Holy Orders — The Subdiaconate and the Four Minor Orders; The Tonsure

Section 4: The Subdiaconate and the Four Minor Orders

That the subdiaconate and the four so-called ordines minores are ecclesiastical orders has never been denied. The only question is whether they are sacramental and directly instituted by Christ. The Church not having defined anything on this point, theologians are free to debate it pro and con. In matter of fact there is a long-standing controversy, which cannot, however, be decided on dogmatic grounds but must be fought out in the arena of history.

1. The Subdiaconate Not a Sacramental Order. As the name itself indicates, a subdeacon (subdiaconus) is one who ministers to a deacon.

The functions of a subdeacon according to the Pontificale Romanum are: “to prepare water for the ministry of the altar; to assist the deacon; to wash the altar cloths and corporals, and to present to him [the deacon] the chalice and paten for the use of the sacrifice.”¹

That the subdiaconate is not a Sacrament was maintained by Hugh of St. Victor, Peter Lombard, Durandus, and Cajetan. Other Scholastic writers regarded the subdiaconate as well as the four minor orders as sacramental. Of later authors, Vasquez² held that the subdiaconate is a Sacrament, whereas minor orders are not. However, since Morinus, Benedict XIV, and St. Alphonsus, the common opinion among Catholic theologians is that probably no order below deaconship is a true Sacrament.³ This opinion rests on weighty arguments.

a) The subdiaconate was unknown before the third century, and consequently must owe its origin to the Church. As the Church cannot institute Sacraments, the subdiaconate is not a Sacrament.

α) The minor premise of this syllogism requires no proof. All the Sacraments, both in regard to matter and to form, have been directly instituted by Christ Himself.⁴ Any rite instituted by human authority is at most a mere sacramental. This argument is not disproved by the contention⁵ that the subdiaconate and the four minor orders have developed from, and must therefore have been virtually contained in, the diaconate. This fact, as Atzberger observes, “does not suffice to make them Sacraments; for if it was the Church that developed these orders from the diaconate, the rite of their administration cannot be sacramental, because all Sacraments owe their institution immediately to Christ.”⁶

β) The major premise can be demonstrated historically. No extant document prior to the third century speaks of the subdiaconate. Most likely this order was instituted by Pope Fabian (236–250).⁷ “Fabianus,” says the Liber Pontificalis, “natione Romanus, … regiones [urbis Romae] divisit diaconibus et fecit septem subdiaconos, qui septem notariis imminerent, ut gesta martyrum in integrum colligerent.”⁸ This fact had not been entirely forgotten in the Middle Ages, for at the Council of Benevento (1091) Pope Urban II declared that while in exceptional cases subdeacons might be elected to the episcopate, the only sacred orders recognized by the primitive Church were the diaconate and the priesthood.⁹ The Decretum Gratiani (1150) expressly says: “We read that levites [i.e. deacons] were ordained by the Apostles, chief among them being St. Stephen; the subdeacons and acolytes were in course of time appointed by the Church.”¹⁰ This theory was adopted by Peter Lombard,¹¹ and St. Thomas, seemingly forgetful of his own teaching, says in his Opusculum against William of Saint-Amour that ”… there were in the primitive Church only two sacred orders, the priesthood and the diaconate, but the Church later on instituted for herself minor orders.”¹²

How are we to explain the fact that the subdiaconate, despite its purely human institution, “is classed among the greater orders by the Fathers and sacred councils”?¹³ The answer is that the subdiaconate, like the hypodiaconate among the Greeks, was always regarded as a minor order in the ancient Latin Church, and that its elevation to the rank of a major order, with the obligation of celibacy, is the work of the Church in later times.¹⁴ It is possible approximately to determine the time when this change occurred. Peter Cantor, writing about 1197, says that the subdiaconate had “lately been made a sacred order.”¹⁵ Early in the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent III, recalling the above-mentioned decree of Urban II, authoritatively declared that the subdiaconate must be counted among the major orders, and that a subdeacon may be elected to the episcopacy without a dispensation.¹⁶

b) The ordination rite for the subdiaconate lacks both matter and form, and therefore cannot be a Sacrament.

The essence of the Sacrament of Holy Orders consists in the imposition of hands as the matter, and the invocation of the Holy Ghost as the form. The rite of ordaining a subdeacon contains neither of these two ceremonies, and consequently lacks both matter and form. The words “Accipe Spiritum sanctum,” upon which the Tridentine Council¹⁷ lays such stress, are entirely wanting in the ordination rite of the subdiaconate.¹⁸

Cardinal Bellarmine holds that the subdiaconate is a Sacrament because it cannot be repeated. But his reasoning is not conclusive. No blessing is strictly speaking capable of repetition. Thus the benediction of a church, or of an altar, or of an abbot, cannot be repeated, though none of them are sacramental.¹⁹ From the fact that a Sacrament imprints a character we may legitimately infer that it can be received but once;²⁰ but it will not do to reverse the argument.

Moreover, the subdeaconship may, with papal dispensation, be conferred by an ordinary priest, whereas the three major orders can be conferred only by a bishop.²¹

2. The Four Minor Orders. There are in the Western Church four minor orders: that of porter, lector, exorcist, and acolyte. The Eastern Church has only two: hypodeacon and lector.

