In the early Christian church and Latin ecclesiastical usage, a deacon; a person ordained to a sacred office of service, especially to aid in worship and charitable work.
From Latin 'diaconus', derived directly from Greek 'diakonos' (servant, minister). The term was adopted wholesale into ecclesiastical Latin and remains the formal Latin name for the deaconate.
Diaconus is the original Latin word that gave English 'deacon,' and tracing it back to Greek 'diakonos' (servant) shows that the church literally institutionalized servanthood as a permanent ordained role—a radical idea in a world of rigid class hierarchies.
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