Soul, Body, and Gender in Late Antiquity: Essays on Embodiment and Disembodiment [1 ed.] 9780367744274, 9780367744304, 9781003157779, 0367744279

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I From India
1 Celibacy, Sexuality, and Monasticism in Early South Asia: A Personal Dialogue with the Past
II Through the Late Antique Mediterranean
II.1 Gender and the Self in Greek Philosophy
2 Light, Knowledge, Incorporeality, and the Feminine in Parmenides
3 Plotinus: Seeing the Self in Unity
4 Sexless Henology, or, Is Plotinus’ One Neutral to Sex and Gender?
5 The Two Aphrodites: Plotinus, Proclus, and the Sublimation of Bodily Desires
6 In/violability as Evidence in Heliodorus
II.2 Gender, The Body, and Christian Theology
7 Male and Female in the Protevangelium Jacobi
8 Identical, But Not Alike: The Resurrection of the Body According to Amphilochius of Iconium
9 Fatherhood and Sonship: The Use of Concepts of Reproduction and Gendered Perspectives in the Ninth-Century Arabic Christian Controversy
II.3 Augustine on Soul, Body, and Sexuality
10 Man, Woman, and Serpent as the Inner State of One Person: Anthropology Based on the Interpretation of Genesis 3 in Didymus the Blind and Augustine of Hippo
11 From Matter to History: Towards a Disembodied Interpretation of Human Sexuality in Augustine
12 Augustine on the Uniqueness of Sexual Desire Among the Passions and on the Ambivalent Character of Sexual Life Within a Christian Marriage
II.4 Bodily Transformations in Hagiography and Magic
13 Shame in the Development of Christian Identity in the Acts of the Christian Martyrs
14 Historicizing Trans Saints: Gender, Sexuality, and Agency in the Life of Pelagia
15 The Im/materiality of the Will?: The Life of Dositheus and Delicia Children in Late Antiquity
16 Menopause and Agency in Late Antiquity: A Case for Magical Gems
17 From the Depths of Sin to the Highness of Holiness: The Female Body as Witness of the Journey to Sanctity in the Life of Mary the Egyptian
II.5 Virility in Roman Rhetoric
18 “Neglegentissimus Vernula”: Manliness and Imperial Legitimation in Pacatus’ Panegyric in Praise of the Emperor Theodosius’ Civil War Victory
19 From Inanity to Ideology: The Allurements of Narrative in Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii
III To the Ancient Mediterranean and India
20 Solomon’s Song of Songs and Adi Shankara’s Soundarya Lahari: A Comparison
IV Appendix
Marianne Sághy: Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Soul, Body, and Gender in Late Antiquity

Including both traditional and underrepresented accounts and geographies of soul, body, gender, and sexuality in late antique history, philosophy, and theology, this volume offers substantial re-readings of these and related concepts through theories of dis/embodiment. Bringing together gender studies, late antique philosophy, patristics, history of asceticism, and history of Indian philosophy, this interdisciplinary volume examines the notions of dis/ embodiment and im/materiality in late antique and early Christian culture and thought. The book’s geographical scope extends beyond the ancient Mediterranean, providing comparative perspectives from Late Antiquity in the Near East and South Asia. It offers critical interpretations of late antique scholarly objects of inquiry, exploring close readings of soul, body, gender, and sexuality in their historical context. These fascinating studies engage scholars from different fields and research traditions with one another, and reveal both change and continuity in the perception and social role of gender, sexuality, body, and soul in this period. Soul, Body, and Gender in Late Antiquity is a valuable resource for students and scholars of Classics, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, as well as those working on late antique and early Christian history, philosophy, and theology. Stanimir Panayotov is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the School of Advanced Studies, University of Tyumen, Russia. Most recently, he is a co-editor of Black Metal Rainbows (PM Press, 2023) and editor of O—Zone: An Ecology of Objects (Punctum Books, forthcoming 2024). Andra Jugănaru (PhD in Medieval Studies) is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of History, University of Bucharest, Romania. Her current research interests involve the use of network theory in the research of late antique epistolography, and her other research interests are late antique monasticism and hagiography. Anastasia Theologou is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Medieval Studies in the Central European University, Vienna, Austria, with a thesis on Plotinus and Sympatheia. Her research interests focus on ancient cosmology, psychology, and epistemology, and the ancient philosophical tradition in Medieval philosophy. István Perczel is Professor in the Department of Medieval Studies at Central European University, Vienna, Austria. He has extensively worked on late antique and patristic philosophy. One of his research projects is on Christian Platonism and Byzantine theology, and he has worked on Syriac Christianity.

Soul, Body, and Gender in Late Antiquity Essays on Embodiment and Disembodiment Edited by Stanimir Panayotov, Andra Jugănaru, Anastasia Theologou and István Perczel

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Stanimir Panayotov, Andra Jugănaru, Anastasia Theologou, and István Perczel; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Stanimir Panayotov, Andra Jugănaru, Anastasia Theologou, and István Perczel to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Panaĭotov, Stanimir, editor. | Jugănaru, Andra, editor. | Theologou, Anastasia, editor. | Perczel, István, editor. Title: Soul, body, and gender in late antiquity : essays on embodiment and disembodiment / edited by Stanimir Panayotov, Andra Jugănaru, Anastasia Theologou, and István Perczel. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023034185 (print) | LCCN 2023034186 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367744274 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367744304 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003157779 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Women—History—To 500. | Sex role—History—To 1500. | Sex—History—To 1500. Classification: LCC HQ1127 .S628 2024 (print) | LCC HQ1127 (ebook) | DDC 305.409/01—dc23/eng/20230822 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023034185 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023034186 ISBN: 978-0-367-74427-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-74430-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-15777-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779 Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

In Memoriam, Marianne Sághy

Contents

List of Contributors Acknowledgments Introduction

xi xv 1

STANIMIR PANAYOTOV, ANDRA JUGĂNARU, ANASTASIA THEOLOGOU AND ISTVÁN PERCZEL

I

From India13   1 Celibacy, Sexuality, and Monasticism in Early South Asia: A Personal Dialogue with the Past

15

UMA CHAKRAVARTI

II

Through the Late Antique Mediterranean

29

II.1

Gender and the Self in Greek Philosophy31   2 Light, Knowledge, Incorporeality, and the Feminine in Parmenides

33

EMESE MOGYORÓDI

  3 Plotinus: Seeing the Self in Unity

57

ANASTASIA THEOLOGOU

  4 Sexless Henology, or, Is Plotinus’ One Neutral to Sex and Gender? STANIMIR PANAYOTOV

77

viii  Contents

  5 The Two Aphrodites: Plotinus, Proclus, and the Sublimation of Bodily Desires

106

CHIARA MILITELLO

  6 In/violability as Evidence in Heliodorus

131

NATHALIE SCHULER

II.2

Gender, The Body, and Christian Theology

139

  7 Male and Female in the Protevangelium Jacobi

141

GYÖRGY GERÉBY

  8 Identical, But Not Alike: The Resurrection of the Body According to Amphilochius of Iconium

161

ISTVÁN PÁSZTORI-KUPÁN

  9 Fatherhood and Sonship: The Use of Concepts of Reproduction and Gendered Perspectives in the Ninth-Century Arabic Christian Controversy

172

ORSOLYA VARSÁNYI

II.3

Augustine on Soul, Body, and Sexuality

195

10 Man, Woman, and Serpent as the Inner State of One Person: Anthropology Based on the Interpretation of Genesis 3 in Didymus the Blind and Augustine of Hippo

197

PETER D. STEIGER AND MAKIKO SATO

11 From Matter to History: Towards a Disembodied Interpretation of Human Sexuality in Augustine

210

ISABELLE KOCH

12 Augustine on the Uniqueness of Sexual Desire Among the Passions and on the Ambivalent Character of Sexual Life Within a Christian Marriage GÁBOR KENDEFFY

236

Contents ix II.4

Bodily Transformations in Hagiography and Magic265 13 Shame in the Development of Christian Identity in the Acts of the Christian Martyrs

267

ANA-MARIA RĂDUCAN

14 Historicizing Trans Saints: Gender, Sexuality, and Agency in the Life of Pelagia

276

MARIANA BODNARUK

15 The Im/materiality of the Will?: The Life of Dositheus and Delicia Children in Late Antiquity

300

JONATHAN CAHANA-BLUM

16 Menopause and Agency in Late Antiquity: A Case for Magical Gems 311 JORDAN POOLE

17 From the Depths of Sin to the Highness of Holiness: The Female Body as Witness of the Journey to Sanctity in the Life of Mary the Egyptian

331

ANDRA JUGĂNARU

II.5

Virility in Roman Rhetoric345 18 “Neglegentissimus Vernula”: Manliness and Imperial Legitimation in Pacatus’ Panegyric in Praise of the Emperor Theodosius’ Civil War Victory

347

SUSANNA ELM

19 From Inanity to Ideology: The Allurements of Narrative in Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii

366

DAVID ROLLO

III

To the Ancient Mediterranean and India

379

20 Solomon’s Song of Songs and Adi Shankara’s Soundarya Lahari: A Comparison

381

SUSAN VISVANATHAN

x  Contents IV

Appendix

395



397

Marianne Sághy: Bibliography ANDRA JUGĂNARU

Index409

Contributors

Mariana Bodnaruk received their PhD from Central European University in 2019. They held positions as Assistant Professor at Al-Quds Bard College in East Jerusalem (2019–2023) and as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the New Europe College, Institute for Advanced Study in Bucharest (2020–2021), and Centre for Advanced Study in Sofia (2021–2022). Currently, they are a faculty member at Bard College and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the CEU Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest. Their research specializes in the social and cultural history of the Later Roman Empire, hagiography, and Marxist transfeminism. Jonathan Cahana-Blum holds a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He conducted postdoctoral research as a Fulbright Fellow at Harvard Divinity School and held a Sapere Aude fellowship from the Danish Council for Independent Research at Aarhus University. He has published extensively on Christian Gnosticism, gender, sexuality, queer theory, and the philosophy of Hans Jonas in venues such as Numen, Journal of Religion, and Journal of the American Academy of Religion. His first scholarly monograph, Wrestling with Archons: Gnosticism as a Critical Theory of Culture, was published with Lexington Books/Rowman and Littlefield. Uma Chakravarti has written widely on Buddhism, the 19th century, gender, caste, and labor, and has an ongoing interest in the history of marginalized groups. Her Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens (2003; second revised edition: 2018) brings together many of these concerns. Currently, Chakravarti is working on a book tentatively titled The Dying Lineage: The Politics of Reproduction in the Mahabharata. Among her recent works is an edited collection titled Thinking Gender, Doing Gender (2017). She is also a filmmaker and has made seven documentary films on women’s lives. Susanna Elm is Sidney H. Ehrman Chair and Distinguished Professor of History and Ancient Greek and Roman Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also a Fellow of the British Academy. Her research focuses on the social, economic, and cultural transformation of the later Roman empire, and her publications include Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church (2012), The Late (Wild) Augustine (2020), and The Emperors’ Eunuch: Civil War, Queer

xii  Contributors Masculinities, and Imperial Representation in the Early Theodosian Age, forthcoming with University of California Press. György Geréby is Associate Professor at the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Vienna. He held the Isaiah Berlin lectures (Oxford, 2018), has been a Keeley Visiting Fellow at Wadham College (Oxford, 2013), Fulbright Teaching Fellow at Rutgers University (2004), and has taught at the University of Pécs (Hungary), Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest), and the University of Liverpool. His areas of specialization are history of late antique and medieval philosophy and theology, including political theology, and has published in, among others, Przegląd Tomistyczny and New German Critique. Andra Jugănaru holds a PhD in Medieval Studies from Central European University (2018) under the supervision of †Marianne Sághy (whose last PhD candidate she was) and István Perczel, and is currently Assistant Professor at the Faculty of History, University of Bucharest. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a fellow at the New Europe College in Bucharest. Her current research interests involve the use of network theory in the research of late antique epistolography, and her other research interests are late antique monasticism and hagiography. Gábor Kendeffy is an Associate Professor at the Theological Faculty of the Károli Gáspár University in Budapest. His field of research includes the thought of Latin Church Fathers and Hellenistic philosophy. He is the author of a monograph in Hungarian on the influence of ancient skepticism on the Church Fathers and another one on Lactantius’ theology entitled What the Evil Is Good For? Isabelle Koch is Full Professor in Ancient Philosophy at Aix Marseille University and Centre Gilles Gaston Granger (CNRS, France). Her research focuses on ethics and metaphysics in Late Antiquity (Plotinus, Porphyry, Augustine), debates around Stoic determinism (Cicero, Alexander of Aphrodisias), and a history of ancient moral concepts from Plato to Augustine. Chiara Militello is Associate Professor in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Catania. She has been Visiting Scholar at New York University and has been invited to give lectures to doctoral students at the universities of British Columbia, Cologne, and Salerno. She has led, as principal investigator, a research project on “Philosophy as Exegesis in the Imperial and Late Antique Ages.” Militello has published four books and 25 papers on ancient philosophy, with a special focus on Alexander of Aphrodisias and Neoplatonic philosophers. Emese Mogyoródi is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of Szeged, Hungary. Her research fields include pre-Socratic philosophy (especially Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and Parmenides), the historical Socrates, and Plato’s ethics and political philosophy. She received fellowships from the Center for Hellenic Studies (Washington, DC), the National Humanities Center (NC), and the Institute for Advanced Study at CEU (Budapest). Her most recent book is Achilles and Socrates: Moral Psychology and Political Philosophy in Archaic and Classical Greece (Budapest, 2012) (in Hungarian).

Contributors xiii Stanimir Panayotov holds a PhD in Comparative Gender Studies from Central European University (2020) and is Assistant Professor in Philosophy and Cultural Studies at the School of Advanced Studies, University of Tyumen, Russia. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Sofia (Bulgaria, 2020–2021). Most recently, he is co-editor of Black Metal Rainbows (PM Press, 2023) and O—Zone: An Ecology of Objects (Punctum Books, forthcoming 2024). István Pásztori-Kupán is Professor of Doctrinal Theology at János Selye University in Komárno, Slovakia, and at the Károli Gáspár University in Budapest, Hungary. He obtained his BA in theology in 1991 in Kolozsvár/Cluj, his MA in 1998, and his PhD in 2003 at the University of Edinburgh, and his dr. habil. at the Debrecen Reformed Theological University in 2010. His main research targets the Christological debates of the fifth century with a special interest in the Antiochene theological tradition. His monograph entitled Theodoret of Cyrus appeared in 2006 from Routledge. István Perczel is Professor in the Department of Medieval Studies at Central European University, Vienna. He has extensively worked on late antique and patristic philosophy. One of his research projects is on Christian Platonism and Byzantine theology, within which he has published studies on Plotinus, Origen, Saint Antony, Evagrius of Pontus, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and more. Also, he has worked on Syriac Christianity, including the Syriac Christians of India. He initiated the digitization and cataloguing of the Syriac and Garshuni Malayalam manuscripts in the Kerala Syrian Christian archives. Jordan Poole is a PhD Candidate in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Liverpool. His thesis examines the manufacturing of Roman-era magical gems, with a focus on the application of microscopy technology to explore gem-carving methods. Ana-Maria Răducan is a researcher in Roman and Byzantine culture at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Levant Culture and Civilization in Bucharest, where she is the project manager of the International Annual School of Byzantine Studies since 2018. She holds a BA in Classics, MA in Medieval Studies, and PhD in Philology (The Meanings of “Eros” in St. Symeon the New Theologian’s Works) from the University of Bucharest. David Rollo is Professor of English at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He previously taught English at the Université Française de l’Océan Indien in the French Département d’outre-mer of La Réunion (1980–1982) and at Dartmouth College (1987–1997). He is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and four monographs: Historical Fabrication, Ethnic Fable, and French Romance in 12th-Century England (1998), Glamorous Sorcery: Magic and Literacy in the High Middle Ages (2001), Kiss My Relics: Hermaphroditic Fictions of the Middle Ages (2011), and Medieval Writings on Sex between Men (2022). Makiko Sato is Research Fellow in Tokyo Gakugei University, Tokyo, and a former Professor at the Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences in Toyama University,

xiv  Contributors Japan. She researches Saint Augustine’s thought, especially the relationship between his theory of language and his anthropology. Her recent publication is “Living as Singing: Augustine’s Understanding of the Voice of Creatures in the Confessiones,” in Augustine and Time, eds. John Doody, Kim Paffenroth, and Sean Hannan (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021). Nathalie Schuler holds a BA in Greek Philology and MA in Comparative Literature and Gender Studies from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. They are currently involved in a project as the chair for New Testament and Greco-Roman culture at the same university, investigating the manuscript tradition of the Pauline epistles. Schuler’s research interests include narratology, representations, and conceptualizations of the (gendered) body in literature and theological thought, and the potential of computational methods for New Testament scholarship. Peter D. Steiger is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Chaminade University of Honolulu, on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. His research is focused on the biblical exegesis of Didymus the Blind, his use of philosophy to interpret the Bible, his theology of the role of the Christian teacher, and how Didymus’ theology may have been the catalyst for several controversies in the late fourth century. He is currently working on Didymus’ commentary on the Book of Job, planning its English translation in the near future. Anastasia Theologou is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Medieval Studies in the Central European University, Vienna, with a thesis on Plotinus and Sympatheia. Her research interests focus on ancient cosmology, psychology, epistemology, and the reception of the ancient philosophical tradition in medieval philosophy. She has published articles on the interrelation between Galen’s and Plotinus’ concept of sympatheia, and on Plotinus’ views on sight. She is research collaborator of the international project “Between Athens and Alexandria: Platonism, 3rd-7th c. CE.” She is also coordinating the Source Language Teaching Group at CEU. Orsolya Varsányi is Lecturer at the Department of Arabic, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest, Hungary. Her primary interests include ninth-century Arabic Christian apology and early modern European perceptions of Islam. Susan Visvanathan retired from Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2022 and is currently Adjunct Professor at the Indian Institute of Science and Educational Research, Bhopal, India. She is the author of The Christians of Kerala: History, Belief, and Ritual Among the Yakoba (1993), Friendship, Interiority, and Mysticism: Essays in Dialogue (2007), and The Children of Nature: The Life and Legacy of Ramana Maharshi. Her most recent books are Wisdom of Community and Work, Word, and the World: Essays on Habitat, Environment, and Culture (both Bloomsbury, 2022).

