Deaconesses in Europe and their Lessons for America
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Title: Deaconesses in Europe and their Lessons for America
Author: Jane M. Bancroft
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DEACONESSES IN EUROPE
AND
THEIR LESSONS FOR AMERICA
BY
JANE M. BANCROFT, Ph.D
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
EDWARD G. ANDREWS, D.D., LL.D.
_Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church_
"No life
Can be pure in its purpose and strong in its strife,
And all life not be purer and stronger thereby."
_NEW YORK: HUNT & EATON_
_CINCINNATI: CRANSTON & STOWE_
1890
IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION,
TO
THE EARNEST AND DEVOTED WOMEN WHO,
AS MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE ON DEACONESS WORK
OF
THE WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY,
HAVE AIDED IN EXTENDING THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE DIACONATE
OF WOMEN,
THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY
Dedicated
BY THE AUTHOR.
AUTHOR'S NOTE.
The Author has aimed to present an accurate and concise statement of the
deaconess cause as it exists at the present time.
In all cases where it was possible, original sources of information have
been consulted.
Many friends, both in Europe and America, have given invaluable aid, for
which words of thanks are an inadequate recognition.
The excellent Index at the close of the volume was kindly prepared by
the Rev. J. C. Thomas.
Acknowledgments are also due to Mr. Gillett, Librarian of the Union
Theological Seminary, and to Mr. C. H. A. Bjerregaard, of the Astor
Library, for putting not only the facilities of the library, but their
personal assistance, at the service of the writer.
JANE M. BANCROFT.
NEW YORK CITY, _June 5, 1889_.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE DIACONATE.
Compassion a Christian virtue--Brotherhood of all men in
Christ--Foreign Missions--Home Missions--Service of
ministering compassion gives rise to the diaconate--Diaconate
of women--Its qualities--Field of labor Page 9
CHAPTER II.
DEACONESSES IN THE EARLY CHURCH.
Little knowledge of early Church--Pliny's letter--Apostolic
Constitutions--Deaconesses, widows, and virgins--Duties of the
deaconess--Chrysostom, Olympias--Deaconesses in Western
Church--Decline in importance--Extinction--Influences that led
to decay 18
CHAPTER III.
DEACONESSES FROM THE TWELFTH TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURIES.
Béguines--Characteristics--Duties--Gerhard Groot--Sisters of
the Common Life--Obligations--Duties--Waldenses--Bohemian
Brethren--Luther--Calvin--Reformed Church at Wesel--
Deaconesses in Amsterdam--Damsels of Charity--Mennonites and
Moravians 34
CHAPTER IV.
FLIEDNER, THE RESTORER OF THE OFFICE OF DEACONESS.
Efforts for the restoration of the office of deaconess made by
Klönne--Amalie Sieveking--Von Stein--Count von der Recke--
Fliedner--His childhood--Youth--Student life--Pastorate and
travels--Marriage--First prison society--Founding of refuge--
Need of training schools--Rhenish-Westphalian Deaconess
Society 46
CHAPTER V.
THE INSTITUTIONS AT KAISERSWERTH.
Opening of hospital training-school--Gertrude Reichardt--The
Home-life--Normal school--Fliedner's wife--Publishing house--
Orphan asylum--Insane asylum--Dispensary--Farm--"Salem"--House
of Evening Rest--Extension of work--Berlin--Foreign lands
Jerusalem--Beirut--Smyrna--Bucharest--Florence--Rome 61
CHAPTER VI.
THE REGULATIONS AT KAISERSWERTH AND THE DUTIES AND SERVICES
OF THE DEACONESSES.
Two classes of deaconesses--Nurses--Teachers--Qualifications--
Probationers--Duties--Service of consecration--Conferences--
Table of results--Instances of work--Duisburg--
Schleswig-Holstein war--Austrian war--Franco Prussian war 79
CHAPTER VII.
OTHER ESTABLISHMENTS ON THE CONTINENT.
House at Strasburg--Mülhausen--Marthashof at Berlin--
Neudettelsau--St. Loup--Riehen--Zürich--Gallneukirchen--
Characteristics of institutions--Countries where they exist 93
CHAPTER VIII.
DEACONESSES IN GERMAN METHODISM.
Origin of Bethany Society--House at Frankfort--Hamburg--
Berlin--St. Gall--Zürich--Sister Myrtha--House of Rest--"God's
Fidelity"--House regulations--Training--Results 110
CHAPTER IX.
DEACONESSES IN PARIS.
Deaconess Home on Rue de Reuilly--Situation--School--
Hospital--House of Correction--Preparatory school--
Instruction--Prison mission--Mademoiselle Dumas--Expenses of
house--Its founders--Deaconess house on Rue Bridaine--
Character of work--Duties of the Sisters--Their consecration--
Importance of parish deaconesses 120
CHAPTER X.
DEACONESSES IN ENGLAND.
Early beginnings--The Puritans--Cambridge Platform--Southey's
complaint--Mrs. Fry--Fliedner--Florence Nightingale--Agnes
Jones--Distinction between "sister" and "deaconess"--
Institutions in Church of England--Garb--Ceremonies--
Self-denying lives--Dr. Laseron's institutions and others--
Prison mission of Mrs. Meredith--The Sisters of the People 142
CHAPTER XI.
MILDMAY INSTITUTIONS.
Rev. W. Pennefather--Sketch of his life--Building of hall and
deaconess home at Mildmay--Conference hall--Nursing hall--
Mission and hospital at Bethnal Green--The deaconesses--Their
training--Expense--Expenses of institution 166
CHAPTER XII.
DEACONESSES IN SCOTLAND.
Church of Scotland--Organization of woman's work--Report of
committees--Scheme--Adoption--Women's Guild--Women-workers'
Guild--Deaconesses--Training--Syllabus of lectures--
Presbyterian Church of England and Ireland Page 189
CHAPTER XIII.
THE DEACONESS CAUSE IN AMERICA.
German Lutherans--Fliedner visits America--Philadelphia--
Mother-house of Deaconesses--Deaconesses in the Episcopal
Church--Among the Presbyterians--The Methodist Episcopal
Church--Deaconess-home in Chicago--Action of General
Conference--Fields of work 204
CHAPTER XIV.
THE MEANS OF TRAINING AND THE FIELD OF WORK FOR DEACONESSES
IN AMERICA.
Advantages of the Home and Training-school--Field of work--In
hospitals--Insane asylums--Infant-schools--Teachers--The
Home-mission deaconess--Her work in London--Similar work
needed in cities of the United States 228
CHAPTER XV.
OBJECTIONS MET AND SUGGESTIONS OFFERED.
Objection that deaconesses resemble Catholic nuns--Their
influence--Numbers in different orders--Order of Charles--
Objection to garb--Its advantages--Objection to the life
answered--Opinion of Bryce concerning American women--Women of
Methodism--Advice to candidates--Associates--The Church
commended by its deeds 247
INTRODUCTION.
How far, and in what form, ought woman's work in the Church to be
organized? What was the deaconess of St. Paul's epistles? What light on
this subject do the primitive and the mediæval Churches yield us? Can
"sisterhoods" be established without weakening the sense of personal
responsibility in those Christian women who are not thus wholly set
apart to charitable and spiritual work? Can they be multiplied without
danger of introducing into Protestant communions the evils of the
conventual life? Are there modern instances of safe and successful
organizations? What good have they achieved, and what further good do
they promise? In what relation should such organizations stand to the
authority and fostering care of the Church? What should be their scope,
spirit, methods? What regulations are fundamental and indispensable?
What perils are real and possibly imminent?
To answer these, and other questions associated with them, this book is
written. Its authoress is a gifted daughter of the Church, well known in
literary and educational circles. During a protracted sojourn in Europe
she enjoyed unusual facilities for studying the deaconess work as
carried on in many places, and particularly in the institutions founded
by Pastor Fliedner at Kaiserswerth in Prussia, and in those at Mildmay
in England. She has also made a thorough and discriminating study of the
subject as developed in the early centuries of the Church and in the
Middle Ages.
The book itself will amply reveal these facts, and cannot but contribute
largely to the guidance of the newly revived interest of the American
churches in the far-reaching question how Christian women may best serve
their Lord in serving the humanity which he has redeemed.
It appears at an opportune time. The General Conference of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, at its session in May, 1888, inserted in the law of
the Church a chapter on deaconesses, defining their duties and
providing for the appointment and oversight of them through the Annual
Conferences. This action was the natural outcome of a wide and
increasing appreciation of the service of Christian women in many
departments of Church work; and it was greatly furthered by the advocacy
of Dr. J. M. Thoburn, now the devoted and honored missionary bishop of
India and Malaysia. But it had not been the subject of any considerable
previous discussion in the periodicals of the Church, and there was not
in the Church a widely diffused or an accurate knowledge of the history,
scope, possibilities, or perils of such an organization. The promptness,
however, with which the provision thus made by the General Conference
has been seized upon by the Church in several of our large cities,
indicates that the time was ripe for the movement. But information is
still scanty; ideas concerning the aim and place of the deaconess work
are crude; methods have been very little digested; the foundations of
local homes evidently may come to be very imperfectly laid; and the
movement may easily come to naught.
This book, it is hoped, will do a twofold work. It will awaken a lively
interest in a movement already arrived at large proportions in some
parts of European Protestantism; and it will guide those among us who
are studying how best to organize, against the sin and suffering of the
world, the practically unlimited resources of Christian women. Whenever
any one shall in some good degree apprehend what helpfulness for the
lost as yet lies undeveloped in the hearts and hands of the daughters of
the Church, and what honor may yet come to Christianity by the rightly
directed use of this power, he will welcome a volume which, like the
present one, offers such guidance as history, observation, and earnest
reflection yield on the question at issue.
EDWARD G. ANDREWS.
NEW YORK, _May 10, 1889_.
DEACONESSES IN EUROPE.
CHAPTER I.
THE DIACONATE.
In the ruins of the old cities of Greece and Rome we find buildings that
were used for public purposes of all kinds--forums, theaters,
amphitheaters, circuses, and temples of worship. Every provision was
made for the entertainment of the people, and for their political and
intellectual needs. But nowhere do we find the ruins of structures,
belonging either to the public or to private individuals, indicating
that any attempt was ever made to care for the feeble-minded, the
insane, the deaf, the blind, the sick, or the aged; those that in every
nation of modern times are the wards of the State and the definite
objects of religious ministrations.
The ruins cannot be found because such buildings never existed. No
provision was made for those suffering from bodily infirmities, because
so far as the State could control circumstances they were not allowed
to exist. Children who were defective in any way were put to death. In
Sparta this measure was carried out under government supervision. Even
Plato in his model republic has all children of wicked men, the
misshapen, or the illegitimate put out of existence, that they may not
be a burden to the State.[1]
With the coming of Christ new elements were introduced into the
civilization of the world; elements of kindliness, of compassion, of
sympathy of man toward his fellow-man, that up to this time had not been
known. There was a new revelation of the brotherhood of all men in the
fatherhood of God: "We are all one in Christ Jesus."
This spirit of compassion and of sympathy has grown with every century
in the Christian era, and at no time has it been stronger in the history
of the world than it is to-day. Well has one American historian said:
"To a generation which knows but two crimes worthy of death, that
against the life of the individual and that against the life of the
State; which has expended fabulous sums in the erection of
reformatories, asylums, and penitentiaries, houses of correction,
houses of refuge, and houses of detention all over the land; which has
furnished every State prison with a library, with a hospital, with
workshops, and with schools, the brutal scenes on which our ancestors
looked with indifference seem scarcely a reality. Yet it is well to
recall them, for we cannot but turn from the contemplation of so much
misery and so much suffering with a deep sense of thankfulness that our
lot has fallen in a pitiful age, when more compassion is felt for a
galled horse or a dog run over at a street-crossing than our
great-grandfathers felt for a woman beaten for cursing, or a man
imprisoned for debt."[2]
The spirit of Christ has penetrated even where his rule is not
acknowledged, and the humanitarianism of the present day is simply the
leaven of Christian love working among the masses of men.
In the Christian world the effort to realize the brotherhood of all men
in Christ is producing large results. Treasures of money, and infinitely
more precious treasures of men, are every year devoted to this one
object. The cause of Protestant foreign missions is not yet a century
old, but the latest available statistics tell us that the following
sums are being contributed annually for this great work:[3]
32 American societies contribute $3,011,027
28 British " " 5,217,385
27 Continental " " 1,083,170
-- ----------
87 societies contribute $9,311,582
With this large sum American societies are employing 986 men, and 1,081
women; British societies, 1,811 men, and 745 women; Continental
societies, 777 men, and 447 women. Total, 3,574 men, 2,273 women.
Visible results of faithfulness in work:
Members in American societies 242,733
" British " 340,242
" Continental " 117,532
-------
Total membership in foreign lands 700,507
Children in the Sunday-schools 626,741
The subject of home missions is to-day attracting greater attention than
ever before. "Die Innere Mission" of Germany, the various forms the work
assumes in England, the many societies in the United States occupied by
the questions of city evangelization, work among the Mormons, the
treatment of the Indians, care for the colored race, and other phases
of home work show that Christians are fully understanding that it is
wise to build over against our own house.
Certainly the reproach cannot justly be made that the Church of Christ
is neglectful of the precept, "As we have therefore opportunity, let us
do good unto all men."
This is genuine service of man to man, and the motive of the service is
love to God. Every revelation of God is of ministering love and
compassion, and the efforts of his disciples to imitate the divine love
have indelibly stamped upon modern civilization the Christian impress.
The service of ministering compassion is so clearly one of the duties of
Christ's Church that of necessity there must be ordinances touching the
exercise of this duty. So in Acts vi, 3, we read of the appointment of
the deacons, "men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and of
wisdom," to see that the service of the tables was not neglected.
But Christian women have ever had special gifts in caring for the poor
and sick and helpless, and the women of apostolic times must necessarily
have had their part in these services of love. In addition to the
diaconate appointed by the apostles recorded in the sixth chapter of
Acts, we must look for a female diaconate as an office in the Church.
This we do not fail to find. In Rom. xvi, 1, we read: "I commend unto
you Phebe, a deacon of the church which is at Cenchrea." Such at least
would have been the form of the verse if our translators had rendered
the Greek word here translated servant as they rendered the like word in
the sixth chapter of Acts, the third of the First Epistle to Timothy,
and in other passages of the apostolic writings.
"That ye receive her in the Lord as becometh saints, and that ye assist
her in whatsoever business she hath need of you: for she hath been a
succorer of many, and of myself also." These words of St. Paul are
especially valuable as an apostolic witness for the existence of the
office of deaconess at the time when he wrote. They are even more than
that. They are an apostolic commendation of the office addressed to the
Christian Church of all times to accept the deaconess in the Lord, and
to assist her "in whatsoever business she hath need of you."
Whether Priscilla, spoken of with Aquila as "my helpers in Christ
Jesus," or Tryphena, Tryphosa, and the beloved Persis, who "labored
much," or Julia and Olympas, all mentioned in the same chapter, were or
were not deaconesses we have no means of knowing.
Outside of this chapter we do not find other references to the order in
the New Testament, unless it be in 1 Tim. iii, 11. In the midst of a
lengthy description of the qualifications of deacons is interjected the
exhortation: "Even so must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober,
faithful in all things." Now the word _wives_ has no authority from the
Greek word, which is simply _women_. Bishop Lightfoot remarks, in his
book on the authorized version of the New Testament, "If the theory of
the definite article (in the Greek) had been understood our translators
would have seen that the reference is to deaconesses, not to wives of
the deacons."
Many eminent scholars are of the same opinion, among whom are
Chrysostom, Grotius, Bishop Wordsworth, and Dean Alvord. Dean Howson
adds: "It should be particularly noticed in connection with this that in
the early part of the chapter no such directions are given concerning
the wives of the bishops, though they are certainly as important as the
wives of the deacons; so that it can scarcely be thought otherwise than
that the apostle's directions were for the deaconesses, an order which
we find in ecclesiastical records for some centuries side by side with
that of deacons."[4]
Those mentioned in Tit. ii, 3, and in 1 Tim. v, 9, cannot be considered
as holding the office of a deaconess. They belong distinctively to the
class of widows, who held a position of honor in the Church. St. Paul
had clear conceptions of the administrative needs of the Church, and it
is not probable that he would set apart to the service of deaconesses,
which had many difficult duties, those who were already sixty years old.
The many names of faithful women mentioned in his letters as helpers in
the Church are important witnesses for the great apostle's appreciation
of woman's co-operation in the work of the Church, although his judgment
was necessarily limited in some directions by the influence of the times
in which he lived.
Let us examine the requirements for the diaconate of the early Church.
The word diaconate means service; helpful service. We use the word to
designate service for the Church of Christ; service that more
particularly concerns itself with administering the charities of the
Church and performing its duties of compassion and mercy. The men who
were selected for this office were to be men of "honest report." They
must have led a blameless life. Those who had repented of wrong-doing
and reformed their lives were excluded from the office, because they
had lost a good report "of them which are without." Pre-eminently they
must be men of spiritual experience, proven Christians, "full of the
Holy Ghost and of wisdom." They were also to have practical gifts that
would make them efficient and capable in the duties of every-day life.
1 Tim. iii, 8.
These are some of the qualifications spoken of as belonging to the
diaconate, and are the same in application to either sex. The woman
deacon must, however, besides possessing the above qualities, be
unmarried or a widow. The married woman has her calling at home, and
cannot combine with that an official calling in the Church, although she
may be a valuable lay helper.
The field of labor of the women deacons of apostolic times and of the
present is essentially the same. The conditions of society and of the
Church, however, are totally dissimilar. We must, therefore, look to see
new adaptations of the same useful qualities. In other words, we shall
not expect to take the female diaconate of the days of the apostles and
transport it unchanged, into nineteenth century environments. We shall
rather expect to see the invariably useful qualities of the diaconate of
women adapted to the needs of the sinful, sorrowing, ignorant, and
helpless of the age in which we live.
[1] _Heidenthum und Judenthum_, von Döllinger, p. 692. Regensburg,
1857.
[2] MacMaster's _History of the United States_, vol. i, p. 102.
[3] Statistics from _North American Review_, February, 1889, "Why am
I a Missionary?"
[4] _Deaconesses_, Rev. J. D. Howson, D.D., p. 236.
CHAPTER II.
DEACONESSES IN THE EARLY CHURCH.
