DOTTORI DELLA CHIESA - Enciclopedia Cattolica, Vol. IV, p. 1101

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH. —

I. THEOLOGY

They are illustrious men of the Catholic Church who, on account of their holiness, orthodoxy in the faith, and above all their eminent learning in sacred matters—especially as attested by their writings—have been adorned with this title by a special decree of the Church.

Just as with the “Fathers of the Church,” so too for the Doctors of the Church, holiness, orthodoxy, learning, and ecclesiastical approval are required. The difference lies in the following: 1) for the Fathers of the Church, antiquity is necessary; they must belong to the early centuries of the Church, so much so that it may be said that they gave it birth, whereas this is not required for the Doctors; 2) for the Fathers, explicit ecclesiastical approval is not necessary; practical consensus suffices, whereas for the Doctors a formal proclamation by decree of a council or of the Supreme Pontiff is required; 3) for the Fathers, exceptional learning is not necessary, whereas for the Doctors learning must be their special characteristic. The Fathers are therefore characterized by “antiquity,” while the Doctors are characterized by “learning.” This does not, however, prevent the same person from possessing both qualities and thus being both a Father and a Doctor of the Church. Indeed, this is the case for several figures, among whom are the four greatest Latin Fathers of the Church: St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St. Gregory the Great, and the four greatest Greek Fathers of the Church: St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzen, and St. John Chrysostom; these are also regarded as the “great Doctors” of the Church.

These distinctions, so clear today, were not so in the past, for “doctor” means teacher, and in the early centuries of the Church those who possessed doctrine in an eminent degree and had the gift of teaching it with ease and fruitfulness were called doctors. St. Paul alludes to this when he says that Christ “gave some as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers” (Eph. 4:11; cf. 2 Cor. 12:28; Acts 13:1).

In time, the title of doctor became increasingly specific, but at first it was commonly attributed only to the Fathers of the Church, and precisely to those who stood out most for their learning.

Thus arose the double title of “Father and Doctor of the Church,” whose significance also included the characteristic of antiquity. The first to provide a list in this sense of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church commonly recognized was the Venerable Bede in the eighth century (Bede, Epist. resp. ad Accam Ep., PL 92, 304). He lists the names of St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Gregory the Great. As can be seen, the name of a martyr does not appear here, nor will it appear subsequently, even if the martyr, such as St. Cyprian, is eminent in doctrine, because one who has given his life for Christ bears the title of “martyr,” which takes precedence over every other title.

In the sixteenth century, the exclusive note of antiquity was abandoned; that is, the Church began to proclaim Doctors even of more recent times. The first such proclamation, without this note of antiquity, was made by Pius V in 1567 for St. Thomas Aquinas (see below). From then on, other proclamations followed, up to that of St. Alphonsus Liguori (d. 1787), who, among the Doctors of the Church, is the one who lived closest to our own time.

Besides the Doctors recognized throughout the entire Church, there are others who are honored with this title in particular nations or religious Orders and who, in those places, also have the liturgical formulary of the Doctors, e.g., St. Leander of Seville for Spain, St. Prosper of Aquitaine for the Canons Regular of the Lateran.

The service rendered by the Doctors to the Church is well symbolized by the four statues that, in 1667, by order of Alexander VII, Bernini placed in the apse of St. Peter’s Basilica: they depict St. Athanasius and St. John Chrysostom of the Eastern Church, and St. Ambrose and St. Augustine of the Western Church, who support the Chair of St. Peter.

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BIBL.: Benedetto XIV, De Servorum Dei beatificatione et canonizatione, IV, pars 2a, cap. 11, n. 13; J. Didiot, La logique naturaliste subjective, Paris 1801, pp. 153 sqq.; J. B. Franzelin, De divina traditione et scriptura, Rome 1806, pp. 156-73; J. V. BAINVEL, VINCENT, De magisterio vivo et traditione, Paris 1905, pp. 72 sqq.

II. LITURGY

1. The liturgical prerogatives of the Doctors of the Church

The feasts of the Doctors of the Church have the rank of double feasts, must be celebrated by the entire Church, and have their own formulary for Mass: In medio Ecclesiae; Gospel: Vos estis sal terrae; and the Creed. In the Office, they follow that of confessors who are or are not popes, but they have some parts proper to themselves, especially the antiphon at Vespers: O doctor optime; a proper “Oremus”; the proper eighth responsory: In medio Ecclesiae; and proper lessons in the second and third nocturns.

The formulary In medio Ecclesiae is derived from the Introit of the Mass of St. John the Evangelist, the “theologian” among the Apostles and Evangelists. As for the antiphon O doctor optime, it is not known when it was first introduced, but it is certain that it was already in use in the thirteenth century. According to Gavanti, the Creed in the Mass was prescribed by Gregory XI and Urban VI, though he does not cite any source (B. Gavanti-C. M. Merati, Thesaurus sacri rituum, I, Venice 1762, pp. 62 sqq.). The rank of double feast was introduced by Boniface VIII with the letter Gloriosus Deus (Anagni, 24 Sept. 1294) addressed to the Archbishop of Reims and his suffragans, later incorporated into his Decretals (I. III, tit. XXIII, dated Rome 1298); but to see in this decree of Boniface VIII, as is often done, the formal institution of the Doctors of the Church is not accurate. He granted to the four great luminaries of the Church, already named and venerated since the eighth century, a liturgical prerogative that had become opportune, since the rank of double feast had been assigned to other saints of lesser importance for the universal Church. Moreover, Boniface VIII’s decretal did not come into force everywhere; even in the sixteenth century, liturgical books are found in which the four Doctors have the rank of semidouble. Only with the liturgical reform of St. Pius V (Breviary, 1568; Missal, 1570) was uniformity established throughout the Church. He extended the liturgical honors due to the four Latin Doctors of the Church equally to those of the Greek Church: St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Athanasius.

2. The two great medieval Doctors: St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure. — The Church would never have conceived the idea of conferring the title of Doctor of the Church on anyone other than the four most renowned great theologians. Now, the immense flowering of medieval theology produced a new type of theologian, the “master” or “doctor theologian.” Some, not always the greatest, soon acquired characteristic nicknames, sometimes even in their lifetime (Doctor Subtilis, Doctor Solemnis, Doctor Profundus, etc.). Among the “masters” and “doctors,” one soon surpassed all the others: the “Doctor Communis,” Thomas Aquinas.

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