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IMPORTANT CHRISTIAN WOMEN
Thecla
“One of the most famous woman apostles was Thecla, a virgin-martyr converted by Paul. She cut her hair, donned men's clothing, and took up the duties of a missionary apostle. Threatened with rape, prostitution, and twice put in the ring as a martyr, she persevered in her faith and her chastity. Her lively and somewhat fabulous story is recorded in the second century Acts of Thecla. From very early, an order of women who were widows served formal roles of ministry in some churches (I Timothy 5:9-10). The most numerous clear cases of women's leadership, however, are offered by prophets: Mary Magdalene, the Corinthian women, Philip's daughters, Ammia of Philadelphia, Philumene, the visionary martyr Perpetua, Maximilla, Priscilla (Prisca), and Quintilla. There were many others whose names are lost to us. [Source: Karen L. King, Professor of New Testament Studies and the History of Ancient Christianity at Harvard University Divinity School, Frontline, PBS, April 1998 ]
“The African church father Tertullian, for example, describes an unnamed woman prophet in his congregation who not only had ecstatic visions during church services, but who also served as a counselor and healer (On the Soul 9.4). A remarkable collection of oracles from another unnamed woman prophet was discovered in Egypt in 1945. She speaks in the first person as the feminine voice of God: Thunder, Perfect Mind. The prophets Prisca and Quintilla inspired a Christian movement in second century Asia Minor (called the New Prophecy or Montanism) that spread around the Mediterranean and lasted for at least four centuries. Their oracles were collected and published, including the account of a vision in which Christ appeared to the prophet in the form of a woman and "put wisdom" in her (Epiphanius, Panarion 49.1). Montanist Christians ordained women as presbyters and bishops, and women held the title of prophet. The third century African bishop Cyprian also tells of an ecstatic woman prophet from Asia Minor who celebrated the eucharist and performed baptisms (Epistle 74.10). In the early second century, the Roman governor Pliny tells of two slave women he tortured who were deacons (Letter to Trajan 10.96). Other women were ordained as priests in fifth century Italy and Sicily (Gelasius, Epistle 14.26).
“Women were also prominent as martyrs and suffered violently from torture and painful execution by wild animals and paid gladiators. In fact, the earliest writing definitely by a woman is the prison diary of Perpetua, a relatively wealthy matron and nursing mother who was put to death in Carthage at the beginning of the third century on the charge of being a Christian. In it, she records her testimony before the local Roman ruler and her defiance of her father's pleas that she recant. She tells of the support and fellowship among the confessors in prison, including other women. But above all, she records her prophetic visions. Through them, she was not merely reconciled passively to her fate, but claimed the power to define the meaning of her own death. In a situation where Romans sought to use their violence against her body as a witness to their power and justice, and where the Christian editor of her story sought to turn her death into a witness to the truth of Christianity, her own writing lets us see the human being caught up in these political struggles. She actively relinquishes her female roles as mother, daughter, and sister in favor of defining her identity solely in spiritual terms. However horrifying or heroic her behavior may seem, her brief diary offers an intimate look at one early Christian woman's spiritual journey.
Virgin Mary, See Separate Article and Birth of Jesus; Mary Magdalene, See Separate Article
Websites and Resources: Saints and Their Lives Today's Saints on the Calendar catholicsaints.info ; Saints' Books Library saintsbooks.net ; Saints and Their Legends: A Selection of Saints libmma.contentdm ; Saints engravings. Old Masters from the De Verda collection colecciondeverda.blogspot.com ; Lives of the Saints - Orthodox Church in America oca.org/saints/lives ; Lives of the Saints: Catholic.org catholicism.org ; Early Christianity: PBS Frontline, From Jesus to Christ, The First Christians pbs.org ; Elaine Pagels website elaine-pagels.com ; Sacred Texts website sacred-texts.com ; Gnostic Society Library gnosis.org ; Guide to Early Church Documents iclnet.org; Early Christian Writing earlychristianwritings.com ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Christian Origins sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC on Christianity bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity ; Candida Moss at the Daily Beast Daily Beast Christian Classics Ethereal Library www.ccel.org;
Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene at the Crucifixion
Mary Magdalene stands out as the one individual who loved Jesus deeply while he was alive, stood with him to the end and was embarrassed to express her love for him. She became one of Jesus's most devout followers after hearing him speak. Some think Mary Magdalene may have been a close adviser of Jesus with perhaps the same status as an apostle. The word maudlin is derived from her reputation as teary-eyed penitent. He name comes from the village of Magdala on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee.
