"Instead, chairs would be arranged around the perimeter of the space for the elderly and pregnant women, but everyone else was expected to stand."

We know from architecture that there were benches built into the walls of certain churches (which might be the origin of the expression "... the weakest go to the wall".

We know, from a sermon by Augustine, that at a certain moment he noticed an extremely tired lady and invited her to sit on his cathedra ...

There is also the curious parallel: at about the time of the invention of printing, with all the words in neat lines, the trend became to fill the churches with neat lines of seating ...