DEACONS IN HISTORY

AND PRACTICE

 

 

(1949 picture)

I

The episcopate is indeed the essential ministry of the Catholic Church, since the apostolic office includes all forms of ministry, and from it all specialized forms can be produced. But as the very terms used indicate, the diaconate can be considered as the basic form of ministering within which all others are specializations. Our English translations obscure the frequency of the terms diakonos and diakonia, and cognate verbs, in the New Testament. Jesus is indeed the “Apostle and high priest of our profession” (Heb 3,1), but the “diaconate of Christ”¹ is more conspicuously emphasized in the Gospels, perhaps just because it needs emphasis. He came, not to be deaconed to, but to diaconize; and so He requires that whoever whishes to be greatest among His followers should be their diakonos (Mk 10,43-45 and parallels) – a principle sacramentally symbolized today by the fact that (normally, at least) no man becomes a bishop unless he has first been ordained to the diaconate. Diakonia is the general term in the New Testament for service or ministry. The noun or cognate verb can therefore be used of the ministry of angels (Mk 1,13; Heb 1,14), of apostles (Acts 1,17; 2 Cor 3,6; 6,4), or of helpful souls generally, such as Peter’s wife’s mother (Mk 1,31), the women who followed the Lord (Lk 8,3), and the recipients of Hebrews (Heb 6,10). The term is indeed of such general application that it can be said that just as Christ has His diakonoi, so Satan has his (2 Cor 11,15), though the immediate reference here seems to be to false apostles who were no true diakonoi of Christ. Diakonia can be used for the work of the Gospel in general, for which the saints are to be perfected (2 Cor 3,7-9; Eph 4,12). But on the other hand, the ministry of service can be distinguished from other vocations more conspicuous, but no more honorable, such as prophesying, presiding, teaching, or working miracles (Rom 12,7; 1 Pt 4,11). Indeed, the most specific use of diakonia is for ministry to physical needs, such as the gifts sent to the saints at Jerusalem (2 Cor 8,4; 9,1), where the church was responsible for daily diakonia to its widows (Acts 6,1).

            The New Testament still leaves us uncertain when diakonos and diakonia began to refer to a specific order, as well as to a function, which might be either general or specific. St. Paul exercised the diakonia of the apostleship (Rom 11,13); but what was that of Archippus at Colossae? (Col 4,17). A later generation would probably have called him bishop of, or at least a bishop at, Colossae; yet we are told that Onesimus might, in his place, have diakonized to Paul (Phil 13). Much as apostolos may refer to the apostles of Christ or the messengers of the churches, so one may be a diakonos of Christ, or of God, or exercise diakonia to the brethren, or to one’s superior, such as an apostle (see Acts 19,22 where Timothy and Erastus diakonize to Paul). The few pagan used of diakonos seem to refer to the assistant or acolyte to a priest; Lucian’s satirical biography of the false prophet, Alexander of Abounoteichos, tells us that he received his training while serving as helper and diakonos to an older thaumaturge.²

            Terms sometimes used interchangeably with diakonos are doulos and hyperetes. The former refers primarily to slavery and the latter emphasizes subordination, which doubtless explains why diakonos alone survived as a technical term. But the New Testament usage of all three is similar. Paul describes himself regularly as slave of Christ (whose service is perfect freedom); and the term is later used of James (Jas 1,1) and Peter (2 Pt 1,1). Epaphras is also a doulos of Christ, and he and Tychicus are fellow-servants (syndouloi) of Paul, but diakonoi rather than douloi of the congregation (Col 1,7; 4,7,12). Hyperetes can be used in general senses; Luke, however, employs it more specifically of the shammas in the synagogue at Nazareth (Lk 4,20), and of the vocation of St. Paul, who himself employs it of the apostolic ministry (Acts 26, 16; 1 Cor 4,1; see Lk 1,2). The cognate verb is used of the help given to St. Paul by his friends at Caesarea (Acts 24,23), which is suggestive of the duties of later deacons in relieving confessors in prison. Finally, John Mark was hyperetes to Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13,5), later apparently succeeding Tychicus as diakonos to Paul (2 Tim 4,11).

            The description of the mysterious Phoebe as a diakonos (not diakonissa) of the church at Cenchreae and patroness of the apostle and many others (Rom 16,1-3) is perhaps semitechnical. Presumably she was a wealthy Christian distinguished for her diakonia, like Chrysostom’s friend and supporter at Constantinople, the deaconess Demetrias, three centuries later. Nearby at Corinth itself the household of Stephanas, the firstfruits of Achaea, had devoted themselves to diakonia to the saints and deserved to be obeyed (1 Cor 16,15-16); this would seem to be a application of the principle that he who is chiefest should be servant to all. Stephanas was apparently as close to a bishop as the church at Corinth would tolerate -- were the member of his household, then, diakonoi, and if not, why not?³ One may see here an anticipation of the presence of deacons as secretaries and attendants in episcopal households – as can be illustrated in the will which Gregory of Nazianzus drew up when he was bishop of Constantinople,⁴ and is met with in the Eastern Orthodox Church today.

