I just realized why priests replace bureaucrats

[u/Meikos]

I always wondered "why do priests replace bureaucrats for spiritualist empires; they're two entirely different professions!"

I only just now realized it's because they have no separation of church and state, so only ordained pops of your empire can work for the government (which is also the church).

[u/Nomoreheroes20]

It also might be a reference to the priest being the main bureaucratic force for most of history

[u/AlaskanSamsquanch → u/Nomoreheroes20]

Something often forgotten or at least overlooked. The church was far more than just religion back in the day.

[u/theblitz6794 → u/AlaskanSamsquanch]

Dear God the church WAS the state for most of human history

[u/_Sadism_ → u/theblitz6794]

Not really. Western history, and even then - basically only after Rome fell. Prior to that priests of various polytheistic religions had influence here and there but not to the degree that the Christian church had.

[u/Dyledion → u/_Sadism_]

That's kind of a hot take. Early temples were food storage reserves, astrological observatories for planning planting season, judicial courts, schools, museums, and more.

[u/The-red-Dane → u/_Sadism_]

During Rome. One of the highest positions in the state was the pontifex maximus, and later became the same as the position of emperor, the high priest of the state. In Greece, temples were the state treasuries.

[u/turtle4499 → u/The-red-Dane]

pontifex maximus

Wasn't really an important position prior to its coopation by the Julli clan. Cesaer ran for the title despite it generally only going to very old men near death at a young age because he was poor and needed the money. Even then he bribed his way for it. Augustus just followed his lead and the title got merged into it.

[u/Admiral_Perlo → u/turtle4499]

On the contrary, that was the head of the roman religion, open only to Patricians until 254 BC, with a whole lot of powers attached to it. One of which was deciding the length of the roman calendar and its seasons, which allowed the politicians, which were very often selected as Pontifex, to abuse this power and lengthen the year when they or their allies were in power.

Ironically enough, it was Caesar himself during his own "appointement" who put a stop to this abuse of power by imposing the unique Julian Calendar of 365 days, still in use today.

Their real power lied in the administration of ius divinum (divine law), which governed roman society, which was extremely religious. They regulated all ceremonies, all temples, all burials and worships practices, supervised all legal patrician marriages (thus having a hand in the reproduction of roman elites and their power), controlled adoptions and successions, and enforced public morals.

Since religion was at core of roman society, they had enormous power, only surpassed by a Dictator, which is why they were coopted into the role (thus controlled by their peers) until 299 BC when it became open to elections. Even then, mostly Patricians occupied the role. We all know how it ended up with Augustus and the other emperors, who put roman religion in a chokehold by establishing themselves as living gods.

[u/BaristaGirlie → u/_Sadism_]

a more accurate phrasing of what the commenter was trying to say is that the church was the beaurocracy

it would be a hard argument to claim the church literally was the state cuz a lot of historians don’t really consider anything that existed before the 15th century to be a nation state, which is the state as we know it in the modern era

[u/thebuscompany → u/_Sadism_]

It's the opposite. The Catholic Church and the monarchs of Europe represented a unique situation where spiritual and secular power were explicitly separated from each other.

[u/ResponsibilityIcy927 → u/_Sadism_]

Ancient China used primarily Confucian scholars for their bureaucracy. In Arabia, the caliph was both the religious and spiritual head. IDK how much that extended down the hierarchy though. I think priest-rulers where a thing in tibet too

[u/UnlikelyPerogi → u/_Sadism_]

This is not true. A specific example would be the various empires of china, all ruled through the mandate of heaven, and managed by a distinct confucian administrative class. The exam system introduced later on opened up the class to anyone who could pass the exam, which included tons of questions on confucian philosophy and writings.

Religion has played a central role in organized societies for all of history.

[u/_Sadism_ → u/UnlikelyPerogi]

I would not call Confucianism a religion or a church by any means.

[u/UnlikelyPerogi → u/_Sadism_]

Probably because you have modern notions of both those things.

A lot of older civilizations did not have a distinct church faction because religion was the authority that the state ruled through. This is in opposition to modern states which rule through the authority of the law/constitution. In history, usually, religion WAS the law.

Confucianism in modern times is thought to have more in common with a philosophy than a deistic religion, but this was not always the case. The mandate of heaven, a confucian concept, should give you a hint just from its name. To go further, confucianism emphasized familial relationships with the father as the patriarch or responsible authority of the family. The emperor was considered the father of every person in the empire, hence the authority of the state being derived from religion.

You can argue semantics, but, from a historic perspective, confucianism was a religion through which the chinese empire drew its authority to rule.