Women in Late Antiquity: Pagan and Christian Lifestyles

by Gillian Clark

This book bridges a gap between two traditional disciplines. Since the 1970s, there has been a remarkable outpouring of work on women in antiquity, but women in late antiquity (3rd-6th centuries A.D.) have been far less studied. Classicists have been more concerned with the first two centuries A.D., and theologians have been interested in New Testament, rather than patristic, teaching about women or its social and cultural setting. In this book, Clark offers an introduction to the basic conditions of life for marriage, divorce, celibacy and prostitution; legal constraints and protection; child-bearing, health care, and medical theories; housing, housework, and clothes; and the general assumptions about female nature which were discarded at need. Christian and non-Christian literature, art, and archaeology are used to exemplify both the practicalities of life and the prevailing "discourses" of the ancient world.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Ancient History, Gender, Ancient

184 pages, Paperback

First published July 7, 1993

About the author

Gillian Clark is a Professor of Ancient History at the University of Bristol.

Professor Clark’s research field is the relationship of inherited classical culture and late antique Christianity. She works especially on Augustine and on the late Platonist philosophers Porphyry and Iamblichus, and also has a longstanding interest in women’s history and the history of gender. She directs an international collaborative and interdisciplinary project, funded for its first five years by the AHRC, for a commentary on Augustine City of God (De Civitate Dei) to be published in print and electronic versions. Professor Clark is co-editor, with Professor Andrew Louth (Durham), of the monograph series Oxford Early Christian Studies and Oxford Early Christian Texts (OUP). She is also a co-editor of Translated Texts for Historians 300-800 (Liverpool UP) and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Roman Studies. She is Chair of Directors for the Oxford Patristic Conference 2011.

Reviews

[Darnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fairly far on the academic end, but still readable. I wish it had more information, but it's good for a book to acknowledge that sometimes we just don't have any facts on a subject.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book impressed me more than I thought it would. It is, as far as I know, the only survey out there on women in late antiquity (roughly 3rd through late 6th centuries). Clark looks at patristic texts concerning women against the Greco-Roman cultural background, covering topics such as marriage, divorce, childbearing, domesticity, health, and philosophical and theological attitudes toward women's personhood. As a survey, it doesn't get into great depth, and by the nature of the sources, it leaves plenty of unanswered questions. She refrains from much evaluative commentary, but her conclusions--that Christianity probably did expand women's horizons and raise their dignity (particularly that of poor women), but that Christian teaching could be used either to reinforce or to subvert Greco-Roman conventions--seems to accord with what I've seen in early Christian writings. I was particularly interested in Clark's research on attitudes to abortion. It's roundly condemned in Christian writings (with perhaps a minority who held to Hippocratic views of the fetus before quickening), though in Fathers like Basil, there is mercy shown to repentant women.

[Faith Key · Rating 4 out of 5]

could not stop laughing at this: "the younger melania... read Scripture and homilies and (as a treat) the lives of the Fathers, and any other Christian writing she could lay her hands on."

considering the lack of actual source material from late antiquity, i found this informative, highly detailed, and impressive in scope. i enjoyed that clark covers the contrast of pagan and Christian lifestyles (i wanted a deeper dive and more extensive/fairer look at Christian writings/practice, but to be fair, not the aim of the book). for what it was, i found super helpful.

[Tyler Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for the first time in preparation for a lecture later this week on late antique women and religion. Short, lucid, and methodologically nuanced.

[Roxanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book rocked. Clark looks at all kinds of sources in order to examine how women lived in late antiquity (200 AD or so to 600 AD or so). She looks at the laws and how the laws changed and tries to extrapolate what the law meant for how women were treated and how they were expected to behave. She also looks at medical texts to see how women's bodies were understood and treated, and at religious and philosophical texts to see what women's place in the world was considered to be and how women interacted in their spiritual lives.

Although it didn't have quite enough information on my particular obscure research topic, it still got the closest of any book I've found yet. This is an excellent sourcebook, full of information and interesting facts, all related in a readable and understandable style.