Paganism

[Skadi]

I will also have to differ with your views on pre-Christian German and Scandinavian pagan culture’s views on women. By almost any metric, women’s dignity and rights were far less valued before Christianity than afterwards for the Merovingians, Carolingians, and Anglo-Saxons, for the period for which we have any kind of textual data.

Although German pagan women had some rights that the Roman pagans did not grant them - they could speak in political councils and testify in court - the customs of marriage devalued women. Their consent was not required for marriage, and marriage by abduction and rape was common (so much so that there was even a pagan marriage ceremony for such events, indicating that they were common.) Child marriages and marriage to children as young as infants were common, so much so that the Church had to set minimum standards for legal marriage. Incest and consanguineous relationships, essential to retain the “honor” of the German pagan male and to secure political relationships, were common and a source of conflict with the early Church.

Polygamy and legal concubinage, which historically have been factors that reduce the dignity and worth of women, was commonly practiced by the pagan Germans. The Merovingian Charibert refused to give up his concubines despite excommunication and reverted to paganism. Dagobert was known for the number of concubines he possessed. Women were punished for adultery under the Germanic pagan codes, whereas men generally were not.

Most of the pagan tribes allowed a man to divorce his wife, but not vice versa (the Anglo-Saxons were the lone exception in this.)

Less is known about pagan Viking culture. There is no evidence that women were allowed to express their views in Viking assemblies it is controversial whether women were allowed to own land (probably not). Men could be punished by death for adultery or for the rape of a virgin, but these were crimes that impacted on the honor of a dishonored husband or father. Sexual assault was common in Viking raids on other countries (as at Barking Abbey, where the nuns disfigured themselves to avoid rape and the aggrieved Vikings burnt the women to death.) Women were commonly enslaved by the pagans for sexual purposes, both among the Vikings and the Celts. One of the 2 surviving texts that are from St. Patrick calls out a Celtic pagan king for this practice, at the risk of Patrick’s own life.

I should make it clear that pagan cultures “valued” women, inasmuch as they were of worth to men. Every culture in history has done that, just as men have valued heads of cattle. Our culture, which is increasingly pagan, “values” and rewards women like Molly Cyrus, inasmuch as she earns money for the men of her record company, and perpetuates a cultural belief that all young women want to dress in a sleazy manner and tweak with older men. Our culture does not value the middle aged women working behind the counter at WalMart to support her children. That is the radical difference of Christianity - it values the inherent human dignity of all women, not just the young, skinny, pretty, or rich ones.

Wow, I’m interested to know where exactly you acquired this information because large portions of it are remarkably false. Firstly, just to establish this, Women across all old Germanic cultures from the Germani of the first century to the Vikings had…
-The right to divorce an abusive or cheating husband
-The right to own and claim land and property, and inherit if they had no living brothers.
-The right to apply (though no garentee of acceptance) in any war band or raiding party.
-The right to bring charges and vote at Thing (local assembly).
-The right to challenge an opponent to trial by combat.

Needless to say these rights quickly disappeared as Christianity rose to prominence. Of the 3 main branches of the old culture (Continental, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse) the Norse women actualy had the most rights, and were undoubtably the most equally treated women of their time.

Furthermore most of your examples presented here are activitys present throughout the whole of human history and which persisted long after the adoption of Christianity. The rape and kidnapping of women durring war continues to this very day, nearly every woman between 8 and 80 in east Germany and west Poland was raped by Slav Orthodox Russians in 1945. And it wasn’t just the Bolsheviks, as the rate of rape in Western Europe was spectacularly high as well, even in liberated allied nations like France. The horrors of war are inherent, and not anything a religion change is going to stop.

Furthermore, the practices of kings taking women as concubines also continued through the Middle Ages, as did arranged marraiges and incestuous marraiges. The betrothal of children hardly even able to walk was common among the Christian aristocracy of Europe.

You somehow seem to equate paganism to Miley Cyrus of all people, and yet Christianity is the champion of women? It was the rise of Christianity which brought an end to democratic practices in Northern Europe, took the right to divorce from women, as well as the right to own property. The progress of women’s rights sense those days has not as some Christians claim been the product of the church (although in certain instances it has been helpful). Instead it has often been against it, as religious authority tends to oppose change in general.

