The Crystal Cathedral

Rule of the clergy
• Early Middle Ages: religious communities
The history of the body of clergy attached to the cathedral church is obscure, and in each case local considerations affected its development, however the main features were more or less common to all.
Originally the bishop and cathedral clergy formed a kind of religious community, which, while not in the true sense a monastery, was nevertheless often called a monasterium, the word not having the restricted meaning which it afterwards acquired. In this lies the reason for the apparent anomaly that churches like York Minster and Lincoln Cathedral, which never had any monks attached to them, have inherited the name of minster or monastery. In these early communities the clergy often lived apart in their own dwellings, and were not infrequently married.