The purpose of this essay is to review recent literature on the role of medieval religious women in the period before the reform movement often attributed to Gregory VII that took place between the eleventh and early thirteenth centuries. The reason for choosing this particular period in Christian history will become clear, one hopes, in the course of the essay. It is divided into three sections. The first will offer a brief summary of historical studies of women religious in the early Middle Ages (roughly 500–1200 CE). The second will offer a summary of scholarly theological discussion of the ordination of women in Christian history. The third will summarize studies of the meaning of ordination, and more importantly, the change in the meaning of ordination in Christian history. Finally, a brief conclusion will offer suggestions for a more integrated study of these three areas in order to more precisely understand the role religious women played in the early medieval Church.

More precisely, this essay attempts 1) to demonstrate that the majority of scholarship on early religious women in Western Christianity has failed to address the extensive scholarship demonstrating that women were designated as ordained in this period, and 2) that this is in part because they are assuming an anachronistic definition of ordination in their studies.

Discussions of the Ordination of Women in Historical Studies of Women Religious

Suzanne Wemple in her 1981 study, Women in Frankish Society, offers one of the few and most complete discussions of women deacons and the roles that they may have played in early medieval ecclesiastical circles. She notes that the attempts to exclude women from the diaconate in the sixth and seventh century failed, and the “Gallican church had ordained deaconesses who regarded themselves as equals to the male clergy.” By the end of the sixth century, however, the office of deaconess had been abolished, and women were removed from ministry. Monastic women continued to defy ecclesiastical legislation by participating in liturgical rites, a practice forbidden by new legislation during the Carolingian period. Women continued to assume the title of deacon at least into the tenth century, although by that time, the title was applied to abbesses.