Rites of Ordination: Their History and Theology

By the early Middle Ages the nature of the ordained ministry had changed dramatically from the situation in the first few centuries of the church’s history. Ordinands were no longer leading Christians whom the local community had chosen from among its number to exercise the ministry of leadership there, but rather men who had embarked on ecclesiastical careers, who had generally served some form of apprenticeship in the lower orders and had been chosen for advancement to higher office by ecclesiastical or civil superiors. Before the Middle Ages were over the understanding of the nature of ordination would undergo further significant changes.

The notion of election by the whole Christian community continued to be maintained in the West, although as time went by secular rulers played an increasingly influential part in the choice of candidates for the episcopate and the people were expected simply to consent to their nominations. The same was often true of the appointment of presbyters to individual churches, which had the double consequence of weakening the authority of the bishop over the presbyterate and of diminishing the sense of the presbyterate as a corporate body.¹ Secular influence on episcopal nominations in particular did not please the ecclesiastical authorities, who viewed it as outside interference in their realm of authority, and by the eleventh century, reforms were put in process to exclude the civil rulers and limit the electorate to the cathedral chapter of the diocese concerned.² Yet, whatever the theoretical rights of others, by the thirteenth century, bishops were de facto nominated by the pope, although it was only in the 1917 Code of Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church that this nomination was officially reserved to the Holy See.

In the patristic period it had been the expectation that those who had been unmarried when they were ordained should remain celibate thereafter and married clergy whose wife died should not remarry. Periodically, attempts were made to go further and mandate that married clergy should also live celibate lives, but with limited success. Thus, the Spanish Council of Elvira in 305 decreed that “bishops, priests, deacons, and all clerics engaged in the ministry are forbidden entirely to cohabit with their wives and to beget children: whoever shall do so will be deposed from the clerical office.”³ On the other hand, when a similar rule was proposed in the East at the Council of Nicaea, it was opposed by Paphnutius, the respected bishop of one of the cities in Upper Thebes and himself unmarried, and the Council simply left it to married clergy to exercise abstinence if they wished.⁴

Thereafter in Eastern Christianity a distinction began to be made between bishops and other clergy over this matter. The Emperor Justinian’s Code of Civil Law in the sixth century forbade anyone who had children or even nephews to be consecrated as a bishop, and the Council of Trullo (692) in canons 12 and 13 also mandated that a bishop be celibate, and if married, should separate from his wife after his consecration. Presbyters, deacons, and subdeacons, on the other hand, continued to be forbidden to marry after ordination, but if they were already married beforehand were permitted to engage in sexual intercourse with their wives, except at times they were required to minister at the altar.

In the West, by contrast, several early popes decreed celibacy for all clergy, and various regional councils issued similar edicts. By the time of Pope Leo I (d. 461), in theory no bishop, presbyter, deacon, or subdeacon could be married, although in practice this was not firmly enforced, and it was not until the eleventh and twelfth centuries that the discipline began to be effectively established. Pope Gregory VII published an encyclical in 1074 dispensing the people from their obedience to bishops who allowed married priests and in the following year forbade married priests or those who had concubines from saying mass or performing other ecclesiastical functions; canon 3 of the First Lateran Council (1123) mandated celibacy for all clergy; and canons 6 and 7 of the Second Lateran Council (1139) reiterated this, depriving all married clergy of their offices and in addition declaring all marriages of clergy to be invalid.⁵

Along with the urging of celibacy went other developments that marked out clergy from laity. Two early elements of this, both found from the beginning of the fifth century, were the adoption of special clerical dress, even outside the liturgy, and of the tonsure. With regard to the former, it might be truer to say that the clergy simply failed to keep up with changing fashions and their dress became distinctive by default. The latter was originally a haircut that was characteristic of monks that then seems to have been required of clergy as well. It soon acquired a liturgical rite for its imposition.

