Theological Studies 66 (2005)
[Although the ordained order of deaconesses vanished in the Byzantine Church,
some women continued to fulfill, either informally or formally, various
liturgical functions in public church life. The author examines' the
art-historical and textual evidence of three groups of women: noblewomen
who participated as incense-bearers in a weekly procession in
Constantinople; matrons who helped organize and keep order in a monastic
church open to the public in Constantinople; and the possibly ordained
order of myrrhbearers in the Church of Jerusalem.]
Women continued to play active and ecclesiastically recognized liturgical roles in the processions, vigils, and services of the Byzantine Church
even during and after the decline of the ordained female diaconate by
the late twelfth century. The Byzantine Church, following historical
Christian tradition, excluded women from the ordained orders of the
presbyterate (priesthood) and the episcopate based on an anthropology of
separate and unequal roles for the sexes, and grounded biblically in
the Pauline prohibition against women speaking in church (1 Corinthians
14: 34), and particularly on the deutero-Pauline injunction against
women teaching (1 Timothy 2:11-12), the latter argued as a result of
woman's role in the Fall from grace in the Garden of Eden. The argument
from 1 Timothy 2 was used, for example, by the late fourth/early
fifth-century archbishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom, specifically to justify the exclusion of women from the priesthood.
However, the biblical injunctions against
women speaking and teaching were not, even in apostolic times,
interpreted as a complete exclusion of women from all liturgical and
pastoral functions, including charismatic preaching and ecclesiastical
offices. For example, the context of 1 Corinthians 14:34 clearly
indicates that the "speaking" that was prohibited to women was of the
question-and-answer variety, since the following verse instructed women
to ask their husbands at home if they needed to know something. That the
injunction was contextual is further supported, only three chapters
earlier (1 Corinthians 11:5), by Paul's directing women who prophesy to
cover their heads. "Prophesying" was, of course, public preaching,
particularly on moral issues, and the office of prophet was a
charismatic office of the early Church. As for 1 Timothy, chapters 3
through 5 outline the qualifications and responsibilities of various
clergy or officials in the church community. Among those discussed by
the writer of the pastoral epistle are two groups of women: Widows (1
Timothy 5:1-16) and female deacons (1 Timothy 3:11)'7. The consecrated,
or "enrolled" (1 Timothy 5:9), order of Widows8 disappeared, judging
from the lack of extant evidence, sometime after the middle of the sixth
century.9 In their lifestyle, their spirituality, and their pastoral
and liturgical roles, though, they provided important links to two other
women's orders on the rise from the late third or early fourth
centuries: female monasticism and the ordained order of female
deacons.1° Moreover, the liminal nature of the Widows—"enrolled" or
consecrated, and with certain liturgical functions, but not
ordained—prefigured the nature of consecrated or enrolled women serving
similar functions in the Byzantine Church.
In the early Christian period, the various
ordained and consecrated orders and informal roles that women played in
church life reflected a variety of needs and concerns, including: (1)
performance of pastoral and liturgical activities serving the needs of
women in the community, particularly those needs created by the
restrictions of Eastern Mediterranean societies that segregated and
secluded women; (2) recognition of women's historical contributions to
the ministry of Christ and to the apostolic Church; and (3) formal
ecclesiastical acknowledgement of the contributions of contemporary
women, especially those with money and influence." Many of these needs
and concerns, such as the baptizing of adult women converts and the
conveying of the Eucharist to the homes of housebound women, were met
through the order of the female diaconate. With the apparent demise of
that order, these continuing needs and concerns had to be met in other
ways.
In the Byzantine period, there were women
who usually bore some sort of formal ecclesiastical title and who were
organized more or less formally into consecrated or ordained orders.
These consecrated women functioned in public settings, either associated
with the metropolitan church, or, in one case, with a male monastery
that provided for liturgical participation by the faithful, both male
and female, of the surrounding neighborhood. All of these ecclesiastical
women have one thing in common: they reflect the Byzantine Church's
recognition that the various needs of a mixed community require the
pastoral and liturgical participation of women as well as men.
My article examines three "orders" or
groups of women active in Constantinople or in Byzantine Jerusalem in
the tenth through thirteenth centuries: (1) a trio of women whose unique
contributions to the orthodoxy of the Church were recognized by their
special participation as incense bearers in the most important and
well-known weekly liturgical procession in Constantinople; (2) a quartet
of women who assisted in the public liturgical functions of a men's
monastery in Constantinople; and (3) an order of women in the Church of
Jerusalem called the myrophoroi (myrrhbearers).
