Rivalry between Presbyters and Deacons in the Roman Church

Author(s): David G. Hunter

Source: Vigiliae Christianae , 2017, Vol. 71, No. 5 (2017), pp. 495-510
Published by: Brill

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26566942

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 vigiliae christianae 71 (2017) 495-510 Vigiliae
Christianae
brill.com/vc

Rivalry between Presbyters and Deacons in the

Roman Church
Three Notes on Ambrosiaster, Jerome, and The Boasting of the Roman
Deacons

David G. Hunter
Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
University of Kentucky
david.hunter@uky.edu

Abstract

In this article I offer three brief notes on Ambrosiaster’s Q. 101, De iactantia Romanorum
leuitarum. First, I discuss its relation to Letter 146 of Jerome, which also deals with the
rivalry between presbyters and deacons and which bears a close resemblance to Q. 101;
second, I examine the peculiar features of the church hierarchy at Rome that led the
anonymous deacon to claim a superior status to presbyters; and, third, I explore some
indications in Q. 101 and in Jerome, Letter 146, which point to the activity of deacons in
elite households at Rome.

Keywords

Ambrosiaster – Jerome – presbyters – deacons – Roman clergy

Introduction

Around the year 380 a Roman presbyter, whom posterity has come to call
“Ambrosiaster” (that is, pseudo-Ambrose), wrote a brief tract, “The Boasting of
the Roman Deacons” (De iactantia Romanorum leuitarum), which was included
as quaestio 101 in his collection of 127 Questions on the Old and New Testaments.1
Like several of the other quaestiones, Q. 101 contained mostly polemical

1 Text in A. Souter, ed., Pseudo-Augustini. Quaestiones ueteris et noui testamenti CXXVII. CSEL
50 (Vienna, 1908), 193-198.

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496 Hunter

arguments rather than a straightforward exegesis of biblical texts. But unlike

his other polemical quaestiones, which were directed against well-known
figures such as Arius and Novatian,2 Q. 101 had as its target a contemporary,
unnamed Roman deacon who, Ambrosiaster said, bore the name of a pagan
god.3 The deacon’s offense was to claim that deacons were equal or even supe-
rior to presbyters in rank.
Ambrosiaster’s text is of great interest because it sheds light on intra-­clerical
dynamics within the Christian community at Rome at an especially critical
period in its history, that is, the pontificate of Damasus (366-384). Rivalry
among clerics of course was nothing new, nor was it restricted to Rome. But
Ambrosiaster reveals a dimension of this conflict that was specific to the
church at Rome and to the later decades of the fourth century. The tension
between deacons and presbyters that Ambrosiaster describes emerged out of
peculiar features of the Roman church hierarchy and its growth in the later de-
cades of the fourth century. Moreover, this conflict gave rise to one of the more
distinctive features of Ambrosiaster’s teaching, namely his view that presby-
ters and bishops are essentially members of the same ordo; both are “priests”
(sacerdotes and antistites) and therefore superior to deacons, who are merely
“servants” (ministri) of the bishop and presbyters.4
In this article I would like to offer three brief notes on aspects of
Ambrosiaster’s Q. 101: first, its relation to ep. 146 of Jerome, a letter which also
deals with the rivalry between presbyters and deacons and which bears a close
resemblance to Q. 101; second, the peculiar features of the church hierarchy at
Rome that led the anonymous deacon to claim a superior status to presbyters;
and, third, some indications in Q. 101 and in Jerome, Letter 146, which point
to the activity of deacons in elite households at Rome. These three notes will
shed further light on the context in which Ambrosiaster’s Q. 101 was written

2 Q. 97, Aduersus Arrium; Q. 102, Contra Nouatianum.

3 Q. 101.2 (CSEL 50:194): Quidam igitur, qui nomen habet falsi dei, duce stultitia et ciuitatis
Romanae iactantia leuitas sacerdotibus et diaconos presbiteris coaequare contendit, non dicam
praeferre. For an attempt to identify the unnamed deacon, see Alexander Souter, A Study of
Ambrosiaster (Texts and Studies VII.4; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905), 169-170,
who suggested the deacon Concordius, who was expelled from the church at Rome in 378.
But C.H. Turner offered a more plausible solution: the deacon Mercurius, mentioned in an
epigram of Damasus. See his “Ambrosiaster and Damasus,” JTS 7 (1906), 281-284; text now
in Dennis Trout, Damasus of Rome: The Epigraphic Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2015), 84.
4 Surprisingly, Q. 101 has drawn little attention from scholars. In the past one hundred years
only one brief article has examined its contents or context in any detail. See Ferdinand Prat,
“Les prétensions des diacres romaines au quatrième siècle,” RechScRel 3 (1912), 463-475.

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Rivalry Between Presbyters And Deacons In The Roman Church 497

and bring additional clarification to his role in defining clerical identity in late
fourth-century Rome.
Before proceeding further, a few words are in order regarding the date and
provenance of Ambrosiaster’s writings, so that we may properly situate his dis-
cussion of the Roman deacons. “Ambrosiaster” is the name coined sometime
in the sixteenth century for the author of the earliest complete Latin commen-
tary on the Pauline Epistles, composed in the later years of the fourth century.5
In the early twentieth century Alexander Souter definitely ascribed two sets
of Quaestiones ueteris et noui testamenti to the same author, one consisting of
127 questions and the other consisting of 151 questions.6 Ambrosiaster him-
self stated that he was writing at Rome while Damasus was bishop, that is,
sometime between the years 366 and 384.7 Scholars also have found evidence
of interaction between the anonymous author and letters of Jerome, which
places him in Rome during the years of Jerome’s stay there, that is, 382-385.8
Moreover, it is now generally agreed that Ambrosiaster was a presbyter who
perhaps was attached to one of the extra-mural cemetery churches.9 His inter-
est in liturgical matters and his frequent observations about the status of the
clergy make his own identity as a presbyter a virtual certainty.

