The Bone Gatherers

When Nicola Denzey leads tour groups into the Roman Catacombs, participants are struck by the splendor of the burial chambers-many of which were created by or for women. In The Bone Gatherers, Denzey uses this archaeological evidence, along with text records, in an unprecedented way: to resurrect the lives of several powerful fourth-century women who, until recently, had been lost to history. Surprisingly, she finds that representations of aristocratic Roman Christian women show a shift in the value and significance of womanhood over the fourth century; these depictions belie a power struggle between the sexes within early Christianity-one that women lost, and one that has had long-lasting implications for the roles of women in the Church. "Nicola Denzey's lively, readable book opens up a fascinating, long hidden world of early Christian women. This fine work not only lets us into their world, but shows how it was kept hidden so long." -Elaine Pagels, author of Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity and The Gnostic Gospels "A brilliantly argued book that weaves archeology, art history, and sociology; it's refreshing that unlike many historians, Denzey is a gifted writer and storyteller . . . Whether or not you're religious, it's a great feminist read." -M. L. Madison, Feminist Review blog "Denzey's prose paints vivid pictures of the sites she visits . . . her densely layered inquiry is insightful and haunting." -Publisher's Weekly "Nicola Denzey's impeccable scholarship and intimate and vivid style of writing makes tangible and credible the power of the holy that was mediated by women-women saints and women patrons. The Bone Gatherers allows the reader to transcend both historical and scholarly distance to encounter the forgotten women who also shaped Christianity." -Karen Jo Torjesen, author of When Women Were Priests: Women's Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity "Unique in its restricted time/place focus, the study probes in-depth with a twenty-first century feminist eye." -Library Journal "A masterful study written in a lively narrative style, The Bone Gatherers is pitched perfectly to both the interested general reader and to scholars. Denzey's expert placing of the funerary images of early Christian and pagan women into their social and cultural milieus, and her rich, well-researched iconographical reading of ancient imagery helps us to see the changing roles of women-both Christian and pagan-during the early centuries of Christian Rome." -Ann Steinsapir, museum educator, J. Paul Getty Museum, and author of Rural Sanctuaries in Roman Syria: The Creation of a Sacred Landscape

Nicola Denzey is a lecturer in the study of religion at Harvard University. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Religions of Late Antiquity from Princeton and recently served as a faculty research associate in Harvard Divinity School's Women's Studies in Religion Program.