Academic literature on the topic 'Priesthood lines'

The article examines the tradition of research on the topic of the priesthood in the legacy of St. Gregory the Theologian from the 19th century to 2020. The review includes general monographs on both the formation of the episcopate in Late Antiquity and specifically the legacy of Nazianzen, dissertations, publications in periodicals, dictionaries and encyclopedias on this topic, as well as on a wide range of related topics, key publications and translations of the Apology on his Flight — St. Gregory’s central text on the priesthood — in English, Russian, German, French and Italian. The following periodization of historiography is proposed: the early period (19th — middle of 20th centuries), theological studies of the Apology in the 50s–70s, studies and publications by J.Bernardi, the “new wave” of the 1990s and its development in the 21st century. In the last period, three main trends are identified: the Theologian’s texts on the priesthood are considered in the context of: the development of the image of a monk-bishop in Late Antiquity; platonic political philosophy; Gregory’s main theological concepts. The importance of research on other aspects of Gregory’s work is shown especially the categories θεωρία/πρᾶξις and his autobiographical texts. Two lines of further research are proposed as the most promising: intertextual analysis of the Apology and integral analysis of the entire legacy of St. Gregory through the prism of the priesthood theme.

Abstract Beyond its entertainment value, every piece of creative literature has something more to say which reading between the lines often has a way of revealing. This is true of the novel Purple Hibiscus by the award-winning Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. While his novel says something about the family, politics, post-colonial history and religious realities such as priesthood, mission, Mary, and the Eucharist, this paper looks at what it can tell us about liturgical inculturation and its implications for the Roman Catholic Church in Nigeria. It is hoped that the paper would help to continue, in the spirit of interdisciplinarity, the conversation on the nexus between Ecclesiology and Creative Literature.

“My men should use their swords and bucklers…but if John Stanshaw is in one alehouse then I will be in another.”To historians of medieval and Reformation England, these lines should not be all that surprising. Throughout the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the heyday of livery and maintenance, ritualized effrontery was in vogue among the affluent and they often employed large retinues of armed servants as signs of potency and prestige. However, it may surprise some to learn that the above statement was uttered by a priest, Geoffrey Elys, vicar of Thatcham (Berks.), around the beginning of the sixteenth century. Though the medieval Church tirelessly struggled to convince its flock of the wickedness of interpersonal aggression, its own servants were not immune to bouts of conflict and strife. As R. N. Swanson cautions in his study of parish priests, the clergy “can be considered as a group; but they were also individuals who created their own careers and had their own personal relations with their parishioners.” Indeed, the conduct of clerics in their parish communities, especially their violent conduct, can be quite baffling if one only evaluates it by the criteria of ecclesiastical proscription and fails to recognize that such proscription was just one thick strand of an intricate web of relations and expectations. In his examination of thirteenth-century parish priesthood, J. Goering has traced the transition of pastors from merely members of the village to semi-detached individuals who were compelled to abide by both village customs and the values of a more unified and doctrinally authoritative Church.

This is an investigation of an aspect of Virgil's Aeneid—ultimately, of the ways in which the poet guides his reader's response to Aeneas’ stay in Carthage—and, while it touches on Roman religious practice, clothing codes, late antique Virgilian commentary and Augustan ideology, it hinges on a single word in Aeneid Book 4 and its implications for Virgil's depiction of his hero in this book. That word is laena, and it features in one of the most celebrated scenes of the poem, when Mercury descends to earth to find Aeneas busily engaged in founding Carthage (Aen. 4.259–64):ut primum alatis tetigit magalia plantis,Aenean fundantem arces ac tecta nouantemconspicit. atque illi stellatus iaspide fuluaensis erat Tyrioque ardebat murice laenademissa ex umeris, diues quae munera Didofecerat, et tenui telas discreuerat auro.As soon as Mercury with winged feet touched the Carthaginian huts, he caught sight of Aeneas founding the citadel and raising new buildings: his sword was studded with stars of yellow jasper, and a laena, hanging from/let down from his shoulders, blazed with Tyrian purple, a gift that Dido with her wealth had made, interweaving in the web a subtle cross-thread of gold.Line 4.262 is the only place in the Aeneid where this word is used, and I shall be suggesting that laena represents an unusually evocative piece of clothing to put on Aeneas, even aside from the particular character, its decoration and origin, that Virgil attributes to the example Aeneas is wearing at lines 4.262–4. What I offer is a cumulative argument, as a whole (I believe) persuasive but also necessarily speculative given the limited state of our knowledge in various areas from religion to clothing. My essential claim is that Virgil is encouraging his reader at this point in the poem to associate Aeneas with, and judge his behaviour in comparison to, one of the most important members of the Roman priesthood.

