Various questions about Almea

[sasasha]

Excellent, that makes sense, and is cool (in being not quite the same as any other Thinking Kind).

Another small random question: in the Caďinorian consitution document, Anaseris is noted as the capital of Kaino around the 11th century (p11). I thought Dageda was the older capital? Almeopedia btw says Anaseri "dates back to Caďinorian days" but perhaps this is a catch-all use of Caďinorian.

[zompist]

Another small random question: in the Caďinorian consitution document, Anaseris is noted as the capital of Kaino around the 11th century (p11). I thought Dageda was the older capital? Almeopedia btw says Anaseri "dates back to Caďinorian days" but perhaps this is a catch-all use of Caďinorian.

The capital of Kaino was Dageda, but that of Arosd province was Anaseris. This was just a matter of moving across the river.

(We had a discussion of this in e-mail, complete with some hydrological changes over the centuries!)

[sasasha]

Another small random question: in the Caďinorian consitution document, Anaseris is noted as the capital of Kaino around the 11th century (p11). I thought Dageda was the older capital? Almeopedia btw says Anaseri "dates back to Caďinorian days" but perhaps this is a catch-all use of Caďinorian.

The capital of Kaino was Dageda, but that of Arosd province was Anaseris. This was just a matter of moving across the river.

Ah ok, maybe this is a typo for the Constitution document then? [edit]Oh I see what you're saying, this isn't a typo because after the Caďinorian conquest the capital was moved to Anaseris. D'oh![/edit]

(We had a discussion of this in e-mail, complete with some hydrological changes over the centuries!)

Indeed, shall I share the drawings? I know they were just speculative...

[sasasha]

Next question: how many claetandet were/are there? (I dimly recall a number being put on it somewhere, IIRC it was 21 – but I don't know if I dreamt this...)

The real question I'm getting at is is this one of those top-down state institutions that has a set format and a conceivable established number of iterations, or is it more bottom-up where temples can decide to set up their own as they wish and there might be one or several in each town?

[zompist]

Next question: how many claetandet were/are there? (I dimly recall a number being put on it somewhere, IIRC it was 21 – but I don't know if I dreamt this...)

The real question I'm getting at is is this one of those top-down state institutions that has a set format and a conceivable established number of iterations, or is it more bottom-up where temples can decide to set up their own as they wish and there might be one or several in each town?

The whole idea was that they were top-down, as they were created as a way to (re-)Caďiinorize conquered territory.

In classical times there was probably one per province. (And yes, I never formally delimited the Caďinorian provinces, but they're comparable in size to Verdurian ones, and many in fact became kingdoms.)

The one complication in modern times is that the larger cults might set up their own.

(Also, yes, you can share the drawings.)

[sasasha]

Next question: how many claetandet were/are there? (I dimly recall a number being put on it somewhere, IIRC it was 21 – but I don't know if I dreamt this...)

The real question I'm getting at is is this one of those top-down state institutions that has a set format and a conceivable established number of iterations, or is it more bottom-up where temples can decide to set up their own as they wish and there might be one or several in each town?

The whole idea was that they were top-down, as they were created as a way to (re-)Caďiinorize conquered territory.

In classical times there was probably one per province. (And yes, I never formally delimited the Caďinorian provinces, but they're comparable in size to Verdurian ones, and many in fact became kingdoms.)

The one complication in modern times is that the larger cults might set up their own.

(Also, yes, you can share the drawings.)

Ok, interesting.

In the Constitution document there's this (which I didn't see before posting the question): "The Sacred Laws established an office of PIDRARȞ (patriarch) in Ctesifon, to oversee the CLAETANDET. Other patriarchs were later created as the empire expanded; the principle of one CLAETANDA per patriarchate did not emerge until the Bandae."

