Book Review: Christian Women in the Patristic World

Lynn H. Cohick and Amy Brown Hughes

Christian Women in the Patristic World: Their Influence, Authority, and Legacy in the Second through Fifth Centuries
Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2017.
Available at Amazon.com

These days there are few books where I learn a lot I didn’t know about before. On women in the early church, I like to think that I have an above average knowledge of the topic, from Mary Magdalene to Thecla, to Perpetua and Felicity to Augustine’s mother Monica. However, this book by Lynn Cohick and Amy Hughes really did open my eyes to a lot of other women in the patristic period, those involved with the Nicene controversy, and close to the seat of imperial power, that I was hereto completely ignorant about. So this is a book is definitely one to read!

The purpose of the book is to describe the role of women in key theological conversations and controversies in the early church and to tell the story of the women in the early church who were instrumental in constructing the church and its teachings in various ways.

The book covers Thecla, Perpetua and Felicitas, images of women in Roman catacomb frescoes, martyr stories about women, Constantine’s mother Helena, Egeria and her travel itinerary to the holy land, Augustine’s mother Monica, Gregory of Nyssa’s sister Macrina, Jerome’s patrons Marcella and Paul, Melania the Elder and Younger, and Theodosius II’s sister Pulcheria.

Several things got asterisked in the margins. Thecla was venerated as a philosopher and teacher of the church (22). Female martyrdom was a big part of the church’s PR campaign.: “The gospel was so strong, the church could argue, that by its power even a weak female was made stronger than the strongest warrior” (29). Felicity creates an intriguing visual picture of Christ being formed in her like a gestating child: “Now I alone suffer what I am suffering, but then there will be another side me, who will suffer for me, because I am going to suffer for him” (59). Best sub-title ever, “Like a Virgin: The Blossoming of Christian asceticism” (158). A great defense of the resurrection of the body rather than the immortality of the soul was made by Gregory of Nyssa’s Socratic dialogue featuring Macrina in On the Soul and the Resurrection (172).

Definitely worth a read or giving to anyone interested in women and early Christianity.