One of the deacons is to be chosen as "chief deacon" (Protodeacon, 1:19, 1:34), and is charged with the care of pilgrims. There are no doorkeepers or singers, who begin to appear about 340 CE. The honour given to confessors is very conspicuous, and points back to an early date. But remarkable above all is the position given to women. We have "widows having precedence" or presbyteresses, three in number, deaconesses, virgins, and widows who are in receipt of the alms of the Church; and the first-named occupy a place of very great dignity, which is almost unequaled elsewhere (excepting in the earlier form of the apocryphal and Montanistic Acts and Martyrdom of Matthew), and which was formally condemned by the Council of Laodicea.