... Now
she that is a widow indeed and desolate trusteth in God and continueth
in supplications and prayers night and day." Simple but very striking is
the epitaph inscribed on the wall of the Vatican:
OCTAVIAE MATRONAE VIDVAE DEI.
The order of deaconesses appears to have been mainly composed of pious
widows, and only those were eligible who had had but one husband. This
order came to an end in the eleventh or twelfth century, but the
vowesses, as a class, continued to subsist in England until the
convulsions of the sixteenth century, and in the Roman Church survive as
a class with some modifications in the order of Oblates, who, says Alban
Butler in his life of St. Francis, "make no solemn vows, only a promise
of obedience to the mother-president, enjoy pensions, inherit estates,
and go abroad with leave." Their abbey in Rome is filled with ladies of
the first rank.
The chief distinction between deaconesses and widows was the obligation
imposed on the former to accomplish certain outward works, whereas
widows vowed to remain till death in a single life, in which, like nuns,
they were regarded as mystically espoused to Christ. Unlike nuns,
however, vowesses usually supported the burdens entailed by their
previous marriage--superintending the affairs of the household and
interesting themselves in the welfare of their descendants. St.
Elizabeth of Hungary, though she bound herself to follow the injunctions
of her confessor and received from him a coarse habit of undyed wool,
did not become a nun, but, on his advice, retained her secular estate
and ministered to the needs of the poor.
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