Reading Saving Paradise: Images of equality

Images of equality in paradise

St. Apollinare Nuovo Church in Ravenna holds a striking example of gender parity on the walls of its rectangular basilica. On both sides of the church, processions of saints move toward the Virgin Mary  – women on one side, men on the other.  

In these mosaics, Christ has reopened paradise and restored humanity to its original dignity and equality:

Procession of male saints

St. Apollinaire Nuovo, Ravenna, 6th c. 

 Procession of female saints

St. Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, 6th c.

(Note: sometime between the 13th to 16th centuries, the four women at the head of the line were replaced by the magi bearing their gifts - so now three men are leading the procession to Mary.)

Despite his emphasis on the masculine virtues, Clement of Alexandria wrote: ‘Men and women share equally in perfection, and we are to receive the same instruction and the same discipline.  For the name ‘humanity’ is common to both men and women; and for us ‘in Christ there is neither male nor female.’   But this vision of equality in paradise dimmed as the centuries passed. By the 3rd century, the church was limiting women’s authority; by the 5th century synods and councils were forbidding their ordination.  Nonetheless, women were active as ordained deacons up through the 6th century. 

The asceticism of the 4th century desert fathers had also replaced the ideal of martyrdom with a masculine, heroic ideal of celibacy and physical austerity.  With these changes in the understanding of martyrdom, arose the idea that the infants slaughtered by Herod were the first Christian martyrs. 

But with the new focus on infants, martyrs were identified with the powerless victims of the powerful.  The ideal saint was becoming someone who was childlike, and the virgin martyrs also became powerless, innocent victims.

In Christianity’s second millennium, the idea of theosis faded.  Paradise would become a garden of pristine innocence. In effect, when weakness and innocence are valorized as holy, communities are absolved of the necessity to create the social conditions for all people to gain power and exercise it with freedom and dignity. 

Brock and Parker write,   In Christianity’s second millennium, Jesus as an abused and innocent victim, hanging dead on the cross, would become the image of holiness.  But for a time – nearly a thousand years – Christianity offered a different image of sanctity: 

The glory of God 

is a human being fully alive;

and to be alive consists in beholding God.

(Irenaeus, 2nd century)