Women Leaders at the Table in Early Churches A K e purpose of this article is to examine the oldest surviving record that iconographic artifacts are so important in iconographic artifacts that depict early Christians in real reconstructing the early liturgy. churches at the Eucharist table. ese provide the oldest visual In a study of the architectural layout of early churches in the evidence of early Christian traditions of leadership as it was city of Rome, omas F. Matthews acknowledged the di culty of actually practiced in churches. e reason for doing this is to ll reconstructing the performance of the liturgy solely from fragments in the cultural gaps about what we know regarding the sex of of prayers and later manuscripts, and he used archeological leaders who performed the ritual, or liturgy. evidence to help answer the question of how the liturgy was ree key elements are present in each of the ancient performed prior to the eighth century. e archeological remains illustrated artifacts under consideration. First, there is a that Matthews considered were of churches in Rome from the Eucharist table, also called the mensa or altar table. Second, the seventh century or earlier, with a couple dated as early as the h. artist depicted real people—not e material remains indicated biblical gures—with the table. that all of them had two stone And third, the architecture in the walls that formed a corridor down scene portrayed the interior of a the middle of the nave to the altar real church; that is, the artist was area—a corridor that essentially not imagining a heavenly or ctive divided the nave into two halves. scene, but representing the ritual Matthews compared this in that church. architectural feature of a divided ese windows into early nave with the oldest surviving churches help us understand how liturgy for the Roman mass, the earliest Christians must have known as the Ordo Romanus received certain sayings in Paul’s Primus, which, despite being the letters, sayings which today are oldest surviving, is only found in interpreted in some congregations manuscripts dated ninth-century as meaning that Paul did not or later. Consistent with the permit women to be church architecture of a divided nave, the leaders. ese artifacts suggest Ordo Romanus Primus mentions that early Christians understood a women’s side and a men’s side. texts such as Gal : as Paul’s Matthews thus reconstructed guiding instructions with respect Figure the nave with men on one side Ivory reliquary box. to interpreting his letters, and of the corridor and women on Liturgy in Old Saint Peter’s Basilica, ca. ­ especially with respect to women, the other. e Ordo Romanus Source: Artres ART¤ ­ because all three of the oldest Primus is usually assumed to surviving iconographic artifacts describe an all-male clergy in the portray women in the altar area of these churches. ese three altar area, but this is less certain since the masculine gender in artifacts are all the more stunning in that they represent the Latin can signify both sexes. altar areas of three of the most prominent orthodox basilicas in Women and Men at the Table in Old Saint Peter’s Basilica Christendom. One depicts Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. in Rome Another depicts the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. e third depicts the Anastasis, also called the Church of the Holy One of the two oldest iconographic artifacts in this study Sepulchre, in Jerusalem. contradicts any assumption that the early churches in the city of Rome had an all-male clergy. is h-century artifact depicts Previous Attempts to Reconstruct the Ancient Liturgy the altar area of Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. While the One might think we could read manuscripts to determine who scene on the artifact con rms that there was a men’s side and a did what in early Christian assemblies, but it has been estimated women’s side in the church, it contradicts that only men were in that eighty- ve percent of the Christian literature known from the altar area. Its sculptor depicted a men’s side and a women’s the rst two centuries has been lost. e percentage of liturgical side in the altar area, too. Since the discovery of this artifact, manuscripts lost is even higher, because almost no liturgical almost without exception scholars have agreed it depicts men on manuscripts dating to the rst seven centuries have survived. the le side of the table and women on the right. In addition, Paul Bradshaw has argued that liturgical is scene is on one face of an ivory reliquary (a box for holy manuscripts were “more prone to emendation than literary relics) that was buried beneath the altar area of a church near the manuscripts.” It is because of