Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/439

 SYNAXIS

383

SYNCRETISM

EDEON, BvSayrtvov topToAoYioi* in SuAAoyos, XXIV (1895), !l-60. See also Menaion. ADRIAN FORTESCOE.

Synaxis (a-vm^is from <rvviya) means gathering, ^s(■ll\l)ly, ri'uiiion. It is exactly equivalent to the
 * itni collccta (from coUigcre), and corresponds to

.'iiagogue {(Tvyaywy-ri), the place of reunion. In hristian and liturgical use the Synaxis is the assem- ly for any religious function, either in the abstract
 * nse {nomen aclionis) or concretely for the people

5sembled (cf. German Sammlung and V ersammlung). he verb (nvdyco occurs frequently in the New estament, for gathering together a religious meet- ig (Acts, xi, 26; xiv, 27 etc.), as also for the Jewish ■rvices and councils (e. g. John, xi, 47). So also in le Apostolic Fathers (Didache, ix, 4; xiv, 1; I lem., xxxiv, 7; in general for the union of the church, turgical (eucharistic) from the aliturgical Synaxis, hich consisted only of prayers, readings, psalms, it of which our Divine Office evolved. Dionysius le Pseudo-Areopagite uses the word only for the icharistic service ("De eccles. hier.", iii, in P. G., .1), and Cardinal Bona thinks that so it maj' have
 * natius, "Magn.", x, 3). We must distinguish the

mystic meaning, as referring to our union with od or Conmiunion (Rerum hturg., I, iii, 3). But it xurs frequently for any religious as.sembly, and

this sense was adopted in the West by St. Benedict 'Regula Ben.", 17: "Vespertina Synaxis" — Ves- !rs) and by John Ca.ssian ("Collat.", IX, 34: "ad includendam synaxim"; ed. Hurter, Innsbruck, 1S7, p. 315) etc. In this signification the word is )w archaic in Greek and Latin. It is preserved, )wever, in the Byzantine Calendar as the title of rtain feasts on which the people assemble in some irticular church for the Holj' Liturgy, and therefore irresponds to the Roman slatio. Thus 4 January is e "Synaxis of the holy Seventy", that is the feast

the seventy disciples (Luke, x, 1, where the Vulgate is seventy-two, on which day the assembly was once ade in some church (at Constantinople?) dedicated them (Nilles, "Kalendarium manuale," I, 2nd ,, Innsbruck, 1S96, p. 52); 26 December is the synaxis of the Theotokos and of Joseph the spouse id guardian of the Virgin", a feast in memory of the ght into Egypt, on which again the station was at a ecial church (ibid., 366).

Adrian Fortescue.

Syncelli (<ri57A-eX\oi, from iriv, with, and KfKXtov, the nrcized form of the Latin cella, cell), a name which the early Church was given to those monks or cler- ! who lived in the same room with their bishops, and lose duty it was to be witnesses to the purity of their cs or to perform the daily spiritual exercises in eom- an with them. In the Eastern Church they soon came the councillors and confe.ssors of the patriarchs id bishops, and exerted a great influence over them, ley held the first place after their mxsters and had leat and vote in the councils of the Church. In the urse of time the patriarchs took two or more syn- lli, the most di.-ilinguishcd of whom was called pro- syncellus (TrpuToa-tr/KiWos). Since the tenth cen- ry their influence began to decrease, but in the Greek lurch they st ill exist. In the Latin Church they never came very influential, though popes and bishops d syncelli as witne.sses of (heir mode of life (Gregory e Great, "Epistolarum libri XIV", IV, ep. xliv). ley gradually developed into the consiliarii papales ephcopales (spiritual councillors).

Peluccia, Df rhrixl. ecd. pnlUia. I (Coloene. 1829), 61 sq.; SRIVTJS. Commpnt. de sarris erclf;H(i^ ordinationifm.^, II (Paris, W) : BiNTFRiM. Di> TorziiaHrhfiten DenkM^Tdi^knlcn der Christ' 'hnU^rhen Kirche (Mainz, 182.5-41), I; II, 61 an.

Michael Ott. Syncellus, George. See GEORcitrs Stncellus. Syncretism, from <rv7itp7)Tlfei^ (not from avyKipavvi- ')■ An explanation is given by Plutarch in a small

work on brotherly love ("Opera Moralia", ed. Reiske, VII, 910). He there tells how the Cretans were often engaged in quarrels among themselves, but became immediately reconciled when an external enemy ap- proached. "And that is their so-called Syncretism." In the sixteenth century the term became known through the ",\dagia" of Erasmus, and came into use to designate the coherence of dissenters in spite of their difference of opinions, especially with reference to theological divisions. Later, when the term came to be referred to auyKipawivai.^ it was inaccurately employed to designate the mixture of dissimilar or incompatible things or ideas. This inexact use con- tinues to some extent even to-day.

(1) Syncretism is sometimes used to designate the fusion of pagan religions. In the East the intermix- ture of the civilizations of different nation.s began at a very early period. When the East was hellenized un- der Alexander the Great and the Diadochi in the fourth century b. c, the Grecian and Oriental civili- zations were brought into contact, and a compromise to a large extent effected. The foreign deities were identified with the native (e. g. Serapis = Zeus, Dionysus) and a fusion of the cults succeeded. After the Romans had conquered the Greeks, the victors, as is known, succumbed to the culture of the vanquished, and the ancient Roman religion became completely hellenized. Later the Romans gradually received all the religions of the peoples whom they subdued, so that Rome became the "temple of the whole world". Syncretism reached its culmination in the third cen- tury a. d. under the emperors Caracalla, Heliogabalua, and Alexander Severus (21 1-35). The countless cults of (he Roman Empire were regarded as unessential forms of (he same (hing — a view which doubtless strengthened the tendency towards Monotheism. Heliogabalus even sought to combine Christianity and Judaism with his religion, the cult of the sun-god. Julia Mama;a, the mother of Alexander Severus, at- tended in Alexandria the lectures of Origen, and Alexander placed in his lararium the images of Abraham and Christ.

(2) A modern tendency in the history of religions sees in the Biblical revealed religion a product of syn- cretism, the fusion of various religious forms and views. As regards the Old Testament, the Chanaanite myth, the Egypt ian, Old Babylonian, and Persian religions are regarded as the sources of Israeliticrehgion, the latter itself having developed from Fetichism and Animism into Heno(heism and Monoiheism. It is sought to explain the origin of Christianity from the continua- tion and development of Jewish ideas and the influx of Brahmanistic, Buddhist, Graeco-Roman, and Egyptian religious notions, and from the Stoic and Philonic philosophy; it is held to have received its development and explanation especially from the neo-Platonic philosophy. That Judaism and Christi- anity agree with other religions in many of their ex- ternal forms and ideas, is true; many religious ideas are common to all mankind. The points of agree- ment between the Babylonian religions and the Jew- ish faith, whirh provoked a lively discu.ssion some years ago after the appearance of Friedrich Delitzsch'a "Babel und Bihol", may be explained in so far as they exist (e. g.) as due to an origin.al revelation, of which traces, albeit tainted with Polytheism, appear among the Babylonians. In many ca.ses the agreement can be .shown to be merely in form, not in eonfent; in others i( i.i^ doubtful which religion contained the orig- inal and which borrowed. As to the special doctrines of the Bible, search has been vainly made for sources from which they might have been derived. Catholic theology holds firmly to revelaticm and to the founda- tion (if Christianiiy by Je.sus of Naz.areth.

(3) The ."^yncretistic Strife is the name given to the theological quarrel provoked by (he efforts of Georg Calixt and his supporters to secure a basis on which