Diaconato femminile nella Chiesa antica

Abstract

Since the beginning of Christianity women played an important role and occupied a special place in the Church community. However, none of them held leadership roles in ecclesial life. The only ministries that they exercised were those connected with diaconate. In the first two centuries, the diaconate of women was unknown; the author of the Didascalia Apostolorum spoke about it as a novelty. According to the different sources, the deaconesses looked after sick women, accompanied them in baptism, taught the neophytesses, attended to the proper reception of women to the Church community during the liturgical celebrations, mediated between women and the Church’s hierarchy, and finally provided assistance to their spiritual and material needs. However, they neither assisted the bishops nor the priests at the altar, and did not help them with the distribution of the Holy Communion. Since the 4th century the presence of deaconesses was more and more evident in the East, except Egypt, where no record of them is to be found. Like men, also women were ordained by the bishop through the imposition of hands and the epiclesis in the presence of the clergy. The diaconate of women existed only in the Christian East. The attempts to introduce it to the West in the 4th and 5th century, even in a form of the office or an honorary title, were not successful.