Women in the history of the church - service of mind and pen

Learned and Holy - but not Pastors

B. Service of Mind and Pen

Although the opportunity to exercise their literary and intellectual abilities could vary considerably given historical circumstances, Christian women nonetheless have bequeathed to the church a respectable literary and intellectual legacy.

From the beginning, Christian women have been interested in the study of the Scripture and Christian theology. Already in the second century we hear of a young woman named Charito who was martyred with Justin Martyr, most probably because she was associated with Justin’s school in Rome (Martyrdom of Justin 4).

(see The martyrdom of the holy martyrs Justin, Chariton, Charites, Pæon and Liberianus, who suffered at Rome)

We know also that the lectures of Origen were well attended by women, the most famous being Mammaea, the mother of Emperor Alexander Severus, who had a military escort bring Origen to Antioch so she could test his understanding of the divine things (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.21.3ff.).

Yet, it was the great Roman matrons of the fourth century whose combination of the ascetic life and the study of the Scriptures and the Church Fathers became, through the influence of Jerome, the ideal image of women dedicated to the religious life. Two of these highborn ladies, Marcella and Paula, founded circles of ascetic women in their homes whose central purpose was the intensive study of the Bible. Jerome became their mentor and introduced them to the study of the Old Testament in Hebrew. Paula learned Hebrew so well that she could chant the Psalms without a trace of Latin accent. Marcella is called by Jerome his "task-mistress" because she incessantly demanded of him complete explanations of Hebrew words and phrases.25 "With her probing mind Marcella wished to have all the obscurities, especially the linguistic ones, of the text cleared up; and although their meetings were frequent, she often insisted on his setting down his solutions on paper.”26 Paula and Jerome eventually established monastic communities for women and for men in Bethlehem.

(see Letters of St. Jerome and download it in pdf from CCEL)

Another Roman ascetic matron who conjoined learning and monastic life was Melania the Elder. She, along with Rufinus of Aquileia, formed monasteries in Jerusalem. Palladius speaks of Melania’s deep learning: Being very learned and loving literature, she turned night into day perusing every writing of the ancient commentators, including the three million (lines) of Origen and the two hundred and fifty thousand of Gregory, Stephen, Pierius, Basil and other standard writers. Nor did she read them once only and casually, but she laboriously went through each book seven or eight times. (Lausiac History 55)

(see Melania the Younger )

A similar circle of studious women gathered in Constantinople around Theodosia, the sister of Amphilocius of Iconium. Olympias, deaconess and friend of John Chrysostom, was educated in this circle.

In this context we should mention also Macrina, whose strength as a woman ascetic and a theological mind is glorified by her brother, Gregory of Nyssa, in his Life of Macrina. Gregory’s On the Soul and the Resurrection is presented as a Socratic dialogue between Gregory and Macrina in which Macrina is depicted as the protagonist and teacher.

(see Macrine the Elder)

The tradition of learned monastic women continued into the medieval period. Lioba (eighth century), sister of St. Boniface, "had been trained from infancy in the rudiments of grammar and the study of the other liberal arts." "So great was her zeal for reading that she discontinued it only for prayer or for the refreshment of her body with food or sleep: the Scriptures were never out of her hands." "She read with attention all the books of the Old and New Testaments and learned by heart all the commandments of God. To these she added by way of completion the writings of the Church Fathers, the decrees of the Councils and the whole of ecclesiastical law.”27 Princes and bishops, we are told, "often discussed spiritual matters and ecclesiastical discipline with her” because of her knowledge of the Scripture and her prudent counsel.28

The Venerable Bede (eighth century) reports that Abbess Hilda of Whitby required those under her direction "to make a thorough study of the Scriptures" and that she did this to such good effect "that many were found fitted for Holy Orders and the service of God’s altar."29 Indeed, five bishops trained at Whitby under Hilda’s direction.

