1060. Christian ritual was at first simple,1921 but rapidly grew in elaborateness. The liturgy and the eucharistic ceremonies were expanded into great proportions, and came to be the essence of worship. This movement went on throughout Christendom (with variations here and there) up to the rise of Protestantism, and after that time continued in the Greek and Roman Churches. Protestantism, in its recoil from certain doctrines of the Church of Rome, threw off much of its ceremonial, which in the minds of the people was associated with the rejected dogmas. Since the separation, however, especially in the last hundred years, the violent antagonism having largely quieted down, there has been in some Protestant bodies a slow but steady movement in the direction of ritualistic expansion; procedures that three centuries ago would have called forth earnest protest are now accepted and interpreted in accordance with Protestant ideas. Doubtless the temperament of a people has something to do with the amount of ceremonial it favors in religious service.
1061. The history of ritual thus shows that it tends to grow in elaborateness and importance as social forms become more elaborate and important—the mode of approaching the deity imitates the mode of approaching human dignitaries, postures are borrowed from current etiquette.1922 Form was especially sought after under the old monarchies, Egyptian and Assyrian.1923 The exaggerated Oriental court etiquette, introduced into Roman life as early as the time of Diocletian, was maintained and developed under the Byzantine emperors.1924 These usages may have affected the growth of the Greek and Roman Church liturgies.1925 In modern China, under the imperial government, divine worship was substantially identical in form with the worship of the emperor. In some cases it may be doubtful in which direction the borrowing has been.
The expansion of liturgical forms has often been accompanied by the effort to interpret them symbolically. Intelligent reflection has led to the conviction that forms without religious meaning are valueless, and it has been easy, after ceremonies were established, to attach spiritual definitions to their details. This relieves their materialism, and gives a certain realness and force to religious feeling.
1062. A priest is a person commissioned by the community or its head to conduct the sacrificial service and related services connected with shrines. Such a person differs in two respects from the religious official of the simplest times, the magician (shaman, or medicine man): the latter acts in his own name and by his own authority, and the methods he employs are magical—they are based on the belief that the supernatural Powers are subject to law and may be controlled by one who knows this law; the priest acts in the name and by the authority of the community, and his methods are dictated by the friendly social relation existing between the community and the Powers. He differs, further, from those religious ministrants (chiefs of clans, fathers of families, and other prominent men) who acted by virtue of their social or political positions in that his functions are solely religious and are in that regard distinct from his civil position. He represents a differentiation of functions in an orderly nonmagical religious society. Such an office can arise only under a tolerably well-organized civil government and a fairly well-defined sacrificial ritual. It is doubtless a slow growth, and there may be, in a community, a period of transition from one grade of religious ministers to another when the distinction between the priest and the magician or between the priest and the headman is hardly recognizable; the distinction comes, however, to be well marked, and then indicates an important turning-point in religious history. It may be, also, that at certain times under certain circumstances the civil ruler may have priestly functions or the priest may exercise civil authority; but these exceptional cases do not affect the specific character of the sacerdotal office.
1063. The priest is a sacred person, and is affected by all the conditions pertaining to the conception of "sacred." In early times he has to be guarded against contamination by impure or common (profane) things, and care has to be taken that his quality of sacredness be not injuriously communicated to other persons or to any object.1927 The parts of his person, such as hair and nail-parings, must not be touched by common folk. The dress worn by him when performing his sacred duties must be changed when he comes out to mix with the people. He must keep his body clean, and the food that he may or may not eat is determined by custom or by law. His sexual relations are defined—sometimes he is forbidden to marry or to approach a woman, sometimes the prohibition extends only to marriage with a certain sort of woman (a foreigner, a widow, or a harlot). In some cases he is forbidden to engage in warfare or to shed human blood;1928 the ground of this prohibition was physical, not moral.1929
1064. Similar rules in regard to food, marriage, chastity applied to priestesses.1930 Women were often, in ancient times, the ministrants in the shrines of female deities—there was a certain propriety in this arrangement; they were, however, in some cases attached to the service of male deities.1931 Their duties were in general of a secondary character: they rarely, if ever, offered sacrifice;1932 they were often in charge of the temple-music; the function of soothsaying or of the interpretation of oracular sayings was sometimes assigned them. On the other hand, female ministrants in temples, who were closely connected with temple duties, were sometimes considered as wives of the god, and in some cases had sexual relations with priests and worshipers, and became public prostitutes.1933 This custom does not exist among the lowest tribes, and it attained its largest development in some of the great civilized cults. It seems not to have existed in Egypt.1934 The consecrated maidens described in the Code of Hammurabi appear to have been chaste and respected;1935 the relation between these and the harlots of the early Ishtar cult is not clear. A distinction may be made between priestesses proper and maidens (hierodules) consecrated to such a deity as Aphrodite Pandemos; Solon's erection of a temple to this goddess, which he supplied with women, may have been an attempt to control the cult of the hetæræ. The thousand hierodules at Corinth1936 were probably not priestesses, and the same thing may be surmised to be true of the women devoted to the Semitic prototype of Aphrodite, the Syrian Ashtart (Astarte), and to the Babylonian Ishtar.1937
1065. The origin of temple prostitution is not clear. In many cases (in Greece, Rome, Mexico, Peru, and elsewhere) the consecrated women were required to be virgins and to remain chaste—this higher conception is obviously the natural one in a civilized community in which the purity of wives and daughters is strictly guarded. The old idea that sexual union was defiling may have originated or strengthened the demand for chastity. The institution of the lower class of women does not seem to have originated in a society in which this regard for purity is lacking, for the hierodulic class is rarely if ever found in existing societies of this sort. The origin of the class is not to be sought in a low valuation of woman, nor, on the other hand, is it to be found in a desire to secure fruitfulness; fruitfulness is generally secured by offerings to the gods, and though the belief has doubtless existed that it could be secured by commerce with a supernatural being,1938 there is no trace of this belief in the accounts of the lives of the hierodules; the benefit would be restricted also to a small number of women. Probably the custom was developed gradually and, like other such customs, had its ground in simple needs. Women were required for the menial work of shrines.1939 Once established in service, they would acquire a certain sanctity and power by their relation to sacred things, and at the same time would, as unattached, be sought by men. Their privileges and license would grow with time—they would become an organized body, and would seek to increase their power. In the course of time current religious ideas, low or high, would attach to them. They would be supposed to be in the confidence of the deity, able to interpret his will, and endowed with the power of cursing or blessing.1940 With the growth of refinement they would be thought of as servants of the deity, belonging to him and to no other, and might be described, as in fact they are sometimes described, as his wives. The title "wife" would be compatible with purity in the higher religious systems, but in the lower systems would be connected with license.
