The Mother of God: a Mirror of Women in Late Antiquity
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| Year of publication | 2018 |
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| Description | The goal of this paper is to examine the different ways in which, through visual representation, the Mother of God came to be a mirror of women in Late Antique Christianity. Images of Mary from the fourth and fifth centuries indeed display a certain disparity: the Mother of God can be represented as robed in a rich patristic gown, elsewhere as a widow with a heavy maphorion, or as a simple young woman. My starting hypothesis is that the images – together with the reception of the figure of the Mother of God – changed in parallel with the establishment of more and more rigid rules defining the place of women within the early Christian church. Therefore, in images as well as in rhetoric, Mary progressively became a model for consecrated virgins. The more the role of women in the church was defined by the “sexist elites”, the humbler the visual characteristics of Mary would become. It is most probably for this reason that, after the sixth century, the prevalent type of image of the Virgin becomes the one presenting her in the simplest and most modest role: that of a married woman, possibly a widow. In particular, this paper will focus on monuments connected to the role of female figures in service to the Church. After two parts dedicated to the relationship between the images of Mary and the place of women in Late antique society, the last part of this text will be dedicated to the arch of the Roman basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. I will therefore try to focus on the moment around the year 400 when – following the considerations of Peter Brown – the place of women in Christian institutions and religious experience reached its apex. |