In 1982, during archaeological excavations in the Danube Limes, a funerary stela was found in the locality of Glamija I (in the village of Rtkovo), inside the Roman fortress, dedicated to Jupiter Dolichenus and Dea Syria. The dedicant is the priest of the divine couple. The monument from Glamija I represents one of only a few monuments dedicated to Jupiter Dolichenus and Dea Syria, particularly since the dedication is made by the priest of the gods. This paper discusses the question and role of Syrian priesthood in the territory of the Danube Limes and the Central Balkan Roman provinces, in the context of the cults of Jupiter Dolichenus and Dea Syria, along with the hypotheses regarding the possible sanctuaries of the deities, their worshippers and the period when their cults existed in the aforementioned territories.

Customary land ownership, recording and registration are complex issues in the Solomon Islands. At present, 87% of the land is held under customary laws. Almost all (some 99%) of the land held under customary law is not surveyed, recorded or registered to the tribes. Customary land disputes have been inhibiting rural development initiatives, which is partly responsible for the ill-being of the people. The Family Tree Approach (FTA) is a process being used within the To'abaita region of the Malaita Province to help address problems in the dilemmas of land ownership, land disputes, land recording, land registration and rural development in land held under customary laws in To’abaita. The FTA is a blend of indigenous epistemology, modern practices and Christian principles. Indigenously, the tribes identify with their land by tracing their origins through genealogies, historical narrations, tribal epics and chants, shrines and properties. Rev. Michael Maelia’u, a Church Minister and a former Parliamentarian, promotes the FTA. The FTA has four pillars (principles) – recognition, reconciliation, recording and registration – which are covered within five sequential phases. For instance, recognition is done in phase one of the process, enabling all members of a tribe to recognize each other. Reconciliation is part of the process, promoting forgiveness and acceptance of tribal members. Recording is an important pillar of the FTA, as its role is to produce documents that will be accepted by the law. Research results show that land registration is also a pillar of the FTA; once customary land is registered to the tribes, land disputes will be resolved, thereby enabling sustainable rural development that improves the people’s well-being. The FTA, however, is currently not formally recognized in the country. It has been used by 12 of approximately 20 tribes within the To'abaita region. Some of the To'abaita tribes have not adopted the FTA for various reasons. The FTA has enabled the disintegrated generations to recognize or identify with one another. It enables public recognition of existing tribes, tribal genealogies, tribal tales, tribal epics, the tribal iii shrines, and the tribal land. Reconciliation has been carried out at both intertribal and intra-tribal levels. The FTA enables identification of people who are residing on land and utilizing resources they do not have a right to. It makes people aware of their roots or the land of their origin, which would then lead to reduced land disputes that constrained development initiatives and the well-being of the people. The results, however, indicated that the FTA has problems either in the approach itself or in its management. It is incapable of achieving its objectives (reducing land disputes, enable rural development, enable tribal land registration, and resettling land that was wrongly acquired). People have split perception of the FTA and the legislation; this therefore reduces potential motivation that is needed to advance the approach. Results of the research also indicated that no proper and serious documentation has been done, despite knowing that it is one of the pillars. In To'abaita, gender and culture are contributing issues, which cause difficulties to the FTA. Also, the FTA lacked financial support. Those that have experience with the FTA believe that the FTA objectives need to be made known to promote motivation to the illiterate people of To'abaita. Adequate communication of issues to improve the FTA is essential. Forming a committee that oversees the design and management of the FTA is necessary for its improvement, and adequate financial support will bring the FTA forward. Chief empowerment by the legislation is essential to enable the FTA to achieve its objectives in the future.

The Power of Godliness explores Mormon liturgical history to elucidate Mormon cosmology and lived religion. Mormons use rituals, patterns of worship, and conceptions of priesthood to order their lives and the universe. What Mormons have meant by “priesthood” has evolved over time and in relation to ecclesiology, authority, gender, and race. For much of the nineteenth century, Mormons conceptualized their family relationships formalized through sealing rituals over their temple altars, as a priesthood and materialized heaven. This heavenly structure was eternal, and consequently church leaders struggled to fairly manage its construction. Ultimately, church leaders changed their emphasis from a gender-inclusive priesthood of heaven to a priesthood on earth that is discursively male. Baby blessings demonstrate this shift: from serving as an important delimiter of communal salvation among Mormons in the faith’s earliest years, they grew into an annunciation of the heaven created in temples and then became an important public demonstration of a priestly fatherhood. Mormon authority is further explored in the analysis of female ritual healing and in association with the creation of formal “ordinances” of the church. Last, Christian folk practice that has often been denigrated as “magic,” such as the use of seer stones, among Mormons is contextualized as part of a transatlantic exchange of ideas and peoples. Mormons integrated folk practitioners who believed in an open heaven by channeling their impulses through the formal liturgy of the church and organizing them through the priesthood bureaucracy.

