Nicanor the Deacon

Third-named of the Seven, “men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom.” The Greek tradition carries him to Cyprus and gives him a martyr’s death there — on some accounts the same day-count as Stephen’s stoning, years apart. The archive records him as the sources do: an ordained servant of the first church’s daily bread, with a tradition where a biography would stand.

On whether the Seven were deacons the sources do not agree, and both readings are worth having. For the diaconate: Acts 6 never uses the noun διάκονος of them, but it does use the verb διακονεῖν and the noun διακονία of their work. The Council of Neocaesarea (c. 315) fixed deacons at seven to a city “according to the canon, even if the city be great,” and appealed to the Book of Acts for proof. Rome kept exactly seven — a letter of Cornelius preserved by Eusebius counts seven deacons there in the 250s beside forty-four priests — and did not raise the number until the eleventh century. The duties described in Acts 6 match those of the later diaconate closely.

Against it: Chrysostom, preaching on this very chapter, asked what office the Seven received and answered that “neither Deacons nor Presbyters is their designation: but it was for this particular purpose that they were ordained” (Homily XIV on Acts). The Quinisext Council of 692 quoted that passage and ruled that the Seven ministered not at the Mysteries but in the serving of tables; the Byzantine canonists Zonaras and Balsamon both read that canon as correcting Neocaesarea rather than interpreting it. The seven-to-a-city rule was in any case not kept everywhere — the acts of Chalcedon record thirty-eight deacons at Edessa — which is part of why the question reached a council at all.

The traditional title is kept here, and the evidence is set out so the reader can weigh it.