Women and the Eucharist: Reflections on Private Eucharists in the Early Church

Introduction

Women’s relationship with the Eucharist is, in the contemporary setting, one of paradox. The woman is both included and excluded from the Eucharist. She can receive the sacrament but she cannot, in some traditions, perform the sacrificial rites. It is tempting to suggest that this has always been the case, but archaeological and historical evidence indicates that this might not be entirely true. For example, a mid-third century fresco from the Greek chapel of the Priscilla Catacomb in Rome depicts a woman breaking bread at an early Christian Eucharist – the clothing and hairstyles of those around her at the table suggests that most of the participants in this ceremony were female also (Torjesen, 1995: 52). The evidence is sketchy, and the complexity of the distinctions between deacons, deaconesses, and women presbyters is not the primary concern here. But, as Kevin Madigan and Carolyn Osiek conclude, the assumptions of conservative and traditional ecclesial historians about women and the Eucharist are untrue:

There is of course much less evidence for women presbyters than for women deacons, yet it is clear that something along these lines was happening in certain times and places, perhaps under the influence of Montanism in the East beginning in the early third century, and the Prisicillianist movement in the West. Heresiologists like Tertullian, Epiphanius, and Augustine want to give the impression that only in these “deviant” groups are such practices done. Yet the existing evidence cannot be confined to members of these movements. Documents like the Synod of Nimes and the Letter of Gelasius are addressed to their own people and bishops. What exactly the practices were is unclear. What can be said with certainty is that the claim that women have never functioned as presbyters in the “orthodox” church is simply untrue (Madigan and Osiek, 2005: 8–9).

Women’s relationship with the Eucharist is complex. In order to explore this relationship further I will focus on a variety of case studies from the patristic period that will allow us to examine the interaction between the feminine and the Eucharist in the private sphere. The first of these is Gregory of Nyssa’s account of the life of his sister – Macrina. The second is the Pseudo-Athanasian text Discourse on Salvation to a Virgin. The third text is Gregory Nazianzus’ funeral oratory on the life of his sister – Gorgonia. In each case, I examine the relationship between women and sacrament in the private sphere; either their personal home, as in the case of Macrina and Gorgonia, or the home of their ascetic practice, as in the case of the recipients of Pseudo-Athanasius’ instructions.

In all three of these cases, the private sphere is contrasted with the public setting in which sacraments would be experienced corporately. It is the domestic setting that will form the basis of our comparison. The distinction between the public and private spaces is essential, and yet complicated. Karen Jo Torjesen and Virginia Burrus note that in the ancient form of political discourse prevalent in the early days of Christianity, there was a sharp distinction between the private sphere of the household and the public sphere of the state. The public state is viewed as male, outdoor, mobile, civilized, and superior in contrast to the private household which is seen as female, indoor, stationary, natural, and inferior (Torjesen and Burrus, 1995: 59). But in the context of the early church, certainly prior to the early fourth century, the distinction between public and private is not so sharp. Indeed, the distinction between public and private space is decidedly blurred.

Early Christians met in households and it was not until the formalization of worship and its shift in line with Roman practice in the early fourth century that there is clear and consistent evidence for Christians worshipping in dedicated separate buildings. The early church was organized along the model of a household (Torjesen, 2004: 193), and as such it was acceptable for women to be heads of congregations and leaders of house churches, in the same way that they were heads of their households (Torjesen, 2004: 192). Whilst it is the private, domestic, female sphere that will be under consideration in this chapter, it is important to acknowledge that is impossible to separate this sphere from the realm of early Christian worship.

The Third Century Eucharist

In the third century the celebration of the Eucharist was not formalized and significant differences existed between Eucharistic practices in different regions of the Christian world. Paul Bradshaw notes that from the beginning of the fourth century we see the consolidation:

of local practices and…the creation of what we still call “rites,” those distinct ecclesial ways of being Christian, living out one’s ecclesial identity through distinct forms of liturgy, canon law, and spirituality in particular contexts…[I]t must be noted, however, that this shape [of the rites], which by the end of the fourth century became dominant in relationship to the multiple liturgical shapes or patterns in earlier centuries, was not necessarily the dominant pattern or ordo before this time, when a greater variety and plurality likely existed (Bradshaw and Johnson, 2012: 71).

Bradshaw outlines three common variants in eucharistic practice in early Christianity. Firstly, a ritual in which a cup-thanksgiving is given first, followed by a bread-thanksgiving. Secondly, a ritual in which water is used instead of wine, a custom stemming from the first-century Christians who wished to avoid elements that were linked to sacrifice. And thirdly, rituals in which the bread is the sole or primary element (Bradshaw, 2004: 59–60).

