Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the allusions to female figures within the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, in order to understand the role played by that specific and recognised group of women who operated in the community of Smyrna during the years in which he lived. Some of these, probably charismatic and wealthy women capable of spending themselves in patronage activities, are called by name (Tavia, Alcé, the wife of Epitropus); others, however, who would otherwise have been forgotten by history, are identified by him in the group of the «virgins called widows» (τὰς παρθένους τὰς λεγομένας χήρας). This research seeks to demonstrate that the “virgins-widowsµ were a group of women (virgins) who, within a larger group of widows, had chosen to live their virginity in a communitarian context already in the first decades of the 2nd century