Section: 2C - Religious titles and positions.
Number of quotes: 379
1Clement, The First Epistle Of Clement To The Corinthians, ANF Vol. 1
Edited by: Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 687 Page: 16
Section: 2A2,2C
1Clem 40:5For unto the high priest his proper services have been assigned, and to the priests their proper office is appointed, and upon the levites their proper ministrations are laid. The layman is bound by the layman’s ordinances.
Quote ID: 9780
Time Periods: 2
2000 Years of Charismatic Christianity
Eddie L. Hyatt
Book ID: 3 Page: 24/26
Section: 2C
The move toward institutionalism in the early church arose as a means of defense against persecution from the state and imposition of error from heretical sects such as Gnosticism and Marcionism. Reacting to these threats, the church formalized worship and centralized power in the bishop. Unfortunately, this move toward organizational structure brought about a change in the very meaning of the word bishop.The word bishop is derived from the Geek word episcopas, which in its verb form means, “to watch over” and, therefore, “to superintend or to oversee.” Not unique to the New Testament, it was used in the larger Greco-Roman world of the first century in reference to individuals who functioned as tutors, inspectors, scouts, watchmen and superintendents. {2} In the apostolic church, the word was used to describe the function of oversight given to certain individuals in matters related to the churches. Acts 20:17, 28 and Titus 1:5-7 show that the same individuals who are known as episcopas are also referred to as elders who are expected to shepherd of pastor the flock.
With the growing emphasis on organizational structure, episcopas evolved into a separate and distinct office with increasing prestige and power.
. . . .
History demonstrates that the institutional trend advocated by Ignatius continued, culminating in the ecclesiasticism of the medieval Roman Catholic Church and in its monarchical bishop. This meant that outward ecclesiastical forms of both office and ritual came to be valued over personal, spiritual experiences. It also meant that spontaneous manifestations of the Holy Spirit became less and less desirable, especially by those in authority. It is for this reason that Ash, in answer to the popular notion that the charismatic gifts were replaced by the New Testament Canon, declares, “The bishops, not the Canon , expelled prophecy.”{7}
Quote ID: 15
Time Periods: 127
A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Book ID: 4 Page: 7
Section: 2C
As it turns out, the best documented meaning of paganus seems to be “peasant.”
Quote ID: 23
Time Periods: 4
A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Book ID: 4 Page: 8
Section: 2C
A paganus is the inhabitant of a pagus, a country district, a man whose roots, unlike a soldier’s, are where he lives. A peasant is thus the paganus par excellence, although the term, from Cicero on, could denote townspeople (Pro Domo, 74).
Quote ID: 24
Time Periods: 34
A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Book ID: 4 Page: 9
Section: 2C
Pagani or pagans are quite simply “people of the place,” town or country, who preserved their local customs, whereas the alieni, the “people from elsewhere,” were increasingly Christian.
Quote ID: 25
Time Periods: 4
A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Book ID: 4 Page: 9/10
Section: 2C
Throughout Antiquity “paganism” was a mosaic of established religions linked to the political order. To be pious was “to believe in the gods of the city-state” - the duty Socrates was accused of failing to observe - and, even more than believing in them, respecting them. Ritual was thus more important than faith. Nonconformism and irreligiosity went together.
Quote ID: 26
Time Periods: 34
A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Book ID: 4 Page: 129
Section: 2C,4B
In the West, a century after the definitive interdict decreed by Theodosius I and nearly a generation after the collapse of imperial power in that half of his domain, paganism, finally deserving the explanation often given today for its name, was of concern only to peasants.
Quote ID: 63
Time Periods: 5
A History Of The Inquisition Of The Middle Ages Vol. I
Henry Charles Lea, LL.D.
Book ID: 9 Page: 4
Section: 2C,3H
The Church Militant was thus an army encamped on the soil of Christendom, with its outpost everywhere, subject to the most efficient discipline, animated with a common purpose, every soldier panoplied with inviolability and armed with the tremendous weapons which slew the soul. There was little that could not be dared or done by the commander of such a force, whose orders were listened to as oracles of God, from Portugal to Palestine and from Sicily to Iceland. “Princes,” says John of Salisbury, “derive their power from the Church, and are servants of the priesthood.” “The least of the priestly order is worthier than any king,” exclaims Honorius of Autun; “prince and people are subject to the clergy, which shines superior as the sun to the moon.” Innocent III. used a more spiritual metaphor when he declared that the priestly power was as superior to the secular as the soul of man was to his body; and he summed up his estimate of his own position by pronouncing himself to be the Vicar of Christ.
Quote ID: 119
Time Periods: 7
A History Of The Inquisition Of The Middle Ages Vol. I
Henry Charles Lea, LL.D.
Book ID: 9 Page: 34
Section: 2C,3H
The similar immunity attaching to ecclesiastical property gave rise to abuses equally flagrant. The cleric, whether plaintiff or defendant, was entitled in civil cases to be heard before the spiritual courts, which were naturally partial in his favor, even when not venal, so that justice was scarce to be obtained by the laity.
Quote ID: 120
Time Periods: 7
A Short History of the Catholic Church
Jose Orlandis
Book ID: 323 Page: 9
Section: 2C
By Christianity we mean the religion founded by Jesus Christ….
Quote ID: 7760
Time Periods: 14
A Short History of the Catholic Church
Jose Orlandis
Book ID: 323 Page: 30
Section: 2C
Gratian, shortly after he became emperor in 375, rejected the official title of pontifex maximus which his Christian predecessors had consented to retain.
Quote ID: 7761
Time Periods: 4
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Book ID: 16 Page: 28
Section: 2C
The word pontiff comes from the Latin pons, a bridge. The college of pontiffs, presided over by the pontifex maximus, the chief bridgebuilder, preserved the sacred books, superintended all public religious ceremonies, and drew up the calendar of festivities.
Quote ID: 260
Time Periods: 04
Ancient Rome: In The Light Of Recent Discoveries (1888)
Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani
Book ID: 18 Page: 141
Section: 2A3,2C
The highest distinction conferred upon the Vestals was the right of interment within the walls of the city.
Quote ID: 353
Time Periods: 01234
Ante-Pacem Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine
Graydon F. Snyder
Book ID: 25 Page: 216
Section: 2C
Since there is no mention of ecclesiastical offices in other third-century inscriptions and essentially no mention of them in third-century letters, one must ask why it occurs with these bishops of Rome. It seems more than coincidental that the bishops connected with the Crypt of the Popes are primarily those who held office during the era of Hippolytus and suffered his scorn.
Quote ID: 461
Time Periods: 34
Ante-Pacem Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine
Graydon F. Snyder
Book ID: 25 Page: 217
Section: 2C
We know that the struggle between church and cemetery, bishop and martyr, became an intense issue in the fourth century. In fact, the key moment for the formation of orthodoxy as we know it was the narrow victory of Damasus, the church candidate, over his cemetery opponent, Ursinus. It was Damasus who extolled the popes and “made” of them martyrs. That shift was caused by Hippolytus, who favored the kind of rigidity that led to martyrdom, vis-`-vis Callistus, who apparently favored accommodation. The Crypt of the Popes marks the effort of the accommodating party to move into martyr territory. It would not be the last time that ecclesiastical leaders were elevated to sainthood within the growing Christian cult of the dead. {i}
Quote ID: 462
Time Periods: 4
Ante-Pacem Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine
Graydon F. Snyder
Book ID: 25 Page: 233
Section: 2C
In contrast with some third-century literature (Acts of Paul), a religious order of virgins does not occur in our pre-Constantinian archaeological data.
Quote ID: 466
Time Periods: 3
Ante-Pacem Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine
Graydon F. Snyder
Book ID: 25 Page: 267
Section: 2C
Of the thousands of papyri discovered in Egypt, many are Christian. The same problem of identification exists here, however, as it did in Rome: When and how did Christians begin to indicate they were Christian?
Quote ID: 470
Time Periods: 23
Ante-Pacem Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine
Graydon F. Snyder
Book ID: 25 Page: 284/285
Section: 2C
CC. LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION TO MAXIMUSThird Century
. . . .
Translation: Greetings in the Lord
beloved brother
…Maximos
….I salute you.
Our brother
Diphilos coming
to you, receive
in peace, through whom you
and those with you,
I and those with me
salute.
For your health
I pray,
beloved
brother in the Lord.
This is our only letter from one congregation to another, that is, from an official of one faith community to an official of another on behalf of a person moving from one to the other.
Quote ID: 472
Time Periods: 3
Ante-Pacem Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine
Graydon F. Snyder
Book ID: 25 Page: 288
Section: 2C
B. RECORD OF INVESTIGATION259-260; Oxyrhynchus
A letter sent from the Saite nome from an Aurelius Herme to Aelius Gordi[anus] asking that an investigation of χριστιανοί be conducted. This would appear to be the earliest extant document requiring such an action.
Quote ID: 473
Time Periods: 23
Ante-Pacem Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine
Graydon F. Snyder
Book ID: 25 Page: 275,277
Section: 2C
(Translation)some of you take ..
with you to Maximos the papa and ….
. . . .
Little can be done with the title “papa.” It only indicates that the term “pope” could be used for a bishop other than the bishop of Rome. It fits well, of course, with the early understanding of the faith community as a family—brothers and sisters led by a father or mother.
Quote ID: 471
Time Periods: 123
Apostolic Tradition Of St. Hippolytus of Rome, The
Edited by Gregory Dix and Henry Chadwick
Book ID: 274 Page: 2
Section: 2C,3A1
I.ii.1 Let the bishop be ordained being in all things without fault chosen by all the people.
Quote ID: 6915
Time Periods: 2
Apostolic Tradition Of St. Hippolytus of Rome, The
Edited by Gregory Dix and Henry Chadwick
Book ID: 274 Page: 3
Section: 2C
I.ii.2. And when he has been proposed and, found acceptable to all, the people shall assemble on the Lord’s day together with the presbytery and such bishops as may attend.Consecration
3. With the agreement of all let the bishops lay hands on him and the presbytery stand by in silence.
4. And all shall keep silence praying in their heart for the descent of the Spirit.
5. After this, one of the bishops present at the request of all, laying his hand on him who is ordained bishop, shall pray thus, saying:
Quote ID: 6916
Time Periods: 2
Apostolic Tradition Of St. Hippolytus of Rome, The
Edited by Gregory Dix and Henry Chadwick
Book ID: 274 Page: 6
Section: 2C
I.iv.1. And when he has been made bishop let every one offer him the kiss of peace saluting him, for he has been made worthy.
Quote ID: 6918
Time Periods: 2
Apostolic Tradition Of St. Hippolytus of Rome, The
Edited by Gregory Dix and Henry Chadwick
Book ID: 274 Page: 13
Section: 2C
Of PresbytersOfficiants
I.viii.1. And when a presbyter is ordained the bishop shall lay his hand upon his head, the presbyters also touching him. And he shall pray over him according to the aforementioned form which we gave before over the bishop, praying and saying:
Quote ID: 6921
Time Periods: 2
Apostolic Tradition Of St. Hippolytus of Rome, The
Edited by Gregory Dix and Henry Chadwick
Book ID: 274 Page: 15
Section: 2C
Of DeaconsOrdination
I.ix.1. And a deacon when he is appointed shall be chosen according to what has been said before, the bishop [alone] laying hands on him [in the same manner]. Nevertheless we order that the bishop alone shall lay on hands at the ordaining of a deacon for this reason:
Functions
ix.2. That he is not ordained for a priesthood, but for the service of the bishop that he may do [only] the things commanded by him.
ix.3. For he is not [appointed to be] the fellow-counsellor of the [whole] clergy but to take charge
Quote ID: 6922
Time Periods: 23
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 221
Section: 2C,3B
Augustus in B.C. 18 ordered them to be re-copied and edited, and the authorised edition was then deposited in his new temple of Apollo on the Palatine, and continued to be consulted till late in the third century.. . . .
As one of the quindecemviris, Augustus had charge of these books, but he formally took the official headship of Roman religion by becoming Pontifex Maximus.
Quote ID: 566
Time Periods: 01
Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 82
Section: 2C
In spite of the changed situation, Pliny still doubted that he had followed exactly the correct procedure, and he wrote to the emperor for guidelines. (1) What was to be investigated and punished? The name “Christian” or the crimes associated with the name? If the latter, Pliny’s investigation itself strongly suggested that there were no crimes. (2) To what extent should the investigation be carried out? Pliny himself was in doubt as to whether or not he should have accepted an anonymous accusation. (3) What penalty was to be inflicted? Should there be allowances for age and physical condition? (4) Could the charge of being a Christian be dismissed upon proof supplied by public recantation? Pliny himself strongly favored this course because of the return to religion was already under way.
Quote ID: 598
Time Periods: 1
Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 146
Section: 2C
The author of the Didache stands, however, at a turning point in the church organization. He instructs his congregations to appoint bishops (episkopoi) and deacons (diakonoi) worthy of the Lord. Such men perform the task of the prophets and teachers. “Do not hold them in contempt, for they are honorable men among you, along with the prophets and teachers” (15, 1-2). The situation is one of transition. On the one hand, the prophets and teachers have been, or are to be, supplanted by bishops and deacons; on the other, the older ministries are not at once to disappear.
Quote ID: 633
Time Periods: 2
Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 147
Section: 2C
Here the situation is more carefully defined than in the Didache. The strong practical bent of Roman Christianity is coming to the fore. The underlying situation at Rome, as ideally at Corinth, is one in which presbyters govern the church (54,2), though only one of them, presumably, exercises the office of administration and offers the “gifts” characteristic of it.{19}[Footnote 19] I Clem. 44, I. 4.
Quote ID: 634
Time Periods: 34
Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 149
Section: 2C
Ignatius refers to his own prophetic utterances as coming from God or the Spirit.Thus for Ignatius, as contrasted with the Didache, there is no question of despising the bishops and deacons; they have taken over all the functions which prophets and teachers previously held.
. . . the monarchical episcopate would eventually triumph and come to be universally accepted.
Quote ID: 635
Time Periods: 2
Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 176
Section: 2C
By writing to the bishops, the emperor implicitly acknowledged their legal status as officers of Christian communities.{28}[Footnote 28] Eusebius, H. E. 7, 13; compare the earlier letter from the legate of Arabia to Demetrius of Alexandria (p. 204).
Quote ID: 645
Time Periods: 34
Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 226
Section: 2C,3B
The provinces were too large for efficient control, and as Lactantius says, the emperor “chopped them into slices”{31} At the same time the provinces were combined in larger groupings known as “dioceses,” each under the control of a deputy of the praetorian prefects. This deputy was called a vicarius, a title which like “diocese” later occurs among Christians.{32}[Footnore 31]De mort. Persec. 7, 4.
[Footnote 32] On vicarius cf. W. Ensslin in RE XXII 2418 and VIII A 2023-44.
Quote ID: 651
Time Periods: 234
Basilica
R.A. Scotti
Book ID: 39 Page: 82
Section: 2C
The Apostolic Chamber was the finance department of the Curia. A classical Roman term referring to the Senate, the Curia of the early 1500s was small and informal—much different than it is today.
Quote ID: 836
Time Periods: 7
Basilica
R.A. Scotti
Book ID: 39 Page: 144
Section: 2C
He squandered fortunes with benevolence and emptied the Vatican treasury in two years. When the coffers were bare, he came up with ever more creative and corrosive ways to pay for his largesse. Leo sold more cardinal’s hats. He also increased the number of venal offices by almost one thousand, bringing some six hundred thousand additional ducats to his treasury and prompting one critic to complain, “Everything is for sale—temples, priests, altars…prayers, heaven and God”.When Leo had exhausted the wealth of the Church, he hawked indulgences like tickets to paradise.
Quote ID: 841
Time Periods: 7
Birth of Europe, The
Jacques Le Goff
Book ID: 199 Page: 11
Section: 2C
The attitude of warriors and peasants alike toward soft town-dwellers was one of hostility tinged with an element of envy. Those town-dwellers, for their part, meanwhile despised the uncouth peasants, the more so because Christianization had begun in the towns, and the countryside remained pagan for considerably longer. “Pagan” and “peasant” are both terms derived from the Latin paganus.
Quote ID: 4490
Time Periods: 45
Birth of Europe, The
Jacques Le Goff
Book ID: 199 Page: 22
Section: 2C
But it was Christianization that, above all, brought uniformity to the West in the Early Middle Ages. In the first place, this whole area was governed by bishops whose power was increasing, in particular in the administration of towns. From the seventh century on, a higher ranking group emerged among the bishops: these figures were called archbishops.
Quote ID: 4493
Time Periods: 7
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 307
Section: 2C,4A
[RE: Seneca] His pessimism, his condemnation of the immorality of his time, his counsel to return anger with kindness ,{54} and his preoccupation with death{55} made Tertullian call him “ours,”{56} and led Augustine to exclaim, “What more could a Christian say than this pagan has said?”{57} He was not a Christian; but at least he asked for an end to slaughter and lechery, called men to a simple and decent life, and reduced the distinctions between freeman, freedman, and slave to “mere titles born of ambition or of wrong.”{58}
Quote ID: 903
Time Periods: 12
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 641
Section: 2C,3B
He and his colleagues redivided the Empire into ninety-six provinces grouped into seventy-two dioceses and four prefectures, and appointed civil and military rulers for each division.
Quote ID: 921
Time Periods: 3
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 33
Section: 2C
The word “pagan” was unknown in these times. It can only be used in a negative sense, indication what a man does not believe rather than what he does (p. 53).
Quote ID: 968
Time Periods: 234
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 166
Section: 2C,3B
[USED this part] “The cardinal and most permanent achievement of Diocletian was his complete reorganization of the administration of the Empire – so cardinal and so permanent that to this day the Christian Church uses the very terms which Diocletian devised for his new structure.” examples: the provinces were grouped into twelve dioceses over each which set a vicar.
Quote ID: 1029
Time Periods: 34
Catechism Of The Catholic Church
Pope John Paul II
Book ID: 48 Page: 32
Section: 2C
85 “The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living, teaching office of the Church alone.
Quote ID: 1095
Time Periods: 7
Catechism Of The Catholic Church
Pope John Paul II
Book ID: 48 Page: 33
Section: 2C
92 “The whole body of the faithful . . .cannot err in matters of belief.
Quote ID: 1096
Time Periods: 7
Catechism Of The Catholic Church
Pope John Paul II
Book ID: 48 Page: 54/55
Section: 2C
180 “Believing” is a human act, conscious and free, corresponding to the dignity of the human person.181 “Believing” is an ecclesial act. The Church’s faith precedes, engenders, supports, and nourishes our faith. The Church is the mother of all believers. “No one can have God as Father who does not have the Church as Mother” (St. Cyprian, De unit. 6: PL 4, 519).
Quote ID: 1097
Time Periods: 37
Catechism Of The Catholic Church
Pope John Paul II
Book ID: 48 Page: 199
Section: 2C
The proper name of the Holy Spirit691 “Holy Spirit” is the proper name of the one whom we adore and glorify with the Father and the Son. The Church has received this name from the Lord and professes it in the Baptism of her new children.[16]
Quote ID: 1103
Time Periods: 37
Cathars: Perfect Heresy, The
Stephen O’Shea
Book ID: 261 Page: 11
Section: 2C
Even a cursory description of the Cathar faith gives an idea of how seditious the heresy was. If its tenets were true, the sacraments of the Church necessarily became null and void, for the very good reason that the Church itself was a hoax.
Quote ID: 6537
Time Periods: 7
Cathars: Perfect Heresy, The
Stephen O’Shea
Book ID: 261 Page: 272
Section: 2C
A Perfect is so called not because he or she is flawless; rather, one so labeled is a hereticus perfectus or heretica perfecta - “a completed heretic,” in the sense of one who has passed from the stage of sympathizer to the rank of the ordained. I have elected to capitalize the term so it will not be confused with the ordinary sense of “perfect”.
Quote ID: 6627
Time Periods: 7
Cathars: Perfect Heresy, The
Stephen O’Shea
Book ID: 261 Page: 277
Section: 2C,3A1
the pontiff’s superiority over all the crowned heads of Christendom: The chutzpah of Gregory VII can still take one’s breath away. In a volume of his correspondence, historians found a list that contains the following statements: “The pope can be judged by no one; the Roman church has never erred and never will err till the end of time; the Roman church was founded by Christ alone; the pope alone can depose and restore bishops; he alone can make new laws, set up new bishoprics, and divide old ones; he alone can translate bishops; he alone can call general councils and authorize canon law; he alone can revise his own judgments; he alone can use the imperial insignia; he can depose emperors; he can absolve subjects from their allegiance; all princes should kiss his feet” (source: R. W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, p. 102).
Quote ID: 6631
Time Periods: 7
Celtic Sacred Landscapes
Nigel Pennick
Book ID: 51 Page: 165
Section: 2C
Here, the Christian tradition did not extirpate the earlier Pagan vision, but continued and developed it.It is sometimes assumed that everything altered radically when the Christian religion was introduced, but this was not the case. Many of the founding saints of Celtic Christianity were of upper-class birth, just the sort of people who, in earlier generations, would have become druids or temple-priests. It was natural that the leaders of the new religion should have the same career path as their Pagan predecessors.
2C
Quote ID: 1150
Time Periods: 6
Christian Inscriptions
H.P.V. Nunn
Book ID: 299 Page: 25
Section: 2C
It is the earliest inscription to a Christian Bishop which can be certainly dated.Pastor John’s note: c 170
Quote ID: 7528
Time Periods: 2
Christian Priesthood Examined
Richard Hanson
Book ID: 55 Page: 9
Section: 2C
This concept of ministry, which I shall call “official ministry” is usually applied to full-time permanent ministers, but it can also be applied to part-time ministers and even to those who occupy a ministry for a defined period and then leave it. The essential point about this type of ministry is that it consists of an office to be filled, to which officials can succeed; also that it is either permanent or for a determined time, not occasional or ad hoc. This definition of ministry applies to almost all forms of ministry filled by Christian ministers today, whether they are popes or archbishops or bishops or priests or deacons or pastors or just ministers, whether they claim apostolic succession or scriptural authority or not, whether they are paid or unpaid, established or free, male or female, whether they wear clerical collars or do not whether they call themselves Catholic or Reformed, apostolic or evangelical.It must first be understood that in the earliest age of the church no such ministry as this existed, and therefore that no such ministry, in any of its forms, can justly claim that it was instituted by Christ or his apostles, nor that it has any particular right to call itself exclusively scriptural.
