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A confraternity is generally a Christian voluntary association of lay people created for the purpose of promoting special works of Christian charity or piety, and approved by the Church hierarchy. They are most common among Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans and the Western Orthodox. When a confraternity has received the authority to aggregate to itself groups erected in other localities, it is called an archconfraternity.〔(Fanning, William. "Confraternity (Sodality)." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 4. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. 3 Jan. 2015 )〕 An example is the Confraternity of the Rosary. ==Description== Some confraternities are very widely spread, especially in the cities of the Middle Ages, confraternities could be important and wealthy institutions for the elite, as in for example, the Scuole Grandi of Venice. The Purgatorial societies and orders of flagellants were other specialized medieval types. The medieval French term ''puy'' designated a confraternity dedicated to artistic performance in music, song and poetry; the German meistersingers were similar, though typically imitating trade guilds in form. The term may have other meanings: Confraternities in Nigeria began as a term for fraternities in the American college sense, university-based social organisations, but the term has spread and changed to become in many cases used by street gangs that have been accused of widespread crime. The Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament is an example of an Anglo-Catholic confraternity established in the Church of England, Mother Church of the Anglican Communion. Catholic confraternities of priests became common in the 19th century, fulfilling similar functions for the clergy. The Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception is a renowned lay Marian apostolate in the Philippines known for administering the ''Grand Marian Procession'' parade on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Similarly members of The Augustana Confraternity, which is in the Lutheran tradition, "devote themselves to the teachings of Holy Scripture and to the elucidation of those teachings in the Confessional writings of the Lutheran Church, particularly the Small Catechism." Each Confraternity organization has a set of rules or by-laws to follow which every member promises to live by. Even though the Catholic Church works in harmony with the confraternity, these rules are not religious vows, instead merely rules set up to govern the confraternal organization.〔Christopher Black and Pamela Grovestock, ''Early Modern Confraternities in Europe and the Americas'', (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2006), 1.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「confraternity」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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