So, to my understanding:

• At first, we have mentions of priests and temples that predate the claetandet (era of Spais Aiďocliťois). Caďinorization of liberated peoples is already central to their mission, but there’s no central authority that we know of organizing them beyond the government itself.
• Then we have claetandet that predate the Pidrarȟ. We don’t know how many they were, but they were established to support Caďinorization and presumably represent a movement towards centralisation and regularisation of this process. They are mentioned by 950. (We know more about the distribution of temples than of early claetandet: temples were built “in every new region”, and already existed copiously in older territories.)
• Then the Pidrarȟ in Ctesifon is established in Ceornactec’s Sacred Laws. There were at least several claetandet in the empire by this point, all now subject to the Pidrarȟ. (All temples were in theory headed by the Emperor.)
• Over a millennium later, under the Bandae, there is one Pidrarȟ per imperial province, and according to your post, also one claetanda per province. The Pidrarȟ of this era is thus basically the leader of a single claetanda.

Is there a development here from smaller, more numerous claetandet to fewer but bigger ones over time?

My interest in this is partially that the claetandet seem to me remarkably large (in whichever era you take them, for the standards of the time). They train priests for, at an estimate, hundreds of temples at once, in the service of dozens of different deities. They represent a large movement of people over province-sized regions. Their libraries must be considerable and their cultural impact probably can’t easily be overstated. We don’t yet know where many of them are or have been, though I guess provincial capitals is the rough answer.

It is a really interesting system, when temples could potentially all just train their own priests locally. Despite the obvious drive for homogeneity, I bet that, like universities, they would attract their own cultures to themselves, and each develop distinctive characters. (For a start, different gods are prominent in different provinces.) I think it’s particularly interesting that with the large-scale movement of people and centralization (and, sort of, de-regionalization), they are not just an antidote to but also a kind of mirror of the same aspects of blutmu, the Munkhâshi ‘milling’ process.

They would be some of the oldest and longest-running educational establishments on Almea. Events in which they were sacked by invaders, for instance, would be notable. Schisms at the claetandet level seem possible. As you mention, cults may set up rival training establishments.

And most importantly of course (ok not really but for me!) they’re fantastic music-making environments! (I think they’re a good answer, for instance, as to why the Caďinorians developed impressive music notation as opposed to the Romans.)

I’m gonna take it as unlikely that there’s one in Ulian in 3422. (I actually originally guessed there were two.)

Anything I’ve got off the mark, missed, overstated or otherwise?

Anaseri pics to follow in next post.

[sasasha]

Rough sketch of Anaseri (Anaseris) and Dažda (Dageda) and their change in locations over time. The pink ovals are the 3480 settlements’ rough shapes (with older parts of town in darker). The overlay shows ancient locations and hydrology. The original drawing was mine, the printed annotations are Zomp’s. The shapes of the islands are pretty much conjectural (hard to get this right, though I scoured many maps of real world rivers, particularly those which haven’t been too altered by modern methods, to try to get the right feel; we were still chewing over the hydrology). Anaseris is from Meťaiun for ‘duck place’; in Davur and Kaino it was probably just some marshy islands north of Dageda that were useful for crossing the river. Perhaps the meander expansion had begun to eat into Dageda and a new capital was necessary as well as politically expedient? The scale is in cemisî.

[zompist]

To explain a bit of what was in the e-mails: the map is sasasha's, with my additions. The idea to explain how the hydrology affects and explains the urbanization. Large rivers in soft soil tend to increase their meanders over time. So the "original flow" is the rivercourse from 3000 years ago. The river started to cut into the location of Dageda, which was therefore moved south. However, as the western meander formed, it became a better place for a fortified city, since the river protected it on three sides. Thus the movement of the city.

Conworlding lesson: things can and should change over the millennia, and river movement can affect the viability of cities.

[Raphael]

and river movement can affect the viability of cities.

Amazing that people can built cities at all: with no river nearby, there's no source of water, and with a river nearby, the entire city is arguably living on borrowed time, until the next major flood.

That reminds me, I once spent a few months in a small town in an area where small floods are apparently so common that they are generally treated as no big deal by the locals. That was a somewhat weird experience. I took the photo from which I took my current avatar here at that time in that place.

[zompist]

My interest in this is partially that the claetandet seem to me remarkably large (in whichever era you take them, for the standards of the time). They train priests for, at an estimate, hundreds of temples at once, in the service of dozens of different deities. They represent a large movement of people over province-sized regions. Their libraries must be considerable and their cultural impact probably can’t easily be overstated. We don’t yet know where many of them are or have been, though I guess provincial capitals is the rough answer.

