It is often pointed out, when the position of women in the Orthodox Church is discussed, that Christ did not call any women to follow Him as His disciples, nor did He appoint any to be apostles. Women have, however, been given the title Isapostole, Equal to the Apostles. They have, interestingly, been honoured in this way almost as often as men: five women to six men, according to the Calendar of the Fellowship of St John the Baptist. A women's study group in London decided to find out about this title, the women who have been declared Equal to the Apostles, their qualities and achievements. We hope they will have something to teach us about what women have been, and can still be, in the life of the Church.

There is no precise definition of the title Isapostolos; in Orthodoxy; the list of those recognised as Equal to the Apostles differs slightly from one part of the Orthodox world to another. Our first assumption was that the title implied that the saint had been responsible for the evangelisation of particular people, as were Saints Cyril and Methodios and Saint Clement of Ochrid among the Slavs and Macedonians. In some cases the person honoured is a ruler, whose decisions to recognise or to adopt Christianity made the conversion of his subject more swift and comparatively free of conflict: the Emperor Constantine and Prince Vladimir are the prime examples. There remains one male saint about whom we have little information: Saint Albericus ,c.167, bishop and wonderworker of Hieropolis, as the Oxford Dictionary of Saints describes him.

Are certain women also responsible for mass conversions? If so, how did they accomplish this under the restrictive conditions of their time? The first in time, and the most universally honoured of the Isapostolai, is St Mary of Magdala. If an apostle is, according to the English translation of the Greek word, 'one who is sent out', then Mary can certainly be called Equal to the Apostles, because she was sent by Jesus Himself to His disciples to announce the Good News of His resurrection.

Mary of Magdala is included in all the Gospel lists of Jesus's women followers. She remained close to Him when He was on the cross; on the morning of the third day she went, alone or with other Myrrhbearers, to the tomb. In John 20:1-2, as soon as she discovered the empty tomb, she reported the fact to the two disciples closest to Jesus, Peter and John. They ran to the sepulchre (John 20: 3- 10) and John " saw and believed. For as yet they knew not the Scripture that he must rise again from the dead. So the disciples went away again unto their own home", but Mary of Magdala remained standing outside the sepulchre weeping. This time of solitude and preparation will be echoed in the stories of other women Isapostolai.

Can we say that, up to this point, she had been one of Jesus's disciples, but that when He sends her out, saying " Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God' she becomes an apostle and, in fact apostle to the apostles, as she was called in the Middle Ages? "Mary Magdalene cometh and telleth the disciples, I have seen the Lord; and how that he had said these things unto her' (John 20:17).

In Mary of Magdala we see how a woman takes up the ministry of an apostle. She is not mentioned as being in the upper room where the disciples were gathered when the Lord appeared to them and said "Peace be unto you; as the Father hath sent me, so send I you". (John 20:19-21) . Does that mean that, in accordance with the practices of the time, only men were there, or 'just that the women were not mentioned? In Acts 1, the eleven disciples in the upper room 'continued steadfastly in prayer, with the women-' and in Acts 2,1, 'when the day of Pentecost was now come, they were all together in one place.' Is this 'all' to include the women mentioned in the previous chapter? However we read these verses, Jesus both respected and transcended the practices of any one time and had already given to a woman the opportunity of being His messenger..

Three other women Isapostolai lived in the early years of Christianity, the Martyr Apphia, wife of the Apostle Philemon, St Mariamne and St Thecla. We would like to find out more about Apphia. What did she do to be marked out for honour in this way? She is mentioned by Paul, is 'our dearest sister' in the Epistle to Philemon It is presumed that she was Philemon's wife. Butler's Lives of the Saints (1956 edition) adds that Philemon's house was 'notable for the devotion and piety of those who composed it, and assemblies of the faithful seem to have been kept there. Nothing else is known'. In 'the story accepted in the East' Philemon became a bishop and was captured when, during the persecutions of Nero, a mob broke into his church, the congregation fled and only he and Apphia remained. They were stoned to death. Courage in. the face of violence, the endurance of martyrdom for the faith and support of the apostolate characterise this saint. Interestingly, F G Holweck, domestic prelate to Pope Pius XII, wanted to claim Apphia for his own sex as a doublet of the Apostle Apphias: "Some writers pretend that he was a woman, A Biographical Dictionary of Saints, 1924)