The love of reading the Scriptures and the Church Fathers led convents also to the copying of manuscripts. In c. 735, St. Boniface wrote to Abbess Eadburga requesting that she have a copy of the epistles of Peter made in letters of gold. "For many times by your useful gifts of books and vestments you have consoled and relieved me in my distress.”30 Among other things, these words of Boniface reveal how logistically important and supportive English convents were to the Anglo-Saxon missionaries on the Continent.

Although the volume of theological and spiritual literature composed by Christian women is less than that written by Christian men, throughout the history of the church there have been capable women who have been productive with the pen. We have mentioned already women like Marcella and Olympias, who engaged in correspondence with Jerome and John Chrysostom. Their letters, unfortunately, no longer exist.

However, a not inconsiderable body of writing by Christian women is extant. Perhaps the earliest writing we have from a Christian woman is the account of Vibia Perpetua of her sufferings and visions as a Christian martyr. Martyred under Septimius Severus (c. 202 a.d.), Perpetua’s personal account was included by an unknown redactor in the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, which became a model for later Acts of the martyrs, especially in North Africa.31

One of the most fascinating documents of the early church is the travel diary of Egeria (late fourth century). Egeria, a noble woman from southern France, spent several years as a pilgrim in the East, traveling to Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor. Taking notes along the way, she later wrote them up as her Travels. It is clear from her narrative that Egeria was steeped in the classics of the church, and “her language often echoes that of the Bible or of formal prayer.”32 Her account contains some of the most helpful and informative detail we possess of early monasticism and liturgy.

(see Itineraria)

A rather unique contribution to Christian literature is the Virgilian cento by Proba. Born a pagan in fourth-century Rome, Proba was educated in the classical writers of Latin literature, especially in Virgil, whom she especially loved. In the fourth century it was fashionable to write cento poetry. A cento is a poem produced by piecing together lines from the works of another poet, resulting in a new poem with a new theme. After becoming a Christian, Proba wrote a cento, borrowing from the works of Virgil, in which she intended to present the whole of the Biblical history.33 About one-half of the 694 lines relates the beginning of the Old Testament (creation, fall, flood, the exodus), but then Proba moves to the gospel story of Jesus. Although Jerome harshly criticized it, and the Gelasian Decretal "On Books to be Received and not to be Received" (496 a.d.) placed it among the apocryphal writings, Proba’s Cento became a popular school text in the Middle Ages.34 Its frequent use is attested by the number of manuscripts containing it and the catalogues of monastic libraries.

Eudoxia is another Christian woman who produced a respectable literary output. The daughter of a pagan philosopher, Eudoxia was instructed "in every kind of learning" (Socrates, Hist. eccl. 7.21). She was later baptized a Christian and became the wife of Emperor Theodosius II (408-450). The greater part of her writing has been lost.35 However, much of a cento drawn from the works of Homer is extant, as is the so-called Martyrdom of St. Cyprian. The Martyrdom tells of a certain Antiochian magician named Cyprian who fails in his effort to tempt a young Christian virgin and is rather himself led to become a Christian. The story ends with the martyr death of Cyprian and of the young maiden under the Emperor Diocletian.36

The tradition of literary Christian women continued into the Middle Ages. Abbess Hildegarde of Bingen (1098-1179) was an extremely influential visionary and prophetess whose correspondence included “four popes, two emperors, several kings and queens, dukes, counts, abbesses, the masters of the University of Paris, and prelates including Saint Bernard and Thomas à Becket.”37 Commanded by a heavenly voice to write down her visions, Hildegarde wrote two major works, Know the Ways of the Lord (Scivias)and Book of Divine Works. Both works belong to the medieval genre that “combined science, theology, and philosophy in a description of the universe, internal (the human body) and external (the earth and the heavens).”38 Her works evince a familiarity with Augustine and Boethius as well as with contemporary scientific writers. Portions of her Scivias were read by Pope Eugenius III and St. Bernard and elicited from the pope a letter of praise and approval.39 In addition to her two major works and her extensive correspondence, Hildegarde wrote lives of St. Disibod and St. Rupert, hymns, books on medicine and natural history, fifty allegorical homilies, and a morality play.