We have seen that as early as the writings of Cyprian individuals might advance from one ecclesiastical office to another and not always remain for the rest of their life in the order to which they had originally been admitted. This facilitated a period of testing and training in one office before undertaking a more demanding ministry in another. But such a probationary period was not absolutely essential, and it was possible, if unusual, for someone to be ordained directly as a presbyter or a bishop without first having been admitted to any other office. Gradually, however, various councils tried to ensure at least some prior experience in one or more of the minor orders before someone was ordained to what came to be called the holy or sacred orders of deacon, presbyter, or bishop. Rather than being seen as quite different kinds of ministries, the various offices were arranged in what was regarded as an ascending series of steps up a single ladder, known as the cursus honorum, a term and concept borrowed from civil and military use, and it was increasingly expected that ordinands would experience each of these in succession as they progressed in their career. However, at first this was neither universal nor uniform: the precise sequence was not yet standardized, some steps in it could be omitted, and direct ordinations to one of the sacred orders could still happen. Furthermore, there are signs that as early as the fifth century the time spent in each order was sometimes being shortened so that, for example, someone could pass through each of the grades from reader to presbyter within a single year, and by the mid-sixth century there are instances of someone passing through them all in a single day.⁶ Treading on each step, however briefly, was beginning to be valued more than spending time on each and gaining experience. It was not until the eleventh century, however, that a uniform sequence of orders became agreed and sequential ordination through every one of the grades became invariable, although occasional protests were made against conferring them all in one day.⁷

Within the Western liturgical books the rites of ordination were not usually clearly segregated from rites of admission to a whole variety of other offices, such as, for example, librarians and archdeacons. This obviously gave rise to the question as to how many of them were actually ecclesiastical orders as such, which became a subject of much debate during the Middle Ages. Although many theologians recognized that minor orders had not existed separately in New Testament times, some understood them to have been contained implicitly within the diaconate⁸ and all regarded their eventual development as part of God’s providence. But exactly how many were there? From the fifth through sixteenth centuries in both East and West there existed a large number of short texts known as “the Ordinals of Christ” that listed each of the ecclesiastical orders (accepted as such by their authors) linked to some event in the life of Christ in which he was thought to have exercised that particular ministry and thereby foreshadowed and sanctioned that office. For example, he was said to have been an exorcist when he cast out demons from Mary Magdalene.⁹ These reveal considerable variation in the particular offices chosen for inclusion and in the relative ranking given to them. From the seventh century onward there is evident a natural tendency to opt for the sacred number of seven, which came to be said to correspond to the seven gifts of the Spirit, but some spoke of eight or even nine, including such offices as cantors and grave diggers among the clergy.¹⁰

Perhaps rather surprisingly, the acolyte tended to be a late addition to the list of dominically sanctioned orders (even though the office itself was very ancient), becoming standard only in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Among those committed to maintaining the number seven this added to the pressure to treat presbyters and bishops as belonging to the same order, about which more will be said later in this chapter. Some theologians, including the influential figures of Hugh of St Victor (1096–1141) and Peter Lombard (ca. 1096–1161),¹¹ dealt with the multiplicity of ecclesiastical ranks by distinguishing between an order as such and a “degree” or “dignity” within an order (e.g., an archdeacon), and this became standard in later medieval theology.

There was further variation with regard to the status of subdeacons in the early Middle Ages, some regarding them as one of the minor orders, others as one of the sacred orders, especially as some conciliar decrees applied the obligation of celibacy equally to them. It was only toward the end of the twelfth century that the subdiaconate came to be definitively treated as one of the sacred orders,¹² but although the rite for appointment to the office did subsequently acquire some of the features of the other sacred orders, especially the use of the litany, it never incorporated an imposition of hands as had the equivalent rites in the East.

It was a fundamental principle of early Christianity that no one could be ordained to any ecclesiastical office without an attachment to a specific ministerial vacancy. For example, a man could not simply be a bishop; he had to be bishop of a particular diocese. A presbyter had to have a designated ministry to exercise in a particular Christian community. There was even reluctance at first to permit someone to move from ministry in one place to another. This attachment was later called a “title,” and ordinations without a title, “absolute” ordinations, were prohibited. The Council of Chalcedon (451) in its sixth canon declared such ordinations to be null.

Absolute ordinations have continued to be prohibited in the East, and similarly in the West it remained necessary for many centuries to have a title to a particular church before one could be ordained. However, at the Third Lateran Council (1179), canon 5 revealed a new interpretation being applied to that term: if a bishop ordained someone without a title “from which he may draw the necessities of life,” the bishop himself was to provide his financial support unless the person concerned could support himself or rely on his family. Similarly, a few years later, in 1198, Pope Innocent III wrote in a letter to the Bishop of Zamora: “Although our predecessors have decided the ordinations of those who were to be promoted without a specific title, to the detriment of those being ordained, to be null and void, we, however, desiring to act with kindness, wish only that support be provided to the ordained by the ordainers or their successors, until they obtain ecclesiastical benefices through them, lest we seem to neglect with a stony face the cries of poor clerics which we believe enter the ears of the Lord of Hosts.” Thus, the title was now understood merely as supplying a source of financial support and no longer a specific context for the exercise of ministry as an essential prerequisite for ordination. In the future, the ritual act of ordination alone, outside of any ecclesial context, would be deemed in the West sufficient for its validity.¹³ This came about because of the adoption of the concept of an “indelible character.”

