Distinction LIX

GRATIAN. Likewise, those who are not imbued with ecclesiastical disciplines and examined by the testing of time shall not aspire to the highest priesthood.

Hence Pope Zosimus [to Hesychius, Bishop of Salona, epistle I]. [PALEA.

One who has not been imbued with ecclesiastical disciplines in order and instructed in divine service by the testing of time shall by no means presume to aspire to the highest priesthood of the Church; and not only shall his ambition be held ineffective, but action shall also be taken against his ordainers, so that they lack that order which, contrary to the precepts of the Fathers, they believed was to be presumed without order. ]

If secular offices confer the chief place not upon those who have entered the vestibule of activity, but upon those examined through many grades, who is found so arrogant, so shameless, that in the heavenly military service—which is to be weighed more carefully and, like gold, tested by repeated fires—he desires immediately to be a leader when he had not first been a recruit, and wishes to teach before learning? Let him first grow accustomed in the Lord’s camp, in the grade of readers, to the rudiments of divine service; nor let it be cheap in his eyes to become in order an exorcist, acolyte, subdeacon, and deacon—not by a leap, but through the periods established for ordination by the elders. Then let such a one approach the summit of the priesthood, so that he both fulfills the name of the age and his prior periods of service bear witness to the merit of his probity. From there he will rightly be able to hope for the place of the supreme pontiff. The excessive laxity of our fellow priests causes this: they seek the display of a multitude and think that some dignity is acquired for themselves from this crowd. Hence a numerous populace of such persons is found indiscriminately even in places where there is solitude, while they desire their parishes to be extended or lavish divine orders upon those to whom they can furnish nothing else. This ought always to be a matter of strict judgment. For everything great is rare.

Likewise Gregory [Book VII of the Register, epistle 110]. It is fitting to embrace with no dissimilar detestation what has reached us: that certain men inflamed by desire for honor are tonsured when bishops die and suddenly become priests from laymen, and shamelessly seize the leadership of a religious profession though they have not yet learned even to be soldiers. What do we think—what will these furnish to their subjects, who do not fear to hold the place of governance before they touch the threshold of discipleship? Concerning this matter, it is necessary that, although each one is of blameless merit, he nevertheless first be exercised through the distinct offices of ecclesiastical order.

Likewise Celestine to the Bishops of Gaul [epistle II, c. 3]. Dearest brothers, we have learned that certain men have been ordained bishops and established at the summit of so great a dignity, contrary to the decrees of the Fathers, though they had held no ecclesiastical orders, by the usurpation of the one who recognizes that he did this, although the episcopate ought to be reached through those grades concerning which caution has very frequently been given, so that those initiated in lesser offices may be strengthened for greater ones. For whoever desires to be a teacher ought first to be a disciple, so that he may be able to teach what he has learned; every training of life strengthens itself by this method toward that for which it strives. One who has by no means applied himself to letters cannot be a teacher of letters. One who has not grown through the individual periods of service cannot attain the order belonging to the merited period of service. Among these things, I ask, is the priesthood alone more worthless? Why is it granted more easily when it is fulfilled with greater difficulty?