Videos by Ally Kateusz
30 minute interview. How to identify Jesus and women on early Christian sarcophagi. These carving... more 30 minute interview. How to identify Jesus and women on early Christian sarcophagi. These carvings illustrate some surprising gender politics.
Interview with Early Christian Texts. 462 views
5 minute talk. The very oldest surviving iconographic artifact to portray just one sex at the alt... more 5 minute talk. The very oldest surviving iconographic artifact to portray just one sex at the altar of a real church portrays women in a liturgical procession to the altar in the rotunda Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the church Constantine built over the cave in which Jesus's body was believed to have been placed, the very site where Mary Magdalene and the women came on Easter morning and met the risen Christ, who sent Mary Magdalene to teach the frightened, foolish, disbelieving men. This beautiful ivory pyx, dated ca. 500, contradicts our modern gendered imagination that only men served at early Christian altars. It illustrates liturgical roles for women, and women only, in one of the most important churches of Christendom. 619 views
Books by Ally Kateusz
London: T&T Clark Bloomsbury, 2020
This interdisciplinary volume of text and art offers new insights into various unsolved mysteries... more This interdisciplinary volume of text and art offers new insights into various unsolved mysteries associated with Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, Mary the Mother of Jesus, and Miriam the sister of Moses. Mariamic traditions are often interconnected, as seen in the portrayal of these women as community leaders, prophets, apostles and priests. These traditions also are often inter-religious, echoing themes back to Miriam in the Hebrew Bible as well as forward to Maryam in the Qur'an. The chapters explore questions such as: which biblical Mary did the author of the Gospel of Mary intend to portray-Magdalene, Mother, or neither? Why did some writers depict Mary of Nazareth as a priest? Were extracanonical scriptures featuring Mary more influential than the canonical gospels on the depiction of Maryam in the Qur'an?
Contributors dig deep into literature, iconography, and archaeology to offer cutting edge research under three overarching topics. The first section examines the question of "which Mary?" and illustrates how some ancient authors (and contemporary scholars) may have conflated the biblical Marys. The second section focuses on Mary of Nazareth, and includes research related to the portrayal of Mary the Mother of Jesus as a Eucharistic priest. The final section, “Recovering Receptions of Mary in Art, Archeology, and Literature,” explores how artists and authors have engaged with one or more of the Marys, from the early Christian era through to medieval and modern times.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan - Open Access, 2019
“Mary and Early Christian Women is a great leap forward in Marian studies, and in peeling away la... more “Mary and Early Christian Women is a great leap forward in Marian studies, and in peeling away layers of deliberate patriarchal obfuscation. A remarkable achievement!”
- Mary Ann Beavis, Department Head, Religion and Culture, St. Thomas More College, Canada
“Mary and Early Christian Women draws back the veil on the earliest representations of the Virgin Mary and her sister saints in both narrative and visual art to reveal a tradition in which women served alongside men as prayer-leaders, preachers, and baptizers. Exemplary in its attention to detail, this book raises potentially shattering questions about the role of women in the early Church.”
- Rachel Fulton Brown, author of Mary and the Art of Prayer: The Hours of the Virgin in Medieval Christian Life and Thought, Associate Professor of History, The University of Chicago
“Commanding and explaining dozens of visual images never seen together before, Ally Kateusz provides a depth, breadth, and technical detail that will need years to appreciate and understand fully. This visual material, alongside some important texts, opens major paths to dramatically valorize women protagonists in the crucial eras after the first two centuries.”
- Hal Taussig, Professor of New Testament (retired), Union Theological Seminary, USA
“Using numerous tables of textual comparisons and illustrations, Ally Kateusz shows what rapidly becomes obvious. Women did what men did: teaching, leading worship, baptising. They were apostles, priests and bishops. She concentrates on Mary the Mother of Jesus, and the evidence in texts and images for her as a leader, teacher and high priest in the early Church. The case is set out clearly and the evidence is meticulously presented. This is a brilliant book, a landmark.”
- Margaret Barker, author of The Mother of the Lord: The Lady in the Temple
“Dr. Kateusz provides irrefutable proof of women taking part in early church ministries.”
