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 NEO-CAESAREA, SYNOD OF, a synod held shortly after that of Ancyra, probably about 314 or 315 (although Hefele inclines to put it somewhat later). Its principal work was the adoption of fifteen disciplinary canons, which were subsequently accepted as ecumenical by the Council of Chalcedon, 451, and of which the most important are the following: i. degrading priests who marry after ordination; vii. forbidding a priest to be present at the second marriage of any one; viii. refusing ordination to the husband of an adulteress; xi. fixing thirty years as the age below which one might not be ordained (because Christ began His public ministry at the age of thirty); xiii. according to city priests the precedence over country priests; xiv. permitting Chorepiscopi to celebrate the sacraments; xv. requiring that there be seven deacons in every city.

 NEOCOMIAN, in geology, the name given to the lowest stage of the Cretaceous system. It was introduced by J. Thurmann in 1835 on account of the development of these rocks at Neuchâtel (Neocomum), Switzerland. It has been employed in more than one sense. In the type area the rocks have been divided into two sub-stages, a lower, Valanginian (from Valengin, E. Desor, 1854) and an upper, Hauterivian (from Hauterive, E. Renevier, 1874); there is also another local sub-stage, the infra-Valanginian or Berriasian (from Berrias, H. Coquand, 1876). These three sub-stages constitute the Neocomian in its restricted sense. A. von Koenen and other German geologists extend the use of the term to include the whole of the Lower Cretaceous up to the top of the Gault or Albian. Renevier divided the Lower Cretaceous into the Neocomian division, embracing the three sub-stages mentioned above, and an Urgonian division, including the Barremian, Rhodanian and Aptian sub-stages. Sir A. Geikie (Text Book of Geology, 4th ed., 1903) regards “Neocomian” as synonymous with Lower Cretaceous, and he, like Renevier, closes this portion of the system at the top of the Lower Greensand (Aptian). Other British geologists (A. J. Jukes-Browne, &c.) restrict the Neocomian to the marine beds of Speeton and Tealby, and their estuarine equivalents, the Weald Clay and Hastings Sands (Wealden). Much confusion would be avoided by dropping the term Neocomian entirely and employing instead, for the type area, the sub-divisions given above. This becomes the more obvious when it is pointed out that the Berriasian type is limited to Dauphine; the Valanginian has not a much wider range; and the Hauterivian does not extend north of the Paris basin.

 NEOCORATE, a rank or dignity granted by the Senate under the Roman Empire to certain cities of Asia, which had built temples for the worship of the emperors or had established cults of members of the imperial family. The Greek word  meant literally a temple-sweeper (, temple,  , to sweep), and was thence used both of a temple attendant and of a priestly holder of high rank who was in charge of a temple.  NEOLITHIC, or (Gr. , new, and  , stone), a term employed first by Lord Avebury and since generally accepted, for the period of highly finished and polished stone implements, in contrast with the rude workmanship of those of the earlier Stone Age (Palaeolithic). Knowledge of Neolithic times is derived principally from four sources, Tumuli or ancient burial-mounds, the Lake-dwellings of Switzerland, the Kitchen-middens of Denmark and the Bone-Caves. No trace of metal

is found, except gold, which seems to have been sometimes used for ornaments. Agriculture, pottery, weaving, the domestication of animals, the burying of the dead in dolmens, and the rearing of megalithic monuments are the typical developments of man during this stage.

 NEOPHYTE (Gr. , from <span title=néos> , new, <span title=phytón> , a plant, “newly planted”), a word used in the Eleusinian and other mysteries to designate the newly initiated, and in the early church applied to newly baptized persons. These usually wore the white garments which they received at their admission to the church (see ) for eight days, from Easter eve till the Sunday after Easter (hence called Dominica in albis), but they were subject to strict supervision for some time longer and, on the authority of 1 Tim. iii. 6, were generally held ineligible for election as bishops, a rule to which, however, history shows some notable exceptions, as in the cases of St Ambrose at Milan in 374 and Synesius of Cyrene at Ptolemais in 409, who were chosen bishops before they were even baptized. By the council of Nicaea (325) this rule was extended to the priesthood. The ancient discipline is still maintained in the Roman Church, and applies to converts from Christian sects as well as to those from heathenism. The period, however, is determined by circumstances. The term “neophyte” is also sometimes applied in the Roman Church to newly ordained priests, and even—though rarely—to novices of a religious order. In a transferred sense the word is also given to one beginning to learn any new subject.

<section end="Neophyte" /> <section begin="Neoplatonism" />NEOPLATONISM, the name given specially to the last school of pagan philosophy, which grew up mainly among the Greeks of Alexandria from the 3rd century onwards. The term has also been applied to the Italian humanists of the Renaissance, and in modern times, somewhat vaguely, to thinkers who have based their speculations on the Platonic metaphysics or on Plotinus, and incorporated with it a tendency towards a mystical explanation of ultimate phenomena.

Historical Position and Significance.—The political history of the ancient world ends with the formation, under Diocletian and Constantine, of a universal state bearing the cast of Oriental as well as Graeco-Roman civilization. The history of ancient philosophy ends in like manner with a universal philosophy which assimilated elements of almost all the earlier systems, and worked up the results of Eastern and Western culture. Just as the Later Roman empire was at once the supreme effort of the old world and the outcome of its exhaustion, so Neoplatonism is in one aspect the consummation, in another the collapse, of ancient philosophy. Never before in Greek or in Roman speculation had the consciousness of man’s dignity and superiority to nature found such adequate expression; never before had real science and pure knowledge been so undervalued and despised by the leaders of culture as they were by the Neoplatonists. Judged from the standpoint of empirical science, philosophy passed its meridian in Plato and Aristotle, declined in the post-Aristotelian systems, and set in the darkness of Neoplatonism. But, from the religious and moral point of view, it must be admitted that the ethical “mood” which Neoplatonism endeavoured to create and maintain is the highest and purest ever reached by antiquity.

It is a proof of the strength of the moral instincts of mankind that the only phase of culture which we can survey in all its stages from beginning to end culminated not in materialism, but in the boldest idealism. This idealism, however, is also in its way a mark of intellectual bankruptcy. Contempt for reason and science leads in the end to barbarism—its necessary consequence being the rudest superstition. As a matter of fact, barbarism did break out after the flower had fallen from Neoplatonism. The philosophers themselves, no doubt, still lived<section end="Neoplatonism" />