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The south‐facing panels represent afternoon moving toward twilight, a time of ambiguity, contradiction, and paradox. Bharata's ambiguous and compromised history told in Book Nine of the Bhagavata Purana may be described as written in “language in the manner of twilight.” The first corner panel depicts Dattatreya with Soma and Durvasas, and assumes knowledge of the Ramayana and Mahabharata; it signifies the tejas of Aniruddha the Unobstructed. In the other corner panel Mohini serves the devas amrita as the asuras watch; tantric rites using the “five m's” are referenced. Two of the bracketed panels illustrate Krishna's long “Summary of the Brahman Doctrine”: Krishna teaches Uddhava at Dvaraka, and Dattatreya as an avadhuta teaches Yadu. The latter alludes to the stories of Taravaloka and Vessantara. The next panel depicts Prahlada worshiping Man‐lion; the meaning of Sudarshana, the wheel‐weapon that embodies Shakti's will, is explored. The “Man‐lion Consecration” is implied. Finally, the Goddess Earth worships Boar, who rescued her from Hiranyaksha.

The criteria for a valid ordination assumed by modern scholars are analyzed here in relation to actual requirements for ordination in the early medieval period. Ordination, according to this earlier understanding, referred to the appointment to any ministry within a particular community for service to that community and was not restricted to the ordination to the diaconate or to the presbyterate. Numerous examples of references to women as ordained according to these criteria, including the surviving ordination rites for women, are then presented. Some of the important implications of this early concept of ordination are explored, particularly the fact that priests were not the only ones assumed to be able to consecrate the bread and wine during Mass.

This sanctum's sculpted program consists of two sequences running parallel, west to east: the Northern Path (“Approaching the Honey of the Lotus Feet”) and “The Path of the Southern Doctrine.” This chapter discusses the panels on the west‐ and east‐facing sides of the northern sequence. The two sequences document the ritual career of Nandivarman Pallavamalla and use specific events in Bhagavata stories to illustrate his steps along both paths to reach virya action and aishvarya sovereignty. Discussed here are: the murti Padmanabha; the Seven Seers; Damodara as Ashtabhujasvamin, the Eight‐Armed Lord (incuding Nandivarman's consecration to Man‐lion); Krishna slays the asura Keshin as horse (including significance of horse sacrifice); Krishna leaves the gopis; Akrura's vision of Krishna and Balarama; Krishna wrestles Chanura; Krishna stands as victorious Madhava.

Experience shows that after consecration, the eucharistic accidents are still extended on the altar and that what remains continues to be causally interactive in all of the ways that bread would be. But theological consensus held that after consecration, the bread-substance does not remain. Two sets of problems arise: from an Aristotelian point of view, independently extant accidents seem to be metaphysically impossible; and if they did exist, they would not fit the profile of Aristotelian agents and patients. How could they act and be acted upon? This chapter charts Aquinas' and Giles' solutions. If it became common place to redraw the distinction between substance and accidents in terms, not of actual but of aptitudinal independence and inherence, Aquinas and Giles insist that quantity alone is capable of independent existence because sensible qualities depend for their individuation on quantity as their proximae subject. Aquinas notes special problems for changes resulting in new substances, while Giles worries about what will persist through quantitative changes in the eucharistic accidents.

The highest level a nun could achieve in Ireland was the office of abbess and, like other female professions, it was imbued with symbols and metaphors. This chapter looks at abbesses and other high-ranking holy women during the early medieval period, as well as the other types of ‘exceptional’ nuns which the Irish acknowledged. As for the latter group, these were women who gained many of the honours and even elements of the legal status of abbesses, without being heads of monasteries. They seem to have earned their status through pilgrimage, holiness, miracle-working, or service to their wider communities. In the highest echelons of the female religious profession, there was the same trend toward diversity and flexibility which have already been seen in the living arrangements and grades of nunhood. This chapter also discusses the selection and consecration of abbesses and their attendance of synods.