To understand the position of the deaconess with respect to the modern
Church we must know something of the relation in which she stood to the
early Church. Concisely as may be we must recall the story of the
intervening centuries to the present, that we may learn the true
position of deaconesses in modern times.
We have very little knowledge of the early Church. During the first
century and the first half of the second century continued persecution
compelled the religious communities of the new faith to live in almost
complete seclusion. For the same reason little has been left on record
of those years, and it is impossible to form clear conceptions of Church
history during the period. The first trace which we find of the
existence of deaconesses after the times of the apostles comes to us
from an entirely outside source--from the official records of the Roman
government. Shortly after the close of the first century the Emperor
Trajan sent the younger Pliny as prefect to Bithynia in Asia Minor. At
the imperial command he began a persecution of the Christians, but
interrupted it for a time to obtain further instructions from the
emperor. His letter and the reply still exist. In the course of what he
wrote Pliny says that he had sought to learn from two maids, who were
called "ministræ" ("ex duabus ancillis, quæ ministræ dicebantur," Book
x, chap. xcvii), or helpers, the truth of what the Christians had said,
and had even deemed it necessary to put them to torture, but could
obtain evidence of nothing save unbounded superstition. Here is
independent testimony of singular interest that deaconesses, followers
of Phebe, were found in Christian communities of Asia Minor at the
beginning of the second century, and that they kept the faith, when put
to cruel martyrdom.
The clearest conceptions of the characteristics and duties of
deaconesses of the early Church we obtain from the _Apostolic
Constitutions_, a collection of ecclesiastical instructions that
gradually grew up in the Eastern Church, and were gathered into one work
in the fourth century. These instructions were of unequal antiquity,
ranging from the earliest usages to the rules and practices last
determined upon. Whether the _Apostolic Constitutions_ have all the
authority that some claim for them is a question not here to be
decided. If not genuine, they must have been written at a very early
time, and from that fact possess a historical value of their own. "They
prove beyond a doubt that there was a time in the history of the Church
when a clear idea was held by some writer of the office of the female
deacon as essential to the discipline of the Church."[5] From them we
learn of three distinct types of women connected with the administration
of the Church--deaconesses, widows, and virgins. Deaconesses and widows
date from apostolic times, the Church virgins from a somewhat later
period. The distinction between widows and deaconesses was not at first
clearly maintained. By some Church fathers widows were called
deaconesses, and deaconesses widows. It was only after the lapse of time
that we find the classes clearly distinguished, and when that time is
reached the deaconesses have become exalted in office, being regarded as
belonging to the clergy,[6] while the widows have lost somewhat the
honorable position first accorded to them. The deaconesses are active
ministering agents, caring for the necessities of others; the widows
have passed the period of active service, and having won the respect
and protection of the Church are supported in old age from a fund set
apart for that purpose. In the _Apostolic Constitutions_ the order of
deaconesses stands forth independently, its many official activities are
mentioned, and the importance of its service emphasized.
By combining the different references we obtain a tolerably clear
picture of the deaconess and her duties. She must be a "pure virgin," or
"a widow once married, faithful, and worthy" (Book vi, chap. xvii). Her
special duties were as follows:
(a.) She was a door-keeper at the women's entrance to the church. This
was an ancient service, dating back to the oldest times.[7] Ignatius
died a martyr's death not long after the beginning of the second
century, and in a letter which bears his name is written, "I greet the
doorkeepers of the holy doors, the deaconesses who are in the Lord."
This guardianship was maintained not only in times of persecution, but
as a matter of order and discipline in times of peace.
(b.) She showed women their places in the congregation, being especially
bound to look after the poor and strangers, giving each due attention.
(c.) She instructed the female catechumens. She also visited the
women's apartments, where male deacons could not enter, carried messages
to the bishops, and acted as a missionary. Teaching was an important
part of the duties of the early deaconesses.
(d.) The deaconess had certain duties in connection with the baptism of
women that were considered important and indispensable.
(e.) In times of persecution she visited those who were oppressed or in
prison, and ministered to their bodily and spiritual needs. She seems to
have been less endangered in performing these acts than were men. Lucian
alludes to the service of these devoted women in prisons. She also cared
for the sick and sorrowing, being especially "zealous to serve other
women."
(f.) On occasion she was a mediator when there was strife in families,
or among friends. Both to deacons and deaconesses "pertain messages,
journeys to foreign parts, ministrations, services." The
ever-to-be-remembered journey of Phebe to Rome, when a whole system of
theology was committed to her keeping, was quite within the sphere of
her duties. It has also been said that to them was given the
safe-keeping of the holy books in periods of persecution. The
enumeration of these principal duties implying so many lesser details
helps us to understand that "deaconesses are needed for many purposes"
(Book ii, chapter xv). The deaconess was ordained to her work, as is
attested by a great number of authorities.[8] "It was because men felt
still that the Holy Ghost alone could give power to do any work to God's
glory that they deemed themselves constrained to ask such power of him,
in setting a woman to do Church service."[9]
The following beautiful prayer of ordination, attributed to the apostle
Bartholomew, bears within it certain proofs of the very early existence
of the ceremony, as well as of the order of deaconesses:
"Eternal God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of man and women,
who didst fill Miriam and Deborah and Hannah and Huldah with thy Spirit,
and didst not disdain to suffer thine only-begotten Son to be born of a
woman; who also in the tabernacle and temple didst appoint woman-keepers
of thine holy gates, look down now upon this thine handmaid, who is
designated to the office of deaconess, and cleanse her from all
filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, that she may worthily execute
the work intrusted to her to thine honor, and to the praise of thine
Anointed, to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be honor and adoration
forever. Amen."
The allusion to the creation of man and woman, to the women in the Old
Testament who were called to special service, as well as to Mary, the
mother of the Lord, while no reference is made to the women of the
apostolic Church who were so highly commended, and held in veneration as
worthy of all imitation, go to prove that the origin of this prayer was
so near the time of the apostles as to be almost contemporary with them.
The office of the deaconess, as described by the _Apostolic
Constitutions_, fitted into the needs of the Eastern Church and the
requirements of Greek life. It was in the East that the diaconate of
women originated, and here that it attained its greatest growth. In the
West custom did not demand the careful separation of the sexes as in the
East, and church relations were less bound by social usages;
consequently we meet with fewer references to deaconesses in the works
of the Latin fathers, and the diaconate of women is not so deeply rooted
in the affections of the church communities as we have found it in the
Greek Church.[10]
The fourth century was the blossoming period of woman's diaconate, when
it attained its highest importance. All the leading Greek fathers and
Church authorities of the age make mention of it. The office is spoken
of as worthy of all honor, filled by women of rank from noble families,
and those of wealth and ability. It found its special advocate and
protector in Chrysostom, "John of the Golden Mouth," who was Bishop of
Constantinople from 397 until 407 A.D. He seems to have had the
ability, rare for that age, of understanding the value of the services
of Christian women, and through his wise guidance and encouragement had
over them almost unbounded influence. Forty-six deaconesses were under
his direction--forty attached to the mother church at Constantinople,
and six belonging to a small church in the suburbs. A number of these
were closely identified with his history, either as relatives or
friends, and through his writings their memory is preserved. Of these
are Nicarete, of a noble family of Nicomedia. We are told she was of a
modest, retiring nature, and would not take places of responsibility
when urged to do so by Chrysostom. We note a strong tendency toward the
later celibate life of the nuns when we read that she was extolled for
"her perpetual virginity and holy life." Sabiniana was the aunt of
Chrysostom. To Amprucla the bishop wrote two letters still extant.[11]
They are filled with words of consolation for the religious persecution
she has undergone. In one of them he says: "Greatly did we sympathize
with your manliness, your steadfast and adamantine understanding, your
freedom of speech and boldness." "Manliness of soul" seems to have held
a high place in the bishop's favorite qualities. In another place,
writing to the same deaconess, he praises "your steadfast soul, true to
God; yea, rather, your noble and most manly soul."
Pentadia and Procla were closely associated with Olympias. In a letter
to Pentadia, Chrysostom writes: "For I know your great and lofty soul,
which can sail as with a fair wind through many tempests, and in the
midst of the waves enjoy a white calm."[12] Reading such words of
appreciation, words that in other places approach dangerously near to
adulation, we better understand the influence Chrysostom exercised over
the women of his time, and their steadfast devotion to him. They had the
conviction that all their efforts met with his sincere and profound
appreciation and quick responsive acknowledgment.
Pre-eminent among the friends of the great bishop was Olympias, of whom
Dean Howson said, "She is the queenly figure among the deaconesses of
the primitive Church." To understand her life we must recall the scenes
by which she was surrounded and the age in which she lived.[13]
In the great capital of the Eastern Empire, where the luxuriance and
magnificence of the Orient combined with the keen, quick intellectual
life of the Greeks; in the circle of the imperial court, with its
intrigues, its fashions, its favoritisms; at a time when outwardly much
respect was paid to the forms of religious life, but when the great and
vital dogmas of the Church were made the sport of witty sophistical
disputations; when those who endeavored to lead an earnest Christian
life met with nearly as much to oppose them as in periods of active
persecution; such were her environments. They were little favorable to
the strength of mind, the fixedness of purpose, the self-denial and
Christian devotion that marked this noble deaconess. Born in 368 A.D. of
a heathen family of rank, owing to her parents' early death she was
educated a Christian. In her seventeenth year she married Nebridius, the
prefect of the city, but after a married life of twenty months he died,
leaving her at eighteen years a widow, rich, beautiful, and free to
decide her future. The Emperor Theodosius desired her to marry one of
his kinsmen, but she refused, saying, "Had God designed me to lead a
married life he would not have taken my husband; I will remain a widow,"
and shortly after she was consecrated a deaconess by Bishop Nectarius.
The emperor, angered at her refusal, took from her the use of her large
fortune, and put it under the care of guardians until she should be
thirty years old, whereupon she only thanked him for relieving her of
the heavy responsibility of administering her estate, and begged him to
add to his kindness by dividing it between the poor and the Church.
Shamed out of his anger, the emperor soon restored her rights, and when
Chrysostom came to Constantinople her lavish and often unwise generosity
was felt in every direction, being compared to "a stream which flows to
the end of the world." He reproved her unbounded liberality, and advised
her to administer alms as a wise steward who must render an account.
This counsel guided her into safer paths. Finally, when Chrysostom was
driven forth to banishment, by his advice she remained in the city, and
became a support for his followers and those who had been dependent upon
him. She met contemptuous treatment and judicial persecutions, but
continued her works of charity, and outlived the man whose mind and
heart had so influenced hers by eleven years. Chrysostom wrote her many
letters, of which seventeen are extant.[14] They plainly show the
estimate he set upon the diaconate of women, and his endeavor to wisely
cherish it. Unfortunately, they also show exaggeration of compliment and
praise which detract from his words of sincere and honest admiration.
Too often, also, he gives undue value to works of mercy, and exalts acts
of ascetic self-denial.
The question of the age at which deaconesses could be received is a
vexed one. The confusion of apprehension touching deaconesses and widows
led to differing enactments at different times and places. The
restriction of age, however, must now have lost its force, as we find
Olympias a deaconess when not yet twenty years of age, and Makrina, the
sister of Gregory of Nyssa, was ordained when a young girl. Deaconesses
retained control of their property. In truth, a law of the State forbade
them to enrich churches and institutions at the expense of those having
just claims on them. Deaconesses also existed in the Church of Asia
Minor. Ignatius mentions them as at Antioch in Syria. They were in Italy
and Rome. The Church of St. Pudentiana, in the Eternal City, keeps
alive the memory of two deaconesses whose house is said to have stood on
this site; Praxedes and Pudentiana, the daughters of a Roman senator,
who devoted themselves, with all they had, to the service of the Church.
Deaconesses also penetrated to Ireland, Gaul, and Spain, lingering in
the last named country many years after they had passed out of knowledge
elsewhere.
We find very little about this order of Christian workers in the Western
Church. There is a passage of Origen in a Latin translation which speaks
of the ministry of women as both existing and necessary, but in the
great Latin fathers, the contemporaries of Chrysostom, scarcely a
mention occurs. From the last half of the fifth century the diaconate of
women declined in importance.[15] It was deprived of its clerical
character by the decrees passed by the Gallic councils of the fifth and
sixth centuries. It was finally entirely abolished as a church order by
the Synod of Orleans, 593 A.D., which forbade any woman henceforth to
receive the _benedictio diaconalis_, which had been substituted for
_ordinatio diaconalis_ by a previous council (Synod of Orange, 441). The
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 mediæval 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 by which the aid of women was not so indispensable, and
especially the fact that since the time of Constantine the care of the
sick and poor was placed under the charge of the State.[17]
These causes combined removed from the life of the Church a powerful
agency for good, and for centuries deprived it of the pre-eminent gifts
of ministration which belong to Christian women.
[5] _Woman's Work in the Church_, J. M. Ludlow, p. 21.
[6] _Die Weibliche Diakonie in ihrem ganzen Umfang_, Theodor Schäfer,
3 vols. Stuttgart: D. Gundert, 1887. Vol. i, p. 45.
[7] _Der Diakonissenberuf nach seiner Vergangenheit und Gegenwart_,
Emil Wacker. Gütersloh: E. Bertelman, 1888. p. 33.
[8] Neander, _Hist. of Chr. Religion and Church_, vol. i, p. 188;
Schaff, _Hist. of Chr. Church_, vol. iii, p. 260; McClintock &
Strong's _Encyclopædia_, art. "Deaconesses."
[9] J. M. Ludlow, _Woman's Work in the Church_, p. 17.
[10] Neander, _Hist. of Chr. Rel. and Church_, vol. i, p. 188; Schaff,
_Hist. of Chr. Church_, vol. iii, p. 260.
[11] _Sancti Johannis Chrysostomi opera om_, t. ii, pp. 659, 662.
Paris, 1842.
[12] Chrys., _Op._, vol. ii, p. 658.
[13] _Die Weibliche Diakonie_, Theodor Schäfer, vol. i, p. 8.
[14] Chrys., _Op._, vol. ii, p. 600.
[15] Schaff's _History of Chr. Church_, vol. iii, p. 260.
[16] _Denkschrift zur Jubelfeier_, J. Disselhoff, Kaiserswerth, 1880,
p. 5.
[17] Herzog's _Protestantische Real Enc._, vol. iii, p. 589.
CHAPTER III.
DEACONESSES FROM THE TWELFTH TO THE NINETEENTH
CENTURIES.
During these seven centuries whenever there arose a reviving spirit of
true love to God, whether within the Church of Rome or in any of the
churches formed from reforming elements that separated from it, then we
find traces of the diaconate of woman assuming some form of devotion to
Christ and work for him. One of these movements well worth our study
originated in Belgium while the last of the Greek deaconesses were still
daily walking the arched pathway that led to their church in
Constantinople. Toward the close of the twelfth century great corruption
of morals and open abuses prevailed in society, and also in the Church.
One of those who protested against the evils of the times was the priest
Lambert le Bègue, as he was called, meaning the stutterer. He lived at
Liège, in Belgium, and just without the city walls owned a large garden.
He determined to make use of this to found a retreat for godly women,
where they could lead in common a life of well-doing. Here he built a
number of little houses, and in the center a church, which was dedicated
to St. Christopher in 1184. Then he presented the whole to some godly
women to be used and owned in common. His earnest words of rebuke
brought persecution upon him from those whose consciences he disturbed,
but he went to Rome and appealed to the pope, who not only protected him
from his assailants, but made him the patriarch of the order he had
founded. Only six months after his return, however, he died, and was
buried before the high altar of the church he had erected in 1187.
Whether he was indeed the founder of the Béguine houses has been called
in question. Be that as it may, fifty years after his death fifteen
hundred Béguines were living around St. Christopher's Church,[18] and
Béguine courts were found throughout Belgium, in the Netherlands, south
along the Rhine, in eastern France, and in Switzerland. The Crusades
made many widows, and both widows and young girls sought shelter in the
community life of the Béguines. As a rule they lived alone, in separate
small houses built closely together and surrounded by a wall. Each house
bore on its door the sign of the cross, and with every Béguine court
there were invariably two large buildings--a church and a hospital; the
one for the worship of the sisters, the other the field of their
self-denying ministrations. At first they were in no wise distinguished
in their dress from other women, but in time they wore a habit which
varied in color with each establishment, but was generally blue, gray,
or brown. The veil was invariably white. The sisters had to earn, or
partly earn, their own livelihood. In the time remaining they rendered
essential service in performing acts of charity. They received orphans
to bring up and educate, taught little children, nursed the sick,
performed the last offices for the dead, and bound themselves by good
deeds closely with the lives of the people. They were in no sense
isolated from the world, but lived busy, useful lives in the midst of
the world. They could leave the community at any time, and after
severing their connection with it were free to marry. They also retained
control of their own property.
There were certainly many points of resemblance between these women who
were so active in the sphere of Christian charity in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries and the deaconesses of Europe to-day. The most
prosperous period for the Béguines was the first half of the thirteenth
century, when they were numbered by thousands.[19] Gradually persecution
was directed against them. The nuns looked upon them with disfavor, and
the pope withdrew his protection. In the Netherlands many became
Protestants at the time of the Reformation, but the Béguines of to-day,
changed in many respects from the original type, and now, closely
resembling the other sisterhoods of Catholicism, are frequently to be
seen in the cities of Belgium and north-eastern France.
A new current of spiritual life swept over the church in the fourteenth
century, and again we find women living together in community life, and
devoting themselves to common service in good deeds, and known as the
Sisters of the Common Life. There was also a Brotherhood of the Common
Life, as there were Beghards, communities of Christian men corresponding
to the Béguines. The Brotherhood and the Sisterhood of the Common Life
honored as their founder Gerhard Groot, of Deventer, who was born in
1340. Of a singularly attractive personality, a creative mind, and an
ardent, enthusiastic nature, he was born to influence and command. He
was already known as a priest of eloquence and wide learning when, in
1374, he met with a deep spiritual change, and from that year dated his
conversion. Henceforth, with every power of a rarely gifted nature, he
sought to lead those who heard him to lives of purity and holiness.
Gradually there grew up about him a circle of like-minded friends,
occupied in writing books to spread his ideas, and aiding him as they
could. His friend Florentius proposed that they live together and form a
community. "A community!" answered Groot. "The begging orders will never
permit that." But Florentius, the planner and organizer, persisted,
offering his own house as a home, and held to the advantages of his plan
until Groot yielded, and said, "In the name of the Lord begin your
work."
