Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Agnes, Ambrose tells us, was just twelve years old when she died in
witness to her Christian faith. Her young and disturbingly vulnerable body
lies at the focal point of the bishop's rhetorical gaze. "Was there room for a
wound in that little body?" Ambrose asks in the opening pages of his treatise
On virgins.
Yet she, who had no room to receive the sword, had that by which
she conquered the sword. . . . This girl was undaunted by the bloody
hands of executioners, this girl was unmoved by the heavy dragging
of the creaking chains. Now she offered her whole body to the raging
soldier's sword: she had been unaware of death until the present, but
she was ready for it. (de virg. 1.7)1
Erotic images moving just below the text's surface shift our attention from
the girl's martyrdom to her precarious virginity. As we are invited to equate
sword with penis and violent death with sexual intercourse, 2 we find our-
This essay grew out of a talk delivered at the University of Malaga in September 1992 as
part of a lecture series entitled "Las Hijas de Afrodita: Dimensiones de la Sexualidad
Femenina en las Culturas Mediterráneas. " I am grateful to the University of Malaga and
especially to Professor Aurelio Perez Jimenez, director of the annual lectureship program
"Curso de Otoño de Estudios sobre el Mediterraneo Antiquo,"forproviding the occasion
and support for scholarly discussion of the issue of female sexuality in Mediterranean an-
tiquity.
1
Trans. Elizabeth A. Clark, Women in the Early Church (Wilmington, Del : Michael
Glazier, 1983), 108.
2
Lest such a reading seem forced, note that the fourth-century Spanish poet Pru-
dentius, almost certainly familiar with Ambrose's version of the tale, adds several details
which make the sexual undertones of the story still more explicit. In Prudentius telling,
the judge first sentences Agnes to a brothel and only later orders her execution. Pru-
dentius's Agnes responds to the executioner in overtly sexual terms. "When Agnes saw
the savage man standing with his sword unsheathed, with greater joy she spoke these
words: Ί revel more a wild man comes, a cruel and violent man-at arms, than if a softened
28 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
youth cameforth,faintand tender, bathed in scent, to ruin me with chastity's death. This
is my lover, I confess, a man who pleases me at last! I shall rush to meet his steps so I
dont delay his hot desires. I shall greet his blade's full length within my breast; and I
shall draw theforceof sword to bosom's depth. As bride of Christ, I shall leap over the
gloom of sky, the aethers heights'" iperisteph. 14.69-80; trans. Clark, Women in the Early
Church, 112). On the Agnes tradition and Prudentius's place in it, see Anne-Marie
Palmer, Prudentius On the Martyrs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 250-53.
3
The medical literature of the period indicates that Roman girlsfrequentlyexperienced
sexual intercourse before theirfirstmenstrual period: "The anatomical errors made by
the Roman doctors . . . could only be the result of girls being deflowered before pu-
berty. . . . These Roman doctors imagined that the vagina was completely sealed inter-
nally and that this, plus the hymen, made the first act of intercourse very painful.
According to this theory the man had the privilege of opening up the passageforthe
menses." Aline Rousselle, Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity, trans. F. Pheas-
ant (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 33.
Burrus: Word and Flesh 29
loss of Pelagia, next seek to rape Pelagia s mother and sisters. These women
too choose to die by their own agency rather than experience sexual viola
tion, drowning themselves in a self-baptism which is quite literally a death
to the sins of this world (de virg. 3.34-35).
In the stories of Agnes and Pelagia, women, even virginal women—
indeed precisely virginal women—are represented a$ the objects of male
sexual desire: Ambrose's text is replete with the tantalizing imagery of sexual
penetration imagined, deferred, or displaced. But again and again, the threat
of penetration is juxtaposed with the insistence on ultimate impenetrability.
Slowly we become aware that the sexualized bodies of women are carrying
a heavy weight of signification in the writings of this renowned recruiter
and consecrator of virgins, theorist pf virginity, and author of the doctrine
of Marys miraculous hymenal intactness in partu. Women's bodies have
themselves become texts, written by a bishop who struggles to guard his
flock from the all too frequent incursions of worldly or "heretical" influence,
a pastor who strives to keep his churchly bride pure for Christ her bride
groom.4 The virgins' flesh has become ecclesiological and eschatological sym
bol; it has been "made word."
The women of antiquity also told stories of ascetics female martyrs, and
these preserve the traces of their resistance to the male textualization of
their flesh. A woman's folktale5 preserved in the late second-century Acts
of Paul and Thecla specifies that a fire blazes around the young virgin Thecla
when she is thrown naked into an arena full of wild beasts, protecting her
body not only from bestial attack but also from the intrusive male gaze.