They'd be smaller than you might think. Consider a Caďinorian town of 5,000 people. That's a big town in ancient times, though not quite big enough to appear in the Historical Atlas. How many temples does it really need? Two dozen is probably plenty— one per 200 people, and there weren't even that many gods. Let's say just half get a claetanda-trained priest, and priests keep their jobs for at least 30 years. Then you need a new priest a bit less than once every two years.

One claetanda in the provincial capital with 50 students in each year (that is, each year it admits 30 students and graduates 30 priests) could thus supply a population of 500,000.

These numbers aren't intended to be canonical, but they're probably the right order of magnitude. The school could be 4 times bigger (classes of 200) without being huge. (Contrast the schools of Han China, which had 30,000 students in the capital.)

This isn't to say they wouldn't be important cultural landmarks. Religions are often pioneers of scholarship, and I expect more important clerics (like the patriarchs) in effect study for much longer. In the major cities, elite children might attend the schools without the intention of becoming priests.

As indicated, I don't think every priest is trained there. That's an educational achievement beyond most premodern states, even cosmopolitan empires. One per town, empowered to check on all the temples, is all you needed for Caďinorization.

(FWIW, though some authors give the impression that Roman religion was unorganized, it was actually rather centrally controlled, and even more so in imperial times when the emperor was a member of all the priestly colleges and had the role of pontifex maximus. Romans might dictate how local temples operated, and in conquered countries could approve at least the choice of head priest in a temple. They didn't really care about doctrine, but they were well aware of the economic and social power a temple could have. The Caďinorians cared much more about uniform practice since they had to re-orient people from Gelalhát to Caďinorian worship.)

[zompist]

Amazing that people can built cities at all: with no river nearby, there's no source of water, and with a river nearby, the entire city is arguably living on borrowed time, until the next major flood.

Oh yes. Depends on the terrain, though. The Mississippi, the Yellow River, and the lower Tigris/Euphrates are notorious for floods. I'm reading a book on Rome right now, and the author mentions frequent floods in Rome— one reason the rich lived on the hills. Rivers can change course dramatically, which can be quite inconvenient for humans.

[sasasha]

Ooh, lots of nice detail here, which brings a few more questions as usual!

They'd be smaller than you might think. [...]

Two dozen is probably plenty— one per 200 people, and there weren't even that many gods.

Ok. It’s not a Caďinorian town, but my Ulian model (for onlookers, I’ve been trying to work out what Ulian looks like in 3422) of something like 30,000 people has currently just 5 temples (and two Eleďe churches). They all look pretty big, and there are plenty of millennia in between for trends to change. But maybe I need to add a lot more temples?

I think I was going off the apparent density from the Verduria-city map, by very rough eye-logic. I was also thinking about ritual: Caďin worship involves sacrifice. I thought maybe fewer, larger temples might be better, or selected over time, so farmers don’t have to supply animals to dozens of temples weekly.

Maybe there are little temples that haven’t made it on to the map?

Exeter in the 17th century had 17 churches and less than 10,000 people, as a corollary. FWIW I’ve been wondering for a while if this population for Ulian at that era is too high (though towns in France and the Low Countries had higher populations than most English towns of the same era, and the Exeter figure is not from quite the right era).

Let's say just half get a claetanda-trained priest, ... I don't think every priest is trained there.

Ok, this is where I was stuck! I was imagining that you have to go to a claetanda to become a priest.

But this adds a whole other interesting layer. We now have priests who have been to the claetandet and priests who haven’t. Is there some kind of distinction drawn between them? A title for the trained priests? Special privileges / responsibilities that come with that?

More importantly for designing small Eretaldan towns, this implies that temples do indeed train local priests (of the lower order).

One per town, empowered to check on all the temples, is all you needed for Caďinorization.

So we have a lower example of one claetanda-trained priest per town, and a higher example of a dozen per town (of 5000 people).

Let’s explore the lower scenario for a minute: does this guy get attached to one of the main temples in town, but have duties to oversee all the temples in it?

