Deaconesses in Late Antique Gaul
by Matthew Smyth
published on www.womenpriests.org with permission of
the author
Deaconesses in the restricted sense —
that is to say women officially ordained as deaconess by the laying on of hands
as they were to be found in most Eastern churches in the patristic age —
were not as widely represented in the Latin West. North Africa and Spain seem
to have been unaware of their existence. And for the rest of the Latin world,
we have no mention of deaconesses before the 4th century. According to the
British monk Pelagius († circa 420), who spent a long time in Rome,
deaconesses are an institution fallen into disuse in the West, though remaining
in the East (In Rom. 16:1). Worst, for the Ambrosiaster, an
anonymous Italian of the end of the 4th century, while commenting on I Tim.
3:11, considers them to be the fruit of a new heresy “that dares ordain
deaconesses.”
As a matter of fact, Gallic canonical legislation,
mainly issued by synods, only seems to have mentioned deaconesses to condemn
them (they ought not to be mistaken for diaconissae who are only the
deacon’s wife mentioned by the 20th canon of the Synod of Tours held in
567). Apparentelly, female diaconate was victim of a lengthy process which
modeled woman’s image in the Church on the secular Late Antique feminine
ideal; an ideal highly incompatible with non-codified usages inherited more or
less directely from early-christian times allowing women to be entrusted with
ecclesiastical responsibilities.
But, precisely, those conflict should be analysed not
only from the point of view of triumphant legislative authorities, but also
from the angle of the ancient customs local churches were clinging to, and
whose abolition the synods had in mind. Custom, although naturally faithful to
tradition, has been too long considered as a negative foil to more recent
written legislation edicted by synods or individual bishops. Furthemore this
new legislation would have been uterly pointless if a few Latin churches had
not at some point agreed to formally ordain deaconesses by laying on of hands.
*
* *
Synods
The best proof of the existence of Western
deaconesses is found in the very effort which was made to stop them from
spreading, once the custom of ordaining deaconesses was accepted here and
there. In this respect, our first witness, the Synod of Nimes in 396 (canon 2)
rejects vigorously the ordination of women to the diaconate: “it has been
made known to us that — a thing unheard of until now —, against the
apostolic discipline […], women raised to the office of deacons had been
seen; this is not acceptable to ecclesiastical discipline because it is
indecent.”
In spite of all this, the 26th canon of the 1st Synod of
Orange (441) is obliged to recognize the existence of an apparently well
established custom, despite the decisions issued previously in Nimes. This is
another attempt to abolish deaconesses and to oblige them to take their place
among the ordinary faithful: “Deaconesses should by no means be ordained.
If there are already some, let them bow their head during the blessing given to
the people.”
Next century, the legislation seems still without
effect, for the Synod of Epaon (517), canon 21, states that: “We abrogate
totally within all our territory the consecration granted to widows called
deaconesses. Let them receive only a penitential blessing if they desire
conuersio” (that is to say if “entering ascetic life”).
The 17th canon of the 2nd Synod of Orleans (533) bears
witness, in spite of itself, to the vigour of the female diaconate, which is
able to survive despite more than a century of hostile synodical legislation:
“Let the women who have received the blessing of diaconate up to the
present day, despite the canonical prohibition, be excommunicated, if it is
proven that they have gone back to married life.” Deaconesses who are
found “defaulting” are to be excommunicated (as a matter of fact,
since they are recruited among widows and virgins, deaconesses came under the
same measures inflicted on fallen female ascetics and adaptated of the 15th
canon of Chalcedon). As for the 18th canon, it tries one more time to supress
the female diaconate: “It has also been decided that, henceforth, diaconal
blessing will not be any longer granted to any women, because of the fragility
of their condition.” The same fear is at work here of “fallen”
widows and virgins among whom the deaconesses are recruited — a fall
explicitely linked with alleged weakness of woman confronted with temptation.
These directives do not seem to have been yet
universally followed, as is shown by the 21th canon of the 2nd Synod of Tours
(567): “[…] everyone knows that a particular blessing for widows is
not to be found in the canonical books, because their personal decision is
enough […] as it is stated by the canons of Epaon, Pope Avitus and all the
bishops: ‘We totally abrogate in all our ecclesiastical discipline the
consecration of widows called deaconesses’.”
