  This study offers a reminder of how little we know about (a) the lives of prayer and praise and (b) the forms of congregational ministry familiar to many lay and non-ascetic Christians, and to female Christians, in the early Christian centuries. It is to do with challenging assumptions derived from the Fathers’ much-studied accounts of congregational life rather than with providing definitive answers. It concerns an unusual and difficult-to-interpret epitaph. The Source The present-day town of Kütahya in Turkey stands where once stood Kotiaeion, metropolis of the Tembris valley region of northern Phrygia. Just a few miles south-east of Kütahya is the village of Akoluk and it was there that a particular epitaph was discovered, written in Greek and dating from the fourth century. This area has provided a rich store of Christian epigraphy, variously identified as catholic, Montanist or Novatianist, which gives evidence of the vitality and variety of Christian groups in the area. The upper Tembris valley was home to the famous so-called "Christians for Christians" group of inscriptions whose date and provenance (pre- or post-Constantine, Montanist or catholic) has been much debated. But although once the majority of critics assumed them to be Montanist this is no longer so and they are taken to be the products of catholic Christianity. The substantial amount of epigraphy plus other evidence from this region has suggested a large population of Christians, even perhaps a majority by the end of the third century. The evidence on stone shows that such Christians were culturally and artistically at one with their non-Christian neighbours and that they declared freely their wealth and achievements. The epitaph to be discussed, engraved on a marble stele and commissioned by people unknown to us, is not one of the "Christians for Christians" group. In fact it uses neither the word Christian nor the word "spiritual" to describe a Christian as some other inscriptions do. It is of interest because the woman it commemorated in its twenty-five lines was one of uncommon gifts and she was described using a language of spirituality which would be comprehensible not just to Christians but to their pagan neighbours as well. Though the word Christian does not appear, we may deduce that she was one: (a) from the presence of Christian epigraphy in the region, (b) from the description of her worship, and (c) from the reference to a word favoured by Christians, viz. koimeterion (here kemeterion), a "sleeping/resting place". The Woman The woman commemorated was called Nanas, a common name used by both sexes. She may have died a widow, for the text (found in W. Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia: Epigraphic Sources Illustrating the History of Montanism, Macon, GA 1997, 419-423), tells of a beloved "sleeping partner" also in the "sleeping place" (ll. 12ff.), or possibly her husband had died after her, prior to the setting up of the stele. On the horizontal moulding above the pediment are the words Nanas of Hermogenes. He may have been her husband or possibly it was her father’s name. Nanas was celebrated for her reverence for God, her devotion to prayer and intercession, adulation and the offering of hymns (ll. 3-5). She prayed both by day and by night (ll. 7-8). A specialist in the history of liturgy might be able to derive a lot from this language about Christian practice in fourth-century Phrygia but the inscription deals with more than a pious congregant whose daily devotions, hymns, entreaties and night prayers were notable for their intensity. Nanas of Kotiaeion was a prophet, as the pediment of the memorial showed. Ardent in her devotions, the prophet Nanas knew "in greatest measure" (l. 11 as Tabbernee translated it) "angelic visitation" and angelic utterance. A key question is what kind of Christian was Nanas? The answer is probably less readily to hand than some readers assume, for given the geographical area of its origins and the fact that the epitaph refers to a prophet, the tendency has been to equate Phrygian with Montanist, Montanists with female prophets, and to categorise the woman and her friends as heretical. Certainly Phrygia was the birthplace of the New Prophecy/Montanism, which became infamous in catholic circles for its female prophets. By the time in question, i.e. the fourth century, Phrygia was indeed home to a variety of subsects of Montanism (Priscillianists, Pepuzians, Quintillianists and so on), but lest we assume that she has to have been a Montanist, Phrygia was of course home to many catholic Christians, and to others such as Novatianists also. The next part of this study will consider whether Nanas might be Montanist or indeed might be catholic, so that her prophesying and her experiences might be regarded as part of the heritage of the church, continued unbroken in (some) congregations