Minor orders are conferred by the delivery to the candidate of the appropriate instruments, in accordance with the ritual given in the Statuta Ecclesiae Antiqua, a document which originated in Gaul about the year 500.²² Lacking historical knowledge, Blessed Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, Paludanus, and other Scholastics maintained the sacramentality of minor orders. They were followed by Bellarmine, Estius, Gonet, Billuart, Gotti, and several modern authors, notably Glossner, De Augustinis, Billot, Sasse, and Egger. Against these writers Hugh of St. Victor, Peter Lombard, Durandus, Cajetan, Vasquez, Morinus, St. Alphonsus, and the majority of present-day theologians contend that the four minor orders are not sacramental. This position seems to us the only tenable one, for two reasons.

a) The four minor orders did not exist in the Apostolic age, but were instituted one by one, as the need for them arose, in the course of the third century, and hence are of purely ecclesiastical origin.

Tertullian,²³ it is true, incidentally speaks of a “lector,” but not as belonging to the clergy. Where he enumerates the different ecclesiastical orders, he mentions but three, viz.: the episcopate, the priesthood, and the diaconate.²⁴

The first mention of the complete series of orders is found in a letter of Pope Cornelius (251–253) to Fabius of Antioch. The Pontiff states that there are among the Roman clergy forty-two priests, seven deacons, seven subdeacons, forty-two acolytes, and fifty-two exorcists, lectors, and porters.²⁵ While it is not likely that Cornelius himself had instituted the four minor orders mentioned in his letter, they are nowhere enumerated fully and in proper sequence before his time. St. Cyprian (d. 258) speaks of exorcists, lectors, and acolytes, but makes no mention of porters.

Note that in the early Church the number of minor orders was not fixed and that occasionally ecclesiastical offices are mentioned which are not orders at all, e.g., custos martyrum, notarius, defensor, psalmista, fossarius, etc.

De Augustinis attributes great importance to the canons of the Fourth Council of Carthage, holding that the rites which they describe²⁶ reflect the discipline of the latter part of the fourth century. In matter of fact, however, these canons are spurious and were composed in or near the city of Arles towards the beginning of the sixth century.²⁷

In the ninth century, Amalarius, Archbishop of Trier, recognized the priesthood (with its two degrees) and the diaconate as divinely instituted hierarchical orders, and said: “The other orders were added to these. The growth of the Church entailed an increase in ecclesiastical offices; that the multitude might be properly served, lower officials were appointed to assist the higher ones.”²⁸

What the Church has introduced she can abolish. The Greek Church in course of time did abolish all her minor orders²⁹ except the hypodiaconate and the lectorate. We do not find that the Latin Church ever protested against this change, which she would surely have done had it involved a mutilation of the Sacrament of Holy Orders or the suppression of any essential part thereof.

These and other considerations led Morinus to “regard the proposition that the subdiaconate and the four minor orders are not Sacraments as so certain and self-evident that no one can deny it who has given due consideration to the testimony of the Fathers.”³⁰

b) The weakness of the objections urged against our thesis is another argument in its favor.

The Decretum pro Armenis proves nothing because Pope Eugene IV did not intend to issue an ex-cathedra definition on the subject of the sacramentality of the four minor orders.³¹ Moreover, the teaching embodied in that Decree would not lose its value even if the sacramental character of the subdiaconate and the four minor orders were denied. The Sacrament of Holy Orders is sufficiently safeguarded by insisting on the sacramentality of its three highest grades.³² The contrary attitude of St. Antoninus,³³ who is supposed to have been an intimate friend of Eugene IV, throws no light on our question, for he nowhere refers to the Council of Florence, at which the Decretum pro Armenis was passed, as a decisive authority. If it had been the intention of the Council to decide this question, how are we to explain the fact that the contrary opinion, as embodied in our thesis, obtained all but universal acceptance afterwards? Nor can anything be proved against our thesis from the decrees of Trent (1562). Even our opponents admit³⁴ that the Tridentine Council purposely omitted to give a decision on the subject. It matters not what the private opinions of the assembled theologians were.³⁵ It is not the private opinions of theologians but the official decisions of the Church by which we must be guided. The Council expressly teaches that all those ordinations (and consequently those alone) in which the bishop pronounces the words, “Receive the Holy Ghost,” bestow grace and imprint the sacramental character.³⁶ These words are used only in the ordination rites for the episcopate, the priesthood, and the diaconate, and consequently, according to the mind of the Tridentine Council, these three orders alone are sacramental.

3. The Tonsure. The tonsure (prima tonsura), so called from the ceremony of cutting the hair, is neither an ordo nor a Sacrament, but merely a ceremony of initiation into the clerical state.

“Non est ordo,” says St. Thomas, “sed praeambulum ad ordinem.”³⁷ Originally the tonsure formed part of the rite by which the first of the greater orders was conferred. Since about A.D. 700 it is given separately.

The tonsure may be traced on mosaic portraits of the saints as far back as the middle of the fifth century. The custom of cutting the hair as a mark of initiation into the clerical state seems to have arisen towards the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century, in imitation of an ancient monastic practice. In the early part of the sixth century the tonsure was not yet generally prescribed. The Council of Agde (506) simply forbade clerics to wear their hair long (comam nutrire). Clerical tonsure became obligatory in the Middle Ages, and the Canon Law of the Church contains a number of severe penalties for those who refuse to wear it. The Council of Trent presupposes tonsure as a condition for the reception of the lesser as well as the greater orders.³⁸ By the act of receiving the surplice and having his hair cut a man becomes a cleric and is endowed with all the privileges pertaining to the clerical state, but he is not authorized to exercise any ordo.³⁹