Note 59 — Chapter XIV

In the middle recension of the Ignatian Epistles we read “I salute the keepers of the holy doors, the deaconesses in Christ” (Ant. xii.). “Let the deaconesses stand at the entries of the women” (Apost. Const. ii. 57, 58). “For we stand in need of a woman, a deaconess, for many necessities, and first in the baptism of women,” etc.—(Ib. iii. 15.)