Subdeacon,[1] Reader, Exorcist, and Doorkeeper. Of course all priests have received these orders too. The secular clergy wear a cassock, cloak, and kalemaukion (priests have no veil over it). They have no tonsure, but wear long hair and a beard. To have their hair cut and be shaven is the mark of disgrace when they are suspended.
3. The Monks.
Monasticism is a very important feature of the Orthodox Church. In general it may be said that it has gone through none of the development that has gradually modified our idea of the religious life, and that it still represents the system that St. Basil knew in the East and St. Benedict found already existing in the West. Indeed, an Orthodox monastery is the most perfect relic of the 4th century left in the world.[2] We have different orders with various titles, rules, and objects: there are teaching orders, nursing orders, orders for doing the work of the secular clergy, orders for preaching to the poor, orders for saving the rich. And with us a religious is either a monk, or a friar, or a canon regular, &c.; they have various letters after their names, honour different holy founders, and obey different rules. The Orthodox monk understands nothing of all this. He belongs to no special order, has no letters after his name, and he would indignantly declare that the only founder of his order is our Lord himself. If one were to ask him what he does—whether he teaches, nurses, preaches, or hears confessions—he would explain that these things are done by people in the world; he is a monk. They still have the ideal of the religious life as meaning only one thing, to flee the world. It is that of the fathers of the desert. One would describe them as being all contemplative, except that they never contemplate. That, too, is a Latin innovation. They say enormous quantities of vocal prayers, sing endless
- ↑ The Subdiaconate has always been a minor order in the East.
- ↑ Harnack: Das Monchtum, Seine Ideale u. Seine Geschichte (Giessen, 1880, also printed in his Reden u. Aufsätze, Giessen, 1904, i. pp. 81–139) is a very] illuminating study of the gradual development of the ideal of a religious order in the West.
