Source: Public Orthodoxy
Where Do We Go from Here?
by Dr. Sarita Melkon Maldjian, Professor at Seton Hall University
Deacon Hripsime Saunyan in Istanbul in 1998. Credit: R. R. Ervine
Following the two-year long process of the Synod of Synodality led by Pope Francis, we must ask why it is mainly Western Catholic women advocating for the right to be ordained. The Orthodox, Apostolic, and Eastern Catholic churches need to be fully included in this conversation. As an American member of the Armenian Apostolic Church, I have never seen a diasporan Armenian church thrive without its hard working, devoutly faithful women members. Looking at the history of deaconesses in the Armenian Apostolic Church is a helpful way to open the door for women’s more active involvement in this formal clerical position.
The issue of the female diaconate is not new in the Armenian Church. Over several centuries, this office developed steadily in several clear stages. Its focus in lively contemporary debate is rather connected with the principle of equality between men and women. If women have achieved striking advances in political, economic, educational, and cultural fields, this raises questions about their proper place in the church, what resources exist within tradition for extending the scope of their service and facilitating their work for the church.[i]
The Armenian Apostolic Church has an apostolic origin in the laying-on of hands by the twelve male apostles, continuing to their successors up through the present. These apostles were the first leaders of the congregations, the trail blazers of the new faith. The first two illuminators to preach Christianity in Armenia were St. Thaddeus (a.k.a. St. Jude Thaddeus) and St. Bartholomew. Although these two apostles can be a source of inspiration for all Armenians, the crucial test confronting the Armenian Church is the heavy task of preparing and supplying true leaders, strengthened with the zeal of a dedicated missionary amongst the people.[ii] We are sadly lacking in ordained clergy internationally to fulfill this duty for each established Armenian church and community. As each year passes, male clergy cannot perform all the many roles needed for a thriving church community everywhere Armenians reside, thus leaving the original dream of our founding fathers, Thaddeus and Bartholomew, deferred. For nearly two thousand years, Orthodox and Apostolic churches have accepted the view that the apostles held definitive religious authority, and that their only legitimate heirs are priests and bishops who trace their ordination back to that same apostolic succession.[iii]
I offer a brief description of the Armenian Apostolic church orders as they pertain to this article:
- The Armenian Apostolic Church possesses all the orders and sacraments known to other Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches. The functions of the lower orders are often performed by young men aspiring to the priesthood.
- The Catholicos (identical to the role of the Catholic Pope) is usually consecrated by twelve bishops.
- All ordinations, from deacon to Catholicos, occur in connection with Holy Communion.
- In the ordination of a deacon and a priest, it is the ordaining bishop who celebrates the Divine Liturgy. In the ordination of a bishop, it is the ordaining Catholicos, and in the ordination of the Catholicos, the Catholicos himself celebrates the Divine Liturgy.[iv]
From the second century, this doctrine has served to validate the male apostolic succession of ordained clergy. Yet history has shown that there were Armenian deaconesses in our ancient church. This office of deaconess began unofficially in the fourth century leading up to an official and rightful place in the seventeenth century. This development of the deaconess in the Armenian Church can be divided into four periods:
- Greater Armenia in the fourth to eighth centuries, where there are uncertain references in the canon to women who have a claim to be present at baptisms.
- Eastern and Cilician Armenia in the ninth to eleventh centuries, where the term deaconess is employed in ritual texts (mastoc) of ordination.
- From the twelfth century there are literary references and rites for the ordination of deaconesses in liturgical texts, first in Cilicia and then in eastern Armenia.