PROCESSIONAL INCENSE-BEARERS
Although active liturgical roles for women
were ecclesiastically prescribed and thus recognized in the forms of
titles and specific consecrated or ordained orders for the other two
groups of women examined in this article, such does not appear to be the
case in this instance. A frescoes preserved in a monastery church in
the Epirote city of Arta in northern Greece depicts a weekly procession
in Constantinople, providing an interesting piece of artistic evidence
of the rare processional role of a few select women based on their
personal, historical connection with certain important ecclesiastical
events in the late 13th century.
The Arta monastery of the Panaghia
Vlachernitissa, originally a male monastery, was converted to a women's
monastery sometime before A.D. 1230. A
few decades later, the monastery church, most likely constructed
originally in the tenth century, was expanded into a three-domed and
three-aisled basilica, and decorated with Byzantine frescoes and other
artistic and architectural elements. Among the 13th-century decorations
of the convent church extant today are a sculpted marble templon, a
mosaic floor, and, most outstandingly, a unique fresco, preserved in
fragmentary form on the southernmost arch on the west side of the
narthex, depicting the procession (or litany) of the famous icon of the
Theotokos Hodegetria in Constantinople.'' The weekly Tuesday procession
of the city's palladium through the capital is described in numerous
sources, both Byzantine and foreign, over a period of at least three
centuries, with the earliest accounts dating to the twelfth century.
The fresco is remarkable for two reasons.
First, it is unusual to find depicted in a church a historical religious
ceremony, particularly an outdoor procession. Most frescoes depict
scenes from the life of Christ, the Theotokos, and the saints.
Benefactors are occasionally shown with Christ or a patron saint, but
usually set against a gold background, i.e., outside of any historical
or social context. Secondly, the occasional religious events that are
depicted in icons and frescoes, such as the ecumenical councils,
generally do not contain women. The icon depicting the final restoration
of the icons following the Council of Haghia Sophia in A.D. 843 is an
exception because the Empress Theodora is shown, but she herself
convoked the council; moreover, it is Patriarch Methodios who takes
center stage, not Theodora. Myrtali Acheimastou-Potamianou theorizes
that the reason for the unusual iconographic subject in this monastery
church far from Constantinople, and in particular the prominent presence
of three women at the forefront of the procession, has to do with the
connection of the monastery's patron to two significant synods held in
the Vlachernae church in the capital and in Adramyttion, and to the
"celebrity" status attached to the mother of the patron, who opposed the
emperor, her own brother, for the sake of the orthodoxy of the
Byzantine Church.
In 1274, the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII
Paleologos for political and military reasons submitted himself
formally to the pope and the Church of Rome at the Second Council of
Lyon, and promised that the Byzantine Church would immediately follow his steps by reuniting itself with Rome
as well. Instead, the Byzantines, clergy and laity alike, vociferously
rejected the agreement. Michael's attempts to win forcibly the approval
of his Church and Empire led him to persecute and imprison those opposed
to the union, including his own sister, Irene-Eulogia. Epiros, with
Arta as its functional capital, had been independent of Constantinople
since the Latin conquest of 1204, and hence became a haven for
opponents of Michael's policies who were fleeing potential imprisonment.
When Michael died in 1282, his son
Andronikos reversed his father's religious policies, immediately
releasing those imprisoned by Michael, such as Irene-Eulogia. A game of
"musical chairs" ensued, with the patriarchal throne as the prize, that
pitted John Bekkos, a pro-unionist elected under Michael, against
Joseph, who both succeeded Bekkos and preceded him (Joseph had resigned
earlier, under Michael, in protest of the union). Finally, the following
year, Gregory II of Cyprus was elected as the new patriarch, in part thanks to the Bishop of Kozyle in Epiros, who was serving as ambassador to Constantinople
for the Despot of Arta, Nikephoros. Not coincidentally, Nikephoros's
wife, Anna Kantakouzena Palaeologina, was the daughter of the recently
released Irene-Eulogia. Also not coincidentally, the new patriarch,
Gregory, convoked in April of 1283, at the Church of the Vlachernae in Constantinople,
a synod that condemned Bekkos and deposed all unionist bishops; later
that same year another synod met in Adramyttion, cementing the victory
of the anti-unionists. Pachymeres records that Irene-Eulogia, her
daughter Anna, and her other daughter, Theodora, were in attendance.
