Harn uses the word 'mercantyler' for a puryveyor of general merchandise. This may not be strictly
historically accurate it is convenient.
(Also I have the impression that historically
chandlers, while obstensibly candle-makers,
often carried a variety of other goods, rope,
ships stores, etc.)
On the theocracy matter, political scientists do
make a distinction between states where the
government and the church are one and the
same thing, and those in which they are separate but joined together at the top. Only the former
are really called theocracies. The situation in
the later Roman (and Byzantine) empire is
called 'caesaro-papism'.
