Williams (eds.)
Chapter 3: The Ministry in the Later Patristic Period (314-451), by George
H. Willliams.
[George H. Williams is Professor of Church History, Harvard
University. Among his books are Polish Brethren, and Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers (Westminster 1995).]
With the sudden cessation of imperial persecution the ministry was obliged to accommodate itself quickly to the demands and the
expectations of a patronizing magistracy. With the establishment of the Church in the favor of one Emperor (by 314 in the West and 324 in the East), and the prospect of a rapid enlargement of the membership of the churches and the proliferation of new duties and opportunities and
temptations, a new phase in the evolution of the ministry had dawned. In the complete change of religious climate most of the new patterns of priestly behavior and pastoral rule which were to prevail for a
millennium in both Eastern and Western Catholicism until challenged by Protestantism were laid down in the period between the Council of Arles in 314 and the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
We began our survey in Chapter II of the two hundred years'
development of the ministry after the close of the New Testament epoch by distinguishing three kinds of ministry: the charismatic, the cultual, and the disciplinary. We saw how the cultual ministry, which was originally twofold with protobishops (or presiding presbyters) and deacons, absorbed several of the functions of the other two, until at length only remnants of the first survived, while the presbyterate was in the process of even more radical metamorphosis. For by the Council of Nicaea the old collegiate, disciplinary presbytery in each city was well on its way toward disaggregation. The city "parish" (paroikia 1) was becoming a diocese (though not yet in name) under its bishop while the presbyters were more or less permanently assigned to outlying
communities or the regional churches in the case of the more populous cities. These segments of the episcopal "parish" were on their way to becoming parishes in our later sense. Thus presbyters were becoming priests at the very same time they were relinquishing their corporate judicial and disciplinary authority in the bishop's church, while the
bishop had become the chief judge; and the law itself was being codified in canons at councils at which bishops alone decreed.
Thus in place of three basic, though overlapping ministries of the primitive church (sometimes concurrently discharged by the same
person) we found at the end of the two centuries of evolution three main orders of the clergy: the episcopate, the priesthood, and the diaconate and an ever-growing series of lower orders. Bishops and presbyters together belonged to the priesthood (sacerdotium) in respect to their function at the altar; to the presbyterate, wherever it remained intact as a corporate entity, in respect to local discipline. All three, bishop, priest, and deacon, constituted the clergy, while others pressed for the same dignity, notably the subdeacon (soon to be classed with the major
orders). In the meantime, ordination, which set the clergy apart from the laity, had acquired the significance of a kind of second baptism or a second penance in blotting out all but carnal sin (Neocaesarea, canon 9)2, a step toward construing the clerical state as a superior stage of Christian achievement both morally and spiritually, and a step also toward the doctrine of the indelibility of ordination.
Celibacy was becoming more and more a mark of the clergy, though the
process was not even, and there were many sections of the Church that limited their scruples to second marriage only. Celibacy had long been esteemed a laudable state for the clergy. It was not, however, until the Spanish provincial council of Elvira (306) that continence as
distinguished from celibacy had been made obligatory. Yet in a corresponding Eastern council, that of Ancyra (314), the bishop and presbyter might enter marriage before ordination; only the deacon might do so afterward on condition that he have declared his intentions before ordination.
The evolution of the episcopate as a ministerial order distinct from the presbyterate, virtually completed by the time of the Council of Nicaea, was formalized in the conciliar canons between Nicaea and the Council of Chalcedon, though not without resistance.
