Video Transcript: Women Presbyters

We've talked about women deacons. Now we're going to talk about women presbyters. First of all, we haven't done the groundwork. What is a Presbyterian? What did a presbyter do? I  mentioned that even as early as Ignatius of Antioch in the early second century. There are  presbyters of cource there are people with that title even earlier in Acts. It says that the  apostles appointed presbyters. There are other cases where presbyters are mentioned for in I  Timothy as well. And but in this organization in which there is a bishop, presbyters, deacons,  deaconesses. That's a particular church order that that came to be probably early second  century, late first, maybe early second century. And so what is a presbyter? What what did a  presbyter do? Well, first of all, the word presbyteros simply means elder, older person. And it  is a word that can be applied to an older person to myself, for example. But there's also a  technical meaning of it in the church when you're talking about Bishop presbyters and  deacons. When when you just have presbyters in an earlier form, it probably is equivalent to  what the patrons of house churches, they're the people who exercise the sort of predominant  leadership but when you get into Bishop presbyters and deacons, they're not the bishop is is  the one who is calling the shots basically, the bishop is is the the head honcho, you know. So  So what does the presbyter do? And I mentioned in the last segment that, that Ignatius says,  okay, the bishop is like God, and the deacon is like Christ and the presbyter but they're the  counsel of the apostles. It doesn't sound as impressive as being like God or Christ. So we're  really not sure what presbyters did in this, this organization. There's a direct line from bishop  to Deacon, not from bishop to presbyter, as I said, the deacons are the ones who are the right hand deacons and deaconesses the right hand of the bishop. What we think it is by about the  fourth century the what's happening is that the, the church, Christianity is extending from the  cities to the countryside all over. Christianity began, of course, the Jesus movement began as  a rural movement in Galilee. But it moves to Jerusalem and all the information we have is  that, that the the organization and the spread of the missionary movement spread from city  to city, from Jerusalem out and all of Paul's operations and city to city. possible exception of  his letter to the Galatians Galatia was a region that but it had a number of cities in it. So I  don't even there think that Paul's out among the haystacks, you know, evangelizing in little  villages, he's going to cities. And we don't even know. One of the real mysteries is what  happened in Galilee? What happened to all the the followers of Jesus in Galilee? We simply  don't know they're they left no written records. So we're talking about cities. And by the  fourth century, though, they're spreading out into the villages into the smaller areas in the  countryside in one supposition is that the presbyters then were the people who went out and  they became the leaders in the local churches in the countryside accountable to the Bishop of the larger city, the urban centers? That's a good guess I think of what happened. Now, as I  said, there's ambiguity in the word presbyter because it can mean elder can mean leader, it  depends on the context and and when you have a woman who has the title presbyter which  we do in inscriptions you've got to be careful. It can mean presbyteros can mean the wife of  the presbyter of the male presbyter, as in some of the Eastern churches today, the the wife of a presbyter the priest is called a presbytera. And in that case, it does not necessarily imply  any kind of a designation to ministry so it depends on the context, you have to be very careful in reading these inscriptions and information, you have to turn them in context. And there are  some inscriptions in which it's pretty clear that a presbytera is the wife of a presbyter and  he's the one who has some kind of a role. Does she have any role? Well, in Eastern churches  today often the wife of the priest of the presbyter priest, by the way is, is a word with a  different origin sacerdos in Latin and roots in Greek, it's it's very different and it's at a later  point that the name priest in English replaces presbyter. Presbyter simply means an elder  older person, not it not an offer of sacrifice priest means the one who offers sacrifice. So  sometimes, the the wife of the of the presbyter is a person who has a ministry of mercy of  charity, you know, and really does extend the the ministry of her husband in in that realm,  but then he's the one with the sacramental ministry. Okay? So sometimes, that that's what it's pretty clear the inscription means but there are times when that's really pretty clearly not the  case. And so we're going to look at three examples of that. And the first one is Flavio Vitalia.  This is there's a date on this inscription 425 when Theodosius Emperor Theodosius is council  for the 11th time it's the year 425 CE. And this inscription is it's not a funerary inscription is 