Acheimastou-Potamianou finds the confluence
of these events significant evidence of the probable rationale for the
depiction of the procession of the Theotokos Hodegetria and the
prominent place given to three women in that procession on the wall of
the monastery church in Arta: There is no doubt that at this time the
established Tuesday procession in Constantinople took on greater
magnificence and meaning. We may firmly state that the pious
Eirene-Eulogia, a "celebrity" following her imprisonment, could not have
failed to take part, along with her two daughters, in the procession of
the icon of the Hodegetria, the palladium of the Capital, either in one
or more of the Tuesday processions or in a special litany of the icon
conducted to celebrate the events that had taken place. The memory of
the ceremony in Constantinople in which
the three ladies participated is, perhaps, preserved in the fresco of
the Vlacherna monastery. Very likely, the recent death of Eirene-Eulogia
in 1284 while Anna Palaiologina was still in Constantinople
prompted the selection of this particular scene with its emotional
charge. The representation of the litany in the women's monastery of the
Vlacherna, the burial church of the family of the despots, was probably
intended as a memorial service for the mother of Anna, and served to
immortalize EireneEulogia with her two daughters at a propitious time in
the position of Orthodoxy, on behalf of which she had struggled with
such great zeal
Thus, an important liturgical procession in Constantinople
remarkably included women in a visibly prominent role. It was unusual
for women to play an active role in liturgical processions since the
Byzantine practice of secluding women, especially upper-class women,
meant that they were discouraged even from appearing in public outside
of church and at important events such as funerals. Matrons would have
had more freedom than young, unmarried women, who were much more
rigorously secluded, so it was probably not unusual for married women to
participate in the weekly procession. Nevertheless, to have such a
visibly public and active role was extraordinary. Even the deaconesses
of the Great Church in Constantinople
do not appear to have taken part in the elaborate procession that
occurred during the part of the Divine Liturgy known as the Great
Entrance. Thus, Eirene-Eulogia and her daughters Anna and Theodora were
honored in this striking way as women of wealth and privilege who
exhibited strong and self-sacrificing dedication to the Byzantine Church.
Part of the unusual public nature of their
participation is represented in their holding some sort of liturgical
vessels. Unfortunately, the poor state of preservation of the fresco and
the small size of the figures makes it unclear what exactly the women
are holding in their hands. It is likely from their shape that the
objects held by the two women in front of the third are either incense
burners, as Acheimastou-Potamianou believes, or
pyxes
(incense holders). Their holding either of these vessels would further
underscore their prominent liturgical position in the procession. More
over, their role as incense-bearers would also recall the myrrh-bearing
women of the Gospels, who remained steadfast in their loyalty to Jesus
Christ. Thus, these women's dedication was recognized by the Byantine Church's
placing them prominently in an important procession, and doing so in a
manner that equated them with the apostolic women of Scripture.
Interestingly,
their liturgical participation linked them to another group of women
who also deliberately imaged these same women recorded in Scripture•
namely, the myrrhbearers of the Church of Jerusalem, who will be described later after the graptai.
THE GRAPTAI OF THE PANTOKRATOR MONASTERY
As already noted, although the order of Widows and later the order of deaconesses died out in the Byzantine Church,
the pastoral and liturgical needs that they met continued to exist. One
group of women who partially met those needs served, curiously, at the
male monastery of the Pantokrator in Constantinople.
The monastery of Christ the Almighty
(Pantokrator) was founded by either the Byzantine emperor John II
Komnenos or his wife, Irene, in the 1130s. An interesting feature of the
monastery was its triple church: three physically connected churches
built at different times and dedicated, respectively, to Christ
Pantokrator (south), the Theotokos Eleousa, or "Merciful" (north), and
the Archangel Michael (center). A hospital and an old age home were also
attached to the monastery.
As with Byzantine women's monasteries, so
too the Pantokrator monastery followed the principle of seclusion or
abatos that is, it did not admit members of the opposite sex into the
monastic foundation proper: "Women will not enter the monastery and the
monastery will be a forbidden area for them, even if they are
distinguished ladies and are adorned by a devout life and a noble
birth." Because the clergy needed for the sacramental life of the
monastery could be found within it, a male monastery was, of course,
able to exclude women far more than a female monastery could exclude
men. Nevertheless, although a monastery needed a certain amount of
seclusion from the world in order that its members could devote
themselves to their spiritual practices, Byzantine monasticism was no
more removed from the world than was medieval Western monasticism. As
Rosemary Morris has remarked, monastic "contacts with the secular world
were often close and frequent and, though monastic tradition might
decree the opposite, complete seclusion—a life 'in the world but not of
it' —was, in fact, rarely practiced."
