...."You say the church has a hidden history of women in leadership and authority roles. Why is it hidden?
It’s hidden because there was a deliberate attempt to change the understanding of the history, and it was successful. It’s historically documented that women were ordained to leadership roles in the early and medieval church. But it became controversial. By the 13th century, the church was saying women were never ordained. They didn’t say, “Women used to be ordained, but now we’re going to stop it.” They went further and built a series of arguments to prove that women had never been ordained.
An influential canon lawyer, Huguccio of Bologna, wrote that even if you ordained a woman, it wouldn’t take because she doesn’t have the right matter. That argument stuck, and century after century the assumption was that women were never and could not be ordained.
What are some surprising examples of women in church leadership?
There are a few examples that might surprise people. Maybe most surprising are the abbesses of Las Huelgas near Burgos in Spain, who acted as extraterritorial bishops until the 1870s.
They established parishes for the 36 villages under them. They dismantled parishes. They had to give faculties to any priest who heard confessions or said Mass in their diocese. They held their own synods. An abbess did everything a bishop did except ordain priests. She had a miter and crozier. There was an order of clerics that ran the hospital that she was in charge of, and they had to take an oath of obedience to her just as clerics have to take an oath of obedience to their bishop.
After the Council of Trent in the 16th century said, “No more of these extraterritorial bishops; we’re going to get rid of them all,” one of the abbesses of Las Huelgas, Anne of Austria, wrote to the pope. She asked, “How would that apply to us?” He wrote back, “Oh, don’t worry. Don’t worry. It doesn’t apply to you.” She was much too powerful for him to mess with.
Another example is St. Radegund, a sixth-century queen of France. She became queen because the king of France, Clothar I, had invaded her father’s kingdom, killed almost all her relatives, and then took her captive and eventually married her.
Around 550, after Clothar killed Radegund’s brother, she’d finally had it with him and fled to Bishop Médard of Noyen. She said, “Ordain me a deacon.” And he said, “No, the king’s knights are in hot pursuit. I’m in big trouble.” And she said, “Do you obey God, or do you obey man?” He was struck by that, so he ordained her a deacon. She became an extremely powerful abbess as well as a deacon.
Would Médard have believed he was making history by ordaining the first woman deacon?
He would have known it was possible because there was a rite for the ordination of women deacons in the Roman Pontifical, a liturgical book, up through the 12th century. We have all of the ordination rites for women deacons from the eighth through the 12th century.
There’s a wonderful legend about Bridget of Ireland, written hundreds of years after her death, half in Latin and half in Celtic
The story is that St. Mel, who was a bishop, was going to ordain Bridget an abbess. He was so flabbergasted and overtaken with her holiness that he opened the book of rites to the wrong place and ordained her a bishop. And Mel said, “OK, she’s a bishop. That’s it.”
Whoever wrote that story thought that if you ordained a woman a bishop, that it would “take.” In this story Mel said, “And this virgin will be the only woman bishop in Ireland.” So they not only thought you could ordain a woman a deacon, they thought you could ordain a woman a bishop.
Given that that story is a legend, does it have historical significance?
While it may be historically unlikely that this ever happened, it shows the person writing this ninth-century story thought that it was perfectly possible.
The same is true with these ordination rites for women deacons. It’s far too expensive to write these liturgical books and then not use them.
What do the rites say?
For women deacons the oldest rite we have in the West comes from an eighth-century book that was used by Bishop Egbert of York. The Eastern rites are much older. They go all the way back to the third century, and there are lots more of them.
The eighth-century rite is an interesting one because there is a single prayer in the middle of the rite, “The prayer for ordaining a male or a female deacon.” It’s the same prayer. But there are other prayers for blessing male and female deacons in Egbert’s pontifical as well. The prayer for females stresses virginity, while the prayer for males asks for peace and prosperity. But the prayer for ordaining them is the same.
