adjective
definition
Of or pertaining to heresy or heretics.
definition
(of ideas or views) Contrary to mainstream or accepted opinion.
synonyms
Examples of heretical in a Sentence
Numerous foreigners had been allowed to settle in Moscow and to build for themselves a heretical church, and their strange unholy customs had been adopted by not a few courtiers and great dignitaries.
Again, the heretical Egyptian king Amenophis IV.
It was at just this period, when the rival popes were engaged in a life-and-death struggle, that heretical movements appeared in England, France, Italy, Germany, and especially in Bohemia, which threatened the whole ecclesiastical order.
The strongholds of these heretical opinions were the great towns, the centres of civilization, because there the growing sentiment of municipal independence, and the rise of a burgher class through commerce, created a spirit of criticism which was dissatisfied with the worldly lives of the clergy and their undue influence in affairs.
Among the first results of the changed order of things were on the one hand the election of Huss (October 1409) to be again rector of the university, but on the other hand the appointment by the archbishop of an inquisitor to inquire into charges of heretical teaching and inflammatory preaching brought against him.
On the 4th of May the temper of the council on the doctrinal questions in dispute was fully revealed in its unanimous condemnation of Wycliffe, especially of the so-called "forty-five articles" as erroneous, heretical, revolutionary.
In his work On the Soul, chap. xviii., the aeons and genealogies of the Gnostics are " the sacraments of heretical ideas."
The name Waldenses was given to the members of an heretical Christian sect which arose in the south of France about 1170.
The spread of these heretical sects led to resolute attempts at their suppression.
But he met with a sharp rebuff, and Bishop Stephen fared no better when, in the middle of the 3rd century, he came into collision with Cyprian of Carthage and Firmilian of Caesarea in the dispute concerning heretical baptism.
He determined also to introduce into the Church many desirable reforms. His project was approved by an ecclesiastical council and was supported by the tsar, but it met with violent opposition from a large section of the clergy, and it alarmed the ignorant masses, who regarded any alterations in the ritual, however insignificant they might be, as heretical and very dangerous to salvation.
Cyprian, although inspired by lofty notions of the prerogatives of the church, and inclined to severity of opinion towards heretics, and especially heretical dissentients from the belief in the divine authorship of the episcopal order and the unity of Christendom, was leniently disposed towards those who had temporarily fallen from the faith.
They were free at the outset from any heretical taint, but were never much in favour with the Church.
At this point Origen succeeded in avoiding the heretical Gnostic idea of God by assigning to the Godhead the attributes of goodness and righteousness.
He holds that freedom is the inalienable prerogative of the finite spirit; and this is the second point that distinguishes his theology from the heretical Gnosticism.
It was shortly after this that rumours began to spread of his holding heretical views regarding the sacrament of the eucharist.
It was supposed to contain heretical propositions and caused a good deal of scandal, inciting Baluze against Faget, both of whom abused the other, to defend the memory of the prelate.
A further complication was added when, in 375, Vitalius, one of Meletius's presbyters, was consecrated bishop by the heretical bishop Apollinaris of Laodicea.
The crisis began when Archbishop Antony of Volinsk denounced the doctrine as heretical in The Russian Monk.
After the Montanistic controversy chiliastic views were more and more discredited in the Greek Church; they were, in fact, stigmatized as "Jewish" and consequently "heretical."
In 1903 a new cemetery with frescoes came to light on the Via Latina, considered by Marucchi to have belonged to a heretical sect.
Early in the 12th century a new religion, that of the Bogomils (q.v.), was introduced, and denounced as heretical.
Ragusa furnished him with money and a fleet, in return for a guarantee of protection; commercial treaties with Venice further strengthened his position; and the Vatican, which had instigated the Croats to invade the dominions of their heretical neighbour (1337-40), was conciliated by his conversion to Roman Catholicism.
In the latter part of the 8th century Mer y became obnoxious to Islam as the centre of heretical propaganda preached by Mokanna.
He fell under the suspicion of the Inquisition; his mystical teaching was said to be heretical, and his most famous book, the Guia de Peccadores, still a favourite treatise and one that has been translated into nearly every European tongue, was put on the Index of the Spanish Inquisition, together with his book on prayer, in 1559 His great opponent was the restless and ambitious Melchior Cano, who stigmatized the second book as containing grave errors smacking of the heresy of the Alumbrados and manifestly contradicting Catholic faith and teaching.
