This study has been researched for and written between the years 1989 and 1994, sandwiched precariously between my university teaching and administrative duties. A lot of it was done during two terms of study leave in 1992–3. In those years too I took the opportunity to make a third visit to western Turkey, to visit the area where the beginnings of Montanism are usually located and to pass through Cappadocia. In the summer of 1993 I gave a series of lectures on ‘Approaching the New Testament from the Second Century’ for the ninetieth year of the Vacation Term for Biblical Study series, held at St Anne's College, Oxford, and the process of preparation helped me to clarify some of my thinking about second-century Christianities.

I had some interest in Montanism already but would not have ventured into wholehearted study of it at this stage without the invitation from Alex Wright, of Cambridge University Press. I am glad the invitation came, for Montanism has proved to be a fascinating topic – hard to unravel but never dull. I have valued particularly the brief to write about Montanism ‘from a woman's perspective’ and as a result women figure large in this work.

Montanism cannot be a comprehensive study, however. More than one volume is needed for that and only one is allowed me. We know less about Montanism, even about its beginnings, than many writers have liked to assume and what evidence we possess sometimes points (in my opinion) in directions quite other than those scholars have taken.