The resistance of christian women

The issue of women did not commence today. Instead, in the history of Christianity, it has ancient roots. We could say that it has been present since the origins, from the moment the first questions were raised about who that Jesus of Nazareth was, who with such freedom and determination proposed a new way of experiencing human relationships and who addressed both women and men equally, and announced an unprecedented message of salvation. In the Gospels, it is indeed emphasized many times the disciples’ embarrassment who were amazed that Jesus spoke with a woman (John 4:27), and often the free and liberating approach of this Master from Galilee emerges. He engages in empathetic dialogue with women to communicate the demands of a Kingdom that also calls for radical choices from them, while offering unusual spaces for participation.

In addition, women, for their part, understand well the newness of life that opens up when Jesus envisions the birth of a community of equals in reciprocal service: for this reason, they do not hesitate to follow him as disciples among the disciples. Then, after his death, as apostles among the apostles, missionaries among the missionaries, deacons among the deacons, and so on, filling the many roles necessary for the care and growth of the groups that refer to his teachings. They are women serving the Gospel, in whose homes the memory of the Last Supper shared by Jesus is often recalled. They are awaiting his return, and are capable of providing concrete responses to the many pastoral needs arising from dynamic and fermenting realities, as were those of early Christianity.

As the wait for the Lord’s return lengthens, however, the communities begin a process of stabilization through the consolidation of a hierarchical-patriarchal organization in line with the social structures of the time. This pushes women to the margins. Women’s expectations are downsized, and brakes are put on especially on those authoritative roles that women were already exercising. Some passages from the Pauline letters or the so-called pseudo-Pauline letters that invite women to silence and submission (1 Corinthians 14:34; Ephesians 5:22; 1 Timothy 2:12) testify to this. At the same time as those letters, however, we know that women continued to perform important roles. The Acts of Paul and Thecla, an authoritative writing that circulated in Asia Minor in the second century, attest to the existence of female leadership. The protagonist is Thecla, Paul’s disciple, who, after disguising herself as a man to follow the apostle, baptizes, teaches, and preaches, representing a significant model of apostolate for women. The writer Tertullian highlights this when he stigmatizes “those vipers who have arrogated the right to teach and wish to baptize by referring to the example of Thecla” (Baptism 17). A sign that women were teaching and baptizing and doing much more, as Tertullian himself laments that some, like the so-called Montanists, prophesy and celebrate the sacraments.

From the canonical texts that make up the New Testament and from early Christian literature, despite the processes of downsizing that were initiated, traces of female participation have not disappeared; on the contrary, women appear as active figures in proto-Christian communities. Gnostic texts, such as the Pistis Sophia, the Gospel of Mary, and the Gospel of Philip, illustrate, for example, the conflicts existing within the communities regarding the roles that women were to play. Through the figure of Mary Magdalene, the beloved disciple of Jesus and a symbol of superior knowledge (gnosis), these texts highlight the rivalry between female leadership, represented by Magdalene, and male leadership, expressed by Peter, as well as the difficulty in accepting that women could have a privileged relationship with Jesus.

Women have never given up in the face of the many obstacles they have encountered, and the history of Christianity is marked by the many forms of resistance they have been able to muster. They fought to conquer those spaces of freedom for which they paid dearly; for instance, when they made their differences known through criticism and opposition and were condemned as rebels, if not outright heretics. From this perspective, the history of dissenters highlights many paths taken with outcomes that were not always fortunate (I wrote about this in Eretiche [Heretical Women], Il Mulino 2022). I think of the women who followed Peter Waldo, who taught in small communities, who preached in the streets, and recited prayers in homes. The inquisitors regarded them as miserable “little women” (mulierculae), and considered them audacious for stepping away from their domestic roles to walk the streets reading the Gospel—”curious, talkative, bold”—eager to learn and evangelize. These were women who relished the importance of being able to access a direct reading of sacred texts, while no longer considering them the exclusive domain of the clergy; thus, by approaching them in their vernacular translations, they made them their own, while embodying the Word in their lives. Together with Waldo, they were persecuted, but their experience did not die, and today the Waldensian community has revived the ancient prophetic provocations, and opened important spaces for women in ministry and authoritative leadership.

Even before Waldo, women managed to find solutions that allowed them to carve out alternative paths of life and faith. The Beguines, for example, were a novelty in the landscape of religious movements that traversed the Middle Ages from the 12th to the 16th century, which generated both astonishment and considerable apprehension among ecclesiastical hierarchies.

For the first time, we encounter not just the awareness of individual women, but of communities of women that emerged in the Low Countries at the end of the 1100s and quickly spread, especially in the Rhineland, Provence, and Northern Italy. In fact, they opposed a powerful and wealthy institutional Church that imposed cloister or marriage on women, concentrating sacraments, preaching, pastoral action, and studies in the hands of the clergy. In response to this Church, the Beguines made a choice rooted primarily in laity: they neither entered monasteries nor married, but lived in community with other women, and supported themselves through their manual labor, praying, studying, and engaging in charitable assistance.

People were astonished that these laywomen, with their strong personalities and unusual education, expressed spiritual realities better than the clergy, that they were considered life teachers by disciples who gathered around them, and that they could integrate biblical and doctrinal formation with mystical and personal experience. Driven by a desire to return to the ideals of apostolic life—characterized by poverty, communal living, meditation on the sacred text, and charity—these women produced a copious body of spiritual literature, written in the vernacular languages, which allowed them to convey an intense religious experience that was difficult to communicate freely without the freshness of a living language.

Ida of Nijvel, Mary of Oignies, Odilia of Liège, Hadewijch of Antwerp, Ida of Gorsleeuw, Beatrice of Nazareth, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete are some of the names of these magistrae. Their literary works (treatises, letters, poems, etc.) revolutionized the approach to theological narrative and even the customary way of speaking about God. Although many of them were condemned and forgotten, even today the new words they managed to use through the language of mystical theology remain full of charm and capable of renewing theology because they indicate how the experience of love can become knowledge, the only one able to access the depths of God.

by Adriana Valerio
Historian and theologian, archiepiscopal delegate of the Archdiocese of Naples.