John Chrysostom on the Gaze

Blake Leyerle

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 1, Number 2, Summer 1993, pp. 159-174 (Article) Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/earl.0.0116

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John Chrysostom on the Gaze*

BLAKE LEYERLE
The work of feminist film criticism on "the gaze," a term denoting the subordi-

nated position of woman as spectacle, provides a new perspective on the writings of John Chrysostom against those couples living in spiritual marriage. We

discover that his program of reform is carried out through a sustained manipulation of the gaze. This exposing gaze which "feminizes" both the men and the women implicitly lays claim to truthfulness, but when subjected to scrutiny, is
revealed to be a construct and, as such, chiefly revelatory of Chrysostom himself
as the authoritative "bearer of the look."

Feminist film criticism has charted with increasing precision the mechanics

and pleasures of "the gaze," a term denoting the socially ascribed and iconographically confirmed position of woman as spectacle"body to be looked at, place of sexuality, and object of desire"1and man as "bearer of the look." This gendered gaze ensures a hierarchical positioning of male
and female encoded in terms such as active/passive and subjective/objective.2

But if the feminist analysis of the gaze is relatively recent, the conviction that women connote "to-be-looked-at-ness"3 is not. For by the late fourth century of our era, the writings of John Chrysostom, priest of Antioch and then bishop of Constantinople, brilliantly illustrate this same "taking of the female body as the quintessential and deeply problematic object of Academy of Religion, Anaheim, California, 1989. I am grateful for the helpful comments of Susan Calef, John Cavadini, Elizabeth Clark, Patricia Cox Miller, Georgia
Frank and Eric Plumer.

*An earlier version of this paper was given at the annual meeting of the American

1. Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesn't (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 4. See the now classic study by Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Screen 16 (1975): 6-18. See also E. Ann Kaplan, Women and Film: Both Sides of the
Camera (New York: Methuen, 1983).

2. Beth Newman, "'The Situation of the Looker-On': Gender, Narration, and Gaze in Wuthering Heights," PMLA 105 (1990): 1037-38. 3. Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure," 11.
Journal of Early Christian Studies 1:2 159-174 1993 The Johns Hopkins University Press.

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sight."4 Nor is this concern new with the Christian era; Chrysostom's

arguments themselves rest upon an impressive poetic and philosophical

concord on the dangers faced by men viewing women. In a spectacular instance of the shifting of blame, this concern centered not on the roving

eyes of men, but on the transgressive female gaze. Chrysostom's deft manipulation of this language and its attendant fears
in order to influence and control his congregation will be our concern here. Within this broad field, of particular interest will be his means of disciplin-

ing those men and women whose ascetic practices struck him as distinctly dangerous. But because his prose tells us, finally, far less how these couples actually appeared than how he made them visible to his listening and imagining audience, it is chiefly revelatory of Chrysostom himself. Implicit in his construction is the fostering of a desire to see, a complicitous voyeurism. And like all voyeurism, its pleasure depends upon the voyeur occupy-

ing a place of secure and privileged vantage. The ancient Greeks had understood eros to be a pathology of the eyes.
Plato's easy assumption that the source of erotic attachment lies in the visual aspect of the beloved rested upon a tradition as old as Sappho.5 Indeed, so strongly was appearance alone known to stir the passions that

bizarre stories of lovers gripped by passion for lifeless images hover around the fringes of classical erotic lore. Pliny tells us one such story, a tale of a
man so smitten by Praxiteles' statue of Aphrodite that he embraced it one

night, surreptitiously he thought, but left behind a tattling stain.6 It was in the eyes of the beloved, however, that desire's disturbing power
concentrated. For if we can name a sight "striking" or "stunning," or even

profess ourselves to be "smitten or "astonished," these metaphors are

dead to us. But this was not so in classical antiquity where poets cele-

brated in outrageous oxymoron the blows inflicted by the eyes of a lovely

woman, from which might stream "melting shafts," "arrows of pity" or

even "gentle daggers of sight."7 Relying upon such tropes, the historian
4. Naomi Scheman, "Missing Mothers/Desiring Daughters: Framing the Sight of
Women," Critical Inquiry 15 (1988): 63.

5. Sappho 31,16. See also Gorgias' theory of perception in the Helen (Hermann Diels
and Walther Kranz, eds., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker [Berlin: Weidmannsche

Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1960], 2:82, B. frag. 11.15-16; cf. Plato, Phaedrus 251b2,

255c6).

6. Natural History 36.20; cf. Luc-an, imagines 4, and amores 15-16; Cicero, de inventione 2.1. Tales of necrophilia attest to a fascination with the body in its most passive state (Libanius, progymnasmata 11.27; Philostratos, vitasoph. 261; "Drusiana and Callimachus" in The Acts of John 63-70, New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 2, E. Hennecke and W. Schneemelcher, eds. [London: Lutterworth Press, 1965], 245). 7. Agamemnon 241, 741-42; cf. Sophocles, Antigone 781-800; Longinus, On the

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Herodotus could both register and dismiss beautiful women as just so much "eye torture."8

In this combination of the seductive and the deadly, philosophy supported poetry. Socrates warned that a pretty face was "more dangerous than a scorpion" because it could "inject its poison into anyone who looked at it" and, like an archer, "wound even at a distance."9 When Plato

posited an intimate relation between sight and knowledge,10 he privileged

the eye among the senses,11 and in so doing, escalated the stakes. For the

subtle fire that joined object and beholding eye created a pathway of influence that led directly to the soul.12 The vulnerability of the eye to attack or subversion was therefore serious and troubling.13 In the late fourth centu-

ry, this linkage of eye and soul carried all the weight of the obvious. So John
Chrysostom remarks that,
The soul may be compared to the eye, which when it is clear and radiant, is Sublime 4.4-7. Roland Barthes terms this power to seize and take an image the "haptic" function of the gaze (The Responsibility of Forms, [trans. Richard Howard; New York: Hill and Wang, 1985], 238). 8. Algedonas ophthalmon from Longinus' summary in On the Sublime 4.7, quoting Herodotus, 5.18.1 am indebted to Susan Calef for bringing this reference to my attention.

sight is found to be a kind of extended touch or contact at a distance; cf. Timaeus 45b-d.