When/if more claetandet-trained priests get added to the town, is there a hierarchy of them? Is there one High High Priest of the town? (De facto, or de jure?)

Do they fall out? What is it they have to fight about – and indeed what exactly is it they’re spending their time overseeing? Is it more doctrine and ritual, or more, like, HR issues?

(Contrast the schools of Han China, which had 30,000 students in the capital.)

True! That really is a huge school! These were for training administrators, essentially, right?

That certainly implies a huge movement of people for study in Han China. Though were populations denser, meaning that these 30,000 students didn’t necessarily have to come from too large an area?

This isn't to say they wouldn't be important cultural landmarks. Religions are often pioneers of scholarship, and I expect more important clerics (like the patriarchs) in effect study for much longer. In the major cities, elite children might attend the schools without the intention of becoming priests.

I like these details a lot, especially the last one. It indicates a financial dimension of the claetandet ‒ who subsidizes the education received there? I presume temples receive some central funding ‒ ditto claetandet? ‒ but are they also money-making entities in their own right?

Maybe claetandet might sometimes branch out into wider foundations, setting up schools (of a more general nature) or other public services?

(FWIW, though some authors give the impression that Roman religion was unorganized, it was actually rather centrally controlled, and even more so in imperial times when the emperor was a member of all the priestly colleges and had the role of pontifex maximus. Romans might dictate how local temples operated, and in conquered countries could approve at least the choice of head priest in a temple. They didn't really care about doctrine, but they were well aware of the economic and social power a temple could have. The Caďinorians cared much more about uniform practice since they had to re-orient people from Gelalhát to Caďinorian worship.)

That’s interesting. Can you recommend a good book aboit Roman religion?

The more I think about it the more I think Caďin religion would have taken things in from Gelalhát. A quick way to ‘re-orient’ people is to make what they’re going to more familiar in some ways. Obviously there was a lot of contrast too; but I don’t think they’d have thrown everything out when some of it could have been useful.

[sasasha]

Quick staircase thought: temples could have several or many priests. Surely big temples are run by big teams (you can’t officiate to large crowds without some kind of stewards, and Caďin temples would need cooks and cleaners as well as people who do the liturgy, so there need to be administrators and so on). Several priests seem reasonable. Small temples possibly get one unfortunate person whose job it is to do everything, but they are probably assisted by volunteers.

[zompist]

Ok. It’s not a Caďinorian town, but my Ulian model (for onlookers, I’ve been trying to work out what Ulian looks like in 3422) of something like 30,000 people has currently just 5 temples (and two Eleďe churches). They all look pretty big, and there are plenty of millennia in between for trends to change. But maybe I need to add a lot more temples?

For the town of 5000 I was thinking of Caďinorian times, when that was a pretty big town. 3400s Verduria is both more populous and more urban.

Exeter in the 17th century had 17 churches and less than 10,000 people, as a corollary.

That seems like a good data point, with caveats. In both medieval Europe and China, the number of temples/churches was what we scientists call "quite a lot." In the 8th century the Tang cracked down on Buddhism and it's said 4600 monasteries and 40,000 temples and shrines were closed. That's for the whole country. As another data point at hand, 12th century Europe had 742 Cistercian monasteries.

One caveat is that temples are not places with services where large crowds regularly gather, like churches or mosques. The ancient Jewish temple might be a better model: individuals could come at any time with small sacrifices (usually grain, not big animals); a few times a year there's a major event where everyone comes-- though they may be hanging around outside, not in the sanctum.

Another is that I'm not sure you need to scale up the number of temples so much. Maybe just make them bigger.

Paganism did have to compete with Eleďat, so by classical times there was more of an effort to involve the people.

But this adds a whole other interesting layer. We now have priests who have been to the claetandet and priests who haven’t. Is there some kind of distinction drawn between them? A title for the trained priests?

Yes, but I'm going to have to think about how all this relates to the titles given in the Thematic Dictionary.

More importantly for designing small Eretaldan towns, this implies that temples do indeed train local priests (of the lower order).

