Ο ρόλος των γυναικών στην Εκκλησία κατά την πρώτη βυζαντινή περίοδο
Η αρχαιολογική σκαπάνη έφερε στο φως εντυπωσιακή βυζαντινή βασιλική στο νότιο Ισραήλ
Πολλούς τάφους και επιγραφές, που σχετίζονται με γυναίκες διακόνισες (θεσμός των πρώτων χριστιανικών χρόνων) , βρήκαν οι αρχαιολόγοι, οι οποίοι ανακάλυψαν στην πόλη Ασντόντ, στο νότιο Ισραήλ, βυζαντινή βασιλική που χρονολογείται τον 4ο ή 5ο αιώνα μ.Χ.
Η συγκεκριμένη βασιλική εκτιμάται από τους αρχαιολόγους ως μια από τις αρχαιότερες και μεγαλύτερες χριστιανικές βασιλικές που έχουν βρεθεί στο Ισραήλ.
Σύμφωνα με ρεπορτάζ της ισραηλινής εφημερίδας ” Haaretz”, οι αρχαιολόγοι βρήκαν επίσης όγκους οστών που ανήκαν σε άτομα, τα οποία φαίνεται πως πετάχτηκαν μέσα στους τάφους καικαλύφθηκαν με ασβέστη κατά τον 6ο αιώνα.
The Holy Mother Sophronia. Theodosia the deaconess. Gregoria the deaconess. These are some of the women lovingly memorialized at a magnificent Byzantine basilica that Israeli archaeologists have uncovered in the southern city of Ashdod.
Such mass graves are typical of large disease outbreaks – in antiquity and today as well when dealing with the death wrought by COVID-19.
“Besides the unusual amount of funerary inscriptions and the prominent place given to women, we found that this church is like one huge cemetery – everywhere we touch we find these strange mounds of skeletons,” says Prof. Alexander Fantalkin, an archaeologist from Tel Aviv University who heads the dig.
Parts of the basilica were first uncovered in 2017 and it has since been fully excavated. The site was once part of the town of Ashdod Yam, which back in the Iron Age, more than 2,500 years ago, functioned as the main port for the Philistine city of Ashdod, located just a few kilometers inland. Both these ancient settlements are now part of the modern Israeli city of the same name.
“I sent over a few volunteers and almost immediately they found the first inscription,” the archaeologist recalls. “I thought, ‘okay, it’s a nice, small church.’ But boy was I wrong: it just kept getting bigger and bigger.”
The oldest text was an inscription in one of the side naves that was paved “in memory of the priest Gaianos and Severa the deaconess,” and carries a date that translates to the year 416 C.E. Since the mosaic paving of the nave must have been done some time after the construction of the church, this suggests that the building existed before, possibly already in the late fourth century, Fantalkin says.
For example, the dedication to Gaianos and Severa is dated to the year 169, in the time of the bishop Heraclius. But the question is: 169 of what calendar? Heraclius is known to have been a bishop of Azotos in the fifth century, plus there were no Byzantine basilicas in Israel (or anywhere) in the middle of the second century C.E. According to Dr. Leah Di Segni, an expert in Greek epigraphy from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the dedicatory inscriptions follow a rare chronology that is based on the millennium of Rome. This was celebrated in 247 C.E. to mark 1,000 years from the city’s traditional foundation date in 753 B.C.E.
So, in the case of the above-mentioned inscription, 247 plus 169 equals 416 C.E. The custom of counting years from that millennial celebration is only found in later inscriptions connected to Georgian Christians, Di Segni notes. That’s why, initially, the archaeologists thought the Ashdod Yam basilica may have been a Georgian place of worship.
However, once the dig advanced, it became clear there was nothing connecting the basilica to the Georgian Church, she says. It now seems more likely that this chronology was developed at Ashdod Yam and possibly later adopted by Georgian Christians, who had a monastery near the town, she concludes.
This however is only one of the many mysteries posed by the Ashdod Yam basilica.
Long-lost daughter?
It was common for early Christians to identify ancient tombs belonging to saints, martyrs or prophets, and build churches around them to promote pilgrimage and worship, May says. The holy person’s tomb was also the only burial that was not recycled in later times as a mass grave, May notes.
