Part 2 (1/2)
It will be noticed that these freer communities of religious women, that bear so much closer resemblance to the deaconesses of the early Church than to the sisterhoods of nuns contemporary with them, mostly existed in the great free cities of Germany and the Netherlands, which were the cradles of political and religious liberty, the centers of commerce and of civilization at that time.
Among the Waldenses, the Poor Men of Lyons, who were already prominent in the last half of the twelfth century, we find there were deaconesses. We learn of them again, too, among the Bohemian brethren, the followers of Huss. With deep Christian faith they endeavored to form a Church after the apostolic model, and in 1457 appointed Church deaconesses. ”They were to form a female council of elder women, who were to counsel and care for the married women, widows, and young girls, to make peace between quarrelers, to prevent slandering, and to preserve purity and good morals,”[21] aims which keep close to the apostolic definition of this office.
Luther, the great master-mind of the Reformation, was too clear-sighted to fail to appreciate the importance of women for the service of the Church. Speaking of the quality which is an inherent part of the diaconate of women, he says: ”Women who are truly pious are wont to have especial grace in comforting others and lessening their sorrows.” In his exposition of 1 Pet. ii, 5, he uttered truly remarkable words, for the age in which he lived, concerning women as members of the holy priesthood. He says: ”Now, wilt thou say, Is that true that we are all priests, and should preach? Where will that lead us? Shall there be no difference in persons? shall women also be priests? Answer. If thou desirest to behold Christians, so must thou see no differences, and must not say, That is a man or a woman, that is a servant or a lord, old or young. They are all one, simply Christian people. Therefore are they all priests. They may all publish G.o.d's word, save that women shall not speak in the church, but shall let men preach. But where there are no men, but women only, as in the nuns' cloisters, there might a woman be chosen who should preach to them. This is the true priesthood, in which are the three elements of spiritual offerings, prayer, and preaching for the Church. _Whoever does this is a priest. You are all bound to preach the Word, to pray for the Church, and to offer yourself to G.o.d._”[22]
There is no mention in Luther's writings, however, of the diaconate of women. It would be more natural that he should have tried to adjust the lives of the monks and nuns as he knew of them to the new relations arising from the Reformation rather than to bring to life an office of which he had no personal knowledge. This was what he did when he wrote to the burghers of Herford in Westphalia. In their new zeal they wanted to drive the inmates from the religious houses, although the latter had been the means of teaching them the reformed doctrines. In his letter of January 31, 1532, Luther says: ”If the brothers and sisters who are by you truly teach and hold the true word it is my friendly wish that you will not allow them to be disturbed or experience bitterness in this matter. Let them retain their religious dress and their accustomed habits which are not opposed to the Gospel.”[23]
Certainly Luther would have seen no harm in allowing deaconesses the protection of a special garb.
Pa.s.sing to another great reformer, Calvin, we find not only references to deaconesses as filling a ”most honorable and most holy function in the Church,” but in the Church ordinances of Geneva, which were drawn up by him, there is mention of the diaconate as one of the four ordinances indispensable to the organization of the Church.
In the Netherlands several attempts were made to revive the ancient office. The General Synod of the Reformed Church at Wesel, in 1568, first considered the question. A later synod, in 1579, expressly occupied itself with the work and office of the deaconess, but the measures taken were not adapted to advance the interests of the cause, and it was formally abandoned by the Synod of Middleburg in 1581. In the city of Wesel, however, there continued to be deaconesses attached to the city churches until 1610. In Amsterdam local churches preserved the office still later than at Wesel. Already in 1566 we read that in the great reformed Church not only deacons but deaconesses were elected.
The terrible days of the Spanish fury swept away all Church organization for a time, but when it was restored in 1578 both cla.s.ses of Christian officers again resumed their duties. From 1582 lists of deaconesses were kept, showing at first three; later, in 1704, twenty-eight, and in 1800 only eight. At the present time there are women directors of hospitals and orphanages in Amsterdam who are called by the t.i.tle of deaconesses.
The helpless, sick, and neglected children are now gathered in inst.i.tutions instead of being cared for individually as was formerly the custom, and women having positions of control in these inst.i.tutions are designated by the name formerly applied to those who had the personal care of the same needy cla.s.ses.
It is interesting to note that there was one a.s.sociation of women in the century of the Reformation that bears close resemblance to the Beguines and the Sisters of the Common Life. These were the Damsels of Charity, established by Prince Henry Robert de la Mark, the sovereign prince of Sedan in the Netherlands. In 1559 he, together with the great majority of his subjects, embraced the doctrines of the Reformed Church, and instead of incorporating former church property with his own possessions, as did so many princes of the Reformation, he devoted it to founding inst.i.tutions of learning and of charity. These latter he put under the care of the ”Damsels of Charity,” an a.s.sociation of women which he had inst.i.tuted. The members could live in their own homes or in the establishments, but in either case they devoted themselves to the protection and succor of the poor and sick and the aged. While taking no vows, they were chosen from those not bound by the marriage vow, and were subject only to certain rules of living. The Damsels of Charity have been held by some to be the first Protestant a.s.sociation of deaconesses, although not called by the name.[24]
There are two evangelical societies, small in numbers, but one at least powerful in influence, which have retained deaconesses from their origin to the present time. These are the Mennonites or Anabaptists, and the Moravians. It was among the Mennonites in Holland that Fliedner saw the deaconesses, who so interested him in their duties that he obtained the convictions which in the end led him to devote his life to their restoration in the economy of the Church. Among the Moravians, deaconesses were introduced at the instance of Count Zinzendorf in 1745, but only as a limited form of woman's service, by no means measuring up to the place accorded them to day in Germany.
