The Corpus and Its Translations

Behr-Sigel wrote in French, published for fifty-five years, and produced something on the order of six books and two hundred articles and chronicles. Four of the books are on subjects other than women in the Church, and the majority of the periodical work has never been translated. The English reader has three titles and a selection of essays; the reader who wants the theologian rather than the controversy has to read French. This file is a guide to what exists.

Tradition: Orthodox (France — Russian emigration milieu)

The Books

In order of publication.

1. Prière et sainteté dans l’Église russe. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1950 (series Russie et Chrétienté, 5); chapters first serialized in Irénikon; later reissued by the Abbaye de Bellefontaine (ISBN 2-85589-033-0). A study of Russian holiness through representative figures — princes, monks, holy fools, laypeople — including St. Nil Sorsky, St. Juliana Lazarevskaya, and St. Tikhon of Zadonsk. Her first book, grown from a maîtrise begun in 1930 with the help of Georges Fedotov. No English translation. See Prière et sainteté and the New Hagiography.

2. Alexandre Boukharev, un théologien de l’Église orthodoxe russe en dialogue avec le monde moderne. Introduction et lettres à Valérien et Alexandra Lavrski. Preface by Olivier Clément. Paris: Beauchesne, 1977. Her doctoral thesis, begun at the Sorbonne in 1951 under Pierre Pascal at Fr. Sergius Bulgakov’s suggestion and defended at Nancy; includes twenty-nine of Bukharev’s letters. No English translation. See Alexander Bukharev.

3. Le ministère de la femme dans l’Église. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1987 (c. 240 pp.). English: The Ministry of Women in the Church, trans. Steven Bigham. Redondo Beach, CA: Oakwood Publications, 1991. The book by which she is chiefly known; the constructive case for women’s ministries and the critique of the essentialist rationales. See Agapia 1976 and the Ministry of Women.

4. Le Lieu du cœur: Initiation à la spiritualité de l’Église orthodoxe. Paris: Cerf, 1989. Grown out of the “Enotikon” correspondence courses in Orthodox spirituality; awarded the Prix Montyon of the Académie française in 1990. No English translation located. The title is drawn from the hesychast vocabulary of the heart as the place of prayer (see The Jesus Prayer).

5. Un moine de l’Église d’Orient: le père Lev Gillet. Paris: Cerf, 1993 (c. 640 pp.); new edition, Cerf, 2005. English: Lev Gillet, “A Monk of the Eastern Church,” trans. Helen Wright. Oxford: Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, 1999 (ISBN 0-903190-07-9). Her longest book, and the fullest account of the francophone Orthodoxy of the twentieth century. See Father Lev Gillet.

6. L’ordination des femmes dans l’Église orthodoxe. With Bishop Kallistos Ware. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1998 (c. 96 pp.). English (three chapters): The Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church. Geneva: WCC Publications, 2000, Risk Book Series (96 pp.; ISBN 2-8254-1336-4; ISSN 0254-3966). Contents of the English selection: Behr-Sigel, “Women in the Orthodox Church”; Behr-Sigel, “The Ordination of Women: Also a Question for the Orthodox Churches”; Ware, “Man, Woman and the Priesthood of Christ” (previously in Hopko, ed., Women and the Priesthood, rev. ed., SVS Press, 1999). See The Question She Raised.

7. Discerner les signes des temps. Paris: Cerf, 2002 (c. 174 pp.).

8. En marche vers l’unité. Ed. and prefaced by Olga Lossky. Paris: Cerf, 2017 (c. 352 pp.). A posthumous collection.

[Disputed: the relation between the French *Discerner les signes des temps* (Cerf, 2002) and the English *Discerning the Signs of the Times: The Vision of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel* (SVS Press, 2001). The English volume is an independently edited selection of ten essays, edited by Michael Plekon and Sarah E. Hinlicky with translations by Lyn Breck, Michael Plekon, Deno Takles and Rachel Mortimer; it appeared a year *before* the French volume of similar title. The two are therefore not translation and original in the ordinary sense, and their contents may not correspond. Readers should not cite one for the other.]

The Periodical Work

The books are the smaller part. She contributed on the order of two hundred articles and chronicles to Contacts — the French Orthodox review she helped found in 1949 — and to other publications, over more than half a century (fr.wikipedia.org, “Élisabeth Behr-Sigel,” following Olga Lossky, Vers le jour sans déclin, Cerf, 2007). Individually identified pieces include:

• “La Prière à Jésus ou le mystère de la spiritualité monastique orthodoxe,” Dieu vivant, 1947.
• An article on Fr. Sergius Bulgakov’s sophiology, Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, 1939.
• “Un prophète orthodoxe: Alexandre Boukharev (1822–1871)” (reproduced at pagesorthodoxes.net).

This body of work is the reason her French and her English reputations differ so sharply. A French Orthodox reader of a certain age knows Behr-Sigel as a fifty-year commentator on the life of the Church — liturgy, spirituality, hagiography, ecumenism, the emigration, the saints — of whom the writings on women are one strand. The English-language reader typically meets her first, and often only, through The Ministry of Women in the Church and the WCC Risk Book, and forms a correspondingly narrow impression.