James Carroll wrote in Smithsonian magazine, “The whole history of Western civilization is epitomized in the cult of Mary Magdalene. For many centuries the most obsessively revered of saints, this woman became the embodiment of Christian devotion, which was defined as repentance. Yet she was only elusively identified in Scripture,and has thus served as a scrim on to which a succession of fantasies has been projected. In one age after another her image was reinvented, from prostitute to sibyl to mystic to celibate nun to passive helpmeet to feminine icon to matriarch of divinity's secret dynasty...Christians may worship the Blessed Virgin, but it is Magdalene with whom they identify."
Mary Magdalene is often described as a prostitute although there is mention that was her trade in the Bible. All it says is that she was a person of means, and a follower of Jesus who was once possessed by seven demons that Jesus cast out. The prostitute label grew out of description of her in the Gospels as having "certain ways about her a little freer than modesty allows."
Book: Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor by Susan Haskins; Mary Magdalene : A Biography (2006) by Bruce Chilton, a professor of religion at Bard College; Mary Magdalene, the First Apostle: the Struggle for Authority by Ann Graham Brock (2003); the Mary Magdalene Tradition: Witness and Counter-Witness in Early Christian Communities by Holly E. Hearon (2003); The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene by Jane Schaberg, a professor at the University of Detroit Mercy.
See Separate Article: MARY MAGDALENE: HER LIFE, SIGNIFICANCE AND RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS europe.factsanddetails.com
Thecla
St. Thecla (Thekla) was born in what's now the Turkish city of Konya at the time of Christ. She was forbidden from listening to St. Paul speak when he came Konya to preach the gospel. Steven V. Roberts wrote in the Washington Post: “Sitting at her open window, she miraculously heard his voice and was instantly converted. After that she broke her engagement and vowed to remain a "bride of Christ." For that she was sentenced to death by fire. But a sudden storm doused the flames. When she spurned the advances of a nobleman in the city of Antioch, she was thrown into a pit with wild beasts, which refused to attack her. Eventually, Paul blessed her decision to live as an ascetic virgin here in the hills of Maaloula, but she faced one more trial: A local peasant vowed to plunder her virtue. She fled his advances, and the mountain opened before her, offering a narrow path of escape.” [Source:Steven V. Roberts, Washington Post, December 20, 2009]
Thecla and the beasts
Elizabeth Clark of Duke University told PBS: “Thecla is a literary character of probably second century Christianity who comes to be thought of as an actual historical character by the fourth century. Thecla appears in a document called The Acts of Paul and Thecla which is one of the many sets of acts that came to be labeled the apocryphal acts.... Thecla's represented as being an aristocratic young woman who hears the teaching of Paul, and upon hearing the message of Paul, which is construed in this text... as a message of sexual renunciation, she gives up her fiancee and wants to go off and follow Paul on his missionary trips. Her family is very much opposed to this. Her mother goes so far as to try to have her daughter burned at the stake to prevent her from carrying out this wish, but after many lively adventures including baptizing herself in a pool of seals, Thecla does manage to become a missionary and lives to a ripe old age preaching and teaching the gospel. So this is one of several stories in the apocryphal acts where women are represented as giving up riches and particularly marriage and sexual activity for the sake of following the teachings of the Apostles.... [Source: Elizabeth Clark, John Carlisle Kilgo Professor of Religion and Director of the Graduate Program in Religion Duke University, Frontline, PBS, April 1998 ]
“I think the moral of the Thecla story is that young women would be better off not marrying in the first place, but if they are already married to try to as soon as possible... to lead lives of abstinence and sexual renunciation, and in that way they will be better fulfilling the will of God. In the Acts of Thecla for example, Paul gives a speech in which he recasts the part of the bible that we call the beatitudes. That's the "blessed are the so and so...." Paul's version of this is all about blessed are the bodies of virgins, ... blessed are the chaste. It's all about sexual chastity. That those are the people who are blessed in this new recasting of the Christian message.