Quote ID: 1232
Time Periods: 234567
Christian Priesthood Examined
Richard Hanson
Book ID: 55 Page: 10
Section: 2C
In one sense, the church sprang out of the resurrection of Jesus, and it is this aspect of the church which Paul emphasizes most strongly. He is not interested in the church as an institution founded by Christ in the days of his flesh, but only in the church as those who live in the Spirit and belong to the body of the risen Christ.
Quote ID: 1233
Time Periods: 1
Christian Priesthood Examined
Richard Hanson
Book ID: 55 Page: 16
Section: 2C
It is important to realize that the ministry envisaged in the three passages examined above is one entirely of function, not of office or ordination. Nobody could ordain anyone to have faith, and if the churches today could ordain people to give liberally or to utter wisdom there would be far more ordinations than there are. It is even incongruous to imagine anyone being ordained as a prophet. Prophets are known by their capacity to utter prophetic sayings, as speakers with tongues and interpreters of tongues are known by their functions, and healers by their capacity to heal.
Quote ID: 1234
Time Periods: 17
Christian Priesthood Examined
Richard Hanson
Book ID: 55 Page: 20
Section: 2C
The communities of the early church apparently came to their decisions by a unanimous vote which was neither achieved by head-counting in the modern democratic manner, nor was forced by coercion, physical or psychological.. . .
Authority in the primitive church, then, did not reside in official ministers but in the church as a whole, all of whose members felt themselves under the authority of Christ. The apostle of the church, as both the spiritual father (1 Cor. 4:14,15) and mother (Gal. 4:19) of his converts, can guide them, exhort them, attempt to persuade or shame them into a course of action; he can rebuke them as well as praise them. But he allows that authority to reside in the church as a whole.
Quote ID: 1235
Time Periods: 12
Christian Priesthood Examined
Richard Hanson
Book ID: 55 Page: 35
Section: 2C
No Christian priesthood is to be found in the New Testament. There is in fact no solid evidence that anyone thinks of Christian ministers as priests until about the year 200.
Quote ID: 1237
Time Periods: 3
Christian Priesthood Examined
Richard Hanson
Book ID: 55 Page: 67
Section: 2C
The reader must be reminded that the origins of episcopacy were not in any sense specifically sacerdotal. It is not true to say that epescopacy, of the kind in which the bishop is distinguished from the presbyter and the ranks above him, can only be found emerging in the 2nd century and was only accepted universally in the second half of it.
Quote ID: 1239
Time Periods: 2
Christian Priesthood Examined
Richard Hanson
Book ID: 55 Page: 93
Section: 2C
The church developed the official ministry because it needed the official ministry. In the history of a great many institutions and religions, the first fine careless rapture is succeeded by a period of sober consolidation. The primitive church could not have continued indefinitely in its state of primordial charismatic bliss. Institutions and organisms grow and develop, and have to face the onset of time. The church was compelled to undergo what Charles Williams called “the reconciliation with time”. The world was not, after all, going to come to an end almost immediately. The second coming of Christ never materialized. Pressures and problems both outside the church and within it made it essential for the church to develop a permanent ministry, and if permanent then official and if official then ordained.
Quote ID: 1240
Time Periods: 234
Christian Priesthood Examined
Richard Hanson
Book ID: 55 Page: 94
Section: 2C
More important, there is no reason for thinking that the actual form of the official ministry itself hindered that which was to be ministered being imparted as it should be, the gospel, the communication of the new being, the opportunity of experiencing God in Christ. The form of the ministry must be judged by what is ministered. I do not see how it can be plausibly argued that the ministry of bishops, presbyters and deacons, as they appear in the pages of Ignatius, of Irenaeus and of Tertullian, hinders the good news or stifles the life of the church or dilutes the truth of the revelation entrusted to the church.. . . .
If by unanimous consent all Christian denominations were to abolish altogether tomorrow the distinction between clergy and laity, within ten years groups would begin appearing everywhere throughout the church who by their dedication, their expertise and their activity would earn the status, if not the name, of clergy. The Holy Spirit does not always call the church to stand still, and its moving onward may as well take the form of raising up official ministers as of inspiring prophets and visionaries.
Quote ID: 1241
Time Periods: 23
Christian Priesthood Examined
Richard Hanson
Book ID: 55 Page: 95
Section: 2C
The dream of a wholly formless, wholly charismatic, wholly spontaneous church in the 20th century is a fantasy.. . . .
Official ministry itself is a development. Within the tradition created by that development a Christian priesthood appeared. But we must here distinguish between two sorts of development. The official ministry was a quite new institution, having no continuity with the ministry of the Jewish religion, neither cultic sacrificing priest nor rabbi, carrying with it no theological significance, appealing to no tradition and no type, simply a development to meet the need of the church, taking such names as seemed suitable to express the very general functions of the various ministers.
Quote ID: 1242
Time Periods: 237
Christian Priesthood Examined
Richard Hanson
Book ID: 55 Page: 105
Section: 2C
What makes any minister a minister is the expressed intention of the church in ordaining him.
Quote ID: 1243
Time Periods: 234567
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 47
Section: 2C
There is, in summary thus far, an easy case to be made for a live-and-let live tradition within the armed forces, against which the Christians predictably but not very strenuously made their objections felt. How else could it have happened that, after Julian’s abrupt death when the army turned to the choice of a successor (it had become their traditional right to make that choice), they first settled on a pious pagan? But he was too old, so they turned to Jovian the Christian. And who were “they” anyway? Two little coteries of high officers, we are told.Therefore Julian himself had chosen to keep on under his own command, undisturbed, the enemies of his own faith.
Quote ID: 1443
Time Periods: 4
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 83
Section: 2C
. . . the empire overall appears to have been predominantly non-Christian in A.D. 400.
Quote ID: 1474
Time Periods: 5
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 6
Section: 2C,4B
The priesthoods, divided into four chief colleges, were public offices held by persons of high birth who had rendered distinguished service to the city. That there were only sixty offices for two to four hundred eligible men made the honor particularly desirable. Often one had to wait years before a position became vacant. Because the Romans thought that the official cults were an integral part of the public life of the city, they took it for granted that the priesthoods should be offered to the most prominent social and political figures. The practice had been defended by Cicero, who said that the “most distinguished citizens safeguard religion by the good administration of the state and safeguard the wise conduct of religion” (Dom. 1). In Rome the practice of religion was a public matter. Gov. of Bythnia
Quote ID: 4524
Time Periods: 0
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 33
Section: 2C
Had Pliny heard the term ecclesia, he would have been puzzled, for in common usage in Greek and Latin ecclesia referred to the political assembly of the people of a city, as contrasted with the smaller group of elected officials who comprised the council (boule).
Quote ID: 4535
Time Periods: 12
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 34
Section: 2C,4B
The term hetaeria, a transliteration into Latin of a Greek word, is usually rendered as “political club” or “association”.
Quote ID: 4536
Time Periods: 12
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 45
Section: 2C,4B
One of the chief points of Celsus’s book against Christianity is that Christians formed “associations contrary to the laws” (c. Cels. 1.1). Instead of joining in with the public religious rites of the cities, like other associations, they refused to have anything to do with others and carried on their affairs in the fashion of an “obscure and secret association” (c. Cels. 8.17).PJ Note: Club
Quote ID: 4537
Time Periods: 12
Cicero: On the Republic by Niall Rudd
Translated by Niall Rudd
Book ID: 62 Page: 129
Section: 4B,2C
They shall worship as gods those who have always been considered divine and those whose services have secured them a place in heaven—Hercules, Liber,{*} Aesculapius, Castor, Pollux, Quirinus—and also those qualities on whose account human beings are allowed to ascend to heaven—Good Sense, Moral Excellence, Devotion, Good Faith. In their honour there shall be shrines, but none in honour of vices.They shall observe the established rites.
Quote ID: 1555
Time Periods: 0
Cicero: On the Republic by Niall Rudd
Translated by Niall Rudd
Book ID: 62 Page: 129
Section: 2C,4B
Different divinities shall have different priests; all together shall have pontiffs; individually they shall have flamines.{*} And in the city the Vestal Virgins shall watch over the undying fire on the public hearth.Those who are unfamiliar with the methods and rituals for conducting these private and public ceremonies shall seek guidance from the public priests. Of these there shall be three kinds: one to preside over ceremonies and sacred rites, and another to interpret the strange utterances of prophets and seers which the Senate and people have accepted. In addition, the interpreters of Jupiter the Best and Greatest, that is, the public augurs, shall divine the future by means of signs and omens and maintain their art.
And whatever an augur shall pronounce unjust, unholy, harmful, or ill-omened shall be null and void. And if anyone fails to obey, that shall be a capital offence.
Quote ID: 1556
Time Periods: 0
Cicero: On the Republic by Niall Rudd
Translated by Niall Rudd
Book ID: 62 Page: 131
Section: 2C
The rights of the spirits of the dead shall be holy. Good men who have died shall be held to be gods. The money spent on them, and the mourning{*} over them, shall be kept small.
Quote ID: 1557
Time Periods: 0
Cicero: On the Republic by Niall Rudd
Translated by Niall Rudd
Book ID: 62 Page: 133
Section: 4B,2C
That the law enjoins the worship of deified human beings like Hercules and others indicates that, while the souls of all are immortal, those of the brave and good are divine.{*} It is right that Good Sense,{*} Devotion,{*} Moral Excellence,{*} and Good Faith’{*} should be deified; and in Rome temples have long been publicly dedicated* to those qualities, so that those who possess them (and all good people do) should believe that actual gods have been set up within their souls. At Athens, after atoning for the crime against Cylon, on the advice of the Cretan, Epimenides, they built a shrine to Insult and Shamelessness.{*} That was a misguided act; for virtues, not vices, should be deified. The ancient altar to Fever{*} on the Palatine, and the other to Evil Fortune{*} on the Esquiline must be refused recognition, and all things of that kind are to be rejected. If we have to devise names, we should choose rather ones like Conquering Power and Protectress, and titles like Jove the Stopper{*} and the Invincible, and names of desirable things like Safety, Honour, Help,, and Victory. Because the spirit is raised by the expectation of good things, Hope{*} was rightly deified by Calatinus.
Quote ID: 1559
Time Periods: 0
Cicero: On the Republic by Niall Rudd
Translated by Niall Rudd
Book ID: 62 Page: 134
Section: 2C
The greatest and most prestigious power in the state is that of the augurs, combined, as it is, with political authority. I don’t say this because I’m an augur myself{*} but simply because one cannot think otherwise. If we consider their official rights, what is more impressive than the ability to dismiss assemblies and meetings called by magistrates (with or without imperium), or, when they have already taken place, to cancel their decisions? What is more momentous than the abortion of a process already begun, if one augur says ‘On another day’? What is more majestic than the right to decide that consuls should resign their office? What is more awesome than the power to grant or withhold the right to do political business with the people or plebs? Or than quashing laws illegally approved, as when the Titian Law{*} was annulled by the decree of the college, or when the Livian Laws{*} were cancelled on the recommendation of Phillippus who was both consul and augur? Or than the fact that nothing done by any official at home or in the field can receive the approval of any body without their permission?
Quote ID: 1560
Time Periods: 0
Cicero: The Nature of the Gods
Translated by P.G. Walsh
Book ID: 61 Page: 70
Section: 2C
What of Jupiter, a name deriving from “helpful father” (iuvans pater), and whom in the oblique cases we refer to as Jove, from the verb to help (iuvare)?
Quote ID: 1549
Time Periods: 0
Civilizations of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History, The
Norman F. Cantor
Book ID: 203 Page: 38
Section: 2C
The church developed a strict, organized hierarchy during its first three centuries that included a distinct priesthood, with priests separated from lay Christians; Christian priests became officeholders on the Roman model.
Quote ID: 4652
Time Periods: 456
Civilizations of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History, The
Norman F. Cantor
Book ID: 203 Page: 39
Section: 2C
Borrowing Platonic philosophy and the Roman system of government, the church developed the Christian priesthood, with its priests set apart from ordinary men and women. Jesus never made that distinction, although most model Roman Catholics argue that the distinction was implicit - or potential - apostolic Christianity.
Quote ID: 4653
Time Periods: 456
Clement of Alexandria, LCL 092
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 140 Page: 111
Section: 2C
Exhortation to the Greeks - Chpt. IVAnother fresh divinity was created in Egypt,- and very nearly among Greeks too, - when the Roman king {b} solemnly elevated to the rank of god his favourite whose beauty was unequalled. He consecrated Antinous in the same way that Zeus consecrated Ganymedes. For lust is not easily restrained, when it has no fear; and today men observe the sacred nights of Antinous, which were really shameful, as the lover who kept them with him well knew. Why, I ask, do you reckon as a god one who is honoured by fornication?
Quote ID: 3025
Time Periods: 2
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 170
Section: 2C
The terms ‘conqueror’ and ‘unconquerable’ (victor, invictus), which henceforward become official designations of the ruler, again imply a comparison with Hercules, and with Alexander the Great as well.
Quote ID: 4724
Time Periods: 234
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 57
Section: 2C
Augustus had agreed with the Senate that he would be governor for the life of the more vulnerable border provinces of the empire. He had the right to appoint deputies (legates) in these provinces.
Quote ID: 4798
Time Periods: 0
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 204
Section: 2C,3C
However, just how closely the power of the church mirrored that of the state can be seen in the decision of the Council of Constantinople in 381 to elevate the bishop of the city “next after the bishop of Rome because Constantinople is the new Rome.”
Quote ID: 4897
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 220
Section: 2C
When a group of senators travelled up from Rome with the traditional robes of the pontifex maximus, Gratian refused to accept them, the first emperor to make such a decisive break with the pagan world. (Ironically, the popes were later--in the fifteenth century-- to adopt the title pontifex maximus as on the their own.)
Quote ID: 4927
Time Periods: 47
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: xxi
Section: 2C
Some terms need further mention here. The word “pagan” as used nowadays is often one of abuse, associated with witches, hedonistic living and minority spiritual ideas. Even the most cursory knowledge of the wide variety of pagan thought and movements in the Roman empire shows that to use the term in a derogatory sense is inappropriate.
Quote ID: 4783
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: xxii
Section: 2C
From the time of Gregory in the late sixth century. It was at about this time that the word “pope” was first used as a title for the bishop of Rome.
Quote ID: 4785
Time Periods: 6
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: xxiii
Section: 2C
I have tended to use the term “Nicene orthodoxy” rather loosely to describe those in the west who saw Father and Son as being of equal grandeur.
Quote ID: 4786
Time Periods: 4
Complete Sermons of Martin Luther Volume 1.1-2, The
Edited by John Nicholas Lenker
Book ID: 336 Page: 63/64
Section: 2C
SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT.8. Moreover the pope has attempted to abolish Christ and to become his vicar. He occupies the throne of Christ on earth, would to God he occupied the Devil’s throne instead.
Quote ID: 7835
Time Periods: 7
Complete Sermons of Martin Luther Volume 1.1-2, The
Edited by John Nicholas Lenker
Book ID: 336 Page: 217
Section: 2C
THIRD CHRISTMAS DAY.121. Christ and the Scriptures are not necessary, as long as the doctrine of the pope and his schools exist. Therefore I have said that pope, bishops, and schools are not good enough to be heretics; but they surpass all heretics, and are the dregs of all heresies, errors, and idolatry from the beginning , because they entirely suppress Christ and the Word of God, and only retain their names for appearance’s sake.
Quote ID: 7838
Time Periods: 7
Complete Sermons of Martin Luther Volume 1.1-2, The
Edited by John Nicholas Lenker
Book ID: 336 Page: 252
Section: 2C
DAY OF SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST.42. The betrayers of Christ therefore are the hypocrites who walk about with the semblance of a holy life and a spiritual estate, while at the same time they annihilate within themselves and in everybody else the truth of Christianity and the light of grace, leaving nothing but human folly.
Quote ID: 7839
Time Periods: 7
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 245
Section: 2C,3C
In 307, on his promotion from Caesar to Augustus, Constantine automatically assumed the title of pontifex maximus, which he never relinquished until he symbolically resigned the imperial power on his deathbed. {2} Nor did Constantine’s immediate successors discard the title, although they too were Christians. {3}
Quote ID: 1645
Time Periods: 4
Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 159
Section: 2C,3C
And it was he himself who chose every bishop when a vacancy arose.
Quote ID: 1734
Time Periods: 4
Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 160
Section: 2C,3C
The top clerics, the bishops, received special attention, and were employed to pronounce on religious issues rather as earlier emperors had used pontifices and augurs; and they obtained judicial powers as well. Indeed, they found themselves among the emperor’s principal advisers; and, although he himself had appointed them, he treated them with respect, even asserting the ’God has given you power to judge us also’.
Quote ID: 1735
Time Periods: 4
Constantine’s Bible
David L. Dungan
Book ID: 67 Page: 13
Section: 2C
Aristotle described Athen’s revolutionary new polis as consisting of a body of citizens (politeia), united by agreements and laws they had voted into existence (the politeia, “constitution”) and led by a people’s assembly, the ekklesia, which was responsible for all decisions pertaining to internal and external policy, The Athenian ekklesia numbered some six thousand citizens, was selected by lot on a rotation basis, and met some forty to fifty times a year.
Quote ID: 1791
Time Periods: 0
Constantine’s Bible
David L. Dungan
Book ID: 67 Page: 22
Section: 2C
Most significant in my estimation was the designation of the Christian congregation by the term “assembly” (ekklesia), which, as we saw above, was the name of the popular assembly in a Greek polis responsible for all decisions of internal or external policy. This term came into the early Christian movement from two sources: The first is the Greek Old Testament, where ekklesia is the translation for Hebrew terms for “assembly” more than one hundred times.
Quote ID: 1792
Time Periods: 12
Continuity and Change in Roman Religion
J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz
Book ID: 313 Page: 283
Section: 2C
fringe-ChristiansJohn’s note – author’s term
Quote ID: 7624
Time Periods: 23
Continuity and Change in Roman Religion
J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz
Book ID: 313 Page: 301
Section: 2C
Gratian soon after repudiated the title of pontifex maximus…
Quote ID: 7633
Time Periods: 4
Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 55
Section: 2C
It means much that the priest is appointed by the city, as he is again at Magnesia in Thessaly. At Eretria and at Athens the priesthood was an annual office. a public officeNow this is particularly important as an indication that the cult was absorbed in the ordinary run of civic cults and also that it was not commonly in the wider Greek world at this time a mystery cult. A mystery generally demands permanent clergy.
Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Sarapis’s cult
Quote ID: 1918
Time Periods: 0
Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 68
Section: 2C,4B
No Roman citizen might become a eunuch priest, and we hear of the banishment of a slave who castrated himself.
Quote ID: 1929
Time Periods: 0123
Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 71
Section: 2C
We see here the gradual development of a cult which the State had accepted, its full expansion being in and after the Antonine period. It belonged to the sacra publica controlled by the commission of fifteen.
Quote ID: 1932
Time Periods: 12
Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia
Vita S. Antoni
Book ID: 446 Page: 50
Section: 2C
55. After I had written my accounts of the Councils, I had information that the most irreligious Constantius had sent Letters to the Bishops remaining in Ariminum; and I have taken pains to get copies of them….….
Constantius, Victorious and Triumphant, Augustus, to all Bishops who are assembled at Ariminum.
….
…their return, that, when they come back with our answer to you, ye may be able to bring matters to a close which so deeply affect the well-being of the Catholic Church.
*John’s note: These were “Arians”, and yet they were fighting to have control of the “Catholic Church”.*
Quote ID: 8838
Time Periods: ?
Councils: Seven Ecumenical Councils, NPNF2 Vol. 14, The Seven Ecumenical Councils
Philip Schaff, Editor.
Book ID: 677 Page: 84
Section: 2C
“For this reason Pope Zacharias in his Letter to Boniface the Bishop, number vi., which begins “Benedictus Deus” says,
‘In case of necessity presbyters may be ordained at xxv. years of age. If men thirty years old cannot be found, and necessity so demand, Levites and priests may be ordained from twenty-five years of age upwards.’”
PJ footnote reference: Council of NeoCeasea, Canon XI note, NPNF2, Vol. 14, 84.
Quote ID: 9715
Time Periods: 4
Councils: Seven Ecumenical Councils, NPNF2 Vol. 14, The Seven Ecumenical Councils
Philip Schaff, Editor.
Book ID: 677 Page: 140
Section: 2C
“. . . it seemed that it was becoming that the sacred rulers and priests of God as well as the Levites, or those who served at the divine sacraments, should be continent altogether . . .”PJ footnote reference: The Canons of the 217 Blessed Fathers Who Assembled at Carthage, Canon 3.
“This is another canon to curb the ambition of Levites who wish to take upon themselves the honours of the priesthood also.”
Quote ID: 9716
Time Periods: 45
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 38
Section: 2C
The Chief Pontiff, responsible for Roman religion, kept firm control over all cults of foreign origin, . . .
Quote ID: 5134
Time Periods: 0
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 44
Section: 2C
This grandson of Livia belonged to a family whose clan name Appius/ Attius went back to the famous Sabine Atta Clausus and recalled the very name of Attis (‘Papa’)
Quote ID: 5136
Time Periods: 1
Cyprian, ANF Vol. 5, Fathers of the Third Century
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 666 Page: 118
Section: 2C
There is one God, and Christ is one, and there is one Church, and one chair founded upon the rock by the word of the Lord.{2} Another altar cannot be constituted nor a new priesthood be made, except the one altar and the one priesthood. Whosoever gathereth elsewhere, scattereth. Whatsoever is appointed by human madness, so that the divine disposition is violated, is adulterous, is impious, is sacrilegious.
PJ footnote: Cyprian, Epistle XXXIX.5
Quote ID: 9500
Time Periods: 34
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 1, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 320 Page: 421
Section: 2C
Even the attributes, or at least the titles, of the DIVINITY were usurped by Diocletian and Maximian, who transmitted them to a succession of Christian emperors.²
Quote ID: 7729
Time Periods: 3
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 6, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 383 Page: 421
Section: 2C
Even the attributes, or at least the titles, of the DIVINITY were usurped by Diocletian and Maximian, who transmitted them to a succession of Christian emperors.²
Quote ID: 8292
Time Periods: 3
Didache: Text, Translation, Analysis, and Commentary, The
Aaron Milavec
Book ID: 211 Page: 31
Section: 2C
12:4 C If, on the other hand, he/she does not have a craft,according to your understanding, plan beforehand
how a Christian will live among you, not [being] idle.