1066. Theories of the origin of religious prostitution. The license just referred to is a part of a widespread custom of the prostitution of sacred persons, of which various explanations have been offered.1941 The existence of the custom is attested for the larger part of the ancient civilized and half-civilized world, and for many more recent peoples. In old Babylonia, Canaan, Syria, Phœnicia, Asia Minor, Armenia, Greece, and now in West Africa and India, we find officially appointed "sacred" women a part of whose religious duty it was or is to offer themselves to men.1942 The service in ancient times was not regarded as degrading; on the contrary, maidens of the noblest families were sometimes so dedicated, and the rôle of devotee might be continued in a family for generations.1943 Such service was sometimes a necessary preliminary to marriage. This seems to be the case in the custom reported by Herodotus1944 that every native Babylonian woman had, once in her life, to sit in the temple of Mylitta (Ishtar) and wait till a piece of money was thrown into her lap by a stranger, to whom she must then submit herself—this duty to the goddess accomplished, she lived chastely. In Byblos a woman who refused to sacrifice her hair to Ashtart on a certain festival day had to yield herself to a stranger.1945
Official male prostitutes also there were in some ancient cults; but information about such persons is scanty, and they seem not to have been numerous.1946 The most definitely named case is that of the Hebrew official class called kedeshim, that is, persons devoted to the service of the deity and therefore sacred1947 (as it is said in Zech. xiv, 20 ff., that bells on horses and temple-vessels shall be sacred to Yahweh). These, together with the female devotees, kedeshot ("prostitutes"), are denounced as abhorrent to Yahweh; both were features in the ritual of the Jerusalem temple of the seventh century B.C. and apparently earlier.1948 The female devotee is called a "harlot" and the male a "dog" (kalb). The original religious sense of the latter term is uncertain. In the Old Testament it occurs, in this sense, only in the passage cited above. In a Phœnician inscription of Larnaca (in Cyprus)1949 the plural of the word designates a class of attendants in a temple of Ashtart, and there are proper names in which the term is an element (and therefore an honorable title). It is not improbable that it meant originally simply a devotee or minister of a god in a temple,1950 the bad sense having been attached to it in the Old Testament from the license sometimes practiced by such ministers.
The sentiment of chastity is a product of the highest civilization. In many savage and half-civilized tribes the obligation on a woman to keep herself pure is not fully recognized, and in the case of married women the opposition to unfaithfulness sometimes springs from the view that it is a violation of the husband's right of property in the wife. In some ancient civilized communities a god's right to a woman seems to have been taken for granted.1951 Ordinary prostitution seems to have existed in the world, in all grades of civilization, from the earliest times. This attitude toward the custom being so widespread, it is not strange that it has established itself in religious organizations.
Two types of organized religious prostitution have to be considered:1952 there is the Babylonian (Mylitta) type, in which every woman must thus yield herself before marriage; and there is the attachment of a company of official public women to a temple permanently or for a considerable time. The explanations that have been offered of these institutions fall into two classes, one tracing their origin to some nonreligious custom, the other regarding them as originally religious (these classes are, however, not necessarily mutually exclusive).
Secular explanations. It has been held that all such customs go back to a period of sexual promiscuity,1953 which has been modified in the course of ages. It is doubtful whether such a period ever existed,1954 but it is certain that prenuptial license has been common, and this laxity may have prepared the way for organized prostitution. More particularly, reference is made to puberty defloration ceremonies, when the girl is handed over to certain men no one of whom can, by tribal rule, be her husband—that is, before marriage she becomes sexually the property of the tribe through its regularly appointed representatives, and is thus prepared for membership; then, it is added, at a later period, when religious service has been established, the girl is given over or devoted not to the tribe but to the tribal god, in whose shrine she must submit to defloration, in accordance with rules fixed from time to time. The act thus becomes religious—it is a recognition of the sovereignty of the deity, and procures divine favor. Such may be a possible explanation of the procedure in the temple of Mylitta and at Byblos.1955 But the meaning of the condition imposed at these places, namely, that the man to whom the woman yields herself must be a stranger, is not clear. It is hardly probable that an outsider was called on to perform what was regarded as a dangerous duty—a stranger would not be likely to undertake what a tribesman feared to do.1956 Nor is the power of a stranger to confer benefits so well established that we can regard his presence as intended to bring a blessing to the girl.1957 More to the point, in one respect, is the conjecture that we have here an attenuated survival of the exogamic rule—the girl must marry out of her social group;1958 the old social organization having disappeared, the "stranger" takes the place of the original functionary, and the deity the place of the clan. This explanation has much in its favor; but, as it is hardly possible to establish an historical connection between the older and the later custom, it cannot be said to be certain, and the origin of the "stranger-feature" remains obscure.