The one with the longest prayer is a 10th-century ritual in the Romano-Germanic Pontifical, and it’s very influential. It has the complete liturgy for the ordination of a female and of a male deacon. The rite for a woman deacon takes place within the Mass and begins with the instructions, “When the bishop blesses the deacon, he places the orarium on her neck. However, when she proceeds to the church, she wears it around her neck so that the ends of the both sides of the orarium are under her tunic.”
The orarium is the stole that the deacon or priest wears when he’s preaching. Another place in the ritual they call it a stola. So she gets a stole for reading the gospel and preaching. That’s typical for a deacon and not different from the male ritual. There are other parts of the ritual—the reception of a veil, ring, and crown—that are also part of a ritual used to consecrate virgins.
In the 12th century a rite appears in the Roman Pontifical, but it seems to be a streamlined version of the one in the Romano-Germanic Pontifical.
There’s a wonderful 12th-century gospel illumination of the Annunciation, and Mary is dressed exactly like a woman deacon would have been. She has the orarium tucked under her tunic. It’s almost like the Archangel Gabriel is coming to ordain her a deacon so she could proclaim the gospel, which in her case would be, of course, to bear Jesus.
Can we tell from the rites how women deacons ministered?
The clearest evidence is that they read the gospel, because again and again you’ll see references to that, particularly in the 10th through the 12th centuries.
We also have sources, such as a ninth-century commentary on canon law, that says women deacons instructed Christian women. So they preached—but to women. We know that in the very early centuries they prepared women for baptism when there was full immersion, because the men weren’t going to do that.
Their ministry seems to have been primarily to women. That’s why in these later centuries—the 10th to the 12th centuries—some abbesses were also ordained deacons. A lot of sources from that time will say abbesses are the new deacons, and they’ll say that because the abbesses read the gospel. But there was a whole other ordination rite for abbesses.
These rituals for women deacons exist in the West through the 12th century. Then in the 13th-century Roman Pontifical, that prayer for women deacons is completely gone. It doesn’t get copied. The 12th century is also the last time a reference to a woman deacon, in this case, Heloise of Paris, is made...
It’s hidden because there was a deliberate attempt to change the understanding of the history, and it was successful. It’s historically documented that women were ordained to leadership roles in the early and medieval church. But it became controversial. By the 13th century, the church was saying women were never ordained. They didn’t say, “Women used to be ordained, but now we’re going to stop it.” They went further and built a series of arguments to prove that women had never been ordained.
An influential canon lawyer, Huguccio of Bologna, wrote that even if you ordained a woman, it wouldn’t take because she doesn’t have the right matter. That argument stuck, and century after century the assumption was that women were never and could not be ordained.
What are some surprising examples of women in church leadership?
There are a few examples that might surprise people. Maybe most surprising are the abbesses of Las Huelgas near Burgos in Spain, who acted as extraterritorial bishops until the 1870s.
They established parishes for the 36 villages under them. They dismantled parishes. They had to give faculties to any priest who heard confessions or said Mass in their diocese. They held their own synods. An abbess did everything a bishop did except ordain priests. She had a miter and crozier. There was an order of clerics that ran the hospital that she was in charge of, and they had to take an oath of obedience to her just as clerics have to take an oath of obedience to their bishop.
After the Council of Trent in the 16th century said, “No more of these extraterritorial bishops; we’re going to get rid of them all,” one of the abbesses of Las Huelgas, Anne of Austria, wrote to the pope. She asked, “How would that apply to us?” He wrote back, “Oh, don’t worry. Don’t worry. It doesn’t apply to you.” She was much too powerful for him to mess with.
Another example is St. Radegund, a sixth-century queen of France. She became queen because the king of France, Clothar I, had invaded her father’s kingdom, killed almost all her relatives, and then took her captive and eventually married her.
Around 550, after Clothar killed Radegund’s brother, she’d finally had it with him and fled to Bishop Médard of Noyen. She said, “Ordain me a deacon.” And he said, “No, the king’s knights are in hot pursuit. I’m in big trouble.” And she said, “Do you obey God, or do you obey man?” He was struck by that, so he ordained her a deacon. She became an extremely powerful abbess as well as a deacon.