Such was the origin of the Brotherhood of the Common Life, and from its
circle proceeded that immortal book, the _Imitation of Christ_, by
Thomas à Kempis, keeping alive in the hearts of choice spirits of every
generation the thoughts and sentiments of the men of whom its author was
the interpreter. For a community of women of similar aims and purposes
it needed only that Groot should make a few changes in the house that he
had already set apart from his paternal inheritance as a home for
destitute women, and the first sister house began. Like the Béguines,
the Sisters of the Common Life took no obligations binding them to
life-long service, but they differed from them in living more closely
together in one family, and had a common purse. They wore a gray
costume, and also worked for their own support. The special virtues they
inculcated were obedience to those above them in authority, humility
that would not shun the meanest task, and friendliness to all. Their
charitable duties were much the same as the Béguines; they cared for
children, nursed the sick, and often acted as midwives. In the first
half of the sixteenth century there were at least eighty-seven
sister-houses, mostly in the Netherlands.[20]
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 God'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 God._"[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.
Passing 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 classes 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 title of deaconesses.
The helpless, sick, and neglected children are now gathered in
institutions instead of being cared for individually as was formerly the
custom, and women having positions of control in these institutions are
designated by the name formerly applied to those who had the personal
care of the same needy classes.
It is interesting to note that there was one association of women in the
century of the Reformation that bears close resemblance to the Béguines
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
Sédan 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 institutions of learning and of charity. These latter he put
under the care of the "Damsels of Charity," an association of women
which he had instituted. 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 association 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 multitude
of those continent women who wish to be called Béguines, to that
extent that Cologne was inhabited by more than a thousand of
them."
[20] _Die Weibliche Diakonie_, Schäfer, vol. i, p. 70.
[21] _Der Diakonissenberuf_ E. Wacker, p. 82.
[22] _Denkschrift zur Jubelfeier_, J. Disselhoff, p. 5. Gütersloh,
1888.
[23] _Die Weibliche Diakonie_, vol. i, p. 73.
[24] _Histoire de la principauté de Sédan_, 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 Klönne, 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
associations 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 entitled _The Revival of the Deaconesses
of the Primitive Church in our Women's Associations_. 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
institution 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 institutions, 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 institution 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 anticipated. 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.
The little village of Eppstein lies in a beautiful country, full of high
mountains and deep-lying valleys, about a dozen miles from Wiesbaden. At
the village parsonage of the little hamlet was born, January 21, 1800, a
son, the fourth of a family that numbered twelve children. The pastor,
whose father before him had filled a like office, was a favorite among
his people for his pleasant speech, sound advice about every-day
matters, and his faithfulness in instructing the children in the Bible
and the catechism, and caring for the sick and the afflicted.
The little boy proved to be a strong, healthy child, and as he grew
older developed a liking for books. His father taught a class composed
of his children and some boys in the neighborhood, and when Theodor
became old enough to join it he soon outstripped the rest, giving his
father no little pride by his fluent rendering of Homer. Theodor
Fliedner was not quite fourteen years old when the sudden death of the
father changed the whole life of the family, and left the mother with
eleven children to maintain and educate. Now began for Fliedner a
struggle to complete his education. The simple, kindly hospitality that
had been so generously exercised in the village parsonage met its
reward. Friends came forward to offer help, and at the beginning of the
New Year Fliedner and his brother went to the gymnasium at Idstein. Here
he was obliged to live sparingly, and earned his bread by teaching, but
he was happy and contented, and found in study his great delight. He was
fond of reading books of travel and the lives of great men, which
stirred him to emulation. In 1817 he went to the University of Giessen.
Here he kept aloof from the political agitations among the students.
Neither was he affected by the rationalistic teachings of the
professors. His shy, retired nature aided him in this course, and his
leisure hours were passed in reading the writings of the Reformers. The
jubilee festival of the Reformation occurred in 1817, and the lives of
the heroes of the faith were brought freshly home to him. Their strength
of faith shamed him, but he had not yet learned the secret of their
power. He was yet without a deep, spiritual life. From Giessen he went
to Göttingen, where he devoted himself to a year's study of history,
philosophy, and theology. During the holidays, as is the custom with
German students, he made repeated pedestrian tours. In this way he
visited the great free cities of the north, Bremen, Hamburg, and
Lubeck. From Göttingen he and his brother went to the theological
seminary at Herborn, where the following summer he passed with credit
his theological examination. He was now ready to enter God's great
school of practical life to be further fitted for the mission he was to
accomplish. In September he went to Cologne and was employed in the
house of a wealthy merchant as a private tutor. This was a great change
for the quiet youth of country habits. He took great pains to
accommodate himself to his surroundings, and to acquire the truly
Christian art of becoming all things to all men. In after life, when
speaking of this period and its usefulness to him, he wrote: "It is a
great hinderance to a man, even to his progress in the kingdom of God,
not to have been brought up in gentle and refined manners from his
childhood." Although a faithful and devoted teacher his life-work was
not forgotten. He constantly sought to widen his knowledge and
experience, was made assistant secretary of the local Bible society, and
formed friendships which led to his appointment to the pastorate at
Kaiserswerth. This was a Catholic town formerly of some importance. The
ruins of an imperial palatinate are still to be seen there, but in
Fliedner's time it had become a little village of workmen dependent on
a few manufacturers. On January 18, 1822, alone, and on foot, to save
his poor society the expense of his journey, Fliedner entered the town
where his life was henceforth to be centered. He was to share the
parsonage with the widow of a previous pastor, and his sister was to be
his housekeeper. His income was one hundred and thirty-five dollars a
year. Only a month after his arrival the great firm of velvet
manufacturers who provided the work-people with employment failed, and
the little church community seemed about to be dispersed. The government
offered him another and better appointment, but he felt that he must be
a true shepherd, and not a hireling, and would not leave his people. He
decided to make a journey to collect money to form a permanent endowment
for his church. A journey over sixty years ago, to a young German of
quiet habits, was a very different matter from a similar trip taken in
this day of railroads and steamboats. To Fliedner it seemed a very
important matter; and so it was in its results, which reached far beyond
the little congregation he served. With great hesitation he began at
Elberfeld, a town near at hand. A pastor of the city, to encourage him,
accompanied him to friends, and on parting gave him a friendly
suggestion that, in addition to trust in God, such work required
"patience, impudence, and a ready tongue." Before starting on the longer
journey to Holland and England he returned to his congregation and
encouraged them by the sum of nine hundred dollars that he had so far
secured. He was now absent for nine months, and during that time
obtained an amount sufficient to put the little church in a position
where a certain, if modest, annual allowance was assured. The pastor had
also, in serving others, greatly strengthened and broadened his own
faith. As he says, "In both these Protestant countries I became
acquainted with a multitude of charitable institutions for the benefit
both of body and soul. I saw schools and other educational
organizations, alms-houses, orphanages, hospitals, prisons, and
societies for the reformation of prisoners, Bible and missionary
societies, etc., and at the same time I observed that it was a living
faith in Christ which had called almost every one of these institutions
and societies into life, and still preserved them in activity. This
evidence of the practical power, and fertility of such a principle had a
most powerful influence in strengthening my own faith, as yet weak." It
was while in Holland that he wrote to Klönne concerning the deaconesses,
whose duties he had observed among the Mennonites. After his return he
applied himself with zeal and success to his pastoral duties. Work was a
delight to him, and his energy and force of character were constantly
seeking new ways by which to make his church services more attractive,
and to increase his influence over each member of his congregation. "He
never asked himself what he _must_ do, but always what he _might_
do."[27] But, work as industriously as he would, his small society left
him time for other activities. While in London he had been profoundly
impressed by the noble labors of Elizabeth Fry in the prisons of
England. It was this woman's hand that pointed out the way for Fliedner
in Germany. The prisons in his own land had remained untouched by any
spirit of reform. The convicts were crowded together in small, filthy
cells, and often in damp cellars without light or air; boys, who had
thoughtlessly committed some trifling misdemeanor, with gray-headed,
corrupt sinners; young girls with the most vicious old women. There was
no attempt at classification of prisoners. Some of them might be
innocent people waiting for trial. Neither was there oversight, save to
keep the prisoners from escaping. No work was provided, and as for
schools, where the larger number of convicts could neither read nor
write, no one thought of such a thing.[28] That such idleness, the
beginning of all vice, was here especially pernicious and corrupting can
be readily seen. But few knew of this state of things, and those few
left it for the government to provide a remedy.
Fliedner, however, could not rest in this indifference. He says: "The
smallness of my charge left me more leisure than most of my clerical
brethren, and the opportunities I had enjoyed on my travels of at once
collecting information and strengthening my faith imposed a more urgent
obligation on me to try to make up by the help of our God for our long
neglect." He tried to obtain permission to be imprisoned a few weeks in
the prison at Düsseldorf, that he might view prison life from within the
walls, but his request was refused. He then obtained leave to hold
services every other Sunday afternoon in the prison at Düsseldorf. The
efforts that he put forth succeeded in waking the interest of a great
many persons, and at last there was formed by his efforts the first
society in behalf of prisoners in Germany.
It was while engaged in this work that he met his wife, Frederika
Münster, who was occupied in bettering the condition of the prisoners in
the penitentiary at Düsselthal. He married her in 1828, and she became
a helpful, inspiring co-worker with him in all his undertakings.
In 1832 he was commissioned by the government to revisit England, to
furnish a report on the various charitable organizations, especially
those connected with prisons and alms-houses. This brought him into
closer relations with Elizabeth Fry, as well as with many other noble
men and women of all ranks who were caring for the poor and neglected of
England. He extended his journey to Scotland, met Dr. Chalmers, and
found his heart strangely touched by what he saw. His spiritual
experience had deepened with the years, and while here he wrote to some
friends, "The Lord greatly quickens me."
His heart became still more open to works of mercy and love, and he
gathered rich experiences which were afterward utilized in his work.
Fliedner had now attained a certain reputation of his own as a friend to
prisoners and outcasts. It was not surprising, therefore, that a poor
female convict, discharged from the prison at Werden, should have taken
the weary six miles' walk to Kaiserswerth September 17, 1833, to ask the
good pastor for help. There stood in the parsonage garden a little
summer-house twelve feet square, with an attic. This was offered to the
convict Minna as a temporary refuge, and she became the first inmate of
the Kaiserswerth institutions. She had arrived at an opportune moment.
In the previous spring Count Spee, the President of the Prison Society,
had urged the founding of two institutions, one Lutheran and one
Catholic, to receive discharged female convicts. Fliedner, who had seen
such refuges in England, declared himself ready for the plan, and tried
to induce the pastors of the larger and wealthier communities in the
neighborhood to locate the Protestant asylum in some one of these
cities. No one responded to his appeal. His wife, whose courage was
often greater than his own, urged him to make a beginning in the little
village where he lived, unpromising as the conditions seemed, and after
a little hesitation, seeing no one was ready to assume any
responsibility in a matter that he took so deeply to heart, the good
pastor decided to follow her advice. The old parsonage was for rent, and
he secured it on low terms.
Frau Fliedner had a friend of her school-days and early youth, now a
woman of experience and ability. She sent for her to come and visit them
to see if she would become the superintendent of the refuge, but shortly
after her arrival she was taken sick, and her friends sent letters of
expostulation urging her to return. Just now, when affairs were in
rather an untoward state, appeared the first inmate. Let Fliedner tell
the story:
"We at first gave her lodging in my summer-house, and the necessity of
attending to her did more good to the poor, distressed superintendent
than all her quinine and mixtures. Countess Spee, the wife of our
president, had prophesied that our inmates would never remain with us a
month, they would certainly run away. So when the first month was over I
marched over to Heltorf and triumphantly announced, 'Minna is yet
there.' Minna was followed by another, and the garden-house became too
small."
Finally Fliedner obtained possession of the house he had hired, after
some delay on the part of the former tenants, and the asylum was opened.
The number of inmates increased, and Fräulein Göbel soon had more than
she could manage. She must have an assistant. The need of trained
Christian workers, who could care for these poor women, grew daily more
apparent.
Fliedner's thoughts constantly dwelt on the subject; they gave him no
rest. He had discovered with joyful surprise in 1827 the traces of the
apostolic deaconesses among the Mennonites, and two years later he
wrote:
"Does not the experience of this our sister Church, do not the women
societies in our last war, does not the holy activity of an Elizabeth
Fry and her helpers in England, and the women's associations of Russia
and Prussia formed after their model to care for the bodies and souls of
women prisoners--do all these not show what great power God-fearing,
pious women possess for the up-building of Christ's kingdom as soon as
they have opportunity to develop it?"[29]
His practical experience with the work he had in hand brought him to the
same conclusion; namely, that there must be training-schools where
Christian women, especially set apart for such service, could have
instruction and practice in the duties they had undertaken. As a
consequence there were drawn up in May, 1836, and signed by Fliedner and
a few friends, the statutes of the Rhenish-Westphalian Deaconess
Society.
Fliedner had now reached the work that was henceforth to be his life
mission; that is, the restoration of deaconesses to the Christian Church
of the nineteenth century.
[25] _Denkschrift zur Jubelfeier_, J. Disselhoff, Kaiserswerth,
1886, p. 8.
[26] Schäfer, _Die Weibliche Diakonie_, vol. ii, p. 86; _Denkschrift
zur Jubelfeier_, p. 9.
[27] T. Fliedner, _Kurzer Abriss seines Lebens_, p. 43.
[28] T. Fliedner, _Kurzer Abriss seines Lebens_, p. 48.
[29] _Kurzer Abriss seines Lebens_, p. 60.
CHAPTER V.
THE INSTITUTIONS AT KAISERSWERTH.
Fliedner saw clearly that if the office of deaconess were to be planted
in the Church there must be soil suitable to nourish it: in other words,
there must be an institution founded which could furnish not only
instruction, but practice in their duties, and a home for those who
should offer their services for this office. "But," he says, "could our
little Kaiserswerth be the right place for a Protestant deaconess house
for the training of Protestant deaconesses--a village of scarcely
eighteen hundred people where the large majority of the population were
Roman Catholics, where sick people could not be expected in sufficient
numbers for training purposes, and so poor that it could not help defray
even the yearly expenses of such an institution? And were not older,
more experienced pastors than I better adapted for this difficult
undertaking? I went to my clerical brethren in Düsseldorf, Dinsberg,
Mettmann, Elberfeld, and Barmen, and entreated them to start such an
institution in their large societies, of which, indeed, there was
pressing need. But all refused, and urged me to put my hand to the work.
I had time, with my small congregation, and the quietness of retired
Kaiserswerth was favorable to such a school. The useful experiences I
had gained on my journeys had not been given me for naught, and God
could send money, sick people, and nurses. So we discerned that it was
his will that we should take the burden on our own shoulders, and we
willingly stretched them forth to receive it. Quietly we looked around
for a house for the hospital. Suddenly, the largest and finest house in
Kaiserswerth was offered for sale. My wife begged me to buy it without
delay. It is true it would cost twenty-three hundred thalers, and we had
no money. Yet I bought it with good courage, April 20, 1836. At
Martinmas the money must be paid."
It is not possible to give here in detail the occurrences by which loans
were made, and the money that was needed obtained at the required time.
God gave friends for the cause, and through them provided the means. The
house was furnished with a little second-hand furniture which had been
given him, and October, 1836, was opened as a hospital and training
school for Christian women. Services of praise and thanksgiving
consecrated this deaconess home yet without deaconesses, this hospital
without patients. Both, however, soon became inmates of the building.
The first deaconess was Gertrude Reichardt, the daughter of a physician.
She had assisted her father in the care of the sick, and had become
experienced in looking after the welfare of the poor and the destitute.
She was an invaluable helper in the new enterprise, and shared with the
doctor the duty of giving instruction in nursing and hospital duties.
Fliedner's wife was the superintendent. She had the oversight of the
house, gave the deaconesses practical direction in housekeeping, and in
their early visits to the sick and poor accompanied them from house to
house. Fliedner was the director, and took upon himself the religious
instruction of the sisters. Every effort was taken to make the house a
home in which a cheerful, loving spirit should prevail. Nearly every
evening Fliedner or his wife would go over to the home, and read to the
sisters, or tell them interesting facts outside their lives. When he
went away on his journeys he would write in full every thing pertaining
to the interests of the common cause, and the letters would be read
aloud. This was to be a home in every sense of the word, in which the
members were to feel themselves belonging to one great family, bound
together by the common tie of unselfish devotion to others "for Christ's
sake." The spirit of the founder has permeated the institution even to
the present time. Those who know any thing of Kaiserswerth testify to
the strong affection for the common home, the "mother-house," as they
beautifully term it, felt by all its children. Every pains is taken to
preserve it. There is correspondence, frequent and regular, from here to
every sister. No matter in what distant land she may be, her birthday is
remembered, and she is taught to look to this as a waiting refuge for
the days of trouble, sickness, and old age.
There was soon arranged a series of house regulations and instructions
for work which became the basis for after regulations in nearly all
existing institutions.
Almost contemporary with the mother-house arose the normal school for
infant-school teachers. It had first started as a child's school, and
afterward young women who had taste for the care of children were
received to be taught their duties. Fliedner took great interest in the
instruction of children. He devised little games for them, and arranged
stories to be told. His simplicity and his child-like nature led him to
disregard formalities, and to think solely of the end he had in view.
On one occasion, when picturing the combat of David and Goliath,
reaching that point in the narrative when the young shepherd lad slings
the stone that brings the giant to the ground, he cast himself headlong,
to the great delight and amazement of his little audience, who enjoyed
to the full this object-lesson that made the story so vivid to them.
Then he took special pains that his teachers should learn to tell the
stories of the Bible so as to make them clear and interesting to the
youngest child. Every day a story was told in school, and each evening
the teacher whose turn it was to relate the story the following day came
to Fliedner and rehearsed it to him as though he were a child, afterward
receiving his suggestions as to how the narrative could be improved. The
work went along quietly, ever growing, ever advancing. "Among all
others, and more than all others, was Fliedner's wife his best help. Her
keen glance, made pure and holy by her Christian faith, preserved him
from mistakes. With the household virtues of cleanliness, order,
simplicity, and economy she united large-hearted compassion toward those
needing help of any kind, yet knowing withal how, with virile sense and
energy, to prevent the misuse of ministering love. She became a model
for the deaconesses, as well as a mother to them, and her name deserves
to be mentioned with honor, as one who had an important part in the
Protestant renewal of the diaconate of women."[30]
In 1842 a new building was erected for the normal school for
infant-school teachers. The publishing house of the institution was also
started, which issues religious books and tracts. The first work sent
forth was a volume of sermons, presented to the new enterprise by the
late Professor Lange, which went through several editions.
