<論説>近世僧位僧官の叙任経路に関する一考察 : 北野社を素材として

Abstract

本稿では、曼殊院門跡が管轄した北野社を素材として、被叙任者・門跡・朝廷の三者の動向から浮かび上がる叙任経路の実態を描出するとともに、個別門跡が管掌する叙任経路に関する先行研究の妥当性を検証した。具体的には、北野社の叙任経路が如何なるものであったかを分析するという手法を採りつつ、安永年間の官位をめぐる動き(安永一件) の全貌解明に取り組んだ。その結果、叙任経路をめぐっては、叙任主体を変更するか否かという次元で問題化する場合があり、三者の動向がせめぎ合う中で変更の是非が決定されていたことを明らかにするとともに、先行研究の理解から漏れる叙任経路の存在を指摘した。また、北野社は神社伝奏と関係を有する神社であったことに鑑み、如上の分析結果を踏まえつつ、同社における神杜伝奏の問題にも論及し、従来は指摘されてこなかった僧俗の官位を区別しない神社伝奏の実態を明らかにした。

This article considers the issue of the route to appointment of Buddhist monks in the early modern perlod to soi 僧位 and sokan 僧官, the government ranks and offices awarded to monks. As regards this path of appointment to soi and sokan in the early modern period there were two types:one that was managed by the monzeki 門跡 (temples headed by members of the imperial family) and another by temple recommendation via the jiin tenso 寺院伝奏, who was a member of the kuge 公家 (court nobility). In regard to the former, previous scholarship has left a number of issues unaddressed. Specifically, 1) insufficient attention has been paid to the movements of the three parties involved: the nominee (the monk to receive investiture), the monzeki, and imperial court that demonstrate the reality of the path to appointment and 2) the possibility has not been considered that another path to appointment may have existed but was not recorded in the primary sources used in the analysis in previous scholarship. Thus, in this article I use source material on the route to appointment at Kitano-sha, a shrine managed by Manshu-in (a monzeki temple affiliated with the Tendai school) with the goal of overcoming the two problems stated above. The focus of the analysis is placed not on Manshu-in, but instead on Kitano-sha and considers the character of the entire path to investiture at Kitano-sha. Specifically, I focus on an incident (hereafter called the An'ei Incident) regarding the route of appointment that embroiled the Kitano-sha from An'ei 2 to An'ei 6 (1773-1776). Moreover, earlier scholarship has indicated that the jinja tenso 神社伝奏 (noble or monzeki officials who held the role of mediator between the shrine and court) was one of the chief components of shrine officialdom in the early modern period, and that the kan'i shisso 官位執奏 (mediating between the court and the shrine regarding the government rank that was to be bestowed on the shrine official by the court) played the leading role, but these have not been sufficiently analyzed. In regard to this situation, the analysis of this article is linked to the elucidation of the reality of the jinja tenso based on two facts: first, Kitano-sha, the object of this study, was a shrine that was related to the jinja tenso and second, the problem of the path of appointment to soi and sokan analyzed in this paper was on occasion accompanied by the kan'i shisso. For these reasons, this article has significance in contributing to the clarification of the problem of how shrines and shrine personnel were organized in the early modern period. The following two points were made clear as a result of this analysis. First, the issue of who was to be appointed became problematic in this period. The two types of appointment to sokan or soi involved either appointment directly by the monzeki or by the emperor who made the appointment after the monzeki had employed mediation with the court. The latter method was the more prestigious, and a hierarchy in ranks was created between those appointed by former and those appointed by the latter method. What became problematic in the An'ei Incident was precisely this point. Specifically, monks who had been appointed by the former method prior to the An'ei era sought a change so they could be re-appointed in the latter fashion. However, the monzeki, Manshu-in in this case, took the position that its pride was at stake and rested in it ability to make the former type of appointment and would not permit such a change. As the court likewise surmised that if it permitted this change, it might create the possibility that there would be a move by other monzeki in addition to Manshu-in to seek the same kind of alteration, it also adopted the policy of not recognizing such a change. In this way the route to sokan and soi, the correctness of the change was determined in a three-way struggle seen in the movements of the appointees, the monzeki, and the court. In addition, analyzing the primary sources held by Kitano-sha, I discovered the previous scholarship had overlooked the existence of another route to investiture. Based on this fact, one must admit that there is room for a reexamination of the route to investiture advocated in earlier scholarship. Secondly, the jinja tenso did not distinguish between lay and clerical in government ranks when acting as a mediator for award of ranks with the court. Previously, a portrait has been drawn of the jinja tenso as mediating with the court only in the case of lay ranks (the regular award of ranks to shrine personnel and not monks), but the fact that at Kitano-sha both ranks for monks and for lay people were mediated by jinja tenso has been made clear by analysis of the An'ei Incident. In this analysis it has become possible to discern the reality of the jinja tenso that had been overlooked in previous scholarship.