According to the New Testament (Acts 8:40), Philip the evangelist was transported by the Holy Spirit to Azotos Paralios, where he preached. The saint also had four unmarried daughters who were gifted prophetesses (Acts 21:9) and played an important role in the early Church. It is therefore possible that, given Philip’s connection to Ashdod Yam, a tradition may have developed that one of his daughters was buried there and an ancient local tomb may have been identified as her grave, ultimately leading to the construction of a basilica that was particularly beloved by female ministers, Fantalkin says.
Ministry of female deacons
These women probably had a high status and had the means and power to be memorialized in such fashion, Di Segni adds. For example, the “Holy Mother Sophronia” was likely the mother superior of a nearby convent, she suggests. As for the deaconesses, who make up most of the women mentioned in the inscriptions, these could have been nuns or secular women of an older age and high class, Di Segni says. In the Byzantine Church, deaconesses had an important role in the baptism of women and other rites, as well as in ministering to female converts, the sick and poor, explains Dr. Balbina Bäbler, a historian from the University of Göttingen who is part of the project.
The ministry of female deacons (from the Greek “diakonos” – servant or assistant) was eliminated in most Christian denominations over the centuries, but recently there have been calls to bring back this ancient order. Both the Orthodox Church of Greece and the Patriarchate of Alexandria and Africa have restored the role, while Pope Francis has set up a commission to study the possibility of a similar move for the Catholic Church.
Going back to Ashdod Yam’s “Church of the Deaconesses,” as some scholars now call it, the archaeologists did investigate other burials in the complex. And, as is often the case, they uncovered more questions than answers.
For example, the above-mentioned mosaic pavement dedicated to Gaianos the priest and Severa the deaconess lay over two tombs, each of which contained a complex burial with two layers.
In the lower, earlier burials the researchers found two adults, one possibly a woman wearing a golden earring, and a man. The latter’s skull was found spiked on an iron spearhead that had skewered him through the jaw (spoiler alert: it killed him).
In the adjacent tomb, likely from the same period, the bodies of four or five children were recovered, from babies to teenagers, May says.
What is clear is that the tomb of the adults was reopened in a later phase of the basilica’s history and transformed into a mass burial for some six people, mostly adults, who were dumped atop the remains of the putative martyrs and liberally sprinkled with lime, she says.
A time of death
The fact that the graves were reused is evident even without opening the burials. Most are covered with patched-up mosaics, indicating that these parts of the church’s floor were at some point ripped out to bury fresh bodies and then repaired, says Dr. Lihi Habas, an archaeologist from the Hebrew University and an expert on Byzantine mosaics.
In some cases, there were attempts to restore the original patterns of the floor decoration, with varying success, while in others they simply fixed the holes with plain white mosaic tiles, Habas says.
The rushed floor repairs, the mass burials, the use of lime – normally employed to limit smells and contagion – all point to a time of crisis and widespread death. This leads the researchers to suggest that the later burials may be connected to the so-called Plague of Justinian, which hit the Byzantine Empire in the 540s. The epidemic, named after the emperor at the time, is said by ancient historians to have killed millions and to have contributed significantly to the decline of the Eastern Roman Empire. However, in recent years, some scholars have questioned whether this epidemic was really so devastating, as little evidence of its effects had been found in the archaeological record. In 2013, researchers did identify traces of Yersinia pestis, the pathogen responsible for the plague, in human remains from a sixth century cemetery in Germany, but much more data is needed to understand the scope and reach of this ancient pandemic.
Lost, found, reburied
Whatever the cause of the basilica’s downfall, ironically, it was the collapse of the building’s roof that entombed the floors in a sort of time capsule of burnt tiles and beams, preserving for posterity the splendid mosaics and the enigmatic graves that lay beneath.
The rediscovery of the Church of the Deaconesses has caused ripples of excitement not only among researchers, but also among Christian religious leaders. Top Orthodox clergy held a liturgy there in July to pray for the souls of the dead and Jerusalem Patriarch Theophilos III called on Israeli authorities to protect the church’s remains.
“It is our fervent hope and desire that this site be preserved intact, and ultimately be made accessible both to scholars and to pilgrims, like all other holy places in our region,” Theophilos said at the ceremony. “This would be a living testimony of the history of this ancient city and would promote peaceful coexistence, tolerance, and mutual respect.”
