sure, right on the top step of the chancel—Emma's folks is 'piscopalians and she would have a church wedding, though HIS mother raised a terrible rumpus over it—well, there it set, right in front of where the minister stood that was going to marry 'em, a coffin covered with a black velvet pall with ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... church, and as they solemnly walked up the aisle a pale-faced young curate came out of the vestry and down to the bottom of the chancel. The beer had had a calming effect on their troubled minds, and both Harry and Sally began to think it rather a good joke. They smiled on each other, and at those parts of the service which they thought suggestive violently nudged one another in the ribs. When the ring ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham

... value. Most of those in the roof, it will be seen, were transverse to the axial line of the church; but there were others parallel to this line, one in particular running right along the soffit of the nave and chancel. There were also numerous small fissures in the dome, due to local structural causes and therefore of varying direction, and a large portion of the dome slipped westward, leaving open fissures of seven to eight inches in width. The mean direction of the wave-path, as deduced from nine sets of fissures, ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison

... different pipes. Thus the manual may be at any distance from the organ, and a number of organs may be worked upon the same manual. As many as five in a single cathedral are thus connected to a manual in the chancel. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... crows. The young poet's fancy was instinctively putting out feelers toward the storied lands of the Old World, and in his Hymn of the Moravian Nuns of Bethlehem he transformed the rude church of the Moravian sisters to a cathedral with "glimmering tapers," swinging censers, chancel, altar, cowls, and "dim mysterious aisle." After his visit to Europe Longfellow returned deeply imbued with the spirit of romance. It was his mission to refine our national taste by opening to American readers, in their own vernacular, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... when that need was past and o'er, Again the volume to restore. I buried him on St. Michael's night, When the bell toll'd one, and the moon was bright, And I dug his chamber among the dead, When the floor of the chancel was stained red, That his patron's cross might over him wave, And scare the fiends from the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... great liveliness and gusto a scene from a classical legend. Possibly, to Fra Angelico, who regarded painting only as a means of edification, its employment on such a subject may have seemed little less than sacrilege, not unlike the use of a chancel for the stabling of horses. Such views can scarcely be said to be extinct now, and this is the more remarkable as no one has the same feeling with regard to the other arts, such as sculpture or poetry. To a young man like Benozzo, and many others of his day, ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... was crowded in every corner. The older women—their heads covered with dark-coloured handkerchiefs, occupied the left side of the aisle, the men crowded in on the right and at the back under the organ loft. Round about the chancel rail and steps the bevy of girls in gayest Sunday dresses looked like a garden of giant animated flowers. When the sexton went the round with the collecting-bag tied to the end of a long pole, he had the greatest difficulty in making his way through the maze of ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... into two main portions—the body of the church and the chancel. This represents the whole Catholic Church, divided into those on earth and those who have passed into Paradise. The body of the church, representing those on earth, is divided again into two parts—the nave and transepts. And these have each their ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester

... accompanied by Joseph, who wore the garb of a mountaineer, with a hatchet in his hand. An officious little officer with a halberd opened the way through the crowd before these personages, and they came solemnly up the aisle towards the chancel, which had been arrayed to represent Bethlehem, the Madonna reciting, as she moved forward, a plaintive song about her homelessness. Joseph replied cheeringly, and led her under a roof of leaves in the sanctuary, formed ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various



Words linked to "Chancel" :   sanctuary, area, church, choir



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