9. Xenophon,-memorabilia 1.3.13. 10. The classic discussion of this may be found in the Theaetetus 184b-193d where

Here he follows Empedocles who noted that "wisdom is of like by like . . . wisdom being either identical with or closely akin to perception" (Theophrastus, de sensu 10, in Diels and Kranz, Fragmente, 1:31 A. 86). Chrysostom also notes this connection, observing that, "If we wish to convince someone we say, 1We have seen with our own eyes,' not, 'We know by hearsay" (horn. 26.3 in Jo. [M 59.156]). He further insists that "what for us is sight, is for [the powers above] knowledge, ... to look fixedly is to know"
(incomp. 4.731b-c [SC 28.226]).

11. Republic 6.507c. Chrysostom avers that "the eyes are the most beautiful and necessary of all our limbs" (anom. 10.4 [M 48.790]). For his fullest praise of the eye's excellence, see horn. 56.2 in Jo. (M5930S); stat. 1.3 (M 49.21); ibid., 11.3 (M 49.12223); horn. 5.5 in 2 Thess. (M 62.500).

are continually giving off effluences, and when these effluences are of the right size to fit
into the pores of the sense organ, then the required meeting takes place and perception arises" (fr. 89, Plutarch, quaest. nat. 19.916d; cf. Heraclitus, fr. 26, Clem. str. 4.141.2. The Stoics considered that the "percipient was acted upon by external objects, but then

12. The presocratics first articulated this theory. Empedocles states that "all things

had to give a mental act of assent" (Chrysippus, de fato 42-43). This combination
of impression and internal sense was in concord with Aristotle's theory of de anima
3.10-11.

13. John says that sight may be damaged through bad habits (horn. 17.4 in Heb. [M 63.132]). With the pollution of one's eyesight, one pollutes also one's soul (horn. 7.7
in Mt. (M 57.81]).

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sharp-sighted ... in observing even the smallest objects, but when . . . some

foul liquid . . . some dark smoke ... a dense cloud forms before the pupil,
... it sees nothing plainly. . . .In the same way it happens to the soul . . . when it becomes turbid with many passions, (horn. 2.4 in Jo. [M 59.35])14

But if every ensouled creature had reason to fear the undisciplined gaze, ancient medical treatises dwelt with particular sharpness upon the vul-

nerability of males. For it was the phantasias seen at night that caused
nocturnal emissions, that squandering of seed which diminished the essential self.15 And in that curious document of the Peripatetic school, the Problems attributed to Aristotle, the eye is decisively implicated in all

sexual performance and desire. "Why," it ponders, "do both the eyes and
loins sink so noticeably in those who overindulge in sexual inter-

course? . . . Is it because both of these parts obviously work together in the act of intercourse by contracting at the time of emission of semen?" "Why
is it that those who indulge in sexual intercourse . . . suffer a deterioration in vision?" It even musingly enquires, "Why are those men lustful, whose eyelashes fall out?"16

Thus while envy and covetousness,17 drunkenness,18 wrath19 and hatred,20 could all, in the thought of John Chrysostom, pervert the eye and
of evil desires, in the darkness of passions and of worldly matters, we can scarcely look up . . . hardly raise our heads, with difficulty see clearly" (horn. 22.3 in Heb.
[M 63.158]). "[God] made your eye; make it useful to him, not to the devil. How useful gazing at women" (horn. 10.5 in Phil. [M 62.261]). 15. Caelius Aurelianus, Chronic Diseases 5.7. Aline Rouselle notes that medical

14. In his commentary on Hebrews, he notes that "if we bury ourselves in the depths

to him? By contemplating his creatures and praising him, and by withdrawing it from treatises assumed that the sight of women and young boys generally aroused male desire and that erotic pictures or stories aroused desire in most women (Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity [trans. Felicia Pheasant; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988], 65). See also Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure (The History of Sexuality 2, trans. Robert Hurley; New York: Vintage Books, 1985), 130-36. 16. Problems 4.876a.37-876bl, 876b.24-26, 878b.22. This collection is particularly useful for understanding Chrysostom's assumptions as it was compiled in the fifth
century of our era.

17. "The eye of the envious man sees nothing whole and entire" (horn. 55.3 in Jo. [M 59.305]; ibid., 64.4 [M 59.359]; laed. 10 [M 52.471]; stat. 2.5 [M 49.41]). Avarice entered the world when men first saw "opulent homes, extensive fields, herds of slaves, silver vessels, and a great accumulation of garments ..." (ibid., 65.3 [M 59.363-64]). Gold "ensnares" (horn. 3.6 in 1 Thess. [M 62.416]; horn. 37.3 in Jo. [M 59.210]). 18. Drunkenness can be used as a metaphor for involvement in any passion which causes the "eyes [to] see things other than they really are" (Jud. 8.1 [M 48.927]).
19. Sac. 3.14 (SC 272.220); stat. 15.2 (M 49.156).

