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Christianization in the Fourth Century: The Example of Roman Women

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Anne Yarbrough
Anne Yarbrough
Affiliation:
Assistant professor of history in Catawba College, Salisbury North Carolina.
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Extract

At the beginning of the fourth century the Roman aristocracy was, for the most part, pagan in its religious attitude. By the end of that century the aristocracy had undergone what Peter Brown has described as a “sea change”: its pagan values had become redefined within the context of Christianity. This “drift into respectable Christianity” was the result of the process of socialization in the households of the Roman senatorial class over several generations. Brown suggests that the fourth-century Christianization of the aristocracy was the achievement of those upper-class Roman women who, by continuing to practice their Christian religion in the households of their pagan husbands, established the syncretistic milieu which would influence the religious attitudes of the next generation. But the apparent calm of Brown's anonymous culture-bearers is disturbed by a small group of women whose religious extremism delineates them sharply from their peers. Rejecting wholly the society into which they were born, they fled the cloying Roman atmosphere for the harsh air of the desert. The “respectable Christianity” that Rome was adopting offered them no satisfaction.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , June 1976 , pp. 149 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1976

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References

1. For Roman aristocratic paganism in the course of the fourth century see Jones, A.H.M., “The Social Background of the Struggle between Paganism and Christianity,” in The Conflict Between Paganism and Chrstianity in the Fourth Century, ed. Momigliano, A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 17–37Google Scholar; H. Bloch, “The Pagan Revival in the West at the End of the Fourth Century,” ibid., pp. 193–217; McGeachy, J.A., “Quintus Aurelius Symmachus and the Senatorial Aristocracy of the West” (Ph. D. diss.: University of Chicago, 1942)Google Scholar; Paschoud, F., Roma Aeterna: Etudes sur le patriotisme Remain dans l'occident Latin a l'epoque des grands invasions (Rome: Institut Suisse de Rome, 1967).Google Scholar

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13. Chastagnol, p. 246.

14. Ibid., p. 47.

15. Ibid., pp. 244–245.

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23. Jer. Ep. 22.

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41. Jer.Ep. 28, 24, 127.

42. Jer. Ep. 127.5; Eng. tr. In Seieot Letters, p. 449.

43. Ibid.

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50. Jer. Ep. 108.26; Eng. tr. in Nieene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 6:209–210.Google Scholar

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56. Mazzarhio, pp. 131–133. This is Mazzarino 's thesis in his segment on women in late Rome, in which he undertakes to refute Seeck 's theory that a declining birth rate could be blamed on arranged matches.

57. Hopkins, , “Elite Mobility,” p. 25.Google Scholar

58. Hopkins, , “The Age of Roman Girls at Marnage,” p. 320.Google Scholar

59. Balsdon, J.P.V.D., Roman Women: Their History and Habits (London: Bodley Head, 1962),Google Scholar which is a book generally irrelevant to our inquiry since it does not deal with the late period, mentions that the Jaw promulgated under Augustus in A.D. 9, lex Papia Poppaea, placed these limits on the period between marriages.

60. Ibid., p. 222.

61. Jer. Ep. 22.27; Eng. tr. in Select Letters, pp. 117 and 123.

62. Amb. De Virginibus 1.57, 59. But see ibid., 1. 57, 58, for his problems with overcoming parental opposition in Milan. For a general treatment of Ambrose in this connection see Dooley, W. J., Marriage According to Saint Ambrose (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1945)Google Scholar; Dudden, F. H., The Life and Time, of St. Ambrose (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), especially pp. 133–159.Google Scholar

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65. Idem. De Virginitate 15; Ep. 5.6; Exhort. Virginatia; De Vtrginibus.

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68. Hopkins, ibid., p. 25, cites Olympiodorus, frag. 44 (Fragmenta historicorum Graccorum, vol. 4) on the expense of raising children into adulthood. See also McGeachy, pp. 101–110, for a description of the provision made by Symmachus for his son's games.

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70. See above p. 158.

71. Jer. Ep. 22.20.

72. Jer. Ep. 107:1 (1 Cor. 7:13); Eng. tr. in Select Letters, p. 339.

73. Ibid.; Eng. tr. in Select Letters, pp. 339–341.

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76. Ibid. 107.4.

77. Ibid. 107.4; Eng. tr. in Select Letters, p. 351.

78. Ibid. 107.5.

79. Ibid. 107.11.

80. Ibid. 107.8.

81. Ibid.

82. Ibid. 107.12; Eng. tr. in Select Letters, p. 365.

83. Ibid. 107.12.

84. Ibid. 107.13.

85. Jer. Ep. 128.

86. See Hill, Christopher, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (New York: Schocken Books, 1964), PP. 443–481,Google Scholar “The Spiritualization of the Household.”

87. Thomas Cartwright, cited in ibid., p. 455.

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91. Chastagnol, pp. 247–248, argues for this identification.

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