CHAPTER II.
DEACONESSES IN THE EARLY CHURCH.
To understand the position of the deaconess with respect to the modern Church we must know something of the relation in which she stood to the early Church. Concisely as may be we must recall the story of the intervening centuries to the present, that we may learn the true position of deaconesses in modern times.
We have very little knowledge of the early Church. During the first century and the first half of the second century continued persecution compelled the religious communities of the new faith to live in almost complete seclusion. For the same reason little has been left on record of those years, and it is impossible to form clear conceptions of Church history during the period. The first trace which we find of the existence of deaconesses after the times of the apostles comes to us from an entirely outside source—from the official records of the Roman government. Shortly after the close of the first century the Emperor Trajan sent the023/19 younger Pliny as prefect to Bithynia in Asia Minor. At the imperial command he began a persecution of the Christians, but interrupted it for a time to obtain further instructions from the emperor. His letter and the reply still exist. In the course of what he wrote Pliny says that he had sought to learn from two maids, who were called “ministræ” (“ex duabus ancillis, quæ ministræ dicebantur,” Book x, chap. xcvii), or helpers, the truth of what the Christians had said, and had even deemed it necessary to put them to torture, but could obtain evidence of nothing save unbounded superstition. Here is independent testimony of singular interest that deaconesses, followers of Phebe, were found in Christian communities of Asia Minor at the beginning of the second century, and that they kept the faith, when put to cruel martyrdom.
The clearest conceptions of the characteristics and duties of deaconesses of the early Church we obtain from the Apostolic Constitutions, a collection of ecclesiastical instructions that gradually grew up in the Eastern Church, and were gathered into one work in the fourth century. These instructions were of unequal antiquity, ranging from the earliest usages to the rules and practices last determined upon. Whether the Apostolic Constitutions have all the authority that some claim for them is a024/20 question not here to be decided. If not genuine, they must have been written at a very early time, and from that fact possess a historical value of their own. “They prove beyond a doubt that there was a time in the history of the Church when a clear idea was held by some writer of the office of the female deacon as essential to the discipline of the Church.”[1] From them we learn of three distinct types of women connected with the administration of the Church—deaconesses, widows, and virgins. Deaconesses and widows date from apostolic times, the Church virgins from a somewhat later period. The distinction between widows and deaconesses was not at first clearly maintained. By some Church fathers widows were called deaconesses, and deaconesses widows. It was only after the lapse of time that we find the classes clearly distinguished, and when that time is reached the deaconesses have become exalted in office, being regarded as belonging to the clergy,[2] while the widows have lost somewhat the honorable position first accorded to them. The deaconesses are active ministering agents, caring for the necessities of others; the widows have passed the period of active service,025/21 and having won the respect and protection of the Church are supported in old age from a fund set apart for that purpose. In the Apostolic Constitutions the order of deaconesses stands forth independently, its many official activities are mentioned, and the importance of its service emphasized.
By combining the different references we obtain a tolerably clear picture of the deaconess and her duties. She must be a “pure virgin,” or “a widow once married, faithful, and worthy” (Book vi, chap. xvii). Her special duties were as follows:
(a.) She was a door-keeper at the women’s entrance to the church. This was an ancient service, dating back to the oldest times.[3] Ignatius died a martyr’s death not long after the beginning of the second century, and in a letter which bears his name is written, “I greet the doorkeepers of the holy doors, the deaconesses who are in the Lord.” This guardianship was maintained not only in times of persecution, but as a matter of order and discipline in times of peace.
(b.) She showed women their places in the congregation, being especially bound to look after the poor and strangers, giving each due attention.
(c.) She instructed the female catechumens. She026/22 also visited the women’s apartments, where male deacons could not enter, carried messages to the bishops, and acted as a missionary. Teaching was an important part of the duties of the early deaconesses.
(d.) The deaconess had certain duties in connection with the baptism of women that were considered important and indispensable.
(e.) In times of persecution she visited those who were oppressed or in prison, and ministered to their bodily and spiritual needs. She seems to have been less endangered in performing these acts than were men. Lucian alludes to the service of these devoted women in prisons. She also cared for the sick and sorrowing, being especially “zealous to serve other women.”
