"What women these Christians have!"
--4th-century pagan philosopher Libanius
"Many women have received power through the grace of God and have performed many deeds of manly valor."
--Clement of Alexandria
"Every woman who makes herself a man shall enter the kingdom of heaven."
--the Gospel of Thomas, a 2nd-century Gnostic work
"She was in the front line in condemning the heretics."
--Jerome, on Marcella
"A woman, however learned and holy, may not take upon herself to teach in an assembly of men."
--the Synod of Carthage, 398 A.D.
"You are the Devil's gateway; you are the unsealer of that tree; you are the first forsaker of the divine law; you are the one who persuaded him whom the Devil was not brave enough to approach!"
--Tertullian, to women
"When [the women] came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven … But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense."
--Luke 24:9-11
"These people do not know that while Barak trembled, Deborah saved Israel, that Esther delivered from supreme peril the children of God … Is it not to women that our Lord appeared after His Resurrection? Yes, and the men could then blush for not having sought what the women had found."
--Jerome, after criticism for dedicating his books to women