Christ Church, Oxford, where he took his degrees in the following order: B.A., 1672; M.A., 1675; B.D., 1682; and D.D., 1686. His account of the famous Arundel marbles just given to the university appeared in 1676. In 1679 he was appointed to the rectory of St Clement's, Oxford, and Hebrew lecturer at Christ Church, where he continued until February 1686, holding for the last three years the rectory of Bladon with Woodstock. In 1686 he exchanged for the benefice of Saham in Norfolk. The sympathies of Prideaux inclined to Low Churchism in religion and to Whiggism in politics, and he took an active part in the controversies of the day, publishing the following pamphlets: “The Validity of the Orders of the Church of England” (1688), “Letter to a Friend on the Present Convocation” (1690), “The Case of Clandestine Marriages stated” (1691). Prideaux was promoted to the archdeaconry of Suffolk in December 1688, and to the deanery of Norwich (he had long been one of the canons) in June 1702. In 1694 he was obliged, through ill health, to resign the rectory of Saham, and after having held the vicarage of Trowse for fourteen years (1696-1710) he found himself incapacitated from further parochial duty. He died at Norwich on the 1st of November 1724.
Many of the dean's writings were of considerable value. His Life of Mahomet (1697) was really a polemical tract against the deists and has now no biographical value. Both it and his Directions to Churchwardens (1701) passed through several editions. Even greater success attended The Old and New Testament connected in the History of the Jews (1716), a work which not only displayed but stimulated research. Biographical details of his numerous publications and of his manuscripts are given in the Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, ii. 527-533, and iii. 1319. A volume of his letters to John Ellis, some time under-secretary of state, was edited by E. M. Thompson for the Camden Society in 1875; they contain a vivid picture of Oxford life after the Restoration. An anonymous life (probably by Thomas Birch) appeared in 1748; it was mainly compiled from information furnished by Prideaux's son Edmund.
PRIE, JEANNE AGNES BERTHELOT DE PLÉNEUF, Marquise de (1698-1727), French adventuress, was the daughter of a rich but unscrupulous father and an immoral mother. At the age of fifteen she was married to Louis, marquis de Prie, and went with him to the court of Savoy at Turin, where he was ambassador. She was twenty-one when she returned to France, and was soon the declared mistress of Louis Henri, duc de Bourbon. During his ministry (1723-1725) she was in several respects the real ruler of France, her most notable triumph being the marriage of Louis XV. to Marie Leszczynska instead of to Mlle de Vermandois. But when, in 1725, she sought to have Bourbon's rival Fleury exiled, her ascendancy came to an end. After Fleury's recall and the banishment of Bourbon to Chantilly Mme de Prie was exiled to Courbépine, where she committed suicide the next year.
See M. H. Thirion, Madame de Prie (Paris, 1905).
PRIE-DIEU, literally “pray God,” strictly a prayer desk, primarily intended for private use, but often found in churches of the European continent. It is a small ornamental wooden desk furnished with a sloping shelf for books, and a cushioned kneeling piece. It appears not to have received its present name until the early part of the 17th century. At that period in France a small room or oratory was sometimes known by the same name. A similar form of chair, in domestic furniture, is called prie-dieu by analogy.
PRIEGO DE CORDOBA, a town of southern Spain in the extreme S.E. of the province of Cordova, near the headwaters of the river Guadajoz, and on the northern slope of the Sierra de Priego. Pop. (1900), 16,902. The district abounds in cattle and mules and agricultural products, especially wine and oil. The local industries also include tanning and manufactures of esparto fabrics, rugs and cotton goods. The oldest church was built in the 13th century and subsequently restored; it has a fine chapel. There are ruins of an old castle—Priego having been a fortified city of the Moors which was captured by the Christians in 1226, lost again, and finally retaken in 1407.