over the first four centuries at least. Was Nanas a Montanist? The language about her prayer and other devotions does not help us much. It is not sufficiently distinctive. We have no cause to assume that what happened in Montanist or Novatianist congregations, most of the time and in most respects, would have been radically different from catholic practice. The hymns, intercessions and prayers referred to probably had a place in Christian groups of many kinds, indeed Phrygian catholic Christianity was rich in hymns: Hilary of Poitiers, exiled probably to this very province between the years 356-359 (Syn. 8.63), learned Greek and Syriac hymns there which inspired him later to compose his own. Just a century previously Firmilian, bishop of Cappadocia, had provided possible evidence of Montanist-catholic conformity on matters liturgical. When writing to Cyprian in Carthage he cited the unacceptable case of a female prophet whose liturgical practice was, by his own admission, impeccable—even in terms of the formulae she used in baptising! She too may have been either catholic or Montanist (the matter is disputed), but if Firmilian was describing her Montanist practice, as I think he was, then her use of language identical to that of catholics is noteworthy. Montanism derived from Asia Minor Christianity and we should expect a considerable degree of overlap with Asian Christian practices in any case. The fact is that Christian groups, catholic and other and even heretical, were in close association one with another. So too were Christians and Jews in some areas. The carefully delineated demarcations of the Fathers’ devising serve to remind us how much such lines of demarcation were disregarded in practice, and the canons of the fourth-century Phrygian Council of Laodicea (same province, same century as our epitaph) are illustrative: some catholics seemed over-close to Jews and some heretical Christians associated closely with catholics. Canons 16 and 29 required that Christians distance themselves from Jewish Sabbath observance and synagogue attendance, and observe the Lord’s Day instead. Neither Jewish unleavened bread nor Jewish festal gifts were to be accepted, and in like vein festivals were not to be kept with heretics (Canons 37, 38). Christians of all kinds and Jews too were closely intermingled in Phrygia, so that telling a mainstream from a sectarian or heretical believer on the basis of fragmentary ancient evidence (such as this inscription), or even telling a Christian from a Jew, is not as easy as is sometimes assumed. Thus although Nanas was a Christian, the type of Christian she was is not self-evident. Yet if she was a Montanist, this inscription would dispel some of our ignorance about Montanist practice and personal devotions at this time. What little we do think we know about Montanism comes from the pens of hostile writers who concentrated on the more colourful rites (white-clothed, lamp- bearing prophesying virgins—I shall return to them in due course) and dire accusations against fragmented Montanism. The least that might be said is that if Nanas was a Montanist, she offered a picture of Christian womanhood and Christian devotion which was a far cry from the fourth- or fifth-century Fathers’ anti-Montanist accounts of infanticidal blood-drenched rites by followers of the supposedly crazed foremothers, Priscilla, Maximilla and Quintilla. In the light of descriptions from Montanism’s opponents, Nanas looks serenely un-Montanist. Other things apart, of course, it might simply be assumed that Nanas was a pious catholic widow. But those other things include prophecy and communing with angels and the fact that here a woman of fame was celebrated. They may make some readers reticent about seeing Nanas as a catholic. So does the word prophet, so prominently displayed at the head of this fourth-century inscription, preclude her being a Christian of the mainstream? Stephen Mitchell in his magnum opus on Anatolia and William Tabbernee in his magnum opus on Montanist inscriptions both assumed the prophet Nanas to have been a Montanist. By contrast Robin Lane Fox in his magnum opus on pagans and Christians sounded a word of warning: "Not every biblical ‘prophetess’ in Phrygia was a Montanist", he wrote. It is an apposite warning. But first I shall acknowledge that there are well-attested parallels in Montanist circles for women of Nanas’ type, i.e. women who prophesied and whose revelations mediated to the congregation were significant for that congregation. There follow examples from two sources: 1. Epiphanius of Salamis recounted that Asian Quintillianists or Pepuzians frequently had in their gatherings lamp-bearing virgin prophets (who were in office in the church). Their words could reduce their hearers to tears and repentance, he reported (Panar. 49.2), and the Quintillianists appealed to the precedents of Miriam and to Philip’s daughters in support of women’s clerical roles. 2. Then there was the evidence of Tertullian and the female described in the De anima 9, a work which dates from his Montanist period:
This woman’s gifts and experiences (the mysterious communications and seeing into the hearts of others speak of a prophet), like those of Nanas, were described in the context of her participation in worship. This was the worship of a catholic congregation in Carthage, into which the New Prophecy/Montanism was integrated (this is now acknowledged by most students of the New Prophecy and of Tertullian). The revelations came to her, wrote Tertullian, during the reading of the Scriptures, during the Psalms, the prayers and even during sermons. They were not communicated to others until afterwards, when she and her revelations were scrupulously tested. Angels figure in this account, and also in the one about another female prophet described by Tertullian. She had been addressed by and slapped on the back by an angel. The point of contact indicated (Tertullian thought) the length of the veil with which her neck should have been covered (De virg. vel. 17). Unlike the Quintillianist prophets, Nanas was not a dedicated virgin. The Carthaginian women (possibly just catholic or of New Prophecy persuasion too) were probably also dedicated virgins, so that Nanas’ married/widowed state may be a small pointer to the non-Montanist character of this prophet. But both in catholic-New Prophecy Carthage and among the Phrygian Quintillianists the messages for their co-religionists came to such women in the context of the community’s worship, and perhaps that had been the case for Nanas too. Worship figured large in her life. On the basis of these examples we may assume third- and fourth-century prophetism in Montanism East and West. But there was ongoing prophecy apart from Montanism, and it is certainly traceable in third-century catholic circles. So if prophecy and the receipt of revelations was not dead and such things had not simply become the preserve of the spiritual high-flyers—i.e. the celibates and monastics—then might Nanas indeed have been a woman of the Phrygian Christian mainstream? Was Nanas a Catholic Prophet? The evidence for the continuation of the charism of prophecy in catholic churches is scattered but real in the second and third centuries, and so far as Phrygia and surrounding provinces were concerned, I would posit that the New Prophecy would not have taken such firm hold in them, and have spread so quickly, had prophecy not been a reality in some congregations there, though diminished or lost in others. Those who valued it but who would not have aligned themselves with the New Prophets when the separation came are unlikely to have jettisoned their respect for the gifts of the spirit. Ongoing prophecy and other spiritual gifts are well-attested in the West in the second and third centuries, through Justin Martyr, Hermas and Hippolytus in Rome, the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian in North Africa, in the work of Irenaeus, and farther east through the Didache, Ignatius of Antioch, through statements made about Melito of Sardis, through Firmilian of Cappadocia and other sources. Origen, conscious as he was of God having granted gifts of the spirit, wrote that the signs of the Holy Spirit were met with infrequently in his own day and were the preserve of the few (Contra Celsum 7.8). Yet in the same work, and in contradictory fashion, he wrote (2.8) that "traces" of Christian prophecy and wonder-working were present "to a considerable extent", though now they had disappeared among the Jews. Nevertheless there is much we do not know about charismatic experience even in the third century. Important evidence has not survived. Both Tertullian’s lengthy treatise De ecstasi and the work on the charismata referred to in the Prologue of the Apostolic Constitutions of Hippolytus are lost. Some response to the marginalisation of prophecy can be seen in one of the Oxyrhynchus papyri and the Ascension of Isaiah, but to a considerable extent we are in the dark about the process which finally saw an end to the kind of congregational prophesying, the seeing into hearts and the delivery of inspired messages by men and women, such as Paul had described in 1 Corinthians. When both Origen wrote of its decline and later John Chrysostom considered it a thing of the past, it must have been because prophecy was no longer familiar to them in the catholic congregations they knew best. But we should not assume that such gifts of the Spirit were wholly absent from congregations, even in catholic circles, and even in the fourth century. We know they were not dead in Montanist ones. The question so far as Nanas is concerned is not whether catholic Christians generally were by the fourth century