Sofia Puchkova, a research associate at Leicester University, has been honoured with the prestigious "Eusebius Essay Prize". This annual award from the Journal of Ecclesiastical History of Cambridge University Press recognises the best essay on a topic of early Christian history. The research for her article began when she was on a research stay at the FSCIRE Institute in Bologna as part of the RESILIENCE Transnational Access Programme. We interviewed her about her findings.
Pre-Christian Roots of Baptismal Imagery
Sofia Puchkova’s essay explores the furnace metaphor in baptismal imagery, tracing its roots to pre-Christian Greek and Mesopotamian literature, where the female uterus was likened to a furnace. This suggests feminine connotations in early Christian rituals. The essay examines how this metaphor was integrated into Syrian Christian baptismal catechesis, where it designates a baptismal font and the transformative power ascribed to baptismal water.
Implications for Women’s Studies
Sofia Puchkova’s research has significant implications for women’s studies, as it reinterprets the furnace metaphor in a way that emphasizes female empowerment. By tracing the metaphor’s origins and its application in Christian contexts, the essay suggests that the baptismal furnace image can be seen as an alternative to the well-known ‘womb of the Church, the mother’ baptismal metaphor.
Instead of purely physiological, the furnace metaphor introduces another type of female agency in early-Christian baptismal theology, namely, a creative power of the furnace that purifies and renews the baptized like metals and gives strength to their souls to resist sin as a real furnace bakes clay or dough. The furnace metaphor may appeal more to contemporary women who are engaged in public sphere as engineers, architects, psychologists, and politicians.
Dr. Sofia Puchkova gave us an interview about her study:
During the last year of my Ph.D. programme, I attended online lectures on ancient medicine led by Dr. Olga Jarman. There, I learned a lot about the topic, including how the ancients conceptualised the female body and uterus. One of the images of the female womb was a furnace, which produces bread and clay vessels. It instantly reminded me of the baptismal furnace imagery in early Christian sources. Essentially, after that lecture was over, I already had a hypothesis that these two ‘furnaces’ might be connected. I began to dig deeper, and my idea about the possible origins of the Christian ‘furnace’ metaphor was confirmed: there are connotations between the baptismal imagery of the womb and the furnace.
As an intellectual historian, I know that ancient ideas have had a great impact on today’s Christianity, even though it has changed drastically in the twentieth century under the influence of secularisation. Apart from this, many conservative Christian communities in the West and East still consider women’s roles mainly as that of mothers. It seems that traditional sacramental theology only endorses this approach to women’s vocation. When I think about the potential benefits of my research for women, I can highlight three things. First, my research provides some ideas for the catechists who address today’s women in their lectures. Second, I hope my study can inspire further research in systematic theology, which sometimes draws on ancient sources. In this way, it prepares the ground for a feminist critique of traditional sacramental theology as well. Finally, by connecting medical and baptismal feminine imagery, my essay opens a way for more historical investigations of this sort that can illuminate female agency in ancient theology even further.
My visit to FSCIRE in the framework of the RESILIENCE was certainly beneficial since it is there where I began my research on metaphors. FSCIRE has an excellent and easy-to-use library, where I could consult the sources and literature on the topic. The library staff was also very supportive; they helped me to preorder, find, and copy some books.
Thank you for the interview, Sofia Puchkova! We wish you all the best in your future research.
Here you can find the Essay “The Womb of Flame: The Pre-Christian Origins of a Greco-Syrian Baptismal Metaphor. EUSEBIUS PRIZE ESSAY”, in: The Journal of Ecclesiastical History (2025), pp. 1-20.
***
About the Journal of Ecclesiastical History Eusebius Essay Prize
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History is a quarterly, peer-reviewed academic journal published by Cambridge University Press. It covers all aspects of the history of the Christian church, examining the church both as an institution and in its interactions with other religions and society in general. The journal is recognised as highly authoritative in its field. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History Eusebius Essay Prize is awarded annually for the best essay on a topic related to any aspect of early Christian history, broadly defined as the first seven centuries after Christ.
Here you can find a report of Sofia Puchkova’s Transnational Access stay at FSCIRE Bologna: Sofia Puchkova: Productive TNA Stay, Full of Discoveries – RESILIENCE
Information on the next TNA call for applications can be found here.