RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Women’s Work in the Church
in the East and afterward in the West. The communities of virgins were naturally preceded by the female anchorite. It was only after the peace of the Church under Constantine that monastic orders became possible, and one of his daughters founded the first woman’s cloister. All that had preceded led to the merging of the institution of virgins, and to some extent of that of widows, in the orders of the nun. “ Heresy, hierarchy, monasticism ”’ were the three factors which checked the development of woman’s service in the community in the fourth and fifth centuries.
In the fourth century, which marks the zenith of female activity in the early Church, the importance of services performed by women not of any order is emphasized by Chrysostom and others. At this time the development of hospitals and hospices appears to have displaced those earlier activities from which women had been gradually shut out. Helena (q.v.), the mother of the Emperor Constantine, built the first hospices for strangers and pilgrims. A group of noble Roman matrons did much to promote Christianity by founding hospitals and convents and forwarding education. Jerome in his various writings especially mentions fifteen, among others Paula, a distinguished Hebrew scholar who assisted him in the translation of the Bible. The first hospital in Rome was founded by Fabiola, whom Jerome calls “ the praise of Christians, the wonder of the Gentiles, the mourning of the poor, and the consolation of the monks.”
The influence of Christian women upon husbands, sons, and grandsons was very marked. Nearly all the distinguished names of the ancient Church are
accompanied by that of mother or
5. Influence sister. Macrina (q.v., 2) helped to
of Women. rear in the love of God her three
brothers, “the eloquent Basil, the
judicious Gregory of Nyssa, and the charitable Peter of Sebaste’”’ (qq.v.). Noma, the mother of Gregory Nazianzen, converted her heathen husband and brought her distinguished son under Christian influences. Arethusa, mother of Chrysostom, devoted her life to the education of her children, and kept her son from becoming a hermit. The influence of Monnica (q.v.) upon Augustine (q.v.) is well known. Ambrose (q.v.) was brought up and educated by his sister Marcellina. Pulcheria (q.v.), the granddaughter of Theodosius the Great, superintended the education of her brother Theodosius II., with whom she reigned as Augusta. Benedict (see BrNnEpIcT or NursiA) owed much to his sister Scholastica. The part of women in the adoption of Christianity by pagan nations was large. It was due to the Christian teachings of Chlotildis that her husband Clovis was ready to accept Christianity after a victory in battle won by prayer. Her granddaughter Bertha prepared her husband, Ethelbert, king of Kent (see Auaus- TINE, SAINT, OF CANTERBURY), to embrace the Christian faith when it was preached in Britain by Augustine. Ludmilla of Bohemia trained her grandson Wenceslas in such piety that, after making Christianity the religion of Bohemia, he became a martyr and saint. Dambrowka of Bohemia persuaded her husband Micislaus of Poland to embrace Christian-
ity. The office of missionary was never forbidden to women, and with the right of the woman missionary to teach went of necessity her right to baptize. Gradually, however, this right was withdrawn. But the missionary service of women continued through the entire period of the conversion of Europe, where women rendered large service. Bridget (see Bripcet, Sart, or Kizpare) worked with Patrick in the evangelization of Ireland. Anglo-Saxon nuns were especially active in this service. The monastery at Whitby was a school of missionaries, female and male. In the eighth century Boniface (see Bontracg, Satnt) called his cousin Lioba from her convent in Dorset to help him evangelize the heathen offnorthern Europe. Walburga and Barthgytha, Anglo-Saxons nuns, assisted in evangelizing Germany. II. In the Middle Ages: The rise of Monasticism (q.v.) in the fifth century changed in a large degree, though for a long time it did not diminish, the activities of women in the Church.
1. As Rulers Nursing the sick and ministering to of Monastic the poor were their special duties, and Institutions. also teaching, especially in the foundations of Benedictines (see BENEDICT
or Nursia). The monastery as originally conceived was not a place of limited opportunity, but rather a religious settlement extending its influence over a wide area. During the turbulent centuries after the break-up of the empire, it offered to women the only place where they could work fruitfully, and develop and cultivate intellectual tastes. It afforded them also the only opportunity for social life. The monotony of castle and burg life for women was great. The men went to camp and court, the women were at home alone. Convent life was varied and interesting, including as it did the presence of a large number of royal princesses. Up to the tenth century a large number of “ double”? monasteries (of men and women) were ruled by women. The need of physical protection in those troubled times made this arrangement nearly imperative. Bede speaks of a double monastery in Rome in the seventh century; there were many in Gaul and Britain, and later in Belgium and Germany, but they were most popular in Ireland. The custom was not unknown in the East, but in the nature of things was not favored there. The custom died out in the ninth century (though revived at Port Royal in the seventeenth). The Benedictine settlement at Fontevrault, including monks and nuns to the number of 3,000 souls, was ruled for 600 years by a line of thirty-two abbesses of remarkable administrative ability. In the sixth century the Princess Radegonde, in her double monastery of the Holy Cross at Poitiers, nursed lepers, fostered literature and the arts, and often made peace in the quarrels of rulers of her time. In the same century Florentine of Spain became the superior of forty monasteries and “ by her knowledge, her virtues, and even by her sacred songs ” ranks high among nuns. Bertile of Chelles in this century drew large audiences of men and women to her lectures on the Scriptures. The abbey of Whitby in Yorkshire, a double institution, founded by Hilda (q.v.), a woman of “ rare capacity for the government of souls and for the consolidation of monastic institutions,” was re-
Women’s Work in the Church