less likely to exhibit gifts of prophecy in a congregational setting—that is most certainly the case, but whether for example in Phrygia, individualistically Phrygian, with prophecy-loving Montanists (and probably Novatianists) and also with prophecy-loving pagans all around—those associated with the worship of Cybele being notable—the prophetic gift, practised by women and men alike since the Apostle Paul’s day, would have been allowed to die. Communing with Angels "While pagans might think that at any moment they were encountering a god", Robin Lane Fox wrote, "the first Christians thought they might be entertaining angels". The Phrygian provenance of our epitaph is important when looking at angelic communication, for the territory of Kotiaeion was home to a cult centre for the worship of two pagan angel-deities, named Holy and Just. Another item of epigraphy records some loyalists’ devotion to them, on a stone which had been commissioned by the "association of angel-lovers". Angelology was a feature of Anatolian syncretistic paganism with its divine angels, and the angelology of the first to the fourth centuries regularly described messengers of the gods as agggelikos or epiphanes. It owed much to Judaism for its inspiration, as did the angelology of mainstream and sectarian Christianity too, of course. Phrygians were noted for such things. Origen commented unfavourably on their worship of angels. We may assume, then, that the language about angels on this epitaph would have been comprehensible to just about any passing Phrygian, be they Christian, pagan or Jew. Catholic Christianity, as I noted, was no stranger to love of angels. Its teachers spoke of angels as sailors on board the ship of the church, as drawing the nations to the church and being present in every assembly, as having the churches in their care. "If you wish to see the angels and martyrs", John Chrysostom told his congregation on Ascension Day, then "open the eyes of faith". For "the whole air about us is filled with angels". For that very reason the Apostle had told women to cover their heads. Yet despite such belief, the kinds of regular "‘close encounter’ with a heavenly stranger" which Hermas’ apocalyptic work The Shepherd had recorded in the second century, had become much less a feature of catholic writing as time went on. Montanist and anti-Montanist sources offer no great interest in angelology—Tertullian’s account apart—though perhaps we should assume Montanists’ interest given some parallels with the thought of the Apocalypse and one reference to a "heavenly ascent" (Himmelsreise) tradition (such as often involved contact with angels) in respect of an early loyalist of the New Prophecy. But one saying attributed to Montanus declared that what was now accessible through the (New) Prophet’s speech was not an angel or an envoy at all, but the Lord God the Father, thereby perhaps distancing the New Prophecy from aspects of Jewish-influenced angel christology or pagan understandings of manifestations of the divine. As the Lord had spoken through the prophets of old, they may have been saying, so too he made himself known through the utterances of the New Prophets, whose inspiration came through no minor angel deity. What may safely be said is that in continuing to examine Nanas’ loyalties, we should note that angels and Montanists do not fit more neatly together than do angels and catholics. Nevertheless angels and Asia had gone together for a long time and needed no reliance on Montanism. The canonical book of Revelation, like other apocalyptic sources, was rich in references to angels (mentioning prophets too) and in angelomorphic christology. For Phrygians Revelation was almost a home-grown work. It had been addressed to places such as Laodicea and Philadelphia and its teaching had permeated the Christianity of Phrygia and the surrounding provinces, as Montanism’s use of it shows. The Apocalypse had found response in Asia not least because its closeness to Judaism and deliberate distancing from Judaism, together with its angelology and heavenly ascents, spoke of matters readily understood in that region. So the possibility presents itself that what Nanas experienced, regular (indeed intense) in her devotions as she was, may have been what many a wholly orthodox Phrygian Christian hoped might come to them—though it was not the kind of thing of which the Fathers wrote when describing Christian congregations. Stephen Mitchell interpreted the language of ll. 8-9 in terms of the apocalyptic "heavenly ascent" tradition. Nanas, he wrote, had claimed "to have gazed in awe on the face of the Lord". And if she was to be regarded like those other practitioners of heavenly ascents which figure in many Jewish and Jewish-influenced early Christian sources, then this epitaph would provide a "bridge" between the charismatic and apocalyptic