20. Encountering an opponent, "we are as though blinded by enmity" (anom. 10.7
[M 49.793]).

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take the soul captive, nowhere did the perils of sight impress themselves on

him more forcefully than in his consideration of the viewing of women. A true child of his culture, he cautions his congregation that "the eye not only
of the wanton but even of the modest woman pierces and disturbs the

soul. "21 He too has heard tell of stories in which men became "emotionally affected by statues and stones."22 But he knows that flesh is more exciting:
"Do you not see in the case of radiant bodies, and the lovers of them, how as long as they are in their sight the fire is kindled, the flame rises radiant; but

when anyone removes them far off, all is extinguished, all is quenched?"23
Behind this apprehension, however, it is not hard to detect an element of

voyeurism which was fostered by late antiquity's careful segregation of the sexes.24 That well-to-do women continued to be enclosed in Chrysostom's time, his own approving remarks testify. The well-raised girl, he notes, "is
relieved of every reason which might compel her to come into the gaze of men . . . the virgin must be walled-in on all sides, in the course of the

whole year leaving the house only rarelyonly when urgent and pressing
reasons compel her."25 On those few occasions when she did walk outside,
21. Sac. 6.8 (SC 272.332); cf. Laz. 3.1 (M 48.993). Of the woman who would adorn

herself, he says, "She shot the dart . . . she mixed the poison, she prepared the hemlock . . . and gave it to the wretched soul" (horn. 17.2 in Mt. [M 57.257]; cf. ibid., 68.4). Occasionally, he assigned blame more accurately, noting in this same homily that "Rather it is not she who shot the arrow but you yourself inflicted the critical wound by your wanton looking" (ibid., 17.2 [M 57.257]; cf. stat. 15.3 [M 49.158]).
22. Subintr. 5.45-46, section and line references follow the critical edition estab-

lished by Jean Dumortier, Saint Jean Chrysostome: les cohabitations suspectes; comment observer la virginit (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1955), trans. Elizabeth A. Clark, Jerome, Chrysostom and Friends (New York and Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1979),
178. Hereafter abbreviated as Clark.

23. Hom.3.6inl Thess. (M 62.416). He advises that the eyes fast: "for looking is the food of the eyes. . . . You do not eat flesh, do you? Then do not feed on wantonness by means of your eyes" (stat. 3.4 [M 49.33]). 24. For the classical period see Aristotle, Politics 4.12.19 and 6.5.13; Xenophon, oeconomicus 7.35-36. This issue has received much scholarly attention; for a review of some of this work, see Sarah B. Pomeroy, "The Study of Women in Antiquity: Past, Present, and Future," American Journal ofPhilology 112 (1991): 263-68. In the second century of our era, Artemidorus can still understand dreams of household doors as symbolizing wives or concubines: "burning doors portend the death of a wife. ... of these, the door with the bolt-pin signifies a free-born wife, whereas the door that is held signifies a slave" (oneirocriticon 2.10, trans. Robert J. White, The Interpretation of Dreams [Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes Press, 1975], 97. Hereafter abbreviated as White).
25. Sac.3.17 (SC 272.214-16). For other remarks testifying to the enclosure of wom-

en from society's upper strata, see horn. 61.3 in Jo. (M 59.340); virg. 44.1.11-18 (SC 125.252); ibid.,52.6.100-101 (SC 125.296);esp. ibid.,57.2.32-35 (SC 125.308-10); horn. 12.5 in 1 Cor. (M 61.103); horn. 7.7 in Mt. (M 57.81); stat. 13.2 (M 49.138); propter forn. 2 (M 51.211); quales ducendae 3 (M 51.230).

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the chaste woman was to wrap her seclusion around herself; she was to be

discreetly veiled, sequestering not only her body, but most especially, her
eyes.26 The result of such enclosure was, predictably, to eroticize the female body. Chrysostom can take as a given that "even if we encounter a woman in the agora, we are perturbed."27 The secure investiture of sexuality within women's bodies allowed John to linger upon the threat posed to male chastity by the unexpected sight of merely a woman's bare arms; whereas a virgin imagined as coming suddenly upon a wholly naked man occasions only ridicule at his expense.28 As the locus of desire,29 women's bodies demanded and justified a policy of social containment. To Chrysostom's eye, this divinely intended repression was mapped within the individual body by the contained heart. He thus notes approvingly how
God constructed [the breast] with bones as though with a kind of stone ... so that [desire] might never burst or break through and instantly destroy the whole living creature. . . . Physicians agree that this is the reason that the lungs have been spread under the heart: that the heart being [enclosed] in something softbeating as it were into a sort of spongemight not suffer injury from its violent beating against the hard and resisting sternum, (horn. 5.8
in Heb. [M 63.53-54])

Like the barricaded heart, the enclosure of women protected both themselves and others from a damage their passionate "nature" decreed inevitable.

Given this seclusion of women, it was only in the context of the likely sighting of women that Chrysostom could dwell on the perils of the licentious gaze. In late antiquity, one such prospect was the theater, where actresses flaunted themselves in the public eye.30 But in John's own commu26. "[AJppearing in public or retiring from it does not cause shame. . . . Therefore many women who have been liberated from their apartments walk through the crowded market and are not censured. In fact, they are much admired for their modesty. ... In contrast, not a few of those sequestered have surrounded themselves with an evil reputation" (virg. 66.2.31-42 [SC 125.334-46], trans. Sally Rieger Shore, John Chrysostom: On Virginity; Against Remarriage [New York and Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1983],
103. Hereafter abbreviated as Shore). 27. Thoruboumetha (theatr. 2 [M 56.266]).