I do imagine a lot of bottom-up activity. It depends on the era, but this need not be very scholastic; more along the lines of "help the existing priest for 20 years until he dies and you become priest."

Let’s explore the lower scenario for a minute: does this guy get attached to one of the main temples in town, but have duties to oversee all the temples in it?

If it's one guy, he supervises all the temples. As Sila Isoraina puts it, he is as much as colonial official as a religious one.

indeed what exactly is it they’re spending their time overseeing? Is it more doctrine and ritual, or more, like, HR issues?

Initially-- i.e. during the slow conquest of Munkhâsh-- it's training in the Caďinorian lifestyle-- how to worship, how to make sure you're worshipping the right gods and not Gelálh, how to speak good Caďinor, what the emperor expects of you. If the locals are not listening, he can call in the army.

Ritual is far more important to the pagans than doctrine. However, a distrust of Gelalhát easily became a distrust of cults. The authorities didn't want anything too zealous or too weird. After the Aďivro was compiled the answer to most questions was "don't stray too far from that." But during the Dark Years there were more pressing things to worry about, like what do do when the local claetanda is sacked by barbarians.

(Contrast the schools of Han China, which had 30,000 students in the capital.)

True! That really is a huge school! These were for training administrators, essentially, right?

That certainly implies a huge movement of people for study in Han China. Though were populations denser, meaning that these 30,000 students didn’t necessarily have to come from too large an area?

I think it was all of China, but I'm not sure.

It indicates a financial dimension of the claetandet ‒ who subsidizes the education received there? I presume temples receive some central funding ‒ ditto claetandet? ‒ but are they also money-making entities in their own right?

Outside the capital, you should assume most temples are built and funded by the locals, and that includes paying the priests. (This is pretty much how both Roman/Greek temples and European churches worked.)

Can you recommend a good book aboit Roman religion?

Yes, the best short one is John Scheid, An introduction to Roman religion.

[Raphael]

Paganism did have to compete with Eleďat, so by classical times there was more of an effort to involve the people.

What do you mean by "classical times" here? Surely not the ancient empire, when Eleďat hadn't been founded yet?

[zompist]

Paganism did have to compete with Eleďat, so by classical times there was more of an effort to involve the people.

What do you mean by "classical times" here? Surely not the ancient empire, when Eleďat hadn't been founded yet?

Sorry, I've been using "classical" lately to refer to the "old Now" of 3480. Think "classical music" or "classic Coke".

[sasasha]

Ok. It’s not a Caďinorian town, but my Ulian model (for onlookers, I’ve been trying to work out what Ulian looks like in 3422) of something like 30,000 people has currently just 5 temples (and two Eleďe churches). They all look pretty big, and there are plenty of millennia in between for trends to change. But maybe I need to add a lot more temples?

For the town of 5000 I was thinking of Caďinorian times, when that was a pretty big town. 3400s Verduria is both more populous and more urban.

Oh, I know, I was just segueing. Still, if a Caďinorian town of 5000 might have had around 24 temples, it's noteworthy if a Verdurian town of 30000 should have 5. In that case the temples have got a lot fewer and bigger over 2k years.

Exeter in the 17th century had 17 churches and less than 10,000 people, as a corollary.

That seems like a good data point, with caveats. In both medieval Europe and China, the number of temples/churches was what we scientists call "quite a lot." In the 8th century the Tang cracked down on Buddhism and it's said 4600 monasteries and 40,000 temples and shrines were closed. That's for the whole country. As another data point at hand, 12th century Europe had 742 Cistercian monasteries.

I think this points to something important: trends in this will change dramatically over time, rebound, etc. 3000 years is a really long time.