            Some influence in the fixing of terminology (one cannot say how much) was exercised by the Septuagint of Is 60,17, which refers to the officers of the people of Israel as episkopoi and diakonoi. In writing to Philippi, St. Paul addresses the saints of that city “with bishops and deacons” (Phil 1,1); one must remain uncertain whether this refers to two definite orders, or simply to those who guided and served the church, which might indeed mean the same individuals in different capacities. The titles recur in the local ministry contemplated in the Didache –“elect for yourselves episkopoi and diakonoi worthy of the Lord” (Didache 15) – but the meaning as well as the time and place of that evidence is uncertain. We reach more solid ground when Clement of Rome, writing in that city about A.D. 100, tells us that the apostles established bishops and deacons in the various churches (I Clement 42). Fortunately, the disorders at Corinth affected only the former order, so Clement has little to tell us of the latter. But he seems to be the first to suggest a parallel between the deacons of the church and the levites of the Old Testament (and, indeed by implication, with the non-commissioned officers of the Roman army) in accordance with his feeling for hierarchy (ibid., 37, 39). Conditions in the province of Asia a few years earlier are probably reflected in 1 Timothy. While its usage of bishop and presbyter is uncertain, its directions for deacons are crystal-clear: they are to be respectable married citizens, sound in the faith, and if they diaconize well (the term has now definitely become technical), will gain “a good standing” (translation in the Revised Standard Version). This does indeed seem to offer them the prospect of promotion to a higher order (1 Tim 3,8-13).

            No use has been made in this discussion of the sixth chapter of Acts, since that passage is more important as a precedent for the later diaconate than as a source of information about the New Testament diakonia. It does, however, tell us that the Seven were chosen for the diakonia of tables (or perhaps banks, which the word can also mean?) so that the Twelve might concentrate on the diakonia of the Word. Actually, the only two we hear of again, Stephen and Philip, function as evangelists rather than as deacons – perhaps a precedent for some modern developments of the Anglican diaconate – but the picture suggested in Acts 6 is followed in the relation of bishops and deacons from the second century to the sixth.

 

 

II

 

The golden age of the diaconate as a distinct order is the patristic period from A.D. 100 to 600, from Ignatius of Antioch to Gregory the Great. The bishop, as the normal pastor and priest of the local church in each city, needed assistance in his various functions, liturgical, administrative, and pastoral; and the order of deacons was ready to undertake this duty. Presbyters fell relatively into the background until, with division of dioceses into parishes (in the modern sense), the parish priest became the pastor loci, taking over most of the day-to-day sacerdotal functions of the bishop and the diakonia of the deacon. That, however, was still in the future. In St. Ignatius’ pictures of normal church structure the bishop is not so much successor of the apostles as vicar of God; the deacons are related to him as Christ to the Father, and the poor presbyters can be compared only to the council of the apostles (e.g., Trallians 3). Usually, however, Ignatius merely mentions deacons as part of the threefold hierarchy – but with a reminiscence of St. Paul’s usage, he singles them out as fellow-servants (syndouloi), of Christ, presumably (Philadelphians 3; Smyrnaeans 12) – and there is a hint of one of their later functions in the suggestion that a deacon would be the natural messenger to send to a distant church (from Philadelphia to Antioch; Philadelphians 10). Some thirty years later Justin Martyr shows us the “serving of tables” developing into a liturgical function, when “those whom we call deacons” distribute “the food which is called Eucharist” both to the congregation present and those absent (1 Apology, 65-67). Indeed, Ignatius seems already to have thought of the duties of the deacons at the Eucharist as the center of their office; the “deacons of the mysteries of Jesus Christ . . . are not diakonoi of food and drink, but hyperetai of the church of God; they must therefore guard themselves from reproach as from fire” (Trallians 2).

            The Church Orders give us our best picture of the functioning of the third-century diaconate. One of these documents even suggests that a very small church might be ministered to by a bishop and deacon with no presbyters,⁵ but the Ignatian picture is the usual one. Writing at Rome about 200, Hippolytus tells us that the deacons brought up the oblations at the Eucharist and assisted at baptism, where two held the holy oils for the presbyter and a third entered the water with the candidates. They should assemble daily to receive the bishop’s instructions, and with their assistants, the subdeacons, were responsible for reporting illness to the bishop so that he might visit the sick. In the prayer for their ordination the bishop would ask:

 

grant the Holy Spirit of grace and care and diligence to this thy servant, whom thou hast chosen to minister to thy church and to bring up in holiness to thy sanctuary that which is offered to thee by thine appointed high priests, so that ministering without blame and in a pure heart, he may by thy good will be found worthy of this exalted office. . . . (Apostolic Tradition, 9)

 

Hippolytus first shows the anxiety to keep deacons in their place, which becomes conspicuous in the next century – perhaps because his running fight with Callistus began when they were respectively presbyter and deacon. The distinctions he makes became permanent; deacons are not ordained to the priesthood, but to serve the bishop – hence they do not join in the council of the clergy with the presbyters, and are ordained by the bishop alone without the laying-on of the hands of the presbyter.⁶ Hippolytus indeed allows them to administer the eucharistic cup only if there are not enough presbyters present; on the other hand, their clerical status does allow them to bless the bread at the agape (Apostolic Tradition 23, 26, 30, 33).

