in large congregations, was limited to seven ; though not rigidly, for the cathedral of Con- stantinople had, under Justinian I., besides sixty presbyters, a hundred deacons, forty deaconesses, ninety subdeacons, a hundred and ten lectors, twenty-five precentors, and a hun- dred janitors — a total of live hundred and twenty-five officers. Though subordinate to the presbyters, the deacons frequently stood in close relations with the bishop, and exerted a greater influence. Hence they not rarely looked ujjon ordination to the presbyterate as a degradation. After the beginning of the fourth century an archdeacon stood at the head of the college, the most confidential adviser of the bishop, his representative and legate, and not seldom his successor in office. Thus Atha- nasius first appears as archdeacon of Alexandria at the council of Nice, clothed with important influence ; and u^Jon the death of the latter he succeeds to the patriarchal chair of Alexandria. The office of deaconess, which, under the strict separation of the sexes in ancient times, and especially in Greece, was necessary to the completion of the diaconate, and which origin- ated in the apostolic age,' continued in the Eastern church down to the twelfth century. It was frequently occupied by the widows of clergymen or the wives of bishops, who were obliged to demit the married state before entering upon their sacred office. Its functions were the care of the female j^oor, sick, and imprisoned, assisting in the baptism of adult women, and, in the country churches of the East, perhaps also of the West, * Comp. Rom. xii. 1, 12, aud my Hist, of the Apost. Church, § 135, p. 535 sqq. 260 THIKD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590, the preparation of women for baptism hy private instruction.* Formerly, from regard to the apostolic precept in 1 Tim. v. 9, the deaconesses were required to be sixty years of age." Tlie general council of Chalcedon, however, in 451, reduced the canonical age to forty years, and in the fifteenth canon or- dered : " No female shall be consecrated deaconess before she is forty years old, and not then without careful probation. It^ however, after having received consecration, and having been some time in the service, she marry, despising the grace of God, she with her husband shall be anathematized." The usual ordination prayer in the consecration of deaconesses, ac- cording to the Apostolic Constitutions, runs thus : " Eternal God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of man and woman, who didst fill Miriam and Deborah and Hannah and Huldah with the Spirit, and didst not disdain to suffer thine only-begotten Son to be born of a woman ; who also in tlie tabernacle and the temple didst appoint women keepers of thine holy gates : look down now upon this thine handmaid, who is designated to the office of deacon, and grant her the Holy Ghost, and cleanse her from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, that she may worthily execute the