In Spain, the Catholic Reformation had a major female voice in St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582). As a young woman she entered the Carmelite convent at Avila. There, later in life, she began to experience visions and ecstasies, and these in turn led her to propose a reform of the Carmelite order according to its original, more austere rule. Although there was powerful opposition to Teresa, support from Pope Paul IV and from King Philip II enabled her to establish many convents for her “discalced” (barefoot) Carmelite nuns. Of her most important writings, two are autobiographical. The Life describes her visions and discusses the centrality of prayer, and Foundations describe the establishment of her convents. Teresa wrote her most important mystical writings for her nuns. The Way of Perfection teaches the virtues of the religious (monastic) life and uses the Lord’s Prayer as the vehicle for teaching prayer. The Interior Castle presents mature Teresian thought on the spiritual life. Growth in prayer enables a person to enter into deeper intimacy with God, who dwells in the soul or “interior castle” of the person. Some thirty one poems and 458 letters of Teresa are extant.

Not all significant writing by women, however, issued from the religious orders. Marguerite Porete (c. 1300) was an important leader in the Beguine movement. The Beguines were pious laywomen who practiced poverty, chastity, and charity but belonged to no monastic order and took no vows. Their independence from church authority sometimes brought them into suspicion of heresy, and this was the fate of Marguerite as well. Nevertheless, her book, The Mirror of Simple Souls, enjoyed considerable popularity in France, Italy, and England.40

Another such woman was Mme. Jeanne Guyon, who - with Fenelon - was a spiritual leader in the Quietist movement in late seventeenth-century France. Her literary production amounted to some forty books, including a multi-volume commentary on the Bible.

In the nineteenth century, hymn writing by women came into its own.41 Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743-1825) wrote Hymns in Prose for Children, which was popular for many years and was translated into French, Spanish, and Italian. "Praise to God, Immortal Praise"is one of her best-known hymns. Charlotte Elliot (1789-1871) wrote around 150 hymns, including "Just As I Am." Sarah Adams (1805-1848) wrote "Nearer, My God, to Thee." But in addition to her hymns Adams wrote also Vivia Perpetua, a dramatic poem about the conflict between paganism and Christianity, and The Flock at the Fountain, a catechism and hymnbook for children. Cecil Frances Alexander (1823-1895) wrote around four hundred hymns, mostly for children. Among her most beloved hymns are "There Is a Green Hill Far Away," "Once in Royal David’s City," and "Jesus Calls Us O’er the Tumult.” Frances R. Havergal (1836-1879), well trained in the classics and mistress of several foreign languages, composed over fifty hymns. These include "Take My Life and Let It Be," "I Am Trusting You, Lord Jesus," and "Now the Light Has Gone Away." From the twentieth century we may mention Dorothy F. Gurney (1858-1932), who wrote "O Perfect Love," and Julia C. Cory (1882-1963), who wrote "We Praise You, O God." And it is hard to imagine how anyone can top Fanny J. Crosby (1820-1915), author of over three thousand hymns, including the well-known "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior," "Rescue the Perishing," and "Sweet Hour of Prayer."

Two women have been significant as translators of hymns. The foremost translator of German hymnody has been Catherine Winkworth (1829-1878), whose renderings are the most widely used of any from the German language. Her translations are contained chiefly in her Lyra Germanica: Hymns for the Sundays and Chief Festivals of the Church Year and Christian Singers of Germany. Winkworth was sympathetic with any practical efforts for the benefit of women, and from that interest wrote the Life of Pastor Fliedner, about the chief architect of the German deaconess movement. Second only to Winkworth as a translator of German hymns is Jane Borthwick (1813-1897). Her Hymns from the Land of Luther contains "Be Still, My Soul" (itself composed by a woman, Catharina von Schlegel, b. 1697).