            No such suspicion of diaconal presumption appears in the Didascalia Apostolorum, coming from some Syrian church about the middle of the century, for its author, the bishop, symbolizes the Father, the deacon the Son, and the deaconess the Holy Spirit – he evidently thought in Syriac in which the word “Spirit” is feminine.⁷ The deaconess’ duties are limited to personal ministry to women; the deacon must be ready for whatever the bishop directs. He may receive the contributions of the faithful, though passing them on at once to the bishop, and should minister devotedly to the sick and infirm, if necessary laying down his life for the brethren. If this phrase is more then rhetoric, it would refer to dangers incurred in time of pestilence or persecution.⁸ In church one deacon stood by the oblations and another at the door as a kind of usher; at some point before the prayers a deacon proclaimed, “Is there anyone who has aught against his fellow?”⁹ The Didascalia directs that there should be deacons in proportion to the size of the congregation. Rome, however, had by this time restricted the number to seven, in imitation of Acts 6; a letter of Pope Cornelius (251-53) lists the clergy of the Catholic Church (of Rome) – “one bishop, 46 presbyters, seven deacons, seven subdeacons,” and numerous minor clerics.¹⁰

                        The deacon’s duty to attend the bishop bound them together even at moments of crisis. So at Carthage Cyprian’s deacons stepped forward to stand beside him at his martyrdom on Sept. 14, 258, and 45 years later the deacons of Cirta shamefacedly joined their bishop in his apostasy.¹¹ The persecution of Valerian was planned, primarily, as an attack on the property of the church, so it is not surprising that it began with the arrest of the Bishop of Rome and four of his deacons as they were officiating in the catacombs, and their martyrdom on Aug. 6, 258. Four days later the deacon Laurentius followed his colleagues; and there is no reason to doubt the story that, in the interval, he laid up in heaven the treasures of the church by distributing them to the poor, for whose benefit he had administered them in time of peace. Known to us as St. Lawrence, he became the first object of widespread popular veneration among the martyrs of the Roman Church, doubtless, in part, because his functions as principal deacon had made him well-known. The services for St. Lawrence’s day are one of the oldest parts of the Roman liturgy; one of the antiphons puts in his mouth words that express the proper relation of an ancient deacon to his bishop in life and death – “Where do you go without your son, O Father? where, O holy priest, are you going without your minister?”¹²

            Much of our knowledge of fourth-century and later deacons comes from the canons of councils, which were more concerned to prescribe what they should not do than to describe their normal functions. In 314 the Council of Arles (canon 16) firmly said that they should not presume to offer the Eucharist as had happened in many places, presumably during the confusion caused by the recent persecution.¹³ It has indeed been suggested that under the Ignatian rule a safe Eucharist is one celebrated by the bishop or his deputy (Smyrnaeans 8); it could indeed be that in this period a deacon, as well as a presbyter, might represent the bishop at the altar.¹⁴ But in the liturgy the deacon had his own separate and important function; and Hippolytus was as clear as any later Catholic writer that presbyters are ordained to the priesthood and deacons are not. The Council of Nicaea assumes the same principle in its canon 18, which carries a step further the principle laid down at Arles; deacons must not administer the Eucharist to presbyters, since those who have no right to offer ought not to give the Body of Christ to those who do. Deacons, the council defines, are “ministers (hyperetai) of the bishop and inferiors of the presbyters,” and so should receive in due order from the bishop or presbyters, and not presume to sit among the latter. The picture envisaged is that of the crown of presbyters in the synthronos on either side of the bishop’s seat in the apse. Some time around the mid-century, the Council of Laodicea adds that a deacon should not sit in the presence of a presbyter unless he invites him to – but may expect due honor from subdeacons and other lesser clergy. What is forbidden to the latter indicates some of the rights of deacons: they enter the sacristy (diaconicon), and handle the sacred vessels; they wear the stole (orarion), here first mentioned as a badge of rank; and are allowed to “give the bread and bless the cup,” which probably means to preside at the agape (canons 20-22, 25).

            Deacons are naturally included in general regulations for the higher clergy, such as those forbidding them to enter taverns (Laodicea, canon 24), a constant preoccupation of ancient and mediaeval councils, and those endeavoring to keep them in their original dioceses (e.g., Nicaea, canons 15 and 16). Their financial duties may lead us to suppose that canons forbidding the clergy to receive usury (Nicaea, canon 17), or to serve as business managers or agents (Chalcedon, canon 3), or as conductors or procurators, that is, administrators of imperial estates (African Code 16), were specially aimed at deacons. On the other hand, deacons were likely to be designated as the clerical stewards (oikonomoi) which the Council of Chalcedon required each bishop to appoint (canons 25 and 26). By the middle of the fifth century, it was assumed that the higher clergy would not marry after ordination (Chalcedon, canon 14) – even early in the fourth century the Council of Ancyra had allowed deacons to marry only if they had declared their intention in advance (canon 10). By 400 the Latin Church was already disposed to require continence of deacons and their superiors (African Code 3 and 4, from a Council of Carthage about 390).

            At Rome, especially, the deacons stood out as conspicuous figures, since they were limited to the sacred number of seven, and were more closely connected with the pope than were the more numerous presbyters. About 370 an anonymous writer attacked their presumption in a treatise significantly entitled “On the Boastfulness of the Roman Deacons” (De Iactantia Romanorum Levitarum).¹⁵ No matter how important they were in practice, deacons must remember that presbyters outranked them; after all, one ordained a deacon presbyter, and not vice versa. If, at Rome, deacons recommended candidates for the presbyterate and then presented them to the bishop (a duty which the Roman Pontifical and English Prayer Book still ascribe to the archdeacon), they were acting on behalf of the congregation of the faithful (see Acts 6,5-6). But, the author adds, deacons did rank ahead of all except priests (i.e., bishops and presbyters -- exceptis enim sacerdotibus, quibus obsequium debent, omnibus praeponuntur diaconi). Jerome who, as a presbyter, was ready to defend the status of his order against both the others, became aware of this discussion and sums it up in one of his cutting epigrams:

 

What can ail the servant of tables and widows that he gives himself airs as the superior of those at whose prayers the body and blood of Christ are produced? [ad quorum preces corpus Christi sanguisque conficitur (Letter 146)].