It is gross misrepresentation of the facts and infact little more than wishful thinking to say that the advent of Christianity advanced the status of women in Northern Europe.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Wow, I’m interested to know where exactly you acquired this information because large portions of it are remarkably false. Firstly, just to establish this, Women across all old Germanic cultures from the Germani of the first century to the Vikings had…
(1)The right to divorce an abusive or cheating husband
(2)The right to own and claim land and property, and inherit if they had no living brothers.
(3)The right to apply (though no garentee of acceptance) in any war band or raiding party.
(4)The right to bring charges and vote at Thing (local assembly).
(5) The right to challenge an opponent to trial by combat.

I renumbered them for clarity. You’re conflating a number of separate tribes and clans. As I said, women in some pagan cultures had some rights that women in other pagan cultures did not.

(1) True in some pagan cultures, not in others. Viking women could fairly easily divorce, and the threat of this was used in some circumstances to goad their men into carrying out blood feuds, as divorce was financially ruinous for the man. Among the early German tribes (such as the Huns), a man could divorce a woman for adultery, but not the other way around. A woman could divorce her husband if he committed a crime against the tribe, such as unlawful homicide or grave-robbing. Divorce at that time was not advantageous to most women, as it resulted in a loss of status, property, and reduced her prospects to find another provider and protector.
(2) As you say, male primogeniture laws took precedence over female claims. No argument there.
(3) Source? Women did not participate in war parties in Scandinavian cultures, though there are claims in the sagas that some took up arms in self defense, or aided their men in the last resort (whether these are actual occurrences or fictional ones to reinforce societal ideals is up for debate.) Women’s graves have been found with weapons, but that’s far from evidence they fought as warriors, in other than defense of the home (as Samurai women were also expected to do - this was a very limited warrant for use of arms, to prevent the loss of honor to an invading male by rape. That’s quite a ways from the idea that there was a culture full of Red Sonjas.) (Actually, Skadi, it’s hard to generalize about Viking cultures as you have done. They did not have a shared cultural identity, and different Scandinavian pagans had different customs and beliefs. In Iceland, which has one of the better attested legal codes, the Grágás forbade women to carry arms (or from cross-dressing as men, or cutting their hair short.). That might not be true in other countries.
(4) Source? Viking women could not be goði (chieftains), judges, or witnesses. There is no evidence women could speak at Scandinavian pagan þing (assemblies), though some could, under limited circumstances, in some Germanic ones. Women could be witnesses of civil ceremonies (as at a wedding) but not as witnesses against a man in a criminal trial, except in some circumstances.
(5) Good luck with that. It was felt to be unmanly (and very unlucky, as described in the Droplaugarsona saga) among the Vikings to strike a woman from their own tribe, so it is unlikely that a man would fight with a woman in trial by combat. I’d like to hear some textual sources for that. Women may have fought with women, but I don’t know of any sources on that in Viking culture. There was a tradition of settling marital disputes by (often lethal) trial by combat in Germany, which appears to have survived into the Christian era, but it was necessary to so handicap the male to make the battle even close to even that this was more likely to have been a really rough form of village entertainment. The cultural protections in some Viking cultures did not apply to women of other countries, who were subject to rape and enslavement as a cultural other. Although this obviously happened in Christian countries, chattel slavery and sexual trafficking of women was seen as a sin and aberrational by Christian thinkers (per Saints Augustine, Patrick, Paul, John, and Nicholas among many others), we do not see a similar movement against slavery in the pagan cultures…until Christianization (and even then, old ways die hard, as formerly pagan cultures, such as Sweden, returned to the slave trade in later years.)

The sexual assault and sexual enslavement of captured women (thralls) by Vikings was hardly just an occasional battlefield aberration, as you imply The sale of women stolen from Europe in slave markets was a source of continuing profits for the Viking men. The Laxdæla saga. described how Melkorka, daughter of an Irish king, was captured when she was 15 years old, then purchased by Höskuldur in Norway, she became the mother of Ólafur Höskuldsson (Olaf the Peacock). The medieval law book *Grágás * sets the purchase price for a concubine, a debt slave used for sexual purposes, indicating that this was not aberrational, but an intrinsic part of pagan Viking society. It wasn’t made illegal until the Christianization of Scandinavian countries.

