What was the role of women in the early Church for the Eastern Fathers?

The Eastern Church was characterized by a philosophical, theological way of thinking — especially the Fathers of the School of Alexandria — so women and marriage were respected.

The School of Alexandria included students of both genders, without distinction.

Convents for virgins appeared if not before the organized monastic movement, at least in the same era.

St. Cyril the Great says, “To be rich in sorrow, then, as by way of a penalty, was the fate of woman. It was, therefore, necessary that by the mouth of Him That had passed sentence of condemnation, the burden of that ancient curse should be removed, our Savior Christ now wiping away the tears from the eyes of the woman, or rather of all womankind, as in Mary the firstfruits … extending also to the whole race of women, if indeed they be pained by the outrages against Christ.”¹¹⁴⁹

Again he says, “As the first woman, the mother of all mankind, was condemned for listening to the devil’s voice, and through her the whole race of women, so also this woman,

1148 David C. Ford, Women and Men in the Early Church: The Full Views of St. John Chrysostom (St. Tikhon Seminary Press, 1996).

1149 St. Cyril of Alexandria, “Commentary on John Book XII,” in Commentary on the Gospel of St. John Vol. 2 , trans. Walter Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1885) on John 20:16: p. 657.

in that she had hearkened to our Savior’s words, and announced tidings fraught with life eternal, might deliver the entire race of women from the charge of old.”¹¹⁵⁰

St. Clement of Alexandria says, “The nature is the same in everyone and so everyone is capable of having the same virtues. Women do not have a different nature than men. They both have the same nature and the same virtue.”¹¹⁵¹