 

The importance of the Roman deacons led to their wearing the dalmatic, which, in this period, was the semi-formal dress of the Roman senator. Granted as a privilege to some others, this usage spread in the course of the Middle Ages to deacons of the Western Church generally, replacing, even in church, their proper costume, the simple chasuble which the deacon removed and threw over his shoulder during his active liturgical duties. In the vestigial form of the folded chasuble (planeta plicata) replaced during the Mass by a strip of material called the “broad stole,” the older dress survived in the Roman ceremonial until eliminated in recent liturgical reforms.¹⁶

            The formal liturgical duties of the deacon, in later times the most conspicuous aspect of the office, developed out of his work as server of tables and as usher. Already at the end of the late fourth century, Theodore of Mopsuestia calls him the “herald of the church.” In this capacity he is the most active participant in the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, proclaiming the biddings for prayer to which the choir responds Kyrie eleison, and directing the congregation with exclamations such as “Let us attend” and “The doors, the doors,” the latter at the moment when, formerly, his assistants closed the doors after the departure of the catechumens.¹⁷ He remained responsible for bringing the oblations to the altar; and the reading of the Gospel, formerly like other lessons entrusted to readers, came to be given to the deacon as a suitable mark of honor. At Rome, deacons acted also as cantors for the elaborate Gradual between Epistle and Gospel, until Gregory the Great transferred this function to singers, since it was leading to the choice of candidates for the diaconate based, mainly, on musical ability. In the Roman rite the deacon still prepares the chalice and joins with the celebrant in offering it; and, as along as communion in both species survived, he had, in spite of Hippolytus’ feelings on the subject, a special connection with the administration of the chalice.¹⁸ This survives in a solemn papal Mass where the deacon, though now actually a cardinal deacon in episcopal orders, brings the chalice to the pope for his communion, and it had been revived in modern Anglican practice.

            When there were a number of deacons, a special importance attached to the bishop’s personal assistant; he came to be called the archdeacon – the title properly means “bishop’s deacon,” rather than “chief of the deacons.” He would often be, for practical purposes, the second most important person in the diocese, and a likely candidate for the episcopate. From such a position at Alexandria Athanasius succeeded Bishop Alexander in 328, and Dioscorus succeeded Cyril in 444. To make an archdeacon merely one of the presbyters was, in effect, a degradation under the form of a promotion. In 453 Leo the Great reprimanded Anatolius of Constantinople for thus mistreating his Archdeacon Aëtius; and in 591/592 Gregory the Great intervened on behalf of Archdeacon Honoratus of Salona against his bishop, Natalis, who “attempted, it is said, craftily to degrade the aforesaid archdeacon, under color of promoting him to a higher dignity.”¹⁹

            The cardinal deacons of Rome, as we may begin to call them, were suitable representatives of their chief at the imperial court. In this capacity the deacon, Pelagius, enjoyed the friendship of the Emperor Justinian; on behalf of Pope Vigilius he sat in the court of the Patriarchs which met at Gaza (about 540) to depose their colleague, Paul of Alexandria,²⁰ and when Vigilius was summoned to Constantinople in 546, Pelagius returned to the war-torn city “with great wealth” for its relief, presumably from the Sicilian estates of the Roman Church. He was, in effect, the pope’s vicar; as such he stood on the steps of St. Peter’s with the Scriptures in his hands to meet the Gothic King Totila, and, as occasion required, interceded for the people of Rome with King and Emperor.²¹ In his Byzantine exile Vigilius was accompanied by at least a subdeacon,²² and when he died on his way home in 554 Pelagius was his logical successor. A similar career is that of Gregory the Great, who, 30 years later, was called from his monastery on the Aventine and made septimus diaconus, which I presume means junior cardinal deacon. As such he represented Pope Pelagius II at Constantinople (as his apokrisiarios, in Latin responsalis), and then returned to Rome as abbot of St. Andrew’s until called to the episcopate himself in 590. He then sent one of his deacons to Constantinople, and functions that would be considered diaconal were exercised by the stewards of the papal estates such as Peter, “subdeacon of Campania,” to whom many of his letters are addressed.²³

 

 

III

 

The canons of the so-called Quinisext Council, which met at Constantinople in 691-692 to supplement the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils with a canonical code, record the rules governing the diaconate in the Eastern Church as they have since remained. Deacons might not marry after ordination as subdeacon, but if already married, could continue to live with their wives, in contrast with the rule of the Roman Church that already demanded celibacy or, at least, continence. But the rule “husband of one wife” was interpreted to exclude those who had married widows, as well as those married twice after baptism (canons 3, 6, 13). Even a deacon who holds a high office is not to take his place before a presbyter, unless he is acting as a representative of his patriarch or metropolitan (canon 7). The proper age for ordination to the diaconate is fixed at 25; and the general custom of having as many as needed is defended against that of limiting the number to seven. The Fathers of the Council agreed with John Chrysostom, as do many modern scholars, that the Seven of Acts 6 were not deacons in the later sense of the term (canons 14, 16). Rome still preserved the other tradition, which had the support of one of the fourth-century Eastern councils (Neocaesarea, canon 15).

