Hidden Voices

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of speaking at Solas Festival, near Perth, on the subject of women in Church history. As both a writer and a woman of faith, I have long been fascinated by the ways women have expressed their faith through writing, and by how their words were received, preserved, or ignored by the Church, both in their own lifetimes and in the centuries that followed.

I titled the talk Hidden Voices because I wanted to let women writers, theologians, and thinkers speak for themselves. Rather than simply telling their stories, I wanted to hear their own words and discover what they believed, how they interpreted Scripture, and how they understood God. After the talk, someone suggested that I should turn it into a book. While I’m not sure I’m ready for that just yet, I have decided to develop it into a series of blog posts.

In this series, I want to explore the often-overlooked voices of women throughout Church history. Although women have frequently been pushed to the margins of historical accounts, they have always been part of the life of the Church, shaping Christian thought and practice in ways that are only now being rediscovered. Together, we will encounter women as thinkers, teachers, martyrs, mystics, reformers, and ordinary believers whose faith left a lasting mark. We will consider how their perspectives challenge and enrich the traditional story of Christianity, and what they still have to say to the Church today.

The idea for this series began a few years ago with an unexpected discovery. In a charity shop, I found a copy of The Story of Christianity: 2,000 Years of Faith, published by Dorling Kindersley in 2000 to mark the millennium. Curious, I bought it and began reading. Before long, I noticed how few women appeared in its pages. So I turned to the index and counted.

Out of 677 people mentioned, only 53 were women—just 7.8 %.

Then I counted something else. There were 38 men named John (or one of its variants). In other words, there are almost as many men called John in this history of the Church as there are women altogether.

That statistic raises an important question.

If women have always made up roughly half of the Christian Church, why do they occupy so little space in our histories? Does this mean that women achieved very little of significance over the past two thousand years? Or have their contributions been forgotten, overlooked, or even deliberately erased?

One of the myths I hope this series will challenge is the idea that there were no significant women theologians, biblical interpreters, or Christian writers before the twentieth century. According to this narrative, women only began engaging seriously with theology because of modern feminism.

History tells a very different story.

Across the centuries, many women studied Scripture deeply and wrote about their faith. Some composed theological treatises, biblical commentaries, letters, poems, hymns, visions, and spiritual autobiographies. Yet many of these writings have been lost. Others were never published because women lacked access to education or the means to circulate their work. Some writings were deliberately suppressed, destroyed, or attributed to male authors. In other cases, women censored themselves out of fear of criticism or persecution.

The survival of ancient and medieval texts has always been precarious, and women’s works have often been particularly vulnerable. Following the Reformation, libraries were searched for books considered controversial, and countless manuscripts disappeared. Sometimes all that remains of a lost work is its title in a catalogue. Manuscripts might be marked with words such as heresy, witchcraft, or Catholic, placing them at risk of destruction. Others were simply labelled femina—”written by a woman”—as though that alone made them less worthy of being copied and preserved. (1)

And yet, despite these obstacles, women continued to write.

Throughout the last two millennia, Christian women have seized whatever opportunities they could to study Scripture, reflect theologically, and share their faith. Thanks to the work of modern scholars, archivists, and historians—often involving remarkable detective work—many of these forgotten voices are beginning to be heard once more.

That is what this series is about.

I want to invite you to listen to these women in their own words. We will journey from the early Church through the patristic period, meet medieval mystics and visionaries, encounter women of the Reformation, and continue into the centuries before the modern era. Along the way, we will discover not only remarkable lives but also profound theological insight, spiritual wisdom, and fresh ways of reading Scripture.

Our journey begins in the early third century with two extraordinary young women whose words have survived against all odds: Perpetua and Felicitas.

As Schroeder and Taylor write in their book Voices Long Silenced: “Throughout most of human history, women have remained ‘muted’ in literature and in public discourse, but their collective voices spoke powerfully, interpreting Scripture with compelling insights and shrewd biblical arguments in favor of expanding women’s roles in religion and society. We invite you to listen.” (2)

That is exactly what I hope we will do together.

Faltonia Proba teaching the history of the world since the Creation through her Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi. Miniature from a 15th-century manuscript of the De mulieribus claris by Giovanni Boccaccio

We will consider how their perspectives challenge and enrich the traditional story of Christianity, and what they still have to say to the Church today.

The cosmic spheres and Human Being – Hildegard of Bingen

History tells a very different story

Miniature of Christine de Pizan in her study at the beginning of the ‘Cent balades’. British Library. Harley 4431 fol 4. 1410-1415. Attributed to the Master of the Cité des Dames and workshop. CC-BY.

despite these obstacles, women continued to write

“We invite you to listen.”