Tertullian's Wife: Misogyny and the Early Church Fathers examines Tertullian and his views on women through his writings. 1. While Tertullian is known for misogynistic quotes, the document shows he did not solely blame Eve for the Fall and saw marriage as a partnership between husband and wife before God. 2. It also examines Jerome and his spiritual hierarchy that placed virgins highest, then chaste widows/widowers, with married people lowest. 3. Jerome encouraged his female followers like Paula and her daughters to pursue lives of celibacy and virginity, seeing marriage as inferior to abstinence from sex and world

1. Tertullian’s Wife:
Misogyny and the Early
Church Fathers
Part One
O Sister, Where Art
Thou?
Part Five

2. Misogamy = Hatred of marriage
Misogyny = Hatred of women.
Misandry = Hatred of men.
Misanthropy = Hatred of people.

4. Eighteen goddess-like daughters are not equal
to one son with a hump.
Chinese Proverb

5. The Church Fathers in light of the women in their lives.
Tertullian’s Wife

6. Tertullian (155-240)
Was Tertullian the “Father of Misogyny”?

7. Tertullian (155-240)
1. Early Life
2. Catholic Stage
3. Montanist Period
4. Later Days

8. Tertullian (155-240)
1. Beware of hyperbole.
Exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be
taken literally.

9. Tertullian (155-240)
“Woman is a temple built over a sewer.”

10. Tertullian (155-240)
“Woman is a temple built over a sewer.”

12. 1. Beware of hyperbole.
2. Beware of bad quotes.

13. 1. Beware of hyperbole.
2. Beware of bad quotes.
3. Keep it in context.

14. Tertullian (155-240)
On the Apparel of Women
Theme
On how to dress and present yourself, before God and before others.

15. Tertullian (155-240)
On the Apparel of Women
Summary Statement
“Clothe yourselves with the silk of uprightness, the fine linen of
holiness, the purple of modesty. Thus painted, you will have God as
your Lover!”

16. Tertullian (155-240)
On the Apparel of Women
“…go about in humble garb… walking about as Eve mourning and
repentant, in order that by every garb of penitence she might be the
more fully expiate that which derives from Eve – the ignominy, I
mean, of the first sin, and the odium (attaching to her as the cause) of
human prediction… do you not know that you are (each) an Eve?
The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt
must of necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway: you are the
unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the
divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not
valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man.
On account of your desert – that is, death – even the Son of God had
to die.”

17. Tertullian (155-240)
On the Apparel of Women
“Handmaids of the living God, my fellow-servants and sisters, the
right which I enjoy emboldens me to address you a discourse, not, of
course, of affection, but paving the way for affection in the cause of
your salvation… we are all ‘the temple of God,’ Modesty is the
sacristan and priestess of that temple…”

18. Tertullian (155-240)
Against Marcion
“Since God placed on man a condition for life, so man brought on
himself a state of death. And this was neither through infirmity nor
through ignorance, so that no blame can be imputed to the Creator.
No doubt it was an angel who was the seducer; but then the victim of
that seduction was free, and master of himself…”

19. Tertullian (155-240)
To His Wife
Introduction
“I have thought it meet, my best beloved fellow-servant in the Lord,
even from this early period, to provide for the course which you must
pursue after my departure from the world…”

20. Tertullian (155-240)
To His Wife
The Advice
“I …am even at this early period instilling into you the counsel of
(perpetual) widowhood.”
Celibacy is Preferred
“What, however, is better than this “good,” (marriage) we learn from
the apostle, who permits marrying indeed, but prefers abstinence.”
“It remaineth that they who have wives act as if they had them not.”

21. Early Church Fathers on Marriage and Celibacy
Why Celibacy?

22. Early Church Fathers on Marriage and Celibacy
Why Celibacy?
Old Testament
Ritual Purity
Leviticus 15
“When a man has sexual relations with a woman ... both of
them must bathe with water, and they will be unclean till
evening....”

23. Early Church Fathers on Marriage and Celibacy
Why Celibacy?
Old Testament
New Testament
1 Corinthians 7
“It’s good for a man not to have sex with a
woman.”
1 Corinthians 15
“I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood
cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable
inherit the imperishable.”
Revelation 14
“These are those who did not defile themselves with women, for they
remained virgins. They follow the Lamb wherever he goes.”

24. Early Church Fathers on Marriage and Celibacy
Why Celibacy?
Old Testament
New Testament
Greek Philosophy
Stoicism
Platonism

25. Early Church Fathers on Marriage and Celibacy
Why Celibacy?
Old Testament
New Testament
Greek Philosophy
Religious Dualism
Gnosticism
Manichaeism

26. Early Church Fathers on Marriage and Celibacy
“Marriage was a serious familial and civic duty in the
ancient world.”
“All the patristic writing on marriage
illustrates one thing with complete clarity;
the married household as the basis of the
Christian community is no more.”
Mary Malone

27. Early Church Fathers on Marriage and Celibacy
“Marriage was a serious familial and civic duty in the
ancient world.”
“All the patristic writing on marriage
illustrates one thing with complete clarity;
the married household as the basis of the
Christian community is no more.”
Mark 3
“’Who are my mother and my brothers?’ he asked. Then he looked
at those seated in a circle around him and said, ‘Here are my mother
and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister
and mother.’”