The same year the _Kaiserswerth Almanac_ appeared and a large picture
Bible for schools was published. In 1848 the magazine _Der Armen und
Kranken Freund_ was sent forth as an organ for the deaconess cause, not
only for Kaiserswerth, but for all the institutions that are represented
at the triennial Conferences. The publishing house is an important
source of income, as the institution has little in the way of endowment
beside the produce of the garden land attached to it. At present about
three fourths of the expense are met by the sale of publications and the
fees of patients; the remaining sum is given by friends.
The financial story of Fliedner's life could form a tale of thrilling
interest, if it were separated from other facts and told by itself. He
constantly went forward, purchased houses, added lands, and erected new
homes when he had no money in reserve, but unfailingly when the time
came for payments to be made the sum was obtained in some way or other
to meet them. "We have no endowment," he once said, "but the Lord is our
endowment."
The same year, 1842, the orphan asylum was opened. For a very moderate
sum this receives children who are both fatherless and motherless, and
who belong to the educated middle class, having fathers who were pastors
or professors, or the like. Fliedner hoped not only to provide a home
for these girls befitting their station in life, but to develop among
them those who should make a vocation of the care of children and the
sick, and in this hope he was not disappointed.
In the midst of these successes the hand of God often lay heavily on
Fliedner's family. Brethren and children passed away, and, sorest
affliction of all to him, his wife, who had so closely and
sympathetically shared all his labors, died April 22, 1842. "She was the
first of the deaconesses to die," writes Fliedner. "As she, their
mother, had always led the way for her spiritual daughters in life, so
she was their leader into the valley of the shadow of death."[31] Not
long after this a normal school for female teachers in the public
schools was started, for this practical believer in woman's work was one
of the first to advocate the introduction of women teachers in the
public schools of Germany, against which there then existed a strong
prejudice. The Board of Education looked favorably on his project, and
afterward sent a government commissioner to attend the examinations and
award the certificates at Kaiserswerth. At a later period provision was
made for teachers of girls' high schools, as also for those who desired
to become teachers but were too young to enter the normal school. Over
two thousand teachers have gone forth from these schools, carrying with
them a love for the institution which has brought back to it many
returns in money and service. Fliedner well called them his "light
skirmishing troops."
In 1849 he resigned his pastorate, and henceforth, with singleness of
purpose, devoted himself to his one calling. From time to time new
buildings were added to meet new needs. In 1852 an insane asylum for
Protestant women was founded, as sisters were often called upon to nurse
patients of this class. The building set apart for the purpose was
formerly used as military barracks and was given to Fliedner by King
Frederick William IV. In 1881 this, as with so many others of the
original buildings at Kaiserswerth, became too small for the increase in
numbers, and a new building took its place. It stands on an eminence
just outside of the village, and is provided with every modern
appliance. Fliedner's practical good sense and administrative ability
led him to care for all the minor details that were needed for the
success of so great an undertaking. He added a dispensary to the
hospital, where a sister who had passed a regular examination before the
government medical board made up the medicines required for the
hospital. Many deaconesses have been trained to the same knowledge,
which has been an especially valuable acquisition in the hospitals
situated in Eastern countries. Little by little he secured land for
farming operations, until there were one hundred and eighty acres in
garden and meadow land, generally lying close about the various
buildings, and affording means of recreation as well to the inmates.
Nearly all of the vegetable and dairy products that are needed are so
provided. A bakery, bath-houses, homes for laborers and officials, were
added, and bakers, shoemakers, carpenters, and blacksmiths formed part
of the staff of the great establishment.
Gradually every variety of institution that could furnish active
practice to the deaconesses took its place here, and the whole might be
denominated a great normal training-school for Christian women. The
refuge for discharged female convicts, which was the starting-point of
the movement, still continued its good work during all these years. The
last report[32] states that nine hundred and nineteen women of different
ages and different degrees of wrong-doing have been its inmates. Parents
send insubordinate girls; societies forward those who profess penitence;
magistrates sentence degraded creatures often too late for any
reasonable hope to reform them. The old experience of the refuge is
repeated in this last report: one third are saved, one third are
irredeemable, and the judgment as to the remaining third, doubtful.
There were two buildings erected during the later years of Fliedner's
life in which he took great interest. One of these was a cottage among
the neighboring hills, where deaconesses who had become exhausted by
long days in the sick-room, or whose health was suffering from
over-toil, could retire for a few weeks of mountain air and quiet rest
during the summer months. This pleasant retreat was well named Salem.
Soon afterward was laid the corner-stone of the second building,
regarded with peculiar favor not only by the good pastor, but by all
friends of the institution. This was the "Feierabend Haus," the House of
Evening Rest, where, somewhat apart from the busy activity of the great
household, those deaconesses whose best strength had been given to
faithful labor in the service could pass the evening hours of life in
quiet waiting for the last great change, while using the experience they
had gathered and the strength still remaining in behalf of the cause
they had faithfully served.
Such are the main features of the great establishment that year by year
grew up in this village on the Rhine. But from this as a center had
gradually branched off manifold lines of service, and many
daughter-houses both in Germany and foreign lands. It was only a year
and a half after the home was opened that the first appointment of
deaconesses to work outside of Kaiserswerth was made.
This was an important victory for the new institution. It took place
January 21, 1838, on Fliedner's birthday, when he and his wife escorted
two of the sisters to Elberfeld, where they were to act as trained
nurses in the city hospital. From that time to the present the hospital
has continued under the management of the Kaiserswerth deaconesses.
Soon afterward sisters were sent out to nurse in private families, and
in 1839 two more were sent to superintend the workhouse in Frankfort. As
the institution became known there was a constant demand for
superintendents, and matrons for public reformatories, prisons, and
charitable establishments. Between 1846 and 1850 more than sixty
deaconesses were at work at twenty-five different stations outside of
the mother-house. About the same time deaconesses began to work in
connection with special churches which called for their services, having
the duties which in England are assigned to those called "parish
deaconesses."
King Frederick William IV., from the beginning Fliedner's faithful
friend and supporter, had long desired a deaconess home in Berlin. This
was finally obtained, and set apart under the name "Bethanien Haus," or
Bethany House, October 10, 1847, at a special dedicatory service, at
which the king, with his court, was present. It was while seeking a
superintendent for this home in Berlin that Fliedner learned to know
Caroline Bertheau, of Hamburg, a descendant of an old Huguenot family
that was driven from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He
led her home as his wife in May, 1843, and she became to him a true
helpmeet for his children, his home, and his institution. She is still
living, having survived her husband over twenty-five years, and in an
advanced age still retains a place on the Board of Direction at
Kaiserswerth.
In one place after another deaconess homes arose, sometimes simply
through Fliedner's advice, more often by his direct co-operation. From
1849 to 1851 he was chiefly engaged in traveling from one land to
another, occupied in kindling the zeal of Christian women to devotion to
the sick and sorrowing, and finding fields of service for their
priceless ministrations. He visited the United States, England, France,
and Switzerland, as well as various cities of the East, including
Jerusalem and Constantinople.
The work in our own land was begun at Pittsburg, where Fliedner came
with four sisters in the summer of 1849, at the invitation of Pastor
Passavant, of the German Lutheran Church.
The deaconesses at once entered upon hospital work, and their care of
the sick met with warm appreciation, but their numbers did not increase.
An orphanage was afterward started at Rochester, and hospitals under the
same auspices exist at Milwaukee, Jacksonville, Ill., and Chicago. Still
the work has not grown, and it has proved the least successful of any
initiated by Fliedner. Upon his return he aided in opening
mother-houses in Breslau, Königsberg, Dantzic, Stettin, and Carlsruhe.
We have now come to the period when Kaiserswerth institutions met with a
notable extension. Fliedner had long been looking toward Jerusalem,
hoping to found a deaconess home there. "Who would not gladly render
service on the spot where the feet of the Saviour once brought help and
healing to the sick?" he had said.
Now, through Dr. Gobat, the Bishop of Jerusalem, the opportunity was
given. The king offered two small houses in Jerusalem that were his
private property, and volunteered to pay the expenses of the journey.
Associations were formed in all parts of Germany to provide an outfit
for the mission. Gifts flowed in rapidly, and March 17, 1851, Fliedner,
accompanied by four deaconesses, two of them being teachers, set out on
this new and peaceful crusade to the holy city. From that beginning has
resulted a net-work of stations throughout the East.
There is at Jerusalem a hospital[33] where, during 1887, four hundred
and ninety-three patients were given medical aid and nursing, and seven
thousand seven hundred and two patients were treated in the dispensary.
No woman in the city is better known or more justly honored than Sister
Charlotte, the head-deaconess.
The Mohammedans at first regarded the work of the sisters with fanatical
distrust, but a glance at the statistics of the last report will show
how completely they have cast aside their prejudices.
Of the 493 patients in 1887, there were 404 Arabians, 43 Armenians, 30
Germans, 5 Abyssinians, 4 Greeks, 3 Roumanians, 2 Russians, 1 Italian,
and 1 Hollander. As to religion, there were 235 Mohammedans, 97
Protestants, 78 Greeks, 23 Roman Catholics, 45 Armenians, 6 Copts, 3
Syrian Christians, 4 Proselytes, 1 Jew, and 1 Maronite; so that in all
nine nations and nine religious faiths were represented in the hospital.
There is also a girls' orphanage, called "Talitha Cumi," just outside
the city walls at Jerusalem, where one hundred and fourteen native girls
were last year taught by the Kaiserswerth deaconesses. Over a hundred
more made application to enter, but there was no room to receive them.
In Constantinople, Alexandria, Cairo, Beirut, and Pesth there are also
well-appointed hospitals, some of them of spacious dimensions, and all
having excellent medical service and nursing that cannot be surpassed.
The orphanage and school at Beirut had a sad foundation. In 1860 came
the terrible news of the massacre of the Maronite Christians by the
Druses in the Lebanon mountains.
Kaiserswerth deaconesses were immediately sent out, and were among the
first to arrive to join the resident Europeans and Americans in caring
for the sufferers. Numbers of children were left fatherless and
motherless, and the sisters started the orphanage at Beirut to shelter
them. When its twenty-fifth anniversary was celebrated in 1885 over
eight hundred girls had received a home and education here, and had gone
forth to eastern homes, carrying with them the light and knowledge of
Christian faith into the dark, degraded social life of the Orient.[34]
From the two orphanages at Beirut and Jerusalem over forty have gone out
as teachers in girls' schools in Palestine and Syria. Twelve others have
become deaconesses, and are ministering in this capacity to their own
countrymen and to foreigners in eastern hospitals.[35]
In Smyrna there is also a girls' school, that was opened at the request
of some wealthy Protestants residing there. The school is not so needed
as formerly, since the government has started girls' high schools, but
it is still maintained, and aids in bringing new life into the hopeless
society of the East. There is also an orphanage at Smyrna, where some
girls of the poorer classes were gathered after the ravages of the
cholera had left them without parents or homes.
The eastern deaconesses have also their Salem. Just above the little
village of Areya, in the Lebanon, on the summit of a hill overlooking
the Mediterranean, stands the house of retreat, where, during the summer
months, the more than forty sisters stationed in Beirut, Alexandria,
Cairo, and Jerusalem can take refuge in seasons of overpowering heat.
The deaconess who superintends the house has a school for the native
children of the village, which is taught by one of the girls educated at
the Beirut orphanage.
Prosperous girls' schools are also in existence at Bucharest, and at
Florence, Italy. The Italian school was started in 1860 with four girls
in the upper floor of a rented house. It now possesses a beautiful house
and grounds of its own, and had one hundred and forty-five girls under
its charge the past year. Most of these were Italians, but different
foreign residents also availed themselves of the opportunity to send
their children to an excellent Protestant school. There is also a
mission at Rome maintained by deaconesses during the winter months.
The large majority of the undertakings outside of Kaiserswerth were
initiated personally by Fliedner. When we recall the complex demands of
the home field in Germany we marvel at the versatile executive ability
of this man, who started life as the humble pastor of an obscure village
church. But he loved work. He possessed "iron industry." He was ever
hopeful, courageous, and indefatigable. Above all, he trusted completely
in the leadings of Divine Providence, and constantly went forward with
sure confidence. Then he was a true leader. He knew men. He put the
right person in the right place, gave him full liberty of action, and
held him to a strict responsibility for results. So, while Fliedner
remained the soul of the great institution, he knew how to make himself
spared, which was not the least of his qualifications for his calling.
[30] _Der Diakonissenberuf_, Emil Wacker, Gütersloh, 1888, p. 116.
[31] _Life of Pastor Fliedner_, translated by C. Winckworth, London,
1867.
[32] _Ein und fünfzigster Jahres-Bericht_, p. 30.
[33] _Achtzehnter Bericht über die Diakonissen Stationen im
Morgenlande_, 1888.
[34] _Vierzehnten Bericht über die Diakonissen Stationen am Libanon._
[35] _Der Rheinisch Westfälische Diakonissen Verein_, p. 64,
J. Disselhoff.
CHAPTER VI.
THE REGULATIONS AT KAISERSWERTH, AND THE
DUTIES AND SERVICES OF THE DEACONESSES.
The regulations in daily use at Kaiserswerth are based on those that
Fliedner drew up in the early days of the institution. They have been
adopted with few alterations by the larger number of deaconess
institutions that have since arisen, so that to understand the spirit
and usages prevailing in them it is well to give these rules some study.
They are contained in a book numbering one hundred and seven pages,[36]
treating with great minuteness every question that affects the daily
lives of the deaconesses. The qualities that the office demands are
first dwelt upon as they are described in Acts vi, 3, and 1 Tim. iii, 8,
9. The sisters are reminded that their life is one of service; that they
serve the Lord Jesus; that they serve the poor and the sick and helpless
"for Jesus' sake;" and that they are servants one of another.
Special stress is given to the importance of cultivating unity, love,
and forbearance in the relations of daily life, and the deaconesses are
enjoined "to protect and further the honor of other sisters," "to form
one family living unitedly as sisters, through the tie of a heartfelt
love for the one great object that brings them to this place."
There are two classes of deaconesses formally recognized, nurses and
teachers; although there is another, deaconess whose work is year by
year becoming more important, and that is the deaconess who is attached
to a church in the capacity of a home missionary. She is designated by
the term "commune-deaconess," or, as the English translate it,
"parish-deaconess."
Those who desire to become nurse-deaconesses must have the elements of a
common school education, must be in good health, and, as a general rule,
be over eighteen and not over forty years of age. Most important of all
is it that she possess personal knowledge of the salvation of Christ,
and a living experience of the grace of God. Those who desire to become
teacher-deaconesses must, in addition, present certain educational
certificates, and be able to sing. All must pass some months at the
mother-house, taking care of children and assisting in housework, so
that their fitness for the office can be proven. A great deal of care
is taken to test the efficiency of the candidates, and only about one
half the probationers finally become deaconesses in full connection. The
teachers have, further, a seminary course of one year for those who are
to teach in infant schools, of two years to prepare for the elementary
schools, and of three years for the girls' high schools.
While probationers, they receive, free of charge, board and instruction,
and the caps, collars, and aprons that are their distinctive badges.
Their remaining expenses they provide for themselves. Those who have
completed the full term of probation, and have proved their fitness for
the office, must pledge themselves to a service of at least five years.
At the end of the time they may renew the engagement or not, as they
wish. Should a deaconess be needed at home by aged parents, or should
she desire to marry, she is free to leave her duties, but is expected to
give three months' notice of her intention to do so.
The deaconess performs her duties gratuitously. This is a main feature
of the system. She is not even free to accept personal presents, for
envy, jealousy, and unworthy motives might then creep into the system.
She is truly "the servant of the Lord Jesus Christ." All of her wants
are supplied, and her future needs anticipated, so that, literally
"taking no thought for the morrow," she can give herself with
single-hearted devotion to the work in hand. The deaconess at
Kaiserswerth receives from the institution her modest wardrobe,
consisting of a Sunday suit, a working-dress of dark blue, blue apron,
white caps and collars. A deaconess attired in her garb, with the
placid, contented countenance that seems distinctively to belong to her,
is a pleasant, wholesome sight that is constantly to be seen on the
streets of German cities. Her deaconess attire is not only a protection,
assuring her chivalrous treatment from all classes of men, but it is a
convenient identification that insures her certain privileges on the
State railroads and steamboats, for the German government recognizes the
sisters as benefactors of society, and treats them accordingly. For her
personal expenses the Kaiserswerth deaconess in Germany receives yearly
twenty-two dollars and fifty cents; sometimes when in foreign lands she
is paid a slightly larger sum. When she becomes unfitted for service by
reason of sickness or old age, and has no means of her own, the Board of
Direction provides for her maintenance.
The rules for probationers are full of practical suggestions touching
the details of daily life. There is not space to transcribe them here,
but those who have charge of training schools will find them valuable
reading. Every kind of house and hospital service is clearly defined.
The deaconesses are instructed what duties are theirs in hospitals for
women and in hospitals for men. In the latter the sister undertakes only
such nursing as is suited to her sex, and for that reason she has a male
assistant. She must follow strictly the doctor's orders in all matters
pertaining to diet, medicine, and ventilation, and must inform him daily
of the patient's state. She also assists the clergyman, if desired, in
ministering to spiritual needs. But she must not obtrude her religion,
when it is distasteful to her patients; rather manifest it in her deeds
and manner of life.
Every portion of the day has definite duties assigned to it. On reading
them over you say, Can much be accomplished when the hours are
subdivided into so many portions, and given over to so many objects? But
the unvarying testimony is that no nurses accomplish more than the
German deaconesses. No matter how busy they may be, the effort is made
for each to have a quiet half hour for meditation and private devotion.
