Catholic Encyclopedia: Doctors of the Church

(Lat. <Doctores Ecclesiae>) -- Certain ecclesiastical writers have received this title on
account of the great advantage the whole Church has  derived from their doctrine.  In
the Western church four eminent Fathers of the Church attained this honour in the
early Middle Ages: St. Gregory the Great, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Jerome.
The "four Doctors" became a commonplace among the Scholastics, and a decree of
Boniface VIII  (1298) ordering their feasts to be kept as doubles in the whole Church is
contained in his sixth book of

In the Eastern Church three Doctors were pre-eminent: Chrysostom, Basil, and
Gregory Nazianzen.  The feasts of these three saints were made obligatory throughout
the Eastern Empire by Leo VI, the Wise, the  deposer of Photius. A common feast was
later instituted in their honour on 30 January, called "the feast of the  three Hierarchs".
In the Menaea for that day it is related that the three Doctors appeared in a dream to
John, Bishop of Euchaitae, and commanded him to institute a festival in their honour,
in order to put a stop to  the rivalries of their votaries and panegyrists. This was under
Alexius Comnenus (1081-1118; see"Acta SS.",  14 June, under St. Basil, c. xxxviii). But
sermons for the feast are attributed in MSS. to Cosmas Vestitor, who  flourished in the
tenth century. The three are as common in Eastern art as the four are in Western.
Durandus (i,  3) remarks that Doctors should be represented with books in their hands.
In the West analogy led to the  veneration of four Eastern Doctors,     St. Athanasius
being very properly added to the three hierarchs.

To these great names others have subsequently been added. The requisite conditions
are enumerated  as three: <eminens doctrina, insignis vitae sanctitas, Ecclesiae
declaratio> (i.e. eminent learning, a high degree of  sanctity, and proclamation by the
Church). Benedict XIV explains the third as a declaration by the supreme  pontiff or by
a general council. But though general councils have acclaimed the writings of certain
Doctors, no  council has actually conferred the title of Doctor of the Church. In practice
the procedure consists in extending  to the universal church the use of the office and
mass of a saint in which the title of doctor is applied to him.  The decree is issued by
the Congregation of Sacred Rites and approved by the pope, after a careful
examination, if necessary, of the saint's writings. It is not in any way an ex cathedra
decision, nor does it even  amount to a declaration that no error is to be found in the
teaching of the Doctor. It is, indeed, well known  that the very greatest of them are not
wholly immune from error. No martyr has ever been included in the list,  since the
Office and the Mass are for Confessors. Hence, as Benedict XIV points out, St. Ignatius,
St.  Irenaeus, and St. Cyprian are not called Doctors of the Church.

The proper Mass of Doctors has the Introit "In medio", borrowed from that of the
<Theologus> par excellence,  St. John the Evangelist, together with special prayers and
Gospel. The Credo is said. The principal peculiarity  of the Office is the antiphon to the
Magnificat at both Vespers, "O DOCTOR OPTIME", and it is rather by  this antiphon
than by the special mass that a saint is perceived to be a doctor (S.R.C., 7 Sept., 1754). In
fact,  St. John Damascene has a Mass of his own, while Athanasius, Basil, Leo, and Cyril
of Jerusalem have not the  Gospel of Doctors, and several have not the collect.

The feasts of the four Latin Doctors were not added to until the sixteenth century, when
St. Thomas Aquinas  was declared a Doctor by the Dominican St. Pius V in his new
edition of the Breviary (1568), in which the  feasts of the four Greek Doctors were also
raised to the rank of doubles. The Franciscan Sixtus V (1588)  added  St. Bonaventure
St. Anselm was added by Clement XI (1720), St. Isidore by Innocent XIII (1722), St.
Peter Chrysologus by Benedict XIII (1729), St. Leo I (a well-deserved but belated
honour) by Benedict XIV (1754),         St. Peter Damian by Leo XII (1828), St. Bernard by
Pius VIII (1830).  Pius IX gave (1851) the honour to  St. Hilary and to two more modern
saints, Alphonsus Liguori (1871) and  Francis de Sales (1877).  Leo XIII promoted (1883)
the Easterns, Cyril of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, and  John Damascene, and last of
all  The Venerable Bede (1899).  The same pope, when, in 1882, he introduced the
simplification of double feasts, made an exception for  Doctors, whose feasts are always
to be transferred.

There are therefore now twenty-three Doctors of the Church, of whom seven are
Eastern  sixteen Western. Two are popes, two are cardinals, all but five are bishops.
They include a Dominican, a  Franciscan, a Redemptorist, and five Benedictines. For
some of these the Office had previously been granted to  certain places or orders--St.
Peter Damian to the Camaldolese, St. Isidore to Spain, St. Bede to England and  to all
Benedictines. St. Leander of Seville and St. Fulgentius are kept as Doctors in Spain, and
the former by Benedictines also, as he was in earlier times claimed as a monk. St.
Ildephonsus has the Introit "In medio" in the same order (for the same reason) and in
Spain without the rank of Doctor.

POHLE in <Kirchliches Handlexikon> (Munich, 1907). II, 384; FESSLER-JUNGMANN,
<Instit. Patrologiae>  (Innsbruck, 1890); BARDENHEWER, <Patrology>, tr. SHAHAN
(Freiburg im Br., St. Louis, 1908), 2-3. On  the early Latin Doctors see WEYMAN in
<Hist. Jahrbuch> (1894), XV, 96; and in <Rev. d'hist. et de litt.  religieuses> (1898) III,
562; for the Greek Doctors see NILLES in <Zeitschrift f. kath. Theologie> (1894), XVIII,
742. See also BOUVY, <Les Peres de l'Eglise in Rev. Augustinienne> (1904) 461-86, and
PESCH <Praelect. Dogmat.> (Freiburg, 1903), 346 sqq.

JOHN CHAPMAN

Transcribed by Gerard Haffner


Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).

This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an effort aimed at placing the
entire Catholic Encyclopedia on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to contribute to this
worthwhile project, you can contact him by e-mail at ([email protected]). For
more information please download the file cathen.txt/.zip.

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