The Deacon And The Schoolmaster

Among the great pitchers in baseball history, Charles “Deacon” Phillippe and Samuel “The Schoolmaster” Leever are hardly household names. But during the first decade of the twentieth century, these two Pittsburgh Pirates were among the most celebrated pitchers in the majors. From 1900 through 1906, they posted a combined record of 261 victories against 131 losses for a win-loss percentage of .666. During the years Deacon and the Schoolmaster pitched together, the Pirates never finished out of the first division, won four National League pennants, and came in second four times. Without flamboyance or controversy to color their legacy, their fame faded quickly after their playing days. But they remain among the most important players in the history of the club.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.

In spite of the centrality of the threefold orders of bishop, priest and deacon to Anglicanism, deacons have been virtually invisible in the contemporary Church of England. 'Inferior Office?' is the first complete history of this neglected portion of theclergy, tracing the church's changing theology of the diaconate from the Ordinal of 1550 to the present day. Francis Young skilfully overturns the widely held belief that before the twentieth century, the diaconate was merely a brief and nominal period of probation for priests, revealing how it became an integral part of the Elizabethan defence of conformity and exploring the diverse range of ministries assumed by lifelong deacons in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Lifelong deacons often belonged to a marginalised 'lower class' of the clergy that has since been forgotten, an oversight of considerable importance to the wider social history of the clergy that is corrected in this volume. 'Inferior Office?' tells the story of persistent calls for the revival of a distinctive diaconate within the Victorian Church of England and situates the institution of deaconesses and later revival of the distinctive diaconate for women, as well as subsequent developments, within their wider historical context. Set against this backdrop, Young presents a balanced case both for and against the further development of a distinctive diaconate today, offering much to further discussion and debate amongst clergy of the Church of England and all those with an interest in the rich tapestry of its history.