Hierarchia

This question is rather strangely worded, and not very helpfully IMHO. Unless you listened very carefully, you'd probably think it was asking who originally ruled in a hierarchy. This is what happened in our quiz; the other team answered "priests".

Wrong! The question is actually asking who were ranked by the priests that formed the original hierarchia.

(I should point out that our team didn't have a clue either way.)

Wikipedia has a page entitled Christian angelology, in which it talks about the "angelic hierarchy". Dictionary.com defines 'hierarchy' as (among other things) "an organized body of ecclesiastical officials in successive ranks or orders".

If the question had asked "Who were ranked by the priests that formed the original hierarchy?", this would probably avoid any misunderstandings; but it just sounds weird.

Dictionary.com actually has seven definitions for 'hierarchy', the sixth of which is "one of the three divisions of the angels, each made up of three orders, conceived as constituting a graded body."

So the original hierarchy ranked the angels into three hierarchies of their own.

I may be wrong, but something tells me the question setter got a bit confused.