St Mariamne is not found in all the lists of Isapostolai. Like Apphia. she worked with male apostles in the years following the Ascension; Marianne, however, went out on missionary journeys. The Synaxaristis of St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, Vol 1, Athens, reprinted from the Spamos edition, Athens, 1868, p 462) tells us that she accompanied her brother Philip and Bartholomew to Hierapolis in Phrygia, the modern, Pammukale in Turkey, where the remains of Philip's martyrium may be seen. There they were condemned to death by being hanged upside down. At the moment of his death Philip was praying ardently; the earth opened and, swallowed up the Roman proconsul and many of the pagans. The terrified witnesses unbound Mariamne and Bartholomew, begging them to save them, The two saints prayed for Philip's intercession, and all who had been swallowed up, save the proconsul, were returned, alive.

St Bartholomew then set out on his mission to India. Surprisingly Mariamne now went, alone, to proclaim the word of God in Lyclaonia. There she baptised many pagans and died peacefully. This saint fulfilled her mission in the same way as did her brother apostles; how we wish that the bare text of her story had given some detail of how she had gone about it, surmounting or circumventing the limitations on a lone woman's freedom of movement.

There is another version of her story, derived from the Philip, which gives Mariamne the title of 'The Apostolic Virgin'. (Holweck.). Here we are told that Mariamne suffered great anxiety at the prospect of Philip's going alone to evangelise Greece. She had a vision of the Saviour, who said to her: 'You, Mariamne, may conceal your body and all your feminine characteristics and set out on the journey together with Philip. ' She was present at Philip's death; then Bartholomew went to Lycaonia, Mariamne to Jordan. This version still gives Marianne her independant mission, adding a divine command to assume a masculine appearance that may be compared to St Thecla's plea to St Paul (Bibliotheca Sanctorum, vol VIII, Institute John XXTII, The Lateran, 1967.)

St Thecla was another woman who was active in the apostolic age. In the Apochryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla (Ante Nicene Christian Library) she becomes Paul's disciple. The account of her deeds is an ancient one. Peter Brown suggests that there was a first century manuscript of this text, now missing; the one we still have is of the second century.

Thecla was a young woman, betrothed to a fellow dweller in Iconium, the modern Konya, when she overheard from a nearby house a 'discourse of virginity and prayer' given by Paul, Entranced, she stayed immoveable by the window for three days, listening. Her fiance charged Paul before the governor, who imprisoned him, but Thecla bribed her way into the prison and sitting at his feet, she heard the great things of God'. Paul was expelled from the city, but Thecla was condemned to be burnt for refusing marriage. She was saved by a storm of hail and rain. Reunited with Paul, she said 'I shall cut my hair and follow thee wherever thou shalt go'. Paul feared that her beauty might lead to trouble and, indeed, in Antioch the ruler 'embraced her in the street'. Paul's rebuke 'do not force the stranger: do
not force the servant of God' saved her for the moment, but brought her to trial again. She was condemned to the arena with the wild beasts, despite the protests of the women - one of many examples of women's solidarity in these stories - but a lioness (is the sex of the beast significant ?) defended her against the other beasts.

Rejoining Paul at Myra, she was told "Go, and teach the word of God". She appears to have spent the next seventy two years as a hermit in a cave in Seleucia. She became renowned as a healer and the jealous physicians sent 'insolent young men' to destroy her. The rocks closed and hid her. Her end was a quiet one, she went to Rome but found that Paul was already dead; there she herself died at the age of ninety. This source adds that another MS concludes: 'Thus, then, suffered the first martyr of God, and apostle, and Virgin Thecla'. The first woman martyr, presumably, since Saint Stephen could not have been forgotten. She was accounted a martyr because of the tortures she had endured and, indeed, overcome but we have no account of how she earned recognition as an apostle, despite Paul's commission. Presumably her healings during her hermit years converted many. Her heroism and ability to follow her conviction in the face of the social pressures of her time can be parallelled in the lives of many women hermits and martyrs: the master-disciple relationship with Paul and his specific command that she teach the word of God are what mark her out as Isapostole.