(f.) On occasion she was a mediator when there was strife in families, or among friends. Both to deacons and deaconesses “pertain messages, journeys to foreign parts, ministrations, services.” The ever-to-be-remembered journey of Phebe to Rome, when a whole system of theology was committed to her keeping, was quite within the sphere of her duties. It has also been said that to them was given the safe-keeping of the holy books in periods of persecution. The enumeration of these principal duties implying so many lesser details helps us to understand that “deaconesses are needed for027/23 many purposes” (Book ii, chapter xv). The deaconess was ordained to her work, as is attested by a great number of authorities.[4] “It was because men felt still that the Holy Ghost alone could give power to do any work to God’s glory that they deemed themselves constrained to ask such power of him, in setting a woman to do Church service.”[5]
The following beautiful prayer of ordination, attributed to the apostle Bartholomew, bears within it certain proofs of the very early existence of the ceremony, as well as of the order of deaconesses:
“Eternal God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of man and women, who didst fill Miriam and Deborah and Hannah and Huldah with thy Spirit, and didst not disdain to suffer thine only-begotten Son to be born of a woman; who also in the tabernacle and temple didst appoint woman-keepers of thine holy gates, look down now upon this thine handmaid, who is designated to the office of deaconess, and cleanse her from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, that she may worthily execute the work intrusted to her to thine honor, and to the praise of thine Anointed, to whom, with thee028/24 and the Holy Ghost, be honor and adoration forever. Amen.”
The allusion to the creation of man and woman, to the women in the Old Testament who were called to special service, as well as to Mary, the mother of the Lord, while no reference is made to the women of the apostolic Church who were so highly commended, and held in veneration as worthy of all imitation, go to prove that the origin of this prayer was so near the time of the apostles as to be almost contemporary with them.
The office of the deaconess, as described by the Apostolic Constitutions, fitted into the needs of the Eastern Church and the requirements of Greek life. It was in the East that the diaconate of women originated, and here that it attained its greatest growth. In the West custom did not demand the careful separation of the sexes as in the East, and church relations were less bound by social usages; consequently we meet with fewer references to deaconesses in the works of the Latin fathers, and the diaconate of women is not so deeply rooted in the affections of the church communities as we have found it in the Greek Church.[6]
The fourth century was the blossoming period of029/25 woman’s diaconate, when it attained its highest importance. All the leading Greek fathers and Church authorities of the age make mention of it. The office is spoken of as worthy of all honor, filled by women of rank from noble families, and those of wealth and ability. It found its special advocate and protector in Chrysostom, “John of the Golden Mouth,” who was Bishop of Constantinople from 397 until 407 A.D. He seems to have had the ability, rare for that age, of understanding the value of the services of Christian women, and through his wise guidance and encouragement had over them almost unbounded influence. Forty-six deaconesses were under his direction—forty attached to the mother church at Constantinople, and six belonging to a small church in the suburbs. A number of these were closely identified with his history, either as relatives or friends, and through his writings their memory is preserved. Of these are Nicarete, of a noble family of Nicomedia. We are told she was of a modest, retiring nature, and would not take places of responsibility when urged to do so by Chrysostom. We note a strong tendency toward the later celibate life of the nuns when we read that she was extolled for “her perpetual virginity and holy life.” Sabiniana was the aunt of Chrysostom. To Amprucla the bishop030/26 wrote two letters still extant.[7] They are filled with words of consolation for the religious persecution she has undergone. In one of them he says: “Greatly did we sympathize with your manliness, your steadfast and adamantine understanding, your freedom of speech and boldness.” “Manliness of soul” seems to have held a high place in the bishop’s favorite qualities. In another place, writing to the same deaconess, he praises “your steadfast soul, true to God; yea, rather, your noble and most manly soul.”