The early Israelite priesthood formed among priest-saint groups beyond the boundaries of chiefdoms. The traditions regarding Moses outshine those of virtually all other such venerated figures, arising from the dominance of his (ostensible) descendants, the Mushites, throughout major sanctuaries in the Canaanite highlands in the twelfth century BCE. It is around these priestly lineages that the Levite caste was built, derived from lay families devoted to the sanctuaries where priestly clans like the Mushites dominated. Yet by the mid-eleventh century, the Levites emerged as the preeminent priestly caste following the decline of a major Mushite line (the Elides) and sanctuary (Shiloh). By this time, Moses became a mythic patron of all Levites rather than functioning as a bloodline ancestor of one priestly line.

This volume expands on the long-standing debates about whether Christianity is a collaborator in, or a liberating force against the oppressive patriarchal culture for women in Asia through the accounts of the Anglican church in China. Women have played an important role in the history of Chinese Christianity, but their contributions have yet to receive due recognition, partly because of the complexities arising out of the historical tension between Western imperialism and Chinese patriarchy. Single women missionaries and missionary spouses in the nineteenth century set the early examples of what women could do to spread the Gospel. The education provided to Chinese women by missionaries, which was expected to turn them into good wives and mothers, empowered the students and allowed them to become full participants not only in the Church but also in the wider society. Together, the Western female missionaries and the Chinese women whom they trained explored their newfound freedom and tried out their roles with the help of each other. These developments culminated in the ordination of Florence Li Tim Oi to priesthood in 1944, a singular event that fundamentally changed the history of the Anglican Communion. At the heart of this collection lies the rich experience of those women in the Anglican church, both Chinese and Western, who devoted their lives to their evangelizing and civilizing mission across mainland China and Hong Kong. Contributors make the most of the sources to reconstruct their voices and present sympathetic accounts of these remarkable women’s achievements.

This book contains an analysis of the experience of married life by men and women in Christian medieval Europe c. 900–1300. The focus will be on the social and emotional life of the married couple rather than on the institutional history of marriage. The book consists of three parts: the first part (Getting Married) is devoted to the process of getting married and wedding celebrations, the second part (Married Life) discusses the married life of lay couples and clergy, their sexuality, and any remarriage, while the third part (Alternative Living) explores concubinage and polygyny as well as the single life in contrast to monogamous sexual unions. Four main themes are central to the book. First, the tension between patriarchal family strategies and the individual family member’s freedom of choice to marry and, if so, to what partner; second, the role played by the married priesthood in their quest to have individual agency and self-determination accepted in their own lives in the face of the growing imposition of clerical celibacy; third, the role played by women in helping society accept some degree of gender equality and self-determination to marry and in shaping the norms for married life incorporating these principles; fourth, the role played by emotion in the establishment of marriage and in married life at a time when sexual and spiritual love feature prominently in medieval literature.

Most accounts of Hinduism posit a radical difference between the aniconic fire sacrifice (yajña) and temple-based image worship (pūjā). The historical distinction between ancient Vedism and medieval Hinduism is often premised on this basic ritual opposition. Through an exacting study of ritual manuals, Rites of the God-King offers an alternative account of the formation of mainstream Hindu ritual through the history of śānti, or “appeasement,” a form of aspersion or bathing, developed in order to counteract inauspicious omens. This ritual, which originated at the nexus of the fourth and somewhat marginal Veda (Atharvaveda) and the emergent tradition of astronomy-astrology (Jyotiḥśāstra), would come to have far-reaching consequences on the ideal ritual life of the king in early medieval Brahmanical society—and on the ideal ritual life of images. The mantric substitutions involved in this history helped to produce a politicized ritual culture that could encompass both traditional Vedic and newer Hindu practices and performers. From astrological appeasement to gifting, coronation, and image worship, the author chronicles the multiple lives and afterlives of a single ritual mode, disclosing the always inventive work of priesthood to imagine and enrich royal power. Along the way, he reveals the surprising role of astrologers in Hindu history, elaborates concepts of sin and misfortune, and forges new connections between medieval texts and modern practice. Detailing forms of ritual that were dispersed widely across Asia, he concludes with a reflection on the nature of orthopraxy, ritual change, and the problem of presence in the Hindu tradition.