            Even at Rome there were, doubtless, by this time others in deacon’s orders besides the seven cardinals. The latter had, in the seventh century, an important place in the administration of the papal city. In each of the seven ecclesiastical regions which had replaced the fourteen civil regions of imperial Rome, the center of what we would call social services was a diaconia with its church, storehouses, hostel, and bathhouse, run by monks under the supervision of the region.²⁴ This was the last expression of the diaconate in its ancient form; the general tendency of the period separated the functions of diaconia from necessary connection with the office of deacon. One aspect, perhaps a cause, of this development is the rise of a parallel hierarchy inside the increasingly important monastic world. St. Benedict, for instance, assumes that his monastery will need deacons as well as priests for its services, the abbot sending up suitable candidates for ordination if the need is not met by novices already in orders (Rule, chapters 60, 62). Under the abbot as ruler and pastor, however, functions which could be considered diaconal, were performed by such officials as the cellarer (chapter 32). Eastern monasteries still do not consider ordination the regular goal of the monastic career, although they have priests and deacons among their members; but by the ninth century, Western monks, as well as the clergy of episcopal churches, normally proceeded to the priesthood after some years in a mainly liturgical diaconate – an example is the career of the Venerable Bede, who was ordained deacon at the early age of nineteen, and priest at the canonical age of thirty (Ecclesiastical History, V, 24). About 840 the abbey of St. Denis had among its 123 monks one bishop, thirty-three priests, seventeen deacons, twenty-four subdeacons, and seven acolytes.²⁵

            Though the mediaeval diaconate retained its status as a major order, it was thought of, mainly, in terms of its formal liturgical functions. As with the priesthood, attention in the ordination service shifted from the imposition of hands and the prayer to more impressive, but actually less significant, moments, such as the vesting in a dalmatic and the tradition of the book of Gospels, considered as the instrument of the deacon’s most conspicuous public function. To this ceremony pontificals attached the words, “Take thou authority to read the Gospel as well for the living as the dead,” that is, in ordinary as well as requiem Masses.²⁶ By a fairly old tradition, the newly ordained deacon (or one of them if there were a number) at once exercises his office by reading or singing the Gospel, while the Eastern Orthodox ordination follows a reverse procedure, the candidate standing in his place as subdeacon until admitted to the diaconate just before his communion.

            Later mediaeval deacons seem either to have been candidates for the priesthood, or else to have been such as wished to be attached to the ecclesiastical world without assuming the responsibilities of the priestly office. The archdeacon became a kind of ecclesiastical justice of the peace, the legal representative of the bishop, and the later history of his office belongs to Canon Law rather than to the diaconate as such – although, in 1102, an English council, out of a general sense of the fitness of things, ordered that archdeacons should be deacons (Council of Westminster, canon 4). The office could be held also by a canon lawyer in major or minor orders, or even used merely as a source of revenue while the duties were delegated – hence the question raised, semi-seriously, by theological students, “Can an archdeacon be saved?”  To this Thomas Aquinas replied charitably that archdeacons, like parish priests,

 

have a certain spiritual greatness, since on account of their zeal they undertake the cure of souls. They likewise give proofs of stability, for they remain firm and constant in the midst of dangers. They are, further, upright in their intention, and just in their dealings. Why then should we deny that they are in a state of perfection? (On the Religious State, Chapter 21).

 

But Thomas feels obliged to answer in the negative, since, unlike monks, archdeacons do not take vows. At the time, a typical example of the worldly archdeacon seemed to be young Thomas of London, Archdeacon of Canterbury under Archbishop Theobald. When he transferred his talents to the royal service as chancellor to Henry II, he scandalized the world by his gay clothes and his addiction to chess, which was then played as a frivolous game and had a reputation rather like that of poker today. Only on the day before his consecration to the episcopate (on Trinity Sunday, 1162) did Becket put worldly things behind him at his ordination to the priesthood – which, incidentally, illustrates that the older custom of consecrating deacons directly to the episcopate, per saltum, had now died out, partly because it had come to be generally held that the priesthood was the highest of the sacred orders and episcopate merely a special form of it.

            It is an example of the conservatism often found in the Roman Church that its cardinal deacons (and in a few cases like that of Hildebrand, cardinal subdeacons) continued to serve as papal legates and administrators without proceeding to the higher order until called to an office which required it. So they might, as deacons, preside over bishops and archbishops in council. A cardinal deacon might well be the logical candidate for the papacy; in one such case, when Cardinal Lothair became Pope Innocent III in 1198, he administered the affairs of the Church for several weeks as a deacon before proceeding to his ordination and consecration.²⁷ In the confused state of church order in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, prolonged diaconates might be found among the worldly, the respectable, or the devout; though celibacy was assumed, deacons were sometimes dispensed from it on renouncing the ecclesiastical state. Once extreme is represented by Caesar Borgia who was cardinal deacon and Archbishop of Valencia (i.e., technically archbishop-elect and administrator, happily for the see, in absentia) until he abandoned this status in the hope of founding a dynasty; the other, by Reginald Pole, who was made a cardinal deacon when in exile from the England of Henry VIII, and who was still a deacon when he served as one of the three presidents of the Council of Trent in 1545-47. He was briefly (though not very seriously) considered as a possible husband for his cousin, Mary Tudor, and, like Becket, was ordained to the priesthood only on the eve of his consecration to the episcopate. Respectability is represented by Pius II’s nephew, Cardinal Piccolomini, who administered the see of Sienna for forty years as a deacon until elected to the papal chair in 1503; or the Hapsburg Cardinal, Archduke Albert, who served his cousin, Philip II, as general and viceroy, and was allowed to abandon his orders to marry Philip’s daughter, Isabella, when sent to govern the Spanish Netherlands in 1598. An English parallel is the career of William Warham, who remained a subdeacon while serving Henry VII as a diplomat, and then in his early fifties was rapidly promoted to higher orders, and advanced to the primatial see in 1502/1504.