With St Nino (Nina) the enlightener of Georgia we have the full pattern of one Equal to the Apostles in bringing the Gospel to a whole people. Georgia adopted Christianity in about 330, and D M Lang (Lives and Legends of Georgian Saints, 1956, p13) considers that her story rests on 'a solid foundation of fact', but that later there was 'no limit to fantasy'. The first account is that of Rufinus, where she is an unnamed captive woman; in later versions she becomes the niece of the Patriarch of Jerusalem or a Roman Princess. Her life of 'faith and complete sobriety and virtue' gained her respect among her captors and her cure of a woman's sick child brought her to the attention of the Queen who, herself ill, visited her and was healed. 'She taught the Queen that Christ, Son of God Almighty, was the Deity who had bestowed this cure on her'. It was the Queen who taught her husband that such a woman is not to be rewarded with gold but by 'worshipping that God Christ who cured me according to her praver' (p16) The King resisted this knowledge until, enveloped by a dark cloud when out hunting, he too prayed to the God of the captive woman.

In the words that Rufinus uses to describe the conversion of Georgia, the importance of the society of women is again stressed: the King summoned all the fold... and albeit himself not yet initiated into the sacraments, became the apostle of his own nation. The men believed thanks to the King, the women thanks to the Queen, and with a single mind they set to work to build a church', There follows the legend of the pillar that refused to be raised until Nino spent the night in prayer; in the daylight it was seen to be hovering in the air, one foot above its pedestal. All acknowledged 'proof of the King's faith and the religion of the captive woman and the church was completed within, the day. Then, when Nino had set both the Church as institution and its mother cathedral on a firm foundation, an embassy was sent to Constantinople to ask for priests for the newly Christian nation.

Lang does not date the Georgian Life of Saint Nino, the first in a series marked by the increasing elaboration of miracles. A few of the additions to Rufinus's account are relevant: before the start of the events in the earlier version, Nino had lived as a hermit in. a tent-shaped bramble bush for three years, preaching and converting many who came to see her. This reminds us of Thecla's life. The embassy to Constantinople is sent off immediately on the King's release from the dark cloud "with a letter fron Nino to Queen Helena". : does this version present Nino as showing greater deference to established authority? When Nino prays that the pillar may be raised, two women stay with her all night. The most interesting addition gives a good authority for St Nino's title. Helena wrote her a letter of
Praise and encouragement 'in which Nino was addressed as queen, apostle and evangelist' (p32). There follow accounts of Nino's missionary journeys, in. particular to Kakhetia, where the Queen regnant 'was baptised with all her chiefs and handmaidens' (p36).

St Helena, created Augusta by her son Constantine the Great soon after his accession, was born far from court circles,in Drepanum in Bythinia in 255: her father is generally said to have been an innkeeper. She was married, or some said became the official concubine of, an effective militarv commander, Constantius Chlorus, who rose to great power and. was, adopted by the Emperor Maximun as his junior partner, his Caesar, and designated successor. To cement this alliance, he 'had to renounce Helena and marry the stepdaughter of his patron, but her son Constantine remained with his father and eventually not only succeeded him but reunited the Roman Empire under himself. We do not know when Helena became a Christian , nor whether the fact that Constantine Chlorus, alone of the tetrarchy ordered no persecutions of the Christians was any indication of his personal beliefs or due to her influence.

Constantine honoured his mother, soon after he was in a position to do so 'her likeness was imprinted on golden coins' says Eusebius; unfortunately, only bronze ones have so far been found. (Life of Constantine in Nicene And Post Nicene Fathers 1890, reprinted 1989, Ch XLVII.) Eusebius says that this is evidence of 'the surpassing degree of filial affection' the son had for his mother. She lived mostly in Rome, founding a church in her palace. Modern authors claim that she either led her son towards the Faith, or that he led her ( e g The New Catholic Encyclopedia,1967. The Oxford Illustrated History of Christians. 1990). She is next heard of at the great crisis of her family's life, Constantine's brilliant son Crispus, child of his. first wife, was falsely denounced at the instigation of his stepmother Fausta and executed on his father's orders. Helena had not been in Rome at the time, she hastened back and in mourning garments went to her son and disabused him Fausta was soon after "stifled" in her bath.

