Reconstructing Women's Roles in Early Christianity

Reconstructing Women’s Roles in Early Christianity provides a thorough understanding of women’s significance in the establishment and development of Early Christianity throughout the Mediterranean.

This volume provides an interdisciplinary approach to the role of women in the early Christian Church, incorporating history, literary criticism, gender theory, family studies, material culture, and a variety of other methodologies in an effort to extract women from the erasures of time. It situates a wide variety of influential roles women held, from apostle to martyr, within the broader contexts of their Mediterranean communities, arguing that women’s participation in and contributions to the burgeoning religion restructured cultural norms for female positions of authority, making women central to the spread and establishment of the fledgling movement. In its efforts to extract women from the historical margins, the volume also asks new questions about what constituted authority in early Christian congregations, what the sources of authority were for women’s claims to leadership, who could wield power, and how notions of authority varied from one community to another.

This book is suitable for students and scholars working on women in the early church, as well as those interested in theology and the history of Early Christianity.

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.