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An Early Medieval Tract on the Diaconate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Roger E. Reynolds
Roger E. Reynolds
Affiliation:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, Canada M5S 2C4
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Extract

“The Decline of the Diaconate” was a title given by T. G. Jalland to the addendum to his well-known article, “The Doctrine of the Parity of Ministers.” In this addendum Jalland showed that in the late patristic Church, at the very time when the presbyter's office was being equated with that of the episcopate, the deacon's office was being minimized. In the ante-Nicene Church the deacon had basked in the reflected glory of the bishop and had wielded administrative and consultative powers great enough to make any presbyter envious, but by the fourth century this prestige and power had begun to slip.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 72 , Issue 1-2 , April 1979 , pp. 97 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1979

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References

1 Jalland, T. G., “The Doctrine of the Parity of Ministers,” The Apostolic Ministry: Essays on the History and the Doctrine of Episcopacy (ed. Kirk, Kenneth E.; London, 1957) 347–49Google Scholar.

2 For the occasion of these letters and tracts on the vanity of the deacons and their relationship to the presbyters see Prat, Ferdinand, “Les préventions des diacres romains au quatrième siècle,” RSR 3 (1912) 463–75Google Scholar; and Vilela, A., “La notion traditionelle des ‘sacerdotes secundi ordinis’ des origines au Décret de Gratien,” Teología del Sacerdocio 5 (1973) 31–65Google Scholar.

3 Isidore, De ecclesiasticis offciis 2.1–15 (PL 83. 777–94); Origines 7.12.1–32 (PL 82. 290–93); Amalarius, Liber officialis 2.4–14 (ed. Hanssens, Joannes Michael, Amalarii episcopi Opera liturgica omnia, 2 [Studi e Testi 139; Vatican City, 1948] 209–36Google Scholar); Rabanus Maurus, De clericorum institutione 1.3–12 (PL 107. 298–305).

4 For the sources of Isidore's treatment of the grades in the De ecclesiasticis officiis see Lawson, A. C., The Sources of the De ecclesiasticis officiis of St. Isidore of Seville (diss.; Oxford, 1937) 78–105Google Scholar. Most of Amalarius' sources appear in the apparatus fontium of Hanssens' edition of the Liber officialis. Rabanus Maurus used largely Isidore's De ecclesiasticis officiis 2.8, to describe the deacon in his De clericorum institutione 1.7 (PL 107. 302–3).

5 See, e.g., Epistula dementis ad Iacobum fratrem Domini in Decretales Pseudo- Isidorianae et Capitula Angilramni (ed. Hinschius, Paul; Leipzig, 1863) 34Google Scholar.

6 See Levison, Wilhelm, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946) 153Google Scholar.

7 On the life and works of Florus see Charlier, Célestin, “Florus de Lyon,” Dictionnaire de Spihtualité 5 (Paris, 1964) 514–26Google Scholar; and Cappuyns, M., “Florus de Lyon,” Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques 17 (Paris, 1971) 648–54Google Scholar.

8 A perusal of medieval obituaries and necrologies yields thousands of examples of clergy styled as “diaconus.”

9 For a tract written on the bishop see my “A Ninth-Century Treatise on the Origins, Office, and Ordination of the Bishop,” RBén 85 (1975) 321–32Google Scholar.

10 Fol. 94r–v. On the manuscript see Mordek, Hubert, “Zur handschriftlichen Überlieferung der Dacheriana,” Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 41 (1967) 578Google Scholar; and more recently his Kirchenrecht und Reform im Frankenreich: Die Collectio Vetus Gallica, Die älteste systematische Kanonessammlung des Fränkischen Gallien: Sludien und Edition (Beiträge zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters 1, ed. Fuhrmann, Horst; Berlin/New York, 1975) 263Google Scholar, giving the location and date as “saec. IX3/4, Reims.”

11 Among the more prominent errors are those in lines 8: “sanguis sanguis;” 25: “qui adnoncia;” and 31: “Qui adnunciad septem que. …”

12 Line 19.