 

 

IV

 

The Reformers, quite naturally, saw no great similarity between the ceremonial or political diaconate of the sixteenth century and that which they found in the New Testament. A typical statement is that of the Church Order proposed for Hesse in 1526: dalmatics are no longer to be used, since

 

no one in the future should wear the vestments of popish deacons or subdeacons, since we do not wish to give support to those orders which were introduced without the testimony of the divine oracles. For Scripture knows no other ministers than bishops, presbyters, and deacons of the poor. We do not find a single iota about mass-priests or deacons in either Testament, though the assistants of the bishops may not improperly be called diaconi, that is, ministers; for deacon means minister and diaconia ministry.

 

The same document later provides for these two kinds of deacons: assistant ministers to bishops, whom it does not distinguish from presbyters, and deacons of the poor.²⁸ From the latter usage derives the diaconate as known in the Reformed Churches; among Lutherans the term has been, and sometimes still is, used in the sense of an assistant minister as, for instance, in the year of diaconate that some American Lutherans plan for their theological students before the final year of the seminary course.

The English Reformation first expressed itself on the diaconate in the Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of 1543, commonly called the King’s Book. In treating of the sacrament of Orders it follows the scholastic line in being vague about the difference between priests and bishops. On deacons it quotes Acts 6 and I Timothy 3, and then adds that

 

their office in the primitive church was partly in ministering meat and drink and other necessaries to poor people found of the church, partly also in ministering to the bishops and priests, and in doing their duty in the church. And of these two orders only, that is to say priests and deacons, scripture maketh express mention, and how they were conferred of the apostles by prayer and imposition of their hands.²⁹

 

The medieval system continued, however, through the Henrician period, with few, if any, ordained to the diaconate except those who intended to advance to the priesthood. The establishment of the monastic churches, which were refounded as secular cathedrals in several cases, included a deacon and subdeacon, but this seems merely to mean minor canons who would be prepared to serve as readers of the Gospel and Epistle at High Mass.

            The modern Anglican understanding of the diaconate begins with the first English Ordinal of 1550 in which Cranmer, whom we may presume to have been its compiler, returns to the older idea of three sacred orders, bishops, priests, and deacons. He added to the solemnity of ordination to the two latter by introducing the formal examination that the Pontifical had provided only for the consecration of bishops. In this he defines the duties of a deacon as follows:

 

It perteyneth to the office of a Deacon in the Churche where he shalbe appoynted to assiste the Prieste in the deuine seruice, and speciallye when he ministreth the holye Communion, and to helpe him in distribucion thereof, and to instructe the youth in the Cathechisme, to Baptise and to preache yf he be admitted therto by the Bisshop. And furthermore, it is his office where prouision is so made to searche for the sicke, poore and impotente people of the parishe, and to intimate theyr estates, names, and places where thei dwel to the Curate, that by his exhortacion they maye been reliued by the parishes or other conueniente almose: wil you do this gladly and wyllingly?

 

Perhaps absent-mindedly, he left the diaconate without any formal ordination prayer except for one after the litany at the beginning of the service (since 1662 used as the Collect). This defect has been repaired in some, though not all, of the modern revisions of the Prayer Book. Cranmer’s definition of the office follows generally the lines laid down in 1543; as in other parts of his liturgical reform, he aims to work back to the ancient institution as he understood it, while preserving continuity with the existing one. The diaconate envisaged in 1550 would have been a different order from the priesthood, rather than merely a step towards it; in effect, it enlarged the duties of the parish clerk into those of a parochial assistant. Had this possibility been actualized, it might have made some of our modern developments unnecessary, but the Ordinal recognized that, actually, most candidates for the diaconate would also aim at the priesthood. The Preface fixes the minimum age for deacons at 21 and priests at 24; the final prayer asks that they “may so wel use themselues in thys inferior offyce, that they may be found worthi to be called unto the higher ministeries in the Church.” Taken literally, this seems to pray that they may become bishops, and the final rubric warns the new deacon that he must continue in that office

 

the space of a whole yeere at the least (excepte for reasonable causes, it bee otherwyse seen to his ordenarie) to thentent he may be perfecte, and wel experte in the thinges apperteyning to the Ecclesiasticall administration . . .

 

before being advanced to the priesthood – which seems to accept the idea of the diaconate as a final stage in theological education. Instead of the Book of Gospels alone, the Anglican deacon was (and is) given the New Testament; and with it he is commissioned, not only to read the Gospel, like his medieval predecessor, but to preach it if so licensed. Actually, Latin Canon Law already contemplated this possibility, as it still does – in the fourteenth-century Gerard de Groot, the founder of the New Devotion, had accepted ordination to the diaconate in order that his previous activity as a lay preacher might be regularized (see Codex Juris Canonici, 1917, canon 1342, 1).