28. Fem. reg. 10.74-76, Clark, 241; ibid., 11.2-7, Clark, 242. In his complaints about Plato's republic, John singles out the legislation concerning women. Tellingly, what disturbs him most is that Plato "having stripped virgins naked, brings them into the palaestra and into the gaze of men" (horn. 1.4 in Mt. [M 57.19]). 29. Although the locus of sexual desire for men, women themselves find that "the
tyranny of desire is [not] so predominant" (virg. 52.7.121-23 [SC 125.296-98], Shore, 87; cf. ibid., 34.4.46-49 [SC 125.202]).

30. In his advice on raising children, John insists that it is necessary to have especially

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165

nity, the Christian practice of spiritual marriagea domestic arrangement in which a professed virgin shared a house with a monk in, they claimed, ascetic chastityoffered another fruitful venue. To these contexts let us
now turn.

Much of Chrysostom's extensive tirade against the theater is informed

by his appreciation for the lethal capacity of the eye. Male spectators, he
insists, "receive ten thousand mortal injuries from the sight" of "those

lavishly decked out women on stage," whose faces, clothing, words, and gait all "rise up before their eyes, and lay siege to their souls."31 Returning
from the theater, he sees the male soul "tied," "bound," "fettered," made "ten-thousand times a captive"32 by the sight of women there. The strength of these chains, "harder than any iron,"33 was attributable in part to the mind's marvelous ability to recreate in its interior spaces spectacles once seen. Nor is John himself above exploiting this imaginative capacity to provoke an instructive discomfort in his congregation. Sternly he enquires, At the same time as the tongue breathes the name of the dancer, does not the soul immediately conjure up the image of ... a harlot: her words, her appearance, her face, her roving eyes, her languid gaze, her curly hair, her smooth cheeks and kohl-rimmed eyes? And did you not feel any emotion as I

was enumerating these details? Consider then how they are affected who are
seated in the theater itself, (hom. 18.4 in Jo. [M 59.120])

Indeed so palpably could desire be evoked that Chrysostom can elsewhere respond to their wan protest, "What adulterer, you ask, has been made by these spectacles?" by relying on the hard saying of the gospels, "Who
indeed has not been made an adulterer?"34

It is, however, in his consideration of the monks who live with virgin housemates that Chrysostom charts most clearly the power and the genstrict laws about "the gate of the eyes." The first of these is: "never send your son to the theater so that he may not be utterly corrupted through his eyes and ears" (de inani gloria 56.732-34 [SC 188.154]).

31. Hom. 60.5 in Jo. (M 59.333). "Nothing," says John, "is more full of harlotry and

impetuosity than an eye that endures to look at [scenes of adultery on stage]" (hom. 6.8
in Mt. [M 57.72]). 32. Hom. 7.7 in Mt. (M 57.81); cf. ibid., 6.10 (M 57.72); 68.4 (M 58.645); hom. 42.4 in Ac. (M 60.301). 33. Hom. 42.4 in Ac. (M 60.301); cf. theatr. 2 (M 56.266).

34. Hom. 37.6 in Mt. (M 57.427). "Don't think," says John, "that because you haven't had intercourse with the harlot that you are clean from the sin" (hom. 7.6 in Mt. [M 57.80]; cf. hom. 12.6-7 in 1 Cor. [M 61.105]). For "in the theater, there is . . . planning for unnatural lust, the study of adultery, practical training for fornication, schooling for wantonness, fostering of filthiness, ... [in short] paradigms for indecency"
(hom. 42.4 in Ac. [M 60.301]; cf. theatr. 2 [M 56.267]).

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dered nature of the gaze. Indeed, his focus on the visual aspect of eroticism

is apparent in the scriptural verse that spurs him, in the course of his gospel homilies, to inveigh against spiritual marriage: "if your right eye offends
you, pluck it out, and cast it from you."35 It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that in his treatise devoted exclusively to correcting these men, he locates the attraction of spiritual marriage precisely in the titillation of voyeurism.36 With disingenuous care, he begins, "Perhaps the notion that this pleasure and love can be greater than that afforded by living together in a legal marriage astounds you."37 But as

he dwells on the blooming appearance of the virgins who, having been spared the rigors of child-bearing, can rival, even at forty years old, girls being led to the nuptial chamber,38 he comes at last to his triumphant conclusion: "These men are stirred by a double desire: they are not permitted to satisfy their passion through sexual intercourse, yet the basis for their desire remains intensely potent for a long time."39 With unerring precision, John has mapped the dynamic of a voyeur's pleasurea pleasure
which can unroll only where a gap separates desire from its object. This gap constructs the gaze, its limit, and its pleasurable transgression.40 Against this avidity of the eyes, Chrysostom sets first the fortitude of Job, who "made a covenant with his eyes not to look into a virgin's face, since he knew that it is perhaps impossible to escape injury from doing so." He then recites the words of Jesus, whom he credits with understanding "the mag35. "You know that the saying is not about limbs, but about those who are close to us" (hom. 17.3 in Mt. [M 57.258]; cf. hom. 57.2-3 in Jo. [M 59.314]). These men "must be guilty," he claims, "of ten thousand adulteries, daily beholding them with desire . . . although you have not touched her with your hand, yet you have caressed her with your eyes" (hom. 17.2 in Mt. [M 57.257]). 36. He characterizes the attraction of this arrangement as a "petty lust of the eyes" (subintr. 2.75-76, Clark, 170) and imagines that the monks' pleasure consists in being able "to feast his eyes on the sight of the virgins" (ibid., 12.1-2, Clark, 199). 37. Subintr. 1.42-44, Clark, 165.
38. Subintr. 1.52-60, Clark, 166.