12:5 [D] If, on the other hand, he/she does not wish to act thus,
he/she is a Christ-peddler.
Beware of such ones!
Quote ID: 5216
Time Periods: 1
Didache: Text, Translation, Analysis, and Commentary, The
Aaron Milavec
Book ID: 211 Page: 35
Section: 2C
15:1 A Appoint, then, for yourselves,bishop and deacons worthy of the Lord,
Quote ID: 5217
Time Periods: 12
Didache: The Oldest Church Manual
Phillip Schaff
Book ID: 254 Page: 204/205
Section: 2C
CHAP.XII.
RECEIVING DISCIPLES.
1. Let every one that comes in the name of the Lord be received, and then proving him ye shall know him;
1. But if he has not handicraft (trade), provide according to your understanding that no Christian shall live idle among you.
2. And if she will not act thus he is a Christ-trafficker. Beware of such.
Quote ID: 6404
Time Periods: 4567
Didache: The Oldest Church Manual
Phillip Schaff
Book ID: 254 Page: 204/205
Section: 2C
CHAP. XII.
RECEIVING DISCIPLES.
4. But if he has not handicraft (trade), provide according to your understanding that no Christian shall live idle among you.
5. And if she will not act thus he is a Christ-trafficker. Beware of such.
Quote ID: 8785
Time Periods: ?
Didache: The Oldest Church Manual
Phillip Schaff
Book ID: 254 Page: 211/212
Section: 2C
CHAP. XV.
BISHOPS AND DEACONS.
1. Elect therefore for yourselves Bishops and Deacons worthy of the Lord, men meek, and not lovers of money, and truthful, and approved; for they too minister to you the ministry of the Prophets and Teachers.
Quote ID: 6406
Time Periods: 23
Didache: The Oldest Church Manual
Phillip Schaff
Book ID: 254 Page: 211/212
Section: 2C
CHAP. XV.
BISHOPS AND DEACONS.
1. Elect therefore for yourselves Bishops and Deacons worthy of the Lord, men meek, and not lovers of money, and truthful, and approved; for they too minister to you the ministry of the Prophets and Teachers.
3. And reprove one another not in wrath, but in peace, as ye have [it] in the gospel; and with everyone that transgresses against another let no one speak, nor let him hear [a word] from you until he repents.
Quote ID: 8786
Time Periods: ?
Early Arianism: A View of Salvation
Robert C. Gregg and Dennis E. Groh
Book ID: 76 Page: 66
Section: 2C
The Father’s work of creation and salvation being completed by the Word, however, “men, redeemed from sin, no longer remain dead, being deified (θεοποιηθέντες).”{98}
Quote ID: 2096
Time Periods: 34
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 30
Section: 2C
Since the birthplace of Christianity was Palestine . . .
Quote ID: 5255
Time Periods: 0
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 35
Section: 2C,3B
(According to the Roman historian Tacitus . . .)Consequently, to be rid of the rumor, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.....
Quote ID: 5259
Time Periods: 1
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 47
Section: 2C
Hence Paul addresses the Christians at Philippi ‘with the bishops (or overseers) and deacons’. Nevertheless, this statement may refer to functions rather than to distinct orders and indeed to sketch the history of the early ministry is to attempt to trace the process whereby the one hardened into the other.
Quote ID: 5263
Time Periods: 1
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 79
Section: 2C
Under the heading of the ‘Apostolic Fathers’, a title first used in the seventeenth century.....
Quote ID: 5269
Time Periods: 7
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 130
Section: 2C
‘It is not persecution alone that is to be feared,’ according to Cyprian, ‘the enemy is more to be feared and to be guarded against when he creeps on us secretly.’ Cyprian had in mind the schismatics, who ‘have broken the Lord’s peace with the madness of discord’, and against these he asserted the oneness of the Church with the episcopate as its centre of unity: ‘the episcopate is one, each part of which is held by each one for the whole.’ He further declared: ‘they are the Church who are a people united to the priest, and the flock which adheres to its pastor. Whence you ought to know that the bishop is in the Church, and the Church is the bishop; and if any one be not with the bishop, that he is not in the Church.
Quote ID: 5290
Time Periods: 3
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 133
Section: 2C
But a process of clericalization began as the Church expanded and function was displaced by position.Thus the process was under way whereby the ministry would be set over against the Church and the idea of function would be subordinated to that of office and privilege.
Quote ID: 5291
Time Periods: 4
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 144
Section: 2C,2D3A
But upon his conversion to Montanism, he changed his ground, asserting that the Church is composed exclusively of spiritual men and that the episcopate was irrelevant.
Quote ID: 5299
Time Periods: 23
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 159
Section: 2C
Constantine himself retained the office of Pontifex Maximus, as did his successors down to 383, and he protected the freedom of worship of his pagan subjects.
Quote ID: 5310
Time Periods: 4
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 170
Section: 2C,3C
Indeed he was prepared to style himself as bishop of those outside the Church. (Constantine)
Quote ID: 5320
Time Periods: 4
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 215
Section: 3A1B,2C,3C
Gratian, however, under the influence of Ambrose did not assume the title of pontifex maximus, and in 382 withdrew the funds that had supported the public cult and removed the altar of Victory from the Curia. The pagan caucus in the senate led by Symmachus, carried on a struggle throughout the next decade to have the altar restored, but the offensive against paganism was renewed by Theodosius, who issued a series of laws prohibiting pagan worship throughout the empire.
Quote ID: 5341
Time Periods: 4
Early Greek Philosophy, LCL 526: Early Greek Philosophy III
Translated by Andre Laks and Glenn W. Most
Book ID: 429 Page: 285
Section: 2C,4A,4B
R77 (≠ DK) Justin Martyr, Apology….
And those people who have lived with the Word were Christians, even if they were considered to be atheists, as for example, among the Greeks, Socrates, Heraclitus, and those men similar to them, and, among the barbarians, Abraham […].
Quote ID: 8711
Time Periods: 2
Ecclesiastical Authority And Spiritual Power
Hans von Campenhausen
Book ID: 79 Page: 4
Section: 2C
For Jesus there is no ‘formal principle’ of theology, {5} and no institutional public position either to confine or to support him. He acts with complete freedom as the person he is, and thus, in this comprehensive sense, ‘with authority’.
Quote ID: 2146
Time Periods: 1
Ecclesiastical Authority And Spiritual Power
Hans von Campenhausen
Book ID: 79 Page: 9/10
Section: 2C
Of his own faith, however, Jesus never speaks.{43} Hidden behind the veil of his own silence he remains in the end the one man who already stands on the far side of the old nature, {44} not merely proclaiming the coming of the kingdom and the holiness of a renewed humanity, but also exhibiting and incarnating them. He himself is the great ‘sign’ of the coming and irruption of the kingdom of God.
Quote ID: 2147
Time Periods: 1
Ecclesiastical Authority And Spiritual Power
Hans von Campenhausen
Book ID: 79 Page: 53
Section: 2C
Paul also differs from the later historians and dogmatic theologians of his Church in the fact that he attaches little importance to a neat definition of specifically apostolic authority in relation to the authorities of other ‘evangelists’ and spiritual teachers. He constantly brackets himself with Barnabas, {191} Apollos, {192} and various other members of his congregation {193} in a way which is highly significant......
The emphasis on the special character and unique importance of the original apostolic office and testimony for its own sake is completely post-Pauline.
Quote ID: 2149
Time Periods: 1
Ecclesiastical Authority And Spiritual Power
Hans von Campenhausen
Book ID: 79 Page: 65
Section: 2C
Nevertheless, it is true that among the gifts of the Spirit which Paul enumerates in Corinthians--though not first in the list--the gift of ‘government’, the art of the pilot or ‘helmsman’{60} as it was called in the political imagery of the ancient world {61}, is also mentioned. But even this does not imply ‘government’ in the strict sense of the word, but much more the gift of ‘providing assistance.’{62} For an office of governor on the lines of the presbyterate or of the later monarchical episcopate there was no room at Corinth either in practice or in principle.{63}
Quote ID: 2152
Time Periods: 1
Ecclesiastical Authority And Spiritual Power
Hans von Campenhausen
Book ID: 79 Page: 76
Section: 2C
The only authority known to Paul as instituted by God in advance, and therefore to some extent independent of the congregation, is that of the apostle. Everything else in a matter of ‘gifts’, and has validity only as a function of the life of the Spirit which has been awakened in the congregation. The community cannot generate this life from within herself, it is given to her; but there is no need for her to accept its manifestations uncritically. She incorporates them, and recognises them as genuine operations of her spirit as occasion requires. Such recognition may lead to the taking over of permanent ministries or functions by those who possess the gifts; but it establishes no automatic personal authority superior to that of ordinary members nor any subordination of one Christian to another.
Quote ID: 2154
Time Periods: 1234567
Ecclesiastical Authority And Spiritual Power
Hans von Campenhausen
Book ID: 79 Page: 129
Section: 2C
That the founding of the Church on Peter is unthinkable in the mouth of Jesus it is impossible to doubt. {18}
Quote ID: 2155
Time Periods: 1
Ecclesiastical Authority And Spiritual Power
Hans von Campenhausen
Book ID: 79 Page: 294
Section: 2C
This book has been concerned only with the foundations of the doctrine of office as these were laid in the Early Church. The central difficulty, which we have encountered at every turn, has been that of determining the right relationship between office organised on a legal basis and free spiritual authority. The two are not originally identical, and yet they have to be brought into a proper relationship if the office of the clergy is to retain its religious meaning and remain an office of the Church in the full sense of the word.
Quote ID: 2157
Time Periods: 234567
End of Ancient Christianity, The
Robert Markus
Book ID: 219 Page: 32
Section: 2C,4B
The question of what it was that defined a Christian had never been easy to answer; but it had become especially troubling in an age when Christianity seemed to have become so easy. How much of the old life could be carried over into the new? To this question there was no clear answer, or there were too many.
Quote ID: 5414
Time Periods: 1234
Europe and the Faith
Hilaire Belloc
Book ID: 84 Page: 37
Section: 2C
But it is unhistorical to think of a “Pagan” world opposed to a “Christian” world at that time. The very conception of “a Pagan world” requires some external manifest Christian civilization against which to contrast it. There was none such, of course, for Rome in the first generation of the third century.
Quote ID: 2234
Time Periods: 3
Europe and the Faith
Hilaire Belloc
Book ID: 84 Page: 46
Section: 2A5,2C
If you read (in Ignatius’ seven certainly genuine letters) of Episcopacy and of the Eucharist, you may think him a wrong-headed enthusiast. But you know that you are reading the work of a man who personally witnessed the beginnings of the Church; you know that the customs, manners, doctrines and institutions he mentions or takes for granted were certainly those of his time, that is, of the origin of Catholicism, though you may think the customs silly and the doctrines nonsense.
Quote ID: 2238
Time Periods: 2
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 11
Section: 2C
Book I chapter I: Injected the word “Christian” twice.
Quote ID: 3044
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 193
Section: 2C
Book III chapter III: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3045
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 195
Section: 2C
Book III chapter IVThus Timothy is related to have been the first appointed bishop of the diocese of Ephesus. . .
Quote ID: 3078
Time Periods: 1
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 197
Section: 2C
Book III chapter IVIn addition to these Dionysius, one of the ancients, the pastor of the diocese of the Corinthians
. . . . bishop of the Church at Athens was that member of the Areopagas, the other Dionysius. . .
Quote ID: 3079
Time Periods: 1
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 233
Section: 2C,2D1
Book III chapter XI. . . .were then still alive, and they all took counsel together as to whom they ought to adjudge worthy to succeed James, and all unanimously decided that Simeon the son of Clopas, whom the scripture of the Gospel also mentions, was worthy of the throne of the diocese there.
Quote ID: 3081
Time Periods: 12
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 235
Section: 2C
Book III chapter XVI: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3046
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 261
Section: 2C
Book III chapter XXVII: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3047
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 283
Section: 2C
Book III chapter XXXVI: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3048
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 285
Section: 2C
Book III chapter XXXVI: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3049
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 297
Section: 2C
Book III chapter XXXIX: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3050
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 301
Section: 2C
Book IV contents: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3051
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 305
Section: 2C
Book IV chapter IAbout the twelfth year of the reign of Trajan {1} the bishop {2} of the diocese of Alexandria, whom we mentioned a little earlier, passed away. . . .
Quote ID: 3090
Time Periods: 2
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 311
Section: 2C
Book IV chapter V: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3052
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 333
Section: 2C
Book IV chapter VII: Injected the word “Christian” twice.
Quote ID: 3053
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 359
Section: 2C
Book IV chapter XV: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3054
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 369
Section: 2C
Book IV chapter XVII: Injected the word “Christian” twice.
Quote ID: 3055
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 373
Section: 2C
Book IV chapter XVIII: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3056
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 379
Section: 2C
Book IV chapter XXIIIConcerning Dionysius it must first be said that he was appointed to the throne of the episcopate of the diocese of Corinth.
Quote ID: 3092
Time Periods: 1
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 381
Section: 2C
Book IV chapter XXIII
. . . .another epistle to Cnossus, in which he exhorts Pinytos, the bishop of the diocese, . . .
Quote ID: 3093
Time Periods: 2
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 383
Section: 2C
Book IV chapter XXXIII: Injected the word “Christian” twice.
Quote ID: 3057
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 387
Section: 2C
Book IV chapter XXV: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3058
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 391
Section: 2C
Book IV chapter XXVI: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3059
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 401
Section: 2C
Book V contents: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3060
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 425
Section: 2C
Book V chapter I: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3061
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 433
Section: 2C
Book V chapter I: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3062
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 435
Section: 2C
Book V chapter I: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3063
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 445
Section: 2C
Book V chapter IV
Irenaeus also, who was at that time already a presbyter of the diocese at Lyons . . .
Quote ID: 3095
Time Periods: 23
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 447
Section: 2C
Book V chapter V: Injected the word “Christian” twice.
Quote ID: 3064
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 449
Section: 2C
Book V chapter V
Irenaeus received the episcopacy of the diocese in Lynos, {1} . . .
Quote ID: 3096
Time Periods: 23
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 451
Section: 2C
Book V chapter VI: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3065
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 477
Section: 2C
Book V chapter XVI: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3066
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 485
Section: 2C
Book V chapter XVII: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3067
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 491
Section: 2C
Book V chapter XVIII: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3068
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 501
Section: 2C
Book V chapter XXI: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3069
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 509
Section: 2C
Book V chapter XXIV: Injected the word “Christian” twice.
Quote ID: 3070
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 517
Section: 2C
Book V chapter XXVII: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3071
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 519
Section: 2C
Book V chapter XXVIII: Injected the word “Christian”.
Quote ID: 3072
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 453
Section: 2C
Book X Chapter V“Greeting, Anulinus, our most honored Sir. It is the custom of our benevolence, that we will that whatsoever appertains by right to another should not only not suffer harm, but even be restored, most honoured Anulinus. Wherefore we will that, when thou receivest this letter, if aught of those things that belonged to the Catholic Church {2} of the Christians in any city, or even in other places, be now in the possession either of citizens or of any others: these thou shouldest cause to be restored forthwith to these same churches…”
Quote ID: 2307
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 455
Section: 2C
Book X chapter V“Constantine Augustus to Miltiades bishop of the Romans, and to Mark.
Quote ID: 3137
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 457
Section: 2C
Book X chapter V“Constantine Augustus to Chrestus bishop of the Syracusans. Already on a former occasion, when some in a base and perverse manner began to create divisions with regard to the worship of the holy and heavenly Power and the Catholic religion, in my desire to cut short such dissensions among them, I had given orders to the effect that certain bishops should be sent from Gaul, nay further, that the opposing parties, who were contending stubbornly and persistently together, should be summonsed from Africa; that so, in the presence also of the bishop of Rome, this question which appeared to have been raised might through their coming receive a right solution by means of a careful examination in every particular.”
Quote ID: 3138
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 1
Section: 2C
Law: Restoration of Goods only to Catholic Christians - Eusebius: Book 10, Chapter 5, pp.380It is the custom of our benevolence, most esteemed Anulinus, to will that those things which belong of right to another should not only be left unmolested, but should also be restored. Wherefore it is our will that when thou receivest this letter, if any such things belonged to the Catholic Church of the-Christians in any city or other place, but are now held by citizens {15} or by any others, thou shalt cause them to be restored immediately to the said churches.
Quote ID: 8209
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 380
Section: 2C
Law: Restoration of Goods only to Catholic Christians - Eusebius: Book X.xv
It is the custom of our benevolence, most esteemed Anulinus, to will that those things which belong of right to another should not only be left unmolested, but should also be restored. Wherefore it is our will that when thou receivest this letter, if any such things belonged to the Catholic Church of the Christians in any city or other place, but are now held by citizens or by any others, thou shalt cause them to be restored immediately to the said churches.
Pastor John’s footnote reference: Eusebius, Church History, X.v.15–16.
Quote ID: 9547
Time Periods: 34
Formation of Christendom, The
Judith Herrin
Book ID: 225 Page: 63
Section: 2C
Since Constantine, the emperor held the final say in the selection of the bishop of Constantinople. Normally, local clergy would submit three names to the emperor, but sometimes he ignored their recommendations for a candidate of his own choosing. “The foremost episcopal sees in the late antique world, those of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Roma, and Constantinople, were almost always occupied by men who were acceptable to the emperor.
Quote ID: 5648
Time Periods: 4
Formation of Christendom, The
Judith Herrin
Book ID: 225 Page: 117
Section: 2C
Remember “St Sophia in Constantinople. “holy wisdom” who was she? anybody at all? or the Roman goddess?
Quote ID: 5672
Time Periods: 2
Formation of Christendom, The
Judith Herrin
Book ID: 225 Page: 145
Section: 2C
Footnote 25 curiales = local civic leaders, apparently
Quote ID: 5687
Time Periods: 3456
Formation of Christendom, The
Judith Herrin
Book ID: 225 Page: 390
Section: 2C
Charlemagne inspired the term and the dream of a “Holy Roman Emperor”
Quote ID: 5699
Time Periods: 7
From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopy in the Early Church
Francis A. Sullivan, S.J.
Book ID: 91 Page: 53
Section: 2C
The next chapter will explore the question: By whom was the ministry of the apostles carried on in the next generation? And in what sense can those who carried it on be termed “successors of the apostles”?Pastor John’s note: simple; whomever God anoints.
Quote ID: 2365
Time Periods: 2
From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopy in the Early Church
Francis A. Sullivan, S.J.
Book ID: 91 Page: 223
Section: 2C,2D1
No doubt proving that bishops were the successors of the apostles by divine institution would be easier if the New Testament clearly stated that before they died the apostles had appointed a single bishop to lead each of the churches they had founded.….
Unfortunately, the documents available to us do not provide such help. They do indicate that in the course of the second century, in the churches of Corinth, Philippi and Rome, there was a transition from the leadership of a college of presbyters to the leadership of a single bishop, but they do not throw any light on how that transition took place. To that question one can only offer what seems the most probable answer.
Quote ID: 2368
Time Periods: 2
From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopy in the Early Church
Francis A. Sullivan, S.J.
Book ID: 91 Page: 227
Section: 2C
With the exception of James, the “brother of the Lord,” the New Testament does not describe any one person as having been left in charge of a local church.
Quote ID: 2369
Time Periods: 1
From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopy in the Early Church
Francis A. Sullivan, S.J.
Book ID: 91 Page: 228
Section: 2C
During the second century, the church met the growing threat to its unity by developing and accepting the stronger leadership that having a single bishop over the church in each city provided.….
Raymond Brown has well expressed the belief that the Spirit has guided development of the episcopate when he said:
"I am not so naïve to think that every development within the Church is the work of the Spirit, but I would not know what guidance of the Church by the Spirit could mean if it did not include the fundamental shaping of the special ministry which is so intimately concerned with Christian communal and sacramental life." {11}
Quote ID: 2370
Time Periods: 2
From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopy in the Early Church
Francis A. Sullivan, S.J.
Book ID: 91 Page: 229/230
Section: 2C
The Reception of the Bishops’ Teaching as Normative of Faith Is Analogous to the Reception of Certain Christian Writings as Canonical and Normative for Faith. The Holy Spirit Guided the Church in Determining Both Norms, for Error about the Norms Would Have Led to Untold Errors in Faith.….
That by the end of the second century bishops were recognized as the rightful successors of the apostles and that what they taught in common was recognized as normative for Christian faith are facts to which the writings of Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen bear witness. The move from these facts to the conclusion that the Spirit guided the development of the episcopate calls for reflection on the theological significance of the church’s reception of the norms for its faith.
….
A wrong decision about the living norm of faith used in countering the threat of Gnosticism would have been just as disastrous for the church as a wrong decision about the reception of the New Testament as its written norm. We have just as good reason for believing that the Spirit guided the church in recognizing its bishops as successors of the apostles and authoritative teachers of the faith as we have for believing that the Spirit guided it in discerning the books that comprise the New Testament.
From this it follows that we also have good reason to believe that the Spirit guided the development of the episcopate itself, for it was to play such a primary role in maintaining the Church in the true faith.
….
While most Catholic scholars agree that the episcopate is the fruit of a post-New Testament development, they maintain that this development was so evidently guided by the Holy Spirit that it must be recognized as corresponding to God’s plan for the structure of his Church.
Quote ID: 2371
Time Periods: 234
Galen on Jews and Christians
Richard Walzer
Book ID: 410 Page: 3
Section: 2C,2D3B,4A
Ibn al-Qifti, History of Learned men (published after 1227 AD) had a version of the passage. Unfortunately no English translation is available.….
Bar Hebraeus, Chronicum Syriacum, and the same material also in the abbreviated Arabic version, Historia Compendosia Dynastiarum. 25 Budge’s translation of the Chronicum Syriacum:24 And in his time Galen flourished. …And he saith also in his exposition of Plato’s Book of Pedon (Phaedo), ‘We have seen these men who are called “Nazraye” (Nazarenes), who found their Faith upon Divine indications (or, inspirations) and miracles, and they are in no wise inferior to those who are in truth philosophers. For they love purity (or, chastity), and they are constant in Fasting, and they are zealous in avoiding the committal of wrong, and there are among them some who during the whole course of their lives never indulge in carnal intercourse. I say that this is a sign of the monastic life which became famous after the Ascension of our Lord, during the period of one hundred years’. (Budge)
Quote ID: 8565
Time Periods: 2
God’s Secretaries: - The Making of the King James Bible
Adam Nicolson
Book ID: 99 Page: 35
Section: 2C
In a Catholic or sub-Catholic church, where the visual and the ceremonial dominated the verbal and intellectual, it scarcely mattered if the priest was well qualified; he was simply the conduit for divine meaning.
