Dictionary

minor order en · NOUN

Meanings

1. (qualifier:Orthodoxy) One of the orders of the Catholic or Orthodox Church lower than the major orders (diaconate and priesthood); especially (Catholicism, historical) the order of porter, lector, exorcist, or acolyte.
   • In various churches some little substance was left in common for the lesser clerics in minor orders who, unlike the others, could not have their distinct shares as they were not yet pledged to a church. But so small were the shares of these younger ones that they were not enough to maintain as many clerics as were needed successively to fill and supply the sacred orders. So (in order to maintain at least a semblance of the ancient rule about progressing via all the minor orders in order to be promoted to the sacred ones) all the minor orders had to be conferred at the same time. 18. The functions of the minor orders were thus abolished, and no trace of them remains except in the case of altar-boys of cathedral and collegiate churches. 1994, Charles Loyseau, A Treatise of Orders and Plain Dignities, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 52:
   • Reader, cantor, and subdeacon are the most common minor orders in the contemporary Orthodox Church, though there are other minor orders from Orthodoxy’s past that might inform Orthodoxy’s future. 2023, Carrie Frederick Frost, Church of Our Granddaughters, Wipf and Stock Publishers, →ISBN:
   • The third minor order is that of reader. His functions are to read or to sing the lessons which are said in the offices of the Church, except the epistle of the Mass, and to teach Christian doctrine to the children. 1898, abbé Luche, The Catechism of Rodez Explained in Form of Sermons, page 501:
   • After the oath and minor orders, he was ordained subdeacon June 14, 1710, and deacon and priest […] 1875, Henry Foley, Records of the English province of the Society of Jesus ... in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, page 456:
   • cleric in minor orders
   • The first Minor Order is the Ostiariate or the Order of Ostiary. The duty of this order is to take care of the House of God, to summon the faithful at the hours for the holy offices and to see […] 1912, Louis Bacuez, Minor Orders:
2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see minor, order.

Forms

Translations (1)

fr ordre mineur (order of the Catholic Church)