So, Who Says There Were Never Female Apostles???

Today is the feast day of St. Miriamne, the sister of St. Philip the Apostle. Holy Miriamne, the Apostolic Virgin, made a vow of virginity and traveled with her brother and St. Bartholomew, preaching throughout Asia. While preaching in Hieropolis, Miriamne was arrested with Philip and Bartholomew after hundreeds were converted to Christianity. The three were crucified, but as they hang on the cross, there was a great earthquake, and the people feared that God was punishing them. They rushed to remove the three from their crosses. Miriamne and Bartholomew survived, but Philip died. Bartholomew went on to India, and Miriamne went on to preach in Asia Minor, where she died a natural death.

What interests me is how the Church seems (and I do say seems) to have supressed the story of her life and ministry. She was one of the first preachers, she performed miracles and converted many to the faith, and yet all that can be found about her is a paragraph or two in relation to her co-ministry with her brother, and the only icon or image of her at all is this icon.

Other female apostles and women important in proclaiming the Gospel and building the Church during the first centuries include St. Junia the Apostle, pictured below, Bishop Theodora, Epiktas, Kale, and, and Ammion- all referred to as elders or prebyters, and many women who had been ordained as deacons and priests before the ban of ordination to the priesthood at the Council of Laodicea in the 4th century, and the ban of the ordination of women to the diacontate under the age of 40 at the Council of Chalcedon in the 5th century.