            Whatever may have been Cranmer’s ideas about the diaconate, they remain among the unfulfilled projects of the English Reformation. The practical question before the Elizabethan Church in this connection was whether it would introduce the Reformed diaconate, or be content with a reform of the mediaeval diaconate not much more radical than that being undertaken in the Roman communion under the guidance of the Council of Trent. The latter prevailed, but not without some controversy. The exiled congregations of Queen Mary’s reign appointed ministers and deacons on the Reformed model, and at least one of Elizabeth’s bishops seems to have visualized this as the ideal. In 1562 James Pilkington of Durham wrote that, under the Gospel, there is no need of popish flummery, but only of “a pulpit, a preacher to the people, a deacon for the poor, a table for the communion, with bare walls, or else written with scriptures.”³⁰ Elizabethan phraseology often uses “minister” for “priest,” as, when in 1578, the Genevan Dean of Durham, William Whittingham, was forced to admit “that he is neither deacon nor minister according to the order and law of this realm.”³¹ But, in effect, the Elizabethan bishops continued to ordain deacons and priests as their predecessors had done – though sometimes, especially in the early years of the reign, admitting a candidate to both orders at one service. This extreme shortening of the diaconate to a half-hour or so seems to have been due to the urgent need of filling gaps in the ministry after 1559, and later sometimes to the feeling of some Puritans that episcopal ordination was merely a legal formality. From their point of view the complaint was justified that the Church of England had no true diaconate; as it was put in the Admonition to Parliament in 1571:

 

Touching deacons, though their names be remaining, yet is the office finally perverted and turned upside down; for their duty in the primitive Church was to gather the alms diligently and to distribute it faithfully; also for the sick and impotent persons to provide painfully, having ever a diligent care that the charity of godly men were not wasted upon loiterers and idle vagabonds. Now it is the first step to the ministry, nay rather a mere order of priesthood.

 

To this John Whitgift and, after him, Richard Hooker replied that ancient deacons had assisted the presbyters in church as well as ministering to the poor, and that the examples of Stephen and Philip were enough to justify the extension of their commission to preaching and baptizing, which Puritans had criticized on the ground that “the deaconship must not be confounded with the ministry.”³² But this left the question unanswered whether there was a special vocation of the diaconate for which the Anglican reform had not provided.

            Canonically, Anglican rules for the diaconate remain much as the Elizabethan left them. In the Constitutions and Canons of 1603, canon 32 is headed “None to be made Deacon and Minister both in one Day”; it, rather unhistorically, describes the diaconate as “a step or degree to the Ministry” – deacons need not necessarily serve for a whole year, but at least till another Embertide, so that “there may ever be some trial of their behaviour in the office of Deacon, before they be admitted to the order of Priesthood.” In 1662 the Prayer Book restricted baptism by deacons to the absence of the priest, and raised the minimum age for the ordinand to twenty-three “unless he have a Faculty,” i.e., dispensation, which has, in fact, rarely been granted. Even the shortening of the diaconate to less than a year, which both Prayer Book and Canons contemplate, seems never to be allowed under normal circumstances. The extreme case did occur in 1661 when those of the Scottish ministers chosen for the episcopate who had not received episcopal ordination were made deacon and priest in one day.

            In the eighteenth century, colonial candidates who could not spend a year in England were often advanced rapidly: Samuel Johnson, for instance, was ordained on March 22 and 31 in 1723; Samuel Seabury on December 21 and 23 some 30 years later. William White, on the other hand, received a Faculty for ordination to the diaconate on Dec. 23, 1770, some months before his 23^rd birthday, but waited for his priesthood till April 25, 1772.³³ Any normal English clerical career since the Restoration will show the canonical one-year diaconate: John Keble, for instance, born in 1792, was ordained deacon in 1815, and priest in 1816; John Henry Newman, similarly, in 1824 and 1825. A less famous cleric, the diarist, James Woodfoorde, born in 1740, thus describes his ordination to the diaconate on May 29, 1763:

 

At nine o’clock this morning went to Christ Church, with Hooke, and Pitters, to be ordained Deacon there by Hume Bishop of Oxford. There were 25 ordained Deacons and 13 Priests. We all received the Sacrament. . . . We were in C. Church Cathedral from nine o’clock this morning till after twelve. For wine this afternoon in the B.C.R. paid 0.0.6.³⁴

 

Except for the last entry this would be typical of general ordinations in English cathedrals in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries; they are somewhat shorter now. Prolonged, or indeed permanent, diaconates sometimes occurred in academic circles; two famous cases are those of the learned Martin Routh who was ordained deacon in 1777, became President of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1791, and was advanced to the priesthood when he undertook also the charge of a parish in 1810;³⁵ and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, who, during his long service as Student (i.e., Fellow) of Christ Church, Oxford, never advanced beyond the diaconate which he received in 1861.

            The canonical rules of the Episcopal Church in the United States are naturally derived from those of the Church of England. Its first bishops sometimes ordained men rapidly to meet the needs of the moment. Thus Seabury advanced some of his first deacons to the priesthood almost immediately, and in 1795 made the future Bishop Griswold deacon in June and priest in October. But since their first adoption in 1789, the Canons have considered a year’s diaconate as normal; they have varied from time to time as to whether the period may be shortened, and, if so, to what extent and by what authority. Since 1907 the bishop and his standing committee must concur in the arrangement, and the minimum period is six months (except that since 1961 canon 35 allows a four-month diaconate for candidates who have served in the ministries for other Churches). The American Canons and Prayer Book have returned to the older minimum age of twenty-one for deacons, thus sometimes requiring a two- or three-year diaconate (e.g., W. A. Muhlenberg, ordained in 1817 and 1820); and since 1832 a “title” (as it is called in England), that is, assurance of a proper clerical position, is required only at ordination to the priesthood, and not necessarily for the diaconate.³⁶

 

 

V

 

It remains to add a few notes about the historic diaconate as found in various parts of the Church today. In the Eastern Orthodox Church the parish clergy are often ordained to the priesthood after a day or two in the diaconate – the order of Orthodox ordination services in which priests are ordained at the Offertory and deacons at the Communion prevents the extreme shortening to one service. But the Greek Orthodox are close to some aspects of the ancient diaconate, since the celibate clergy often remain deacons while serving under the bishop in non-parochial ministries. An example within the present writer’s experience was that of Leontios Leontiou, afterwards Archbishop of Cyprus, who was a deacon and diocesan preacher in Paphos (studying at the General Theological Seminary in New York) when elected Bishop of Paphos in 1930. In the Russian Church, on the other hand, outside monasteries the permanent diaconate is mainly a liturgical and musical office; and I understand that in the Syrian, Coptic, and Ethiopian Churches boys are made deacons much as in the West they might be made acolytes.