5 Jan Krans has found the earliest reference to “Ambrosiaster” in the 1580 Notationes of
Franciscus Lucas Brugensis. See “Who Coined the Name ‘Ambrosiaster’?” in Jan Krans, Bert
Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, Peter-Ben Smit and Arie Zwiep (eds.), Paul, John, and Apocalyptic
Eschatology: Studies in Honour of Martinus C. de Boer (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 274-281.
6 On the basis of common illustrations and allusions, similarity of scriptural quotations,
style and language, and identity of thought, Souter, Study of Ambrosiaster, 23-157, demon-
strated that the same author must have composed both the Pauline commentary and the
Quaestiones. Q. 101 does not appear in the set of 151 questions that has been attributed to
Ambrosiaster.
7 In his commentary on 1 Timothy 3:15 (CSEL 81.3:270) he referred to the church “whose rec-
tor at present is Damasus” (ecclesia … cuius hodie rector est Damasus). In Q. 115.16, De fato
(SC 512:168), Ambrosiaster spoke of being “here in the city of Rome and its environs” (Hic
enim in urbe Roma et in finibus), and in recension gamma of his comment on Rom 16:3-5
(CSEL 81.1:479) he mentioned being “here, that is, in Rome” (hic, id est Romae).
8 H. Vogels, “Ambrosiaster und Hieronymus,” RBén 66 (1956), 14-19. See now the collection of
articles by Marie-Pierre Bussières, Theodore S. De Bruyn, Stephen A. Cooper, and David G.
Hunter in “Ambrosiaster Revising Ambrosiaster,” RÉAug 56 (2010), 20-91. See also Andrew
Cain, “In Ambrosiaster’s Shadow: A Critical Re-evaluation of the Last Surviving Letter-
exchange between Pope Damasus and Jerome,” RÉAug 51 (2005), 257-277.
9 For this suggestion see Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, Ambrosiaster’s Political Theology (OECS;
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 80-86; also David G. Hunter, “The Significance of
Ambrosiaster,” JECS 17 (2009), 1-26, at 15-16.

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498 Hunter

1 Ambrosiaster, Q. 101, and Jerome, ep. 146

The first question to be clarified is the nature of the relationship between

Q. 101 and Jerome’s Letter 146, which deals with the same topic. Scholars
have long recognized the close resemblance between the two texts and have
rightly suggested that there is a genetic relationship between them, but dif-
ferent views have been expressed regarding which one is prior. Alexander
Souter observed more than one hundred years ago that Letter 146 was prob-
ably written around the same time as Jerome’s other letter to Evangelus, Letter
73, which is dated to 398.10 Although Jerome’s Letter 146 contains no internal
indications of its date, it shares with Letter 73 an interest in themes that were
also discussed by Ambrosiaster. In Letter 73 to Evangelus Jerome examined and
rejected a theory about the enigmatic figure of Melchisedech, which had been
brought to his attention by Evangelus. Evangelus had sent to Jerome a uolu-
men ἀδέσποτον, which evidently argued that Melchisedech should be identified
with the Holy Spirit.11 This curious argument is found in Ambrosiaster, Q. 109,
De Melchisedech, and therefore this quaestio is almost certainly to be identified
with the uolumen ἀδέσποτον sent by Evangelus to Jerome.
Likewise, Jerome’s Letter 146 to Evangelus also deals with a topic brought
to Jerome’s attention by Evangelus: “I hear that someone has become so mad
that he places deacons before presbyters, that is, before bishops.”12 Since we
have only two letters of Jerome to Evangelus, and since both of these letters
refer to opinions found in Ambrosiaster’s Quaestiones, it is very likely that the
two letters were written close in time to each other. Letter 73 is securely dated
to the year 398 because in it Jerome referred to being occupied at the time
with his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew.13 If Letter 146 was written
around the same time as Letter 73, it must have post-dated Ambrosiaster’s
Q. 101, rather than vice versa, for Ambrosiaster’s writings date from no later
than the mid-380s. Considerations of chronology, therefore, appear to require
Ambrosiaster’s Q. 101 to have been written almost fifteen years before Jerome’s
Letter 146.

10 Souter, Study of Ambrosiaster, 170-171; F. Prat, “Les prétensions,” 465, also maintained the
priority of Ambrosiaster. On these letters to Evangelus, see J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life,
Writings, and Controversies (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 212-213.
11 Jerome, ep. 73.1 (CSEL 55:13).
12 Jerome, ep. 146.1 (CSEL 56:308): Audio quondam in tantam erupisse uaecordiam, ut dia-
cones presbyteris, id est episcopis, anteferret.
13 Jerome, ep. 73.10 (CSEL 55:23).