After the military victories won by the Cossacks throughout 1648, the rule of the hetman of the Zaporozhian Host suddenly ceased to be purely military and extended to the civil, economic, judicial, and foreign-policy affairs of the entire territory that was now under Cossack control. The authority of the Zaporozhian hetman, to which post Bohdan Khmelnytsky was elected at the beginning of 1648, was no longer limited to the Zaporozhian Host. There was an urgent need to establish the hetman's legitimacy even among his ‘own’ Cossacks, as he customarily exercised absolute power during a military campaign, but not in peacetime. This chapter examines the evolution of hetman rule in Ukraine during the time of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Cossacks' support for monarchism under Khmelnytsky, the idea of Khmelnytsky's divine election, and the consecration of the hetman.

A church that is rich in symbolic associations conveys a strong sense of sacrality—the presence of the holy within the sacred. Different forms of symbolic association in the classic sacramental tradition are discussed in connection with Santa Maria Novella at Florence. Orientation (planning a church with the altar at the east end), legends of foundation, and ceremonies of consecration are all seen as ways of cultivating symbolic resonance. The “Cathedral of Huts” at Maciene in Mozambique is seen as one example of how churches reflect a process of indigenization in Africa.

The space where praise and prayer are offered not only signifies shelter from the elements but also represents an integral aspect of the worship itself. Methodist liturgical spaces evolved as denominations grew in membership and liturgies developed; attention to architecture and aesthetics coincided with interest in “enriched” worship. Stone and wood edifices designed according to popular architectural styles soon replaced plain preaching houses and log chapels. Pew rentals were sometimes – albeit controversially – established to cover the expense. The interior disposition might be longitudinally oriented and pulpit‐centered or designed according to an auditorium plan or divided chancel arrangement. Rites for the laying of a cornerstone and for the consecration or dedication of buildings were formulated. These had a practical function, yet they also identified Methodist understandings of the purpose of a house for worship.

Claire Ferchaud was born in west France on May 5, 1896. Although there was nothing special about her birth or her early youth, her modest origins made her ascent more spectacular. By the end of 1916, in the midst of the First World War, Claire was compared to Joan of Arc. Claire's visions made her a regional and national celebrity as she promised victory for France. This book focuses on how Claire Ferchaud came to stand in front of the president of the French Republic at the height of the crisis of the Great War. It discusses the forces that drove her mission. It is also about Claire's skillful use of those forces as she campaigned for national consecration and redemption which would lead to the victory of France in an interminable war.

This chapter discusses Claire's journey to Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre and her gradual awakening to her national mission of saving France from secularization, of fighting for France's soul, and of reclaiming France's status. Under the tutelage of Bourget in Saint Laurent, Claire's visions and message took shape. She acquired an outward personality that readied her for her national mission to save France. Claire's message of saving France was nothing new, however what set her apart was that this familiar message was harnessed to her phenomenal visionary power. As a result of her status at Saint-Laurent, Claire was no longer a visionary woman but a woman with a national mission. Her stay at Saint-Laurent also catapulted her to a national figure, pointing the path to France's consecration and regeneration.

This chapter discusses the unraveling of Claire's national mission. In 1917, the petition for the consecration intensified. From a personal redemption, the national debate shifted to national redemption. Claire and the Lay Catholics carried out a national petition-drive to persuade the government to lay the grounds for victory by consecrating France to the Sacred Heart. The campaign for a national consecration through petitions, emblems, photos, ceremonies, and newspapers reports continued to build. Claire continued her public campaign and maintained pressure on Poincaré. At the same time, her visionary world was becoming more elaborate. She claimed in her letter to have received word of a Masonic plot to destroy France. She claimed that the plot would soon be uncovered and that many high government officials would be put to death. Her message had always implied that only the stubbornness of the government officials stood between France and victory. In spite of the gravity of Claire's message, the government's position on the usage of the Sacred Heart as a military insignia and the national consecration remained emphatic. Neither the government nor the troops campaigned in favor of Claire Ferchaud or a consecration of the nation to the Sacred Heart.

