Other divergent views appeared, for example, in late second-century Phyrgia in Asia Minor, where Montanus and two women, Priscilla and Maximilla, proclaimed a “new prophecy.” Apocalypticists, they heralded the second coming, announcing that Christ would return imminently to the Phrygian villages of Pepuza and Tymion. Despite Christ’s failure to do so, the movement persisted. Two centuries later, Emperor Theodosius commanded that the books of the Montanists be burned and that those who hid them be put to death. In their unbridled eschatological expectation, ecstatic prophesying, and claim to be instruments of the Holy Spirit, the Montanists challenged the growing authority of the church’s episcopal structure.
Women in Early Christianity
The Montanist movement was also noteworthy for the prominent role of its female prophets. However, just as the existence of powerful goddesses in the great civilizations of the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean world had not yielded societies with gender equality, so too in the church the growing importance of Mary, the mother of Jesus, was not accompanied by an increasing role for women in its ecclesiastical life.
The study of women in the earliest phase of Christianity is largely the study of Jewish women; indeed, the New Testament is a major source for Jewish women’s history, reminding us that the original followers of Jesus were Palestinian Jews. Not long after the death of Jesus, however, as non-Jews began to enter the community “in Christ,” debate arose concerning the role of Jewish law in God’s scheme for salvation. With his position that followers of Jesus had been “discharged from the law… which held us captive” (Rom. 7.6), Paul represented one end of the theological spectrum. James, the brother of Jesus and the leader of the Jerusalem church, represented the other in maintaining that the Jewish law in its entirety remained valid. By the second century, the majority of Christians were non-Jews, and the church adopted the Pauline position that the law was no longer a vehicle for salvation. Jewish Christians, diverse groups who followed Jewish law and accepted Jesus as the resurrected Messiah, were condemned by both the church fathers and the rabbis. At a time when the emerging church and the emerging synagogue engaged in a rigorous process of self-definition, Jewish-Christian groups blurred the boundaries that both sought to erect. Still, rabbinic and patristic sources hint that as late as the fifth century, Jewish-Christian communities persisted in such areas as Galilee, Jordan, and Syria. It is likely that eventually they were assimilated into the Christian community.
During the Byzantine era, female leadership was exercised largely within the hierarchical structures of women’s monastic communities. However, the letters of Paul and the book of Acts suggest that in the earliest phase of emerging Christianity, the opportunities for women were far greater. The closing chapter of Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, following the epistolary conventions of that period, includes greetings and personal commendations. Paul mentions ten women, the first of whom is Phoebe, described in Greek as a diakonos and a prostatis, correctly translated in the New Revised Standard Version as “deacon” and “benefactor” (Rom. 16.1–2). Older translations erroneously rendered these words as “deaconess” and “helper”; thus, generations of translators ignored the plain sense of the text because of their assumption that women could not have exercised significant roles in the early church, and here and elsewhere produced translations that could be used both to reinforce that point of view and to limit contemporary women’s ecclesiastical activities. To be sure, Romans was written before the institutionalization of church offices; one cannot describe with certainty the activities of a first-century deacon. But the inaccurate translation “deaconess” suggests a role of less importance than that of “deacon.” During the following centuries, the former developed into a position of circumscribed responsibilities, distinct and limited relative to those of a deacon.
Ancient inscriptions suggest, moreover, that the prostatis or prostates was not only a benefactor or patron, but frequently the president or head of an association. Phoebe was probably one among many of an increasing number of wealthy upper-class Roman women who could control and dispose of their property as they wished, and who often chose to act as donors and benefactors, participating in the Roman system of euergetism or benefactions in the same manner as their male counterparts.
Later in Romans 16, Paul describes the activities of other women mentioned in the chapter using the same vocabulary he employs with respect to his own work and to that of his male colleagues. The husband-and-wife couples Prisca and Aquila (mentioned also in 1 Cor. 16 and Acts 18) and Andronicus and Junia, along with Mary, Tryphaena and Tryphosa, and Persis, are all greeted as coworkers in Christ, and, notably, in the case of Andronicus and Junia, as missionary colleagues (the Greek word is apostoloi, “apostles”). Paul also extends greetings to the mother of Rufus, to Julia, and to the sister of Nereus, who must also have been prominent in the community at Rome. Elsewhere Paul takes for granted that women pray and prophesy in church (1 Cor. 11). Similarly, Luke, the author of Acts, mentions women who are prophets, patrons of house churches, prominent converts, missionaries, and teachers.
Both the theological concerns and the highly stylized literary character of the Gospels are such that the historical significance is unclear of those passages in which women are portrayed as the discoverers of the empty tomb and the first post-resurrection witnesses, or as understanding Jesus’ true nature when his male disciples fail to do so. The Gospels do, however, provide evidence that Jesus’ followers included both men and women. Mary of Magdala was almost certainly among his innermost circle of disciples.
