THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
D. Hoffmann, in Magazin fur die Wissenscftaft des Judenthums, x (1SS3), 45-63; L. Low, Gesammelte Schriften, pp. 399-449, Szegedin, 1889; S. Krauss, in JQR, x (1898), 347-377; JE, xi. 640-643.
SYNAXARIUM. See Acta Mabtyrum, Acta Sanctorum, II., § 1.
SYNCELLUS: The title of certain high ecclesiastical officers in the Eastern Church. The name signifies literally " one who shares a cell," and was attached to monks and clergy associated with high ecclesiastics. The patriarchs and metropolitans of Constantinople had from early times one or more of these officers, the chief of the patriarch's being
called " the great protosyncellus." The (patriarchal) syncelli took precedence of the metropolitan at festivals, though later this precedence was contested. They were usually the confessors of the patriarchs, and hence were often employed as spies by the emperors, who sometimes conferred the title upon archbishops and bishops. They were not unknown in the Western Church, and a synod held by Gregory I. in 595 issued regulations concerning them. (Philipp Meyer.)
Bibliography: L. Thomassin, De vetere et nova ecclesiw disciplina, I., ii., Frankfort, 1787; Milasch, Das Kirchenrecht der morgenlandischen Kirche, Mostar, 1905; DC A, ii 1947-48.
SYNCRETISM, SYNCRETISTIC CONTROVERSIES.
I. Syncretism.
Origin of the Term (§1). Misuse of the Term (§ 2). II. Syncretistic Controversies. The Synod of Charenton (\ 1. The First Period.
1).
In Prussia (§1). In Electoral Saxony (§ 2). 2. The Second Period. In Hesse-Cassel (§ 2). In Prussia and Brandenburg (§ 2). The Wittenberg Consensus (§ 3).
Herman Conring (§4). The Counsel of Spener (§ 5). The Third Period. Recrudescence of Calovius (§ 1). Final Influence.
Syncretism refers in general to the union of opponents on a basis which they hold in common, and so applies to philosophy and organized religion; in particular, to the irenic movement arising from an effort within the Lutheran Church in the seventeenth century toward interconfessional union, the sole final result of which was the moderation of the theological spirit. Syncretistic controversies is a phrase summing up the conflict waged between the partizans and opponents of the movement.
I. Syncretism: The only mention of the term in ancient literature is that of Plutarch, who, in illustrating brotherly love, cites the example of the Cretans, stating that they make war upon
i. Origin one another, but in the face of attack of the unite against a common enemy. It Term. was resuscitated by Erasmus (q.v.), who, in Adagia, critized the practise, yet in a letter to Melanchthon (1519) proposed a common (synkretizein) defense of the learned against their opponents, although not wholly in accord among themselves. In a letter of Zwingli (q.v.) to GCcolampadius (q.v.) and other clerics of Basel (in Zwingli 's Opera, ed. Schuler and Schulthess, vii. 390), the former urged a syncretistic union against the persecutions arising over the Eucharist, and soon after both term and conception became prominent in the peace negotiations of M. Butzer (q.v.), and in the vocabulary of humanists in general. Zacharias Ursinus (q.v.) applied it likewise to the wicked, speaking of their " syncretism " and conspiracy against God. In the first half of the seventeenth century the twofold value of censure and praise continued, although the term acquired an increasingly sinister significance as the unpopularity of the concord with dissenters increased during the time in which dogmas became more and more fixed. The Roman Catholic theologian Paul Windeck predicted, in Progno^ticon futuri status ecclesiw (1603), the speedy fall of Protestantism, and admonished those of his own church to cultivate " syncretism," which called forth the Irenicum sive de unione Evangelicorum concilianda (Heidelberg, 1614-15) of David Pareus (q.v.), summoning the two Protestant bodies to a peaceful conciliation against the common foe.
The Jesuit Adam Contzen attacked the proposition of Pareus with De pace Germania (Mainz, 1616) in two books, the first of which is superscribed De syncretismus. He omitted no effort before the Thirty Years' War to incite the Lutherans against the Reformed in order to avert an anti-Catholic union. Two years before the Synod of Dort he pointed to the alleged effort of the stricter Reformed to suppress the moderate, charging them with syncretissare, which, according to Titus i. 12, they had ascribed to others; and he in eighteen chapters suggested numerous reasons against fellowship with the revolutionary Reformed. In the next three decades of the war, the term as well as the thing to which it applied retired to the background.
Toward the middle of the century, however, there developed a tendency in the direction of the finality and authority of dogma, specially in 2. Misuse the Lutheran and Roman Catholic of the Churches. This necessarily involved Term. the perpetuity of differences and divisions within the Church. Against this Georg Calixtus (q.v.) protested, denouncing it as a cause for shame in Christianity, and the theology crystallized for this purpose as barbarism. He brought to recognition the differences between the more and the less fundamental doctrines, proposed to refer those basic doctrines which by common consent were less important to the schools for further development, and desired to see a closer affiliation established, at least between the Lutheran and Reformed Churches. But with the events of 1645 (see below), the irenics of Calixtus only served to irritate the Lutherans and Roman Catholics. Before the Conference of Thorn (q.v.) two published briefs from Wittenberg counseled against " syncretism." The Jesuit Voit Ebermann, in Eirenikon catholicum (Mainz, 1645), objected to the irenics of Calixtus, holding that there could be no more dangerous heresy than that all who could assent to the apostolic symbol should therefore feel themselves as one; because it would admit to unity those otherwise at variance, or lead to a false appearance deceiving both themselves and others- Thereby the union not only of individuals of different religions but of