The Education of Girls in Early Christian Ascetic Traditions

Abstract

There is a surprising silence about any kind of education of children by Christian families until quite late, and information about the education of girls is even scarcer. Margaret MacDonald and I, in A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity (Fortress Press, 2006), tried to develop whatever information there is. Here we follow some of the elusive strands from ascetic writers of the third and fourth centuries that suggest the beginnings of a full educational program for girls, which would certainly have applied only in selective situations, but that may have its origins much earlier.

Il ya un silence surprenant sur toute forme d’éducation des enfants par les familles chrétiennes jusqu’à assez tard, et l’information sur l’éducation des filles est encore plus rare. Avec Margaret MacDonald j’ai essayé d’élaborer l’information existante [A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity (Fortress Press, 2006)]. Ici, nous suivons quelques-uns des volets insaisissables d’écrivains ascétiques des IIIe et IVe siècles qui suggèrent le début d’un programme complet d’éducation pour les filles qui ne s’aurait certainement appliqué que dans des situations sélectives, mais qui peut avoir ses origines beaucoup plus tôt.