Although right from the early days appointment to office had been expected to be permanent (see for instance 1 Clement), this permanence was not understood to preclude the possibility of someone being deposed for good reason, nor for many centuries did it prevent some bishops from deciding that clergy who had joined heretical and schismatic sects needed reordination if they returned to the Catholic Church and even that ordinations carried out by bishops thought to have heretical views should be regarded as invalid. Moreover, the opposition frequently mounted to clergy being allowed to return to the lay life offers a sure sign that this was happening in practice.¹⁴

All this was set to change in the late twelfth century, however, as a result of the appropriation by theologians of the period of Augustine of Hippo’s understanding of ordination, which had all but been ignored in the intervening centuries. Although in his controversy with the Donatists Augustine had been primarily concerned about the question of the permanence of baptism in heretical and schismatic groups, he had also referred to ordination in this connection:

For the sacrament of baptism is what the person possesses who is baptized; and the sacrament of conferring baptism is what he possesses who is ordained. And as the baptized person, if he depart from the unity of the Church, does not thereby lose the sacrament of baptism, so also he who is ordained, if he depart from the unity of the Church, does not lose the sacrament of conferring baptism. For neither sacrament may be wronged. If a sacrament necessarily becomes void in the case of the wicked, both must become void; if it remain valid with the wicked, this must be so with both. If, therefore, the baptism be acknowledged which he could not lose who severed himself from the unity of the Church, that baptism must also be acknowledged which was administered by one who by his secession had not lost the sacrament of conferring baptism. For as those who return to the Church, if they had been baptized before their secession, are not rebaptized, so those who return, having been ordained before their secession, are certainly not ordained again; but either they again exercise their former ministry, if the interests of the Church require it, or if they do not exercise it, at any rate they retain the sacrament of their ordination; and hence it is, that when hands are laid on them, to mark their reconciliation, they are not ranked with the laity.¹⁵

Elsewhere Augustine had used the expression character dominicus of the permanent effect of baptism (see Epistula 98.5), and the scholastic theologians extended this idea to ordination as well, arguing that it, too, conferred a “character” on the recipient. In the thirteenth century Thomas Aquinas defined the character bestowed through the sacraments as a “spiritual power” (spiritualis potestas) pertaining to the worship of God that was “indelible,” outlasting even death. In the particular case of ordination that power related to the dispensing of the sacraments, was possessed by all the orders, including the minor ones, and so indelible that even if a priest were returned to the laity, the character of ordination still remained.¹⁶ This view—that ordination imprinted an indelible character on the soul—was included by the Council of Florence in 1439 in its Decree for the Armenians.¹⁷

We saw in an earlier chapter that the idea of the ordained ministry as in some way constituting a priesthood seems to have first arisen in the third century, with the bishop being given the title of “priest” or of “high priest” and presbyters regarded as sharing in a lesser way in his priesthood. This persisted in later centuries, but gradually the term “priest” began to be applied unequivocally to presbyters, because they, rather than the bishop, were seen as the normal eucharistic presidents. Bishops came to be commonly described as the successors of Aaron as high priest, and presbyters as the successors of the sons of Aaron as priests. This priesthood was at first understood in a broader sense to include various ministerial activities. We saw in the patristic period how Chrysostom viewed his presbyteral priesthood as fulfilled in preaching, and something similar was also true of some Western theologians in the early Middle Ages. Rabanus Maurus (ca. 780–856), for example, included baptizing and preaching along with confecting Christ’s body and blood as expressions of priesthood.¹⁸

