Temple



The temple is the primary place of worship of the gods. Although there are small shrines throughout Ehrenfest, the temple within the city is the only one in the duchy. It sits directly on the border between downtown and the Noble District. Throughout the year the temple holds several religious ceremonies. The vast majority of priests live on the temple grounds.

There are two major sections in the temple. The first is the noble's quarters. This is where the rooms for the blue priests are. The grey priests and servants live in the same section but in a different area. This section contains the temple's library and the offertory hall where the Dedication Ritual is held.

The second section is the worship area and orphanage. These face the entrance from the lower city.

There are 2 main entrances to the temple one from the Noble District which we see for the first time when Myne goes on the trompe mission and must be opened by using mana. The other main gate is from the downtown, which is near the main entrances to the noble sector from the common sector. There is also a back gate which leads to the temple from the common sector. In the anime this is where Myne is seen entering the temple from the common sector.

Spoiler from Part 4 Volume 4 Unlike the rest of the noble's quarter, the temple does not have toilets and bathes in every person's room. Instead there are respective communal areas for bathing and disposing waste. At the very least the rooms for the highest ranking priests - like the High Bishop's quarters and the Orphanage Director's chambers - are fitted with their own sanitary facilities, but it is unclear whether this extends to the rooms for all blue priests. All the facilities utilize magic tools that take the shape of a slime, usually at he bottom of a shaft or pipe of some kind.

The priests within the temple mainly fall into two groups: People of noble brith (blue robed) and orphans (grey-robed).

While technically any noble may choose to become a priest or shrine maiden, in practice the only ones that actually join the temple are those that are left with no other choice. The most common group are children who's mana capacity is insufficient for their noble rank, children of poor laynoble families who can not afford the magic tools that are necessary to keep a noble child alive for all their offspring and adults who retire from noble society due to fear for their lives. In rare cases nobles also send their children to the temple with various degrees of secrecy to keep them safe from jealous family members during their first years of life and then bring them back into the family at a laster date, usually shortly before their baptism. Lady Christine, the former master of Rosina and Wilma is one such person. Children who are part of the temple at the age of ten are not sent to the Royal Academy and thus never become true nobles. Such individuals occupy a spot between regular nobles - even lower than the poorest laynoble - but still above any commoner. Sometimes they can secure better treatment for themselves if they retain good relations with their family like the former High Bishop Bezewanst.

Orphans are commoners who either lost their parents and didn't have distant relatives able or willing to take them in, children abondoned by their parents - usually by anonymously handing them over to temple guards as a "gift to the gods" - and the children of priests.

Within the temple, there is a strict hierarchy of command. see Temple Hierarchy

This hierarchy holds sway in every aspect of life of the temple residents. Lower ranking priests have to show deference and follow every command of higher ranking priests unless it contradicts a direct order by someone of equal or higher rank. Even the food is determined by rank with the food generally only being made for blue priests and only their left-overs being passed down the rank-structure as "divine gifts" with each rank eating their fill and then passing the divine gifts to the next-lower rank until it eventually arrives at the unbaptized orphans. While blue priests aware of this mechanism usually choose to have their cooks make more food than they would ever eat themselves, it still leaves the grey priests at the total mercy of their superiors.

When the number of blue priests drastically declined as a result of the civil war, it also caused a famine among the grey priests due to the few remaining blue robes being unable (or unwilling) to provide enough food for the much bigger number of grey robes. To counteract this starvation the previous High Bishop Bezewanst sold as many grey priests as he could. When that still left too many mouthes to feed he ordered a significant number of grey shrine maidens to be executed, choosing to keep particularly those alive that were expected to grow up into beauties. Even with these drastic measures the lack of food as well as mismanagement and embezzeling by the former orphanage director Margaret, as well as a period without an orphanage director resulted in many of the unbaptized orphans that didn't get executed to die of malnutrition and sickness until Myne accepted the position of orphanage director and managed to turn the situation around.

Myne also partially upturns the divine gift system by teaching the grey priests how to cook simple meals and providing them with ways to aquire ingrediants to supplement the divine gifts, thus making it far less likely that any more grey priests or orphans die from starvation in the forseeable future and reducing the dependence on the blue priests' mercy.

The temple takes from varies sources and activities that the Blue-robed priest perform. With most of the income to run the temple coming from tithes collected for and during the Harvest Festival. Blue priest can also make money performing Baptism ceremonies at nobles' mansions. Having the High Bishop or High Priest perform a baptism carries the highest cost, but also carries the highest prestige with it and thus any noble who is able to afford this will also attempt to get one of them to perform the baptism for their children.

Recently the temple also gained an additional form in income thanks to the unusual circumstances of Myne's induction in the temple. 10% of the profits made by her workshop are sent to the temple as "donations".

The money a priest gets for noble baptisms seem to go just to the priest in their entirety. The tithes collected during the harvest festival are split between the priest who performed the ceremony in a town or village and the temple. Naturally this makes performing the rituals in the more prosperous provinces highly sought after.

Money and goods that are given to the temple are first used to provide for the running cost of the temple and then what remains is split between the blue priests, with the distribution being entirely up to the High Bishop and not governed by any law or rule. When Bezewanst was the High Bishop he gave himself by far the biggest share and Blue Priests in his favour received considerably more than those who didn't suck up to him to his satisfaction or displeased him in some way. When Rozemyne becames High Bishop, after the cost of running the temple is taken out 50% of the money is split between her and High Priest with the remaining split up evenly between the blue-priests.

Once Rozemyne convinces Ferdinand to train other priests to help him with his paperwork, the few candidates who successfully made it through his harsh training get the chance to earn extra pay for helping him with his work, mainly involving paper-work.


 * The Blue-Robed priests are looked down upon by nobles.
 * Nobles do not want to set foot inside the temple.
 * Ferdinand joined/escaped to the temple to take himself out of Ehrenfest's politics.
 * In the anime the temple is refered to as the church or the cathedral.