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  • Women in Pastoral Office: The Story of Santa Prassede, Rome by Mary M. Schaefer
  • Robin M. Jensen
Mary M. Schaefer Women in Pastoral Office: The Story of Santa Prassede, Rome New York: Oxford University Press, 2013 Pp. xxi + 469. $74.00.

Tourists often overlook Sta. Prassede, one of Rome’s most beautiful ancient churches, although it is situated almost across the street from the more revered basilica of Sta. Maria Maggiore. Epigraphical and documentary evidence testifies to its existence from at least the late fifth century, but the current building was founded by Pope Hadrian in the eighth century and completely rebuilt and decorated by Paschal I in the ninth. Paschal had been the church’s presbyter before being elevated to Pope and was known for sheltering exiled Byzantine monks who had fled from the iconoclasm that rocked eastern Christendom. Some of these monks undoubtedly aided him in his program of adorning Sta. Prassede [End Page 318] along with other Roman churches, including Sta. Caecilia in Trastevere and Sta. Maria in Domnica.

Historians of early Christianity, however, may find the story of Sta. Prassede just as interesting for its purported foundation by one of the two sainted granddaughters of the senator, Pudens. According to tradition, Pudens hosted the apostle Peter while he was in Rome and had two daughters, Pudentiana and Praxedes, who after inheriting their father’s lands and wealth, consecrated themselves to Christ and established their own early Christian house churches. Living through the persecutions of Antoninus Pius, the two legendary sisters eventually were recorded as martyrs for their care and protection of the vulnerable Christian community and are the titular founders of the basilicas dedicated in their names (Sta. Pudenziana and Sta. Prassede in Italian). When Paschal I lavishly redecorated Praxedes’ church, he commissioned a striking apse mosaic depicting saints Peter and Paul, each presenting one of the women to the ascended Christ. The two pairs are flanked by representations of the Pope himself on the left, offering a model of his church, and another figure, possibly the biblical deacon Stephen, on the right. To complement his apse, Paschal added a great triumphal arch showing the twenty-four elders of Revelation adoring the enthroned lamb. In addition, he included a small memorial chapel for his mother, Theodora. Although dedicated to St. Zeno, this chapel is especially intriguing for the inscription accompanying Theodora’s portrait that identifies her with the title episcopa.

Mary M. Schafer’s opening, wide-ranging, and appreciative account of the convoluted legends surrounding the sainted sisters and the complex history of the basilica’s rich mosaic decoration is, in fact, her springboard for examining the evidence for women’s ministry in the ancient and medieval church. Noting the striking inclusion of women saints in the apse, her book’s remaining pages are dedicated to sifting liturgical, hagiographical, art historical, and archeological indications for women holding ecclesial offices in antiquity. Is it possible that the second-century Praxedes was a presbyter? What does Theodora’s title as episcopa actually imply about her role or authority in the church? Was she actually a bishop or simply honored as the mother of one? Schaefer explores a large range of other instances, most thoroughly the available ordination rites for women deacons and abbesses from the seventh to the sixteenth century. Depending to a degree on the work of such other scholars as Gary Macy, Ute Eisen, Carolyn Osiek and Kevin Madigan, Schaefer recognizes that the data is open to interpretation. In addition, historians must reckon with the complication that ancient offices (or rituals) are not easily compared with current orders or practices. Thus, while the possibilities are always tantalizing, especially for those who seek historical precedents for advancing the cause of women’s ordination, the evidence is far from indisputable and, to be fair, Schaefer acknowledges that her conclusions are based on probabilities and conjectures. Yet, however one regards her effort, it also presents important material—both archaeological and documentary—that is too often overlooked or undervalued.

While this provocative work likely will not lead skeptics to fully revise their thinking on the range of women’s ministerial offices in the early and medieval western church...

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