Rex Sacrorum

In ancient Roman religion, the rex sacrorum (“king of the sacred things,” sometimes called rex sacrificulus) was a senatorial priesthood reserved for patricians. The rex sacrorum was based in the Regia.

During the Roman Republic, the rex sacrorum was chosen by the pontifex maximus (the chief high priest of the College of Pontiffs in ancient Rome) from a list of patricians (patricians were originally a group of ruling-class families in ancient Rome) submitted by the College of Pontiffs.

A further requirement was that he be born to parents married through the ritual of confarreatio. This was also the form of marriage he himself had to enter. His wife (the regina sacrorum) also performed religious duties specific to her role. Marriage was such a fundamental part of the priesthood that if the regina died, the rex had to resign. The rex sacrorum was above the pontifex maximus. Although he was more or less a powerless figurehead.

The rex sacrorum wore a toga, the undecorated soft “shoeboot” (calceus), & carried a ceremonial axe. As a priest of the archaic Roman religion, he sacrificed capite velato, with head covered.

The rex held a sacrifice on the Kalends of each month. Kalends is the 1st day of every month in the Roman Calendar. The word ‘calendar’ comes from this word. On the Nones (the Roman Calendar used by the Roman Kingdom & Roman Republic), he announced the dates of festivals for the month.

On March 24 & May 24, he held a sacrifice in the Comitium. The Comitium was the original open-air public meeting space of ancient Rome & had major religious & prophetic significance. In addition to these duties, the rex sacrorum seems to have functioned as the high priest of Janus.

In Rome, the priesthood was deliberately depoliticized. The rex sacrorum wasn’t elected. His inauguration was merely witnessed by a comitia calata, an assembly called for the purpose. The rex was barred from a political & military command. After the overthrow of the Roman kings, the office of rex sacrorum fulfilled at least some of the sacral duties of kingship, with the consuls assuming political power & military command, as well as some sacral functions.

As the wife of the rex sacrorum, the regina sacrorum (“queen of the sacred things”) was a high priestess who carried out ritual duties only she could perform. On the Kalends of every month, the regina presided at the sacrifice of a sow (porca) or female lamb (agna) to Juno. The reginas were equal to their male partners. These 2 priesthood were gender-balanced & had shared duties.

While performing her rituals, the regina wore a headdress called the arculum, formed from a garland of pomegranate twigs tied up with a white woolen thread. The rex & regina sacrorum were required to marry by the ritual of confarreatio, originally reserved for patricians. But after the Lex Canuleia of 445 BC, it’s possible that the regina could’ve been plebeian. Plebeians/plebs were the general body of the free Roman citizens who weren’t patricians.

The office of Rex Sacrorum wasn’t a highly coveted position among the patricians. Although the rex sacrorum was technically superior to the pontiffs, the rank conferred no real political gain. Because of this, there would be some years without a rex sacrorum at all.

By the time of Antony’s civil war, the office was entirely in disuse. But seems to have been revived later by Augustus, as there was mention of it during the empire until it was probably abolished by Theodosius I.

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Café Vegetaria: the thread about early vegetarianism in Edinburgh, an idealistic founder and the Suffragette safe haven

This thread was originally written and published in May 2022.

Given that Glasgow had a vegetarian restaurant as far back as 1897, for the sake of civic one-upmanship, I decided to look up “vegetarian” in the Edinburgh Post Office directories.

https://twitter.com/LostGlasgow/status/1526499849503485952?s=20&t=U7HtPvR7DrHDF-eK92iWZg

The first mention for Edinburgh is a café in the 1892-3 edition, although there is a Vegetarian restaurant at 6 Jamaica Street in Glasgow, then called “Arbuckle’s Caledonian Restaurant”, as early as 1881.

In 1908 the first vegetarian “Health Food Depot” is listed, the proprietor one Edwin Rodbourn, on Hanover Street. Incredibly, it’s still going, first opening in 1904.

The first mention of the word “vegetarian” in The Scotsman is in 1849, where it is described in a book review as something with a “considerable number of professors in England” but that hasn’t caught on in Scotland due to “our shaper mountain air and generally colder climate”

The first real mention of vegetarianism in a local context is October 1855, where Mr Palmer, the former precentor of the Broughton Place United Presbyterian Church, is reported as giving a lecture detailing “his experience in the vegetarian line“. Mr Palmer described an “inventory of the vegetable contents of a series of brown jars which he [was] fortunate enough to have in his pantry at home“. He also described a vegetarian banquet he had recently attended in Glasgow. The menu contained “almost every green thing that ever was created – besides some articles of dubious lawfulness at a vegetarian table, such as butter cheese, eggs and omelettes“. He also detailed his wife’s horror when he came home one night and announced to her that “as he had for a long time lived without drink he was determined in future to live without meat” and further claimed his vegetarianism had cured a 20 year stomach ache.

