Drawing the Sortes Sanctorum (Lots of the saints) or Sortes Sacrae (Holy Lots) was a type of divination or cleromancy practiced in early Christianity, derived and adapted from the ancient Roman sortes, as seen in the pagan Sortes Homerica and Sortes Virgilianae.

PropertyValue
dbpprop:abstract
  • Drawing the Sortes Sanctorum (Lots of the saints) or Sortes Sacrae (Holy Lots) was a type of divination or cleromancy practiced in early Christianity, derived and adapted from the ancient Roman sortes, as seen in the pagan Sortes Homerica and Sortes Virgilianae. Some early Christians went to church and listened for the words of scripture that were being sung when they entered the church as a random means of predicting the future and God's will (along the lines of the Jewish Bath Kol form of divination), but the Sortes was done more formally, by casually opening the Holy Scripture and reading the first words to come to hand, with these words being taken to foretell the inquirer's fate. Doing so was often a public event, and sometimes accompanied by ceremonies (such as the 7th century emperor Heraclius ordering 3 days' public fast before a consultation as to whether or not he should advance or retreat against the Persians - he took the text that arose as divine instruction to winter in Albania). Since full copies of the Christian Bible were rare before printing was invented, the lots usually used the Psalms, the Prophets, or the four Gospels.
dbpprop:hasPhotoCollection
dbpprop:reference
rdfs:comment
  • Drawing the Sortes Sanctorum (Lots of the saints) or Sortes Sacrae (Holy Lots) was a type of divination or cleromancy practiced in early Christianity, derived and adapted from the ancient Roman sortes, as seen in the pagan Sortes Homerica and Sortes Virgilianae.
rdfs:label
  • Sortes Sanctorum
owl:sameAs
skos:subject
foaf:page
is dbpprop:redirect of