However, the emergence from the ninth century onward of an increase in the frequency of eucharistic celebrations offered for particular needs or purposes—the “votive mass,” usually without other people being present, a “private mass”¹⁹—affected the understanding of priesthood, not just in making the Eucharist even more central to the presbyter’s life, but changing his role from that of president of a eucharistic community to that of an individual personally empowered to act on behalf of the people. It was inevitable, therefore, that priesthood came in time to be seen by most theologians exclusively in terms of its principal power, which was shared equally by bishops and presbyters, that of offering the eucharistic sacrifice, the potestas in corpus eucharisticum, with its other functions receding into the background. On the other hand, some later medieval theologians did acknowledge the importance of the secondary power of remitting and retaining of sins in the sacrament of penance,²⁰ which although earlier had been exercised by bishops, in the course of the Middle Ages came to be the regular responsibility of presbyters. Thus, Aquinas believed that Christ gave the apostles the principal power of priesthood at the Last Supper and its secondary power in his appearance to them after the resurrection (Summa IIIa, q. 37, a. 5, ad 2).

We saw in the previous chapter how the medieval ordination rites increasingly gave liturgical expression to this narrower understanding of priesthood. In the eighth century the rite for presbyters, and later that for bishops, began to include the consecration of the ordinand’s hands by an anointing with oil, in the tenth century the climax of the ordination of presbyters became the handing over of a paten and chalice containing bread and wine for the Eucharist, and from the twelfth century onward a second imposition of hands accompanied by the formula Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, quorum remiseris peccata…(Christ’s commission to the apostles in John 20:22-23), began to be added in many pontificals at the end of the ordination mass in that rite, in order to give specific expression to the bestowal of the secondary power of the remission of sins. Indeed, in the Pontifical of Durandus the chasuble, which had been bestowed earlier in the rite, had only been resting on the new priest’s shoulders until that point but was then unrolled completely so as to indicate the completion of the priestly powers, a ceremony that was continued in the later pontificals.

If, however, the fullness of the priesthood and its powers were shared by presbyters and bishops alike, how were the two offices related to one another? This was a question not raised in the East where priesthood was not viewed so narrowly and the bishop was still understood as being the central priestly figure. In the West, by contrast, the high priesthood ascribed to the bishop began to be interpreted in the eleventh century more in terms of his being a “super-priest,” having additionally the power of rule or government in the church, the potestas in corpus mysticum, and some concluded that bishops had not been distinct from priests in New Testament times.

Thus, although throughout the early Middle Ages some theologians had continued to maintain the opinion articulated by Jerome and Ambrosiaster in the West in the fourth century about the essential equality of presbyters and bishops, there was a wider revival of this belief from the eleventh century onward, resulting not only from the new exclusive emphasis on the sacrament of the altar but, as we have seen earlier, from a commonly held belief that there could be no more than seven orders. While most canon lawyers held the view that episcopacy was a distinct order from the presbyterate, most—though it needs to be noted not all—later medieval theologians concluded that it was only a dignitas or a degree within the same order, and hence tended to speak of bishops being “consecrated” rather than “ordained.”²¹ This was a trend also evidenced in later medieval pontificals themselves, and where significantly the rite for a bishop was often not located together with the rites for the other orders but rather with the coronation of kings and emperors.

Aquinas adopted a rather more subtle position. Although in one place he clearly denies that the episcopate is an order (Summa IIIa, q. 37. a. 2), elsewhere he qualifies that opinion:

In other words, in relation to what was seen as the principal power of priesthood, consecrating the body of Christ, bishops and presbyters were equal, but in relation to its secondary power in relation to certain actions, bishops were superior to presbyters (see Summa IIIa, q. 40, a. 4). This secondary power, although indelible, was not a character, however, “because a man is not thereby placed in direct relation to God but to Christ’s mystical body” (Summa IIIa, q. 38, a. 2, ad. 2).²²

The distinction between an order and a dignity or rank within an order proved insufficiently precise for the canon lawyers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, however, who instead began to distinguish between the spiritual power resulting from ordination itself (potestas ordinis) and the power to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction (potestas jurisdictionis), a distinction that in the long run created more problems than it sought to solve. The former was permanent because of the indelible character bestowed in ordination, but the latter could be delegated, withheld, restricted, or withdrawn by competent ecclesiastical authority. The consequence of this separation of the two aspects meant that a presbyter had power to celebrate the Eucharist by virtue of his ordination but required a mandate from the bishop in order to exercise that power. Similarly, it was possible for someone to be a titular bishop, possessing the power of orders without actual jurisdiction in the place of which he was nominally the bishop. Moreover, it was thought that the bishop could even permit some of his own functions (including ordaining and confirming) to be exercised by presbyters, and instances are known of popes delegating to abbots of religious communities (themselves only presbyters) the right to ordain members of the community to the sacred orders.²³ Thus, not only could there be order without jurisdiction, there could be jurisdiction without order. There was disagreement, however, as to whether the episcopal power of jurisdiction derived from papal appointment or directly from God.

