Military and religious life in the Middle Ages and at the period of the Renaissance

by P. L. Jacob

By the name of presbyters (from a Greek word equivalent to the Latin words seniores, sages, and sacerdotes, sacred men) were designated the functionaries who stood in the second rank of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. From this term was afterwards derived that of priest. At first there was no fixed age for admission to the priesthood; but at the end of the fourth century Pope St. Syricius decided that a clerk, promoted to be a deacon at thirty, should not become a priest for at least five years.

The Emperor Justinian prohibited a deacon from being promoted to the priesthood until he had attained the age of thirty-five; but in Gaul, Spain, and Germany the minimum age was thirty, and as soon as the people had given their sanction to the ordination of a deacon, the election took place. The functions of deacons are from the first clearly indicated by what they did, for in the first century Philip, one of the seven deacon-cardinals chosen by the Apostles, preached the Gospel and baptized. At the end of the third century we find in Spain that St. Vincent, only a deacon, took Bishop Valerian’s place when he felt himself unable to minister the word. Moreover, St. Stephen, the first of the deacons and martyrs, was also preaching, within a few months of the death of Jesus Christ, when he was dragged from the sanctuary to be stoned. The deacons, therefore, performed liturgical functions, but their ordinary duty was to preside at the tables of the Christian communion.

The tumular epigraph on the catacombs of Rome exhibits a curious list of the various special duties allotted to the priests, as well as to the deacons, besides the service of the altar: here we find a priest doctor; a priest guardian, overseer, possibly our inn or lodging-keeper (mansionarius); again, we find a deacon archivist, or keeper of the archives (scrinarius), a priest schoolmaster (magister ludi), &c.

In the first three centuries of the Church, holy orders were conferred not only in the basilicas and in the catacombs, but also in private oratories; some few recluses were even ordained in their own cells. From the reign of Constantine, it was decided by the councils that the laying on of hands upon the clerks to raise them to deacons, or upon deacons to raise them to the priesthood, should always take place in public (coram populo) and at fixed periods. The epoch chosen was at first the calends of December, afterwards extended to each of the four seasons.

Fig. 224.—The Ecclesiastical Tonsure.—Miniature from the “Rationale Divinorum Officiorum” of William Durand (Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century), Library of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.

The iconography of the officers of the sanctuary nearly always represents the bishop as seated upon an elevated chair, laying hands upon clerks of a gradually descending order; the priest raising his arms and spreading them out to give the benediction; the deacon, bearing a cross or a book of the Gospels, or perhaps both, as he is portrayed in an ancient mosaic in St. Lawrence-without-the-walls, at Rome. It must also be noted that the deacons and the priests, as well as the clerks of a lower order, are represented as beardless and with short-cut hair.

In the sixth century, the tonsure or clerical crown, was universally adopted by the Church. It was a mark of dignity which distinguished the clerks from the monks and the rest of the faithful; laymen wore their hair more or less long with a proportionate amount of beard, and the monks cut their hair almost as close as if shorn.

The primitive Church had created the office of acolyte, whose duty consisted in accompanying the bishops, the priests, and even the deacons. Under the pontificate of Cornelius (251), there were forty-two of these assistants. The Eastern Church also had its acolytes, but did not accord them the importance which they had in the city of the popes, where they formed three classes: the palatines, who assisted the sovereign pontiff in the basilica of the Lateran; the stationaries, who aided him in the churches where the stations took place; the regionaries, who assisted the deacons in each of the regions or parishes.

The political power of the bishops was founded in Gaul at the beginning of the sixth century (Fig. 225), and down to the end of the first dynasty they were the real organizers of the French monarchy. Converted to Christianity after the battle of Tolbiac, and baptized by St. Remigius, Clovis became the protector of the Gallo-Roman Church. The Clergy then enjoyed a legitimate influence, as is justly remarked by a grave historian: “The barbarians, accustomed to carry all before them by the weight of arms, could not be subdued by a force or civilised by a literature which they despised or failed to understand; but the clergy, surrounded by that pomp which has so great an influence over uncultivated imaginations, combated them with simple and plain doctrines, with a vigorous and united hierarchy, and with a faith which, needing no subtle reasonings, imposes only the duty of belief, and leans for support upon a morality the sanctity of which they could not but feel, even while violating it. Was it not most fortunate that there should have been an order capable of arresting the universal disorder? Unarmed priests mingled with these savage hordes and inspired them, by means of baptism, with some notions of humanity; they taught them to hold their hands, showing them that they whom they were about to strike was a brother.