39. Subintr. 1.60-63, Clark, 166. John puts his case as follows. "Even in the act of intercourse there seems to be no pleasure, since the one who has consummated the union also has extinguished the pleasure; on the other hand, the one still in coitus does not experience pleasure, but rather tumult, confusion, frenzy, madness, great turmoil and violent shaking" (oppugn. 2.10 [M 49.346-47], trans. David G. Hunter, A Comparison Between a King and a Monk/Against the Opponents of the Monastic Life: Two Treatises by John Chrysostom [Lewiston and Queenston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1988], 118. Hereafter abbreviated as Hunter).

40. For the analysis of this technique in film criticism, see Christian Metz, "The Imaginary Signifier," Screen 16:2 (1975): 60; Mary Ann Doane, "Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator," Screen 23 (1982): 76.

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nitude of the problem."41 But in his hands, the gospel injunction has

undergone a telling alteration. For he insists that "Jesus did not permit a
man even to look into the eyes of a woman, but threatened those who did so with the penalty laid on adulterers."42

But if this verse suggests that adultery could be carried out through look
alone, the real force of his argument to the men centers in upon the gap between desire and its object: the painfulness of looking with longing upon what one cannot have. For although the philosophical tradition continued to teach that only the ache of privation could give pleasure its sharpest savor,43 the very ease by which pleasure might shift to pain spoke to John of the unseemly mixtures of the devil.44 Obsessional and incapable of being fully satisfied, such pleasures just out of reach remind him initially of Tantalus' hellish punishment.45 Subsequently, they recall even more forcibly Adam's predicament, when God placed him just next to the paradise from which he was debarred, in order, notes Chrysostom calmly, that he might have "a more constant punishment."46 But if, in his treatise to the men, Chrysostom has highlighted privation, when he turns to the women, it is the completeness of union that he labors. Explicitly he levels his accusation, "You carry out the sinful deed, if not by intercourse then by the eyes."47 In part, this charge of "making adulterers
41. Subintr. 4.72-77, Clark, 176, referring to Job 31.1. 42. Mt. 5:28; subintr. 5.21-22, Clark, 177, emphasis added. Elsewhere, Chrysostom comments on this locus of desire: "The eye of the virgin is so beautiful and comely that it has as a lover not men but the incorporeal powers and their master" (virg.
63.2.13-15 [SC 125.326-28], Shore, 99).

43. Foucault, Use of Pleasure, 43. "The struggle is greater on seeing but not possessing the object of desire . . . the pain of captives and prisoners is not greater" (hom. 17.2 in Mt. [M 57.257]). "The terrible feature of this very bitter slavery is that it even persuades them to feel grateful for it; the more they become enslaved to it, the more the pleasure they take in it will be increased" (hom. 65.3 in Jo. [M 59.363]). "Where there is satiety, it is not possible for desire to exist, and if there is no desire, how could there ever be pleasure?" (hom. 22.3 in Jo. [M 59.138]). 44. It is "an unnatural combination of elements" (atopon tina krasin) (subintr. 2.7882, Clark, 170), "an unnatural pleasure" (hedonen atopon) (fem. reg. 4.62, Clark, 220). 45. Subintr. 2 A25, Clark, 167. John concentrates on the inappropriateness of vision: such pleasure cannot be savored "through the eyes" (subintr. 2.8-9, Clark, 167); "he is disturbed not so much by looking as he is when he stretches out his hand to touch what is before him, but is forbidden to take it" (subintr. 2.40-42, Clark, 169). John therefore concludes, "this sort of activity is not pleasant but its opposite and we derive no pleasure from this sight" (subintr. 12.4-6, Clark, 199). 46. Subintr. 2.48-52, Clark, 169; cf. hom. 18.3 in Gen. (M 53.152); Laz. 2.4 (M
48.897).

47. Fem. reg. 1.67-69, Clark, 211. This image could also be used positively. Chrys-

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of all who look at you "48 simply mirrors his condemnation of actresses that we have already noted. But more strangely to our ears, he continues, "I am not [accusing you of] sexual intercourse, for what would be its advantage,

when even the communion of the eyes accomplishes the same thing?"49
What, we might well ask, is this "same thing"? Does he, in fact, believe that virginity could be lost by gaze alone, that sight itself could defile? Remembering his own ready concession, however, that of virginity, "the physical aspect is the least part,"50 we must be prepared to move into metaphor. Behind this charge of physical defilement stand two related social issues. We glimpse the first in his contention that even if the virgin's body remains undamaged, the intactness of her seclusion, which her closed body replicated, has been irrevocably torn. He finds his proof in the openness of her visage: "When a virgin learns to discuss

things frankly with a man, to sit by him, look straight in his face, laugh in
his presence, and to disgrace herself in many other ways, and does not think this is dreadful, then the veil of virginity is destroyed and the flower trampled under foot."51 To appreciate the second issue, we must recall the language in which

antiquity cloaked its understanding of the eroticized female gaze: snares, nets, chains, fetters. The unchaste woman held men in bondage. John
Chrysostom accuses these women of exercising a bruising and imperious dominion over men, through their eyes.52
ostom says that in the eucharist, Jesus "gives himself to those who wish to enfold and embrace him, which they do, all of them, with their eyes" (sac. 3.4.25-29 [SC 272.144]). 48. Fem. reg. 10.26-27, Clark, 239. 49. Fem. reg. 4.63-65, Clark, 221. 50. Fem. reg. 1.36-37, Clark, 210; cf. virg. 5.2.14-24 (SC 125.106-08); ibid., 6.1.3-21 (SC 125.108-10); ibid., 7.1.3-4 (SC 125.112); ibid., 77.1.4-6 (SC 125.366); de non it. conj. 3.204-06 (SC 138.178), Shore, 136; hom. 28.7 in Heb. (M 63.202). With the same reasoning, Chrysostom can insist that "marriage is not called marriage because of coitus . . . but because the married woman is content with one
man" (de non it. conj. 2.96-108 [SC 138.168], Shore, 132).