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Rivalry Between Presbyters And Deacons In The Roman Church 499

Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe has taken a different view of the relationship be-

tween Q. 101 and Jerome’s Letter 146 in her monograph on Ambrosiaster’s polit-
ical theology.14 Although she was aware of Souter’s arguments, Lunn-Rockliffe
offered two reasons to suggest that Ambrosiaster was relying on Jerome’s letter
rather than vice versa. First, she noted that Jerome stated that the unnamed
deacon had dared to place deacons before presbyters: “I hear that someone has
broken into such madness, that he places deacons before [her emphasis] pres-
byters, that is, before bishops.”15 Ambrosiaster, on the other hand, portrayed
the deacon’s claim in somewhat milder terms:

A certain man … contends to make levites equal with priests, deacons

with presbyters, not I would say prefer them [deacons], because that
would be even more stupid and would perhaps seem incredible, and we
would be held to be not correctors but slanderers.16

According to Lunn-Rockliffe, the wording of Ambrosiaster’s Q. 101 suggests

that “Ambrosiaster had come across Jerome’s letter and was distancing himself
from the attack in it which he said overstated the case.”17
There are several problems with this argument. First, elsewhere in Q. 101
Ambrosiaster made it clear that the anonymous deacon did, in fact, claim that
deacons were to be ranked before presbyters. In fact, he employed the same
verb that Jerome had used (anteferre). In Q. 101.8, a paragraph we will exam-
ine in greater detail below, Ambrosiaster observed that deacons tended to lose
sight of their appropriate rank because of certain privileges they acquired in
private households. As a result, he argued, “they become reckless and think
that more is allowed to them, especially when they see that such deference
is not given to the priests, and for this reason they think that they [deacons]
should be placed before them [priests].”18 In this sentence Ambrosiaster makes
it clear that he was aware of deacons claiming to be ranked before (anteferri)
the presbyters/priests, and not merely to be equal to them.

14 Lunn-Rockliffe, Ambrosiaster’s Political Theology, 20-22.

15 Jerome, ep. 146.1 (CSEL 56:308): Audio quondam in tantam erupisse uaecordiam, ut dia-
cones presbyteris, id est episcopis, anteferret.
16 Q. 101.2 (CSEL 50:194): Quidam igitur … leuitas sacerdotibus et diaconos presbiteris coae-
quare contendit, non dicam praeferre. Quia stultius est et forte incredibile uideatur et non
non emendatores, sed calumniatores habeamur. The italics in the English translations are
those of Lunn-Rockliffe.
17 Lunn-Rockliffe, Ambrosiaster’s Political Theology, 21.
18 Q. 101.8 (CSEL 50:197): praecipites illos faciunt, ut plus sibi putent licere, quippe cum uideant
non sic deferri sacerdotibus, ac per hoc anteferri se putant.

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500 Hunter

What, then, is the meaning of Ambrosiaster’s earlier remark that he would

rather not say that the anonymous deacon claimed to be superior (non
dicam praeferre) because such a claim was so stupid and unbelievable that
Ambrosiaster himself would be regarded as a slanderer rather than a correc-
tor? Ambrosiaster must have been employing a rhetorical device, a form of rec-
usatio, in which he pretended that he would not attack the deacon for claiming
to be superior to presbyters, when in fact this was precisely the claim that
Ambrosiaster spent the remainder of the quaestio refuting. Contrary to Lunn-
Rockliffe’s suggestion that Ambrosiaster was deliberately distancing himself
from Jerome’s attack, Ambrosiaster was stating the same point as Jerome,
but more subtly. Later in Q. 101 Ambrosiaster, like Jerome, acknowledged that
the object of his own attack was the deacon’s claim of superiority to (and not
merely equality with) presbyters.
A similar response can be given to Lunn-Rockliffe’s second argument in
favor of the temporal priority of Jerome’s letter to Ambrosiaster’s Q. 101. Lunn-
Rockliffe has suggested that Jerome referred to the deacon as “a mere server
of tables and widows,”19 whereas Ambrosiaster seemed to distance himself
from Jerome’s characterization of deacons as table servers, a portrait which
was taken from Acts 6:2. Ambrosiaster wrote: “For we read that Peter the apos-
tle said to the people: ‘Choose from among yourselves those whom we will
constitute to serve the ministries of the church,’ I do not want to say ‘tables’.”20
Regarding Ambrosiaster’s phrasing, Lunn-Rockliffe queries: “Was this a subtle
rebuttal of Jerome’s demeaning description?”21
Here again Ambrosiaster’s nolo dicere should be read like the English “not to
mention,” that is, as an affirmation couched as a denial. Support for this read-
ing can be found in the fact that earlier in Q. 101 Ambrosiaster was not reluctant
to cite Old Testament passages that characterized deacons or levites as mere
“porters of the tabernacle and all of its vessels” (baiulos tabernaculi et omnium
uasorum eius), “wood choppers” (lignorum concisores), and “water carriers”
(portitores aquae).22 Elsewhere in Q. 101, as we will see below, Ambrosiaster
did not hesitate to characterize deacons as “servants” or “slaves” (serui) of the
priests. It is difficult, therefore, to imagine him finding Jerome’s reference to

19 Ep. 146.1 (CSEL 56:108): mensarum et uiduarum minister. Later in ep. 146.2 (CSEL 56:311)
Jerome cited the verse of Acts 6:2 from which the phrase was derived: Non est dignum, ut
relinquentes uerbum dei ministremus mensis.
20 Q. 101.9 (CSEL 50:197): Legimus enim ad plebem dixisse Petrum apostolum: eligite, inquit, ex
uobis quos constituamus deseruire ministeriis ecclesiae, nolo dicere ‘mensis’.
21 Lunn-Rockliffe, Ambrosiaster’s Political Theology, 22.
22 Q. 101.2 (CSEL 50:194).