Subsequently Thecla stands before the governor who has sentenced her and
boldly preaches to him. Are we to imagine that the fire still covers her
nakedness? It does not matter: at this point the story declares the male gaze
impotent. When the governor finally offers Thecla her clothes, she denies
his power either to clothe or to unclothe her, responding defiantly, "The
one who clothed me while I was naked among the beasts shall clothe me
4
Peter Brown's nuanced discussion of Ambrose's treatment of the body and sexuality
highlights the connections between Ambrose's thoughts on female virginity and his preoc
cupation with the boundaries separating church and world: "In defending the perpetual
virginity of Mary . . . Ambrose . . . found an apposite Te Deum with which to celebrate
twenty years of tense concern for boundaries, for the dangers of admixture, and for the
absolute and perpetual nature of the antidiesis between the Catholic Church and the
formless, disruptive confusion of the saeculum." The Body and Society: Men, Women,
and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press,
1988X355.
5
For arguments in favor of identifying Thecla s story as a woman's folktale, see my
Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of Apocryphal Acts (Lewiston, Ν. Y. : Edwin
Mellen Press, 1987), esp. 53-57, 67-^80.
30 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
6
Women in the Early Church, 87.
7
Margaret Miles, Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the
Christian West (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 58.
8
Women in the Early Church, 101-2. Unlike Agnes, Pelagia, and Thecla, Perpetua is
not a virgin or even generally thought of as an "ascetic." But it seems to me mat the
distinction between virginal and nonvirginal ascetic women is of relatively little use for
understanding women s asceticism from a female point of view. Nor should a strong dis-
tinction be made between nonascetic and ascetic martyrs, since ascetic training can be
shown to be a significant part of the preparation for any martyrdom. On the latter point,
see Maureen A. Tilley, "The Ascetic Body and the (Un) Making of the World of the Martyr,"
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 59 (1991): 467-79.
9
Patricia Cox Miller, "The Devil's Gateway: An Eros of Difference in the Dreams of
Perpetua," Dreaming 2 (1992): 62.
Bur rus: Word and Flesh 31
writers. While the fourth-century authors can hardly be said to have origi-
nated the sexual textualization of women's bodies,10 it is in this period that
female sexuality first comes to occupy a central and clearly articulated place
in Christian thought. We shall see that the imagined physical enclosure or
intactness of the female virgin s sexual organs functions symbolically in the
rhetoric of the fourth century to reinforce social and ideological bound-
aries.11 Closely linked with the construction of orthodoxy, the figure of the
virgin is frequently contrasted with the figure of the heretical harlot, in
language that seeks to delineate the boundaries of acceptable theological
reflection while also creating a sharp distinction between "insiders" and
"outsiders." At the same time, the constructed opposition of virgin and harlot
functions to limit and control the intellectual, social, and sexual behavior of
Christian women.
The second part of the paper is entitled "Word Made Flesh." Such
language is immediately problematic, for we cannot expect to recover the
"fleshly" experience of ancient women or even to discover more than meager
fragments of the "words" with which they represented their own bodies.
Nevertheless, the metaphor appropriately suggests movement away from the
culturally dominant textualization of women's sexual bodies—the "Word"—
toward the subversive "words" through which some ascetic women chal-
lenged and creatively transformed the androcentric construction of their
bodies. And insofar as these subversive words seem to draw powerfully upon
the bodily knowledge of women, I am willing to suggest that they bring us
closer to the female flesh to which they refer.
Even male authors in the ancient period share the awareness that sexu-
ally ascetic women escape certain forms of physical suffering and social
oppression through the rejection of marriage, and furthermore actively resist
self-textualization through their disciplined refusal to arrange or adorn their
bodies for the benefit of the male viewer.12 But in other areas ascetic women's
10
Indeed, it might be argued that the burden of signification placed on women's bodies
is practically universal in patriarchal cultures. Within the Christian tradition alone, evi-
dence for both the attempt to exploit and control women's bodies and women's resistance
to that attempt surfaces as early as Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians and, still more
dramatically, in the Pastoral Epistles.
11
I emphasize "imagined," because, as observed in note 3, the Roman understanding of
female anatomy was notoriously flawed: "Soranus, thought that only dissection would
convince the Roman doctors that in a virgin the vagina was not normally sealed by a
membrane stretching between the neck of the womb and the hymen" (Rousselle, Por-
neia, 27).
12
See, for example, Ambrose's negative comparison of marriage with virginity in de virg.
1.25-30, 55-56. The theme is common in ancient Christian treatises on virginity. Eliza-
beth Clark considers the social benefits of female asceticism from the point of view of a
modern feminist historian in "Ascetic Renunciation and Feminine Advancement: A Para-
dox of Late Ancient Christianity," Anglican Theohgical Review 63 (1981): 240-57; now
32 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
views are strikingly different from the views of male contemporaries. Female
ascetics express little interest in bodily intactness or cloistered privacy, topics
which loom large in male discussions of female virginity. Nor do women s
interpretations of their sexual asceticism closely parallel ascetic mens domi
nant preoccupation with resisting their own sexual desire. Instead, it is the
problem of resistance to male control which most concerns ascetic women.
