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This clergy is highly hierarchical; priests are appointed by their peers and senior officials. [3] Newly invested priests were required to demonstrate a sound knowledge of theology, medicine, and astronomy. Thus, the priests of Ra were reputed to have been particularly well-versed in the knowledge of the heavens.
These lowest level of servants were not priests. An assistant priest is a priest in the Anglican and Episcopal churches who is not the senior member of clergy of the parish to which they are appointed, but is nonetheless in priests' orders; there is no difference in function or theology, merely in 'grade' or 'rank'.
In Yucatán, priests were sons of priests or second sons of nobles. [10] The priesthood provided high status positions for those children of the Maya nobility who could not obtain political office. They were trained through an apprentice system, with young adults being selected according to their descent and individual abilities.
Priests were responsible for continuing the cultural and religious traditions of their city-state, and were viewed as mediators between humans and the cosmic and terrestrial forces. The priesthood resided full-time in temple complexes, and administered matters of state including the large irrigation processes necessary for the civilization's ...
A group of priests with two bishops in Batangas City, Philippines, 2024. The priesthood is the office of the ministers of religion, who have been commissioned ("ordained") with the Holy orders of the Catholic Church. Technically, bishops are a priestly order as well; however, in layman's terms priest refers only to presbyters and pastors ...
His functions were partly sacrificial or ritualistic, but these were the least important. His real power lay in the administration of ius divinum or divine law; [ 33 ] the information collected by the pontifices related to the Roman religious tradition was bound in a corpus which summarized dogma and other concepts.
The world's first civilizations were Mesopotamian sacred states ruled in the name of a divinity or by rulers who were seen as divine. Rulers, and the priests, soldiers and bureaucrats who carried out their will, were a small minority who kept power by exploiting the many.
Membership in the various colleges of priests, including the College of Pontiffs, was usually an honor offered to members of politically powerful or wealthy families. Membership was for life, except for the Vestal Virgins whose term was 30 years. In the early Republic, only patricians could become priests.