The Lives of Holy Women in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Throughout the christian world, women have chosen to lead disciplined lives of prayer and asceticism. Descriptions of early role-models?Macrina, the two Paulas and Melanias, Radagunde--and others by contemporaries, usually men, provide details of their austerities, their aspirations, and their relationship with the Church and the world, not least with male authority figures.