It was at the Council of Antioch in Encaeniis (341)3 that the character of the fourth-century episcopate was most clearly and significantly
defined. Almost all its canons dealt with episcopacy and were
authoritatively made a part of canon law by the Council of Chalcedon.4 These canons made clear that the bishops of a province, meeting
semiannually in synod under the presidency of their metropolitan,
constituted a collegium with a relationship to the metropolitan much like that of the second-century collegiate presbytery in relation to the bishop of the local church. According to canons 4 and 18 to 23,5 a new bishop is elected and ordained by the metropolitan and the provincial bishops in synod; and, when thus elevated, he enjoys the rank and ministry of bishop even if he is not accepted by the people of his see.6 Yet he may be deposed by the same synod for other reasons. In these canons of an Arianizing council7 the relation of the bishop to his people has been seriously attenuated. In 380 at the Council of Laodicea election by the people 8 was expressly forbidden (canon 13), though the rights of the laity in election survived in many places, especially in the West. In the Eastern Apostolic Constitutions the communal voice in the election of a bishop has been reduced to the thrice-iterated consent of the people and presbytery to receive a synodally chosen bishop as their ruler (archon).9 In the Testament of Our Lord,l0 the formality is reduced to the thrice- recited "He is worthy!" (axios!) which still resounds at the
enthronization of a Greek bishop.
With the widening gulf between the bishop and his people went the elimination of the chorepiskopoi and therewith the pattern of greater
fellowship and intimacy between bishop and people which had survived outside the great cities. The Council of Sardica (canon 6) decreed (343) that chorepiskeopoi should no longer be appointed; and Laodicea (canon 54) sought to replace all rural bishops with visitors under the
supervision of city bishops. It should be remarked that the repeated efforts to control and eventually to suppress the chorepiscopate were prompted in part by the recurrent involvement of the rural bishops, because of insufficient stipends, in part-time economic activities inconsonant with the episcopal dignity. Despite this consolidation the feeling that each (city) bishop stood in succession to the apostles was still largely confined to the apostolic sees. The Syrian Constitutor of the Apostolic Constitutions (c. 380) could, for example, still think even of the presbyters of Antioch (for this would have been his model see) as taking the place of the apostles rather than the bishop. He called the presbyters "the sanhedrin and senate of the church,''11 and he thought of Christ as the universal Bishop and High Priest.l2 To be sure,
Chrysostom, Epiphanius, and Theodore of Mopsuestia among others contended that bishops were but presbyters with greater jurisdiction and the power of ordination.13 Jerome and Ambrosiaster were particularly pleased to recall that even the ordaining power had once been exercised by presbyters in ante-Nicene Alexandria. But these were not
representative contentions, for the provincially organized and ecumenically minded episcopate had bcome fully conscious of
participating in a ministry, as well as a jurisdiction, different from that of their subordinate presbyter-priests.
As we have noted, as early as the Council of Nicaea bishops had taken upon themselves the full responsibility for the authoritative definition of dogma in their corporate capacity as the organ of the Holy Spirit. To this doctrinal function had been added the disciplinary and legislative
powers to bind and loose by canons deemed superior in authority to locally received traditions and the consensus of local churches in which the laity and the presbyters had customarily voiced their assent in
adjudications and in doctrinal formulations.
The bishops were also assigned local judicial duties by the new
Christianized State. In the period of persecutions it had been natural that Paul's injunction not to seek adjudication outside the Christian
community should be observed; and usages in this connection were codified in manuals of church discipline. Yet even in the period of imperial patronage, when the ordinary courts themselves came to reflect Christian principles, bishops continued to enlarge the judicial aspect of
their office. All Christians, at the beginning of the Constantinian era, were directed (318, 333) to the courts spiritual presided over by bishops;
and thus two codes of law and two separate though mutually influential
"Christian" systems of adjudication were elaborated in the course of the fourth century. Only in 398 did Emperor Acadius for the East and in 408 Honorius for the West limit the scope of the episcopal court in respect to Christian laymen to those cases in which both parties sought it in
preference to the regular tribunal. Canon 9 of Chalcedon was content to constrain clerics from carrying their grievances before secular tribunals (except as a final resort, the throne in Constantinople). In the meantime, bishops had come to be appointed occasionally, as it were ex officio, the emperor's "personal" defensores of the municipalities to protect the local populations, Christian and otherwise, from any unfair practices of the local or provincial officialdom of the Empire. At Chalcedon by canons 4 and 8 bishops also acquired the right of direct supervision and
appointment in respect to all monasteries, the surviving
chorepiscopacies, poorhouses, and hospitals in their "dioceses." 14 The diaconate, in contrast, had by the end of the Patristic period been atrophied insofar as it could no longer be considered a terminal or life ministry. It was merely a rung in the clerical ladder, moreover, the deacon had become the assistant of the parish presbyter-priest 15 as well as of the bishop. For the most part the presbyter had become the
principal beneficiary of the devolution of episcopal powers.