And once they have escaped the social and sexual domination of men and
constructed an alternative ascetic culture, ancient women are free to seek
new expressions of their sexuality. Those who would likely have found little
sexual satisfaction in patriarchal marriage extend their erotic desire for
knowledge of God and enjoy the intimacies of friendship with other ascet
13
ics. Within the texts of the ancient Christian ascetic movement we can,
then, detect signs of women gaining control over their bodies and sexuality.
We discern the feint traces of the ongoing history of women struggling to
u
free their flesh from imprisonment in the male word and gaze.
also in Clark, Ascetic Piety and Women's Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity
(Lewiston, Ν.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1986), 175-208. Focusing on the period of Christian
origins, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza likewise suggests that female asceticism may be
interpreted as a rejection of the social oppression of patriarchal marriage; see In Memory
of Her (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 90, 220-26, 315.
13
In connection with the question of women s sexual satisfaction within Roman marriage,
consider not only the extremely young age of many Roman brides married to older men,
but also the probable implications of the late Roman assent to the Aristotelian tradition
"which held that women conceived without feeling anything"—a tradition which first
competed with and then superceded the earlier Greek understanding that both male and
female partners must achieve orgasm in order to conceive (Rousselle, Porneia, ET, 32).
14
Elizabeth Castelli offers an admirably thorough survey of ancient Christian texts on
female virginity as well as an incisive feminist analysis; her essay should be consulted by
anyone seriously interested in the topic. See "Virginity and Its Meaning for Women's
Sexuality in Early Christianity," Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 2, no. 1 (Spring
1986): 61-88. My own approach diverges most significantlyfromCastelli's in the following
areas. First, I am more interested in the connections between virginity and orthodoxy in
the androcentric construction of ascetic women's sexuality. Second, I am more optimistic
about the possibility not only that ancient women actively resisted the culturally dominant
androcentric interpretation of their own sexuality, but also that we can recover traces of
their resistance. Third, I would like to consider the question of female sexuality from a
broader and more pluralistic point of view than Castelli's claim that women's asceticism
involved a simple "abdication of sexuality" (p. 88) would seem to imply. Peter Brown notes
that "the virgin state was praised as the state of 'true' joining, and so as the source of
'true' and abiding progeny," and warns that "we should be careful not to dismiss such
hyperboles as if they were merely rhetoric or as if they betrayed a somewhat pathetic
Biirrus: Word and Flesh 33
sublimation of the procreative urge in so many useless male bodies, so many empty
wombs." T h e Notion of Virginity in the Early Church," Christian Spirituality: Origins
to the Twelfth Century, ed. Bernard McGuinn, John Meyendorff, Jean Leclerq (New
York: Crossroad, 1985), 431-32. Brown makes this point in references to both male and
female virgins but I suspect that it is especially relevant to our understanding of female
virginity and sexuality.
15
This is in the context of the scriptural reference to the hundred andforty-fourthousand
virgins "who were not defiled with women" (Rev. 14.1-5).
34 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
the bride as the whole church (symp. 7.4-7) or as the undefined flesh which
is united with the Lord in the incarnation (symp. 7.8).
As we enter the fourth century, we find ourselves in a very different
world, where the sexual bodies of women, above all the bodies of the true
virgin and her counterpart the heretical harlot, are highly charged with
symbolic meaning. Significantly, the earliest treatments of female virginity
and heretical harlotry are found in the writings of Alexander of Alexandria
and coincide precisely with the onset of the Arian controversy and the acces-
sion of Constantine in the east.16 It is with the writings of Alexander s more
famous and prolific successor Athanasius that we shall begin, moving from
there to survey the slightly later works of Epiphanius and the westerners
Ambrose and Jerome, as we attempt to trace the spread of this intensified
interest in the symbolic expressiveness of female sexuality.
Athanasius's fragmentary Letter to the Virgins is one of the earliest
ascetic works that clearly privileges the virginal female body.17 It does so in
terms which were to endure: namely, the invocation of Mary as the first and
highest model of virginity, and the identification of the female virgin with the
"bride of Christ" whom Patristic exegetes generally agreed to be referred to
in the Song of Songs. In the letter, Athanasius argues that Mary must have
remained eternally virgin; for if she had had other children after Christ,
Christ would surely have entrusted her to these children rather than to John
(ep. virg. 59). Unperturbed by the weakness of his sole scriptural argument,
Athanasius moves to emphasize his main point: Mary remained eternally
virgin in order to serve as model or "type" for the female virgins who would
come after her (ep. virg. 59).18 Athanasius proves surprisingly well-informed
about Mary s life. He notes that Mary is to be imitated in her good works,
her study of scripture, her constant prayer, and her moderate practice of
fasting and vigils. The virgin s calm passions and pure thoughts are likewise
16
I deal briefly with Alexander s feminization of heresy and its probable influence on
Athanasius in "The Heretical Woman as Symbol in Alexander, Athanasius, Epiphanius,
and Jerome," Harvard Theological Review 84.3 (1991): 233-39. In his Letter to the Vir-
gins, Athanasius himself names Alexander as one of the sources for his own construction
of the model of orthodox virginity. Lettre aux vierges, in L.-Th. Lefort, trans, and ed., S.
