Religion Past and Present
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Subject: Religious Studies
Edited by: Hans Dieter Betz, Don S. Browning†, Bernd Janowski and Eberhard Jüngel
Religion Past and Present (RPP) Online is the online version of the updated English translation of the 4th edition of the definitive encyclopedia of religion worldwide: the peerless Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (RGG). This great resource, now at last available in English and Online, Religion Past and Present Online continues the tradition of deep knowledge and authority relied upon by generations of scholars in religious, theological, and biblical studies. Including the latest developments in research, Religion Past and Present Online encompasses a vast range of subjects connected with religion.
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Religion Past and Present (RPP) Online is the online version of the updated English translation of the 4th edition of the definitive encyclopedia of religion worldwide: the peerless Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (RGG). This great resource, now at last available in English and Online, Religion Past and Present Online continues the tradition of deep knowledge and authority relied upon by generations of scholars in religious, theological, and biblical studies. Including the latest developments in research, Religion Past and Present Online encompasses a vast range of subjects connected with religion.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
Sanchez, Thomas
(105 words)
[German Version] (1550, Cordoba – May 19, 1610, Granada), Jesuit (from 1567) moral theologian. His three-volume treatment of marriage became a standard work, although its open and detailed description drew censure. He anticipated the modern view that not every instance of marital intercourse need be intended for procreation. Jansenists accused him of laxism. Rolf Decot Bibliography Works include:
Disputationum de sancto matrimonii sacramento... libri 10, 3 vols., 1602–1605
Opus morale in praecepta Decalogi, 2 vols., 1613–1621 On Sanchez: BCJ 7, 1896, 530–537, suppl. no.…
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Religion Past and Present
Sanchuniaton
(126 words)
[German Version] The Phoenician personal name Sanchuniaton (“Sakun has given”) appears in Greek in passages from the writers Porphyry and Philo of Byblos quoted by the church father Eusebius of Caesarea (
Praep. I 9.20f., 24–29; X 9.12–16). He is said to have been a Phoenician priest from the time before the Trojan War, cited by Philo Byblius as vouching the Phoenician tradition he records and for its great antiquity. Philo Byblius is claimed to have translated Sanchuniaton’s work on Phoenician history from Phoenician into Gre…
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Religion Past and Present
Sancroft, William
(205 words)
[German Version] (Jan 20, 1617, Fressingfield, Suffolk, England – Nov 24, 1693, Fressingfield, Suffolk, England), archbishop of Canterbury and Nonjuror. Fellow of Emmanuel College in Cambridge from 1642 to 1651, he fled to the Continent after being rejected from his Cambridge fellowship by the Puritans. After the Restoration in 1660, he gained rapid preferment in the Church, being elevated to archbishop in 1668. While in office, he labored in various ways to strengthen the spiritual and political …
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Religion Past and Present
Sanctification
(2,676 words)
[German Version]
I. Old Testament Sanctification, the “setting apart” of spaces, times, objects, and persons to make them sacred (cf. Lat.
sacer) is represented in the Old Testament by the verb קדשׁ/
qdš piel and niphal, its antonyms חלל/
ḥll I piel and חל/
ḥl, and the antithesis “clean–unclean” טהר–טמא/
ṭhr–ṭmʾ (with reference to holiness: Lev 11:43ff.; 16:19; cf. Deut 14:3ff.; purity and impuraty). Since YHWH represents holiness
per se (Isa 5:16, etc.), sanctification means translating the object in question into the immediate divine realm (cf. the regulati…
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Religion Past and Present
Sanction, Church Law
(137 words)
[German Version] A sanction is the legal detriment associated with failure to observe a requirement of church law. Roman law recognized
leges plus quam perfectae (legal action voided, penalty),
leges perfectae (legal action voided),
leges minus quam perfectae (penalty but legal action valid), and
leges imperfectae (not voided and no penalty). Criminal sanctions must be distinguished from non-criminal sanctions. The former are ecclesiastical penalties. In canon law, there is a range of possibilities, depending on the legal action in questio…
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Religion Past and Present
Sanctus
(503 words)
[German Version]
I. Liturgy The
Sanctus is an acclamation sung after the preface of the Eucharistic prayer. It is virtually universally used in the East and West in liturgical traditions, with increasing use in the reformed orders of less liturgical Protestant traditions. The text expresses unity of earthly worship with heavenly worship in praise of God. The text is the Trisagion based on Isaiah (Isa 6:3; see also Rev 4:8), with the added Benedictus, both of which end with “Hosanna” acclamation (see also Matt 21:9; Ps 118; 25–26a). The Trisagion (three Holys) comes ¶ from the ancient mor…
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Religion Past and Present
Sanday, William
(149 words)
[German Version] (Aug 1, 1843, Holme Pierrepont, Nottinghamshire – Sep 16, 1920, Oxford). Educated at Repton and Oxford, Sanday became Dean Ireland’s ¶ Professor (1882–1895) and Lady Margaret Professor (1895–1919), both in Oxford. An influential New Testament scholar, Sanday was one of the first English academics to organize a seminar, where he championed young scholars including B.H. Streeter, and was crucial in publicizing German theology in England. Initially conservative, he later introduced A. Schweitzer’s thought into England with
The Life of Christ in Recent Research (19…
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Religion Past and Present
Sandhagen, Caspar Hermann
(160 words)
[German Version] (Oct 22, 1639, Borgholzhausen, near Bielefeld – Jul 14, 1697, Kiel). After studying at Rostock and Straßburg (Strasbourg), he was appointed assistant pastor in Bielefeld in 1665 and in 1667 headmaster of a school there; for a while he was closely associated with the Labadists (J. de Labadie) in nearby Herford. In 1672 he was appointed superintendent in Lüneburg, and in 1689 was made general superintendent for Schleswig-Holstein and senior court chaplain in Gottorf. As a painstakin…
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Religion Past and Present
Sandoval, Alonso
(98 words)
[German Version] (Dec 7, 1576, Seville – Dec 25, 1651, Cartagena, Columbia) was educated in Lima, Peru, where he became a Jesuit. After 1605 he dedicated his life to the service of the African slaves in Cartagena, Colombia. An observer of the African cultural background of the slaves, he developed a pastoral method for integrating slaves in the Catholic Church. He inspired other Jesuits, including the famous P. Claver, to work for the good of black people. Armando Lampe Bibliography Works include:
De instauranda Aethiopum salute. El mundo de la esclavitud negra en América, 1627, 1956.
