Pope Innocent I prescribes the rules for accepting into the ecclesiactical orders those who were baptized as children and those who were not. Letter 3 of Pope Innocent I, "Saepe me", to the Spanish bishops, Rome, ca AD 403.
Intended for scholary use. For credentials see Bibliography
Letter 3
10. Quales vero eligendi sint in ordine clericorum, evidens forma declarat: id est, qui ab ineunte aetate baptizati fuerint, et lectorum officio sociati; vel si majores sint, cum fuerint Dei gratiam consecuti, statim se ecclesiasticis ordinibus manciparint.
Requirements regarding being “the husband of one wife" follow.
(ed. Coustant 1845: 492)
Letter 3
10. It is evident who should be chosen to the clerical order: either those who were baptised at an early age and took the office of readers, or those who, having obtained the grace of God at an older age, immediately gave themselves to the ecclesiastical order.
Requirements regarding being “the husband of one wife" follow.
(trans. S. Adamiak)
Discussion:
In some manuscripts the letter is wrongly described as being addressed to the bishops of the Council of Tolosa. The passage about the marital status of the clerics repeats what Innocent wrote in his letter to Victricius of Rouen [1540].
Innocent I was the bishop of Rome from AD 401 to 417. Several of his letters, especially to the bishops of Gaul and Spain, are "decretals": authoritative letters containing papal rulings, usually in response to questions raised by the bishops.
Edition:
P. Coustant ed., S. Innocentii Papae Epistolae et Decreta, Patrologia Latina 20, Paris 1845, 463-608.
Bibliography:
G.D. Dunn, "Innocent I and the Synod of Toledo”, [in:] The Bishop of Rome in Late Antiquity, ed. G.D. Dunn, Farnham, Burlington 2015, 89–107.
D. Jasper, H. Fuhrmann, Papal Letters in the Early Middle Ages, Washington 2001.
Categories:
Family life - Marriage
Former ecclesiastical career - Lower clergy
Impediments or requisits for the office - Marriage
Former ecclesiastical career - None
Impediments or requisits for the office - Neophyte
Neophyte
Please quote this record referring to
its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
S. Adamiak, Presbyters
in the Late Antique West, ER1611, http://presbytersproject.ihuw.pl/index.php?id=6&SourceID=1611
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