Episcopa Theodora is the inscription on a 9th century mosaic

Mosaic

Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral...

 in the St. Zeno Chapel of the Church of St. Praxedis

Santa Prassede

The Basilica of Saint Praxedes , commonly known in Italian as Santa Prassede, is an ancient titular church and minor basilica in Rome, Italy, located near the papal basilica of Saint Mary Major...

 in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

. Historically, Theodora was the mother of Pope Paschal I

Pope Paschal I

Pope Saint Paschal I was pope from January 25, 817 to February 11, 824. A native of Rome and son of Bonosus, he was raised to the pontificate by the acclamation of the clergy, shortly after the death of Pope Stephen IV, and before the sanction of the emperor Louis the Pious had been obtained - a...

, who built the chapel for her while she was still alive.

There is contentious debate over what episcopa might mean in reference to this mosaic. Feminist theologians and proponents of the ordination of women

Ordination of women

Ordination in general religious usage is the process by which a person is consecrated . The ordination of women is a regular practice among some major religious groups, as it was of several religions of antiquity...

 point out that, linguistically, episcopa is a Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 feminization

Grammatical gender

Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...

 of the Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 episkopos, the traditional and biblical term for a bishop

Bishop

A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...

. They argue that the Theodora in the inscription is in fact , evidence of the ordination of women in the 9th-century Catholic Church. They also note that the 'a' in the word episcopa was defaced in antiquity, leading to the conclusion that it was understood by contemporaries to indicate her ecclesial status. As a result, many Feminist theologians and proponents of ordination of women

Ordination of women

Ordination in general religious usage is the process by which a person is consecrated . The ordination of women is a regular practice among some major religious groups, as it was of several religions of antiquity...

 use this titular example to argue for the ordination of women in the Roman Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

 today.

Some Roman Catholic theologians and Roman art

Roman art

Roman art has the visual arts made in Ancient Rome, and in the territories of the Roman Empire. Major forms of Roman art are architecture, painting, sculpture and mosaic work...

 scholars take issue with this argument by pointing out that feminizations of clerical titles have traditionally been associated with the wives and widows of early Christian clergy since the Apostolic Age

Apostolic Age

The Apostolic Age of the history of Christianity is traditionally the period of the Twelve Apostles, dating from the Crucifixion of Jesus and the Great Commission in Jerusalem until the death of John the Apostle in Anatolia...

. It is important to note that wives and widows of clergy in early Roman times were given honorific titles such as Presbytera Episkopa and Diakonissa are, for instance, continuously used to this day in deference to the wives of presbyter

Presbyter

Presbyter in the New Testament refers to a leader in local Christian congregations, then a synonym of episkopos...

s and deacon

Deacon

Deacon is a ministry in the Christian Church that is generally associated with service of some kind, but which varies among theological and denominational traditions...

s in the Eastern Catholic Churches and in Eastern Orthodoxy. Since the ancient Roman Catholic Church permitted married bishops many centuries before the discipline of celibate clergy was promulgated, the title Episkopa may have referred to the wife, mother or widow of a Christian prelate or bishop. Therefore, the title Episkopa may have been used for the Lady Theodora for her position as the mother of the Pope, not as an ordained bishop.

Feminist theologians and proponents of women's ordination also have claimed that the white coif found in the mosaic of Theodora indicates that she was an unmarried woman. Others argue that the white coif was a symbol of humility and was worn by many women at the time, regardless of marital status.

Although there is no recorded consecrator of Episcopa Theodora, records from that period are spotty at best.