Later on, in the Acts of the Apostles, we find women mentioned as most efficacious helpers in the work of the infant church. Tabitha, for instance, a “woman full of good works, and almsdeeds” (Acts ix. 36), and Priscilla, the wife of Aquila, a woman who accompanied St. Paul from Corinth to Ephesus, and there took Apollo, an eloquent and fervent man, and “expounded to him the way of the Lord more diligently” (Acts xviii. 26). Again, Lydia, a seller of purple, “one that worshipped God,” offered hospitality to St. Paul, and “constrained” him to dwell in her house (Acts xvi. 14, 15). St. Paul has been quoted and misquoted so often that one almost shrinks from appealing to his arguments and precepts; yet perhaps even here we may find something new to say, something to point out in a new light, something that the controversialists on the subject of Women’s Rights, on both sides, have, apparently at least, overlooked. We will not dwell on such portions of his Epistles as are always in the mouth of those who aim at relegating woman to an exclusively domestic sphere, but, on the contrary, we will point out words of his, honoring woman so highly that no law of modern times has been able to rival such deference, and no claim of strong-minded female associations would dare to lift itself to such importance. In his First Epistle to the Romans, chapter xvi., he says: “And I commend to you Phebe, our sister, who is in the ministry of the church ... that you receive her in the Lord as becometh saints, and that you assist her in whatsoever business she shall have need of you: for she also hath assisted many, and myself also.” Ministry, of course, stands for help, and is used here in its strict and original sense, as when the Gospel says of our Lord, “And angels came and ministered unto him,” and as when we say the ministrations of charity. Some persons, indeed, have affected to see in this text an implied permission for women to act as priests; common sense and the general tone of the Epistles are sufficiently explicit, however, to undeceive all such as do not on this head voluntarily deceive themselves. The same Epistle we have quoted goes on to say: “Salute Prisca [Priscilla] and Aquila [her husband], my helpers in Christ Jesus; who have for my life laid down their own necks; to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles; and the church which is in their house.” Observe how St. Paul speaks of them without distinction of sex as equally helpers, and how he even mentions the woman’s name first. Again he continues: “Salute Mary, who hath labored much among you ... salute Julia, Nereus, and his sister, and Olympias, and all the saints that are with them.” We have no space for recalling the well-known precepts St. Paul gives concerning both the state of marriage and that of virginity; we would only indicate by a passing notice how truly liberal is his teaching, including both states as honorable, commanding neither marriage nor continence, and providing with minute foresight for each circumstance that human mutability can create. And in one of these, the case being the desertion by an unbelieving consort of the Christian yoke-fellow, he distinctly says: “If the unbeliever depart, let him depart; for a brother or sister is not under servitude in such cases; but God hath called us in peace” (1 Cor. vii. 15). The very custom of calling women “sisters,” universal in the early church, is a token of the respect that was paid them, and of the Christian equality which denied them no legitimate share in the spiritual and social life of man. St. Paul has traced out in one word the whole duty of man to woman when he said, “The elder women entreat as mothers, the younger as sisters, in all chastity” (1 Tim. v. 2). In the First Epistle to the Philippians, he says: “Help those women who have labored with me in the Gospel, ... and whose names are in the book of life.” St. John dedicated a whole Epistle, or letter, to the “Lady Elect and her children, whom I love in the truth, and not I only, but also all they that have known the truth.... And now I beseech thee, lady, not as writing a new commandment, but that which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another.... Having more things to write to you, I would not by paper and ink, for I hope that I shall be with you, and speak face to face, that your joy may be full.” St. Peter, in his First Epistle, does not disdain to give counsel as to the outward dress of women, thus dignifying the subject through the symbolism he wishes it to express. And let not any one of our own times call these counsels either frivolous or interfering, for has not every sect that arose as a self-appointed reformer begun by the restraint on female apparel, typical of moral restraint over our passions and inclinations? Even now, in a mistaken and distorted interpretation of the significance of dress, have not the ultra-advocates of Woman’s Rights laid their “reforming” hands upon the current fashions?
When St. Peter came to Rome, the first house that received him was that of Pudens, a Roman senator, whose wife Priscilla, and whose daughters Pudentiana and Praxedes, became his first converts and his most powerful co-laborers. The two virgins, having become the heiresses of their parents and brothers, sold their vast estates, and gave the price to the suffering and persecuted among their brethren; and, though we read of hundreds of such cases among the women of the early church, we seldom find it so with the men, except in such families where the influence of some female relative resulted in this heroic renunciation. The palace of Pudentiana and Praxedes was converted into a church which for centuries has borne their name, and in which is shown as well the temporary receptacle and hiding-place, says time-honored tradition, of the bodies of the martyrs, carefully collected by these brave women. This church is the oldest in Rome, says a reliable authority, the Rev. Joachim Ventura, whom we shall often have reason to quote in these pages, and it is also the first among those giving titular rank to the order of cardinals.
