DEACONESS. - The deaconesses were Christian widows, to whom in the early Church liturgical and charitable duties were entrusted.
Already St. Paul (Rom. 16:1) names a deaconess, Phoebe of Cenchreae, whose office is probably also mentioned in 1 Tim. 3:11. 1 Tim. 5:9-16 seems to enumerate, among the widows to be honored, the qualities required for a deaconess (only one marriage, 60 years of age). St. Ignatius (Smyrn., 13) besides widows also knows of virgins admitted to the office of deaconess; later, married women were also admitted, though they lived in continence and enjoyed high esteem (Epiphanius, Expos. fidei, 21). Toward the end of the 3rd century the Didascalia, III, reduced the prescribed age from 60 to 50 years; the Council of Chalcedon (451) and the Trullan Council (692) required only 40. Widows of subsequent bigamy always remained excluded from the office.
To secure for the deaconesses greater grace and to give their office more importance, a special blessing, also called ordination, was conferred upon them, which later resembled that of deacons: the bishop imposed hands and with prayer invoked the Holy Spirit "ad digne perficiendum munus sibi commissum". The blessing, already mentioned in the Traditio Apostolica of St. Hippolytus and in the Constitutiones Apostolorum, 8, 19, was one of the sacramentals, but not a sacrament (Council of Nicaea I, can. 19). In the ancient rituals of the Greek Church, the blessing of deaconesses, like that of deacons, is called cheirotonia. Like the deacons they received the stole and the chalice, with which they could communicate themselves at the altar and place it back upon it (J. Morinus, De sacris Eccl. Ordinationibus, Paris 1655, pp. 182-92, especially pp. 69, 80, 99).
The legislation of the Christian emperors numbered deaconesses among the clergy, but nevertheless the Eastern Church has always held that the blessing of a deaconess did not confer a spiritual power (thus, for example, the Constitution of the Egyptian Church, chaps. 37 and 47; the Syriac Didascalia, chaps. 14 and 15; the Council of Laodicea, chap. 11; Epiphanius, Adv. haer., 79, 3; Const. Apost., III, 9, 3; Ambrosiaster, In I Tim., 3, 11; PL 17, 470).
The offices and services of deaconesses were in part extra-liturgical. They assisted in the pre-baptismal catechesis of women and in their Baptism, kept watch at the entrance of the churches on the women's side, transmitted the bishop's orders to the female members of the community, cared especially for the poor, the sick, and prisoners, and fulfilled the obligations of visiting homes. The duties differed in the individual Churches. Among the Syrians and the Nestorians they also had the privilege of distributing the Eucharist to women and children. Their relations with Christian widows are not yet well clarified. Originally, it seems, they were an ascetic-charitable institution of the Church, but already in the 3rd century, first in Syria, then in the Eastern Church, they became two distinct institutions. When in the West the missionary period and the Baptism of adults ceased, the institution of deaconesses also disappeared.
For Protestant deaconesses, v. DIACONO and DIACONESSA (protestanti).
Bibliography11 works
Filippo Oppenheim