HIERARCHY (Gr. hieros, sacred, and archo, to govern), the name used by theological writers to designate the whole sacred governing and ministering body in the church, distributed according to its several gradations. The word, in its strict acceptation, is, of course, only applicable to the Roman Catholic church, and to those Christian com munities which retain the prelatical form of church government, or at least the distinc tions of ecclesiastical order and gradation. In considering the hierarchy of the Catholic church, it is necessary to bear in mind the well-known distinction of order and ofjuriv diction. I. Considered tinder the head of order, the hierarchy embraces all the VarIOUS orders or classes of sacred ministers to whom has been assigned the duty of directing the public worship, administering the sacraments, and discharging the various other offices connected with the preaching of the gospel; and these are of two kinds—the orders directly instituted by divine authority, and those established by ecclesiastical ordinance. Theologians commonly distinguish a hierarchy of divine right, and a11-ier amity of ecclesiastical right. (1) The first includes time three ranks of bishops, priests. and deacons. The bishops are believed, as successors of the apostles, to have inherited the integrity of the Christian priesthood. The order of episcopate, however, is not believed to be a distinct order from that of priesthood, but only a fuller and entirely unrestricted form of that order. In all that regards what Catholics believe to be the Christian sacrifice of the eucharist, they hold that the priest possesses the same powers of order with the bishop; but he cannot confer the sacrament of orders, nor can he validly exercise the power of absolving in the sacrament of penance without the appro bation of the bishop. The office of deacons is to serve as helpmates of priests and bishops, especially in the administration of the eucharist and baptism, and in the relief of the material as well as the spiritual necessities of the faithful (Acts vi. I, and foil.).
(2) To the three ranks thus primitively instituted, several others have been added by ecclesiastical ordinance. See 0 RDERS, Mixon.—II. The hierarchy of juradi rtion. directly regards, and is founded upon; the government of the church,, and it comprises not only all the successive degrees of ecclesiastical authority derived from the greater or loss local extension of the several spheres within which such governing authority is limited— beginning with the pope as primate of the universal church, and extending to the patri archs as ruling their several patriarchates, the primates in the several kingdoms as national churches, and the metropolitans or archbishops within their respective p•o vinces—but also, although less properly, the ecclesiastical grades which. although ecclesi astical jurisdiction may be attached to them, arc more directly honorary in their nature, as those of the cardinalate, the archipresbyterate, and the archidiaconate.
In the Anglican church, with the office of the episcopate, the theory of a hierarchical gradation of rank and of authority has beets retained. The Anglican hierarchy com prises bishops, priests, and deacons. In the Scottish church it is of course unknown, as it is in the greater number of the foreign Protestant churches; while those Lutheran communities which have retained or have revived the title of bishop concede little to the office which can be considered as imparting to the distinction of grades in the min istry which it imports a strict hierarchical character. The Lutheran bishop has little beyond his brother-ministers, except the right to bear certain insignia, and the first place in the consistories.
In the well-known work, The Celestial Hierarchy, falsely ascribed to Dionysins the Areopagite, the hierarchy includes Christ as its head, and the various orders of angels as his ministering spirits.