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Rivalry Between Presbyters And Deacons In The Roman Church 501

the deacons as “servers of tables” truly “demeaning,” as Lunn-Rockliffe suggest-

ed, especially since Jerome’s characterization of the deacons as table-servers
was taken directly from the text of the New Testament.
Since both of Lunn-Rockliffe’s arguments for the priority of Jerome’s let-
ter are weak,23 it seems more reasonable to follow Souter’s original sugges-
tion that Jerome’s Letter 146 to Evangelus was composed close in time to his
Letter 73 to Evangelus and that both letters were responding to texts of
Ambrosiaster that Evangelus had brought to Jerome’s attention. This would
mean that Jerome’s Letter 146 followed Ambrosiaster’s discussion by more
than a decade and that the similarity between the two indicates Jerome’s de-
pendence on Ambrosiaster.24
The question of the priority of Ambrosiaster is significant beyond the rudi-
mentary question of chronology. Jerome’s Letter 146 contains one of his more
extensive discussions of the identity of the order of presbyter with the order
of bishop, and, like Ambrosiaster, Jerome argued that it was the “priesthood”
(sacerdotium) of the presbyter that united him with the bishop.25 It is some-
times said that Jerome “was the first ecclesiastical writer to use sacerdos inter-
changeably for ‘bishop’ and ‘presbyter’ on a wide scale.”26 If my argument is
correct, Ambrosiaster deserves that credit, and, at least partly as a result of his
conflict with the deacons of Rome.

2 The Roman Church and the Priority of Deacons

This brings me to the second point I wish to make, namely, that the “boasting”
of the Roman deacons to which Ambrosiaster responded emerged out of the

23 Lunn-Rockliffe, Ambrosiaster’s Political Theology, 22, offered a third argument for her
position, namely that Jerome and Ambrosiaster cited different biblical texts to support
their positions, but this argument does not tell in favor of the priority of either author.
24 As Prat, “Les prétensions,” 464-465, observed, Ambrosiaster clearly relied on a written
copy of the deacon’s arguments, whereas Jerome seems to be dependent either directly
on Ambrosiaster’s discussion or on Evangelus’s careful summary of it.
25 Cf. Jerome, ep. 146.2 (CSEL 56:312): aut si ex diacono ordinatur presbyter, nouerit se lucris
minorem, sacerdotio esse maiorem. Jerome also discussed the topic of the relation between
the office of bishop and that of presbyter in his Commentary on Titus 1:5 and in ep. 52.7 to
Nepotian, but both of these works post-date the writings of Ambrosiaster.
26 Andrew Cain, Jerome and the Monastic Clergy. A Commentary on Letter 52 to Nepotian, with
an Introduction, Text, and Translation (SVigChr 119; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 181, citing the view
of E.W. Watson, “The Style and Language of St. Cyprian,” StudBiblEccl 4 (1896), 189-324, at
259.

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502 Hunter

peculiar structures and traditions of the Roman church in the later decades
of the fourth century. There are several dimensions to be considered. At times
Ambrosiaster suggested that it was the unique stature of the church in Rome
based on its political status that motivated the claims of the unnamed deacon:

A certain person, who has the name of a false god, led by stupidity and
by the boasting of the city of Rome [my italics], strives to equate Levites
with priests and deacons with presbyters, not to mention to give them
preference.27

And in another place Ambrosiaster stated:

But because they are ministers of the Roman church, for this reason they
are thought to be more honorable than those [ministers] in the rest of the
churches because of the eminence of the city of Rome, which seems to be the
head of all cities (my italics).28

These comments suggest that one basis of the unique claims of the Roman
deacons was the secular status of Rome as the center of the empire and its
largest and most prominent city.
But there were additional dimensions to the claim for a special status of
deacons in the Roman church. A variety of liturgical customs distinguished the
deacons of Rome from deacons elsewhere and seem to have served as the basis
for the iactantia of the deacon to whom Ambrosiaster was responding. In his
Q. 46, De Samuhele, in which he argued that the biblical Samuel was not a priest,
Ambrosiaster mentioned in passing that deacons at Rome wore dalmatics “just
as the bishop did.”29 The dalmatic was a white tunic with two red or purple
stripes (claui) running vertically down the front.30 Originally worn by emper-
ors and popular among Roman aristocrats, by the fourth century the dalmatic
was adopted as a liturgical vestment at Rome, specifically for the deacons and

27 Q. 101.2 (CSEL 50:194): Quidam igitur, qui nomen habet falsi dei, duce stultitia et ciuitatis
Romanae iactantia leuitas sacerdotibus et diaconos presbiteris coaequare contendit, non
dicam praeferre.
28 Q. 101.4 (CSEL 50:195): Sed quia Romanae ecclesiae ministri sunt, idcirco honorabiliores
putantur quam apud ceteras ecclesias propter magnificentiam urbis Romae, quae caput
esse uidetur omnium ciuitatum.
29 Q. 46.8 (CSEL 50:87): quasi non hodie diaconi dalmaticis induantur, sicut episcopus.
30 Cf. Albert Blaise and Henri Chirat, “Dalmatica,” Dictionnaire latin-français des auteurs
chrétiens (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954), 237.

