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 the 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 a 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."[5] 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,[6] 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, 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.[7] 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. She 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 for many purposes"
(Book ii, chapter xv). The deaconess was ordained to her work, as is
attested by a great number of authorities.[8] "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."[9]
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 thee 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.[10]
The fourth century was the blossoming period of 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 bishop wrote two letters still extant.[11]
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."[12] 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.[13]
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 eighteen 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, 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.[14] 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. The 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.[15] 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 it 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.[16]
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. 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 time of Constantine the care of the
sick and poor was placed under the charge of the State.[17]
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.
[5] _Woman's Work in the Church_, J. M. Ludlow, p. 21.
[6] _Die Weibliche Diakonie in ihrem ganzen Umfang_, Theodor Schäfer,
3 vols. Stuttgart: D. Gundert, 1887. Vol. i, p. 45.
[7] _Der Diakonissenberuf nach seiner Vergangenheit und Gegenwart_,
Emil Wacker. Gütersloh: E. Bertelman, 1888. p. 33.
[8] 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."
[9] J. M. Ludlow, _Woman's Work in the Church_, p. 17.
[10] Neander, _Hist. of Chr. Rel. and Church_, vol. i, p. 188; Schaff,
_Hist. of Chr. Church_, vol. iii, p. 260.
[11] _Sancti Johannis Chrysostomi opera om_, t. ii, pp. 659, 662.
Paris, 1842.
[12] Chrys., _Op._, vol. ii, p. 658.
[13] _Die Weibliche Diakonie_, Theodor Schäfer, vol. i, p. 8.
[14] Chrys., _Op._, vol. ii, p. 600.
[15] Schaff's _History of Chr. Church_, vol. iii, p. 260.
[16] _Denkschrift zur Jubelfeier_, J. Disselhoff, Kaiserswerth, 1880,
p. 5.
[17] Herzog's _Protestantische Real Enc._, vol. iii, p. 589.