 

[David_Zampino]

While the dictionary version of th word Pagan is a religion worshiping anything other than the god of Abraham, it originated as Roman military slang for farmer or country dweller, and eventually became equivalent to the modern term “Hick” as Christianity spread in city’s much more effectively then rural areas.

When I use it I am specifically reffuring to either

1. Non-Abrahamic religions from Classic antiquity, specifically Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
2. Modern incarnations of those religions or Neo-pagan religions derived from various forms of paganism, for example Wicca.

While by dictionary defenition religions like Hinduism and Shinto are pagan I don’t refer to them as such.

Thanks! While I don’t necessarily agree with all point of your definition (though there are bits that I DO agree with, vis a vis Hinduism, etc.) it creates a starting point for discussion.

I have to admit that I look at Wicca as invented – and recently invented – and having no more claim to ancient paganism than L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology has to either science or religion.

 

[Faith1960]

Okay, this seems like it is of concern to you, so I looked at the on-line article.

First off, it is unlikely in the extreme that pious 1st century Jews would be in a position to know or copy the attributes of a libertine Greek God in recognizing the Messiah, or to copy pagan Greek ideas into their prophecies of the coming Messiah. That alone eliminates the argument.

Secondly, the leaders of the early Church refused to mix pagan worship with Christian worship, and were willing to die for that stance. *Why would they change that stance? * The writings of the early Church clearly reflect that they did not think the pagan gods did not exist - they thought they did, but that they were not gods but actually fallen angels / demons who tricked the gullible pagans into worshipping them. Why would they want to combine pagan and Christian belief and have relations with demons? (For more on this, see “The Trickery of the Fallen Angels and the Demonic Mimesis of the Divine” - A.Y. Reed - Journal of Early Christian Studies 12 (2004): 141-171 (original in PDF in annettereed.com/jecs12.2reed.pdf))

Thirdly, correlation does not equal causation - that is, a similarity in thematic elements does not necessarily mean one is the cause of the other. There are pyramids in Egypt and pyramids in Mexico - we don’t have to claim that Atlanteans or Aliens were the common source. People in different regions can have similar ideas.

Yeah, but pretty much all pagan gods were the sons of gods. These beings were said to be conceived through sexual relations between a god and a human woman. That’s very different from the Christian belief.

Your source says Dionysus was a savior in that “this power of Dionysos over death and his positive role in the ritual makes him a “savior” of his initiates in the next world”

So unlike Christ, who came to save all men and redeem us from original sin, Dionysus is supposed to save only the initiates of his secretive “mystery cult.” Your source wrote, " the rites (orgia) of this ritual included the tearing apart of animals (sparagmos) and eating them raw (omophagia). Dionysos’ subversive character is expressed in his rejection of the sacrificial system of eating food cooked according to the proper order (roasted then boiled) in favor of omophagia, the desire to eat raw flesh. The most extreme form of omophagia is allelophagia, in which men devour one another, becoming like wild beasts and ferocious animals. Such behavior allows them to escape from the human condition and get “outside themselves” by imitating those animals least subject to domestication."

Okay, not seeing a correlation with Christianity there.

Again (see above), all manner of miracles were said to be performed by gods. Compare them to the actual miracles performed by Jesus, which are attested to as historical facts, not myths. Your source wrote, “There are several miracles involving Dionysos with wine, growth miracles, and others…” but both his hyperlinks are expired. As I said, Dionysus’s miracles were primarily acts of vengeance against those who refuse to worship him, not acts of love and charity as were those of Jesus.

See my comments above.

With whom? Pretty much everyone in the ancient world ate together and consumed wine and bread, they were staples of the diet. I had some bread and wine with dinner last night, that doesn’t make me a messiah figure. Dionysus did not proclaim that the bread and wine were his body and blood.

