Reconstructing Women’s Roles in Early Christianity

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

List of Contributors

Introduction: Women’s Leadership in Early Christianity - Roberta Franchi and Aneilya Barnes

Part I: Family, Household and the Body: Reconstructing Christian Women’s Authority

1. From the Gospels to the Catacombs: Sourcing Women’s Authority in the First Christian Centuries - Roberta Franchi and Aneilya Barnes

2. ‘Gospels Hanging from their Necks’: Women as Ritual Agents in Christian Household    Cult - Caroline Johnson Hodge

3. The Dimensions of Authority Exercised by Early Christian Women - Margaret Y. MacDonald

4. Contested Authority?: Thecla, Mary, and Power in the Reconfigured Christian Family - Meghan Henning

5. Bodies of Authority and Aspiration in the Acts of the Apostles - Davina C. Lopez and Todd Penner

Part II: Guiding the Way: Women’s Voice and Authority as Congregational Leaders

6. Martha and Her Sister(s): Female Voices in the Fourth Gospel - Andrea Taschl-Erber

7. Conduits of Wisdom: Women as Spiritual Guides in Gnostic Circles - Pheme Perkins

8. Who were the Widows of the Early Church? - Charlotte Methuen

Part III: Power and Defiance: Women’s Charismatic Authority as Prophets and Martyrs

9. The Charismatic Authority of Women Prophets - Carolyn Osiek

10. More than Prophetesses: Women Clergy in Montanism - William Tabbernee

11. The Authority of Perpetua, the Martyr - Clementina Mazzucco

12. The Martyrdoms of St. Agnes of Rome and St. Eulalia of Mérida as Acts of Defiance - Alberto Ferreiro

13. Concluding Remarks - Roberta Franchi and Aneilya Barnes

Index

Biography

Roberta Franchi is Associate Professor of Ancient Christian Literature at the University of Florence. Her research focuses on patristic literature and early Christian thought, with particular attention to women, motherhood, and gender perspectives in early Christian texts and late antiquity.

Aneilya Barnes is Professor of History at Coastal Carolina University. Her scholarship focuses on ancient and late antique history, with particular attention to social, cultural, and religious dynamics in the Roman world. She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and collective volumes.

"This marvellous volume brings together answers from a wide range of experts to a tremendously important question: what do we know about early Christian women and their leadership? How do we know what we know? Students and their teachers alike will be grateful to Roberta Franchi and Aneilya Barnes for this collaborative labor of love." - Kate Cooper, Professor of History, Royal Holloway University of London.