he
withdrawing of church sanctions made the deaconess cause a private one.
But as such it existed for hundreds of years, often under the patronage
and protection of those high in authority. About the year 600 A.D. the
patriarch of Constantinople, godfather of the Emperor Mauritius, built
for his sister, who was a deaconess, a church which for centuries was
called the "Church of the Deaconesses." It is still standing and, only
slightly changed, is now used for a Turkish mosque.[16]

In the twelfth century there were still deaconesses at Constantinople.
Balsamon, a distinguished professor of Church law, writing at the time,
says that deaconesses were still elected in that city and took charge of
conferences among women members, but in other places the order had
passed completely away.

There was no historian of the diaconate of the early Church. We learn of
it only from isolated and occasional references in works devoted to
other subjects. Yet these references are sufficient to enable us to
affirm that deaconesses were a factor in the life of the Church for from
nine to twelve centuries, or two thirds of the Christian era.

The same influences led to its decay that affected the entire life of
the Church during these centuries. The superior sanctity attached to
the unmarried state, that brought about the celibacy of the priests,
gradually changed the active beneficent existence of the old-time
deaconesses into the cloistral life of nuns. Statutes were passed
forbidding her to marry. Gradually grew up the dangerous superstition of
the marriage of the individual soul with Christ, that made of the nun
the Bride of Christ in an especial sense. It was this false conception
that led the vow of the nun to be regarded as the vow of marriage, and
to be guarded from infringement in the same way as the human marriage
tie, and like it to be lasting for life. The glorious doctrine of
justification by faith was replaced by ascetic mortifications of the
flesh based upon the belief in meritorious works. The cell of the monk
and the nun were esteemed more sacred than the family circle, and in the
darkness of mediaeval times that settled down upon the life of the Church
we lose sight of the busy, active ministrations of women deacons, who
had once been esteemed so needful to her usefulness.

There are other minor causes that aided in the downfall of the order;
the abuses that arose in some cases; the changes in the ceremony of
baptism b