Word Finder - laity

definition

People of a church who are not ordained clergy or clerics.

definition

The common man or woman.

definition

The unlearned, untrained or ignorant.

The clergy and laity of a diocese together elected their bishop, as they had done before; but no one could become a bishop against the will of the king, and the confirmation of their choice rested with him.

This was a popular work intended for the laity; but there are others strictly professional.

This arrangement still survives in some of the ancient churches of Rome; it has been revived in many Protestant places of worship. It symbolized principally an official distinction; but with the theocratizing of the empire in the East and its decay in the West the accentuation of the mystic powers of the clergy led to a more complete separation from the laity, a tendency which left its mark on the arrangements of the churches.

In the West the high altar was moved to the east end (the presbyterium) with a space before it for the assisting deacons and subdeacons (the chancel proper) railed off as a spot peculiarly holy (now usually called the sanctuary); between this and the nave, where the laity were, was the choir, with seats for the clergy on either side.

He encouraged the laity to follow monastic practices such as fasting and meditation on the Gospels and lived himself in poverty.

The fame of his vast journeys appears to have made a much greater impression on the laity of his native territory than on his Franciscan brethren.

By the Act of Uniformity (1559) a uniform ritual, the Book of Common Prayer, was imposed upon clergy and laity alike, and no liberty of public worship was permitted.

The communion of the laity in the bread alone was enjoined by the council of Constance in 1415, and by the council of Trent in 1562.

The cancelli, the lattice or bar, which in the civil tribunal had divided the court from the litigants and the public, now served to separate clergy and laity.

On the support of the laity Henry relied to abolish papal jurisdiction and reduce clerical privilege and property in England; and by a close alliance with Francis I.

This phrase in its primary sense imports not jurisdiction over ecclesiastics, but jurisdiction exercised by ecclesiastics over other ecclesiastics and over the laity.

But if he thus incurred the hostility of the High Church party among the clergy, he was admired by the laity for his strong sense, his clear and forcible reasoning, and his wide knowledge, and he remained to the last a power in the north of England.

The disciplinary question of clerical marriage is not of the same primary importance as the doctrinal questions involved in the restoration of the cup to the laity, or discussed in the subsequent article on the mass.

Even at the later sessions the cardinal of Lorraine with the French prelates supported the German representatives in requests for the cup for the laity,the permission of the marriage of priests, and the revision of the breviary.

Charles was unwearying in his efforts to improve the education of clergy and laity, and in 789 ordered that schools should be established in every diocese.

The laity should read their New Testament, and would in this way come to feel the true significance of Christ's life and teachings, which, rather than the Church, formed the centre of Erasmus's religion.

This was the work of the remainder of Trench's life; it exposed him at times to considerable misconstruction and obloquy, but he came to be appreciated, and, when in November 1884 he resigned his archbishopric from infirmity, clergy and laity unanimously recorded their sense of his "wisdom, learning, diligence, and munificence."

It is reserved for the priests, and in that respect differs from the choir, the stalls in which are occasionally occupied by the laity.

In that country the Church almost completely lost her possessions; in Germany they were at least considerably curtailed; in both the hierarchical organization was shattered, while the Catholic laity surveyed the catastrophe in complete passivity.

There is a close connexion between the laity and priesthood, as the Buddhist rule, which prescribes that every man should enter the priesthood for at least a few months, is almost universally observed, even young princes and noblemen who have been educated in Europe donning the yellow robe on their return to Siam.

In the Church of England, on the other hand, the name "Protestant" has, under the influence of the High Church reaction, been repudiated by an increasingly large number of the clergy and laity, and is even sometimes used by them in a.

Among the laity, on the other hand, the ideal of holiness found realization in the observance of the ordinary principles of morality recognized by the world at large, in attendance upon the means of grace provided by the Church, in fasting at stated intervals, in eschewing various popular employments and amusements, and in almsgiving and prayer.

The bishop alone possessed the right to ordain; through him alone could be derived the requisite clerical grace; and so the clergy like the laity were completely dependent upon him.

The infallibility of the episcopate guarantees the infallibility of a general council in which not the laity and not the clergy in general, but the bishops as successors of the apostles, speak officially and collectively.

Under the influence of these ideas, in part purely Christian and in part neo-platonic, piety gained in warmth and depth and became more personal; and though at first it flourished in the monasteries, and in those of the mendicant orders especially, it penetrated far beyond them and influenced the laity everywhere.

The Wycliffite authorship of the Commentaries on the Gospels, on which the learned editors base their argument, is, however, unsupported by any evidence beyond the fact that the writer of the Prologue to Matthew urges in strong language " the propriety of translating Scripture for the use of the laity."