Among the apostolic women whose names stand beside those of the great saints to whom the church owes her wide sway, St. Thecla has ever been foremost; St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Chrysostom, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Isidore of Pelusium, St. Epiphanius, and St. Methodius, bishops and fathers of the church, have vied with one another in extolling her constancy and her greatness. The last mentioned of these tells us, in his book the Banquet of Virgins, that she was well versed in secular philosophy, and in the various branches of polite literature; he also exceedingly commends her eloquence, and the ease, strength, sweetness, and modesty of her discourse (Butler’s Lives of the Saints). Of the persecution she suffered at the hands of the young pagan to whom she had, before her conversion, been betrothed, we will not speak, neither will we touch upon her miraculous deliverance from the wild beasts to whom she had been thrown, further than to point out, however, that woman has shown more than masculine courage long before modern agitators began to accuse her of degeneracy and tameness. But the secret lay then, as it does now, in the teaching of a church that sees in her children only hierarchies of souls, and that looks upon the body as a mere form, determining respective duties, it is true, but certainly not conferring de jure on the possessors of such forms any superiority or difference of intellectual or moral capacity. A proof of this lies open to all in the fact that women’s names as well as men’s are incorporated in the text of the Mass, and are repeated every day with as much honor, before the altar of God. After the “Commemoration of the Dead,” and in the prayer beginning, “Nobis quoque peccatoribus,” the names of Felicitas, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia, are coupled with those of the apostles and martyrs John, Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, Ignatius, Alexander, Marcellinus, and Peter, that is, with some of the greatest saints whom even Protestants consent to admire. The church, too, shows her appreciation of the sex and its capabilities by the express words, often used in her liturgy, “devoto femineo sexu,” which, whether translated as usual, the “devout female sex,” or the “devoted,” seems equally honorable to woman and her special characteristics. Virgins and widows are mentioned by name in the prayers used in public on Good Friday, and immediately before them are named the seven orders of the priesthood. The mere fact of so many churches being dedicated to God under the special invocation of some female saint, often one whose history has become obscure and traditional from very remoteness, serves to illustrate the high respect of the Catholic Church for womanhood, and the perfect equality with which she looks upon both her sons and her daughters. The cathedral of Milan, one of the most renowned shrines in the world, is under the patronage of the virgin of whom we have just spoken, the proto-martyr, St. Thecla. The fathers of the church, following the example of St. Paul, call the help of faithful Christian women a ministry, and Ventura tells us that Origen, St. Chrysostom, and Haymon speak of “women having through their good offices deserved to attain to the glorious title of apostles, and having supplemented the work of the evangelists and apostles by their preaching in private houses, especially to persons of their own sex” (Ventura, La Donna Cattolica, vol. i. p. 279). It is related in the Breviarium Romanum, at the part appointed to be read on the 19th of May, that St. Pudentiana once presented ninety persons to St. Pius, Pope, to be baptized, all of them being perfectly instructed in the faith through her teaching alone. St. Martina, who was a deaconess (which answers to religious in the later church), converted and instructed many persons, principally women. The Breviarium honors her as the protectress of Rome. She has also a hymn specially set apart for her office in the Breviarium, and the church dedicated to her in Rome is the richest and most magnificent of those under the patronage of the martyrs. The house of Lucina, a noble Roman matron, was converted into a church, afterwards dedicated to the holy Pope Marcellus. Another church, now called San Lorenzo in Lucina, stands over the tomb which Lucina prepared for that saint. Priscilla, also a Roman lady of high lineage, the wife of the before-mentioned senator Pudens, gave her fortune and her land for a cemetery, to which her name was justly appended. Natalia, the wife of the martyr Adrian, after publicly exhorting her husband to be steadfast in the faith, boldly put on man’s attire to elude the order recently given that no Christian woman should be allowed to visit the prisoners. The Breviarium tells us that St. Justina, upon whom a famous magician named Cyprian had tried all manner of unhallowed arts, so far prevailed over him that she brought him to know the true God, and to abandon his idols and sorceries. But examples such as these of the intellectual influence of women upon their friends, and even upon strangers and enemies, would multiply under our hands into a volume, if we could stop to collect them all.