Up to the twelfth century, the term sacramentum was used in a quite broad sense to include many different sacred signs and symbols, and ordination did not always figure in the lists of these compiled by theologians. From the twelfth century onward, however, Peter Lombard’s enumeration of just seven sacraments became generally accepted. He included among them ordination, which he defined as “a certain sign/seal (signaculum), that is, something sacred, by which a spiritual power and office is conferred on the one ordained” (Sententiae 4.24.13). By signaculum, a term with Augustinian roots, he meant the outward action of ordination, with which Aquinas later concurred, but Aquinas went beyond Lombard in equating the spiritual power with the “character” that he believed was imprinted in ordination discussed above (Summa IIIa, q. 34, a. 2).

We saw in the previous chapter how in the course of the medieval period the rites of ordination became complex and their central features obscured by numerous secondary accretions. Under the influence of the feudal system of the contemporary world around, theological interpretation of ordination became focused on it being the conferral of specific powers on an individual and not on service to a particular ecclesial community, and so many of the secondary accretions followed the ritual pattern of feudal appointments, the handing over of objects that symbolized the new office accompanied by imperative formulas expressing bestowal of the related powers, known as the traditio instrumentorum, a process that had begun with the minor orders and then spread to them all. (Similarly, the promise of obedience to their superiors made by both priests and bishops in their ordination from the Romano-Germanic Pontifical onward seems to derive from feudal practice.²⁴)

Thus, deacons received the book of the gospels with the words, “Receive the power of reading the gospel in the church of God both for the living and for the departed” (a formula obviously influenced by the following one for presbyters); presbyters received the paten and chalice containing bread and wine respectively and accompanied by the words Accipe potestatem offerre sacrificium Deo missasque celebrare tam pro vivis quam pro defunctis (“Receive the power to offer sacrifice to God and to celebrate mass both for the living and for the departed”); and as noted above already, a second imposition of hands also tended to be introduced near the end of the rite, accompanied by the formula Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, quorum remiseris peccata…(Christ’s commission to the apostles in John 20:22-23). Bishops received the pastoral staff, ring, and gospel book. At the delivery of the pastoral staff the words were: “Receive the staff of the pastoral office, and may you be dutifully firm in correcting faults, making judgment without anger, softening the souls of those who hear in fostering virtues, not abandoning the censure of severity in tranquility”; those at the delivery of the ring: “Receive the ring, a sign of sure faith, so that adorned with pure faith, you may keep inviolate the spouse of God, namely the holy church”; and at the delivery of the gospel book: “Receive the Gospel, and go, preach to the people entrusted to you, for God is able to increase his grace in you.”

This development also affected the primary ritual gesture of the rites, the imposition of hands, which had previously been performed in silence. In the thirteenth-century Pontifical of Durandus, the words “Receive the Holy Spirit for strength and to resist the devil and his temptations” are added to the action in the rite for deacons, even though it is performed immediately prior to the petition “send the Holy Spirit” in the middle of the Roman ordination prayer. While in the case of the rite for presbyters the first imposition of hands continued to be done in silence (although the second imposition of hands has the John 20:22-23 quotation, “Receive the Holy Spirit…”), in the rite for bishops the shorter formula, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” was said by all the bishops as they laid hands on the candidate.

This complexity of ritual actions and imperative formulae caused confusion to theologians in their attempts to define what constituted the principal elements of the sacrament. Some believed that the essential ritual action and the words that effected the ordination—its matter and form in scholastic terminology—had been instituted by Christ himself, but others thought that the church had been left to determine what they should be. While some argued that the imposition of hands must be essential because it went back to apostolic times, many others took the view that the traditio instrumentorum and its accompanying formula were the indispensable elements because they more clearly signified the transmission of power, with the imposition of hands merely a preparatory act for this. With regard to ordination to the presbyterate, some understood there to be a twofold action, corresponding to the twofold power of priesthood—the delivery of the paten and chalice conveying the power to celebrate the Eucharist and the final imposition of hands (that had only recently been added to the rite!) conveying the power to forgive sins—while still others thought that the priestly anointing must constitute at least part of what was vital.²⁵