Perhaps the varied and important roles available to women in the earliest phase of Christianity were the church’s equivalent of the “Rosie the Riveter” phenomenon in the United States during World War II. That is, in times of political, social, and spiritual revolution, women have often had exceptional ranges of opportunities. However, during the periods of increasing stabilization that typically follow, many of these opportunities tend to shrink or be lost. The “household codes” of some of the later books of the New Testament advocate a subordinate and submissive role for women, and reflect what the pioneering feminist New Testament historian Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza has termed “repatriarchalization.” Thus the author of 1 Timothy, writing in the name of Paul decades after his death, decreed: “Women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent” (1 Tim. 2.9–12). The household codes are embedded in documents written at a time of fading apocalyptic expectations within the church, as it was beginning to develop the institutions and the structure of authority that would facilitate its stability and self-perpetuation. Although the church would view itself as “outside” its Roman environment, at the same time it had set out to evangelize this same Roman world. Respectability could serve its goals.
In the Roman culture, “honor” and “shame” could be acquired on the basis of the behavior of the females in the household. The wellrun household was both a microcosm of and the foundation of the wellrun state. The images of the “ideal” woman in the household codes, in later rabbinic documents, and in the works of Roman orators, elegists, and historians are strikingly similar. They can be summed up in the epitaph of a Roman housewife of the first century BCE: “Here lies Amynome, wife of Marcus, best and most beautiful, worker in wool, pious, chaste, thrifty, faithful, a stayer-at-home” (Inscriptiones Latinae selectae 8402). But the image of Amynome must be balanced against sources that depict women participating in a broad range of occupations and activities outside the home, including serving as priestesses and holding offices in religious associations. Upper-class women attended dinner parties and the theater, and as noted above, some participated in the Roman system of benefactions. Thus models both for women’s lea
dership roles and for the subordination of women in the church existed in the larger Roman environment of which the church was part.
During succeeding centuries, debate continued within the church concerning the proper roles for women. In some circles, women taught, prophesied, baptized, and administered the Eucharist, rousing the ire of such Christian authors as Tertullian and Epiphanius. Collections of church rules such as the fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions barred women from priestly activities. Early on, however, women created a place for themselves in communities of female ascetics. The letters of the church father Jerome inform us about an ascetic circle of Roman aristocratic women of the second half of the fourth and the early fifth centuries. These include Marcella, Melania, Paula, and Paula’s daughter Eustochium. Both Melania and Paula established women’s monasteries in Palestine. Paula’s monasteries were located in Bethlehem, near the men’s monastery, which Jerome headed and which was built through Paula’s largesse.
Jerome is well known for his disparaging comments about women despite his close friendships with several female ascetics who lived as virgins or celibates. For Jerome, sexual renunciation had spared them the taint of femaleness, enabling them to acquire holiness. Mary, a second and vastly improved Eve, had brought life and had preserved her virginity; a woman could do no better than to imitate her. In a letter to Eustochium, Jerome also listed some of the practical advantages of the life of the unmarried virgin: no pregnancy, no crying baby, no jealousy, and none of the worries of managing a household. Although Jerome was especially ardent in his advocacy of female virginity, the Byzantine church would accept that the most attainable lot for the majority of women was that of the honorable wife. But contrary to paganism and rabbinic Judaism, Christianity’s highest praise was reserved for the virgin. Women such as Paula and Eustochium anticipate the powerful and pious female ascetics of medieval Europe.
The “Fall of Rome”
Throughout the fourth century CE, the proponents of paganism had warned that the wellbeing of Rome was dependent on the proper maintenance of the old imperial religion. Conversely, such church leaders as Eusebius had seen in the Christianization of the ruling house the effective union between church and state. The glory and power of the latter provided evidence of the triumph of the church. These ideas would be challenged when, in 410, the Visigothic Arian king Alaric and his army sacked Rome. While pagan authors saw in this traumatic event the gods’ punishment for their neglect, Augustine (354–430), bishop of Hippo Regius in North Africa, responded with his magisterial City of God, penned in twenty-two books between 413 and 426. For Augustine, the “universal way” of salvation was through Christ and the Catholic church, the earthly point of access to the eschatological and eternal “city of God.”
In today’s language, City of God is a multidisciplinary work, intertwining, as the Roman historian Averil Cameron has observed, not only theology but also political theory, history, and philosophy to argue that pagan culture and, indeed, the Roman state were fundamentally flawed. Thus for Augustine the sack of Rome did not undermine the belief that God was the agent of human history as it moved toward the final judgment and, for some, life in the Heavenly Jerusalem.
