Excursus on the Minor Orders of the Early Church. Some of these lower orders, the subdeacons, readers, door-keepers, and exorcists, are mentioned in the celebrated letter of Cornelius bishop of Rome a. In the Eastern Church, however, if we except the Apostolic Constitutions, of which the date and country are uncertain, the first reference to such offices is found in a canon of the Council of Antioch, a.
But while most of these lower orders certainly existed in the West, and probably in the East, as early as the middle of the third century the case is different with the "singers" psaltai and the "labourers" kopiatai. Setting aside the Apostolic Constitutions, the first notice of the "singers" occurs in the canons of the above-mentioned Council of Laodicea. This, however, may be accidental. The history of the word copiatai affords a more precise and conclusive indication of date.
The term first occurs in a rescript of Constantius a. Exorcists and readers there had been in the Church from old times, subdeacons are not essentially strange, as they participate in a name deacon which dates from the earliest days of Christianity.
But acolytes and door-keepers puloroi are quite strange, are really novelties. And these acolytes even at the time of Cornelius stand at the head of the ordines minores: for that the subdeacons follow on the deacons is self-evident. Whence do they come? Now if they do not spring out of the Christian tradition, their origin must be explained from the Roman. It can in fact be shown there with desirable plainness.
With regard to subdeacons the reader may also like to see some of Harnack's speculations. In the volume just quoted he writes as follows p. The same is seen in the "gesta apud Zenophilum. According to Probst and other Catholic scholars the subdiaconate existed in Rome a long time before Fabian Kirchl.
