1 Earliest Rome

12. R E L I G I O U S G R O U P S
12.7c(iii) Upper-class women in Rome
The presence of upper-class women in the church is illustrated by this section
of Hippolytus' attack against Callistus, bishop of Rome (A.D. 217-22).
Callistus had apparently allowed highborn Christian women to live with
Christian men without formal marriage. This was a means of protecting the
status of the women who (according to Roman law) would have lost all sena­
torial privileges by marriage to men of lower rank; while (inconveniently)
highborn women probably outnumbered highborn men in the church at this
date. However, Hippolytus saw this as 'laxity' and was so shocked that he broke
with the church, calling it the 'school of Callistus'.
See further: Vol. 1, 299-300 (with references); 12.7e(ii) on Valentinus and
women; R. M. Grant (1970) 180-3*; Averil Cameron (1980); Lane Fox
(1986) 308-9.
Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies IX.12.20-5
the imposter after venturing on such opinions set up a school, issuing
the following teachings against the church. He was the first to decide that people were
permitted [sinful] pleasures, on the ground that he could forgive everyone their sins.
With any Christian member of someone else's congregation who commits some sin,
according to him, the sin is not held against him, if he runs off to the school of Callistus.
Many people with no sense of conscience were pleased by his proposition, some who had
actually been expelled by many heresies, others who had been formally expelled by us
from the church; they went over to him and filled up his school . . .
His hearers, delighted with his tenets, continue deluding themselves and many others.
Crowds of them flock to his school. So their numbers do grow, rejoicing at the crowds
flocking iri for the pleasures which Christ did not permit. Despising him , they
do not prevent anyone from sinning, saying that he pardons those in good standing with
him. For women who were unmarried and were passionately attracted [to a man], those
of high status who did not wish to annul their status through a legal marriage, he
actually permitted to take any man they chose, household slave or ex-slave, as
their bedfellow, and permitted a woman, though not legally married, to consider him as
her husband. Then the so-called Faithful women began to make use of abortive drugs
and bindings to remove what had been conceived, because they do not want to have a
child by a slave nor by a worthless man, on account of their good birth and extreme
wealth. See what a pitch of impiety the lawless man has teached, teaching adultery and
murder at the same rime. And in addition to these btazen acts, these shameless people
endeavour to call themselves a catholic church, and some people, thinking they do well,
run over to join them.
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