Preceptor
teacher responsible to uphold a certain law or tradition
A preceptor (from Latin, "praecepto") is a teacher responsible for upholding a precept, meaning a certain law or tradition.
Buddhist monastic orders
Senior Buddhist monks can become the preceptors for newly ordained monks. In the Buddhist monastic code of discipline, the Buddha instructed that one of the criteria to conduct the "Higher Ordination" Ceremony (Upasampadā) is that the candidate will need to have a preceptor to provide guidance on monastic discipline, consisting of 227 precepts. During the ordination, the candidate will request one of the senior monks to be his preceptor. When the senior monk agreed to do so, he will be the preceptor of the candidate and guide him as long as he remains a bhikkhu in the Buddha's Dispensation (Buddha Sāsana).
Christian military orders
A preceptor was historically in charge of a preceptory, the headquarters of an order of monastic knights, such as the Knights Hospitaller or the Knights Templar, within a given geographical area. The preceptor exercised supreme control over his brethren and was answerable only to the Grand Master of his order. A preceptory's main focus was on its church and on accommodation for the brethren. Examples in the UK include the Hospitaller Torphichen Preceptory in West Lothian; West Peckham Preceptory in Kent; the Templar Aslackby Preceptory in Lincolnshire; Keele Preceptory in Staffordshire; and Temple, Midlothian.
Freemasonry
Within modern Freemasonry, the preceptor is the head of a lodge of instruction.
The public source identifies “Preceptor” as teacher responsible to uphold a certain law or tradition. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Preceptor, teacher and responsible.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Preceptor”, the useful work is to connect “teacher responsible to uphold a certain law or tradition” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q499143. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Preceptor” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.