To suggest, then, the minimum requirements for a ritual to be considered eucharistic is difficult. A thanksgiving prayer over bread (and perhaps a cup of some sort), followed by the consumption of the elements would seem to be the common foundation of these varied rituals, all of which can, at least until the end of the third century, be considered eucharistic. It is important to acknowledge the limitations of such a definition of eucharistic activity. As with the previous analysis of notions of public and private space, this understanding of what is eucharistic offers blurred distinctions between various activities. Such a definition is helpful in that it allows a broad interpretation of what is eucharistic, perhaps more in line with the church’s own multivalent understanding of eucharistic activity in the third century. Furthermore, such a definition helps to clarify that, in the early church, a wide range of activities were eucharistic; much broader than those we would give credence to in the present day.

Macrina and the Bread

Turning first to Gregory of Nyssa’s account of the life of his sister Macrina, Gregory refers to Macrina:

preparing the bread for her mother with her own hands. Not that she made this her primary occupation. But when she had lent her hands to the mystic services – deeming that the zeal for this matter befitted the purpose of her life – from what was left over she furnished food for her mother by her own labours (Silvas, 2008: 116).

Pierre Maraval offers a discussion of the various potential meanings of this text. In his account of the Greek, Maraval renders the key word in this text ἔχρησε (gave or lent). He notes that the same word has been rendered ἔχρισε (anointed) in other texts, and it is in this mistranslation that the problem arises. The first translation of ἔχρησε, and the one that Maraval presents in his text as authoritative, indicates that Macrina gave or lent her hands to liturgical services. The alternative reading – ἔχρισε – indicates that Macrina’s hands were anointed through mystical services or rather ‘liturgical’ services as Maraval translates it.

This second reading is a far more difficult one, as Maraval himself notes. He suggests two possible interpretations of this second reading. Firstly, he proposes that it could mean that Macrina’s hands were anointed through the receiving of the Eucharist. Or it could mean that by making the bread for the Eucharist Macrina’s hands were anointed. But ultimately, Maraval rejects this reading. He notes that the second interpretation (that her hands were anointed through the making of the eucharistic bread) is equally compatible with his own reading of the word ἔχρησε which would mean that she lent her hands to liturgical services through the baking of the Eucharistic bread (Maraval, 1997).

Whilst Maraval does not offer a conclusion as to the theological meaning of Macrina’s lending of her hands to liturgical services, I argue that Gregory was indicating that each day Macrina was baking the bread for the Eucharist herself, and then baking bread for her mother as well. The baking of bread would have been an activity usually reserved for the slaves in an aristocratic household like Macrina’s, therefore it is significant that she is undertaking this activity herself. There must be something intrinsic to the creation of the eucharistic bread that it can be classed as a liturgical service. Gregory, and most likely Macrina herself, felt that by performing this service she was undertaking something liturgical and sacramental. If we consider sacrament to be, as the common adage suggests, an outward sign of some invisible grace, then we can see this bread-making as a sacramental. By lending her hands to liturgical service in this way, Macrina is giving expression to the invisible grace of God within her.

Why, then, did these older translators seek to change the meaning of this text from Macrina lending her hands to liturgical services to her hands being anointed by liturgical services? Perhaps the first interpretation is simply too active and too full of her own agency to be palatable to these early translators. After all, liturgical or mystical services were, in the eyes of these translators, the preserve of the male priesthood. Perhaps they sought to place her in a passive role in which she received something sacramental, in a way acceptable for women, rather than actively doing something sacramental.

This active sacramental action reoccurs later on in Gregory’s account of his sister’s death. He notes that ‘[A]s she spoke these words she traced the seal on her eyes and mouth and heart’ (Silvas, 2008: 135). The ‘seal’ is the sign of the cross made in a clearly sacramental action. Macrina performs it over her body in imitation of the action of the priest who makes the sign of the cross over the consecrated bread or over a newly baptised person. Macrina clearly understood herself to be consecrated to God – she prays to the God ‘to whom I have been attached from my mother’s womb’ (Clarker, 1916: 16). Macrina identifies her own body with the body of Christ in a sacramental way, although the fact the she also turns her body to face east, in an act reminiscent of the priest facing east as he performed Mass, indicates that the primary source for her actions is that of the Eucharist rather than a Baptismal ceremony. Consecrated, her body is marked with the sign of the cross before it is consumed, in Macrina’s case, by death. Derek Krueger, in his analysis of Macrina’s death-bed prayers, notes:

Macrina’s prayer recalls the anaphoral ritual of the divine liturgy. First, the prayer recalls the major events of biblical narrative. Macrina remembers God for the act of creation, for his act of redemption “from the curse and from sin,” and for his opening “for us a path to the resurrection”. This invocation of creation, redemption, and consummation constitutes a renarration of salvation history, such as we find in the early anaphoral prayers (Krueger, 2000: 509).