an inscription found in a cemetery, but not for somebody's burial, to some, not for her burial.  And it's from Dalmatia, from what is today Croatia. And it's a Latin inscription and it says,  under our Lord Theodosius Council for the 11th time and Valentinian noble man of Caesar so  this is the dating of the inscription. This is the time when these people were in office, I  Theodosius. An unknown person by that name, bought it bought a burial chamber a burial  tomb from the matrona Flavia Vitalia presbytera sancta for three golden solidi. that's the price that's paid. So he bought this burial plot from Flavio Vitalia, who is matrona presbytera  sancta. She's a matrona. We've looked at that before. That means that she's a married  woman. Properly married according to Roman law, and she is a holy presbyter. It cannot be  argued that she is simply the wife of a male presbyter. He would have bought the property  from the male presbyter. She is a woman who represents the church she is an agent of the  church, at least for the for the the issue of selling property. So she has some kind of authority  in the church itself. That is about all you can say about it, we don't know, other than selling  property for the church, we don't really know what else she did. The second example is Leta,  a woman named Leta and here and this is in I didn't put the place. This is in Calabria in  southern Italy Tropea, a place called Tropea. And this is a funerary inscription and I I've seen  the original it's it's it's as large as the covering of a tomb. It's it's very long, and it's very wide, and it was placed on the ground on top of this woman's tomb. It's now in the actually in in  private ownership. And it says sacred to her good member memory. Leta presbytera lived 40  years, eight months and nine days. That was typical of Roman inscriptions to count the days  the month that the years, the months and the days. Her husband her maritus made this she  preceded him in peace on the day before the Ides of May May 14. And he doesn't even name  himself. He simply says her husband did this and that is very unusual. Usually, the dedicator  will also give the name whether it's a man or a woman, whoever paid for this tomb, who set it up, usually gives the name. He doesn't give his name. if he's the presbyter and she's simply  the wife of the presbyter, he's going to give his name. So, again, we have a testimony, it's  fourth or fifth century, we have a testimony to a woman who bore the title presbytera. And  some have suggested that this relates to a letter of the the Bishop of Rome to the bishops of  this area of Calabria around the same time. And the Bishop of Rome says it has come to our  attention that that there is this irregularity going on that, that you have women who are doing the service of the altar. So stop it. So you have a bishop in Rome, who hears about something  that is going on in which women are performing sacramental ministry, the service at the altar, he disapproves of it. No surprise, but you don't have a letter from somebody saying, Stop  doing this unless you're doing it to somebody is doing it. And so what we think might be going on in South Italy, which was very much under the the influence of the Greek church, because  there were a lot of Greeks who had several centuries before that in southern Italy, that we  may have a here an example of what we call altar ministry, performed by women, and it  would have been fairly widespread, but something that in Rome, they didn't want to do. This  is at a time when things are, are still very fluid. Things are developing in different parts of the  world in different ways. And so this is an interesting possible example. And the third example  is also a fourth or fifth century, it's, it's for sure after, I shouldn't say fourth, this probably fifth  century, it's after the year 430. And this is from the Basilica of Augustine, in Hippo in North  Africa. But it's after the time of Augustine. Augustine died in 430. And while he was dying, the the Vandals were on their way. They were working their way across North Africa. They'd gone  through Europe and very disruptive invasion and they were working their way. They were  almost at Hippo at the time that Augustine died. And this comes from the Vandal period. The  Vandals were Christians. They were Aryan Christians. And so they took over the religious  establishments, the churches and everything. We wish we knew a whole lot more about about Vandal Christianity. But this is a burial that was actually in the church that Augustine preached in and worked in for so many years before that. And it is a dedication, again for a woman who  has died and her name is either Guilia the the second name is Runa Guilia Runa, or Guilia is a  misspelling of Julia, spelled with a G instead of an I or a J, as it usually is in Latin. Runa is  certainly a Vandal name, and it may be Guilia Runa that she is she's a Vandal Christian, and  she's given the title presbiterissa, which is a kind of a diminutive of presbytera and she's a  presbytera presbiterissa, excuse me, who lived about 50 years. It's very quick Guilia Runa 

presbiterissa who died in peace? Lived 50 years. So it's a beautiful mosaic. And it was again  over her tomb. And again, we just really don't know what she did. But it must be a title on her  own, of her own because Again, no husband is mentioned that she she doesn't seem to be the wife of a presbyter, he would put his own name in there. So this is a third example. And there  there are a few others a handful of others. Examples of inscriptions that name women  presbyters, when it's pretty likely that it's not, they're not just the wives of presbyters. So  what can we conclude here? First, there definitely were women who were the title aboard the  title presbyter in their own right. And not because they were wives of presbyters. But what did they do? Well, you know, I think what they did is about as unclear as what male presbyters  did in the same time and place. We just don't know. At some point, certainly by the time that  the the Bishop of Rome writes his letter to Calabria, presbyters are exercising some kind of  sacramental ministry that is they are doing leadership at the altar, and therefore leadership of bread and cup of not just the bishop, but but presbyters at as well, probably in places that  were where there wasn't a bishop. And every major city by this time that had any kind of  Christian community also had a bishop. So this would be in in other places where, where there were no bishops. Were women exercising the same kind of function? We don't know. We  simply don't know. And it would be very tempting to just say, Well, of course they were. We  hope they were. But it could be that the same kind of bias was operating and they were  precluded from from doing the same kind of ministry that the presbyters did. The male  presbyters. What is clear is that they they exercised agency in the church, Flavio Vitalia  especially represented the church in an important way with the question sale of land. So I  kind of want to say that whatever the male presbyters were doing, probably the female  presbyters were doing for the most part, and certainly in in some places