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Rivalry Between Presbyters And Deacons In The Roman Church 503

the bishop.31 The fact that deacons were garbed in a manner similar to the
bishop of Rome would have enhanced their status and encouraged their claim
to stand higher than the presbyters in office and closer to the bishop.
We also know that the church in Rome had preserved an ancient tradition
of restricting the number of deacons to seven, whereas there were many more
presbyters in the city. Already by the middle of the third century, in addition to
its bishop, the church in Rome possessed forty-six presbyters, but only seven
deacons and seven sub-deacons, if we can trust the account given in a letter of
Cornelius to Fabius of Antioch preserved in Eusebius’s Church History.32 The
proliferation of church buildings at Rome in the fourth century would have
produced significantly more presbyters by that time, but the number of dea-
cons remained at seven. Jerome was alert to this fact and noted in Letter 146:
“It is their fewness that makes deacons worthy of honor, whereas the crowd of
presbyters causes them to be disdained.”33 The claim of the Roman deacon,
then, was not based solely on the secular status of the city of Rome, but rather
on the elite place that the seven deacons of Rome held within the hierarchy of
the church there owing to their limited number.34
Another tradition unique to the church in Rome that seems to have motivat-
ed the “boasting” of the Roman deacon—one mentioned by both Ambrosiaster
and Jerome—was the custom of ordaining presbyters on the recommendation
of a deacon. Ambrosiaster seems to be quoting from the anonymous deacon
when he mentions this point: “But, he says, it is on the testimony of a deacon
that one is made a presbyter, as if that entailed some privilege of greatness.”35
Jerome likewise pointed to the same custom: “ ‘But,’ you will say, ‘how does it
happen that at Rome a presbyter is ordained on the testimony of a deacon?’ ”36

31 Cf. Henri Leclercq, “Dalmatique,” DACL 4, pt. 1 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1920), 111-19.
According to the Liber pontificalis 34, it was Pope Sylvester (314-335) who first established
that deacons should use the dalmatic: Hic constituit ut diacones dalmaticas uterentur et
pallia linostima leua eorum tegerentur; text in L. Duchesne, Le Liber Pontificalis. Texte,
introduction et commentaire (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1955), 77.
32 Historia ecclesiastica 6.43.11-12 (ed. F. Winkelmann; GCS NF 6.2:618).
33 Ep. 146.2 (CSEL 56:311): Diaconos paucitas honorabiles, presbyteros turba contemptibiles
facit.
34 Canon 15 of the Council of Neocaesarea decreed that the number of deacons should be
seven, even in the largest of churches. However, the church in Rome seems to have been
unusual in preserving this custom. See Prat, “Les prétensions,” 468.
35 Q. 101.9 (CSEL 50:197): “Sed testimonio”, inquit, “diaconi fit presbiter”, quasi istud ad praero-
gatiuam pertineat magnitudinis.
36 Ep. 146.2 (CSEL 56:311): Sed dices: “quomodo Romae ad testimonium diaconi presbyter
ordinatur?”.

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504 Hunter

Both Jerome and Ambrosiaser responded to this argument (though in differ-

ent ways), which suggests that it carried some weight and required an answer.
As attendants and advisers to the bishop of Rome, deacons were well placed
to exert influence over the choice of future clergy, and this fact led the anony-
mous deacon to view this tradition as an implicit validation of his claim re-
garding the superior status of deacons.37
But of all the factors that would have encouraged deacons to claim superior-
ity over presbyters, perhaps the most cogent of all is the fact that the bishop of
Rome was often chosen for his office from among the deacons, not the pres-
byters. This is a point that neither Jerome nor Ambrosiaster mentioned explic-
itly, but it is one that is well attested in the fourth-century evidence. Although
less numerous than presbyters, deacons had a much greater chance of being
elected bishop of Rome than did presbyters.38 For example, Damasus was a
deacon upon his election to the episcopacy in 366, as was his rival Ursinus.39
The custom continued for a long time. As Eamon Duffy has observed:

Pope Boniface was the son of a Roman priest, Innocent I was the son of
his predecessor as pope, Anastasius I (399-401), and had served his fa-
ther as deacon. Indeed it was routine for the Pope to be elected by the
senior clergy from among the seven deacons. The deacons dressed like
the Pope himself in the distinctive wide-sleeved dalmatic with its two
purple stripes, and they formed the heart of the papal administrations—
Boniface I (418-22), Leo I (440-61), and Felix III (483-92) were all succeed-
ed by their archdeacons.40

37 Ambrosiaster added a liturgical dimension to the deacon’s argument, noting that can-
didates for ordination were usually led into the church flanked by the deacons. See
Q. 101.10 (CSEL 50, 198): Est iterum, quo inflentur et putent sibi multum deberi; “a nobis”
enim, inquiunt, “perducuntur qui ordinandi sunt”, ut, dum lateri illorum saepti sunt, honore
digni uideantur.
38 Cf. Charles Pietri, Roma Christiana: Recherches sur l’Église de Rome, son organization, sa
politique, son idéologie de Miltiade à Sixte III (311-440) (Rome: École française de Rome,
1976), 716: “Mais ce petit college des sept constitue un groupe beaucoup plus homogène,
auréolé de prestige. Chacun de ces clercs, qui porte la dalmatique comme l’évéque
lui-même, a des chances beaucoup plus sérieuses que le simple prêtre d’accéder au
pontificat.”
39 On the rival elections, see Quae gesta sunt inter Liberium et Felicem episcopos in Collectio
Avellana 1.2-5 (CSEL 35:1-2).
40 Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes. 3rd ed. (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2006), 41.