Athanase: Lettres Festales et Pastorales en Copte, vol. 2 (Louvain: L. Dubercq, 1955)
(hereafter ep. virg.\ 72-76.
17
It should be noted that only a single anonymous and fragmentary Coptic manuscript
survives as a witness to this Letter to the Virgins; nevertheless, scholars feel considerable
confidence in assigning its authorship to Athanasius. The issue is carefully discussed by
David Bernhard Brakke, "St. Athanasius and Ascetic Christians in Egypt" (Ph.d. diss.,
Yale University, 1992), 18-24. I am grateful to Elizabeth Clark for calling my attention to
this fine dissertation and to David Brakke for generously providing me access to his work.
18
So important is Mary s exemplary virginity for Athanasius that he is led to suggest
that Paul must have had Mary in mind when he gave his opinions concerning virginity
in his letter to the Corinthians! (ep. virg. 62)
Biirrus: Word and Flesh 35
were evidently attracted to the teachings of his rivals.19 The bishop's primary
rhetorical strategy is to label these rivals heretical and to associate them
with the external forces of evil which attack the virgin s essential "core" of
sexual, social, and doctrinal purity. Athanasius thereby constructs a powerful
link between virginity and orthodoxy.
This link between virginity and orthodoxy and the ecclesiological func-
tion of the virgins as symbols of the true church which is thereby implied
manifests itself not only in rhetoric but also concretely in the parading of
the "symbolic retinue" of female virgins which forms "an integral part of a
bishop's show of power/' in the words of historian Peter Brown.20 As is
frequently the case, virginity receives most attention when it is perceived
to be threatened, and we find many of Athanasius s references to his own
virginal retinue in his account of the violation of the church's virgins which
took place during the public disorder following the accession of the Arian
Gregory to the Alexandrian episcopacy. He writes that
Holy and pure virgins were being stripped naked, and suffering what
is not right or lawful, and if they did not allow it, they placed them-
selves in great danger, (ep. enclycl. 3; cf. apol. sec. 30 and 49)
The image in this text is of Arian Christians raping Nicene virgins, though
that is not necessarily what actually occurred. Elsewhere Athanasius refers
suggestively to the "naked swords" with which the virgins were attacked,
but goes on to describe not sexual assault on the part of Arian Christians
but humiliation at the hands of non-Christians: mock persecution trials,
verbal ridicule, insult, and the like (apol. sec. 15). What actually took place
is less important for our purposes than is Athanasius's interpretation of
events. In Athanasius's view, the Arians were responsible for the public
disorder that led to the dishonoring of the Nicene virgins. And to violate the
virgins constituted a rape of the true church and a defilement of its purity.
The virginal body was not the only female body available for sexual
textualization in the works of the Alexandrian bishop. The orthodox virgin
has her counterpart in the figure of the heretical harlot. If the virgin repre-
sents a community whose boundaries are intact, the heretical harlot ex-
presses the threatening image of a community whose boundaries are
uncontrolled. Just as she allows herself to be sexually penetrated by strange
men, so too she listens indiscriminately and babbles forth new theological
formulations carelessly and without restraint: all the gateways of her body
are unguarded. She furthermore ignores both women's physical restriction
to the private sphere and their corresponding social subordination to the
19
See the far more extended and nuanced discussion of Brakke* "St. Athanasius and
Ascetic Christians in Egypt," 100-173.
20
Brown, Body and Society, 260.
Burrus: Word and Flesh 37
21
Note that Athanasius draws upon the "little women" of 2 Timothy 3.6-7 as well as the
Eve of Genesis 3 to cement the connection between women or female nature and heresy,
as I point out in a slightly expandedformof this same discussion in "The Heretical Woman
as Symbol, " 235-39.
38 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
22
Trans. Frank Williams, The Panarkm of Epiphanius of Salamis, Book I, Sections 1-46
(Leiden: Brill, 1987).
Burrus: Word and Flesh 39
23
This discussion of women and heresy in Epiphanius also appears in 'The Heretical
Woman as Symbol, " 239^3.
24
Charles Neumann considers in some detail Ambrose's dependence on Athanasius's
depiction of Mary. The Virgin Mary in the WorL· of St. Ambrose (Fribourg: The Univer-
sity Press, 1962), 39-17.
