1 Timothy 3:11

Their wives] RV 'women': but instructions about women in general would not be thus parenthetically inserted. Both Light-foot and Ellicott translate 'deaconesses.' Such an order, which, it is certain, came into existence at a very early date, was especially necessary in the East owing to the strict seclusion of the female sex, who were thus debarred from the ministrations of men. Deaconesses were admitted to their order by the laying on of the bishop's hands ('Apost. Const.' iii. 15, viii. 19). They were not allowed to marry (Can. 15 of Chalcedon). Their duties were to minister generally to women, to assist at the baptism of women, to stand at the women's door of the church, to act as go-between between the clergy and women ('Apost. Const.' iii. 15, ii. 26, ii. 57, ii. 26). There were 40 deaconesses attached to the great Church of Constantinople in the time of St. Chrysostom. The order practically became extinct in the West, perhaps very gradually, after the tenth century, and lingered on rather longer in the East. But in the West it never completely died out in the Church of France, where to this day Benedictine abbesses receive the ordination of a deaconess. Both in England and Scotland it is now revived, and forms a most wholesome and scriptural channel through which organised women's work can be carried on.