Looking at Caďinorian ‘ecclesiastical’ history in extremely broad brushstrokes, there seems to be energetic Caďinorization evident in the 800s and 900s, religious upheaval in the 1000s (absorption of Cuzei and Kaino), then a drive towards ritual homogeneity in the 1100s with Kehadau, which continued into the 1200s with the laws of Ceornactec. In the 1300s there was consolidation of orthodoxy, and in the 1400s relaxation of the same including removal of the ban on Arašát, leading up to religious upheaval in the form of Decanos’ forced absorption of the Arauni gods. The 1500s were largely spent absorbing that change. 1600s were an obvious new golden age of Caďinorization. 1700s start with consolidation of this including in law, but end with licentious religious reforms of Decanos II. 1800s undoes these and swerves back to orthodoxy, though under Andeoraďa in a more female-friendly way. ... It goes on. Temple foundation and maintainance no doubt fluctuated massively and trends in their numbers expanding and contracting over time is to be expected. Particularly, temples would have a hard time in the Dark Years, and we could probably expect this to be the era in which ‒ whilst cults flourished ‒ many temples would dissolve, and the temples that would ultimately survive into the Prežeon era became more prominent as a result.

How does that sound? (I’m trying to flesh out my understanding of Caďinorian history, but I’m a bit low on info in the 20th century, so I stopped my potted ecclesiastical history there! There’s obviously lots of info on the Caďin religion page, but some eras are just a little less documented than others.)

One caveat is that temples are not places with services where large crowds regularly gather, like churches or mosques. The ancient Jewish temple might be a better model: individuals could come at any time with small sacrifices (usually grain, not big animals); a few times a year there's a major event where everyone comes-- though they may be hanging around outside, not in the sanctum.

Ok, this gives me pause for thought! Not quite what I was expecting: I think I expected weekly ceďnare sacrifices. There is some ritual significance to ceďnare, right? It’s a feast, more than anything else, right ‒ featuring the meat of the animal sacrificed? I remember reading about rooms in bigger temples where the feasts happened ‒ but only, generally, for the nobles.

Caďin liturgy in general is a big area I’m interested in, and I have some (musical) ideas.

Perhaps rites have to be performed in the temples regularly, but they don’t have to be (and generally aren’t) attended by large crowds. Like, you can attend if you want, but no compunction unless it’s a special occasion, or you yourself are bringing a sacrifice...?

Another is that I'm not sure you need to scale up the number of temples so much. Maybe just make them bigger.

Cf my potted ecclesiastical history, and the idea that a fundamental change in number and size of temples (to fewer, and bigger) might occur over the Dark Years...?

Paganism did have to compete with Eleďat, so by classical times there was more of an effort to involve the people.

Right, another big religious upheaval.

But this adds a whole other interesting layer. We now have priests who have been to the claetandet and priests who haven’t. Is there some kind of distinction drawn between them? A title for the trained priests?

Yes, but I'm going to have to think about how all this relates to the titles given in the Thematic Dictionary.

Excellent, I shall look forward to it (I’ve been curious. I don’t even understand the dizzying complexity of catholic and Anglican ecclesiastical hierarchy...)

More importantly for designing small Eretaldan towns, this implies that temples do indeed train local priests (of the lower order).

I do imagine a lot of bottom-up activity. It depends on the era, but this need not be very scholastic; more along the lines of "help the existing priest for 20 years until he dies and you become priest."

That certainly makes sense. I recall that ečomî don’t focus on religious education. It strikes me that there might be some temple schools, however, for which that doesn’t hold...?

Let’s explore the lower scenario for a minute: does this guy get attached to one of the main temples in town, but have duties to oversee all the temples in it?

If it's one guy, he supervises all the temples. As Sila Isoraina puts it, he is as much as colonial official as a religious one.

Ok cool, but where does he live/how is he sustained? By a temple with which he is mainly associated, despite his overall responsibilities? Or is there like a house in the town for the claetanda-trained priest, maintained by the claetanda?

indeed what exactly is it they’re spending their time overseeing? Is it more doctrine and ritual, or more, like, HR issues?

Initially-- i.e. during the slow conquest of Munkhâsh-- it's training in the Caďinorian lifestyle-- how to worship, how to make sure you're worshipping the right gods and not Gelálh, how to speak good Caďinor, what the emperor expects of you. If the locals are not listening, he can call in the army.

I’d love to know what form(s) the instruction generally took. Did people literally go to classes? Or was it more like the priest taking a hands on approach in day to day life, instructing while helping out ploughing, or somesuch?