Quote ID: 2519
Time Periods: 47
God’s Secretaries: - The Making of the King James Bible
Adam Nicolson
Book ID: 99 Page: 75
Section: 2C
The ould ecclesiasticall words to be kept viz. As the Word Churche not to be translated Congregation etc.William Tyndale in his great 1526 ground-breaking translation of the New Testament had translated ecclesia not as ‘church’ but as ‘congregation’ and presbyteros not as ‘priest’ but as ‘senior’ (which he later changed, under pressure from Thomas More, to ‘elder’, as being the more English word). The entire meaning of the Reformation hinges on these differences.
And if ecclesia means not church but congregation, what relevance to God can there be in the elaborate and expensive superstructure of an established church and the grotesque indulgences of its officers?
[Used in Chapter 1, “The Beginning of the End”]
Quote ID: 2525
Time Periods: 7
Hadrian
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 103 Page: 31
Section: 2C,3G
The position of the senate under the empire resembled in some way that of the College of Cardinals under the modern papacy, in that while it has little corporate power in normal times, to belong to it is a coveted honour, and, when a Pope dies, it is the College which elects a successor.
Quote ID: 2569
Time Periods: 147
Hadrian
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 103 Page: 58
Section: 1A,2C,3A1
The great organization which is in so many ways the successor of the Caesars, the Roman Catholic Church, insists that complete obedience is the natural condition of the Christian soul, and in this view of human destiny millions throughout the world ardently concur. They submit to a pontiff as sovereign, and they, like their secular predecessors, address that sovereign as father, he them as his children.
Quote ID: 2570
Time Periods: 47
Hadrian
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 103 Page: 62
Section: 2B2,2C
There were still, in the second century, simple folk who worshipped the antique deities of Etruria or Latium, who still sought the protection of Priapus for their flocks and gardens, the succour of Lucina in childbed, the bounty of Vertumnus for their harvests; just as today their descendants solicit the benevolence of the saints who have succeeded to their shrines.It is perplexing, for instance, to read that the emperors, or still more an Antinous, were deified, that ordinary men were to be regarded as gods, and that they were then to be qualified by the same adjective, divus, as in Renaissance Latin was applied by the Catholic Church to saints.
Quote ID: 2571
Time Periods: 2
Hadrian
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 103 Page: 70
Section: 2C
To this day, the College of Cardinals is officially styled, in canon law, the senate of the Roman pontiff.
Quote ID: 2574
Time Periods: 46
History of Dogma
Adolph Harnack, translated by Neil Buchanan
Book ID: 432 Page: 45/46
Section: 1A,2A5,2C
Instead of enthusiastic independent Christians, we find a new literature of revelation, the New Testament, and Christian priests. When did these formations begin? How and by what influence was the living faith transformed into the creed to be believed, the surrender of Christ into a philosophic Christology, the Holy Church into the corpus permixtum, the glowing hope of the Kingdom of heaven into a doctrine of immortality and deification, prophecy into a learned exegesis and theological science, the bearers of the spirit into clerics, the brethren into laity held in tutelage, miracles and healings into nothing, or into priestcraft, fervent prayers into a solemn ritual, renunciation of the world into a jealous dominion over the world, the “spirit” into constraint and law?There can be no doubt about the answer: these formations are as old in their origin as….[John’s note: "as the rejection of Paul’s gospel"] (see PJ Note below)
Quote ID: 8723
Time Periods: 234
History of Dogma
Adolph Harnack, translated by Neil Buchanan
Book ID: 432 Page: 135/136
Section: 1A,2C
Paulinism is a religious and Christocentric doctrine, more inward and more powerful than any other which has ever appeared in the Church. It stands in the clearest opposition to all merely natural moralism, all righteousness of works, all religious ceremonialism, all Christianity without Christ.
Quote ID: 8748
Time Periods: 2
History of Rome
Michael Grant
Book ID: 109 Page: 249
Section: 2C,3B
Four days after the new political arrangements were announced in 27 B.C., the ruler’s name “Caesar” was supplemented by the novel designation “Augustus.” It was a word that carried venerable religious overtones, being linked with the verb “increase” (augere) which was also the root of auctoritus and probably of augurium, the practice of divination, which lay deep in Roman tradition. The adoption of this term “Augustus” to define his new status as the leader of the nation indicated his superiority over the rest of humankind and yet avoided dictatorial or divine appellations that would cause conservatives offense.
Quote ID: 2634
Time Periods: 01
History of the Franks
Gregory Bishop of Tours
Book ID: 110 Page: 37
Section: 2C
On hearing this the king said to the messenger: “Follow us as far as Soissons, because all that has been taken is to be divided there and when the lot assigns me that dish I will do what the father{1}asks.”....
[Footnote 1] papa. The word was used in the early Middle Ages in unrestricted, informal sense, and applied widely to bishops. Cf. Du Cange, Glossarium.
Quote ID: 2646
Time Periods: 567
Inheritance of Rome, The
Chris Wickham
Book ID: 236 Page: 176
Section: 2B2,2C
But there is no reason to think that Christian belief changed much as a result of its exposure to a new frontier of paganism beyond the old bounds of the Roman empire, apart from sometimes in terminology, as with the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre, whose spring festival took place in the Easter period and whose name was borrowed by Anglo-Saxon Christians.
Quote ID: 5921
Time Periods: 234
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 299/300
Section: 2C
2. “There is no doubt whatsoever that the prince of the kingdom of the Persians was the adversary power that befriended the Persian nation, which was hostile to the people of God. And he stood in the way of the benefit that he saw the archangel was going to procure in response to the request that the prophet had made of the Lord, being envious lest the angle’s salutary consolation come to Daniel too quickly and lest he comfort the people of God over which the archangel Gabriel had been set. The latter said that he would have been unable to come to him even then because of the vehemence of his onslaught were it not that the archangel Michael helped him and, resisting the prince of the kingdom of the Persians and interjecting himself into the conflict and opposing him, protected him from his attack and let him come to instruct the prophet after the twenty-first day.3. “And shortly afterwards it says: ‘The angel said: Do you know why I came to you? And now I will return to fight against the prince of the Persians. For when I went out, the prince of the Greeks appeared coming. But I shall tell you what is set down in the writings of truth, and no one is my helper in all these things but Michael, your prince. {32} And again: ‘At that time Michael, the great prince, who stands for the children of your people, shall arise. {33} 4. We read, then, that there is another who is called the prince of the Greeks, and he favored the people subject to him while seeming to be opposed both to the people of Israel and to the nation of the Persians.
….
For they cannot be called dominations unless there are those over whom they can exercise the sway of their domination, nor can they be named powers or principalities unless there are those over whom they might claim to be princes. 2. We find this spoken of very openly in the Gospel by the blaspheming Pharisees: ‘By Beelzebub, the prince of demons, he cast out demons. {35} We also read that they are called ‘the rulers of darkness {36} and that one has the title of ‘the prince of this world. {37} Yet the blessed Apostle asserts that these grades will be eliminated in the world to come, when all things have been subjected to Christ, when, as he says, ‘he has handed over the kingdom to God the Father, when he has destroyed every principality and power and domination. {38}
Quote ID: 231
Time Periods: 01
Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 164
Section: 2C
Again, if any of the accused deny the name, and say that he is not a Christian, you acquit him, as having no evidence against him as a wrong-doer; but if any one acknowledge that he is a Christian, you punish him on account of this acknowledgment.
PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, The First Apology of Justin, IV.
Quote ID: 9654
Time Periods: 2
Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 164
Section: 4A,2C
…on the other hand, if we be found to have committed no offense, either in the matter of thus naming ourselves…
….
For of philosophy, too, some assume the name and the garb who do nothing worthy of their profession….
PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, The First Apology of Justin, IV.
Quote ID: 9655
Time Periods: 2
Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, The
David I. Kertzer
Book ID: 239 Page: ix
Section: 2C,3A2A,2A1
Where else, indeed, could rule by divine right be so well entrenched, so well justified ideologically, so spectacularly elaborated ritually? The Pope had been a worldly prince, a ruler of his subjects, for many centuries, and the contours of his domain in 1858-- ….
Quote ID: 5991
Time Periods: 7
Lactantius, ANF Vol. 7, Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 675 Page: 132
Section: 2C
“[The Roman Universal Church] is the fountain of truth, this is the abode of the faith, this is the temple of God; into which if any one shall not enter, or from which if any shall go out, he is estranged from the hope of life and eternal salvation.”
PJ footnote: Lactantius, The Divine Institutes, II.xxx.
Quote ID: 9701
Time Periods: 4
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 14
Section: 2C
How did Latin paganus come to acquire its most famous meaning? The earliest documented meaning was apparently “rural,” from pagus, a rural district. But to judge from surviving texts, the dominant meaning by the early empire was “civilian,” as opposed to “military.” Finally, soon after the middle of the fourth century, quite suddenly we find it as the standard Latin designation for non-Christians.
Quote ID: 6028
Time Periods: 4
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 14
Section: 2C
So Baronius (1586), assuming that Christians dismissed nonbelievers contemptuously as country bumpkins. This seems to be the dominant view today.{4} Yet there are major objections.
Quote ID: 6029
Time Periods: 7
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 15
Section: 2C
More generally, it would be paradoxical if western Christians had called pagans by a name symbolizing lack of culture when eastern Christians called them by a name symbolizing culture itself (“hellene”).
Quote ID: 6030
Time Periods: 7
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 18
Section: 2C
Remarkably enough, the earliest datable writers to use paganus in this sense all treat it as the exact Latin equivalent of hellene = pagan.
Quote ID: 6031
Time Periods: 4
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 20
Section: 2C
But with the end of the persecutions and a Christian on the imperial throne, Christians must have begun to look on the non-Christians around them differently, no longer as automatic enemies but as misguided fellow citizens, fellow Romans in an increasingly dangerous world. Non-Christians were now individuals who lived next door or worked in the same office. Above all, they were converting in unprecedented numbers. The time had come for a less openly pejorative term to denote them.
Quote ID: 6032
Time Periods: 4
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 24
Section: 2C
Following Mohrmann, then, I would suggest that the religious sense has nothing to do with either rustics or soldiers of Christ. At some time, around the end of the third or beginning of the fourth century, Christians began referring to those “outside” their community as pagani. It is unlikely that there was ever a conscious search for a new term. Paganus was simply the most natural term for any Latin speaking community to apply to outsiders.
Quote ID: 6034
Time Periods: 34
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 25
Section: 2C
Words that fill a newly felt need sometimes catch on very quickly (computer-related terminology is an obvious recent illustration), and it is surely no coincidence that paganus caught on a generation after the Constantinian revolution.
Quote ID: 6035
Time Periods: 4
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 26
Section: 2C
It is true enough that early Christians used “paganism”as “a convenient shorthand for a vast spectrum of cults ranging from the international to the ethnic and local.”{76}
Quote ID: 6036
Time Periods: 4
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 27
Section: 2C
Fourth-century pagans naturally never referred to themselves as pagans, less because the term was insulting than because the category had no meaning for them.
Quote ID: 6037
Time Periods: 4
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 27
Section: 2C
When the pagan Longinianus styles himself homo paganus in a letter to Augustine (Ep. 234), the tone of the letter suggest irony. He would certainly not have so styled himself writing to a fellow pagan.
Quote ID: 6038
Time Periods: 45
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 32
Section: 2C
A random survey of a few recent studies of late antique society that employ “polytheist” instead of “pagan” turned up not a single case where the substitution of “pagan” could by any stretch of the imagination have been said to convey a negative bias of any sort.. . . .
But in most cases “pagan” is the simplest, most familiar, and most appropriate term, and I make no further apology for using it.
Quote ID: 6039
Time Periods: 7
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 158
Section: 2C,3A4A
In the high empire the man in the Roman street knew, when comparing two otherwise parallel cursuses, that priesthoods implied noble birth and imperial favor. But by the second half of the fourth century priesthoods must have come to be viewed quite differently, by both Christians and pagans. The Christian man in the street was likely to see a pontifex as something like a pagan bishop and a quindecimvir sacris faciundis as someone personally stained with the blood of sacrifice. Aristocrats would not have continued to spend fortunes on games (Symmachus 2,000 pounds of gold on the praetorian games of his son) unless popular favor was still important to them. When they held (as most of them did sooner or later) the prefecture of Rome, they were faced with the delicate responsibility of provisioning the city. There were constant famines and riots. The elder Symmachus was not the only noble to have his fine Trastevere mansion burned down by a rampaging mob. In an increasingly Christian Rome, it was unwise for nobles to run further risks by “advertising” their paganism to everyone who passed their dedications in the public spaces of Rome on a daily basis. The reason members of the Roman elite had in the past routinely listed priesthoods along with the rest of their honores was the prestige they brought. Even before the 380s it was becoming clear that they were now becoming liabilities. It was not prudent to flaunt them.
Quote ID: 6051
Time Periods: 124
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 271
Section: 2C
For any Roman antiquarian who had done his homework, paganus meant “countryman.” But among Christians, of course, the standard meaning of the word was not “pagan” (Ch.1).
Quote ID: 6096
Time Periods: 4
Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World
Ed. G.W. Bowerrsock, Peter Brown, Oleg Grabar
Book ID: 126 Page: 83
Section: 1A,2C
The unselfconsciousness of traditional religion in the Roman empire--what we call “paganism” or “polytheism”-- is manifest especially in its lack of a distinctive name for itself. Threskeia, eusebeia, and nomos; hieros, hosios, and hagios; religio and pietas; sacer and santus: all these words lack specific historical reference contained in such terms as “Jew” or “Christian”.
Quote ID: 2879
Time Periods: 0123
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 187/188
Section: 2C,4B
“In particular, Roman landowning families, with their strong cultural traditions, provided many of the powerful bishops of the period, and Latin continued to be used as the language of administration and culture.”
Quote ID: 6178
Time Periods: 45
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 58b
Section: 2C,3C
Constantine referred to himself as “the bishop of those outside the church” or “the thirteenth apostle”.
Quote ID: 6117
Time Periods: 4
Legacy of Greece, The
Edited by R. W. Livingstone
Book ID: 469 Page: 29
Section: 2C,4A
If Nietzsche was right in calling Plato a Christian before Christ, I do not therefore regard him as an unhellenic Greek. Rather, I trace back to him and so to Greece, the religion and the political philosophy of the Christian Church….Essay by W. R. Inge (on Religion)
Quote ID: 9127
Time Periods: 2347
Livy, History of Rome, LCL 114: Livy I, Books 1-2
B. O. Foster, Trans.
Book ID: 356 Page: 71
Section: 2C
In like manner he designated virgins for Vesta’s service—a priesthood, this, that derived from Alba and so was not unsuited to the founder’s stock. That they might be perpetual priestesses of the temple, he assigned them a stipend from the public treasury, and by the rule of virginity and other observances invested them with awe and sanctity.
Quote ID: 8145
Time Periods: 0
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Bart D. Ehrman
Book ID: 420 Page: 140/141
Section: 2C,3A2B
His opponents, including the young and already feisty John Milton, argued that the letters of Ignatius were forgeries of later times, fabricated, in part, precisely in order to justify the later creation of the office. Among all the participants in this debate, it was Ussher himself who cut through the Gordion knot by showing that of the thirteen widely circulated letters of Ignatius, six were forgeries and the rest had undergone illicit expansion by the author of the forgeries. But there were authentic Ignatian letters as well, and we still have them, preserved in their shorter, more original form in several surviving manuscripts.This Judgment, with some slight modification, is still the consensus among scholars who work in the field today.{5} We have seven of Ignatius’s letters. And even stripping away the fabricated expansions, these give a clear picture of one proto-orthodox author’s view of church structure.
Quote ID: 8601
Time Periods: 257
Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament
Bart D. Ehrman
Book ID: 427 Page: 116
Section: 2C
But Dema and Hermogenes said to Thamyris, “Say that he is a Christian, and you will destroy him.”
Quote ID: 8687
Time Periods: 1
Love Affairs of the Vatican, The
Dr. Angelo S. Rappoport
Book ID: 250 Page: 27
Section: 3A1,2C
Gregory’s aim was to isolate the priests from society, to turn them into a praetorian guard of the Pope. The Pontiff was to be a king, an emperor; he was to be above the sovereigns of the world, and as such he, too, must have his armies and his guards.Pastor John’s note: Gregory VII (Pope 2073–1085)
Quote ID: 6264
Time Periods: 7
Making of a Christian Aristocracy, The
Michele Renee Salzman
Book ID: 297 Page: 182/183
Section: 2C
Some twenty years after the death of Constantius II, the emperor Gratian’s actions occasioned the first documented public protestation by pagan senators. In 382 Gratian confiscated monies intended for maintaining public sacrifices and ceremonies, confiscated property willed by aristocrats and Vestals for the upkeep of pagan ritual, and put an end to the exemption of pagan religious officials from compulsory public duties. He also ordered the removal of the altar, but not statue, of Victory from the Roman senate. Soon after, Gratian publicly repudiated paganism by renouncing the title of pontifex maximus.{18}
Quote ID: 7448
Time Periods: 4
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 55/56
Section: 2A3,2C,4B
The martyrs were not merely protesters against conventional religion, nor were they particularly noteworthy as men and women who faced execution with unusual courage: as the notables of Smyrna told a later bishop, they were too used to professional stars of violence – to gladiators and beast hunters – to be unduly impressed by those who made a performance out of making light of death. {8} Rather, the martyrs stood for a particular style of religious experience. “The primitive Christians,” wrote Gibbon, “perpetually trod on mystic ground.” {9} The Christians admired their martyrs because they had made themselves the “friends of God”; they summed up in their persons the aspirations of a group made separate from, and far superior to, their fellow men by reason of a special intimacy with the divine.The rise of the Christian church in the late second and third centuries is the rise of a body of men led by self-styled “friends of God,” who claimed to have found dominance over the “earthly” forces of their world through a special relation to heaven.
. . . .
Friendship with God raised the Christians above the identity they shared with their fellows. The nomen Christianum they flaunted was a “non-name.” It excluded the current names of kin and township and pointed deliberately to a widening hole in the network of social relations by which other inhabitants of the Roman towns were still content to establish their identity: “He resisted them with such determination that he would not even tell them his own name, his race, or the city he was from, whether he was a slave or a freedman. To all their questions he answered in Latin: ‘I am a Christian!’” {10}
Quote ID: 6310
Time Periods: 23
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 64/65
Section: 2C,4B
In a society that knew all about the immediate social effects of friendship and patronage, the emergence of men and women who claimed intimate relations with invisible patrons meant far more than the rise of a tender religiosity of personal experience, and more than the groping of lonely men for invisible companionship. It meant that yet another form of “power” was available for the inhabitants of a Mediterranean city.The problems that Late Antique men faced, therefore, were not whether such power existed, nor whether it rested solely in the Christian church. The power had to be focused and its apparently random distribution canalized trenchantly and convincingly onto a definite class of individuals and a definitive institution. Hence the importance of the rise of the Christian bishop in the third century, and of the Christian holy man in the fourth century.
In the second century, the boundaries between the human and the divine had remained exceptionally fluid. The religious language of the age is the language of an open frontier. . .
Quote ID: 6319
Time Periods: 234
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 106
Section: 2C,4B
It is interesting that Cicero’s Balbus, despite his Stoicism, applauds the views of Cotta, a religious sceptic who was none the less Pontifex Maximus, in rejecting the arguments of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers for the existence of gods, as being subject to logical suspicion and therefore unacceptable as a basis of religious conduct. {8} Instead, the only basis Cotta can accept was that of tradition, the mos maiorum and that was to be accepted without question.{9}. . . .
‘If we reject devotion towards the gods, good faith and all associations of human life and the best of virtues, justice, may also disappear.’{11}
. . . .
Roman religion was therefore less a matter of personal devotion than of national cult.{13}
. . . .
A religio was licita for a particular group on the basis of tribe or nationality and traditional practices, coupled with the proviso that its rites were not offensive to the Roman people or their gods.
Quote ID: 3183
Time Periods: 01
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 106
Section: 2C
…the views of Cotta, a religious sceptic who was none the less Pontifex Maximus, in rejecting the arguments of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers for the existence of gods, as being subject to logical suspicion and therefore unacceptable as a basis of religious conduct.{8} Instead, the only basis Cotta can accept was that of tradition, the mos maiorum--and that was to be accepted without question.{9}
Quote ID: 7660
Time Periods: 04
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 179
Section: 2C
From the scattered evidence of the Rabbinic sources, we can trace how, in the thirty or forty years after the fall of Jerusalem, the Christians in Palestine faded into a despised and dwindling heretical sect of Nazoreans.3
Quote ID: 7665
Time Periods: 12
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 179
Section: 2C
The Jewish canon of Scripture was drawn up so as to exclude the Gospels and about the same time the sentence was added by Rabbi Samuel the Lesser to the traditional malediction of separatists, ‘Let the Christian (notzrim) and the heretics (minim) perish as in a moment. Let them be wiped out of the book of life and with the righteous let them not be written’.{6 This petition was not intended as empty words. Gamaliel ordered the Benedictions to be recited three times a day.{7} It effectively excluded Christians from synagogue worship. From the Jewish point of view the separation was now complete.{8}
Quote ID: 7666
Time Periods: 1
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 251
Section: 2C,4A
His claim that some of the philosophers were ‘Christians before Christ’, prepared the way for the more generous assertion of Clement that ‘philosophy was the schoolmaster to bring the Greek mind to Christ, as the Law brought the Hebrews’,{97}…
Quote ID: 7673
Time Periods: 2
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 259
Section: 2C,4B
As the decade 150-160 wore on, Christians gradually concentrated on themselves the hatred of the Greek-speaking world previously reserved for the Jews.. . . .
The key to the deepening wave of hatred was the accusation of ‘atheism’,{154} – the old battle cry of Greek provincial against the Jew, and now turned against the Christians.
Quote ID: 7675
Time Periods: 2
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 67
Section: 2D2,2C
One of the most profound and most persistent roles of the Virgin Mary in history has been her function as a bridge builder to other traditions, other cultures, and other religions. From the Latin word for “bridge builder” care the term pontifex, a priestly title in Roman paganism. In the form pontifex maximus it became one of the terms in the cult of the divine Roman emperor, and for that reason it was disavowed by Christian emperors already in the fourth century. Not long thereafter it was taken up by Christian bishops and archbishops.
