Summary of arguments against the consensus view that aristocratic women were key to the rise of Christianity in the Late Roman Empire. Based on "The Making of a Christian Aristocracy" by M. Salzman
I enjoyed this, and would raise 2 points in response:
1. It's my understanding that many of the pagan Saxon kings in Britain converted (along with their kingdoms) at the moment of taking or under the influence of a Christian wife from the continent. Obviously that's much later and in a context in which membership of 'Christendom' offered huge perks for an up-and-coming warlord, but interesting to compare and contrast.
2. On the topic of contemporary ideologies being projected back into the past, I'd politely suggest that it seems unlikely a 1900s German theologian described Helena of Constantinople and women like her as 'upper middle class.'
Thank you for ur feedback! 2) I had noticed the misshap and corrected it. It's weird that you seem to be seeing the old version. Unless I made the mistake in multiple places and not seeing it.
Re: 1. I think it would be an interesting comparison, indeed. My suspicion is that barbarian paganism was much less entrenched and related to status than Roman paganism. So barbaric Kings were keen to convert and be associated with the glory of Old Roman (Which by the time we are discussing about was associated more with Christianity). The situation with Roman aristocracy is a bit different because at the time Christianity was introduced, being a Pagan aristocrat was already the highest status thing
The other thing I would add about 1): notice the difference between being influenced by a wife through a marriage that was convenient and was actually negotiated by men (the father of the wife and that of the groom) and the idea that aristocratic Roman women converted to Christianity out of their own volition and then brought Christianity to their passive husbands. There are different dynamics and it relies less on a presupposition of female freedom
Excellent. I have read this argument and taught Ancient - Medieval history but have not read the book. I'm more familiar with Hollister, Peter Brown *Rise of Western Christendom*, and a smattering of primary sources. I can think of three geographicly distinct pagan primary sources off the top of my head which point out that Christians are 1) law abiding, 2) don't believe in divorce, and 3) and don't expose unwanted infants. Those issues seem like they would matter to women.
When I read early less hagiographical martyr stories like Perpetua and Felicity, or the Scilitan Martyrs the number and rank of women involved is notable.
But the biggest and most obvious thing is data on the spread of church communities combined with what seems to me a sociologocal fact that we are talking about a slave holding society accepting Christianity. Whole households are converting when the mother and the father convert. So there can be a nonlinear effect. Three aristocratic women convert along with one husband, 6 slaves, 14 children. Continue that for three generations and you'll have some big growth! 📈
Salzman may address this and add nuance that I'm missing. But I still think this picture is largely correct?
The women may not have converted the husbands but they very likely converted the slaves and the children. Half of those children would have been future men (and husbands).
Julian the Apostate comes to mind, so thoroughly raised Christian that when he tried to be pagan it was just Christianity relabeled with pagan words rather than what the pagan worship had been.
Excellent article. I am sticking with the "greatest Jewish marketer of all time" St. Paul who sold Jesus to the Roman slaves. There was a little help probably from the psychedelics in Eleusis?
I wonder if there might be selection bias, since the aristocrats whose lives we know about would have been mainly members of the very top of society. Below them there must have existed a larger and more precarious aristocracy. Among them it might have been impossible for a husband to completely shelter his wife and daughters from the outside world, even if culture demanded it. They would just not have had enough slaves, servants and private space, so his wife would have had to interact with many others, including early christians. The same would not be true of the wife of a consul.
Also, I think we can assume that an aristocratic husband who is too poor to afford a concubine might be much less inclined to try to hinder his wife from joining a new religion. The price would just be too steep in matters of domestic harmony.
So, that is a new completely ad-hoc theory which is accordance with the new evidence. The wives of the lower aristocracy converted their husbands, who later rose in the ranks of the empire and converted their friends.
I want to know more about these sociological factors. I am still quite confused as to how christianity spread in the first place. What were these social networks that spread throughout the roman aristocracy and how did they originate in the first place?
I read (don't know where, sorry) that after the death of a Eoman husband, the inheritance would usually go to his family not the widow and Christian churches invented an exploit of a loophole: the husband was able to give his wealth to a temple (or church) instead and churches offered to make widows CEOs of such endowments, giving them not legal but de facto control of the inheritance. (And this gave to Christianity both influence and an interest in personal rather than familial property rights, which was one of the preconditions of capitalism.)