this gap in the historical written city of Pola in what is now Croatia. It was excavated in . ¤­ • PRISCILLA PAPERS | ­/ | Spring cbeinternational.org Today it is in the Venice Archeological Museum. Sometimes called as the Constantinian apse in Saint Peter’s.” e excavators also the Pola Ivory, most art historians date this delicately carved box discovered a rectangular stone tomb under the pavement, which to the s, usually they believed at one no later than . time held Peter’s See Figure . bones. Both Jerome In , Anton in the late s and Gnirs, who was Gregory of Tours in familiar with the the late s wrote excavation, was that the basilica’s the rst to publish altar was over Peter’s an article about bones, so with the ivory box. He this discovery the said the scene had excavators seemed to extraordinary value have proved beyond for the liturgy during doubt that the stone the era of early Figure A table had been the Christian culture. Detail: Altar area of Old Saint Peter’s Basilica basilica’s altar. For He identi ed two detail of the shrine men and two women anking the ciborium, that is, the columned on the ivory, with the man and woman at its stone table, see structure over the altar sometimes called the baldachin or Figure B. canopy. ese two men and two women were sculpted with Gnirs speculated that the man and woman at the altar table their arms raised, a pose o en associated in Jewish Scripture were participating in a ceremony of the sacrament of matrimony. with the priesthood, and which art historian Alexei Lidov says In the subsequent thirty years a er his article, other art historians “is interpreted in iconographic studies as a liturgical one.” agreed that the ivory sculptor had carved a man and a woman at the Finally, beneath the ciborium, Gnirs also identi ed a man and a altar, with most assuming they must be a married couple. Others woman on either side of the altar table (mensa dell’altare). See have since proposed they might be mother and son. Some art Figure A. historians have suggested that the pair might be venerating the Although Gnirs did not make the connection, in Alice cross at the altar table, but in Joseph Wilpert rebutted that Baird published an article pointing suggestion saying, “in Saint Peter’s out that the six spiral columns of the Basilica the cross was not venerated ciborium on the ivory are an almost in such a pronounced fashion as perfect match for the six spiral depicted in this scene.” Wilpert’s columns that Constantine reputedly reason was that, unlike some donated to Old Saint Peter’s, columns churches, Saint Peter’s did not have today in the galleries of the modern a relic of the true Cross. Other art Saint Peter’s. at they indeed historians, however, have pointed out were the same six columns was that the woman was sculpted raising con rmed in , when the Vatican some type of container, perhaps a commissioned excavations beneath bowl or a pyx (a container for the the modern high altar. Eucharist). If the sculptor had At the bottom of a stack of carved a man instead of a woman medieval altars, Vatican excavators at the altar in Old Saint Peter’s, then discovered a second-century shrine, almost certainly from the beginning which they thought was the same scholars would have identi ed him shrine reportedly dedicated to Peter Figure B as a priest or bishop li ing a chalice near the site of his martyrdom in Detail of the shrine and its table of eucharistic wine. Rome. Fourth-century architects had One can imagine that a woman at built Old Saint Peter’s Basilica around this second-century shrine. the altar table in Old Saint Peter’s Basilica must have caused some It was “the architectural focus of the whole building.” e shape consternation among the Vatican excavators. ey took ten years and size of this shrine with its stone table—an eight-foot high by to publish their nal report, and it included two reconstructions eight-foot wide wall with the stone table embedded in its front of the ciborium as a twenty-foot by twenty-foot square. Without face—was virtually identical to what was carved on the ivory, mentioning that a woman had been identi ed at the altar, the down to the arched niche behind the table, which on the ivory is Vatican excavators sandwiched a photo of the ivory between seen with a large cross. Englebert Kirschbaum, one of the Vatican their two drawings of the square ciborium. One drawing was excavators, wrote that the scene on the ivory was “so striking a diagram with dotted lines in front of the shrine, accurately even in its details as to con rm conclusively its interpretation representing that they did not excavate in front of the shrine and cbeinternational.org PRISCILLA PAPERS | ­/ | Spring • ¤£ that their reconstruction was hypothetical.