Word Finder - ordination

definition

The act of ordaining or the state of being ordained.

definition

The ceremony in which a priest is consecrated, considered a sacrament in the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Some account has been already given of scholastic opinion on presbyteral ordination to the diaconate and even to the priesthood.

St Jerome (Ep. 1 4 6) tells us that as late as the middle of the 3rd century the presbyters of Alexandria, when the see was vacant, used to elect one of their own number and without any further ordination set him in the episcopal office.

Therein we are told that the threefold ministry of bishops, priests and deacons may be traced back to apostolic times, and in the final revision of 1662 a clause was added to the effect that no one is to be accounted " a lawful bishop, priest or deacon in the Church of England," unless he has had episcopal consecration or ordination.

He was ordained at Zurich, and from him Court himself received ordination.

The Schoolmen had no historical sense and little historical information; hence they fell into one error after another on the essentials in the rite of ordination.

An unbaptized person is also incapable of valid ordination.

The church lays down a rule of domestic policy, and neither gives nor pretends to give any absolute criterion for the validity of ordination.

There seems to be no record of his ordination, but as he was a candidate for the see of Hereford in 1199 it is most probable that he was in priest's orders.

Hodgson, however, thought that up to 1721, at which time he was residing at Widdrington, "he had not received ordination, but preached as a licentiate."

He studied for the priesthood, but abandoned the idea before ordination, and took the diploma of doctor of letters (1860).

St Peter's church, a Perpendicular building, is said to have been the scene of the ordination of Cardinal Wolsey in 1498.

One of the signatories of the Definition of Faith made at Chalcedon, in which both creeds were quoted in full, Kalemikus, bishop of Apamea in Bithynia, refers to the council of Constantinople as having been held at the ordination of the most pious Nektarius the bishop. Obviously there was some connexion in his mind between the creed and the ordination.

He was still felt by many of his clergy and by candidates for ordination to be a rather terrifying person, and to enforce almost impossible standards of diligence, accuracy and preaching efficiency, but his manifest devotion to his work and his zeal for the good of the people rooted him deeply in the general confidence.

Peter Lombard (c. r r 50) added as a seventh that of ordination, and to this number the Latin Church adhered at the councils of Florence and Trent.

He was not ordained presbyter until 365, and his ordination was probably the result of the entreaties of his ecclesiastical superiors, who wished to use his talents against the Arians, who were numerous in that part of the country and were favoured by the Arian emperor, Valens, who then reigned in Constantinople.

This led to the further step of setting up personal merit rather than ecclesiastical ordination as the ground of the priestly office.

Election took the place of ordination, but even here the Lombards showed their difference from the Ultramontanes, and recognized only two orders, like the Cathari, while the northern body kept the old three orders of bishops, priests and deacons.

This is implied in the oldest ordination rules and forms of prayer, such as those underlying the " Canons of Hippolytus " and related collections.

Elsewhere it was the custom to wear it always, at least for a year after ordination.

The custom of giving the stole to priests and deacons at their ordination is of great antiquity.

He distinguished himself at an early age, and on his ordination to the priesthood (1805) was appointed professor of the philosophy of religion in Prague University.

Deaconesses, upon entering their office, were ordained much in the same way as deacons, but the ordination conveyed no sacerdotal powers or authority.

He entered the academy of Dr Philip Doddridge at Northampton, became minister of a congregation formed by a fusion of Presbyterians and Independents at High Street Chapel, Shrewsbury (1741), received Presbyterian ordination there (1745), resigned in 1766 owing to ill-health, and lived in retirement at Kidderminster until his death.

The monastery once entered, there was no drawing back; and Erasmus passed through the various stages which culminated in his ordination as priest on the 25th of April 1492.

A Frankish bishop, Liudhard, had laboured there before his time; but the mission of Augustine and his ordination as a bishop were decisive in the conversion of the country and the establishment of the Anglo-Saxon church.

In all the rite of ordination is in their hands.

Until 1811 the Calvinistic Methodists had no ministers ordained by themselves; their enormous growth in numbers and the scarcity of ministers to administer the Sacrament - only three in North Wales, two of whom had joined only at the dawn of the century - made the question of ordination a matter of urgency.