I know a little bit about the conversion to Christianity in northern Europe from my undergrad. It seems that often the peasantry got baptised en masse and that was about it in terms of how much their lives changed, initially. It was only higher up the social ladder, and further along in time, where cultural effects were felt.

Caďinorization was different, for sure; I’m just curious quite how.

It indicates a financial dimension of the claetandet ‒ who subsidizes the education received there? I presume temples receive some central funding ‒ ditto claetandet? ‒ but are they also money-making entities in their own right?

Outside the capital, you should assume most temples are built and funded by the locals, and that includes paying the priests. (This is pretty much how both Roman/Greek temples and European churches worked.)

Ah, ok. But what about the funding of the claetandet? They are surely centrally funded, somehow?

Can you recommend a good book aboit Roman religion?

Yes, the best short one is John Scheid, An introduction to Roman religion.

Thanks! For this and all the points!! I will try to get hold of it.

[sasasha]

and river movement can affect the viability of cities.

Amazing that people can built cities at all: with no river nearby, there's no source of water, and with a river nearby, the entire city is arguably living on borrowed time, until the next major flood.

Agreed; sometimes I look at old maps (do you know oldmapsonline.org?) and find areas where the settlements seem actively to avoid the larger rivers. But other places have plenty of settlements right on the river. As zomp says, soil type comes into it a lot. Also, I think, as the next bit of your post illustrates, cultural attitudes to the bother of dealing with flooding.

[zompist]

Still, if a Caďinorian town of 5000 might have had around 24 temples, it's noteworthy if a Verdurian town of 30000 should have 5.

We're still dealing with orders of magnitude. 24 might be too high; 5 for Ulian is certainly too low. But recall that a "temple" can be small, and shade off into "shrine" territory.

More data that happens to be at hand (from Beard/North/Price, Religions of Rome): imperial Rome had at least 40 "official" temples, 30 temples for Cybele and Isis, 40 Mithraic temples, and (in the 4C) 60 Christian catacombs. That of course is more comparable to the entirety of Verduria-city.

But it also suggests that density depends on the religion. The official religion was mostly for the elite... the common people only rarely shared in the sacrifice, and mostly did their own worship at home.The sheer number of temples for Cybele, Isis, and Mithra suggests that these were more intensive: it wasn't enough that someone was doing rites for the god, you wanted to attend.

Looking at Caďinorian ‘ecclesiastical’ history in extremely broad brushstrokes, there seems to be energetic Caďinorization evident in the 800s and 900s, religious upheaval in the 1000s (absorption of Cuzei and Kaino), then a drive towards ritual homogeneity in the 1100s with Kehadau, which continued into the 1200s with the laws of Ceornactec. In the 1300s there was consolidation of orthodoxy, and in the 1400s relaxation of the same including removal of the ban on Arašát, leading up to religious upheaval in the form of Decanos’ forced absorption of the Arauni gods. The 1500s were largely spent absorbing that change. 1600s were an obvious new golden age of Caďinorization. 1700s start with consolidation of this including in law, but end with licentious religious reforms of Decanos II. 1800s undoes these and swerves back to orthodoxy, though under Andeoraďa in a more female-friendly way. ... It goes on. Temple foundation and maintainance no doubt fluctuated massively and trends in their numbers expanding and contracting over time is to be expected. Particularly, temples would have a hard time in the Dark Years, and we could probably expect this to be the era in which ‒ whilst cults flourished ‒ many temples would dissolve, and the temples that would ultimately survive into the Prežeon era became more prominent as a result.

This sounds pretty accurate. Note that compilation of the Aďivro in the 2200s, which was both a reform and an appeal to "orthodoxy". (Scare quotes because the mythology was never key, and you were never forced to worship a particular god.)

Ok, this gives me pause for thought! Not quite what I was expecting: I think I expected weekly ceďnare sacrifices. There is some ritual significance to ceďnare, right? It’s a feast, more than anything else, right ‒ featuring the meat of the animal sacrificed? I remember reading about rooms in bigger temples where the feasts happened ‒ but only, generally, for the nobles.

Meat sacrifices, among Romans, Vedic Indians, Temple Jews, and Aztecs, were mostly for the elite.