- John Wijngaards, author of Women Deacons in the Early Church: Historical Texts and Contemporary Debates
60 illustrations.
Key words: women apostles, women priests; early Christian art
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Ally Kateusz
Metropolitan Museum Journal, 2024
In-depth study of the ivory pyxis in The Metropolitan Museum of Art that depicts five women parti... more In-depth study of the ivory pyxis in The Metropolitan Museum of Art that depicts five women participating in an early Christian liturgy. The sculptor carved two of the women swinging censers of incense on opposite sides of a small altar, and the other three with their arms raised in a procession around the side of the circular vessel. The pyxis dates to the sixth century, as early as about 500. This article demonstrates that its scene represents the Easter liturgy at the altar of Jesus’s tomb, a reprisal of the New Testament accounts of Mary Magdalene and the women meeting with the risen Christ at the rock tomb. This ivory pyxis is both the very oldest surviving artifact to depict just one sex at a church altar, and it is also the oldest and best representation of the Constantinian Tomb of Christ.
For a PDF of the article, please email me at allykateusz@gmail.com
S/HE International Journal of Goddess Studies, 2024
We often find what appear to be narrative themes in early Christian art that do not correspond to... more We often find what appear to be narrative themes in early Christian art that do not correspond to the canonical gospels. In some cases these themes can be traced to extracanonical gospels such as the Protoevangelium of James, but in other cases their origin is uncertain. In this study, I argue that sometimes early Christian art can be read as a type of visual text that preserves elements of traditions that have been lost. As a case study, I address unexpected themes in some early art of the Adoration of the Magi, themes that indicate that artists or their patrons were already elevating Mary as if she were Theotokos long before the Council of Ephesus in 431 affirmed that title for Mary. These themes include 1) the star placed closest to Mary, 2) the baby, as well as the Magi, facing Mary, suggesting that she was the focal point of the scene, 3) the Magi offering breads or eucharistic platters for bread, reminiscent of the Collyridians who offered bread to Mary, and 4) Mary paralleled with the Father.
Deaconesses: A Tradition for Today and Tomorrow, ed. John Chryssavgis, Niki Papageorgiou, Marilyn Rouvelas and Petros Vassiliadis (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press), 2023
Important for the re-institution of the order of deaconesses is the evidence of ancient Christian... more Important for the re-institution of the order of deaconesses is the evidence of ancient Christian art that demonstrates women taking a far greater role in the liturgy than previously thought. This art portrays Christian women at church altars and the altars have crosses on them. This chapter details pre-600s art portraying women at church altars in both East and West. Previously published in ΘΕΟΛΟΓΙΑ, 2020, “Χριστιανές γυναίκες στην Αγία Τράπεζα: Αρχαίες μαρτυρίες για την ανασύσταση του θεσμού των Διακονισσών.”
CEMES, 2022
Early Christian art preserves several important images of women in liturgical roles, both at holy... more Early Christian art preserves several important images of women in liturgical roles, both at holy tables and also what Jocelyn Toynbee proposed was a scene of two women assisting a woman about to be baptized. These images of women appear at a minimum to represent women in the historical role of deacon.
Feminist Theology, 2023
Writers starting with Tertullian and the author behind the Didascalia Apostolorum attest to the p... more Writers starting with Tertullian and the author behind the Didascalia Apostolorum attest to the presence of early Christian women baptizers, as do a variety of later writers. The early Christian tradition of Holy Spirit as female and mother, her womb the font of new birth (Jn 3.3-5), helps illuminate why women may have been seen as the midwives, or ministers, of this birthing ritual. Likewise, the identification of the font as a womb adds to Jocelyn Toynbee's 1964 proposal that a scene on the Walesby Tank, a fourth-century Romano-British baptismal font, portrayed two clothed women assisting a nude female neophyte at her baptism.
Patterns of Women's Leadership in Early Christianity, ed. Joan Taylor and Ilaria Ramelli (Oxford University Press), 2021
We are grateful that Oxford University Press made this chapter free to download in honor of Women... more We are grateful that Oxford University Press made this chapter free to download in honor of Women's History Month, March 2023.
