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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
The traditio instrumentorum is the ceremony in the rite of conferring holy orders in which an object or objects symbolizing the office to be conferred is handed to the candidate with an appropriate accompanying form of words. This ceremony grew in importance through the Middle Ages, to the extent that in Catholic theology it came to be seen as the essential act of ordination. Eucharistic doctrine and the role of the Church in salvation were key areas of conflict in sixteenth-century Reform movements. The Church’s ministry, therefore, being both intensely bound up with ecclesiastical structures and intimately concerned with the appropriate conduct of worship, was profoundly affected by these fundamental debates. A continuing need for some form of structured ministry was widely felt, though often understood as simply the appointment (for a time) of appropriate persons to the ministry of Word and Sacrament whose sacramental qualification for ministry was their own baptism, by which they entered into the priesthood of all believers, which was different from the unique high priesthood of Christ and completely replaced any sense of a sacrificing priesthood, which was tied up with the Old (and superseded) Testament. Looking to their Bibles for this, as for so much else in their ecclesiologies, the Reformers found only the apostolic laying on of hands with prayer in the conferring of ministry.
1 Contemporary sacramental theology required two essential features for the valid administration of a sacrament: ‘matter’ (the medium used in the rite, such as water in baptism, or a specific action carried out by the minister) and ‘form’ (the words which accompanied the matter). Perhaps arising from a belief that all grades of order, minor and major, were sacramental, the confusion grew among late medieval scholastic theologians that the sole common action, the handing over of an appropriate instrument, itself constituted the matter (or essential rite) of the sacrament of order. Indeed, it was not until 1947 that Roman Catholic theology formally defined the first imposition of hands in silence as the matter of the sacrament of holy order, and then only with reference to ordinations after that date without prejudice to those carried out in the belief that the traditio instrumentorum was the essential rite. See Ott, L., Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Cork, [1952]), pp. 327–8 Google Scholar, 454-5, and Pius XII, ‘Sacramentum ordinis’, in H. Denzinger, Enchiridion symholorum definitionum et declarationum, 33rd edn (Barcelona, 1965), 3857-61 (2301), pp. 765-6.
2 English translation and introduction in G. Dix, The Treatise on the Apostolic Tradition of St Hippolytus of Rome, 2nd edn, rev. Chadwick, H. (London, 1968 Google Scholar).
3 Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Tanner, N. P., 2 vols (London and Washington, DC, 1990), 2, p. 743 Google Scholar.
4 Minor variants in texts and rites exist throughout the late Middle Ages, though by the end of the fifteenth century they were generally standardized. Texts cited here are from extant English pontificals of the period, as edited and collated by Maskcll, W., in Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 2 (Oxford, 1882 Google Scholar) [hereafter. Maskell], p. 211.
5 Maskell, p. 231.
6 Anointing at ordination probably originated in the Celtic Church, passing through Gallican rites into the Roman liturgy. The practice was derived from the Old Testament, e.g. Lev. 16.32, where the priestly succession is confirmed by anointing with oil; this passage was cited by Gildas (Liber Querulus, III, 21, c.545 AD), with reference to Celtic practice: Ellard, G., Ordination Anointings in the Western Church before 1000AD (Cambridge, MA, 1933), pp. 10–13 Google Scholar.
7 The connection is less obvious, but can be made. In the Old Testament the rite of conferring priesthood often includes an act of handing over the holy oblations, referred to as a ‘filling of the hands [mille’ yadh]’ translated as ‘pleroun tas cheiras’ in the Scptuagint; See Lev. 7.29 and Exod. 32.29. In the New Testament there are possible allusions to this action, as in the high priestly prayer of John 17, or in Eph. 1.22-3, 3.19. John 3.35, The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hands’, may also suggest the pleroun tas cheiras to a reader familiar with the Old Testament rite. T. F. Torrance, ‘ConSeeration and ordination’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 11 (1958), pp. 225-52.
8 Maskell, p. 226.
9 Maskell, p. 289.
10 The principal conSeerator, placing the ring on the ring finger (in digitum annularem) of the elect’s right hand, said: ‘Accipe annulum fidei scilicet signaculum, quatenus Dei sponsam, sanctam Dei videlicet ecclesiam, intemerata fide ornatus, illibate custodias.’ Maskell, pp. 289-90.
11 Where given, the episcopal staff was sometimes called cambuta, a word of Celtic Latin origin; J. H. Crehan, ‘Medieval ordinations’, in C. Jones, G. Wainwright, and Yarnold, E., eds, The Study of Liturgy (London, 1978), pp. 324, 326 Google Scholar.
12 First expressed in Scotus (on the fourth Sentence of Peter Lombard, in 4. dist. 24. qu. unica, art. 3), this definition is found in both later medieval texts and in Catholic theology at least as late as the nineteenth century. For a comprehensive list, See Van Rossum, G. M., De essentia sacramenti ordinis (Rome, nd), pp. 38–42 Google Scholar.
13 The conferring of a power is effected by giving to its subjects something which belongs to the proper exercise of that power’: Aquinas, Commentum in quatuor libros sententiarum, XXIV, ii, 3, cited in Crchan, ‘Medieval ordinations’, p. 326.
14 Denzinger, Enchiridion, 1326 (701), p. 336.
15 For instance, in the writings of Cardinal Cajctan (Thomas de Vio) and Reginald Pole, amongst others. Details of sources for this view may be found in Van Rossum, De essentia sacramenti ordinis, pp. 13-14.
16 Luther’s Works, Vol. 53, Liturgy and Hymns, ed. Leopold, U. S. (Philadelphia, PA, 1965), pp. 122–6 Google Scholar.
17 Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J. J. McNeill, Library of Christian Classics, 21 (Philadelphia, PA, 1960), IV, iii, 16; IV, iv, 15 (pp. 1066-8, 1083-4).
18 Calvin: Theological Treatises, ed. J. K. S. Reid, Library of Christian Classics, 22 (Philadelphia, PA, 1954), pp. 59-60.
19 Whitakcr, E. C., Martin Bucer and The Book of Common Prayer, Alcuin Club Collections, 55 (Great Wakering, 1974), pp. 176–83 Google Scholar.
20 McMillan, W., The Worship of the Scottish Reformed Church, 1550-1638 (London, 1931), p. 342 Google Scholar.
21 Ibid., pp. 343-4. ‘How the personis that bear ccclcsiasticall functionis arc admittit to thair offices’: The Seeond Book of Discipline, ed. Kirk, J. (Edinburgh, 1980), p. 180 Google Scholar.
22 Ibid., p. 72.
23 McMillan, Worship, pp. 351 -2.
24 The First and Seeond Prayer-Books of King Edward the Sixth, Everyman edn (London, 1910), pp. 301, 447.
25 Ibid, p. 311.
26 Ibid., p. 312.
27 Third Sermon upon Jonas, 5 March 1550, Early Writings of John Hooper, D. D., ed. Carr, S., PS (Cambridge, 1843), p. 479 Google Scholar.
28 Gloucester, Gloucester Diocesan Records, XVIII, fols 49-50.
29 Prayer-Books, p. 317.
30 Tanner, Decrees, 2, p. 663.
31 Dykmans, M., Le Pontifical romain, révisé au XVe siècle (Vatican City, 1985), pp. 156–7 Google Scholar.