Well-attested, however, is an unrelated use of the word diacona, exclusive to the West: the term designates the continent wife of a deacon. In Gaul and Rome, when a married man was called to become a deacon, priest, or bishop, then continence was enjoined upon both husband and wife, and the wife was identified by a feminine form of the husband's office: diacona and diaconissa; presbytera and presbyteria; episcopa and episcopissa.5° The couple would continue to live under one roof, but without sexual relations. Church documents specifying penance for a deacon and diacona who failed to remain continent obviously refer to a deacon's wife.51 Also, a cleric's mother could be identified by the feminine form of his office. Thus Theodora, the mother of Pope Paschal, episcopus of Rome, was styled episcopa.52 Could a deacon's sister also call herself diacona? That might explain an abbreviated votive inscription naming a brother and sister, Dometius and Anna, each as DIAC.53

A single prayer for a diacona is found in the Gregorian Sacramentary (ca. 685), absent any rite: "Exaudi, Domine, preces nostras." It focuses on giving a good example: "Hear, O Lord, our prayers, and upon this your servant [Name] send forth the spirit of your blessing, so that, endowed with the celestial reward, she may be able to acquire the grace of your majesty, and by living well she may offer an example to others."54 The prayer also occurs

50 Jean Morin, Commentarius de sacris Ecclesiae ordinationibus, secundum antiquos & recentiores, Latinos, Graecos, Syros et Babylonios, new ed. (Amsterdam: Stephanum Lucam, 1695), 144; Martimort, Les diaconesses, 201-02; Schaefer, Women in Pastoral Office, 220; Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 405-6. 51 For example, see canon 20 of the Council of Tours (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina [CCL], 148A:184); Martimort, Les diaconesses, 200-201. 52 See inscriptions in Figures 2.7 and 2.8 in Schaefer, Women in Pastoral Office, 106, 107. 53 Although Schaefer would posit an entire sixth-century "Roman diaconate of women" from this one votive inscription (Women in Pastoral Office, 219), Martimort finds interpreting it and the few other sixthand eighth-century inscriptions "precarious," given their ambiguity (Les diaconesses, 202). In Greek and Latin, evidently "diaconate" was never used collectively of deaconesses. 54 "Exaudi, Domine, preces nostras, et super hanc famulam tuam illam spiritum tuae benedictionis emitte, ut caelesti munere ditata et tuae gratiam possit maiestatis adquirere, et bene vivendi aliis exemplum prebere" (Martimort, Les diaconesses, 203). It also appears solo in the Leofric Missal from the tenth or eleventh century (Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 105-6). Though absent from the thirteenth-century Pontificale Romanum de la Curia, it reappeared once more with mention of a diacona in the Pontificale Romanum of 1497 (Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 62-63, 385). The Exaudi prayer continued to appear solo as "oratio ad diaconam faciendam" in later MSS; see The Gregorian Sacramentary: Under Charles the Great, edited from three manuscripts of the ninth century, ed. H. A. Wilson, Henry Bradshaw Society 49 (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 1915), 139. In contrast, that same sacramentary

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Deaconesses and Ritual Impurity

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