Deaconesses in historical records
Meanwhile, we have this time two positive testimonies of
great value:
- the Testament of Remigius of Reims († 533) mentions
“my daughter Hilary the deaconess”;
- and, according to the Vita of queen Radegunde († 587)
written by the Italian Venantius Fortunatus bishop of Poitiers († circa
600), bishop Medardus of Noyon, after some hesitations because of the youth
of Radegunde, “consecrated [her] deaconess laying the hands upon her
(manu superposita),” after she had left her husband King Clotaire
to take the religious habit.
One cannot use Frankish legislation to undermine those testimonies: on
the contrary, the case of Radegond illustrates the very usage which the Synods
opposed. However, it is to be noted that in the case of Radegond, the female
diaconate is in fact linked to monastic life, in the Eastern fashion.
As for Ireland, whose ecclesiastical institutions
(especialy liturgical) are in many respects very close to that of Gaul, we have
the testimony of a gloss in the Epistolary of Wurzburg Universitätbibl.
M. th. 12 (8th century) which mentions a deaconess (bandechuin in
Gaelic); the Liber Angeli of the Book of Armagh (7th century),
refers even to women in matrimonio legitimo ecclesiae servientes.
In Italy, where legislation did not oppose the female
diaconate, a Roman liturgical book of the 8th century known as the Gregorian
Sacramentary contains the sole surviving Western formulary for the ordination
of a deaconess, simply reusing the formula for the ordination of a deacon but
in the feminine (n·994).
It is unnecessary to adduce more documents to prove the
strength of a custom which met so well the need for an official recognition of
the dignity of this commitment and lasted in some places until the 11th century
before it up fell into dissuetude.
Were deaconesses nuns?
It is to be noted that Latin deaconesses were in those
days de facto linked to the state of continent widow or voluntary
virgin, since this ministry was usualy recruited among women who have chosen
sexual continence. Accordingly, to a state of mind inherited from
Judeo-Christian Encraticism, most churches held celibate life in great favour,
therefore widows and virgins were considered more able to be entrusted with
female ministries. Canon 21 of the Synod of Epaon (517), seems to indicate that
in Gaul, contrary to the East at the time, deaconesses were recruited mostly
among widows; already traditionally entrusted with female ministries. According
to some scholars, such a blessing, was thought to underline the dignity of a
status now devalued in comparison with that of virgins who were, from the 4th
century on, granted a an episcopal consecration of their commitment bestowed
during a solemn veiling modelled upon the Roman wedding ceremony (a
consecration that widows were usualy not allowed to recieve in Gaul before the
8th century).
This does not at all imply that the female diaconate was
meant to be purely honorific, since widows, as well as consecrated virgins,
were entrusted precisely with ministries, as is shown in the Statuta
Ecclesiae Antiqua, a canonical collection composed in Provence at the end
of the 5th century. This document, which enjoyed a wide reception, states that
instituted widows and voluntary virgins were entrusted with the ministry of
preparing female catechumens for baptism: “Widows and nuns who are chosen
to minister to women about to receive baptism, must be well prepared for this
office, in order to be able to teach clearly and correctly unlearned and rustic
women when they are to receive baptism; how those women ought to answer the
questions asked by the one who baptises them, and how they should live after
their baptism” (canon 100). It is not much of a surprise since female
ascetics, who were recognized as a highly priviliged ecclesiastical rank,
benefiting from special care on the part of the bishop and his clergy, enjoyed
a great prestige and played an important role within the community, especially
if they came from the aristocraticy. Voluntary virgins notably personified in a
way the local church. Furthemore, they were not prevented to fulfil
ecclesiastical ministries as long as they carried on to take part in ordinary
daily life, dispose of their own property, live in their family’s home,
their own house or in common with other women sharing the same ideal, or under
the roof of a wealthier sister-member. Genevieve of Paris († 502), for
instance, does not belong to a monastery (as a matter of fact, she gathers
unformally a few friends around her), uses her own possessions, recieves
visitors at home (and even meets Germanus of Auxerre at an inn), calls on
people, dabbles in civil and Church politics, travels the country, has a
basilica built, and of course takes part in parish services.
Thus the female deaconess appears as a justified
development that had been lacking too long, although the Statuta clearly
refers to a female diaconate in the etymological sense — that is to say
the service accomplished by women within the assembly (presumably, what
Pelagius had in mind when he mentions the former Latin deaconesses). To grant
an ordination bestowed by the laying on of hands to women entrusted with a
ministry, meant that deaconesses were able catch up a little with the male
diaconate or presbyterate raised long ago to the status of “ranks”
within a hierarchy of dignitaries.