“Did stories like Thecla — the fact that the early church is urging people to abstinence, to effectively be breaking up their families, leaving their fiancees — Does that create tension within the church, or does that create tension with society?
“The fact that some young women and men wanted, on the basis of hearing these injunctions to sexual chastity, to abandon societal life, not to marry, not to have children as their parents probably wanted them to, [is] certainly depicted in early Christian writings as causing a problem. In fact, I think we would analyze this today as a case of adolescent rebellion. That you hear many stories from the fourth and early fifth century, particularly, of aristocratic young women who decide they're not going to be obey their parents' command to marry. At this [time] ... aristocratic girls marry very young, in young teenage years probably, and their refusal to do this, and concordant with that their control of enormous sums of money devolving upon them, was a very great asset to the Christian church, and these women were much celebrated and written about and praised by the male authors of this period....
Martyrdom of Perpetua
Perpetua
Professor Paula Fredriksen told PBS: “One of the most amazing documents historians of early Christianity are privileged to have is the prison diary of a young woman who was martyred in the year 202 or 203 in Carthage, as part of a civic celebration. Her name is Perpetua. And she insisted on being killed. It's an amazing, complicated story. The diary is in kind of a sandwich. The editor introduces the story, then there's the authentic diary of Perpetua, and then there are editorial conclusions, at the end. [Source: Paula Fredriksen, William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of the Appreciation of Scripture, Boston University, Frontline, PBS, April 1998 ]
“Perpetua has brought herself to the attention of the governor. And she is really insisting on being put into the arena. There's an incredibly powerful trial scene where Perpetua's father is pleading with her and, finally, actually trying to beat her. And the Governor has him subdued by his soldiers. And the governor says, "Please, won't you cooperate?" And Perpetua, who's not even a baptized Christian, who's still catechumen, says, "No, I'm a Christian." Now, there's no dragnet out for Christians. Perpetua is visited by other Christians in prison. If the governor were trying to get all the Christians in Carthage, he just could have arrested whoever is going to visit Perpetua. But he doesn't. She's what one historian has called an overachiever in a sense. She's insisting on being martyred as part of her Christian witness. She gives her baby back over to her family, because she's still nursing. And she talks about this. And she's really insisting on being martyred because she says, and we have to believe her, this is the only word we have from her, because in so doing, she will get to God through Jesus....
“The authentic diary ends before Perpetua is led into the arena. What we have concluding the diary is a description by somebody who is presenting a hero tale. The majority of Christians were not volunteering to be martyred. For one thing, there wouldn't have been an audience for these martyr stories. For another thing, we have doctrinally, the evolution of penance as a way to reincorporate Christians who lapse in the face of persecution. So Perpetua is really being preserved by her community as a role model. She marks off the heroic limit against which other Christians can measure themselves. She's led out to the arena. She, with heroic chastity, faces down the animals and gladiators, and finally, after being tormented by several animals, a young gladiator is sent into the arena to dispatch her. And it's just an incredibly moving scene; his hand is trembling so much he can't cut her. And she grabs his hand and guides his sword to her own throat. It's a kind of assisted suicide....
