Introduction to the History of Religions Part 28

+1046+. In Smith's theory there is confusion between the two ideas of communion and expiation or placation. All the facts adduced by him go to show only that the earliest form of animal sacrifice took the form of communal eating; and in such repasts, as in the savage feasts on the bodies of warriors and others, the prominent consideration seems to have been the a.s.similation of the qualities of the thing consumed--in this case a divine animal. There is not a word of proof of the view that the placation of the deity was due to his a.s.similation of kindred flesh and blood. Such a view is not expressed in any ancient doc.u.ment or tradition, and, on the other hand, placation by gifts of food (animal or vegetable) and other things appears in all accounts of early ritual.

Even in the sacramental meals of later times, Eleusinian, Christian, and Mithraic, there is no trace of the theory under consideration. In the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" (ix f.) the conception of the eucharistic meal is simply symbolical. The origin of the Australian custom[1891] (in which the food brought in by a clan is not eaten till the old men have first tasted it) is obscure; but there is no hint that the food was supposed to be shared by a supernatural being.[1892]

Piacula arose under the influence of a deep sense of individual relation to the deity, and sometimes in connection with voluntary a.s.sociations in which a special sanct.i.ty was held to accrue to the initiates through the medium of a cult in which special sacrifices were prominent It was natural that peculiarly solemn or dreadful offerings should be made to the deity in times of great distress; the placating efficacy in such cases seems to have been due to the pleasure taken by the deity in the proof of devotion given by the wors.h.i.+pers. In general, the communal meal lost its early significance as time went on, and came at last to be celebrated merely as a traditional mark of respect to the deity, or as a social function; the belief in its efficacy, however (and sometimes belief in its magical power), survived into a relatively late period.

+1047+. In one point, the death of the G.o.d, J. G. Frazer, while accepting Smith's theory in general, diverges from his view. Smith regards the death of the G.o.d as having been originally the sacrificial death of the divine totem animal, with which later the G.o.d was identified. Frazer[1893] (here following Mannhardt[1894]) finds its origin in the death of the vegetation-spirit (the decay of vegetation), which was and is celebrated in many places in Europe, and furnishes an explanation of the myths of Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Dionysus, Demeter and Proserpine, and Lityerses. This explanation is adopted and expanded by Hubert and Mauss.[1895] So far as the mere fact of the sacrifice of a divine being is concerned it might be accounted for by either of these theories; but the numerous points of connection between the deities in question and the ancient ideas concerning the death of vegetation make the view of Mannhardt and Frazer the more probable. The kernel of the original custom is not expiation but celebration or wors.h.i.+p; the myths are dramatic developments of the simple old idea. Frazer suggests that the spirit or G.o.d, supposed to be enfeebled by age, was slain by the wors.h.i.+pers in order that a more vigorous successor might infuse new life into the world--an explanation that is possible but cannot be considered as established or as probable.[1896] However this may be, it was at a relatively late period that the conception of communion was introduced into ceremonies connected with the death of a deity. Originally the grain, identified with the G.o.d, was eaten in order to acquire his strength;[1897] such seems to be the purpose in the Mexican ceremonies in which paste images of the deity were eaten by all the people. With the growth of moral and spiritual conceptions of wors.h.i.+p such communal eating came naturally to be connected with a sense of union of soul with the deity, as we find in the higher religions, but still without the feeling that reconciliation and unity were effected through the absorption, by G.o.d and man, of the same sacred food.

+1048+. In some forms of Christianity the sacramental eating is brought into connection with the atoning death of a divine person, but this latter conception came independently by a different line of thought. Its basis is the idea of redemption, which is an element in all sacrifice proper. And, as the death of the divine victim is held to rescue the wors.h.i.+per from punishment for ill doing, the conclusion is natural that the former stands in the place of the latter. In the higher forms of thought such subst.i.tution could only be voluntary on the part of the victim. Traces of the self-sacrifice of a G.o.d have been sought in such myths as the stories of the self-immolation of Dido and Odin; but the form and origin of these myths are obscure[1898]--all that can be said of them in this connection is that they seem not to contain expiatory conceptions.[1899] The higher conception of a divine self-sacrifice is a late historical development under the influence of convictions of the moral majesty of G.o.d and the sinfulness of sin.