Timothy Barnes thinks it was partly to restore the family image, though surely also in atonement, that Constantine sent Helena in 326, at the age of almost eighty years to the Holy Land with instructions to show the Imperial generosity in action (Constantine and Eusebius, 1981) This she did grandly; after she had founded two churches in Jerusalem, Barnes follows Eusebius in describing 'her progress towards towards Syria" As she went, she gave generously to cities, to the soldiers, and to all individuals who approached her, especially to the poor. She released criminals from prison, from the mines, from exile. She dedicated gifts in churches everywhere, even in the smallest cities ' it is perhaps in connection with this voyage that Constantine, as Eusebius says, 'even granted her authority over the imperial treasures, to use dispense them according to her own will and discretion', (Life p.532)

But there is no mention of the finding of the Cross of Christ in Eusebius' chapters on Helena's voyage; he had already placed that in the context of Constantine's building of the Church. of the Holy Sepulchre. Within twenty five years of Helena's voyage, Cyril of Jerusalem, however, links the Invention of the Cross to Helena, and all later writers until the modern period followed him. (Notes to Eusebius's Life, p.444 by E C Richardson)

St Helena died in 330, when with her son in Nicodemia. He brought her body in a great porphyry sarcophagus to Rome for burial with imperial honours and renamed her birthplace Helenopolis. Like Nino, pious legends gathered around her name. In 1879 Heydenreich published an anonymous medieval romance about the noble girl from Revres who was glimpsed crossing a bridge by the general, but already Geoffrey of Monsmouth had placed her ir Britain, the daughter of 'Old' King Cole, and Hakluyt included a much heightened account of her travels in his Voyages. Evelyn Waugh's Helena is the latest of these variation on the Helena story.

She does not need elaboration. In an age of ruthless dynastic rivalries, she survived reversals of fortune, family horrors and political chicanery to an active, indeed a splendid old age in which she had access to power and used it for good. It seems probable that, like St Olga, she was also a precursor of the conversion of the empire. In later ages, the Empress Pulcheria and Queen Bertha of Kent, were both honoured by being likened to her ( W C Frend, The Rise of Christianity, 1984 pp.771 & 889)

St Olga was born in Pskov; the date of her birth is unknown. She married Prince Igor and, following his slaughter by Prince Mal of the Derevelians in 945, ruled in Russia as regent in the name of Sviatoslav, her son. Vivid accounts have been handed down of her attempts to avenge the death of her husband. One story tells of the Prince of the Derevelians asking for her hand in marriage. She feigns acceptance, asking for his ambassadors to be carried into her presence in their boat. This boat is then dropped into a trench that had been specially dug around the courtyard and the Prince's ambassadors are buried alive. Acts of cruelty such as this remind us of her grandson Vladimir's words about himself before his baptism :'I was like a beast, much evil did I do as a Pagan, and I lived as a brute but Thou hast tamed me and taught me by thy grace'.

Olga's conversion to Christianity brings radical change. Historical accounts of her baptism differ, some suggesting that it took place during her journey to Constantinople, others leading us to believe that it happened before this, possibly in Kiev. Certainly we know that she took the name Helena, in honour of Constantine the Great's mother. -

The Chronicler Nestor gives us details in the Russian Primary Chronicle (translated from the Imperial Edition, St Petersberg, 1842 by Fr Louis Paris) of how the newly baptised Olga was told by the Patriarch in Constantinople that she was blessed among Russian women because she had sought the Light and had left behind the path of darkness. With her head lowered, she was instructed by him in Christian doctrine and ecclesiastical disciplines, was taught about what is meant by prayer and fasting and was informed about bodily chastity. Thus protected from the snares of the enemy through the prayers of the Patriarch, she received his blessing and was sent back to her own country.

At this point, one small detail suggests that Olga did not allow herself to be slighted by men. Upon her return to Kiev, Constantine's envoys came to her, asking for presents for their Emperor of slaves and wax, furs and soldiers. In reply, Olga said that she would gladly grant his request if he came to her door in person and waited there as long as she had waited at his! The Greeks assumed that any prince or princess who accepted their- faith became a vassal of the Emperor but Olga, whilst sharing their faith, intended to remain Regent in her own right.