In English: What Exists

Primary:

1. The Ministry of Women in the Church, trans. Steven Bigham (Oakwood, 1991).
2. The Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church, with Kallistos Ware (WCC, 2000).
3. Lev Gillet, “A Monk of the Eastern Church,” trans. Helen Wright (Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, 1999).
4. Discerning the Signs of the Times: The Vision of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, ed. Michael Plekon and Sarah E. Hinlicky (SVS Press, 2001) — ten short essays; the title is from Matthew 16:3, and the phrase is the one she had used of Bukharev’s prophetic vocation thirty years earlier.

Secondary:

5. Olga Lossky, Toward the Endless Day: The Life of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, trans. Jerry Ryan, ed. Michael Plekon (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010; xvii + 345 pp.; ISBN 978-0-268-03385-9). The authorized biography, written with Behr-Sigel’s full cooperation — Lossky met her weekly in the last year of her life and had access to her journal and personal letters.
6. Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, Woman, Women, and the Priesthood in the Trinitarian Theology of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel (London: T&T Clark, 2013). The scholarly monograph; the indispensable guide to the development of her thought, and sympathetic to it — a fact readers should hold in mind, since a great deal of the English-language account of her (including much of this collection’s) rests on it.

What a Reader Should Read First

Three suggestions, depending on the reader’s purpose.

To meet her as a theologian rather than as a controversy: Discerning the Signs of the Times (SVS Press, 2001). Ten short essays across her range, in English, in one slim volume.

To meet her as a historian: the Gillet biography (Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, 1999). It is the best English window on the whole world of the Paris emigration, and it is the work of a mature craftsman.

To engage the contested question at its source: The Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church (WCC, 2000), read alongside Thomas Hopko, ed., Women and the Priesthood (SVS Press, rev. ed. 1999) — which contains, in Ware’s chapter, one of the same texts, and in the rest of the volume the Orthodox case her argument is answering. Reading either alone gives a false picture. Readers should also consult the repository’s own Women in Orthodoxy for the Church’s teaching, which is not to be sought in either book.

What Is Missing

Three gaps in the English-language record, stated so that the reader of this collection knows the limits of what could be checked.

The two early books are untranslated. Prière et sainteté (1950) and the Bukharev thesis (1977) are the foundation of her scholarly reputation and are inaccessible to English readers. This collection’s account of both rests on French secondary description and on her own essay on Bukharev, not on the printed volumes.

The French primary texts of the contested question were not consulted. L’ordination des femmes dans l’Église orthodoxe (Cerf, 1998) and Le ministère de la femme dans l’Église (Cerf, 1987) were not available for this collection. Where her exact formulations matter — and on the priesthood question they matter more than anything else — this collection reports the secondary literature and marks the uncertainty rather than inventing a quotation. See the [Disputed] notes in The Question She Raised.

No sustained Orthodox scholarly reply to her mature argument was located in the languages surveyed. See the note in The Orthodox Criticism.

See Also

• Assessment — the provisional weighing
• Contacts and the French Orthodox Milieu — the periodical world
• The Question She Raised — where the missing texts matter most
• Women in Orthodoxy — the Church’s teaching, which is not in these books

References

• Behr-Sigel, Elisabeth. Prière et sainteté dans l’Église russe. Paris: Cerf, 1950; repr. Bellefontaine (ISBN 2-85589-033-0).
• ———. Alexandre Boukharev, un théologien de l’Église orthodoxe russe en dialogue avec le monde moderne. Pref. Olivier Clément. Paris: Beauchesne, 1977.
• ———. Le ministère de la femme dans l’Église. Paris: Cerf, 1987. English: The Ministry of Women in the Church, trans. Steven Bigham. Redondo Beach, CA: Oakwood Publications, 1991.
• ———. Le Lieu du cœur: Initiation à la spiritualité de l’Église orthodoxe. Paris: Cerf, 1989. (Prix Montyon, 1990.)
• ———. Un moine de l’Église d’Orient: le père Lev Gillet. Paris: Cerf, 1993; new ed. 2005. English: Lev Gillet, “A Monk of the Eastern Church,” trans. Helen Wright. Oxford: Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, 1999 (ISBN 0-903190-07-9).
• ——— and Bishop Kallistos Ware. L’ordination des femmes dans l’Église orthodoxe. Paris: Cerf, 1998. English (three chapters): The Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church. Geneva: WCC Publications, 2000 (Risk Book Series; ISBN 2-8254-1336-4).
• ———. Discerner les signes des temps. Paris: Cerf, 2002.
• ———. Discerning the Signs of the Times: The Vision of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel. Ed. Michael Plekon and Sarah E. Hinlicky; trans. Lyn Breck, Michael Plekon, Deno Takles, Rachel Mortimer. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001.
• ———. En marche vers l’unité. Ed. Olga Lossky. Paris: Cerf, 2017.
• Lossky, Olga. Vers le jour sans déclin: Une vie d’Élisabeth Behr-Sigel (1907–2005). Paris: Cerf, 2007. English: Toward the Endless Day, trans. Jerry Ryan, ed. Michael Plekon. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010 (xvii + 345 pp.; ISBN 978-0-268-03385-9).
• Hinlicky Wilson, Sarah. Woman, Women, and the Priesthood in the Trinitarian Theology of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel. London: T&T Clark, 2013.
• Hopko, Thomas, ed. Women and the Priesthood. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1983; rev. ed. 1999.
• “Élisabeth Behr-Sigel.” French Wikipedia (fr.wikipedia.org), following Lossky. (The bibliography, page counts, and the estimate of c. 200 articles.)