+1049+. _Union with the divine through a sanctified victim._ The conception of sacrifice as bringing about a union of the divine and the human is reached in a different way from that of Smith by MM. Hubert and Mauss, and receives in their hands a peculiar coloring.[1900] They hold that the numerous forms of sacrifice cannot be reduced to "the unity of a single arbitrarily chosen principle"; and in view of the paucity of accurate accounts of early ritual (in which they include the Greek and the Roman) they reject the "genealogical" (that is, the evolutionary) method, and devote themselves to an a.n.a.lysis of the two ancient rituals, the Hindu and the Hebrew, that are known in detail and with exactness.

They thus arrive at the formula: "Sacrifice is a religious act which, by the consecration of a victim, modifies the state of the moral person who performs it, or of certain objects in which this person is interested."

The procedure in sacrifice, they say, consists in establis.h.i.+ng a communication between the sacred world and the profane world by the intermediation of a victim, that is, of a thing that is destroyed in the course of the ceremony; it thus serves a variety of purposes, and is dealt with in many ways: the flesh is offered to hostile spirits or to friendly deities, and is eaten in part by wors.h.i.+pers or by priests; the ceremony is employed in imprecations, divination, vows, and is redemptive by the subst.i.tution of the victim for the offender; the soul of the beast is sent to join its kin in heaven and maintain the perpetuity of its race; all sacrifices produce either sacralization or desacralization--both offerer and victim must be prepared (for the victim is not, as Smith holds, sacred by nature, but is made sacred by the sacrifice), and, the ceremony over, the person must be freed from his sanct.i.ty (as in the removal of a taboo); all sacrifice is an act of abnegation, but the abnegation is useful and egoistic, except in the case of the sacrifice of a G.o.d.

+1050+. The essay of MM. Hubert and Mauss is rather a description of the mode of procedure in Hindu sacrifice than an explanation of the source of its power. A victim, it is said, sanctified by the act of sacrifice, effects communication between the two worlds, but we are not told wherein consists this sanctifying and harmonizing efficacy. The rituals chosen for a.n.a.lysis are the product of many centuries of development and embody the conceptions of theological reflection; it does not appear why they should be preferred, as sources of information concerning the essential nature of sacrifice, to the simple rites of undeveloped communities. The authors of the essay, though they deny the possibility of finding a single explicative principle chosen arbitrarily, themselves announce a principle, which, however, amounts simply to the statement that sacrifice is placatory. In thus ascribing the virtue of the ceremony to the act itself it is possible that they may have been influenced by the Brahmanic conception that sacrifice had power in itself to control the G.o.ds and to secure all blessings for men; it was credited by them with magical efficacy, and the efficacy depended on performing the act with minutest accuracy in details--the slightest error in a word might vitiate the whole proceeding.[1901] The developed Hindu system thus embodied in learned form the magical idea that is found in many early procedures, and in some other cults of civilized communities. So far as regards the variety of functions a.s.signed by MM.

Hubert and Mauss to sacrifice, they may all be explained as efforts to propitiate supernatural Powers; and the obligation on priests and wors.h.i.+pers to purify themselves by ablutions and otherwise arises from a sense of the sacredness of the sacrificial act, which is itself derived from the feeling that the sacredness of supernatural beings communicates itself to whatever is connected with them. The view that the victim is not in itself sacred is contradicted by all the phenomena of early religion. Though the essay of MM. Hubert and Mauss formulates no definition of the ultimate efficient cause in sacrifice, pa.s.sing remarks appear to indicate that they look on the offering as a gift to superhuman Powers, and that their object is to show under what conditions and circ.u.mstances it is to be presented.

