CANON XVIII.

IT has come to the knowledge of the holy and great Synod that, in 

some districts and cities, the deacons administer the Eucharist to the 

presbyters, whereas neither canon nor custom permits that they who 

have no right to offer should give the Body of Christ to them that do 

offer. And this also has been made known, that certain deacons now 

touch the Eucharist even before the bishops. Let all such practices be 

utterly done away, and let the deacons remain within their own 

bounds, knowing that they are the ministers of the bishop and the 

inferiors of the presbyters. Let them receive the Eucharist according to 

their order, after the presbyters, and let either the bishop or the 

presbyter administer to them. Furthermore, let not the deacons sit 

among the presbyters, for that is contrary to canon and order. And if, 

after this decree, any one shall refuse to obey, let him be deposed from 

the diaconate.

ANCIENT EPITOME OF CANON XVIII.

Deacons must abide within their own bounds. They shall not 

administer the Eucharist to presbyters, nor touch it before them, nor sit 

among the presbyters. For all this is contrary to canon, and to decent 

order.

VAN ESPEN.

Four excesses of deacons this canon condemns, at least indirectly. The 

first was that they gave the holy Communion to presbyters. To 

understand more easily the meaning of the canon it must be 

remembered that the reference here is not to the presbyters who were 

sacrificing at the altar but to those who were offering together with the 

bishop who was sacrificing; by a rite not unlike that which to-day 

takes place, when the newly ordained presbyters or bishops celebrate 

mass with the ordaining bishop; and this rite in old times was of daily 

occurrence, for a full account of which see Morinus De SS. Ordinat. P. 

III. Exercit. viij. . . . The present canon does not take away from 

deacons the authority to distribute the Eucharist to laymen, or to the 

minor clergy, but only reproves their insolence and audacity in 

presuming to administer to presbyters who were concelebrating with 

the bishop or another presbyter.

The second abuse was that certain deacons touched the sacred gifts 

before the bishop. The vulgar version of Isidore reads for "touched" 

"received," a meaning which Balsamon and Zonaras also adopt, and 

unless the Greek word, which signifies "to touch," is contrary to this 

translation, it seems by no means to be alien to the context of the 

canon.

"Let them receive the Eucharist according to their order, after the 

presbyters, and let the bishop or the presbyter administer to them." In 

these words it is implied that some deacons had presumed to receive 

Holy Communion before the presbyters, and this is the third excess of 

the deacon which is condemned by the Synod.

And lastly, the fourth excess was that they took a place among the 

presbyters at the very time of the sacrifice, or "at the holy altar," as 

Balsamon observes.

From this canon we see that the Nicene, fathers entertained no doubt 

that the faithful in the holy Communion truly received "the body of 

Christ." Secondly, that that was "offered" in the church, which is the 

word by which sacrifice is designated in the New Testament, and 

therefore it was at that time a fixed tradition that there was a sacrifice 

in which the body of Christ was offered. Thirdly that not to all, nor 

even to deacons, but only to bishops and presbyters was given the 

power of offering. And lastly, that there was recognized a fixed 

hierarchy in the Church, made up of bishops and presbyters and 

deacons in subordination to these.

Of course even at that early date there was nothing new in this 

doctrine of the Eucharist. St. Ignatius more than a century and a half 

before, wrote as follows: "But mark ye those who hold strange doctrine 

touching the grace of Jesus Christ which came to us, how that they are 

contrary to the mind of God. They have no care for love, none for the 

widow, none for the orphan, none for the afflicted,  none for the 

prisoner, none for the hungry or thirsty. They abstain from 

eucharist(thanksgiving) and prayer, because they allow not that the 

Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which flesh suffered 

for our sins, and which the Father of his goodness raised up."()

In one point the learned scholiast just quoted has most seriously 

understated his case. He says that the wording of the canon shews 

"that the Nicene fathers entertained no doubt that the faithful in the 

holy Communion truly received 'the body of Christ.'" Now this 

statement is of course true because it is included in what the canon 

says, but the doctrinal statement which is necessarily contained in the 

canon is that "the body of Christ is given" by the minister to the 

faithful. This doctrine is believed by all Catholics and by Lutherans, 

but is denied by all other Protestants; those Calvinists who kept most 

nearly to the ordinary Catholic phraseology only admitting that "the 

sacrament of the Body of Christ" was given in the supper by the 

minister, while "the body of Christ," they taught, was present only in 

the soul of the worthy communicant(and in no way connected with the 

form of bread, which was but the divinely appointed sign and 

assurance of the heavenly gift), and therefore could not be "given" by 

the priest.()

This canon is found in the Corpus Juris Canonici, Decretum. Pars I. 

Dist. XCIII., c. xiv.