Nevertheless, in Rome and perhaps in other very large sees, the deacons, who were held to the apostolic number of seven but with quite
unapostolic prerequisites and powers, tried intermittently to take precedence over the more numerous and less highly remunerated presbyters. During the pontificate of former deacon Damasus, Ambrosiaster wrote a little tract On the Arrogance of the Roman
Deacons.l6 Besides the propitious factor of the relatively small number of deacons, mention also should be made of their close association with people in their everyday necessities as a common consideration in their election to the episcopate. Hence some of the jealousy of the presbyters.
As late as the Testament of Our Lord (variously dated from 350 to 450) the deacon is said to be "counsellor of the whole clergy" at the very point in the reworking of Hippolytean material where the deacon had been hitherto expressly stated not to be participant in the counsel of the clergy. In the fifth-century Canons of Hippolytus certain deacons are set aside as instructors of the catechumens and are called doctores
ecclesiae. In this same milieu the deacons were also charged with
preaching, like the Syriac Father Ephrem (d. 373), teacher in Nisibis and
in the refugee "School of the Persians" in Edessa. In view of their close association with the neophytes, deacons frequently baptized in the absence of priest or bishop (though the practice was forbidden in the Apostolic Constitutions).l7 Deacons continued in most areas their eleemosynary functions but many of these had been taken over by the ever-growing number of minor or more specialized clerical
functionaries.
In the meantime, the female diaconate was undergoing significant expansion, but exclusively in the East. Beginning with the obscure reference of canon 19 of Nicaea respecting Paulinian 18 deaconesses and ending with canon 15 of Chalcedon which prohibits the ordination
(cheirotonia) of a deaconess before the age of forty we have the
canonical framework of the most significant period in the expansion and elaboration of the ministry of women before modern times.
According to the Apostolic Constitutions she had to submit to a careful examination before proceeding to ordination. A representative prayer for the latter is preserved in the "Clementine" Liturgy embedded in the Constitutions and reflecting Antiochene usage c. 350 to 380. The
"constitution" is ascribed to the apostle Bartholomew who instructs a bishop thus:
Thou shalt lay thy hands upon her in the presence of the presbytery and of the deacons and deaconesses, and shalt say:
O eternal God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Creator of man and of woman, who didst replenish with the Spirit Miriam, and Deborah, and Anna, and Huldah; who didst not disdain that thine only-begotten Son should be born of a woman; who also in the Tabernacle of the testimony and in the Temple, didst ordain women to be keepers of thy holy gates, do thou now also look down upon this thy servant, who is to be ordained to the office of a deaconess, and grant her thy Holy Spirit . . . that she may
worthily discharge the work.19
At a somewhat later date we know from the Byzantine ritual for the ordination of the deaconess that the bishop invested her with a diaconal stole and that after communicating, she herself replaced the chalice on the altar. The mid-fourth-century Council of Laodicea speaks (canon 10) of female presidents (presbytides). These, however, are no longer to be appointed in the church. In view of the survival of Montanists in the
region -- and this Council deals with them -- it is possible that these presbytides represent the Catholic counterpart of the Montanist
prophetesses. The deaconesses from Nicaea to Chalcedon and thereafter seem to have been recruited almost exclusively from the upper classes;
and, although in The Testament of Our Lord they are by way of
exception regarded as markedly inferior to the widows (presbytides)20
"who sit in front," the highborn deaconesses are almost everywhere else clearly distinguished from widows in being ministers rather than the recipients of church welfare.
