I grew up believing that women could do anything. In rural South Dakota, I was surrounded by farm wives, some of the toughest, most resilient people I have ever met. My mother could make delicious chicken And slaughter them too.
South Dakota also often leads the nation in percentage of women And the mothers who work outside the home. As a young girl, I never doubted that women could do whatever they wanted, that they were just as capable as men. I could become president. I could be an astronaut. I could do anything I wanted to do.
But as I prepared to do so, I discovered a gap between what I had always been told and what I saw now – and that gap was clearly feminine. Despite the large number of visible women in the South Dakota workforce, women felt largely invisible when it came to the work of theology. My home church never had a female preacher. During the seminar, I had a female professor. In my doctoral studies, I had two, but none in my religion classes.
I was convinced that the Scriptures supported women in teaching and leading the Church: women were the First of all to proclaim the Gospel (Luke 24:5-12), and Paul names women as Junie and Phoebe, who acted as apostles and deacons (Rom. 16:1, 7). But compared to the pages and pages devoted to Peter and Paul, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, Calvin and Luther, women often seemed like names merely mentioned in the margins.
I wanted more than names. I wanted to see women in leadership. I wanted to see women teach. I wanted to see their faces and hear their stories. I wanted role models I could imitate: women who, with Paul, could say, “Imitate me, as I imitate Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1, NLT).
I wanted hero.
Finally, during a trip to Italy, I found them. That’s when I realized that women’s testimony does not hide in the margins. It’s written clearly. Just look at the writing on the walls.
I spent a lot of my time in Italy looking at stones. I was fascinated by the Colosseum, impressed by the grandeur of St. Peter’s, and amazed by the architectural perfection of the Pantheon. Most astonishing, however, was discovering that what I had struggled to find in ink and paper, I could see clearly in stone and paint. Here, in and on the walls of ancient churches, I found my heroes.
In Rome, I discovered churches named not only for Mary but also for Anastasia, Susanna, Agnes and Sabina. As I walked through some of these ancient churches, I discovered that the connection was much deeper than a name written on a wall. In many churches, women were literally the foundation on which the church was built: the walls were built around their bones.
Tertullian famous said that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,” and 1 Peter 2:5 describes the Church as “living stones” that are “built into a spiritual house unto a holy priesthood.” So when ancient Christians built their places of worship, they often did so on the bodies of believers who lived so deeply for Christ that they gave their lives for Him.
The martyrs were both the metaphorical and literal foundation of the Church. In the center – the heart-in the old church was the Eucharistic altar, which usually content the bones of Christian martyrs and saints. Their bodies and their willingness to follow Christ until his death served as an example and sign of what the Eucharist celebrates and calls the faithful to become. Taking bread and wine from a headstone was a powerful reminder that believers must die with Christ to be resurrected with Him.
Therefore, although scholars still debate whether women led the Eucharist in the early Church, there is no debate over whether women were fundamental to its celebration. Their tombs – and therefore their bodies – were the constituent elements not only of the Eucharist but of the entire Church.
In Ravenna, I saw their faces. Alongside Peter, Paul, and the rest of the apostles, Perpetua, Felicity, Daria, Euphemia, Cecilia, and Eugenia looked down at me from the glittering, intricate mosaics of Archbishop St. Andrew’s Chapel. These heroines led lives of such holiness that the early Church wanted women and men to admire them, both figuratively and on walls; to be inspired by their testimony and follow their example. Here, right before my eyes, were women leaders of the Church who were such authoritative teachers and role models that even the Archbishop, one of the highest authorities in the Church, looked to them for guidance. advices.
And there were more. In the Basilica of St. Vital, Empress Theodora was equal in size and position to her husband Justinian. Along the walls of the new Saint-Apollinaire Basilica, each side featured a procession of saints walking toward Christ. On the left was a line of women, and on the right, men, of the same stature, of the same position. The design and placement of the mosaics mirrored each other, so that when I stood in the church, I could clearly see what it meant for men and women to be “one in Christ” (Galatians 3:28) . These were not women hiding in the margins or in the background, but visibly guiding the Church toward Christ.
These early heroes of the Church were clearly concerned about their experience as women. And they weren’t afraid to talk about their female bodies.
