Following the recent decision by the Church of England to accept women bishops I was interested to pick up an article from Reuters last year regarding some archaeological evidence that there were women priests in the second to fifth centuries AD. There is certainly evidence for them in Britain in the Celtic Church from the fifth century on but surprisingly this evidence is in Rome and I had not come across it before.
Frescoes in the newly restored Catacombs of Priscilla are claimed to prove there were women priests in early Christianity. The Vatican dismisses such claims as 'fairy tales' but given the elevated position of women in the Celtic Church this might be wishful thinking on the part of a church with a long history of misogyny.
The Catacombs on the Via Salaria reopened after a five-year restoration project. I have not visited them myself but you can tour them virtually via Google Maps. A Christian burial site between the second and fifth centuries AD they meander underground for 13km (8 miles) over several levels. The Catacombs of Priscilla contain frescoes of women including the 'Cubicularum of the veiled woman's showing a woman with arms outstretched like a priest saying mass. She is wearing a 'rich liturgical garment' (although the word liturgical is for some reason unknown omitted in the English version) and a stole.Another room known as the 'Greek Chapel' shows a group of women sitting around a table, their arms outstretched like those of a priest saying mass.
This interests me because the Celtic Church always believed that it represented a more 'pure' form of Christianity. Women had a more equal role in society in Northern Europe than in Rome and I had assumed this accounted for equality for women within the Christian Druid Church but it seems I may be wrong and they were simply continuing a tradition within the early Christian Church.