(see Finlandia Hymn)

The literary contribution of women to the faith and life of the church has continued into our own century. Of great influence was Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941). Born into an agnostic home, she converted to Roman Catholicism through a religious experience that led her to investigate spiritual experience. Underhill became an internationally recognized authority in mystical theology, and her book Mysticism (1911) became a standard text in that discipline. In Worship (1936), Underhill studied the nature and forms of Christian worship. Eventually Underhill was led into the Anglican communion by Baron Friedrich von Hügel, with whom she shared a long and fruitful spiritual relationship. Underhill herself served as a spiritual director for many, and she conducted many retreats in spirituality. Underhill’s distinction is indicated by the fact that she was the first woman invited to give a series of theological lectures at Oxford University (1921). She became a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, and received a Doctor of Divinity degree from Aberdeen.

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) is another example of an influential woman thinker and writer. The daughter of an Anglican minister, Sayers studied medieval literature at Oxford. While her initial success was as a writer of detective novels, her renown come from her work as an expositor of orthodox Christian faith through translations, plays, and books. Her play The Man Born to Be King (written for BBC) was a dignified presentation of the life of Christ. Her background in medieval literature bore fruit in her translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy, which is perhaps the most-used English translation of that classic. Sayers was a lay theologian of some merit. Her treatment of God and the creative process, The Mind of the Maker (1942), argues that the creative process is analogous to the government of the world by the Trinity wherein both the sovereignty of God and the freedom of man are preserved. Sayers was a prolific writer, whose works, both popular and scholarly, require their own book to catalogue.42

Women also have written popular and devotional literature. As a representative of this writing we mention Corrie ten Boom, whose popular books - The Hiding Place, Tramp for the Lord, In My Father’s House - detail her courageous love to Jew and Christian during and after World War II.

C. Service of Spiritual Power and Administration

...

26. J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (New York: Harper & Row, 1975) p. 94. Jerome says that some, including priests, inquired of Marcella concerning “doubtful and obscure points” (Letter 127).

27. For these quotes, see the Life of St. Lioba, in The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany, ed. C. H. Talbot (London: Sheed and Ward, 1954, 1981), p. 215.

28. Life of St. Lioba, p. 223.

29. Bede, History of the English Church and People, 4.23. Whitby was a double monastery of both women and men. In Celtic and Anglo-Saxon monasticism, such monasteries were usually under the direction of an abbess.

30. Boniface’s letter may be found in Christianity and Paganism, 350-750: The Conversion of Western Europe, ed. J. N. Hillgarth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), p. 175.

31. In the present form of the Martyrdom of Perpetua, chapters 3-10 constitute the prison diary of Perpetua. The Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius and the Martyrdom of Marian and James (both c. 250 a.d.) are patterned after the Martyrdom of Perpetua.

32. John Wilkinson, ed., Egeria’s Travels (London: SPCK, 1971), p. 5.

33. Virgilian cento poetry existed already at the time of Tertullian. In her Cento, Proba used especially Virgil’s Aeneid, Eclogues, and Georgics.

34. For Jerome’s criticism, see Letter 53.7, where he calls Christian cento literature “puerile” (also Letter 130). The most easily accessible English translation of Proba’s Cento is in Patricia Wilson-Kastner, G. Ronald Kastner, et al., A Lost Tradition: Women Writers of the Early Church (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981), pp. 45-68. The Cento was not Proba’s only writing. The beginning lines indicate that while still a pagan she had written of civil war, probably referring to the uprising of Magnus Magnentius against the Emperor Constantius (351-353 a.d.).

