Abstract

Disciplina Arcani : this term was first applied by Dallaeus and G. T. Meier to the practice of maintaining a studied reticence concerning the form and character of introduction into the Church, as if it were something analogous to the initiation into the mysteries of the heathen world. The practice is especially observed in the fourth and fifth centuries. Baptism and the Lord's Supper, with the baptismal formula and the Lord's Prayer, played an essential part in the introduction, as they represented the center of the supposed mysteries. A theological term used to express the old discipline of the primary Church. This forbade the disclosure of Christian sacraments to non-Christians. The notion that defines this phenomenon is relatively modern and does not seem to have been used before the controversies of the seventeenth century when both Protestants and Catholics published works on the subject of the Old Church.