EP 03 - The Real-Life Magisterium

The Missing Women

- Episode 03 -

The Real-Life Magisterium: the secret history of the Roman Catholic Church

DOWNLOAD

LISTEN

The Missing Women

29 October 2025

TO HEAR JON AND PENELOPE TALK LIVE 30 OCTOBER REGISTER FOR FREE HERE WITH ROOT&BRANCH

All History Café links

The real life magisterium: the secret history of the ROMAN Catholic Church

EPISODE 3 - THE MISSING WOMEN

Second-century sisters, Praxedes and Pudentiana, in a ninth century fresco that shows the two of them dressed as bishops. Basilica of Santa Pudenziana in Rome

Another dangerous myth - women weren't apostles or leaders

One of the striking differences between the humble church of the first apostles, and the rigid hierarchy that suddenly burst into power and wealth in the fourth century was that women played a big part in the first but were kept out of the second.

But plenty of them are named in the New Testament. Among many others, there’s Junia (whom Paul called an ‘apostle’), Chloe (a leader in Corinth), Apphia (a leader in Colossae), Nympha (a leader in Laodicea), the mother of John Mark (who ran a house church in Jerusalem, which was the house where Peter hid when he escaped from prison). There were also the four daughters of Philip the evangelist (women whom the Acts recorded as prophets).

Historian Ally Kateusz has also pointed to many examples in early Christian art and archeology, including for example a sarcophagus from Constantinople that shows a man and a woman celebrating together mass at an altar. It comes from Constantinople and dates from the fifth century.

And let's not forget the two Christian leaders, both women, whom Pliny the Younger executed in modern Turkey around AD111. He hadn't come across Christians before and ends up torturing and killing them. Pliny called them ministrae, priests.

The Panagia Ekatontapiliani, which means ‘the Church with a Hundred Doors,’ on the island of Paros in Greece, parts of which date back to AD326

Lost in translation?

Were women increasingly excluded in the 2nd-3rd Century Church because they were seen as theologically different?

No. The kleros were not set apart from ordinary believers, laos. These words did not mean clergy and laity in a modern sense. Kleros simply meant someone who was assigned a job (often by lot). Laos just meant the rest of the people. There was nothing mystical about it.

Similarly, the word ordinare, which we now think of as to ordain, had no religious connotation at all. It was simply a standard term for the nomination of officials in public positions, or in clubs and associations.

Jesuit scholar Josef Jungmann shows it was not until the 4^th Century that any liturgies for ordination of bishops begin to show up.

It would not be until AD787 that prospective bishops would have to prove they had any knowledge of scripture.

#115 The Missing Women - Ep 3 The Real-Life Magisterium: the secret history of the Roman Catholic Church [click on icons]

By AD400 Christians (about 3% of the population) were distributing poor relief and so punching above their weight

Pre-Constantine image of a short-haired, unveiled female Christian leader with doves and sheep, and hands raised in blessing*

The Church didn't take over the Roman Empire, the Empire took over the Church

As soon as churches began to be significant enough to matter in local society – perhaps around AD200, and especially in the following decades as they began to have a paid leadership – it was the local big-wigs who were expected to step up and run them just as they ran everything.

As historian Norman Russell Underwood puts it, ‘the clergy … emerged as yet another professional group in the late antique landscape.’

And this was why women were dropped out of church leadership. Women might go on organising house churches for a century or more. But in ancient society – in fact in most societies until recently - public roles were always taken by men.

And the church was no exception (though you might argue it should have been). This was not theology. It was the way of the world.

*After Constantine Christian women were depicted veiled. Dr Ally Kateusz, historian and archaeologist, is Research Associate at Wijngaards Institute of Catholic Research, London

A colder, drought-stricken Roman Empire was struck by an epidemic of an Ebola type virus spreading from Ethiopia in AD249, reaching Rome in AD251. It went on poisoning the empire until at least AD270

Christian persecution began as a result of climate change

From the end of the second century the weather became colder, and, from the AD240s, dramatically so. North Africa and Palestine were hit by drought. In Egypt the all-important flooding of the Nile, feeding the Empire’s most important bread-basket, began to falter. Wheat prices rocketed.

The so-called ‘third century crisis’ provides the immediate context – indeed one persuasive explanation – for the persecution of the church that broke out in the AD250s. Someone had to carry the can. And if the old gods had turned their backs, then those who refused to honour them might be the first to take the blame.

AD250-1 the Emperor Decius launched the first brief, but bloody campaign against the Church right across the Empire. Then, in the three years AD257-60 the Emperor Valerian launched a second until his son, Galienus, issued an edict of toleration.

By AD303 the church was sufficiently significant for the Emperor Diocletian to launch the most serious persecution so far. It continued after his abdication, until AD311. Eight bloody years of persecution suggest that the church was indeed now big enough to matter. Cue Constantine!

Listen To Our Full Series

Every series we add to the History Café catalogue is available on our website. You can click the images below or choose to listen on any of your favourite platforms.

Images top and l to r: Loss, love and the struggle to stay alive in 1912/ Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot/ Lunatics take over the asylum: neoliberalism uncut/ World War One: how much was it Britain's fault? /Who really won the Battle of Britain?

View All Episodes

View this email in your browser