Religious explanation. Sacred prostitution is supposed by many writers to have sprung from the cult of the goddess who represented the productive power of the earth1959 (Mother Earth, the Great Mother). While such a figure is found in many of the lower tribes, it is only among civilized peoples, and particularly in Western Asia, that the cult acquired great importance. By the side of the female figure there sometimes stands a male representative of fertility (Tammuz by the side of Ishtar, Attis by the side of Kybele) who is regarded as the husband or the lover of the goddess, but occupies a subordinate position. In early times the goddess is represented as choosing her consorts at will, but this is merely an attribution to her of a common custom of the period. All deities, male and female, might be and were appealed to for increase of crops and children, but a Mother goddess would naturally be looked on as especially potent in this regard. Prayer would be addressed to her, and that, with offerings, would be sufficient to secure her aid; simply as patroness of fertility she would not demand prostitution of her female worshipers—some special ground must be assumed for this custom, and it is held that, as fertility was produced by the union of the goddess with her consort or her lovers, this union must be imitated by the women who sought a blessing from her.1960 The probability of such a ground for sacred prostitution is not obvious. There are communities of temple-courtesans (in West Africa and India) where such an idea does not exist. If the license was in imitation of the goddess, this feature of her character requires explanation, and the natural explanation is that such a figure is a product of a time of license. In the ancient world it was only in Asia Minor and the adjacent Semitic territory that religious orgies and debauchery existed—they seem to have been an inheritance from a savage age. Or, if the prostitution is explained as a magical means of obtaining children,1961 this also would go back to a religiously crude period. Magical rites, many and of various sorts, have been performed by women desiring offspring—imitations and simulations.1962 But the giving up of the body is not imitation or simulation—it is the procreative act itself.
Organized official sacred prostitution must be regarded as the outcome of a long period of development. License, starting at a time when sexual passion was strong and continence was not recognized as a duty or as desirable, found entrance into various social and religious customs and institutions, accommodating itself in different places and periods to current ideas of propriety. Appropriated by organized religion, it discarded here and there its more bestial features, adopted more refined religious conceptions, its scope was gradually reduced, and finally it vanished from religious usage. The objections urged to such a process of growth are not conclusive.1963 Explanations of communities of temple-courtesans and male prostitutes and of customs affecting individual women are suggested above.1964 Many influences, doubtless, contributed to the final shaping of the institution, and we can hardly hope to account satisfactorily for all details; but the known facts point to an emergence from savage conditions and a gradual modification under the influence of ideas of morality and refinement.
1067. Organization and influence of the priesthood. In accordance with the law of natural human growth the priests in most of the greater religions came to form an organized body, hierarchical grades were established, many privileges were granted them, and they exercised great influence over the people and in the government. In Egypt they were exempt from taxes and had a public allowance of food; the temples at the capitals, Memphis and Thebes, became enormously wealthy; the priests exercised judicial functions (but under the control of the king); they cultivated astronomy and arithmetic, and controlled the general religious life of the people; as early as the thirteenth century B.C. they had attained a political power with which the kings had to reckon, and still earlier (ca. 1400 B.C.) the Theban priests were able to overthrow the religious reformation introduced by Amenhotep IV; the departments of sacerdotal functions were multiplied, and the high priest of the Theban Amon, whose office became hereditary, controlled the religious organization of the whole land, set himself up as a rival of the Pharaoh in dignity, and finally became the head of a sacerdotal theocracy.1965
1068. While the Babylonian and Assyrian priesthoods were not so highly organized as the Egyptian, and never attained great political power, they were nevertheless very influential. Astronomy and astrology, the interpretation of omens and portents, the science of magic and exorcisms, the direction of the religious life of kings and people were in the hands of the priests; the great temples were rich, there were various classes of temple-ministers, all well cared for, and the chief priest of an important shrine was a person of great dignity and power. The interpretation of sacrificial phenomena was made into a science by the priests, and, passing from them to Greece and Italy, exerted a definite influence on the religious life of the whole Western world.1966
1069. The process of organizing the Hebrew priesthood began under David and Solomon, at first, under Solomon (who favored the Zadok family), affecting only the Jerusalem temple. In the Northern kingdom (established about 930 B.C.) there seems to have been a similar arrangement. As long as the old royal governments lasted (the Northern kingdom fell in the year 722 B.C., the Southern in 586) the priests were controlled by the kings. On the building of the Second Temple (516) and the reorganization of the Judean community they became, under Persian rule, independent of the civil government and finally, in the persons of the high-priests, the civil heads of the Palestinian Jews. The Maccabean uprising resulted in the establishment of the Asmonean priest-dynasty, in which the offices of civil ruler and religious leader were united. After the fall of this dynasty (37 B.C.) the priestly party (the Sadducees, that is, the Zadokites), forming an aristocracy, conservative of ritual and other older religious customs and ideas, was engaged in a constant struggle with the democratic party (the Pharisees), which was hospitable to the new religious ideas (resurrection, immortality, legalism). The latter party was favored by the people, and with the destruction of the temple (70 A.D.) the priests disappeared from history. From the beginning they appear to have been not only religious ministrants and guides but also civil judges; their great work was the formulation of the religious law, as it appears in the Pentateuch, and it is probable that the shrines (especially that of Jerusalem) were centers of general literary activity. The national development turned, however, from sacerdotalism to legalism—the later religious leaders were not priests but doctors of law (Scribes and Pharisees).