traditions known to us from the Pseudepigrapha, the Revelation and Hermas and those which "reappear" in monasticism. "Angelic hymns are very popular in the ascent apocalypses" observed Martha Himmelfarb. But space does not allow consideration of possible parallels between heavenly and earthly liturgy triggering supernatural experiences, or of the visionary’s participation in heavenly liturgy, though such ideas may underlie what is said in the epitaph. In any case my emphasis would be rather different and the question of "heavenly ascent" would be left open. The key to this epitaph, to Nanas and her role in the Christian community lies, I think, in its first word. She was a prophet. As Robin Lane Fox recognised, the language of the epitaph is not transparent. The visitation and the voice may have been external to Nanas or it may have been that her own speech was at times like that of the angels and that she too was a medium of the message for her co-religionists. Tabbernee’s translation (which is reflected in the title of this study) assumes a meaning for the "episcopal" which does not at first sight touch on the possibility that some kind of official role was implied, or that the "voice"/utterance was related to that role and in turn to the prophetic gift. The providential care/oversight given by Nanas may even have been that of a prophetic bishop, but only if we associate her with the Quintillianists/Pepuzians of Epiphanius, Panarion 49.2-3. They had female bishops and presbyters—a possibility which would divorce Nanas from the catholic fold, of course but which would shed important light on the charismatic character of Montanist bishops. Alternatively Nanas may indeed have held office as a prophet, rather like the prophesying widow kept by a church and one of a very small number of recognised widows, such as is legislated for in some fourth- to fifth-century versions of the Apostolic Church Order. But if we are looking for a fuller explanation of Nanas’ relation to the angel and of her own intermediary’s role, then some further background study is necessary. Nanas "The Angel" The Christian prophet was a seer into hearts, the interpreter for the present situation who was the charismatic exegete of Scripture, using the familiar and the cherished and weaving it into something from the Spirit for the age. Revelation 19:10 speaks of "the spirit of prophecy", just as Hermas’ apocalyptic work The Shepherd (Man. 11.9) used the phrase "the angel of the prophetic spirit", there speaking of an angelomorphic Holy Spirit or perhaps of a guardian-angel-type figure who was a bearer of insights and an angelus interpres for the prophet Hermas through visitation. Paul had written of "the spirits of the prophets" (see 1 Cor. 14:12, 14-16, 32), which at least one scholar has interpreted as signifying belief in the mediation of prophecy and the gift of tongues via spiritual beings or angels and the transmitters of John the Seer’s prophetic message to the churches of Asia were also described as "the angels" of the churches (Rev. 1:20; 2:1,8,12,18; 3:1,7,14). The Ascension of Isaiah, which deplored the marginalisation of prophecy, had spoken both of the angel of the church and of the angel of the Holy Spirit (3.5; 11.4). Against the background of such language and ideas it may be that in Nanas we have a woman who was regarded as inspired and whose insights reached her through the mediation of an angel. She would have become in turn (like the women in Carthage or like the prophesying widow) an "angel" of the message to her circle, just as the prophet Hermas and others had transmitted his revelations in gatherings of Christians and Tertullian’s female prophets had divulged theirs. Nanas, honoured for devotional practices and for her converse with the other-worldly, may well have been seen in her prophet’s role (at least by those who commissioned the epitaph) as a valued messenger/interpreter for the con-gregation. But what of the "voice"? If this was not the voice of authoritative officialdom, manifested in an office-bearing woman, then did Nanas merely hear the speech of angels or did she practise it too? If Christian prophecy was not cold in its grave, especially not in somewhere like Phrygia where prophecy was a reality among pagans, where Judaism of apocalyptic type had exerted an influence and where concern for its survival and potential had spawned Montanism, then is it possible that glossolalia or the gift of tongues, which was sometimes interpreted as the speech of angels (1 Cor. 13:1), was not dead either? Glossolalia, it should be said, is often assumed to have died even faster than prophecy itself, though recently Christopher Forbes has again resurrected evidence for its continued existence in the Patristic age. Tertullian mentioned it (Adv. Marc. 5.8.12), as did Origen—though few people manifested the gift to his