As Augustine lay near death in 430, the “barbarians” stood literally at the gates of his beloved city. Had he lived another year, he would have witnessed the partial destruction of Hippo by the Arian Vandals, who would rule North Africa for roughly the next century. In 476, well before their departure, the paradoxically named Romulus, the last Roman emperor in the west, was deposed by his master of the soldiers, a Visigoth, constituting the date often serving to mark the “Pall” of the Roman Empire. But the previous century had already provided ample evidence that, in the west at least, the empire was splitting at some of its seams. At the same time, the “barbarian” kingdoms that evolved in the fifth and sixth centuries, some of which shaped the map of medieval Europe, displayed much continuity with their Roman and Christian pasts. The Latin language, the Christian religion, and the Late Antique culture of the eastern elites were adopted and transmitted by the “barbarian” elites, resulting in a kind of “romanization.”
In the east, although Justinian and his successors understood themselves to be Romans, modern historians typically refer to them as Byzantines. Historians differ in their date for the beginning of the Byzantine era. Some date it to the reign of Justinian, others to 330 when Constantine dedicated his new capital at Constantinople, the former Byzantium. The end of the Byzantine empire is usually dated at 1453, when, under Mehmet the Conqueror, the Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople.
Justinian’s lust for power and glory in both secular and sacred spheres was reflected not only in his territorial ambitions but also in his building projects. They included the rebuilding of the magnificent Hagia Sophia church in Constantinople, whose extraordinary interior prompted Byzantine clerical sources to observe that it embraced the divine cosmos, enabling worshipers through their senses to contemplate and celebrate God. At its dedication in 537, Justinian is said to have uttered, “Solomon, I have surpassed you.”
Its enduring grandeur notwithstanding, the circumstances in which Justinian rebuilt Hagia Sophia are reminders of the hardships and tensions of urban life in the Late Antique empire. Justinian began his building project in the aftermath of the Nika riot of 532, in which the older church had been destroyed by fire. The revolt had left many thousands dead and much of Constantinople in ruins. Anger at Justinian’s officials probably fueled the riot. Indeed, exorbitant taxes, government mismanagement, occasional interruptions in the food supply, and mass poverty contributed to the unrest, which exploded at times in devastating riots in the cities of the empire. Of course, the fate of the city-dwellers was inextricably linked to the countryside. Rural unrest, whether the outcome of natural disasters or political and economic strife, exacerbated by the rural populace’s disproportionate tax burden, could affect food production and transportation with devastating consequences for civic life. Disease was also a ubiquitous specter haunting the cities. Only six years after the dedication of Hagia Sophia, as much as one-third of Constantinople’s population may have died in an epidemic of bubonic plague.
The Church in Late Antiquity
The fourth to sixth centuries CE witnessed the church’s adaptation to empire, as well as its increasing institutionalization and associated efforts at doctrinal clarification. Begun centuries earlier, the process of scriptural canonization, which would yield a fixed and authoritative listing of the books of the New Testament, reached a milestone in the fourth century. In a festal letter written in 367, Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria listed all of the twenty-seven books of today’s New Testament. By the early fifth century, his canon had been largely accepted in both the east and the west.
The process of canonization cannot be reconstructed with certainty. In the second and third centuries many Christian writings were regarded as authoritative, but not all of them ended up in the New Testament canon or even exist today. The degree to which a text was regarded as authoritative often varied both regionally and among different factions and figures in the church. Indeed, the second century was an era in which many gospels were composed, containing traditions about and sayings of Jesus not found in the canonical Gospels. By the close of the century, the four canonical Gospels and the letters of Paul had already acquired a widespread authoritative status. But the Epistle of Barnabas, 1 Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Apocalypse of Peter are examples of texts that were widely known and viewed as authoritative by many, and yet did not achieve canonical status. Many historians hold that the process of canonization was in part a response to what key figures in the early church regarded as threats, including in the second and third centuries Gnosticism, Marcionism, and Montanism. The opinions of, and rivalries among, various sees and prominent clerical figures also played a role, both shaping and reflecting the evolving regional consensus concerning a writing. Moreover, as New Testament scholar Harry Gamble has observed, c
anonicity demanded that a writing be considered apostolic, catholic—of relevance to the universal church, orthodox, and in wide usage. Significantly, only in the fourth century, when the canon emerged, did the technology of codex production make possible the manufacture as one book of a collection as large as the New Testament.
The fourth and fifth centuries witnessed also the growing power and authority of the bishop of Rome, even as, during the fifth century, Roman imperial power was in decline. To be sure, the title pope (Latin papa) had been appropriated not only by the bishop of Rome but also by the bishops of other major cities. However, from the time of the papacy of Damasus (366–84), the Roman bishops had argued increasingly forcefully and explicitly that they were, as the inheritors of the authority of the apostle Peter, the rightful leaders of the church. Strong and able fifth- and sixth-century popes such as Leo I (440–61) and Gregory the Great (590–604) contributed to the growing power, especially in the west, of the Roman papacy, an office that would facilitate greater church unity in the west and add to the growing tensions between eastern and western Christendom.
The Oxford History of the Biblical World Page 74