51. Fem. reg. 11.27-31, Clark, 242. Chrysostom tells us elsewhere of the constraint felt by women in the presence of their husbands; they rarely laugh, and if they do, it is "only during a time of relaxation" (hom. 15.4 in Heb. [M 63.122]). 52. Marriage to rich wives also reversed "natural" roles by "enslaving" men (virg. 53.1.6-21 [SC 125.298-90]; Thdr. 2.5.7-9 [SC 117.70]); see Elizabeth A. Clark, "The Virginal Politeia and Plato's Republic: John Chrysostom on Women and the Sexual Relation," in her Jerome, Chrysostom and Friends, 1-34, esp. 10-11. Feminist film criticism has made the point that a woman's direct gaze threatens to immobilize men (Linda Williams, "When the Woman Looks," in Mary Ann Doane, Patricia Mellencamp and Linda Williams, eds., Re-Vision: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism [Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1983], 86; cf. Beth Newman, " 'The Situation of the Looker-On,'" 1030; Doane, "Film and Masquerade," 83).

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In the Fall he finds a paradigm to link this female domination of men with the work of the devil. In his version, Eve's temptation was orches-

trated through the organ of sight. Dangling before her eyes the globe of
fruit, the serpent put it to her: Why did God deprive you of such enjoyment? Why does he not allow you to share in the good things of the garden? Instead, he grants you the pleasure of looking at them, but does not permit you to possess them and enjoy greater pleasure. . . .[Are you not, therefore, worse off in the garden,] since you experience the more intense pain of having the sight of these things but not the enjoyment that comes from possession? (hom. 16.2 in Gen. [M 53.126-27])

Genesis tells us that she took the fruit and ate it, but John supplies a revealing motivation. He insists that she acted thus because she had "set her heart on the very pinnacle of power."53 Like Eve and like the devil,

the virgins living in spiritual marriage are driven by a desire for selfaggrandizement whose vehicle is the enslavement of men through desire. The burden of guilt thus belongs to the women:54
You have not pronounced [the words] with your tongue, . . . you have not uttered them with your lips, . . . you have not called with your voice, but you

have spoken them more clearly with your eyes. . . .you have wrought indeed, the perfect adultery for the man conquered by your scheme. His madness is
your work. (fem. reg. 1.59-75, Clark, 211)

In the monks' subordination to the virgins, Chrysostom sees the mark of

passion consummated.
This analysis of the contours of the problem simultaneously offers Chrysostom a mode of correction. Skillfully he holds up the prospect of male submission to dominant women to pillory and ridicule. Scenarios follow, each detailing their womanish ways: the monk is found sequestered inside, even holding the distaff for the spinning virgin.55 He is likened to a
53. Horn. 16.4 in Gen. (M 53.130). "Do you see," asks John, "how the devil led her captive, handicapped her reasoning, and caused her to think more highly of herself than her proper worth, in order that she might be puffed up by empty hopes and lose what good she already had?" (hom. 16.4 in Gen. [M 53.129-30]). 54. This accords with Chrysostom's general denigration of the passions as instruments of bondage. He speaks here of "violent and tyrannical pleasure" (subintr. 1.3335, Clark, 165) and of "a slavery crueler than any darkness" (subintr. 12.60-61, Clark, 201). See also his description of the married couple as two fugitive slaves, each individually shackled as well as bound together (virg. 41.2.18-28 [SC 125.236-38]; cf. ibid., 28.1.12-16 [SC 125.182]; ibid., 28.3.25-36 [SC 125.184]; ibid., 47.5.90-100 [SC 125.270]). Chrysostom derives this equation of sexual love with tyranny from Plato, who compared the actions of a tyrant to those of one prompted by eros (Republic
9.573c; cf. Phaedrus 265a). 55. Subintr. 10.72-79, Clark, 195.

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cowardly soldier who, having cast away his weapons, hides among the women.56 The final mark of gender slippage lies in his speech which has itself become stamped with female traits.57

But even while mocking this kind of feminization, Chrysostom is nevertheless intent upon inculcating another sort. When he turns to the task of impressing upon his male congregation58 the perils of viewing women, he

knows that his counsel of flight from temptation will raise the exasperated
cry, "What are you ordering us to do? Retreat to the mountains and be-

come monks?"59 And indeed he sighs over his unreconstructed congregation which continued to find in the chance sight of a prostitute an augury
for good business.60 To dislodge them from their complacent posture as

spectators, Chrysostom calls to mind another vision. Repeatedly describing in bruising detail the scene of the last judgment, he would have the men

remember that there they will be spectacle rather than spectator.61 In that
place there will be no need of accusers or witnesses, for all of one's life will simply unscroll before a mighty audience.62 Then a wrong glance, a bark of

laughter, or even the simple words, "you fool," of which everyone stands
culpable, will be cause enough to precipitate the soul into endless tor56. Subintr. 11.1-11, Clark, 196; cf. subintr. 11.23-30, Clark 197, for the simile of

the denatured lion made into a woman's pet.

57. Subintr. 11.37-40, Clark, 197. 58. Ramsay MacMullen, "The Preacher's Audience (AD 350-400)," JTS n.s. 40 (1989): 504-7.