40 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
25
David Hunter places both Ambrose's novel use of Mary as a type of the church and
the "virginal" ecclesiology of his interpretation of the Song of Songs within the context of
the ecclesiological debate between Ambrose and Jovinian. "Helvidius, Jovinian, and the
Virginity of Mary in Late Fourth-Century Rome/' Journal of Early Christian Studies 1
(1993): 47-71.
Burrus: Word and Flesh 41
26
Ambrose here compares his opponents to "some dread and monstrous Scylla" whose
cavern "is laid thick with hidden lairs" (de fide 1.46-47). Later in the same work he
expresses awareness that some might be offended by his use of pagan examples and
defends himself on the grounds that Isaiah too spoke of "sirens and daughters of ostriches,"
while Jeremiah warned against the "daughters of sirens" (defide3.4).
42 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
raise a virgin after her fell," he warns the young Eustochium (ep. 22.5).
Even a thought can compromise the true virgin, who must remain spiritually
as well as physically pure. "But if those who are virgins are not saved by
their physical virginity when they have other failings, what shall become of
those who have prostituted the members of Christ?" he demands. "Do not
let the faithful city Zion become a harlot" (ep. 22.6). Protesting that he is
"ashamed to speak of the many virgins who fall daily" (ep. 22.13), Jerome
nevertheless devotes a large portion of his lengthy letter to precisely that
topic, vividly depicting the disturbing spectacle of sexually and socially pro-
miscuous women, while at the same time also satirizing their male seducers,
from whom he is at pains to separate himself.
Jerome's intense preoccupation with protecting the fragile virginal body
from corruption clearly goes beyond his immediate need to defend himself
from charges of improper relations with female ascetics. Yet at the same
time the ecclesiological significance of the female virgin is more ambiguous
for this man who is most at home in the small-group setting of the informal
meetings of largely female ascetic scholars. The boundaries Jerome defends
do not always coincide with those of the episcopally led congregation, and
he is correspondingly hesitant in his use of explicit ecclesiological language
in relation to the virginal body. Nevertheless, for Jerome, as for Athanasius
and Ambrose, the female virgin has an important social referent. Just as the
spread of asceticism creates elite subgroups within the church, so too the
virginal body functions, albeit ambiguously, to define the sacred integrity of
the ascetic community.
Accompanying Jerome's preoccupation with the sexual vulnerability of
the virgin is an extraordinary textual eroticism whose focus is not so much
the disturbingly open bodies of most women (the "fallen") as the tantalizingly
closed body of the virgin.27 He counsels Eustochium,
Always let the privacy of your chamber guard you; always let the
Bridegroom sport with you within. You pray: you speak to the Bride-
groom. You read: He speaks to you. And when sleep overtakes you
He will come behind and put His hand through the opening, and
He shall touch your inner parts; and you will be aroused and rise up
and say: "I have been wounded by love." And you will hear Him
respond: "A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a garden en-
closed, a fountain sealed." (ep. 22.25)
27
Patricia Cox Miller first alerted me to the depth and complexity of this textual eroti-
cism ('The Blazing Body: Ascetic Desire in Jerome's Letter to Eustochium," Journal of
Early Christian Studies, 1 [1993]: 21-45). In an article tracing the widespread popularity
of the Cyprianic notion that prayer and Scripture-reading constitute "speech" with God,
Neil Adkin notes that "Jerome is alone in placing the idea in a prurient context: only he
goes beyond conversation to physical caress." "'Oras: loqueris ad sponsum; legis: ille tibi
loquitur (Jerome, Epist. 22.25,1)," Vigiliae Christianae 46 (1992): 145.
Burrus: Word and Flesh 43
Here more clearly than ever we see the powerful attraction of the unattain-
able female body for the male viewer. Jerome, of course, does not interpret
his own preoccupation with the virginal female body in quite these terms,
but uses the example of Mary to explain and justify his privileging of the
female in ascetic discourse: "Death came through Eve, life through Mary.
And thus the gift of virginity has been bestowed more richly upon women,"
he writes, "since it began from a woman" (ep. 22.21).
In the letter to Eustochium Jerome emphasizes that all ascetic practices
are only of use when they are carried out "within the church." Indeed, by
now we are not surprised to find that he goes still further in his claims:
"Virgins such as are said to be among the various heresies and among the
followers of the vile Mani must be considered not virgins but prostitutes" (ep.
22.38). This link between false virginity, or harlotry, and heresy is further
developed in a much later letter written from Jerome's Bethlehem monas-
tery and addressed to one Ctesiphon, a supporter of Pelagius. In this letter
Jerome claims to demonstrate historically that women have been involved
in the founding and promulgation of all heretical movements, including
those associated with the figures of Simon Magus, Nicolaus, Marcion, Apel-
les, Montanus, Arius, Donatus, Elpidius, and Priscillian. "Now also the
mystery of iniquity is at work. Both sexes trip each other up," he concludes
darkly, in veiled allusion to the circle around his rival Pelagius (ep. 133.4).
