{"product_id":"the-hidden-history-of-womens-ordination-female-clergy-in-the-medieval-west","title":"The Hidden History of Women's Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Roman Catholic leadership still refuses to ordain women officially or even to recognize that women are capable of ordination. But is the widely held assumption that women have always been excluded from such roles historically accurate?  In the early centuries of Christianity  ordination was the process and the ceremony by which one moved to any new ministry (ordo) in the community. By this definition  women were in fact ordained into several ministries. A radical change in the definition of ordination during the eleventh and twelfth centuries not only removed women from the ordained ministry  but also attempted to eradicate any memory of womens ordination in the past. The debate that accompanied this change has left its mark in the literature of the time. However  the triumph of a new definition of ordination as the bestowal of power  particularly the power to confect the Eucharist  so thoroughly dominated western thought and practice by the thirteenth century that the earlier concept of ordination was almost completely erased. The ordination of women  either in the present or in the past  became unthinkable.  References to the ordination of women exist in papal  episcopal and theological documents of the time  and the rites for these ordinations have survived. Yet  many scholars still hold that women  particularly in the western church  were never \"really\" ordained. A survey of the literature reveals that most scholars use a definition of ordination that would have been unknown in the early middle ages. Thus  the modern determination that women were never ordained  Macy argues  is a premise based on false terms.  Not a work of advocacy  this important book applies indispensable historical background for the ongoing debate about womens ordination.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44946441470005,"sku":"ByrdShop_0195189701","price":70.79,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780195189704_a15964a2-cc0c-4e4a-a034-2b1a943aca87.jpg?v=1770560425","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-hidden-history-of-womens-ordination-female-clergy-in-the-medieval-west","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}