EXCURSUS ON THE DEACONESS OF THE EARLY CHURCH.

It has been supposed by many that the deaconess of the Early Church 

had an Apostolic institution and that its existence may be referred to 

by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans(xvi. ) where he speaks of 

Phoebe as being a  diakonos   of the Church of 

Cenchrea. It moreover has been suggested that the "widows" of  Tim. 

v.  may have been deaconesses, and this seems not unlikely from the 

fact that the age for the admission of women to this ministry was fixed 

by Tertullian at sixty years(De Vel. Virg. Cap. ix.), and only changed 

to forty, two centuries later by the Council of Chalcedon, and from the 

further fact that these "widows" spoken of by St. Paul seem to have 

had a vow of chastity, for it is expressly said that if they marry they 

have "damnation, because they have cast off their first faith"( Tim. v. 

).

These women were called  diakonissbi  , 

 Presbutides  (which must be distinguished from the 

 presbuterai  , a poor class referred to in the Apostolic 

Constitutions(ii. ) who are to be only invited frequently to the love-

feasts, while the  pr  ,s210> sbutioes   

had a definite allotment of the offerings assigned to their support), 

 khrai  , diaconissoe, presbyteroe, and viduce.

The one great characteristic of the deaconess was that she was vowed 

to perpetual chastity.() The Apostolical Constitutions(vi. ) say that 

she must be a chaste virgin( parqenos   

 agnh  ) or else a widow. The writer of the article 

"Deaconess" in the Dictionary of Christian Antiquities says: "It is 

evident that the ordination of deaconesses included a vow of celibacy." 

We have already seen the language used by St. Paul and of this the 

wording of the canon of Chalcedon is but an echo(Canon xv). "A 

woman shall not receive the laying on of hands as a deaconess under 

forty years of age, and then only after searching examination. And if, 

after she has had hands laid on her, and has continued for a time to 

minister, she shall despise the Grace of God and give herself in 

marriage, she shall be anathematized and the man who is united to 

her." The civil law went still further, and by Justinian's Sixth Novel() 

those who attempted to marry are subjected to forfeiture of property 

and capital punishment. In the collect in the ancient office there is a 

special petition that the newly admitted deaconess may have the gift of 

continence.

The principal work of the deaconess was to assist the female 

candidates for holy baptism. At that time the sacrament of baptism 

was always administered by immersion(except to those in extreme 

illness) and hence there was much that such an order of women could 

be useful in. Moreover they sometimes gave to the female 

catechumens preliminary instruction, but their work was wholly 

limited to women, and for a deaconess of the Early Church to teach a 

man or to nurse him in sickness would have been an impossibility. 

The duties of the deaconess are set forth in many ancient writings, I 

cite here what is commonly known as the XII Canon of the Fourth 

Council of Carthage, which met in the year :

"Widows and dedicated women(sanctimoniales) who are chosen to 

assist at the baptism of women, should be so well instructed in their 

office as to be able to teach aptly and properly unskilled and rustic 

women how to answer at the time of their baptism to the questions put 

to them, and also how to live godly after they have been baptized." 

This whole matter is treated clearly by St. Epiphanius who, while 

indeed speaking of deaconesses as an order( tagma  ), 

asserts that "they were only women-elders, not priestesses in any 

sense, that their mission was not to interfere in any way with Sacerdotal functions, but 

simply to perform certain offices in the care of women"(Hoer. lxxix, 

cap. iij). From all this it is evident that they are entirely in error who 

suppose that "the laying on of hands" which the deaconesses received 

corresponded to that by which persons were ordained to the diaconate, 

presbyterate, and episcopate at that period of the church's history. It 

was merely a solemn dedication and blessing and was not looked upon 

as "an outward sign of an inward grace given." For further proof of this 

I must refer to Morinus, who has treated the matter most 

admirably.(De Ordinationibus, Exercitatio X.)

The deaconesses existed but a short while. The council of Laodicea as 

early as A.D. -, forbade the appointment of any who were 

called presbutides (Vide Canon xi); and the first 

council of Orange, A.D. , in its twenty-sixth canon forbids the 

appointment of deaconesses altogether, and the Second council of tile 

same city in canons xvij and xviij, decrees that deaconesses who 

married were to be excommunicated unless they renounced the men 

they were living with, and that, on account of the weakness of the sex, 

none for the future were to be ordained.

Thomassinus, to whom I refer tim reader for a very full treatment of 

the whole subject, is of opinion that the order was extinct in the West 

by the tenth or twelfth century, but that it lingered on a little later at 

Constantinople but only in conventual institutions.(Thomassin, 

Ancienne et Nouvelle Discipline de l' Eglise, I Partie, Livre III.)