Quote ID: 3212
Time Periods: 2345
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 130
Section: 2D2,2C
As “the Queen of Angels, the ruling Lady of the world, and the Mother of him who purifies the world,” she could acquire such titles as these: Mother of Truth; Mother and Daughter of Humility; Mother of Christians; Mother of Peace; My Most Merciful Lady. She was also called, in a term reminiscent of Augustine, the City of God.….
What set the devotion and thought of this period apart from what preceded it was the growing emphasis on the office of Mary as Mediatrix. The title itself seems to have appeared first in Eastern theology, where she was addressed as “the Mediatrix of law and of grace.”
Quote ID: 3221
Time Periods: 45
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 132/133
Section: 2C,2D2
Mary’s cooperation in the plan of salvation helped to explain the puzzling circumstance in the Gospel narratives, that after his resurrection Christ had not appeared first to his mother: “Why should he have appeared to her when she undoubtedly knew about the resurrection even before he suffered and rose?”….
This title Mediatrix, however, applied not only to Mary’s place in the history of salvation but also to her continuing position as intercessor between Christ and humanity.
….
The remembrance of Mary’s “ancient mercies” aroused in a believer the hope and confidence to “return to thee [Mary], and through thee to God the Father and to thy only Son,” so that it was possible to “demand salvation of thee [Mary].” The consummation of the believer’s glory was the awareness that Mary stood as the Mediatrix between him and her Son; in fact, God had chosen her for the specific task of pleading the cause of humanity before her Son. And so she was “the Mother of the kingdom of heaven, Mary, the Mother of God, my only refuge in every need.”
Quote ID: 3224
Time Periods: 47
Material Evidence for Early Christian Groups during the First Two Centuries C.E.
William Tabbernee
Book ID: 455 Page: 291
Section: 2C
PJ Note: This is an internet article https://www.academia.edu/27317349/Material_Evidence_for_Early_Christian_Groups_during_the_First_Two_Centuries_C_E.Some of the earliest uses of the actual word “Christian” or “Christians” on tombstones also come from Phrygia. One of these, from Hierapolis (Pamukkale), reads: “For Ammia and Asklepios. The (coffin is that) of Christians” (IMont 10). This inscription, carved on the side of a sarcophagus lid, definitely pre-dates the year 212 and may be as early as ca. 170 to 180.{19}
Quote ID: 8951
Time Periods: 2
Material Evidence for Early Christian Groups during the First Two Centuries C.E.
William Tabbernee
Book ID: 455 Page: 292
Section: 2C
The earliest dated Phrygian inscription containing the word “Christian” discovered thus far is IMont 17. It bears the date 327 (Sullan era), i.e., 242/3 C.E., as well as a Latin cross (which appears to be contemporary rather than added later).{22}
Quote ID: 8952
Time Periods: 24
Material Evidence for Early Christian Groups during the First Two Centuries C.E.
William Tabbernee
Book ID: 455 Page: 293
Section: 2C
Another possible candidate for the earliest extant inscription comes from the Via Latina in Rome, now in the Capitoline Museum (Nuovo Catalogo Epigraphico [NCE] 156 = Eig. 9).{27} A solid case can be made on paleographical grounds for dating this inscription to the Antonine period (138-192 C.E.)
Quote ID: 8953
Time Periods: 2
Material Evidence for Early Christian Groups during the First Two Centuries C.E.
William Tabbernee
Book ID: 455 Page: 293
Section: 2C
Other likely Valentinian inscriptions have survived from the same general location (CIG 4.9595a;IMont75). The first of these, the tombstone of Flavia Sophe, may be as early as the late second century, although it may also belong to the third century.{31}
Quote ID: 8954
Time Periods: 23
Material Evidence for Early Christian Groups during the First Two Centuries C.E.
William Tabbernee
Book ID: 455 Page: 294
Section: 2C
Ca. 180-200 is also the earliest we can date distinctively Christian art, symbols, and inscriptions in the Roman catacombs,{32} including the well-known [GREEK] acrostic.{33}
Quote ID: 8955
Time Periods: 23
Material Evidence for Early Christian Groups during the First Two Centuries C.E.
William Tabbernee
Book ID: 455 Page: 295
Section: 2C
Another Roman graffito from ca. 200 or slightly later mocks a Christian named Alexamenos for allegedly worshipping a crucified donkey as his god (see Fig. 12). The charge was a common one (cf. Minucius Felix, Oct. 9.3; Tertullian, Apol. 16.12).
Quote ID: 8956
Time Periods: 23
Material Evidence for Early Christian Groups during the First Two Centuries C.E.
William Tabbernee
Book ID: 455 Page: 295
Section: 2C
Apart from Rome and Phrygia, there are few, if any, indisputably Christian inscriptions which can be securely dated prior to the year 200.
Quote ID: 8957
Time Periods: 23
Material Evidence for Early Christian Groups during the First Two Centuries C.E.
William Tabbernee
Book ID: 455 Page: 296
Section: 2C
Some inscriptions or graffiti, such as the famous rotas/sator palindrome (see Fig. 13), discovered (among other places) at Pompeii, clearly belong to the first two centuries of the Common Era, but their connection with Christianity is not assured.{43} Another example is a (possibly) first-century C.E. bowl, found in Alexandria’s harbor. It is inscribed with the phrase [GREEK], but the second word need have no connection at all with “Christ,” as Chrestos was not an unusual name.{44}
Quote ID: 8958
Time Periods: 12
Material Evidence for Early Christian Groups during the First Two Centuries C.E.
William Tabbernee
Book ID: 455 Page: 299
Section: 2C,2E3
Even for Jerusalem, Judaea, Galilee and the whole of Syria Palaestina―the area where Christianity originated—indisputably Christian material evidence from the first two centuries simply does not exist.
Quote ID: 8962
Time Periods: 12
Material Evidence for Early Christian Groups during the First Two Centuries C.E.
William Tabbernee
Book ID: 455 Page: 301
Section: 2C,2E7
In the meantime we need to recognize that very few likely Christian artifacts able to be dated prior to 180 have survived and that the Christian nature of anything earlier than the beginning of the Antonine period (ca. 138) remains highly controversial….
Quote ID: 8964
Time Periods: 1234
Medieval Saints: A Reader
Edited by Mary-Ann Stouck
Book ID: 151 Page: 46
Section: 2C
Galerius Maximus the proconsul said: “Have you taken on yourself to be pope a term originally applying to all bishops of persons holding sacrilegious opinions?”Cyprian the bishop answered: “Yes.”
Quote ID: 3251
Time Periods: 3
Medieval Saints: A Reader
Edited by Mary-Ann Stouck
Book ID: 151 Page: 569
Section: 1B,2C
In this way our sweet Lord was born on earth,To begin Christianity,
Quote ID: 3258
Time Periods: 17
Medieval Saints: A Reader
Edited by Mary-Ann Stouck
Book ID: 151 Page: 569
Section: 1B,2C
He was twenty-nine years old before he armed himself for it,And started to do battle for Christendom.
Quote ID: 3259
Time Periods: 17
Medieval Saints: A Reader
Edited by Mary-Ann Stouck
Book ID: 151 Page: 571
Section: 1B,2C
Well ought we to love Christendom that has been bought at such a price,With the heart’s blood of our Lord, pierced by the spear.
Quote ID: 3260
Time Periods: 17
Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, The
Candida Moss
Book ID: 386 Page: 139
Section: 2C
Jesus followers themselves do not appear to have begun using the name “Christian” until, at the earliest, the very end of the first century.
Quote ID: 8335
Time Periods: 1
Nova Historia [New History]
Zosimus Historicus
Book ID: 376 Page: 172
Section: 2C,3C
Upon the elevation of any one to the imperial dignity, the pontifices brought him the priestly habit, and he was immediately styled, Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest. All former emperors, indeed, appeared gratified with the distinction, and willingly adopted the title. Even Constantine himself,
Quote ID: 8240
Time Periods: 4
Nova Historia [New History]
Zosimus Historicus
Book ID: 376 Page: 172
Section: 2C,3C
PJ Note: IV.36.But when the Pontifices, in the accustomed manner, brought the sacred robe to Gratian, he considering it a garment unlawful for a Christian to use, rejected their offer.
Quote ID: 8241
Time Periods: 4
Organization of the Early Christian Churches, The
Edwin Hatch, M. A.
Book ID: 255 Page: 86/87
Section: 2D1,2C
Lecture IV: The Supremacy of the Bishop.I. In the first place, there were some cases in which an Apostle had been supreme during his lifetime, and in which the tradition of personal supremacy lingered after his death; there were others in which the oversight of a community had been specially entrusted by an Apostle to some one officer; there were others in which special powers or special merits gave to some one man a predominant influence. Rome, Antioch, Ephesus, are examples of such cases. It is, indeed, wholly uncertain how far they are typical; and there is a probability that, where such supremacy existed, it was personal rather than official, inasmuch as those who exercised it do not appear to have had as such any distinguishing appellation. In later times they were entitled ‘bishops:’ the Clementines speak of James, ‘the Lord’s brother, as ‘archbishop’ and ‘bishop of bishops{3}:’ the subscriptions of some versions and late MSS. of the Pastoral Epistles speak of Timothy and Titus as ‘bishops’ respectively of Ephesus and Crete{4}: but there is no early evidence of the use of these titles in this relation{5}: and on the other hand Irenaeus calls Polycarp indifferently ‘bishop’ and ‘presbyter{6}:’ and, what is even more significant in a formal letter to the head of the Roman Church, in which, from the circumstances of the case, he would be least likely to omit any form of either right or courtesy, he speaks of his predecessors by name as ‘presbyters{7}.’
[Footnote 3] Clementin. Recog. I. 73 ‘Jacobus archiepiscopus’ (so in later times, e.g. Conc. Ephes. c. 30 Greek needed here): Epist. Clem. ad Jacob. inscr. (Greek needed here).
[Footnote 4] The earliest MS. which does so is probably the Codex Coislensis of the sixth century: the version which does so is the Peschito: the statement which contains the word is omitted in the greater MSS. and in the early Latin versions.
[Footnote 5] The earliest use of the word with a definite reference to an individual is the inscription of the letter of Ignatius to Polycarp: (Greek needed here): but the absence of the definite article, and the inscription of Polycarp’s own letter, (Greek needed here), are inconsistent with the hypothesis that the word was already specially appropriated to the head of the community. The next earliest use of the word is probably in reference to Polycarp in the letter of Polycrates to Victor, ap. Euseb. H. E. 5.24. It is worthy of note, i. that these earliest uses are in reference to officers of the Asiatic Churches, i.e. in the neighborhood of communities in which (Greek needed here) was already a title of certain secular offices (see Lecture II, notes 26, 28): ii. that Hegesippus does not give any title to the heads of the Roman Church.
[Footnote 6] S. Iren. Epist. ad Florin. ap. Euseb. H. E. 5. 20. 7, (Greek needed here): adv. Haeres. 3. 3. 4 (Greek needed here).
[Footnote 7] S. Iren. Epist. ad Victor. ap. Euseb. H. E. 5. 24. 14 (Greek needed here). So late as the third century, the extant epitaphs of Roman bishops do not give the title episcopus : De Rossi, Bulletino di Archeologia Christ. ann. ii. 1864, p. 50.
Quote ID: 6408
Time Periods: 3
Organization of the Early Christian Churches, The
Edwin Hatch, M. A.
Book ID: 255 Page: 119
Section: 2C
Lecture V: Clergy and Laity.The distinctions which St. Paul makes between Christians are based not upon office, but upon varieties of spiritual power. They are caused by the diversity of the operations of the Holy Spirit. They are consequently personal and individual.
. . . .
Some of these spiritual powers are distinguished from others by a greater visible and outward effect : but they are all the same in kind. The gift of ruling is not different in kind from the gift of healing. The expression ‘he that ruleth’ is coordinate with ‘he that exhorteth,’ ‘he that giveth,’ ‘he that sheweth mercy{16}.’
Quote ID: 6426
Time Periods: 1
Organization of the Early Christian Churches, The
Edwin Hatch, M. A.
Book ID: 255 Page: 141
Section: 2C
Lecture VI: The Clergy as a Separate Class.I. In the first place, the State conceded to the officers of the Christian Churches those immunities which were enjoyed by the heathen priesthood and by some of the liberal professions{4}.
Quote ID: 6428
Time Periods: 3456
Organization of the Early Christian Churches, The
Edwin Hatch, M. A.
Book ID: 255 Page: 159
Section: 2C
Lecture VI: The Clergy as a Separate Class.The legislation which affected social life began by excluding clergy from the amusements of life, and went on gradually to exclude them from its ordinary pursuits, and at last, though not for some centuries, clenched the distinction by requiring them to wear a special dress{51}.
[Footnote 51] There are many injunctions to the clergy in earlier centuries to use modest and becoming dress : but there is probably no direct enactment as to the form of dress which the clergy should wear in ordinary life earlier than the Capitulary of Karloman in 742.
Quote ID: 6436
Time Periods: 7
Organization of the Early Christian Churches, The
Edwin Hatch, M. A.
Book ID: 255 Page: 170
Section: 2C,3A1
Lecture VII: Councils and the Unity of the Church.These latter were held upon a strictly local basis : they followed the lines of the civil assemblies whose ordinary designation they appropriated. They followed them also in meeting in the metropolis of the province. The bishop of that metropolis was their ordinary president : in this respect there was a difference between the civil and the ecclesiastical assemblies, for in the former the president was elected from year to year. In this way the bishop of the metropolis came to have a preeminence over the other bishops of a province. By a natural process, just as the vote and sanction of a bishop had become necessary to the validity of the election of a presbyter, so the vote and sanction of a metropolitan became necessary to the validity of the election of a bishop{14}. In time a further advance was made. Just as civil provinces were grouped into dioceses, and the governors of a ‘province’ were subordinated to the governor of a ‘diocese,’ so a gradation was recognized between the bishop of the chief city of a province and the bishop of the chief city of a diocese. In both cases the civil names were retained : the former were called metropolitans, the latter exarchs or patriarchs{15}.
Quote ID: 6441
Time Periods: 45
Organization of the Early Christian Churches, The
Edwin Hatch, M. A.
Book ID: 255 Page: 177/178
Section: 1A,2C,3A1,3C
Lecture VII: Councils and the Unity of the Church.In this way it was that, by the help of the State, the Christian Churches were consolidated into a great confederation. Whatever weakness there was in the bond of a common faith was compensated for by the strength of civil coercion. But that civil coercion was not long needed. For the Church outlived the power which had welded it together. As the forces of the Empire became less and less, the forces of the Church became more and more. The Churches preserved that which had been from the first the secret of Imperial strength. For underneath the Empire which changed and passed, beneath the shifting pageantry of Emperors who moved across the stage and were seen no more, was the abiding empire of law and administration, – which changed only as the deep sea changes beneath the wind-swept waves. That inner empire was continued in the Christian Churches. In the years of transition from the ancient to the modern world, when all civilized society seemed to be disintegrated, the confederation of the Christian Churches, by the very fact of its existence upon the old imperial lines, was not only the most powerful, but the only powerful organization in the civilized world.
. . . .
This confederation, and no other, was the ‘city of God;’ this, and no other, was the ‘body of Christ;’ this, and no other, was the ‘Holy Catholic Church.’
Quote ID: 6447
Time Periods: 147
Organization of the Early Christian Churches, The
Edwin Hatch, M. A.
Book ID: 255 Page: 185
Section: 3A1,2C,3C
Lecture VII‘Your Catholic Church,’ they said to their opponents, ‘is a geographical expression: it means the union of so many societies in so many provinces or in so many nations: our Catholic Church is the union of all those who are Christians in deed as well as in word: it depends not upon intercommunion, but upon the observance of all the divine commands and Sacraments: it is perfect, and it is immaculate’ {47}.
The Donatists were crushed: but they were crushed by the State. They had resisted State interference: Quid Imperatori cum ecclesia? They asked {48}. But the Catholic party had already begun its invocation of the secular power: and the secular power made ecclesiastical puritanism a capital crime{49}.
Quote ID: 6449
Time Periods: 456
Organization of the Early Christian Churches, The
Edwin Hatch, M. A.
Book ID: 255 Page: 195
Section: 2C,3A2A
Lecture VIII(4) Another group of circumstances was that of the great estates, upon which many Christians were resident, but which probably lay outside the jurisdiction of the municipal magistrates {14}. The fact that the owner was supreme, and that all others who lived on an estate were either serfs or slaves, probably prevented the free growth of that kind of organization which had come to exist elsewhere. The owner seems to have appointed church officers as he would have appointed farm-bailiffs. He could do so of his own mere motion, without regard to the ecclesiastical organization of any other place, because there was no one whose rights were thereby touched. Dioceses in the later sense of the term did not yet exist, and the system of subordinating one community to another had hardly begun.
. . . .
. . . .a limitation of the rights of owners in this respect became necessary in the interests of orthodoxy: and the imperial legislation, with its usual support of the Catholic party, enacted that any presbyter who was appointed to minister on an estate should first be approved by the bishop of the neighbouring city {16}. This enactment seems to have been evaded by ceasing to appoint presbyters. The imperial legislation consequently interfered again, and prohibited laymen from meeting for public worship without the presence of an authorized office {17}.
Quote ID: 6451
Time Periods: 456
Origen: Contra Celsum
Henry Chadwick
Book ID: 164 Page: 392
Section: 2C
If anyone should want to see many bodies filled with a divine spirit, ministering to the salvation of men everywhere after the pattern of the one Christ, let him realize that those who in many places teach the doctrine of Jesus rightly and live an upright life are themselves also called Christs by the divine scriptures in the words: ‘Touch not my Christs and do my prophets no harm.’Moreover, just as we have heard that ‘antichrist is coming’, and have learnt no less that there are ‘many antichrists’ in the world, in the same way knowing that Christ has come we see that because of him there have been many Christs in the world, who like him have ‘loved righteousness and hated iniquity’; and on this account God, the God of Christ, has even anointed them with the oil of gladness.
Quote ID: 3455
Time Periods: 3
Origins of Modern Europe, The
R. Allen Brown
Book ID: 256 Page: 58/60
Section: 2C,3A1
Bishops in, as it were, historically recognizable form scarcely appear to our knowledge before the second century, but when they do we can begin to see also the organization for the Church inevitably following the pattern of Roman civil organization. In the West, not the least of the ‘non-religious’ contributions of the Church to the future will be the preservation of something of the fabric, and much of the concept, of classical Roman government and administration . . .. . . .
Thus early ecclesiastical organization, like Roman society and administration, was essentially urban, a bishop residing in a city and presiding over the Christian community within it, and presiding also over the wide surrounding and dependent countryside of the city, which will become his diocese. The majority of early Christians being townsfolk, and the countryfolk outside the towns being backward in respect of religion, the Latin word for countryman, paganus, became synonymous with unbeliever, and hence the word ‘pagan’.
. . . .
. . . the inevitable following out a stage further of the pattern of Roman civil administration. Thus when, as was necessary, conferences, councils or synods were called to discuss ecclesiastical affairs, it was natural and convenient that they should assemble at the principal city, the capital or metropolis of an existing Roman province, and thus a certain pre-eminence accrued to the bishop of that city, who will in due course become the metropolitan, i.e. the archbishop.
Quote ID: 6487
Time Periods: 456
Origins of Modern Europe, The
R. Allen Brown
Book ID: 256 Page: 63
Section: 2C,4B
We know, but they did not, that the last visit of a Roman Emperor to Rome took place in 663, and that the last Pope to visit Constantinople was Constantine I in 710. For centuries the Popes (who began to appropriate the title papa, pope, once applicable to any bishop, . . .
Quote ID: 6490
Time Periods: 7
Origins of Modern Europe, The
R. Allen Brown
Book ID: 256 Page: 139
Section: 2C
Simony is the sin of Simon Magus, who, the Bible tells us, offered money to St. Peter for the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is, then, the sin of the purchase of spiritual office: there is no doubt of its prevalence in the tenth and eleventh centuries; and it is almost impossible to do justice to the vehemence with which the reformers of the day denounced it.
Quote ID: 6497
Time Periods: 7
Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans
A. T. Fear
Book ID: 165 Page: 32
Section: 2C
You had instructed me to write against the arrogant wickedness of those who are strangers from the city of God and are called pagans, taking their name from crossroads and fields in the countryside, or otherwise gentiles because they know of the things of this world. {5}. . . .
[Footnote 5] The use of pagan in this sense was a recent innovation in Christian rhetoric. Oroisus here is distinguishing between the pagans of town and country, but also skillfully uses the classical preference for urban life here by contrasting the city of God with the countryside of the pagans. To the ancient mind country men were notoriously stubborn and slow-witted and so this contrast also fits with Orosius’s claims about pagan blindness in failing to see the obvious truth of Christianity. For further discussion of ‘pagan’, see O’Donnell (1977).
Quote ID: 3475
Time Periods: 45
Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans
A. T. Fear
Book ID: 165 Page: 330
Section: 2C
At the beginning of his reign, Peter, the apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, came to Rome and with his trustworthy words preached the Faith that brings salvation to all who believe, providing its truth with his mighty miracles......
Jerome, Chronicle, A Abr. 2058. Jerome merely mentions that Peter founded the church at Rome and was bishop there for twenty-five years.
Quote ID: 3484
Time Periods: 145
Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices
Frank Viola
Book ID: 168 Page: 45
Section: 2A5,2C
Under Luther’s influence, the Protestant pastor simply replaced the Catholic priest.
Quote ID: 3528
Time Periods: 7
Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices
Frank Viola
Book ID: 168 Page: 81
Section: 2C
To fill his absence, the clergy-caste began to emerge.
Quote ID: 3539
Time Periods: 7
Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices
Frank Viola
Book ID: 168 Page: 109
Section: 2C
Almost to his dying day, Constantine “still functioned as the high priest of paganism.” {78} In fact, he retained the pagan title Pontifex Maximus, which means chief of the pagan priests! {79} (In the 15th century, this same title became the honorific title for the Catholic Pope!) {80}
Quote ID: 3556
Time Periods: 234
Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices
Frank Viola
Book ID: 168 Page: 154/155
Section: 2C
As we have already seen, the role of the bishop began to change from being the head of a local church to becoming the representative of everybody in a given area. {76} Bishops ruled over the churches just like Roman governors ruled over their provinces. {77} Eventually, the bishop of Rome was given the most authority of all and finally evolved into the “Pope.” {78}Thus between the years A.D. 100 and A.D. 300, church leadership came to be patterned after the leadership of the Roman government. {79} And the hierarchy of the Old Testament was used to justify it. {80} The one-bishop-rule had swallowed up the priesthood of all believers.
