Martyr, Witches, Mystics and Rebels: The Role of Women in the Church

Thursday, August 24th, 2023

The story of women’s participation in the Christian church in the two millennia since the resurrection of Jesus Christ has been one of ambivalence.

Scholars have written widely about the role women have played in establishing the early church but who were silenced before the end of the first century of the Common era.

Through the ages this ambivalence towards women has spread to the laity in general until the 1960s when Pope John XXIII instituted the second Vatican Council.

Here the call for laity to have an expanded role was heard throughout as the pope asked that the windows of the church be thrown open to refresh the stale air and bring awareness of what was happening in the world outside in a process called “Aggiornamento”.

This article aims to look at some of the forces against women’s participation in the church through two millennia.

It will touch briefly on the early church and some women leaders following the early period before scooting forward to the mid-20th century and the present moment.

An important consideration in any historical account is in what is not included in official records.

The Gospel of John and the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, are included in the Canon of the Roman Catholic Church, as are the second part of Luke: the Acts of the Apostles, and the letters of Paul, which give an earlier account of the life of Jesus than other writings from the first century.

However, non-canonical writings include The Gospel of Mary of Magdala, The Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip, all of which show Mary in the role of leader.

Mary’s epithet, “apostle to the apostles”, was inspired by the account of her meeting Jesus after his resurrection and Jesus instructing her to, “Go … to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God'” (John 20:17).

Through her witness with Mary, the mother of Jesus and other women at the foot of the cross, Mary had come to be regarded as a leader in the community.

The Gospel of Thomas particularly refers to the reactions of the other apostles who looked to Mary as their leader.

In fact, scholars believe that without the witness of the women at the foot of the cross, the news of the resurrection would not have been shared.

The only other person there was a Roman centurion who was unlikely to have dared to impart such heretical information.

The end of Paul’s letter to the Romans lists women without whom Paul could not have continued his ministry.

These women, Phoebe, Prisca (with her husband Aquila), Mary, Tryphena and Tryphosa, Persis, and Junia, (Lydia could also be included here) were instrumental in the church of Acts, some opening their homes as house churches at a time when the followers of Jesus Christ were forced underground by the Roman occupation.

It is likely they were women of means, like Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward, Chuza, and Susanna “who provided for them out of their own resources” (Luke 8:3; see also Mark 15:40).

We know that Lydia was a businesswoman of some means because she managed a lucrative business in dyeing and selling purple cloth – highly prized for ceremonial use in the society of the time.

It is worth rereading Acts to reflect on the role of these powerful women at the forefront of the foundation of house churches in such towns as Ephesus and Corinth.

Yet, by the end of the first century a male-led movement in the church had succeeded in silencing these women and their successors. It is important to see this silencing of women in the church in the context of the time.

In Graeco-Roman society, women were confined to their homes while the men discussed politics in the public spaces, often in the public toilets where they would sit for hours with others arguing points of law or politics.

Women in Church

In the second thousand years there was a tussle to wrest control of the church from the laity.

The idea of married clergy was universally accepted but, in the middle of the opening century, a war against clerical marriage started with Leo IX, intensified under Gregory VII and reached a canonical climax at the second Lateran Council in 1139.

To institute clerical celibacy, the church had to get rid of the wives of its priests.

This debate which raged for more than a century, was primarily about the clergy, but also about the role of women in Christianity and the debate extended to explore the very nature of women (Malone vol II:21).

One difficulty was that women were presented through the eyes of the clergy who had been schooled in female suspicion.

The struggles for clerical celibacy were exacerbated by a new ecclesiastical marriage teaching that insisted on mutual consent. But this was conspicuously ignored in many marriage arrangements being made when the bride was as young as four years of age. She was seen as an available and hopefully fertile womb (Malone II:25).

There were women through the ages who worked against this anti- woman movement. These include Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich and St Teresa of Avila.

Malone says Hildegard “would have to be considered among the geniuses of any age” (III:301) and Julian saw God as “only, always and everywhere Love, and one could never conclude from her writings … the existence of a sinful ancestor called Eve…” (III:300).

Catherine of Siena went around Europe trying to convince church and political leaders that their goal should be “the public exercise of compassion”.

Hundreds of women leaders of religious orders, including the Beguines and the Ursulines, worked hard to convince church leaders that their mission should be in the service of the poor and that this was not a danger to humanity but an expression of gospel living (Malone III:301).

Barely out of her teens, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for leading the French army to victory against an English attempt to conquer France during the Hundred Years’ War.

She was believed to have been hearing voices. She died in 1431 and was canonised 500 years later in 1920.

Feminist historian Anne Llewellyn Barstow’s analysis of the witch craze of the Renaissance, found that some 200,000 witches were burned to death between 1560 and 1760 – a mass murder of women by the Christian churches (Catholics and Protestants).

These figures do not include lynchings, those who died under torture, or those simply murdered in prison.

Malone notes that most were “the poorest of the poor, condemned to live as outcasts, surviving as best they could”.

This highlights the quality of Christian life in the period of the most profound theological debate and conciliar reform” (32-33). Barstow calls it “a burst of misogyny without parallel in Western history” (Malone III 31-32).

The judges, torturers and executioners were men, “and even more ambiguously, those who initiated the process and prayed over the final moments were ordained men.”

She also questions the effect on villagers and townspeople of watching daily executions.

I have not discussed the sea change wrought by the Council of Trent (1545 – 1563) which reinforced the cloister for religious women from the Jewish tradition and the strict obedience of wives to their husbands (this requirement for wifely obedience is also seen in Islam. Vatican II (1962-65) will have to wait for another article.

I will stress though the impact on women of Vatican II’s promotion of ecumenism as they met and mixed with women leaders of other faiths.

Cecily McNeill is a pastoral mentor in the Archdiocese of Wellington. She is a former editor of the Archdiocese’s Wel-Com publication.
Most of his material is inspired by Mary T Malone: Women & Christianity Volumes I, II (2001) and III (2003), Orbis.