§ 127. Deacons and Church-Servers in the Parishes

In older times, at every church, besides the presbyter there was also a deacon, and no church service, and especially not the liturgy, could be celebrated without a deacon. In the course of time this old norm began to be lost, chiefly because the poorer church communities were unable to cover the necessary expense of maintaining a deacon, and church services came to be performed by the priests alone, without a deacon. Today deacons exist as a rule only in those parishes of the several territorial churches where this is fixed by the organic statute, or where the church communities are in a position to provide what is needed for the deacon’s support.

Besides the deacon, there existed in older times at every church several further appointed church-servers: the lector, the psalt, the exorcist, and the doorkeeper, and in some places also the deaconess. The lector (ἀναγνώστης, lector) read in church the appointed psalms, and also occupied himself with the instruction of the young, teaching them in general to read and training them in particular in the reading of the prayers in the horologion and the psalter.[1] The psalt (ψάλτης, ἱεροψάλτης, psalta, psalmista) directed the church singing at divine service, and it was he who, from the ambo, began the sacred songs (τὰ θεῖα ψαλτωδήματα), while the people sang the same songs after him.[2] The exorcist (ἐξορκιστής, ἐφορκιστής) served at the baptism of catechumens—that is, he prepared the catechumens for a fixed time before baptism, and at the baptism itself assisted those being baptized at the moment of renunciation.[3] The doorkeeper (θυρωρός, ostiarius, janitor) guarded the church doors and saw to it that unbelievers did not enter the church, and that the catechumens went out of the church when the “liturgy of the faithful” began.[4] The deaconess (ἡ διάκονος) had, at the baptism of female catechumens, the same duty that the exorcist had at the baptism of the male catechumens.[5] All the persons named, except the deaconess, together with the parish priest, made up the clergy of the church in the community.

In the course of time, especially once infant baptism was introduced into the church, the clergy of the church community became simplified, coming to consist of: the parish priest, the deacon, and the psalt; and the office of the paramonar (παραμονάριος, mansionarius)[6] was newly introduced. By his office, as the typikon states, the paramonar is obliged “to bring the prosphora [bread], the wine, the water, the incense, and the fire into the altar area, to light and to extinguish the candles, to prepare the censer and the warm water and hand them to the priest, to announce to the faithful the beginning of the prayers; to clean the altar area thoroughly and often, and likewise to sweep the floor and cleanse the walls and the ceiling of dust and cobwebs.” This paramonar (who is also called the parecclesiarch and the candle-lighter) is today’s sexton [crkvenjak], who indeed performs the aforesaid duties in the church.

As a rule, even today, in well-ordered parishes there exists the “parish clergy” [причтъ церковный], which, besides the parish priest, is made up of: the deacon and the psalt; in poorer parishes: the parish priest and the psalt.[7] This last is appointed in parishes by choice of the church epitropy from among persons qualified for the office, and is confirmed in office by the eparchial bishop.[8] The paramonar or sexton is chosen by the same epitropy in agreement with the parish priest.[9]