When I read the Fathers of the Church about women, I was surprised about how much more they put down womankind than had Jesus Christ.

Perhaps part of the answer is that the "Fathers" were engaged in what they saw as a contest for the control of a developing Church. The main rival was seen to be the Gnostic Christians who gave to women sacred ritual roles and had both women and men preside over their Eucharist. The Fathers saw this as entirely wrong - but this still does not explain why the Fathers came to write so vehemently against women.

Perhaps a clue lies in Augustine's reaction when the British monk Pelagius attacked him for teaching that the material world, including our bodies, were essentially evil, an alleged teaching of the Manichaeans among whom Augustine had been before he became a Christian. Augustine furiously denied this, saying that whereas the pagan Manichaeans taught that nature was evil, he taught that nature was created good but through the sin of the first humans had been corrupted and made evil. Augustine believed that nature must be tamed and mastered with the help of Jesus Christ.

He and the other Fathers were as concerned as the Iron Age farmers with the mastery of nature - and saw women as part of a reluctant nature that did not want to be mastered. They put down the reluctance of women to accept male domination to the devil's influence over them - explaining that corrupted nature dominated the lives of women (as was evident from their periods) and thus kept them naturally more in the domain of Satan. They saw the salvation of women lay in persuading them to be "virtuous" or male-like. The very word "virtue" originally meant "male-like".Q 178

Their attacks on women may also have been influenced by the politics of blood that accompanied the rise of patriarchies. In this rise, the blood of the womb, the most ancient symbol of human fertility, was replaced in religious significance by the blood shed through male circumcision, through war and through martyrdom.

A creation myth reflected this change by saying that humankind did not come from a Mother Goddess but from the mingling of a male God's blood with the soil. The Bronze Age Babylonian myth of Marduk had him destroy his mother; "Then the lord paused to view her dead body, that he might divide the monster and do artful works. He split her like a shellfish into two parts, half of her he set up and called it sky." (M278) - turning the rest into the earth. He then slaughtered a younger God who had loved his Mother/Consort and "out of his blood they fashioned mankind." (N6 Tiamat 279)

The first Christians lived through a time of bloodshed. The Emperor Nero scapegoated Christians for a fire that destroyed Rome, impaling them through the anus on stakes, tarring them and setting them afire to light his parks and games. This would have sent a shiver of absolute horror around all the Christians communities of his empire. Such a climate can both inspire and dehumanise its victims. Tertullian became a Christian after watching Christians dressed as pagan gods being massacred in the arena. He wrote that he first enjoyed this - but soon came to admire those who could so triumph over pain.

Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, another "father" and fierce critic of the Gnostic women, saw fifty of his people rounded up and killed - because the Senate decreed that provinces could cut the cost of the regular gladiatorial games by replacing expensive professional gladiators with killing Christians and prisoners as entertainment. A Christian was budgeted at one tenth of the cost of using a 5th rate gladiator. 84

In such a climate some Christians transcended their fear by declaring that just as Christ had conquered death through shedding his blood, so would they. They volunteered for death - sometimes embarrassing Roman officials who did not want to kill them. They formed a highly macho Christian sect that saw martyrdom as a short cut to heaven. There was joy among them when one was martyred for, in Christ, they were confident of victory.

Almost as if they were Celtic warriors, they believed that the blood they shed in the gladiatorial circus was the seed of life, that Christians could be born into a higher life only through the blood shed by martyrs. Tertullian wrote: "the sole key to unlock paradise is your life's blood." N58 p85 When some women joined the men in facing death - as also was the custom among the Celts whose women fought as warriors, they said these women had transcended their female nature to become men.

From all accounts, many went to their deaths very bravely - and women in trance and ecstasy took a significant role. The group in Lyon found courage in a young slave girl, Blandina who outdid all in not allowing torture to break her spirit. "Blondina was hung upon a post and exposed as bait for wild animals ... she seemed to hang there in the form of a cross and by her fervent prayers she aroused intense enthusiasm in those who were undergoing their ordeal" (gos73)). In Carthage around 203CE another woman, Perpetua, took the lead. She kept a record of the dreams she had as she prepared for death. One was that she had become a male in order to achieve victory. "And I was stripped naked and became a man. And my supporters began to rub me with oil as if for a wrestling match." When in this dream she was victorious over the gladiator, the fencing master greeted her as a "daughter." She was androgynous in victory.(Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas. Trans. P. Dronke in "Women writers of the Middle Ages.")

Her prison diary, completed by another, told of their belief in a "second baptism of blood" A woman with her called "Felicitas, glad that she had safely given birth so that now she could fight the beasts, going from one blood bath to another, from the midwife to the gladiator, ready to wash after childbirth in a second baptism." Later when another man was savaged by a leopard and drenched in blood, this too was called: "a second baptism". The diary recorded that the crowd cried at this: "'Well washed! Well washed!'". The diarist commented: " For well washed indeed was one who had been bathed in this manner."

