According to the first canon of the Council of Nicæa (see Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, I. p. 376), persons who made themselves eunuchs were not to be allowed to become clergymen, nor to remain clergymen if already such. But this prohibition was not to apply to persons who were made eunuchs by physicians or by their persecutors; and the latter part of the canon confines the prohibition expressly to those who have purposely performed the act upon themselves, and hence nothing would have stood in the way of the advancement of one born a eunuch as Dorotheus was, even had he lived after the Council of Nicæa, and still less previous to that time. Closs (followed by Heinichen) is therefore hardly correct in regarding the fact that Dorotheus held office as an exception to the established order of things.