Acknowledgments

As with most work in academia, projects are only possible due to generous, as well as un/expected collaborations and support. All of those are present and ingrained in the work behind this project, which is the follow-up of the conference Dis/ embodiment and Im/materiality: Uncovering the Body, Gender, and Sexuality in Late Antiquity ‒ In Memoriam Marianne Sághy (1961‒2018), Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, June 6‒8, 2019. First and foremost, all of the editor express their deep gratitude for the inspiring work and pedagogical support offered by our former colleague and teacher Marianne Sághy, who was one of the two original organizers of the conference; much of the work here has the indelible trace of her original and careful scholarship and innovative guidance to difficult and, at times, institutionally unnerving subjects. Sadly, during the work process and right before the conference was to ensue, we lost her to an untimely battle with the body, but it is in the footsteps of her intersectional work between classics and gender studies that the conference, and thus the present volume, walks the strides of progress. As this volume is the result of a conference organized at the Central European University, which at the time was still located and functioned in Budapest, Hungary (now moved to Vienna, hoping for better days in Hungary), we would like to thank the CEU’s Academic Cooperation and Research Support Office, as well as the Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies there, for financially supporting the event, which is now presented to the reader as the current and much revised work in their hand. In this regard, this is not a typical conference proceedings volume. We would also like to thank the Hungarian Patristic Society in helping to promote the conference at a time of dramatic political turmoil, especially with respect to the then ongoing (and, sadly, still raging) Hungarian anti-gender and anti-LGBTQI hysteria. This help proved that in the face of adversity, odd friends make for good politics and scholarly causes. We would also like to thank Jasmina Lukić, who then was serving as the Head of the Department of Gender Studies at CEU, and to Katalin Szende, the then Head of the Department of Medieval Studies at CEU; both of them supported and promoted the much necessary intersection between classics and gender studies, which is far from an obvious friend in both gender and classics departments globally and locally. The conference would not have garnered such success and recognition were it not for the keynote lectures of our three invited female inspirations:

xvi  Acknowledgments Grace Ledbetter (Swarthmore College), Susanna Elm (UC Berkeley), and Uma Chakravarti (Miranda House College). We thank them for crossing the globe to support the efforts of our conference-turned-volume. Anastasia Theologou, apart from being a co-organizer, served also at that time as coordinator of the Department of Medieval Studies. She supervised all of the administrative work and provided an excellent support in financial matters. In addition to these tasks, she ensured the successful implementation of the event, providing a seamless experience for everyone, which is also intangible and invisible to the eye, but a must. The event owes its success, too, to Dunja Milenković, who offered her enthusiasm, kindness, and invaluable help in the organization of the conference. She took care of logistics and provided assistance to the participants, most of whom came from long distances. Mariana Bodnaruk, who were also part of the organizing team, generously supported the good development of the event. Thanks should always be extended to the invisible ones. Thus, gratitude should also go to Chrys Margaritidis, who was the Dean of Students and who, sadly, is not part of the CEU administration team anymore. We would like to warmly thank the technical team of CEU, too. Without them, the interactive side of the conference would not have been possible. Finally, we would like to thank in advance You, the readers of our volume, for taking the time to read it. We hope that it will benefit You, whether you are a student, a scholar, or a passionate reader of Late Antiquity. Just as Marianne Sághy would have suggested, we also hope that the chapters in the volume open up the path for future discussions. —The editors

Introduction Stanimir Panayotov, Andra Jugănaru, Anastasia Theologou and István Perczel

Placing itself at the crossroads of gender studies, philosophies of Late Antiquity, patristics, history of asceticism, and history of Indian philosophy, this volume reunites papers (with one exception) presented at a conference organized by the editors.1 We would like to warmly thank all our colleagues who helped us in finalizing this event, which was initially planned by Marianne Sághy, a professor at CEU’s Department of Medieval Studies, a patristic and feminist scholar, and a practicing Roman Catholic, with the purpose of revealing instances of both continuity and change in the perception and social role of soul, body, gender, and sexuality in Late Antiquity. Finally, and unfortunately, this project turned into an in memoriam conference. A Historical Account of the Present Volume Sadly, losing Marianne Sághy was not the only dramatic event surrounding the work behind this project. In the process, we lost an individual but also an institutional battle related to the institution to which all of us are connected, the Central European University (CEU). Thus, before we walk the reader through the aims and scope of the present volume, we need to spell out the context in which our work happened and why this context is important for us (but not necessarily for the reader). Although the tumultuous particulars conveyed here do not have to be read as entirely motivating our work, they are unavoidably relevant and, at times, central, in much the same way as feminism is important for classics, and vice versa, as we will explain a bit later. Therefore, a historically factual, just, and honest account of these events is required so that the reader can understand the high stakes at work that transcend all levels: quotidian, scholarly, and even political (in the normative sense of the word). Our work, of course, should not be read as, or reduced to, a reaction to these events. Yet, to some extent, it inevitably became that, as none of us was interested in escaping the political reality within which everyone was (and some still are) violently thrown into. The institutional battle was raging and coincided with the time of the conference— although one could not foresee this coincidence when the conference had been planned, as early as 2016—with the heaviest attacks by propagandists of the Hungarian government on CEU, by then the top-ranked Hungarian university, founded DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-1

2  Stanimir Panayotov et al. by (and still supported by an endowment from) the Hungarian-American philanthropist and billionaire George Soros. Those attacks were based on a double hoax. On the one hand, CEU’s existence was reduced to and explained mostly via its work on promoting “gender studies.” One of the editors of this volume belonged at the time to CEU’s Department of Gender Studies, which was instrumentalized as one of the main causes of the attack. Back then, gender studies were already effectively forbidden at the state-funded Hungarian universities, where the former gender studies departments had been closed; now it was CEU’s turn to have its program of gender studies eliminated. It was difficult to understand the point of erasing the discipline, since the department has never had Hungarian accreditation to begin with, so it was unclear what the actual effect for the university would be even if CEU remained in Budapest. It was thus clear that the government needed a political score, not an accreditation scandal, but the latter has always served as a way to explain the attacks, not just to the Hungarian audience but also globally. On the other hand, the propaganda demoted gender studies from the rank of a scholarly discipline into an “ideology” that does nothing more than promoting same-sex relations and gender transitioning. On the internal front, there were issues too. Although instigated by members of CEU’s faculty to respond to the state propaganda and present to the public the university’s manifold activities, including the study of late antique and medieval Christianity, as well as oriental Christianity, CEU’s leadership kept a low profile, trying to comply with the new artificial legal requirements, imposed by the illfamous Lex CEU. That same law made impossible the university’s functioning in Hungary after almost 30 years of successful activity, and it was voted for by the Parliament on April 4, 2017. Then, on October 12, 2018, the government removed gender studies from the list of accredited master programs in Hungary, and the discipline remained as the empty line #15 in the registry. It was in this atmosphere that the conference was held later in June 2019, co-organized by CEU’s Departments of Medieval Studies and Gender Studies. At the time, CEU was already on its way out of Budapest. Back then, we could not foresee the later consequences of and the reactions to the attacks, namely that finally, all the efforts at placating the authorities notwithstanding, CEU had to move to Vienna, Austria; that on October 6, 2020, the European Court of Justice rejected the Lex CEU as contradicting European law. While we were not planning to seek unnecessary political attention, our conference nevertheless had this spontaneous luggage and testified to the relevance of our scientific interests well beyond the original intent. Thus, we considered our conference also as an opportunity to respond, according to our feeble capacities, to the attacks. Even if we did not want to, it would have always been read this way. The Historical and Theoretical Trajectories of the Volume Having exposed the political ramifications for our freedom of expression, we strongly wished to engage classical, religious, and gender studies colleagues of diverging convictions in a meaningful discussion about the gendered aspects of

Introduction 3 late antique and early medieval intellectual and social history, and to prove, against all odds, that such an investigation is scholarly, legitimate, and independent of any preconceived ideology. At the same time, we also wanted to shake some of what we considered as biased (and, at times, even sexist) preconceptions of feminist theory, namely, the standard and very influential uncritical acceptance of Aristotle’s association of materiality and femininity, and a combative defense of the former (materiality) in the name of the latter (femininity and embodiment). We invited scholars of all convictions, historians, intellectual historians, feminist historians, and philosophers, to participate in this debate, with the following words: feminist critics of ancient philosophical theories have focused on theories of matter. Fascinated by Aristotle’s identification of matter with privation, ugliness, and femininity, they often tend to consider mainstream philosophies as sexist, and the positive evaluation of matter and body as the gauge of the liberation of the female gender. Moreover, there is a tendency to link the Christian dichotomy of spirit and flesh to these philosophical theories. On the other hand, Late Antique scholars, following the lead of Peter Brown, have pointed to the function of sexual renunciation in early Christianity in liberating women from their traditional roles played in the Roman society. Yet, rarely, if ever, do scholars who are engaged in gender and sexuality studies attempt to conduct a comprehensive and in-depth study into these interrelated phenomena, while mainstream scholarship on these often turns a blind eye to the gendered perspective. The answer to our call was heart-warming. Many colleagues from all over the world (four continents, to be precise) volunteered to participate, and so also from Hungarian universities, including those with religious affiliation. Apparently, these colleagues were more interested in a scholarly debate about the gendered aspects of history than in an artificial ban on “gender studies.” Then, as now, with this volume, our aim was to close a “gap.” A cursory glance at the existing literature that aims to do so in various humanitarian disciplines, however, often reveals the following problem: even when feminist and/or queer studies intersect with classics, the focus is almost universally on embodiment and matter/ materiality, and the body as such. When classicists try to work with purportedly anachronizing paradigms (gender, queer, decolonial, postcolonial studies), they all too often revert back to immateriality and notions of soul with the sole agenda to critique them. The first group refuses to engage with, say, a feminist reading of the soul (say, in any Church Father). The second group refuses to see the body as something slightly more than a pedagogical nuisance and syllabus diversification despite the best of intentions. The resulting efforts are thus all too often curtailed by a mutual disbalancing that seems to satisfy both scholarly polarities with their selective biases, keeping rather intact their original motifs and research agendas. Yet the real problem as we see it is that there is a striking disbalance in scholarship when it comes to body and embodiment: and while this volume has invited various perspectives on both embodiment and disembodiment, it remains true that

4  Stanimir Panayotov et al. after countless studies from the last 60 years, contemporary academia has come to a standstill with respect to “embodiment.” For example, a brief glimpse at the feminist literature on Plato and Aristotle, on the Church Fathers, etc., shows that this literature is almost never trying to assess such legacies as relevant to ancient psychology. There is, in short, always something more to say about the body and the soul, but the latter term needs currently much more investigation. Is this true when it comes to body and embodiment? With this volume, we partially disagree. Partially, because the millennia-long disparaging of the human body in history, philosophy, and theology has had acute and material political consequences stemming from allegedly “universalist” and “neutral” ideologies, and partially also because, in their current stage of development, gender and feminist studies have come to a certain standstill: there is widespread scholarly consensus that “gendering” or “queering” any phenomenon or author is a legitimate scientific method and strategy. Now, the question that animated us was: can we say something about immateriality and disembodiment—old, allegedly unreconstructed ideologies of “universality” and, for many critics, “oppression”—that is progressive, productive, and meaningful for our contemporary momentum? In the endless engagement with theories of (feminist) embodiment, which are and will continue to be legitimate, are we not missing an opportunity to see parts of a universalist canon (or canons) as progressive—and politically and spiritually helpful? Indeed, our hypothesis in this volume is that such an opportunity should be pursued. Since the volume focuses on Late Antiquity in a wider sense, it also takes into account earlier discourses that have strongly affected late antique debates, as well as the reception and dissemination of late antique themes in the early Middle Ages. The central concepts circumambulated across the volume are soul, body, gender, sexuality, self, matter, im/materiality, and dis/embodiment. Various chapters included tend to use some of these in diverse concatenations—or oppositions. The use of the slash (e.g., in “dis/embodiment”) is not just an ambiguous and stylistic mannerism: it expresses the real opportunity of closing a gap, whereby both notions (embodiment and disembodiment) are taken seriously. The research on body, gender, and sexuality in late antique studies has started a dialogue with feminist theories, which our volume continues, by bringing these two traditions in closer engagement, hopefully with mutual benefits. The 20th and 21st centuries have seen a vast array of research on theories of matter from metaphysical and cosmological perspectives in ancient philosophy, on the body in ancient Christianity, on gender and sexuality in ancient and late antique social history, alongside the voluminous research produced by feminist theorists. However, the various research traditions of ancient philosophy, ancient history, and gender studies have so far largely lacked engagement and dialogue with each other. One of the reasons for this state of affairs is due to the political motivations against the idea that disembodiment and immateriality can be anything but oppressive. The present volume aims to bring together scholars from fields such as patristics, philosophy, social history, literature, and gender studies, to examine the notions of dis/embodiment and im/materiality in dialogue and not separately as we usually find this in topical bibliographies. An outstanding task remains: to extend these

Introduction 5 investigations to the world beyond the Mediterranean and to involve into them parallel phenomena in other philosophies and renunciatory traditions, such as Buddhism or Jainism. The proposed volume is a modest attempt to bring together the study of these different areas and traditions from a comparative perspective. The Mediterranean, the Near East, and South Asia are highlighted within this comparative juxtaposition. Yet, we must admit that this is just a very modest step toward “decolonizing” Late Antiquity, as the bulk of the studies included still deal with the late antique Mediterranean. The book is divided into three main parts, with the first and the last speaking to each other and framing the volume’s comparative and geographically expansive focus torn between India and the Ancient Mediterranean: Uma Chakravarti (Miranda House College for Women, University of Delhi) and Susan Visvanathan (Indian Institute of Science and Educational Research, Bhopal) offer studies on South Asian Late Antiquity, and despite their rather different topics and authorities regarded, they share an intimate and up-close approach to writing, expressing a personalistic scholarly sensitivity that opens and closes the volume with the sense of both openness and rigor. Both authors come from very long career paths, with significant expertise in South Asian thought systems. While Chakravarti’s chapter builds on her groundbreaking studies on gender and class in South Asian monasticism, Visvanathan’s text on the Song of Songs attributed to King Solomon and Adi Shankara’s Soundarya Lahari has important methodological implications for both comparative late antique studies and South Asian cultural and theoretical specificity. The bulk of the volume consists of five thematic and disciplinary sections. The first one, “Gender and the Self in Greek Philosophy,” begins with five studies dealing mostly with late antique philosophy and problems of gender and femininity. Here, the opening text by Emese Mogyoródi (University of Szeged) sets the stage, with some important consequences, for some of the next chapters and for scholarship dealing with the long legacy of both Parmenides and Plato’s eponymous dialogue. Parmenides’ usual modern interpretations acclaim him as a paragon of reason and hence as a pioneer in the foundations of Western science, as we conceive of it today. While this account is not fundamentally flawed, some crucial features of Parmenides’ poem suggest that it might be misleading to present it as a paragon of “logic” of a masculinist type. The poetic ego of the poem is a young man (kouros) who, after a mythical journey on a chariot to the heavens, encounters an anonymous goddess who initiates him into some profound knowledge about both “Truth” and “Appearance.” Further striking details of the poem suggest that Parmenides might have put a great premium on the fact that the knowledge conveyed by his poem is presented as revealed by a female figure, and the poem is thronged with traditional goddesses or female powers, persistently featuring in all three sections (Proem, Alētheia, Doxa), which suggest that they play some explanatory role both in the arguments (Peithō) and the metaphysical (Alētheia) and natural philosophical (Doxa) conclusions. Hence, the question is raised from substantially revised premises: what is the role of the feminine in Parmenides’ poem and philosophy? This chapter also analyzes the role and the symbolism of light and night, connects

6  Stanimir Panayotov et al. them with the poem’s metaphysical and natural philosophical theses and argues that, in contrast to traditional Greek notions, as well as to mainstream modern accounts on the poem, Parmenides not only associated positive qualities with the feminine, but also accorded to it an ontological and cosmological status that is higher than that of the male gender. In her chapter on the self in Plotinus, Anastasia Theologou (Central European University) seeks to build an argument of the Plotinian self as fundamentally indivisible and relevant to “sight.” Consciousness in contemporary analytic philosophy is often derived from Cartesian concepts. Recent studies have suggested that Plotinus was the first philosopher of the Platonist tradition who had outlined a pre- but also non-Cartesian model of consciousness and a new approach for understanding cognition. Theologou claims that the real self is based on an advanced theory of perception founded in V.3.49 and its exploitation of the myth on the birth of perception in the Platonic dialogue Theaetetus, and argues that Plotinus’ theory of consciousness indeed exceeds the Cartesian body-mind dichotomy, not because of the cognitive edifice of the mind manifested in a multilayered self, but primarily due to the role of the “complete sight” identified with the fully developed intellect, which makes the self fundamentally one. The study also exploits a discovery that Theologou made during her Plotinian studies and is presented in another publication, namely, that Plotinus followed Galen’s theory of the numerical difference of the higher or rational soul saying “I” in the human composite, and the soul animating the body of humans, which Galen tends to link tentatively to the demiurgic world-soul animating the cosmic body, and Plotinus explicitly considers a part of the world-soul. This is a major argument against the theory of the “multilayered self,” as the vegetative and animal functions of the human composite in the last analysis belong to another self, that of the world-soul. In the next study, again on Plotinus, Stanimir Panayotov (School of Advanced Studies, University of Tyumen) discusses what he calls “sexless henology” in Plotinus and whether the Plotinian One is somehow relevant to categories such as sex and gender. Panayotov problematizes (which is not the same as “refutes”) the consensus that Plotinus’ original notion of the One is beyond all predicates, including sex/gender, by reviewing a literature that relates Plotinus to the body, sex, and gender. Following the late Zeke Mazur, Panayotov claims that the thesis of the One’s neutrality cannot explain away sex, and discusses what this presumed neutrality means based on defining what he calls “the problem of grammatical neutrality” of the One. By formulating this problem, he formalizes “sexless henology” and how it consists in the One, culminating in unknowability. Moreover, he offers arguments relating this henology to gender and embodiment in Plotinus. He defends the idea that there is a form of de-gendering in Plotinus and problematizes this de-gendering by looking at the relationship between the One and the Indefinite Dyad as guaranteeing the said “neutrality” of the One. In yet another study on Plotinus in this section, but also expanding toward Proclus, Chiara Militello (University of Catania) looks at the “sublimation of bodily desires” in these authors and offers an ambitious reading of Plato’s, Plotinus’, and Proclus’ reading of the two Aphroditai. She shows that in Plotinus and Proclus,