35. Socrates (Hist. eccl. 7.21) speaks of a “poem in heroic verse” that Eudoxia composed on the occasion of Theodosius’ victory over the Persians (422 a.d.). Evagrius Scholasticus (Hist. eccl. 1.20) has preserved one verse of a poetic address to the people of Antioch. Photius, ninth-century Patriarch of Constantinople, mentions a poetic paraphrase of the first eight books of the Bible (Bibliotheca 183) and also a poetic paraphrase of the prophetic books of Daniel and Zechariah.

36. For an English translation of Eudoxia’s Martyrdom of Cyprian, see Wilson Kastner, et al., Lost Tradition, pp. 149-171.

37. Frances and Joseph Gies, Women in the Middle Ages (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), p. 84.

38. Ibid., p. 78.

39. Ibid., p. 81. Other nuns of the twelfth century who followed Hildegarde as intellectual mystics and writers were Herrad of Landesberg, Elizabeth of Schönau, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Mechtild of Hackeborn, and Gertrude the Great (ibid., pp. 85-86).

40. See Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 68-78. For a theological description of The Mirror of Simple Souls, see Lerner, pp. 200-208.

41. Examples of pre-nineteenth-century female hymn writers are Emilie Juliane (1637-1706), to whom some six hundred hymns are attributed, and Henriette Luise von Hayn (1724-1782), who wrote over four hundred hymns, the most famous of which is perhaps "I Am Jesus’ Little Lamb." For this topic, cf. Tucker and Liefield, Daughters, pp. 256-257.

42. See Colleen B. Gilbert, A Bibliography of the Works of Dorothy L. Sayers (Hamden, CN: Archon Books, 1978).

...

(William Weinrich, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood)

Women in the history of the church - service of prayer and charity

Learned and Holy - but not Pastors

If it was once true that women were a neglected factor in church history, that imbalance is quickly being rectified. There is a spate of recent books on the history of women in the church that chronicle their institutions, their influence, and their contributions. As typical examples one may mention the three-volume collection of scholarly essays, Women & Religion in America, edited by Rosemary Ruether and Rosemary Keller, and the monograph Holy Women in Twelfth-Century England, by Sharon K. Elkins.1 There is little doubt that such scholarship is making a significant contribution to our understanding of the church’s past and, specifically, of the place and importance of women in it.

From within evangelical circles, the most important contribution to the history of women in the church is Daughters of the Church, by Ruth A. Tucker and Walter Liefeld.2 This book offers historical vignettes about women who have in one way or another exercised active, public leadership roles in the centuries of the church’s past. While striving to be objective, Tucker and Liefeld nevertheless exhibit a predilection for feminist interpretations of the evidence. Yet, that aside, they have amassed a considerable amount of material so that their book can nicely serve as a kind of women’s “Who’s Who in Church History.”3

In a short article we cannot encompass the full breadth of women’s contributions to the church’s life and faith through the centuries. We do wish, however, briefly to indicate some of the ways women have contributed to the church as well as the unbroken teaching and practice of the church that the recognized teaching and sacramental ministry of the church is to be reserved for men.

I. Daughters of the Church: in Word and Deed

A. Service of Prayer and Charity

It is, I suppose, impossible to escape the trap of describing the contributions of women, or of men, to the church primarily in terms of leadership and influence. After all, historical sources tend to focus on persons who did something or said something of extraordinary importance and therefore have been remembered and recorded. Yet we ought not be oblivious to one-sided activistic assumptions. The life of faith can be “active” in prayer, contemplation, and charity, and there have been myriad women, and men, who have excelled in these “silent works.”