- The renewal of the female diaconate in the seventeenth century.[v]
The second period listed above is noteworthy, since the actual term, deaconess is seen in one of the famous Armenian manuscripts held in Venice on St. Lazzaro Island by the Armenian Catholic Mekhitarist monks. In ritual text No. 457, the rubric “Ordination of those worthy to be monastics,” there is a section stating that nuns should be vested by the deaconess. It reads: “One should give women the schema and perform the same rite. But let the deaconesses perform this bare-headed and cover their brow with a black veil to the eye-brows.”[vi]
Furthermore, detailed references to deaconesses begin to appear during the third period. For example, in a judicial manual from 1184, it states, “There are also women ordained deacon who are styled deaconess to preach to women and read the Gospel to obviate a man entering the convent and the nun leaving it. When the priests perform baptism, they (the deaconess) approach the font to wash the women with the water of atonement below the curtain…Do not consider this new and unprecedented, as we learn it from the tradition of the holy apostles; for it says, “I entrust you our sister Phoebe who is a servant of the church.”[vii]
Similar references to deaconesses can be found in the lawbook composed by Smbat Constable in 1265 stating, “With the priest’s permission, deaconesses can also be ordained and proclaim sermons to women and read the Gospel where men should not enter….and can wash children and women in the water of atonement.”[viii]
The fourth period was a time of spiritual and cultural revival. During this time, there was a reform not only of male monasteries, but also of a series of nunneries in Siwnik. In his voluminous, seminal work, Sisakan, Fr. Ghevond Alisan notes the list of these nunneries including the Mother of God in Halidzor, Sinaher, Noratunk, Ilkhpat, Kot, and Sorot (all located throughout Armenia) amongst others.[ix]
Dr. Maria Christine Arat’s doctoral dissertation from the Vienna State University spent years compiling data into the document “The Deaconess of the Armenian Church in Canonical Perspective,” giving deaconesses a concrete place in the Armenian Apostolic Church. Dr. Arat reviewed literary data concerning the ordination of deaconesses alongside formal liturgical texts on the ordination offices. She states that when the Armenian patriarch of Constantinople, Catholicos Shenork I Kaloustian, ordained deaconess Hripsime Saunyan in 1982, he chose the rite of ordination befitting a male deacon without changing the male suffix corresponding to the masculine gender.[x]
More recently, on September 25, 2017, the Archbishop of Tehran, Sepuh Sargsyan, ordained 24-year-old Ani-Kristi Manvelian an official deaconess to provide pastoral ministry in the Armenian churches of Tehran and to stress the importance of women’s ministry in the Armenian community there.[xi] Lastly, on December 9, 1984, Archbishop Vatche Hovsepian of the Western Diocese of the Armenian Church of the United States ordained Seta Simonian Atamian as the first adult woman to be ordained in the United States.[xii]
We may conclude therefore that the four periods of the development of the Armenian deaconess had a concrete role in the history of the Armenian Apostolic church. It is true that deaconesses existed in the early church and are still present, but it is not possible to speak of a female diaconate dispersed throughout all the churches as a permanent institution, because it bears a purely local character. Despite the deaconesses’ local character and limited functions, it is undeniable that the office found an important place within the church. The burning question remains, “Where do we go from here?” With each passing year, as more Armenian churches are left with no clergy and many are abandoned altogether, one of Fr. Abel Oghlukian’s final beseechments from his book The Deaconess in the Armenian Church rings true more than ever before: “But now the time has come when more than ever the need to re-establish the female diaconate is felt to be imperative.”[xiii]
[i] Fr. Abel Oghlukian, The Deaconess in the Armenian Church (New York: St. Nersess Armenian Seminary, 1994), 1.
[ii] Fr. Oshagan Minassian, A Brief History of the Armenian Church (New York: Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America, 1961), 6-7.
[iii] Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 11.
[iv] Patriarch Papken Gulesserian, The Armenian Church (New York: Diocese of the Armenian Church of America, 1966), 11-12.
[v] Oghlukian, The Deaconess, 13-22.
[vi] Barsel Sargisean, Mayr C’uc’ak hayeren jeragrac’ i Venetik [Grand Catalogue of the Armenian Manuscripts in Venice], vol. 3 (Venice: St. Lazar, 1966), 27-33.
[vii] Xosrov Torosyan, Judicial Manual (Erevan: University of Erevan, 1975), 136-137.
[viii] Smbat Constable, Datastanagirk [Law Book, 1265], A. Galstyan, editor (Erevan: University of Erevan, 1958), 66-67.
[ix] Oghlukian, The Deaconess, 22.
[x] Meneshian, Knarik O., “A Nearly Forgotten History: Women Deacons in the Armenian Church.” (2013). Marcin Bider, Rights and Duties of the Armenian Deaconesses of the Armenian Apostolic Church. A Historical and Legal Perspective of the 17th to the 21st Century (KOSCIOL I PRAWO 12 (25) 2023), 154.
[xi] Hratch Tchilingirian, Historic Ordination of a Deaconess in the Tehran Diocese of the Armenian Church (2018) Bider, Rights and Duties, 153.
[xii] Bider, Rights and Duties, 153.
[xiii] Oghlukian. The Deaconess, 44.
Related Article
A Nearly Forgotten History: Women Deacons in the Armenian Church – The Armenian Weekly
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Sarita Melkon Maldjia
Professor at Seton Hall University
