1. Just as order is different from office, so too is its deprivation different. Deprivation of office is called ‘forfeiture’; that of order is commonly termed ‘degradation’, in as much as grade or degree is understood to be synonymous with order, although degrees are, properly, the ranks of a particular order. That is why, strictly speaking, the degradation which our jurisconsults call de gradu dejectionem and the laws of the Code call regradationem (for degradatio is not Latin) is not properly the absolute deprivation of order, as the vulgar think, but only a demotion or deprivation of a higher degree or rank, being put or thrown back to a lower degree whilst nevertheless remaining in the order.

2. In Greek this is called ‘demotion’, and in Latin regradatio where ‘re’ either is a privative particle or signifies ‘backwards’.

3. It is in this sense that St Jerome says that ‘Heraclius was demoted from a bishop to a priest’; and he says, ‘Let anyone demoted from the power of a tribune by his fault be deprived of every office of the service and be reduced to the designation of tiro’. He also says that ‘In the book of Ezekiel, priests who transgressed were demoted to sacristans and doorkeepers’. The passage in Ezekiel contains these words: ‘The Levites who strayed from the Lord after their idols shall be ministers in the sanctuary of God and keepers of the gates’.