Word Finder - deaconesses

definition

A female deacon.

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A female servant in the early Christian church.

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The nun in charge of the altar in a convent.

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One of an order of women in some Protestant churches who nurse the sick and tend the poor.

The law includes with clerics, monks, deaconesses, nuns, ascetics; and the word " clerics " covered persons in minor orders, down to doorkeepers.

The church officers (generally unpaid) comprise bishops (or ministers), elders, teachers, deacons (or visiting brethren) and deaconesses - chiefly aged women who are permitted at times to take leading parts in church services.

The city has several public parks, a public library and various charitable institutions, among which are a children's home, a home for aged men, a home fort aged women and a deaconesses' home.

Deaconesses in the East received the imposition of the bishop's hands, but could not ascend to the priesthood.

On the continent institutes for nursing deaconesses were founded at Strassburg, Utrecht, Berlin, Breslau, Konigsberg and Carlsruhe between 1842 and 1851.

It is quite certain that from the 3rd century onward there existed in the Eastern Church an order of women, known as deaconesses, who filled a position analogous to that of deacons.

The order is recognized in the canons of the councils of Nicaea (325) and Chalcedon (451), and is frequently mentioned in the writings of Chrysostom (some of whose letters are addressed to deaconesses at Constantinople), Epiphanius, Basil, and indeed most of the more important Fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries.

Deaconesses, upon entering their office, were ordained much in the same way as deacons, but the ordination conveyed no sacerdotal powers or authority.

Whether deaconesses, in the later sense of the term, existed before 250 is a disputed point.

On the whole the evidence does not seem sufficient to prove the contention that an order of deaconesses - in the ecclesiastical sense of the term - existed from the apostolic age.

In modern times several attempts have been made to revive the order of deaconesses.

In 1833 Pastor Fleidner founded "an order of deaconesses for the Rhenish provinces of Westphalia" at Kaiserswerth.

The members of these institutions do not represent the ecclesiastical deaconesses, however, since they are not ministers set apart by the Church; and the sisterhoods are merely voluntary associations of women banded together for spiritual fellowship and common service.

This committee publishes a magazine of " Life and Work," which has a circulation of over 10o,000, and has organized young men's gilds in connexion with congregations and revived the ancient order of deaconesses.

In 1849 he founded the Lutheran Society of Home Missions and in 1853 an institution of deaconesses.

They speak of the ordination of bishops (the so-called Clementine Liturgy is that which is directed to be used at the consecration of a bishop, cc. 5-15), of presbyters, deacons, deaconesses, subdeacons and lectors, and then pass on to confessors, virgins, widows and exorcists; after which follows a series of canons on various subjects, and liturgical formulae.

There is no precise arrangement; but the subjects, following a general introduction, are the bishop and his duties, penance, the administration of the offerings, the settlement of disputes, the divine service, the order of widows, deacons and deaconesses, the poor, behaviour in persecution, and so forth.

This charitable activity, however, distinguishes the modern sister from the nuns of primitive and medieval times, who were cloistered and contemplative, and left external works to deaconesses, or to laywomen of a " third order," or to the freer societies like the Beguines.

An early outstanding feature of the hospital was the nursing care provided by the Protestant deaconesses from the Kaiserswerth Institute near Wessendorf.

To ascertain the truth, he had also put to the torture two maid-servants described as deaconesses, but had discovered nothing beyond a perverse and extravagant superstition.

Several specimens of the ordination service for deaconesses have been preserved (see Cecilia Robinson, The Ministry of Deaconesses, London, 1878, appendix B, p. 197).

At that time England was sadly behind-hand in matters of nursing and sanitation, and Miss Nightingale, who desired to obtain the best possible teaching for herself, went through a course of training in the Institute of Protestant Deaconesses at Kaiserswerth.

The oldest hospital is the Reineman (private; 1803) for maternity cases; the municipal hospital (1878) is for contagious diseases; the Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of Mercy, the Institution of Protestant Deaconesses, the Presbyterian Church and the United Presbyterian Woman's Association each have charge of a hospital; and there is also an eye, ear and throat hospital (1895).

Experience in other denominations shows that ordination of deaconesses either paved the way to general female ordination and/or to schism within the communities.

Deacons anointed the males, deaconesses the females.