Introduction  7 Aphrodite is “a symbol of a love that is no more associated with the body (i.e., with the feminine principle), but rather with theoretical research, an endeavor typically associated with male traits.” Both Plato and Plotinus describe two Aphroditai—one heavenly and another in the material world. Plotinus links the heavenly Aphrodite with the male principle, immateriality, and purity. While in the commentary on the Cratylus Proclus distinguishes, like Plato and Plotinus before him, two Aphroditai, in his commentary on the Republic there is only one goddess bearing this name. Militello tries to read this philosophical data as fundamentally relying on what she calls a disembodied interpretation. After the studies on the gendered aspects of late antique philosophical theories, Nathalie Schuler, in her essay on in/violability in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica, treats a popular late antique novel, a love story narrating the love at first sight of two young people, Charikleia and Theagenes, their travel from Delphi via Egypt to the Ethiopian capital Meroë, and the trials they must withstand until they can marry and become heirs to the Ethiopian throne. She gives both a literary and a philosophical analysis of the story. In fact, the story, which remained popular in Byzantium, competing with another novel, Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon, gave rise to allegorizations of the Neoplatonist/Alexandrian Christian type, the most important being An Interpretation of the Chaste Charikleia from the Voice of Philip the Philosopher written, according to modern research, by a 12th-century Sicilian monastic preacher, Philagathos of Cerami. These allegorical interpretations were based on the story’s inherent Neoplatonic philosophical background, uncovered by Schuler’s analysis through a close reading of the text. By following the story step by step and focusing her attention on the relationship of soul and body revealed through the descriptions of Charikleia’s physical and psychical trials, in which the inviolability of her body testifies to her supreme virtue, Schuler unfolds the underlying Neoplatonic doctrine of love being a manifestation of the pre-incarnation unity of pre-existent souls. At the same time, Schuler remains attentive to the author’s doubts expressed through an intricate entanglement of narrative voices. The second section groups chapters focused on “Gender, the Body, and Christian Theology.” Three studies explore the topic of dis/embodiment in patristics. In his chapter on the Protevangelium Jacobi, György Geréby (Central European University) proposes a new approach to this second-century apocryphon. Geréby claims that usual classifications notwithstanding, the text is not an “infancy gospel.” It is a late antique short novel, thus eminently a fiction, containing a theological message and written with the help of the Alexandrian cento technique, compiled from scriptural themes and linguistic elements. Another Alexandrian element is that its message is in two layers: a narrative surface and implied secondary meanings. Thus, it is not the naïve story, as it is usually characterized, but rather a learned “narrative theology” addressing much debated contemporary issues. It is written as a response to competing Gnostic and Marcionite narratives, which disparaged the material creation, the role of Israel in salvation history, and the female gender associated, in a very Aristotelian way, to materiality. Thus, the Protevangelium is nothing less than a philosophical myth (also using Plato’s myth of the cave in an inverted form) compiled from elements of biblical narratives. Its deliberate divergencies from the

8  Stanimir Panayotov et al. gospel narrative are subtle sub-generic markers indicating the genre of the philosophical myth, also practiced by the Gnostic teachers. This myth proposes a counter-narrative to the Gnostic views, defends the goodness of the material creation, the equality of the sexes, the importance of fertility and procreation, and the role of the Jewish people in God’s plan for the salvation of humanity. It is thus the irony of fate that the fiction has in a sense supplanted the original gospel narrative and that its elements, such as the descent of the Light into—the birth of Christ in—Plato’s cave, began to be celebrated as evangelic truths. The study of István Pásztori-Kupán (János Selye University/Károli Gáspár University) in its first part discusses the statement in the Apostolic Creed referring to the “resurrection of the flesh” (Lat. carnis resurrectio). The term “resurrection of the flesh” is present only in the Apostolic Creed of the Western Church and, probably, in the so-called Antiochene Creed (379), but is conspicuously absent in the creed of the ecumenical council of Constantinople held in 381, which adopted the more neutral term “resurrection of the dead.” It is difficult to find an explanation for this change. To elucidate this difficult question, Pásztori-Kupán turns to a theologian who was contemporary to the Creeds, Amphilochius of Iconium, a close acquaintance, even friend, of the Cappadocian Fathers, who treated the doctrine of the resurrection in the flesh in extenso. Analyzing Amphilochius’ extant fragments from his homily, “Concerning that the Son Can Do Nothing by Himself (John 5:19),” Pásztori-Kupán proposes that, for Amphilochius, the “resurrection of the flesh” means the persistence in the resurrection of the personal identity, to use a modern concept. To express that the risen body is both the same and different from the earthly body, Amphilochius uses the oxymoron “identical, but not alike.” The meaning of the oxymoron is explained by Pásztori-Kupán on examples taken from everyday life. Orsolya Varsányi (Pázmány Péter Catholic University) expands the volume’s focus by offering a study on a ninth-century Arabic Christian controversy regarding the problem of generation with a careful philological exegesis on the notions behind fatherhood, sonship, and their relatedness to, or functioning as, concepts of reproduction. Such studies are rare, all the more so because Varsányi makes a contribution to late antique philosophical scholarship via a much later debate, which, however, originates in early theological continental circles. Ninth-century Arabic Christian apologists, i.e., the first known Christian theologians who wrote in Arabic— the Melkite Theodore Abū Qurra, the Jacobite Ḥabīb ibn Ḫidma Abū Rāʾiṭa, and the Nestorian ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī—composed their works to defend Christian teachings challenged by Muslims. In this apologetic literature and in the intra-Christian dogmatic debates, they used a wide range of words, terms, or appellatives to refer to a variety of concepts and notions of “body.” This chapter briefly presents and classifies the lexicon of the Arabic Christian authors, putting it into a context that takes into consideration the patristic, Greek, and Syriac Christian heritages. In the following section, titled “Augustine on Soul, Body, and Sexuality,” three studies on the Bishop of Hippo discuss views on the problems of body, gender, and sexuality in his writings. The chapter of Peter D. Steiger (Chaminade University of Honolulu) and Makiko Sato (Tokyo Gakugei University), “Man, Woman, and

Introduction  9 Serpent as the Inner State of One Person: Anthropology Based on the Interpretation of Genesis 3 in Didymus the Blind and Augustine of Hippo,” explores the interpretation of the third chapter of Genesis in the light of the Pauline letters. The authors explain the views on the “inner man” and the relation with the broader anthropological concerns of the eras. The chapter also discusses whether Didymus’ interpretation of Genesis had any influence on Augustine’s or whether Origen’s commentary on De Genesi contra Manichaeos was one of Augustine’s sources. The authors offer what is effectively an anthropologically grounded study based on the textual investigation. Isabelle Koch (Aix-Marseille University) presents an ambitious study on Augustine, philosophy of history, and sexuality studies, employing the idea of disembodiment as a heuristic tool. Augustine is well known for his early commitment to Manicheism, but he progressively felt disappointed by the Manichean theoretical imprecision. Thereafter, he developed an understanding of libido and sexuality that focuses on human will, which he expresses in his exegesis of Genesis 1:27–28 and his intense discussions with Julian of Eclanum. Considering some key texts of the City of God, the Literal Commentary on Genesis, and the Contra Julianum opus imperfectum, Koch explores Augustine’s new conception of sexual lust, rather disembodied or at least disconnected from matter, physicality, and gender. The final study in this section, “Augustine on the Uniqueness of Sexual Desire Among the Passions and on the Ambivalent Character of Sexual Life Within a Christian Marriage” by Gábor Kendeffy (Károli Gáspár University), offers a careful and intricate explanation of this Church Father’s developing views on the earthly aspects of love. The outburst of the Pelagian controversy leads to a change of Augustine’s view on sexual desire. The late view of Augustine, expressed in his anti-Pelagian treatise On Marriage and Concupiscence, is that of a tragic tension pinned down between sexual desire as something evil and marriage as a good connection, which denies that sexual intercourse is possible without concupiscence. Whence the claim that Christian marriage, a good and natural relationship, can only be maintained by committing vicious acts regularly. In the next section entitled “Bodily Transformations in Hagiography and Magic,” five studies, predominantly on hagiography and patristics, deal with Christian vitae, the body as a religious vessel, as well as objects such as magical gems. Ana-Maria Răducan (Institute of Advanced Studies for the Culture and Civilizations in Levant, Bucharest) discusses “Shame in the Development of Christian Identity in the Acts of the Christian Martyrs.” She analyzes the role of shame in the expression of Christian identity, as revealed in several Acts of the Christian Martyrs. The persecutors’ behaviors are meant to humiliate, uncover, or expose the martyrs’ bodies so that their social role and activity are literally put to shame. However, from the martyr’s point of view, shame acquires a positive connotation. Mariana Bodnaruk (CEU Institute of Advanced Studies) focuses on a trans saint in their analysis of The Life of Saint Pelagia. They explore the conceptualization of gender and woman’s agency as a site of struggle. Gender fluidity in the Life is connected to the construction of early Christian identity. Importantly, the chapter documents and analyzes in a systematic fashion the existing scholarly

10  Stanimir Panayotov et al. views on trans protagonists, all the while reading Pelagia as the avatar of whatever scholars since the rise of feminist theology want the saint to stand for: often, as Bodnaruk shows, to the effect of completely different ends and opposing meanings, especially when it comes to gender and its purported emancipating reading of Pelagia’s life. Thus, this is a rare synoptic reading of the problematic of trans saints that demonstrates how source analysis cannot be disconnected from authorial views on gender and agency. Bodnaruk’s chapter on the masculinization of a female saint is followed by an insightful study on the effemination of an important figure in Palestinian monasticism by Jonathan Cahana-Blum (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), namely, Dositheus. In his “The Im/materiality of the Will? The Life of Dositheus and Delicia Children in Late Antiquity,” Cahana-Blum analyzes this sixth-century vita through the feminist criticism of devaluation of materiality and monastic embodiment. Along the way, this theory is further juxtaposed with postcolonial queer theory and reading strategy, which the author uses to assess also how modern readers of Dositheus have mostly exploited this vita to justify practices of religious existence, which are completely unthinkable today. As with Bodnaruk and Cahana-Blum, agency is the main focus of Jordan Poole (University of Liverpool) and his chapter on menopause and magical gynecological gems in Late Antiquity. The author argues that such gems were malleable in their application and not intended to be confined in their use. Poole discusses the multifarious and largely uncontrollable meanings of magical amulets and gems in the Roman world in a field where not much has been said of female agency, which is problematic as gems were popular among both men and women. He also analyzes the perception of menopause and meaningfully relates menopause, medicine, and magic to suggest that, by reading the personal function of gems, we can learn what social consequences there were for women in gynecology: a field historically ridden by gynophobia. Finally, in the closing chapter of this section by Andra Jugănaru (University of Bucharest), the author presents a case study on the body of Mary the Egyptian in her vita attributed to the Patriarch Sophronius of Jerusalem (c. 600 CE). She offers a close study of the Greek text of the vita, tracing the evolution of the ideas of the author with its theological and philosophical consequences, parallel to the development of Mary’s life from an excessive passion toward earthly love, surpassing that of any other contemporary woman, to an excessive dedication to the love of God, surpassing any contemporary man and leading to a Christ-like state. Her chapter explores the functions of Mary’s body in her metamorphosis from the worst of women (certainly not a harlot as, in her dedication to love, she never accepted payment, thus anticipating her later self-sacrifice in repentance) to the holiest of women, through the power of love. Jugănaru also makes the case that the dissociation of body and sin has to be read exactly as relevant to Mary’s female body in an emerging world of piety and dedication that can easily confuse self-refusal and self-misogyny. In the next section called “Virility in Roman Rhetoric,” two studies engage with matters of gender and knowledge: one pertaining to the military world and oration,

Introduction 11 and one to philosophy and rhetorics. In her chapter, Susanna Elm (University of California Berkeley) offers the only chapter in this volume that focuses exclusively on masculinity—and its subversion thereof—in Pacatus’ panegyric in praise of the Emperor Theodosius’ civil war victory. This article begins from “Veste regia indutus,” Marianne Sághy’s article on the masculine models offered by Sulpicius Severus. Pacatus’ panegyric is compared to Severus’ Life of St. Martin. Elm’s study discusses two models of imperial masculinity, or manliness that reflects shifts in late Roman imperial power and its representation. It is with great impatience that the reader should be looking forward to her forthcoming book, The Emperors’ Eunuch: Civil War, Queer Masculinities, and Imperial Representation in the Early Theodosian Age, of which this chapter offers us a glimpse. In the final chapter of this section, David Rollo (University of Southern California) overviews the narrative structure of Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, trying to understand how the text is ingrained not just with embodied and gendered issues but also with the curious problem of the text announcing itself as simply boring. The author analyzes the first medieval rewriting of De nuptiis, that is, the first Arthurian romance, Chrétien de Troyes’ Erec et Enide. He explores the use of fiction and the connections to the classical precedents. Walking the reader between genre and gender, Rollo offers a theorization of Capella’s work as both instructional and gendered. As we said earlier, there is always more to say concerning body and soul, but also gender and sexuality. Because we all have them one way or another, we easily forget that we know so much about them. It is because of this quotidian habit of forgetfulness that we hope the present volume does scientific and—where needed— political justice to these phenomena: by intersecting history, patristics, philosophy, and gender, queer, feminist, and post/decolonial studies in Late Antiquity in an integrative approach, and through the contributions of different scholars who discuss in a dialectic and interdisciplinary way the notions of dis/embodiment and im/ materiality in relationship to soul, body, gender, and sexuality. It is never too late to know what the canons have excluded. It is our role to admit what is included, but is forgotten: the better to live with ourselves now, and not simply in past or future. Note 1 Dis/embodiment and Im/materiality: Uncovering the Body, Gender, and Sexuality in Late Antiquity ‒ In Memoriam Marianne Sághy (1961‒2018), Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, June 6‒8, 2019. See our full statement and the program at, https:// medievalstudies.ceu.edu/events/2019–06–06/disembodiment-and-immateriality-uncovering-body-gender-and-sexuality-late. Accessed May 31, 2023.

I

From India

1 Celibacy, Sexuality, and Monasticism in Early South Asia A Personal Dialogue with the Past1 Uma Chakravarti

From very early times a divide existed between renouncers and householders in the early religious traditions of South Asia, Buddhism and Jainism in particular. While the renouncer pursues salvific goals, the householder creates and sustains production and is also engaged in the reproduction of the family, lineage, and property relations. Celibacy-driven religious/philosophical systems founded monasteries and laid down elaborate rules for sexual abstinence. Since the normative salvation seeker was a man, women came to be associated with the body, sensuousness, and the enticement of men, requiring stringent monitoring. Ironically, women had to fight to be included among salvation seekers and clamored to be let into the sangha, the Buddhist monastic order. Elaborate rules were then laid down for regulating the conduct of monks and nuns in relation to each other as well as between renouncers and householders as they interacted with each other while seeking alms, or teaching the dhamma to the householders, in return for the lay support the latter provided to the bhikkhus. The body and its potential lapses were sought to be kept in order through rules that included dress, deportment, and speech, to prevent sexual lapses and improper conduct. I Perhaps Buddhism is the earliest philosophical/ethical tradition we have records for that created—and sustained—monasticism as an inherent part of its ethical tradition. It is from the Buddhist textual corpus that we can delineate attempts to imagine, and then create, monasticism as the structure within which seekers of the path could find individual salvation; collectively, such journeys could lead to salvation of the many. Prior to the age of the Buddha, scholars have seen traces of evidence for mystics, hermits, and wanderers, within India and outside, to note the possibilities of wandering ascetics/mystics who lived on the fringes of society.2 Their relationship to the world of production and reproduction is not, as yet, known. The narratives of the Buddha’s life, especially the description of the four different “sights” that he witnessed on his forays into the city at Kapilavatthu, give us a clue about what the future Buddha experienced when he looked on to the real world, which seemed to be full of misery. It was these “sights”—a sick man, an old man, and a corpse that shocked him out of the dreamworld within the palace—that DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-3

16  Uma Chakravarti his father had sought to isolate him from the real world outside. In the last of the extraordinary sights that he witnessed, what the Buddha saw was a renouncer, a seeker of the truth, a man in yellow/orange robes who was in search of himself/ liberation, which is why the Buddha himself needed to leave home in search of the path—out of the world of family, power, and wealth. He left home that very night, leaving behind his wife Yashoda and his infant son Rahula, never to return to “worldly” life, which only perpetuated the cycle of misery for new generations of human beings.3 The dichotomy between worldly life and the search for salvation is the fundamental element in the Buddha’s personal journey. The birth of the son and the great departure that follows immediately after is almost inevitable given the polar opposition between the renouncer and the householder. The practice of renunciation predates the birth of Buddhism, but its institutionalization may be attributed to the Buddha, who provided the basic structure of organized renunciate institutions.4 From a loose set of practices that may have existed, such as food being provided by householders/laypeople to wandering mendicants who had no stable shelter, living under trees, or in caves, the Buddhist monastery became the structure that enabled bhikkhus to be sheltered from the elements. Architectural remains tell us of the growth of a monastic order that remapped the life of the wandering ascetic/renouncer that existed in pre-Buddhist times. According to the evidence in the Buddhist texts, the world of production and reproduction is sustained—and perpetuated—through the acts of the householder; working at a livelihood, feeding himself and his family: wife, children, and parents.5 The world of the spiritual seeker is dependent on that very structure, but it is precisely that kind of existence that prevents a man from seeking—and achieving—final liberation. This opposition was built into the elaborate rules that the Buddha laid down to organize the code of conduct for the renunciate/bhikkhu so that he might pursue his goal of liberation with single-minded attention. These elaborate rules came to be laid down, rule by rule, over the years, to ensure that the Buddhist monk at least was guided by a set of rules that were to be stringently observed. These rules are part of the Vinaya Piṭaka6 and came to be known as the Pāṭimokkha. In order that they should be well understood, the bhikkhus chanted them at a fortnightly assembly of bhikkhus on uposatha days. The ceremony enabled a bhikkhu to acknowledge his wrongdoing, in case he had not done so before, and the assembly might then lay down the form of expiation required to be observed by the errant bhikkhu. According to the Vinaya Piṭaka, each individual rule had a context in which the rule came to be pronounced. In an earlier study of the Pāṭimokkha rules, I had sought to uncover the basic structure of ideas that informed the laying down of the rule. An analysis of the Pāṭimokkha rules reveals that a basic opposition between the householder and the renouncer underpinned the rules. Further, there was the opposition between the brahmanas who continued to live their lives as householders, unlike the bhikkhus, leading to a structural opposition between them, and finally there was a clear opposition between the Buddhist bhikkhu and those renouncers who followed other beliefs and practices, termed the anna tithiyas, or other sects in the Pāli texts. They too followed rules that may not have been similar to those followed by the Buddhist bhikkhus but conformed to a broad pattern among renouncers.7

Celibacy, Sexuality, and Monasticism in Early South Asia  17 For the argument I wish to make in this chapter, the basic opposition between the Buddhist bhikkhu and the householder is derived from the essential principle of celibacy that must be observed in the case of the bhikkhu, as well as the pursuit of householder norms and concerns for those who lived a lay life. These would include the legitimate expression of sexuality within marriage, the procreation of children, and the reproduction of family, including property systems. Many of the rules laid down derive from fundamental difference that must be observed between householders and renouncers, and it was necessary to maintain this difference because the very householders who fed the bhikkhus expected to see this difference being observed. An example will make clear the point I am trying to make: As the viharas, the staying places for the bhikkhus during the rainy season (it was this season that led to the construction of viharas for the bhikkhus) became stocked with essential items for the use of the bhikkhus such as beds and mattresses and even pillows, the living arrangements began to approximate the homes of the householders. The pillow and its size became a matter of regulation and detail. One account of how a rule came to be laid down is instructive. Some deviant monks began to use a pillow that was large so people who came to visit the vihara murmured among themselves, “like those who still enjoy the pleasures of the world,” a coded reference to the world of the rich householder. The Buddha then regulated the permissible size of the pillow a bhikkhu could use.8 The set of regulations laid down for the bhikkhunī is much more explicit, as we will see in later sections. However, first we must recount the circumstances that led to the admission of women into the sangha. II According to the Vinaya Piṭaka, the Buddha was once visiting Kapilavatthu as part of his travels across what is now northern Bihar and Uttar Pradesh—his normal beat, if we can call it that. It was here that his foster mother, Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī, made her first plea to let her join the sangha as a bhikkhunī, devoted solely to a spiritual life that would, ultimately, lead to her own liberation. She said: “It would be well, Lord, if women should be allowed to renounce their homes and enter the homeless state, under the doctrine and discipline proclaimed by the Tathāgata.” The Buddha’s response was a clear rebuff, a straightforward and uncompromising “No.” “Enough, O Gotamī! Let it not please thee that women should be allowed to do so.” Mahāpajāpatī repeated her request twice more. Each time she was met with the same response.

