There were a few lay orders that were open to women, though we would not consider them clergy, because they had no role in liturgy. The one exception to this seems to be the deaconesses, whose responsibility it was to prepare women for Baptism by anointing them. (Didascalia Apostolorum, 16) Since it would not be appropriate for a male bishop to anoint the body of a woman before Baptism (especially when Baptism was done in the nude, or when it came to include the changing of clothes into a symbolic white robe), a deaconess would perform the pre-baptismal anointing, through the bishop would still pronounce the Baptism in the name of the Trinity and anoint the newly baptized woman’s head afterward. In some places, a curtain would have hung over the baptismal font, concealing the woman to be baptized from the bishop’s view. A deaconess might also visit a sick woman if there were no men in the home to chaperone, or if the visit by a man would cause a scandal. (James L. Papandrea, Reading the Church Fathers: A History of the Early Church and the Development of Doctrine [Manchester, N.H.: Sophia Institute Press, 2022], 153)