1070. In India the priests formed the highest caste, were the authors of the sacred books (which they alone had the right to expound), conducted the most elaborate sacrificial ceremonies that man has invented, and by ascetic observances, as was believed, sometimes became more powerful than the gods.1967 Ritual propriety was a dominant idea in India, and the influence of the priesthood on the religious life of the people was correspondingly great. Priests did not attempt to interfere in the civil government, but their religious instruction may sometimes have affected the policy of civil rulers. On the other hand, the Hindu priesthood, by its poetical productions and its metaphysical constructions, has become a permanent influence in the world.
1071. The early (pre-Zoroastrian) history of the Mazdean priesthood is obscure. In the Avestan system, however, a great rôle is assigned the priests, as is evident from the vast number of regulations concerning ceremonial purity, of which they had charge.1968 It does not appear that the early sacerdotal organization was elaborate or strict. There were various classes of ministrants at every shrine, but they differed apparently rather in the nature of their functions than in rank.
1072. The Greek priestly class had the democratic tone of the Greek people.1969 There was little general organization: every priest was attached to a particular deity except the Athenian King Archon, who had charge of certain public religious ceremonies. The mutual independence of the Greek States made the creation of a Hellenic sacerdotal head impossible. In Sparta the priestly prerogatives of the king were long maintained; usually, however, there was a separation of civil and religious functions. Generally in Greece priests were chosen by lot, or were elected by the priestly bodies or by the people, or were appointed by kings or generals. They were usually taken from good families, were held in honor, and were housed and fed at the public expense (their food came largely from sacrificial offerings). It was required that they should be citizens of the place where they officiated, and should be pure in body and of good conduct. They seem to have been simply citizens set apart to conduct religious ceremonies, and their influence on the general life was probably less than that of civil officers, poets, and philosophers. Greek educated thought moved at a relatively early period from the conventional religious forms toward philosophical conceptions of the relation between the divine and the human.1970
1073. The minute details of the Roman ritual might seem to give great importance to priests;1971 and the flamens (the ministers of particular deities) were of course indispensable in certain sacrifices. But the organization of Roman society was not favorable to the development of specifically sacerdotal influence. Religion was a department of State and family government. For the manifold events of family life there were appropriate deities whose worship was conducted by the father of the family. The title rex (like the Greek basileus), in some cases given to priests, was a survival from the time when kings performed priestly functions. Later the consul was sometimes the conductor of public religious ceremonies. There was hardly a religious office, except that of the flamen, that might not be filled by a civilian. In the Augustan revival membership in the College of the Arval Brothers was sought by distinguished citizens. It was thought desirable that the Pontifex Maximus, the most influential of the priests, should be a jurist; and the office was held by such men as Julius Cæsar and Augustus. The increase of temples and priests by Augustus did not materially change the religious condition. The adoption of foreign cults was accompanied by ideas that did not belong to the Roman religion proper. In general, if we except the augurs, who represent the lowest form of the sacerdotal office, the priest was relatively uninfluential in Rome.1972
1074. The minimum of priestly influence is found in the national religion of China, in which there is no priestly class proper.1973 In the worship of ancestors, which satisfies the daily religious needs of the people, every householder and every civil official is a ministrant. The great annual sacrifices to the heavenly bodies have been conducted till recently by the emperor in person.1974 Public religion is, in the strictest sense, a function of the State. Society, according to the Chinese view, is competent to manage relations with the supernatural Powers—it needs no special class of intermediaries. This thoroughgoing conception of civic autonomy in religion connects itself with the supreme stress laid on conduct in the Confucian system, which represents the final Chinese ideal of life:1975 man constructs his own moral life, and extrahuman Powers, while they may grant physical goods, are chiefly valued as incidents in the good social life. The great speculative systems of thought, Confucianism and Taoism, gradually gave rise to definite sacerdotal cults; but the priests of the Confucian temples serve mainly to keep before the people the teaching of the Master, and the Taoist priests have become largely practicers of magic and charlatans. Chinese religious practice remains essentially nonsacerdotal.
1075. The Peruvian cult presents a remarkable example of a finely organized hierarchy closely related to the civil government.1976 The priests were chosen from the leading families; the highpriest was second in dignity to the Inca only. The functions of the priests were strictly religious; and as the masses of the people were devoted to the worship of local deities and natural objects, it seems probable that the sacerdotal influence was merely that which belonged to their supervision of the State religion. Details on this point are lacking.
Priests played a more prominent part in Mexico, entering, as they did, more into the life of the people.1977 On the one hand, the numerous human sacrifices, of which the priests had complete control, kept the terrible aspect of religion constantly before the mind of the public; and, on the other hand, the milder side of the cult (for the Mexican religion was composite) brought the priests into intimate relations with adults and children. As the priests, apart from their monstrous sacrificial functions, appear to have been intelligent and humane, it is not unlikely that their general moral influence was good.
1076. The influence of the priesthood on religion (and on civilization so far as religion has been an element of civilization) has been of a mixed character. On the one hand, while not the sole representative of the idea of the divine government of the world (for soothsayers and prophets equally represented this idea), it has stood for friendly everyday intercourse between man and the deity, and has so far tended to bring about an equable and natural development of the ordinary religious life; it was involved in the sacerdotal functions that the deity might be placated by proper ceremonies, whence it followed that the priest, who knew the nature of these ceremonies, was a benefactor, and, more generally, that man had his salvation in his own hands. The business of the priest was to maintain the outward forms of religion, to order and elaborate the ritual, to organize the whole cultus.1978 This was a work that required time and the coöperation of many minds. Priests were, in fact, naturally drawn together by a common aim and common interests—with rare exceptions they lived in groups, formed societies and colleges, had their traditions of policy, gathered wealth.1979 For this reason they were in general opposed to social changes—they were a conservative element in society, and in this regard were the friends of peace.