18  Uma Chakravarti Finally, a sad and sorrowful Gotamī, denied permission to enter the homeless state, departed weeping and in tears.9 In due course, the Buddha left Kapilavatthu, his own birthplace, where he himself had left home, father, foster-mother, wife, and his newly-born son many years ago, to travel across some three hundred miles to the mahavana in Vesali. Determined, and not reconciled to this first and strongly articulated refusal to let Gotamī join the sangha, Mahāpajāpatī cut off her hair, wore ochre coloured robes and marched off to Vesali accompanied by a number of women of the Sakyan clan and reached Vesali. By then she had swollen feet and was covered with dust. In this condition she waited at the porch to the vihara, weeping and sorrowful. It was here that the soft-hearted Ananda saw Gotamī, and reached out to her, asked: “Why [do you stand] there, outside the porch, with swollen feet and covered in dust, sad and sorrowful, weeping and in tears?” When Ananda heard Gotamī say that she is grieving because the Buddha had refused women entry into the sangha, refusing them permission to leave home and enter the homeless state under the doctrine and discipline that he himself has proclaimed as the truth finder, he was moved by Gotamī’s sorrow. Ananda then intervened on Gotamī’s behalf, first describing the condition she is in—dusty, tired, and sorrowful—as she restated her plea. He went to the Buddha and, throwing in his own gloss about her condition, said: “It were well, Lord, if women were to have permission granted to them as she (Mahāpajāpatī) desires.” We may note that the plea has gone from a personal request to a collective one, which has been hidden in the description of Gotamī’s condition—hot, dusty, and tired from walking many hundreds of miles. The Buddha refuses, firmly. Not to be thwarted from his own sympathies for the cause of women’s entry into the sangha, Ananda persists for a second and a third time. With the Buddha now exasperated, Ananda changes track and tries another line of reasoning, in a sense trapping the Buddha into giving in. The text tells us that Ananda made his request using another ground: Are women, Lord, capable [my gloss, U. C.] when they have gone forth from the household life and entered the homeless state, under the doctrine and discipline, proclaimed by the Blessed One, are they capable of realizing the fruit of conversion, the path of arhatship? Cornered, the Buddha answers in the affirmative, “Yes, they are!” Ananda then drives home the advantage just conceded. He brings in the affective ties that exist between the Buddha and Gotamī, even as the demand to open the doors has been

Celibacy, Sexuality, and Monasticism in Early South Asia  19 stated in generic terms for all women. The text tells us the Buddha said: “They are capable, Ananda!” If then, Lord, they are capable [of it], since Mahāpajāpatī the Gotamī has proved herself of great service to the Blessed One when as aunt and nurse she nourished him, and gave him milk, and on the death of his mother suckled the Blessed One at her own breast, it were well, Lord, that women should have permission to go forth from the household life and enter the homeless state, under the doctrine and discipline proclaimed by the Tathāgata.10 Trapped, the Buddha gives in somewhat reluctantly, not quite comfortable with the manner in which women won their right to join the sangha. The critical recounting of how the Buddha laid down eight conditions and made the acceptance of those conditions the basis by which women might enter the sangha, and which, in her desperation to enter the sangha, Gotamī accepted, makes for poignant reading. These rules placed the bhikkhunīs, however senior, under the authority of the monks. Gotamī’s later discomfort with one of them, wherein even the senior-most of bhikkhunīs must salute the junior-most of monks, a rule she later tried to have rescinded, got a negative response from the Buddha, who merely stated that other sects too did not permit this possibility. Then, in a further demonstration of his general reluctance to let women into the sangha, the Buddha places the responsibility for the potential decline of the sangha upon this moment of inclusion. He forecast that the end of the sangha would be hastened by 500 years because of the entry of women.11 This is the burden that the narrative places upon women, led by Gotamī, for persisting in their plea for inclusion into the sangha.12 On her behalf, and perhaps on behalf of all women, a fairly strong critique has been mounted upon the Buddha for his apparent misogyny, as encapsulated in this moment. Worse still, Ananda was berated for advocating the cause of women at the first council held immediately after the death of the Buddha. Clearly then, the decision to let women into the sangha has had serious repercussions in the history of Buddhism.13 I now believe that the surface reading of women’s entry into the sangha needs a deeper analysis based on a close reading of the Buddha’s personal biography and his own concerns in enforcing a celibacy-driven way of life. The Buddha’s relationship to women was perhaps conflictual in a way that the Buddha was maybe unconscious of. His birth mother Mahamaya died seven days after he was born, and I am not sure that this fact has been factored into the psychological propensity to build an entire philosophy on the overwhelming role of sorrow in everything that the Buddha saw as basic to human existence—the world was full of sorrow and human existence was indelibly marked by suffering.14 The body, even the beautiful, handsome body in youth, would decay. Sickness, old age, and death are inevitable, and there is nothing permanent in human experience. The “birth” mother had died in childbirth, leaving the infant child to experience shock and withdrawal of the mother within days of its birth. How could sorrow not be the

20  Uma Chakravarti dominant theme of the Buddha’s philosophy, and how could impermanence not be a fundamental idea in Buddhist philosophy? However, the world was also full of compassion. The birth mother had a sister, who nurtured the child and became his “milk mother.”15 The child survived because of the compassion of Mahāpajāpatī, who gave her own son Nanda to be nursed by another woman so that Siddhartha could survive.16 It was foretold that the baby would become a great emperor or a great renouncer, someone who would extend the compassion shown by a woman to give life to the future wayfarer/pathfinder by spiritually nourishing humanity. But human society is not made up of only a few thoughtful or compassionate human beings; it is beset by selfishness and greed, power and its distortion. The path out of the sorrow that is inevitable must be honed with skill, as well as compassion, so that everyone can find their way out of a life of suffering. As soon as Siddhartha found the path, he is said to have gone to the Tavatimsa heaven where Mahamaya was at that time, and there he taught her the dhamma, fulfilling his duty toward her so that she too could be released from the cycle of sorrow that human existence entailed. Its significance in the Buddha’s post-enlightenment teaching of the dhamma has been celebrated in many sculptural representations of the Buddha’s life, one way that the Buddhist legends circulated among people. III The way out of an endless cycle of suffering was not merely a way of being that could build compassion into its core ideas. It was part of human experience that there was a world beyond kin relations and affective ties where giving could moderate human suffering. There was a world of power that, by the time of the Buddha, was fairly despotic, and of work, production, and of social and economic exploitation. That, too, had to be confronted and moderated. In the Buddhacharita, a significant aspect of the Buddha’s journey out of the world of affective ties and the household is a description of work on a field, the natural site of food production, the basis of human sustenance. Ashvaghosha, in the Buddhacarita, renders the sight thus: Clumps of grass dug up by the plow littered the earth, covered with tiny dead creatures, insects, and worms; as he beheld the earth with all these strewn about, he grieved greatly, as if a kinsman had been killed, seeing the men plowing the field, their bodies discoloured, by the wind, the dust, the scorching rays of the sun. Oxen wearied by the toil of pulling the plow, great compassion overwhelmed him; deeply anguished he cried out: how wretched, indeed, is this world.17 The challenge was to build a compassionate world, for the renouncer who abandoned the usual roles that men must perform and for those left behind, who too supported the renouncer with food so that he might achieve the goal of liberation.

Celibacy, Sexuality, and Monasticism in Early South Asia 21 A code was needed for the lay world, for the householders, as much as the Buddha laid down for the Buddhist bhikkhu. This fundamental and unbridgeable opposition between the renouncer and the householder dictated codes for both the renouncer and the householder. The world of the renouncer, though living among bhikkhus, was that the bhikkhu must renounce affective ties as the Buddha had done, adopt celibacy, live on the basic minimum for the reproduction of the body, and focus on his own liberation. Here lay the challenge: how was this to be achieved? Perhaps this dilemma led the Buddha to say no to Mahāpajāpatī’s request: she could, if allowed, bring into the sangha the affective ties between the Buddha and his foster mother. Furthermore, she was not coming in alone. She headed a group of 500 Sakyan women, all of whom were following from their male kin having entered the sangha at different moments in the early history of Buddhism in South Asia. Would it have been different for women to have sought entry into the sangha as unrelated women, assorted in terms of their origin? Would the answer have been no if Ambapali led the request for entry? She had proved her loyalty and commitment to the Buddha’s ideals by inviting him and the other bhikkhus for a meal at her orchard in Vesali. Would the request of Soma,18 later known as the learned Brahmin bhikkhunī, have been met with equal reluctance? Or, if the little Punna/Punnika, the dasi girl who was owned by Anāthapiṇḍika but released from her obligations to him, and who had earlier shown the light to the brahmana performing meaningless bathing rituals,19 led the request? I wonder. In all of this speculation, a basic fact cannot be ignored: the people, the lay followers who fed the sangha and followed the Buddha’s teachings, never forgot the codes that the bhikkhus must follow. The lay followers were not to have even a hint of suspicion that the two different communities could blur the divide between them; they must maintain the difference, whatever the cost. This is well demonstrated through a close reading of the Bhikkhunī Pāṭimokkha and the context that the text provides for how and when certain rules came to be laid down for the bhikkhunī sangha to observe. IV The laying down of the eight rules that preceded, or accompanied, the acceptance of Gotamī into the sangha was treated as the first stage of her entry into the sangha. Her ordination is traced back to that moment by the Buddha,20 and it was the first step in setting up a separate bhikkhunī sangha. That this new development in the history of the sangha would require its own set of guidelines or rules was the next step in the history of the bhikkhunī sangha. That the general rules of celibacy, giving up of individual possessions, and living off what was freely given were without specific acknowledgement by way of being laid down by the Buddha seem to have been understood. However, by virtue of being women, with specific characteristics such as menstruation or pregnancy, and being regarded as vulnerable to male sexual violence, required new rules to be formulated and adhered to. The Bhikkhunī Pāṭimokkha shared rules with the bhikkhu sangha but also had a number of new

22  Uma Chakravarti precepts that needed to be followed. Non-observance of these rules required expiation and perhaps could even lead to expulsion. Did these new developments lead to increased male control over the bhikkhunīs? Further, how did the distinctive rules get formulated? Was the censure expressed by householders an element in the new regulations? A more detailed examination of the Bhikkhunī Pāṭimokkha is useful. Laying down detailed rules for the bhikkhunī sangha did not come about by happenstance. Take a basic rule that was laid down by the Buddha about how the recitation of the pāṭimokkha in the bhikkhunī sangha was to be conducted. To begin with, the bhikkhus recited the pāṭimokkha to the bhikkhunīs. The people then murmured and were indignant, saying, “[t]here are their wives, there are their mistresses; now they will take pleasure together!” Their criticisms were reported to the Buddha, and he laid down a rule that only bhikkhunīs could lead the pāṭimokkha at the residences of the bhikkhunīs, not the bhikkhus.21 There were other ground rules. The bhikkhunīs could not accost bhikkhus as they went about their daily lives and confess their faults to them on the street. Again, the people were indignant and complained that these bhikkhunīs were the “wives and mistresses” who were being pardoned for having treated them scornfully overnight. Thus, another rule came into being which laid down that the bhikkhus were forbidden from hearing confessions of wrongdoing by bhikkhunīs.22 The garments that bhikkhunīs wore also needed regulation as they tended, according to the situation, to take pleasure in styling their robes, or so it seemed to the lay folk. Again, they were indignant, and that led to a new set of rules.23 Pleasure in any form was disallowed; even having their backs scratched seemed to give pleasure to the bhikkhunīs. Again, it is recorded that the people were indignant and complained. That too led to a specific ruling being laid down banning certain acts for bhikkhunīs in terms of their daily conduct.24 The real rub came when rules for special clothing and protective gear were required during menstruation. The kind of protective gear to be allowed was detailed. Further, it was ruled that such garments/undergarments were to be used only during menstruation, not otherwise!25 The ever-present danger of being violated led to a specific ruling in the matter of bathing in a public place: it could not be a common bathing place for men and women. The detailed ruling made it a secluded space, but it was laid down that it must also be a common bathing place such that the women were somewhat protected by the presence of other women. It goes without saying that it had to be a place not frequented by men.26 If these are problems of the “ordinary” woman who became a bhikkhunī, the account of the ganika Addhakasi bears re-telling: Now at that time a ganika named Addhakasi had adopted the religious life under the bhikkhunīs, and she wanted to go to Savatthi to be received as a full member of the order, to receive the upasampadā initiation by the Blessed One himself. And [rogue men] heard of it and beset the road. And when Addhakasi, the ganika, heard that they had done so, she sent a messenger to the Blessed One saying, “I want to receive the upasampadā initiation. What course of action should I adopt?”27

Celibacy, Sexuality, and Monasticism in Early South Asia 23 The solution provided by the Buddha made for a new rule. The bhikkhunīs can be ordained—conferred the upasampadā initiation by a learned, competent bhikkhunī as the messenger through whom the ordination was conducted. The text tells us that Addhakasi was lifted out of the worldly life by adopting this method out of compassion for her.28 Compassion leads to innovative rules being laid down by the Buddha. If you wanted to be a bhikkhunī, the Buddha had to find ways of facilitating the desire for liberation from worldly occupations to women, whatever the challenges might be. To sum up, we can see that it was hard to be a woman, and then a bhikkhunī, perhaps harder than being a bhikkhu given some of the rules laid down for them, but the bhikkhunīs were committed to their right to seek liberation as much as the men, and they assiduously pursued it as a goal. V The sangha needed to factor in extraordinary issues for the laying down of rules. Flexibility while maintaining core ideas of celibacy in the sangha might bring the divide between renouncers and householders into a state of tension: how were they to be resolved? Flexibility informed by consideration for worldly values may be seen in the story of Sudinna, but even more in the case of the nameless bhikkhunī who was faced with a serious problem. The resolutions speak for themselves. But first the Sudinna story—first, the dilemma of the bhikkhu, before that of the bhikkhunī! Sudinna was set to join the sangha as a bhikkhu, but his family would not give him permission to do so since he was an only son. He then went on a hunger strike until his parents gave in and let him go. They were persuaded to give permission by a friend of Sudinna, who tells the parents that if he died, he would be totally lost to his family. This way he would still live and maybe even return some day, giving up on his bhikkhu state. Sudinna was ordained by the Buddha and became a homeless wanderer following the Buddha’s precepts and began to live off alms. At some point there was a drought and food was hard to come by. In search of food, Sudinna dropped in at his parents’ place to eat. His presence was noticed by a dasi of the family, who immediately alerted the mother. The mother then implored Sudinna to have sex with his former wife as they had no children, and the lineage would simply die out. After some persuasion, Sudinna agreed to his mother’s request, and thinking that since there was no specific rule in place about celibacy, he would not be violating any injunction laid down by the Buddha. On the day his former wife’s season came and she would be most fertile, Sudinna takes her to the forest and impregnates his wife.29 Life goes on as before, or so he thinks. The text tells us that Sudinna was unaware that he was violating any specific rule laid down by the Buddha. The bhikkhus, however, know that it is wrong for a bhikkhu to have sex, even with a wife, even to satisfy a mother’s desire. So, when they get to know this, they make a noise: the earth gods censure the act of Sudinna; there is a great din, and the Buddha gets to know what Sudinna has done. The Buddha scolds Sudinna and censures him for doing an improper act, of following the

24  Uma Chakravarti gamadhamma, or the village dhamma. The Buddha then specifically laid down a pārājika rule: entering the homeless life means celibacy, and it has to be strictly followed; there can be no falling away from it. We do not know explicitly what happens to Sudinna. Did he get expelled from the sangha, or did he get some latitude because he did not know he was violating a rule that others presumed to be wrong? What we do know is that the first rule of homeless life is celibacy: bhikkhus cannot deviate from that norm.30 In contrast is the story of a nameless bhikkhunī who had been ordained recently, as it is described in the Bhikkhunī Pāṭimokkha. When she joined the order, she did not know that she was pregnant, but when she did discover her condition, there was a crisis in the making. What were the bhikkhunīs to do about this unexpected problem? The matter was taken to the Buddha for his advice on how to handle such an unexpected situation. The Buddha said: I allow her, O bhikkhus, to bring up [the child] till it attains the age of discretion in the sangha.31 Clearly this ruling is made out of compassion for the bhikkhuni, as well as of the child. The expectant bhikkhunī is then worried about the male child she has borne, so she can get no help from other bhikkhunīs, and she cannot manage her situation on her own. The Buddha then ordained that another bhikkhunī is to be provided to her as a companion and helper, and so the sticky issue gets resolved. That, too, with compassion. Afterword The first serious monastic experiment in documented history provides a glimpse of the challenges the Buddha faced in setting up the sangha, the parallel world of the renouncers as distinct from the world of the householders. The world of householders was deeply embedded in affective and blood bonds, tied through marriage and reproduction into a vast web of links, which presumed shared bonds and personal histories that were inextricably bound up.32 They were difficult to break even after the monks and nuns chose to seek individual liberation, as they prepared themselves for the candle finally blowing out and the end to the cycle of rebirth, and therefore of suffering. In what way were the core principles of compassion and friendship, karuna and metteya, used to build a new humane world even as the renouncers refused older ties and sought to build new ways of being? That will have to be the subject of another essay. My candle still burns. . . Notes 1 This chapter would not have been written without the active engagement of A. Soheb Vahab, who accompanied me in my journey in reading for and writing this chapter, especially in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, when my style of researching was impossible to pursue, because libraries and journals could not be accessed. I am poor at accessing internet resources, which the new generation is adept at. Soheb, Chandrabhan Yadav Poonam Kumari, and Kumkum Roy sent me their personal library holdings,