Innuendoes of sexual immorality lurk just below the surface of Jerome's
rhetoric, and elsewhere he does not stop short with innuendoes. In this
same letter, he accuses the followers of the heretic Priscillian of shutting
themselves up alone with "little women" and singing words of Virgil to them
"between intercourse and embraces" (ep. 133.3) and he remarks that some
of Pelagius's followers "cling to women and think that they cannot sin" (ep.
133.11). In his unfinished Commentary on Jeremiah, Jerome generalizes
about the relation between heresy and sexual promiscuity, citing 2 Timo-
thy 3.6-7:
clustered around the textualized sexual bodies of both virginal and sexually
active women. What are we to make of all this? How are we to locate this
fourth-century Christian fascination with the sexual bodies of women within
its particular historical and cultural context, as I suggested at the outset we
must do? In closing this portion of the discussion, let me venture a few
generalized claims.
I have hinted at the chaotic conditions which reigned in the strife-ridden
Christian communities of Alexandria and Milan and likewise referred briefly
to the dispute in Rome about the proper role of asceticism in Christian life.
Such local conflicts point to a broader crisis, namely the dramatic reconfigu-
ration of Christianity following the early fourth-century conversion of Con-
stantino The church's new access to imperial power resulted first of all in the
evolution of an innovative, more explicitly political model for the Christian
community itself and, second, in the intensification of intra-Christian dis-
putes. It appeared for the first time possible to enforce unity and uniformity
within the imperially supported church; but in reality the goal of unity
remained more elusive than ever, as the high stakes of imperial rewards and
punishments intensified rivalry and bitterness. These political changes were
accompanied by shifts in ideological perspective and emphasis: fourth-cen-
tury Christians became increasingly concerned with the issue of Christian
self-identity, as they confronted the rapid and sometimes very incomplete
conversion of former pagans, as well as the internal differences which were
made more visible and problematic by the new political process. This con-
cern with Christian self-identity intensified interest in defining a single
catholic orthodoxy and, correspondingly, heresy was problematized through
the construction of negative boundary markers for orthodoxy. Finally, on a
social plane, the fourth century witnessed the emergence of numerous alien-
ated Christian movements which resisted the creation of an imperially sup-
ported catholic orthodoxy. These protest movements were frequently
ascetic, and the authority of the ascetic lifestyle was such that catholic ortho-
doxy was forced either to discredit it or to assimilate it.
In considering this broader context, several factors seem crucial to un-
derstanding the fourth-century sexualized textualization of female bodies:
first, the introduction of a decisively male-dominated political model for
Christian community; second, the anxious concern to establish a unified and
well-defined catholic orthodoxy; and, third, the need to come to terms with
the disturbing influence of various ascetic movements in which traditional
social institutions and the gender roles undergirding them were profoundly
challenged. The men who struggled to construct an imperial, catholic ortho-
doxy were drawn again and again to the problems of boundaries and social
order—above all the order of the relations between men and women. Within
this context the well-bounded and constrained virginal body came to carry
Burrus: Word and Flesh 45
29
I use the term gynocentric, or woman-centered, not only because it parallels the term
androcentric, but also to sidestep lengthy debates about male and female authorship.
The story of Thecla probably originated as a folktale told by and to women, as both
Dennis MacDonald and I have argued MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle: The
Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Philadelphia: Westminster: 1983), 34-53; Burrus,
Chastity as Autonomy, 53-57, 67-80. But the feet remains that we do not know who first
told the story or even who eventually wrote it down. Similarly, the Spanish letter was
probably written not only to but also by a woman, although we cannot be sure of this.
The letter bears the title "to the holy widow Marcella," but its content suggests that its
addressee is a married woman whose husband is still living at the time the letter is
written. D. G. Morin, the text's editor, suggests persuasively that the author is likewise
a woman, on the basis of her playful self-designation "she-ass"; see "Pages inédites de
deux Pseudo-Jérômes des environs de Tan 400," Revue Bénédictine 40 (1928): 291. I find
it curious that scholars nevertheless typically refer to this text as a letter of Bachiarius,
ostensibly following Morin, who in fact suggests tentatively not that Bachiarius authored
the document but that he may have edited it, perhaps serving as secretary to its female
author (Morin, "Pages inédites/' 307). On the basis of Bachiarian echoes as well as the
reference to a practice of Advent retreat also mentioned in the Spanish Acts of the Council
46 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
The story of Thecla is worth recounting in some detail. We are told that
the young Thecla sits in her window for three days and nights listening to
the itinerant apostle Paul preach about the ascetic life. Her fiance Thamyris,
filled with jealous rage, persuades the civic leaders to imprison Paul on
the grounds that he is corrupting the women of the city. When Thecla is
subsequently discovered to have joined Paul in his prison cell, the citizens
are outraged. Paul is scourged, and Thecla is condemned to be burned.