28. Tertullian (155-240)
To His Wife
Husband and wife are...
“...truly ‘two in one flesh.’ Where the flesh is one, one is the spirit
too. Together they pray, together they prostrate themselves, together
they perform their fasts; mutually teaching, mutually exhorting,
mutually sustaining. Equally (are they) both (found) in the Church of
God; equally at the banquet of God; equally in straits, in
persecutions, in refreshments. Neither hides (ought) from the other;
neither shuns the other; neither is troublesome to the other. The sick
is visited, the indigent relieved, with freedom...

29. Tertullian (155-240)
To His Wife
Husband and wife are...
...Alms (are given) without (danger of ensuing) torment; sacrifices
(attended) without impediment: (there is) no stealthy signing, no
trembling greeting, no mute benediction. Between the two echo
psalms and hymns; and they mutually challenge each other which
shall better chant to their Lord. Such things when Christ sees and
hears, He joys. To these He sends His own peace. Where two (are),
there withal (is) He Himself. Where He (is), there the Evil One is
not.”

30. Tertullian (155-240)
Women in the Church
“It is proper that our virgins be veiled from when they reach
puberty.”
Prophecy – Yes, when veiled.
Teaching – No!

31. Tertullian (155-240)
Summary
1. Outside of the quotes from Apparel Tertullian focuses the blame and
consequences of the Fall on Adam, not Eve.
2. “Babe, we are in this together,” seems to be Tertullian’s message to his wife.
3. “Dress for success”, spiritual success, that is.
4. The Devil attacked Eve, not Adam, because Tertullian felt that Adam would have
been able to withstand him.
5. Is Tertullian the “Father of Misogyny”?
5. Tertullian was a man of his times!

32. Don’t Forget Paula

33. Jerome (347-420)
1. Early Life: Stridon (Croatia?)
2. Travels and Desert of Chalcis
3. Rome
4. Bethlehem

34. Jerome (347-420)
Jerome in the Desert
“Now, although in my fear of hell I had no
companions but scorpions and wild beasts, I
often found myself amid bevies of girls.
My face was pale and my frame chilled with
fasting; yet my mind was burning with desire,
and the fires of lust kept bubbling up before me.
There, also… I sometimes felt myself among
angelic hosts, and for joy and gladness sang…”

35. The Conversion of Paula by Saint Jerome
By Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1898)

37. Jerome (347-420)
On Paula
A wealthy widowed with five children.
After giving her husband a son it is said that she no longer had
relations with him.
Biblical Scholar, she knew Hebrew, Greek, & Latin

38. Jerome (347-420)
Blaesilla
Paula’s daughter.
Enjoyed a wealthy lifestyle, even when widowed.
After sickness devoted herself to God.
Died from an overdose of asceticism.

39. Jerome (347-420)
Eustochium
Paula’s daughter.
Entrusted to Jerome for spiritual training.
The first known “lifelong” virgin in Rome.
Jerome wrote that Paula was, “God’s mother-in-law”.

40. Jerome (347-420)
Jerome’s Spiritual Hierarchy
1. The Chaste Virgin (male and female)
2. The Chaste Widow(er)
3. The Married

41. Jerome (347-420)
Jerome’s Spiritual Hierarchy
1. The Chaste Virgin (male and female)
“The fruit which is an hundredfold and that which is sixtyfold both spring from
one seed, and that seed is chastity.” (Matthew 13: 8)
Jerome encouraged a “holy pride; know that you are better than they.”
“In paradise Eve was a virgin, and it was only after the coats of skins that she
began her married life.”
“Again, she may be a virgin in body and not in spirit.”

42. Jerome (347-420)
Jerome’s Spiritual Hierarchy
1. The Chaste Virgin (male and female)
“I will say it boldly, though God can do all things He cannot raise up a virgin
when one once she has fallen. He may indeed relieve one who is defiled from the
penalty of sin, but He will not give her a crown.”
“Care must be taken, therefore, that abstinence may bring back to Paradise those
whom satiety once drove out.”

43. Jerome (347-420)
Jerome’s Spiritual Hierarchy
2. The Chaste Widow(er)
Jerome points to Blaesilla, was a widow, saying, “She has lost, at once, the crown
of virginity and the pleasures of wedlock.”
Writing of Blaesilla, “As a childless widow she will occupy a middle place
between Paula, the mother of children, and Eustochium the virgin.”
Writing of Lea (a friend that had died); she, “as a (chaste) widow, held a lower
place.”

44. Jerome (347-420)
Jerome’s Spiritual Hierarchy
3. The Married
“I praise wedlock, I praise marriage, but it is because they give me virgins. I
gather the rose from the thorns…”
To mothers of virgins, “you are now the mother-in-law of God.”