Dionysus’s journey to the underworld is presented like a typical Greek mythological adventure (as described in Aristophanes’ play The Frogs.) It has nothing to do with Christ’s Harrowing of Hell and setting free the holy dead.

As your source says, “Dionysos is always the lord of dementia and of the ability to get outside oneself. Dionysos is truly himself only in unyielding madness, when the mania creates, through murder, a taint, a miasma, a sickness or pestilence…The unclean madness that forms the basis of his cult is always part of him, however disciplined and civilized Dionysos may seem in the pantheons of cities unmindful of his fundamental wildness.”

Does this sound like a model for Christ to you?

About your second point, that leaders of the early church refused to mix pagan worship with Christian worship, can you link me to something about that ?

Also couldn’t some argue the legend that they ate Dionysus’s body be similar to our belief in the Eucharist ?

 

[David_Zampino]

About your second point, that leaders of the early church refused to mix pagan worship with Christian worship, can you link me to so.etching about that ?

Also couldn’t some argue the legend that they ate Dionysus’s body be similar to our belief in that Eucharist ?

Faith,

Perhaps it would help if you turned the discussion around. For example, there are numerous examples on other religions regarding a dying god who returns to life bringing new life. In Christianity, that actually happened. So who is “copying” whom? Or, in fact, do the non-Christian religions actually have a glimpse of the truth of which Christianity is its fullness?

 

[Faith1960]

Faith,

Perhaps it would help if you turned the discussion around. For example, there are numerous examples on other religions regarding a dying god who returns to life bringing new life. In Christianity, that actually happened. So who is “copying” whom? Or, in fact, do the non-Christian religions actually have a glimpse of the truth of which Christianity is its fullness?

I was wondering about the very last part you wrote, even before you wrote it.

 

[David_Zampino]

I was wondering about the very last part you wrote, even before you wrote it.

I think that this is something that Lewis was trying to convey . . .

 

[Faith1960]

I thought you were going to say Mithras at first

I know this won’t answer your question specifically, but here’s my two cents.

Because we believe that God seeks all of His creation to be reconciled to himself, we shouldn’t get too worked up about some similarities seen in other manners of faith. Even among ancient paganism, there was a yearning for some godly authority above themselves, albeit imperfectly developed and practiced.

So, in other words , you’re saying that Christianity didn’t inspire the pagans to steal it’s ideas but that the longing for God resulted in some similarities between the two?

 

[David_Zampino]

So, in other words , you’re saying that Christianity didn’t inspire the pagans to steal it’s ideas but that the longing for God resulted in some similarities between the two?

Something like that . . .

For example, in “The Abolition of Man” Lewis compiled quite an astonishing number of examples of similarities in moral codes throughout the centuries, all over the world, and in many, many different religions and philosophies.

 

[Faith1960]

It occurs to me that part of the problem, at least in this thread, is that the word “pagan” remains undefined. Even now, do we use the word as it might have been used 2,000 or more years ago?

There are a couple of points I’d like to bring up, but would like to learn how other posters define the term.

I’m simply talking about the Roman and Greek gods, and their followers .

 

[Faith1960]

Something like that . . .
.

I thought I was making some progress here.

 

[David_Zampino]

I thought I was making some progress here.

You are . . . see my next post.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

About your second point, that leaders of the early church refused to mix pagan worship with Christian worship, can you link me to something about that ?

I did, Faith. See post #15, that you quoted. I don’t mind writing long (or long-winded) responses in response to a sincere question, but you are actually reading the responses, I hope.

You can also Google some of the writings of the early Church fathers on this subject, such as the sermon of Bishop Gregory Nazianzen, On the Theophany, or St. Athansius’s On the Heathen. There’s a good book collecting the writings of the ECFs that you would probably enjoy, and it’s available on the store website of this website - *The Fathers Know Best *by Jimmy Akins.