But in the
meantime the Gallic episcopate, strongly influenced by cenobitical monasticism
and its ideal of fuga mundi, became growingly hostile to a female
asceticism rooted within the Christian baptismal community. An ideal of
complete separation (much stricter for consecrated virgins than for men) spread
rapidely in the wake of the Regula virginum imposed by Cesarius of Arles
(† 543). Nuns, henceforth provided with their own oratory and ministers,
are severed from the life of the assembly of the baptised, symbolically
identified with the “world”. This segragation goes hand in hand with
the ending of the freedom enjoyed formerly by consecrated virgins. They no
longer form an haphazard gathering of pious persons, but an institution shaped
to lead an autonomous life in the long term, clearly situated at the periphery
of the local assembly, in whose eucharist it does not share any longer.
Synods followed the movement:
canon 19 of Orleans V (549) submits nuns to a “perpetual enclosure,”
and excommunicates those who flee to marry, as well as the non-cloistered
ascetics who go back on their former commitment. A little later, the 3rd canon
of the Synod of Lyons (583) and the 14th canon of the Synod of Paris (614)
excommunicate nuns who leave the monastic enclosure, even without marrying.
Legislation displays a striking fear of what is looked upon as a fall. This new
strategy of reclusion and this fear of any “fall” — that is to
say marriage — betray a growing lack of consideration for the freedom
proper to Christian commitment, and more generaly a latent pessimism inherited
from Encraticism hanging over relationship between sexes doomed by flesh. By
the way, it is to be underlined that this pessimism was hanging much heavier on
women. Previousely, legislation tended only to inflict a penance on women who
marry after commitment to an ascetic life, but by the end of the 6th century,
it goes further and excommunicates virgins and widows who marry, even if they
do not live in a monastry. The Austrasian Synod of Saint-Jean de Losne
(circa 675) states that: “if [widows] are unmindful of chastity,
they […] should be put behind walls in a monastery.”
“Female fragility”
Such an evolution of female asceticism was incompatible
in the long run with ministerial responsibilities entrusted formerly to widows
and virgins. Obviously, in the eyes of the espiscopate, deaconesses (or any
ascetic women) in charge of an ecclesiastical office within the assembly, was
far too much at risk of “falling”, considering the alleged
“fragility of the feminine condition”.
Actually, even before the complete triumph of the ideal
defended by Cesarius of Arles and his followers, along with the shift of
mentality that it reflects, other sources of tensions between usages and
episcopal directives existed, resulting from a hostility towards female
ministries that existed well before the expansion of the monastic movement.
Nonetheless, these very conflicts between custom and legislation unwillingly
lift the veil that covers the range of ministries actually entrusted to women.
Since Tertullian (De Virginibus Velandis 9:2,
De Baptismo 17:4-5, and De Praescriptione Haereticorum 41:5), a
further series of negative testimonies enables us to say that until the 6th
century, some Western communities on the outer limits of the Great Church (for
one reason or another) were in a position to retain female ministries inherited
from paleochristian usages. Most certainely, those ecclesiastical ministries
did not correspond completely to the one fulfilled by male deacons. Women were
not expected to look after the finance of the domus episcopi, nor to
present candidates to the priesthood in front of the bishop as the archdeacon
did. All the same, the functions they were entrusted with remained very wide.
As a matter of fact, female ministries which remained
under the form of a help to the priest ad altare (at the altar), of a
baptismal ministry, or other functions performed coram populo (in
public), have from time to time given rise to harsh criticism. Their
formulation suggests that those ancient usages persisted in groups which stayed
apart from churches where a self-affirmation of hierarchical authority was
under way. Within the cultural context of the Roman Empire or its remains, this
effort of hierarchical structuration was in
fact incompatible with the appointement of responsibilites to women.
We find such recriminations in the decretale
Necessaria Rerum (494) of Gelasius to the bishops of Southern Italy.
Unfortunately omitting to specify who were to blame, Gelasius complains that
“holy things have been held in such contempt that some have approved of
women who perform a ministry at the holy altars and take part in functions
reserved to a sex to which they do not belong”.
Without letting us know any better which communities he
was thus targeting, the compiler of the Statuta Ecclesiae Antiqua is
also found confronted to comparable usages as he asks women “not to dare
to baptise” (canon 37).
On the other hand, in the case of the 1st canon of the
Synod of Saragossa (380) against the conventicles inspired by the preaching of
Priscillian of Avila, this is a clearly marginalised movement which gives rise
to the prohibition: “that no women belonging to the catholic Church
[…] should join the women who read publicly, following a desire to teach
or to learn.”