See Separate Article: PERPETUA europe.factsanddetails.com
St. Catherine of Alexandria
St. Catherine Monastery, the world’s oldest monastery, is named after St. Catherine of Alexandria (287-305), an early Christian convert and the daughter of a ruler from Alexandria who was martyred for upbraiding the fourth century Roman Emperor Maxentius s over his persecution of the Christians. St. Catherine was interrogated about her faith by philosophers and gave brilliant answers. After she was tortured on a spiked wheel and beheaded, the story goes, her body was carried by angels to Mt. Catherine. Her hand and skull are enclosed in jeweled reliquaries in the monastery bearing her name.
According to her hagiography, St. Catherine was both a princess and a noted scholar who became a Christian around the age of 14, converted hundreds of people to Christianity and was martyred around the age of eighteen. After her death some monks established an order in her memory. More than 1,100 years after Catherine's martyrdom, Joan of Arc identified her as one of the saints who appeared to and counselled her. [Source: Wikipedia]
The Eastern Orthodox Church venerates Katherine her as a Great Martyr and celebrates her feast day on November 24 or 25, depending on the regional tradition. In Catholicism, Catherine is traditionally revered as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers and she is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on November 25. Her feast was removed from the General Roman Calendar in 1969, but restored in 2002 as an optional memorial.
St. Agnes and St. Catherine of Siena
St. Catherine of Siena St Agnes was martyred at age of 10 or 12 in 304. She is the virgin-martyr of young girls. Saint Agatha, the patron saint of married women and breast-feeding women, had her face and breast removed before she was martyred. St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) was an Italian nun so well known for her piety she was called my "my dear little Babbo" by Pope Gregory XI. She purportedly lived on a handful of herbs a day and spent so much time praying she only slept two hours a night. She bore stigmata wounds of Christ's crucifixion and died at age of 33, supposedly the same age Christ was to the day when he died. St. Catherine of Siena claimed that Jesus gave his foreskin to her as a wedding ring. She said he pledged the union "not with a ring of silver but with a ring of his holy flesh, for when he was circumcised just such a ring was taken from his holy body." She also whipped herself three times a day: once for herself, once for the sins of living people and once for the sins of the dead.
St. Teresa (Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada) is one of the best known Catholic saints. One of 12 children in an aristocratic family, she was born and baptized in 1515 and spent most her life in the walled medieval city of Avila, Spain. She opened her first reformed Carmelite convent in 1562 and founded 16 others in her lifetime. St. Teresa re-emphasized the contemplative nature of religion. She often said "God deliver me from sullen saints!" Although she was known as a mystic who went into ecstatic states she was also her known for her sense of humor and her ability to make friends.
Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc on horseback Joan of Arc (1412-1431) is the most written about woman from the Middle Ages. She was burned at the stake for heresy but before that, while still in her teens, she was instrumental in the defeat the British in the Battle of Orleans, which changed the course of the Hundred Year War between Britain and France and helped establish the modern French state. Based on the number of books written about her (545 in 1999 the Library of Congress collection), Joan of Arc is the world's second most famous woman behind the Virgin Mary.
Joan of Arc was canonized in 1920 by the Vatican, which ironic because she was burned at the stake for witchcraft on the orders of Catholic Chruch. She also did have many traits normally attributed to saints: she wasn't a martyr for her religion as other saints had been; she didn't renounce the world; and she didn't go around performing good deeds and miracles. Joan of Arc is the only Catholic saint who was burned at the stake as a heretic. The file her at the Vatican is closed and no reason has been given for its inaccessibility (the files on other saint are open to review).
Joan of Arc was an illiterate peasant girl named Jehanne or Jeannette or Jeanne D'Arc. She called her self "Shann Day" and Jehanne la Purcell" (Jeanne the Virgin). The name Joan can be traced back to Shakespeare and late medieval writers. Most of what is known about her comes from medieval reports. The Joan of Arc that most people are familiar with is the product of a myth created in the 19th century.