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Religion Past and Present
Sanhedrin
(271 words)
[German Version] Sanhedrin, Hebrew (and Aram.) ןירִדהַנְסַ, loanword from Greek συνέδριον/
synédrion, “assembly, tribunal, ¶ council.” Earlier scholarship saw in the Sanhedrin the highest legislative and judicial body of Palestinian Judaism (I), established in the Hellenistic period and continued by the rabbis (II, 1) into the 5th century after the destruction of the second temple (II, 4); initially it was headed by the high priest, later by the nasi. This picture is a harmonization of statements in Flavius Jo…
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Religion Past and Present
Śaṅkara
(329 words)
[German Version] Śaṅkara (Śaṃkara, Shankara; c. 7th–8th cent. ce, India), founder of so-called
kevalādvaita, historically the most influential school of Vedānta (Hinduism: I, 1). Historically accurate information about Śaṅkara’s life is not immediately available. Myths and legends glorifying his ministry were spread by biographies canonized in the 14th–18th centuries. Śaṅkara, a reincarnation of Śiva, is said to have been the son of a South Indian Brahmin, a student of Govinda, who had himself been a stu…
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Religion Past and Present
Sankey, Ira David
(165 words)
[German Version] (Aug 28, 1840, Edenburg, PA – Aug 13, 1908, Brooklyn, NY). In tandem with evangelist D.L. Moody, Sankey developed a new paradigm of religious service in which music was equal to preaching. He created a style of congregational song called “gospel hymns” (Gospel music) with simple texts and appealing music. A chorus or refrain was the most prominent feature. Gospel hymnody became the musical model for revivalism (Revival/Revival movements) that impacted all American religious life a…
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Religion Past and Present
Sankt Blasien Abbey of
(235 words)
[German Version] Sankt Blasien Abbey of, Benedictine abbey in the southern Black Forest, established in the 9th century by translation of the relics of St. Blasius from Rheinau. After 1000 it was associated with the high Alemannic nobility and the bishop of Basel and became the center of the monastic reform movement (Monasticism: III, 3.d), with extensive influence. In the 12th century it passed to the Zähringers and in the 13th century to the Habsburgs, with whom it remained associated until secularization in 1806. The abbey acquired extensive, ¶ widespread properties and rights an…
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Religion Past and Present
San Marino
(220 words)
[German Version] San Marino, the oldest republic in Europe. Located on the eastern side of the Umbrian Apennines, as of 2010 it had an estimated population of 31,830 in an area of 61.2 km2. A 9th- or 10th-century legend associates its beginnings with Marinus and Leo, two Christians sentenced to forced labor near Rimini under Diocletian; after some missionary work in that area, they retreated to Monte Titano. There a group of hermits formed, which grew into a settlement that was organized in the 10th century as a fortified town …
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Religion Past and Present
Sannyāsin
(259 words)
[German Version] The Sanskrit word
saṃnyāsin (“renouncer”) is one of several terms for an ascetic in the Indo-Brahmanic tradition (Asceticism: VIII). A
saṃnyāsin renounces “the world,” especially all forms of ritual. In the classic formulation of the four stages of life (Āśrama: Brahmin student, householder, hermit, itinerant ascetic),
saṃnyāsa (“renunciation”) represents the fourth and final stage: having completely fulfilled his duties, the ideal twice-born man – someone who has experienced his “second birth” through initiation, in other…
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Religion Past and Present
Santayana, George
(157 words)
[German Version] (Dec 16, 1863, Madrid – Sep 26, 1952, Rome). With a Hispanic-American background, he lived the first half of his life in Boston, where he studied and taught at Harvard, and the second half in Europe. Influenced by both Pragmatism and Idealism, Santayana wrote widely on aesthetics, ethics, politics, religion, and the nature of imagination. Naturalism and a love of the wide-ranging intellectual life were driving forces in his thought, as was a general intolerance for pessimism, tech…
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Religion Past and Present