If this is true, it should be here. Are you saying this explanation is wrong, or were you unaware of it?
Ruxandra, I think the general question you are trying to answer is can women change big aspects of the culture? Basically, back then the early adopters were people whose status was ambiguous. Freedmen, who were making good money, but still not considered citizens, bearing the taint of ex-slavehood. And rich women, yes, high status because rich, low status because women in that kind of society, so ambiguous status.
It is not that kind of society so the status ambiguity does not play a role.
I like the review, but I have to mention this is _totally_ unconvincing. Between:
> Similar to the above point, many Christian teachings advocated against the commonly accepted practice of abortion in the Greco-Roman world, thereby offering protection to expectant mothers
(wild! Isn't pro-choice the pro-mother position, especially in pre-modern world of high maternal mortality?)
and
> Michele Salzman also brings plenty of literary evidence of her own to support her view, chiefly written works about the ideal role of a wife within a family.
(You can find works about a wife's role in family even today. They will be widely out of step with actual practices - indeed, if they weren't, they wouldn't be written!)
You have statistics on this? Death rates from induced abortion vs. childbirth in the ancient world?
Of course when you step back from it, you notice that the human race would go extinct if abortion was always safer and women always went with the safer option. Being pro-woman by doing the risk analysis on abortion and birth is being anti-humanity.
And having a religious prohibition on abortion is pro-woman to the extent that it eliminates the ability of men to pressure women into not having the baby they want.
Indeed, there's a reason for the most widespread (i.e. higher-number) cultures to have (or have had in the past) strongly anti-abortion stances. But one then notes that being pro-woman isn't _forcing_ abortions on them, some will take the risk.
One of the many paradoxes of precommitting, but a relatively easily solvable one even within religion-style framework: cut the middleman and have religious prohibition on people advising women either way.
I enjoyed this, and would raise 2 points in response:
1. It's my understanding that many of the pagan Saxon kings in Britain converted (along with their kingdoms) at the moment of taking or under the influence of a Christian wife from the continent. Obviously that's much later and in a context in which membership of 'Christendom' offered huge perks for an up-and-coming warlord, but interesting to compare and contrast.
2. On the topic of contemporary ideologies being projected back into the past, I'd politely suggest that it seems unlikely a 1900s German theologian described Helena of Constantinople and women like her as 'upper middle class.'
Thank you for ur feedback! 2) I had noticed the misshap and corrected it. It's weird that you seem to be seeing the old version. Unless I made the mistake in multiple places and not seeing it.
Re: 1. I think it would be an interesting comparison, indeed. My suspicion is that barbarian paganism was much less entrenched and related to status than Roman paganism. So barbaric Kings were keen to convert and be associated with the glory of Old Roman (Which by the time we are discussing about was associated more with Christianity). The situation with Roman aristocracy is a bit different because at the time Christianity was introduced, being a Pagan aristocrat was already the highest status thing
The other thing I would add about 1): notice the difference between being influenced by a wife through a marriage that was convenient and was actually negotiated by men (the father of the wife and that of the groom) and the idea that aristocratic Roman women converted to Christianity out of their own volition and then brought Christianity to their passive husbands. There are different dynamics and it relies less on a presupposition of female freedom
Seems correct now - I saw the link to it via notes before, maybe that pulled through a cached version.
thank you!
TIL syntyche is a name
Excellent. I have read this argument and taught Ancient - Medieval history but have not read the book. I'm more familiar with Hollister, Peter Brown *Rise of Western Christendom*, and a smattering of primary sources. I can think of three geographicly distinct pagan primary sources off the top of my head which point out that Christians are 1) law abiding, 2) don't believe in divorce, and 3) and don't expose unwanted infants. Those issues seem like they would matter to women.
When I read early less hagiographical martyr stories like Perpetua and Felicity, or the Scilitan Martyrs the number and rank of women involved is notable.