This chapter provides evidence of Early Christian women bishops in both text and art, especially in and around fifth-century Rome. It focuses on two artefacts that appear to portray women church leaders operating in this broad context. It addresses frescoes of deceased women painted with open gospel books in the San Gennaro Catacombs in Naples; it proposes that the most logical interpretation of the iconographic motifs associated with them is that they were women bishops, perhaps two of the women about whom Pope Gelasius complained to male bishops in southern Italy c. 496. For cultural context it next considers an ivory reliquary box discovered in 1906, which depicts three pairs of men and women in the altar area of Old St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. This scene has recently been re-analysed; one of the pairs appears to have been sculpted jointly officiating the Eucharist at the basilica’s altar. Additional fifth- and sixth-century artefacts that portray women as clergy, sometimes paired with men, sometimes independently, affirm both the identification of women bishops in the two Naples catacomb frescoes and also the scene of the woman and man officiating at the altar in Old St Peters on the ivory box. A forensic analysis of some of these two artefacts suggests that aggressive censorship, both ancient and modern, is a key reason why these women church leaders are not more clearly in view.
S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies, 2022
Some Jesus followers described Holy Spirit as Mother and female in the same way that Father was m... more Some Jesus followers described Holy Spirit as Mother and female in the same way that Father was male. Some also remembered Jesus as androgyne, or intersex in this case with both male and female genitals. The femaleness of Holy Spirit and Jesus appears to have provided theological justification for female ministers, who often were paired in leadership with male ministers. What happened to these three early Christian phenomena—divine Mother, intersex Jesus, and gender parallel officiants? The hypothesis in this interdisciplinary essay is that their origins were in Second Temple Judaism, and their near disappearance was due to the theological innovations of the Nicene Creed. This creed and its subsequent amendments redefined Jesus and Holy Spirit as one substance with the Father, a male. Their masculinization undermined the ancient unification of the sexes seen in Gen 1:27 and Gal 3:28, which had theologically justified gender parallelism, both male and female, in the ritual.
This is the published article without page numbers, 50-93. A copy with page numbers is available from Mago Books, including on the Mago Books Academia.edu page.
Rediscovering the Marys: Maria, Mariamne, Miriam, Library of New Testament Studies 620, T&T Clark / Bloomsbury, 2020
Where today in John 20 we see Mary Magdalene in the garden with the risen Christ, authors of extr... more Where today in John 20 we see Mary Magdalene in the garden with the risen Christ, authors of extracanonical narratives as well as church fathers in Ancient Syria instead often identified Jesus’s mother as the Mary there. This ancient phenomenon is relatively well known. Robert Murray in his 1975 book on the early Syriac tradition gave numerous witnesses, and Thierry Murcia in his 2017 book on this very topic adds dozens more. In this chapter, I argue that a specific variant in the Diatessaron may have been an important early source of this phenomenon.
Rediscovering the Marys: Maria, Mariamne, Miriam, T&T Clark / Bloomsbury, 2020
Recently discovered, one of the two oldest scenes of the Dormition portrays six women (not men) s... more Recently discovered, one of the two oldest scenes of the Dormition portrays six women (not men) swinging censers around Mary on her deathbed, Jesus as a Great Angel with red-tipped wings, and twelve men seated in the background sleeping. These three narrative elements--Jesus as a Great Angel, women with censers, and women, not men, around Mary--suggest that its iconography belongs to a very old tradition that preceded the later and now common scene of Mary on her deathbed surrounded by twelve men. Manuscript evidence also suggests that a single literary source may be behind these three narrative traditions.
