Regarding the Historical Female Diaconate
Valerie A. Karras
Mary Magdalen announcing the Resurrection to the Apostles, St Albans Psalter, English, 1120-45.
In early November, at the Maliotis Center at Hellenic College/Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, the St. Phoebe Center for the Deaconess held a symposium as part of the celebrations of its ten years of existence. The well-attended conference included presentations by several seminary faculty and other Orthodox theologians as well as a Greek Orthodox metropolitan bishop and discussed a number of topics related to women’s ministries in the church: the historical diaconate, notions of ritual impurity, contemporary female chanters here in the U.S., consecrated deaconesses in some African Orthodox churches, pastoral issues where an ordained women’s ministry would benefit the church, logical fallacies in some arguments opposing the female diaconate, and the possibility of and strategies for reviving the female diaconate within the Eastern Orthodox Church. (I specify the Eastern Orthodox Church since the Armenian Apostolic Church – one of the family of churches called “Oriental” or “pre-Chalcedonian” Orthodox – revived in the 19th century their own female diaconate, which had begun around the 12th century; contemporary Armenian female deacons are vested identically to their male counterparts and perform the same liturgical functions.)
Apparently, in response to the St. Phoebe Center symposium, several people, some of whom have written against the historical and/or a revived female diaconate before, have written on this topic on their own websites or elsewhere. I saw on my Facebook feed a link to one such post, an article by Fr. Lawrence Farley trying (unsuccessfully) to argue that female deacons in the history of the Orthodox Church weren’t really deacons. I admit to frustration and some anger at the lack of intellectual honesty in the arguments presented by Fr. Farley and others, and at the readiness of some – readers as well as authors – to accept such clearly unconvincing arguments simply because of a shared ulterior agenda, namely, to continue to restrict the ordained ministry to men in the Orthodox Church. I subsequently shared my response on my own Facebook feed and was then asked to provide it to The Wheel for its online website. The editors have been patiently waiting for me to send this to them, but I haven’t had the time that I wanted to provide full references for the individual points I made. In lieu of that, I therefore refer interested readers to my lengthy article, “Female Deacons in the Byzantine Church,” which was published in the scholarly, peer-reviewed journal Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 73:2 (June 2004), 272-316. This article was recently republished as chapter 3 in John Chryssavgis, Marilyn Rouvelas et al., eds., Deaconesses: A Tradition for Today and Tomorrow (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2023). The article provides copious referrals to additional scholarly literature on the subject as well as full citations from sources such as church canons, the emperor Justinian’s legislation, saints’ vitae, and especially the Parenti edition of the euchologion (church service manual) contained in the eighth-century Barberini 336 codex and the several later Byzantine-era euchologia published by Jacobus Goar in the 17th century.
It is important first to distinguish between current discussions of whether the church should have a female diaconate today and, if so, how it should be structured in terms of qualifications and ministry, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, whether the church historically had a female diaconate and, if so, whether female deacons in the early and/or Byzantine church were ordained and whether their ordination was considered to be to a “lower” or “minor” (e.g., subdeacon or reader) or to a “higher” or “major” (deacon, priest, or bishop) order. I am here only treating the topic of the historical female diaconate. While current discussions include widely varying opinions regarding the revival of the female diaconate, there should be no diversity of opinion regarding the historical female diaconate because the documentary evidence is so abundant and definitive.
In fact, there is no debate within academic circles for that very reason. The Greek theologian Evangelos Theodorou settled the question with his three-part publication of his doctoral research in the Greek theological journal Θεολογία almost 70 years ago, and subsequent research and publications by American, British, French, German, and other scholars has simply verified Theodorou’s conclusion that female deacons were ordained to major orders. That female deacons’ liturgical and pastoral ministry was not public like their male counterparts but, instead, mirrored the generally private nature of women’s lives in antiquity did not detract from how their ordination was conducted and understood in the Byzantine era. The nature of the historical female diaconate in the Byzantine church is debated within some Orthodox (and Catholic) circles only because it is a fly in the ointment for those who are adamant that women have always been excluded from the higher/major orders of ordained ministry. In other words, such people operate from the logical fallacy of beginning with their conclusion and then seeking evidence to prove their conclusion or, failing that, attempting to interpret evidence contrary to their position in such a way as not to disprove their predetermined conclusion.
