Sprengel (Protestant)

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The word Sprengel (originally: sprengel or sprengil as the name for the holy water sprinkler of the Catholic priest or bishop) today describes the sphere of activity of their regional bishops in certain German Protestant regional churches or free churches . Their sphere of activity is congruent with parts of the sphere of activity of the church-leading bishop . There are Sprengel in those Protestant churches that are so large that certain episcopal tasks have to be delegated to regional bishops who have one of the following service titles: state superintendent , general superintendent, provost , prelate . To the respective Sprengel include those church districts and congregations that are in the scope of the regional bishop. Each district is a special, historically evolved area of ​​life for Protestant Christians with their own forms of piety and is no longer understood only as a middle administrative level in the hierarchy of the Evangelical Church, but also as the sum of all offers and activities of Christians in their parishes and church districts.

A district is comparable to an administrative district in general administration. In many churches, instead of the word Sprengel, the names Kirchenkreis , Prelatur or Propstei are used.
In Austria the (provincial) superintendent corresponds to a district, but only the church as a whole is headed by a bishop.

etymology

A bishop blesses a bridal couple in the bridal bed with the parish in his left hand - medieval illustration

The words sprengel or sprengil come from Catholic parlance and originally referred to the holy water sprinkler, which is used in the liturgy for sprinkling holy water . This name for the holy water sprinkler was later replaced in the Catholic Church by Aspergill (Latin: aspergere - sprinkle). The similarity of the rapeseed with the holy water sprinkler led to the name Rübssprengel on the Bergstrasse .

Since the holy water sprinkler was used by the priest as part of his liturgical activities in his entire sphere of activity, the word Sprengel acquired the secondary meaning early on: the sphere of activity of a pastor. This meaning agrees with the word meanings of parish, parish parish, parish and parish . The name Sprengel for the effective range of a pastor was later in both the Catholic and Protestant church initially by these meaningless same words , and finally through the neugeprägten terms parish replaced and parish.

The area in which the bishop or archbishop sprinkled holy water was also called Sprengel . Secondly, the names Kirchensprengel and Kirchsprengel emerged for this . In the Catholic Church these terms were later replaced by diocese .

In various German Protestant regional churches and free churches, Sprengel is still used today as a term for the sphere of activity of a regional bishop.

An adoption of the term Sprengel in the political area led to German-speaking public administrations adopting this designation in order to identify the administrative levels subordinate to them, for example in the terms court district , school district , election district or counting district . The term archival district was further differentiated as the spatial area of ​​responsibility of an archive, which is defined by political-geographical and / or thematic and / or administrative specifications. As a result of the Prussian administrative reform in 1815, the term Sprengel was largely replaced by district in the public administrations .

literature