Home | Contact us | Staff | Students | iExeter (Staff and Students) | Site map | 中文网

• Theology and Religion

• • Home
  • About
  • Study
  • Resources for teachers
  • Research
  • Our people
  • Contact

Early Christian Women: Eve, Mary, Thecla (THE2147)

Module aims

The main objective of the module is to provide you with specialised knowledge and critical understanding of roles and perceptions of women in early Christianity. You will learn critical skills, for example: how to set early Christian views in their historical and cultural contexts inside and outside the Roman Empire; how to acknowledge the limitations of evidence and the difficulties of interpreting constructed female identities. You will learn how women such as Eve, Mary and saints like Thecla, played a key role in early Christian theology and how in more recent centuries early Christian conceptions of women have been interpreted through the lens of feminist and other theories. You will compare women portrayed as objects of a male gaze and women portrayed as speaking with their own voice.  

An important aim of the seminars is to develop a thorough understanding of primary evidence: you will examine material culture and key texts in English translation. You will have the chance to consider early Christian use of the Bible and the creation of non-biblical texts in various forms (poetry, hymns, sermons, treatises). You will consider the role of liturgy and the spoken word in early Christian culture. You will develop your skills in interpreting texts of various kinds.

This module is expected to improve your future prospects by training you in the interpretation of complex texts which are from a distant epoch, but still have a cultural and religious impact today. You will develop your skills of evaluating and assessing theory as applied to historical evidence and negotiating complex arguments which are sometimes both politically and religiously freighted. By writing a blog-post/on-line encyclopedia entry on a woman in early Christianity, you will develop experience in conveying historical ideas clearly to a general audience. You will be required to engage respectfully with others’ arguments and learn to disagree well.

ILO: Module-specific skills

• 1. Demonstrate detailed knowledge and critical understanding of a variety of early Christian views of women.
• 2. Describe and critically assess with nuance and confidence the relation of Christian views of women to the portrayal of particular women, including women in the Bible, female saints, and other notable women.
• 3. Demonstrate an understanding of several key theoretical developments in early Christian studies, as they have been applied to views of women.

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

• 4. Understand, and analyse critically, different interpretations of theological doctrines and the arguments supporting them.
• 5. Use the methods of critical historical investigation to analyse and evaluate the relationship between specifically Christian beliefs, texts, practices and institutions, and wider social and cultural structures and norms.

ILO: Personal and key skills

• 6. Undertake independent work within broad guidelines.
• 7. Shape information independently into a coherent and creative account, demonstrating consistency and rigour in method and argument.
• 8. Independently select, analyse and evaluate a range of primary and secondary written sources and material sources.
• 9. Communicate clearly for specialist and non-specialist audiences.
• 10. Participate appropriately in a learning group.

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• Who was Thecla? An introduction to key topics through the character of Thecla in early Christian “Acts” (literary form, asceticism/virginity, the holy woman, changing patterns of piety, history and reception).
• Eve, Mary and salvation in theology and rhetoric (e.g. Gnostics, Irenaeus; Tertullian, John Chrysostom).
• Creation in the image of God: men, women and androgyny in the beginning and at the end.
• Mary, motherhood and virginity: from the gospels to and beyond Chalcedon.
• Mary in liturgy and prayer: the dormition/assumption; Mary the intercessor in Byzantine hymns.
• Women, virginity and asceticism: theology and biology (setting Christian ascetical writing alongside medical texts on virginity and fasting).
• Other women, other saints: to what extent did Christian hagiography re-valorise classical norms? (Plutarch on a good wife, women in parallel lives; the Cappadocians and John Chrysostom’s hagiography and biblical exegesis).
• Wealth, power and other kinds of female influence: female ascetic leadership: e.g. Macrina, Melania, Marcella; imperial patronage: the Empress Theodora.
• Women, ordination, leadership: literary and epigraphic evidence; cultural constraints: ritual purity and public speech.
• Feminism: first and second waves.
• Feminism and gender theory: reading femininities and masculinities.

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Børresen, Kari Elisabeth. Subordination and Equivalence�: The Nature and Role of Woman in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Kampen�: Kok Pharos, 1995.
• Børresen, Kari Elisabeth. The Image of God: Gender Models in Judaeo-Christian Tradition. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995.
• Cameron, Averil. Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse. Berkeley [etc.]: University of California Press, 1991.
• Clark, Elizabeth A. History, Theory, Text Historians and the Linguistic Turn. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10313863.
• Clark, Elizabeth A. ‘Holy Women, Holy Words: Early Christian Women, Social History and the “Linguistic Turn”’. Journal of Early Christian Studies 6, no. 3 (1998): 413–30.
• ———. ‘Ideology, History and the Construction of “Woman” in Late Antique Christianity’. Journal of Early Christian Studies 2, no. 2 (1994): 155–84.
• Clark, Elizabeth A., and Diane F. Hatch. ‘Jesus as Hero in the Vergilian “Cento” of Faltonia Betitia Proba’. Vergilius, no. 27 (1 January 1981): 31–39.
• Clark, Gillian. Monica: An Ordinary Saint. Oxford University Press, 2015.
• Clark, Gillian. Christianity and Roman Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511803536.
• Clark, Gillian. Women in Late Antiquity: Pagan and Christian Life-Styles. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2008. https://www-fulcrum-org.uoelibrary.idm.oclc.org/concern/monographs/qr46r099x.
• Cohick, Lynn H., and Amy Brown Hughes, eds. Christian Women in the Patristic World: Their Influence, Authority, and Legacy in the Second through Fifth Centuries. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017. http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/christian-women-in-the-patristic-world/332351.
• Harrison, Verna E F. ‘A Gender Reversal in Gregory of Nyssa’s First Homily on the Song of Songs.’ In Studia Patristica Vol 27, 34–38. Louvain: Peeters, 1993. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=reh&AN=ATLA0001200084&site=ehost-live.
• Harrison, Verna E. F. ‘Gender, Generation, and Virginity in Cappadocian Theology’. The Journal of Theological Studies, NS, 47, no. 1 (1996): 38–68. https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/47.1.38.
• Harrison, Verna E. F. ‘Male and Female in Cappadocian Theology’. Journal of Theological Studies, NS, 41, no. 2 (1990): 441–71.
• Hylen, Susan. A Modest Apostle: Thecla and the History of Women in The early Church. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
• Krueger, Derek. Writing and Holiness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East. Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
• Madigan, Kevin, and Carolyn Osiek. Ordained Women in the Early Church: A Documentary History. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.
• Miller, Patricia Cox, ed. Women in Early Christianity: Translations from Greek Texts. First edition. Washington, D.C: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005.
• Rousseau, Philip, ed. A Companion to Late Antiquity. Electronic resource. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2009. http://www.vlebooks.com/vleweb/product/openreader?id=Exeter&isbn=9781444306118. [selections from]
• Ruether, Rosemary Radford. ‘Misogynism and Virginal Feminism in the Fathers of the Church’. In Religion and Sexism: Images of Women in the Jewish and Christian Tradition. NY: Simon & Shuster, 1974.

Module has an active ELE page?

Yes

Available as distance learning?

Yes

Origin date

30/11/2020

Last revision date

21/01/2021

Key words search

women, Christianity, Eve, Mary, saints, hagiography, creation, salvation, prayer, liturgy, hymns, feminism, masculinity

Using our site | Freedom of Information | Data Protection | Copyright & disclaimer | Privacy & Cookies |