The Oratorian Jean Morin, in the seventeenth century, and Cardinal Hergenröther, in the nineteenth, designated as "reordinations" the history of all ordinations which were considered null for any other reason than defect of the prescribed form or intention and which were repeated.
If there were in fact reordinations corresponding to this definition they were unjustifiable, given the theological view that the sole causes of nullity of the Sacrament of Holy orders are defects of the prescribed form or intention.
Father Perrone has written: Ordinationes ab illegitimo ministro peractas illicitus esse, nemo umquam theologorum dubitavit: utrum vero præterea irritæ, inanes ac nullæ habendæ sint, implicatissima olim questio fuit, adeo ut Magister Sententiarum scribat: "Hanc quæstionem perplexam ac pæne insolubilem faciunt doctorum verba, quæ plurimum dissentire videntur" (I, iv, dist.
Nunc iam a pluribus sæculis sola viget S. Thomæ doctrina, cui suffragium accessit universæ ecclesiæ, ordinationes ab hæreticis, schismaticis ac simoniacis factas validas omnino esse habendasThat ordinations performed by an unlawful minister are illicit, no theologian ever doubted; but whether they are, moreover, to be regarded as null and void was of old a most intricate question–so much so that the Master of the Sentences writes: "This problem is rendered complex and almost insoluble by the statements of the doctors which show considerable discrepancy" (I, iv, dist.
In the second half of the fifth century, the Church of Constantinople repeated the confirmation and ordination conferred by the Arians, Ancient Macedonians, Novatians, Quartodecimans, and Apollinarists (Beveridge, "Synodicon", II, Oxford, 1672, Annotationes, 100).
In 881-82 Pope John VIII prescribed the reordination of Bishop Joseph of Vercelli, who had been ordained by the Archbishop of Milan, then under the ban of excommunication.
In the strife between the emperors of Germany and the popes of the eleventh and twelfth centuries the power of ordination of schismatic bishops was discussed and denied in various ways (cf.
In the history of reordinations the authority of the popes is much less concerned than in the doctrine regarding the relations of the civil and ecclesiastical powers, in which, nevertheless, as theologians maintain, papal infallibility is not involved (cf.