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Rivalry Between Presbyters And Deacons In The Roman Church 505

This close association of the seven deacons of Rome with the bishop of
Rome helps to explain the “boasting” of the Roman deacon against whom both
Ambrosiaster and Jerome reacted. The Roman deacon’s proximity to the bish-
op’s seat of power would have done much to enhance their status and provoke
the envy of their fellow clerics, especially the presbyters.41

3 The Roman Deacons and Elite Roman Households

There is one last feature of the deacon’s role in the church in Rome that I would
like to address, one based on observations by both Ambrosiaster and Jerome.
Toward the end of Q. 101 Ambrosiaster noted something he regarded as scan-
dalous behavior by deacons:

For now we see deacons during banquets (per conuiuia) rashly doing
what belongs to priests and during prayer wishing for responses to be
given to them, although this is allowed only to priests. For the proper
procedure (ordo) for the deacon is to receive from the priest and thus to
give to the people.42

Immediately following this accusation Ambrosiaster offered further thoughts

on the reason why the deacons of Rome tended to make such elaborate claims
for themselves. The passage must be quoted in full, with special attention to
some of the significant vocabulary Ambrosiaster used:

Do you see what this empty audacity gives birth to? On account of their
inflated minds they become forgetful—because they see that they are
ministers of the Roman church—and they do not acknowledge what
God has decreed for them and what they ought to devote their atten-
tion to. But they are made forgetful by their frequent services in private
homes (adsiduae stationes domesticae) and by their status as attendants
(officialitas), which nowadays is able to accomplish a great deal by means
of [their] recommendations (per suggestiones), whether these are good
or bad. For they [i.e., the deacons] are either feared lest they give bad

41 Prat, “Les prétensions,” 474, speculated that the unnamed deacon may have harbored
“le secret espoir de le [Damasus] supplanter,” but this goes beyond the available evidence.
42 Q. 101.7 (CSEL 50:197): Nunc enim uidemus diaconos temere quod sacerdotum est agere
per conuiuia et in oratione id uelle, ut respondeatur illis, cum istud solis liceat sacerdotibus.
Diaconi enim ordo est accipere a sacerdote et sic dare plebi.

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506 Hunter

recommendations, or they are bribed so that they may provide favorable

ones. These are the people who make them [i.e., the deacons] not take
account of the nature of their order. When they show deference to them
[i.e., the deacons] illegitimately with flattery, they make them reckless,
so that they think that more is allowed to them, especially since they see
that such deference is not paid to the priests, and because of this they
think that they are ranked higher.43

Ambrosiaster here offers an intriguing glimpse at another aspect of the social

context that gave rise to the boasting of the Roman deacons. Their activity
at banquets (conuiuia), arrogating to themselves priestly functions, which
Ambrosiaster thought should belong only to presbyters and bishops, was cer-
tainly perceived to be a problem. But he also spoke of the deacons’ adsiduae
stationes domesticae and their officialitas, as well as their suggestiones. Further
attention to these terms is necessary if we are to understand the activities of
deacons in the domestic context and the implication of these activities for the
deacons’ status and authority.
Statio was a word with a wide variety of connotations in early Christian
Latin. Tertullian had used the term for a fast, while Cyprian spoke of a statio as
an assembly where a bishop and the people met to discuss problems. Christine
Mohrmann, who has published an important study of the term, cited a text
from the Collectio Avellana, which is close in time and sense to the usage of
Ambrosiaster and suggests another sense of statio. In the first document in
the Collectio, there is a description of an attempt by supporters of the exiled
Bishop Felix to unseat Damasus’s predecessor, Bishop Liberius:

But after a little while, at the instigation of the clergy, who broke their
oaths, he rushed into the city and dared to hold a statio (stationem … dare
praesumit) in the basilica of Julius across the Tiber.”44

43 Q. 101.8 (CSEL 50:197): Vides quid pariat uana praesumptio? Inmemores enim elatione
mentis, eo quod uideant Romanae ecclesiae se esse ministros, non considerant quid illis a
deo decretum sit et quid debeant custodire, sed tollunt hoc de memoria adsiduae stationes
domesticae et officialitas, quae per suggestiones malas seu bonas nunc plurimum potest. Aut
timetur enim, ne male suggerant, aut emuntur, ut praestent. Hi sunt qui faciunt eos ordinis
sui non considerare rationem. Dum enim per adulationem obsecuntur illis inlicite, praecipi-
tes illos faciunt, ut plus sibi putent licere, quippe cum uideant non sic deferri sacerdotibus, ac
per hoc anteferri se putant.
44 Quae gesta sunt inter Liberium et Felicem episcopos in Collectio Avellana 1.3 (CSEL 35:2): …
et post parum temporis impulsu clericorum, qui peiuraverant, inrumpit in urbem et statio-
nem in <basilica> Iuli trans Tiberim dare praesumit; cited in C. Mohrmann, Études sur

