Women of Early Christianity

by Alfred Brittain; Mitchell Carroll

Though this is a work of collaboration, Mr. Brittain is solely responsible for the part of the book treating of the women of the Western Roman Empire, and Mr. Carroll is solely responsible for that discussing the women of the Eastern Roman and Byzantine Empires. Differences of personal characteristics, based upon dissimilarity of national temperament, reveal themselves in these women of Rome and Constantinople, but the Christian principle, through its transforming and elevating influence on the lives of pagan women, gives unity to the volume, and presents a type of womanhood far superior to any that had up to this time been produced by the Orient or early Greece or ancient Rome.

Alfred Brittain,
Mitchell Carroll.

PART FIRST

WOMEN OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE

I

THE WOMEN OF THE GOSPEL NARRATIVE

The study of the early Christian women takes up a phase of the history of woman which is peculiar to itself. It is, in a sense and to a degree, out of historical sequence. It deals with a subject in which ideas and spiritual forces, rather than the effect of racial development, are brought into view. It presents difficulties all its own, for the reason that not only historical facts about which there can be no contention must be mentioned, but also theories of a more or less controversial nature. We shall endeavor, however, as far as is possible, to confine ourselves to the recapitulation of well-authenticated historical developments and to a dispassionate portrayal of those feminine characters who participated in and were influenced by the new doctrines of early Christianity.

In writing of the women who were the contemporaries and the acquaintances of the Founder of Christianity the difficulty is very greatly enhanced by the fact that everything related to the subject is not only regarded as sacred, but is also enshrined in preconceptions which are held by the majority of people with jealous partiality. Our source of information is almost exclusively the Bible; and to deal with Scriptural facts with the same impartiality with which one deals with the narrative of common history is well-nigh impossible. There are few persons who are exempt from a prejudicial leaning, either in favor of the supernatural importance of every Scriptural detail or in opposition to those claims which are commonly based upon the Gospel history. We hear of the Bible being studied merely as literature, a method most highly advantageous to a fair understanding of its meaning and purport, but possible only to some imaginary, educated person, unacquainted with the Christian religion and totally unequipped with theological conceptions. That which is true of the Bible as literature is also applicable to the Scripture considered as history.