1) THE DEACON IN HISTORY

But first one needs to know something about the deacon in history. We initially encounter the deacon in the famous passage in Acts 6:2, where Peter says it is not proper for the apostles to give up preaching so that they can wait on tables. Accordingly, they ordained seven deacons, including the proto-martyr Stephen, to serve the Christian community. By the end of the ancient world the deacon was the bishop's assistant, serving as his "eyes and ears," taking care of church property as well as administrative matters.

Deacons quickly became VIP's. One measure of the importance of the deacon in the early church is the number of deacons elected pope in the early Middle Ages. Of the thirty-seven men elected pope between 432 and 684 A.D., only three are known to have been ordained to priest before their election to the Chair of Peter.[2]

In the course of time the bishop's principal assistant, the <diaconus episcopi>, came to be called the archdeacon and by the fifth century his role had developed into a powerful ecclesiastical office. He had charge of church administration and of the care of the poor and thus held the purse.

When archdeacons became too dominant sometimes their bishops were minded to "kick them upstairs" by ordaining them priest whereupon they would lose the office of archdeacon. Saint Jerome said, "<archidiaconus injuriam putat si presbyter ordinetur,>" ("the archdeacon thinks himself injured if ordained priest"), for then he would lose his powerful archdiaconal office. Pope Gregory the Great, in fact, once upbraided a bishop for ordaining his archdeacon priest with a view "craftily to degrade the aforesaid archdeacon."

In ensuing centuries the archdeacon acquired the duty of supervising and disciplining the lower clergy. Because of this role the archdeacon acquired the right to examine candidates for ordination, and in the ordinals we find the archdeacon now presenting to the bishop candidates for priestly ordination and attesting their fitness.

Beginning with the eighth century, the right to discipline the clergy brought to the archdeacon ordinary jurisdiction and his own separate church court. And soon we find that at least the larger dioceses were divided up into several archdeaconries, each headed by an archdeacon who presided over a first instance tribunal and carried out visitations to correct abuses and infractions of church canons. The archdeacon also served as the bishop's administrative assistant in instituting clerics to their benefices and watching over the decency of worship and the repair of churches within his territory. In many places the archdeacon of the see city also acted as vicar capitular, or diocesan administrator of the vacant or impeded see.

From the eighth to the thirteenth century the power of the archdeacon waxed greatly and archdeacons began to exercise quasi-episcopal powers. Like bishops, they even began to appoint vicars and officials to carry out their administrative and judicial functions, respectively. With the development of the benefice system, moreover, archdeacons were no longer removable at the whim of the bishop, since their
archdeaconry was now considered a benefice in which they had a life interest that was protected by law, barring judicial privation for good cause. Their wide powers and fixity of tenure made archdeacons serious rivals of bishops whose own authority over them had begun to recede into something like that of a metropolitan over his suffragan bishops. So powerful had the archdeacons become that a reform movement was spawned and bishops began to counter the power of the archdeacons by appointing
priests as their vicars general and officials (or judicial vicars). These priests enjoyed powers similar to those of archdeacons but, importantly, their office was not a benefice and they served at the pleasure of the bishop and were directly subject to his control. Once established, these alternatives set the scene for a frontal assault on the power of the archdeacons.

The Council of Trent's reforms drastically restricted the archdeacon's power. Archdeacons were deprived of the power of excommunication and of their jurisdiction in matrimonial and criminal matters. No longer could they make visitations and order the correction of abuses, unless asked to do so by the bishop. By the seventeenth century the once-powerful office had been reduced to that of a master of pontifical ceremonies and the last vestige of the office was the liturgical role in the ordination service of presenting the ordinands to the bishop at priestly ordinations.

Now the office of archdeacon was merely ceremonial and the real power had passed to the vicar general, vicar capitular and the judicial vicar-all priests. The order of deacon itself became a mere apprenticeship to priesthood lasting only a few months, even though until 1917 a deacon still could be canonically appointed pastor of a parish or canon of a cathedral or cardinal of the Holy Roman Church-as in the case of Pius IX's Secretary of State, Giacomo Cardinal Antonelli (1806-1876), who never proceeded beyond the order of deacon.[3]