The leaders of these death defying Christians organised their groups or churches as did other shedders of blood, that is, along military lines. They brought all their churches into a tightly structured unity under one leader, the Bishop of Rome. As a General in charge of an army demands absolute obedience, so too did they demanded absolute obedience be given to all the officers of the Bishop of Rome, even to the relatively lowly deacons. The Roman Army was commanded by a divine Emperor. Likewise the Bishop of Rome was said to speak in the name of God. Disobedience, they said, meant damnation. When many Christian communities refused to agree to this supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, the supporters of the Roman Bishop promptly declared that those who did not agree were disobeying the supreme commander, God. Even Ireneus, Bishop of Lyon, who campaigned against the gnostic Christians, was surprised by the zeal shown by Rome's bishop in trying to impose uniformity of practice. P99 -

The gnostic Christians in their turn had their own name for the Christians who were attacking them. They called them the "Catholics" or univeralists, because they were forcing Christians everywhere into the same mould. p 105

These Catholic Catholics, while reorganising their part of "Christianity" along male lines, putting hierarchy above co-operation, obedience above consensus, scornfully dismissed and attacked any of the "weaker" sex who "trespassed" into roles of power within the church. These were now totally reserved for men - much as we have seen happen in modern times in Afghanistan at the hands of an equally male, blood, warfare and martyr centred Islamic sect . These Christians like these Mughadin? banned women from education.

And they poured scorn on those other "wimps" - the gnostic Christians - for few gnostics had volunteered to be martyred, saying in effect. "If you were not willing, eager, to be killed, then you were not worthy of Christ.". A leading Catholic Justin said darkly that he did not know if the Gnostics practised cannibalism and promiscuity but "we do know " they are "neither persecuted or put to death", suggesting that the Gnostics had done a deal with the pagan authorities. Pagels 84 Tertullian, after saying that blood was the sole key to heaven, added bitterly "but the heretics go about as usual"

The Gnostics on their part were horrified at the joy the Catholics showed at the sufferings of their companions in martyrdom. They said perfection could not so easily be purchased through the shedding of blood. Rather it was to be found through meditation, the mystic marriage of the soul and through living lovingly in the community. They rejected the claims of the Catholics, calling their bishops and clergy "waterless canals" 106.

The Catholic Christians did not extend their exultation of blood to that naturally shed by women in childbirth and menstruation. This was an absolutely different affair, a product of a fallen nature, so contaminating and dangerous. Blood from childbirth was considered more dangerous than that from menstruation - and the Father of the Church Jerome (d420) who had responsibility for revising the New Testament wrote about menstruation: "When a man has intercourse with his wife at this time, the children born from this union are leprous and hydrocephalic; and the corrupted blood causes the plague-ridden bodies of both sexes to be either too small or too large." (Commentary on Ezekiel 18- 6) Archbishop Caesarius of Arles later (d. 542) warned: "whoever has sex with his wife during her period will have children that are either leprous or epileptic or possessed by the devil". This supposed link between women and the devil would put in danger the lives of European women for centuries .(Eu p22) In the early Middle Ages influential Catholic theologians such as St Thomas Aquinas taught that it was a mortal sin to make love to a woman during her period - because her blood would harm male seed. Menstruating woman including deaconesses were barred from Christian rituals. Theodore of Balsamon explained "They were allowed to approach the altar but because of their monthly impurity they were ousted from their place in liturgy. (Eu ref.25)

There could not be a greater contrast with the attitude towards female blood shown by the sacred practices of Australia's natural peoples. At least one nation taught that when a woman stops bleeding and leaves the Rainbow Serpent, she is carrying the divine power of fertility for it is in the days following that she can conceive a child

In 9th century Ireland the Christian phobia against female blood continued. Thus the Celi-De monks taught that an excess of blood was the cause of sexual lust. It was this that made women the temptress for they taught that menstruation clearly revealed that women had too much blood. But there was hope for women. If they starved themselves until their periods ceased, they could achieve perfection.

The status of women fell so low in the next centuries in Christendom that the Church Council of Maçon in the Sixth Century seriously debated whether women had souls. The decision that a woman did have a soul was only carried by a majority of one.(p64gos)

But to return to the tale of the rise of the Christian patriarchy during the first half millennium, Tertullian himself eventually was convinced he was wrong by some of those whom he had attacked. He left the authoritarian catholic sect and joined the Montanists. He then attacked the very doctrine he had for so long maintained by saying that wisdom comes from within and not from a bishop's dictate. The Montanists were, it seems, exploring the common ground between gnostic Christianity and the faith of the Gallae, the transgendered priestesses who honoured the Goddess Cybele. 110

While the Christian community increasingly became split between the Catholics and Gnostics, more and more pagans had become Christian. This was partially because it was fertile times for a new faith based around supportive communities that saw themselves united in a God who loved them to the point of death. The story of how Christ had come back to life after three days dead, a story that took on greater detail as Christianity grew, had enormous resonance within the Pagan community for it seemed Christ had personified in his own life the great pagan myths embodied in the major and still popular initiation rituals of the time. The discipline of the Catholic Christians also became much more appealing to the Imperial authorities than the ecstatic rites in some Pagantemples.