Tellingly, he concludes that Gregory has, in his recounting of Macrina’s life, developed ‘a eucharistic model for hagiography: the narration of Macrina’s Life is a thanksgiving-offering and sacrifice to God’ (Krueger, 2000: 510). In light of the definition of what is eucharistic in the third century, posited earlier, Krueger’s analysis here is particularly insightful and serves to further expand the understanding of what can, at this time, be considered eucharistic.

Whatever Macrina actually believed to be taking place in her preparation of the eucharistic bread and however she understood her engagement in this sacramental activity, it is clearly an activity she values highly. Throughout this passage, Gregory frequently highlights the way in which Macrina is devoted to her mother. And yet, when it comes to serving, it is this lending of her hands to mystical service that Macrina prioritizes, before she serves her mother. From Macrina’s perspective this activity is even more important than her devotion to her mother.

In the domestic sphere of Macrina’s household, the Eucharist is a powerful force. It inspires activity and influences the way in which the female head of the household, Macrina herself, views her own body and her actions in relation to it. In Macrina’s household, her relationship to the Eucharist makes her an active agent in sacramental activity, rather than a passive recipient of sacramental elements. Even if Macrina could not consecrate the bread and administer it to herself and her female followers, she clearly believed, as did her brother, that there was something intrinsically spiritual and cultic in the preparation of this dough.

Pseudo-Athanasius and the Ascetic Virgins

The second example we will consider is that of the short set of instructions for a meal for ascetic virgins found in the fourth century text known as Pseudo-Athanasius’ Discourse on Salvation to a Virgin:

And after the synaxis of the ninth hour eat your bread, giving thanks to God at your table in this way: “Blessed by God who nourishes me from my youth, ‘who gives nourishment to all flesh’ [Ps. 136:25]. My heart is full with joy and glad thoughts, that ‘having enough of everything at all times we might abound in every good work’ [2 Cor. 9:8] in Jesus Christ our Lord, with whom to you be glory, honor, and power together with the Holy Spirit unto the ages of ages. Amen.”

And when you sit at the table and start to break bread, while crossing yourself three times, giving thanks in this way, say: “We give thanks to you our Father for your Holy resurrection, for through Jesus your Son you have made it known to us; and just as this bread, which is at first scattered, becomes one when it is gathered together on this table, in this way may your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom, for yours is the power and the glory unto ages of ages. Amen.” If two or three virgins are present with you, let them give thanks for the bread lying before you and join you in prayer. But if a catechumen should happen to be at the table, let her not pray with the faithful, and do not sit to eat your bread with her (Shaw, 2000).

The text has much in common with other eucharistic rituals and prayers found in sources. For example, the prayer over the bread is similar to that found in the Didache, the Apostolic Constitutions, the Sacramentary of Sarapion, and the Dier Balyzeh fragments. In comparing the text to that of the Didache, in particular, we find some striking similarities. Johannes Betz notes of the Didache that ‘[T]he typical concepts like body (flesh), blood, covenant, together with an explicit reference to the death of Jesus typical there, are missing’ (Betz, 2002: 248). We see a similar absence of these (now) familiar eucharistic concepts in this Discourse on Salvation to a Virgin. The Didache 9:3–4 reads:

But over the broken bread thus: We give you praise and thanks, our Father, for the life and the knowledge, which you have revealed to us through Jesus, your servant. To you be the glory forever! [Amen]. As this bread was scattered over the mountains and gathered together became one, so let your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom. For yours is the glory and power forever! [Amen] (Betz, 2002: 246).

This excerpt is very similar to the text found in the Discourse on Salvation to a Virgin. Thanks is given over the broken bread and then there is a prayer asking for the scattered elements of the church to be gathered together, drawing on the gathering of the bread in John 6, that outlines the eschatological hope of the Christian community. Furthermore, this section of instructions from the Didache ends with a similar prohibition to that found in the Pseudo-Athanasius text: ‘[B]ut none shall eat or drink from your eucharist except those who are baptized in the Name of the Lord’ (Betz, 2002: 246). Taking into account various scholarship and analysis of the Didache text, Betz notes that ‘the sayings in these verses offer a pronounced eucharistic colour which can hardly be ignored’ (Betz, 2002: 249) and finally concludes that only a eucharistic interpretation of these verses does justice to the text. They are not recorded as an agape meal, but as ‘an independent eucharistic celebration’ (Betz, 2002: 274).

