ABSTRACT
Women saints, holy women-mystics and pious ascetics spring first to mind: in the West, St Frideswide, St Theresa or even Augustine’s Monica; in the East the nun Macrina, the women pilgrims and settlers of the Holy Land, perhaps Chrysostom’s friend the deaconess Olympias. All women of whose lives we know a good deal. Yet this approach is unsystematic. Vaguely at the back of our minds are all those martyrs, St Catherine and her wheel, St Ursula and the 11,000 virgins, as Carpaccio painted them.