As for the Letter of Licinius of Tours, Melanius of
Rennes and Eustochius of Angers to the Briton Priests Lovocatus and
Catihernus written around 520, it scorns the same type of usages, this time
within Celtic churches (which were not doctrinally but geographically
marginalised): “it has been made known to us,” write the Gallic
bishops, “that you do not cease to carry among your fellow-countrymen,
from one hut to another, certain tables on which you celebrate the divine
sacrifice, with the help of women to whom you give the name of
conhospitae (lit. assistant hostesses). While you distribute the
eucharist, they take the chalice and have the audacity to administrate the
Blood of Christ to the people. This is a novelty and superstition unheard of
before. We have been deeply distressed to witness in our time the resurgence of
an abominable sect which had never been introduced previously in Gaul: the
Eastern Fathers call it the Pepodian [i.e. Montanist] sect, named after
Pepodius author of the schism.”
If the origin attributed to Montanism is fantastic
— “Pepodian” refers in the first place to the town of Pepuza in
Phrygia where the parousia was supposed to take place according to Montanists
—, the parallel is not without any ground, since this movement was
favorable to female ministers (although, paradoxically, one of the first to
bear witness that a tradition has been recieved in the Church forbidding any
kind of female ministry inter mysteria [during the sacred mysteries], is
the Montanist Tertullian). Furthermore, their conservatism was notorious and
their tiny marginal assemblies were ardent enough to feel free from an
overwhelming carnal concupiscence. Judging by these two last sources, we have a
confirmation that marginal groups felt the need to keep important female
ministries, whether their situation arose from ecclesiastical (such as for the
Priscillianists) or geographical reasons (such as for the Celtic churches).
This description of Celtic deaconesses (in the wider
sense) suggests that their institution did not result from ideology but was due
to an actual ministerial necessity, inherent to the concrete needs of
assemblies without a numerous clergy. Moreover, the choice of a
conhospita to help the priest, that is to say a virgo subintroducta
[virgin/religious drawn in]living in an Encratite union with a male
ascetic, confirms that, if these offices were allowed to be entrusted to women,
it was not done in contempt of tradition, but because of a particularly
conservative institutional context making the way to the survival of customs
forgotten elsewhere: Encratite unions were already criticized in the time of
Cyprian (cf. Ep. 4) before their official condamnation by the 3rd canon
of Nicea (325). Beside, the Catalogus Sanctorum Hiberniae Secundum Diversa
Tempora (8th century) testifies that this way of life was quite in favour
among the first Irish ascetics. Celtic churches had been evangelised already at
the begining of the 5th century from Great Britain (where Christian centres
were present at least since the 3rd century). Offset communities appear thus as
a haven to a kind of gender equalitarianism inherited from that of the
primitive Church, and which displayed a certain unconcern towards Late Antique
social prejudices common to the larger assemblies set in an post-Constantinian
urban context. Celtic churches, unaware of the disciplinary transformations led
by the great centres, did not allow social relationship between the different
sexes to be dominated by fear in the same fashion.
Far from a novelty, these female ministries known in the
Western fringes, are one example among many others of those ancient traditions
erased from the memory of more “advanced” churches. What is in fact
traditional henceforth seems to contradict general ecclesiastical discipline.
As usual, wild accusations of “novelty” thrown in on those occasions
should not be taken into account without further examination. Actually, first
because of the fear of a “fall” (into marriage!) and a contempt for
women (alleged to be “fragile” in front of carnal temptation),
hierarchical authorities sought to abolish these female ministries within the
assembly, that is to say female deacons or female ascetics still taking part in
the local assembly.
*
* *
It is certain that our Western sources do
not provide a very clear picture of female deacons in regard of the
responsibilities they were entrusted. However, as for the range of ministries
actually entrusted to women, whether they were deaconesses (in the narrow
sense) or not, does not help to judge how churches regarded female ministries.
Phoebe, diakonos of the church at Cenchreae, the women mentioned after
the deacons in I Tim. 3:11, and the ministrae put to torture by Pliny
the Younger (Lib. X, Ep. 96, 8) performed an ecclesiastical
office, which constitutes them ipso facto as “deaconesses,”
irrespective of a diaconate granted through the laying on of hands. This is
what Origen seems to allude to, commenting on Romans 16:1 (In Epist. ad Rom.
10, 7), when he mentions the “women in charge of an ecclesiastical
ministry.”
We have a well known example of these
ministries — in a fashion that the Great Church does not seem afterwards
to have encouraged — in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, where a
virgin, Thecla, assumes the responsibility of catechising and baptising.
