Canon XIX.
Concerning the Paulianists who have flown for refuge to the Catholic Church, it has been decreed that they must by all means be rebaptized; and if any of them who in past time have been numbered among their clergy should be found blameless and without reproach, let them be rebaptized and ordained by the Bishop of the Catholic Church; but if the examination should discover them to be unfit, they ought to be deposed. Likewise in the case of their deaconesses, and generally in the case of those who have been enrolled among their clergy, let the same form be observed. And we mean by deaconesses such as have assumed the habit, but who, since they have no imposition of hands, are to be numbered only among the laity.
Notes.
Ancient Epitome of Canon XIX.
Paulianists must be rebaptised, and if such as are clergymen seem to be blameless let them be ordained. If they do not seem to be blameless, let them be deposed. Deaconesses who have been led astray, since they are not sharers of ordination, are to be reckoned among the laity.
Ffoulkes.
(Dict. Chr. Ant. s.v. Nicæa, Councils of.)
That this is the true meaning of the phrase horos ektetheitai, viz. "a decree has now been made," is clear from the application of the words horos in Canon xvii., and horisen, in Canon vi. It has been a pure mistake, therefore, which Bp. Hefele blindly follows, to understand it of some canon previously passed, whether at Arles or elsewhere.
Justellus.
Here cheirothesia is taken for ordination or consecration, not for benediction,...for neither were deaconesses, sub-deacons, readers, and other ministers ordained, but a blessing was merely pronounced over them by prayer and imposition of hands.
Aristenus.
Their (the Paulicians') deaconesses also, since they have no imposition of hands, if they come over to the Catholic Church and are baptized, are ranked among the laity.
With this Zonaras and Balsamon also agree.
Hefele.
By Paulianists must be understood the followers of Paul of Samosata the anti-Trinitarian who, about the year 260, had been made bishop of Antioch, but had been deposed by a great Synod in 269. As Paul of Samosata was heretical in his teaching on the Holy Trinity the Synod of Nice applied to him the decree passed by the council of Arles in its eighth canon. "If anyone shall come from heresy to the Church, they shall ask him to say the creed; and if they shall perceive that he was baptized into the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, [102] he shall have a hand laid on him only that he may receive the Holy Ghost. But if in answer to their questioning he shall not answer this Trinity, let him be baptized."
The Samosatans, according to St. Athanasius, named the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in administering baptism (Orat. ii, Contra Arian. No. xliii.), but as they gave a false meaning to the baptismal formula and did not use the words Son and Holy Spirit in the usual sense, the Council of Nice, like St. Athanasius himself, considered their baptism as invalid.
There is great difficulty about the text of the clause beginning "Likewise in the case, etc.," and Gelasius, the Prisca, Theilo and Thearistus, (who in 419 translated the canons of Nice for the African bishops), the Pseudo-Isidore, and Gratian have all followed a reading diakonon, instead of diakonisson. This change makes all clear, but many canonists keep the ordinary text, including Van Espen, with whose interpretation Hefele does not agree.
The clause I have rendered "And we mean by deaconesses" is most difficult of translation. I give the original, 'Emnesthemen de diakonisson ton en to schemati exetastheison, epei k.t.l. Hefele's translation seems to me impossible, by schemati he understands the list of the clergy just mentioned.
[102] In Patre et Filio et Spiritu Sancto esse baptizatum
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. 1) where he speaks of Phoebe as being a diakonos of the Church of Cenchrea. It moreover has been suggested that the "widows" of 1 Tim. v. 9 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" (1 Tim. v. 12).
These women were called diakonissai, presbutides (which must be distinguished from the presbuterai , a poor class referred to in the Apostolic Constitutions (ii. 28) who are to be only invited frequently to the love-feasts, while the presbutides had a definite allotment of the offerings assigned to their support), cherai, diaconissæ, presbyteræ, and viduæ.
The one great characteristic of the deaconess was that she was vowed to perpetual chastity. [103] The Apostolical Constitutions (vi. 17) say that she must be a chaste virgin (parthenos hagne) 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 (6) 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 398:
"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" (Hær. 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. 343-381, forbade the appointment of any who were called presbutides (Vide Canon xi); and the first council of Orange, a.d. 441, in its twenty-sixth canon forbids the appointment of deaconesses altogether, and the Second council of the 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 the 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.)
[103] In 1836, the Lutheran Pastor Fliedner, of a little town on the Rhine, opened a parish hospital the nurses of which he called "Deaconesses." This "Deaconess House" at Kaiserswerth, was the mother-house from which all the deaconess establishments of the present day have taken their origin. The Methodists have adopted the system successfully. Some efforts have been made to domesticate it, in a somewhat modified form, also in the Anglican Churches but thus far with but little success. Of course these "Deaconesses" resemble the Deaconesses of the Early Church only in name. The reader who may be interested in seeing an effort to connect the modern deaconess with the deaconess of antiquity is referred to The Ministry of Deaconesses by Deaconess Cecilia Robinson. This book, it should be said, contains much valuable and accurate information upon the subject, but accepts as proven facts the suppositions of the late Bishop Lightfoot upon the subject; who somewhat rashly asserted that "the female diaconate is as definite an institution as the male diaconate. Phoebe is as much a deacon as Stephen or Philip is a deacon!"