The Disappearing Deaconess: Why the Church Once Had Deaconesses and Then Stopped Having Them

For all the recent research on deaconesses in the early Church, we still know very little about them, for two reasons: First, their duties were very limited, so there isn't much said about them in ancient texts. Second, their presence was also very limited: There weren't many of them anywhere outside Constantinople. In many places, there weren't any at all, and for a long time, there weren't any anywhere in the Orthodox Church. Why?

The Disappearing Deaconess examines not just the evidence o...