Among the Caďinorians, it'd ebb and flow as with other religious trends. I see there being regular feasts; it fits the more popularist role of Caďinorian religion.

Perhaps rites have to be performed in the temples regularly, but they don’t have to be (and generally aren’t) attended by large crowds. Like, you can attend if you want, but no compunction unless it’s a special occasion, or you yourself are bringing a sacrifice...?

No compunction, but my idea is that the whole idea is to make the spectacles both attractive and edifying. Come for the free meal and music, stay for the plays and a sermon.

I don’t even understand the dizzying complexity of catholic and Anglican ecclesiastical hierarchy...)

I think the usual explanation is that it parallels imperial Roman government.

Ok cool, but where does he live/how is he sustained? By a temple with which he is mainly associated, despite his overall responsibilities? Or is there like a house in the town for the claetanda-trained priest, maintained by the claetanda?

As it happens I've been reading about Rome, and its basic problem of government: ruling 50 million or so people with, by modern standards, a handful of people. Imperial China had the same problem. Basically, a premodern state has to do a lot with minimal administrative overhead. In both cases a governor might be sent out with basically no institutional backing (i.e. budgets, staff, guards). They could call on the army for backup, but also might use their own resources, and definitely had to co-opt local resources. E.g. Romans could commandeer horses and carts for travel. In both Rome and China the locals could essentially be milked for fees, but the governor probably also had to pay locals to help out.

The 900s priest is not a governor, but he is the lowest level of the empire. Empires are extractive: he and the army and the rich heartland are supported by taxation. (How that works is another topic, but based on every empire ever, the general answer is "heavily and unjustly.")

Tiberius, I think it was, complained of excessive taxation: "I want my sheep to be shorn, not shaven." That is, a smart empire doesn't overdo it, builds some public works, encourages the local elites to think of themselves as an important part of the empire.

I’d love to know what form(s) the instruction generally took. Did people literally go to classes? Or was it more like the priest taking a hands on approach in day to day life, instructing while helping out ploughing, or somesuch?

Certainly not classes— there was no idea of general education at that time. More being a model, correcting people's errors, probably insisting on correct liturgy.

But what about the funding of the claetandet? They are surely centrally funded, somehow?

They'd be funded at the provincial level. E.g. Aránicer or Aites doesn't need a subsidy to run its claetanda.

[Glenn]

Thank you for the detailed discussion of the temples and claetandet! It has made me reflect on my own (embryonic and fitful) attempts to create conreligions. I won't say too much about the latter, so as not to derail the discussion, but it has made me realize that I have not thought nearly enough about religious education, and also that my conculture's capital city may not have nearly enough temples... (Although part of that may also involve a distinction between temples (larger and staffed) and shrines, as well as the large role played by home-based worship.)

One caveat is that temples are not places with services where large crowds regularly gather, like churches or mosques. The ancient Jewish temple might be a better model: individuals could come at any time with small sacrifices (usually grain, not big animals); a few times a year there's a major event where everyone comes-- though they may be hanging around outside, not in the sanctum.

This is part of the contrast between the two main conreligions that I wanted to create: one of them, the one alluded to above, has a model similar to the one described here by Zompist; the other, a newer religion, includes congregational services along the lines of churches/mosques/synagogues.

I do imagine a lot of bottom-up activity. It depends on the era, but this need not be very scholastic; more along the lines of "help the existing priest for 20 years until he dies and you become priest."

This reminds me strongly of some of the claims that I have read about parish priests in Russia during the Tsarist period. (This refers to the parish ("white") clergy, who were married, as opposed to the celibate ("black") clergy, who were monks as well as priests; the higher church leadership - bishops, metropolitans, and the Patriarch, when that office existed - were drawn exclusively from the latter. As in Western Europe, there were also monks who were not priests.) While there were indeed seminaries for training clergy, village priests allegedly got fairly minimal training, and the role was partly hereditary: the sons of priests often themselves became priests, and the role of priest in a particular village might be passed directly from father to son, although I don't know enough to say how common the latter was. (I am largely quoting from memory here, so please take everything I say with a grain of salt.)