We have now reached the nineteenth century, and from the early Church to the present time we find successive if sporadic attempts to incorporate into the Church the active diaconate of women. These constantly recurring efforts imply a consciousness, deep, if unexpressed, of the need to utilize better the especial gifts of women in Christian service.
We have reached the moment when this consciousness is to take a suitable and enduring form; when the Church machinery, long defective in this particular, is to be re-adjusted and made complete.
[18] _Die Weibliche Diakonie_, vol. i, p. 67.
[19] _Woman's Work in the Church_, Ludlow, p. 117, note. ”Matthew Paris mentions it as one of the wonders of the age, for the year 1250, that in Germany there rose up an innumerable mult.i.tude of those continent women who wish to be called Beguines, to that extent that Cologne was inhabited by more than a thousand of them.”
[20] _Die Weibliche Diakonie_, Schafer, vol. i, p. 70.
[21] _Der Diakonissenberuf_ E. Wacker, p. 82.
[22] _Denkschrift zur Jubelfeier_, J. Disselhoff, p. 5. Gutersloh, 1888.
[23] _Die Weibliche Diakonie_, vol. i, p. 73.
[24] _Histoire de la princ.i.p.aute de Sedan_, Pasteur Pegran, vol. ii, chaps. i, ii.
CHAPTER IV.
FLIEDNER, THE RESTORER OF THE OFFICE OF DEACONESS.
The first years of the present century were sad years for Germany. There was a life-and-death struggle with an all-powerful conqueror to preserve existence as a nation. The Germans still call this ”the war for freedom.” Immediately thereafter followed a period of religious awakening, and this proved to be the hour when the diaconate of woman rose again to life and power. When the fullness of time arrives for a cause or a movement to take its place among the forces of society, many hearts become impressed with its importance. So, between the years 1820 and 1835, there were four several attempts to awaken the Christian Church to an enlightened conscience in this matter, the last of which obtained a wide and an enduring success. The first was made by Johann Adolph Franz Klonne, pastor of the church at Bislich, near Wesel.
Stirred to admiration by the activity that the women's societies had shown in the Napoleonic wars, he lamented the fact that the a.s.sociations had dissolved, and complained that they had not taken a permanent form, in which the members might have performed the duties for the Church that deaconesses had done in the early years of Christianity.
In 1820 he published a pamphlet ent.i.tled _The Revival of the Deaconesses of the Primitive Church in our Women's a.s.sociations_. This he sent to many persons of influence, trying to win their co-operation for the cause. He received a great many answers in reply, among them one from the Crown Princess Marianne. But while in a general way his project met with approval, no one could suggest a practical method by which his thought could be realized.
A distinguished woman, Amalie Sieveking, attempted the same task of utilizing the labor of Christian women as deaconesses in the Church. She belonged to a well-known patrician family in the old free city of Hamburg, and was well known for her philanthropic views and her generous deeds. ”When I was eighteen years old,” she relates, ”I first learned about the charitable sisterhoods in Catholic lands, and the knowledge seized upon me with almost irresistible power. Like a lightning's flash came the thought, What if you were appointed to found a similar inst.i.tution for our Protestant Church?”[25] The thought stayed by her, and disposed her to receive willingly a similar suggestion coming from the great Prussian minister Von Stein, the Bismarck of Germany during the first quarter of this century. He had been favorably impressed by what he had seen of the Sisters of Mercy in the camp and in hospitals.
He consulted with one of his councilors about increasing their number, so that they could be employed in all the Hospitals, Insane Asylums, and Penitentiaries which had women inmates. To another minister he complained with warmth that the Protestant Church had no such sisterhoods by which the beneficent stream of activities among women could be directed into well-regulated channels. ”The religious life of Protestantism suffers from the want of them,” he said. These words were repeated to Amalie Sieveking and stirred her to make the endeavor to fulfill her own long-cherished wishes, which were those of Stein. Just at this time, in 1831, the cholera broke out in her native city. She took this as a providential opening, by means of which deaconesses could begin their work, and went at once to one of the cholera hospitals, offered her services as a nurse, and at the same time issued an appeal for sister-women to join her. But no one came. The only outcome of her effort was a woman's society which she formed to care for the sick and the poor of her native city, and to work for this she devoted the remainder of her life. Stein and Amalie Sieveking had in mind an order of women closely resembling the Sisters of Charity. That their efforts were not crowned with success seemed to the evangelical Protestant promoters of the deaconess cause in later times providential.[26]
Shortly after, in 1835, Count von der Recke, already well known as the founder of two charitable inst.i.tutions, issued the first number of a magazine called _Deaconesses; or, The Life and Labors of Women Workers of the Church in Instruction, Education, and the Care of the Sick_. Only a single number appeared, but his earnest plea for deaconesses, and the elaborate plan he devised for an inst.i.tution and officers, aroused wide attention, and brought him a letter of warm commendation from the crown prince, afterward King Frederick William IV. Evidently the idea was ripening, and a near fruition could be antic.i.p.ated. But neither to minister of state, count, nor prince--to no one among the distinguished of the earth--was the honor given of reviving the female diaconate. It was to a humble pastor of an obscure village church that this work was committed.