Word Finder - acolyte

definition

One who has received the highest of the four minor orders in the Catholic Church, being ordained to carry the wine, water and lights at Mass.

definition

An altar server.

definition

An attendant, assistant or follower.

When the pope rode in procession to the station an acolyte, on foot, preceded him, bearing the holy chrism; and at the church seven regionary acolytes with candles went before him in the procession to the altar, while two others, bearing the vessel that contained a pre-consecrated Host, presented it for his adoration.

During the mass an acolyte bore the thurible (Ordo VI.) and three assisted at the washing of the hands.

He was then, at Sarum, censed by the deacon, and an acolyte censed the choir; at Bangor the Sinistrum Cornu of the altar and the relics were censed instead.

This office of bearing the sacrament is an ancient one, and is mentioned in the legend of Tarcisius, the Roman acolyte, who was martyred on the Appian Way while carrying the Hosts from the catacombs.

The official dress of the acolyte, according to Ordo V., was a close-fitting linen garment (camisia) girt about him, a napkin hanging from the left side, a white tunic, a stole (orarium) and a chasuble (planeta) which he took off when he sang on the steps of the ambone.

At most pontifical functions, moreover, the bishop - as the representative of Christ - is preceded by an acolyte with a burning candle (bugia) on a candlestick.

Except that Uncle Sam and his devoted acolyte Tony Blair are behaving somewhat less rationally than the Kaiser.

All these clerical preferments Wykeham held when he was a simple clerk, who had no doubt undergone the "first tonsure," but was not even ordained an acolyte till the 5th of December of this golden year.

In 1538 he obtained a dispensation permitting him to hold a benefice, notwithstanding his being a natural son, and in June 1546 he was made an acolyte in the cathedral church of Aberdeen, of which he was afterwards appointed a canon and prebendary.

What pivotal role will be performed by Neo's adoring acolyte?

The office of acolyte may have been suggested by the attendant assigned to heathen priests.

While there is frequent mention of the acolyte's office in the Ordines Romani, it is only in the Ordo VIII.

It is possible that the Liber Pontificalis refers to the office under the Latin synonym, when it says of Pope Victor (186-197) that he made sequentes cleros, a term - sequens - which Pope Gaius (283-293) uses in the sense of acolyte.

The Roman books are silent, and there is no mention of it in the collection known as the Leonine Sacramentary; while in the so-called Gelasian Massbook, which, as we have it, is full of Gallican additions made to St Gregory's reform, there is the same silence, though in one MS. of the 10th century given by Muratori we find a form for the ordination of an acolyte.

The Pontifical known as Ecgbert's shows that it was then in use both as an office and as an order, and Aelfric (Io06) in both his pastoral epistle and canons mentions the acolyte.

Sufficiently apprised of the risible nature of my enquiries, he holds all the cards and knows it, I am a green acolyte.

Married to Jack Crusher, Captain Picard's closest friend, who died under his command, she is mother to Wesley Crusher, Picard's young acolyte.

The evidence available, therefore, points to the fact that the acolyte was only a local office and was not a necessary step or order for every candidate.

The conclusion, then, which seems warranted by the evidence, is that the acolyte was an office only at Rome, and, becoming an order in the Gallican Church, found its way as such into the Roman books at some period before the fusion of the two rites under Charlemagne.

Zwingli prevailed on the council to forbid his entrance into Zurich; and even then the pope argued that, so long as the preacher was still receiving a papal pension, he could not be a formidable adversary, and he gave him a further sop in the form of an acolyte chaplaincy.

The Statuta Ecclesiae Antigua (falsely called the Canons of the Fourth Council of Carthage in 397), a Gallican collection, originating in the province of Arles at the beginning of the 6th century, mentions the acolyte, but does not give, as in the case of the other orders, any form for the ordination.