Little is known about Joan of Arc's early life except that she refused to be married off by her father, who had threatened to drown her if she went off to war. Medieval writers described Joan of Arc as the bastard daughter of French nobility. Other pieces of information that have come out over the years were that she was a cook, she was good looking and had large breasts and her brother support her. She said she first hear the voice at age of 13.
Joan of Arc's Military Career Joan and the Battle of Orleans
Joan of Arc and
the siege of Orleans Joan of Arc's military career only lasted about two years. She came out of nowhere, reportedly egged on by "voices" of the saints to lead the French army of the dauphin Charles (and future-king Charles VII) to defeat the English forces occupying much France. In the late 1420s, at the time Joan of Arc emerged, France was losing the Hundred Year War. The English had won most of the battles and were advancing steadily and methodically across France. They captured Paris and marched towards Orléans, which they hoped to use as a base for the conquest of southern France.
The English, and led the infant King Henry VI, England. were firmly entrenched in northern and southwestern France. They were supported by much of the French population including the Duke of Burgundy, who controlled eastern France and Flanders. Charles had been defeated in one battle after another and was largely regarded as a basket case.
In 1429, at the age of 17, Joan of Arc was brought to meet Charles. She promised him that she would end the "seige" of Orleans. Charles sent Joan to Orleans as part f the food convoy, not the army. Orleans as it turns out was not being attacked by the full English army but rather was under threat from a relatively small force: a force of 4,000 English soldiers, aided by 1,500 Burgundians. In October 1428, they, surrounded Orléans, a heavily fortified, well provisioned town protected by 5,400 soldiers. The English refused to let the French surrender to the Burgundians and captured the outer forts and pounded the town with cannonballs. At this juncture Joan arrived on the scene, dressed in armor, and lead an army through an English blockade and brought supplies and reinforcements to Orléans.
Joan of Arc is credited with saving Orleans and turning the tide of the Hundred Year War in favor of the French. But in reality Joan never lead the French armies, she never defeated the English and in fact was involved in a three-way war in which one of her enemies was French (the Burgundians). Joan of Arc convinced the defenders of Orleans to attack a few English outposts. The main English army retreated by why they did so is not clear.
Charles VII and Joan of Arc After Orleans
Joan of Arc coronation
by Charles VII by Ingres After Orléans, Joan of Arc was viewed as a saint by the French and witch by the English. Her military role appears to have been limited. Rather than taking command of the French army she was really more of a mascot. After Joan’s arrival, the previously demoralized French army, apparently inspired by her, won a couple of important battles. They captured an English force in May, 1429 after a long battle at the fortification of Patay, where Joan reportedly fought hard even after she was seriously wounded in the shoulder by an arrow, a story which only added to her reputation as being something more than human.
On May 8, 1429, the English surrendered all their fortifications in central France and retreated to their positions along the French coast. Central France was never again in danger of being conquered by the English.
On July 17, 1429, Charles was crowned the French King Charles VII at the cathedral at Rheims, which only a few weeks before had been held by the English. After being anointed king, on Joan of Arc's urging, Charles VI marched on Paris, which was regarded as pro-English but was in reality more Burgundian. His army was routed. After that Charles rejected Joan of Arc's appeals to "boot out the English" and pursued diplomatic solution.
Charles is credited with laying the foundations for the modern French state. One of his first major moves was to "cruelly” and sensibly”dismissed" Joan of Arc so he could make a deal with the Burgundians. Feeling betrayed Joan of Arc attracted a small group of followers and fought a short-lived guerilla war. On May 29, 1430, Joan of Arc was captured outside Compiègne by the Burgundians. Charles VII refused to pay the ransom for her. The English paid 10,000 pounds for her and turned her over to the Catholic Church, who felt threatened by her and portrayed her as a kind of false prophet.