PRIENE (mod. Samsun kale), an ancient city of Ionia on the foot-hills of Mycale, about 6 m. N. of the Maeander. It was formerly on the sea coast, but now lies some miles inland. It is said to have been founded by Ionians under Aegyptus, a son of Neleus. Sacked by Ardys of Lydia, it revived and attained great prosperity under its “sage,” Bias, in the middle of the 6th century. Cyrus captured it in 545; but it was able to send twelve ships to join the Ionian revolt (500-494). Disputes with Samos, and the troubles after Alexander's death, brought Priene low, and Rome had to save it from the kings of Pergamum and Cappadocia in 155. Orophernes, the rebellious brother of the Cappadocian king, who had deposited a treasure there and recovered it by Roman intervention, restored the temple of Athena as a thankoffering. Under Roman and Byzantine dominion Priene had a prosperous history. It passed into Moslem hands late in the 13th century. The ruins, which lie on successive terraces, were the object of missions sent out by the English Society of Dilettanti in 1765 and 1868, and have been thoroughly laid open by Dr Th. Wiegand (1895-1899) for the Berlin Museum. The city, as rebuilt in the 4th and 3rd centuries, was laid out on a rectangular scheme. It faced south, its acropolis rising nearly 700 ft. behind it. The whole area was enclosed by a wall 7 ft. thick with towers at intervals and three principal gates. On the lower slopes of the acropolis was a shrine of Demeter. The town had six main streets, about 20 ft. wide, running east and west and fifteen streets about 10 ft. wide crossing at right angles, all being evenly spaced; and it was thus divided into about 80 insulae. Private houses were apportioned four to an insula. The systems of water-supply and drainage can easily be discerned. The houses present many analogies with the earliest Pompeian. In the western half of the city, on a high terrace north of the main street and approached by a fine stairway, was the temple of Athena Polias, a hexastyle peripterial Ionic structure built by Pythias, the architect of the Mausoleum. Under the basis of the statue of Athena were found in 1870 silver tetradrachms of Orophernes, and some jewelry, probably deposited at the time of the Cappadocian restoration. Fronting the main street is a series of halls, and on the other side is the fine market place. The municipal buildings, Roman gymnasium, and well preserved theatre lie to the north, but, like all the other public structures, in the centre of the plan. Temples of Isis and Asclepius have been laid bare. At the lowest point on the south, within the walls, was the large stadium, connected with a gymnasium of Hellenistic times.
See Society of Dilettanti, Ionian Antiquities (1821), vol. ii.; Th. Wiegand and H. Schrader, Priene (1904); on inscriptions (360) see Hiller von Gärtringen, Inschriften von Priene (Berlin, 1907), with collection of ancient references to the city. (D. G. H.)
PRIEST (Ger. Priester, Fr. prêtre), the contracted form of “presbyter” (πρεσβύτερος, “elder”; see Presbyter), a name of office in the early Christian Church, already mentioned in the New Testament. But in the English Bible the presbyters of the New Testament are called “elders,” not “priests”; the latter name is reserved for ministers of pre-Christian religions, the Semitic כֹּהֲנִים (kōhănīm, sing. kōhēn) and כְּמָרִים (kemārīm), or the Greek ἱερεῖς. The reason of this will appear more clearly in the sequel; it is enough to observe at present that, before our English word was formed, the original idea of a presbyter had been overlaid with others derived from pre-Christian priesthoods, so that it is from these and not from the etymological force of the word that we must start in considering historically what a priest is. The theologians of the Greek and Latin churches expressly found the conception of a Christian priesthood on the hierarchy of the Jewish temple, while the names by which the sacerdotal character is expressed—ἱερεύς, sacerdos—originally designated the ministers of sacred things in Greek and Roman heathenism, and then came to be used as translations into Greek and Latin of the Hebrew kōhēn. Kōhēn, ἱερεύς, sacerdos, are, in fact, fair translations of one another; they all denote a minister whose stated business was to perform, on behalf of the community, certain public ritual acts, particularly sacrifices, directed godwards. Such ministers or priests existed in all the great religions of ancient civilization. The term
