NAZARENENS. — Protestant sect of Wesleyan origin that arose at the beginning of the 20th century (Church of the Nazarene).
Among Protestants it was widely held that after Wesley’s death (1791) the idea of “entire sanctification” had ceased to be emphasized, having nearly disappeared during the 18th century owing to the enormous development of Wesley’s other doctrine of “conversion.” Here and there groups of “holiness” and Pentecostal groups sprang up, claiming to revive in Christians the ideal of perfect holiness, manifested through charisms granted by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
From three of these groups, which united in 1907, there arose the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene. From three other groups that had come together in 1904 there was formed the Holiness Church of Christ, which in 1915 merged with the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene. In 1919, at the General Assembly in Kansas City (Missouri), it was decided to drop the name “Pentecostal,” retaining only that of Church of the Nazarene. The reason for this change was that, in the meantime, many Pentecostal Churches had developed which held that the “gift of tongues” was a manifestation of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit; the General Assembly in Kansas City wished to make clear that it rejected this doctrine.
The Church of the Nazarene, composed of elements drawn from Methodism (v.) and Pentecostalism, admits the necessity of repentance, followed by justification and regeneration. Entire sanctification is an act of God whereby the regenerate man, freed from sin, is made perfect through the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. This perfection is also called “perfect love,” “Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” “fullness of blessing,” “Christian holiness,” and it ensures that the Christian who possesses it may avoid and in fact does avoid all sin (a doctrine directly opposed to the Council of Trent, sess. VI, can. 23). The ecclesiastical government is similar to that of the Methodists. The Nazarenes have missions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, especially in Guatemala, and work for the training of national ministers. They do not number 100,000, but are well organized.
NAZARENES. — This name was initially applied, not without a touch of irony, to those German painters who between 1810 and 1815 gathered in Rome around Friedrich Overbeck in the cloister of S. Isidoro at Trinità dei Monti, forming a kind of artistic brotherhood. They lived in common and, in opposition to neoclassical theories, proclaimed the need to restore to Christian art those emotional values that had already characterized Italian painting at the close of the 15th century, particularly within the orbit of Raphael’s predecessors. By following this path they hoped also to attain the excellence of his art.
For the Nazarenes, art was a means of religious propaganda; hence they despised the neoclassicists’ cult of formal and corporeal beauty. Their theories, moreover, must be linked with those of the Italian “Purists” and of similar movements in other countries, which in varying degrees represent an intermediate phase between neoclassical manifestations and the more openly Romantic ones that preceded the rise of realism. The principal painters who belonged to the group of the Nazarenes, besides Overbeck already mentioned, are P. Cornelius, Ph. Veit, W. von Schadow, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, and J. Führich.
Their chief works, of a programmatic character and executed in collaboration, were painted in Rome. These are the frescoes in the Casa Bartholdy (1816), removed early in the last century and taken to Berlin, to the Friedrich Museum, and those in the Villa Massimo Lancellotti (1821) near S. Giovanni. Later, in 1843, when the group of the Nazarenes had practically dissolved, Overbeck joined T. Minardi and P. Tenerani in signing the manifesto of “Purism” drawn up by the painter and man of letters Antonio Bianchini. — See pl. CXII.