Mani (prophet)
Mani, of Iranian origin, was the prophet and the founder of Manichaeism, a gnostic religion of late antiquity, widespread but no longer prevalent by name. Mani was born in or near Seleucia-Ctesiphon in Babylonia, at the time still part of the Parthian Empire. Six of his major works were written in Syriac, the seventh, dedicated to the Sasanian emperor Shapur I, was written in Middle Persian, he died in Gundeshapur. His name "Mani" is derived from a Persian word meaning "eternity" or "one who lives forever". In 1969 in Upper Egypt a Greek parchment codex dating to c. AD 400 was discovered. It is now designated Codex Manichaicus Coloniensis because it is conserved at the University of Cologne. Combining a hagiographic account of Mani's career and spiritual development with information about Mani's religious teachings, containing fragments of his writings, it is now considered the most reliable source of information about the historical Mani. All other medieval and pre-medieval accounts of his life are either legendary or hagiographical, such as the account in Fihrist by Ibn al-Nadim, purportedly by al-Biruni, or were anti-Manichaean polemics, such as the 4th-century Acta Archelai.
Among these medieval accounts, Ibn al-Nadim's account of Mani's life and teachings is speaking the most reliable and exhaustive. Notably, the image of the "Third Ambassador" is only represented through a brief mention of the name bašīr, "messenger of good news", the topos of "Mani the Painter" is absent; this work and other evidence discovered in the 20th century establishes Mani as a historical individual. Mani was born near Seleucia-Ctesiphon in the town Mardinu in the Babylonian district of Nahr Kutha. Mani's father Pātik, a native of Ecbatana, was a member of the Jewish Christian sect of the Elcesaites, his mother was of Parthian descent. At ages 12 and 24, Mani had visionary experiences of a "heavenly twin" of his, calling him to leave his father's sect and preach the true message of Jesus. In 240 -- 41, Mani travelled to India, where he studied its various extant philosophies. Al-Biruni says. Returning in 242, he joined the court of Shapur I, to whom he dedicated his only work written in Persian, known as the Shabuhragan.
Shapur remained Zoroastrian. Shapur's successor Hormizd I, who reigned only for one year, appears to have continued to patronize Mani, but his successor Bahram I, a follower of the Zoroastrian reformer Kartir, began to persecute the Manichaeans, he incarcerated Mani, who died in prison within a month, in 274. Mani's followers depicted Mani's death as a crucifixion in a conscious analogy to the crucifixion of Jesus, he was flayed alive and his skin stuffed with straw, was nailed to a cross and suspended over the main gate of the great city of Gundeshapur as a terrifying spectacle for those who followed his teachings. His corpse was decapitated and the head placed on a spike. Bahram ordered the killing of many Manichaeans; the canon of Mani included six works written in Syriac, one in Persian, the Shapuragan. While none of his books have survived in complete form, there are numerous fragments and quotations of them, including a long Syriac quotation from one of his works, as well as a large amount of material in Middle Persian and numerous other languages.
Examples of surviving portions of his works include: the Shabuhragan, the Book of Giants, the Fundamental Epistle, a number of fragments of his Living Gospel, a Syriac excerpt quoted by Theodore Bar Konai, his Letter to Edessa contained in the Cologne Mani-Codex. Mani wrote the book Arzhang, a holy book of Manichaeism unique in that it contained many drawings and paintings to express and explain the Manichaeist creation and history of the world. Mani's teaching was intended to succeed and surpass the teachings of Christianity and Buddhism, it is based on a rigid dualism of evil, locked in eternal struggle. In his mid-twenties, Mani decided that salvation was possible through education, self-denial and chastity. Mani claimed to be the Paraclete promised in the New Testament, the Last Prophet. While his religion was not a movement of Christian Gnosticism in the earlier mode, Mani did declare himself to be an "apostle of Jesus Christ", extant Manichaean poetry extols Jesus and his mother, with the highest reverence.