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Rivalry Between Presbyters And Deacons In The Roman Church 507

Here statio has the sense of a liturgical celebration. This also appears to be the
meaning of the term in Q. 101 where Ambrosiaster spoke of the deacons partici-
pating in stationes domesticae, that is, liturgical services held in private homes.
This is confirmed by a passage in Jerome’s letter that describes deacons in
a domestic context usurping ritual functions that belonged to presbyters and
bishops:

Moreover even in the church of Rome the presbyters sit and the deacons
stand, although little by little vices have crept in and I have seen a deacon
sit among the presbyters when the bishop was absent and at domestic
banquets (in domesticis conuiuiis) give his blessings to presbyters.45

Both Jerome and Ambrosiaster, then, point to the presence of deacons in pri-
vate households exercising roles, such as leading prayer and bestowing bless-
ings, that they believed should belong exclusively to the “priest,” that is, to the
bishop or presbyter.
As for the term officialitas, this is the difficult case of a hapax legomenon,
that is, a word apparently coined by Ambrosiaster and not found in any earlier
author. Souter suggested the definition “official duty” in his Glossary of Later
Latin;46 Lewis and Short proposed “a body of attendants”;47 Blaise-Chirat sug-
gested “témoignages de respect, politesses mondaines (du clergé romaine)”;48
the Thesaurus linguae latinae proposed a parallel with officiositas, which
means something like “courtesy” or “obliging disposition” (Souter) or “bienveil-
lance” or “empressement à render service” (Blaise-Chirat).
In my opinion, none of these definitions quite fits the context of
Ambrosiaster’s remarks. I suggest that Ambrosiaster’s officialitas refers to the
deacon’s status as an officialis, that is, as an “attendant” or “agent” of the bishop.
According to the Oxford Latin Dictionary, when officialis is used as a masculine

le Latin des chrétiens. Tome III: Latin chrétien et liturgique. (Rome: Edizioni de Storia e
Letteratura, 1965), 307-330, at 328-329.
45 Ep. 146.2 (CSEL 56:311): Ceterum in ecclesia etiam Romae presbyteri sedent et stant diaconi,
licet paulatim increbrescentibus uitiis inter presbyteros absente episcopo sedere diaconum
uiderim et in domesticis conuiuiis benedictiones presbyteris dare. Ambrosiaster, likewise,
cited the custom of deacons standing while presbyters sat as evidence of the lower status
of deacons. Cf. Q. 101.3 (CSEL 50:195): Quamquam Romanae ecclesiae diaconi modice inu-
erecundiores uideantur, sedendi tamen dignitate in ecclesia non praesumunt.
46 Alexander Souter, A Glossary of Later Latin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), 275.
47 Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879),
1259.
48 Dictionnaire latin-français des auteurs chrétiens, 575.

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508 Hunter

substantive it refers to “an official attending on a magistrate.”49 At several

points in Q. 101 Ambrosiaster proposed that deacons stood in relation to the
priest-bishop as slaves to masters or as officiales to prefects. For example, he
stated: “What audacity it is to compare the servants of presbyters to the presby-
ters themselves…. This is tantamount to making attendants equal to prefects,
servants equal to masters.”50 Similarly, at another place in Q. 101, Ambrosiaster
offered this analogy: “Any honor that is shown toward an attendant brings in-
crease to the one in power, just as the honor of a slave redounds to the praise
of the master.”51 And in the concluding paragraph of Q. 101 he returned to the
image as a way of explaining the deacons’ role in the ordination of presby-
ters, that is, the deacons escorted presbyters, flanking them as they entered in
procession:

[The deacon] is sent as an attendant (quasi officialis) by the bishop, in

order to show due deference to the one being ordained [i.e., to the pres-
byter]. For likewise the emperor, in order to make his appearance as the
emperor, is ordained with a display of military deference, and yet the
army is neither better than nor equal to the emperor.52

It is clear that Ambrosiaster naturally thought about the relationship between

deacons and bishops or presbyters on that analogy of slaves to masters or
attendants (officiales) to magistrates. Therefore, his use of neologism officiali-
tas is best understood as a reference to the status of deacons as “attendants”
of the bishop. They stand in a subservient relationship to the priest-bishop
and therefore must be subservient to the presbyters, who share in the bishop’s
sacerdotium.
Finally there is the term suggestiones and Ambrosiaster’s claim that the
Roman deacons were in a position to make both good and bad suggestiones:
good suggestiones brought profit to the deacons; bad suggestiones from them
were feared. Given Ambrosiaster’s proclivity to think in legal and political

49 P.G.W. Glare, Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 1243. The OLD also
noted that the expression operae officiales could refer to “services given free to a patron by
a freedman (opposed to work done for hire).”
50 Q. 101.2 (CSEL 50:194): Quae audacia est prebiteris ministros ipsorum pares facere! … Tale
est, si praefectis officiales, dominis serui aequentur.
51 See also Q. 101.4 (CSEL 50:195): quicquid enim officialibus praestatur, augmentum fit potes-
tati, sicut honor serui ad laudem proficit domini.
52 Q. 101.10 (CSEL 50:198): … quasi officialis enim ab episcopo mittitur, ut obsequium prae-
beat ordinando. Nam et imperator, ut imperator appareat, ordinatur obsequio militari; non
tamen melior nec par exercitus imperatori.

