Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership, Hardcover

Description

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND license.

This book reveals exciting early Christian evidence that Mary was remembered as a powerful role model for women leaders--women apostles, baptizers, and presiders at the ritual meal. Early Christian art portrays Mary and other women clergy serving as deacon, presbyter/priest, and bishop. In addition, the two oldest surviving artifacts to depict people at an altar table inside a real church depict women and men in a gender-parallel liturgy inside two of the most important churches in Christendom--Old Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome and the second Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Dr. Kateusz's research brings to light centuries of censorship, both ancient and modern, and debunks the modern imagination that from the beginning only men were apostles and clergy.

About the Author

Dr. Ally Kateusz is Research Associate at the Wijngaards Institute of Catholic Research in London. She is a cultural historian whose work focuses on religion and gender. Her research has been published in the Journal of Early Christian Studies, the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, as well as other venues, and has won prestigious awards.