Martyrdom was, in the early ages, the almost inevitable end of zealous faith and active evangelization. St. Cecilia ranks among the most prominent of those who, strong with a supernatural strength, gladly gave up life, youth, health, and beauty, for the sake of principle. Let us put it in that form, for even now there are many who respect in the abstract a single-minded devotion to principle. This devotion would be essentially called manliness in our day; yet the women of the early church—some mere children in years, some threatened with what would make a woman waver in her determination far more than mere physical torture could, the loss of her honor, some again with natural diseases or weakness upon them—showed a superabundant amount of this very manliness. Cecilia has long been the patroness of music, and we read in her Acts that she employed both vocal and instrumental music in the service of the Most High, fitly using the most beautiful of arts to glorify Supreme Beauty. Her love for the Holy Scriptures was such that she often wore them on her bosom in the folds of her robe, and that long before the Canon of Scripture had been fixed, and before the Holy Book could have the world-wide reputation which the church has now bestowed upon it. Cecilia’s will, made in presence of Pope Urban, consisted in the giving of her palace for a church, and the distributing of her remaining wealth to the poor. Her death was heroic, and, as her life-blood was ebbing slowly from her, she only thought of converting her executioners. Oblivious of bodily pain, she exhorted them to throw off the yoke of idolatry, and succeeded so far as to cause them to exclaim, “It is only a God who could have created such a prodigy as his servant Cecilia!” The body of the martyr was interred in the Catacomb of St. Callixtus, in a chapel hollowed out of the earth, and somewhat larger than the other chambers of the same catacomb: it was the sepulchre of the popes, and the placing of her body in this sepulchre was a mark of the extraordinary respect due to her generous munificence and her heroic courage. Thus has the old church, so truly called the “mother church,” always recognized and rewarded merit, whether in man or woman. Susannah, a relation both of Pope Caius and of the Emperor Diocletian, and daughter to Gabinius, a man as learned as he was noble, was another instance of how religion can reconcile profound instruction with deep piety, and unite both to beauty of person and grace of manner. She was learned, say her Acts, in philosophy, in literature, and in religion. The emperor sent one of his nobles, Claudius, Susannah’s own uncle, to entreat her to marry Maximinus Cæsar, Diocletian’s son. The noble and learned virgin not only refused the alliance, but, strengthened by the approbation of her Christian father and her other uncle, Pope Caius, who were present, spoke so eloquently that Claudius was converted to Christianity. The Acts of the Martyrs record his words in announcing this conversion to his wife: “It is chiefly my niece Susannah who has conquered me. I owe to the prayers of this young girl the happiness of having received God’s grace.” His wife, Prepedigna, and Maximus, his brother, were also won over by her influence, and the latter bears tribute equally to her wisdom, holiness, and her beauty. There could be but one end to such proceedings, a glorious end for all: her friends all suffered martyrdom before her, and she who had braved an emperor’s displeasure without a sign of so-called womanly weakness, met her death in secret with equal courage and joy.
Agnes, the maiden of twelve or thirteen years, is praised by Ambrose, a Christian priest, for her contempt of the jewels with which the son of Symphronius attempted to bribe her: she is also pictured as the very incarnation of youthful bravery, when with holy defiance she scorns the threat of her impure and cruel judge to send her to a place of ill-fame. This threat, often executed, was more than any other the touch-stone of their faith to the Christian virgins of antiquity, while their invariable deliverance from this danger was the reward of their unflinching denial of the power of the false gods, even in the face of this shameful threat. Death would seem a bridal, to judge by the loving alacrity with which these child-virgins ran to meet it. Who can say that the church does not admire and inculcate courage and self-respect in women, since half the martyrs defended their honor as well as their faith with the last drop of their blood?
St. Ambrose, speaking to his sister Marcellina of the martyr Sothera, in whose praises he is enthusiastic, says: “What need for me to seek for examples for thee, who hast been formed to holiness by thy martyred relative? [Sothera was their great-aunt.] ... Brought up thyself in the country, having no companion to set thee examples, no master to teach thee precepts, there were at hand no human means to teach thee what thou has learnt. Thou art no disciple, therefore—for there can be no disciple where there is no master—but the heiress of the virtues of thy ancestress. Let us speak of the example of our holy relative, for we priests have a nobility of our own, preferable to that which counts it an honor to have prefects and consuls among our forefathers: we have the nobility of faith, which cannot die.” These words of grave import are addressed to a woman, and the boast of holy ancestry they contain also refers to a woman. Agatha, the heroine of Catana, and Lucy, the martyr of Syracuse, both noble Sicilian maidens, speak the boldest language to their barbarous judges, and meet death as bravely as any man could face it for his country and his home.
