a female deacon; an order of women who had their distinct offices and services in the primitive church. This office appears as ancient as the apostolical age: for St Paul calls Phbea a servant of the church of Cenchrea. The original word is διακόνος, answerable to the Latin word ministra. Tertullian calls them viduae, "widows," because they were commonly chosen out of the widows of the church; and, for the same reason, Epiphanius, and the council of Laodicea, call them πρεσβυτίδες, elderly women, because none but such were ordinarily taken into this office. For, indeed, by some ancient laws, these four qualifications are required in every one that was to be admitted into this order. 1. That she should be a widow. 2. That she should be a widow that had born children. 3. A widow that was but once married. 4. One of a considerable age, 40, 50, or 60 years old. Though all these rules admitted of exceptions. Concerning their ordination, whether it was always performed by imposition of hands, the learned are much divided in their sentiments. Baronius and Valesius think they were not, and make no other account of them than as mere lay-persons. But the author of the constitutions, speaking of their ordination, requires the bishop to use imposition of hands, with the form of prayer which is there recited. We are not, however, to imagine, that this ordination gave them any power to execute any part of the sacerdotal office. They were only to perform some inferior services of the church, and those chiefly relating to the women for whose sakes they were ordained. One part of their office was to assist the minister at the baptizing of women, to undress them for immersion, and to dress them again, that the whole ceremony might be performed with all the decency becoming so sacred an action. Another part of their office was to be private catechists to the women-catechumens who were preparing for baptism. They were likewise to attend the women that were sick and in distress; to minister to martyrs and confessors in prison; to attend the women's gate in the church: and lastly, to assign all women their places in the church, regulate their behaviour, and preside over the rest of the widows; whence in some canons they are styled προϊσταμέναι, "governesses." This order, which since the 10th or 12th century has been wholly laid aside, was not abolished everywhere at once, but continued in the Greek church longer than in the Latin, and in some of the Latin churches longer than in others.