Clergy, Theologians & Religious Officials

Clergy, theologians and religious officials held a formal office, bishop, abbot, priest, priestess or theologian, within an organized religious body and are known chiefly for that office and its teaching rather than for founding a new movement or writing outside scholarship about religion. The heading spans the Christian episcopate and monastic orders across two millennia and reaches back further still to the temple officials of pre-Christian Rome and the high priesthood of Zoroastrian Iran, since holding a religious office is the common thread rather than any one tradition.