priests must behave themselves according as the apostles have ordained; wherefore the bishop must be in nothing blameworthy, married to one wife," etc.[1] Gregory of Nazianzus's father was the bishop of that town. Of course the case of monks who became bishops was different.
While a college training was not considered to be essential as a preparation for the ministry, the more famous bishops were highly educated men. Literary culture was acquired at Cæsarea, Alexandria, Constantinople, and above all at Athens; theological training was taken after this in one of the great schools of theology, at Alexandria, Antioch, or Edessa. The canonical age for the priesthood or a bishopric was thirty. One of the Sardican canons (a.d. 346, 347) ordered that if a rich man or a lawyer were proposed as bishop he should not be appointed till he had ascended by degrees through the offices of reader, deacon, and priest, and that he should spend a considerable time in each grade of the ministry. But this rule of caution was frequently set aside, and candidates were hurried through the inferior orders when their appointment was urgent. The bishops were supposed to be elected by their congregations; but more often they were designated by the metropolitans of their provinces, with the co-operation of the neighbouring bishops. While the priesthood of the clergy was now universally recognised, their social separation from the laity was a slow and gradual process. At first they wore no distinctive vestments. By the beginning of the fifth century some among them began to don clothing of a more sober hue than was fashionable at the time. So they appeared as the Puritans or Quakers among the gay society people of their day. Jerome condemned this distinction of dress. The sixth century saw the invention of the tonsure. The clergy were now forbidden to wear the long hair of the dandies of their day. The unmarried clergy lived together under the eye of their bishop and slept in a common dormitory.
The bishop presides over his own church and also the
- ↑ Canons of Athanasius, vi.