In fact, the early church had a distinct group of women called “widows” who were dedicated to prayer and intercession.4 The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus (c. 210 a.d.) speaks of widows as “appointed for prayer” (chap. 11), and the Didaskalia Apostolorum (Syria, c. 230 a.d.) similarly speaks of the widows as having prayer as their primary duty: “for a widow should have no other care save to be praying for those who give and for the whole Church.”5 Other early Christian writers make clear that widows as a group held a place of considerable honor and dignity. Often they are listed along with the bishop, elders, and deacons (e.g., Origen, Hom. in Luc. 17), and Tertullian calls them an “order” and says that widows were assigned a place of honor within the assembled congregation (On Modesty 13.4).6

Although prayer and intercession were the primary tasks of the widow, the Didaskalia indicates that by the  3rd century the widows in some churches were engaged in charitable work. Such charity would consist in hospitality, working at wool to assist those in distress, and visiting and laying hands on the sick.7 The Apostolic Church Order (Egypt, fourth century) evinces a similar two-fold division of prayer and service. Three widows are to be appointed: “Two of them are to dedicate themselves to prayer for all those in trial and to be ready for revelations. . . . The one is to be ready to serve, attending upon those women who are ill” (chap. 21).8

Especially in eastern Christianity (Syria, Chaldea, Persia), social mores that severely limited social access to women required the creation of a distinctly female diaconal ministry for the evangelization and care of women. The order of deaconess first takes concrete form in the Didaskalia.9 The first duty of the deaconess was to assist the bishop in the baptism of women by anointing their bodies and ensuring that their nudity was not seen. Beyond this duty, the Didaskalia says that the deaconess had the responsibility of teaching and instructing the newly baptized women, apparently serving as a spiritual mother exhorting them to chastity. In addition, the deaconess was to visit Christian women in the homes of the heathen, to visit women who were ill, to bathe those women who were recovering from illness, and to minister to women in need.10

Subsequent ecclesiastical legislation in eastern Christianity reiterates these functions of the deaconess, but they add other responsibilities. The Apostolic Constitutions (Syria, fourth century) indicate that the deaconess supervised the seating and behavior of the female part of the worshiping community. She was a keeper of the doors to prevent men from mingling in the women’s section of the church, and she served as intermediary between the male clergy and the women of the congregation (Apost. Const. 2.57ff.; 2.26; 3.15ff., 19).11 The Testament of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Syria, fifth century), which gives to the widow what other legislation gives to the deaconess, does give the deaconess one duty, to bring communion to pregnant women unable to attend Easter mass (Test. II 20.7). Such legislation reveals a feminine ministry of considerable significance and responsibility. Indeed, the importance of the deaconess is indicated by the fact that she was an ordained member of the clergy.12 

In other regions, where the separation of the sexes was not so strict, such a female diaconate was not required, but the title of deaconess was introduced as a degree of honor to enhance the dignity of a woman religious called upon to oversee a convent. Such a deaconess abbess not only would administer the life of the convent and oversee its charitable activities, but also could perform certain liturgical services in the absence of a priest.13

Typical of this kind of deaconess was Olympias. Born into wealth in fourth-century Constantinople, she used her wealth to found a convent that included a hostel for priests as well as a number of hospitals. Her fame was enhanced by her friendship with John Chrysostom, with whom she corresponded while he was in exile.14 According to Palladius, Olympias “catechized many women.”15 Perhaps another such deaconess-abbess was a certain Mary who is known only from her tombstone (found in Cappadocia): “according to the text of the apostle, raised children, practiced hospitality, washed the feet of the saints and distributed her bread to those in need.”16

In the East where convents frequently were located in isolated places and priests might not be present, a deaconess abbess could perform certain liturgical services: distribute communion to the nuns, read the Gospels and the holy books in a worship assembly, etc.17 Although the West never had a developed female diaconate18 and the deaconess disappeared also in the East by the twelfth century, the deaconess ideal of charity and teaching for the sick and poor experienced a significant renewal in the nineteenth century.

