Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/476

 PRIESTHOOD

410

PRIESTHOOD

Ormuzd, Persian Mithra-worship held the field almost unopposed; and under the Roman Empire it exerted an irresistible influence on the West (see Mass).

C. — To turn to classical antiquity, Greece never possessed an exclusive priestly caste, although from the Dorian-Ionian period the public priesthood was regarded as the privilege of the nobility. In Homer the kings also offer sacrifices to the gods. Public worsliip was in general undertaken by the State, and the priests were state officials, assigned as a rule to the service of special temples. The importance of the priesthood grew with the extension of the mysteries, which were embodied especially in the Orphic and Eleusinian cults. Sacrifices were always accompanied with prayers, for which as the e.xpression of their re- ligious sentiments the Greeks showed a special pref- erence.

But among no people in the world were religion, sacrifice, and the priesthood to such an extent the busi- ness of the State as among the ancient Romans. At the da^^Ti of their history, their legendary kings (e. g. Numa) are themselves "the sacrificial priests. Under the Republic, the priestly office was open only to the patricians until the Lex Ogulina (about 300 B. c.) admitted also the plebeians. As the special object of Roman sacrifice was to avert misfortune and win the favour of the gods, chvination played in it from the earliesttimes an import ant role. Hence the importance of the various classes of priests, who interpreted the will of the gods from the flight of birds or the entrails of the beasts of sacrifice {augures, haruspices). There were many other categories: pontifices, flamiiies, feliales, hiperci etc. During imperial times the em- peror was the high-priest (pontifex maximiis).

D. — According to Tacitus, the religion of the ancient Germans was a simple worship of the gods, without images; their services took place, not in temples, but in sacred groves. The priests, if one may call them such, were highly respected, and possessed judicial powers, as the Old High German word for priest, ewarte. (guardians of justice), shows. But a far greater influence among the people was exercised by the Celtic priests or druids (Old Irish, drui, magician). Their real home was Ireland and Britain, whence they were transplanted to Gaul in the third century before Christ. Here they appear as a priestly caste, exempt from taxes and military service; they constitute with the nobility the ruling class, and by their activity as teachers, judges, and physicians become the represent- atives of a higher rehgious, moral, and intellectual culture. The druids taught the existence of Divine providence, the immortality of the soul, and trans- migration. They appear to have had images of the gods and to have offered human sacrifices — the latter l^ractice may have come down from a much earlier I)eriod. Their religious services were usually held on heights and in oak-groves. After the conquest of Gaul the druids declined in popular esteem.

E. — The oldest religion of the Chinese is Sinism, which may be characterized as "the most perfect, spiritualistic, and moral Monotheism known to an- tiquity outside of Judea" (Schanz). It possessed no distinct priesthood, the sacrifices (animals, fruits, and incense) being offered by state officials in the name of the ruler. In this respect no alteration was made by the reformer Confucius (sixth ccntuiy B. c), although he debased the concept of religion and made the al- most deified emperor "the Son of Heaven" and the organ of the cosmic intellect. In direct contrast to this pricstless system Laotse (b. fi04 B. c), the founder of Taoism (tno, reason), introduced both monasticism and a regular priesthood with a higli-priest at its head. From the first century before Christ, these two reli- gions found a strong rival in Buddhism, although Con- fucianism remains even to-day the official religion of China.

The original national religion of the Japanese was

Shintoism, a strange compound of nature-, ancestor-, and hero-worship. It is a refigion without dogmas, without a moral code, without sacred writings. The Mikado is a son of the Deity, and as such also high- priest; his palace is the temple — it was only in much later times that the Temple of Ise was built. About A. D. 280 Confucianism made its way into Japan from China, and tried to coalesce v^ith the kindred Shinto- ism. The greatest blow to Shintoism, however, was struck by Buddhism, which entered Japan in a. d. 552, and, by an extraordinary process of amalgamation, united with the old national religion to form a third. This fusion is known as Rio-bu-Shinto. In the Revo- lution of 1S68, this composite religion was set aside, and pure Shintoism declared the religion of the State. In 1877 the law establishing this situation was re- pealed, and in 1889 general religious freedom was granted. The various orders of rank among priests had been abolished in 1879.

F. — With the ancient religion of the Egj-ptians the idea of the priesthood was inseparabh' bound up for many thousand years. Though the ruler for the time being was nominally the only priest, there had de\-eloped even in the ancient kingdom (from about 3400 B. c.) a special priestly caste, which in the middle kingdom (from about 2000 B. c), and still more in the late kingdom (from about 1090 B. c), became the ruling class. The great attempt at reform by King Amenhotep IV (died 1374 B. c), who tried to banish all gods except the sun-god from the Egyptian reli- gion and to make sun-worship the religion of the State, was thwarted by the opposition of the priests. The whole twentj'-first dynasty was a family of priest- kings. Although IMoses, learned as he was in the wisdom of the Egyptians, may have been indebted to an Egj'ptian model for one or two external features in his organization of Divine worship, he was, thanks to the Divine inspiration, entirely original in the es- tablishment of the Jewish priesthood, which is based on the unique idea of Jahweh's covenant with the Chosen People (cf. "Realencvklopadie fiir protest. Theologie", XVI, Leipzig, 1905, 33). Still less warranted is the attempt of some writers on the comparative history of religions to trace the origin of the Catholic priesthood to the Egyptian priestly castes. For at the very time when this borrowing might have taken place, Egyptian idolatry had degen- erated into such loathsome animal-worship, that not only the Christians, but the pagans themselves turned aw.ay from it in disgust (cf. Aristides, "Apol.", xii; Clement of Alexandria, "Cohortatio", ii).

G. — In the religion of the Semites, we meet first the Babylonian-Assyrian priests, who, under the name "Chaldeans", practised the interpretation of dreams and the reading of the stars and conducted special schools for priests, besides performing their functions in connexion with the sacrifices. Hence their di^^sion into various classes: sacrificers {ni'sakkv), seers (bdrfl), exorcists (aiipu) etc. Glorious temples with idols of human and hybrid form arose in Assyria, and (apart from the obligatory cult of the stars) served for as- trological and astronomical purposes. Among the Syrians the cruel, voluptuous cult of Moloch and Astarte found its special home, Astarte especially (Babylonian, Ishtar) being known to the ancients simply as the "Syrian Goddess" {Dea Syria). Like- wise among the semitized Phccnicians, Amonites, and Philistines these ominous deities found special venera- tion. Howling and dancing priests sought to appease the bloodthirsty Moloch by sacrifices of children and self-mutilation, 'as the analogous Galli strove to pacify the Phrygian goddess Cybele. The notorious priests of Baal of the Chanaanites were for the Jews as strong an incentive to idolatry as the cult of Astarte was a temptation to immorality. The south-Semitic reli- gion of the ancient pagan Arabians was a plain re- ligion of the desert without a distinct priesthood;