But the biggest and most obvious thing is data on the spread of church communities combined with what seems to me a sociologocal fact that we are talking about a slave holding society accepting Christianity. Whole households are converting when the mother and the father convert. So there can be a nonlinear effect. Three aristocratic women convert along with one husband, 6 slaves, 14 children. Continue that for three generations and you'll have some big growth! 📈
Salzman may address this and add nuance that I'm missing. But I still think this picture is largely correct?
The women may not have converted the husbands but they very likely converted the slaves and the children. Half of those children would have been future men (and husbands).
Julian the Apostate comes to mind, so thoroughly raised Christian that when he tried to be pagan it was just Christianity relabeled with pagan words rather than what the pagan worship had been.
Excellent article. I am sticking with the "greatest Jewish marketer of all time" St. Paul who sold Jesus to the Roman slaves. There was a little help probably from the psychedelics in Eleusis?
I wonder if there might be selection bias, since the aristocrats whose lives we know about would have been mainly members of the very top of society. Below them there must have existed a larger and more precarious aristocracy. Among them it might have been impossible for a husband to completely shelter his wife and daughters from the outside world, even if culture demanded it. They would just not have had enough slaves, servants and private space, so his wife would have had to interact with many others, including early christians. The same would not be true of the wife of a consul.
Also, I think we can assume that an aristocratic husband who is too poor to afford a concubine might be much less inclined to try to hinder his wife from joining a new religion. The price would just be too steep in matters of domestic harmony.
So, that is a new completely ad-hoc theory which is accordance with the new evidence. The wives of the lower aristocracy converted their husbands, who later rose in the ranks of the empire and converted their friends.
I want to know more about these sociological factors. I am still quite confused as to how christianity spread in the first place. What were these social networks that spread throughout the roman aristocracy and how did they originate in the first place?
I read (don't know where, sorry) that after the death of a Eoman husband, the inheritance would usually go to his family not the widow and Christian churches invented an exploit of a loophole: the husband was able to give his wealth to a temple (or church) instead and churches offered to make widows CEOs of such endowments, giving them not legal but de facto control of the inheritance. (And this gave to Christianity both influence and an interest in personal rather than familial property rights, which was one of the preconditions of capitalism.)
If this is true, it should be here. Are you saying this explanation is wrong, or were you unaware of it?
Ruxandra, I think the general question you are trying to answer is can women change big aspects of the culture? Basically, back then the early adopters were people whose status was ambiguous. Freedmen, who were making good money, but still not considered citizens, bearing the taint of ex-slavehood. And rich women, yes, high status because rich, low status because women in that kind of society, so ambiguous status.
It is not that kind of society so the status ambiguity does not play a role.
I like the review, but I have to mention this is _totally_ unconvincing. Between:
> Similar to the above point, many Christian teachings advocated against the commonly accepted practice of abortion in the Greco-Roman world, thereby offering protection to expectant mothers
(wild! Isn't pro-choice the pro-mother position, especially in pre-modern world of high maternal mortality?)
and
> Michele Salzman also brings plenty of literary evidence of her own to support her view, chiefly written works about the ideal role of a wife within a family.
(You can find works about a wife's role in family even today. They will be widely out of step with actual practices - indeed, if they weren't, they wouldn't be written!)
this is "castle built on sand".
Your first point assumes that an ancient abortion had a lower maternal mortality rate than ancient childbirth.
Duh. Herbal abortifacients, while still toxic, were safer on average.
You have statistics on this? Death rates from induced abortion vs. childbirth in the ancient world?
Of course when you step back from it, you notice that the human race would go extinct if abortion was always safer and women always went with the safer option. Being pro-woman by doing the risk analysis on abortion and birth is being anti-humanity.
And having a religious prohibition on abortion is pro-woman to the extent that it eliminates the ability of men to pressure women into not having the baby they want.
_I_ don't. I've read people who claim to.
Indeed, there's a reason for the most widespread (i.e. higher-number) cultures to have (or have had in the past) strongly anti-abortion stances. But one then notes that being pro-woman isn't _forcing_ abortions on them, some will take the risk.
One of the many paradoxes of precommitting, but a relatively easily solvable one even within religion-style framework: cut the middleman and have religious prohibition on people advising women either way.
I was expecting something slightly different, use of the data set to show that conversions grew more from sociological factors than belief.