1077. On another side they did good work; they were to some extent the guardians of morals. In ancient popular life ethics was not separated from religion—religion adopted in general the best moral ideas of its time and place and undertook to enforce obedience to the moral law by divine sanctions. Priests announced, interpreted, and administered the law, which was at once religious and ethical; they were teachers and judges, and this function of theirs was of prime importance, particularly where good systems of popular education did not exist. Further, as a leisured class they often turned to literary occupations; examples of their literary work are found in India (poetry and philosophy), Babylonia (the history of Berossus), Palestine (Old Testament Psalter, the works of Josephus). They offered a place of rest in the midst of the continual warfare of ancient times.
1078. On the other hand, the priesthood has been generally conservative of the bad as well as of the good. It has maintained customs and ideas that had ceased to be effective and true, and in order to preserve them it has resorted to forced interpretations and has invented accounts of their origin. It has thus in many cases been obscurantive and mendacious. It has tended to make the essence of religion consist in outward observances, and has not infrequently degraded the placation of the deity to a matter of bargaining—it has sold salvation for money. Priests have not always escaped the danger that threatens all such corporations—that of sacrificing public interests to the interests of the order. They have drifted naturally toward tyranny—the enormous power put into their hands of regulating men's relations with the deity has led to the attempt to regulate men's general thought, though in most of the great religions their power in this regard has been partly controlled by the civil authority and by the general intelligence of the community. When they have not been controlled, they have often succumbed to the temptations that beset wealth; they have fallen into habits of luxury and debauchery.
1079. In a word the history of the priesthood has been like that of all bodies of men invested with more or less arbitrary power. Its rôle has varied greatly in different places and at different times. It has numbered in its ranks good men and bad, and has favored sometimes righteous, sometimes unrighteous, causes. It is not possible to define its influence on religion further than to say that it has been a natural element of the organization of religion, taking its form and coloring from the various communities in which it has existed, embodying current ideas and thus acting as a uniting and guiding force at a time when higher forces were lacking. It has formed a transitional stage in the advance of religious thought toward better conceptions of the relation of man to the deity.
1080. Islam has no priesthood, as it has no provision for atonement for sin except by the righteous conduct of the individual; its cultic officials are preachers or leaders of prayer (imams) in the mosque worship, and jurists or scholars (ulamas) who interpret the Koran. Judaism has had no priests since the destruction of the Second Temple (70 A.D.); its synagogue services are conducted by men trained in the study of the Bible or the Talmud (rabbis). In Christianity the conception of a sacrificial ministrant has been retained in those churches (the Greek and the Roman) which regard the eucharistic ceremony as a sacrifice. In the West the "presbyter" (such is the New Testament term), the head of the congregation, took over the function of the old priest as conductor of religious worship, and the word assumed the form "priest" in the Latin and Teutonic languages. Among Protestants it is employed only in the Church of England, in which, however, for the most part it has not the signification of 'sacrificer.'
1081. Places of worship. The simplest form of early worship is the presentation of an offering to the dead or to some extrahuman object of reverence. Such objects were held to exist in all the world, in the sky, in rocks, streams, woods, caves, hills and mountains, and beneath the surface of the earth; but it was chiefly in places of human resort that their presence was expected. On some natural object or at some spot regarded as sacred, particularly where, it was believed, a spirit or deity had manifested himself (in some remarkable natural phenomenon, or in some piece of good fortune or ill fortune), the worshiper would place his offering. Sometimes it was left to be disposed of by the deity or spirit or dead person at his pleasure. When the offering was an animal, the blood, as food, was often applied to the grave or to the stone or other object connected with a superhuman Power. In the course of time, it may be supposed, it would be found convenient to erect a table or some other structure on which an animal could be slain. Such a structure would be an altar. At first simple, a heap of stones, a pile of dirt, a rough slab, it was gradually enlarged and ornamented,1980 and itself, by association, became sacred.
1082. Places where the presence of the divine was recognized were sacred. In them worship was paid to the deity, and in the course of time they were marked off and guarded against profane use. At first, however, they were merely spots on hills or in groves, by streams or in the open country, needing no marks or watches, for they were known to all and were protected by the reverence of the people.1981 When the land came to be more thickly populated and religion was better organized, such places were inclosed and committed to the care of official persons. Well-known examples are the Greek temenos and the Arabian haram.1982 Taboos and privileges attached themselves to such inclosures. Precautions had to be taken on entering them; the shoes, for example, were removed, lest they should absorb the odor of sanctity and thus become unfit for everyday use. The spaces thus set apart were sometimes of considerable extent (as was and is the case at Mecca); within them no war could be waged and no fugitive seized. Sometimes they owed their sacredness to the buildings to which they were attached.
1083. The necessity for a house of worship arose very early.1983 Where there was an image or a symbol of a god, or where the apparatus of sacrifice or of other ritual practice was considerable, buildings were required for the protection of these objects and perhaps for the convenience of the ministrants. The development of buildings followed the course of all such arrangements—at first rude, they became gradually elaborate and costly. In many savage tribes and in the earliest period of civilized peoples (Egyptians, Hebrews, al.) a hut, constructed like those of the people and therefore of a very simple character, houses the image or other representative of the god. With the progress of artistic feeling and skill abodes of men grow into palaces and abodes of deities into temples. It is on the temples that the greatest labor has been expended, partly because they are the work of the whole community, partly because it has been believed that the favor of the deity would be gained by making his dwelling-place magnificent.1984 The essential fact in a temple—its definition—is (in the lower cults) and was (in the great ancient cults) that it is or was the home of a god, the specific place of approach to him, with the possibility of face-to-face intercourse and a greater probability of gaining the blessings desired. This local conception of the deity continued after larger ideas had arisen,1985 and is to be found at the present day in some Christian circles.
