At the head of the Buddhist hierarchy was a high priest called _Shaku_, resident at Miyako, and having much the same spiritual prerogative with the Pope of Rome, including the canonization of saints. With him rested the consecration of the _Jūji_, corresponding to the bishops, or rather to the abbots, of the Catholic Church—all the Buddhist clergy being, in the language of Rome, regulars (similar, that is, to the monks and friars), and living together in monasteries of which the Jūji were the heads. These Jūji, however, could not enter upon their offices, to which great revenues were attached, except by the consent of the temporal authorities, which took care to limit the interference of the Shaku and the Jūji strictly to spiritual matters.[35] [Illustration: PILGRIMS RETURNING FROM A TEMPLE] There was this further resemblance also to the regular orders of the Romish church, that the Buddhist clergy were divided into a number of observances, hardly less hostile to each other than the Dominicans to the Franciscans, or both to the Jesuits. But as the church and state were kept in Japan perfectly distinct,—as now in the United States,—and as the bonzes possessed no direct temporal power, there was no appeal to the secular arm, no civil punishments for heresy, and no religious vows perpetually binding, all being at liberty, so far as the civil law was concerned, to enter or leave the monasteries at pleasure. It was also another result of this separation of state and church—as here in the United States—that there was only needed a Jo Smith, a man hardy or self-deceived enough to pretend to inspiration, to set up a new observance; an occurrence by which the theology of Japan had become from time to time more and more diversified. There were also, besides the more regular clergy, enthusiasts, or impostors, religious vagabonds who lived by beggary, and by pretending to drive away evil spirits, to find things lost, to discover robbers, to determine guilt or innocence of accused parties, to interpret dreams, to predict the future, to cure desperate maladies, and other similar feats, which they performed chiefly through the medium, not of a table, but of a child, into whom they pretended to make a spirit enter, able to answer all their questions. Such, in particular, were the Yamabushi, or mountain priests, an order of the religion of Shintō.