Every afternoon the chapel is opened for this purpose, and all the
sisters who can be spared meet here. A hymn is sung, and afterward each
spends the time as she will in meditation, reading the Bible or silent
prayer, the quietness and stillness being unbroken by words. The "Stille
halbe Stunde," as it is called, is greatly prized by the sisters, and is
observed by them in all their institutions, and in all lands. There are
Bible-classes and prayer-meetings for the deaconesses during the week,
and the first Sunday of every month there is a special service of prayer
and thanksgiving for all sisters, all the affiliated houses, and similar
homes wherever they exist. Fliedner prepared a book of daily Bible
readings for the use of the sisters, and a hymn-book, used in all the
Kaiserswerth institutions at home and abroad. "We have no vows," he
said, "and I will have no vows, but a bond of union we must have, and
the best bond is the word of God, and our second bond is singing."[37]
The sisters of each house meet together to give their votes for the
admission of new deaconesses and the election of the superintendents.
Each deaconess is expected to obey those who are placed over her, and to
accept the kind of work assigned her, except in the case of contagious
diseases, when her permission is asked. What a tribute it is to these
women that such a refusal has never yet been known! Every effort is made
to harmonize the right of the individual with the needs of the whole
body, a marked characteristic of the Protestant sisters of charity.
When a probationer becomes a deaconess she is consecrated to her work by
a service the main features of which it may be well to indicate. They
are as follows:
Singing. Address commending the deaconesses for acceptance. Address to
the deaconesses, recalling the ever-repeated thought, "You are servants
in a threefold sense: servants of the Lord Jesus; servants of the needy
for Jesus' sake; servants one of another." Then, having answered the
question, "Are you determined to fulfill these duties truly in the fear
of the Lord, and according to his holy will?" the candidate kneels and
receives the benediction: "May the Triune God, God the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, bless you; may he give you fidelity unto death, and then the
crown of life." After this is repeated the prayer of the _Apostolical
Constitutions_, that beautiful prayer which has been said on similar
occasions in many lands and in many tongues.[38] The service ends with
the communion.
A similar consecration service is used by nearly all the German
deaconess houses. The features of those that meet together in the
triennial Conferences at Kaiserswerth are strikingly similar; the spirit
of the original founder pervades them all.
The first of the Conferences was held in 1861, just twenty-five years
after the founding of the first deaconess house at Kaiserswerth. It was
celebrated as a Thanksgiving festival for the restoration of the
diaconate of women to the Church. The representatives of twenty-seven
distinct mother-houses met together to exchange their experiences, and
to deliberate on matters touching the further usefulness of the order.
Since then the Conferences have been continued at intervals of three and
four years. The last General Conference assembled at Fliedner's old home
in September, 1888.
Just before it convened, as is the custom, statistics were obtained from
the different mother-houses represented in the association, and pains
were taken to verify their correctness. The results so obtained are
given in the following table:[39]
Mother- Fields of
Conferences. houses. Sisters. Work.
1861 27 1,197 ?
1864 30 1,592 386
1868 40 2,106 526
1872 48 2,657 648
1875 50 3,239 866
1878 51 3,901 1,093
1881 53 4,748 1,436
1884 54 5,653 1,742
1888 57 7,129 2,263
Five additional houses had made application for entrance at the time the
table was made, and were received at the ensuing Conference, among which
was the Philadelphia mother-house of deaconesses in connection with the
Mary J. Drexel Home.
Over sixty mother-houses now belong to the association, and
notwithstanding the necessary loss of deaconesses from death or removal
from work since the preceding Conference, there are 1,476 more in number
now than then. Surely the deaconess cause is striking deep root in the
religious life of Protestant Europe. During Fliedner's life-time
occasions arose which called the deaconesses outside their accustomed
fields of work, and proved their value in the exceptional emergencies
that so often arise. Here is an instance that occurred during the early
days of the establishment:[40]
"An epidemic of nervous fever was raging in two communes of the circle
of Duisburg, Gartrop, and Gahlen. Its first and most virulent outbreak
took place at Gartrop, a small, poor, secluded village of scarcely one
hundred and thirty souls, without a doctor, without an apothecary in the
neighborhood, while the clergyman was upon the point of leaving for
another parish, and his successor had not yet been appointed. Four
deaconesses, including the superior, Pastor Fliedner's wife, and a maid,
hastened to this scene of wretchedness, and found from twenty to
twenty-five fever patients in the most alarming condition, a mother and
four children in one hovel, four other patients in another, and so on,
all lying on foul straw, or on bed-clothes that had not been washed for
weeks, almost without food, utterly without help. Many had died already;
the healthy had fled; the parish doctor lived four German leagues off,
and could not come every day. The first care of the sisters, who would
have found no lodging but for the then vacancy of the parsonage, was to
introduce cleanliness and ventilation into the narrow cabins of the
peasants; they washed and cooked for the sick, they watched every night
by turns at their bed-side, and tended them with such success that only
four died after their arrival, and the rest were only convalescent after
four weeks' stay. The same epidemic having broken out in the neighboring
commune of Gahlen, in two families, of whom eight members lay ill at
once, a single deaconess was able, in three weeks, to restore every
patient to health, and to prevent the further spread of the disease.
What would not our doctors give for a few dozen of such hard-working,
zealous, intelligent ministers in the field of sanitary reform?"
The Schleswig-Holstein war of 1864 was the first in which Protestant
deaconesses were active as nurses. Already in the Crimean war the Greek
Sisters of Charity among the Russians, the Sisters of Mercy among the
French, and Florence Nightingale and Miss Stanley among the English, had
wakened the liveliest gratitude on the part of the soldiers, and secured
the respect and approbation of the surgeons.
In the Austrian war of 1866 two hundred and eighty-two deaconesses were
in the hospitals and on the battle-fields, fifty-eight of whom were from
Kaiserswerth. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870 was on a greater scale,
and afforded wider opportunities for the unselfish, priceless labors of
these Christian nurses. Neatly eight hundred deaconesses, sent from more
than thirty mother-houses, cared for the sick and wounded in the camp
hospitals or on the field. The willingness of a number of boards of
administration to release sisters who were in their service, and the
voluntary offers of other women to take their places, enabled
Kaiserswerth to send two hundred and twenty of the number. Their
experience in improvising hospitals, in aiding the surgeon in his
amputations, and in ministering to the wounded and dying, throws a
tender glow of compassionate sympathy over the terrible scenes of
war.[41]
The importance of trained deaconesses in times of war is now well
understood by the military authorities at Berlin. In the winter of 1887,
when war seemed imminent, the directors of the German deaconess houses
were summoned by the government to a conference at the German capital to
take measures for supplying nurses in case war should be declared.
Deaconesses are now thoroughly incorporated into the religious and
social features of the German national life, as must be admitted by any
one who has weighed the facts that have been given.
The example of Kaiserswerth has been far-reaching; the mission of
Fliedner, that simple-hearted, true-souled, practical, energetic pastor,
has been wonderfully successful.
In this rapid sketch I have said but little of the hinderances he met,
nothing of the ridicule which at first attacked him unsparingly. He paid
no heed to these obstacles, and why should we waste time in detailing
them? Steadfastly and undeviatingly he went forward toward the end he
had in view; that is, to restore in all its aspects the devoted
disciplined services of Christian women to the Church. He passed away
from life October 5, 1864, leaving the great establishment that he had
watched over in the charge of his son-in-law, Pastor Disselhoff, and
other members of his family.
The institution has become an imposing mass of building, forming an
almost absurd contrast to the little garden house, the cradle of the
whole establishment, which is still standing in the parsonage garden.
When the fiftieth anniversary of the rise of the deaconess cause was
celebrated in 1886 the Kaiserswerth sisterhood put their mites together
and purchased the little house, to hold it in perpetuity as a monument
of God's providence.
The symbol of Kaiserswerth is a white dove, carrying an olive branch,
resting against a blue ground. The blue flag floats from the old
windmill tower on the river-bank, attracting the attention of the
traveler as he floats up the Rhine.
Other flags bear messages of conquest, of victory, of battles fought and
won, of storm and stress and endeavor in the conflict of man against his
fellow-man. But only peace and good-will, the victory of goodness and of
love--these alone are the messages that are waved forth to the wind by
the blue flag of Kaiserswerth.
[36] _Haus Ordnung und Dienst-Anweisung für die Diakonissen und
Probeschwestern des Diakonissen Mutterhauses zu Kaiserswerth._
[37] _Deaconesses_, Rev. J. S. Howson, D.D., p. 81.
[38] Refer back to page 23, chapter ii, where it can be found.
[39] _Der Armen und Kranken Freund_, August Heft, 1888.
[40] _Woman's Work in the Church_, p. 273, J. M. Ludlow. A. Strahan,
London, 1866.
[41] _Denkschrift zur Jubelfeier_, p. 215.
CHAPTER VII.
OTHER ESTABLISHMENTS ON THE CONTINENT.
In a book of these dimensions no exhaustive historical account can be
given of all the developments of the deaconess movement in the various
countries on the Continent. Only a few of the leading houses can be
spoken of, but through a knowledge of these we can gain an insight into
the life and characteristics of the movement as a whole.
The mother-house at Strasburg is one of the oldest ones, dating from
1842. It owes its origin to the holy enthusiasm and life experiences of
Pastor Härter, who exercised a deep religious influence in the city
where he lived. In 1817, when he was a young man of twenty, the great
Strasburg hospital was re-organized. The six to eight hundred patients
were divided according to their religious faith. To the Catholics were
assigned as nurses Sisters of Charity. For the Protestants there were
paid women nurses.
The magistrates appealed to the pastors to find at least two Protestant
women of experience and ability to oversee the nurses, but the most
persistent search in the various churches of Strasburg failed to procure
suitable candidates. Years afterward, when death entered Härter's family
circle, and his life became clouded and darkened, he was called as a
pastor to the largest church in Strasburg. He entered upon his new
pastorate with a heart heavy and sad, and not until after ten months of
struggle, in which the depths of his soul were stirred, did he come
forth strong, confident, and positive as never before that "Jesus Christ
came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief." Henceforth
there was force to his life, conviction in his words, and never-ceasing
energy in good works.
When he heard of Fliedner's new undertaking below him on the Rhine he
remembered the difficulty in finding Protestant nurses for the hospital,
and declared that Strasburg must have a similar institution. He won the
support of a number of Christian men and women, and the house was opened
in October, 1842. From its beginning many branches of charitable and
religious work were undertaken. Especial attention was at first given to
preparing Christian teachers, and the schools in connection with the
deaconess house were filled with pupils. The success in this particular
aroused apprehension lest the deaconesses should be diverted from their
legitimate duties in caring for outside interests, so for a time the
schools were discontinued. They have been resumed, however, and are
to-day prosperous as of old.[42] There are also a hospital, a home for
aged women, a servants' training-school and a foundling asylum under the
charge of the deaconesses. They are, as a class, of higher social rank
than these of Kaiserswerth, the preponderating number of whom are from
the lower grade of social life. They are also better educated. This is
partly a necessity, from the fact that the city is on the border-land
between two great nations and if the deaconesses are to be effective
they must be familiar with the spoken and written speech of both
peoples. Strasburg continues to be a great and powerful center of
deaconess activities, having a number of branch houses and various
fields of work.
The affiliated house at Mülhausen has obtained an especially good report
for its successful use of parish deaconesses. No other house has so
systematized their labors or developed their possibilities as has the
deaconess house at Mülhausen. All the authorities on deaconess work
agree that the office of the parish deaconess is the crown and glory of
the diaconate, and approaches most nearly the type of the deaconesses of
the early Church.
The parish deaconess has occasion to use every gift which she can
possibly acquire in the varied training of the deaconess school. She
must know how to care for the poor, the weak, the sick, and those
needing help for either body or soul, as she finds them in her visits
from house to house. She must be able to pray at the bedside of the rich
man, and to serve in the kitchen of the poor man; to be motherly to
children, sympathetic with the sorrowing, and silent with the
complaining. She must be an intelligent nurse, having some knowledge of
medicine, able to faithfully carry out the instructions of the
physician. She must be keen in detecting imposition, and wise in the
administration of charity, knowing that "to deny is often to help, and
to give is often to corrupt." Truly, there is no gift of Christian
womanhood which has not here its use.
For many reasons Mülhausen was well adapted for a field of labor for
parish deaconesses. It is an old city, dating back to mediæval times,
having a population of about sixty thousand inhabitants, half of whom
are workmen. It has long been known for its noble and successful
endeavors to promote the well-being of the working class. One of the
first building and loan associations was started here to enable the
operatives to earn their homes by gradual payments. Other organizations
whose object is the moral elevation of the employees have united the
different social circles by strong ties of sympathy. It was an easy
matter, therefore, to raise a subscription of two hundred thousand
francs to provide a home for the deaconesses who were invited here from
Strasburg in 1861. There are now fourteen sisters in the deaconess
house. Half of the number remain at the home to nurse the sick, and
perform house duties. The remainder are parish deaconesses, who go forth
early in the morning, each to her own quarter of the city, where she is
busy at her labors during the day. In the evening she returns to the
central home. In each of the seven districts into which the city is
divided is located a district house; a pleasant, well-kept place. This
contains a waiting-room for the deaconess and a consultation-room for
the district physician, who comes at stated hours during the week. The
poor who are recommended by the sister he treats gratuitously, and, so
far as the physician directs, she furnishes food gratuitously. She keeps
on hand a good stock of lint, bandages, and instruments. Each house has
a kitchen and cellar. Every morning a woman comes in and prepares a
large kettle of nourishing soup, and at 11 A. M. this is given out to
the sick and poor.
In the store-room are rice, sugar, coffee, meal, and similar articles of
food. From here she sends out at noon such portions as are needed for
the most destitute of the district. In winter she also sells from her
stores to the poor. Then there is a closet amply provided with sewing
materials, and when the deaconess obtains work for seamstresses she
furnishes them at a small price the necessary outfit to begin sewing. At
two o'clock the deaconess ends her duties at the district house, and
spends the remainder of the day in making visits in her quarter. To
provide means to support the constant expenditure, there is in each
quarter of the city a committee of fifteen ladies and three gentlemen,
being in all more than one hundred ladies and twenty gentlemen, who are
responsible for the administration of the charity. Each committee has a
yearly collection in its district, and in this way about forty thousand
francs are gathered annually. In each quarter nine hundred francs (one
hundred and eighty dollars) is set apart for the maintenance of the
sister and the rent of the district house. The remaining sum is expended
by the deaconesses in their several districts in caring for the sick and
destitute. Every month each one receives the sum allotted her from the
treasurer, and in return reports her expenditure. The ladies on the
committee often give personal assistance to the deaconess, and sometimes
assume responsibility for individual cases, or for an entire street. The
arrangements are constantly being improved upon as knowledge is gained
by practice. The experience that has been gathered at Mülhausen is very
practical, and therefore very valuable. Similar work could be undertaken
in any of our large American cities, with the anticipation of like
beneficent results. For that reason the above detailed description has
been ventured upon, with the hope that the Old World example will find
imitators in the New.[43] Similar institutions, although not so
carefully perfected, are found in Gorlitz and Magdeburg.
In Berlin are a good many deaconess institutions. Among them is the
Marthashof, a training-school for servants, and a home for those out of
employment.
The first impulse to care for the girls who come to large cities to
obtain work, and to provide them a home where they can have respectable
surroundings, came from Pastor Vermeil, the founder of the deaconess
house at Paris. When Fliedner visited the Paris house his heart was
touched by what he saw. He thought of the thousands of girls coming
annually to Berlin from the provinces, and of the exposures and
temptations to which they were subjected. He knew that many of them in
their ignorance and inexperience were ruined body and soul in the
lodging-houses to which they resorted, and drifted away on the streets
of the city, only to find a place eventually in the hopeless wards of
the great hospital, La Charité.
He determined to do what he could to provide a remedy, and, as was his
wont, "without money and without noise" he set to work. In the north of
Berlin, at quite a distance from the railroad stations, he hired a small
house on a street then called "The Lost Way"--a street well named, as it
was unlighted and unpaved, and so poorly kept that when the queen came
to visit the home, shortly after it was opened, her carriage, in spite
of the strong horses, got stuck in the mud.
By the aid of some ladies in the city the home was furnished with twelve
beds; three deaconesses were put in charge, and after perplexing
difficulties the authorization to open a registry for servants was
obtained. The idea at first met with derision. It was said that such an
institution was rightly located on "The Lost Way," for no one would ever
come to it. But they came. In two years the number of beds increased to
twenty, and the same year Fliedner purchased the entire court in which
the house stood, containing five houses and a fine garden. Queen
Elizabeth of Prussia became the patroness of the institution, and it
grew in favor with the people. A training-school was added in which the
girls were taught to wash, iron, cook, and sew, and also to work in the
garden and to care for cows, the last two branches of domestic service
being required of servant-girls in Germany. Later an infant school was
added in which nursery girls were practiced in taking charge of
children, a pleasant, helpful demeanor being made one of the requisites.
Over two hundred children, mostly coming from the poorest and gloomiest
homes, are in daily attendance. About three hundred and fifty more
attend the girls' school for children of the working classes. In the
home and training-school for servants about eight hundred girls are
received annually, and sixteen thousand have been sheltered and taught
during the years it has been open. They readily secure situations, over
two thousand applications being annually received for the servants of
the Marthashof. They remain in friendly relation to the home, receive
good counsel and advice, and are encouraged to spend their free Sundays
there.
The Marthashof has had a beneficent influence over the moral and
spiritual welfare of servants throughout Germany. In nearly all the
cities similar homes are now established, while in the larger cities
Sunday associations are formed to provide suitable places of meeting for
the entertainment and instruction of those who are free Sunday
afternoons and evenings. So far as I am aware, no similar work has been
attempted for servant-girls in the United States. It is true that
training-schools exist, but not with religious supervision, and with the
moral and religious instruction of the inmates made a prominent feature.
The Marthashof offers us a lesson well worth our learning.
The deaconess house, "Bethanien," in Berlin, was founded by King
Frederick William IV., who as the Crown Prince took a warm interest in
Fliedner's undertakings.[44] It still remains under the protection of
the emperor, and is one of the most important mother-houses. Over three
thousand patients are annually admitted to the hospital connected with
the house, and five hundred children are treated at a dispensary devoted
solely to cases of diphtheria. Outside of the city it has thirty-three
stations. There are also the Lazarus Hospital and Deaconess Home, the
Paul Gerhardt Deaconess Home, provided for parish deaconesses, and the
Elizabeth Hospital and Home, which started independently but is now
allied to Kaiserswerth.