Ignatius effectively made the bishop the local authority. Cyprian made him a representative of all the churches by his doctrine of apostolic succession. {81}
[Footnote 78] Before Constantine, the Roman bishop exercised no jurisdiction outside of Rome. While he was honored, he did not have that kind of ecclesiastical authority (Church History in Plain Language, p. 151). The word “pope” comes from the title “papa,” a term used to express the fatherly care of any bishop. It was not until the sixth century that the term began to be used exclusively for the bishop of Rome. Here is a brief sketch of the origin of the Roman Catholic Pope: At the end of the second century, Roman bishops were given great honor. Stephen I (d. 257) was the first to use the Petrine text (Matthew 18:18) to support the preeminence of the Roman bishop. But this was not universally held. The emergence of the modern Pope can be traced to Leo the Great (440-461). Leo was the first to make a theological and Biblical claim for the primacy of the Roman bishop. Under him, the primacy of Rome was finally established. With the coming of Gregory the Great (540-604), the “papal chair” was extended and enhanced. (Incidentally, Gregory became by far the largest landowner in Italy, setting a precedent for rich and powerful Popes to follow.) By the mid-third century, the Roman church had 30,000 members, 150 clergyman, and 1500 widows and poor people.
Quote ID: 3587
Time Periods: 12345
Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices
Frank Viola
Book ID: 168 Page: 158
Section: 2C
From A.D. 313-325, Christianity was no longer a struggling religion trying to survive the Roman government. It was basking in the sun of imperialism, loaded with money and status. {95} To be a Christian under Constantine’s reign was no longer a handicap. It was an advantage. It was fashionable to become a part of the Emperor’s religion. And to be among the clergy was to receive the greatest of advantages. {96}
Quote ID: 3589
Time Periods: 4
Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices
Frank Viola
Book ID: 168 Page: 159
Section: 2C
It should come as no surprise that so many people in Constantine’s day experienced a sudden “call to the ministry.” {110} To their minds, being a church officer had become more of a career than a calling. {111}
Quote ID: 3590
Time Periods: 4
Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices
Frank Viola
Book ID: 168 Page: 164
Section: 2C
During the third century, “ordination” took on an entirely different meaning. It was a formalized Christian rite. {138} By the fourth century, the ceremony of ordination was embellished by symbolic garments and solemn ritual. {139} Ordination produced an ecclesiastical caste that usurped the believing priesthood.
Quote ID: 3591
Time Periods: 34
Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices
Frank Viola
Book ID: 168 Page: 169
Section: 2C
The Anabaptists believed it was every Christian’s right to stand up and speak in a meeting. It was not the domain of the clergy. Luther was so opposed to this practice that he said it came from “the pit of hell” and those who were guilty of it should be put to death! {168} (Behold your heritage dear Protestant Christian!)
Quote ID: 3592
Time Periods: 7
Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices
Frank Viola
Book ID: 168 Page: 175/176
Section: 2C
In short, the Protestant Reformation struck a blow to Roman Catholic sacerdotalism. But it was not a fatal blow. The Reformers still retained the one-bishop-rule. It merely underwent a semantic change. The Pastor now played the role of the bishop. He came to be regarded as the local head of a church—the leading elder. {208} As one writer put it, “In Protestantism, the preachers tend to be the spokesmen and representatives of the church and the church is often the preacher’s church. This is a great danger and threat to the Christian religion, not unrelated to clericalism.” {209}
Quote ID: 3593
Time Periods: 7
Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices
Frank Viola
Book ID: 168 Page: 193/194
Section: 2C
With the coming of Constantine, distinctions between bishop, priest, and deacon began to take root. {28} When Constantine moved his court to Byzantium and renamed it Constantinople in A.D. 330, the official Roman dress was gradually adopted by the priests and deacons. {29} The clergy were now identified by wearing the garb of secular officials. {30}After the Germanic conquests of the Roman Empire from the fourth century onward, fashions in secular dress changed. The flowing garments of the Romans gave way to the short tunics of the Goths. But the clergy, wishing to remain distinct from the laity, continued to wear the old-fashioned and archaic Roman costumes! {31}
The clergy wore these outdated garments during the church service following the model of the secular court ritual. {32} When laymen adopted the new style of dress, the clergy believed that such dress was “worldly” and “barbarian.” They retained what they considered to be “civilized” dress. And this is what became the clerical costume. {33} This practice was supported by the theologians of the day. For example, Jerome (347-420) remarked that the clergy should never enter into the sanctuary wearing everyday garments. {34}
Quote ID: 3595
Time Periods: 45
Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices
Frank Viola
Book ID: 168 Page: 237
Section: 2C
The phrase “Personal Savior” is yet another modern innovation that grew out of the ethos of 19th-century American revivalism. {17}
Quote ID: 3597
Time Periods: 7
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 1
Section: 2C
The embittered husband then denounced his former wife to the authorities on the charge of being a Christian. She was immediately arrested, but then granted a temporary release by the emperor so that she might put her affairs in order before reporting to the court to answer the accusation. The husband now denounced the woman’s instructor in the Christian faith, a man by the name of Ptolemaeus, who was also arrested, put in chains, and carried off to prison, where he endured a long period of harsh treatment. Finally the day of his trial arrived, and he was led before the judge, Urbicus. Urbicus asked only one question of Ptolemaeus: “Are you a Christian?” When he replied in the affirmative, Ptolemaeus was sentenced to death and, since death sentences in Rome were carried out immediately, led away to execution. A certain Lucius, having witnessed the proceeding, rose in indignation and cried out to the judge: “Why did you pass such a sentence? Was this man convicted of a crime? Is he an adulterer, a murderer, a robber? All he did was confess that he was a Christian!” To this Urbicus replied: “It seems that you are a Christian too!” “Yes,” said Lucius, “I am!” Urbicus promptly had him executed as well. A third Christian now came forward and received the same sentence. Justin, a philospher and later Christian martyr (ca. 100-ca. 165), heard about this incident and in protest wrote a letter to the emperor, which has survived under the name of The Second Apology of Justin Martyr.
Quote ID: 3604
Time Periods: 2
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 2
Section: 2C
Justin himself, in his First Apology, addressed to Emperor Atoninus Pius, begged for nothing more than that specific charges be presented against the Christians and that only if the charges were substantiated should the persons involved be punished as they deserved. But, he argued, if no one could bring proof of criminal activities then their punishment simply for being Christian was a gross violation of reason and justice.
Quote ID: 3606
Time Periods: 2
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 2
Section: 2C
Some twenty years later, Athenagoras, “The Athenian philosopher and Christian,” as he is identified in the title of his essay, wrote A Plea for the Christians, addressing it to Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus (ca. 177). Athenagoras started with the same complait:
Quote ID: 3607
Time Periods: 2
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 3
Section: 2C
“No name of a crime stands against us, but only the crime of a name,” Tertullian cried in Ad nationes. “What crime, what offence, what fault is there in a name?” He went on to explain, as Justin had done before him, that since Chrestos means good, the name should not be punished.
Quote ID: 3610
Time Periods: 23
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 5
Section: 2C
Pliny’s letter to Trajan is an important source on early Christianity. Because of his legal training and experience in government, Trajan chose Pliny as governor of the province of Bithynia-and-Pontus, where he served from September 111 until his death in 113. The province was in state of disorder, and Trajan gave Pliny considerable freedom to do whatever was needed to restore law and order.…..
Pliny saved copies of his letters together with Trajan’s replies and later published them. The correspondences has survived, and it is one of these exchanges of letters, dated 111, that deals with the Christians.
Quote ID: 3612
Time Periods: 2
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 5
Section: 2C
(the letters)It is a rule, Sir, which I inviolably observe, to refer to you in I all my doubts; for who is more capable of guiding my uncertainty or informing my ignorance? Having never been present at any trials of the Christians, I am unacquainted with the method and limits to be observed either in examining or punishing them. Whether any difference is to be made on account of age, or no distinction allowed between the youngest and the adult; whether repentance admits to a pardon, or if a man has been once a Christian it avails him nothing to recant; whether the mere profession Christianity, albeit without crimes, or only the crimes associated therewith are punishable – in all these points I am greatly doubtful.
In the meanwhile, the method I have observed towards those who have been denounced to me as Christians is this: I interrogated them whether they were Christians; if they confessed it, I repeated the question twice again, adding the threat of capital punishment; if they still persevered, I ordered them to be executed. For whatever the nature of their creed might be, I could at least feel no doubt that contumacy and inflexible obstinancy deserved chastisement. There were others also possessed with the same infatuation, but being citizens of Rome, I directed them to be carried thither.
These accusations spread (as is usually the case) from the mere fact of the matter being investigated and several forms of the mischief came to light. A placard was put up, without any signature, accusing a large number of persons by my name. Those who denied they were, or had ever been Christians, who repeated after me an invocation to the gods, and offered adoration, with wine and frankincense, to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for that purpose, together with those of the gods, and who finally cursed Christ-none of which acts, it is said, those who are really Christians can be forced into performing- these I thought it proper to discharge. Others who were named by that informer at first confessed themselves Christians, and then denied it; true, they had been of the persuasion but they had quitted it, some three years ago. They all worshipped your statute and the image of the gods and cursed Christ.
They affirmed, however, the whole of their guilt, or their error, was, that they were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to commit any wicked deeds, fraud, theft, or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food – but food of an ordinary and innocent kind. Even the practice, however, they had abandoned after the publication of my edict, by which, according to your orders, I had forbidden political associations. I judged it so much the more necessary to extract the real truth, with the assistance of torture, from two female slaves, who were styled deaconess: but I could discover nothing more than depraved and excessive superstition.
I therefore adjourned the proceedings, and betook myself at once to your counsel. For the matter seemed to me well worth referring to you, - especially considering the numbers endangered. Persons of all ranks and ages, and of both sexes are, and will be, involved in the prosecution. For this contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but had spread through the villages and rural districts; it seems possible, however, to check and cure it. ’Tis certain at least that the temples, which had been almost deserted, began now to be frequented; and the sacred festivals, after a long intermission, are again revived; while there is a general demand for sacrificial animals, which for sometime past have met with but few purchasers. From hence it is easy to imagine what multitudes may be reclaimed from this error if a door be left open to repentance. [Pliny’s letter to Trajan, 10.96]
Quote ID: 3613
Time Periods: 2
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 8
Section: 2C
He asked the accused whether the charge was true or not, just as a judge today asks the accused “How do you plead? Guilty or not guilty?” The difference, of course, lay in the question that Pliny asked: “Are you a Christian?” If the prisoner acknowledge that he was, Pliny repeated the question twice more, explaining the nature of the punishment that a guilty verdict would bring. Then, if the answer remained the same, he pronounced the death sentence, and the condemned was led away for immediate execution, unless he was a Roman citizen, in which case he was sent to Rome.”
Quote ID: 3614
Time Periods: 12
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 9
Section: 2C
It appears from Tertullian, although he was unclear on this point, that Nero issued a law against the Christians, the so-called institutum Neronianum, the only law of Nero’s that was not abolished after his death. {12}
Quote ID: 3615
Time Periods: 123
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 9
Section: 2C
One clue is provided by a small incident related by the elder Pliny. The emperor Claudius once received a Roman knight for an audience, in the course of which it was noticed that the knight wore a Druidic talisman on his breast. For this he was immediately sentenced to death.{14} Druidism constituted the main rallying point for forces in Gaul that resisted Romanization of the province, so that sympathy with Druidism could be interpreted as anti-Romanism and as a crime against the state. It’s adherents were also known to perform human sacrifices, a practice abhorrent to Romans. Such were the negative connotations attached to the name “Druid” that without any further investigation the Romans presumed criminal behavior.Pastor John’s note: Just the name
Quote ID: 3616
Time Periods: 1
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 10
Section: 2C
Once exonerated, the former Christians furnished Pliny with a description of Christian practices that so aroused his suspicions that he ordered the torture of two female Christian slaves to uncover the whole truth. To his great relief, he found nothing more than a “depraved and excessive superstition.” But what had troubled him in the accounts of the former Christians, causing him to undertake further investigation?
First, the Christians came together “before daylight”, and that suggested some sort of conspiracy under cover of the darkness of night.
Quote ID: 3617
Time Periods: 12
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 11
Section: 2C
The venerated Twelve Tables, the very foundation of Roman law, forbade nightly meetings, {20} and thus Pliny’s suspicions were understandably aroused. And Pliny was not alone in his apprehensions of this Christian custom.PJ Note: Find out where this note comes from.
Quote ID: 3618
Time Periods: 12
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 11
Section: 2C
Minucius Felix (floruit 200-240), probably drawing on the anti-Christian rhetoric of Marcus Cornelius Fronto (ca. 100-166), criticized the Christians in his book Octavius as, among other things an “unlawful and desperate faction . . . which is leagued together by nightly meetings . . . a people skulking and shunning the light. . . .” Then he added the ominous sentence: “Certainly suspicion is applicable to secret and nocturnal rites!” {21} And as late as the early third century, Bishop Cyprian was accused of being a member of a “nefarious conspiracy.” Of course, as we shall presently see, the public associated secrecy and nightly meetings with harmful magic, which only added to Pliny’s problem.
Quote ID: 3619
Time Periods: 3
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 11
Section: 2C
...but a brief look at Livy 39.8-19 shows that a close comparison was indeed feasible. According to Livy, the two consuls in the year 186 investigated secret conspiracies, among them Bacchanalia, which had been introduced to Etruria by a Greek acting as, in Livy’s words, a “priest of secret rites performed by night.” Like the contagion of pestilence,” the Bacchanalia spread to Rome, where devotees including people of high rank, engaged in illegal activities.
Quote ID: 3620
Time Periods: 2
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 12
Section: 2C
The Senate passed an ordinance forbidding Bacchic assemblies throughout Italy, and in Rome guards were placed everywhere to see that no night meetings were held and that provisions were made against fire. After these precautionary measures, the consuls called a meeting of the people and addressed them from the Rostra of the Forum. A prayer was said, and one of the consuls explained that a false and foreign religion (praba et externa religio) was driving men to crime and lust. “Of what sort, do you think, are first, gatherings held by night, second, meetings of men and women in common?” The security of the state seemed, therefore, threatened by a foreign ritual.…...
Furthermore, other aspects of the Christians’ meetings disturbed Pliny. They sang a hymn (carmen) to Christ as to a god, they took an oath (sacramentum) not to commit major crimes, and they had a common meal – all potentially dangerous signs. A carmen was not necessarily a harmless raising of voices; it could also signify an “incantation,” the casting of a magical spell. It is in this latter sense that the word is used in the Twelve Tables.
…...
The word sacramentum could be equally ambiguous. It could simply mean the oath of allegiance of a soldier or, more sinisterly, the initiation into a mystery in which the candidate took an oath of secrecy and allegiance to the principals of the cult. And such a mystery -oath- was not necessarily innocent and harmless, as the case of the Bacchanalia had shown. {25} In the Catilinian conspiracy the participants had also taken an oath that they reinforced by murder and the communal eating of human flesh. {26}
PJ: Might use the first para. Copied it to “The Second Century”
Quote ID: 3621
Time Periods: 2
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 13
Section: 2C
All indications are that for Trajan the name alone (nomen ipsum) constituted the crime. It appears that he tacitly assumed that Christianity automatically and inevitably led to wrongdoing, at least in the sense that refusal to worship Roman gods harmed the tranquility of the state.
Quote ID: 3622
Time Periods: 12
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 15
Section: 2C
In the following passage Tacitus describes the fire in Rome in 66 during Nero’s reign.
So far, the precautions taken were suggested by human prudence: now means were sought for appeasing deity, and application was made to the Sibylline books; at the injunction at which public prayers were offered to Vulcan, Ceres, and Prosperine, while Juno was propitiated by the matrons, first in the Capitol, then at the nearest point of the sea-shore, where water was drawn for sprinkling the temple and image of the goddess. Ritual banquets and all-night vigils were celebrated by women in the married state. But neither human help, nor imperial munificence, nor all the modes of placating Heaven, could stifle scandal or dispel the belief that the fire had taken place by order. Therefore, to scotch the rumour, Nero substituted as culprits, and punished the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. {28} Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of procurator Pontius Pilate, and the pernicious superstition was checked for a moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judaea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue. First, then the confessed members of the sect were arrested; next, on their disclosures, vast numbers were convicted, not so much on the count of arson as for the hatred of the human race. And derision accompanied their end: they were covered with wild beast skins and torn to death by dogs; or they were fastened on crosses, and when daylight failed were burned to serve as lamps by night. Nero had offered his gardens for the spectacle, and gave an exhibition in his circus, mixing with the crowd in the habit of a charioteer, or mounted on his car. Hence, in spite of a guilt which had earned the most exemplary punishment, there arose a sentiment of pity, due to the impression that they were being sacrificed, not for the welfare of the state but to the ferocity of a single man. [15.44] {29}
Quote ID: 3623
Time Periods: 12
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 15
Section: 2C
Furthermore, Tacitus was in Rome in 95, when Emperor Domitian’s niece Domitilla and her husband, Favius Clemens, were “accused of atheism, for which offense a number of others also, who had been carried away into Jewish customs, were condemned, some to death, others to confiscation of property.” {30} Domitilla was exiled and Clemens was executed, although embracing Jewish customs was not a crime, since Judaism was a recognized religion. Thus it was possible that Judaism here really means Christianity . . .
Tacticus saw Christianity as a “superstition” of Jewish origin, and he disliked the Jews as a people. He characterized Jewish customs as “perverse and disgusting” and the Jews themselves as a people who are true only to each other, for “the rest of mankind they hate and view as enemies.” {32} He also charged the Christians with a “hatred of the human race.” It seems that he drew no distinction between Jews and Christians, . . .
But the burning of Rome happened more than fifty years before Tacitus wrote, when Jews and Christians had not yet completely parted company. Tacitus regarded Nero’s action as aimed against a particularly dangerous Jewish sect, and he fully approved of it.
Quote ID: 3624
Time Periods: 12
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 18
Section: 2C
Suetonius briefly recorded Claudius’s edict of 49: “Since the Jews constantly made disturbance at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome.” {41}
Quote ID: 3625
Time Periods: 12
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 20
Section: 2C
In 64 Christians were still known as Jews, and the Roman authorities failed to distinguish peaceful Jews from rebellious Jews, and Jews from Christians. Both moderate and radical elements of the synagogue disliked the Christians, and they thus made easy scapegoats. As a matter of fact, Jewish hostility toward Christians was so well known that even Tertullian referred to the synagogues as the “fountains of persecution”. {48}…...
The only clear reference by Suetonius to the Christians is in the following passage:
During his reign many abuses were severely punished and put down, and no fewer new laws were made: a limit was set on expenditures: the public banquets were confined to a distribution of food; the sale of any kind of cooked viands in the taverns was forbidden, with the exception of pulse and vegetables, whereas before every sort of dainty was exposed for sale. Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition. He put an end to the diversions of the chariot drivers, who from immunity of long standing claimed the right of ranging at large and amusing themselves by cheating and robbing the people. The pantomimic actors and their partisans were banished from the city. [Nero 16.2] {51}
Quote ID: 3626
Time Periods: 12
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 21
Section: 2C
The three Roman historians whose writings we have investigated were all contemporaries, and all reflected the aristocratic, well-bred Roman’s judgment that Christianity was one of a multitude of degraded foreign cults - “atrocious and shameful things,” as Tacitus put it – that infested Rome.…....
All three historians had firmly ingrained antipathies that, brought together and attached to the name Christian, gave rise to the summary judgment that Christianity was a disruptive social phenomenon and a danger to the security of the state. Therefore, Christians deserved their punishment.
…....
As a new superstition, Christianity could not claim the sanction of antiquity.
Quote ID: 3627
Time Periods: 12
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 22
Section: 2C
Even Tacitus, who had nothing but contempt for the “perverse and disgusting” customs of the Jews, reluctantly admitted that “Jewish worship is vindicated by its antiquity.” {58} Christianity, however, could not claim the approval of antiquity . . . .….
Furthermore, the Romans saw Christianity as a superstition rather than as a legitimate religion, such as their own state cult or others that had been authorized. {59}
….
Our three authors go further, however, in condemning Christianity. Judaism was “perverse, disgusting and barbarous,” but Christianity, besides having all of these defects in full measure, was also “depraved, excessive, foreign, and new,” and therefore much worse than Judaism.
Quote ID: 3628
Time Periods: 12
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 23
Section: 2C
Unfortunately, because of its Eastern origin, the Romans may have associated Christianity with such behavior. Some of the liturgical practices of Christians notably glossolalia, confessions of sins, prophecies, sacraments, and the sexual aberrations of fringe groups, may have contributed to a distorted picture of this, “oriental superstition.” {62}
Quote ID: 3629
Time Periods: 12
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 25
Section: 2C
Footnote 16 Cicero Catiline 1.1.7, E.T., C.D. Younge (London: H. G. Bohn, 1852). The following verses are particularly relevant: “Do you see that your conspiracy is already arrested and rendered powerless by the knowledge which everyone here possesses of it? What is there that you did last night, what the night before, where is it that you were, who was there that you summoned to meet you, what design was there which was adapted by you. . .” 3.6.3: “For what is there, O Catiline, that you can still expect, if night is not able to veil your nefarious meetings in darkness, and if private houses cannot conceal the voice of your conspiracy within their walls; if everything is seen and displayed?” 4.8.3
Quote ID: 3630
Time Periods: 0
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 26
Section: 2C
Twelve Tables 8.26: “No person shall hold meetings by night in the city.”
Quote ID: 3631
Time Periods: 0
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 26
Section: 2C
Footnote 27 The way Pliny mentioned Christians in the same breath with collegia makes it appear that he put Christians in the same category as private clubs, such as the firemen’s company mentioned by him in Ep. 10.33-34. These were legal according to the Twelve Tables, in the opinion of......….
etaipav vocant = Associates are persons who belong to the same collegium for which the Greeks use the term etaipa. These are granted by a law (of the Twelve Tables) the right to pass any binding rule they like for themselves, provided that they cause no violation of public law. . . .” E.H. Warmington, Remains of Old Latin, Loeb (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), 3:493. Ever since the Bacchanalian crisis, however, clubs were under suspicion. Julius Caesar forbade them, excepting only those of ancient origin (Suetonius Caesar 42), Augustus placed them under strict control and made them carry a license (Suetonius Augustus 32; dio 53.36). Illicit clubs could be prosecuted and their members regarded as taking part in a riot, for which the punishment was death (Digest 47.22.3 [Marcian]; 47.22.2, 48.4.1 [Ulpian]; Paulus Sentences 5.29) Characteristically, Trajan did not allow the firemen’s brigade to be formed – clubs could do more damage than fires. Tacitus Annals 14.17 also reports that after a riot between the inhabitants of Nuceria and Pompeii, all associations formed in Pompeii “in defiance of the laws” were dissolved.