To say that the modern Nestorians are not definitely and firmly orthodox is perhaps fairer than to charge them with being distinctly heretical.
There was considerable controversy in the early church as to the validity of heretical baptism.
The validity of heretical baptism was denied by the church of Asia Minor as well as of Africa; but the practice of the Roman Church was to admit without second baptism heretics who had been baptized with the name of Christ, or of the Holy Trinity.
But on the other hand the church in maintaining its place and power may condemn as heretical genuine efforts at reform by a return, though partial, to the standard set by the Holy Scriptures or the Apostolic Church.
To the beginning of the 13th century the popular superstitions regarding sorcery, witchcraft and compacts with the devil were condemned by the ecclesiastical authorities as heathenish, sinful and heretical.
As an ecclesiastical offence it would at this moment be almost impossible to say what opinion, in the case of a layman at least, would be deemed heretical.
Hale, as quoted by Phillimore (Ecc. Law), says that before the time of Richard II., that is, before any acts of Parliament were made about heretics, it is without question that in a convocation of the clergy or provincial synod" they might and frequently did here in England proceed to the sentencing of heretics."But later writers, while adhering to the statement that Convocation might declare opinions to be heretical, doubted whether it could proceed to punish the offender, even when he was a clerk in orders.
The supposed right of Convocation to stamp heretical opinions with its disapproval was exercised on a somewhat memorable occasion.
They are said to be descendants of Persian tribes; but the fact is very doubtful, and they may be at least as aboriginal as the Maronites, and a remnant of an old Incarnationist population which did not accept Christianity, and kept its heretical Islam free from those influences which modified Druse creed.
They own a chief sheikh, resident at Jeba`a, and have the reputation, like most heretical communities in the Sunni part of the Moslem world, of being exceedingly fanatical and inhospitable.
Jealous of the exclusive claims of the Roman Church, he procured a further condemnation at Rome of the "Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom," which advocated prayers for the accomplishment of a kind of federal union between the Roman, Greek and Anglican Churches, and in a pastoral letter he insisted on the heretical assumption implied in such an undertaking.
But also we are drawn by the faults of our heretical opponents to do things unlawful, to scale heights inaccessible, to speak out what is unspeakable, to presume where we ought not.
The steady progress of the heretical movement in spite of all opposition was a cause of deep sorrow to Polycarp, so that in the last years of his life the words were constantly on his lips, "Oh good God, to what times hast thou spared me, that I must suffer such things!"
When this discontent took any independent form of expression, zeal, which was not always accompanied by discretion, brought the movement into collision with the ecclesiastical authorities, by whom it was condemned as heretical.
The secret of the enthusiasm of the masses for the analogous expression Theotokos is to be sought not so much in the Nicene doctrine of the incarnation as in the recent growth in the popular mind of notions as to the dignity of the Virgin Mary, which were entirely unheard of (except in heretical circles) for nearly three centuries of the Christian era.
In Germany the Reformers called themselves usually evangelici, and avoided special designations for their communities, which they conceived only as part of the true Catholic Church; "Calvinists," "Lutherans," "Zwinglians" were, in the main, terms of abuse intended to stamp them as followers of one or other heretical leader, like Arians or Hussites.
Those Jewish Christians who refused to go with the rest of the Church in this matter lived their separate life, and were regarded as an heretical sect known as the Ebionites.
The question of missions is reserved, and the relaxations granted to the Society in such matters as fasting, reciting the hours and reading heretical books, are withdrawn; while the breve ends with clauses carefully drawn to bar any legal exceptions that might be taken against its full validity and obligation.
The attacks upon it by the heretical followers of Arnold of Brescia (1152) convinced neither the partisans of the pope nor those of the emperor.
For some years he was busy travelling in the Levant in the interests of his order, but a perusal of Calvin's Institutes revived his heretical tendencies, and he was condemned to be burnt.
They are used on a journey in a heretical or heathen country, or in private chapels.
The heretical literature has to a great extent either perished or been completely changed; but much has also survived in a modified written form or through oral tradition.
The old Slavonic lists of forbidden books of the i 5th and 16th centuries also give us a clue to the discovery of this heretical literature and of the means the Bogomils employed to carry on their propaganda.
Much may also be learnt from the doctrines of the numerous heretical sects which arose in Russia after the iith century.
The Bogomils were without doubt the connecting link between the so-called heretical sects of the East and those of the West.