The deaconess house in Neudettelsau stands in closest union with the
Lutheran Church. The sisters are mostly from the higher ranks of
society, and intellectual training is made prominent. Certain liturgical
forms are used, and in the main deaconesses are employed in preparing
ecclesiastical vestments and embroideries for church adornment.
In marked contrast to Dettelsau is the deaconess house at Berne. It is
almost a private institution, having only slight connection with the
State Church. It owes its origin to Sophie Wurdemberger, a member of one
of the old patrician families of Berne. A visit to England made her
acquainted with Elizabeth Fry, with the usual beneficent result of
increased interest and activity in good works. On her return to Berne
she gained the support of a society of women, and through their aid
secured a hospital and deaconess home. It is now fourth in number among
the largest mother-houses, has two hundred and ninety-seven deaconesses,
five affiliated houses, and forty-five different fields of work.
The oldest mother-house in Switzerland is at St. Loup, not far from
Lausanne, standing on one of the beautiful heights of that picturesque
region. It was founded by Pastor Germond in 1841, through the direct
influence of the work at Kaiserswerth. There are now seventy-three
deaconesses, mostly acting as nurses either in private homes or public
institutions.[45]
There is also a large institution at Riehen near Basel, which sends out
two hundred deaconesses. The greater number are of the peasant class,
and are nearly all employed as nurses. The home at Zürich was at first a
daughter-house of Riehen, but is now an independent institution with
twenty-seven stations. In Austria there is a mother-house at
Gallneukirchen from which sisters are sent forth, four of them working
in as many Vienna parishes. The story of deaconess work in Austria is an
interesting one, and is told by Miss Williams in a recent number of
_The Churchman_, from which the following extracts are taken:
"The Protestants of Gallneukirchen were first formed into an independent
parish in the year 1872, and it is the only one lying between the Danube
and the Bohemian frontier. It is very widely extended, but numbers only
three hundred and eighteen souls, and is so poor that with the greatest
effort it can raise only four hundred florins a year (about one hundred
and sixty dollars) for church and school. With the aid of those
interested in the work a parish-house has been secured, where the pastor
and his wife reside, and in which is the deaconess asylum for the aged,
infirm, and insane of all classes. It has not as yet been possible to
clear off the debt on the purchase. Still the sisters strive in every
way to enlarge their usefulness, so that they now possess extensive
buildings and farms--only partly paid for, it is true--wherein to house
the many afflicted who apply to them for aid. In one building, standing
alone on a hill, they purpose to collect the insane patients, and
suitable additions are now being made to insure their safety and
comfort. In another village, two hours' drive from here, is their
school, where more than sixty boys and girls are taught, fed, and
clothed, in most cases gratuitously, at worst at a nominal charge."
"The sisters are bright and cheerful, and keep their various dwellings
so exquisitely neat and clean, with their white-washed walls adorned
with Scripture texts and pictures. No work, however menial, is beneath
them. I have myself seen one scrubbing the stairs, and in turns they
sleep on a hard straw bed on the floor, ready to rise in the night as
often as a bell summons them to the aid of a suffering invalid or a
refractory lunatic."
There are a few institutions that exist independently of those
represented at the Kaiserswerth General Conference. They stand alone for
various reasons; perhaps they have not met the conditions required of
those which belong to the association. Any house whose administration
rests exclusively either in the hands of a man or a woman is excluded
from the Conference. In every mother-house there represented the
administrative head is twofold, consisting of a gentleman, who, with
rare exceptions, is a clergyman, and a lady who is a deaconess. The
Kaiserswerth authorities regard this joint management as an
indispensable condition.
The rector, as he is usually called, cares for the intellectual and
spiritual instruction of the probationers, conducts public services in
the chapel, and issues the publications and reports of the house.
The oberin, or house-mother, is the direct head of the sisters. She is
responsible for the interior management, regulates the duties of the
sisters, and gives practical instruction. The two are jointly
responsible for the acceptance and dismissal of probationers, for the
assignment of the sisters to different fields of labor, and the kind of
labor required. Every mother-house has its own peculiarities. The
personal characteristics of those who conduct it are naturally impressed
upon the house.
Then, too, the influence of environment is to be reckoned with. The
house may be located in a large city or in a small one; in the country
or in towns. It may be under the influence of a State Church, as in
Germany, or of Christians of all Churches, as at Mildmay. It will share
the characteristics of the race of people from which come its workers.
Doubtless in the Methodist Episcopal Church in America the deaconesses
that eventually become recognized as set apart to special Christian
service, through the training that is provided for them, will be women
who are peculiarly adapted to the needs of that Church, with all the
distinguishing American traits that will prepare them to understand the
people whom they are to serve, and that will give them access to the
hearts of this people.
If the deaconess cause should gain favor with us as it has in Europe,
and should the deaconesses become as established in the social life of
the people as they are there, the effective agencies will be largely
increased that are to deal with the questions that come to the front
whenever, as in great cities, large numbers of people are massed
together.
Deaconess institutions now exist in Switzerland, France, Holland,
Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Austria, England, and Germany, while
the countries in which these homes have stations are literally too
numerous to mention. Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, the countries of
Northern Africa, and of Asia Minor, as well as isolated mission stations
throughout the entire world are now served by deaconesses.
If there were ten times the number of sisters, places could be at once
found for them. It is instructive on this point to read what Pastor
Disselhoff says[46] in the account he gives of the various demands made
upon him, which he has been unable to meet. One of the letters he quotes
was from an English missionary on the Cameron River. "Send us
deaconesses for our hospital," he says. "It was built for European
sailors, especially Germans. We hope and trust to overcome the
superstitions of the natives, and that they too, may come to be healed."
But there were no sisters to send.
A similar call came from Shanghai, but as it was impossible to return a
favorable answer, although the hospital was a Protestant institution,
the Sisters of Mercy were invited in, and given control. From 1870 up to
1886 over two hundred and twenty-seven places at widely remote
distances, such as Madras, New Orleans, Port Said, Rio de Janeiro, and
elsewhere, sent most urgent appeals for Kaiserswerth deaconesses to be
assigned them, but invariably the same answer must be returned: "There
are none to send." Disselhoff closes by saying, "How many open doors has
God given! Whose fault is it that they remain closed?"
[42] Schäfer, _Die Weibliche Diakonie_, vol. i, p. 21.
[43] The details of the deaconess work at Mülhausen are largely
taken from Schäfer's _Die Weibliche Diakonie_, vol. ii.
[44] _Life of Pastor Fliedner_, translated by C. Winckworth, London,
1867, p. 133. "The favor of the great, especially the
condescending kindness of our late Sovereign, he took as a gift
from the King of kings, who allowed his own work to be thus
promoted. He strenuously avoided all personal distinction, and
never wore the order which had been sent him; 'for a servant of
the Church,' he said, 'there should be but one order--the Cross
of the Lord.'"
[45] _Der Armen und Kranken Freund_, August, 1888.
[46] _Denkschrift zur Jubelfeier_, pp. 248, 249.
CHAPTER VIII.
DEACONESSES IN GERMAN METHODISM.
The good results of the work of deaconesses in the other Protestant
bodies of Germany doubtless had their influence upon German Methodism.
As far back as 1868 in Wurtemberg, and later in Frankfort, some
preachers introduced parish deaconesses for the care of the sick; but
well-directed efforts, and unity in management, were lacking.
The existing association was started July 8, 1874, under the title of
"Bethanienverein," or the Bethany Society, through the efforts of
several members of the German Conference, among whom were Rev. G. Weiss,
who, with two deaconesses, initiated the work in Bremen, Rev. Frederick
Eilers, the present inspector, and Rev. G. Hausser, who for several
years was president of the board of direction, and now resides in
America.[47] A further number of ministers showed themselves inclined to
stand by the society, both by their influence and through contributions
taken in their churches, so that in 1876 the first trained deaconesses
were set at work in the city of Frankfort.
As has been said,[48] the little institution in its early days had to
pass through a series of critical experiences, as a young child has to
encounter the series of childhood diseases that assail it; but it
outlived them all, and is now enjoying a vigorous youth. It was but
another illustration of the truth that all beginnings are difficult, and
that successful experience has to be bought by overcoming hinderances
and obstacles.
To-day there is no branch of German Methodism more successfully and
substantially incorporated into the Church life than the deaconess
society, and none that wins greater favor among those outside of
denominational lines.
The first printed report was issued in October, 1884. In this the
inspector says: "Our society is now in three cities, Frankfort, Hamburg,
and Berlin, and our sisters are not able to meet all the demands upon
them for service." At that time there were thirteen deaconesses and
twenty probationers. The last report, issued in July, 1888, shows an
increase in numbers both of deaconesses and their stations. There are
now eighty-nine deaconesses, eleven of whom are probationers, and there
are stations in five places. Besides the ones previously mentioned in
Germany, two additional stations have been started in Switzerland: one
in Zürich, and one in St. Gall.
Nearly all the Methodist German deaconesses are engaged in caring for
the sick; it is only recently that attempts have been made in some other
directions of charitable endeavor. In the last report we are told that
at Frankfort steps have been taken to reform fallen women. One of the
sisters seems to be especially endowed with tact and ability for this
difficult work. She has already induced twenty-two of these girls to
enter the asylum at Sachsenhausen. The police authorities and city
magistrates have given this same sister access to the women prisoners,
which is a decided favor, coming from German officials. Besides her work
in this particular, she has devoted her remaining time to the care of
the poor and the sick.
Many deaconesses were called upon to go out as nurses in private
families, and, in order to obtain room to accommodate the added number
these services required, it has been necessary to rent an additional
house. There are two clinics in connection with the institution; one for
those suffering from nose, throat, or lung diseases, the other for
diseases of women. In both, the hours of consultation are free, and
attract numerous visitors. Two hundred and forty-six people were
received in the hospital last year, and were cared for in four thousand
one hundred and fifty days of nursing. Spiritual results are also
anticipated from the seed of God's word sown in the hearts of the sick
through daily prayer and Sunday services.
The house at Frankfort is too small for its increasing needs, and a
permanent home of more ample dimensions is greatly to be desired.
In Hamburg the house has been enlarged, and there is now room for
thirty-five sisters; yet still there are more demands made than can be
met. In one month ninety requests were handed in for the aid of the
deaconesses. The city authorities offered them a large lot of land at a
very moderate sum, which is at present used as a garden, and adds much
to the enjoyment of the home.
On the 4th of March, 1888, occurred the anniversary of the founding of
the Hamburg house, at which time six sisters were set apart to their
life calling by a service of consecration. As in all places where our
deaconesses are employed, so also in Hamburg their influence is felt in
the increase of religious life among the families they serve.
In Berlin, again, there is an imperative call for enlarged house
accommodations, and more sisters are needed to meet the requests for
help that are constantly coming to them. As the report expresses it,
"Something must happen!"[49] After six years of activity in Berlin the
deaconesses find themselves well appreciated, and with a broad field of
labor. The city authorities gave them permission to take a house
collection during the months of February and March. One of the German
ministers said, "This is an unusual favor, only granted in exceptional
cases, as when a village is swept away, or there is an inundation, or a
failure of harvests." This collection was no easy task. In the depth of
winter, in rigorous cold and snow the sisters had to climb weary flights
of stairs, in houses four and five stories high, arranged in flats; to
knock at many doors, often meeting with but slight success or a positive
refusal; yet daily they went with fresh courage to their work,
encouraged by the thought that they were toiling not for themselves, but
to serve the needy, "for Jesus' sake." The collection resulted in
obtaining nearly twenty thousand marks, to which has been added the loan
of a larger sum at a small rate of interest, so that there is good
prospect of soon obtaining a permanent home as the property of the
deaconess society.
St. Gall is one of the newer stations, but from the beginning it has
been a work of promise. In this old center of missionary operations,
where Irish missionaries founded one of the most famous monasteries of
mediæval times, is now to be erected a hospital under the care of
Methodist deaconesses, who have already begun to collect means for this
purpose. In Scheffel's famous story of _Ekkehard_ the only way in which
the Duchess Hadwig could enter the monastery of St. Gall (as there was a
law that no woman should set her foot upon the threshold) was by the
ingenious device of a young monk, who lifted her over in his arms. These
peaceful women of Methodism are finding no obstacle now as did Hadwig of
old; they do not need even figuratively to be lifted over the entering
threshold; they are gladly welcomed, and are introducing a new element
into the life of the old city.
In Zürich seven deaconesses are at work under the protection, and with
the sympathetic co-operation, of the pastor and the church. I saw
something of the deaconesses and their duties in this place. The
inspector, Rev. Fr. Eilers, came with the first deaconesses and
introduced them to their new field when I was a resident of the city. On
Sunday morning he occupied the pulpit, preaching from Rom. xvi, 1,
commending the deaconesses to the kindness and helpful aid of the
members of the church. I used often to see Sister Myrtha, who was the
head sister, hastening hither and thither on her errands of mercy. In
her plain black dress and round shoulder-cape to match, and broad white
collar and white cap, she was a pleasant and attractive figure. She was
always happy and contented, ready to answer the many questions with
which I plied her in my desire to look through the eyes of a deaconess,
and to obtain her views of the office to which she belonged. She had a
great love for her work, and believed that she was doing service for
Christ in a true missionary field. Her simple uniform was a
distinguishing mark that insured her respect and attention wherever she
went, and she regarded it as a garb of honor that marked her as
belonging to the daughters of the great King. You could not call such a
life an austere or unnatural one. It was too thoroughly filled with
thoughts of love to others to be either morbid or introspective. I
obtained my first favorable impressions of the usefulness of deaconesses
and their importance to the Church from the cheerful, contented labors
of Sister Myrtha and her associates among the poor and sick of
Zürich--quiet women, of no particular prominence in the social world,
and not learned or accomplished; "_nur einfache Mädchen_" (only simple
maidens, quiet, ordinary women, as we might translate Sister Myrtha's
own phrase), but living "not to be ministered unto, but to minister,"
commending their creed by their deeds, and winning sympathy by the
loving, self-denying spirit that they manifest.
During the last year a house of rest has been opened similar to the
house Salem at Kaiserswerth. This is called by the beautiful name
"_Gottestreue_," or "God's Fidelity." The report says that they have
named it God's Fidelity in recollection of this: "That the Lord has so
faithfully led us and has cared for us in all storms which, especially
at the beginning of the work, threatened to overwhelm it, has watched
over us and upheld us, and has so richly blessed us." The acquisition of
this house came through the work of the sisters. One of them was caring
for an aged widow, whose sympathies were so won that she offered to give
her property, amounting to about ten thousand marks, to the deaconess
society, asking only that she be cared for for the remainder of her
life. This sum enabled the house to be built, and last summer it was
opened for use. It lies upon a mountain, has a pleasant outlook to the
south, and a beautiful view over the valley of the Main and off to the
distant forests. Near at hand is a grove of chestnut trees, and farther
removed are extensive pine forests with pleasant walks. The house is in
the charge of one of the older sisters.
The regulations touching the training and duties of the sisters are
similar to those of Kaiserswerth. Two years of probation are required,
part of which is devoted to practical work under the superintendence of
an older deaconess. The rules of daily life are much the same; a quiet
half hour of prayer and meditation is strongly urged, and the same
freedom in control of personal property and withdrawal from the office
exists. It is pleasant to record that our deaconesses have secured to
themselves such good report for their usefulness that the city officials
in Germany accord to them the free use of steamboats and street-cars;
and the Prussian government does the same for roads that are under State
control.
The Bethany Society of the German Methodists is self-supporting and is
independent of the Conference, save only that the board of direction is
composed of Methodist preachers chosen by the Conference. Each of the
homes at the five stations has also its board of control, made up of the
inspector, the pastor in charge, and the head sister. The inspector is a
member of the Conference, but has no appointment, as his whole time is
devoted to the duty of superintendence. Last year the society took the
further step of deciding that henceforth the deaconesses should not be
sent, as heretofore, to outside hospitals or other institutions to
complete their training, but should be given the advantages they require
at our own homes. Owing to this decision only six probationers can be
received for the coming year, and others who have made application to
enter must wait their turn.
The German Methodist Church, the daughter of American Methodism,
anticipated the parent Church in utilizing the womanly gifts and
services of deaconesses as members of her aggressive forces, and
furnished it a very helpful and stimulating example.
[47] _Jahresbericht des Bethanienvereins_, 1884, Bremen.
[48] _Der Christliche Apologete_, article by Rev. G. Hausser,
September 20, 1888.
[49] _Jahresbericht_, 1888, page 8.
CHAPTER IX.
DEACONESSES IN PARIS.
When in Paris we visited the deaconess establishment on the Rue de
Reuilly, and had the pleasure, ever to be remembered, of seeing the
institution in all its workings under the guidance of Mademoiselle Sara
Monod, the daughter of Adolphe Monod; members of a family that have been
Protestants of the Protestants in the annals of France. We examined with
some degree of thoroughness the different departments, and saw them in
the busy working hours, when the full activities of the great
establishment were in exercise.
In addition to the information and reports then secured I am under
further obligation to Mademoiselle Monod for other material lately
received, among which is a pamphlet entitled _Une Visite à la Maison de
Diaconesses_, by Madame W. Monod, "the worthy daughter of one of the
founders, and the worthy wife of one of the present chaplains of the
institution." I have translated freely from this in the following pages,
as it is pervaded by a tone of intimate knowledge, and nothing can take
the place of the long years of close personal relation that make this
little book so fresh and attractive in its recital.
The institution is situated on the outskirts of the Faubourg St.
Antoine, upon an elevation, where the view in one direction is limited
by Mont St. Geneviève, and on the other embraces a large territory
intersected by the windings of the Seine and by lines of railroad. The
space is thickly dotted by the high chimneys of manufactories and
massive constructions of various forms. A great pile of buildings which
fronts upon the street forms one of the sides of the court within; two
long wings extend at right angles, which seem to have been built at
different intervals of time. That on the right ends with the
penitentiary, or house of correction; the left wing terminates more
modestly at the garden entrance; while farther, at the extreme portion
of the grounds, still to the left, rises the hospital, standing apart
from the rest. The whole establishment, including the gardens, has an
extent of fifty-five hundred square meters.
In the little room at the entrance, where the _concierge_ is usually
found in these French houses, sits one of the sisters, surrounded by
bell-cords and tubes and bells which are constantly in use, bringing
messages to and fro in all directions. A sister is always on duty,
morning, afternoon, and at night when it is necessary, responding with
discreet politeness to the inquiries made. Adjoining are the little
reception rooms, where comers and goers are met, and the consulting-room
of the distinguished oculist, who twice a week gives gratuitously his
valuable services. Then come the office and reception-room of the
chaplain of the house, followed by the little "prophet's chamber,"
occupied by the former directress when she returns upon visits which her
age and poor health render only too infrequent.
