Talk:Chancel

About encyclopedic thinking

This has been hived off Apse without the addition of notable new text. Never a very good practice, if the Wikipedia reader is kept firmly in mind. Several juicy paragraphs of information on chancel, enough to have unbalanced the article Apse if they were still there, would show me to have judged wrongly. As this article expands, do please think to revise the brief version that continues to appear as a section at Apse. Dividing articles into the smallest possible alphabetizable "entries" (see this alphabetized index) clearly reveals "dictionary thinking". Let's keep articles encyclopedic!--Wetman 00:56, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I entirely agree in principle. However, a chancel is never part of an apse. Sometimes there is an apse at the east end of the chancel, but there are zillions of examples where there isn't. Chancel certainly needs an article to itself - look at all the pages that point to it. --GuillaumeTell 10:32, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Merge

Presbytery (architecture) is clearly the same topic as this page, and should be merged. -- 101.119.15.35 (talk) 03:11, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Support as the same topic, and the lack of content at Presbytery (architecture). Having a diagram might be good, however. StAnselm (talk) 02:50, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Since there are no objections, I'll just do it. -- 101.119.14.213 (talk) 02:52, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Actually they are not the same, and this was unfortunate. Johnbod (talk) 12:41, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

The difference betw chancel and choir

Is there any? In texts on architecture they seem to be interchangeable. If the terms have different meanings in lithurgy, the specific religious use by the clergy, the priest..., one might explain it along these lines, not as architecture. Leo translates chancel as 'Chor' in German. MenkinAlRire 21:26, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

I think the article is pretty clear on this, although it takes its time about it. The choir (if there is one) is a subdivision of the chancel. They are certainly not interchangeable terms. Johnbod (talk) 04:29, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

I admit my reaction was a bit hasty. I falsely saw 'choir' in other languages refer to both terms, chancel and choir (architecture). Most irritating is for me the first sentence and the chart that goes with both, where the chancel is defined as comprising the choir (and presbytery), while in German it is the other way around (I assume in other languages, too). In German there is the term 'Altarraum' ("altar space") that is the chancel, and again, it is thought as part of the choir not the other way around. The origin of chancel, cancelli, the boundery between altar space/choir and nave is also called 'Chorschranke' ("choir gate"), and similar terms in other languages; in the fr.wiki it says about chancel: "pour les périodes suivantes, elle est appelée « clôture de chœur »", while in Spanish the definition is restraint to the original balustrade itself and sees it primarily in the courtroom. It seems to me then more of an English peculiarity. MenkinAlRire 15:44, 29 May 2023 (UTC)