Bishops in the Church of England are involved directly or indirectly in all aspects of ecclesiastical life: pastoral, governmental, doctrinal, liturgical, and proprietorial. The ministry of the episcopate, one of the church's three clerical orders, is pivotal: associated theologically with charismatic power and leadership, it is a ministry ordered and facilitated by law. The episcopal order itself is generic, but the Church of England has in recent years introduced a variety of different episcopal offices principally with a view to giving assistance to the diocesan bishop. As well as exploring the terms under which the new offices of bishop are regulated, this chapter explores the law applicable to all episcopal offices with regard to appointment, consecration, basic functions, retirement, resignation, and discipline. The entire legal framework of the Church of England, like that of the Roman Catholic Church, though sometimes in radically different ways, is one which protects and enhances the centrality of the episcopal ministry as an instrument of continuity and authority within the church.

This chapter discusses the archivization of Mergen Monastery, which was aimed at bringing the monastery into the modern age: new technologies were introduced that defined what could be picked out and conserved in written form, and thus made consonant with, and available to, modern people. It first describes the recruitment of young monks and the situation in the monastery since this book's authors' visit in 2002. It then details the vagaries of the spontaneous production of tradition at Mergen, giving the example of the ritual consecration of the new guardian deities in 2005.

The stories of Buddhist children destined to be saints or monastics reflect the motif of “the precocious child” that was already evident in Chinese elite culture in the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-220 C.E.). Yet childhood is not neglected in elite Buddhist texts. Childhood appears in stories of the Buddha’s birth and infancy, in ceremonies of bathing the infant Buddha who stands in the posture of proclamation of his real nature and mission, and in the Avatamsaka and Lotus Sutras, two Indian sutras that are immensely popular in China in part because they portray children in heroic roles. Childhood takes on a larger role in indigenous Buddhist tales, where they display real filiality as Buddhists understand it. In popular indigenous Buddhist stories, children, who are not yet ordained renouncers or sexually active adults, are seen as the best persons to achieve this universal Mahayana Buddhist goal.

This chapter discusses Marcus Simaika's travels in Sudan. Simaika visited Sudan for the first time in 1908, as a member of a Legislative Council delegation that also included Shawarbi Pasha, Mahmud Pasha Fahmi, and Abd al-Latif Bey al-Soufani. The purpose of the visit was to accompany Khedive Abbas Hilmi II, who was to inaugurate the harbor of Port Sudan. In 1909, Simaika again went to Sudan to accompany Pope Cyril V for the consecration of the Coptic Cathedral of Khartoum. On the return journey, Simaika urged Cyril to collect contributions from Coptic notables to fund the relocation of the patriarchal church from its a crowded section of Azbakiya to a spacious suburb of Cairo. In 1910, Simaika visited Sudan for the third and last time at the personal invitation of Sir Reginald Wingate to attend the consecration of the Anglican Cathedral.

This chapter examines the cultural history of Canonization of the Gods, beginning with its authorship, publication history, and narrative content. It then resituates the category of vernacular literature within an environment where it relates to the rituals and communities that produced it. It considers how the various antecedent versions of Canonization's skeletal plot from archaic history (“King Wu's Conquest of [King] Zhòu”) are directly related to a particular ritual for the consecration of inimical gods as territorial guardians. These gods and their armies of demon soldiers are installed by local ritualists to defend the space inhabited by local communities, a space most commonly conceived as the Five Quarters. The chapter also discusses a Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) version entitled Plain Tale of King Wu's Conquest of King Zhòu, along with several of the (newly added) main protagonists in the story that it argues are Daoist martial divinities.

This chapter examines the religious structures that allowed these royal women to cultivate strong networks of power by exploring in different contexts the relationship between virginity and martyrdom. It reviews the history of consecrated virginity and explores the influence of the teachings of Ambrose on female virginity and Leander of Seville on women’s monasticism in Spain. Hagiographies of martyrs and saints were also used to support or constrain the roles of royal women. The chapter concludes by exploring what we can learn about the meaning of royal female consecration from objects and images produced for their use.

This chapter examines the ritual for church consecration and the paradigm that it sets up for the construction and interpretation of sacred space. The performance of the liturgical ritual unites building, community, and scripture, purifying and consecrating the space as an ideal location for the communal worship of God. The chapter establishes key practices for the creation and maintenance of sacred space, including procession, purification, and the consecration of liturgical objects, and examines the continued relevance of the consecration ceremony for the identity of the parish community, in evidence from dedication sermons.