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Rivalry Between Presbyters And Deacons In The Roman Church 509

terms, it is not unlikely that he was thinking of a suggestio in a quasi-legal

sense. In his Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law, Adolf Berger has defined
suggestio thus: “A query or report presented by a lower official to a higher
one or to the emperor. The term is used primarily in imperial constitutions.”53
Conceiving of the relation of deacons to bishops as their official “attendants”
or “agents,” Ambrosiaster must be referring to the role of the deacon as an in-
termediary between the Christian populace at Rome (and especially its elite
members) and the bishop of Rome. Maurice Bévenot has captured well this
aspect of the deacons’ function: “As officials of the great church of Rome, the
deacons handle all business to be submitted to its bishop. Petitioners fear
them lest they report on them unfavorably, and they bribe them to secure a
favorable report.”54
Ambrosiaster has presented the deacons’ presence at private religious ser-
vices (stationes domesticae) and banquets in private homes (conuiuia) as one
source of their allegedly inflated sense of themselves and their desire to as-
sume priestly prerogatives. Ambrosiaster appears to be referring to the house-
holds of elite Christians at Rome, whose mansions were increasingly the site
of private worship in the later fourth century, as the work of Kim Bowes has
demonstrated.55 The deacons’ “official status” (officialitas), that is, their role
as “officiales” or representatives of the bishop, gave them extraordinary influ-
ence, as they had the power to give either good or bad recommendations to
the petitions of their elite clients. Unlike presbyters, whose work was largely
confined to the individual churches in which they were resident (Ambrosiaster
states that there were two presbyters assigned to each church at Rome),56 the
deacons served as the bishop’s official representatives in aristocratic house-
holds, where their officialitas provided access to elites that surpassed what any
ordinary presbyter could obtain.

53 Adolf Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law. Transactions of the American

Philosophical Society. New Series, vol. 42, pt. 2 (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical
Society, 1953), 723.
54 Maurice Bévenot, “Ambrosiaster’s Thoughts on Christian Priesthood,” Heythrop Journal 18
(1977), 152-164, quotation p. 158.
55 Kim Bowes, Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). On p. 101 (n. 253) Bowes cites a comment
from Ambrosiaster, Commentary on 1 Corinthians 16:19 (CSEL 81.2:193), in which he drew
a distinction between the ecclesia domestica and the ecclesia publica, but she does not
discuss Q. 101 or the role of the deacons in these households.
56 In his Commentary on 1 Timothy 3:12-13 (CSEL 81.3:269), Ambrosiaster noted that in addi-
tion to the seven deacons the church at Rome contained aliquantos presbyteros, ut bini
sint per ecclesias et unus in civitate episcopus.

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510 Hunter

Conclusion

I would like to return to an observation made at the beginning of this article.

Both Ambrosiaster and Jerome were unusual in the later fourth century for
their explicit identification of presbyters as “priests” (sacerdotes).57 Both men
developed theories to explain the historical development of the mono-episco-
pate out of an originally collegial group of presbyters.58 Both insisted that the
“priesthood” (sacerdotium) was one ordo that was shared by presbyters and
bishops; what made the bishop distinctive, according to Ambrosiaster, was his
status as the primus presbyter or summus sacerdos.59 In Q. 101 we have evidence
of some of the factors that shaped this presbyter’s unique sense of the priest-
hood. More numerous than the seven deacons of Rome, and generally assigned
to specific churches (the basilicas and tituli of the later fourth century), Roman
presbyters lacked both the elite status of Roman deacons and their close con-
nection to the bishop of Rome. Jerome tells us they were even paid less than
deacons!60 But they had something that deacons lacked—a prerogative that
both Jerome and Ambrosiaster zealously defended—namely the priesthood
(sacerdotium).

Acknowledgements

A shorter version of this paper was presented in July 2016 at the Leeds
International Medieval Congress in the session “Social Networks of the Clergy,”
organized by Robert Wiśniewski of the University of Warsaw. I am very grate-
ful to the following friends and colleagues whom I consulted at various stages
in its preparation: Michele Salzman, Danuta Shanzer, Kristina Sessa, Dennis
Trout, and Terrence Tunberg. Special thanks are owed to Andrew Cain, who
read and responded to the final version in its entirety.

57 For a good overview of the question, see Pierre-Marie Gy, OP, “Remarques sur le vocabu-
laire antique du sacerdoce chrétien,” in Études sur le sacrement de l’ordre. Lex Orandi 22
(Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1957), 125-145, esp. the conclusion, 144-145: “De la seconde
moitié du IVe siècle jusqu’au VIe, sacerdos désigne normalement l’évêque: sauf indication
contraire du contexte, sacerdos est synonyme d’episcopus; mais on l’applique aussi occa-
sionnellement au prêtre dans son pouvoir eucharistique et cultuel.”
58 See Ambrosiaster’s discussion in his commentary on Eph 4:11-12 (CSEL 81/3: 99-100). For
references to Jerome’s discussions, see note 25 above.
59 Q. 101.5 (CSEL 50:196): Quid est enim episcopus, nisi primus presbiter, hoc est summus
sacerdos.
60 Ep. 146.2 (CSEL 56:312): … nouerit se lucris minorem, sacerdotio esse maiorem.

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