Those Virtuous Rebel Women
Leading Women, Pt 3: Striking back at the empire through...virginity?
In our third of three posts exploring the participation of women in the early church, we turn to the class of virgins. I hope the internet filters don’t target me, because we are talking less about abstinence and more about remaining single—two statuses that were equivalent in Roman culture. Young unmarried women had better be abstinent, or they no longer had honor. What part did Christian virgins, women dedicated to remaining unmarried, play in the early church? Let’s get to it.
Critical to understanding the role of women in the early church is modesty, one of the great virtues in Roman society. How did a modest Roman woman, specifically, behave? It depended upon her social status—marital, economic, class, and civic—as well as religion. A modest woman lived honorably and industriously, using her resources the best she could for the welfare of those in her home and community. The possible applications for living modestly were numerous.
Roman Expectations for Women
Marriage was the ultimate class status for women. Early in the first century CE, Augustus promoted legal marriage among the upper class as a means of perpetuating wealth and the health of the empire. Because Rome valued the production and raising of the next generation of wealthy citizens, private relationships in the home became public responsibilities. The personal virtues of modesty, piety, and industry in the home became a civic duty. Modesty for Romans meant pursuing self-control both privately and communally, which resulted in increasing honor for oneself or one’s family. Women were afforded the opportunity to gain honor and social clout just by diligently doing their best at home.
So how might a Christian convert respond to cultural norms? Many believers did not want to perpetuate the Roman empire by producing more children for the army to conscript and wealth to further its prosperity. How could a young woman, for instance, rebel against the empire in favor of God’s kingdom?
Virginity—refuse to marry and bear children for the emperor.
Poverty—give the family wealth to the poor, rather than to the empire’s economy.
Martyrdom—Demonstrate personal agency in offering your life for Christ rather than to Rome.
Virtuous Rebels
Perpetua
A young, wealthy Roman in Carthage, Perpetua was married with a new baby. As an upper-class woman, she was pursuing the Roman ideal: “. . . nobly born reared in a liberal manner, wedded honorably; having a father and mother and two brothers, one of them a catechumen likewise, and a son, a child at the breast.”
But Perpetua became a Christian and was sentenced to the arena. No mention is made of her husband, leading scholars to believe he had already died or abandoned her. In the weeks before her date with the beasts, she displayed modesty through courage, a virtue typically attributed to men. Even Perpetua’s duty toward her father, reflected in his numerous pleas for her to return home and care for him and her son, did not shake her conviction and determination to fulfill her calling. She submitted to Christ above any other authority in her life, becoming an inspiration for future generations of women disciples determined to thwart their society’s expectations in favor of devoting themselves to Christ.
Agnes of Rome
Agnes (300s) lived as a virgin and is one of the most celebrated Roman martyrs.
At twelve or thirteen years old, she refused marriage, stating that she could have no spouse but Jesus Christ. Her suitors revealed her Christianity, then exposed her to a brothel—a deplorable move designed to dishonor her morally or violate her physically. Awed by her purity and presence, all but one of the Roman youths left her untouched; in his attempt to violate her, the sole attacker was miraculously struck blind, whereupon Agnes healed him with prayer. Later, after refusing to renounce her faith, she was murdered during the Diocletian persecution and was buried beside the Via Nomentana.
Thecla
When Thecla became entranced by the teaching of the apostle Paul and determined to follow Christ, she refused to obey her mother or marry her fiancé. Her new faith, facilitated through Paul’s teaching on the resurrection of the dead, steered her toward virginity. In determining to remain a virgin because of her utter devotion to Christ, Thecla subverted the social norms in which virtuous daughters obeyed parents, got married, and had children.
The Acts of Paul and Thecla casts Paul as “an apostolic homewrecker,”1 wooing young virgins away from their future lives of marriage and motherhood. By valuing the modest choice to remain single and devoted to Christ, the church raised the question: Must every woman of means marry and raise a family just because society encouraged it? Could Christian women aspire to an opposing lifestyle—as virgins exhibiting the virtue of modesty through their sexual self-restraint? Thecla’s story gave future generations of Christian women inspiration that, yes, pursuing the ascetic life was a worthy, virtuous endeavor. As a literary figure, Thecla exemplified to young Christian women the kind of disciple they could aspire to become.
Cecilia of Rome
From a noble Roman family, Cecilia came to faith early and vowed her virginity to God while still a young girl (in the early 300s). Though she was married against her will to Valerian, then a pagan, her witness was influential in his conversion (and that of his brother). Valerian and his brother became bone collectors, secretly gathering the bodies of martyrs to give them honorable burials, but they were captured and martyred. Cecilia distributed her possessions to the poor, which enraged the Roman prefect who had been oppressing her. She was ordered to be burned, and when the flames did not harm her, she was beheaded.
Female Church Leaders
Christian men and women enjoyed serving and influencing the church, often through hosting church gatherings in their homes. Because house church gatherings were not restricted to members of the immediate household, they were not actually private. So when we see mention of “Chloe’s people” (1 Corinthians 1:11) or the church that meets in Prisca and Aquilla’s home (Romans 16:4–5), or Euodia and Syntyche “women who have contended for the gospel at [Paul’s] side” along with the rest of his coworkers (Philippians 4:2–3), we know their culture allowed for them to lead those communities.
So, as virgins came to be celebrated in the young church, some (those who avoided martyrdom) withdrew from society to gather like-minded women around them. These monasteries mimicked the male-centered ones that became popular in the late Patristic—early Medieval periods. They emphasized asceticism, which included vows of poverty and chastity. Christ alone was to be their focus.
Macrina the Younger
Macrina, sister to Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa, two of the three Cappadocian Fathers (c. 327–380), earned the admiration of her brothers for the way she tutored them in the faith when they were young. She devoted herself to the celibate life, serving her parents until their old age, then initiating and leading monastic communities for women and “double houses” for both women and men. We know of her influence on Basil and Gregory from their own writings which sang her praises.
Hilda of Whitby
In the 600s, Hilda was born into English nobility and converted as a child along with her great-uncle King Edwin. According to Bede, she lived a secular life until the age of 33, when she became a nun. Within fifteen years she had established the double monastery at Whitby, on the northern English east coast.
Double monasteries led by abbesses were common in the fifth to seventh centuries. At some, there was a strict separation between men and women, but there is no evidence for this at Whitby. Hilda, for instance, seems to have had regular contact with visiting clerics and the religious elite.
Her monastic regime required strict observance of ‘justice piety, chastity’ and ‘particularly of peace and charity’. In her monastery, ‘no one there was rich, and none poor, for they had all things common’.
No Husband But Christ
Through the centuries, Christian women often used their social status to the greatest effect allowed in service to the church. If married, they performed good deeds and raised their children in the faith. If wealthy, they opened their homes to house churches and gave to the poor. Many devoted their lives to celibacy and poverty, giving their futures to Christ rather than to the empire. If educated, they taught others and led them into lives of service and worship.
Over the centuries, virgins as a class within the church morphed into what we know today as monastic orders such as the Sisters of Saint Joseph, under whose tutelage I studied at St. Joseph’s Academy in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Nuns, or sisters, continue to pledge their lives to God’s service apart from having a natural family of their own. They will be the first to admonish others that celibate and separate living is but one way to serve the Lord. Marriage and motherhood, professional work, volunteer and missionary service, and any other way in which we use our time, talent, and treasure for God are all valid callings in his kingdom.
This clever wording comes from Andrew Jacobs in his chapter in A Feminist Companion to the New Testament Apocrypha.
I love how you’re highlighting all these women of the Christian past, Kelley!