59. Hom. 7.7 in Mt. (M 57.81). There was reason for this cry, since in recommending the solitary life, he notes that "if a strange thought creates a representation . . . the image is weak and capable of being speedily subdued, because there is no fuel added to the flame from without, arising from actual sight" (sac. 6.3.38-42 [SC 272.312]; cf.
ibid., 6.12.10-13 [SC 272.342]). But inconsistently, he also says that "carnal desire

affects the monks more violently since they do not have intercourse with women"
(oppugn. 3.15 [M 49.375], Hunter, 160).

60. Catech. 2.5 (M 49.240). Artemidorus explains the underlying rationale in his analysis of dream imagery: "prostitutes . . . are auspicious for every undertaking. For they are also called 'hustlers' (ergasimoi) by some people" (1.78, White, 59; cf. 4.9,
White, 191).

61. The prison is thus a better sight than the theater, because it calls to mind the judgment to come (hom. 42.4 in Ac. [M 60.301-02]). Returning from prison, he says, a man encountering a prostitute "won't be caught in the snare of that sight . . . since the fear of judgment rather than that wanton face is before his eyes" (hom. 60.5 in Jo. [M
59.333]).

62. Then "the living word of God, who is aware of what happens in secret, will set their lives naked and exposed before the eyes of all people, and bring the hidden thoughts of human hearts into the open (fem. reg. 3.8791, Clark, 218; cf. hom. 34.3 in Jo. [M 59.196-97]; stat. 6.7 [M 49.92]; ibid., 20.2 [M 49.200]; Thdr. 1.13.1-8 [SC 177.152]; ibid., 2.2.39-44 [SC 177.56]; Laz. 2.2 [M 48.984-85]; ibid., 2.4 [M 48.987]). See his remarks about publicity evoking shame (hom. 39.3 in Ac. [M 60.279]).

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ment.63 Over this scene sits God, the great "Unsleeping Eye."64 This penetrating eye has, moreover, a personal corollary: the eye of conscience, which was "implanted in us from the beginning as a ceaseless accuser."65 By a scrupulous recollection of this ever-vigilant gaze, Chrysostom aims to

bring the erotic eye under the control of shame. His reasoning here merely extends the obvious, noting that, "if anyone were watching, no one would
choose to commit fornication, but even though ten thousand times aflame with that evil, the tyranny of passion is conquered by a sense of shame

[aidous] before other people."66

Against the roving and autonomous male eye, hoarding up spectacles to

savor in the license of imagination's privacy, John sets the stark publicity of
the last judgment. As society constrained women physically, he would constrain men psychically, by reminding them of their ultimate subordination to another's gaze. The reward Chrysostom promises the monks for

renouncing their unorthodox living arrangements is wholly consonant with his analysis of the problem: they will find release from the alluring
eyes of women. "What could be," he asks, "more pleasant than to . . . end

the constant war with desire . . . and to look toward heaven with free
eyes}"67 Chrysostom's corrective advice to the virgins reveals a similar redirec-

tion of the attentive gaze. He begins, unremarkably, by insisting that the true virgin will be known not only by flight from the sight of men, but also
by her veiled eye.
63. "Tell me," John asks, "who does not call his brother a fool? But this renders a

person liable to the fire of Gehenna" (oppugn. 1.8 [M 49.330], Hunter, 92; cf. diab. 7 [M 49.256]), John comments that "with the most violent and bitter punishment [God the judge] afflicts one simply for gazing with wanton eyes" (oppugn. 3.1 [M 49.350], Hunter, 124; cf. hom. 1.8 in Mt. [M 57.23-24]; hom. 60.5 in Jo. [M 59.333-34]). For the importance of the last judgment in John's thought see Francis Leduc, "L'Eschatologie: une proccupation centrale de S. Jean Chrysostome," Proche-Orient Chrtien 19 (1969): 109-134.

64. For examples of God as the Unsleeping Eye, see oppugn. 3.21 (M 49.386); Jud. 8.8 (M 48.941); hom. 7.3 in Gen. (M 53.64); ibid., 8.6 (M 53.75); hom. 3.6 in Jo. (M 59.46); ibid., 4.4 (M 59.52); hom. 12.4 in 1 Cor. (M 61.101); stat. 20.4 (M 49.203);
Laz. 1.8 (M 48.973).

65. Hom. 17.1 in Gen. (M 53.135). Here John speaks of the conscience as "the incorruptible judge which takes its stand against the accused, crying out clearly, as though bringing before their eyes the indictment of the magnitude of their sins" ; cf. hom.
34.3 in Jo. (M 59.196-97); laed. 9 (M 52.470); Laz. 1.11 (M 48.979); ibid., 4.4 (M 48.1011); ibid., 6.1 (M 48.1028). 66. Hom. 12.3 in 1 Cor. (M 61.100).

67. Subintr. 12.51-52, Clark, 201; emphasis added. John comments that, "the beginning of chastity is to abstain from the sight of an improper object" (hom. 1.2 in 2
Thess. [M 62.470]).