What the French call the "_économat_" or business office, next demands
our attention. A dozen registers admirably kept, portfolios of all
kinds, and numberless papers are arranged upon different shelves. The
sister in charge notes in her journal every entrance and every
departure, and all the journeys and leaves of absence of the sisters. In
a safe she has the necessary money for current expenses, the rest being
deposited in the bank. She provides the stores, examines the accounts of
the pharmacy and the kitchen, pays the salaried employees, gives or
sends to each deaconess the modest sum allowed her for personal needs,
and transacts the daily business of the house. She must also every
month hand in three reports--one to the Prefect of Police, another to
the Minister of the Interior, and the third to the Minister of Finance,
giving detailed statistics concerning the age, occupation, and progress
of her _protégés_. "How many know how to read? How many to read and
write? How many to read, write, and cipher? What progress has been made
since the last report?" These are some of the questions she has to
answer; and, meanwhile, if a crowd of little children come in, she turns
from her writing and calculations and plays with them as if she had
nothing else to do.
Let us see where these children come from. Here is the "Salle d'Asile,"
as it is called, with its benches and chairs for the little ones, maps
and historical pictures suspended upon the walls, slates and globes, and
all the belongings of a school-room. The sister who has directed this
school for thirty-five years has seen sons and daughters succeed fathers
and mothers. More than nineteen hundred children have passed through her
hands. With what pride she showed us the copy-books, and pointed out
some particularly good compositions. Hers was no perfunctory task; a
mother could not have displayed greater interest in her children. The
number of pupils varies from one hundred and ten to one hundred and
thirty, a little less than half of them being Catholics. All kinds of
primary instruction are given, including gymnastics, singing, and
marching. Bible stories hold an important place in this elementary
teaching, even those which are sometimes considered to be beyond the
reach of children; for there is nothing in any other book to take their
place. It is useless to add that not only lessons are given, but shoes,
aprons, and garments of all kinds, some of the little ones being clothed
from head to foot by the institution. Every day soup is distributed,
ostensibly to the poor and the ill-nourished, but practically partaken
of by all. Even during the siege of Paris the soup continued to appear.
It gradually became less substantial, it is true, but still it was soup.
From four to six o'clock the mothers and older sisters and brothers, or
perhaps some old lady who has been engaged to have the care of several
children, come to take the little ones home. The influence of these
children is felt beyond the school-room; it is a visible, constant
force. Such a little girl has persuaded her grandmother not to work on
Sundays. Another asks for a book that her father can read aloud to the
family. And similar instances could be multiplied; they are always to be
obtained where loving Christian hearts are interested in children, and
when they remember that fine saying of Jacqueline Pascal; "_Parler à
Dieu des petites âmes plus qu' aux petites âmes de Dieu._"[50]
There used formerly to be attached to this a "_Crèche_," where a mother
could bring her babe when she went to work in the morning, and could
come for it at night. But the government has now started a day-home for
this district of the city, so this part of the work of the deaconesses
has been discontinued.
Passing by the vegetable garden, which is also a pleasure garden for the
sick and infirm, we come to the hospital. This was opened in September,
1873, and can accommodate sixty to seventy patients. There are two large
wards for women, one for children, a dormitory for aged women, and rooms
with one, two, and three beds. All are perfectly heated, lighted, and
ventilated. The medical inspector visits the house every month, and
gives it due praise for meeting every condition of modern medical
science.
A committee of ladies takes the hospital as an especial object of its
care. They have organized a system of patronage, by which beds are
furnished poor patients at a low rate, in some cases gratuitously.
Fifteen subscribers give each two francs, or forty cents, a month; the
sick man or his patron pays a franc a day, to which the Deaconess Home
adds also a franc daily. These three francs represent the bare expenses
of a hospital bed. Of course, sixty cents a day is far from meeting the
entire cost of rent, food, baths, medicine, and service; but those
patients who have been accustomed to a certain degree of comfort in
life, when paying three francs, are freed from the painful impression of
receiving charity.
Many of the patients, when sent forth from the hospital, are directed to
the Convalescents' Home, at Passy. This is an inestimable benefit; what
could this poor servant do, whose strength is not yet sufficient to
undertake fatiguing labor? Or this mother of a family, who would
certainly fall ill again if obliged to resume the heavy burden of
housekeeping, accompanied by privations and wearing economies, were it
not for the home at Passy? Such homes of rest and convalescence are a
necessity in connection with every well-equipped deaconess institution.
The pharmacy is in the charge of a deaconess trained especially for her
duties. A deaconess director, several nurse deaconesses and
probationers, with one or two aged women, constitute the working force
of the hospital outside of the physicians. So many denominational
hospitals are now arising in America that the arrangement of hospitals
under the care of deaconesses in Germany, France, and England, cannot
fail to have interest for us.
There are no nurses like the deaconesses. Other nurses, however well
prepared in the best of training-schools, do not have the same high
motive that lifts the service onto the plane of religious duty, where
the question of self-interest is wholly lost sight of. It was the
perception of this truth that led the authorities of the German Hospital
in Philadelphia to send to Germany for deaconesses as nurses, and that
has brought about the erection of the magnificent Mary J. Drexel Home
for Deaconesses.
But let us return to Paris and our examination of the home on the Rue de
Reuilly. Leaving the hospital, and turning in the opposite direction
from that to which we came, we are at the house of correction. Bars of
iron before the windows apprise us of the character of the building.
There are two divisions of inmates; the one in which the discipline is
more rigid is called the _retenue_. Those placed here are generally
between fourteen and twenty-one years of age, although occasionally a
child of precocious depravity is met with, who has to be separated from
those under less restriction even at ten years of age. The
_disciplinaire_ is the division of milder restraint. The twenty-five or
twenty-six places in each of the two divisions are ordinarily applied
for in advance. Pastor Louis Valette said: "We shall not have room
enough until we have too much room."
There are three classes of inmates: those who are put here by their
parents for insubordination or other grave faults; those who are sent
here by order of a judge of the court for a limited period, and those
who are recognized guilty of a misdemeanor, but are acquitted on account
of their age, and must remain a certain time, sometimes until they have
attained their majority, in houses of correction and education.
The Minister of the Interior pays twelve cents a day for pupils of the
third class; the Prefect of Police four hundred dollars a year for those
of the second class, whatever their number, only the establishment is
bound to receive them at any time and at any hour.
There is a system of rewards, to promote good behavior, and those who
profit by it can accumulate a small sum of money, sometimes amounting to
sixteen or eighteen dollars, to have when they go out from here. In
other cases there is a large indebtedness on the opposite side, which
can never be collected.
The days are occupied in household work, washing, ironing, and sewing,
and two hours of schooling. When the nature of the work will permit,
instructive books are read aloud, or the deaconesses give pleasant talks
on different subjects that will keep the thoughts of the workers busy,
and give them helpful ideas to store away in their minds. As we went
about in the sewing-classes, we noticed that the time was invariably
utilized in some way that was profitable to the girls. Most of them are
pitiably ignorant of even the commonest knowledge demanded in life.
There are separate court-yards for the recreations of the two divisions.
The girls of the _disciplinaire_ are sometimes taken outside the
institution for walks; those of the _retenue_, never. The work in this
last division is especially difficult, and requires the utmost patience
and love. These poor girls have to be watched carefully, and kept
isolated from one another. Some are greatly influenced by the atmosphere
of the place, the gentle, firm kindness of the sisters, and the
restriction they receive. Others go out to take up again the old life of
immorality, and are dragged away into the meshes of sin, finding their
place, after brief delay, in the wards of a hospital, or sometimes a
suicide's grave. It is a singular fact that the numerical appreciation
of those influenced by this school of reform is precisely the same as
that given in the report of the similar work at Kaiserswerth, although
the two reports have no connection with one another, and one in no wise
supposes the other. Thirty-three years ago one of the founders of the
institution, Pastor Valette, said in answer to a question as to the
amount of good accomplished, "Sixteen years ago this question came to my
ears, and I stated as a principle that one cannot and ought not to
answer it precisely and absolutely, because no one but God can give an
appreciation of its real value. However, out of curiosity, I set myself
at work to gather and register some results; and, matured by the
experience of six years, I offer them, such as they are: One third of
the moral results may be considered excellent; another third as offering
good guarantees, and a final third has no value. It seems to me,
however, as I am sure it will seem to you, that here is cause for
rejoicing. Here is something for which to praise the Lord, and to
encourage those who administer our affairs. For, I ask of the merchants
who listen to me, if any one were to offer you thirty-three and one
third per cent. assured, with the hope of a dividend, would you refuse
the investment?"
In 1871 an occurrence took place worthy of being recorded. On April 13,
at ten o'clock in the evening, emissaries of the Commune entered the
house, revolvers in hand. Armed men were posted at all the entrances.
The deaconesses were summoned to one of the parlors, and held prisoners
until three o'clock the following morning. Meanwhile an investigation
took place among the girls in the penitentiary, as they would be the
most likely of any of the inmates of the house to have complaints. The
officers of the Commune interrogated them closely. Their answers were
favorable beyond all expectation. "Are you happy here?" "Oh, yes, very
happy." "What have you done deserving punishment?" "Nothing that we need
talk to you about." "How are you punished here?" "The sisters don't
punish us; they advise us what to do, and warn us." "Now," said the
chief to one, "just tell me quietly, no one else need hear; if you are
not contented I will take you away with me." "What a coward you are,"
she answered, quite scornfully. Not one of them thought of escaping. All
this time the prison wagon had been waiting in the street, and would
have been filled with deaconesses had the slightest cause of complaint
been found; but it went away empty. Later the sisters had occasion to go
to the head-quarters of the Commune in their ward, and they met with
polite consideration. This is not the only experience of the troubled
political life of the great city that the deaconesses have had. The
Faubourg St. Antoine has been noted ever since the time of the Fronde as
being the haunt of all that is turbulent and revolutionary. In February
1848, a great barricade was thrown across the Rue de Reuilly, men,
women, and children hurrying with bricks and stones to help in building
it. Then came the moment of storm and attack, and forty-two men lay dead
in the street. Some of the wounded were received by the sisters, crowded
as they were with the children whom the mothers had brought for safety.
Meanwhile the deaconesses went about unmolested, bought food and
medicine, hunted friends and relatives for the sick, and through all
that period of excitement and strife kept up their ministrations of
mercy.
There is no distinct home for women who are left alone and desire
Christian surroundings, as is the case in several German institutions,
but about sixty such ladies are received as boarders in the Paris home.
Frequently also the hospitality of the house is enjoyed by young girls
who come to Paris alone to earn a livelihood, or who have to stop here
for some hours on their way to another place; a great advantage for
inexperienced young women, unversed in the ways of a city, who find
themselves alone in the great world for the first time.
The preparatory school for deaconesses is on the first floor, below the
rooms of the sisters. For two years the candidates are under the
instruction of superior sisters. They are received into the house
gratuitously, and accept its regulations while they remain. They have to
pass through all practical duties of house-work, and care of the sick
and children. They also pursue practical and theoretical courses in
hygiene, and receive lessons in singing and pedagogics. The chaplains of
the institution give them courses of religious instruction, and lectures
on Church history. Some (the larger number) need very elementary
lessons; others come with a good education. Each is directed according
to her education and experience. In fact, all classes are represented
among the deaconesses; servants, teachers, ladies, and shepherdesses.
They come from different parts of France, but in larger numbers from the
South.
Deaconesses are constantly in demand to go out in the city as nurses in
private families. Such requests often meet with refusals, because
sisters cannot be spared for such duties. Their work is limited by the
smallness of their numbers. The last report gives sixty deaconesses
attached to the Home on the Rue de Reuilly.
The work is upon sterile soil as compared to Germany. The Protestants of
France are in a small minority, surrounded by an overwhelming majority
of Catholics; while in the beginning of the work some influential
members of the Protestant faith, having an inadequate comprehension of
the good in the movement, and a misconception of its plans, exerted a
powerful influence that for awhile told adversely to the cause. The home
has now passed beyond the stage when it can be affected by adverse
criticisms; and it to-day not only has the approbation of Christians,
but also of those who regard it solely from the point of view of
philanthropy.[51]
There are but two parish deaconesses who are at work in Belleville and
Ste. Marie. The directors of the institution would be glad to increase
the number, as they regard the work of the sisters under the direction
of the city pastors as that which presents the widest opportunities for
doing good, while it perpetuates those aspects of the deaconess work
which most closely resemble those of the early Church. But Calvin's
reply from Geneva to the Church of France is theirs. When petitioned to
send more pastors over the boundary into France he replied, "Send us
wood and we will send you arrows." So the want of deaconesses is a
continual hinderance to the furtherance of the cause, both in the city
and the provinces.
The prisons for women in France are under the supervision of women, save
the office of chief director, which is filled by a man. The great
majority of the prisoners in France being Catholics, the number of
Sisters of Charity is naturally much larger than the number of
deaconesses employed. At the prison of Clermont four of the Paris
deaconesses are kept constantly at work among the prisoners.
In connection with the old prison of St. Lazare, the women's prison of
Paris, the deaconesses have a mission especially concerned with caring
for discharged female convicts. As was the case at Kaiserswerth, this,
in its initiation, is closely connected with the saintly life of
Elizabeth Fry. When she came to Paris, in 1835, a drawing-room meeting
was held at the residence of the Duchess de Broglie, in which she told
of her efforts to effect a reform in prisons in England. None of the
ladies of rank and wealth who heard her were stirred to greater effort
than was demanded by the keen interest with which they listened to her
words; but a quiet governess was present, Mademoiselle Dumas, and with
her the seeds of truth fell into prepared ground. She determined to
attempt for her own country a portion of the work Mrs. Fry had
accomplished for England. Obtaining permission from the authorities to
visit the prison of St. Lazare, she went daily to the prisoners shut up
in the rooms of this great building, formerly the monastery of St.
Vincent de Paul, the founder of the Sisters of Charity. After the
deaconess home was established, some deaconesses were set apart to aid
Mademoiselle Dumas in her work. All these years the mission has
continued, not interrupted even during the dark days of the Commune. A
committee of ladies aids in providing shelter and work for the prisoners
when they are discharged. The great publishing house of Hachette & Co.,
although the head of the firm is a Catholic, provides employment in
folding paper for books.
Through the kind offices of Mademoiselle Monod we called on Mademoiselle
Dumas. She is now an extremely aged woman; but her interest in the
Christian reformation of prisoners of her sex is as keen as it was over
fifty years ago, when her labors began. The registers of many years
stand by her desk, and from these we were shown how the records of the
mission are kept, and in what way the lives of those assisted are
watched and followed for years. Narratives of individual reformation
were related to us, and through the long correspondence of many years
she was enabled to tell us of those who had turned to a better life and
held to it permanently. As she talked her eyes brightened, the tones of
her voice became stronger and clearer, her manner more vivacious, and
the years seemed to slip from her. Finally, as if overcome by the
memories that the long retrospect had brought to her, and thrilled by
the recollections, of all this work meant to her, she ended by
exclaiming, "O, my dear St. Lazare!" I looked at her astonished. I had
just come from the walls of the gloomy prison, and the place had chilled
me with horror as I walked through its corridors, and read the stories
of shame and guilt in the faces of its inmates; most hopeless looking
faces, belonging to little children of ten and twelve up to hardened and
prematurely aged women of fifty and sixty. I could not comprehend a term
of endearment applied to such a place. But a moment's consideration led
me to see that this aged saint had there fought and won the best of her
life's battles, and the place remains glorified in her thoughts by most
hallowed and Christ-like memories.
Now that Mademoiselle Dumas is kept to her room, the deaconesses still
come to her weekly, make their reports, and keep up the proper entries
in her books.
A recent letter from Mademoiselle Monod says: "Mademoiselle Dumas still
lives, having completed her ninety-sixth year the 26th of last December
(1888). Only yesterday our prison committee met at her house, she acting
as presiding officer."
The life of this quiet woman is but little known outside the circle of
her immediate influence, but it has been more valuable to her country
than that of many a general or statesman who has been ranked among the
famous of the earth.
The deaconess home has also branches of work in different parts of
France. These include nine hospitals, two homes for the aged and infirm,
four orphanages, two work-rooms for young girls, and a convalescents'
home. The house has established close connection with the deaconess
houses at St. Loup in French Switzerland, and with Strasburg. The ties
of a common language and former memories are strong, and these are the
homes most akin to the Paris home.
The ordinary expenses of the Paris deaconess home are about thirty
thousand dollars a year. Nearly seven thousand dollars are collected
annually by subscriptions, the remaining sum being made up of returns
arising from service.
The institution was founded in 1841 by Rev. Antoine Vermeil, a
distinguished minister of the Reformed Church, aided by a devout and
worthy minister of the Lutheran Church, Rev. Louis Valette. It has grown
up under the joint and harmonious patronage of these two State Churches.
A later deaconess home, entirely devoted to training and employing
parish deaconesses, was started in 1874, under the sole control of the
Lutheran Church. Some pastors secured the co-operation of a few young
Christian women to consecrate a portion of their strength and time to
the service of the Church. From this beginning sprang the work that
exists to-day. The home is located in the Rue de Bridaine. There are now
sixteen deaconesses, six of whom are probationers. Five of them are
located in different parishes in Paris, usually at a long distance from
the central house. Each goes forth early in the morning to her parish,
where is a room of some kind serving as a center to the work. Materials
used in nursing and medicines are stored here, and there is an office
for the physician, who comes at stated periods to give free
consultation. From the district house the deaconess goes in all
directions and in all weather to look up families which have fallen away
from the Church, to gather in children for the Sunday-school, to visit
the sick, and to collect garments and money from the rich in order to
distribute them among the poor. Such are some of their duties. Each
sister is under the direction of a pastor, and is aided by his advice,
while still remaining a member of the community to which she belongs.