1084. Temples have tended to grow not only in beauty and magnificence but also in elaborateness of interior arrangements and of connected structures. Anciently they were specifically places of sacrifice—the abodes of gods to whom sacrifice was offered—and this function generally determined their interior form. Sometimes they contained a single room in which stood an image and an altar; this was the simplest architectural embodiment of the idea of divine sacredness. But the progress of ritual forms was accompanied by the notion of grades of sanctity, and a special sanctity was indicated by a special room, an adytum, an inner or most holy shrine;1986 where, as was often the case, gradations in priestly rank existed, only the highest priest could enter the adytum. For the implements of service and for the priests there were buildings attached to the temple. The people gathered in courts adjoining the sacred structure; where ritual exactness was carried very far (as in Ezekiel's plan and in Herod's temple), there were gradations in the courts also.1987 Usually an altar stood in one of the courts. The sacredness of the sanctuary communicated itself to the vessels and other implements of the sacrificial service.
1085. Temples, like sacred inclosures and altars, were often asylums, and doubtless in many cases served to protect innocent persons. The privilege, however, was often abused, and it became necessary in Greece and Rome to restrain it.1988
1086. As a factor in the development of art the temple has been important. It has called forth the best architectural skill of man, and the statues that often adorned sacred buildings have stimulated sculpture. It does not appear that symbolism entered into the idea of ancient temples.1989 The Babylonian and Assyrian zikkurat (or ziggurat) was a staged structure (resembling in this regard the Egyptian pyramid), supposed by many scholars to be an imitation of the mountains whence the predecessors of the Semites in Babylonia came, and on which they worshiped;1990 if this be so, there is no attempt at pointing upward to the abode of the gods. Nor is there any trace elsewhere in the ancient world of a symbolic significance attached to temples beyond the distinction of place, referred to above, between the sacred and the profane and between different degrees of sacredness. The form of temples appears to have been determined by imitation of early nonreligious usage or by considerations of convenience;1991 the ziggurat may have been suggested by a high place, the adytum by a cave, but most temples were probably copies of ordinary human dwellings or civic buildings (as in late Latin, basilica is used in the sense of 'cathedral').
As abodes of priests temples were the centers of all priestly activities in the development of ritual and literature. Being strong and well guarded they were often used by kings as treasure-houses; but they were stripped of their wealth by native kings in times of need, and were freely plundered by conquerors.
1087. Forms of worship. The ancient forms of divine worship, as is remarked above,1992 follow in a general way the modes of approaching human potentates. Ceremonies of worship reached a high degree of elaboration in the great religions, Egyptian, Babylonian-Assyrian, Hebrew, Hindu, Greek, Roman.1993 The central fact was the presentation of the offering, and with this came to be connected prayers and hymns, ceremonies of purification, vows, imprecations, exorcisms, oracles; the festivals also were religious functions. Prayer is spoken of below.1994 Hymns sometimes consisted of or contained petitions, more generally were laudations of the power and benefactions of a deity. For poetical charm the first place is to be assigned to the Egyptian, Hebrew, and Hindu hymns. The religious ideas expressed in such compositions varied with time and place, but they show a general tendency toward a monolatrous or henotheistic point of view and toward higher ethical and spiritual feeling. Many of the Egyptian hymns seem to be substantially monotheistic, and the same thing is true of the Babylonian, the Assyrian, and the Vedic. The Babylonian hymns so far recovered (belonging in their present form mostly to the seventh century B.C.) are chiefly penitential1995 and show a close resemblance to some Hebrew psalms. In the Veda traces of philosophical thought, pantheistic and other, are not lacking. The poems of the Old Testament Psalter vary greatly in breadth and elevation of thought—some, dealing generally with national affairs (occasionally with individual experiences), are narrow and ethically low; others show exalted conceptions of the deity and fine moral feeling. The Avestan ritual is concerned largely with physical details, but is not lacking in a good ethical standard; the Gathas, particularly, though not free from national coloring, give a noteworthy picture of the government of the world according to moral law. Of Greek ritual hymns we have few remains, and these are of no great interest.
1088. Everywhere the temple-hymns, as is natural, deal chiefly with the desires and hopes of the worshiper, and often do not rise above mere egoism. Their object is to secure blessing, and the blessing is often, perhaps generally, of a nonmoral character—wealth, children, triumph over enemies. Desire for moral purity appears in some Hebrew hymns, and perhaps in some Babylonian. Of the modes of presenting liturgical poems to the deity we have few details. In the Second Temple at Jerusalem there were choruses of ministrants (Levites), and some of the titles of the psalms contain what seem to be names of musical instruments and melodies; but of this temple-music nothing further is known than that it was sometimes sung antiphonally, but without harmony.1996 In some parts of Greece boys were trained to render hymns musically in the daily service and on special occasions. The general character of old Greek music is indicated in the Delphian hymn to Apollo discovered in 1893;1997 the melody is simple but impressive—there is no harmony.