Manichaean tradition is noted to have claimed that Mani was the reincarnation of different religious figures including Zoroaster, the historical Buddha, as well as Jesus. Mani's followers were organized in a church structure, divided into a class of "elects" and "auditors". Only the electi are required to follow the laws while the auditores care for them, hoping to become electi in their turn after reincarnation; the Western Christian tradition of Mani is based on Socrates of Constantinople, a historian writing in the 5th century. According to this accoun
Judaean Desert
The Judaean Desert or Judean Desert is a desert in Israel and the West Bank that lies east of Jerusalem and descends to the Dead Sea. It stretches from the northeastern Negev to the east of Beit El, is marked by natural terraces with escarpments, it ends in a steep escarpment dropping to the Jordan Valley. The Judaean Desert is crossed by numerous wadis from northeast to southeast and has many ravines, most of them deep, from 1,200 feet in the west to 600 feet in the east; the Judaean Desert is an area with a special morphological structure along the east of the Judaean Mountains. It is sometimes known as יְשִׁימוֹן Yeshimon, meaning desert or wildland, or yet Wilderness of Judah or Wilderness of Judaea, among others; the Judaean Desert descends to the Dead Sea. Major urban areas in the region include Jerusalem, the Gush Etzion and Hebron. Rainfall in the Judaea region varies from 400–500 millimetres in the western hills, rising to 600 millimetres around western Jerusalem, falling back to 400 millimetres in eastern Jerusalem and dropping to around 100 mm in the eastern parts, due to a rainshadow effect.
The climate ranges from Mediterranean in the west and desert climate in the east, with a strip of steppe climate in the middle. A study by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem of an underground water reservoir beneath the Judaean Desert known as the Judaea Group Aquifer, found that the aquifer begins in the Judaean Mountains and flows in a northeasterly direction towards the Dead Sea with outflows at the Tsukim, Kane and Ein-Gedi springs; the rain-fed aquifer contains an average yearly volume of some 100 million cubic meters of water. Ein Gedi Geography of Israel Mar Saba Masada Qumran Caves Tourism in Israel Tourism in the Palestinian territories Hiking in the Judaean Desert travel guide from Wikivoyage
Skete
A Skete is a monastic community in Eastern Christianity that allows relative isolation for monks, but allows for communal services and the safety of shared resources and protection. It is one of four types of early monastic orders, along with the eremitic and coenobitic, that became popular during the early formation of the Christian Church. Skete communities consist of a number of small cells or caves that act as the living quarters with a centralized church or chapel; these communities are thought of as a bridge between strict eremitic lifestyle and communal lifestyles since it was a blend of the two. These communities were a direct response to the ascetic lifestyle that early Christians aspired to live. Skete communities were a bridge to a stricter form of hermitage or to martyrdom; the term Skete is most a reference to the Scetis valley region of Egypt where Skete communities first appear, but a few scholars have argued that it instead is a stylized spelling of the word ascetic. It is impossible to talk about the earliest Skete communities without touching on the early days of monasticism itself.
The earliest monks were men who fled civilization to lead an ascetic lifestyle alone in the desert. Early desert ascetics have been chronicled as far back as the writings of Eusebius In his book Church history or Ecclesiastical History, he writes of early desert fathers who left civilization behind to wander the desert drawing a following and settling down into monastic communities; the problem with these earliest writings is that no distinction is made between those who fled civilization for ascetic reasons, those who fled to avoid persecution. Another problem is that early accounts of monastic life are exaggerated leading some scholars to calculate that if these reports were taken at face value the monasteries were larger than the entire populations of the countries where they were founded; the only thing, certain from these early writings is that some early religious figures did flee to the seclusion of the desert while others had a legitimate calling. Whether fleeing persecution or fleeing civilization, the monks who retreated to the Scetis valley in Egypt began to draw followers.
The inherent problem with attracting followers is that it defeated the original goal of seeking solitude. Early communities began forming, with the monks building small one- or two-room cells or occupying caves; these small communities would draw more people, leading to the need for simple communal infrastructure. The monks would work together to build a church retreat to the solitude of their cells or caves to embrace the hermetic and ascetic lifestyle. After building a communal church they could gather for Eucharist; the Scetis Valley in Egypt, now known as the Wadi al-Natrun, is 22 miles long and lies west of the Nile River in the Libyan Desert. The name Scetis comes from the Coptic word Shi-het, meaning “to weigh the heart”; the valley lies below sea level and is dotted with oases and marshes. Despite the low elevation and water resources, the Scetis Valley was a dangerous place; the monasteries of the Scetis Valley were not like the large centralized communities that would come to define monasteries in the Middle Ages.