In both of the deaconess houses of Paris, as in the German houses, a
special service sets apart those sisters who have passed their period of
probation, and have been received into full connection. As one of the
deaconess reports beautifully says: "When Christ calls the soul to a
special vocation he gives it special grace, and those who consecrate
themselves to him he consecrates to their task by the strength of his
Spirit. So in conformity with the usages of the primitive Church we give
consecration to our sisters by the laying on of hands. The consecration
is not a sacramental act, conferring a particular character, greater
sanctity, or special powers; neither is it simply a ceremony or pious
formality. It is a real and efficacious benediction, which the Saviour
accords to our sisters to consecrate them to their holy work, as he
accorded it to the deacons who received the imposition of the apostles'
hands."
The good that can be accomplished by deaconesses working together with
ministers in behalf of the manifold interests of the Church is
incalculable. The most faithful pastor can make only short and
unsatisfactory visits. Many sorrows which he overlooks the deaconess can
discern and assuage. She knows best how to reach the heart of a
sorrowing woman, to care for her needs, to discern her wants, and to
bring solace to the sorrowing and succor to the needy. Deaconesses who
have been specially trained for service cannot be spared now that the
world has learned to know of them. For "charity cannot take the place of
experience, nor good-will replace knowledge;" and trained Christian
service is the highest of all service.
The old spirit of the Huguenots has not died out of France, and with
that ready susceptibility to noble ideas which is a marked
characteristic of the French character, we can expect to see the
deaconess cause thrive and prosper as it has done in other lands.
[50] Speak to God about the little ones, rather than to the little
souls of God.
[51] See a sympathetic study of the work by Maxime du Camp, a
member of the French Academy, in his book _Paris Bienfaisant_.
CHAPTER X.
DEACONESSES IN ENGLAND.
To learn the first facts about deaconesses in England, we must go back
to the early days of the Puritans. In 1576, under Queen Elizabeth, about
sixty non-conformist ministers of the eastern counties assembled to make
regulations concerning Church constitution and discipline, and one of
them was as follows: "Touching deacons of both sorts, namely, both men
and women, the Church should be admonished what is required by the
apostle, that they are not to choose men by custom or course, or for
their riches, but for their faith, zeal, and integrity; and that the
Church is to pray in the meantime to be so directed that they may choose
them that are meet. Let the names of those that are thus chosen be
published the next Lord's Day, and after that their duties to the
Church, and the Church's duty toward them. Then let them be received
into their office with the general prayers of the whole Church."[52]
There are other references in the works of the early Puritans that
indicate that the office of deaconess was as well known and recognized
as were the other offices that were named in accordance with the usages
of the primitive Church.
In the early part of the seventeenth century it still survived, as we
shall see from a quaint and curious picture that is of especial interest
to all Americans, because it portrays what took place in that community
of pious souls who furnished us the men we delight to honor as the
Pilgrim Fathers. A number of these heroic souls, who could give up their
country, but would not yield their faith, went forth from England in
1608, and settled in Amsterdam. They preserved in a foreign land their
own Church usages, as the following words show: "In Amsterdam there were
about three hundred communicants, and they had for their pastor and
teacher those two eminent men before named (Johnson and Ainsworth); and
had at one time four grave men for ruling elders, three able, godly men
for deacons, and one ancient widow for a deaconess, who did them service
many years, though she was sixty years of age when she was chosen. She
honored her place, and was an ornament to the congregation. She usually
sat in a convenient place in the congregation, with a little birchen rod
in her hand, and kept little children in awe from disturbing the
congregation. She did frequently visit the sick and weak, especially
women, and as there was need called out ladies and young women to watch
and do them other helps as their necessity should require; and if there
were poor she would gather relief for them of those that were able, or
acquaint the deacons. And she was obeyed as a mother in Israel and an
officer of Christ."[53]
Whether the "ancient widow" with the little "birchen rod" had any
followers in the early Puritan communities of the Plymouth Colony we
cannot say, as there are no records that throw light on the subject; but
the history of early New England Congregationalism gives us one
indication that the office was recognized in the New World. In the
Cambridge Platform, a system of Church discipline agreed upon by the
elders and messengers of the New England churches assembled in synod at
Cambridge, in 1648, the seventh chapter enumerates the duties of elder
and deacons, and then adds, "The Lord hath appointed _ancient widdows_,
where they may be had, to minister in the Church, in giving attendance
to the sick, and to give succor unto them and others in the like
necessities." The same confusion of thought concerning the Church widow
and the deaconess is here seen, but there is evident the recognition of
the services that women were officially to render the Church.
In the early part of the present century Southey voiced the complaint,
long reiterated, that Protestantism had no missionaries. We who live in
the closing years of the same century, surrounded by the multiplied
evidences of the extent of missions, when the Protestants of the world
are expending nearly ten millions of dollars annually, and employing
nearly six thousand men and women as missionaries, cannot realize the
change that has taken place. In 1830 Southey again wrote: "Thirty years
hence another reproach may also be effaced, and England may have her
Sisters of Charity." He had learned to know their value when serving as
a volunteer in Wellington's army, and a year after the battle of
Waterloo he had visited the Béguines at Ghent, and what he saw deeply
impressed him. "We should have such women among us," he said. "It is a
great loss to England that we have no Sisters of Charity. There is
nothing Romish, nothing unevangelical in such communities; nothing but
what is right and holy; nothing but what belongs to that religion which
the apostle James has described as 'pure and undefiled before God the
Father.'"[54]
Southey's prophecy has come true. England to-day in her deaconesses
possesses her Sisters of Charity. How has this change been brought
about? The acquaintance of Mrs. Fry with Fliedner, and her visit to
Kaiserswerth, led her to introduce into England the practical training
of nurses for the sick. The Nursing Sisters' Institution in Devonshire
Square, Bishop's Gate, was founded through her efforts in 1840, and
still exists "to train nurses for private families, and to provide
pensions for aged nurses."[55]
In 1842, Fliedner came to London, accompanied by four sisters, at the
invitation of the German Hospital at Dalston. These deaconesses won
golden opinions from the hospital authorities for their quiet, efficient
manner, and their trained skill. The hospital continues to be served by
them, but the Sisters now come from the mother house at Darmstadt.
Kaiserswerth and its deaconesses became more widely known through the
life and inestimable services of Florence Nightingale. When a child,
one of Fliedner's reports fell into her hands. Its perusal marked an
era in her life. It made clear to her what she should do. She would go
to Kaiserswerth, and fit herself for a nurse. Her childish resolve never
wavered. "Happy is the man who holds fast to the ideals of his youth."
Florence Nightingale held fast to hers. She went to Kaiserswerth at two
different times, and through her deeds and her writings the care of the
sick in England has been completely transformed. She has won a nation's
gratitude, and now is living in honored old age in one of the London
institutions founded mainly by the money that she contributed, and which
she obtained by selling some valuable gifts given her by a foreign
government in acknowledgment of her care of its wounded soldiers during
the Crimean war.
Another woman distinguished in England's philanthropies is Agnes Jones,
who left a home of wealth and refinement to receive her training also at
Kaiserswerth. Returning to England she gave her time and talents in
single-hearted devotion to the care of the poor in the Liverpool
work-house, and met death in the midst of her labors. The training which
led two such women to accomplish such noble deeds naturally was
recognized as valuable, and Kaiserswerth soon became an honored name in
England.
In 1851 Miss Nightingale sent out anonymously her little book entitled
_An Account of the Institution of Deaconesses_, which added to the
knowledge already in circulation about the movement in Germany.
Meanwhile articles were appearing in the reviews. In 1848 one was
written in the _Edinburgh Review_ by John Malcolm Ludlow, who later, in
1866, gave the results of the thoughts and studies of a number of years
in _Woman's Work in the Church_, the best historical study of the
subject up to the date at which it was written. Since then the Germans
have pushed their historical investigations further, and the work needs
to be revised and to be brought down to the present time.
In _Good Words_ for 1861 there were two articles by Dr. Stevenson, of
the Irish Presbyterian Church, entitled "The Blue Flag of Kaiserswerth,"
afterward incorporated in his work, _Praying and Working_, a book too
little known among us.
The great upholder of the deaconess cause in the Church of England was
the late Dean of Chester, Rev. J. S. Howson. His essay, first published
in the _Quarterly Review_, was amplified and issued in book form in 1860
under the title _Deaconesses_. It won many friends. The cause remained a
favorite one with him, and he constantly advocated it by speech and by
deed. Since his death his latest thoughts, which remained substantially
the same as those that he first advanced, have been published in a work
entitled _The Diaconate of Women_.
Within the Church of England, however, the deaconess cause has not met
the same prosperous development that it has obtained in connection with
certain independent institutions, notably that of Mildmay.
Among the institutions on the Continent, as well as in the pages of this
work up to the present, the terms "sister" and "deaconess" are used
synonymously, to indicate one and the same person. But when we come to
consider the deaconess institutions within the Church of England we
cannot continue to use these two names in the same way. A deaconess is a
member of a deaconess institution, actively engaged in charitable deeds,
but, like the deaconess on the Continent, she can sever her connection
with it when adequate cause presents itself, and return to her family
and friends. A sister belongs to a sisterhood which closely resembles
the Roman Catholic sisterhoods in many features. These sisterhoods began
in 1847 with a number of ladies brought together through the influence
of Dr. Pusey, who formed themselves into a community to live under its
rule. Their influence and number increased, and twenty-three
sisterhoods are mentioned in the last official report.[56]
Doubtless it was the activity and great usefulness of the continental
deaconess houses that provided the stimulating examples which acted on
the Church of England and led to the rise of sisterhoods and deaconess
institutions. But the two opposing tendencies within the Episcopal
Church--namely, that which desires to approach the Church of Rome, with
which it feels itself in sympathy on many points, and that which views
with disfavor any conformity to it, and strives to keep to the landmarks
set at the great Reformation--these two distinct tendencies are closely
reflected in the woman's work of the Anglican Church.[57] The
sisterhoods are distinctly under the fostering care of the former
element, the deaconesses are manifestly favored by the latter.
Sisterhoods, again, differ among themselves, some being strongly
conventual in their life and practice, adopting the three vows of
poverty, chastity, and obedience, and a few even advocating penance and
confession. The vows are taken for life, and, in connection with the
view of the sacred obligation to life-long service, great stress is laid
upon the position of the sister as the "bride of Christ"--the same
thought of the mysterious union with the heavenly Bridegroom that is so
dwelt upon in the nunneries of the Catholic Church. With such views
Protestants, distinctly such, can have no sympathy. Those who look upon
the deaconess as a valuable member of the Church economy do so because
they regard her as a Christian woman, strengthened and disciplined by
special training to do better service for Christ in the world. This is
the recognized difference: "The sisterhood exists primarily for the sake
of forming a religious community, but deaconesses live together for the
sake of the work itself, attracted to deaconess work by the want which
in most populous towns is calling loudly for assistance; and with a view
of being trained, therefore, for spiritual and temporal usefulness among
the poor."[58]
There are now seven deaconess establishments in the Church of England,
each having a larger or smaller number of branches, with diocesan
sanction and under the supervision of clergymen.[59]
The first of these was founded in 1861, and is now known as the London
Diocesan Deaconess Institution. At that time Kaiserswerth was accepted
as its model; deaconesses were sent there to be trained; Kaiserswerth
rules were adopted as far as possible, and a modification of the
Kaiserswerth dress for the sisters. The house was then represented at
the triennial Conferences in Germany, and in the list of mother houses
published at Kaiserswerth[60] the name still appears. It would seem,
however, that now the Kaiserswerth connection is entirely set aside by
the London house, for in an historical sketch of the revival of
deaconesses in the Church, that is found in the organ of the
institution, called _Ancilla Domini_, for March, 1887, there is no
mention made of any of the continental houses. The Anglican Church
apparently dates the entire work from the setting apart of its first
deaconess, Elizabeth C. Ferard, in 1861, as she was the first to receive
consecration through the touch of a bishop's hand. The former connection
with Kaiserswerth and the great work carried on in Germany from 1836 to
the present time are quite ignored.
Besides the London house already mentioned an East London deaconess home
was opened in 1880, to provide deaconesses and church-workers for East
London. Besides the deaconesses and probationers thirty-two associates
are connected with this home. The associates are ladies who do not
intend to become deaconesses, but give as much time as they can to the
work. They live with the deaconesses, conform to the rules, and wear the
garb, but pay their own expenses. These associates are a highly
important part of the working force. They form a valuable tie connecting
the sisters with sources of influence and aid that would otherwise be
closed to them. Nearly always they are ladies of independent means, and
come for longer or shorter periods to relieve the deaconesses, their
zeal often being as great as that of the sisters whose places they take.
Besides these houses there are homes located at Maidstone, Chester,
Bedford, Salisbury, and Portsmouth, in the respective dioceses of
Canterbury, Chester, Ely, Salisbury, and Winchester.
In the home at Portsmouth sisters not only engage in nursing and parish
work, but are also given special training for penitentiary and
out-of-door rescue work. They also have a home for the rescue of
neglected children.
The Salisbury Home is beautifully situated in the quiet cathedral city
of the same name. The house is a picturesque and venerable mansion,
covered with clinging green vines, opening out into a garden which in
olden times belonged to the convent. There is in connection with the
home an institution for training girls for domestic service, supported
by the funds of a charity given for that purpose. The whole service of
the house is done by the girls. They attend upon the deaconesses and the
ladies who board there to receive training in the hospital. Each
deaconess pays for board and lodging while training, and, if able to do
so, when she returns for rest, or a visit to her old home.
In other houses the deaconess is expected to keep her own room in order,
and may have some duties in the house, but servants do the rough work.
The social status of the English deaconesses is, as a rule, markedly
different from the German deaconesses. Here ladies of rank and inherited
social traditions, of refinement, of accomplishments, and of education,
many of them women of means, defraying their entire expenses and often
those of their poorer sisters, are largely represented among the
deaconesses. On the other hand, the German deaconesses, as we have seen,
are largely of that station in life that furnishes many for domestic
service. Although of course there are among them women of all ranks and
all degrees of education, still such women form the larger number; and
the conditions under which Fliedner began the work, as well as the
difference of custom and habit in the two countries, incline the German
houses to maintain the rules of service by which nearly every detail of
domestic service in their institutions is cared for by the deaconesses.
There is more of ceremony and formality in the English deaconess
institutions which are under the direction of the Church of England. At
Salisbury, for instance, the candidate must reside in the home for three
months, that her ability and efficiency may be tested. If accepted, she
then puts on a gray serge habit, a leathern girdle, white cap, black
bonnet, the veil and cloak of a probationer, and is admitted to the
"degree" of a probationer at a special service. The year of probation
having come to an end, she is again presented to the bishop, and is set
apart as a deaconess by the laying on of hands. This time the habit is
changed from gray to blue, and a black ebony cross, with one of gold
inlaid, is hung upon her neck.[61]
This is very different from the way in which Fliedner regarded the dress
and adornment of the deaconesses for whom he was responsible. The king
of Prussia desired to present them with a small silver cross as their
badge of service, but the simple-hearted German pastor dissuaded him,
saying that the deaconesses needed no ornament save a meek and quiet
spirit, and they must avoid symbols which would suggest Romish
imitations.
The Strasburg deaconesses also at first wore a small cross, but Pastor
Härter discontinued it when he found that the wearing of it gave
occasion for complaint.
Yet however we may differ in the lesser details, of garb, of rules, and
of ceremonies, from those accepted by some of the Church of England
deaconess institutions, we can give unstinted admiration to the lives of
self-denial, and active, unceasing efforts in behalf of others, that we
see among their numbers. Take, for instance, the little publication _The
Deaconess_, issued by the East London Home, and notice the undertakings
carried on by the members--district-visiting, nursing of the sick,
mothers' meetings, Sunday-school teaching, Bible classes, and all the
multitudinous ways of meeting the squalor, poverty, ignorance, sickness,
and sin of the poor of the east of London. There is no poetic enthusiasm
that strengthens one for such work, the dirt, the degradation, the
forlorn condition are so trying. The little children so precociously
wicked, so preternaturally cunning, that the natural charm and
attraction of childhood have wholly disappeared; the sights and sounds
that assail the senses; the dulled, hopeless faces, the apathy, the
stunted intellectual growth--these are the depressing influences that
continually beset the deaconesses, and nothing short of God-given
strength and Christ-like enthusiasm can enable these women to devote
six, eight, and ten years of service to this worst city district, and to
come forth with sunshiny, peaceful faces, and sympathetic, loving
hearts.
Taking the total number of deaconess institutions under the Church of
England, there are eighty one deaconesses, thirty-four probationers, and
two hundred and twenty-nine associates.[62]
So far, sisterhoods have proved more attractive to the women of the
Church of England than have deaconess establishments. The latter do not
seem to increase largely in numbers. Vexing questions have arisen as to
how the deaconess should be set apart to her work. Should she be
consecrated by the imposition of the bishop's hands? What relation
should she have to the Church? These questions have been partially
settled by the principles and rules that were drawn up in 1871 and were
signed by the two archbishops and eighteen bishops. They define a
deaconess as "a woman set apart by a bishop, under that title, for
service in the Church;"[63] placing her under the authority of the
bishop of the diocese. These recommendations have not been formally
adopted by the Church of England; they hold good only so far as they are
accepted.
But there are other institutions, lying outside of the boundaries of the
State Church, which have developed more fully and prosperously than
those within it. Of these we must speak first of the institution of
Dr. Laseron, which is more closely connected with Kaiserswerth than any
other in England. In 1855 Dr. Laseron and his wife lost their only
child; and as Mrs. Laseron walked through the streets with burdened
heart she looked at the little children with quickened sympathy, and
noticed how many were poor and hungry and scantily clothed. She talked
with her husband, and they opened a "ragged school" for children. This
increased and branched off, until now there is an orphanage, workhouses
for boys, and a servants' training school for girls. Requests were
frequently made for some of the older girls to act as nurses among the
poor; and, finally, Dr. Laseron, who was a German by birth, determined
to found a deaconess house and hospital. A small hospital of twelve beds
was opened, and proved insufficient to meet the demands; and none could
be accepted as deaconesses, as there was no opportunity to train them in
so small a place. While waiting to see how the house could be enlarged,
he mentioned his perplexity to Mr. Samuel Morley. This gentleman heard
him with interest, and said that he was one of the directors of a large
hospital; that at a recent meeting of the directors a Catholic bishop
had offered to send Sisters of Charity who, without compensation, should
nurse the sick, and he had thought what a fine thing it would be if the
Protestant Church had also its women of piety who could devote
themselves to a similar work. The result of the conversation was that
Mr. Morley contributed forty thousand dollars, with which Dr. Las
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