ΘΕΟΛΟΓΙΑ, 2020
Virtually all liturgical manuscripts from the first eight centuries have disappeared, both Christ... more Virtually all liturgical manuscripts from the first eight centuries have disappeared, both Christian and Jewish. Early Christian iconography that depicts people in the altar table of churches thus provides critical evidence for assessing who did what during the ancient liturgy. The three very oldest surviving iconographic artifacts to depict Christians in the altar areas of real churches were discovered buried below ground in the twentieth century, and quite unexpectedly, each portrays women in the altar area—in two cases women in parallel with men, and in one case, women only. Today these depictions of women in the altar areas of Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem are almost always studied individually, and thus, not recognized as a striking pattern of female liturgical leadership across geographic areas. This long-buried art provides strong evidence for the role of women deacons in the early church.
in Mary, the Apostles and the Last Judgment: Apocryphal Representations from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, edited by Stanislava Kuzmová and Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky (Trivent, 2020), 23-60, 2020
Recent studies have demonstrated that from Late Antiquity up through the early modern era, some a... more Recent studies have demonstrated that from Late Antiquity up through the early modern era, some artists portrayed Jesus’s mother Mary as a priest, including depicting her with insignia such as the Eucharistic handkerchief and the episcopal pallium. In fact, surviving art indicates that Mary was portrayed with liturgical insignia as early, or earlier, than any male leader. Contextualizing why artists portrayed Mary in this fashion, some gospel writers paralleled Mary and Abraham as the cultic founders of their religion, and other authors represented Mary as a bishop of bishops, or high priest. Censorship, both ancient and modern, appears to explain why Mary is rarely remembered this way today.
Priscilla Papers, 2020
Author: Ally Kateusz
Publisher: CBE International
The tradition of women raising the eucharistic... more Author: Ally Kateusz
Publisher: CBE International
The tradition of women raising the eucharistic cup is witnessed from the late 100s to the mid-500s, including evidence from the three oldest surviving iconographic artifacts that depict early Christians in real churches.
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 2017
Awarded March 2018 Feminae Journal Article of the Month, this article is Part 2 in a series about... more Awarded March 2018 Feminae Journal Article of the Month, this article is Part 2 in a series about the early tradition that Mary, the Jewish mother of Jesus, was a priest. Part 1, “Collyridian Déjà Vu,” appeared in JFSR (Fall 2013), and won the First Place Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza New Scholar Award. The current essay illuminates an early tradition in the Life of the Virgin that the women disciples were at the Last Supper, and that both Mary and her son sacrificed as priests at the meal. Consistent with this eucharistic model, early Christian authors in both East and West described a gender parallel co-priesthood. Confirming this model was orthodox, the two oldest surviving artifacts to portray people around the altar inside a real church, both early fifth-century, depict women and men in parallel — inside the second Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and inside Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
Journal of Early Christian Studies, Jun 2015
The iconography today called the "Ascension of Christ," which depicts an arms-raised Mary standin... more The iconography today called the "Ascension of Christ," which depicts an arms-raised Mary standing beneath Jesus inside an orb in the sky, originally depicted the ascension of Mary in the earliest Six Books Dormition narrative. This iconography is seen as early as the Christian catacombs of Rome.
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Nov 2013
First Place Winner, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza New Scholar Award, 2013. The oldest largely comp... more First Place Winner, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza New Scholar Award, 2013. The oldest largely complete Dormition manuscript, a 5th-century palimpsest, depicts Mary, the mother of Jesus, with markers of the Christian priesthood.
Teaching Aids: Art as Text by Ally Kateusz
slideshare.com, 2013
Early Christians saw the woman at the well two different ways -- one way side by side with Jesus,... more Early Christians saw the woman at the well two different ways -- one way side by side with Jesus, and the other way as his servant.
Uploads
Videos by Ally Kateusz
Interview with Early Christian Texts.
Books by Ally Kateusz
Contributors dig deep into literature, iconography, and archaeology to offer cutting edge research under three overarching topics. The first section examines the question of "which Mary?" and illustrates how some ancient authors (and contemporary scholars) may have conflated the biblical Marys. The second section focuses on Mary of Nazareth, and includes research related to the portrayal of Mary the Mother of Jesus as a Eucharistic priest. The final section, “Recovering Receptions of Mary in Art, Archeology, and Literature,” explores how artists and authors have engaged with one or more of the Marys, from the early Christian era through to medieval and modern times.
- Mary Ann Beavis, Department Head, Religion and Culture, St. Thomas More College, Canada
“Mary and Early Christian Women draws back the veil on the earliest representations of the Virgin Mary and her sister saints in both narrative and visual art to reveal a tradition in which women served alongside men as prayer-leaders, preachers, and baptizers. Exemplary in its attention to detail, this book raises potentially shattering questions about the role of women in the early Church.”
