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1. IntroductionPastoral care refers to the assistance church officials (pastors) provide for individuals and groups of the faithful in questions of faith and the religious conduct of life. The  Regula pastoralis (“Pastoral Rule,” c. 590) of Pope Gregory I, the normative guide to pastoral care well into the early modern period, uses the Latin terms  cura pastoralis (“pastoral care,” French  la pastorale) and regimen animarum (“guidance of souls”). The literal Latin equivalent of German Seelsorge,  cura animarum (“care/cure of souls”), does not occur until the earl…

1. TerminologyThe English word  priest, like its equivalents in other Western European languages (French  prêtre, German  Priester, Italian  prete), goes back etymologically to Church Latin  presbyter (from Greek  presbýteros, “elder”). Its semantic content varies. In general religious studies and in English translations of the Old Testament, the term  priest denotes a religious specialist or functionary, especially in the sphere of the cult ( priest in the sense of Latin  sacerdos), but the New Testament totally avoids priestly terminology. There the function…

1. DefinitionThe term heresy (from Greek  haíresis, “school (of thought),” “faction”) denotes a serious deviation in the faith (“false doctrine”), resulting in exclusion from the church (Excommunication). The German synonym Ketzerei is derived from the name of the medieval mass movement of the Cathars (Greek  katharoí, “pure ones”), which formed an anti-church in the 12th century and were persecuted relentlessly. Heresy, as a violation of the integrity of the faith by individuals or groups, must be distinguished from apostasy (Greek  apostasía) as “renunciation” of the fa…

1. DefinitionAlthough theologians in the early church like Origen (3rd century CE) engaged  de facto in dogmatics, the term dogmatics itself (Latin  theologica dogmatica, from Greek dogmatikḗ, “teaching regarding the church’s teaching –  dógma – i.e. “theological teaching, doctrine”) did not gain currency until the theology of the 17th century. During the early Enlightenment, J.F. Buddeus was the first to offer a definition, in his encyclopedic introduction to theology (1727) [11]: the term  dogmatics denotes the portion of theology that explains and demonst…

1. To the 15th centuryThe term “pastorate” in English refers to the office of pastor, but the German term Pfarramt encompasses in a kind of personal union both the pastorate and the  rectory or parish house as the administrative center of a parish, which comprises either the faithful within a specific area (territorial parish) or belonging to a specific group (personal parish). (On the etymology of the German words  Pfarrei, “parish,” and  Pfarrer, “pastor,” see [4. 153]).The Christian parish (Congregation) of Roman late antiquity, whose territory was coextens…

1. OverviewGiven the complex history of the growth of the European universities, in the high Middle Ages there was a theological faculty only at the educational institutions organized into four faculties on the Paris model (arts, law, medicine, and theology; Law, Faculty of, Medicine, faculty of ). The tertiary institutions modeled on Bologna consisted instead of two sub-units, themselves called universities (University of the Jurists, University of the Artists and Physicians). Here theology was …

1. General See Childhood; Pedagogy; SchoolPeter Walter2. Late medieval religious education and HumanismDuring the Middle Ages, transmission of at least the rudiments of religious teaching and practice was considered primarily the task of the family. Contrary to the assumption of earlier researchers, however, besides their own religious practice and the preaching of the church (Sermon), there do not appear to have been sermons addressed specifically to children [6. 278]). The tools available to parents included brief written guides, which could be acquired an…

1. Protestantism The Reformers saw the Bible as the complete, self-evident revelation of God. This meant a rejection of a spiritualistic appeal to additional inner revelations as well as the Catholic view that God has revealed himself equally in the Bible and in Church tradition so that the Bible can only be properly understood and interpreted by ecclesiastical ministers of the teaching tradition (Ministry [ecclesiastical]), and under no circumstances by just anyone. This difference in revelation …

1. TerminologyIt was not until the early modern period that the two adjectives Roman and  Catholic were used together to single out the church with Rome as its center from among the confessional churches that emerged after the Reformation. The older of the two (in ecclesiological usage),  Catholic (from Greek  kathólou, katholikós, “universal”), appears for the first time in the 2nd century, in the letter of Bishop Ignatius of Antioch to the church in Smyra (8.2), to distinguish the universal church of Jesus Christ from an individual congr…

1. IntroductionMission (Neolatin  missio, “[act of sending]”; “dispatch”) denotes what was originally an exclusively Christian phenomenon: the active propagation of a religion, Christianity, by annunciation and sacramental incorporation into the church. A distinction is drawn between this “outer mission” ( missio externa) and the “inner mission” ( missio interna) that aims to recruit or recover to the faith people in already Christian countries.The literate religions that existed before and alongside Christianity did spread through migration, like Judaism…