St. Justin Martyr wrote for the ECF majority in his First Apology:

[W]e do not reverence the same gods as you do, nor offer to the dead libations and the savour of fat, and crowns for their statues, and sacrifices. For you very well know that the same animals are with some esteemed gods, with others wild beasts, and with others sacrificial victims. And, secondly, because we— who, out of every race of men, used to worship Bacchus** [Bacchus is another name for Dionysus - AZM]** the son of Semele, and Apollo the son of Latona…or some one or other of those who are called gods— have now, through Jesus Christ, learned to despise these, though we be threatened with death for it, and have dedicated ourselves to the unbegotten and impossible God; of whom we are persuaded that never was he goaded by lust of Antiope, or such other women, or of Ganymede, nor was rescued by that hundred-handed giant whose aid was obtained through Thetis, nor was anxious on this account that her son Achilles should destroy many of the Greeks because of his concubine Briseis. Those who believe these things we pity, and those who invented them we know to be devils.

(emphases are mine)

If you don’t accept that as evidence that the early Christian Church utterly rejected any affinity between Christ and Dionysus, Grace, I’m not sure what will convince you.

Interestingly, St. Justin’s writings are used by some to try to argue that he admitted to similarities in some pagan beliefs to Christianity. That’s a complete misunderstanding of his point. His point, like that of David Zampino and C.S. Lewis, was that pagan philosophy contained some dim apprehension of the truth that is found fully only in Christian revelation. He wrote this in an attempt to persuade the pagan authorities to stop the persecution of the Christian Church, and used some pretty far-reaching and inaccurate parallels (but then, he was trying to use his persuasive powers to save innocent lives).

Also couldn’t some argue the legend that they ate Dionysus’s body be similar to our belief in the Eucharist ?

If they were ninnies, yes.

I know you are smarter than that, and understand that a legendary event (Dionysus did not really exist) is not the same as an historical event (Jesus did, as the vast majority of all reputable historians agree.) We have sufficient textual evidence from multiple sources for the historicity of Jesus. We have none for Dionysus. The Transubstantiation of the Eucharist is quite a different order of event than a mythical figure supposedly being torn apart and consumed by giant Titans, and then having his heart patched into another mythical god’s thigh…

 

[Faith1960]

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. So there’s no chance early Christians borrowed ideas from pagan mythology and used those ideas when .writing about Christ?
My Bible says this, 2 Peter 1:16: We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ but we had been eyewitnesses to His majesty.

I did, Faith. See post #15, that you quoted. I don’t mind writing long (or long-winded) responses in response to a sincere question, but you are actually reading the responses, I hope.

You can also Google some of the writings of the early Church fathers on this subject, such as the sermon of Bishop Gregory Nazianzen, On the Theophany, or St. Athansius’s On the Heathen. There’s a good book collecting the writings of the ECFs that you would probably enjoy, and it’s available on the store website of this website - *The Fathers Know Best *by Jimmy Akins.

St. Justin Martyr wrote for the ECF majority in his First Apology:

(emphases are mine)

If you don’t accept that as evidence that the early Christian Church utterly rejected any affinity between Christ and Dionysus, Grace, I’m not sure what will convince you.

Interestingly, St. Justin’s writings are used by some to try to argue that he admitted to similarities in some pagan beliefs to Christianity. That’s a complete misunderstanding of his point. His point, like that of David Zampino and C.S. Lewis, was that pagan philosophy contained some dim apprehension of the truth that is found fully only in Christian revelation. He wrote this in an attempt to persuade the pagan authorities to stop the persecution of the Christian Church, and used some pretty far-reaching and inaccurate parallels (but then, he was trying to use his persuasive powers to save innocent lives).

If they were ninnies, yes.

I know you are smarter than that, and understand that a legendary event (Dionysus did not really exist) is not the same as an historical event (Jesus did, as the vast majority of all reputable historians agree.) We have sufficient textual evidence from multiple sources for the historicity of Jesus. We have none for Dionysus. The Transubstantiation of the Eucharist is quite a different order of event than a mythical figure supposedly being torn apart and consumed by giant Titans, and then having his heart patched into another mythical god’s thigh…

Sorry. I forgot about your post.

 

[Faith1960]

About your second point, that leaders of the early church refused to mix pagan worship with Christian worship, can you link me to something about that ?

Also couldn’t some argue the legend that they ate Dionysus’s body be similar to our belief in the Eucharist ?

That article is way over my head.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

That article is way over my head.