Celibacy, Sexuality, and Monasticism in Early South Asia 25 downloaded from the internet, without which this paper could not have been written. I thank them all for their scholarly generosity. In terms of transliteration choices, I have consistently stuck to the Pāli variants of terms in keeping with the cadences of the texts. 2 Govind Chandra Pande, Studies in the Origins of Buddhism (New Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 1957); Sukumar Dutt, Early Buddhist Monachism (600 BC–100 BC) (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1960). 3 These incidents in the life of the Buddha are well known. The great departure has been visually depicted in the sculptural representations of the Buddha’s life. The departure from home, leaving behind a wife and a newly born son, have also led to much interpretation/re-interpretation by modern Buddhists. 4 Dutt has a comprehensive discussion in his book cited earlier in n2. 5 The Sigālovāda Sutta provides an account of the ideal householder, and the Buddha’s homily to Sigala may be a visualization of the ideal householder. See Dīgha Nikāya, translated into English as: Dialogues of the Buddha, trans. T. W. Rhys Davids (London: The Pāli Text Society, 1977), Part 111, 173ff. 6 I have used mainly the early Pāli texts for this chapter. Occasionally, I have drawn from other sources, particularly on the essays of other scholars who have written their essays drawing from a much wider set of sources, including hybrid Sanskrit sources. 7 See Uma Chakravarti, Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), 38ff.; Uma Chakravarti, “Renouncer and Householder in Early Buddhism,” Social Analysis, no. 13 (May 1983): 70–83. 8 T. W. Rhys Davids and Hermann Oldenberg, Vinaya Texts Translated from the Pāli, trans. T. W. Rhys Davids and Hermann Oldenberg (Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 1975), Part III, 167. 9 Ibid., 320. 10 Ibid., 322. 11 Ibid., 321–26. 12 In a parallel but later tradition in early medieval times within the devotional cults in Hinduism, which privileged the householder status and abjured monasticism, the challenge for men and women was to pursue their religious devotion and simultaneously perform their duties as householders. While the male devotees managed to successfully straddle the householder-devotee roles, women found it more difficult to pursue their devotion without hindrance, and some of them were forced to exit from their “duties” as wives. Refusing to remain trapped by their bodies, they found ways to liberate themselves from the household and practice full-time devotion to their chosen Gods, leaving a rich tradition of poetry from which future generations could draw inspiration. See Uma Chakravarti, “The World of the Bhaktin in South Indian Traditions: The Body and Beyond,” Manushi 10, nos. 50–52 (January–June 1989): 18–29. 13 Perhaps I led the pack (at least in India) in mounting a critique of the Buddha for his misogyny and held up Ananda as the real feminist/humanist for advocating the cause of women in my early essay titled “The Rise of Buddhism as Experienced by Women,” Manushi 8 (August 1981): 6–10. While I stated a general sense of disappointment at the Buddha’s failure to advocate for real equality in all spheres, many scholars went much further and virtually damned Buddhism for its failure to uphold gender equality, and some saw in Buddhism a deep-seated distaste or even hatred for women in this account of the entry of women into the sangha and repeated references to their insatiable appetite for sexual gratification. See, for example, Liz Wilson, Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 14 Patrick Olivelle (personal communication) points to how the Buddha might have felt responsible for his mother’s death. He, after all, is believed to have been born from his mother’s side, and so violently tearing her apart. 15 For an account of “milk mothers” in the early Pāli texts, and on others who nourish the Buddha with food later on in his spiritual journey, see Karen Muldoon-Hules, “Of Milk and Motherhood: The Kacaṅgalā Avadāna Read in a Brahmanical Light,” Religions of

26  Uma Chakravarti South Asia 3, no. 1 (2010): 111–24. See also Reiko Ohnuma, for an extended discussion on the dynamics of the entry of women into the sangha, the debt to Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī, and the relationship between the Buddha and his foster mother: Reiko Ohnuma, “Debt to the Mother: A Neglected Aspect of the Founding of the Buddhist Nuns’ Order,” The Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74, no. 4 (December 2006): 861–901. 16 Gunapala Piyasena Malalasekera, s.v. “Mahāpajāpati Gotamī,” in Dictionary of Pāli Proper Names, Vol. 2 (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2007), 523. 17 Aśvaghoṣa, Life of the Buddha, trans. Patrick Olivelle (New York: New York University Press and JJC Foundation, 2008), 127. 18 Alice Collett, “Soma the Learned Brahmin,” Religions of South Asia 3, no. 1 (2010): 93–109. 19 The Therīgāthā, translated as: Psalms of the Early Buddhists: Psalms of the Sisters, trans. C. A. F. Rhys Davids (London: The Pāli Text Society, 1980), 116–19. 20 Vinaya Texts III, 327. 21 Ibid., 330. 22 Ibid., 332. 23 Ibid., 340. 24 Ibid., 341–42. 25 Ibid., 348. 26 Ibid., 368. 27 Ibid., 360. 28 Ibid., 361. 29 Malalasekera, s.v. “Sudinna Kalandakaputta,” 1196–97. 30 Summarized from Achim Bayer, “The Sudinna Tale in the Pāli Vinaya and Its Interpretation,” in Buddhist Narratives in Asia and Beyond: In Honour of HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhdhorn on Her 55th Birth Anniversary, eds. Peter Skilling and Justin McDaniel (Bangkok: Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University, 2012), 1–14. 31 Vinaya Texts III, 365. 32 A serious account of kinship and marriage in the age of the Buddha may be seen in Narendra K. Wagle, Society at the Time of the Buddha (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1963).

Bibliography Aśvaghoṣa. Life of the Buddha. Translated by Patrick Olivelle. New York: New York University Press and JJC Foundation, 2008. Bayer, Achim. “The Sudinna Tale in the Pāli Vinaya and Its Interpretation.” In Buddhist Narratives in Asia and Beyond: In Honour of HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhdhorn on Her 55th Birth Anniversary, edited by Peter Skilling and Justin McDaniel, 1–14. Bangkok: Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University, 2012. Buddha. Dialogues of the Buddha. Translated by T. W. Rhys Davids. London: The Pāli Text Society, 1977. Chakravarti, Uma. “The Rise of Buddhism as Experienced by Women.” Manushi 8 (August 1981): 6–10. ———. “Renouncer and Householder in Early Buddhism.” Social Analysis 13 (May 1983): 70–83. ———. Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987. ———. “The World of the Bhaktin in South Indian Traditions: The Body and Beyond.” Manushi 10, Nos. 50–52 (January–June 1989): 18–29. Collett, Alice. “Soma the Learned Brahmin.” Religions of South Asia 3, no. 1 (2010): 93–109. Dutt, Sukumar. Early Buddhist Monachism (600 BC–100 BC). Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1960.

Celibacy, Sexuality, and Monasticism in Early South Asia  27 Malalasekera, Gunapala Piyasena. Dictionary of Pāli Proper Names, Vol. 2. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2007. Muldoon-Hules, Karen. “Of Milk and Motherhood: The Kacaṅgalā Avadāna Read in a Brahmanical Light.” Religions of South Asia 3, no. 1 (2010): 111–24. Ohnuma, Reiko. “Debt to the Mother: A Neglected Aspect of the Founding of the Buddhist Nuns’ Order.” The Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74, no. 4 (December 2006): 861–901. Pande, Govind Chandra. Studies in the Origins of Buddhism. New Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 1957. Rhys Davids, C. A. F. Psalms of the Early Buddhists: Psalms of the Sisters. Translated by C. A. F. Rhys Davids. London: The Pāli Text Society, 1980. Rhys Davids, T. W. and Hermann Oldenberg. Vinaya Texts Translated from the Pāli. Translated by T. W. Rhys Davids and Hermann Oldenberg. New Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 1975. Wagle, Narendra K. Society at the Time of the Buddha. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1963. Wilson, Liz. Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

II

Through the Late Antique Mediterranean

II.1

Gender and the Self in Greek Philosophy

2 Light, Knowledge, Incorporeality, and the Feminine in Parmenides Emese Mogyoródi

Parmenides of Elea (flor. early fifth century BCE) is a seminal thinker in early Greek thought, acclaimed as a paragon of reason, logic, and of the philosophy of nature, hence as a pioneer at the very foundation of Western philosophy and science. Some crucial features of his poem, however, suggest that this account is in need of some qualification. First, he presents his views in epic verse, traditionally believed to be inspired by the Muses, superhuman female agencies. Second, the poetic ego of his poem is a young man (kouros) who, after a mythical journey on a chariot, meets an anonymous goddess who initiates him into some profound, all-encompassing knowledge (B 1).1 Finally, the poem is thronged with traditional goddesses or female powers (Hêliades, Hêmerê, Nux, Dikê, Themis, Peithô, Moira, Anankê),2 persistently featuring in all three sections (Proem, Alêtheia, Doxa), which strongly suggests that they have some explanatory role both in the arguments and the metaphysical and natural philosophical theses. Hence, a pertinent question might well be raised: what is the role and status of female characters and the feminine in general in Parmenides’ poem and philosophy? Despite the prominence of female deities, the majority of modern accounts of the philosophy of Parmenides explain away the motif of revelation or divine inspiration in the Proem and suppress the significance of female divinities or the divine in general. A crucial reason for this move might be the prevalence of a strong “scientist” approach to Parmenides, which attributes little or no significance to its religious symbolism or references (most obviously represented by traditional mythical goddesses or female divine powers) and focuses on arguments and/or scientific discoveries about the natural world. From this perspective, the deities come across as allegorical figures providing a mere façade to the poem or representing a rhetorical apparatus employed for some didactic purpose of secular import.3 In contrast, the conspicuous presence of female figures has naturally not escaped the attention of feminist philosophers. Contrary to what might be expected in view of the striking predominance of goddesses, however, influential feminist scholars portray Parmenides as biased against women, an architect of Western sexism and discrimination, a paragon of a type of logos-centered philosophizing that determined the rest of the history of Western thought, based as it has standardly been on the exclusion of women.4 Although representative feminist accounts similarly take it (albeit for reasons fundamentally different from those of the scientist approach) DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-6

34  Emese Mogyoródi that female characters are ultimately suppressed in the poem, they indirectly but duly alert us to their significance in terms of the underlying philosophical messages of Parmenides. Is there anything to be gained from considering female deities or the feminine in general in making sense of the philosophy of Parmenides? This issue is relatively rarely discussed and even less often put into focus by scholars of Parmenides for reasons referred to earlier.5 Given the predominance of female characters in his poem, a feature unparalleled in early Greek philosophy (indeed, in Greek philosophy on the whole), a clarification of their philosophical import is thus highly welcome. At the same time, the very predominance of female figures, and especially the fact that the kouros is instructed in philosophy by a goddess, raises concerns about interpretations that saddle Parmenides with sexism and misogyny, aligning him with blatant representatives of this cultural bias, such as Hesiod or Aristotle.6 The following chapter is meant to be a contribution to a better clarification of the issue of the significance of female characters in Parmenides by attempting to do justice to certain symbolic elements related to them, as well as to the motif of revelation in the poem. A  more specific objective is to provide a more nuanced view of his conception of the feminine than either his feminist critics or scholars of Parmenides have proposed. Parmenides has recently been defended in the face of the charge of sexism or androcentrism by two preeminent Parmenides specialists, who argue that, in contrast to traditional Greek conceptions, he did not repudiate women or the feminine, for he accorded equality to both sexes or genders, or, if he privileged any of them, it was in fact the feminine, at least as far as tenets in the Doxa section are concerned.7 In light of their sound arguments, it is difficult to disagree with the proposal that as far as Doxa goes, Parmenides was egalitarian, a stance to be highlighted as unconventional, given the overall contemporary climate of androcentric bias. However, the criticism mounted by feminist accounts cannot fully be met by this conclusion. For, unless the feminine might in some way be connected with the metaphysical theses, in particular with what-is or Being (eon)8 prioritized in the Alêtheia section, it might be objected that from the viewpoint of Parmenides’ metaphysics women do remain downplayed.9 Thus, in order to supplement and buttress arguments against Parmenides’ purported androcentrism, beside adding some points to existing arguments on the basis of Doxa, I attempt to make a case for a more trenchant view.10 I propose that Parmenides not only valorizes the feminine over the masculine, but also associates it with qualities widely connected to the masculine, such as light, knowledge, and incorporeality. Since these are associated with what-is, the feminine is also associated with it, or at least, as it is to be proposed later, more so than the masculine. These theses run strongly against priorities commonly considered typical of Greek androcentrism, hence they might seem outlandish at first sight. Before detailed arguments are developed in their support, it should serve as a general introductory note that Parmenides lived in Southern Italy, in the vicinity of thriving Pythagorean communities in Croton, Thurioi, and Tarentum. It is less widely known than one might wish for that the Pythagoreans accorded equal status to women and men,11 and that, on the whole, the situation and status of women throughout

Light, Knowledge, Incorporeality, and Feminine in Parmenides 35 Ancient Greece was more diverse than might be assumed from an Athenocentric perspective. In particular, it seems to be of importance that some Southern Italian headquarters of Pythagorean communities (Tarentum, Laconia) were Spartan colonies, and in Sparta, as is well known, women enjoyed greater autonomy than they did in Athens.12 Pythagoras and his followers might well be assumed to have continued and even developed a tradition, different from “mainstream” androcentrism, which accorded higher cultural status to women than elsewhere in Greece.13 Without meaning to be exhaustive, this chapter focuses on three central claims of Parmenides’ critics, which in one combination or another recur in a series of works by leading feminist thinkers. The first and most important one is that, through his notorious contrast of Being and Non-Being14 (whereby the latter is identified with the physical world and rejected as unthinkable, cf. B 2, B 6, B 8.51–61), Parmenides advocated a “one-sex world” in the form of a hierarchical dualism. Through privileged access to Being, man is ultimately constructed as the norm and woman as the subordinate “other” representing “hateful birth” (B 12.4), change, corporeality, and mortality, in contrast to male immutability, incorporeality, and immortality.15 And since immutability (lack of generation and destruction, cf. B 8.3, 5–15, 19–21, 26–31) and incorporeality are specified as constituents of Reality/Truth (eon,16 B 4.2, B 8.12, 19, 24–25, 32, 35–37, 47), the corporeal (and hence, woman) is downplayed as “doxastic,” apparent, illusory, or ultimately even non-existent; at any rate, dissociated from genuine Being and thinking (cf. B 3).17 Closely conjoined with this account is the suggestion that it was through his insistence on the logical principles of non-contradiction and the excluded middle, lying behind his deductions about the immutability and incorporeality of Being, that Parmenides expelled the changing, mutable, generative, corporeal, or physical, and together with them, woman, from the domain of philosophy.18 For logic operates via stringent oppositions and exclusions and hence outlaws ambivalences or a confusion of distinct categories, such as those one finds in the physical world (to be associated with the female).19 Finally, since the blatant presence of female deities in the poem strikes one as, at least prima facie, incompatible with these accounts, some feminist scholars suggest that the role of these deities is merely instrumental; once the central male character, the youth (kouros, B 1.24) of the Proem, is guided to the revelation of the Truth by female deities, they are ignored. This is taken as an affirmation of male predominance over and an exploitation of females through their symbolic exclusion from philosophy, the quest for Truth.20 Central Problems in Parmenides and His Feminist Critique Before coming to terms with these unfavorable charges, it is expedient to provide a brief outline of the contents of Parmenides’ poem and the most crucial issues it raises. The poem consists of three sections: the Proem (B1), a mythical introduction, is narrated in first-person singular (B 1.1–3) by a youth (kouros) (B 1.24), who is carried on a chariot pulled by mares and guided by the Sun Maidens (Hêliades), through “the gates of Day and Night” (B 1.11) to the house (B 1.25) of an

36  Emese Mogyoródi anonymous goddess (thea, B 1.22). She warmly welcomes the kouros (B 1.22) and tells him all he needs to know “both of the unmoved heart of persuasive reality, and the beliefs of mortals, which comprise no genuine conviction” (B 1.29–30). The statements that follow are all reported by the youth to have been related by the unnamed goddess,21 and might be classified accordingly. The Alêtheia (“Truth/ Reality”) section is devoted to right and wrong “routes [methods] of inquiry” (B 2.2–8, B 6, B 7), the relation of thought/thinking (noein, noos22) and being (B 3, B 4, B 6.1–2, B 8.16–17, 34–38), “signs” that characterize being (B 4, B 8.1–49) and reasons for the mistaken “beliefs of mortals” (B 2.5–7, B 6.1–2, B 8.53–59). From B 9 on, the goddess presents a cosmogony and cosmology, all according to the “beliefs of mortals’ ” (B 8.51), in the spirit of the traditional Ionian philosophy of nature (the Milesians, Xenophanes, and Heraclitus). This is the section customarily referred to as Doxa (“Appearance/Opinion”).23 The greatest difficulties in interpreting all of this are the following. First, what the goddess, by implication, declares to be a “trustworthy” account of being or what-is (cf. B 1.29–30) boils down to a “strict” or “radical” monist metaphysics, where generation and destruction, divisibility and inhomogeneity (hence plurality), change and movement, and unlimitedness or indefiniteness are downright denied (B 8.1–49). To that, they are denied not on authority, but on the basis of stringent arguments derived from some self-evident insights (B 2, B 3, B 6.1–2). Let us not be misguided: all this is just as provoking for us today as it must have been for Parmenides’ contemporaries or ancient interpreters.24 What sense might be made of the rather counterintuitive conclusion, for example, that whatever exists is one, without differences, distinctions, and hence plurality? Or, of the no less challenging thesis that what-is never comes to be, changes, moves, or perishes? Nothing whatsoever complies with these criteria in our everyday experience. Yet, to make the situation even more perplexing, and in striking contrast, the goddess presents the Doxa section of the poem, a cosmogony and cosmology of a traditional type, in which there is generation and destruction, divisibility and inhomogeneity, ultimately based on the dualistic and contradictory principles of “light” and “night,”25 distinct, but mutually related “stuffs,”26 meant to explain all that was categorically denied in Alêtheia. The most puzzling questions widely raised and discussed in connection with all of these theses and/or facts are the following: is the cosmos as described in Doxa entirely false or illusory, and if so, why is it presented by the goddess at all? Or, is it plausible, containing some germs of truth? If so, how is it related to the “full Truth” contained in Alêtheia? Or, is Doxa (or at least some of it) actually true, given that it contains groundbreaking discoveries about the natural world, such as the fact that the moon receives its light from the sun (B 14, B 15)?27 If so, what sense might be made of such contradictory accounts of reality, if both are to be considered true? Since these issues are among the most hotly debated ones concerning the philosophy of Parmenides, it would be ill-advised to attempt their discussion in sufficient detail here. Nonetheless, since some of these questions are pertinent to a critical appraisal of Parmenides’ feminist interpretations, they must be discussed to the extent allowed

