Deaconesses in Europe and their Lessons for America Part 2

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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d._"[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.

Pa.s.sing 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 cla.s.ses 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 t.i.tle of deaconesses.

The helpless, sick, and neglected children are now gathered in inst.i.tutions instead of being cared for individually as was formerly the custom, and women having positions of control in these inst.i.tutions are designated by the name formerly applied to those who had the personal care of the same needy cla.s.ses.

It is interesting to note that there was one a.s.sociation of women in the century of the Reformation that bears close resemblance to the Beguines 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 Sedan 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 inst.i.tutions of learning and of charity. These latter he put under the care of the "Damsels of Charity," an a.s.sociation of women which he had inst.i.tuted. 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 a.s.sociation 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 mult.i.tude of those continent women who wish to be called Beguines, to that extent that Cologne was inhabited by more than a thousand of them."

[20] _Die Weibliche Diakonie_, Schafer, vol. i, p. 70.

[21] _Der Diakonissenberuf_ E. Wacker, p. 82.

[22] _Denkschrift zur Jubelfeier_, J. Disselhoff, p. 5. Gutersloh, 1888.

[23] _Die Weibliche Diakonie_, vol. i, p. 73.

[24] _Histoire de la princ.i.p.aute de Sedan_, 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 Klonne, 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 a.s.sociations 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 ent.i.tled _The Revival of the Deaconesses of the Primitive Church in our Women's a.s.sociations_. 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 inst.i.tution 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 inst.i.tution 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 antic.i.p.ated. 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 Gottingen, 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 Gottingen he and his brother went to the theological seminary at Herborn, where the following summer he pa.s.sed with credit his theological examination. He was now ready to enter G.o.d'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 G.o.d, 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 a.s.sistant secretary of the local Bible society, and formed friends.h.i.+ps 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 G.o.d, 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 a.s.sured. 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 mult.i.tude of charitable inst.i.tutions 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 inst.i.tutions 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 Klonne 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 n.o.ble 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 cla.s.sification 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 G.o.d for our long neglect." He tried to obtain permission to be imprisoned a few weeks in the prison at Dusseldorf, 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 Dusseldorf. 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 Munster, who was occupied in bettering the condition of the prisoners in the penitentiary at Dusselthal. 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 n.o.ble 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 inst.i.tutions. 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 a.s.sume 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 Fraulein Gobel soon had more than she could manage. She must have an a.s.sistant. 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 a.s.sociations 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 G.o.d-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] Schafer, _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 INSt.i.tUTIONS 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 inst.i.tution 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 inst.i.tution? And were not older, more experienced pastors than I better adapted for this difficult undertaking? I went to my clerical brethren in Dusseldorf, Dinsberg, Mettmann, Elberfeld, and Barmen, and entreated them to start such an inst.i.tution 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 G.o.d 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."