knowledge. Novatian knew of the gift of tongues in the churches (De Trin. 29) as had Irenaeus before him (Adv. haer. 3.12.1; 5.6.1) and a number of students of the New Prophecy believe that Montanists practised it. But the tendency of some later Fathers was to confuse glossolalia with xenolalia, probably because (as John Chrysostom made clear about Antioch or Constantinople) they had no experience of it in the churches they knew . Possibly, and alternatively, as Parmentier has surmised, the terminology had shifted and glossolalia had now been subsumed under something else. But if this epitaph does indeed speak of a practitioner of glossolalia in this out-of-the- way portion of the empire, then the question also arises whether this was acknowledged in her church (rather than only among her immediate friends and supporters) as a valid vehicle of worship along with the prayer and formal liturgy which evidently were important to her. I am not convinced that Nanas did practise the gift of tongues or that this is what the epitaph describes. My leaning is towards an understanding of the epitaph which puts Nanas in receipt of revelation from an angel which subsequently was transmitted and used in prophetic ministry to a congregation. That is a remarkable enough claim in itself. But above all I see the epitaph as preserving several intriguing possibilities for our understanding of early Christian communities and the people of influence in them. Epilogue Catholics’ suspicion of prophecy and a hardening of attitudes towards it arose, we are told, because of teaching on dispensationalism, changes in church order and altered understanding of the relation of charisma to leadership, the advent of the New Prophecy and the subsequent debates about ecstasy. I do not doubt that there is truth in such claims. But given Phrygian distinctiveness and relative isolation, given the degree to which its Christianity was permeated with echoes of Jewish thought and the Jewish speculative religion which had helped to make the rich soup of Anatolian religious belief and practice, I am still left with the nagging question of whether a woman like Nanas need not have been a Montanist or a Novatianist. Might she still have had a place in a more mainstream congregation as a recognised prophet, and among people who themselves harboured hopes of being vouchsafed the kind of experience which she had in abundance? Perhaps so. We must not underestimate the variety and vitality of early Christian communities, nor assume that something like prophecy, which had brought spiritual nurture to congregations, had obligingly lain down to die. The evidence in stone may suggest otherwise. Nanas the fourth-century prophet may indeed have been one of a dying breed in Christian congregations. Perhaps she was more appreciated by some Christians in her circle than by others, so that it would have been the former who commemorated her gifts, celebrating a life of intense spirituality in which prayer, ritual and liturgy filled much of her waking hours. We do not know. But evidently Nanas who communicated with angels had communicated with human beings too, and was loved. In the course of commemoration those who arranged for the epitaph would have known that the language about prophecy in it, the reference to angelic communication and the angelic tongue would have been comprehensible to many a passing Phrygian, be they Christian, pagan or Jew. The language of intense devotion was probably directed at Christian readers of the epitaph, however, not least at those who were not of the same Christian group. The declaration that here was one with the prophetic gift could appear as a Montanist statement of the reality of something considered past in catholic congregations. But equally it might be a catholic declaration, in the face of Montanist and Novatianist practice, that the greater church still had its prophesying women of the Spirit. Was Nanas a catholic or was she a Montanist? Robin Lane Fox decided that the question had to stay open and I agree with him. The uncertainties of this case are a reminder, nevertheless, of how little we really know of the lives of prayer and praise of Christians, of lay Christians and of female Christians in the early centuries of the religion. Ronald Kydd, in his 1984 study of Charismatic Gifts in the Early Church (a study which went up to 320 AD), wrote as follows in his introduction:
And yet ... There may have been more of it about than historians of the church have chosen to credit, and not just among the spiritual high-flyers, i.e. the rigorists and monastics. Nanas, respected prophet, cherished the prayer and liturgy of the church and in the context of its worship she experienced those things which were transmitted to those unknown Christians who thought her worth commemorating. |
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