Pentadia and Procla were closely associated with Olympias. In a letter to Pentadia, Chrysostom writes: “For I know your great and lofty soul, which can sail as with a fair wind through many tempests, and in the midst of the waves enjoy a white calm.”[8] Reading such words of appreciation, words that in other places approach dangerously near to adulation, we better understand the influence Chrysostom exercised over the women of his time, and their steadfast devotion to him. They had the conviction that all their efforts met with his sincere and profound appreciation and quick responsive acknowledgment.
Pre-eminent among the friends of the great bishop was Olympias, of whom Dean Howson said, “She is the queenly figure among the deaconesses of the primitive Church.” To understand her life we must recall the scenes by which she was surrounded and the age in which she lived.[9]
In the great capital of the Eastern Empire, where the luxuriance and magnificence of the Orient combined with the keen, quick intellectual life of the Greeks; in the circle of the imperial court, with its intrigues, its fashions, its favoritisms; at a time when outwardly much respect was paid to the forms of religious life, but when the great and vital dogmas of the Church were made the sport of witty sophistical disputations; when those who endeavored to lead an earnest Christian life met with nearly as much to oppose them as in periods of active persecution; such were her environments. They were little favorable to the strength of mind, the fixedness of purpose, the self-denial and Christian devotion that marked this noble deaconess. Born in 368 A.D. of a heathen family of rank, owing to her parents’ early death she was educated a Christian. In her seventeenth year she married Nebridius, the prefect of the city, but after a married life of twenty months he died, leaving her at eighteen032/28 years a widow, rich, beautiful, and free to decide her future. The Emperor Theodosius desired her to marry one of his kinsmen, but she refused, saying, “Had God designed me to lead a married life he would not have taken my husband; I will remain a widow,” and shortly after she was consecrated a deaconess by Bishop Nectarius. The emperor, angered at her refusal, took from her the use of her large fortune, and put it under the care of guardians until she should be thirty years old, whereupon she only thanked him for relieving her of the heavy responsibility of administering her estate, and begged him to add to his kindness by dividing it between the poor and the Church.
Shamed out of his anger, the emperor soon restored her rights, and when Chrysostom came to Constantinople her lavish and often unwise generosity was felt in every direction, being compared to “a stream which flows to the end of the world.” He reproved her unbounded liberality, and advised her to administer alms as a wise steward who must render an account. This counsel guided her into safer paths. Finally, when Chrysostom was driven forth to banishment, by his advice she remained in the city, and became a support for his followers and those who had been dependent upon him. She met contemptuous treatment and judicial persecutions,033/29 but continued her works of charity, and outlived the man whose mind and heart had so influenced hers by eleven years. Chrysostom wrote her many letters, of which seventeen are extant.[10] They plainly show the estimate he set upon the diaconate of women, and his endeavor to wisely cherish it. Unfortunately, they also show exaggeration of compliment and praise which detract from his words of sincere and honest admiration. Too often, also, he gives undue value to works of mercy, and exalts acts of ascetic self-denial.
The question of the age at which deaconesses could be received is a vexed one. The confusion of apprehension touching deaconesses and widows led to differing enactments at different times and places. The restriction of age, however, must now have lost its force, as we find Olympias a deaconess when not yet twenty years of age, and Makrina, the sister of Gregory of Nyssa, was ordained when a young girl. Deaconesses retained control of their property. In truth, a law of the State forbade them to enrich churches and institutions at the expense of those having just claims on them. Deaconesses also existed in the Church of Asia Minor. Ignatius mentions them as at Antioch in Syria. They were in Italy and Rome. The034/30 Church of St. Pudentiana, in the Eternal City, keeps alive the memory of two deaconesses whose house is said to have stood on this site; Praxedes and Pudentiana, the daughters of a Roman senator, who devoted themselves, with all they had, to the service of the Church. Deaconesses also penetrated to Ireland, Gaul, and Spain, lingering in the last named country many years after they had passed out of knowledge elsewhere.