- Rachel Fulton Brown, author of Mary and the Art of Prayer: The Hours of the Virgin in Medieval Christian Life and Thought, Associate Professor of History, The University of Chicago
“Commanding and explaining dozens of visual images never seen together before, Ally Kateusz provides a depth, breadth, and technical detail that will need years to appreciate and understand fully. This visual material, alongside some important texts, opens major paths to dramatically valorize women protagonists in the crucial eras after the first two centuries.”
- Hal Taussig, Professor of New Testament (retired), Union Theological Seminary, USA
“Using numerous tables of textual comparisons and illustrations, Ally Kateusz shows what rapidly becomes obvious. Women did what men did: teaching, leading worship, baptising. They were apostles, priests and bishops. She concentrates on Mary the Mother of Jesus, and the evidence in texts and images for her as a leader, teacher and high priest in the early Church. The case is set out clearly and the evidence is meticulously presented. This is a brilliant book, a landmark.”
- Margaret Barker, author of The Mother of the Lord: The Lady in the Temple
“Dr. Kateusz provides irrefutable proof of women taking part in early church ministries.”
- John Wijngaards, author of Women Deacons in the Early Church: Historical Texts and Contemporary Debates
60 illustrations.
Key words: women apostles, women priests; early Christian art
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Ally Kateusz
For a PDF of the article, please email me at allykateusz@gmail.com
This chapter provides evidence of Early Christian women bishops in both text and art, especially in and around fifth-century Rome. It focuses on two artefacts that appear to portray women church leaders operating in this broad context. It addresses frescoes of deceased women painted with open gospel books in the San Gennaro Catacombs in Naples; it proposes that the most logical interpretation of the iconographic motifs associated with them is that they were women bishops, perhaps two of the women about whom Pope Gelasius complained to male bishops in southern Italy c. 496. For cultural context it next considers an ivory reliquary box discovered in 1906, which depicts three pairs of men and women in the altar area of Old St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. This scene has recently been re-analysed; one of the pairs appears to have been sculpted jointly officiating the Eucharist at the basilica’s altar. Additional fifth- and sixth-century artefacts that portray women as clergy, sometimes paired with men, sometimes independently, affirm both the identification of women bishops in the two Naples catacomb frescoes and also the scene of the woman and man officiating at the altar in Old St Peters on the ivory box. A forensic analysis of some of these two artefacts suggests that aggressive censorship, both ancient and modern, is a key reason why these women church leaders are not more clearly in view.
This is the published article without page numbers, 50-93. A copy with page numbers is available from Mago Books, including on the Mago Books Academia.edu page.
Publisher: CBE International
The tradition of women raising the eucharistic cup is witnessed from the late 100s to the mid-500s, including evidence from the three oldest surviving iconographic artifacts that depict early Christians in real churches.
Teaching Aids: Art as Text by Ally Kateusz
Interview with Early Christian Texts.
Contributors dig deep into literature, iconography, and archaeology to offer cutting edge research under three overarching topics. The first section examines the question of "which Mary?" and illustrates how some ancient authors (and contemporary scholars) may have conflated the biblical Marys. The second section focuses on Mary of Nazareth, and includes research related to the portrayal of Mary the Mother of Jesus as a Eucharistic priest. The final section, “Recovering Receptions of Mary in Art, Archeology, and Literature,” explores how artists and authors have engaged with one or more of the Marys, from the early Christian era through to medieval and modern times.
- Mary Ann Beavis, Department Head, Religion and Culture, St. Thomas More College, Canada
“Mary and Early Christian Women draws back the veil on the earliest representations of the Virgin Mary and her sister saints in both narrative and visual art to reveal a tradition in which women served alongside men as prayer-leaders, preachers, and baptizers. Exemplary in its attention to detail, this book raises potentially shattering questions about the role of women in the early Church.”