+1051+. _Sacrifice as the expression of desire for union with the Infinite._ Professor C. P. Tiele, dissatisfied with existing theories of the significance of sacrifice, contents himself with a general statement.[1902] After pointing out that the material of sacrifice in any community is derived from the food of the community, he pa.s.ses in review briefly the theories of Tylor (gifts to deities), Spencer (veneration of deceased ancestors), and Robertson Smith; all these, though he thinks it would be presumptuous to condemn them hastily, he finds insufficient, most of them, he says, confining themselves to a single kind of offering, whereas every kind should be taken into account, gifts presented, objects and persons consecrated, victims slain with or without repasts, possessions and pleasures renounced, acts of fasting and abstinence, every kind of religious self-denial or self-sacrifice. The question being whether one and the same religious need is to be recognized in all the varieties, he finds the root of sacrificial observances in the yearning of the believer for abiding communion with the supernatural Power to which he feels himself akin, the longing of finite man to become one with the Infinity above him.

+1052+. Tiele here has in mind the highest form of the religious consciousness, which he carries back to the beginnings of religious thought. He is justified in so doing in so far as all later developments must be supposed to exist in germinal form at the outset of rational life; but such a conception tells us nothing of the historical origin of customs. The idea of the relation between the finite and the infinite is not recognizable in early thought; to trace the history of such an inst.i.tution as sacrifice we desire to know in what sort of feeling it originated, and we may then follow its progress to its highest definition. All the details mentioned by Tiele are included under the head of gift except acts of abstinence and self-sacrifice, and these last belong properly not to what is technically known as "sacrifice,"

but to man's endeavor to bring himself into ethical harmony with an ethical deity. With equal right prayer and all moral conduct might here be included; Tiele thinks of "sacrifice" as embracing the whole religious life. In the earliest known cults the "yearning for union with the Infinite" takes the form of desire to enter into friendly relations with superhuman Powers by gifts, in order to derive benefit from them; when old forms have been outgrown the conviction arises that what is well-pleasing to G.o.d is the presentation of the whole self, as a "living sacrifice," in service in accordance with reason (Rom. xii, 1).

+1053+. The various theories of the origin and efficacy of sacrifice (omitting the amba.s.sadorial conception) are thus reducible to three types: it is regarded as a gift, as a subst.i.tution, or as an act securing union (physical or spiritual) with the divine. These have all maintained themselves, in one form or another, up to the present day.

The old ritual slaughter of an animal and the presentation of vegetables and other things have, indeed, vanished. The movement of thought against animal sacrifice began in the Western world (among the Greeks and the Hebrews) probably as early as the fourth century B.C.[1903] In Greece the formulation of philosophic thought and the rise of individualism in religion (embodied, for example, in the great Mysteries) brought larger and more spiritual ideas into prominence. Rational law and inward impulse took the place, in the higher circles, of ritual offerings. The object of law, says Plato, is the encouragement of virtue of all kinds and the securing of the highest happiness; but, he holds, there is something higher than law: the good Athenian is above other men, for he is the only man who is freely and genuinely good by inspiration of nature, and is not manufactured by law.[1904] The Mysteries a.s.sumed that every man, with suitable inward preparation, was fitted to enter into a spiritual union with the deity. The later Jews showed equal devotion to their law, held to be divinely given, laying the stress on the moral side;[1905] jurists became more important than priests, and the synagogue (representing individual wors.h.i.+p) more influential than the temple-ritual. In certain psalms[1906] sacrifice is flatly declared not to be acceptable to G.o.d; this att.i.tude had been taken by the earlier prophets,[1907] but is emphasized in the psalms in the face of the later opinion that the sacrificial ritual was of divine ordination (so in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers). In the Gospels the sacrificial ritual is practically ignored. In India the Brahmanic and Buddhistic movements toward rational conceptions of religion showed themselves as early as the sixth century B.C. Thus, over a great part of the civilized world intellectual and moral progress took the form of protest against the old idea of sacrifice.

