The Hidden History of Women¿s Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West Book

This is now one of my favorite books of all time.

The books starts off by highlighting an assumption that I never thought of - a lot of arguments about women's ordination assume that "ordination" meant the same thing in the past as it does today. The author then cites a huge amount of evidence to show that, in fact, there was a huge gulf between the first millennium of Christianity and the Western Church since the high middle ages. In the past, ordination referred to elevating individuals to a particular ministry in their particular community - not only were there bishops, priests, and deacons, but also librarians, exorcists, canons, porters, acolytes, readers, abbots, monarchs, etc. More to the point, the leadership of sacraments and worship was far more diffuse - abbesses could hear confession, deaconesses could read the Gospel and preach, presbytera served alongside presbyters at the altar of Mass. The issue of appointing clerics to churches (which eventually became the Investiture Controversy) only came up because in this older idea of ordination, people were ordained to serve special roles in their specific communities/villages/families.

The shift came about in the 11th and 12th centuries, during the Gregorian Reforms. The clergy began to reserve sacred power to themselves and tried to reform the Church by making a purer clergy. They attacked both secular lords (who were often the heads of these community churches and who themselves were considered ordained as monarchs) and women (who were subject to horrible sexism). Women in particular were now denounced as unclean, intellectually and morally inferior, and the source of sin because of Eve. Women were now banned from the altar due to menstruation, could no longer preach or lead or hear confessions because of their inherent inferiority, and were defined as metaphysically incapable of receiving holy orders due to their sex. Touching on holy orders, these were now defined from the previously broad range of ministries back to a new, three-fold understanding of deacon-priest-bishop. Ordination was narrowly redefined to enabling a person to lead Eucharist liturgy, and effecting a metaphysical change in a person that would allow them to exercise this power not only in their community but universally. During this period, women who married clergy were declared concubines and their children bastards, thus enforcing a celibate, monastic clergy on the entire church. Even as the clergy became monasticized, the monks became clericalized as many were ordained as priests (a pathway not open to female monastics).

This is one of the best books that I've ever read. Despite the core of the text being only 130 pages (the rest is documents in the original Latin, notes, etc.), it is full of quotes, references, historical narratives, and other pieces that create a powerful argument. The author continually ties back every piece of evidence to their argument, offers conclusions to the various subsections, and continually reinforces the distinction between ancient and modern understandings of ordination and the distinction between theological and historical perspectives.