Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/730

 DEACONESSES

652

DEACONESSES

probably has reference to the possibihty of advance to a higher ecclesiastical dignity as priest or bishop, no such praise being used in the case of the deaconess.

The subject of the precise status of deaconesses is confessedly obscure and confused, but two or three points at any rate seem worth insisting on. In the first place there were no doubt influences at work at one time or other which tended to exaggerate the position of these women-helpers. This tendency has found expression in certain documents which have come down to us and of which it is difficult to gauge the value. Still there is no more reason to attach importance to these pretensions than there is to re- gard seriously the spasmodic attempts of certain dea- cons (q. V.) to exceed their powers and to claim, for example, authority to consecrate. Both in the one and the other case the voice of the Church made itself heard in conciliar decrees and the abuse in the end was repressed without difficulty. Such restrictive measures seem to be found in the rather obscure 11th canon of Laodicea, and in the more explicit 19th canon of the Council of Niciea, which last distinctly lays down that deaconesses are to be accounted as lay per- sons and that they receive no ordination properly so called (Hefele-Leclercq, Conciles, I, 618). In the West there seems always to have been considerable reluctance to accept the deaconesses, at any rate under that name, as a recognized institution of the Church. The Council of Nismes in 394 reproved in general the a.ssumption of the levitical ministry by women, and other decrees, notably that of Orange in 441 (can. 26), forbid the ordaining of deaconesses altogether. It follows from what has been said that the Church as a whole repudiated the idea that women could in any proper sense be recipients of the Sacrament of Order. None the less in the East, and among the Syrians and Nestorians much more than among the Greeks (Hefele-Leclercq, Conciles, II, 448), the ecclesiastical status of deaconesses was greatly exaggerated.

Another source of confusion has also been introduced by those who have interpreted the word diaconissce, on the analogy of presbyterce and presbytides, episcopce and episcopissw, as the wives of deacons who, living apart from their husbands, acquired ipso facto an ecclesias- tical character. No doubt such matrons who generous- ly accepted this separation from their husbands were treated with special distinction and were supported by the Church, but if they became deaconesses, as in some cases they did, they had, like other women^ to fulfil certain conditions and to receive a special con- secration. With regard to the duration of the order of deaconesses we note that when adult baptism be- came uncommon, this institution, which seems pri- marily to have been devised for the needs of women catechumens, gradually waned and in the end died out altogether. In the time of Justinian (d. 565) the dea- conesses still held a position of importance. At the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople the staff con- sisted of sixty priests, one hundred deacons, forty deaconesses and ninety subdeacons; but Balsamon, Patriarch of Antioch about 1070 A. D., states that deaconesses in any proper sense had ceased to exist in the Church though the title was borne by certain nuns (Robinson, Ministry of Deaconesses, p. 93), while Matthew Blastares declared of the tenth century that the civil legislation concerning deaconesses, which ranked them rather among the clergy than the laity, had then been abandoned or forgotten (Migne, P. G., CXIX, 1272). In the West in spite of the hostile decrees of several councils of Gaul in the fifth and sixth centuries, we still find mention of deaconesses con- siderably after that date, though it is difficult to say whether the title was more than an honorific name attributed to consecr.'itcd virgins and widows. Thus we read in Fortunatus that St. Radegund was "or- dained deaconess" liy St. Mcdard (about A. D. 540 — Migne, P. L., LXXXVIII, 502). So also the ninth

Ordo Romanus mentions, as forming part of the papal procession, the "feminse diaconissae et presbyterissse quse eodem die benedicantur", and diaconissa: are mentioned in the procession of Leo III in the ninth century (Duchesne, Lib. Pont., II, 6). Further, the Anglo-Saxon Leof ric missal in the eleventh century still retained a prayer ad diaconissam jaciendam, which ap- pears in the form Exaudi Domine, common to both deacons and deaconesses. The only surviving relic of the ordination of deaconesses in the West seems to be the delivery by the bishop of a stole and maniple to Carthusian nuns in the ceremony of their profession.

Functions of Deaconesses. — There can be no doubt that in their first institution the deaconesses were intended to discharge those same charitable offices, connected mainly with the temporal well-being of their poorer fellow-Christians, which were per- formed for the men by the deacons. But in one par- ticular, viz. the instruction and baptism of catechu- mens, their duties involved service of a more spiritual kind. The universal prevalence of baptism by im- mersion and the anointing of the whole body which preceded it, rendered it a matter of propriety that in this ceremony the functions of the deacons should be discharged by women. The Didascalia Apostolorum (III, 12; see Funk, Didascalia, etc., i, 208) explicitly direct that the deaconesses are to perform this func- tion. It is probable that this was the starting-point for the intervention of women in many other ritual observances even in the sanctuary. The Apostolic Constitutions expressly attribute to them the duty of guarding the doors and maintaining order amongst those of their own sex in the church, and they also (II, c. 26) assign to them the office of acting as inter- mediaries between the clergy and the women of the congregation; but on the other hand, it is laid down (Const. Apo.st., VIII, 27) that "the deaconess gives no blessing, she fulfils no function of priest or deacon", and there can be no doubt that the extravagances per- mitted m some places, especially in the churches of Syria and Asia, were in contravention of the canons generally accepted. We hear of them presiding over assemblies of women, reading the epistle and Gospel, distributing the Blessed Eucharist to nuns, lighting the candles, burning incense in the thuribles, adorning the sanctuary, and anointing the sick (see Hefele- Leclercq, II, 448). All these things must be regarded as abuses which ecclesiastical legislation was not long in repressing.

Deaconesses in Protestant Communions. — Outside the Catholic Church the name of deaconesses has been adopted for a modern revival which has had great vogue in Germany and to some extent in the United States. It was begun in 1833 by the Lutheran Pastor Fliedner at Kaiserswerth near Diisseldorf. His first inspiration is said to have been derived from the Quakeress Elizabeth Fry, and through the cele- brated Miss Florence Nightingale, who organized a staff of nurses in the Crimean war and who had pre- viously been trained at Kaiserswerth, the revival at a later date attracted a good deal of attention in Eng- land. The main work of deaconesses is the tending of the sick and poor, instruction and district visiting, but with more subordination to parish needs than is usu- ally compatible with the life of an Anglican sisterhood. In the United States more particularly, community life is usually not insisted upon, but a good deal of attention is given to training and intellectual develop- ment. Both in the Anglican Church, and in the Prot- estant Episcopal Church and Methodist Episcopal Church of America, deaconesses are "admitted" in solemn form by the bishop with benediction and the laying-on of hands. In Germany the movement has taken such hold that the Kaiserswerth organization alone claims to number over 16,000 sisters, but it is curious that relatively to the population the institu- tion is most popular in Catholic districts, where prob-