+1054+. Yet old customs are long-lived, and the ancient theories, as is remarked above, still have a certain power. The crudest of them--that the deity may be propitiated by gifts--shows itself in the belief that ill-doing may be atoned for by the support of charitable and religious inst.i.tutions--by the building of churches and hospitals, by the maintenance of religious wors.h.i.+p, and by aid to the poor. Society has benefited largely by this belief, especially in medieval Europe and to some extent in Buddhistic and Moslem communities; it has formed a transition to higher conceptions, by which it has now been in great measure replaced. The same thing is true of ascetic observances. The idea of sacrificial subst.i.tution, which has been prominent in organized Christianity from an early period (though it has no support in the teaching of Jesus), might seem to be prejudicial to religion for the reason that it tends to depress the sense of individual responsibility by relegating the reconciliation with the deity to an external agency--and such has often been its effect; but this unhappy result has been more and more modified, partly by the natural human instinct of moral responsibility and the ethical standard of the Christian Scriptures, partly by the feeling of grat.i.tude and devotion that has been called forth by the recognition of unmerited blessing. The third theory of sacrifice, according to which its essence is union with the divine, has pa.s.sed gradually from the sphere of ritual to that of moral culture. In mystical systems, Christian and Moslem, it has lent itself sometimes to immorality, sometimes to a stagnant, egoistic, and antisocial quietism; but in the main it has tended to avoid or abandon mechanical and mystical features, and confine itself to the conception of sympathetic and intelligent cooperation with what may be regarded as the divine activities of the world.

+1055+. _Further external apparatus of religion._ Along with the growth of sacrifice there has been a natural development of everything that was necessary to give permanent form to public wors.h.i.+p--ritual, priests, temples, idols, and whatever was connected with the later church organizations.

RITUAL

Apart from magical procedures the earliest known public religious wors.h.i.+p consisted simply in the offering of an animal, a vegetable, a fluid, or other object to a superhuman being, the offering being performed by any prominent person and without elaborate ceremonies.

Inevitably, however, as the social organization grew more complex and the conception of sanct.i.ty more definite, the ceremonial procedure became more elaborate. The selection and the handling of the victim came to be objects of anxious care, and the details increased in importance as they increased in number. It was believed that minute accuracy in every ritual act was necessary for the success of the offering. Various elements doubtless entered into this belief: often a magical power was attributed to the act of sacrifice; and there was a feeling, it may be surmised, that the deity was exacting in the matter of ceremonies--these were marks of respect, such as was paid to human potentates, and well-defined court rituals (on which the religious ritual was probably based) appear in early forms of society. Thus ritual tended to become the predominant element in wors.h.i.+p, serving first the interests of unity and order in religion, and later always in danger of becoming a mechanical and religiously degrading influence.