Light, Knowledge, Incorporeality, and Feminine in Parmenides  37 within the confines of this chapter. It is notable that feminist accounts are univocally based on the assumption that Parmenides was a strong (or “strict” or “radical”) metaphysical monist, who argued for the existence of a unique, immutable, indivisible, incorporeal “thing” or entity. Thus, from the interpretive options referred to earlier, feminist scholars assume that the ontologies of Alêtheia and Doxa are entirely incompatible. This is what supports the central conclusion that Parmenides repudiated or denied birth, change, and corporeality (to be connected with the female). This interpretative option, however, is far from inevitable. A prevailing majority of contemporary students of Parmenides support a “compatibilist” view, an interpretation of his philosophy in terms of which he did not deny or devalue natural or physical entities at all, but merely argued that, as opposed to immutable being, no epistemic certainty might be related to them.28 If so, this would pull the rug from under feminist critiques straightaway. For, it would follow that Parmenides does allow for the ontological reality of the physical world (together with birth, death, change, plurality, etc.), and merely asserts its elusiveness or inscrutability, the view that natural entities are unavailable for scientific knowledge. Nor would Parmenides necessarily discourage or entirely devalue the exploration of the natural world, since he would grant that some views concerning nature are more plausible, hence worth pursuing, than others. As it happens, however, I do not think that a compatibilist account of Parmenides is entirely satisfactory and, consequently, that his feminist critique might so easily be challenged.29 I believe critics are correct to assume that Parmenides was a radical monist and that he devalued the physical world, together with its mutability, change, plurality, and the like. The question is merely whether or not he connected the mutable, corporeal, or physical specifically with woman, the female, or the feminine. This is the point where some reasonable objections might be raised against this line of interpretation. In Defense of Parmenides: The Motif of Revelation and the Doxa Before clarifying the objections, it is first worthwhile to come to terms with the last two of the theses highlighted here, notably, the role of logic in Parmenides’ insight into Truth/Reality, on the one hand, and that of female characters in the poem, on the other. These two issues are not unrelated, since from the perspective of Parmenides’ contemporary audience, the primary message of the Proem is epistemic, an upshot naturally associated with reason, reasoning, or logic. Now, whatever role one should eventually accord to reason or logic in the poem, it is notable that, on account of the motif of disclosure, the crucial message of the Proem is entirely in line with the traditional and widespread Greek sentiment that, vis-à-vis the divine, human (that is, both male and female) cognitive faculties are woefully and fundamentally limited.30 Hence, an insight into ultimate Truth/Reality is a matter of divine help, i.e., of superhuman inspiration or revelation (provided by the Muses, for example). This is clearly supported both by the form (epic hexameter) of the poem and the content (the symbolism) of the Proem.31 Epic is the genre in which Homer and Hesiod convey what they learnt from the Muses about events of which only gods or goddesses are cognizant. Similarly, in the Proem the kouros is in need

38  Emese Mogyoródi of superhuman assistance (by the mares and the Sun Maidens) in arriving at the house of the anonymous goddess, who reveals for him the Truth (cf. B 1.5, 8–9, 15–18, 20–21, 24–32).32 Besides, on their journey, he is passive all through, underlined by the repetition of the verb “carry” (pherô) (with the mares as agents and the kouros as the object of their activity) right at the beginning (B 1.1–4);33 the vivid visual and auditory experiences he is exposed to (B 1.6–7, 17–20); and finally, the consequent loss of orientation (B 1.17–18)34 and even fear.35 All of this suggests a series of points that run counter to the theses referred to earlier. First, the role of female divinities in the Proem is hardly meant to be instrumental or exploitative; quite to the contrary, it is clearly in line with traditional conceptions about the limitations of human knowledge vis-à-vis the divine, a message also conveyed by the very form of the poem.36 Consequently, if and in so far as logic or rational faculties play a role in attaining an insight into Truth/ Reality, they can at best be instrumental or subservient; the primacy of revelation is underlined both by the form of the entire poem and the language, symbolism, and content of the Proem.37 Therefore, whether or not logic is exclusive in a way that feminine qualities such as ambiguity or diversity are ruled out by it, as Parmenides’ critics would have it, it is unlikely to be the primary or ultimate means of attaining an insight into Truth/Reality in his poem.38 Finally, it follows that the feminine, as such, is not dissociated from philosophical knowledge. Quite to the contrary, the fact that Truth/Reality is revealed to the kouros, the only male character in the Proem, by a powerful and formidable goddess,39 through the help of other female divinities, strongly suggests that Truth/Reality is in some fundamental way associated with the feminine.40 Goddesses are not, of course, to be identified with women per se, as men are not to be identified with gods. Nonetheless, it is not unreasonable to conclude that by opting for a female deity rather than a male one (for example, Apollo) as a source of divine disclosure, and by featuring a series of other female divinities aiding the kouros in proceeding towards it, Parmenides wished to convey a premeditated message.41 The upshot is that the female has a mysterious and intimate connection with the knowledge of ultimate Truth/Reality.42 It remains to be seen, however, whether the valorization of the female and its connection with knowledge and/or what-is extends to the feminine in general, that is, whether it includes (mortal) women as well.43 In seeking for clues to find out whether Parmenides valorized any of the sexes or genders at all, we cannot but look in the Doxa section of his poem, for polarities of this kind (light/night, female/male) are nowhere to be found in Alêtheia. Hence, whether Parmenides valorized the male (or the female) is a question that can only be clarified through the themes related in Doxa.44 B 17 is a good place to start. B 17 Galen. Epid. vi comm. ii, 46 δεξιτεροῖσιν μὲν κούρους, λαιοῖσι δὲ κούρας . . . in the right [parts] boys, in the left girls. . . Although, for lack of primary context (ideally to be provided by other fragments), this verse is less informative than one might wish for, in view of some testimonies, the message is certainly not cultural but embryological.45 It refers

Light, Knowledge, Incorporeality, and Feminine in Parmenides  39 not to the social segregation of boys and girls, but to their conception in the womb. Like Anaxagoras or Aristotle, Parmenides held that male children are conceived in the right compartment of the womb, whereas females in the left.46 Unlike them, however, he also held (pace Alcmaeon of Croton, an important Pythagorean)47 that both parents contribute a seed for the embryo, as attested by a fragment preserved in Latin (by Caelius Aurelianus, a fifth-century Roman physician).48 In contrast to Aristotle’s later view, in terms of which the mother provides merely the receptacle for the embryo, and it is the prerogative of the father to provide the seed (and together with it the form, the immaterial, superior constituent),49 Parmenides’ theory is notable for its egalitarianism.50 This is further supported by his description of the two basic “stuffs” or principles constitutive of the cosmos: B 9 Simp. in Ph. 180 αὐτὰρ ἐπειδὴ πάντα φάος καὶ νὺξ ὀνόμασται καὶ τὰ κατὰ σφετέρας δυνάμεις ἐπὶ τοῖσί τε καὶ τοῖς, πᾶν πλέον ἐστὶν ὁμοῦ φάεος καὶ νυκτὸς ἀφάντου ἴσων ἀμφοτέρων, ἐπεὶ οὐδετέρωι μέτα μηδέν· But since all things have been named “Light” and “Night,” and [the names] pertaining to their respective powers (have been applied) to these things and to those, All is full at once of light and obscure night, Both equal, for nothings exists without a share in either of them.51 Light and night are equal, the two of them together (or “likewise,” homou, 9.3) entirely fill up the cosmos, and there is nothing apart from them, just as neither of them participates in what-is-not. Light and night are not, of course, to be identified with male and female (or female and male) without further ado. However, since these are the only two polar opposites referred to in Doxa, and there is a strong analogy between their interaction (“mixing,” B 12, B 16, B 18, cf. B 4), the conclusion is inescapable that Parmenides was egalitarian, at least as far as cosmology and sexual biology are concerned.52 Light and night are not only equal, but both have characteristics of their own (cf. B 8.55–59), so that there is no “power-filled dichotomy” between them, in terms of which one of them would be the norm, the other its lack, or defined negatively.53 Could this be explained away as a view Parmenides ultimately refused, once we accept that what-is is a strictly monistic entity, allowing for no other (true or genuine) entities? Egalitarianism is nonsensical, after all, if there is no plurality or difference. What-is is distinctly predicated on a denial of difference (cf. B 4.2–4, B 8.4, 6, 22, 25), in polar contrast with light and night, distinguished and separated as they are from each other (cf. B 8.56).54 If there was no night (in terms of the ontology of Doxa), there would be neither plurality nor contrast with light, and the same is true of light. However, if the tenets in Doxa are to be entirely put aside for being repudiated by the goddess, then no valid conclusions might be drawn from them in terms of Parmenides’ valorization of any of the sexes or genders. Hence, this seems to be just as inimical to feminist accounts as to their critiques.

40  Emese Mogyoródi Though this problem is not put into focus by feminist interpreters, they are not unjustified in drawing conclusions on Parmenides’ own views in terms of some gender valorization from tenets in Doxa. However, one reason that might warrant this procedure is precisely the unconventional view about the equality of the sexes in Doxa. No doubt, the kind of egalitarian view of male and female expressed in B 17 and B 18 was not as widespread as to be generally referred to (and criticized) by the goddess as “mortals’ opinion” (B 1.30, cf. B 8.51). Likewise, none of the Greeks before (or after) Parmenides singled out light and night as constitutive stuffs or principles in cosmogony and cosmology. These facts suggest at least some innovations in cosmology by Parmenides, relevant to the issue at hand. But who would put aside one’s own hard-won innovative views as utter nonsense? Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that the Doxa contains Parmenides’ own views, proposed at least as plausible, and as far as cosmology and the physical world go.55 What follows, however, is not necessarily that Alêtheia and Doxa are compatible (in the sense that they refer to the same reality or entity), but at least that it is legitimate to reason from Doxa to Alêtheia to some extent.56 This particularly concerns the issue of the valorization of one or the other of the genders. For, while no gendered polar opposites are mentioned in Alêtheia, the predominance of female deities extends over it as well (Peithô and Alêtheiê, B 2.4, Dikê, B 8.14, Anankê, B 8.30, Moira, B 8.37). This raises the question of the relation of the feminine and the ontology and epistemology contained in Alêtheia. Could the feminine have something significant to do with what-is and/or its knowledge? The Epistemic Valorization of the Feminine On the basis of Doxa, so far, we have found that in terms of male and female (and light and night), Parmenides held an egalitarian view. It follows that he did not connect birth, generation, or mutability, nor corporeality or mortality exclusively with the female.57 Both male and female are responsible for generation and destruction, just as both night and light (and their mixtures) are constituents of the physical world and thus (in some sense at least) corporeal.58 This clearly goes against the charge that Parmenides attributed superiority to male over female. However, given that the ontology of Doxa is devalued on the whole, and disclosure of Reality/Truth is granted to a male character (the kouros) in the poem, some might still conclude that males do have a privileged access to it, while females are excluded from it. Therefore, as pointed out earlier, unless (mortal) females are to be directly connected to what-is and/or to its cognition in some way, its privileged access by the kouros in the poem might leave one dissatisfied with the prior defense of Parmenides against the charge of androcentrism. However, there is evidence that Parmenides in fact valorized the feminine (including women) over the masculine; what is more, in such a way that he associated it with the cognition or knowledge of what-is, as well as with its privileged ontological status. It will be expedient to discuss the epistemic valorization first. If consonant with the fragments and reliable also in other respects, testimonies can be helpful in putting together the puzzle pieces of the fragments of the early

Light, Knowledge, Incorporeality, and Feminine in Parmenides 41 Greek thinkers in a meaningful and coherent way. In one testimony on Parmenides, Aristotle reports the following: De partibus animalium II, 648a29–31 (= DK 28 A 52) Παρμενίδης τὰς γυναῖκας τῶν ἀνδρῶν θερμοτέρας εἶναί φησι καὶ ἕτεροί τινες, ὡς διὰ τὴν θερμότητα καὶ πολυαιμούσαις γινομένων τῶν γυναικείων, Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δὲ τοὐναντίον·59 Parmenides and some others declare that women are hotter than men, on the grounds that their menstrual flow occurs because of their heat and the abundance of their blood, while Empedocles states the opposite. This is indirectly and independently supported by Aëtius: Aëtius V, 7 (How Males and Females are Generated) 4 (Dox. Gr. 420,1–6 = DK 28 A 53) Π. ἀντιστρόφως· τὰ μὲν πρὸς ταῖς ἄρκτοις ἄρρενα βλαστῆσαι (τοῦ γὰρ πυκνοῦ μετέχειν πλείονος), τὰ δὲ πρὸς ταῖς μεσημβρίαις θήλεα παρὰ τὴν ἀραιότητα· Parmenides held the opposite [of what was held by Empedocles]: that those toward the north came forth as males, since they have a greater share of the dense, and those towards the south [came forth] as females on account of their rare texture. Aristotle’s student, Theophrastus, further reports the following: De sensibus 1–3 (= DK 28 A 46) περὶ δ’ αἰσθήσεως αἱ μὲν πολλαὶ καὶ καθόλου δόξαι δύ’ εἰσιν· οἱ μὲν γὰρ τῶι ὁμοίωι ποιοῦσιν, οἱ δὲ τῶι ἐναντίωι· Π. μὲν καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ Πλάτων τῶι ὁμοίωι, οἱ δὲ περὶ Ἀναξαγόραν καὶ Ἡράκλειτον τῶι ἐναντίωι. . . . (3) Π. μὲν γὰρ ὅλως οὐδὲν ἀφώρικεν ἀλλὰ μόνον, ὅτι δυοῖν ὄντοιν στοιχείοιν κατὰ τὸ ὑπερβάλλον ἐστὶν ἡ γνῶσις. ἐὰν γὰρ ὑπεραίρηι τὸ θερμὸν ἢ τὸ ψυχρόν, ἄλλην γίνεσθαι τὴν διάνοιαν, βελτίω δὲ καὶ καθαρωτέραν τὴν διὰ τὸ θερμόν· Most general opinions about sensation are of two kinds: some make [sensation occur] by the like, others by the contrary; Parmenides, Empedocles and Plato by the like, Anaxagoras and Heraclitus by the contrary. . . . For Parmenides said nothing at all definite, only that, there being two elements, cognition is in accordance with the one that predominates. For if the hot or the cold is in excess, thought becomes different—that which is due to the hot being better and purer. Put all these testimonies together and it emerges that females are not merely hotter than males, but also more receptive to the hot, since Parmenides held that like perceives like (DK 28 A 46). Since “understanding” (gnôsis) is “better and purer” through heat, females must have (a natural tendency to have) more of it than males.60

42  Emese Mogyoródi These testimonies throw light on some verses in B 8, where light and night as cosmological entities are characterized (pace “mortals’ opinion,” cf. B 8.50–52) apparently in terms of traditional gendered polarities: B 8.53–59 Simp. in Ph. 179, 31 μορφὰς γὰρ κατέθεντο δύο γνώμας ὀνομάζειν· τῶν μίαν οὐ χρεών ἐστιν—ἐν ὧι πεπλανημένοι εἰσίν— τἀντία δ’ ἐκρίναντο δέμας καὶ σήματ’ ἔθεντο χωρὶς ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων, τῆι μὲν φλογὸς αἰθέριον πῦρ, ἤπιον ὄν, μέγ’ ἐλαφρόν, ἑωυτῶι πάντοσε τωὐτόν, τῶι δ’ ἑτέρωι μὴ τωὐτόν· ἀτὰρ κἀκεῖνο κατ’ αὐτό τἀντία νύκτ’ ἀδαῆ, πυκινὸν δέμας ἐμβριθές τε· For they resolved to name two Forms (of which it is wrong to name only one, wherein they have gone astray), and they chose opposites in body and assigned them marks separate from one another, on the one hand, aetherial fire of flame, being gentle-minded, immensely light, the same with itself in every direction but not the same as the other; and again that other in itself, the opposite: unintelligent night, dense and heavy with regard to its body.61 While taken in themselves, the characterization of light and night might be understood in terms of the gendered polarities of the Pythagorean table of opposites (where male is associated with, among others, light, and female, in turn, with night),62 the testimonies quoted earlier suggest that these associations should be understood as reversed by Parmenides. Since females are related to the hot and the rare (and, by implication, to fire and light) in two of the testimonies (A 52, A 53), “gentle-mindedness” (êpion, B 8.57) and “lightness” (elaphron, B 8.57) is to be connected to the female, whereas density or solidity (pukinon, B 8.59) and heaviness or ponderousness (embrithes, B 8.59) to the male. This in itself is a highly unconventional polarization to be noted as innovative on the part of Parmenides,63 but it is critical that unintelligence or ignorance (adaê,64 B 8.59) is also associated with night and, by implication, with the male. Consequently, its opposite, that is, intelligence or knowledge, is to be associated with the female. This association is consonant with the testimony of Theophrastus (A 46), who relates cognition through an excess of the hot (connected to menstruation by Aristotle in A 52) with “better and purer” understanding. Therefore, the conclusion based on the testimonies that females, on account of their (relative) hotness, have better cognition or understanding than males is corroborated by an important fragment in the poem.65 On this evidence, a final, no less trenchant conclusion follows: since “the best and purest” understanding is obviously related to what-is, female cognition is closer to “the best,” i.e., the knowledge of what-is, than male cognition. This epistemic valorization of the female over the male is still predicated on the precarious ontological status of entities (including humans) in Doxa. However, the

Light, Knowledge, Incorporeality, and Feminine in Parmenides 43 logic of gradation (of cold/dense/male and hot/rare/female parallel with ignorance/ knowledge) and the “like by like” principle suggest a closer association of the feminine also with the steadfast ontology of what-is than that of the masculine. The Metaphysical Valorization of the Feminine It is again Aristotle, who claims that Parmenides: Metaph. A5 986b30–987a1 (= DK 28 A 24) δύο τὰς αἰτίας καὶ δύο τὰς ἀρχὰς πάλιν τίθησι, θερμὸν καὶ ψυχρόν, οἷον πῦρ καὶ γῆν λέγων. τούτων δὲ κατὰ μὲν τὸ ὂν τὸ θερμὸν τάττει, θάτερον δὲ κατὰ τὸ μὴ ὄν· posits two causes and two principles, the hot and the cold, calling them fire and earth; and of these he assigns the hot to the category of what-is and the other to that of what-is-not. This passage is rather puzzling for a series of reasons. First, cosmic light (as a naturally hot “stuff”) cannot, prima facie, be identical with what-is, for just like night, it must be divisible to be able to mix with night and form the heavenly bodies and the earth (B 9, B 10, B 11, B12). In contrast, what-is is distinctly indivisible (B 4, B 8.22–25). Second, night in turn cannot be identified with what-is-not, for there is no such thing (B 6.1–2, B 7.1). Finally, whereas what-is and what-is-not are contradictories and hence exclusive alternatives (B 2.1–2, B 8.15–16), night and light are mutually dependent on each other for being what-they-are and are, in this sense, inclusive opposites.66 It follows that Aristotle is either wrong,67 or his enigmatic use of the verb tattei (“ranks with,” or “assigns to”) expressing the relation of the hot and what-is (and earth or the cold and what-is-not) signifies not identity, but association, assimilation, or analogy.68 In other words, Aristotle might be taken to claim that what-is is “light-like” and what-is-not, in turn, is “night-like” in Parmenides.69 If so, Aristotle’s report might be made sense of in a way that clarifies the relation of light and the feminine from a metaphysical perspective. Consider the following reasoning I propose might be lying behind Parmenides’ tenets concerning cognition, light, females, and corporeality: P1: like is known by like (B 16, A 46), i.e., the hot is known by the hot, the cold by the cold; P2: light is hotter (lighter, rarer) than night (B 8.57–59); P3: females are hotter (lighter, rarer) than males (A 52, A 53); P4: cognition by the hot is “better and purer” than by the cold (A 46); P5: what-is is incorporeal (B 4, B 8.22–25);70 P6: what-is is light-like (A 24); C1: the hotter (lighter, rarer) something is, the less corporeal it is; C2: females are less corporeal than males; C3: females have a “better and purer” cognition than males; C4: they are closer both in their ontological and cognitive constitution to what-is than males.

