This is a short post where I respond to some of the people who were not convinced by my previous piece. The gist of that piece is that the role of aristocratic women in the rise of Christianity in the Late Roman Empire has been greatly overestimated by historians.
" But that is NOT the same as having the power to convert them, or even taking the initiative to learn about a new religion in the first place, if that was not something women generally had access to!"
That makes me wonder. How realistic would it have been for a married woman, or one under the control of her father, to be preached to by others about a strange new faith? I suspect it wouldn't have happened often. The argument for the conventional wisdom in your piece doesn't seem to speak to that, it simply points out that women were considered good Christians by some authorities.
Yeah the arguments for the conventional wisdom are about women’s intrinsic interest in Christianity & some examples of important women in early Christianity (although how some examples became a “majority” I don’t know). An often cited example is Melania the Elder, who was actually a noble woman who converted to Christianity. But as you can see, she was a young widow & generally speaking widows had more power over their own life.
I’m inclined to think that no, noble women in general didn’t have access to that. It doesn’t seem historians concerned themselves with such boring details though & I don’t have access to primary sources, so I’m not sure.
The thing is, in the early 4th century (Constantine changed the official religion in 313), most aristocrats were still pagan. Then, it seems that Christianity, which was now much higher status, spread through social networks (which were also career networks given how intertwined these 2 were). One of the other interesting things in Michele Salzman’ book is she shows there is a strong correlation between conversion to Christianity and occupation of high status men. So men who worked for the imperial bureaucracy were more likely to be Christian. Last but not least, the Roman Empire didn’t have priesthood as a separate profession. Men who held public office were supposed to also have the role of priests in specific situations. All these strands of evidence suggest to me that, at least at the level of the aristocracy, the spread of Christianity was less about being suddenly hit with the realisation that it was a better ideology and more about networks of influence. Which men would have been much more exposed to.
It might have been that lower class women actually had more influence! I don’t know enough about how Christianity spread prior to the 4th century but it does seem to have been a more organic/ belief based process. My impression is that we’ll never know for sure. I mean there’s a high level of uncertainty about the life of Jesus himself in terms of details. So this gives a level of insight into how bad the actual real evidence is.
Ugh apparently the Church explicitly forbade widows (which were often supported by the church) in the western Roman Empire from teaching/ evangelising in public.
" But that is NOT the same as having the power to convert them, or even taking the initiative to learn about a new religion in the first place, if that was not something women generally had access to!"
That makes me wonder. How realistic would it have been for a married woman, or one under the control of her father, to be preached to by others about a strange new faith? I suspect it wouldn't have happened often. The argument for the conventional wisdom in your piece doesn't seem to speak to that, it simply points out that women were considered good Christians by some authorities.
Yeah the arguments for the conventional wisdom are about women’s intrinsic interest in Christianity & some examples of important women in early Christianity (although how some examples became a “majority” I don’t know). An often cited example is Melania the Elder, who was actually a noble woman who converted to Christianity. But as you can see, she was a young widow & generally speaking widows had more power over their own life.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_the_Elder
I think your point is totally plausible &
I’m inclined to think that no, noble women in general didn’t have access to that. It doesn’t seem historians concerned themselves with such boring details though & I don’t have access to primary sources, so I’m not sure.
The thing is, in the early 4th century (Constantine changed the official religion in 313), most aristocrats were still pagan. Then, it seems that Christianity, which was now much higher status, spread through social networks (which were also career networks given how intertwined these 2 were). One of the other interesting things in Michele Salzman’ book is she shows there is a strong correlation between conversion to Christianity and occupation of high status men. So men who worked for the imperial bureaucracy were more likely to be Christian. Last but not least, the Roman Empire didn’t have priesthood as a separate profession. Men who held public office were supposed to also have the role of priests in specific situations. All these strands of evidence suggest to me that, at least at the level of the aristocracy, the spread of Christianity was less about being suddenly hit with the realisation that it was a better ideology and more about networks of influence. Which men would have been much more exposed to.
It might have been that lower class women actually had more influence! I don’t know enough about how Christianity spread prior to the 4th century but it does seem to have been a more organic/ belief based process. My impression is that we’ll never know for sure. I mean there’s a high level of uncertainty about the life of Jesus himself in terms of details. So this gives a level of insight into how bad the actual real evidence is.
Ugh apparently the Church explicitly forbade widows (which were often supported by the church) in the western Roman Empire from teaching/ evangelising in public.
So doesn’t really answer ur question but still...