We find very little about this order of Christian workers in the Western Church. There is a passage of Origen in a Latin translation which speaks of the ministry of women as both existing and necessary, but in the great Latin fathers, the contemporaries of Chrysostom, scarcely a mention occurs. From the last half of the fifth century the diaconate of women declined in importance.[11] It was deprived of its clerical character by the decrees passed by the Gallic councils of the fifth and sixth centuries. It was finally entirely abolished as a church order by the Synod of Orleans, 593 A.D., which forbade any woman henceforth to receive the benedictio diaconalis, which had been substituted for ordinatio diaconalis by a previous council (Synod of Orange, 441). The withdrawing of church sanctions made the deaconess cause a private one. But as such it035/31 existed for hundreds of years, often under the patronage and protection of those high in authority. About the year 600 A.D. the patriarch of Constantinople, godfather of the Emperor Mauritius, built for his sister, who was a deaconess, a church which for centuries was called the “Church of the Deaconesses.” It is still standing and, only slightly changed, is now used for a Turkish mosque.[12]
In the twelfth century there were still deaconesses at Constantinople. Balsamon, a distinguished professor of Church law, writing at the time, says that deaconesses were still elected in that city and took charge of conferences among women members, but in other places the order had passed completely away.
There was no historian of the diaconate of the early Church. We learn of it only from isolated and occasional references in works devoted to other subjects. Yet these references are sufficient to enable us to affirm that deaconesses were a factor in the life of the Church for from nine to twelve centuries, or two thirds of the Christian era.
The same influences led to its decay that affected the entire life of the Church during these centuries.036/32 The superior sanctity attached to the unmarried state, that brought about the celibacy of the priests, gradually changed the active beneficent existence of the old-time deaconesses into the cloistral life of nuns. Statutes were passed forbidding her to marry. Gradually grew up the dangerous superstition of the marriage of the individual soul with Christ, that made of the nun the Bride of Christ in an especial sense. It was this false conception that led the vow of the nun to be regarded as the vow of marriage, and to be guarded from infringement in the same way as the human marriage tie, and like it to be lasting for life. The glorious doctrine of justification by faith was replaced by ascetic mortifications of the flesh based upon the belief in meritorious works. The cell of the monk and the nun were esteemed more sacred than the family circle, and in the darkness of mediæval times that settled down upon the life of the Church we lose sight of the busy, active ministrations of women deacons, who had once been esteemed so needful to her usefulness.
There are other minor causes that aided in the downfall of the order; the abuses that arose in some cases; the changes in the ceremony of baptism by which the aid of women was not so indispensable, and especially the fact that since the time037/33 of Constantine the care of the sick and poor was placed under the charge of the State.[13]
These causes combined removed from the life of the Church a powerful agency for good, and for centuries deprived it of the pre-eminent gifts of ministration which belong to Christian women.
[1] Woman’s Work in the Church, J. M. Ludlow, p. 21.
[2] Die Weibliche Diakonie in ihrem ganzen Umfang, Theodor Schäfer, 3 vols. Stuttgart: D. Gundert, 1887. Vol. i, p. 45.
[3] Der Diakonissenberuf nach seiner Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, Emil Wacker. Gütersloh: E. Bertelman, 1888. p. 33.
[4] Neander, Hist. of Chr. Religion and Church, vol. i, p. 188; Schaff, Hist. of Chr. Church, vol. iii, p. 260; McClintock & Strong’s Encyclopædia, art. “Deaconesses.”
[5] J. M. Ludlow, Woman’s Work in the Church, p. 17.
[6] Neander, Hist. of Chr. Rel. and Church, vol. i, p. 188; Schaff, Hist. of Chr. Church, vol. iii, p. 260.
[7] Sancti Johannis Chrysostomi opera om, t. ii, pp. 659, 662. Paris, 1842.
[8] Chrys., Op., vol. ii, p. 658.
[9] Die Weibliche Diakonie, Theodor Schäfer, vol. i, p. 8.
[10] Chrys., Op., vol. ii, p. 600.
[11] Schaff’s History of Chr. Church, vol. iii, p. 260.
[12] Denkschrift zur Jubelfeier, J. Disselhoff, Kaiserswerth, 1880, p. 5.
[13] Herzog’s Protestantische Real Enc., vol. iii, p. 589.