Perpetua and Felicitas, two of the women depicted in the archbishop’s chapel, prepared for their martyrdom by speaking openly about their breasts, breastfeeding and childbirth. Imprisoned in 2nd century North Africa, the two women refused to renounce their faith, even though Perpetua had just given birth and Felicity was pregnant. In the account of their imprisonment and martyrdom, Perpetua describes the grief and pain she feels when the guards refuse her request to breastfeed her child in prison. Felicity gives birth early, so that when she enters the arena to die, milk is still flowing from her breasts.
Both women connect their bodies to Christ and describe their relationship with him in a maternal way. Perpetua has a vision where she receives curdled milk from a shepherd, describing it with eucharistic language. But the fact that it is sour milk instead of bread and wine also connects the life-giving breast milk she gives her son to the “pure and spiritual milk” (1 Peter 2:2-3) of the eternal life that Christ offers us. Jesus is like a mother whose body offers nourishment and life.
Félicité goes “from blood to blood”, says the narrator of her martyrdom, from childbirth to death as a martyr. During her work, Félicité compares her labor pains to her martyrdom, saying: “I myself suffer now what I suffer, but there will be another in me who will suffer for me, because I must suffer for him . » A martyr, upon dying, undergoes a baptism of blood and experiences a second birth: birth in heaven.
Félicité, like Perpétue, describes Jesus with maternal language. She tells imitation of Christ to the maternal womb describing her sufferings and bleeding for Christ, who is inside her, and his suffering and bleeding for her, which will end with her rebirth. Perpetua and Felicity describe their bodies not as obstacles or temptations, but as ways to understand Christ and become more like Him.
Theodora, the 6th-century empress who adorns the wall of San Vitale, was so powerful and influential that scholars often consider her a coruler (and even the true ruler) of Byzantium. Theodora was probably an actress and a prostitute (these roles were often linked) before marrying Justinian.
When she becomes empress, Theodora does not forget her origins and channels her power and influence to help oppressed women. She freed women from forced prostitution, banned sex trafficking, closed brothels, and bought women’s freedom, providing them with shelter and resources for a new start. She also helped establish harsher consequences for rape, banned men from killing their wives for adultery, and changed laws on divorce, child guardianship, and property to grant more rights to women. These laws formed the basis of the women’s rights laws we still have today.
In these religious spaces, the writings and artwork on the walls showed me that the female body did not need to be relegated to the margins or made invisible, but could be highlighted in the worship spaces. When I looked at the testimony of women on the walls, the female body was not a hindrance or an obstacle but a sign of holiness.
Image: WikiMedia Commons
Theodora in the Basilica of Saint Vital
We tend to think of theology as the study of the written word. But theology is not only based on texts, it is practiced…lived-in the body. The discovery of women’s bodies in and on the stones of ancient churches helped me realize that the woman-shaped space I had discovered at the seminar was not so much an absence as a keyhole, prompting me to look beyond the page to the body. Embodied forms such as art, stories and physical spaces act as a key to uncovering what is often women’s hidden history.
In my search for female heroes, I actually discovered “proof” that women had taught theology when I learned about women like Macrina and the Desert Mothers. But women also continued pilgrimages and ordered sacred work. They consecrated their bodies to Christ with vow of virginitya physical way to illustrate their spiritual commitment to being the bride of Christ (and a choice that often required them to defy their fathers).
Women owned many of the early house churches where Christians worshiped (Col. 4:15; Acts 16:15; 1 Cor. 1:11). They donated land for catacombsbuilt churchesand founded monasteries—all heroic tasks that built the churchand the kind of work that both inspires and educates.
Witnessing the women on the walls helped me better see the testimony of women in my own story as well. By channeling my vision to only think of women leaders and heroes in a certain way, I had neglected to see the many women who had written their love, knowledge, and holiness into my own life.
They were my prayer warriors. My Sunday school teachers. My most attentive listeners and advisors. My models of patience and perseverance. My purveyors of practical wisdom and most fervent followers of Christ. In short, they were my role models and mentors, my inspirations and teachers, my authorities and leaders on almost everything that mattered most.
The more I looked around me on this trip to Italy, the more I realized how limited my vision was. The church was full of women leaders and teachers. They were not just names on the margins, but foundations – in every sense of the word – for the Church. I just had to know where, and howlook.
Lanta Davis is the author of the upcoming work Becoming by contemplating (Baker Academic, 2024) and teaches at the John Wesley Honors College at Indiana Wesleyan University.