He was a strong supporter of Church reform, especially in the direction of obtaining larger powers for the laity.

At first inclined to conservatism, he afterwards became an exponent of the mediating theology (Vermittelungs-theologie), and ultimately a liberal theologian and advanced critic. Associating himself with the "German Protestant Union" (Deutsche Protestanten-verein), he defended the community's claim to autonomy, the cause of universal suffrage in the church and the rights of the laity.

In France agitation was directed chiefly against the Jesuits, active in the movement to displace ancient local catechisms and liturgies by the Roman texts, to enroll the laity in Roman confraternities, and to induce the bishops to visit Rome more frequently.

The principal of the clergy present then approaches and gives a palm to the celebrant, who then, in his turn, distributes the branches, first to the principal of the clergy, then to the deacon and subdeacon, and to the other clergy in order of rank, and lastly to the laity, all of whom receive the palms kneeling, and kiss the palm and the hand of the celebrant.

When the immediate disciples of the saint had become an order bound by the religious vows, it became necessary to provide for the great body of laity, married men and women, who could not leave the world or abandon their avocations, but still were part of the Franciscan movement and desired to carry out in their lives its spirit and teaching.

The anti-papal tendency, known as Febronianism, had made immense headway, not only among the laity but among the clergy in the Austrian dominions.

He wrote a number of popular hymns, partly original, partly translations; translated the Pentateuch from the Hebrew; and published (1536) a collection of sermons embodying the reformed doctrine and destined for the use of clergy and laity.

The preachers could get the statute passed, but the sense of the laity prevented the death penalty from being inflicted, except, as far as we know, in one or two instances.

The addiction of the Franks in later centuries to the chase is evidenced by the frequency with which not only the laity but also the clergy were warned by provincial councils against expending so much of their time and money on hounds, hawks and falcons; and we have similar proof with regard to the habits of other Teutonic nations subsequent to the introduction of Christianity.

So long as the number of pilgrims remained comparatively small, and the difficulties in their path proportionately great, they obtained open letters of recommendation from their bishops to the clergy and laity, which ensured them lodging in convents and charitable foundations, in addition to the protection of public officials.

They are merely consultative bodies, and the primary intention of their foundation was to associate the laity in the deliberations of convocation.

The members are elected by the various diocesan conferences, which are in turn elected by the laity of their respective parishes or rural deaneries.

In large portions of the Church also opportunity for the free expression of the religious experience of the laity is found.

He found their religion at a low ebb, the regular clergy apathetic and sensual, the bishop little obeyed, the laity divided by the family feuds of their rulers, unchaste and ignorant.

It has also necessarily maintained amongst the laity a sense of the righteous claims of the poor upon the charity of the more affluent members of the community.

In addition a system of synods provides for local unity among bishops, priests and laity.

This revived spirit of nationalism was by outsiders sometimes associated, quite erroneously, with the aims and actions of the Welsh parliamentary party, the spokesmen of political dissent in Wales; yet in reality this sentiment was shared equally by the clergy of the Established Church, and by a large number of the laity within its fold.

Moreover, in proportion as the clergy, no longer mere ringleaders of a despised and persecuted sect, became beneficiaries and administrators of rich endowments - and this at a time when the external safeguards against embezzlement were comparatively weak - a strong feeling grew up among the laity that church revenues should not go to support the priest's family.

In order to break down the desperate, and in many places organized, resistance of the clergy, he did not shrink from the perilous course, so contrary to his general policy, of subjecting them to the judgment of the laity.

Not only were concubinary priests - a term which was now made to include also those who had openly married - forbidden to serve at the altar and threatened with actual deposition in cases of contumacy, but the laity were warned against attending mass said by "any priest certainly known to keep a concubine or subintroducta."' But these heroic measures soon caused serious embarrassment.

If the laity were to stand aloof from all incontinent priests, while (as the most orthodox churchmen constantly complained) many priests were still incontinent, then this could only result in estranging large bodies of the laity from the sacraments of the church.

He also ordered that the Catechism of Caranza, who, like him, was to suffer from the Inquisition for this very book, should be translated into English for the use of the laity.

Here the poems of the prophet and fragments of ancient religious literature survived, understood by the Magians and rendered accessible to the faithful laity by versions in the modern dialect (Pahlavi).

Tyler demanded that all differences of rank and status should cease, that all church lands should be confiscated and divided up among the laity, that the game laws should be abolished, and that no lord should any longer hold lordship except civilly.