Quote ID: 3632
Time Periods: 12
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 40
Section: 2E2,2C
Again, if a man cares nothing for life or material possession, for him death holds no fear either. “Therefore,” Epictetus continued, “if madness can produce this attitude of mind toward the things which have just been mentioned, and also habit, as with the Galileans, cannot reason and demonstration teach a man that God has made all things in the universe . . .
Quote ID: 3642
Time Periods: 12
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 46
Section: 2C
Their behavior is very similar to those blasphemous people in Palestine. They, too, manifest their impiety by the obvious signs that they do not recognize those who are above them, and they separated themselves from the Greeks and from everything good. They are incapable as far as they are concerned of contributing in any matter whatsoever toward any common good, but when it comes to undermining home life, bringing trouble and discord into families and claiming to be leaders of all things, they are the most skillful men. {60}
Quote ID: 3648
Time Periods: 12
Paganism and Christianity 100-425 C.E. a Sourcebook
Ramsay MacMullen and Eugene N. Lane
Book ID: 170 Page: 72
Section: 2C
5.5 Two Documents of Mithraism….
It involved worship by small groups of almost entirely male votaries in artificial caves, as well as various stages of initiation, of which the highest was that of father (pater).
Quote ID: 3683
Time Periods: 12345
Paganism and Christianity 100-425 C.E. a Sourcebook
Ramsay MacMullen and Eugene N. Lane
Book ID: 170 Page: 139
Section: 2E2,2C
But the hierophant was not disposed to admit him to the rites, for he said that he would never initiate a wizard and charlatan, nor open the Eleusinian rite to a man who dabbled in impure rites.
Quote ID: 3686
Time Periods: 0
Paganism in the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 171 Page: 79/80
Section: 2C
But demons were something else again: very deeply rooted in paganism, western as well as eastern, even if much more easily documented in the latter. First, the word itself. It occupied a place apart form “gods,” a little lower, in common usage. But there were passages in what might be called sacred writings, notably in Homer, where the two terms appeared synonymously.{23} Christian writers drew a sharp distinction, reserving the proper title for their own God and the lower rank for everyone else’s.
Quote ID: 3728
Time Periods: 012
Paganism in the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 171 Page: 81/82
Section: 2C
Inscriptions for Germany refer to Sol as “the unconquerable emperor,” Jupiter as “princeps of the gods,” and in Italy even Christ appears in imperial military regalia under the title Christus Imperator, before the mid-third century.{27}
Quote ID: 3730
Time Periods: 0123
Paganism in the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 171 Page: 82
Section: 2C
The pagan and Christian pictures of divine administration were identical, however different in origin; both could have accepted what the emperor Julian later said in his oration against the “Galilaeans” (143A-B), that “over each nation is a national god, with an angel acting as his agent, and a demon, and ‘hero,’ and a peculiar type of servant-powers and subordinates.” The titles he chose would have aroused some disagreement;
Quote ID: 3731
Time Periods: 4
Paganism in the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 171 Page: 104
Section: 2C
The priest of Hercules Augustus in Apulum in Dacia was installed by the governor and other priests in Smyrna by the emperor and Roman senate.{42}
Quote ID: 3764
Time Periods: 2
Paganism in the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 171 Page: 105
Section: 2C
in Teos. There, the senate and people laid down the rules for the honoring of “the god presiding over the city, Dionysus, on each day, by the priest and the ephebes,” and so forth. The details are spelled out fully, including the matter of who pays (the god, form temple resources).{50} At Ephesis, it was the society of Elders (gerousia) that oversaw most religious concerns; elsewhere, it was usually the same bodies that are found at Teos.
Quote ID: 3765
Time Periods: 0
Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire
Walter Woodburn Hyde
Book ID: 172 Page: 194
Section: 2C,3C
For nearly three hundred and fifty years it had been the duty of Roman emperors to support the idea that the favor of the gods had caused the greatness of Rome, a fact which makes it understandable why Constantine and his successors down to Gratian kept the ancient title Pontifex maximus as heads of the State-cult, and also why Constantine, until the middle of his life, kept emblems of the pagan gods on his coinage.
Quote ID: 3784
Time Periods: 04
Pagans and Christians: Religion and the Religious Life from the Second to Fourth Century A.D.
Robin Lane Fox
Book ID: 173 Page: 30/31
Section: 2C
In antiquity, pagans already owed a debt to Christians. Christians first gave them their name, pagani. The word first appears in Christian inscriptions of the early fourth century and remained colloquial, never entering the Latin translations of the Bible. In everyday use, it meant either a civilian or a rustic. Since the sixteenth century, the origin of the early Christians’ usage has been disputed, but of the two meanings, the former is the likelier. Pagani were civilians who had not enlisted through baptism as soldiers of Christ against the powers of Satan. By its word for non-believers, Christian slang bore witness to the heavenly battle which coloured Christians’ view of life.{11}
Quote ID: 3830
Time Periods: 4
Pagans and Christians: Religion and the Religious Life from the Second to Fourth Century A.D.
Robin Lane Fox
Book ID: 173 Page: 464
Section: 2C
Back in Rome, Manilius had already served as one of Rome’s board of “fifteen men” who had authority over new foreign cults and controlled the use of the Sibylline Books. In 203/4, Manilius is known as their Master. The year had not been idle. Yet another round of “secular games,” Rome’s seventh, had been announced amid the usual rhetoric of a new age. The “fifteen men” were at the heart of it, if only as consultants of their Books. From inscriptions, this husband of “lawless Politta” can still be followed as he made his speech to the Senate. He warmed to the usual themes, the pagan Sibyl, the passage of the years and the dating of the games: “For the security and eternity of the Empire,” he told the Senate, “you should frequent, with all due worship and veneration of the immortal gods, the most sacred shrines for the rendering and giving of thanks, so that the immortal gods may pass on to future generations what our ancestors have built up and all which they have granted to our ancestors and to our own times too.”{5} This classic argument for pagan worship left no room for the new Christian faith.
Quote ID: 3874
Time Periods: 1
Papal Monarchy from St. Gregory the Great to Boniface VIII (590-1303), The
William Barry
Book ID: 342 Page: 3
Section: 2C
The Pope called himself Pontifex Maximus; and if this hieratic name—the oldest in Europe—signifies “the priest that offered sacrifice on the Sublician bridge,”….
Quote ID: 7905
Time Periods: 67
Papal Monarchy from St. Gregory the Great to Boniface VIII (590-1303), The
William Barry
Book ID: 342 Page: 12/13
Section: 2C
This word “Pontifex”—meaning the sacrificer on the bridge—was associated from very early times with ceremonies in honour or deprecation of the dead, whom the Romans called Lemures. The feast of the Lemuralia was kept on the Sublician Bridge, which spanned the Tiber between Aventine and Janiculum, during the 9th, 11th, and 13thof May.
Quote ID: 7911
Time Periods: 0
Papal Monarchy from St. Gregory the Great to Boniface VIII (590-1303), The
William Barry
Book ID: 342 Page: 13
Section: 2C
Here, then, is the most ancient ritual in which the Pontifex Maximus comes before our view.
Quote ID: 7912
Time Periods: 0
Papal Monarchy from St. Gregory the Great to Boniface VIII (590-1303), The
William Barry
Book ID: 342 Page: 13/14
Section: 2C
Under Augustus, and down to the fall of Paganism, the Emperor always held the title; he was Pope as well as Consul and Imperator. He continued to hold it for some time afterwards; and not only Constantine but his more Christian successors, Valentinian I, and Gratian, are mentioned under this name on inscriptions now extant. Theodosius, however, gave up all pretence to be the High Priest of a heathen worship…
Quote ID: 7913
Time Periods: 01234
Papal Monarchy from St. Gregory the Great to Boniface VIII (590-1303), The
William Barry
Book ID: 342 Page: 14
Section: 2A4,2C
The times of the festivals were in their keeping, and they regulated the Calendar. Julius Cӕsar, in his capacity as Pontifex Maximus, reformed it in 46 B.C. And Pope Gregory XIII., under the same title, reformed it again by his Bull of February 24, 1582.
Quote ID: 7914
Time Periods: 067
Paradiso, The
John Ciardi
Book ID: 260 Page: 269
Section: 2C
Canto XXIV: THE TRIUMPHANT ST. PETERContinuing: “Father, as it was set down
by the pen of your dear brother, who, with you,
set Rome on the road that leads to glory’s crown, 63
Quote ID: 6531
Time Periods: 7
Patronage in Early Christianity
Alan B. Wheatley
Book ID: 396 Page: 150
Section: 2C,4B
Origen clearly saw a problem developing in his own day and addressed it in his last work (Com.Matt.XI,15). He identified leaders at several levels in the church as working with the hope of praise and both expecting and responding to flattery.
Quote ID: 8432
Time Periods: 3
Patronage in Early Christianity
Alan B. Wheatley
Book ID: 396 Page: 176/177
Section: 2C,3A1,4B
More serious still is the way in which Cyprian condemned the cursus honorum, yet in his language about the Episcopal office and in his manner of dealing with subordinates, he reinstated it in practical terms. The bishops owned the church and all its benefits, allegiance and honor from the dispensing of goods and spiritual benefits. The people performed essentially the same functions in this community as they did in the general Roman community. They were his clients and his clients’ clients.When Cyprian was gone, the African church continued with great tensions between those who wished to follow the revised paradigm and those who saw Cyprian’s reinstatement of the tradition one as the true model. It was a critical time when Cyprian, a man not steeped in the new paradigm, was forced to deal with the pressures of persecution, apostasy and opposition. He simply was not thoroughly prepared, so he returned to the default position, the traditional paradigm of greatness and leadership.
Quote ID: 8449
Time Periods: 3
Patronage in Early Christianity
Alan B. Wheatley
Book ID: 396 Page: 184
Section: 2C,3A1,4B
…ambition continued to play a role. Some reasons can be seen in the Apostolic Tradition, a Roman church order document attributed to Hippolytus. In it, a full hierarchy of church officers is apparent, and the workplace terms which once downplayed position now have distinct levels of honor and privilege. The people have once again become clients of a great man, the bishop. Benevolence continues, but it is clearly in the mold of the traditional patronage paradigm.
Quote ID: 8453
Time Periods: 3
Patronage in Early Christianity
Alan B. Wheatley
Book ID: 396 Page: 185
Section: 2C,3A1,4B
Meanwhile, the two major figures of Cappadocia and Pontus, Firmilian and Gregory Thaumaturgos, were of aristocratic families and continued to be aristocratic in their Episcopal offices.….
When the qualifications for a bishop in Pontus included a choice from “those who appeared to be outstanding in eloquence and family,{1} that then would not have been a surprise. These developments make the case of Paul of Samosata quite understandable.
Paul simply took to its logical conclusion what had become the standard model among urban clergy: he was a “great man.” That was now standard for bishops, especially in a major urban center like Antioch. As for becoming a procurator ducenarius by the patronage of the Palmyrene dynasty—why not? Other Christians held high imperial positions,{2} why not combine two great positions: bishop of Antioch and procurator of Syria?
Quote ID: 8454
Time Periods: 3
Patronage in Early Christianity
Alan B. Wheatley
Book ID: 396 Page: 186
Section: 2C,4B
The movement of “significant people” into episcopal positions in this period [PJ: 3rd], in addition to the gathering of power and honor around the same led to increasing numbers of members from those classes. The same language which those classes would expect to be used of them in civil positions became normal for ecclesiastical positions as well.
Quote ID: 8456
Time Periods: 3
Philosopher and the Druids (A Journey Among The Ancient Celts), The
Philip Freeman
Book ID: 263 Page: 158
Section: 2C
There are three groups among the Gauls who are given special honor— bards, vates, and Druids. The bards are singers and poets, while the vates supervise sacrifices and study the ways of nature. The Druids also study nature but devote themselves to morality as well. The Gauls consider the Druids the most just of all their people, and so they are given the role of judge in all public and private disputes. In the past, they were even able to halt battles and bring an end to wars.
Quote ID: 6674
Time Periods: 0
Philosopher and the Druids (A Journey Among The Ancient Celts), The
Philip Freeman
Book ID: 263 Page: 163/164
Section: 2C
According to Caesar, the Druids formed a priesthood with a strong organization and well-defined hierarchy that spread across tribal boundaries: “Among the Druids there is one supreme leader who holds authority over all the rest. When this chief Druid dies, he is succeeded by whoever is most qualified. If there are several contenders for the position, the Druids all take a vote—though they have been known to contend for the title with armed force.”
Quote ID: 6676
Time Periods: 0
Pontifix Maximus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifex_maximus
Book ID: 603 Page: ?
Section: 2C
Late AntiquityWhen Tertullian, a Montanist, furiously applied the term to a bishop with whom he was at odds (either Pope Callixtus I or Agrippinus of Carthage),{38}{39} c 220, over a relaxation of the Church’s penitential discipline allowing repentant adulterers and fornicators back into the Church, it was in bitter irony:
In opposition to this (modesty), could I not have acted the dissembler? I hear that there has even been an edict sent forth, and a peremptory one too. The “Pontifex Maximus,” that is the “bishop of bishops,” issues an edict: “I remit, to such as have discharged (the requirements of) repentance, the sins both of adultery and of fornication.” O edict, on which cannot be inscribed, “Good deed!”... Far, far from Christ’s betrothed be such a proclamation!
— Tertullian, On Modesty ch. 1
In the Crisis of the Third Century, emperors continued to assume the title pontifex maximus. The early Christian emperors, including Constantine the Great (r. 306–337) and the rest of the Constantinian dynasty, continued to use it; it was only relinquished by Gratian, possibly in 376 at the time of his visit to Rome,{10} or more probably in 383 when a delegation of pagan senators implored him to restore the Altar of Victory in the Roman Senate”s Curia Julia.{40}. Its last use with reference to the emperors is in inscriptions of Gratian.{41}{24}{9}
The Edict of Thessalonica of 27 February 380 was enacted in Thessalonica (Thessaloniki) and published in Constantinople (Istanbul) for the whole empire. By it, Theodosius I established Nicene Christianity as the state church of the Roman Empire. The Latin text refers to the bishop of Rome, Damasus, as a pontifex, and the bishop of Alexandria, Peter, as an episcopus:{42}
... the profession of that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it has been preserved by faithful tradition and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria ... We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title Catholic Christians ...{43}
Various forms of summus pontifex (‘highest pontiff’ or bishop) were for centuries used not only of the Bishop of Rome but of other bishops also.{20} Hilary of Arles (d. 449) is styled summus pontifex by Eucherius of Lyon (P. L., vol. L, col. 773). Pontifex inclytus [edit]
During Gratian’s reign or immediately afterwards the phrase pontifex maximus – which had unwelcome associations with traditional Roman religion during the Christianization of the Roman Empire – was replaced in imperial titulature with the phrase: pontifex inclytus.{44} The first to adopt the inclytus alternative to maximus may have been the rebel augustus and devout Christian close to bishop Martin of Tours, Magnus Maximus (r. 383–388), who killed Gratian in August 383.{44}
This practice was followed by Gratian’s junior co-emperor Theodosius the Great and was used by emperors thereafter, including the co-augusti Valentinian III (r. 425–455), Marcian (r. 450–457) and the augustus Anastasius Dicorus (r. 491–518), for whom examples of official usage survive.{44} Another inscription dedicated to Justin
II (r. 565–574) and naming him pontifex has long been recognized as a forgery, though there is no evidence to suggest the title could not have been used by Justinian the Great (r. 527–565) or even by Constantine IV (r. 654–685).{44}
Catholic Church use of the title
In the 15th century, when the Renaissance drove new interest in ancient Rome, pontifex maximus became a regular title of honour for Popes.{45} After the Fall of the Eastern Roman Empire with the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire and the death of the final Roman emperor Constantine XI in 1453, pontifex maximus became part of the papacy’s official titulature of the Bishop of Rome.{46} The name given to the book containing the liturgical rites to be performed by any bishop, the Roman Pontifical, and to the form of liturgy known as Pontifical High Mass witness to the continued use of pontifex to refer to bishops in general. (citation needed)
While the title pontifex maximus has for some centuries been used in inscriptions referring to the Popes, it has never been included in the official list of papal titles published in the Annuario Pontificio. The official list of titles of the Pope given in the Annuario Pontificio includes “Supreme Pontiff of the whole Church” (in Latin, Summus Pontifex Ecclesiae Universalis) as the fourth title, the first being “Bishop of Rome”. The title pontifex maximus appears in inscriptions on buildings and on coins and medallions.(citation needed)
In December 2012, Pope Benedict XVI adopted @pontifex as his Twitter handle, prompting users to pose questions with the #askpontifex hashtag. This has been maintained by his successor Pope Francis, who now uses it as his Twitter handle.
Quote ID: 9335
Time Periods: 0147
Priest and Bishop (Biblical Reflections)
Raymond E. Brown, S.S.
Book ID: 184 Page: 16
Section: 2C
There is not proof that the Christian communities who broke the eucharistic bread after the resurrection would have thought that they were offering sacrifices. In these observations I am not questioning the legitimacy of the development in later theology whereby the Church came to understand the Eucharist as a sacrifice. . . .
I am simply pointing out that such a theology was a post-NT development, and so we have no basis for assuming that early Christians would have considered as a priest the one who presided at the eucharistic meal.
Quote ID: 4092
Time Periods: 2
Priest and Bishop (Biblical Reflections)
Raymond E. Brown, S.S.
Book ID: 184 Page: 18/19
Section: 2A2,2C
But there still had to be a second development before the emergence of the concept of a special Christian priesthood: Christianity had to have a sacrifice at which a priesthood could preside. This second condition was fulfilled when the Eucharist was seen as an unbloody sacrifice replacing the bloody sacrifices no longer offered in the now-destroyed Temple. This attitude appears in Christian writings about the end of the 1st century or the beginning of the 2nd. Didache 14 instructs Christians: “Assemble on the Lord’s Day, breaking bread and celebrating the Eucharist; but first confess your sins that your sacrifice thysia may be a pure one. . . .For it was of this that the Lord spoke, ‘Everywhere and always offer me a pure sacrifice.’” The citation is from Mal 1:10-11, a passage which became a very important factor in the Christian understanding of the Eucharist.. . . .
At about the same time, in his plea that Christian liturgical offerings and services should be structured, Clement of Rome (I Clem 40) calls on the analogy of the OT structure of high priest, priests, and levites.
Quote ID: 4093
Time Periods: 2
Priest and Bishop (Biblical Reflections)
Raymond E. Brown, S.S.
Book ID: 184 Page: 73
Section: 2C
And so the affirmation that all the bishops of the early Christian Church could trace their appointments or ordinations to the apostles is simply without proof.
Quote ID: 4096
Time Periods: 12
Priscillian of Avila: The Occult and Charismatic in the Early Church
Henry Chadwick
Book ID: 378 Page: 14
Section: 2C
…from the record of the synod at Saragossa in October, probably of the year 380.The canons of Saragossa deplore many things in the situation: (a) women attending Bible-readings (‘lectio’) in the houses of men to whom they are unrelated (‘alieni’); (b) fasting on Sundays and withdrawal from the worship of the church during Lent and in the period from 17 December to 6 January; (c) receiving the Eucharistic elements in the church without immediately consuming them; (d) recession into cells and mountain retreats (‘latibula cubiculorum ac montium’); (e) walking with unshod feet; (f) clergy abandoning the duties of their office to become monks; (g) virgins taking the veil before the age of forty and without doing so formally in the presence of the bishop; (h) the title of ‘teacher’ being granted to unauthorized persons (presumably laymen).
Quote ID: 8258
Time Periods: 4
Priscillian of Avila: The Occult and Charismatic in the Early Church
Henry Chadwick
Book ID: 378 Page: 77
Section: 2C
…the complaint against the ‘Binionites’ (that is, those who distinguish between the Father and the Son)….
Quote ID: 8264
Time Periods: 4
Priscillian of Avila: The Occult and Charismatic in the Early Church
Henry Chadwick
Book ID: 378 Page: 87
Section: 2C
The abusive term ‘Binionitae’ occurs also in the first tractate (i, p. 5, 10). It is Priscillian’s rejoinder to a charge of being a ‘Unionita’....
Quote ID: 8266
Time Periods: 4
Rise of Western Christendom, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 265 Page: 74
Section: 2C
In the late fourth century, polytheism received its modern name. The word “pagan,”paganus, began to circulate among Christians. This word emphasized the marginal status of polytheism. Usually, paganus had meant “second-class participant” – civilian as opposed to regular soldier, lower as opposed to high official. The Spanish priest, Otosius, who wrote his History against the Pagans at the behest of Augustine, in 416, added a further touch to this language of exclusion. Cultivated polytheists, urban notables, and even members of the Roman Senate, were told by Orosius that theirs was a religion of country folk, of pagani, of men of the pagus, of paysans, paesanos – that is, a religion worthy only of illiterate peasants.
Quote ID: 6702
Time Periods: 45
Rise of Western Christendom, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 265 Page: 91
Section: 2C
Human beings could not glory. But an institution could do so. What was truly gloriouson earth, for all the imperfections of its individual members, was the Catholic Church. For without
Catholics baptism, Augustine was convinced, it seemed impossible (to human minds, at least) that God would grant forgiveness of the original sin which had made all human beings equal because equally estranged from God. For this reason, the Church had to be truly universal. It was the only resting place, on earth, in which a sorely wounded humanity could hope to recover its lost health.
Quote ID: 6707
Time Periods: 4
Rise of Western Christendom, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 265 Page: 92
Section: 2C
Augustine deliberately created common ground with his readers, precisely so that, allobstacles removed and all arguments vanquished, they might have no excuse not to slip across that
shared ground in order to become potential citizens of heaven by joining the Catholic Church.