Trial and Execution of of Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc interrogation Joan of Arc was tried in an austere room by an English-backed court at the Abbey in the port city of Rouen. The trial was fairly lengthy and Joan of Arc defended herself with conviction and intelligence. Under protracted interrogation, she maintained that her visions were real, that God had ordered her to do what she did. Based on the minutes of her trial, Joan comes across a calm, stubborn woman not the deranged fanatic as she is often made out to be. During her trial, when she was asked how she inspired her countrymen, she replied, “What I said was 'Ride these English down'and I did it myself!”
Although the English paid for and approved of the trial, the proceedings were led primarily by conservative forces in the French Catholic church at the University of Paris. Joan was accused of witchcraft partly on the grounds that she dressed in men's clothes (which she probably wore for practical reasons on the battlefield). She reportedly recanted to avoid being burned at the stake but was found dressed as man in her cell. For having "relapsed" she was condemned to death.
Many historians and movie makers believe that her women’s clothes were taken away and men’s clothes were placed in her cell — -giving her the choice of going naked or wearing men's clothes to her trial — -to frame her. Either way she would be charged with being a witch. Historians say that if this story is true, the clothes were mostly likely put there by the French inquisitors. The English had no interest in killing her. They were happy to see her rot in prison.
On May 30, 1431, at the age of 19, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake as a witch in the main square of Rouen. She was largely forgotten for around 400 years and resurrected in the mid-19th century as a patriotic-republic and a heroine of religious conservatives. Today she is has been adopted by the far right pary intent on ridding France of foreigners. The Luc Besson film “The Messenger” (1999) was the 31st film made about Joan of Arc. It was shot in English in the Czech Republic and financed with Hollywood and French money.
St. Therese
St. Therese Thérèse of Lisieux is one of the most beloved saints in the Catholic church and not a very old one. Described by Pope Pius X as the greatest saint of modern times, She was born on January 2, 1873 in Alencon, France, joined the Carmelites at age 15, took her vows at 17 and died seven years later in 1897 of tuberculosis. She was beautified in 1923. In 1997, she was declared a doctor of the Catholic Church by Pope Paul II, only the third woman to be so honored. Mother Teresa is named after her.
Before she died, Therese wrote on account of her life, “The Story of a Soul”, edited by one of her fellow sisters, that became a symbol of people who persevere through daily, minor troubles, Translated into over 50 languages, it was avidly read by singer Edith Piath and writer Jack Kerouac and others.
Sherida Gilley, a professor of theology at Durham University, told the Observer, “Therese stands for the quotidian grind that we all suffer from, and the eventual beatification that can be found in it, so she has a huge number of followers who are not Catholic...Therese is the saint to approach with the daily trials and tribulations we all face. She stands for the holiness of small things.”
The remains of St. Therese are kept in France. A casket containing half of her skeleton went on a tour of France in 1994 and began a world tour in 1997 — the centenary of her death — traveling first to Brazil and Latin America and reaching 24 countries as of 2001, including Russia, France, Ireland and Britain, where the remains sparked scenes of religious frenzy and excitement, giving the Catholic Church some much needed buzz.
More than 1 million people came to view the remains during a 75-day tour of Ireland in 2009. Huge crowds turned out and traffic was brought to a halt when the “Theresemobile,” a Mercedes people-carrier that transports her around each diocese, came through. The last time Ireland experienced anything like that was when the Pope visited in 1979. An organizer of the Therese visit told the Observer, “the visit has succeeded beyond our most optimistic expectations. There is a certain supernatural divine magnetism about it all.”
see India, Mother Teresa
Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Christian Origins sourcebooks.fordham.edu “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File); “ Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions” edited by R.C. Zaehner (Barnes & Noble Books, 1959); King James Version of the Bible, gutenberg.org; New International Version (NIV) of The Bible, biblegateway.com; Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ccel.org , Frontline, PBS, Wikipedia, BBC, National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Live Science, Encyclopedia.com, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, Business Insider, AFP, Library of Congress, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
Last updated March 2024