+1056+. In most savage and half-civilized communities sacrifice is a simple affair, and the details of the ceremonies of wors.h.i.+p are rarely reported by travelers and other observers.[1908] An exception exists in the case of the Todas of Southern India, who have elaborate ceremonies connected with the milking of buffaloes.[1909] The ordinary buffaloes of a village are cared for by some prominent man (never by a woman), who is sometimes a sacred person and while carrying on his operations performs devotional acts (prayer and so forth), but without a fixed ritual. A higher degree of sanct.i.ty attaches to the inst.i.tution called _ti_, which comprises a herd of buffaloes belonging to a clan and provided with dairies and grazing-grounds; each dairy has appropriate buildings, and the _ti_ is presided over by a sort of priest called a _palol_. The migration of the buffaloes from one grazing-ground to another is conducted as a sacred function. In the case of an ordinary herd the procession of animals is accompanied by a religious official who carries the dairy implements; on reaching the destination the new dairy is purified, the sun is saluted, and prayer is offered. In a _ti_ migration the procedure is more elaborate: the milking of the buffaloes is accompanied by prayers for the older and the younger members of the herd, and every act of the _palol_ is regulated by law. The same thing is true of the animal sacrifices: the slaughter of the victim and the disposal of the various parts are accomplished in accordance with definite rules that are handed down orally from one generation to another. The Todas are a non-Aryan people, hardly to be called half-civilized: if the buffalo-ritual is native with them, the natural inference will be that the custom is ancient. Rivers adduces a considerable number of similarities between Toda inst.i.tutions and those of the Malabar coast (such as polyandry and other marriage inst.i.tutions), and this agreement, as far as it goes, may point to a common culture throughout a part of Southern India;[1910] the early history of these tribes is, however, obscure. It is possible that the Todas have borrowed some customs from the Hindus. They have certainly adopted some Hindu G.o.ds, and Rivers suspects Hindu influence in their recognition of omens and lucky and unlucky days, in certain of their magical procedures, and in their use of pigments and ashes in some sacred ceremonies. There seems, however, to be no proof that the buffalo-ritual has been borrowed from the Hindus. On this question, which is of importance as bearing on the early history of ritual, it is to be hoped that further information will be got.

+1057+. Various nonsacrificial rituals (dances and so forth) are referred to above.[1911] Magical processes should be here included so far as they involve a recognition of superhuman agents; they are then to be regarded as religious. Definite magical ritual is found in many of the lower tribes, and there are ceremonies in which a shaman is the conductor--these are governed by fixed customs as to dress, posture, acts, and words.[1912] They differ from magical processes in that they are a.s.semblies of the people, religious because there is communication with spirits. In the Californian tribes and others they become occasions of merrymaking; a peculiar feature of these gatherings among the Maidu and other tribes is the presence of a clown who mimics the acts and words of the dancers and performs knavish tricks; the origin of this feature of the dances is not clear. In all such ceremonies the tendency to regulate the details of religious performances is apparent, and such regulation is found in so many parts of the world that it may be regarded with probability as universal.

+1058+. For the ancient national religions we have the fullest details in the case of the Hindus and the Hebrews. The Hindu sacrificial ritual is described by MM. Hubert and Mauss;[1913] the Hebrew procedure is given in the later sections of the Pentateuch.[1914] The Egyptian ritual also appears to have been elaborate, including much music.[1915] These show methods similar to those described above, and probably the same general modes of procedure were followed in Babylonia and Persia, though of the ritual in these countries only slight notices have been handed down.[1916] The great Chinese Imperial sacrifices are described by H.

Blodget.[1917]

+1059+. These national systems exhibit a gradual quiet enlargement of the ritual resulting from increasing specialization in the conception of sin and forgiveness and in the functions of religious officials. A different sort of development appears in the rites of the cults that sprang up on the ruins of the old faiths--Greek Mysteries, Mithraism, Isisism, Christianity. These were all redemptive religions, highly individualistic and intense, efforts to infuse into old forms the ideas concerning moral purity, union with the deity, immortality, and future salvation that had arisen in the Graeco-Roman world by the natural growth of thought and the intermingling of the various existing schemes of religious life. They are all marked by a tendency toward elaborate organization, a sharp differentiation from the national cults, and purificatory and other ceremonies of initiation. The differentiation was most definite in Christianity, the ritual was most highly developed in the other movements. In the Greek public Mysteries[1918] and in those of Mithra[1919] there were (besides ablutions) the old communal meals, processions, striking dramatic performances, and brilliant effects of light and music, and in Mithraism trials of courage for the neophyte after the manner of the old savage initiations. The ceremonies in the Isis cult were less sensational, more quiet and dignified.[1920] In all these cults there was symbolism, and the moral teaching was of a lofty character.

+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 wors.h.i.+p. 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 a.s.sociated 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 a.s.syrian.[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 wors.h.i.+p was substantially identical in form with the wors.h.i.+p 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.

