The Ordained Women Deacons: of the Church's First Millennium

A recent theological statement from the Roman Catholic Church has increased hopes that while women may not be ordained as priests, their ordination as deacons may soon become reality. This is a new, enlarged edition of a groundbreaking book that gathered historical evidence from ancient liturgies, literature, art and inscriptions on graves to show that the practice of ordaining women as deacons in the first ten centuries of the Church was normative. Women carried out sacramental rites along...