So, just read the quote from St. Justin the Martyr that I posted.

The Early Church Fathers (ECF) did NOT use Dionysus/Bacchus as a model for Jesus, as it says.

There is no textual evidence the Jews, the Apostles, or the ECF used Dionysus as a model - no letters, epistles, etc., saying “let’s do this. it will make us more popular.”

The mythological stories are widely different from the historical evidence for the life of Jesus.

Because there are a couple of vaguely similar elements in both stories doesn’t mean one is the source for another. If I know my grandfather was a foundling who was adopted by farmers in Kansas, and grew up to be big and strong, it doesn’t mean that he didn’t exist and that my parents made him up using Superman’s life as a model.

 

[Faith1960]

So, just read the quote from St. Justin the Martyr that I posted.

The Early Church Fathers (ECF) did NOT use Dionysus/Bacchus as a model for Jesus, as it says.

There is no textual evidence the Jews, the Apostles, or the ECF used Dionysus as a model - no letters, epistles, etc., saying “let’s do this. it will make us more popular.”

The mythological stories are widely different from the historical evidence for the life of Jesus.

Because there are a couple of vaguely similar elements in both stories doesn’t mean one is the source for another. If I know my grandfather was a foundling who was adopted by farmers in Kansas, and grew up to be big and strong, it doesn’t mean that he didn’t exist and that my parents made him up using Superman’s life as a model.

I can’t find that quote. . Will you please repost it?

 

[Arizona_Mike]

I can’t find that quote.

It’s block-quoted in post #51, above. It was written sometime around 155 to 157 A.D., is addressed to the Emperor and the Roman Senate, and also provides an early attestation to Catholic belief, especially the celebration of the Eucharist and the doctrine of Transubstantiation.

“[W]e do not reverence the same gods as you do, nor offer to the dead libations and the savour of fat, and crowns for their statues, and sacrifices. For you very well know that the same animals are with some esteemed gods, with others wild beasts, and with others sacrificial victims. And, secondly, because we— who, out of every race of men, used to worship Bacchus Bacchus is another name for Dionysus - AZM] the son of Semele, and Apollo the son of Latona…or some one or other of those who are called gods— have now, through Jesus Christ, learned to despise these, though we be threatened with death for it, and have dedicated ourselves to the unbegotten and impossible God; of whom we are persuaded that never was he goaded by lust of Antiope, or such other women, or of Ganymede, nor was rescued by that hundred-handed giant whose aid was obtained through Thetis, nor was anxious on this account that her son Achilles should destroy many of the Greeks because of his concubine Briseis. Those who believe these things we pity, and those who invented them we know to be devils.”

 

[Faith1960]

It’s block-quoted in post #51, above. It was written sometime around 155 to 157 A.D., is addressed to the Emperor and the Roman Senate, and also provides an early attestation to Catholic belief, especially the celebration of the Eucharist and the doctrine of Transubstantiation.

“[W]e do not reverence the same gods as you do, nor offer to the dead libations and the savour of fat, and crowns for their statues, and sacrifices. For you very well know that the same animals are with some esteemed gods, with others wild beasts, and with others sacrificial victims. And, secondly, because we— who, out of every race of men, used to worship Bacchus Bacchus is another name for Dionysus - AZM] the son of Semele, and Apollo the son of Latona…or some one or other of those who are called gods— have now, through Jesus Christ, learned to despise these, though we be threatened with death for it, and have dedicated ourselves to the unbegotten and impossible God; of whom we are persuaded that never was he goaded by lust of Antiope, or such other women, or of Ganymede, nor was rescued by that hundred-handed giant whose aid was obtained through Thetis, nor was anxious on this account that her son Achilles should destroy many of the Greeks because of his concubine Briseis. Those who believe these things we pity, and those who invented them we know to be devils.”

Thanks!

 

[Mintaka]

Re: earlier comments by Skadi et al about pre-Christian Norse women’s rights –

There was one circumstance in which a Norse woman could legally become an avenger, fight duels, etc. She had to declare herself legally a man, dress like a man, live like a man, and give up all rights as a woman (including the right to marry a man, hold land, etc. if I remember correctly). This was different from being a shieldmaiden, btw. I don’t remember whether this custom went away when Christianity came in.