1089. The temple-music doubtless tended to heighten devotional feeling among the worshipers, and possibly a similar popular effect was produced by the festivals that were common in the ancient world. Here the whole population took part, there were religious ceremonies, and the consciousness of the presence of the deity was made more distinct not only by visible and tangible representations, but often also by the fact that these occasions were connected in current myths and legends with histories of gods and ancient national experiences. Processions and pilgrimages brought the people to sacred places to which stories were attached, and the religious life became a series of object lessons. The Greek and Roman calendars contain a great number of feast days, each assigned to some god.1998 The Hebrews at a comparatively early date (eighth or ninth century B.C.) connected their great festivals with remote national events;1999 examples of festivals attached to recent historical events are Purim,2000 the Feast of Dedication established in commemoration of the rededication of the temple by Judas Maccabæus (December, 165 B.C.) after the Syrian profanation,2001 and the "Day of Nicanor" commemorating the victory of Judas over that general (March, 161 B.C.).2002 In the Hindu festivals (New Year's Day and during the spring months) stories of gods formed a prominent feature.2003 The Greek Genesia, the season of mourning for the dead, came to be connected with the victory of Marathon.2004
All such celebrations tend to become seasons of merrymaking, and the religious element in them then receives less and less attention.2005 This remark holds of the festivals that Christianity took over from the old religions, adapting them to the new conditions.2006 Such occasions lose their distinctive religious significance in proportion as the events they commemorate recede into the past and become less and less distinct. It is in very early times, when they are thought of as representing realities, that they are religiously effective; in later times they give way to more reflective forms of devotion.
1090. Vows, blessings, and curses may be considered to belong to worship in the regard that they contain petitions to the deity; the curse or the blessing, however, sometimes rested on a baldly objective conception of the power of words, sometimes was held to be magical: once uttered, the word, beneficent or maleficent, went to its object, person or thing, did its work, and could not be recalled; its effect could be set aside only by an utterance in the opposite direction.2007 A magician, by the power resident in him, could fix a curse or a blessing on man or thing. An exorcism, also, might be effected by magic or by invoking the aid of a deity; an evil spirit is a supernatural Power and has to be considered—one does not worship such a being, but one may employ religious means to circumvent him. Bad magic may be overcome by good magic, and a deity, hostile and maleficent under certain circumstances, may be placated by offerings. It is not always easy to draw the line between worship proper and modes of defense against injurious Powers. But in general true worship implies friendly relations between human and superhuman persons.
1091. Idols. From an early time men have desired to have visible representatives of the supernatural. So long as natural objects, trees, stones, mountains, were regarded as themselves divine or as the abodes of spirits, so long as a loose social organization and the absence of definite family life led men to spend their lives in the open air, there was no need of artificial forms of the Powers. Such a need arose inevitably, however, under more advanced social conditions. Exactly at what stage men began to make images it is hardly possible to say,—the process was begun at different stages in different regions,—but it appears that in general it was synchronous with some fairly good form of social organization. Yet, where such forms exist, there are differences in the use of images. These are found—to take the lower peoples—in Melanesia and the Northern Pacific Ocean, in the northern part of South America, in North America apparently only among the Eastern Redmen (as the Lenâpé or Delawares),2008 and on the western coast of Africa (Ashanti, Dahomi, Yoruba). Where the cult of beasts (whether totemic or not) is a living one, idolatry does not find a place; it is only when communities have begun to be agricultural that they have artificial forms of gods; that is, idolatry comes in with the stage of culture connected with the agricultural life.2009
The development in the form of images is familiar. The rude and, to modern eyes, grotesque idols of the lower peoples gradually pass into the more finished forms of the civilized nations.2010 Really artistic forms, however, were produced only by some Semites (Babylonians and Assyrians) and in the Hellenic and Græco-Roman worlds. In Central America, Mexico, and Peru images are anthropomorphic but lacking in symmetry and grace. Hindu idols are often composite and grotesque, sometimes (especially images of Buddha) highly impressive.
1092. The Hebrews appear to have had no anthropomorphic images of their national deity. Down to a late period there was a cult of household gods,2011 and of these, probably, there were images in private houses and in shrines, whether anthropomorphic or not is uncertain. In Solomon's temple (and in Ezekiel's proposed plan) figures of cherubs (originally divine beings) stood on the walls of the main room and guarded the ark in the adytum; they were winged creatures, the forms derived immediately from Phœnicia, ultimately from Babylonia; they appear only in the great public cult, probably did not enter into the religious life of the people at large, and there is no evidence that they ever received divine worship.2012 The Hebrews had no plastic art of their own, seem to have had small disposition in their earlier history to make images, and later such forms were excluded by the antagonism of the prophets to foreign cults and by refined ideas of the deity.2013 The absence of images in the Zoroastrian cult may be accounted for in a similar way—from early lack of artistic impulse and later elevated conceptions. In China there are images in household worship, but none in the great imperial religious ceremonies.2014 Though the Koran does not expressly forbid the cult of images, yet, as the old Arabian cults denounced by the prophet were all idolatrous, images were identified with false religion (polytheism) and have been avoided by the Moslems, whose strict monotheism left no place for them.
1093. Images were credited in half-civilized times with a certain personality, were flogged or destroyed when they failed to do what was expected of them, or were bound in order to prevent their going away.2015 In such cases the conception of the power of these objects was probably a confused one; though they were known to be inanimate pieces of wood or stone or other material, it was believed that they were inhabited by spirits or deities, and it was held that in some undefined way the power of the divine agent was transferred to its physical incasement—the two were practically identified. This sort of conception soon passed away and was succeeded by a symbolical interpretation. Whatever the ultimate origin of the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Hindu divine and semidivine forms (which are sometimes monstrous),2016 it is probable that for the more thoughtful worshipers they represented divine powers and functions. Uncouth shapes may be softened or transformed by familiarity, and by association with higher ideas—things in themselves repulsive may become vehicles of devotion.2017 In all religious worship objects associated with pious acts acquire sanctity and beauty.