In fact, while never developing the
mendicant orders that became prevalent in the West, neither did the
Eastern Christian monastic tradition practice the complete seclusion
found in Western cloistered orders, except in the most extreme type of
anchorite (solitary) monasticism. From the beginnings of monasticism in Egypt and Palestine,
there was a steady intercourse between monks and laypersons.
Hospitality was a basic monastic virtue; the Basilian (and Macrinan)
style of monastic life included charitable activities for the lay
faithful in the neighboring community; and, as Morris has also noted,
"[c]entral to the relationship between monks and laity was the role of
the monk as spiritual guide." This social, philanthropic, and spiritual
monastic outreach was particularly true of coenobitic monasteries in
urban areas, such as the Pantokrator in Constantinople. Its hospital, old age home, and off-site sanatorium for lepers showed its founder's commitment to monastic philanthropy.
Pantokrator's spiritual leadership, too,
was obviously important to its founder. The outermost church of the
monastic complex, the Eleousa, served as a liminal area between the
abatos of the monastery and the world outside the monastery walls,
providing spiritual nurture to the public with a regular calendar of
services. The typikon (monastic rule) for the monastery mandated for the
Eleousa church a large number of clergy, whose duties included
celebrating for the people of the city a weekly Friday night vigil,
replete with a procession of banners into the church. The section
enumerating the clergy attached to the Eleousa listed a total of 50
clergy: priests, deacons, chanters, lamplighters, etc. In addition to
the 50 clergy, the section also mandated extra orphans to serve as
alternate lamplighters when there were not enough "certified" orphans
Finally, completing the section on clergy, but excluded from the clergy
count of 50, was the founder's description of four women "with the rank
of graptai":
[W]e decree that four respectable women of
propriety, mature in age and character and with the rank of graptai,
should carry out their duties, two in one week and the other two in the
next, and the four of them should be present on a Friday evening and
watch over the church and what happens there. For we have decreed that
these orphans and graptai should exist for this reason, that they should
conduct the procedure of the meeting of the holy banners every week,
carry out the service to those brothers who gather by refreshing them
all with water, and see to the oversight of the church and the things
connected with it.
So, according to the typikon, people were
needed to care for a monastic church that was open to the public on a
regular basis, in order to offer visitors appropriate hospitality, and
especially to ensure order during what was obviously a popular and
well-attended weekly vigil. In earlier times, consecrated Widows or
ordained female deacons would have served such functions as doorkeepers
and maintainers of order. However, as mentioned above, by the 13th
century, both of these orders had disappeared from the Byzantine Church.
Therefore, the emperor or empress, recognizing the pastoral and
liturgical need, given the social segregation of the sexes in Byzantine
culture mentioned earlier, for women as well as men to fulfill these
tasks, appointed four women "with the rank of graptai" to serve the
faithful visiting the monastic church throughout the week, rotating in
teams of two on a weekly schedule, with all four graptai serving during
the Friday evening vigil processions, which much have attracted a large
crowd.
In fact, these graptai were the equivalent
of deaconesses or Widows, in terms of both their eligibility
requirements and their duties. With respect to eligibility, it is
unclear whether the requirement that the graptai be proper or chaste
(semnas) necessarily meant their being widowed, as were deaconesses and
Widows, or virginal, as were deaconesses, but the general tenor is the
same: the graptai had to be older women who were above reproach.4° As to
their functions, although there is no indication that they shared the
sacramental duties connected to baptism and Eucharist that female
deacons performed in earlier times, the duties of maintaining order and
seeing to the needs of the faithful during church services were the
same.
Were these graptai ordained? Were they
considered clergy? There is no indication that they were ordained, and,
since their duties had less to do with active participation in the
liturgical services than with the peripheral liturgical duties of
overseeing the banner procession at the Friday vigil and keeping order
in the church, it is unlikely that they were ordained, particularly
since, as previously mentioned, they were not included in the
enumeration of the 50 clergy of the Eleousa. On the other hand, they
were listed together with the clergy in that section, and were counted
as part of the clergy rather than as servants in the section that set
forth the remuneration scale for the various clergy. So, why were the
graptai listed with the clergy but not officially counted as part of
them?
