Virgins and Monasticism

 

The charismatic ministry of prophet, for both men and women, apparently died out within the first couple of centuries. Several other ministries mentioned in the New Testament and in early church documents, however, continued. One of these was that of the virgins. This was originally a special ministry within a parish community. Their ministry can be seen as a predecessor to what we now call monasticism. In the fourth century, with the example of St. Anthony in the Egyptian desert, monasticism developed as a lifestyle independent of a parish context. In any case, monasticism began as a lay movement and remained lay in the Eastern Churches, whereas in the West most male orders became predominantly clerical during the Middle Ages, and the Protestant Reformation led to the complete abolition of monasticism. Thus, a major source of lay influence and work within the Western Churches was either eliminated completely in the case of Protestantism or largely clericalzed in the case of Catholicism, with the exception, of course, of female monasticism.

 

Virgins within the early church had a ministry of prayer. They often lived in group homes near the parish church; in fact, when St. Anthony went into the desert to begin his new life as a hermit, he first took his sister, who was under his care, to live in a group home of virgins. As female monasticism developed from the fourth century on, it acquired the same characteristics as

male monasticism. Among these was a pastoral mission -- the founding of hospitals, orphanages, hostels, etc. In fact, the activist monasticism which St. Basil the Great advocated appears to have been inspired by the example of his older sister Macrina, a virgin who founded what was in essence a women's monastery, with its nucleus Macrina, her mother, and their

female former servants. The monastery grew into a double monastery, the women's side presided over by Macrina and the men's by her brother Peter, who had earlier joined the community. The monastery practiced constant prayer and an active social concern in a community of absolute equality with complete disregard for the nuns' and monks' previous wealth or station in life. The monastery became both a spiritual and a philanthropic center, attracting women from the surrounding area who

came to Macrina for spiritual guidance. When she died, the orphans for whom she had cared wept bitterly, according to the biography of her written by her and Basil's younger brother, St. Gregory of Nyssa.

 

The example Macrina set for female monasticism lives on today in many women's communities.  But women's monasticism and lay women's involvement in the Church has not been limited to social or pastoral concerns. In the Byzantine period, women were extremely important in combating a variety of heresies, especially that of iconoclasm. According to legend, the first person martyred in defense of the icons was a nun, who was executed for having accidentally killed a soldier by pulling the

ladder out from under him as he was removing the icon of Christ from the Chalke Gate of Constantinople. Both male and female monasticism was active in the cause of icon veneration. Significantly, both periods of iconoclasm were ended when empresses married to iconoclastic emperors became regents for their minor sons upon the deaths of their husbands. As regent

for her teenaged son Constantine VI, Irene convoked what is generally known as the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787; she would later rule in her own right, with the support of the Byzantine Church. In 843, the empress Theodora, regent for her five-year-old son Michael III, convened a council at Hagia Sophia in Constantinople which permanently reestablished the veneration of icons and which is commemorated annually in the Orthodox Churches on the first Sunday of Lent as the Sundayof Orthodoxy. Another woman whom Theodora's husband Theophilos almost married, Kassiane, became a nun and the head of a women's monastery. She was one of the Church's most prolific hymnographers, and in the Byzantine rite her hymns are sung at several of the Holy Week services.

 

 

Valerie A. Karras, Th.D. 10th Annual Conference of

Orthodox Christian Laity Hellenic College and Holy Cross, Brookline, MA

Saturday, November 15, 1997