Thus, with regard to the essential “form” of ordination in general, Aquinas asserted: “This sacrament consists chiefly in the power conferred. Now power is conferred by power, as like proceeds from like; and again power is made known by its use, since powers are manifested by their acts. Wherefore in the form of order the use of order is expressed by the act which is commanded; and the conferring of power is expressed by employing the imperative mood” (Summa IIIa, q. 34, a. 4). On ordination to the presbyterate in particular, he specified the giving of the chalice (presumably a shorthand expression for “chalice and paten,” as that was the typical sequence rather than the earlier “paten and chalice”) as forming the essential act, dismissing the prayers, imposition of hands, and anointing as simply preparation for it:

The principal act of the priest’s Order is to consecrate Christ’s body. Now he receives the power to this effect at the handing of the chalice. Therefore the character is imprinted on him then.…The bishop in conferring orders does two things; for he prepares the candidates for the reception of orders, and delivers to them the power of order. He prepares them, both by instructing them in their respective offices and by doing something to them, so that they may be adapted to receive the power. This preparation consists of three things, namely blessing, imposition of hands, and anointing. By the blessing they are enlisted in the Divine service, wherefore the blessing is given to all. By the imposition of hands the fullness of grace is given, whereby they are qualified for exalted duties, wherefore only deacons and priests receive the imposition of hands, because they are competent to dispense the sacraments, although the latter as principal dispensers, the former as ministers. But by the anointing they are consecrated for the purpose of handling the sacrament, wherefore the anointing is done to the priests alone who touch the body of Christ with their own hands; even as a chalice is anointed because it holds the blood, and the paten because it holds the body.

The conferring of power is effected by giving them something pertaining to their proper act. And since the principal act of a priest is to consecrate the body and blood of Christ, the priestly character is imprinted at the very giving of the chalice under the prescribed form of words. (Summa IIIa, q. 37, a. 5)

Aquinas added that the deacon received his power at the delivery of the gospel book and the subdeacon at the delivery of the empty chalice (Summa IIIa, q. 37, a. 5, ad. 5). His views were endorsed by the fifteenth-century Council of Florence in its Decree for the Armenians,²⁶ although as scholars have pointed out, that can only have been referring to the matter and form of the Western rites, because its authors were well aware these actions did not exist in Eastern rites. Even this did not put an end to the disagreement between theologians as to which of the ceremonies really did constitute the sacramental matter and form of ordination, however, and the vigorous nature of that continuing debate can be glimpsed beneath the caustic comments of the Protestant reformer William Tyndale (ca. 1492–1536): “Last of all, one singular doubt they have: what maketh a priest; the anointing, or putting on of the hands, or what other ceremony, or what words? About which they brawl and scold, one ready to tear out another’s throat. One saith this, and another that; but they cannot agree.”²⁷

In the course of the Middle Ages, and especially from the eleventh century onward, the understanding of ordination underwent a dramatic transformation. From being seen as essentially for ministry within a specific community, it came to be viewed as the bestowal particular powers on an individual for his own use. These powers were primarily concerned with the celebration of the Eucharist rather than being directed toward the pastoral leadership of the church. And because of this narrow focus on the Eucharist, priesthood became the dominant image and the presbyterate its central manifestation. Moreover, the recovery and development of the Augustinian concept of an indelible character imprinted in the act of ordination led to the view that, provided that the ritual act had been correctly performed, an ordination was considered valid even if other conditions (such as attachment to a specific church, election by the community, or the possession of a genuine mandate for ministry) were not met. All these constituted a major departure from earlier ways of thinking and acting and were to have a profound effect on the future understanding of the nature of ordination.

¹ For some account of these developments, see for example Kenan B. Osborne, Priesthood: A History of the Ordained Ministry in the Roman Catholic Church (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 169–78.

² On the conduct of elections, see canons 23–25 of the Fourth Lateran Council; and on lay investiture in general, Robert Benson, The Bishop-Elect: A Study in Medieval Ecclesiastical Office (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968); Uta-Renate Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1988).

³ Canon 33; but it is possible that this particular canon may belong to a somewhat later council.

⁴ Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica 1.11.

⁵ Reference to most of the relevant primary sources for the early history of celibacy can be found in Christian Cochini, The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), even if his argumentation is not always to be accepted.