But as the more militant Catholics took control over Western Christianity, the ascetic and anti-women attitudes of the Fathers became enshrined within the Christian communities. Sexuality became more and more outlawed. In the 6th Century, Pope Siricius wrote to a Spanish bishop, Himerius of Tarragona (385) to say that although a priest could be married, it was an obscene lust (obscena cupiditas) and a crime for him to continue to have sexual relations with his wife after ordination to the priesthood. As for the correct attitude a priest should have towards his wife, Pope Gregory the Great, I, wrote to Bishop Leo of Catana saying that from the day of their ordination, priests should "love their wives as if they were sisters and beware of them as if they were enemies." (Dialogues. 4/II).

I would have been putting Jackie into great jeopardy if I had lived in those days. Pope Leo 9th seized and enslaved in his Lateran Palace the wives of priests. (Cf. Kempf, in Jedin, Hadbuch de Kirchengeschichte, vol III 1966 oo 407ff) In 1089 Pope Urban II declared that if a Sub-Deacon was unwilling to be separated from his wife, "the prince may enslave his wife" (Decretum Gratiani, pars II , dist XXXII, c10) In England the famous Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, called a synod in London that terrorised the wives of priests by making them the property of the bishop.

Sex split the Christians apart. The rift between the Catholics and Greek Orthodox was finally effected when Cardinal Humbert, the leader of a papal delegation to Byzantium, on July 16 1054 , damned and "expelled" the whole eastern half of the church, because they had married priests. He reported with horror: "Young husbands, just now exhausted from carnal lust.. serve at the altar. And immediately afterward they again embrace their wives with hands that have been hallowed by the immaculate Body of Christ. That is not the mark of a true faith but an invention of Satan." (C Will, Acta et scripta quae de controversiis ecclesiae graecae et latinae" 1861 p126) (eunuchs 107)

But at that time the battle for celibacy in the Western Church was not yet won (It was never won in the Eastern churches where Augustine never had such a following as in the West). Many Western priests had valid church weddings in the 11th Century despite the fuming of Pope Gregory 7th, (d 1085) who called priestly marriage "a crime of fornication" in a letter to Bishop Bernold He ordered that Catholics must boycott all church services held by married priests under pain of excommunication. This caused much outrage. Bishops refused to implement this ruling and wrote reminding the Pope that the teachings of Christ and the apostles were in favour of marriage and that the apostles were married.

In 1139 Rome finally declared invalid the marriages of Roman Catholic priests - (Can 10) (eu5) but this did not stop the practice. The Synod of Munster in 1280 forbade priests to attend the weddings or funerals of their children (can2) and in the 14C the wives of priests were denied church funerals. p 112

A man sainted by the Catholic church, Bonaventure (d 1274), a famous Franciscan theologian, taught "because the sexual act has been corrupted (though original sin) and has become, so to speak, stinking and because human beings besides are for the most part too lustful, the devil has so much power and authority over them." He quoted the biblical book Tobit that Jerome had doctored to make it pro celibacy.

Unfortunately for women, Aristotle's views on the inferiority of women and on the male generating the entire embryo which then grew within the woman were adopted and strengthened by the most influential of Catholic medieval theologians, the 13th Century St. Thomas Aquinas whose theological teachings dominated the education of Catholic priests right up to until the 1970s. The rediscovered theories of Aristotle provided him with an useful extra justification for the exclusion of women from the priesthood.

He explained the birth of female babies was solely due to a defect in the mother or the environment - he suggests girls are conceived because a damp wind was blowing at the time: "for the active power in the seed of the male tends to produce something like itself, perfect in masculinity, but the procreation of the female is the result either of the debility of the active power, of some unsuitability of the material, or of some change effected by external influences, like the south wind, for example, which is damp." N67 p 521g This mention of dampness was a reference to a further development of the mock scientific theory of why women were physically inferior to men. It was that women's bodies contained too much water . This explained why they had softer skins and were so fickle.

The Roman church having lost its link with the eastern church partly over sex, then lost the northern half of Europe also partly because of its attitude to sex. When Luther defied Rome by allowing marriage to the clergy, Archbishop Albrecht of Brandenburg wrote: " I know all my priests are living in concubinage. But what should I do to stop it? If I forbid them concubines they either want to have wives or to become Lutherans" (Mornes to Cardinal Farnese, Mounumenta Vaticana, ed. Laemmer 1861 p 312) Eu. 113 Today marriage of clergy in the Protestant and Eastern churches are seen by the Roman Church as a major obstacle to union. The other bigger obstacle is the presence of women in the priesthood of Anglican and other churches. Sex is it seems still the great issue in Christianity.

For me, it is incredible that despite all this in-fighting, all this corruption of religion, that somehow among the debris was preserved some wisdom and some knowledge of Jesus as friendly to women.