Quote ID: 6708
Time Periods: 4
Rise of Western Christendom, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 265 Page: 210
Section: 2C
One could have no illusion as to the skill required to govern such small, cramped groups as a true abbas, a “father.” As abbas, the abbot was truly the “father” of his monks. He was the representative among them of God the Father. His words must work their way, like God’s own leaven, into the soul of each and every monk. To do this required constant vigilance, insight and adaptability.
Quote ID: 6716
Time Periods: 567
Rise of Western Christendom, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 265 Page: 213
Section: 2C,3A1,3A3
The bishop of Salona (Solun, near Split) was the proud ruler of a “Roman” imperial enclave on the Dalmatian coast. He was a bishop of the old style. He justified his lavish banquet by an appeal to the hospitality of Abraham. Gregory was not amused.“In no way do you give attention to reading the scriptures, in no way are you vigilant to offer exhortation, rather, you ignore even the common norms of an ecclesiastical way of life.”
On his epitaph, Gregory was acclaimed as consul Dei, “God’s consul.”
Quote ID: 6717
Time Periods: 67
Rise of Western Christendom, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 265 Page: 227
Section: 2C
In 508, Caesarius of Arles set up a convent under his sister, Caesaria. The Rule which he composed for her in 512 became a classic. He brought together an unusually large group of women (200 in all) in a single convent of St. John. He deliberately placed this group in buildings that abutted the walls of the city itself. By their position beside the city walls, they were marked out as the spiritual protectors of Arles, at a time when the city was under constant danger to siege.
Quote ID: 6718
Time Periods: 6
Roman Social Relations
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 188 Page: 106
Section: 2C
It was a Roman invention to set aside certain adjectives for certain dignities: “Most Grand” for ex-consuls, “Most Renowned” for ordinary senators, “Most Distinguished” or “Distinguished” for equites of all sorts from Cicero’s day on, and in townships, “Most Splendid” or “Splendid” while “Illustrious” described the upper equestrian rungs as a whole. {53} “Most Eminent,” “Most Perfect,” and “Outstanding” designated what we would call civil service grades.
Quote ID: 4164
Time Periods: 01234
Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus, The
R. M. Ogilvie
Book ID: 390 Page: 21
Section: 2C
So there was never at Rome any division between a priestly class and a governing class: indeed by the first century B.C., as we can judge from Cicero’s pleasure on being elected an augur, the great priesthoods were regarded as social distinctions more than religious offices, although they entailed religious duties and required religious knowledge.
Quote ID: 8372
Time Periods: 0
Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus, The
R. M. Ogilvie
Book ID: 390 Page: 25
Section: 2C
Normally Jupiter Optimus Maximus was the patron god of Rome, but the city itself was also thought of as a deity, however, so valuable that it had a secret name, known only to the pontifices, for which ‘Rome’ was a cover-name. We do not know what that secret name was. As Servius says, ‘The Romans wanted to conceal the identity of the god who looked after Rome and therefore their priestly discipline laid down that the gods of Rome should not be invoked by their proper names, for fear they should be enticed away.’
Quote ID: 8373
Time Periods: 0
Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus, The
R. M. Ogilvie
Book ID: 390 Page: 26
Section: 2C
The Romans employed two techniques to safeguard themselves against this danger. The first was to list, as fully as possible, all the known alternatives which a god might use.….
The second technique to prevent the god from evading a summons was to add at the end of the invocation a blanket-expression such as ‘or whatever name you care to be called’.
Quote ID: 8374
Time Periods: 0
Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus, The
R. M. Ogilvie
Book ID: 390 Page: 27
Section: 2C
…Aulus Gellius tells us that in the event of an earthquake the Romans held a festival of purification without naming the god in whose honour it was given, for fear that they might make matters worse by naming the wrong god (II, 28, 2). They addressed simply ‘the responsible deity’, as a letter might be addressed ‘to whom it may concern’.
Quote ID: 8375
Time Periods: 012
Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus, The
R. M. Ogilvie
Book ID: 390 Page: 27
Section: 2C
If a goddess in fact resided there, she might not merely ignore a prayer couched in the masculine gender but be positively insulted by the mistake. To avoid such a danger the Romans refined the idea of ‘the unknown god’ still further by a stereotyped formula ‘if it be a god or a goddess who (lives here)’….
Quote ID: 8376
Time Periods: 012
Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus, The
R. M. Ogilvie
Book ID: 390 Page: 28
Section: 2C
It was, therefore, as well to be on the safe side, leaving nothing to chance. A further reason may have been a sense that the gods formed a collective group and, if so disposed, could help each other in their operations. So the pontifices had a rule always to invoke all the gods as a whole after individual invocations (Servius, On the Georgics I, 21).….
…formula used when war was declared (Livy I, 32, 10): ‘Hearken, Jupiter, and you, Janus Quirinus, and all the gods of heaven, of earth and of the underworld: I call you to witness that such-and-such a people is in the wrong.’
Quote ID: 8377
Time Periods: 012
Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus, The
R. M. Ogilvie
Book ID: 390 Page: 29
Section: 2C
Great care had to be taken to invoke not merely Apollo but Apollo with the requisite functional cult-title. Otherwise he might not listen. Macrobius, a pagan scholar of the middle fifth century A.D. who preserves much valuable learning of older times, explains that the successful combination of titles used by the Vestal Virgins for invoking Apollo to cure disease was ‘Apollo Medice, Apollo Paean’ (Apollo Doctor, Apollo Healer).*John’s note: All this indicates how confusing polytheism became, and how burdensome and fear-ridden.*
Quote ID: 8378
Time Periods: 012345
Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus, The
R. M. Ogilvie
Book ID: 390 Page: 106
Section: 2C
…the Romans are almost unique in not having a separate priestly profession. …the major offices of religion were usually held by prominent figures of political life.
Quote ID: 8384
Time Periods: 01234
Rome 1300: On The Path of the Pilgrim
Herbert L. Kessler and Johanna Zacharias
Book ID: 189 Page: 3
Section: 2C
These were governed by the bishop of Rome, called by the Latin word for “father,” papa, or “pope.” For centuries, popes had taken the title Pontifex Maximus, Supreme Pontiff, the ancient epithet of the city’s chief pagan priest,
Quote ID: 4173
Time Periods: 34567
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 93
Section: 2C,3D1,3G
As pope, he is remembered above all for the English mission, when the Roman church first stepped outside the contracted bounds of the Empire into contact with peoples who had never been subject to its ecclesiastical jurisdiction; for writing the Regula Pastoralis, the key to a bishop’s life, and so to civilization in the succeeding centuries; for welcoming the conversion of the Spanish Visigoths from Arianism to Catholicism; for his defence of Roman primacy against the pretensions of the see of Constantinople; for making himself pope of the emerging nations. But in Rome and Italy he was ’God’s consul’, under whose management came the whole care and preservation of the population of war-torn Italy - a frontier province since the Lombard invasions. The imperial authorities had no resources to spare for Rome in its almost isolated situation. The decimated senatorial families had vanished into exile in the East and had given their possessions to the Roman church, or - their estates, bankrupt, existed on charity.
Quote ID: 4298
Time Periods: 6
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 96
Section: 2C,3A3B
Pigments and other more delicate articles of commerce were offered by him as marks of respect to citizens of rank, and so the Church came to be regarded as a source of supply for the whole community. “To 3,000 handmaids of God (called by the Greek name nuns) he gave 15 lb. of gold for bed-clothes and bestowed upon them for their daily support 80 lb. in gold.”
Quote ID: 4304
Time Periods: 4
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 103
Section: 2C
. . .the pope forbade the ordination of unlettered priests, and he found deacons were being appointed for their fine voices rather than for their knowledge.
Quote ID: 4312
Time Periods: 567
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 109
Section: 2C,3A4
The civil administration of Rome in the years subject to the East was overshadowed in prestige, in quality and in effectiveness by the Church’s own administration which through its management of charity, of its great estates and of a wide diplomacy, determined Rome’s survival in the declining years of Byzantine power in the West. The Roman clergy formed a tight corporation with a common identity, a common interest and common privileges - the word ’cleros’ retained its Greek connotation of a chosen group apart. Entry into the clerical ranks provided the sole opportunity for the realization of talent and ambition - whether spiritual or secular - and for learning.
Quote ID: 4320
Time Periods: 7
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 130
Section: 2C,3A1
. . . the election of the pope. This was not yet confined to the clergy, but as the choice of their chief magistrate as well as spiritual father, was something in which the whole city, sometimes too vigorously, participated. First the death of the pope was formally announced to the emperor and exarch by the regents, the archpriest, archdeacon, and primicerius of the notaries; and following the election, a formal request was made for permission to consecrate.
Quote ID: 4332
Time Periods: 7
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 131
Section: 2C,3A1,3A4C
At its most formal, the mode of election may best be seen in 769 when, following the usurpation of Constantine, the authorities were scrupulously legal in the election of Stephen III; the participants were the priests ’and all the clergy, the leaders of the army and the army itself, the more substantial of the citizens, and the general populace itself’.
Quote ID: 4333
Time Periods: 7
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 132
Section: 2C
His consecration took place on the Sunday, following receipt of imperial approval; accompanied for the first time by the singing of the papal choir and with the ceremonial candles carried before him. . . .
Quote ID: 4335
Time Periods: 7
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 132
Section: 2C
When finally the archdeacon placed the symbol of supreme authority, the pallium, upon him, the pope rose and reseated himself on his throne. . . .
Quote ID: 4336
Time Periods: 7
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 211
Section: 2C,3A1
On this occasion Stephen, who had repeated the anointing of Pepin and his two sons as kings of the Franks, conferred upon them a new title, that of Patrician of the Romans. This was strictly speaking a high grade of the Byzantine court nobility whose owners were normally invested by the Emperor with the insignia of their rank and acclaimed as patrician by the people. It had frequently been held by barbarian chiefs, as had other imperial honours; Odoacer and Theodoric had been patricians, Clovis of the Franks had received the insignia of consulship.
Quote ID: 4377
Time Periods: 7
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 269
Section: 2C
Louis . . . ’we have taken this name and dignity from the Romans among whom this highest of styles and appellations first arose’; it was conferred by ’imposition and unction at the hands of the highest bishop and by the judgment of the Church’ for the defense and glorification of the mother of all God’s churches’.
Quote ID: 4405
Time Periods: 7
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 297
Section: 2C
c. 900+ Theophylact rose steadily in the official cursus of honors:
Quote ID: 4413
Time Periods: 7
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 297
Section: 2C
Other titles were gloriosissimus dux, and in 915 ‘senator of the Romans’ . . .Theophylact was ’lord of one city but that city comprised the whole world’.
Quote ID: 4414
Time Periods: 7
Rome Triumphant: How The Empire Celebrated Its Victories
Robert Payne
Book ID: 192 Page: 216
Section: 2C
Such was the triumphal ceremony celebrated on February 22, 1198, when Pope Innocent III was crowned and at his consecration delivered a sermon in which he claimed for himself a position higher than that claimed by any triumphator before him. He claimed that he was “the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the successor of Peter, the anointed of the Lord God of Pharaoh, one whose place was between God and man, acting as intermediary between God and man, under God but above man, less than God but greater than man”. Not even the deified Caesar had claimed so high a place in the economy of heaven.
Quote ID: 4445
Time Periods: 7
Secret Archives of the Vatican, The
Maria Luisa Ambrosini & With Mary Willis
Book ID: 269 Page: 40
Section: 2C,4B
Here Pope Damasus, who died in 384 at the age of eighty, and who was born when the last persecutions were raging, erected a memorial stone to commemorate his father who, coming to Italy as a stranger from Spain, had advanced through the various ranks from employee to priest. The Pope says, in his own verses:Here my father, employee, reader, levite, priest,
Advanced in merit and in deeds.
Here Christ honoured me with the supreme power
Of the Apostolic Seat.
I have built new roofs for the archives,
And added columns at the left and right
That the name of Damasus may live through the
Centuries.
Quote ID: 6792
Time Periods: 4
Signs & Symbols in Christian Art
George Ferguson
Book ID: 195 Page: 103
Section: 2C
St. Ambrose ( fourth century) is one of the four Latin Fathers of the Church.
Quote ID: 4466
Time Periods: 4
Tacitus, Histories, LCL 249: Tacitus III, Histories, Books 4-5
Tacitus (Translated by A.J. Church)
Book ID: 197 Page: 11
Section: 2C
…there had been the farce of consulting the pontiffs, whether, with a child conceived and not yet born, she could properly marry. {30}
Quote ID: 7493
Time Periods: 1
Tacitus, Histories, LCL 249: Tacitus III, Histories, Books 4-5
Tacitus (Translated by A.J. Church)
Book ID: 197 Page: 16
Section: 2C
That year triumphal honors were decreed to Aulus Caecina, Lucius Apronius, Gaius Silius for their achievements under Germanicus. The title “father of his country,” {43} which the people had so often thrust on him, Tiberius refused, nor would he allow obedience to be sworn to his enactments, {44} though the Senate voted it….. . . .
…any corrupt act by which a man had “impaired the majesty of the people of Rome.” Deeds only were liable to accusation; words went unpunished.
Quote ID: 7494
Time Periods: 1
Tacitus, Histories, LCL 249: Tacitus III, Histories, Books 4-5
Tacitus (Translated by A.J. Church)
Book ID: 197 Page: 74
Section: 2C
…and the celebration of the Great Games, which were to be exhibited by the pontiffs, augurs, and colleges of the Fifteen {75} and of the Seven, {76} with the Augustal brother-hood. {77}
Quote ID: 7503
Time Periods: 0
Tertullian, ANF Vol. 3, Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian
Edited by Philip Schaff and Alan Menzies
Book ID: 678 Page: 404
Section: 2C
Just as if we also did not recognize in John a certain limit placed between the old dispensation and the new, at which Judaism ceased and Christianity began….PJ footnote reference: Tertullian, Against Marcion, IV.xxxiii.
Quote ID: 9727
Time Periods: 247
Tertullian, Apology and De Spectaculis, LCL 250
Translated by T.R. Glover
Book ID: 134 Page: 9
Section: 2C
chapter IINo! One thing is looked for, one alone, the one thing needful for popular hatred – the confession of the name. Not investigation of the charge!
Quote ID: 2939
Time Periods: 23
Tertullian, Apology and De Spectaculis, LCL 250
Translated by T.R. Glover
Book ID: 134 Page: 19
Section: 2C
chapter IIFinally, in reading the charge, why do you call the man a Christian, why not a murderer too, if a Christian is a murderer? Why not incestuous? Or anything else you believe us to be? Or is it that in our case, and ours alone, it shames you, or vexes you, to use the actual names of our crimes? If a Christian, with no charge laid against him, is defendant because of a name, how shocking the name must be, if the charge consist of a name and nothing more.
Quote ID: 2940
Time Periods: 23
Tertullian, Apology and De Spectaculis, LCL 250
Translated by T.R. Glover
Book ID: 134 Page: 23
Section: 2C
chapter IV
. . . . the name is picked out; the name is the object of attack. The school is unknown; the founder is unknown; a word of itself condemns both in advance – because they bear a name, not because they are convicted of anything.
Quote ID: 2942
Time Periods: 23
Tertullian, Apology and De Spectaculis, LCL 250
Translated by T.R. Glover
Book ID: 134 Page: 113
Section: 2C
chapter XXI
This whole story of Christ was reported to Caesar (at that time it was Tiberius) by Pilate,{c} himself in his secret heart already a Christian.
Quote ID: 2961
Time Periods: 1
Theophilus, ANF Vol. 2, Fathers of the Second Century
Ante Nicene Fathers
Book ID: 22 Page: 112
Section: 2C,4B
Chap. IV – HOW AUTOLYCUS HAD BEEN MISLED BY FALSE ACCUSATIONS AGAINST THE CHRISTIANS. - Book III….And to give credit to the prevalent rumor wherewith godless lips falsely accuse us, who are worshippers of God, and are called Christians, alleging that the wives of us all are held in common…
Quote ID: 408
Time Periods: 2
Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards, The
The Geoffrey Chaucer Page
Book ID: 275 Page: 2
Section: 2C
The Second Conclusion: The PriesthoodThe Second Conclusion is this: Our usual priesthood, the which began in Rome feigned of a power higher than angels, is not the priesthood the which Christ ordained to his Apostles. This conclusion is proved: for the priesthood of Rome is made with signs, rites, and bishops’ blessings, and that is of little virtue. Nowhere ensampled in the Holy Scripture, for the bishops ordinals in the New Testament be little of record.
Quote ID: 6942
Time Periods: 7
Victory Of The Cross, The
Desmond O’Grady
Book ID: 278 Page: 24
Section: 2C
Vestal virgins, an elite group of pagan nuns.
Quote ID: 6973
Time Periods: 0
Victory Of The Cross, The
Desmond O’Grady
Book ID: 278 Page: 26
Section: 2C
The six Vestal virgins, the remains of whose convent with an internal garden can still be seen, guarded objects supposed to prove that Rome had been founded by the survivors of the destruction of Troy. The Vestals’ convent is noteworthy not only because the cult began early, but because it finished late: it was abolished only at the end of the fourth century, eight years after Constantine’s conversion.. . . .
The convent stands near what is thought to be the house of Numa Pompilus (716-683 77 BC), the priest-king who founded Rome’s civil religion. He was the Pontifex Maximus, head of the twelve-man college of priests. Among other things, they were responsible for the all-important bridges across the Tiber (pontifex means bridge builder).
Quote ID: 6974
Time Periods: 01234
Victory Of The Cross, The
Desmond O’Grady
Book ID: 278 Page: 30
Section: 2C
But in 27 BC, when he was thirty-six, which the Senate bestowed on him the title “Augustus”, which became his name. Corresponding roughly to “Venerable”, it had religious connotations. It was still being used as a title by those who claimed to be heirs of the Roman emperors (the Habsburgs) eighteen hundred years later.
Quote ID: 6977
Time Periods: 17
Victory Of The Cross, The
Desmond O’Grady
Book ID: 278 Page: 78
Section: 2C
Everything depended on the bishop. He guaranteed the unity of faith; he filled roles which were formerly those of prophets and teacher, and authorized others for liturgical functions. It has been suggested that the emergence of the “monarchical” bishop was prompted by the need to oppose his authority, now that the apostolic age was ending, against those who claimed to be leaders because they were in receipt of private revelation.
Quote ID: 6983
Time Periods: 2
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 205
Section: 2C
It was no uncommon thing for a bishop to confer orders on one of the dependents of a man eminent for his sanctity, at the request of the patron. We have an instance of this in one of Paulinus’ letters to Amandus. ‘I commend Marius, the bearer of this epistle, to your notice, and I beg that he may be ordained in your church, according to the tenor of a request which I have already made to my father, the holy bishop. I have affranchised this servant of mine, now our fellow-servant in the Lord, and have given him his liberty for the Lord’s sake.’
Quote ID: 7219
Time Periods: 45
Voting about God in Early Church Councils
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 285 Page: 17
Section: 2C,3A1,4B
The numbers of repetitions has been doubted, but the doubts removed by looking at accounts of other, only slightly less awe-full moments signalized by a 60-times repeated acclamation (this, for an emperor, naturally) or 23, 16, 26 . . . to a total of 159 times for successive salutes and hopes expressed in support of a mere priest. He was being appointed co-adjutor to his bishop in AD 426.
Quote ID: 7261
Time Periods: 5
Western Society And The Church In The Middle Ages
R. W. Southern
Book ID: 286 Page: 104
Section: 2C
From about the middle of the twelfth century, the popes began for the first time to take the title ‘Vicar of Christ’ and to claim it for themselves alone.{12} In the past, kings and priests had called themselves ‘Vicars of Christ’; but not the pope. For him the title was too vague.
Quote ID: 7308
Time Periods: 7
What Is the Meaning of the Term Christian
https://www.gotquestions.org/meaning-of-Christian.html#:
Book ID: 701 Page: ?
Section: 2D3B,2C
The followers of Jesus Christ were first referred to as “Christians” by the Gentiles of Syrian Antioch, and the name was more than likely meant as an insult (see Acts 11:26).In the New Testament, believers never refer to themselves as “Christians”; rather, they use such terms as brethren (Acts 15:1; 1 Corinthians 16:20, NAS), disciples (Acts 11:26; 14:24, NKJV), and saints (Acts 9:13; 2 Corinthians 13:13, ESV). Before his conversion, Saul of Tarsus sought out those “who belonged to the Way” (Acts 9:2), indicating that an early label for Christians could have been “people of the Way” (see also Acts 19:9; 24:22).
Believers in Christ came to be called “Christians” during a time of rapid expansion in the church. Persecution had forced many believers from Jerusalem, and they scattered to various areas, taking the gospel with them. The evangelism was at first limited to Jewish populations. That changed when “men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord” (Acts 11:20–21). Barnabas was there in Antioch, as was the newly converted Saul, and they were both teaching in the church. “And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians” (Acts 11:26, BLB).
At the time that believers got the appellation Christians, it was common for the Greeks to give satirical nicknames to particular groups. So those loyal to the Roman General Pompey were dubbed “Pompeians,” and the followers of General Sulla were called “Sullanians.” Those who publicly and enthusiastically praised the emperor Nero Augustus received the name Augustinians, meaning “of the party of Augustus.” To the Greeks, it was all a fun word game and a verbally dismissive gesture. Then a new group cropped up in Antioch; since they were characterized by behavior and speech centered on Christ, the Greeks called them “Christians,” or “those of the party of Christ.”
In the first decades after the resurrection, the word Christ meant little to the general population. In fact, some ancient sources refer to believers as “Chrestians” and relate that their key figure was “Chrestus,” reflecting limited knowledge of the actual faith. This makes it seem even more likely that the word Christian was cobbled together by those who were not involved in Christianity themselves.
Non-believing Jews of that day would not have referred to believers as “Christians,” since Christ means “Messiah” and refers to the Son of David. Christ was exactly what they did not believe Jesus to be; such a term would not have been used by Jews until it became an established, stand-alone word. In the book of Acts, we see the unbelieving Jews referring to Christians as those “of the Nazarene sect” (Acts 24:5)—Nazareth being a city of low repute in the minds of most Israelites (see John 1:46).
Both the Bible and history suggest that the term Christian was probably meant as a mocking insult when it was first coined. Peter actually tells his readers not to be “ashamed” if they are called by that term (1 Peter 4:16). Likewise, when Herod Agrippa rejects Paul’s appeal to be saved, he says, “Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?” and he was probably playing off of the negative reputation of that term (Acts 26:28). Why would he, a king, submit to the indignity of being called a “Christian”?
*PJ Note: Accessed 2/28/2025*
Quote ID: 9872
Time Periods: 147
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