I figured I ought to get some slightly more conventional sources.

Oh, but where's the fun in that?

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Jesus Christ Superstar

Ha! That's where most of my knowledge of the Bible comes from, too. And also Godspell.

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Hil, was that image you linked to by Fra Lippo Lippi? The site won't let me in.

I checked my books and I have a lovely book called The Painted Prayer about Books of Hours and the only St. Agatha it has is a teeny tiny image that is part of an image of all saints. (So tiny, that even though the caption said she was there I couldn't tell which one she was.)

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Connie, your comment cracked me up (because I have a committee meeting, tonight. Q.E.D.).

Me: .... Jesus Christ Superstar.

I love JCS. I have never seen Godspell, and keep meaning to get a copy of it.

Hil, I think religious communities of hermits/monks, nuns and the like started within the first couple of centuries. When Christians were on the run at different times, they formed religious communities in the desert. From the beginning though (which you can even see in the first generation, with Jesus and his followers) there was a tendency to assemble into communities.

In the cities throughout the Roman Empire, all the first "churches" were house churches. From what I understand, they were pretty autonomous, but they followed the lead of the Apostles/Jerusalem Council. The epistles (letters) you see in the NT are either pastoral (personal letters to a leader), ecclesiastical (to a particular community), or general (to all the communities). As far as I know, it seems these generally ended up being copied and circulated among the other communities in different cities.

There wasn't an official office of priest (at least one that translates into the English of that title) among the Christians discussed in the NT, as far as I know. Christianity does have this concept of the priesthood of all believers though, and that Jesus is High Priest (there's a lot about that in the NT book of Hebrews). Because the very first Christians were still practicing Jews, they continued to go up to the Temple where, of course, there already were priests.

I'm not all that clear on how the roles of bishop and deacon you can see in the NT birthed the office of priest, because it's not part of my own tradition. From what I do know of it, Roman Catholic tradition traces a line from the apostles to the priesthood, but acknowledges the apostles as both the first bishops and priests, I think. I believe they recognize Jesus's institution of communion (the Last Supper a.k.a. the Eucharist) and his instruction for them to continue the rite in his memory as the first ordination. They consider those taught by the apostles to administer the Eucharist and baptize (and administer the other rites the RC church recognizes as sacraments), as the next generation of priests, and so-forth. There's this whole big, very specific idea of apostolic succession, which they tie back to that verse about Peter being the rock. Roman Catholic tradition teaches that Peter was the first Bishop of Rome. Pope was special recognition (eventually) given to the bishop at Rome, who in RC teaching is Christ's vicar on earth.

You can see where some itty bitty seeds of administrative layers were planted in Acts, which talks about the first big waves of conversion; communal living among believers; the Jerusalem Council; the Apostles (generally "Apostle" is reserved for the original followers of Jesus, and yet it includes Paul, because of the experience he had on the road to Damascus); the Seven who were appointed to oversee charitable concerns (in response to an argument between Koine speakers and Aramaic speakers, about the treatment of their respective widows); and disciples in other cities (usually the earliest converts). Of course none of this seems to be as big or formal as what you'll see once the empire and the church co-mingle, which happened well after the time period covered in Acts.

You'll also find the first martyr (Stephen, one of the Seven); Paul's conversion; arrests of various leaders (including Peter and John); and the earliest journeys (some intentional, some because they were fleeing) in Acts, as well as some of the early concerns regarding both doctrine and praxis, like -- "Do we make the Gentiles convert to Judaism first, or not?" and "How can we/do we have to observe the dietary laws if we're with the Gentiles?" This is something Paul touches on in some of his epistles, too. Pretty much, the four gospels and Acts are the only intentional history. The rest of the books (continued...)

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( continues...) are letters, that give snap shots, and then there's Revelation, which is also a letter, but it's a letter about a vision and people have spent the last 2000 years trying to unpack the symbolism.

After the Christian NT, there are the writings of the people commonly referred to as "The Church Fathers," some of the earliest of whom knew some of the Apostles. I think many of these bishops were Gentile converts, and from what I understand of their writings, when an issue would arise, they would analyze it in light of the Gospels and the Hebrew Bible, and what they knew from the Apostles' teachings/

As to saints, my education is extra-light on them. I know there's a Catholic encyclopedia online (New Advent, I think) and I've found various (Roman Catholic POV) stories of saints I've wanted to read about, there. "Saint" is one of those words that has different meanings, depending on who is saying it. In the broadest sense, it would apply to any believer, and that's how it is used in the NT.

When it comes to Renaissance art, you're probably mostly seeing people who were canonized by the church, often because they were matyrs, but there is other criteria, too. Eastern iconography and other art (which I think JZ has an interest in) would be of similar subjects, I think. To hook up a saint with his/her symbology, you'd probably do just as well to search on the web, as to buy any one book on the saints.

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generally "Apostle" is reserved for the original followers of Jesus, and yet it includes Paul, because of the experience he had on the road to Damascus

Basically, the fifth Beatle. Not the one who died of a brain hemorrhage right before they got famous.

Some good reading, if you're up for slogging through ancient primary sources, is Gregory of Tours' Historia Francorum -- his is the history I read of St. Gregory, the pope and famous-maker of Gregorian chants, who got stuck with the extremely raw deal of being pope when the plague of Justinian hit Italy. Anyway, the book itself is an interesting/weird chronicle of the late-Roman, early-Germanic, everything-muddled period of western European history.

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Not the one who died of a brain hemorrhage right before they got famous.

Saint Stu.

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Roman Catholic tradition teaches that Peter was the first Bishop of Rome.

Cool archaeological tidbit--they have found bones of a man in Peter's traditional burial spot, and the bones have been dated to the mid-1st century AD, so it's in the correct timeframe.

The infighting in the church over doctrinal issues can be rather interesting--the Marcian heresy is particularly fascinating to me (Marcian argued against the duality of Jesus, saying he couldn't be both God and Man), because it ties into the issues that official Rome had with the barbarians, most of whom were Marcian followers. A lot of the gnostic writings that have been uncovered in the past 60 years or so have been of similar "heretical" origin.

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Okay, and in looking up the Council of Nicaea on Wikipedia (and with a detour through that other greatest hit of barbarian theology, the Arian heresy), I discovered that the #1 canon that came out of Nicaea was a rule against self-castration.

1. They needed the rule because some dude in Alexandria (named Orygen) was promoting such a practice.
2. I cannot discern from Wikipedia whether classical Christians were all rugby players, or what.
3. Teh Craxxy has been in evidence in organized religion for a long, loooong time. Let's just be grateful that all the other bishops at Nicaea did some math and figured out that Christians with no balls do not lead to more generations of Christians.

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Arian! Thank you, Nutty! I couldn't remember the other (even bigger) barbarian heresy--I knew it began with an A, but couldn't come up with it.

Anyway, even though I'm a verging-on-lapsed-Catholic, I find all the early Christian history stuff fascinating, especially finding out where certain imagery comes from (the Virgin Mother with Baby Jesus pose--complete ripoff of Isis).

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