Virgins did not become a clearly distinct order until the middle of the fourth century.21
Of the increasing number of clerics in minor orders and other special functionaries of the fourth- and fifth-century ecclesiastical bureaucracy, a partial list must suffice. Among these numerous ministries, several were commonly singled out as the seven degrees or orders ordained by Christ and sanctified by his having himself served variously in the grade of (1) gravedigger, (2) doorkeeper, (3) lector, (4) subdeacon, (5) deacon, (6) presbyter, and (7) bishop.22 These seven ministerial degrees could also be made to correspond to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. There was also a tendency to assimilate these clerical degrees to the cursus honorum of the Roman civil servant. But, as in the imperial
bureaucracy, so in the clerical career, it was not always necessary to start at the bottom of the ladder. Moreover, though the number seven recurs in the ancient lists, the lower degrees were not fixed. Exorcist, and acolyte were possible alternatives. In the East, at least, the singers constituted a special order. Interpreters were assigned to preachers in rural areas where the languages of the Empire were not sufficiently well known for the missionary preacher to dispense with the local dialects.
Visitors of the sick and custodians of the episcopal residences emerged as special classes of servants and ministrants of the church. In this
period the archpriest emerged as the chief representative of the bishop in respect to priestly functions in the cathedral church, comparable to the archdeacon in administrative and eleemosynary affairs. The Council of Chalcedon (canon 26) advanced beyond the Council of Antioch (canon 24) in rcgularizing episcopal property and decreed that every episcopal establishment should have a steward (oikonomos, vicedominus) drawn from the cathedral clergy whose task it was to manage the estates and income of the basilica, to keep the bishop's personal property distinct from that of the see, and to safeguard the cathedral holdings during a vacancy of the see. Other functionaries of the large sees were the
notaries, the archivists, and the emissaries (apokrisiarioi, nuntii), the latter representing the bishop at the residence of his superior (the metropolitan, exarch or patriarch).
The household of the bishop had become so large that new patterns were bound to emerge for the common life of cathedral clerics. Eusebius of Vercellae (d. 370) and Augustine (d. 430) were pioneers in the West in introducing the model of the monastery into the cathedral.
In the late fourth century short-cropped hair or the tonsure, borrowed from the Egyptian monks, began to be the outward sign of all clerics.23 Already by the middle of the fourth century the clergy were wearing a distinctive garb.24 Among the higher clergy the insignia and distinctive garments and accouterments of dress were made to correspond to those of the secular ranks of society, the clarissimi (of the senatorial class), the spectabiles, and the illustres. Within the last rank there were the five grades of illustrissimi, magnifici, excellentissimi, glorissimi, and
nobilissimi (of the blood royal). The Synod of Arles, for example, addressed the Pope as glorissime. The insignia and prerogatives of rank and precedence, such as the use of a certain kind of sandal, rings,
pallium, and maniple, seem to have been in part appropriated by the clergy and in part formally bestowed by the emperor. With the enhancement of the dignity of the bishop and the extension of his judicial authority under the patronage of the Empire, the old cathedra upon which the ante-Nicene bishop had sat in his capacity as teacher, was gradually converted into a veritable throne, imitative of that of the emperor.25 It is quite possible that the courtly protocol and the sartorial details of the so-called Donation of Constantine are a reasonably
accurate description of the dress, insignia, and prerogatives of the chief bishop of the West in the late imperial period, that even the account of the bestowal of these privileges primarily errs in fictionally ascribing to one emperor what was probably done by several in the course of the fourth and fifth centuries, and that once the fictional monopolization of these prerogatives by one bishop is removed, the Donation is recognized as supplying us with a picture of a late imperial prelate.26
Let us turn from the prelates inextricably involved in the protocol of late imperial society and from the more specialized ministries of the various orders to the pastoral office as conceived by four great episcopal pastors of the fourth century: Chrysostom and Basil for the East; Ambrose and Augustine for the West. In one sense none of these was typical, for one was called from a high post in civil service; two were pre-eminently