Along with his lifelong criticism against the priesthood, there is another goal that Hume keeps pursuing: to suppress dangerous political factions. To demonstrate the importance of this goal we must turn to one of Hume’s political writings that has been underestimated: the ‘Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth’. Many commentators still tend to consider this essay a mere satire on political reforms, and fail to ascertain the integral connections between it and his other political writings. This chapter analyses this essay through detailed examinations of his other works and his ‘economic’ essays of thePolitical Discourses. This essay should be considered a development of his earlier essay ‘That Politics may be reduced to a Science’ with the purpose of theorising the most stable and liberal constitution. Through careful comparisons with the similar proposals of Harrington, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, this chapter also makes it clear that his plan has much wider links, for example, with his views of elections, his interest in indirect democracy, and his criticism of utopianism.

Mike Allen’s Path to global dealmaker was a strange one. He graduated from Oblate College in San Antonio and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1964. As an oblate in the church, Allen committed his early adult years to the lives of migrant workers and others on the margins, and he considered himself a socialist. He lived in a grungy trailer near the impoverished members of his McAllen parish, where he was known as “Padre Mike.” Not unlike Ed Krueger, Allen worked with the United Farm Workers, taught his parishio­ners how to work the welfare system, and railed against the injustices of capitalism. He had a friendly relationship with Krueger during those years. When Krueger needed something mimeographed, for example, he would go to the office where Allen worked to use his machine. In 1974 Mike Allen left the priesthood and became that most diehard of capitalists: the convert. As he tells it, he evolved, realizing that handouts cannot offer the dignity of work. He took a job working with the Texas Office of Economic Opportunity, where he lobbied in D.C. to get money for Texas and handled economic development grants for Texas businesses. In the mid-1980s he started a company that sold corrugated cardboard to Mexico, invested in a shoe-making maquiladora, and did various consultancies. Then in 1987 Allen moved back to the Magic Valley to lead the McAllen Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) at Mayor Brand's invitation. He was the perfect choice; he felt as comfortable with a Mexican developer or impoverished colonia (neighborhood) dweller as he did with corporate executives or Austin politicos. He wasn’t only bilingual, he was bicultural—and persuasive to boot. In 1988, a year into his tenure at MEDC, Allen met with the mayor of Reynosa, Tamaulipas. A gritty border city of a few hundred thousand, Reynosa lagged behind Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and Matamoros, but had been relatively self-sufficient—supported for several decades by its petroleum and natural gas reserves.

Stanley Brandes is an American sociocultural anthropologist whose work spans both European and Latin American peasantries. In this article Brandes describes a kind of Catholicism characteristic of peasant villages of the Iberian peninsula: locally inflected by rites and practices particular to specific regions, and organizationally overlapping with kinship and territorial corporate groups. At the broadest level, the essay offers a set of reflections about processes of modernization and secularization, viewed through a classic set of anthropological oppositions: collective/individual, rural/urban, great/little. More specifically, however, it tells us something interesting about the impact of Vatican II reforms on the ground. Brandes argues that what might be read as “secularization” is, in the village of Becedas, a function of processes internal to religion itself. Today, in light of works such as Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, this line of argument has become quite familiar. Yet as Brandes’s ethnography suggests, ruminations around the polemic between belief and unbelief have not merely been the preserve of scholars and philosophers; they have inflected the lives of ordinary Catholic peasants as well. Through Brandes we see how Becedas villagers narrate, in their own idiom, the development of the idea of “the secular” as something that is contingent upon the history of Christianity in the West. By exploring the disjuncture between Catholic “great and little” traditions Brandes touches on one of the most interesting pressure points within the anthropology of Catholicism: the division of labor between the clergy and the lay. Such a division may map with varying intensities onto other distinctions, such as those between elite and folk, or educated and uneducated, and even onto distinctly differing ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. Whether or not clergy are perceived as “cultural outsiders” in the communities they serve, where a person stands within the institutional hierarchy matters. That is, Catholic subjectivities are incontrovertibly shaped by an individual’s relationship to or position in relation to the church. Belonging to the priesthood thus diminishes the possibilities for certain abstractions and sensorial trajectories, just as it makes others imminently actualizable. In the particular context being described here, the priest, Don Sixto, sees “folk Catholicism” a bit the way a radical Protestant sees Roman Catholicism: as a Christianity contaminated. His work is one of purification: separating true belief from “blind adherence to custom.” For parishioners, however, there is no a priori concept of a religion “contaminated.” There is only a corpus of devotions whose gradual elimination leaves a sense of spiritual vacuum. By foregrounding a “perspectival” approach split between the view of the priest, the people, and the anthropologist, Brandes allows us to grasp the structural tensions that propel different versions of what is correct and what is proper in Christian forms of practice. Brandes’s article might be read in some ways as a tentative exploration of the interesting and often fraught role Catholic priests perform in their day-to-day ministry as mediators between the center and the periphery, and old and new, in the great march of Christian modernity.