Instead, the Scetis monasteries were a collection of hermits who for the most part lived separately, each in his own cell, but who would come together for weekly prayers and holy days. These small cells could be close together or scattered, making their exact locations hard to find; when major buildings were erected, the cells associated with them were easy to find, but the locations of the earliest cells became harder to know with certainty. Modern scholars now estimate the most famous of these monasteries, the Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great, to be 92 kilometres northwest of Cairo. Saint Macarius was born into a middle-class family in Upper Egypt around the year 300; as a boy, he accompanied his father, a camel driver and merchant, on desert excursions and came to know the Scetis Valley. When his parents arranged a marriage for him, he feigned an illness and retreated to the desert to decide what to do; when he returned, he found. Following the death of his parents soon after that, he gave all his money to the poor.
When the bishop of Ashmoun became aware of Macarius' piety, he ordained him a priest. Macarius was accused by a village woman of impregnating her, he did not defend himself, but the woman had a difficult labor and did not deliver until she confessed that Macarius was not the father. Following this incident, he fled to the Scetis Valley to live as a desert hermit. Soon, he began to attract followers, he sought the advice of Saint Anthony, who inspired him to become a teacher and to found a monastic community. That monastic community reflected Macarius's own thoughts on the need for solitude and contemplation and allowed monks to live for the most part separated from one another, coming together when needed for mass on the weekends and in times of trouble, he was exiled by Emperor Valens to an island in the River Nile along with Saint Macarius of Alexandria over a dispute about the Nicene Creed. The exile was short-lived, he returned to his monastery where he lived until the time of his death in 391.
After his death his body was stolen and brought to his home village of Shabsheer, but his remains were taken back to the Monastery of Saint Macarius in the Scetis Valley where they remain to this day. The Skete monastery system is thought of as a middle path of monastic life because it is a middle g
Abbey of Saint Gall
The Abbey of Saint Gall is a dissolved abbey in a Roman Catholic religious complex in the city of St. Gallen in Switzerland; the Carolingian-era monastery has existed since 719 and became an independent principality between 9th and 13th centuries, was for many centuries one of the chief Benedictine abbeys in Europe. It was founded by Saint Othmar on the spot; the library at the Abbey is one of the richest medieval libraries in the world. The city of St. Gallen originated as an adjoining settlement of the abbey. Following the secularization of the abbey around 1800 the former Abbey church became a Cathedral in 1848. Since 1983 the whole remaining abbey precinct has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Around 613 Gallus, according to tradition an Irish monk and disciple and companion of Saint Columbanus, established a hermitage on the site that would become the monastery, he lived in his cell until his death in 646. in Arbon. The people kept looking for protection at Gallus' cell in time of danger.
Following Gallus' death, Charles Martel appointed Otmar as custodian of St Gall's relics. Several different dates are given for the foundation of the monastery, including 719, 720, 747 and the middle of the 8th century. During the reign of Pepin the Short, in the 8th century, Othmar founded the Carolingian style Abbey of St Gall, where arts and sciences flourished; the abbey grew many Alemannic noblemen became monks. At the end of abbot Otmar's reign, the Professbuch mentions 53 names. Two monks of the Abbey of St Gall, Magnus von Füssen and Theodor, founded the monasteries in Kempten and Füssen in the Allgäu. With the increase in the number of monks the abbey grew stronger economically. Much land in Thurgau, Zürichgau and in the rest of Alemannia as far as the Neckar was transferred to the abbey due to Stiftungen. Under abbot Waldo of Reichenau copying of manuscripts was undertaken and a famous library was gathered. Numerous Anglo-Saxon and Irish monks came to copy manuscripts. At Charlemagne's request Pope Adrian I sent distinguished chanters from Rome, who propagated the use of the Gregorian chant.