The fact is that the ordination rite is quite definitive in placing the female deacon with the major orders of clergy because of (1) most importantly, the ordination’s occurrence during the liturgy and at the altar (in fact, at the exact same place in the liturgy as the male deacon’s), rather than outside of the altar and outside of the eucharistic liturgy, as was/is done with the ordination of subdeacons and other minor orders; (2) the use of two prayers, as with other major order ordinations, rather than one, as with minor order ordinations (the prayers themselves for the female deacon were customized by the Fathers of the Church to her ministry, so, for example, one of them rather naturally mentions St. Phoebe), and included the “θείος χάρις” (“divine grace”) phrase common to ordinations to major orders but not to minor ones; (3) the female deacon was vested by the bishop with the diaconal stole (orarion), placed on her in the same manner as the male deacon’s would be placed by the time he actually received the Eucharist (the male deacon’s was/is initially draped over one shoulder, but he changed its position later in the liturgy so that both ends are at the front; this was so that the deacon, whether male or female, could use the ends of the orarion to hold the chalice without directly touching the vessel with his/her bare hands – see, e.g., historical icons of the Communion of the Apostles, where the apostles approach Christ as celebrant with their hands covered by their clothing); and (4) the female deacon received the Eucharist at the altar with the other clergy in major orders, not outside the altar with the laity, as did (and still do) the subdeacons and other clergy in minor orders; in fact, after communing the female deacon from the chalice, the bishop put the chalice into the female deacon’s hands, whereupon she placed it back on the altar. Again, clergy in minor orders did not touch the chalice, just as they did not receive the Eucharist at the altar.
The canons and laws regulating the clergy in the early and Byzantine church normally used the term διάκονος (“deacon”) for female as well as male deacons, the difference being only in the use of the feminine definite article (ἡ) rather than the masculine article (ὁ). Justinian, in one of his novels, actually specifically included female deacons, together with male deacons, presbyters, and bishops, in what he terms the ἱεροσύνη (“priesthood” in the broad sense of the higher orders of clergy). The service manuals (εὐχολόγια) of the Byzantine period make this perhaps the clearest simply by the fact that the ordination rite for the female deacon is always listed directly after that for the male deacon, even if the ordinations are listed in ascending order. In other words, they go from subdeacon to (male) deacon to female deacon, and then to presbyter and bishop rather than inserting the female deacon’s ordination between the subdeacon’s and the male deacon’s, as one would expect if it were considered a liminal, lower order than that of the male deacon. It is also worth noting that at least one of those εὐχολόγια doesn't even bother to provide the full ordination rite, simply noting that the female deacon’s is to be performed the same as for the male deacon’s except for a few differences (differences which Fr. Farley and some others irrationally claim to be much more important than such matters as when and where the ordination occurs, and where the ordinand receives the Eucharist).
Aimé Georges Martimort, a French Catholic theologian who overall does an excellent job presenting the historical documentary record for the female diaconate in various areas of the church both west and east, displays his own bias when he tries to argue that, basically, the female deacon in the Byzantine church couldn't possibly really have been part of major orders since acknowledging that would (to his mind) leave open the possibility that women could be ordained to the other two major orders. I despise this “slippery slope” argument – another logical fallacy – since it implicitly acknowledges the truth of “the other side” while simultaneously attempting to invalidate that truth by the bait-and-switch tactic of raising fears of something else. Moreover, it is established fact that the church had female deacons for well over a millennium in the past without women being ordained as presbyters, and the Armenian Apostolic Church, which initiated its female diaconate about the same time that it was falling into disuse in the Byzantine church, revived it in the 19th century and continues to have it without women being ordained as presbyters. They are two very different orders with different ministries and different histories; let us not confuse the diaconate with the priesthood.
As for the question of whether a revival of the female diaconate should simply reinstitute it exactly as it was or could and should modify certain qualifications, restrictions, or ministries better to serve the church today, that is something for the hierarchs to decide in consultation with clergy and lay leaders. St. Nektarios, e.g., when he ordained a couple of female deacons at the women’s monastery he founded on the Greek island of Aegina, had them chant petitions so the nuns could enjoy a fuller Liturgy of the Hours (i.e., the daily cycle of services at various times of the day) when there was no priest present. When sharp criticism arose over his ordaining these women and the Archbishop of Athens challenged him about it, Nektarios defended his actions by claiming that they were really more like subdeacons. Nevertheless, as I am sure the saint well knew, there is no evidence that female deacons in the early or Byzantine church chanted petitions at liturgical services; in fact, that is most likely the reason that the bishop vested the female deacon with the orarion differently from the male deacon, since the deacon holds up one end of the orarion when chanting petitions (there is some indication that the petitions, or at least mnemonic cues, may have been on the orarion). So, while the contemporary issue of whether and how to revive the female diaconate is not the subject of this article, but I cannot resist mentioning that, if a saint of the church over a century ago was willing not only to ordain a female deacon but to expand her function beyond its historical role in the Byzantine period (subdeacons, by comparison, have never chanted petitions liturgically) in order better to serve the worship community, I have no problem at all following his lead.
In any case, as I stated earlier, the question of the revival of the female diaconate is a separate issue from the long-settled question of the historical female diaconate. Only those with other agendas – generally, it appears, related to keeping women entirely out of ordained ministry – continue to voice opposition to what is patent in the historical record.
Valerie A. Karras is a theologian and retired theology professor who has taught at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Saint Louis University, and Southern Methodist University. She holds a Doctorate of Theology in Patristics from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a PhD in Church History from the Catholic University of America.