Whilst much of the rest of this Pseudo-Athanasian text is focused on instructions for purity and piety for these ascetic virgins, the particular section in which these meal instructions occur is in the context of worship – a miniature version of a Book of Hours. These instructions should, therefore, be regarded as liturgical, as indeed the instructions proceeding them are. Furthermore, the instruction for this meal is to take place at the ninth hour (or at three o’clock in the afternoon), traditionally believed to be the time at which Christ died. In the instructions concerning the hours of prayer in The Apostolic Traditions, the author notes that this should be a time of lengthy prayer and praise for ‘in that hour Christ [was] pierced in His side [with a lance and] shed forth blood and water and brought the rest of the time of [that] day in light to evening’ (Dix, 1937: 62). Therefore, these instructions would not be merely encouragement for moral living, but rather instruction on how to perform a liturgical meal in remembrance of the death of Christ.

Gregory Dix performs a cursory analysis of this text in his influential work The Shape of the Liturgy and is surprised to find eucharistic terminology ‘applied to this obviously purely domestic meal of women alone’ (Dix, 1945: 94). In contrast to Dix, I argue that this is not a purely domestic meal. The virgins are instructed to recite a eucharistic blessing and make the sign of the cross over the bread, clearly indicating that this is a eucharistic ritual of some sort. Furthermore, the virgin performing these actions must dismiss a catechumen beforehand, should one be present at the table in the same way that catechumens were dismissed from the corporate Eucharist celebration. Such a dismissal would not be needed from a purely domestic meal nor from an agape celebration.

Taking this idea of liturgical instruction, together with the time of the celebration, and the comparisons drawn with Betz’s analysis of the Didache text, it would seem like a logical conclusion to suggest that this was not purely a domestic meal. It clearly has a eucharistic flavour, even if one were not so bold as to argue it was a complete eucharistic celebration. Teresa Berger, in her analysis of this same text, concludes:

[T]he meal probably is best understood as a home communion of ascetic women, that is, women who both eucharistize the bread on their table every day, and also attend public worship, presumably a Sunday eucharistic liturgy. How these women thought of the relationship between the two Eucharists we will in all likelihood never know (Berger, 2011: 92).

Whilst I would agree with Berger’s assessment of this meal as a ‘home communion of ascetic women’ I would challenge her use of the term ‘eucharistize’. This would seem, to me, to be making a technical term out of something that is not technical but sacramental and mystical. Furthermore, it would seem to be the use of a special term for an action performed by women, rather than simply using the same vocabulary and terminology that one would use to discuss Eucharists performed by male priests. Berger is right in acknowledging the limitations of our analysis – we will never know if these virgins thought their home Eucharist was the same as the weekly Eucharist celebrated by a male priest. However, one cannot, as Dix did, relegate this meal to something purely domestic.

Gorgonia and the Night-time Sacrament

The third example we will consider is taken from Gregory Nazianzus’ funeral oration for his sister Gorgonia. In this oration he recounts significant events from her life, one of which is her miraculous healing.

Giving up on all the doctors, she took refuge in the universal Physician. Waking once in the dead of night, when her illness had receded a little, she threw herself with faith before the altar, and calling out in a loud voice to him who is honored there, naming him by all his names and reminded him of all his powerful deeds of the past – for she was well schooled in “things old and new” – she ended by indulging in a kind of reverent and benign shamelessness, imitating the woman who dried up her flow of blood by touching the fringe of Christ’s cloak. What did she do? First she leaned her head against the altar, crying out as before, and drenched the altar with her abundant tears, as once a woman had done to the feet of Christ, threatening that she would not let him go before she regained her health. Next, she anointed her whole body with a medicine she had devised herself: having privately stored away some of the sacraments of the precious body and blood [of Christ], and now she mingled them with her tears! And O wonder! She immediately sensed that she was healed, and went away, lightened in body, soul, and mind, receiving as the reward of her hope the thing she had hoped for, and securing new strength for her body by the strength of her soul (Oration 8.18 [Daley, 2006: 72–73]).