The answer may be twofold.
First, the absence of ordained women by this time, due to the
disappearance of the ordained female diaconate, may have led the
founders and the capital's clergy to entertain not even the possibility
of considering the graptai to be ordained, even to a minor order. Note,
by contrast, that the certified orphans/lamplighters were listed as part
of the clergy. Secondly, the very title, the "rank" (taxis) or order of
graptai, accorded them by the monastery's imperial founders may provide
a clue. This term or office is unknown: it appears in no ancient,
patristic, or Byzantine Greek lexicon, nor in any standard Byzantine
reference works, such as the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. However,
the literal sense of the term, "written," may relate these women to the
Widows of the early Church as opposed to the female deacons. Although
the writer of the First Epistle to Timothy uses a different word,
katalegestho (to count among, or to enroll), the meaning is identical:
these were enrolled women who had an established pastoral, spiritual,
and semi-liturgical church ministry and hence were supported by the
church (or monastery, in this case), but they were not part of the
clergy who participated more centrally in the liturgical services as
celebrant, chanter, etc. Thus, they were indeed clergy in its broader
sense, but were consecrated as opposed to being ordained to either major
or minor orders.
MYROPHOROI — THE MYRRH BEARERS
The Patriarchate of Jerusalem, although autocephalous ecclesiastically, in reality was very closely linked to the Byzantine Church
throughout most of the middle Byzantine period, particularly in
liturgical terms. The hymnography emanating from the monastery of St.
Sabas outside Jerusalem, and certain liturgical practices, especially
paschal ones, were exported to Constantinople and other places by
pilgrims wishing to recreate the rituals of this most ancient and
apostolic of churches. By the turn of the first millennium, Jerusalem had an elaborate and well-established set of rites surrounding the celebration of Easter. One unique element of the Jerusalem
rite, of which traces appear in other places (such as the
incense-bearing women in the Arta fresco), is the order of myrophoroi,
myrrhbearers, who participated in the Holy Saturday and Resurrection
services of the Church of Jerusalem.
All four Gospels record that several female
disciples of Jesus, unlike the Twelve, attended his Crucifixion and
burial, and returned early on Sunday morning with myrrh and spices to
anoint his body, only to find the empty tomb and hence become the first
evangelists of the Resurrection.
These myrrhbearing women, or myrophoroi in
Greek, were celebrated in the early Church for their courage and
selfless devotion. The Eastern Church even gave Mary Magdalene the title
isapostolos, or "equal to the apostles." In the Byzantine period, the
development of the Pentecostarion, the cycle of hymns for the period
from Easter to All Saints (the week after Pentecost) included the
special commemoration of the Myrrh-bearers on the third Sunday after
Easter. At approximately this same time, a special order of women
developed in the Church of Jerusalem who were named after these female disciples of Jesus Christ.
It is not known when exactly the order of myrophoroi developed in the Jerusalem Church;
when they disappeared is equally unknown. They are not mentioned in
early church documents relating to the paschal celebration in Jerusalem,
including the detailed description given by Egeria in the late fourth
century. However, there are numerous references to these women in a
typikon (liturgical rule) of the Church of Jerusalem,
contained in a twelfth-century manuscript that apparently is a copy of
an earlier work from the late ninth or early tenth century. Egeria's
diary and the dating of the original typikon on which the
twelfth-century manuscript is based thus provide us with a terminus post
quem of the fifth century and a terminus ante quem of the ninth
century, since the myrophoroi were clearly an established order by the
time the typikon was written. It is likely that they still existed in
the 13th century when the extant manuscript was copied from the lost
original, although it is also possible that they had become defunct by
that time but still existed within institutional memory. Their
disappearance thus may coincide with, or postdate by a century or so,
the disappearance of the female diaconate in the Byzantine Church.
Unlike the confusion over the use of the term myrophoroi by certain Russian travelers describing the Great Church in Constantinople,
these women definitely cannot be identified with deaconesses, since
that order is separately mentioned in the typikon's description of the
paschal services.
Thus, the myrophoroi were a distinctive order unique to the Church of Jerusalem. Their liturgical functions are quite clearly spelled out in the Jerusalem typikon, and largely mirror, in a stylized and liturgical fashion, the activities of the biblical myrrhbearing women.
