RIORDINATION. – A modern term denoting the practice, prevalent in certain periods and only in certain circles, of repeating an Ordination deemed invalid because it had been performed by heretical, schismatic, deposed, and excommunicated ministers.
This practice is connected with the theory, Donatism (v.), that Baptism, Confirmation, and Orders conferred by unworthy ministers were invalid (v. SACRAMENTS). Although St. Augustine (v.) had demonstrated the theoretical and practical inconsistency of Donatism, clearly bringing to light the doctrine of the objective efficacy of the Sacraments (opus operatum) and the indelibility of the character (v.) in the three Sacraments mentioned, nevertheless, during centuries of particular theological and moral decadence, the error and the practical consequence of r. already in use among the Donatists surfaced here and there.
In the East, as early as can. 68 of the Apostles (4th century), r. was recognized as necessary in the case of bishops, priests, or deacons ordained by heretical ministers. Patriarch John the Scholastic (565–77) attempted to impose r. on the Monophysites. In the West, setting aside the error of St. Cyprian (v.) and Firmilian of Caesarea in Cappadocia, it should be recalled that the Councils of Orléans (511) and Saragossa (592) had already prescribed that Arian clerics returning to the Church be reordained. Around 669 Theodore of Canterbury reordained Ceadda, former bishop of York; the Roman Council of 769 prescribed the r. of clerics ordained by Pope Constantine; the Council of Soissons (853) declared invalid the Ordinations performed by Ebbone during his governance of the Church of Reims; in 881 John VIII approved the r. of Joseph of Vercelli performed by Anspert; the Ordinations of Pope Formosus were deemed invalid by Sergius III (904–11) and partly repeated; the Roman Council of 964, presided over by John XII, rejected as null the Ordinations of Leo VIII. During the troubled period of the haeresis simoniaca (11th century), Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida vigorously maintained the invalidity of Ordinations performed by simoniacal ministers, whereas St. Peter Damian (v.) defended the true doctrine; during the struggle over investitures, the Roman curia oscillated between Humbert’s theory (supported by Cardinal Deusdedit) and Damian’s doctrine (defended by Cardinal Atto and Anselm of Lucca). The cardinal legate Amatus repeatedly followed the opinion of Cardinal Humbert; Bonizo of Sutri (v.) attests that in northern Italy, around 1088–90, r. was practiced; in 1091 the deacon Poppone, previously ordained by the schismatic Engelbert, was reordained; in 1088 the deacon Dalbert, previously ordained by the schismatic Venzilone of Mainz, was reordained by Urban II. This practice became an accepted theory in the School of Bologna, through the work of Rolando Bandinelli (later Alexander III) Rufinus (v.), and resurfaced during the Western Schism (14th–15th centuries).
The reasons advanced by St. Cyprian and the Donatists in defense of their practice—the Holy Spirit cannot be conferred by one who does not possess him, and unworthy ministers (heretics, schismatics, deposed persons, etc.), being outside the Church, do not possess Grace—already refuted by St. Augustine, returned in the Middle Ages and were combined with others which emerged during periods of particular anarchy and were applied with insufficient consideration: emphasis was placed above all on subordination to the Church (to the legitimately established hierarchy), and the principle was formulated that for Ordination not only potestas Ordinis was necessary, but also licentia Ordinis exequendi (thus, for example, by Hugh of Amiens, Rolando Bandinelli, and Rufinus), with too close a parallel drawn between the power to absolve and that to ordain; it was argued that just as a priest lacking jurisdiction absolves invalidly, so a deposed, excommunicated, schismatic, or heretical bishop (or other minister), being separated from the Church, does not possess the officium or the mandatum exequendi Ordinis, and his action is null. This doctrine, never definitively condemned, has also found proponents in recent times, who have presented it with many qualifications and nuances corresponding to the current progress of scholarship (cf. C. Baisi, Il ministro straordinario degli Ordini sacramentali, Rome 1935).
This conception, which might be described as marginal, even if adopted in practice by some pope, did not compromise papal infallibility, since no definitive judgment was ever intended in the concrete case; against it, however, the common doctrine was asserted, already enunciated in the 3rd century by Pope Stephen in the celebrated rescript (nihil innovetur nisi quod traditum est) by which he rejected the theory of St. Cyprian and of those who rebaptized, and subsequently sanctioned by the Council of Nicaea (325), developed and masterfully illustrated by St. Augustine, and transmitted through St. Gregory the Great to Rabanus Maurus (9th century), Eugenio Vulgario and Liutprand (10th century), Fulbert of Chartres, St. Peter Damian, and Bernold of Constance (11th century), Ognibene, Gandolfo of Bologna, and Huguccio of Pisa (12th century), until it triumphed with St. Raymond of Peñafort, Rolando of Cremona, Alexander of Hales, and above all St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., 3ᵃ, qq. 60–90 [his entire sacramental theology presupposes this doctrine] and Suppl., q. 38, a. 2). The Council of Trent defined the validity of Baptism conferred by heretics (sess. VII, de Baptismo, can. 4), but refrained from declaring valid Ordinations conferred by heretical ministers or by ministers in any way separated from the Church, not because doubt could exist on this point, but in order not to place the doctrine of certain Catholic authors in opposition to a defined truth of faith.