Anglo-Saxon Church
The Church in England from the end of the 6th cent. to the Norman Conquest (1066). In 597 the Roman mission of St Augustine landed in Thanet in the south and sees were quickly set up at Canterbury, ...
Barber
(κουρεύς).Information on barbers is scanty, despite the important role hair-cutting played in Byz. (e.g., through the monastic tonsure, or as a form of punishment, or as an expression of ...
clergy
The body of all people ordained for religious duties, especially in the Christian Church. Recorded from Middle English, the word comes via Old French, based on ecclesiastical Latin clericus ...
clerics
Patristic tradition designated by the Greek term cleros those who, as successors to the Levites of Israel, were devoted to the service of the altar. In the classic period of ...
Cyril of Scythopolis
(b. c.525), Greek monk and hagiographer. He went to Jerusalem in 543. He was the author of the Lives of seven Palestinian abbots; they are remarkable for their accurate detail.
Hrabanus Maurus
(c.780–856)Abbot of Fulda, archbishop of Mainz; known as the praeceptor Germaniae (teacher of Germany) for his contributions to the Carolingian Renaissance. Hrabanus was an oblate at Fulda, and in ...
John Calvin
(1509–64)French Protestant theologian and reformer. He began his theological career in France, but was forced to flee to Basle in Switzerland after embracing Protestantism in the early 1530s. He ...
Julian of Toledo
(642–690)Trained at the episcopal school of Toledo, under the tutelage of Eugenius, Julian became archbishop in 680. A brilliant intellectual, he dedicated himself to theology (Prognosticon futuri ...
monk
The word is popularly applied to any member of a religious community of men living under vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, but its proper use is confined to hermits or members of a monastic ...
novice
A person in a period of probation in a religous house before pronouncing his or her vows. At the end of the noviciate, the postulant had the choice of returning ...
Paschasius Radbertus
(c.790–c.865) Monk, abbot of Corbie (843/4–849);composed treatises on the Eucharist and the Gospel of Matthew, and biographies of two abbots of Corbie, Adalard and Wala.JJCF. Brunhölzl, Histoire ...
Piast
The reigning dynasty of the State of Poland from its beginnings to 1370 (and even up to the 17th c. in a number of Silesian duchies attached to Bohemia from ...
Priesthood
The notion of priesthood (Latin sacerdotium) appears simple only if we refer it to the word's Latin ancestry (distribution of the sacred). In the Christian sphere, the reality was much ...
Profession, Monastic
The act by which an individual committed himself or herself, publicly and in writing, to become a monk or a nun for ever; the decision could not afterwards be revoked ...
St Colman
(d. 676), leader of the Celtic party in Northumbria. He became Bp. of Lindisfarne in 661. At the Synod of Whitby (664) he unsuccessfully pleaded for the retention of such customs as the Celtic date ...
St Cuthbert
(d. 687).Bishop of Lindisfarne from 685. After the synod of Whitby, he was instrumental in winning acceptance of Roman usages at Lindisfarne. The cult of Cuthbert was especially popular from this ...
Synod of Whitby
664.The Northumbrian church, which began with Paulinus and Roman Christianity, was revived by Aidan, who introduced Celtic customs from Iona. The most controversial difference, the dating of Easter, ...
Yiddish
A language used by Jews in central and eastern Europe before the Holocaust. It was originally a German dialect with words from Hebrew and several modern languages, and still has some 200,000 ...
