The status of women in the patristic age, as defined by the Church Fathers, is a contentious issue within Christianity.
[4] However, many Christians point out that the Fathers believed strongly in the dignity of women, especially when compared to the broader cultures of antiquity.
book 5) insists emphatically on their exact equality and says that God made a woman from a man so that the tendencies and actions of both might be harmonious.
Chrysostom, in a passage of singular beauty, gives us a comparison between the duties of the wife and those of the husband, the former being represented as, in some respects, the more dignified; for while the husband is described as engaged in the rougher work of life, in the market or the law-courts, the wife is represented as remaining at home and devoting much of her time to prayer and to reading the Scriptures, καὶ τῇ ἄλλῃ φιλοσοφίᾷ.
"[1] Throughout the Patristic age, women held a variety of positions in Church office and performed ecclesiastical duties.
[4] By the end of the 6th century, the Church officially recognized three orders of women: deaconesses, widows and virgins.
[5] The surviving evidence also suggests the existence of female presbyters and even bishops, the extent of which is unclear because of the scarcity of remaining records.
[7] The office was further classified in the Council of Nicaea as well as the Apostolic Constitutions of the 4th century in which the ordination ceremony for the deaconess is outlined, confirming its place as an order supported by the Church.
[8] Evidence for female deacons in the West emerges in the 5th century but few inscriptions survive as a result of several synods’ efforts to eliminate them.
Others, like the Testamentum Domini explicitly state that widows were to have an ordained office, with duties surpassing the usual service of prayer.
[6] In some areas however, they were considered members of the clergy and part of the ecclesiastical order, like those of Tertullian’s Carthage and other African congregations.
Although both movements were later deemed heretical, evidence also exists to support the presence of female presbyters within the "orthodox" Church.
A letter from Pope Gelasius from the end of the 5th century acknowledges their sacerdotal duties in Southern Italy and Sicily, whose communities and bishops evidently accepted these positions.
Some argue that perhaps their governing role in communities as presbyters assigned women the authority to teach and exercise sacramental and liturgical functions.
[6] As a result of sparse epigraphical evidence, it is arguable whether women exercised the role of bishop in other areas and Christian groups.
In the realization of these obligations, you will discover the incredible patience and endurance that is necessary to fulfill your family duties; it is in this manner that you will also find the great strength that you, as a woman, possess.
He speaks to him kindly, in a soft but firm voice; he caresses it, he attends to it, he puts it, and gradually, calmness is restored.
[21] St Jerome, the well known Biblical scholar and translator of the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate) had a simple view of women.
[26] The c. 4th century council of Elvira made some canons (church law) restricting women concerning divorce, adultery and abortion: In his First Apology Justin Martyr cautioned that it was wicked to dispose of children through exposure to the elements, given that almost all those who are exposed were raised to prostitution.
[27][28] Eastern legislation was somewhat more considered from the 5th–6th centuries, since it recognized the possibility for married wives to divorce and even to obtain financial compensation from their husbands for beating them.