44  Emese Mogyoródi Obviously, intra-cosmic females are not absolutely hot, but merely “hotter” than males.71 Nor are they, mutatis mutandis, entirely incorporeal. However, since an increase in hotness entails “better and purer” cognition, and presumably the best or perfect cognition is that of what-is, cognition of females is, by virtue of their inherent nature or ontological constitution, as it were, closer to that of what-is than the cognition of males. Whereas, just like females, light remains part of the cosmos, hence in some sense at least corporeal or material,72 the analogy implied by Aristotle’s testimony suggests some extra-cosmic, supernatural or transcendent, incorporeal Light, naturally to be identified with what-is. For just like what-is, this supernatural, incorporeal Light must transcend plurality, in particular dualism, difference, or differentiation, paradigmatically represented by cosmic light and night. While intra-cosmic fire or light cannot, prima facie, be identified with what-is, nothing precludes from concluding that Parmenides conceived of what-is by the analogy of intra-cosmic light, as some extra-cosmic, transcendent Light.73 By the logic of intra-cosmic gradation, this extra-cosmic or transcendent Light is to be naturally identified with the Feminine (as different from intra-cosmic females), as “light” and “female” analogically, just like goddesses, are “women” analogically. Consequently, the cognition of intra-cosmic females, just like that of males, remains limited and they are in need of divine (in particular, female divine) assistance to attain an insight into ultimate Truth/Reality, so different from the reality ordinarily experienced by us via intra-cosmic light and night (cf. B 16). The male kouros is, indeed, granted a privileged access to it, but nothing suggests in the poem that females could not be granted the same insight. Quite to the contrary, on account of their bio- or psychophysical constitution, they are in fact more receptive than males to such an insight.74 Conclusion Arguments here can illuminate much that would otherwise remain puzzling in the poem of Parmenides. First, the predominance of female characters in the mythical journey of the kouros in the Proem to initiation into some profound knowledge; the fact that the kouros, the single male character in the Proem, is a passive recipient of the knowledge imparted by the goddess (B 1.1–4); the “much-attending” (hence, intelligent) (poluphrastoi) mares that pull the chariot (B 1.4); the wisdom of the Sun Maidens who, by their “soft words” (malakoisi logoisin)75 cunningly (epiphradeôs) speak Dikê into opening the gates for them (B 1.15–16); above all, the fact that, apart from the Proem, it is a goddess who speaks all through the poem and initiates the youth into knowledge of what-is.76 Further, they also illuminate the figure of another mysterious goddess, the feminine daimôn “in the midst” of the cosmic rings who “steers all things” (B 12.3) and, by intelligence, “devised” (mêtisato) Erôs (a central male character in Doxa, corresponding to the kouros in the Proem) as first of all the gods (B 13). Finally, they shed light on the binding power of Moira (B 8.37) and Anankê (B 8.30), by which they hold both what-is and the heavens in place (B 8.30–31, B 10.6). Knowledge, cunning, and intelligence are consistently associated with female characters all through the poem,77

Light, Knowledge, Incorporeality, and Feminine in Parmenides 45 and since knowledge is power, the deities are all in a position of power. The power of goddesses over humans is, of course, taken for granted in Greek myths, but their predominance and, in particular, strong and consistent association with intelligence and wisdom in the poem of Parmenides suggest a special connection of the feminine with knowledge, and through that, with philosophical wisdom. If arguments herein are correct, then the conclusion follows that this applies also to (mortal) females. In so far as reasoning from Doxa to Alêtheia might be allowed, this valorization can be accounted for on the basis of their closer association with what-is, identical as it is with an extra-cosmic, transcendent Light to be associated, in turn, with the Feminine. This metaphysical valorization of the Feminine is certainly unconventional, perhaps even provoking in contemporary Greek culture, one that goes straight in the face of the misogynist paradigm notoriously represented by Hesiod or by Aristotle later. But Parmenides was innovative and provoking in so many respects that the need to give him credit for another uncommon conception should not be entirely unexpected. Notes 1 The fragments (notated as “B + no.”) and testimonies (“A + no.”) of Parmenides and other pre-Socratic authors are taken from the standard edition of Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz, eds., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Vol. 1, 6th ed. (Zürich and Hildesheim: Weidmann, 1951) (abbreviated as DK). Unless otherwise noted, translations of the fragments and testimonies are drawn from Allan H. Coxon, The Fragments of Parmenides: A Critical Text with Introduction and Translation, the Ancient Testimonia, and a Commentary (Las Vegas, Zürich and Athens: Parmenides Publishing, 2009). (Although I do not always agree with Coxon’s translations, since nothing hangs in my arguments on textual disagreement, with one exception, I cite his translations throughout this chapter.) Testimonies missing from DK, but included in Coxon’s edition, are notated as “Coxon, t. + no. (of testimony).” 2 Except for the Hêliades (‟Sun Maidens”), these names can function both as abstractions (as common nouns) and personifications (personal names). Though in some cases their usage is debatable (e.g., peithô and alêtheiê in B 2.4), mostly they are to be interpreted as personal names, that is, as goddesses. 3 Modern representatives of the allegorical interpretation include Cecil Maurice Bowra, “The Proem of Parmenides,” Classical Philology 32 (1937): 97–112; Leonardo Tarán, Parmenides (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 30–31; Nestor-Luis Cordero, Les deux chemins de Parménide (Paris: J. Vrin, 1984), 176–83; Herbert Granger, “Parmenides of Elea: Rationalist or Dogmatist?” Ancient Philosophy 30 (2010): 15–38. For strong recent objections to this conception, see John Palmer, Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 52–61; Shaul Tor, Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Philosophy: A Study of Hesiod, Xenophanes, and Parmenides (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 10–19. 4 I have consulted and refer to the following feminist interpretations of Parmenides: Andrea Nye, “Rethinking Male and Female: The Pre-Hellenic Philosophy of Mortal Opinion,” History of European Ideas 9 (1988): 261–80; Val Plumwood, “The Politics of Reason: Towards a Feminist Logic,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 71 (1993): 436–62; Adriana Cavarero, In Spite of Plato: A Feminist Rewriting of Ancient Philosophy, trans. Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio and Áine O’Healy (London and New York: Routledge, 1995); Vigdis Songe-Møller, Philosophy Without Women: The Birth of Sexism in Western Thought, trans. Peter Cripps (London and New York: Continuum, 2002);

46  Emese Mogyoródi Hanneke Canters and Grace M. Jantzen, Forever Fluid: A Reading of Luce Irigaray’s Elemental Passions (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2005); Clara Fischer, Gendered Readings of Change: A Feminist-Pragmatist Approach (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014); Vigdis Songe-Møller, “The Goddess and Diotima: Their Role in Parmenides’ Poem and Plato’s Symposium,” in Methodological Reflections on Women’s Contribution and Influence in the History of Philosophy, eds. Sigríður Þorgeirsdóttir and Ruth Edith Hagengruber (Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2020), 67–82. Although these accounts propose varying interpretations, and their gravity of criticism also differs, they all share the central claim that Parmenides’ philosophy reflects the general Greek cultural bias against women and incorporates it into his philosophy. I have failed to find an interpretation proposed by avowed feminist scholars controverting this claim. 5 However, it might well be due to the influence of strong feminist interest in female characters in Parmenides that there is a rising concern with this issue also among his specialists. Most recently, see Fernando Santoro, “Venus and the Erotics of Parmenides,” Anais de filosofia clássica 14, no. 27 (2020): 166–89; Livio Rossetti, “Les déesses de Parménide,” in Penser les dieux avec las Présocratiques, ed. Rossella Saetta Cottone (Paris: Presses de l’École normale supérieure, 2021), 129–42. See also n7.—The identity of the unnamed goddess of B 1 has, of course, been in the forefront of interest since Antiquity, but her relevance in interpreting the metaphysics, natural philosophy, or arguments of Parmenides has been studied less extensively than it deserves. Exceptions include Peter Kingsley, Reality (Inverness: The Golden Sufi Center, 2003); Laura M. Gemelli Marciano, “Images and Experience: At the Roots of Parmenides’ Aletheia,” Ancient Philosophy 28 (2008): 21–48; Franco Ferrari, Il migliore dei mondi impossibili. Parmenide e il cosmo dei Presocratici (Roma: Aracne, 2010). 6 In Hesiod, sexuality is dangerous and destructive for men, for it ruins their life (see esp. Th. 594–613); see also the famous story of Pandora as the first woman and a source of all trouble for mankind (Op. 83–105). Aristotle is notorious for his hierarchical view of men and women and for his disdain for women’s intellectual abilities (cf. Pol. 1254b4– 24, 1260a5–14). 7 Gérard Journée, “Lumière et nuit, féminin et masculin chez Parménide d’Elée: quelques remarques,” Phronesis 57 (2012): 289–318; Rose Cherubin, “Sex, Gender, and Class in the Poem of Parmenides: Difference Without Dualism?” American Journal of Philology 140 (2019): 29–66. 8 Cf. n16. 9 It makes a significant difference, however, that females are downgraded together with males in Doxa (on this, see following discussion). 10 In my account of egalitarianism in Doxa, I comply with the excellent studies of Journée and Cherubin and give due references to our points of agreement. 11 See Iambl. VP 30; Porph. VP 19–20; D.L. 8, 42–43. Feminist scholars seem to fail to take into consideration the equal status of men and women in Pythagorean communities and heavily rely on the Pythagorean ‟table of opposites,” for which the source, however, is late and controversial (cf. n65). On the equality of women and men among the Pythagoreans see, e.g., Sarah B. Pomeroy, Pythagorean Women: Their History and Writings (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), xxi (with further literature), 17; Gabriele Cornelli, In Search of Pythagoreanism: Pythagoreanism as a ­Historiographical Category (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2013), 74. We have various sources for the influence of Pythagoreanism on Parmenides (D.L. 9.21 = DK 28 A 1; Str. Chr. 6.1.1; Procl. in Prm. 619.5; Iambl. VP 166, 267). (On this, see Journée, 297–300.) Therefore, whether or not Parmenides was a Pythagorean (an issue on which his students are divided), their influence on him must certainly be taken into account. For a detailed defense in favor of his Pythagoreanism most recently, see Andrei V. Lebedev, ‟Parmenides, ΑΝΗΡ ΠΥΘΑΓΟΡΕΙΟΣ: Monistic Idealism (Mentalism) in Greek Metaphysics,” Indo-European Linguistics and Classical Philology 21 (2017): 493–536.

Light, Knowledge, Incorporeality, and Feminine in Parmenides  47 12 Cf. Pomeroy, Pythagorean Women, 10–11, where she notes that Sparta had cultural ties with Samos, the native land of Pythagoras; on the autonomy of Spartan women, see Sarah B. Pomeroy, Spartan Women (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), esp. 3–32. 13 Beside Sparta, the earlier law code of Gortyna in Crete (a Dorian settlement) is also to be noted for securing more extensive rights for women (e.g., to property, divorce, and litigation) than ancient Athenian women ever had. (I am grateful for reminding me of Gortyna to István Perczel.) 14 Cf. n16 below. 15 Nye, “Rethinking Male and Female,” 264–65, 270–71; Cavarero, In Spite of Plato, 38–39, 45–47, 49–50; Songe-Møller, Philosophy Without Women, 5–8, 21–23, 46–48; Songe-Møller, “The Goddess and Diotima,” 71; Fischer, Gendered Readings of Change, 3–4, 15–17, 25–27. 16 The present participle eon (“being”), cognate of the verb eimi (“to be”), might also denote “truth” and “reality.” (This also applies to the noun alêtheia.) The basic translation I prefer is “what-is” (standard in the literature on Parmenides), but in what follows I  use the more traditional translations “being” or “Being” when referring to feminist accounts, where they are widely adopted. In epistemically significant contexts, in my own account I preserve the ambiguity of Reality/Truth. On “thinking,” cf. n22. 17 Nye, “Rethinking Male and Female,” 265–66; Cavarero, In Spite of Plato, 38–39; Fischer, Gendered Readings of Change, 16–17, 39; Songe-Møller, “The Goddess and Diotima,” 74. 18 Plumwood, passim; Cavarero, In Spite of Plato, 40–41; Nye, “Rethinking Male and Female,” 262–64, 265–66, 268, 273; Fischer, Gendered Readings of Change, 36–39; Canters and Jantzen, Forever Fluid, 14. 19 Nye, “Rethinking Male and Female,” 264, 269–70; Cavarero, In Spite of Plato, 42; Fischer, Gendered Readings of Change, 21–22. 20 Cavarero, In Spite of Plato, 38–39; Canters and Jantzen, Forever Fluid, 13–14; Fischer, Gendered Readings of Change, 22 claims that the anonymity of the goddess of the Proem suggests that she is external from the viewpoint of the philosophy. (On objections, see later discussion.) Songe-Møller states that, since the gods and goddessess of traditional mythology are always named, the anonymity of Parmenides’ goddess suggests that she has nothing to do with our “real world” (Songe-Møller, Philosophy without Women, 36; cf. Songe-Møller, “The Goddess and Diotima,” 74). Although Parmenides’ reasons for leaving the revealing goddess of B1 anonymous is highly controversial among specialists, it is clear that his procedure is not unparalleled and must be interpreted within his own cultural context. The relevant context is that the underworld and initiatory divinities are standardly left unnamed in Greek culture. On this, see Tor, Mortal and Divine, 268 (with literature). 21 It might be helpful to remind readers that from B 1.24 on, the text of the poem is a direct quote from the anonymous goddess; thus, what we call “Parmenides’ philosophy” is meant to be taken as divinely inspired through and through, to that, by a goddess. 22 It can merely be noted here that I prefer the translation of noein as “cognize” or “cognition” and of noos as “intellect,” but again, since nothing hangs on this in my argument, and since it would require a lengthy discussion to provide reasons for these preferences, for the purposes of this chapter their widely accepted translations are adopted. 23 Just like eon and alêtheia, the noun doxa is ambiguous between an ontological (“appearance”) and an epistemic (“opinion”) connotation (cf. n16). The double designation is meant to convey this ambiguity. 24 Aristotle famously complains that, although the Eleatic theses seem plausible on the ground of logic, from the viewpoint of “the facts” (pragmata) (i.e., states of affairs borne out by sense experience), they seem “next-door to madness” (maniai paraplêsion) (GC I.8, 325a17–23). In a similar vein, Charles Kahn in his classic essay raises the pertinent question: “How are we to understand the permanent relevance of a doctrine which, taken literally, might seem to be either madness or sheer sophistry?” Charles Kahn, “The Thesis of Parmenides,” The Review of Metaphysics 22, no. 4 (1969): 715.

48  Emese Mogyoródi 25 The pair is referred to by various phrases by Parmenides: “day” (hêmerê) and “night” (nux) (B 1.11); “the aetherial fire of flame” (phlogos aitherion pur) and “unintelligent night” (nukt’ adaê) (B 8.58–59); “light” (phaos) and “night” (nux) (B 9.1, 3); “fire” (pur) and “night” (nux) (B 12.1–2). Nothing hangs on these differences in my argument. 26 It can merely be noted here that light and night, though constitutive of the cosmos, do not fully comply with our notion of “the material” or corporeal, rather, they are some sort of “psychosomatic” entities. On this, see Emese Mogyoródi, “Materialism and Immaterialism, Compatibility and Incompatibility in Parmenides,” in Eleatic Ontology: Origin and Reception, Vol. 1, Tom. a, eds. Rose Cherubin and Nicola Galgano. Anais de filosofia clássica 14, no. 28 (2020): 89–91. 27 There are other notable innovations in Doxa, such as the discoveries that the Earth is spherical (A 1, A 37), and that the Morning Star and the Evening Star are one (Venus) (A 40a). 28 The debate between “compatibilism” and “incompatibilism” (that is, of the ontologies of Alêtheia and Doxa) is certainly the most controversial one in the history of modern interpretations of Parmenides, so for the purposes of this chapter, I can only make basic references to related research. Some of the more recent, influential compatibilist accounts include the following works: Panagiotis Thanassas, Parmenides, Cosmos, and Being: A Philosophical Interpretation (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2007); John A. Palmer, Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Thomas Kjeller Johansen, “Parmenides’ Likely Story,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 50 (2016): 1–29. 29 Among students of Parmenides, incompatibilism is the minority view today. For a recent criticism of the compatibilist approach, see Matthew R. Cosgrove, “What Are ‘True’ Doxai Worth to Parmenides? Essaying a Fresh Look at His Cosmology,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 46 (2014): 1–31; Mogyoródi, “Materialism and Immaterialism,” 93–97. 30 Some classic texts that lament the limitations of human knowledge vis-à-vis that of the gods include Hom. Od. 18.136–17; h.Cer. 256–257; Archil. fr. 70; Thgn. 141–142; Simon. fr. 22. It is not without significance that in referring to ordinary humans, Parmenides employs the nouns anthrôpos (B 1.30, B 16.2–3, B 19.3) or brotos (B 6.4, B 8.39, 50, 61), which might refer to both men and women, in contrast to anêr (never used in the poem), referring exclusively to men. True, B 1.3 mentions “a knowing man [phôs],” containing a noun with exclusive reference to males. Yet, similarly to anthrôpos and brotos, phôs might be used in contrast not only to a woman, but also to a god (LSJ s.v. φώς). Thus, except when referring to “male and female” (including animals) (B 12.5–6) or “boys and girls” (B 17) in a pair, Parmenides seems to deliberately employ genderneutral terms denoting humans, while underlining their mortality. This also applies to the “knowing man” (a phrase that recalls the language of mystery initiation: see Tor, Mortal and Divine, 255–56, with literature). 31 The relation of reason and revelation or disclosure in Parmenides’ poem is also a hotly debated issue. For an informative and thought-provoking recent discussion of the history of the debate on reason vs. disclosure, see Tor, Mortal and Divine, 10–60. 32 The kouros needs the help of the Sun Maidens not only to be guided to their destination on the miraculous chariot, but also to be let in through the gates; the Sun Maidens talk Dike into opening the formidable gates for them by “cunning words” (B 1.15–17). Thus, as an adept to be initiated into knowledge, the kouros is a passive recipient of superhuman disclosure, subjected to divine grace (just as the “knowing man” in B 1.3, whether or not it refers to the kouros). In further support for these claims, see Tor, Mortal and Divine, 5, 265–67, 278–84. 33 Once in passive form (pheromên B 1.4). The passivity of the kouros is, of course, implied by the semantics of the verb itself, since the mares are the agents and the kouros is the object of their action.—This clearly contradicts the assumption that Parmenides connects passivity with the feminine and activity with the masculine (contra Fischer, Gendered Readings of Change, 15). Cf. n30 above.