The Jerusalem
myrophoroi began their liturgical service early on Holy Saturday
morning, when they accompanied the patriarch and his clerical
assistants, such as the archdeacon and chanters, to the Holy Sepulcher.
The myrrhbearers were to clean and prepare the oil lamps in the Holy
Sepul cher, chanting the canon and the liturgy of the hours while they
worked. When they had finished cleaning and preparing the lamps, they
chanted the "Glory to the Father ..." and a hymn in plagal second tone. A
deacon then would chant the litany, and the patriarch would lock the
Holy Sepulcher after extinguishing the lamps.
It cannot be stated for certain whether the
myrophoroi were included as part of the clergy in the vesper service
and for the Divine Liturgy of St. James, since they are not individually
mentioned in the rubrics. However, it is likely that their inclusion
should be inferred since, at the end of the liturgy, the typikon
mentions that the myrrhbearers remained behind and reentered the Holy
Sepulcher in order to cense and anoint it. The Church of the Holy
Sepulcher was then locked until the return of the patriarch and clergy
early the following morning.
For Easter matins, the clergy, which
apparently included the myrophoroi, gathered early in the morning at the
patriarchate, in the secreton, where they changed into white vestments
before presumably returning to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
Although the text does not give a full list of clerical orders included,
the rubrics for the paschal matins service make it impossible not to
understand the term "clergy" to include the myrrh-bearers. Outside the
church, the clergy chanted the Easter apolytikion, "Christ is risen,"
several times as a refrain to psalm verses intoned by the patriarch, who
then called out: "Open to me the gates of righteousness; I shall
confess the Lord as I enter in," to which the archdeacon responded with
another "Christ is risen." Then, The doors of the church are immediately
opened and the patriarch together with the clergy enter the church,
chanting the 'Christ is risen'. And the patriarch and the archdeacon
immediately enter into the Holy Sepulcher, those two alone, with the
myrophoroi standing before the Holy Sepulcher. Then the patriarch shall
come out to them and say to them [the myrophoroi]: "Rejoice! [or
"Greetings!"] Christ is risen." The myrophoroi then fall down at his
feet, and, after rising up, they cense the patriarch and sing the
polychronion to him. They [then] withdraw to the place where they
customarily stand.
The matins service then proceeded normally
with the chanting of the canon for Easter, the exaposteilarion, the
praises (lauds), and the Easter aposticha. Near the end of the service
comes the final reference to the myrophoroi. Following the deacon's
chanting of the epakousta, there was a procession to the bema with two
of each clerical order: deacons, sub deacons, deaconesses, and
myrophoroi. The deacons held censers, the
subdeacons
and deaconesses held manoualia, and the myrophoroi each carried a
triskelion. The two myrophoroi took up position one on each side of the
Holy Sepulcher, censing throughout the second deacon's reading of the
Gospel. At the end of the reading, the myrrhbearers entered the Holy
Sepulcher and censed and anointed it.
It is clear that the activities of the
myrophoroi in the liturgical services of Holy Saturday and Sunday
mimicked those of the original myrrhbearing women: they were present at
the tomb, they censed and anointed Christ—in the person of the
patriarch—and the tomb, and they even recreated the myrrhbearing women's
encounter with the angel(s), or the risen Christ, at the tomb early on
Sunday morning.
The typikon leaves many questions
unanswered. For example, it is unclear whether there are a number of
myrophoroi or only two. Since the rubrics at the end of the matins reads
"the two myrophoroi" as opposed to "two of the myrophoroi," it is
possible that there were only two in this order. However, only two of
each order participated in the matins procession, so, for example, it
also says "the two deacons," although there were undoubtedly more than
two connected to the church. Therefore, it is possible that there were
more than two myrophoroi attached to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher,
although for practical reasons only two participated liturgically, at
least for the Easter matins. In fact, given the Jerusalem Church's
propensity to recreate the Passion events as closely as possible, it is
likely that there were more than two myrophoroi since the gospel
accounts generally list more than two women at the crucifixion, if not
at the tomb itself.
A second unanswered question concerns where
the particular location was within the church for the myrophoroi when
they were not actively participating in the services. Bertoniere finds
the reference significant because it suggests that "their role was
something of a permanent office." This raises perhaps the most important
unanswered question, namely, whether the myrophoroi were ordained. They
probably would not have been considered a major order since (1) they do
not appear to have had the type of sacramental functions associated
with major orders, and (2) they would not have fit into the threefold
system of major orders, deacon(ess), presbyter/priest, and bishop,
already well entrenched in church practice at least five centuries
earlier. Therefore, either they were "consecrated" but not ordained,
such as the Widows in the early Church, and probably the graptai already
mentioned, or they were ordained to a special minor order of clergy,
akin to the level of reader. This latter option seems more likely, given
the myrrhbearers' important liturgical functions during the Easter
services and the typikon's assumption that they are part of the clergy.