There’s a similar custom in the backcountry of Albania today, in which women can trade the restrictions of being a woman and support their families as the heir, by means of becoming legally a man, working men’s jobs, and dressing like a man. There are some older ladies still alive who still practice this.

Irish tradition does remember women slaves in pagan times being drafted into their lords’ war service as well as men, but of course this usually didn’t end well for a woman with less upper body strength and reach than the man on the opposite side; and peasant slave girls didn’t have any more war training than the slave men (ie, none) to compensate for this by speed and cleverness. So the story goes that one of the Irish saints’ mothers, coming upon a particularly gory battlefield full of dead women, demanded that women be legally forbidden to fight in wars, and to be given legal protection from being slaughtered in war along with other noncombatants.

Moving along… the sad truth is that, if you examine most cultures that worshipped goddesses, they usually worshipped goddesses aplenty but continued treating normal women like crud.

Romans were kind of an interesting case. Roman matrons could have a fair amount of power (and they wielded it), but it was usually unofficial power backed by strength of character and generations of hot Italian temper and cool Roman stares. A lot of their power depended on their fathers’ and husbands’ goodwill, their slaves and children’s fear of them, and a lot of experience of being powerless. If you were widowed or divorced, your kids belonged to your husbands’ families, not to you or yours. You saw or raised your kids solely by the other clan’s sufferance.

Roman girls didn’t have diddly. If their dad let them survive to get a name, and if their mom and dad loved them, and if they were freewomen, their lives might be pleasant enough. They weren’t kept kenneled up like classical Greek women, though they weren’t as free as Hellenic women in places like Alexandria. They were usually pretty uneducated by Roman standards, although many learned to read at home, and some women picked up a fair amount from reading or from talking to their brothers and relations. But although it didn’t usually come up if you were a freewoman or a citizen, you were essentially your dad’s property the whole time. Yay.

People like St. Paula, St. Fabiola, and their friends saw Christianity (at least partly) as a road to dignity. They were mostly pretty educated (except maybe Fabiola) and reasonably wealthy, but they had nowhere to go. Most of them were widows, and their lack of control of their lives, as well as their lack of certainty about what would happen to their kids, was apparently a big issue for them. Christianity told them that there was neither man nor woman, slave nor free, Jew nor Greek, and they did their best to bend their minds to the other strange concepts, for the sake of the God who promised a world safe for women to have families in.

Roman women, even after all the “new women” and their sexual exploits in Imperial times, still had a deep cultural belief that no Roman woman should ever allow herself to live if she had been raped, and that therefore any threat of rape should be answered by suicide. We can see that Roman men and women in St. Ambrose’s family still believed this, from his “On Virginity” treatise for his sister which praises Christian ladies who drowned themselves to escape capture and rape. It was the next generation of people more Christian in culture who rejected this – people like St. Augustine, who declared that rape was a crime by the rapist, not a shame for the victim; and that a raped woman should be regarded as no less chaste than she’d been before.

Re: Tertullian…

Well, yeppers, you have to watch what part of his career his writings come from. Was it from when he was still married, and telling people that the greatest joy in life was to sing psalms with your wife in the bosom of your home? Was it after she died, when he got all weird and bitter in a lawyer way, and started talking about the joy of heaven was to see all persecutors of Christians in Hell? (Nobody seems to know what happened to Tertullian’s wife, but it seems that she died, and it might have been in the persecution of his time.) Was it after he joined the holier-than-thou Donatists who said that nobody who took the easy way out of persecution could ever be forgiven by God and the Church? Was it after he joined the weird Montanist group that was simultaneously Donatist and worshipped a couple of rural prophet ladies as the Holy Spirit incarnate? Or was it one of the treatises written by those who admired him and wrote as him to make their allegiance clear?

Back when Tertullian was sane-ish and just a bit stern, he wrote a fair number of treatises telling men how to dress and behave, including that no decent Christian man would go out on the street without a good Roman pallium around his shoulders. So it’s no surprise that he wrote at least one treatise about women’s dress and behavior.