The most fitting word with which to describe the Church Fathers' attitude toward women is ambivalence. Women were God's creation, his good gift to men---and the curse of the world. They were weak in both mind and character---and displayed dauntless courage, undertook prodigious feats of scholarship. Vain, deceitful, brimming with lust---they led men to Christ, fled sexual encounter, wavered not at the executioner's threats, adorned themselves with sackcloth and ashes. Leaving the examination of the Fathers' psyches to other specialists, this volume documents from an historical perspective the ways in which the Fathers praised and blamed, honored and disparaged the female sex

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