The term cardinalis may mean principalis, like the leading or principal priest heading the clergy of a church or titulo; and also it may signify a clergyman who was attached to a church other than the one for which he was ordained, mostly for liturgical functions. From the end of the fifth century until the second half of the eleventh century the term cardinalis was used to qualify presbyters permanently attached to the Roman tituli (or parishes), which were also often called tituli cardinales. When those presbyters subscribed the acts of the Roman council, they indicated the title in which they were the head presbyter or cardinalis.

Pope Stephen III (IV) ( 769-772) decreed that the neighboring bishops should represent the pontiffs weekly at episcopal functions in the patriarchal Lateran basilica and should aid them with their counsel. They had been assisting the bishop of Rome, as the volume of ecclesiastical and temporal business increased greatly, for a long time. By that time, their service was already an ancient custom. These bishops received the name of episcopi cardinales. From the beginnings of the Church in Rome there were seven deacons with the duty of assisting the pope in liturgical functions and to helping in the administration of the material possessions of the Church. In the third century each deacon was assigned two of the fourteen regions in which the city of Rome was divided. Later, the number of deacons was increased and each region was assigned to one deacon, with subdeacons and notaries.

Toward the end of the 7th century and the beginning of the 8th, a new institution appeared in Rome, originally from the East: the monastery deaconries, each one having a church. Each one had a deacon leading it but these deacons did not have anything to do with the deacons of the Roman Church. Towards the end of the 9th century, due to topographical changes in the city of Rome and the decline of the monastery deaconries, they all but disappeared. But not so the churches belonging to those deaconries. The cardinal deacons as we know them today did not begin to exist until the last quarter of the 11th century around the pontificates of Popes Urban II and Paschal II when they started to take part in papal functions with the banners of their deaconries and to subscribe the acts of the synods and council with the name of their deaconries like the priests cardinalis had been doing for centuries. Around 1051, the term cardinalis began to be used as a noun.

The presbyters, bishops and deacons cardinalis (an adjective), listed in this site from the beginning until the time in which the term began to be used as a noun, thus describing an office, could be considered as pre-cardinals. A substantial bibliography has been consulted concerning the origin and development of the cardinalate during this epoch.

©1998-2018 Salvador Miranda.