Beside, the 1st Council of Nicea (canon 19) testifies that deaconesses
constituted a well established ecclesiastical reality though remaining longer
than other ministries without an institution performed by laying on of hands.
However, that this recognition, especialy in the West,
came only after a somewhat hesitant and lengthy evolution does not change
anything to the nature of the female diaconate. It simply betrays an aspect of
the mentality that dominated the espiscopal hierarchy during the first
centuries of the Church, in conformity with ambiant rules regarding
women’s role in society. Furthermore, the desire to endow every
ecclesiastical ministry with a solemn liturgical blessing is difficult to
imagine before the establishment of the Church, except may be for the great
ecclesiastical centres. Indeed even the need to ratify the most prominent
ecclesiastical ministries with a particular blessing through cheirotonia
was by no means universal and immediate. In apostolic and sub-apostolic
times, it would be a complete anachronism to think of deaconesses in terms of a
sacramental “rank” or dignity instituted by the laying on of hands.
It would be even a stranger mistake to try and read those facts in the light of
medieval Latin sacramental dogmatics with the idea of setting apart the female
diaconate from the other main holy orders. History does not provide any ground
for this kind of artificial distinction.
Matthew Smyth
SOURCES:
A. Souter, Pelagius’ Expositions
of Thirteen Epistels of st. Paul II, Cambridge, 1926, (Texts and Studies
9).
Ambrosiaster. In Rom., Ed. H.J. Vogels, Vienne,
1966, (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 81, 1)
Concilia Galliae A.314-506, Ed. Ch. Munier,
Turnhout, 1963 (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 148) and Concilia Galliae
A.511-695, Ed. Ch. De Clercq, Turnhout, 1963 (CCSL 148 A)
Vitae sanctae Radegundis, Ed. Br. Krusch, MGH,
Auct ant. IV, 2, Berlin, 1881, p. 41
Testamentum Remigii, PL 65, col. 971
Thes. Palaeohibernicus. A Collection of the Oldest
Monuments of the Gaelic Language I, Ed. Wh. Stockes—J. Strachan,
Cambridge, 1901, 683 (Wurzburg Universitätbibl. M. th. 12)
The Tripartite Life of Saint Patrick with
other Documents Relating to that Saint II, Ed. Wh.
Stockes, Londre, 1887, 354 (Liber Angeli), quoted in L. Gougaud,
“Celtiques (Liturgies),” in Dictionnaire d’Archéologie
Chrétienne et de Liturgie II—2, Paris, 1910, col. 2998 .
Ed. Ch. Munier, Les Statuta Ecclesiae Antiqua,
Paris, 1960 (see also Concilia Galliae A. 314—506).
A. Thiele, Epistulae pontificum romanorum genuinae
I, Braunsberg, 1868, 376-377 (Necessaria Rerum).
L. Duchesne, “Lovocat et Catihern,” Revue
de Bretagne et de Vendée 57 (1885) 6-7 and L. Gougaud,
Christianity in the Celtic Lands. A History of the Churches of the Celts,
their Origin, their Development, Influence and Mutual
Relations,2 Dublin, 1992, 870 (Letter of Licinius of
Tours…).
J. Deshusses, Le Sacramentaire Grégorien
d’après ses principaux manuscrits I, Le
sacramentaire, le supplément d’Aniane, 2
Fribourg/CH, 1979 (Spicilegium Friburgense, 16).
A.W. Haddan—W. Stubbs, Councils and
Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland II, Oxford,
1878, p. 292 (Catalogus Sanctorum Hiberniae).
Studies :
For recent studies on the matter see:
- R. Gryson, Le ministère des femmes dans
l’Église ancienne, Gembloux, 1972 (Recherches et
Synthèses; Section d’Histoire 4);
- A.-G. Martimort, Les diaconesses. Essai historique, Rome,
1982 (Bibliotheca “Ephemerides Liturgicae” Subs. 24);
- D. Ansorge, “Der Diakonat der Frau. Zum gegenwärtigen
Forschungsstand,” in Liturgie und Frauenfrage, Ed. T.
Berger—A. Gerhards, St. Ottilien, 1990 (Pietas Liturgica 7), 31-665;
- M. Metzger, “Le diaconat féminin dans
l’histoire,” in Mother, Nun, Deaconess, Munich, 2000 (Kanonika
16), 144-166;
- M.B. Smyth, Widows, Consecrated Virgins and Deaconesses in Antique
Gaul Magistra 8 (2002) 53-84…
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