            Since the Council of Trent the Roman Catholic Church has taken the diaconate seriously; but in practice it is conferred only on candidates for the priesthood, usually in their last year at the seminary. In Montreal, Cardinal Paul-Emile Léger arranged to have his seminarians spend their last vacation as parish assistants, gaining pastoral experience while discharging those functions which canon law allows to deacons, such as preaching, baptizing, and taking Communion to the sick. A form of the permanent diaconate, now extinct, survived till 1870 among clerics who found their careers in the papal diplomatic service or the administration of the papal states. Famous examples are Jules Mazarin (1602-61), who passed from the papal diplomatic service to the French, and rose to become cardinal and chief minister of France during the minority of Louis XIV; Cardinal Ercole Consalvi (1757-1824), who ably represented Pius VII in the negotiations for the Napoleonic Concordat in 1801, and at the Congress of Vienna; and Pius IX’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli (1806-76). With the end of the papal states in 1870, there was no longer any need for these secular cardinals, and the last of them died early in the pontificate of Leo XIII – although until 1960 the Roman missal contained directions for the funeral mass of a cardinal deacon who had not been advanced to the presbyterate.³⁷ Cardinal deacons (no longer limited to seven) are now always at least presbyters, and indeed John XXIII directed that in the future all cardinals should be consecrated to the episcopate.

            In the Church of England the diaconate seems now invariably to be considered as the final year of preparation for the priesthood. However, the order of Readers has gradually been allowed to undertake all the functions which Cranmer contemplated for the diaconate, except for public baptism, but including, by special permission, the administration of the chalice.³⁸ It could be said that the readers, who in England are not called lay readers, are in effect the diaconate of the English Church. In the United States the Episcopal Church has for more than a century considered the possibility of a permanent diaconate. In the discussions which followed the Muhlenberg Memorial of 1853, the diaconate was considered mainly as an order of evangelists, which was not the primary character of the ancient diaconate.³⁹ This may explain why the provision for candidacy for the diaconate only, which was introduced into the Canons in 1871, was dropped in 1904. As someone commented, the main characteristic of permanent deacons seemed to be their impermanence, that is, their tendency to aspire to the priesthood. It is still possible to be ordained to the diaconate without taking the full canonical examinations required for priest’s orders; and in 1952, provision was again made for the ordination as deacon of a man desirous of serving in that office “without relinquishing [his] secular occupation and with no intention of seeking advancement to the priesthood” (canon 34, section 10, as of 1964). The diaconate is here conceived of in terms of voluntary pastoral and liturgical assistance. There are now some 200 of these “permanent deacons,” and they do seem to serve a useful purpose, especially since the laity in General Convention had three times defeated the proposal to follow England in licensing lay readers to administer the chalice.⁴⁰ Formally these permanent deacons differ from others only in that they are not included in the operations of the Church Pension Fund (and are perhaps not licensed to preach, which other deacons seem to be automatically); and they are not forbidden to change their minds and qualify for the priesthood after all. But their existence does give some recognition to the principle that the diaconate is a distinct order and not merely a step towards the priesthood. In one diocese (Long Island), a permanent deacon (the Rev. John H. Mears) has occupied the position of diocesan treasurer, which the ancient church would have considered a proper function of the diaconate.

            Every deacon is in fact a perpetual deacon, and if ordained to the priesthood or episcopate continues to exercise the functions of the diaconate; in fact he may spend much of his time in duties which the early Church would have considered diaconal. For many centuries the Church has abandoned the ancient custom of ordination per saltum (though they have occurred in some recent reunion plans), and so, under all normal circumstances, every man ordained to the priesthood has first been made a deacon. As presbyter or bishop he should continue to stir up in his life the grace of the diaconate, that is, the gift of service in union with the serving Christ. As of old, the Lord Jesus says to us, “Where I am, there shall my diakonos be” (Jn 12,26); and the spirit of the order, whether held alone or in conjunction with others, is beautifully expressed in the prayer offered by an Orthodox bishop when he admits a man to it:

 

O God our Saviour, who by thine incorruptible voice didst appoint unto thine Apostles the law of the diaconate, and didst manifest the first Martyr, Stephen, to be of the same; and didst proclaim him the first who should exercise the office of a Deacon, as it is written in thy Holy Gospel: Whosoever desireth to be first among you, let him be your servant: Do thou, O Master of all men, fill also this thy servant, whom thou hast graciously permitted to enter upon the ministry of a Deacon, with all faith and love, and power, and holiness, through the inspiration of thy holy and life-giving Spirit; for not through the laying-on of hands, but through the visitation of thy rich bounties, is grace bestowed upon thy worthy ones; that he, being devoid of all sin, may stand blameless before thee in the terrible day of thy judgment, and receive the unfailing reward of thy promise:

For thou art our God, and unto thee do we ascribe glory, to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.⁴¹