The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1175 page)

see
A
GA
.

 
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(Jap., ‘meditation’). Buddhist concentration and meditation; also (a different Jap. word), a vehicle, i.e. a means of carrying people to salvation or
nirv
na;
j
j
is the highest teaching.

 
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(
c.
1132–1202).
Christian mystic and prophetic visionary. As a young man he became a
Cistercian
, but later left and eventually founded his own monastery at Fiore in Calabria. He saw history divided into three ages: the age of the Father, in the Old Testament; the age of the Son, the period of the Church; and the shortly-to-be-inaugurated age of the Spirit, in which new religious orders would convert the world and usher in the ‘Spiritual Church’. His views were influential among the new orders of the 13th cent., especially the Spiritual
Franciscans
. He wrote a harmony of the Old and New Testaments, a commentary on the Apocalypse, and
The Psalter with Ten Strings
.

 
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Joan, Pope
.

Legendary female pope. The gist of the story is that about the year 1100 a woman in male disguise succeeded to the papacy. After reigning more than two years she gave birth to a child during a procession to the Lateran and died immediately afterwards. The tale is first attested in the 13th cent. and was widely believed in the Middle Ages.

 
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