[log in to unmask] wrote:
> Who told you she was a deaconess? There were no deaconesses in the
> west at this time, though the title is sometimes used as a courtesy
> title for nuns; I have never before seen it applied to Julian.
>
> Oriens.
>
> Do you know when there were deaconesses in Europe? I have heard them
> mentioned much earlier in the Middle Ages in association with the San
> Zeno Chapel in the Church of S. Prassede in Rome, but I have never
> found anything written about female deaconesses.
> Curiously,
> Jim Bugslag
Peter Abelard discusses deaconesses in his Romans commentary at 16:2,
which speaks of Phoebe along the lines of a deaconness, or as a woman
appointed in the ministry of the church. He quotes a number of earlier
sources--Origen, Jerome/Pelagius, Epiphanius, Cassiodorus, and Claude of
Turin. Peter says nothing about any deaconnesses in his time, though
clearly one wonders if he is thinking of Heloise. I know of no other
commentator on Romans who devotes so much space (only about a page) to
discussing deaconnesses at this passage.
Steve Cartwright
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