Christianity introduced a new moral epoch in the course of human
history. Its effect was necessarily transforming upon those who came
under its sway. Being cosmopolitan in its nature, we have now to study
woman as being somewhat dissociated from racial type and national
manner, and we shall seek to ascertain how she met and was modified by
Christian conditions. These had a larger effect upon her life than upon
that of man; for, by its nature, Christianity gave an opening for the
higher possibilities of her being of which the old religions took little
account. In the realm of the spiritual, it, for the first time, assented
to her equality with man. That the women of the first Christian
centuries submitted themselves to the influence of that religion in a
varying degree, the following pages will abundantly show. And it will be
seen that in the many instances where the Christian doctrine was not
permitted to dominate the life, the dissimilarity of those women from
their prototypes in former heathendom is correspondingly lessened. While
it is not possible to treat this subject without illustrating the
above-mentioned fact, the authors beg to remind the reader that this is
distinctively a historical and not a religious work.
Though, under other
circumstances, they would be very willing to state positive views in
regard to many questions herein suggested, it is not within the province
of this book to defend or refute any religious institution. The aim is
solely and impartially to represent the life of the Christian women of
the first ages.
Though this is a work of collaboration, Mr. Brittain is solely
responsible for the part of the book treating of the women of the
Western Roman Empire, and Mr. Carroll is solely responsible for that
discussing the women of the Eastern Roman and Byzantine Empires.
Differences of personal characteristics, based upon dissimilarity of
national temperament, reveal themselves in these women of Rome and
Constantinople, but the Christian principle, through its transforming
and elevating influence on the lives of pagan women, gives unity to the
volume, and presents a type of womanhood far superior to any that had up
to this time been produced by the Orient or early Greece or ancient
Rome.
ALFRED BRITTAIN,
MITCHELL CARROLL.