RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Priest Primate
(London, 1769). He was an original seeker after truth, was essentially devout, and a rapid, untiring, and thought-educing writer. He stands at the transition point marked by the dissolution of ultratheological views and the advent of agnosticism, occupying the central position of the first period of the Unitarian movement. Other works to be mentioned are: Analogy of the Divine Dispensations {Theological Repository, 1771) pronounced by James Martineau his finest piece of work; A Free Discussion of the Doctrines of Materialism (Birmingham, 1782) ; Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion (1782); and Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever (1787). The Theological and Miscellaneous Works (26 vols., London, 1817-32), and Memoirs and Correspondence (2 vols., 1831-32) were collected by J. T. Rutt, and name over 130 separate works. Bibliography: His own Memoirs was edited and completed by his son Joseph, London, 1805, reprinted, 1904, best ed. by T. Cooper and W. Christie, 2 vols., London, 1806; Priestley's Scientific Correspondence, ed. H. C. Bolton, was privately printed, with biographical sketch and bibliographical notes, Brooklyn, 1893. As a source for his life the sketch in the Universal Theological Magazine for Apr., 1804, is essential. Consult further, besides the work of J. T. Rutt, ut sup.: J. Corry, The Life of Joseph Priestley (2 eds.), Birmingham, 1804; T. Belsham, Zeal and Fortitude in the Christian Ministry Illustrated, London, 1804; G. L. Cuvier, Eloges historiques, Paris, 1860; W. Sprague, Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit, pp. 298-308, New York, 1865; Lord Brougham, in Works, vol. i., Edinburgh, 1872; F. Hitchman, Eighteenth Century Studies, London, 1881; Leslie Stephen, Hist, of English Thought in the 18th Century, New York, 1881; B. Schoenlank, Hartley und Priestley die Begriinder des Associationismus in England, Halle, 1882; H. Sidgwick, Hist, of Ethics, London, 1886; T. E. Thorpe, Joseph Priestley, London and New York, 1906. Sidelights are cast by Miss C. Hutton, Reminiscences of a Gentlewoman of the Last Century, Birmingham, 1891 ; J. B. Daly, The Dawn of Radicalism, New York, 1892; J. H. Allen, in American Church History Series, x. 154-159, 187, New York, 1894; I. W. Riley, American Philosophy, The Early Schools, pp. 396-407, New York, 1907; DNB, xlvi. 357- 376 (extended, with a very full account of his literary works and a useful index of references to letters published in various places and also to books containing scattering details).
PRIESTS OF THE MISSION. See Vincent de Paul.
PRIMACY. See Primate.
PRIMASIUS: Bishop of Hadrumetum and primate of Byzacena in Africa; d. about 560. Of his early life nothing seems to be known, but in 551, after he had become a bishop, he was called with other bishops to Constantinople and took part in the Three Chapters Controversy (q.v.) where he shared the fortunes of Vigilius, bishop of Rome; helped to condemn Theodorus Ascidas, bishop of Ciesarea, the chief promoter of the controversy, and fled with Vigilius to Chalcedon. He declined to attend the so-called fifth ecumenical council at Constantinople in the absence of the pope; was the sole African to sign the papal constitutum to Justinian, and was ingloriously crushed with his leader. While at Constantinople, Primasius studied the exegesis of the Greeks, and his fame is chiefly due to his commentary on the Apocalypse. This work, divided into five books (MPL, lxviii. 793-936), is of importance both as containing the pre-Cyprian Latin text of the Apocalypse of the early African church,
and as aiding in the reconstruction of the most influential Latin commentary on the Apocalypse, the exegetical work of the Donatist Ticonius (q.v.; see also Atjtpertus, Ambeosius). The text and exegesis of Revelation xx. 1-xxi. 5 are taken without reference from Augustine's De civitate Dei, xx. 7- 17. Of special interest is a letter of Augustine to the physician Maximus of Thenae preserved by Primasius, in which the four philosophical cardinal virtues are combined with the later three so-called theological virtues to make the number seven, in a manner nowhere else known of Augustine. The work of the Donatist Ticonius was considered by Primasius a piece of treasure adrift and belonging of right to the Church, needing only to be revised and expurgated. He followed essentially the strongly spiritual exegetical method of Ticonius, approved the theory introduced by Victorinus and developed by Ticonius that the Apocalypse in certain places repeats with different words and imagery what had previously been said, and held the true content of the prophecy to be the conflict between the Church and the world instead of Ticonius' more concrete interpretation of the struggle of the Donatists with false brethren and gentiles. The first edition of Primasius' commentary was by Eucharius Cervicornus (Cologne, 1535; reprinted, Paris, 1544), but the most complete and still the most valuable is that of Basel, 1544, which is based on a very ancient manuscript of the Benedictine Monastery of Murbach in Upper Alsace. The same monastery, according to a manuscript catalogue, possessed a work Contra hmreticos, which is no longer extant, and alludes to other works, especially one on Jeroboam. The commentary on the Pauline epistles and on Hebrews ascribed to Primasius by Migne {MPL, lxviii. 409-793) is spurious. (J. Haussleiter.)
Bibliography: H. Kihn, Theodor von Mopsuestia und Junilius Africanus als Exegeten, pp. 248-254, Freiburg, 1880; J. Haussleiter, in ZKW. vii (1886), 239-257; idem, in T. Zahn's Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons, iv. 1-224, Leipsic, 1891; H. Zimmer, Pelagius in Irland, Berlin, 1901; Ceillier, Auteurs sacres, xi. 283-284, x. 332, xi. 879; DNB, iv. 467.
PRIMATE: In general ecclesiastical usage, the chief prelate of a land or of a people. The early hierarchic organization followed the political division of the Roman Empire, but the terms applied to the higher officials of the Church changed in the course of time. In the East the system was headed by patriarchs, under whom were exarchs in the dioceses (in the Greek sense of the word) and eparchs in the provinces or eparchies. In the West this order finds its counterpart in the relation of the pope, the primates, and the archbishops. The designations primas, episcopus primm sedis, or episcopus primm cathedrce were originally synonymous with metropolitan, and occur after the beginning of the fourth century. Episcopus primm cathedrm was applied to Secundus of Tigisis in the synodal acts of Certa (305), and occurs in canon 58, Synod of Elvira (306). The mode of speech is used with reference to Africa, Italy, and Gaul in the fifth and sixth centuries. The bishop of Carthage, however, had a different position from the other primates, since he exercised supervision over all the churches
Primate Prince