Sistine Chapel Choir

As early as in the pontificate of Sylvester I (314–35), a regularly constituted company of singers, under the name of schola cantorum, lived together in a building devoted to their exclusive use.[where?] The word "schola" was in those days the legal designation of an association of equals in any calling or profession and did not primarily denote, as in our time, a school. It had more the nature of a guild, a characteristic which clung to the papal choir for many centuries. wikipedia