Thus, although there is no ordination rite extant for the myrophoroi, either in the Jerusalem
typikon or elsewhere, one may hypothesize that some sort of tonsure, or
minor-order ordination (cheirothesia), was likely done for the
myrophoroi, for two reasons. First, it would fit with the early and Byzantine Church's
practice of clearly restricting liturgical functions to clergy, of
either major or minor orders. Eirene-Eulogia and her daughters indeed
participated in a liturgical procession, but it was an out-of-doors
procession that was not part of a standard liturgical service.
Laypersons traditionally did not participate in the worship of the
Byzantine Church beyond the activities common to all the faithful; even
chanters and readers were ordained as members of the minor orders of
clergy. Secondly, as previously discussed, although the typikon gives no
definition of the term "clergy," it is apparent from the rubrics at the
beginning of the paschal matins service68 that the term must include
the myrophoroi since they enter the church with the patriarch and
immediately stand at the entrance to the Holy Sepulcher while he enters
it with the archdeacon. Thus, while the myrophoroi may have been
consecrated by a simple prayer, it appears more likely from their
functions as described in the Jerusalem typikon that they were in some way ordained to a type of minor order.
CONCLUSION
While early female church orders such as
Widows and deaconesses vanished by the later Byzantine period, meager
but important literary evidence demonstrates that women in the Byzantine
Church, at different times and in different parts of the Empire,
continued to be specially designated for particular liturgical roles,
and were even ordained, consecrated, or "enrolled" into various orders.
These roles or orders served one, or usually more, of three functions:
(1) they honored certain women for their particular devotion to the
church; (2) they provided a means for women faithful to be properly
cared for during church services, while attending to the demands of
social convention; and (3) they evoked the scriptural witness of the
apostolic ministry of women to Jesus Christ.
Eirene-Eulogia and her daughters served in a
semi-liturgical role that honored them personally by positioning them
prominently in a popular weekly procession with the palladium of the
city. Moreover, the nature of their liturgical role evoked the
myrrhbearers of Scripture, who did not abandon their Lord at his
Crucifixion and who later went with myrrh and incense to attend to his
body. The myrophoroi of the Church of Jerusalem
explicitly imaged the myrrbearing women of the Gospels during the
Easter services at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, recreating in a
stylistic and liturgical manner the actions of the biblical women for
whom their order was named. As for the graptai, they demonstrate that,
even after the decline of the orders of Widows and female deacons, the
need for a liturgical and pastoral ministry by and for women was
recognized even in a male monastery, which responded by essentially
recreating the early order of Widows in these older, well-respected
women "with the rank of graptai."
The existence of these various orders and groups of women in the Byzantine Church,
as with their predecessors in early Christianity, reveals the
ambivalence of a male-dominated ecclesiastical hierarchy toward the
active liturgical participation of women as more than lay faithful. This
ambivalence resulted from, on the one hand, theological notions of
women's subordination to men combined with social conventions that
limited women's activity to private, domestic space, and, on the other
hand, the theological recognition of the spiritual equality of women
combined with a pastoral desire to ensure that the Church met the full
spiritual needs of its women faithful. Thus, women continued to be
excluded from the leadership ranks of presbyters and bishops, and even
the female diaconate disappeared with no formal indication in the extant
literature of how, when, or why. On the other hand, the service of
women in formally recognized liturgical roles continued to fulfill a
combination of needs and interests arising from such disparate factors
as (1) a culture that imposed sexual segregation and the seclusion of
women, (2) a desire to honor publicly and formally those who had
contributed much to church life, and (3) the Byzantines' fondness for
recreating liturgically the important events in the life of Christ.
Thus, while the theology and practice of the Byzantine Church disallowed
the ordination of women to most major orders, its pastoral and
liturgical concerns for its faithful, specifically for its women
faithful, led to diverse and unique roles and orders for some women—as
processional incense-bearers, wardens of a public vigil hosted by a male
monastery, and liturgical representations of the myrrhbearing women who
ministered to Christ.
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