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When she makes her regal entrance into the marketplace . . . she walks

... as though through a desert, and when she sits in church she sits in deepest silence, her eyes see none of those in attendance, neither men nor women, but only [her heavenly] bridegroom. . . .she flees not only the looks of the

male sex but also from association with worldly women, (fem. reg. 9.6480,
Clark, 237)

But as his argument develops, it relies increasingly upon the social construction of women as spectacle, with its accompanying assumption that prestige may be indexed from the number and status of the viewers. He insists that a chastely veiled eye itself exercises an irresistible attraction.68 She will become, he promises, a "spectacle, longed for not only by humans,

but by the angels themselves,"69 oreven betterby Christ the bridegroom, "a lover," he claims, "more ardent than any man."70 But Chrysostom is not content to rely solely upon enticement when a stick lies ready to hand. Smoothly he calls up the judgment of the contemporary world which meted out shame and honor with a stringently assessing eye.
Let us not just talk about cohabitation, let us also unfold the subject. . . . Since it is not the Unsleeping Eye they fear, but rather it is the eyes of people

that are alarming to them, let us rob them of this consolation by bringing
these matters which the walls had kept hidden and in shadows into public view, and open the doors to those eager to see. (fem. reg. 10.4349, Clark,
240)71

Although delivered in tones of outrage, Chrysostom is nevertheless offering his congregation, and us, the pleasure of voyeurism, the pleasure of a Peeping Tom that thrives precisely on the possibility of looking without being seen, of indulging a libidinous gaze from a place of privileged vantage.72 This promise of pleasure, however, should not distract us from the
68. Anom. 10.4 (M 48.790); virg. 68.1.5-8 (SC 125.338). "All women will come running to love you" (fem. reg. 11.66-68, Clark, 244; vid. 6.404-08 [SC 138.14850]).

69. Fem. reg. 9.67-70, Clark, 237. "Beautify your face therefore with modesty, holiness, almsgiving, philanthropy . . . these are the colors of virtue, by which you will attract not human beings but angels to you as your lovers; by which you will have God himself to praise you" (catech. 2 [M 49.238]; cf. hom. 28.7 in Heb. [M 63.201]). 70. Sphodroteron (fem. reg. 12.27-28, Clark, 238). 71. This threat of exposure has already been raised by John's terrible prediction that it will be the virgin's companions, who have been privy to her private affairs, who will "broadcast all her secrets" (fem. reg. 8.71-72, Clark, 234). 72. Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure," 9,14; Annette Kuhn, The Power of the Image: Essays on Representation and Sexuality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), 28, 41;
Doane, "Film and the Masquerade," 76.

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violence implicit in the threat of public stripping.73 For the violence and salacious revelation which mark John's vision of the final judgment were a familiar combination to the theater-going public of late antiquity, who could hope to enjoy, among other things, the sight of a goose pecking seeds from between the naked thighs of a low-born girl.74

If Chrysostom's teasing promise to lay bare before our eyes the scandalous and licentious activities of these couples has itself incited a measure of voyeurism, the vignettes he proceeds to detail turn out to be disappointingly banal. Their banality, however, underscores the far more interesting issue of our complicity. Our desire to see, in turn, discloses the mechanics of how Chrysostom has made these couples visible to us : his reforming zeal has been carried out by a prolonged and fascinated gaze.75 As a master rhetorician, he has drawn his audience to his own position and made them sharers in his gaze. Chrysostom's correction of these ascetic couples has, therefore, been carried out through a sustained manipulation of the gaze. We realize that not only has he "feminized" the men by presenting them as passive objects of the gaze, but also, to our discomfort, that he has posed the figure of the

virgin as an erotic object on two levels. Certainly, he has argued that she
functions thus for the monks involved in spiritual marriage, but he has also presented her in this light to his listening and imagining congregation.76 In the body of the virgin we see not only how deeply the boundaries between gaze and touch, desire and contamination have become blurred in the course of these treatises, but also an intensification of the position of woman as "body to be looked at, place of sexuality and object of desire." But perhaps such intensification is inevitable. For consecrated virginity was
73. Chrysostom realizes the violence of this language. He commends the retired life of the monk precisely because they "have a veil for their private faults in their solitude. But when they are brought into public life, they are compelled to strip off their retirement like a cloak and to show everyone their naked souls by their external movements" (sac. 3.10.195-200 [SC 272.180]). He also uses such language in his treatise on virginity, "We do not strip [the virgin's] soul bare and scrutinize its inner state (virg. 7.1.13-14

[SC 125.112], Shore, 9). Elsewhere he wishes that he could undress the souls of those
who swear frequently so that he could expose the ravages of sin (stat. 14.6 [M 49.152]). 74. A scene from the early life of the Empress Theodora (Procopius, Secret History

9.20, quoted and analyzed by Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and
Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity [New York: Columbia University Press,
1988], 320).

75. A point expertly made for the Victorians by Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), 12548 esp. 139.

76. Laura Mulvey uses these same levels to describe the presentation of women in film
("Visual Pleasure," 11).

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never simply a state antecedent to honorable marriage, but rather a claim

to perduring statusa status built up precisely through the public recognition of deeply private acts inscribed upon the body; holiness itself might be
said "to petition the gaze."77 But what of Chrysostom himself? If he has presented all women, but especially ascetic ones, as connoting "to-be-looked-at-ness," he is himself

the prime "bearer of the look." His claim to truthfulness rests ultimately
upon the sheer artfulness of his manipulation of the gaze: what we "see" is just what he would have us see, and as such it is revelatory of no one more than Chrysostom himself. If we then drag our reluctant eyes away from the offered spectacle and focus them instead upon the spectator, our vision

doubles. We see how John's tones of outraged morality as well as his thinly
veiled offers of voyeuristic pleasureboth of which would conscript our

eyescannot be dissociated from the exercise of power. The alignment of

his own sight with that of the privileged eye of God neatly underscores his

authoritative claim. If feminist film criticism has shown us how "the gaze" works to ensure the hierarchical positioning of male and female by feminizing its object, John Chrysostom's own vision, feminizing those who live in spiritual marriage, marks the assertion of clerical superordination over
ascetic lives.

Blake Leyerle is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame

77. With thanks to Patricia Cox Miller for bringing this possibility to my attention.