Back in her own country, with great courage Olga stood alone in a pagan world which mocked and misunderstood her. She devoted herself to prayer, praying night and day for the conversion of her family and her country. She longed to share the joy of her faith with others but we are told that her son, Sviatoslav, did not wish to know the majesty of the God in whom she rejoiced. He was afraid of being scorned by his people for adopting a strange religion and, besides, soldiers fought with a sword and not a cross! In spite of her disappointment, Olga respected her son's choice to live as a pagan, and the chronicler Nestor tells us that she did not love her son less for this. She persuaded him to stay with her until her death, although he would have preferred to journey abroad.

Following her death, Olga was given a Christian burial, as she had requested, and Nestor hands down the small detail that at her funeral her son and grandson and all the Russian people wept with great mourning. Her grandson, Vladimir, carried within him the seeds of his grandmother's faith and example and, watered by the tears of his grief, when the time was ripe, as we know, these seeds grew. Indeed, just before his baptism, Vladimir's ambassadors exclaimed to him, 'If the Greek religion had been so bad Olga, the wisest of beings, would not have adopted it'.

Finally, no better tribute is paid to Olga than in the following extract from the Primary Chronicle: Olga was the precurser of the Christian land, even as the dayspring precedes the sun and as the dawn precedes the day. For she shone like the moon by night, and she was radiant among the infidels like a pearl in the mire, since the people were soiled and not yet purified of their sins by holy baptism. But she herself was cleansed by this sacred purification. She put off the sinful garments of the old Adam, and was clad in the new Adam which is Christ. Thus we say to her, 'rejoice in the Russian's knowledge of God', for we were the first fruits of their reconciliation with Him (Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles and Tales ed.S. A Zenkovsky, New York, 1963,p6l).

What do the accounts of the apostolates of these women have in common? Since the names of those who have been thus honoured vary in different parts of the Orthodox world and the concept of Equal to the Apostles has not been strictly defined, we can only come to tentative conclusions. The question now arises as to whether the nature of the male apostolate is different from the female one and, if we accept that it is not, whether a women has to practice it in a different manner. Keeping in mind that 'in Christ there is neither male nor female". what exactly does that mean in relation to ministry?

Mary of Magdala, Thecla and Nina all spend a period of preparation, whether of hours, days or years, in which they withdraw from the everyday life of their societies. These three were specifically 'sent out'; St Mary to the disciples, St Thecla to the world at large, St Nina to the people of Georgia, as St Mariamne was to Greece and Lycaonia.

The apostolate of these women was, of necessity, exercised in a different way from that of St Paul and the other male apostles, since women could not travel freely from place to place, preaching in the synagogues and fora. They worked by attraction and example, located at a court or in a cave. Often, they received help from other women. Mariamne and Thecla may have avoided danger while travelling by dressing as males.

Nevertheless, the Isapostolia were not prevented from acting in the wider world when this was necessary: St Mariamne's story shows her operating with, and in exactly the same way as, her companions St Philip and St Bartholomew; St Nine moves from the retirement of her cell to the centre of events at court; St Helena not only acted through her son but became his public agent; St Olga destroyed pagan shrines and worked for the conversion of her people while still retaining her role as regent.

Saints deemed to be Equal to the Apostles arose in the earliest years of the spread of Christianity and again when a new people was ready for evangelisation: whenever they were most needed. We in the West live in a post Christian society where, as Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh pointed out in a talk 'On the Church", given in the Cathedral in Ennismore Gardens on 13 February 1992, we Orthodox can be seen as an enclave within society, an irrelevance; tolerated, but not listened to, people 'content with being among themselves'. But the apostles 'were men and women sent into the world ' who, when their lives had been changed 'could not keep the wonderful discovery to themselves'. The delight and generous energy of those days shines through the stories told of the Isapostolai

Could there be greater equality or greater honour for both men and women than to be deemed Equal to the Apostles, to outshine the titles of the church hierarchy? Should this not set us thinking about equality and ministry in the widest sense? We live, now, in what might become a new apostolic age, and we are all called to be apostles, men and women alike.