Early Christianity from a woman's point of view is not a tale of domestic drudgery. These are women of spirit who "discover a blazing fierceness of purpose when faced with the impossible". Women like Thecla, for example, who turned away from her expected role as wife and mother, leaving fiancé, home and family to follow Paul and preach the gospel. This kind of thinking didn't go down too well with the imperial authorities and many early Christian women met sticky ends in Roman arenas, thrown to the lions in gladiatorial games.

The turning point came with the conversion of the empress Helena, mother of the first Christian emperor Constantine. Cooper is careful not to overstate Helena's role "as the mother of imperial Christianity", focusing more on the effects of legitimation of the Church as a powerful organisation within Roman society. 

This marks a "an institutional ‘hardening' of the faith" in which women have to renegotiate their place, particularly as worship moved out of households into newly-built basilicas. Cooper presents this as a period when women could influence culture through poetry, reading, and scholarship. 

By the fourth century, books transmitted "ideals of ascetic renunciation and virginal purity" which made chastity seem like an attractive option for women. Communities of virgins and widows flourished, offering a release from volatile husbands and constant childbearing with a high risk of infant and maternal mortality. Women gained like-minded company and the chance to do good works for the poor and vulnerable.

Spiritual power is Cooper's main focus, "not the offices and institutions that had sprouted like weeds" within the Church, and where women are concerned Cooper's narrative makes it clear that spiritual power operates more effectively where structures are looser and improvised. There are implications for developing a deeper theology of women in the church, particularly when the ordination of women remains a contentious issue, but Cooper never strays out of her area of expertise into theological territory. 

Band of Angels is not a book for feminist theologians, who would be familiar with most of the material anyway. It's telling that Cooper's ideal reader is her own mother, and she describes "a desire to write the kind of book that she and my aunt would have wanted to read". 

It is pitched at smart, interested, spirited women. I can already think of a few female friends who would enjoy it, and suspect its success will depend on word of mouth and the quiet tide of female networking.