He studied at Munich, and at an early age joined the Canons Regular at Polling, where, shortly after his ordination in 1717, he taught theology and philosophy.

The chasuble is thus in a special sense the sacerdotal vestment, and at the ordination of priests, according to the Roman rite, the bishop places on the candidate a chasuble rolled up at the back (planeta plicata), with the words, " Take the sacerdotal robe, the symbol of love," &c.; at the end of the ordination Mass the vestment is unrolled.

The first delegated general conference met at Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, in 1815, and adopted a confession of faith, rules of order and a book of discipline, which were revised in 1885-1889, when women were first admitted to ordination, and when the Conservatives, protesting against the new constitution, withdrew and formed the body now commonly known as the United Brethren in Christ "of the Old Constitution."

He thus views the consecration of the elements as akin to other consecrations; and, like priestly ordination, as involving " a metamorphosis for the better," a phrase which later on became classical.

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.

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.

To have been married a second time disqualified for ordination, or for continued tenure of the office of bishop. In all the action of the church unanimity was considered to be necessary; if any member differed in opinion from the rest, he must either surrender his judgment to that of the church, or be shut out from its communion.

In 1379, having received ordination as a deacon, he became missionary preacher throughout the diocese of Utrecht.

We consecrate ourselves either in a ritual act, as of baptism or ordination, vows or monkish initiation; or, without any implication of particular ceremonies, a man is said to consecrate himself to good works or learning.

This ordination of Ulfilas by the chiefs of the semi-Arian party is at once an indication of their determination to extend their influence by active missionary enterprise, and evidence that Ulfilas was now a declared adherent of the Arian or semi-Arian party.

If, as seems probable from the circumstances of his ordination, he was a semi-Arian and a follower of Eusebius in 341, at a later period of his life he departed from this position, and vigorously opposed the teaching of his former leader.

Ordination was conferred by the congregation and not by any specially appointed minister.

After his ordination, his great learning and stainless life led him to office after office in the Church, each higher and more influential than the last.

Each judge has an auxiliary; to the tribunal are attached a promotor fiscalis, charged with the duty of securing the due application of the law, and an official charged with the defence of marriage and ordination; there is also a clerical staff (notaries, scribes) attached to the court.

On the death of Nerses the right of saying grace at the royal meals, which was the essence of the catholicate, was transferred by the king, in despite of the Greeks, to the priestly family of Albianus, and thenceforth no Armenian catholicus went to Caesarea for ordination.

The two churches of Iberia and Albania at first depended on the Armenian for ordination of their primates or catholici, and in large part owed their first constitution to Armenian missionaries sent by Gregory the Illuminator.

The Albanians of the Caucasus were also converted in the age of Gregory, early in the 4th century, and were loyal to the Armenians in the great struggle against Mazdaism in the 5th; but broke away for a time towards 600, and chose a patriarch without sending him to Armenia for ordination.

Besides these there was a class of wardapets or teachers, answering to the didascalos of the earliest church, whose province it was to guard the doctrine and for whom no rite of ordination is found in the older rituals.

In1678-1679he spent some time at Grenoble as tutor in a private family; on his return to Geneva he passed his examinations and received ordination.

After completing his studies in Holland and England, Jurieu received Anglican ordination; returning to France he was ordained again and succeeded his father as pastor of the church at Mer.

The first church in New Jersey, at Bergen, in 1661, was quickly followed by others at Hackensack and Passaic. After English rule in 1664 displaced Dutch in New York, the relations of the Dutch churches there were much less close with the state Church of Holland; and in 1679 (on the request of the English governor of New York, to whom the people of New Castle appealed) a classis was constituted for the ordination of a pastor for the church in New Castle, Delaware.

This ceased at Rome at the same time as the apparel disappeared; but two relics of it survive - (I) in the directions of the Missal for putting on the amice, (2) in the ordination of subdeacons, when the bishop lays the vestment on the ordinand's head with the words, "Take the amice, which symbolizes discipline over the tongue, &c."

Thompson, trained Philip Quaque, said to be " the first convert who ever received ordination since the Reformation in the Reformed Church."