Thecla is miraculously rescued from the fire, and afterwards she again seeks
Paul. When she finds him, she declares that she wants to cut her hair and
follow him. He hesitates. "The times are unfavorable, and you are beautiful,"
he replies. "May no other temptation come upon you, worse than the first,
and you not endure but act cowardly!" Thecla persists, asking him to
strengthen her with baptism, but Paul still refuses.
Paul and Thecla then journey to a neighboring town. Immediately, Alex-
ander, a leading citizen, sees Thecla and desires her. He tries to buy Thecla
from Paul, but Paul again proves peculiarly unhelpful, claiming that he does
not know Thecla. Perceiving Thecla to be unattached and therefore avail-
able, Alexander attempts to embrace her, but Thecla resists forcefully. In
his anger and shame, Alexander brings her before the governor, who con-
demns her to the wild beasts. During the fight in the arena, Thecla is
miraculously saved four times, and in each case females are somehow respon-
sible for her rescue: even a female lion defends her from the other animals.
At one point Thecla, denied baptism by Paul, baptizes herself in a pool
filled with dangerous beasts. Once freed, Thecla stays for some time with a
wealthy female supporter and teaches the women of her household. But
again she yearns for Paul, so she dresses as a man and goes off in search of
him. Paul still cannot fully accept her role; instead, he wonders whether
"some other temptation had come to her." She explains all that has happened
and announces that she is returning to her hometown. Finally, Paul commis-
sions her: "Go and teach the word of God!" Thecla continues to do just that,
"and when she had enlightened many people with the word of God, she
slept with a good sleep."30
This remarkable narrative is preserved in the late second-century Acts
of Paul. Tertullian may not be far off the mark when he reports that a naive
and misguided devotion to the apostle Paul led a certain Asian presbyter to
record Thecla's exploits (de bapt. 17). Surely the Acts author intended for
the interpretation of the story of Thecla to be controlled by the framing
narrative of the Acts of Paul, in which context Paul is to be read as the hero.
of Saragossa (380), Morin suggests that the letter originates in Spain around the year 400
("Pages inédites," 302-7).
30
The Acts of Thecla are translated in Clark, Women in the Early Church, 78-88.
Burrus: Word and Flesh 47
But the presbyter seems to have preserved more than he realized. In the
story of Thecla, we see that Thecla, not Paul, stands at the center of the
narrative. And though Paul initially appears in the positive if ancillary role
of a supernatural helper or "donor figure/' by his repeated failure to satisfy
our expectations for that role he comes precariously close to alliance with
Thecla's villainous opponents. We begin to suspect that he is not in fact
Thecla's helper but is, like the other males in the story, part of her problem.
Indeed, the story of Thecla insists that it is men—whether would-be
lovers or fellow-ascetics—who impede women's struggle to live ascetically.
Viewing women only through the narrow and distorting lens of their own
desire, they vie with one another for the control of women's sexuality. At
the same time, they jealously project their own desire onto women, so that
Thecla's fiance Thamyris suspects her of unchaste relations with Paul, and
Paul can only interpret her rejection of matronly attire as a sign of the
"temptation" to sexual promiscuity. In this context, the central problem of
female sexual asceticism becomes resistance to male control. Consequently,
the story calls attention to the potentially radical social consequences of
women's choice to be sexually continent. Thecla cuts her hair and dons male
clothing in the most blatant enactment of her rejection of traditional female
social roles. Equally significant is the manner in which she shatters the
spatial boundaries which define women's social roles. In the course of the
narrative Thecla moves first to gaze out the window, then to leave the house
alone at night, then to leave her town in the company of a strange man, and
finally to travel independently and speak publicly as a man would.
If it rejects the androcentric sexualization of the female body, the story
of Thecla is nevertheless attentive to female eroticism, as it subtly traces
the transfer of her desire—a process crucial to Thecla's escape from male
domination. Extracting herself from her relationship with her fiance Tha-
myris, Thecla attaches herself instead to Paul, whom she idealizes as her
guide and liberator. However, Paul almost immediately betrays her. When
she is about to be burned at the stake, Thecla looks around for his supporting
presence, but he is already gone. Christ then appears in the form of Paul
to encourage her. The facade of her idealizing construction begins to crum-
ble as we perceive the growing disjunction between the real Paul and
Thecla's vision of Paul, but Thecla is still irresistibly attracted to and depen-
dent on the form she has created, and she must pursue Paul until she can
force him to acknowledge her as a fellow ascetic and apostle. Only then is
she able to free herself from this attraction and move another step in her
social and sexual liberation. Upon receiving Paul's recognition, she discovers
that by extending her desire toward Paul, she has extended herself and has
in fact become the idealized apostle; she no longer needs the form of Paul
interposed between herself and Christ. Now Thecla returns to the spot
where she first heard Paul speak and praises Christ as her true helper. If
48 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
31
My hunch is that the Constantinian shift had a far less direct and profound effect on
ascetic women's experience and interpretation of their own sexuality than it did on men s
view of female sexuality. When we shift the perspectivefromwhich history is written,
the old schema of periodization may no longer be helpful.