Indeed, Kathleen Bliss would write that in terms of its subsequent influence, the revival of deaconess in Germany in the early nineteenth century was “the greatest event in the life of women in the Church since the Reformation.”19 In Germany the deaconess trained primarily as a nurse and only secondarily as a teacher. The model for this nursedeaconess was the deaconess home at Kaiserwerth begun in the 1830s by a Lutheran pastor, Theodore Fliedner. Its focus was the care of the sick poor, the orphan, discharged women prisoners, and the mentally ill.20 Other deaconess training schools on the Kaiserwerth model began all over Germany, such as that in Neuendettelsau in 1854, but the success of Fliedner’s enterprise was measured in international terms. By the midnineteenth century, Kaiserwerth nurses and teachers were staffing hospitals and schools in America, Constantinople, Smyrna, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Bucharest, and Florence.21

A different type was the Anglican deaconess, whose training was mostly theological and pastoral. The inspiration for this female diaconate came from Elizabeth Ferard, who with six other women-founded the London Deaconess Institution in 1862. Unlike the German deaconess, who worked largely independently of the church, the Anglican deaconess was responsible to the bishop of the diocese in which she worked. Well trained theologically, the Anglican deaconess worked in the parish or taught in school.22

In her 1952 report on the function and status of women in the member churches of the World Council of Churches, Kathleen Bliss listed in addition to the deaconess these types of women parish workers: (1) the trained lay parish worker whose duties might include Sunday school and youth work, Bible study, home visitation, hospital visiting, preparation for confirmation, and social case work; (2) parish helpers; (3) directors of religious education; (4) trained youth leaders; (5) church social workers; (6) Sunday school organizers.23

Throughout the history of the church thousands of dedicated women have carried on the tradition of prayer, Christian charity, and care begun in the early church by the widow and deaconess. Happily, the stories of some of these women are being told. An example of this is a recent book by Barbara Misner, who chronicles the history and work of eight different groups of Catholic women religious in America between 1790 and 1850.24 Among their “charitable exercises” she mentions especially the care of the sick, work during cholera epidemics, and care of orphans.

B. Service of Mind and Pen

...

1. Rosemary Radford Ruether and Rosemary Skinner Keller, eds., Women & Religion in America, three vols. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982-1986); Sharon K. Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988). The importance of women in the history of the church was never a totally neglected theme. Before it was fashionable to do so, Roland H. Bainton wrote his three-volume Women of the Reformation (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1971- 1977). See also Edith Deen, Great Women of the Christian Faith (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), and her bibliography, pp. 411-415.

2. Ruth A. Tucker and Walter Liefeld, Daughters of the Church: Women and Ministry From New Testament Times to the Present (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1987).

3. More recently Ruth A. Tucker has produced a similar but more focused book on women in modern missions: Guardians of the Great Commission: The Story of Women in Modern Missions (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1988).

4. See 1 Timothy 5:3-10. Ignatius of Antioch speaks of “virgins called widows” (Smyrna 13:1), a phrase that indicates that widow designated a specific group of women within the church. Polycarp of Smyrna calls the widow an “altar of God” (Philippians 4:3), probably because widows were recipients of Christian charity.

5. R. Hugh Connolly, Didaskalia Apostolorum (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1929), p. 132.

6. See also Tertullian, Exhortation to Chastity 13:4; On Modesty 13:7; To His Wife 1.7.4. This does not imply that widows were “ordained” or considered part of the clergy.  Indeed, the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus expressly forbids the laying of hands on the widow. She is to be appointed “by the word alone” and is distinct from the clergy (Apost. Trad. 11).

7. Connolly, pp. 136, 138, 140.

8. The Apostolic Constitutions (Syria, fourth century), the Canons of Hippolytus (Egypt, fourth century), and the Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ (Syria, fifth century) continue to depict the widow as given to prayer and charity. The Testament gives the widow a place of considerable prominence and even appears to place her among the clergy. One should note that the ministry of the widow was exclusively toward other women.

For general discussion of the widow, see Mary McKenna, Women of the Church: Role and Renewal (New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1967), pp. 35-63; Bonnie Bowman Thurston, The Widows: A Women’s Ministry in the Early Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989); Roger Gryson, The Ministry of Women in the Early Church (Collegeville, MD: The Liturgical Press, 1976, 1980) passim.

