Video Transcript: Patronage of Leadership of Women

We've just talked about martyrdom and prophecy in the previous segment. Now I want to talk  about patronage. We've talked about that a little bit when we were looking at the way the  society worked. We'll go a little deeper into it now about patronage and the leadership of  women. First of all, what would you say that leadership is, I say it's the ability to get others to  change or not to change, there's often a definition that it's an ability to cause change. But I  think there's another piece of that it's also an ability to keep change from happening, if  change shouldn't happen, you know. So it has to do with change. And at the same time,  there's a problem with that, because if you think things should continue the way they are,  then then you want to foster that. But anyway, it's, it's something like that. And we can talk  about both formal and informal patronage. Formal patronage has to do with a relationship in  the Roman world, the relationship of the of a former slave holder, to a Freedman or freed  woman. And we've talked about that. Remember, it is a formal relationship, it's built into law.  And it means that the freedmen or freed woman owes obsequium et operae, to the patrons  and the patrons, now the freed person is in the, in the position of client to the patron. And,  and that means of honor, and reverence and loyalty, and showing up when you're supposed  to show up. And also working for, for free a certain number of days per year by contract for  the patrons. So that's formal patronage. But for the most part, we're talking about informal  patronage and informal patronage was not built into law. You know, if you're in a situation or a culture in which it's not what you know, it's who you know, you understand a little bit about  patronage, it's access to power through others, who can get you that access that that that  context. So, we are talking about a situation in which we have informal leadership in a society that does not have a strong central structure. So people who have wealth, people who have  connections, who can get what they want, because they know the right people. They are the  ones who exercise patronage. There are certainly political systems today that work on  patronage, and many of you may be very familiar with them, and you may be in the midst of  them. So it's, it's a question of what connections you have. And so in the Roman world, people would align themselves as clients with someone more powerful than they who had good  connections. And in a society that was as fickle would say, as, as ancient Roman society, you  had to align yourself with someone who could protect you. So that the whole society is  informally structured that way. So that a whole group of people would be clients of a patron,  now what did that mean? For the most part, it meant that you showed up at the patrons door  very early in the morning. And you waited for a private interview one by one with the patrons  and you would hope for answers to your questions. Could I have such and such could I? Can  you give me access to such and such and you hope for a positive answer? And also there was  a custom of handing out little sportellae is the name, little baskets with food in them. And so  you hope that you're getting one and if you really score, you're getting an invitation to dinner  that evening. So often in the houses of wealthy patrons, there would be dinners. In which  invited certain invited clients would come, and then you'd have all this vying for, which place  am I going to be assigned to at the table? We've talked about that before. So all of this is  involved in the the normal function of the, the way the patronage system worked. In the case  of male patrons, with elite status, you're also talking about access to political appointments,  and political positions it could get very political women, of course, we're not directly involved  in the political system, but they were still involved in informal ways they could exercise this  influence as patrons. So we have men patrons, and we have women patrons, one of the best  known of the women patrons was Lydia, who was the wife of Augustus, she had her own  home, her own household. And she ran her own patronage system. If you couldn't get to the  Emperor, you got to go to the Empress to the wife, and you'd try to get her then to intercede  for you with not only her husband, the emperor, but with all kinds of other Imperial agents  that she had access to. So that gives you some sense of how the patronage structure worked.  But it also had a trickle down effect. That is, it wasn't only something that the elite did it, it  was something that that worked on every level, anybody who had the wherewithal to, to  gather a group of clients around them did, and the clients then would expect access to  various things. I talked before about the function of the house church of networking, well,  that's just an extension of the patronage system. Because one of the things that you might  want is access to other people who could get you where you where you wanted to go. And 

