[MR] Women and the Early Church

[Rowanwald Central]

    From Professor Giorgio Otranto in his "Note sul sacerdozio femminile
nell'antichita in margine a una testimonianze di Gelasio I: in "Vetera
Christianorum" 19 (1982), 342-60 :


The chief document brought forth by Otranto is an Epistle 14: 26 of Pope
Gelasius, dated March 11, 494. The essential part as translated by Rossi (p.
81) is this: "Nevertheless we have heard to our annoyance that divine
affairs have come to such a low state that women are encouraged to officiate
at the sacred altars, and to take part in all matters imputed to the offices
of the male sex, to which they do not belong."

and...
Otranto adds (p. 85) that we have evidence from St. Irenaeus of heretical
Gnostic women priests and also of some in other erroneous sects, as shown by
Firmilian of Caesarea and St. Epiphanius of Salamis. But they are called
heretical sects by Irenaeus and Firmilian.


   Given that our history of the early church is written by members, usually
clerical, who had a firm grasp of "what was correct"for their era and
reflected that knowledge in their work, this subject comes down to "what do
I want to believe?" It is an accepted problem for historians that accounts
of saints lives were changed (or interpreted) to best align with the current
practises of the church at the time that the copyist was living, frequently
having stories added at later times to enhance the sanctity of the saint.
Thus, stories of St. Briget of Kildare being ordained priest and bishop are
glossed, ingored, or in the case of one Irish historian, excused by the
addition to the tale that "St. Patrick was tired after a day of ordinations
and accidently used the formula for ordaining a priest when he was
consecrating Briget as Abbess (Abbots held bishoprical rights in many areas
of Britain during the early developement of Christianity). When queried
about this, he realized his mistake, but shrugged and said that so great a
soul was already beloved of God and would handle it wisely" - this is a
paraphrase, of course, of the tale, which I can't find in a quick search -
but the pertinent part of this is that the monk/historian did not leave out
the designation "priest and bishop", but instead invented a story to explain
it and make the "exception" unremarkable.
   Any expression of Christianity not sanctioned by the Pope of Rome was
considered heretical and in some cases, "heathen" - just reading the history
of missionaries in Greater Europe can bring that home, as many of the Roman
missionaries were reported as "ministering to the heathens" which included
the Arian (and a few other more obscure sects) Christians along with the
pagan tribes. Further muddying the trail is the reverence and adoption of
the views of St. Augustine, who rabidly decride women as creatures of evil.
That being the case, early accounts of women priests cannot be totally
dismissed (and somewhere I just read a paper on the writings of Sts. Paul
and Peter, which have phrases in them which in translation read "deaconess"
rather than "holy women", along with listing some of these womens first in
the "order of precedence" in their churches, which are now being reexamined
in light of the possiblity that they did, indeed, acknowledge women helping
to celebrate the Eucharist during the time of the Apostles, such practise
later being deemed heretical and therefore the translations "adjusted". For
an example of such practise closer to our time, I commend the accounts of
the translation of the St. James Bible to you).

   I'm not actually going to get involved beyond this one post in this
debate. It is a heavily emotional one for many people, and the evidence, or
lack of it, is already a subject of extreme polarity amoung religious
scholars. But I could not let the blanket dismissal of scholarly evidence,
thin as it is, of canonical ordination of women go by unchallenged. Please
also note that I am writing this at speed and off the top of my head after a
rapid shifting through of my source material and excuse the glosses. There
are better arguements than the ones I've brought forward available to the
serious scholar. I just don't have the time right now to dig them out - I'm
scheduled to go to a school in one hour and help a bunch of giggling school
kids and their parents create their first sets of garb from scratch, while
also couching a teacher through "how to cook a feast for 100" and a few
parents through "this is a sewing machine, it won't bite. At least, not
hard". Ah, demos! Such fun...


Rosine