- Rachel Fulton Brown, author of Mary and the Art of Prayer: The Hours of the Virgin in Medieval Christian Life and Thought, Associate Professor of History, The University of Chicago
“Commanding and explaining dozens of visual images never seen together before, Ally Kateusz provides a depth, breadth, and technical detail that will need years to appreciate and understand fully. This visual material, alongside some important texts, opens major paths to dramatically valorize women protagonists in the crucial eras after the first two centuries.”
- Hal Taussig, Professor of New Testament (retired), Union Theological Seminary, USA
“Using numerous tables of textual comparisons and illustrations, Ally Kateusz shows what rapidly becomes obvious. Women did what men did: teaching, leading worship, baptising. They were apostles, priests and bishops. She concentrates on Mary the Mother of Jesus, and the evidence in texts and images for her as a leader, teacher and high priest in the early Church. The case is set out clearly and the evidence is meticulously presented. This is a brilliant book, a landmark.”
- Margaret Barker, author of The Mother of the Lord: The Lady in the Temple
“Dr. Kateusz provides irrefutable proof of women taking part in early church ministries.”
- John Wijngaards, author of Women Deacons in the Early Church: Historical Texts and Contemporary Debates
60 illustrations.
Key words: women apostles, women priests; early Christian art
For a PDF of the article, please email me at allykateusz@gmail.com
This chapter provides evidence of Early Christian women bishops in both text and art, especially in and around fifth-century Rome. It focuses on two artefacts that appear to portray women church leaders operating in this broad context. It addresses frescoes of deceased women painted with open gospel books in the San Gennaro Catacombs in Naples; it proposes that the most logical interpretation of the iconographic motifs associated with them is that they were women bishops, perhaps two of the women about whom Pope Gelasius complained to male bishops in southern Italy c. 496. For cultural context it next considers an ivory reliquary box discovered in 1906, which depicts three pairs of men and women in the altar area of Old St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. This scene has recently been re-analysed; one of the pairs appears to have been sculpted jointly officiating the Eucharist at the basilica’s altar. Additional fifth- and sixth-century artefacts that portray women as clergy, sometimes paired with men, sometimes independently, affirm both the identification of women bishops in the two Naples catacomb frescoes and also the scene of the woman and man officiating at the altar in Old St Peters on the ivory box. A forensic analysis of some of these two artefacts suggests that aggressive censorship, both ancient and modern, is a key reason why these women church leaders are not more clearly in view.
This is the published article without page numbers, 50-93. A copy with page numbers is available from Mago Books, including on the Mago Books Academia.edu page.
Publisher: CBE International
The tradition of women raising the eucharistic cup is witnessed from the late 100s to the mid-500s, including evidence from the three oldest surviving iconographic artifacts that depict early Christians in real churches.
https://www.slideshare.net/DivineBalance1/mary-and-the-women-at-the-raising-of-lazarus-106605254?qid=20d1d01e-d436-4bd5-95a9-f75960532f3a&v=&b=&from_search=10
PowerPoint at:
https://www.slideshare.net/DivineBalance1/art-as-text-12-two-traditions-two-marys?qid=74b201a7-251c-4895-ac11-a0c137c37265&v=&b=&from_search=8
https://www.slideshare.net/DivineBalance1/an-introduction-to-early-christian-catacomb-art?qid=c1f64eae-52f7-4f64-b92b-da052a756358&v=&b=&from_search=12
https://www.slideshare.net/DivineBalance1/art-as-text-11-feminine-euphrasiana-basilica?qid=c1f64eae-52f7-4f64-b92b-da052a756358&v=&b=&from_search=3
PowerPoint at:
https://www.slideshare.net/DivineBalance1/art-as-text-05-women-in-the-mosaics-of-the-basilica-of-aquileia?qid=c1f64eae-52f7-4f64-b92b-da052a756358&v=&b=&from_search=6
https://www.slideshare.net/DivineBalance1/art-as-text-03-women-witnesses-to-the-resurrection-28894229
PowerPoint is on Slideshare.net:
https://www.slideshare.net/DivineBalance1/art-as-text-02-two-early-christian-sarcophagi-two-traditions-about-women-28894211?qid=e5e73010-6511-456e-9406-1257121faebd&v=&b=&from_search=2