“The word hierarchy was first used in the sixth century CE, when it referred to levels of angelic choruses, but it soon came to be applied to the governance of the Church, to describe its strictly ordered levels of authority and subordination. Gradually, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuri…”— Caroline Levine, amazon.com
“The highest hierarchy is transcendence; the second is ethics; and the third is execution.”— Thomas Aquinas, ccel.org