Victoria, a lady of Abyssinia, in Africa, accused of being a Christian, and defended by her pagan brother, who swore she had been deluded into connivance with the Christians, vehemently contradicted him in open court. “I came here of my own accord,” she averred, “and neither Dativus nor any one else beguiled me; I can bring witnesses among my fellow-townspeople to the fact that I came simply because I knew there would be a gathering of our brethren here, under our priest Saturninus, and that the holy mysteries would be celebrated.” She persists when her brother excuses her again as being insane, and eagerly criminates herself in the eyes of the judge, till she succeeds in winning her crown. Forty-eight other martyrs, men and women, heroically suffer the same penalty, greatly comforted and encouraged by her dauntless attitude. At Thessalonica, a woman named Irene was apprehended, together with her five sisters, and was herself chiefly accused of having kept and concealed the books of Scripture, and other papers relating to the Christian religion. Dulcetius, the judge before whom she was brought, and who was president of Macedonia, could elicit from her nothing that could endanger any one but herself, her sisters having been tried and martyred upon the charge of refusing to eat meats consecrated to idols. Her firmness both in screening others and in avowing her eager care for the holy writings, not only gives us a high idea of her moral courage, but also of her intellectual interest in those scarce and valuable works. She suffered death for her dauntless custody of these treasures, and it is related that she sang psalms of praise while ascending the funeral pile.
St. Catherine of Alexandria is a most noted example of the erudition often attained and displayed by Christian women. At the age of eighteen, says the Breviarium Romanum, she outstripped in knowledge the most learned men of her day: Maximinus, who was both a libertine and a tyrant, was cruelly persecuting the Christians of Alexandria, and dishonoring the noble matrons of that city. Catherine boldly and publicly upbraided him, and forced him to listen to her arguments. Her Acts and the Greek Menology of the Emperor Basil affirm that she supported her thesis of Christianity against the arguments of forty of the ablest heathen philosophers, and so effectually confuted them that they preceded her in her martyrdom by declaring themselves Christians, and being forthwith condemned to be burned alive. Catherine, during her imprisonment, converted the wife of Maximinus, and the commander of his army, and further made such an impression upon the crowd assembled to witness her death that many became Christians on the spot. The interesting Church of San Clemente, in Rome, contains one chapel, the walls of which are covered with frescoes illustrative of each of these occurrences; this chapel is supposed to date from the fourth or fifth century, and is a mute witness to the honor with which the memory of the illustrious and learned maiden of Alexandria was, even at that early age, surrounded. Butler, in his Lives of the Saints, says of her: “From this martyr’s uncommon erudition, ... and the use she made of it, she is chosen in the schools the patroness and model of Christian philosophers.” This is by no means the only instance of a woman being honored as patroness in the roads of learning or of art. Later on, we shall have occasion to speak of other saints equally distinguished for their talents and zeal for true philosophy. Butler says in a foot-note to the Life of St. Catherine: “The female sex is not less capable of the sublime sciences, nor less remarkable for liveliness of genius. Witness, among numberless instances in polite literature and in theology, the celebrated Venetian lady, Helen Lucretia Cornaro, doctress in theology at Padua in 1678, the wonder of her age for her skill in every branch of literature, and, still more, for the austerity of her life and her extraordinary piety.”
Most of the martyrs we have hitherto mentioned were virgins: among widows and widowed mothers, we find other heroines whom no bodily torture nor that more bitter anguish of witnessing their children’s sufferings could daunt or even cause to waver.
Symphorosa, a noble Roman matron, denounced by the astrologers of Rome to the Emperor Adrian, bravely confessed her faith in the presence of her seven sons, whom she thus encouraged to do the same. She spoke of herself as honored in being the widow and sister of martyrs, and utterly scorned the proposal to forsake the truth for which they had bled. Here is a foreshadowing of the times of mediæval chivalry, which were but the legitimate offshoot from such a moral atmosphere of pure chivalric heroism as enveloped the lives of the early Christians. Invincible strength and a courage that smiled in the face of death was with the children of the primitive church a point of honor, a family tradition, a hereditary legacy. Another widow and mother, Felicitas, suffered more cruelly yet than Symphorosa; for, under the reign of Marcus Aurelius, she beheld her seven children butchered before her eyes, and never ceased exhorting them to constancy, while her mother’s heart and more natural feeling were suffering a sevenfold martyrdom. She followed her sons to death with fervent joy. St. Augustine was eloquent in her praise, and on one anniversary of her triumph called her death a “great spectacle offered to the eyes of faith,” and herself “more fruitful by reason of her many virtues than of her many children.” St. Gregory, the great father, exalted her by likening her example to a new and spiritual birth of the Saviour in each soul that she thus secured to God, according to the interpretation of the words of the Gospel: “He who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and my sister, and my mother.”