There is somewhat the same principle of some people adding salt to holy water. It was so it wouldn’t freeze in winter… It still didn’t stop me from almost breaking my fingers at a holy water font at a shrine in Bavaria in early March.
Actually, there were. They were called porters, and they not only kept out stray dogs, but anyone who was not a baptized Christian. The role developed into a grade of minor cleric that existed right up to 1983.
Porters started out as, basically, security guards. And yes, they stood by the doors whenever they were open. They later took on a liturgical role.
You even retain the order to them to escort the catechumens out before the Liturgy of the Faithful.
:crazy_face:All the Divine Liturgies I’ve been to have had a Deacon serving. I’ve never seen one without a Deacon, and wonder how the priests juggles the roles. I’ll have to look into it.
I remember commenting to myself the same when I first heard it!
Yes, Constantinople did have these things, but in Rome it was a very different story during the 5th century. 410 began the decline of the Western Empire, with it’s full collapse in 476. In 410 Rome was sacked by the Visigoths. The initial assaults upon the city heavily damaged the aqueduct system and the city quickly fell. From this point forward, Rome received almost no Imperial support from this point onward as it was more concerned with protecting Ravenna. Instead, the upkeep of the city was shouldered by the Pope’s personal funds. While the Popes tried to keep the city running, they did not have the infrastructure to do so. The damaged aqueducts now led to mass amounts of dysentery and other waterborne illnesses. The population of the city plummeted and large sections were simply abandoned. Rome was sacked again in 455 and the entire Western Empire fell in 476 at which time Odoacer became king of Italy. While he did have a palace on the Palatine hill, he was an Arian and his Capital was at Ravenna, not Rome, thus he did not contribute many resources to the Pope for the restoration of Rome.
Before the sack in 410 (which was rather mild as far as sacks go), Rome still had a population of about 800,000. In the decades falling the sack, it dropped to half a million, still pretty sizable. Under Odacer and Theoderic, life in Rome was quite good. Far from a “fall”, the city actually rebounded a bit. The “ghost town” phase didn’t set in until after the sack of Totila in 546 and the ultimate fall of the city three years later. The breaking of the aqueducts you referred to occurred during this siege.
We have one priest for a whole county and we don´t have an deacon for our church
It works really good, but at feast days we sometimes have a deacon from outside and it´s amazing to see how more understandable the parts of liturgy become when there are enough people to perform.
That’s exactly what I mean. It must be quite confusing for the priest to cover all the roles on his own.
I once found one of the funniest historical sources I ever worked with at university. It´s a rule for husbands who want to oficially get rid of their wife´s beaus. They were told to make a petition (three times written! long live bureaucracy!
) and should include in which situation the man was flirting with the wife, and there were the following options : market, stadion, …and church.One of the funnier things was the Blues and Greens, the Bloods and Crips of their day. One of the main things they fought over was… theology.