In 744, the Alemannic nobleman Beata sells several properties to the abbey in order to finance his journey to Rome. In the subsequent century, St Gall came into conflict with the nearby Bishopric of Constance which had acquired jurisdiction over the Abbey of Reichenau on Lake Constance, it was not until Emperor Louis the Pious confirmed in 813 the imperial immediacy of the abbey, that this conflict ceased. The abbey became an Imperial Abbey. King Louis the German confirmed in 833 the immunity of the abbey and allowed the monks the free choice of their abbot. In 854 the Abbey of St Gall reached its full autonomy by King Louis the German releasing the abbey from the obligation to pay tithes to the Bishop of Constance. From this time until the 10th century, the abbey flourished, it was home to several famous scholars, including Notker of Liège, Notker the Stammerer, Notker Labeo and Hartker. During the 9th century a new, larger church was built and the library was expanded. Manuscripts on a wide variety of topics were purchased by the abbey and copies were made.
Over 400 manuscripts from this time are still in the library today. Between 924 and 933 the Magyars threatened the abbey and the books had to be removed to Reichenau for safety. Not all the books were returned. On 26 April 937 a fire broke out and destroyed much of the abbey and the adjoining settlement, though the library was undamaged. About 954 they started to protect the monastery and buildings by a surrounding wall. Around 971/974 abbot Notker finalized the walling and the adjoining settlements started to become the town of St Gall. In 1006, the abbey was the northernmost place; the death of abbot Ulrich on 9 December 1076 terminated the cultural silver age of the monastery. In 1207, abbot Ulrich von Sax becomes a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire by King Philip of Swabia; the abbey became a Princely Abbey. As the abbey became more involved in local politics, it entered a period of decline; the city of St. Gallen proper progressively freed itself from the rule of the abbot, acquiring Imperial immediacy, by the late 15th century was recognized as a Free imperial city.
By about 1353 the guilds, headed by the cloth-weavers guild, gained control of the civic government. In 1415 the city bought its liberty from the German king King Sigismund. During the 14th century Humanists were allowed to carry off some of the rare texts from the abbey library. In the late 14th and early 15th centuries, the farmers of the abbot's personal estates began seeking independence. In 1401, the first of the Appenzell Wars broke out, following the Appenzell victory at Stoss in 1405 they became allies of the Swiss Confederation in 1411. During the Appenzell Wars, the town of St. Gallen sided with Appenzell against the abbey. So when Appenzell allied with the Swiss, the town of St. Gallen followed just a few months later; the abbot became an ally of several members of the Swiss Confederation in 1451. While Appenzell and St. Gallen became full members of the Swiss Confederation in 1454. In 1457 the town of St. Gallen became free from the abbot. In 1468 the abbot, Ulrich Rösch, bought the County of Toggenburg from the representatives of its counts, after the family died out in 1436.
In 1487 he
Middle East
The Middle East is a transcontinental region centered on Western Asia and Egypt. Saudi Arabia is geographically the largest Middle Eastern nation; the corresponding adjective is Middle Eastern and the derived noun is Middle Easterner. The term has come into wider usage as a replacement of the term Near East beginning in the early 20th century. Arabs, Persians and Azeris constitute the largest ethnic groups in the region by population. Arabs constitute the largest ethnic group in the region by a clear margin. Indigenous minorities of the Middle East include Jews, Assyrians, Copts, Lurs, Samaritans, Shabaks and Zazas. European ethnic groups that form a diaspora in the region include Albanians, Circassians, Crimean Tatars, Franco-Levantines, Italo-Levantines. Among other migrant populations are Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, Pashtuns and sub-Saharan Africans; the history of the Middle East dates back to ancient times, with the importance of the region being recognized for millennia. Several major religions have their origins in the Middle East, including Judaism and Islam.
The Middle East has a hot, arid climate, with several major rivers providing irrigation to support agriculture in limited areas such as the Nile Delta in Egypt, the Tigris and Euphrates watersheds of Mesopotamia, most of what is known as the Fertile Crescent. Most of the countries that border the Persian Gulf have vast reserves of crude oil, with monarchs of the Arabian Peninsula in particular benefiting economically from petroleum exports; the term "Middle East" may have originated in the 1850s in the British India Office. However, it became more known when American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan used the term in 1902 to "designate the area between Arabia and India". During this time the British and Russian Empires were vying for influence in Central Asia, a rivalry which would become known as The Great Game. Mahan realized not only the strategic importance of the region, but of its center, the Persian Gulf, he labeled the area surrounding the Persian Gulf as the Middle East, said that after Egypt's Suez Canal, it was the most important passage for Britain to control in order to keep the Russians from advancing towards British India.