Here we see a very different example of women and the Eucharist in the domestic sphere. Gorgonia reserves some of the consecrated host and wine from a Eucharist celebration. We do not know whether it was from a service in her home or the corporate weekly service, but Brian Daley suggests that ‘Gorgonia seems to have had a private chapel in her house or else to have lived very close to a church where the Eucharist was celebrated’ (Daley, 2006: 213). Either way, Gorgonia believed that the eucharistic elements would heal her and so administered them to herself. In the third century it was already common to anoint the bodies of those who were sick with oil (Martos, 1991: 322), but Gorgonia’s ritual seems to have more in common the modern sacrament of the anointing of the sick. This sacrament is often performed in the context of a eucharistic liturgy or Eucharist can be given to the sick person at their behest (Martos, 1991: 338–39).

Whichever way we view this ritual, as some extension of the eucharistic sacrament or as an administration of some sort of sacrament for the sick, Gorgonia takes the role of a priest. One can see elements of primitive eucharistic ritual in the way Gorgonia prays. For example, she begins her prayer with thanksgiving and a recalling of God’s great works in the past, in a similar manner to the beginning of the ancient eucharistic prayer found in the Didache. She then proceeds to make the eucharistic elements fitting for their purpose as she mixes them with her tears. There is no epiclesis, but as we have already noted, an epiclesis, at this point in historical development, is not an essential element of eucharistic liturgy.

It is the application of her bodily fluids, her tears, which gives the bread and wine the efficacy required to heal her. Much as, in a similar way, the faith of the woman with the haemorrhage (Mt. 9. 20–22) mixes with the power of Christ to heal her. Gregory describes both the action of Gorgonia and the action of the woman with the haemorrhage as ‘a kind of reverent and benign shamefulness’ (Daley, 2006: 72). In both cases, the women make physical contact with the body of Christ; the haemorrhaging woman by reaching out to touch his garment and Gorgonia by holding in her hand the consecrated eucharistic elements. In both cases, the women are aware that they are acting in way that defies convention. Neither should be doing what they are doing, but both are performing these actions in reverence and with hope for healing. Whatever supernatural power at work in this account, it is clear to note that Gorgonia here acts as priest to herself (not because she lives in a community that is far removed from the ministry of a priest – she does, after all, have access to consecrated eucharistic elements, indicating that a priest forms part of her general milieu at least).

I would hesitate to equate this action of Gorgonia’s with an actual Eucharist, although I argue it is Eucharist-esque. The celebration of a Eucharist in private without a congregation would seem to foreshadow the private masses of the Middle Ages in which the mass was believed to produce spiritual benefits for the Christian community, whether or not it was attended at all (Martos, 1991: 240). In the private, domestic sphere the Eucharist is powerful in the hands of a woman and a masculine priest is not required for the administration of this sacrament.

Becoming Male

What, then, does this mean for our consideration of women and the Eucharist in the private, domestic sphere? We cannot neglect the fact that these are texts about women and women’s activity written by men. These male authors promote an overcoming of femaleness as essential to these women. In the case of Macrina, Gregory of Nyssa notes, when introducing the topic of his sister’s life, ‘if indeed she should be styled woman, for I do not know whether it is fitting to designate her by her sex, who so surpassed her sex’ (Clarker, 1916: 17). Similarly, the ascetic virgins who are the recipients of Pseudo-Athanasius’ instructions have renounced sexual relations and embrace virginity. In this sense they have overcome their femaleness. Kari Vogt notes that ‘if a woman chooses to live an ascetic life, she ceases to be a woman and can be called vir’ (Vogt, 1995: 180). Gorgonia, unlike the women in the previous two texts was married, but Gregory Nazianzus is at great pains to point out that although she was married she was celibate (Daley, 2006: 66). He goes on to say:

For when she was joined to flesh, she was not, by that same action, separated from spirit; nor, because she looked on her husband as her head, did she disregard our chief head. Rather, after paying service for a little while to the world and to nature, as far as the law of flesh – or rather, as far as the one who gave flesh its laws – demanded, she then consecrated herself entirely to God (Daley, 2006: 67).

Whilst the meaning of this text is obscure it would seem to imply that after bearing children, Gorgonia lived a celibate life within marriage in imitation of those women who lived as virgins for their whole lives. Thus, we can assume that, in embracing this ascetic virginity, Gorgonia conquered her femaleness and became male.