1094. That idolatry in ancient times was not a wholly bad feature of worship is shown by the excellence of the great religions in which it was practiced. Its general function was to make the deity more real to the worshiper, to make the latter more sharply conscious of the divine presence, to fix the attention, and so far to further a real communion. On the other hand, it tended to produce a low physical conception of the divine person, and to distract the mind of the worshiper from the ethical side of worship. Its moral effect was dependent on the man's character and thought. When the image was regarded as the symbol of an ethically good Power, it was a reënforcement of pure religious feeling; when it was regarded as in itself a source of physical benefit, it was a degrading influence. This difference of effect exists in those Christian bodies that include images and pictures of the deity and of saints in their apparatus of worship.
1095. The history of the social organization of religion is the history of the growth of churches—voluntary associations for worship; it is toward the Church that society has hitherto moved.2018 Every ancient community may be said to be an incipient church in the sense that it contains the germs of the later ecclesiastical development. But this later form exists in such communities only in germ—the most ancient worship was communal, an affair of clan, tribe, or State. Men were born into their religious faith and could no more change it, or think of changing it, than they could change, or think of changing, their language or any other inheritance. It was inevitable, however, that there should be a growth of individualism—instinct impelled men to think for themselves in religion as in all other things. Religion was a part of the general social movement, affected by all other parts of that movement. Independence of thought led to social aggregations, the members of which were drawn together by similarity of ideas and aspirations. This is the familiar history of social movements, and that in religion such movements have been continuous will be evident from a brief statement of the historical facts.
1096. Savage secret societies. These societies are referred to above;2019 here we have only to notice their germinal ecclesiastical character. They represent a partial break-up of tribal communal worship by assigning special duties and granting special privileges to certain initiated persons. Totemic groups are sometimes (as in Central Australia) charged with specific functions in the tribal life; but membership in such groups is a matter of birth, and they everywhere tend to give way to secret societies. These latter often have charge of certain religious rites, and from their secret proceedings and from a knowledge of their secret lore the rest of the tribe are excluded.
The extent to which religious organization and influence have been carried is illustrated by the history of the Polynesian Areoi, the most remarkable of such fraternities.2020 The Areoi created 'mysteries,' with an elaborate ritual whose effectiveness was dependent on absolute accuracy in words; its members were chosen without regard to tribal position and entered of their own free will; it was a voluntary association and made its own religious laws. It was restricted (as all such associations are) by the necessity of paying regard to existing customs, but within such limits it was independent of the tribe, and its members were held to be entitled to special honors and enjoyments in this life and the next (a crude conception of salvation). It was essentially a church, and other societies, in Polynesia, Africa, and North America, approached this position more or less nearly. They all tended to become tyrannical—their social influence enabled them to impose their authority on the tribe, and they did not hesitate to employ violence in asserting their rights.2021 To foreign influence they were naturally hostile, since this generally diminished their power. Founded as they are on savage ideas they have disappeared, or are disappearing, before foreign civilizations. In their best form they doubtless gave a certain unity to communities and were thus an element of order.
1097. Greek mysteries. In Greece dissatisfaction with the current cults expressed itself in various ways, largely through poets and philosophers, who asserted themselves, indeed, individually, but showed no power of organization. The task of organizing religious opinion fell to that new direction of thought (vaguely called "Orphic"2022) which, while it gave prominence to spiritual ideas and moral ideals, introduced a lively emotional element into worship. In the Eleusinian and other mysteries this element was both external (dramatic representations, songs, processions, ceremonies of initiation) and internal (the hope of salvation). Without breaking with the popular religious forms the mysteries constructed their own forms, chose their members, and created a religious imperium in imperio. They were voluntary associations for worship, ignored distinctions of social rank, had great ideas and impressive rituals—apparently all the elements necessary to the establishment of churches or of a national church. Yet they faded gradually away, and perished finally without leaving any definite impression, as it seemed, on Greece or the world without.2023
1098. The reasons of their failure are not far to seek. They did not reach the Hellenic mind for the reason that they were of foreign origin and much in them was opposed to the genius of the Hellenic religion. Even the Pythagorean reform movement of Southern Italy, with its strenuous moral culture of the individual, seems to have had a foreign (Asiatic) coloring. It was, indeed, at one with the better Greek thought of the time (sixth century B.C. and later) in its elevated conception of the deity and of worship, but with this it combined ascetic observances and, apparently, mystical ideas; it established what may be called a church, which had a great vogue in Southern Italy for several centuries but did not, as an organization, penetrate into Greece. It attracted some thoughtful men, but was too calm and restrained for the masses.2024
1099. It was different with the Dionysiac cult, whose wildness made it popular; of foreign origin, it was in time partly Hellenized and in Athens took its place in the regular national worship; some of its foreign features were taken up in the mysteries. These latter, with their enthusiasm and their half-barbaric ceremonies, excited the contempt of most of the educated class.2025 These cults were Asiatic—not Semitic—but probably a product of a non-Hellenic population of Asia Minor (Phrygia and other regions), developed during a period the history of which is obscure.
1100. The Semites seem to have produced no mysteries—there is no record of such cults in Babylonia, Syria, Phœnicia, the Hebrew territory, or Arabia; Semitic religion was objective, simple, nonmystical.2026 The Syrian cult of Tammuz (Adonis), which was adopted by Hebrews in the sixth century B.C. (Ezek. viii, 14), was an old folk-ceremony, not a mystery; it is allied to the Attis ceremonies of Asia Minor and to the mourning ceremony mentioned in Judges xi, 40 (mourning for a dead deity, but there referred to Jephthah's daughter).