So perhaps Mr Palmer is the first recorded Vegetarian in Edinburgh?

There was for a while an Edinburgh establishment called “Café Vegetaria”, proprietor Albert Broadbent, who was a food reform campaigner and the secretary of the Vegetarian Society.

It opened on March 24th 1909 at 3 Nicolson Street, having started out at the Edinburgh Exhibition at Saughton Park in 1908, and advertised itself as the “Freshest, most Artistic Café in the City“.

A letter written to the Clarion socialist newspaper in May 1909 stated that the café gave

The best conditions to the employees. Waitresses and kitchen helpers receive a minimum wage of 15s. weekly, all their food, a week’s holiday with wages paid, no fines and no deductions from wages for absence through illness. Mr Albert Broadbent deserves great credit for his constant consideration oft the woman workers in the cafés run in various exhibitions by the Vegetarian society.

Broadbent believed that the social position of women could be bettered by providing them with better working conditions. The café prided itself on the low cost of its food (25% below that offered in equivalent establishments) and also the purity; food purity is a common theme amongst vegetarianism at this time. It also drew attention to the cleanliness of its kitchens, which were open to inspection by the clientèle at any time.

Within a few months it was being advertised as a meeting place for suffragists. Vegetarian food at this time was sometimes known as “reform food” and was increasingly popular in radical and progressive circles. Vegetarian cafés provided women with good meeting and organising places.

Cafe Vegetaria advertised itself quite widely in the newspapers as a cafe, but the adverts for suffragist events held there are far more numerous. In April 1911, the establishement was used as part of a women’s suffrage campaign to avoid taking part in the census; it was a safe venue for them to stay in on the night of the census so that they could not be recorded at home; no rights? no censusing. The Registrar was forewarned and arranged for extra forms for the venue, but the manager had sublet the premises for the weekend to Miss Burns of the Womens Social and Political Union who refused to take part, and returned it to the enumerator marked “No Vote etc“.

The Registrar reported he had “seen the said lady but can obtain no satisfaction“.

“Miss Burns” was Lucy Burns, a prominent American suffragist who was the WPSU’s organiser in Edinburgh for 2 years.

Despite the popularity of the café, with its generous ideals and the cheap prices it offered (Broadbent was long an advocate for a vegetarian diet for the poor as being cheaper and more nutritious than a traditional diet) it caused its owner to suffer considerable financial loss and he suffered a complete nervous breakdown as a result, dying on January 12th 1912.

In December 1911, a limited company with the significant capital of £1,500 was formed to take over the running of Café Vegetaria and its premises, by which time included a branch on Princes Street and one on Broad Street, Aberdeen. It was “to advocate the total disuse of animal flesh, and to promote instead by all expedient means the use of purer and better food yielded by the vegetable kingdom“. Its principal financial backers were:

• J. Daniel Easson, a solicitor of 10 George Street, he was a noted supporter of women’s suffrage – his wife was the suffragette Florence Elizabeth Macleod
• Archibald Aikman Blair of 67 Gilmore Place, a dietician, organic gardener and vegetarian
• Frances A. D. Clark of 31 Scotland Street
• Christina Meredith of 3 Nicholson Street, the manager of the café
• Ethel H. L. Palmer of 35 Lauriston Place, a spiritualist
• Kenneth Sinclair of 6 Eyre Crescent
• James Redpath Watson of Iona Place, Leith

In January 1912, Café Vegetaria was advertising itself as open again for “luncheons and teas”, with rooms for meetings, dances etc. In March of that year it was the setting for what were regular “Hard-Up Social” fundraisers by the Women’s Freedom League, where guests brought their own food for a pot-luck supper and dressed to an interpretation of “hard up”.

In October they were advertising for a pastry cook and in February 1913 a Socialist Party event was held there on the evening of the 17th, but in May of that year the contents of the restaurant, its furnishings, fittings, appliances etc. were being sold by the liquidator; clearly the business had gone bankrupt.

The business seems to have re-opened in 1914 as the New Café (Vegetaria) at 3 St. Andrew Square, taking out adverts to describe itself as the “daintiest café in the city” and that it was owned, managed and worked by women, with liveable wages paid to all. Suffragists were asked to please support the establishment. Again from advertisements it was clearly a political meeting place as much as a café, with suffragist, socialist, pacifist and liberal organisations making use of it.

