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4^4
MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
canon law, acting alongside of the bishop as an alternative as
well as a substitute. Later, there was a tendency to combine the
offices ofVicar General and Official in a single holder who was
usually the Chancellor; this last, originally holding a secretarial
post, had developed in dignity without a corresponding in/
crease in duties of importance. There were, however, certain
actions, such as ordinations, consecrations, and blessings,
which required episcopal orders and which in consequence
neither ofthe bishop's customary delegates could perform. For
these suffragan bishops were employed, who were neither (as
with some Anglican dignitaries holding the title) charged with
the administration of a district nor (as in modern Roman
Catholic practice) dignified or office/holding members of the
diocesan clergy, but temporary assistants, usually Dominican,
Franciscan, or Carmelite friars, and later also Austin canons,
who had been furnished by the pope with titular or inaccess/
ible Irish sees. They were usually maintained by the gift of a
benefice in the diocese, and took no part in its conduct.
While the bishop's duties as Ordinary and consecrator were
thus performed or shared by a group of delegates, other tasks
were permanently executed by subordinates. The chiefofthese
was the archdeacon. This functionary was of ancient institu/
tion as the bishop's principal assistant in a primitive urban
diocese, and he existed before the Conquest at Canterbury, if
nowhere else. Originally a single official in a see/city, the arch/
deacon remained sole in small dioceses; in larger sees there
might be as many as five (York) or eight (Lincoln). The arch/
deacon's powers were merely visitatorial and penal; he was a
standing example ofthe medieval axiom that a court is a pecu/
niary asset . (magnum emolumentumjustitia) His two functions were
those of parochial visitation and the imposition of fines for
moral and ecclesiastical offences, and it soon became customary
for him to receive a fee instead of visiting and to collect fines
out of court by deputy, he thus became a target for satirists and
the most cordially disliked official of the diocese. Beneath the
archdeacon were the rural deans, who are first seen in being in
the early twelfth century. They were members ofthe clergy who