The most fitting word with which to describe the Church Fathers' attitude toward women is ambivalence. Women were God's creation, his good gift to men and the curse of the world. They were weak in both mind and character and displayed dauntless courage, undertook prodigious feats of scholarship. Vain, deceitful, brimming with lust they led men to Christ, fled sexual encounter, wavered not at the executioner's threats, adorned themselves with sackcloth and ashes. Leaving the examination of the Fathers’ psyches to other specialists, this volume documents from an historical perspecitve the ways in which the Fathers praised and blamed, honored and disparaged the female sex.

Elizabeth Clark, a patristic scholar and founder of the Department of Religion at Mary Washington College, has drawn upon her depth of scholarship and linguistic ability to make available to an educated but nonspecialized readership an intriguing mosaic of opinions.”

— America

Softbound. 264 pp.