PRIESTS[1926]

+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 circ.u.mstances 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 s.e.xual 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, chast.i.ty 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 a.s.signed them. On the other hand, female ministrants in temples, who were closely connected with temple duties, were sometimes considered as wives of the G.o.d, and in some cases had s.e.xual relations with priests and wors.h.i.+pers, and became public prost.i.tutes.[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 G.o.ddess, which he supplied with women, may have been an attempt to control the cult of the hetaerae. The thousand hierodules at Corinth[1936]

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 prost.i.tution 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 s.e.xual union was defiling may have originated or strengthened the demand for chast.i.ty. The inst.i.tution of the lower cla.s.s of women does not seem to have originated in a society in which this regard for purity is lacking, for the hierodulic cla.s.s is rarely if ever found in existing societies of this sort. The origin of the cla.s.s 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 G.o.ds, 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 sanct.i.ty 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 t.i.tle "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 prost.i.tution._ The license just referred to is a part of a widespread custom of the prost.i.tution 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, Phoenicia, 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 n.o.blest families were sometimes so dedicated, and the role 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 Herodotus[1944] 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 G.o.ddess 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 prost.i.tutes 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 cla.s.s called _kedes.h.i.+m_, that is, persons devoted to the service of the deity and therefore sacred[1947] (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_ ("prost.i.tutes"), 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 pa.s.sage cited above. In a Phoenician inscription of Larnaca (in Cyprus)[1949] the plural of the word designates a cla.s.s of attendants in a temple of Ashtart, and there are proper names in which the term is an element (and therefore an honorable t.i.tle). It is not improbable that it meant originally simply a devotee or minister of a G.o.d 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 chast.i.ty 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 G.o.d's right to a woman seems to have been taken for granted.[1951] Ordinary prost.i.tution seems to have existed in the world, in all grades of civilization, from the earliest times. This att.i.tude toward the custom being so widespread, it is not strange that it has established itself in religious organizations.

Two types of organized religious prost.i.tution 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 inst.i.tutions fall into two cla.s.ses, one tracing their origin to some nonreligious custom, the other regarding them as originally religious (these cla.s.ses are, however, not necessarily mutually exclusive).

_Secular explanations._ It has been held that all such customs go back to a period of s.e.xual 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 prost.i.tution. More particularly, reference is made to p.u.b.erty 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 s.e.xually the property of the tribe through its regularly appointed representatives, and is thus prepared for members.h.i.+p; 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 G.o.d, 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 prost.i.tution is supposed by many writers to have sprung from the cult of the G.o.ddess who represented the productive power of the earth[1959] (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 G.o.ddess, but occupies a subordinate position. In early times the G.o.ddess 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 G.o.ddess 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 prost.i.tution of her female wors.h.i.+pers--some special ground must be a.s.sumed for this custom, and it is held that, as fertility was produced by the union of the G.o.ddess 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 prost.i.tution 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 G.o.ddess, 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 prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution must be regarded as the outcome of a long period of development. License, starting at a time when s.e.xual pa.s.sion was strong and continence was not recognized as a duty or as desirable, found entrance into various social and religious customs and inst.i.tutions, accommodating itself in different places and periods to current ideas of propriety. Appropriated by organized religion, it discarded here and there its more b.e.s.t.i.a.l 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 prost.i.tutes and of customs affecting individual women are suggested above.[1964] Many influences, doubtless, contributed to the final shaping of the inst.i.tution, 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 a.s.syrian 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 cla.s.ses 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, pa.s.sing 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 G.o.ds.[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 role is a.s.signed 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 cla.s.ses of ministrants at every shrine, but they differed apparently rather in the nature of their functions than in rank.

+1072+. The Greek priestly cla.s.s 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 h.e.l.lenic 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 wors.h.i.+p was conducted by the father of the family. The t.i.tle _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 members.h.i.+p 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 Caesar 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]