ORDERS, the petty, or minor, are four; viz. those of doorkeeper, exorcist, reader, and acolyth.

Those in petty orders may marry without any dispensation: in effect, the petty orders are looked on as little other than formalities, and as degrees necessary to arrive at the higher orders. Yet the council of Trent is very serious about them; enjoins that none be admitted into them without understanding Latin; and recommends it to the bishops, to observe the intervals of conferring them, that the persons may have a sufficient time to exercise the function of each order; but it leaves the bishops a power of dispensing with those rules; so that the four orders are usually conferred the same day, and only make the first part of the ceremony of ordination.

The Greeks disavow these petty orders, and pass immediately to the subdeaconate; and the reformed to the deaconate.

Their first rise Fleury dates in the time of the emperor Justinian. There is no call nor benefice required for the four petty orders; and even a bastard may enjoy them without any dispensation; nor does a second marriage disqualify.