This ‘becoming male’ is a common trope in texts about female piety from late antiquity. In recounting the spiritual progress of women, the lessening of their femaleness is emphasized against the increase of their maleness. Thus for a woman to be called a man is a term of praise. For example, in the story of the life of Thecla, in order for Thecla to make spiritual progress and become a missionary she first cuts her hair and then dons male clothing (Roberts et al., 1886). Elizabeth Castelli notes that in the second and third centuries idealized forms of popular piety frequently used this theme of women becoming male and concludes that ‘gender ambiguity becomes a sign of special holiness’. (Castelli, 1991: 43). This gender ambiguity, or conquering of femaleness, seems to confer upon the women charismatic authority, and thus, by their virtue of becoming male, Macrina, the ascetic virgins, and Gorgonia have access to sacramental activity normally reserved for males only.

Willi Braun, in his analysis of the problem of femaleness in early Christian discourses notes that, despite early Christian texts such as Paul’s letter to the Galatians and the Gospel of Thomas referring to male and female being made into a single ‘one’, we should not consider this a radical feminist statement of equality. Indeed, he notes:

The “single one”, however, should be taken neither as an androgynous blend – a blend that neither Christians nor anyone else in Graeco-Roman antiquity valorized – nor as an entirely genderless or sexless “one”…[but] the “one” is imagined as masculine and women’s salvation is contingent on “becoming male” (Braun, 2002: 110).

The male authors of these texts where women become male seem to emphasize the conquering of their female (i.e. sinful) nature as the key to their salvation. One cannot help but wonder how the women actually viewed themselves. Burrus points out:

ancient Christian women’s bodies and sexuality are hidden from our view by the very process which at first appears to lay them painfully bare. In the fourth-century church fathers’ treatises on female virginity, layers of word obscure the flesh, as women’s bodies are rewritten by male authors whose own sexual, theological, and political agenda so distort and obscure their vision of female bodies and sexuality that women’s capacity to know, to relate, to create, and even to procreate is severed from their physical experiences of desire, pleasure and pain” (Burrus, 1994: 45).

Reading the stories of these women from a gynocentric, rather than an androcentric, perspective allows the reader to see this ‘becoming male’ in a different light. Rather than placing value in masculinity and seeking to augment their spiritual progression by becoming men, it is possible to see these actions from the perspective of the women as something else entirely. Rather than becoming men, one can view these women as circumventing the conventional and restrictive roles their gender would have tied them to. Perhaps it is this freedom from the norms of society that is really their salvation. By living as ascetic virgins and celibate wives, by the practical actions of cutting their hair short, and wearing men’s clothing, by the rejecting of societal and familial expectations, these Christian women did not become less female but rather more female. This enabled them to rise above the status of motherly, beautiful object, and become a person in their own right – a fully female person with action and agency, more than a collection of feminine body parts.

Whilst the masculine writers of these texts commend the women for becoming male, I am reluctant to do so. First, because I do not believe that is how the women saw their actions. Second, because even if this ‘becoming male’, from the perspective of the male authors, allowed these women to function with a measure of sacramental activity, rather than receptive passivity, it is at too great a cost. In order to gain this sacramental freedom, the women had to renounce something of their femaleness. The gaining of this access, far from being commendable, is saddening. It merely serves to uphold the patriarchal hierarchy and cultural gender norms. It says loudly and clearly that being a woman isn’t good enough.

Conclusion

These texts provide a window showing the relationship between the feminine and the Eucharist in the private, domestic sphere. Whilst some of the texts certainly raise more questions than can be answered (without resorting to imagination and speculation) a number of conclusions can be drawn. In the private, domestic sphere, it would seem apparent that the Eucharist did not have to lie solely in the hands of men. Nor did it have to be consecrated with what we now would consider to be the traditional anaphora prayers; those prescribed for the ascetic virgins are far closer to the distinct tradition of the Didache than with any prayers we would now consider to be traditional. Furthermore, the power of women in the domestic sphere seems to be unrivalled. Their performance of ritualistic actions in the domestic realm is fundamentally potent – Macrina is sacramentally active, the virgin’s bread is consecrated, and Gorgonia’s body is healed. It is worth remembering that the distinction between public and private is somewhat blurred in the context of early Christian worship. The home was the Church and the Church was a household. These texts indicate sacramental activity in the hands of these women – they are not simply passive recipients of the elements. In these female hands, in this blurred public/private setting, women perform eucharistic activity that is efficacious. Sacramental power does not, therefore, lie simply in the hands of the male priest. Nor does sacramental power become potent in female hands only once they have ‘become male’. Rather it would seem that there is a connection between sacramental power and female autonomy. The Eucharist, in the hands of women at home, has real power.