45. Jerome (347-420)
Jerome’s Spiritual Hierarchy
3. The Married
“You've already learned the miseries of marriage. It's like
unwholesome food, and now that you have relieved your heaving
stomach of its bile, why should you return to it again like a dog to its
vomit?”

46. Jerome (347-420)
Against Jovinianus (393)

47. Jerome (347-420)
Against Jovinianus (393)
Things that Jovinianus appears to have taught:
1. A virgin is no better than a wife in the sight of God.
2. Abstinence from food is no better than thankfulness in matters of food.
3. A person baptized with the Spirit as well as water cannot sin.
4. All sins are equal.
5. No hierarchy of rewards in future state.
“This is the hissing of the old serpent...” and, “Jovinianus’ nauseating trash…”

48. Jerome (347-420)
Against Jovinianus (393)
1 Corinthians 7: 1, “if it is good not to touch a woman, it is bad to
touch one: for there is no opposite to goodness but badness.”
“’It is good to feed on wheaten bread, and to eat the finest wheat
flour,’ and yet to prevent a person pressed by hunger from devouring
cow-dung, I may allow him to eat barley. So, virginity is wheat,
marriage is barley, and burning with lust (or prostitutes) is manure.”
“I grant that even marriage is a gift of God, but between gift and gift
there is great diversity.”

49. Jerome (347-420)
Against Jovinianus (393)
“…the angelic life be not exacted of us, but merely recommended.”
“Christ loves virgins more than others, because they willingly give
what is not commanded them. And it indicates greater grace to offer
what you are not bound to give, than to render what is exacted of
you.”

50. Jerome (347-420)
Against Jovinianus (393)
“I do not condemn second, nor third, nor, pardon the expression,
eighth marriages: I will go still further and say that I welcome even a
penitent whoremonger.”
“And as regards Adam and Eve we must maintain that before the fall
they were virgins in Paradise: but after they sinned, and were put out
of Paradise, they were immediately married.”
“The first Adam was married once: the second was unmarried.”

51. Jerome (347-420)
Against Jovinianus (393)
“The Virgin Mother was entrusted by the Virgin Lord to the Virgin
disciple.”
“For if there is no difference between a virgin and a widow, both
being baptized, because baptism makes a new man, upon the same
principle harlots and prostitutes, if they are baptized, will be equal to
virgins.”
“You surely admit that he is no bishop who during his episcopate
begets children.”

52. Jerome (347-420)
Against Jovinianus (393)
“…the promises attached to virginity which He has given us, that
through it we may become partakers of the divine nature, having
escaped from the corruption that is in the world through lust.”
“He who too ardently loves his own wife is an adulterer.”
(quoting Sextus the Pythagorean)

53. Jerome (347-420)
What would Paula (or Marcella) have to say?
“I know that as you (Marcella) read these words you will knit your
brows, and fear that my freedom of speech is sowing the seeds of
fresh quarrels; and that, if you could, you would gladly put your
finger on my mouth to prevent me from even speaking of things
which others do not blush to do…”

54. Jerome (347-420)
Letter to Lucinius
“You have with you one who was once your partner in the flesh, but
is now your partner in the spirit, once your wife but now your sister,
once a woman but now a man, once an inferior but now an equal.”

55. Jerome (347-420)
Summary
1. The Angelic Life
For Jerome virginity is a step into the Angelic Life and a participation
in Paradise. The true virgin is living in God’s Paradise already.
2. The Married Life
Those that marry are living still on this earth. Marriage is good, but
virginity is better. Why live a mediocre life in the kingdom of God?
The future, and present, reward for those that have given their all
here is greater than for those that were mediocre, they will receive a
mediocre life in heaven.

56. Jerome (347-420)
Summary
3. Was his view egalitarian?
Outside of the “angelic life” women are clearly inferior.
Most Church Fathers did not view a male/female distinction in the
afterlife. He appears to hold that those that live the Angelic Life
here, virgins such as Eustrochium, and probably Paula and Marcella,
are his equals in the Angelic Life.

57. Jerome (347-420)
Summary
3. Was his view egalitarian?
“[A] commandment which is given to men logically applies to
women also. … The laws of Caesar are different, it is true, from the
laws of Christ…but with us Christians what is unlawful for women
is equally unlawful for men, and as both serve the same God both
are bound by the same obligations.”
“If to be taught by a woman was not shameful to an apostle
(Apollos), why should it be [shameful] to me afterwards to teach
men and women?” “This and its like I have touched on briefly, to
ensure that you [women] should not be penalized because of your
sex.”

58. Jerome (347-420)
Summary
4. With Paula’s Help
Palladius wrote that Paula was, “hindered by a certain Jerome. For
though she was able to surpass all, having great abilities, he hindered
her by his jealousy, having induced her to serve his own plan.”
“Without Paula’s help, Jerome would not have had the money or
leisure to complete his biblical translations and commentaries.”
(Mary Malone)
Jerome “used women for his own personal agenda. It was only with
them that he found any solace.” (Malone)