Would Médard have believed he was making history by ordaining the first woman deacon?
He would have known it was possible because there was a rite for the ordination of women deacons in the Roman Pontifical, a liturgical book, up through the 12th century. We have all of the ordination rites for women deacons from the eighth through the 12th century.
There’s a wonderful legend about Bridget of Ireland, written hundreds of years after her death, half in Latin and half in Celtic
The story is that St. Mel, who was a bishop, was going to ordain Bridget an abbess. He was so flabbergasted and overtaken with her holiness that he opened the book of rites to the wrong place and ordained her a bishop. And Mel said, “OK, she’s a bishop. That’s it.”
Whoever wrote that story thought that if you ordained a woman a bishop, that it would “take.” In this story Mel said, “And this virgin will be the only woman bishop in Ireland.” So they not only thought you could ordain a woman a deacon, they thought you could ordain a woman a bishop.
Given that that story is a legend, does it have historical significance?
While it may be historically unlikely that this ever happened, it shows the person writing this ninth-century story thought that it was perfectly possible.
The same is true with these ordination rites for women deacons. It’s far too expensive to write these liturgical books and then not use them.
What do the rites say?
For women deacons the oldest rite we have in the West comes from an eighth-century book that was used by Bishop Egbert of York. The Eastern rites are much older. They go all the way back to the third century, and there are lots more of them.
The eighth-century rite is an interesting one because there is a single prayer in the middle of the rite, “The prayer for ordaining a male or a female deacon.” It’s the same prayer. But there are other prayers for blessing male and female deacons in Egbert’s pontifical as well. The prayer for females stresses virginity, while the prayer for males asks for peace and prosperity. But the prayer for ordaining them is the same.
The one with the longest prayer is a 10th-century ritual in the Romano-Germanic Pontifical, and it’s very influential. It has the complete liturgy for the ordination of a female and of a male deacon. The rite for a woman deacon takes place within the Mass and begins with the instructions, “When the bishop blesses the deacon, he places the orarium on her neck. However, when she proceeds to the church, she wears it around her neck so that the ends of the both sides of the orarium are under her tunic.”
The orarium is the stole that the deacon or priest wears when he’s preaching. Another place in the ritual they call it a stola. So she gets a stole for reading the gospel and preaching. That’s typical for a deacon and not different from the male ritual. There are other parts of the ritual—the reception of a veil, ring, and crown—that are also part of a ritual used to consecrate virgins.
In the 12th century a rite appears in the Roman Pontifical, but it seems to be a streamlined version of the one in the Romano-Germanic Pontifical.
There’s a wonderful 12th-century gospel illumination of the Annunciation, and Mary is dressed exactly like a woman deacon would have been. She has the orarium tucked under her tunic. It’s almost like the Archangel Gabriel is coming to ordain her a deacon so she could proclaim the gospel, which in her case would be, of course, to bear Jesus.
Can we tell from the rites how women deacons ministered?
The clearest evidence is that they read the gospel, because again and again you’ll see references to that, particularly in the 10th through the 12th centuries.
We also have sources, such as a ninth-century commentary on canon law, that says women deacons instructed Christian women. So they preached—but to women. We know that in the very early centuries they prepared women for baptism when there was full immersion, because the men weren’t going to do that.
Their ministry seems to have been primarily to women. That’s why in these later centuries—the 10th to the 12th centuries—some abbesses were also ordained deacons. A lot of sources from that time will say abbesses are the new deacons, and they’ll say that because the abbesses read the gospel. But there was a whole other ordination rite for abbesses.
These rituals for women deacons exist in the West through the 12th century. Then in the 13th-century Roman Pontifical, that prayer for women deacons is completely gone. It doesn’t get copied. The 12th century is also the last time a reference to a woman deacon, in this case, Heloise of Paris, is made...
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