Note 206 — Chapter I

It does not appear that deacons as such were specially concerned with the burial of the dead. The present passage, indeed, implies the contrary. Malachy was made deacon against his will; his care for the dead poor is mentioned as a work of piety, voluntarily superadded to the duties of his office. His sister (see below) would have been unlikely to ask him to abandon a practice which he could not decline. But there was ancient precedent for a deacon engaging in such work, of which Malachy may have been aware. At Alexandria throughout the persecution of Valerian, one of the deacons, Eusebius by name, not without danger to himself, prepared for burial the bodies of "the perfect and blessed martyrs" (Eus., H.E. vii. 11. 24).