This collection is dedicated to the evolution of women's church service, from evangelical times to the early Middle Ages. Based on a wide range of written and epigraphic sources, different groups of women who had a certain church status were considered: prophets, elders, widows, virgins and deaconesses. In some essays, the further fate of the institution of deaconess in the Russian Church was traced until the beginning of the twentieth century, when the great martyr Elizabeth Fedorovna tried to revive this ministry. The book is equipped with a detailed list of scientific literature on this topic.