Burrus: Word and Flesh 49
32
Morin, "Pages inédites," 297 (L 31-34).
33
Morin, "Pages inédites," 297 (L 35)-298 (L 3).
34
Morin, "Pages inédites," 298 (L 4-6).
35
Morin, "Pages inédites," 297 (L 16)-302 (L 9).
36
Morin, "Pages inédites," 298 (L 15-19).
37
Morin, "Pages inédites," 298 (L 10-12).
38
Morin, "Pages inédites," 301 (L 26-33).
39
Morin, "Pages inédites," 299 (L 2-4).
50 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
makes herself a dwelling place for Christ.40 Some will attack this innovative
Advent practice but, the author insists, the novelty of Christ abrogates all
old laws and institutions.41
Thus, in the fourth-century Spanish letter as in the story of Thecla,
women are concerned with resistance to their husbands' or lovers' desire,
not with subduing their own desire. And even in the later period when
writers like Ambrose focus so intensely on the virginal body, the ascetic
women we hear of are by no means exclusively virgins; nor do they seem
particularly interested in their own physical intactness. The central problem
of women's sexual asceticism is neither the preservation of virginity and
sexual purity nor the suppression of female sexual desire but rather the
resistance to male attempts to exert sexual and social control over women.
If sexual asceticism entails successful resistance to male control, this in
turn liberates the women's sexual energies, albeit in "sublimated" forms; for
the women are now free to direct their eros toward the pursuit of knowledge
and spiritual growth as well as the formation of new relationships. While the
correspondence of men like Jerome and John Chrysostom gives us one side
of the remarkably intense and egalitarian friendships between ascetic men
and women,42 the story of Thecla and the Spanish letter seem to give us a
glimpse into relationships between women who support one another in
their ambitious undertaking of self-formation. The extent to which women
appropriated or even shaped the "bride of Christ" imagery remains difficult
to trace, but the story of Thecla and the Spanish letter suggest that the
experiences not only of labor and birth but also of sexual desire may have
functioned as powerful metaphors for women who sought to articulate the
spiritual and intellectual fertility of their encounter with Christ.
In the Spanish letter as in the story of Thecla, we have pushed beyond
the "word" of the dominant androcentric construction of ascetic women's
sexuality. What we have encountered is, of course, not actual "flesh" but
rather more words—words which are, however, more revealing of the elusive
flesh, representing the utterance of that flesh.
Conclusions
As we have considered the sexuality of ancient Christian ascetic women,
it has become clear that the perspectives which I have labelled androcentric
40
Morin, "Pages inédites," 299 (1. 16-32).
41
Morin, "Pages inédites," 301 (1. 33)-302 (1. 9).
42
See the studies of Elizabeth Clark, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Friends (New York:
Edwin Mellen 1979), and Rosemary Rader, Breaking Boundaries: Male/Female Friend-
ship in Early Christian Communities (New York: Paulist Press 1983). See also Clark,
"Theory and Practice in Late Ancient Asceticism: Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine,"
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 5, no. 2 (1989): 25-46.
Biirrus: Word and Flesh 51
and gynocentric not only diverge dramatically, but to a great extent develop
in active opposition to one another. The culturally dominant androcentric
construction of virginal sexuality, which crystallizes out of the distinctive
needs of the post-Constantinian church, functions to create and defend new
communal boundaries and to reassert and strengthen the gender hierarchy;
in the process, it rewrites women's bodies with an almost violent disregard
for the physical knowledge and experience of women. But at least some
ascetic women of antiquity either ignore or resist this interpretation. For
them, sexual asceticism represents liberation from precisely such male at-
tempts to control women's sexuality, social relationships, and intellectual
strivings; and their articulation of their own sexuality remains attentive to
the knowledge and experience of their own bodies.
Both as historians and as the cultural heirs of the church fathers and
mothers, we must work to reconstruct both sides—or, rather, all sides—of
the ancient Christian debate over the meaning of female sexuality, not least
because one may offer a key to the interpretation of the other. Ambrose uses
the metaphor of the virgin s own enclosed body to confine and control her.
His Spanish contemporary, on the other hand, insists that the very notion
of enclosing God's grace in a single human body is misguided. The Mary of
Ambrose's construction not only conceives without sexual desire but is also
miraculously delivered of her child without pain or physical disruption. But
the Spanish author exhorts Marcella to join with the laboring Mary as she
sighs and groans in her struggle to give birth to her own salvation. Word or
flesh? Or, rather, whose word names her flesh?
^ s
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