9. That social conditions demanded an order of deaconess is evident from the Didaskalia itself: “for there are houses to which you (the bishop) cannot send a (male) deacon to the women, on account of the heathen, but you may send a deaconess” (Connolly, p. 146). The best study on the deaconess is Aimé Georges Martimort, Deaconesses: An Historical Study (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986); see also Gryson, Ministry of Women.

10. Connolly, pp. 146-148.

11. See also the fifth- through seventh-century legislation from Chaldea and Persia adduced by Martimort, Deaconesses, pp. 52-58.

12. For discussion see Gryson, Ministry of Women, pp. 62-64; Kyriaki Fitzgerald, The Characteristics and Nature of the Order of the Deaconess, Women and the Priesthood, ed. Thomas Hopko (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1983), pp. 84-89. Apost. Const. 8.20 gives an ordination prayer for the deaconess. It is necessary to make clear that ordination placed one into a specific service. It did not mean that one could perform any and all churchly acts. The deaconess performed by ordination the functions of deaconess. Her ordination did not authorize her to perform the tasks of elder or bishop. No office was simply interchangeable with another office.

13. For discussion of the deaconess-abbess, see Martimort, Deaconesses, pp. 134-143, 205-206; Gryson, Ministry of Women, p. 90.

14. See Martimort, Deaconesses, pp. 136-137.

15. Palladius, Lausiac History, 56.

16. Martimort, Deaconesses, pp. 125-126. Most likely “the text of the apostle” is 1Timothy 5:10.

17. See especially Martimort, Deaconesses, pp. 138-143.

18. Martimort, Deaconesses, pp. 187-216.

19. Kathleen Bliss, The Service and Status of Women in the Church (London: SCM Press, 1952), pp. 80-81.

20. Perhaps the most famous of Kaiserwerth’s nurses was Florence Nightingale, who went there after she could find no similar training in England.

21. For a brief account of the history and influence of the German type of deaconess, see Bliss, Service and Status of Women, pp. 80-89.

22. For the Anglican deaconess, see ibid., pp. 89-91. Bliss noted a third type of deaconess as well, one common to Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist churches. Their work ranged “from parish work to institutional work in orphanages, homes for the aged, and other church-supported institutions” (pp. 92-94).

23. Ibid., pp. 94-103. This informative report, now almost forty years old, deserves an update, if it has not already received one.

24. Barbara Misner, “Highly Respectable and Accomplished Ladies”: Catholic Women Religious in America 1790-1850 (New York/London: Garland, 1988). The eight groups Misner discusses are the Carmelites, Visitation Sisters, Sisters of Charity- Emmitsburg, Sisters of Loretto, Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine Kentucky, Oblate Sisters of Providence, and Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy.

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(William Weinrich, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood)

Mary Somerville (Scottish, 1780-1872)

During her marriage she made the acquaintance of the most eminent scientific men of the time, among whom her talents had attracted attention before she had acquired general fame, Laplace told her “There have been only three women who have understood me. These are yourself, Mrs Somerville, Caroline Herschel and a Mrs Grieg of whom I know nothing.” (Of course, Somerville was first and third of these three.)

Having been requested by Lord Brougham to translate the Mécanique Céleste of Laplace, she greatly popularized its form, and its publication in 1831, under the title of The Mechanism of the Heavens, at once made her famous. She stated “I translated Laplace’s work from algebra into common language”.

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Émilie du Châtelet (French, 1706-1749)

Her crowning achievement is considered to be her translation into French of Isaac Newton’s monumental work, Principia Mathematica, with her own commentary; it is still considered the standard translation.

Voltaire, one of her lovers, declared in a letter to his friend King Frederick II of Prussia that du Châtelet was “a great man whose only fault was being a woman”.

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