⁶ For examples, see Pope Gelasius I (d. 495), Epistula 14.2; Pope Pelagius I (d. 561), Epistula 5.

⁷ For further details of this development, see John St H. Gibaut, The Cursus Honorum: A Study of the Origins and Evolution of Sequential Ordination (New York: Lang, 2000).

⁸ See, for example, Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae IIIa, q. 37, a. 2, ad. 2.

⁹ For further details, see Roger E. Reynolds, The Ordinals of Christ from Their Origins to the Twelfth Century, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters 7 (New York: de Gruyter, 1978).

¹⁰ See Roger E. Reynolds, “‘At Sixes and Sevens’—and Eights and Nines: The Sacred Mathematics of Sacred Orders in the Early Middle Ages,” Speculum 54 (1979): 669–84.

¹¹ Hugh of St Victor, De sacramentis 2.3.5 (PL 176: 423); Peter Lombard, Sententiae 4.24.14–15.

¹² See the extensive study by Roger E. Reynolds, “The Subdiaconate as a Sacred and Superior Order,” in idem, Clerics in the Early Middle Ages: Hierarchy and Image (Brookfield VT: Ashgate, 1999), iv.

¹³ For the earlier history, see further Cyrille Vogel, Ordinations inconsistantes et charactère inamissable (Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1978), especially 133–162.

¹⁴ See Vogel, “Laïca communione contentus: Le retour du presbytre au rang des laics,” in idem, Ordinations inconsistantes et charactère inamissable, 1–67.

¹⁵ Augustine, De baptismo contra Donatistas 1.2; English translation from NPNF 4:412. See also his Contra Epistulam Parmeniani 2.13.28; De bono conjugali 24.32.

¹⁶ Thomas Aquinas, Summa III, q. 63, a. 1–2, 5; q. 50, a. 4, ad. 3; IIIa, q. 35, a. 2. See David N. Power, Ministers of Christ and His Church (London: Chapman, 1969), 121.

¹⁷ Text in Heinrich Denzinger–Adolfus Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum, 32nd ed. (Freiburg: Herder, 1963), no. 1313.

¹⁸ Rabanus Maurus, De clericorum institutione 1.6 (PL 107:302); for other examples, see Power, Ministers of Christ and His Church, 101–3.

¹⁹ See David N. Power, The Eucharistic Mystery: Revitalizing the Tradition (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1992), 164–71, 226–30, 248–49.

²⁰ Among them, Duns Scotus (ca. 1265–1308), Commentaria in sententias 4.24.1. See Roger E. Reynolds, “Patristic ‘Presbyterianism’ in the Early Medieval Theology of Sacred Orders,” Mediaeval Studies 45 (1983), 311–42.

²¹ See Augustine McDevitt, “The Episcopate as an Order and Sacrament on the Eve of the High Scholastic Period,” Franciscan Studies 20 (1960): 96–148; Seamus Ryan, “Episcopal Consecration: The Legacy of the Schoolmen,” Irish Theological Quarterly 33 (1966): 3–38; R. P. Stenger, “The Episcopacy as an Ordo according to the Medieval Canonists,” Mediaeval Studies 29 (1967): 67–112; Power, Ministers of Christ and His Church, 103–5, 115–19.

²² See further George Dolan, The Distinction between the Episcopate and the Presbyterate according to the Thomistic Opinion (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1950). All quotations from Aquinas are from the translation of the Summa made by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2nd ed. (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1920–25).

²³ Texts in Denzinger–Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum, nos. 1145, 1146, 1290, 1435. See also L. N. Crumb, “Presbyteral Ordination and the See of Rome,” Church Quarterly Review 164 (1963): 19–31; Stenger, “The Episcopacy as an Ordo according to the Medieval Canonists,” 103–9.

²⁴ For a detailed account, see Leon F. Strieder, The Promise of Obedience: A Ritual History (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001).

²⁵ For a convenient summary in English of the diversity of views, see E. C. Messenger, The Reformation, the Mass and the Priesthood 1 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1936), 80–94; for more detailed references, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 11:1322–30.

²⁶ Text in Denzinger–Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum, no. 1326.

²⁷ William Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528), in Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures, by William Tyndale, martyr 1536, ed. Henry Walter, Parker Society 42 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848), 258.

Chapter 7

The Theology of Ordination in the Middle Ages