minster

In English usage a Minster is a grand type of church; the term may be extended to apply to a cathedral, such as York Minster and Southwell Minster. Lincoln Cathedral ^[1], and Ripon Cathedral ^[2], are also sometimes called by their earlier title of minster. However, when the term is used less vaguely, it is a collegiate church.

The word is Old English, mynster or monastery^[3], derived from Latin ministerium, the “office" or “service”, the canonical hours, which were sung at set hours in the minster. Thus minster originally applied to the church of a monastery or a chapter: it was an abbot who presided in the minster, rather than a bishop, as at a cathedral. Westminster Abbey is not the seat of the Bishop of London, whose seat is St Paul's Cathedral. But in pre-reformation Britain, many cathedrals were also monastic.

In England in addition to the above, bishops live in the cathedrals and the following are mainly fine churches, which may have been collegiate before the reformation but they are not the seat of a diocesan bishop: Beverley Minster, Wimborne Minster, Reading Minster, Doncaster Minster, Sunderland Minster, Iwerne Minster, Stow Minster, Dewsbury Minster, Berkeley Minster, Tewkesbury Minster, Howden Minster, St. Botolf's Minster (Iken, Suffolk), South Elmham Minster, Rotherham Minster, Preston Minster, Hemingbrough Minster, and Stonegrave Minster. The name Peterborough Minster is now applied to a district of Peterborough but not to Peterborough Cathedral.

The title of Stoke Minster was conferred on the parish church of St. Peter ad Vincula in Stoke-upon-Trent by The Rt Revd Jonathan Gledhill, Bishop of Lichfield, at a ceremony on May 17, 2005. [4]

In the case of the Ulm Münster in Germany, the term was used for a particularly prosperous parish church boasting a plethora of clergy.

In other places in Europe, “minster” has become simply a historical term for a particular church, e.g. the minsters of Strasbourg (France); Basel and Bern (Switzerland); Bonn Minster, Essen, Freiburg, Aachen, Hamelin, Doberan (all Germany).

See also

• Munster (disambiguation) for many related place names (includes Minster, Münster).

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