Mahan first used the term in his article "The Persian Gulf and International Relations", published in September 1902 in the National Review, a British journal. The Middle East, if I may adopt a term which I have not seen, will some day need its Malta, as well as its Gibraltar. Naval force has the quality of mobility; the British Navy should have the facility to concentrate in force if occasion arise, about Aden and the Persian Gulf. Mahan's article was reprinted in The Times and followed in October by a 20-article series entitled "The Middle Eastern Question," written by Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol. During this series, Sir Ignatius expanded the definition of Middle East to include "those regions of Asia which extend to the borders of India or command the approaches to India." After the series ended in 1903, The Times removed quotation marks from subsequent uses of the term. Until World War II, it was customary to refer to areas centered around Turkey and the eastern shore of the Mediterranean as the "Near East", while the "Far East" centered on China, the Middle East meant the area from Mesopotamia to Burma, namely the area between the Near East and the Far East.
In the late 1930s, the British established the Middle East Command, based in Cairo, for its military forces in the region. After that time, the term "Middle East" gained broader usage in Europe and the United States, with the Middle East Institute founded in Washington, D. C. in 1946, among other usage. The description Middle has led to some confusion over changing definitions. Before the First World War, "Near East" was used in English to refer to the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire, while "Middle East" referred to Iran, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Turkestan. In contrast, "Far East" referred to the countries of East Asia With the disappearance of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, "Near East" fell out of common use in English, while "Middle East" came to be applied to the re-emerging countries of the Islamic world. However, the usage "Near East" was retained by a variety of academic disciplines, including archaeology and ancient history, where it describes an area identical to the term Middle East, not used by these disciplines.
The first official use of the term "Middle East" by the United States government was in the 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine, which pertained to the Suez Crisis. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles defined the Middle East as "the area lying between and including Libya on the west and Pakistan on the east and Iraq on the North and the Arabian peninsula to the south, plus the Sudan and Ethiopia." In 1958, the State Department explained that the terms "Near East" and "Middle East" were interchangeable, defined the region as including only Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. The Associated Press Styleboo
Persian Empire
The Persian Empire refers to any of a series of imperial dynasties that were centred in Persia/Iran from the 6th century BC Achaemenid Empire era to the 20th century AD in the Qajar dynasty era. The first dynasty of the Persian Empire was created by Achaemenids, established by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC with the conquest of Median and Babylonian empires, it covered much of the Ancient world. Persepolis is the most famous historical site related to Persian Empire in the Achaemenid era and it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979. From 247 BC to 224 AD, Persia was ruled by the Parthian Empire, which supplanted the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire, by the Sassanian Empire, which ruled up until the mid-7th century; the Persian Empire in the Sasanian era was interrupted by the Arab conquest of Persia in 651 AD, establishing the larger Islamic caliphate, by the Mongol invasion. The main religion of ancient Persia was the native Zoroastrianism, but after the seventh century, it was replaced by Islam which achieved a majority in the 10th century.
The Safavid Empire was the first Persian Empire established after the Arab conquest of Persia by Shah Ismail I. From their base in Ardabil, the Safavid Persians established control over parts of Greater Persia/Iran and reasserted the Persian identity of the region, becoming the first native Persian dynasty since the Sasanian Empire to establish a unified Persian state. Literature and architecture flourished in the Safavid era once again, it is cited as the "rebirth of the Persian Empire". Safavids announced Shia Islam as the official religion in the empire versus the Sunni Islam in the neighbouring Ottoman Empire. Achaemenid Empire Sasanian Empire Safavid dynasty Afsharid dynasty Qajar dynasty List of monarchs of Persia Iranian monarchy List of Iranian dynasties and countries Persia Iranian peoples Persian people List of tombs of Iranian people Briant, Pierre. From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire. University Park, Pennsylvania: Eisenbrauns. P. 15. ISBN 978-1575060316. DK. History of the World in 1,000 Objects.
