Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 34:2 (Spring 2020)
Article: Women Leaders At The Table In Early Churches
Author: Ally Kateusz

PP 34:2 (Spring 2020) p. 14

Women Leaders At The Table In Early Churches

Ally Kateusz

Ally Kateusz, PhD, is a Research Associate at the Wijngaards Institute of Catholic Research in London. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Early Christian Studies and the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, as well as other venues. Her recent book is Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), and she is co-editor of Rediscovering the Marys: Maria, Mariamne, Miriam (T&T Clark, 2020).

The purpose of this article is to examine the oldest surviving iconographic artifacts that depict early Christians in real churches at the Eucharist table. These provide the oldest visual evidence of early Christian traditions of leadership as it was actually practiced in churches. The reason for doing this is to fill in the cultural gaps about what we know regarding the sex of leaders who performed the ritual, or liturgy.

Three key elements are present in each of the ancient illustrated artifacts under consideration. First, there is a Eucharist table, also called the mensa or altar table.1 Second, the artist depicted real people—not biblical figures—with the table.2 And third, the architecture in the scene portrayed the interior of a real church; that is, the artist was not imagining a heavenly or fictive scene, but representing the ritual in that church.3

These windows into early churches help us understand how the earliest Christians must have received certain sayings in Paul’s letters, sayings which today are interpreted in some congregations as meaning that Paul did not permit women to be church leaders. These artifacts suggest that early Christians understood texts such as Gal 3:28 as Paul’s guiding instructions with respect to interpreting his letters, and especially with respect to women, because all three of the oldest surviving iconographic artifacts portray women in the altar area of these churches. These three artifacts are all the more stunning in that they represent the altar areas of three of the most prominent orthodox basilicas in Christendom. One depicts Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Another depicts the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. The third depicts the Anastasis, also called the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in Jerusalem.

Figure 1
Ivory reliquary box.
Liturgy in Old Saint Peter’s Basilica, ca. 430.
Source: Artres ART 193402

Previous Attempts To Reconstruct The Ancient Liturgy