It was more successful than its predecessor, and lasted until May 1923, when again the auctioneers were selling the fixtures and fittings. This time it was on account of the termination of its lease. The proprietor at this time was Christina Meredith; who had previously been the manager at 3 Nicolson Street. Christina Meredith died age 83 in 1952, at which time she was living at 7 Brunton Place.

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Some of the spinach is up and some leaves on the radishes now. No signs of peas or beets.

#gardening #spinach #radish #GrowYourOwn #garden #SeedStarting #March24

The first crocus has bloomed.

#BloomScrolling #flowers #crocus #florespondence #crocuses #SpringFlowers #spring #March24

March 24

This day in history:

• 1999 – Kosovo War: NATO began attacks on Yugoslavia without United Nations Security Council (UNSC) approval, marking the first time NATO has attacked a sovereign country.
• 1934 – The Tydings–McDuffie Act is passed by the United States Congress, allowing the Philippines to become a self-governing commonwealth.
• 1944 – German troops massacre 335 Italian civilians in Rome.
• 1663 – The Province of Carolina is granted by charter to eight Lords Proprietor in reward for their assistance in restoring Charles II of England to the throne.

Births:

• 1960 – Jan Berglin, Swedish cartoonist
• 1924 – Norman Fell, American actor (d. 1998)
• 1991 – Nick Browne, English cricketer

Deaths:

• 2014 – John Rowe Townsend, English author and scholar (b. 1922)
• 1984 – Sam Jaffe, American actor (b. 1891)
• 1990 – Ray Goulding, American comedian and radio host (b. 1922)

Holidays:

• World Tuberculosis Day (International)
• Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice (Argentina)
• National Tree Planting Day (Uganda)

Random Article of the day:

St. Louis Cathedral, Port-Louis

St. Louis Cathedral (French: Cathédrale Saint-Louis de Port-Louis, Mauritian Creole: Katedral Sin Lwi) is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Port Louis, Mauritius, the seat of the bishop of Port-Louis.
Several churches have been built in succession at this location. Between 1752 and 1756, Joseph-François Charpentier de Cossigny built the first, which soon fell apart, and then was hit by a cyclone in 1760. A new church collapsed again on April 9, 1773 as a result of another cyclone. A further reconstruction in 1782 soon ended in collapse. Subsequently, the building was restored in 1814 by Sir Robert Townsend Farquhar, the first British governor, until the same recurring structural problems reappeared in 1819. Bishop Jacques Leen rebuilt the structure from 1930 to 1933, and a final restoration was completed in 2007.

#wikipedia #March24 #St.LouisCathedral,PortLouis

There's a deer spying on me.

#deer #wildlife #MuleDeer #doe #DeerVideo #March24

Russia-Ukraine war: Frontline update as of March 24

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/russia-ukraine-war-frontline-update-as-of-1742831025.html

#WarOfAggression #Europa #Ukraine #March24 #army #update #Frontline #war #Russia #WarCriminal #occupiers #defenders
#перемогаYкраїни

Happy Breakfast Club Day.

#TheBreakfastClub #March #March24 #Silly

March 24

This day in history:

• 2015 – Germanwings Flight 9525 crashes in the French Alps in an apparent pilot mass murder-suicide, killing all 150 people on board.
• 1961 – The Quebec Board of the French Language is established.
• 1870 – A Chilean prospecting party led by José Díaz Gana discovers the silver ores of Caracoles in the Bolivian portion of Atacama Desert, leading to the last of the Chilean silver rushes and a diplomatic dispute over its taxation between Chile and Bolivia.
• 1972 – Direct rule is imposed on Northern Ireland by the Government of the United Kingdom under Edward Heath.

Births:

• 1947 – Alan Sugar, English businessman
• 1960 – Nena, German singer-songwriter and actress
• 1975 – Thomas Johansson, Swedish-Monégasque tennis player

Deaths:

• Oleg Bryjak, Kazakhstani-German opera singer (b. 1960)
• 832 – Wulfred, archbishop of Canterbury
• 1603 – Elizabeth I of England (b. 1533)

Holidays:

• World Tuberculosis Day (International)
• Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice (Argentina)
• National Tree Planting Day (Uganda)

Random Article of the day:

Daturaolone

Daturaolone is a pentacyclic oleanane triterpenoid, also known as 3-oxo-6-β-hydroxy-β-amyrin, found in Datura species such as Datura stramonium and Datura innoxia.