London: DK. p. 71. ISBN 978-1465422897. Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. "Persia". Encyclopædia Britannica. Cambridge University Press; the dictionary definition of Persian Empire at Wiktionary Persian Empire travel guide from Wikivoyage Media related to Persian Empire at Wikimedia Commons
Religious order
A religious order is a lineage of communities and organizations of people who live in some way set apart from society in accordance with their specific religious devotion characterized by the principles of its founder's religious practice. The order is composed of laypeople and, in some orders, clergy. Religious orders exist in many of the world's religions. In Buddhist societies, a religious order is one of the number of monastic orders of monks and nuns, many of which follow under a different school of teaching, such as Thailand's Dhammayuttika order - a monastic order founded by King Mongkut. A well-known Chinese Buddhist order is the ancient Shaolin order in Ch'an Buddhism and in modern times the Order of Hsu Yun. A Catholic religious institute is a society whose members pronounce vows that are accepted by a superior in the name of the Church and who live a life of brothers or sisters in common. Catholic religious orders and congregations are the two historical categories of Catholic religious institutes.
Religious institutes are distinct from secular institutes, another kind of institute of consecrated life, from lay ecclesial movements. In the Catholic Church, members of religious institutes, unless they are deacons or priests in Holy Orders, are not clergy, but belong to the laity. While the state of consecrated life is neither clerical nor lay, institutes themselves are classified as one or the other, a clerical institute being one that "by reason of the purpose or design intended by the founder or by virtue of legitimate tradition, is under the direction of clerics, assumes the exercise of sacred orders, is recognized as such by the authority of the Church". Well-known Roman Catholic religious institutes, not all of which were classified as "orders" rather than "congregations", include Augustinians, Carmelites, Franciscans, Piarists, Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Congregation of Holy Cross. Several religious orders evolved during the Crusades to incorporate a military mission thus became "religious military orders", such as the Knights of the Order of Saint John.
It is typical of non-monastic religious institutes to have a motherhouse or generalate that has jurisdiction over any number of dependent religious communities, for its members to be moved by their superior general to any other of its communities, as the needs of the institute at any one time demand. In accordance with the concept of independent communities in the Rule of St Benedict, the Benedictines have autonomous abbeys. Hence they can not move -- abbess -- to another abbey. An "independent house" may make a new foundation which remains a "dependent house" until it is granted independence by Rome and itself becomes an abbey; the autonomy of each house does not prevent them being affiliated into congregations – whether national or based on some other joint characteristic – and these, in turn, form the supra-national Benedictine Confederation. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, there is only one type of monasticism; the profession of monastics is considered by monks to be a Sacred Mystery. The Rite of Tonsure is printed in the Euchologion, the same book as the other Sacred Mysteries and services performed according to need.
See also: Active Lutheran orders Martin Luther had concerns with the spiritual value of monastic life at the time of the Reformation. After the foundation of the Lutheran Churches, some monasteries in Lutheran lands and convents adopted the Lutheran Christian faith. Other examples of Lutheran religious orders include the "Order of Lutheran Franciscans" in the United States. A Lutheran religious order following the Rule of St. Benedict, "The Congregation of the Servants of Christ," was established at St. Augustine's House in Oxford, Michigan, in 1958 when some other men joined Father Arthur Kreinheder in observing the monastic life and offices of prayer; this order has strong ties in Germany. In 2011, an Augustinian religious order, the Priestly Society of St. Augustine was established by the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church, its headquarters is at Christ Lutheran Church ALCC. Kent Island, Fr. Jens Bargmann, Ph. D. is the Grand Prior. Religious orders in England were dissolved by King Henry VIII upon the separation of the English church from Roman primacy.
For three hundred years, there were no formal religious orders in Anglicanism, although some informal communities – such as that founded by Nicholas Ferrar at Little Gidding – sprang into being. With the advent of the Oxford Movement in the Church of England and worldwide Anglicanism in the middle of the 19th century, several orders appeared. In 1841, the first order for women was established; the first order for men was founded 25 years later. Anglican religious voluntarily commit themselves for life, or a term of years, to holding their possessions in common or in trust. There are presently thirteen active religious orders for men, fifty-three for women, eight mixed gender; the Methodist Church of Great Britain, its ancestors, have established a number of orders of Deaconesses