that's what I mean by networking. And that happens really at every level. So we have patrons  and clients. And one of the things that's, that's noted in the the literature that that is  produced by people who were influential patrons, and we're talking now about the elites, they tended to avoid the, the term client, patron, yes, their patrons, they tend not to speak of their clients as clients. clientis is a Latin word. Because that was considered demeaning. And the  word that they tended to use instead was friend amici. So a patron and his friends, did  patrons, to people who were patrons also have friends, real friends, yes, they did of the same  social status. So it's a tricky thing to interpret when you when you read this. My own thinking  is that just just take this off as a little diversion. In, in the Gospel of John, in the Last Supper  discourse, when when Jesus says, I no longer call you slaves, but friends. In a non patronage  society, we tend to interpret the friends there as equals, I don't think that's what's intended at all. I think this is a patron client language. So that it's from slave or what's the next up from  slave, its client, the freed person client, so I don't think Jesus is saying there, I'm treating you  on an equal basis, because in John's gospel, nobody is equal to Jesus, come on. I think the it's  a reference there out of the out of the system, that you are now my freed person, and  therefore you have a different relationship to me. And we're going to operate this on in terms  of patrons and clients. Anyway, back to the, the general considerations here, we're dealing  here with patrons and clients. And I've already said what is the next point here, that the  formal relationship requires this reverence and various kinds of work? Two pictures here of  well known women patrons. And the first one is this woman named Eumachia. Eumachia was  an elite woman Woman of high status in Pompeii. And And one of the things I haven't said is,  is that patrons wealthy patrons, but also the patrons of associations, professional  associations, religious associations, churches. Eumachia is a patron of the Fuller's guild, in the fullers are the people who clean your, your, your woolen garments. You know, it's like the  drycleaners. And they have a professional guild professional association in Pompeii as people  with the same work did all over in Roman cities. And they, they had Eumachia as their patron, which meant that she was she put up a lot of money for them. They had a building, well  located building right on the forum, the central area, with an inscription at the top that said  who they were, this is this was their, their guild office, this is where they hung out, you know.  And, in Eumachia is the one who is honored there with a statue. So this is a statute it's a copy  of the original which is in the museum, of course, but this is the statue of Eumachia. And she  is portrayed here as a as a Roman Matron. She wears a simple tunic that goes all the way  down to her ankles, but then over that she's wearing a stola. And you see it's a very long  piece of of material, and it goes over her head and it's wrapped all around her and it's under  her right arm. The the stolla is the feminine counterpart of the man's toga, a Roman citizens  toga. So it's a long piece of wool that wraps around you. And she's wearing it in the in the  traditional way. So she is depicted here as a Roman Matron. We know that, that Eumachia also had an extensive burial lot. And this is something that's kind of interesting too, with regard to  households, that on the way out, one of the roads up is the cemeteries were always outside  the city. And therefore, as soon as you went out the city gate, the whole road is lined with  cemetery. And she had a very extensive plot there, which was a place of burial not only for  her immediate family, but also for her freed persons, and the slaves in the household. It was  one of the good things about belonging to one of these extended households is that you were  guaranteed a place to be buried when you died. So she's, you see that in terms of patronage,  you know, she's the one who takes care of everybody. That's the that's the idea. And I wanted to bring in also the example Junia Theodora we do not have a statue of Junia Theodora, but  we have an extended inscription, a copy of which was placed in her burial chamber. Outside  the city of Corinth. Junia Theodora was a patron and not a Christian, but a patron in Corinth  and she came from Lycia in Asia Minor in in western Turkey. And she exercised patronage in  Corinth for her homeland people, for anybody from Lycia, who came into Corinth probably on  business, looking for business connections, looking for a place to stay. For hospitality for okay, I'm here now helped me with the connections that I need. And it's all spelled out in her  inscription, which gives us a wonderful idea of how patronage functioned, and how women's  patronage functioned. In the case of Eumachia, Eumachia had a son at least one son, she she  was certainly married at one point and then she was widowed, and she continued her 

patronage, also as a widow, Junia Theodora. We don't know about her marital status, but  presumably she was married at some point. And one more of these women patrons at Perga  in in southern Asia Minor southern Turkey, her name was Plankia Magna. She's a second  century patron. Again, she is wrapped up in her stola and you see the Long Tunic here, you  see how long that was actually dragged the ground. And then the the stola is, is it's over her  head. It's it's wrapped around her arms, etc. And the statute base for her is is what you see  on the left and in Latin, and in Greek. It says to the goddess Diana, or Artemis In Greek of  Perga, the patron goddess of the city of Perga, Plankia Magna. So Plankia Magna has  dedicated a statue to the goddess, the Roman goddess Diana, the Greek goddess Artemis,  they were put together in this city. So that was another thing that patrons did was was civic  patronage, paying for statues, for monuments for public baths, for auditoriums for for various  things that would benefit the citizens. So, that gives you some idea of how women patronage  women patrons functioned. So let's just look at the patronage of women in early Christianity  of what we know. We've already mentioned, Phoebe, we've mentioned Nympha we haven't  mentioned yet Tavia in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch. Ignatius was a bishop in Antioch, who was arrested and condemned to death and sent to Rome, probably to be executed in the in  the arena. And on the way he he visits a number of, well, he doesn't visit the house, the  churches, the churches, delegations come to him in various places because he's under arrest.  And one of the women he writes about in one of the letters is the name Tavia, who seems to  have the same kind of function that Phoebe and Nympha did that is there that she's hosting a  house church. So so we know of others in early Christianity. We can imagine now Phoebe, in  the same kind of relationship she's called she's called a diakonos and a prostatatis by Paul  we're going to, diakonos we're gonna deal with another time. But for prostatis, is the is the  word for patron. And everything we've said now about these other patrons about Junia  Theodora, Eumachia, Plankia Magnia, Magna. These women like Phoebe are not in a position  to erect public statues, they're not doing public patronage. They're doing patronage of the  Christian community, the way Eumachia did of the fullers guild of the professional guild. And  we know of other examples of that of women who are not Christian, who are patrons of  religious groups that meet in their house of professional groups. So, and certainly women and  men too, of course, but we're focusing here on the women. So in all of this, I hope that you  get some idea of how patronage functions. And Paul says that Phoebe is his prostatis, his  patron. So that means that he probably accepted hospitality in her house. And that she was  very influential in networking for him in introducing him to people who would be helpful for his mission. All of that is part of how patronage functioned in the society at large and therefore,  how it functioned in early Christianity.