Light, Knowledge, Incorporeality, and Feminine in Parmenides  49 34 The phrase, chasma (“chasm, gulf”) achanes (“yawning, open”; “vast, immense”) (B 1.18), both cognates of the verb chaskô (“yawn, gape”), is a kind of oxymoron, which suggests confusion on the part of the kouros. 35 The journey frightens the kouros and he undergoes some sort of near-death experience, since upon meeting him, the goddess addresses him as follows: ‟Welcome, O youth, arriving at our dwelling; no ill fate moira kakê [. . .] sent you forth to travel on this way . . ., but right and justice.” The phrase moira kakê refers to death in Homeric parlance (Il. 13.602), thus, the goddess’ words imply reassurance for the youth that he did not die. Cf. Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides: Revised and Expanded Edition (Las Vegas, Zürich and Athens: Parmenides Publishing, 2008), 15; Tor, Mortal and Divine, 256 (with further literature). 36 Contra Cavarero, In Spite of Plato, 38–39; Canters and Jantzen, Forever Fluid, 12–13. In addition, as has been pointed out earlier, goddesses feature in all three sections of the poem. In particular, the roles of Moira (B 8.37) and Anankê (B 8.30–31) are notable for their holding what-is fast in its bonds. (Anankê also holds the stars in chains: B 10.6–7.) Thus, goddesses have control over what-is; how could they not be in control of a poor mortal male (the kouros)? 37 Thus, for reasons pointed previously, I take the disclosure motif of the Proem literally, without denying the value and role of arguments in the poem. That is to say, I assume that through the symbolism of the Proem (and B 16) Parmenides means to convey the epistemic message that an insight into Truth/Reality requires a mode of cognition fundamentally different from our normal state of consciousness (cf. n74 below); and that while the latter also includes our rational faculties, these do play some instrumental role in facilitating the momentous insight. On this, see in more detail: Emese Mogyoródi, “Ráció és reveláció Parmenidész filozófiájában: A  reveláció logikája,” in Töredékes hagyomány. Steiger Kornélnak, eds. Gábor Betegh et al. (Budapest: Akadémiai kiadó, 2007), 14–42. 38 Critics might well have been inadvertently influenced by modern interpretations of Parmenides that overrate the role of logic and reasoning in the poem. This approach, however, is far less prelavent today as it had been until about the end of the previous century. Cf. nn3 and 31 above. 39 Gleaning from the fact that the kouros is in need of her reassurance (B 1.26–28) and “kindness” (prophrôn, B 1.23) upon their encounter.—Another central (mythical) male character in Doxa, notably, Erôs, is also subjected to a goddess, the daemoness “in the middle,” who “governs all things” (B 12.3–4) and who “devised” him “first of all the gods” (B 13). 40 Songe-Møller, “The Goddess and Diotima,” 70 suggests that, unlike the kouros, the divine female helpers have no desire for knowledge and that this, as well as their construction as the “double Other” (divine and female) of the male kouros, symbolizes the exclusion of females from philosophy. However, the female helpers have the upper hand over the kouros not merely because they are divine, but also because they possess the intellectual assets for guiding him towards their destination (on this, see following discussion); hence, they do not have a desire for knowledge because they already possess wisdom (just like the unnamed goddess). Consequently, whether or not they represent the “double Other” of the kouros, their intellectual superiority over him is inevitable. 41 As Cherubin, “Sex, Gender, and Class,” 55–56 notes, Parmenides could have easily selected male characters aiding the kouros on his journey, and a male god to reveal to him the Truth. It is especially informative that he chose female horses (mares), rather than stallions (B 1.1) (cf. Cherubin, “Sex, Gender, and Class,” 55), and specified a female daimôn governing the cosmos (B 12.3). (This is only made clear by the usage of the articles, since the nouns, “horse” and “daimôn,” might be either feminine or masculine in Greek.) This is a strong argument against the objection that the majority of abstract nouns are feminine in Greek, which might be taken to undermine the significance of female figures in the poem. (I am grateful to Grace Ledbetter for this objection she raised during the conference Dis/embodiment and Im/materiality: Uncovering the Body,

50  Emese Mogyoródi Gender, and Sexuality in Late Antiquity—In Memoriam Marianne Sághy (1961‒2018), Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, June 6–8, 2019, when this paper was first presented.) 42 It is informative that Parmenides omits the traditional mytheme of the Muses of Homer and Hesiod as sources of superhuman knowledge by singling out an unnamed goddess. The significance of this is also supported by the fact that, in contrast, Empedocles retains the traditional role of the Muses by invoking Calliope (cf. DK 31 B 131). Tor’s note on the contrast of Hesiod and Parmenides with regard to the Muses in the former and the anonymous goddess in the latter is also highly illuminating: “Parmenides removes from his kind goddess the spectre of a mocking and almost predatory deceptiveness that marks female divine wisdom in Hesiod” (Tor, Mortal and Divine, 313). 43 The unnamed goddess who reveals the truth to the kouros (B 1.22) requires a separate study, but her identity is not crucial to my argument. 44 A discussion of the notorious issue of the direction of the youth’s journey in the Proem (whether it is an anabasis, i.e., a journey to the light, or katabasis, a journey to the Netherworld) is deliberately put aside in this chapter. The reason is not only that this requires a separate study, but also that it is worthwhile to clarify the connection of light/night and the male/female on independent grounds, preferably from the rest of the poem. 45 Contra Nye, “Rethinking Male and Female,” 264; Fischer, Gendered Readings of Change, 40 (with reference to Nye). On this, see the detailed discussion and arguments of Cherubin, “Sex, Gender, and Class,” 36–41. 46 See A  53 (Aët. V.7.4  =  Dox. Gr. 420). While providing a thorough analysis of Parmenides’ embryology, with special attention to his conception of the uterus, Kurfess persuasively argues that it is misleading to speak of its “sides,” for its structure, as Parmenides is likely to have conceived of it, contained “compartments.” See Christopher Kurfess, “A Blend of Much-Wandering Limbs: DK 28 B 16 and Parmenidean Embryology” (unpublished paper presented at the Fourth Biennial Conference of the International Association for Presocratic Studies, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece, June 30–July 4, 2014), 25–30. 47 Varro Log. Tub. (Dox. Gr. 190, 4–11) = Coxon t. 50. 48 Cael. Aur. TP iv, 9, 134 (B 18.1–3): “When woman and man together mingle the seeds [germina, plural] of love, / the potency from the diverse blood within the veins lends form / and, if it maintains due measure, fashions well-constituted bodies /. . .. ” 49 Arist. GA I, 20–21, 729a21-b20; I, 22, 730a24-b8.—There is evidence that in the early fifth century, there was a debate among pre-Socratics whether the female also contributed a seed to the embryo. On this, see G. E. R. Lloyd, Science, Folklore, and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 86–105. Cf. n65 later. 50 The egalitarian treatment of light and night is acknowledged by Songe-Møller, Philosophy Without Women, 75, who for this reason finds it distressing that Parmenides valorized his ontology over cosmology. As I argue later, this is not critical. Fischer, Gendered Readings of Change, 40 notes that Parmenides allowed for female generative power, but obscures this insight by claiming that B 18 might be about homosexuality. While the fragment may well be about homosexuality (or about hermaphroditism), this does not annul the idea that women also contribute a seed to the formation of the embryo. 51 Translation by Alexander P. D. Mourelatos. 52 Journée, “Lumière et nuit,” 291–301, 306–8; Cherubin, “Sex, Gender, and Class,” 37–41. 53 Contra Cavarero, In Spite of Plato, 53. Cf. Cherubin, “Sex, Gender, and Class,” 61–62; Tor, Mortal and Divine, 186. 54 Again, both night and light are the same and not the same (B 8.57–58), so it is not the case that any of them alone would represent ‟otherness” or difference. 55 Most scholars today accept this position. Earlier, see, e.g., Coxon, The Fragments of Parmenides, 342; more recently, see Jenny Bryan’s careful clarifications of the theoretical

Light, Knowledge, Incorporeality, and Feminine in Parmenides 51 issues and support for this position: Jenny Bryan, “Reconsidering the Authority of Parmenides’ Doxa,” in Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, eds. Jenny Bryan, Robert Wardy, and James Warren (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 20–40. 56 Similarly, Cherubin, “Sex, Gender, and Class,” 44, 46. 57 From B 12 and B 17, Nye draws the conclusion that “[m]en must not mingle with women; intercourse with women is a distasteful necessity for breeding purposes. The male must be separated from the female” (Nye, “Rethinking Male and Female,” 264). The “daimôn in the middle,” however, sends both “female to unite with male and, conversely, male to unite with female” (B 12.5–6). Therefore, from B 12 it must just as well be inferred that women must not mingle with men, in other words, that “birth and union” is just as “hateful” (stugeros, B 12.4) for them, as it is for men. Hence, it is wrong to exclusively associate the female with birth, generation, intercourse or mixing in Parmenides (contra Nye and Songe-Møller, “The Goddess and Diotima,” 73–74). (On different grounds for the same point, see Cherubin, “Sex, Gender, and Class,” 33–35.) Songe-Møller is on the right track in claiming that Parmenides labels sexuality “hateful” because it leads to death (Songe-Møller, Philosophy Without Women, 48; cf. Cavarero, In Spite of Plato, 47). It is of crucial importance, however, that the adjective has Pythagorean associations, in particular, it recalls the religious belief of transmigration, referring to the wretchedness of incarnate human existence allotted to humanity (men and women alike) as punishment. Cf. Coxon, The Fragments of Parmenides, 20, 276, 370–72; Tor, Mortal and Divine, 237; Andrei V. Lebedev, “The Aegean Origin and Early History of the Greek Doctrine of Reincarnation and Immortality of the Soul (Epimenides, Pherecydes, Pythagoras, and Onomacritus’ Orphica),” in Myth, Ritual, Literature. Orientalia et Classica VI/LXXVII, eds. Julia V. Ivanova and Nadezhda B. Bogdanovich (Moscow: Higher School of Economics Publishing House, 2022), 253– 54. (Transmigration is attested for Parmenides by Simplikios in Ph. 39, 17–20, Coxon t. 207, and Porph. Antr. 21–23, Coxon t. 133.) The sexual union of men and women is, therefore, “hateful” not because of prudishness or misogyny, but because it perpetuates the cycle of incarnation of humans qua humans, through the infinite recurrence of birth and death. 58 Cf. n26. 59 Cf. GA IV, 765b17–28 (Coxon t. 35). 60 Cf. Journée, “Lumière et nuit,” 308–10, 315–16; Cherubin, “Sex, Gender, and Class,” 42; Tor, Mortal and Divine, 313 n8, 249 n69. 61 Translation by Coxon with some corrections by me.—The whole passage is highly controversial, but our concerns here are restricted to the qualities associated with light and night, which are largely uncontroversial. 62 Arist. Metaph. I, 5, 986a22–27. Cf. n65 below. 63 Cf. Journée, “Lumière et nuit,” 300. 64 From *δάω, δαῆναι (“learn, know”), not from δάος (“torch”) as conjectured by Diels (cf. Coxon, The Fragments of Parmenides, 348). See also Gregory Vlastos, “Parmenides’ Theory of Knowledge,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 77 (1946): 74 n48; Journée, “Lumière et nuit,” 293 n9. 65 Coxon, The Fragments of Parmenides, 20 suggests that by associating light and knowledge with the female, Parmenides criticizes Pythagoreanism (cf. Coxon, 343, 369). However, our only source of the Pythagorean table of opposites is late (Arist. Metaph. I, 5, 986a22–27), and it is rather uncertain whether it could be attributed to the early Pythagoreans and, if so, to what extent. As is well known, the table ranks female with qualities such as darkness, left, and evil, and male, in turn, with light, right, and good. Feminists heavily rely on the table in asserting the sexism of Ancient Greece in its entirety. It would, however, be ill-advised to give credence to Aristotle (indubitably androcentric as he was) concerning the ranking of females in early Pythagoreanism. As was argued earlier, Parmenides, who was certainly sympathetic to Pythagoreanism

52  Emese Mogyoródi (if not a Pythagorean himself), associated the female with hotness, light, lightness, and knowledge, which should serve as a warning against hasty conclusions concerning androcentrism in early Pythagoreanism (cf. Pomeroy, Pythagorean Women, 10; see also Journée, “Lumière et nuit,” 295–97). It is informative in this regard that according to Aetius (Aët. v. 5.1) Pythagoras himself held (similarly to Parmenides) that the female emits a seed. If this evidence on Pythagoras’ view is correct, then (among Pythagoreans or those influenced by them) he, Alcmaeon of Croton, Empedocles (cf. Coxon t. 50), and Parmenides all held a progressive view about the female seed, while others (such as Philolaus DK 44 A 27) did not. 66 On this in more detail, see Mogyoródi, “Materialism and Immaterialism,” 96 with n32. 67 Cf. Tor, Mortal and Divine, 186, with further literature in support of this conclusion. 68 This is a generous reading, for elsewhere Aristotle straightforwardly idenitifes fire with what-is and earth with what-is-not (DC I, 3, 318b6–7), but Aristotle’s report on Parmenides and the Eleatics is contradictory in many other respects. 69 In a similar vein, Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides, 325 notes that in the Parmenidean version of “the table of opposites” (B 8.56–59) there is a certain “leaning” of one side (that of light) towards truth and reality, which was convincing enough for Aristotle to rank it with what-is. Mourelatos, however, assumes that this “leaning” works both ways, since some positive properties associated with what-is (such as firmness and immobility) are also associated with night. I believe the “leaning” is asymmetrical; the crucial reason is that light is associated with knowledge, whereas night with ignorance. 70 On this, see Mogyoródi, “Materialism and Immaterialism,” 99–100 (with further literature). 71 Contrary to what-is, which admits of no “more or less” (B 8.44–45), augmentation is an essential trait of both light and night (cf. B 12.1, A 46, A 52, A 53). 72 In so far as they are psycho-somatic entities (cf. n26 above). 73 “Transcendence” is meant in a broad, non-committed sense, referring to an entity that in any given system cannot be accounted for on the basis of rules, laws, or the nature of (immanent) entities within the system. (I refer to some such transcendent light or night as “Light”.) For the transcendence of what-is in this sense, see Scott Austin, Parmenides: Being, Bounds, and Logic (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), 17, 140–42, 148–53; Scott Austin, Parmenides and the History of Dialectic: Three Essays (Las Vegas, Zürich and Athens: Parmenides Publishing, 2007), 27, 82; Mogyoródi, “Materialism and Immaterialism,” 99–100. 74 Cf. Tor, Mortal and Divine, 313 n8, who suggests that, in order to be receptive to the disclosure of the goddess, the kouros is aligned with those aspects of his constitution which are more female (brighter, hotter, more intelligent). Indeed, this is further supported by the odd gender reversal with regards to the kouros implied by the chariot ride (which, in a series of details, recalls the wedding ceremony): traditionally, the bride is escorted on a chariot to the bride-groom’s house in the Greek wedding ritual. Hence, the kouros is in a position assigned to females in a well-known Greek ritual.—If one assumes a specific, unitive mystical experience (traditionally called unio mystica) lying behind the poem, as has been suggested by some scholars, one cannot but think of Medieval Christian female mysticism, practiced by a series of women (some of whom were, for this reason, outcasts from or even executed by, the Church), such as Hildegard of Bingen, Marguerite Porete, Catherine of Siena, or Teresa of Avila. Students of Parmenides who assumed this sort of mysticism in Parmenides include Bowra, “The Proem of Parmenides,” 39, 53; Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers: The Gifford Lectures of 1936 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 107; Martin L. West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 222; Gemelli, “Images and Experience,” 21–48; Simon Trépanier, “Early Greek Theology: God as Nature and Natural Gods,” in The Gods of Ancient Greece: Identities and Transformations, eds. Jan N. Bremmer and Andrew Erskine (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 296. See especially Willem Jacob Verdenius, “Parmenides’ Conception of Light,” Mnemosyne 2 (1949): 122–28, who cites a range of cross-cultural mystical literature in which

Light, Knowledge, Incorporeality, and Feminine in Parmenides 53 light is not merely a symbol but a “stuff” that pervades the mystic. Cf. also Robbiano’s thought-provoking study about striking parallels with “nondual experience” in Advaita Vedānta: Chiara Robbiano, “Parmenides’ and Śaṅkara’s Nondual Being Without NotBeing,” Philosophy East and West 66 (2016): 290–327. 75 The adjective malakos (“soft, gentle”) conjoined with speech (logos, epos) connotes cunning, intelligence, and persuasiveness in Homer (see, e.g., Hom. Il. 1.56; Od. 10.70). 76 With regard to a female divine source of wisdom, further points of consonance with Pythagoreanism are to be noted in Parmenides. There is strong evidence that Pythagoras claimed to teach what he had learnt from a Delphic priestess (Diog. Laert. 8.8.3; 8.21.2; Porph. VP 41.6; Suda s.v. Pythagoras) (noted by Pomeroy, Pythagorean Women, 29). For the possible association of Pythagoras’ katabasis and Demeter as his source of wisdom, see Tor, Mortal and Divine, 276 with n152. 77 Cf. Cherubin, “Sex, Gender, and Class,” 42–43. The exception is the “knowing man” (eidota phôta) in the Proem (B 1.3). The phrase, however, refers to the initiate (cf. infra, n32), which the kouros comes to be posterior to the goddess’ revelation (cf. Tor, Mortal and Divine, 278 n157).

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56  Emese Mogyoródi ———. “The Goddess and Diotima: Their Role in Parmenides’ Poem and Plato’s Symposium.” In Methodological Reflections on Women’s Contribution and Influence in the History of Philosophy, edited by Sigríður Þorgeirsdóttir and Ruth Edith Hagengruber, 67–82. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2020. Tarán, Leonardo. Parmenides: A Text with Translation, Commentary, and Critical Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965. Thanassas, Panagiotis. Parmenides, Cosmos, and Being: A Philosophical Interpretation. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2007. Tor, Shaul. Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology: A Study of Hesiod, Xenophanes, and Parmenides. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Trépanier, Simon. “Early Greek Theology: God as Nature and Natural Gods.” In The Gods of Ancient Greece: Identities and Transformations, edited by Jan N. Bremmer and Andrew Erskine, 273–317. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010. Verdenius, Willem Jacob. “Parmenides’ Conception of Light.” Mnemosyne 2 (1949): 116–31. Vlastos, Gregory. “Parmenides’ Theory of Knowledge.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 77 (1946): 66–77. West, Martin L. Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.

3 Plotinus Seeing the Self in Unity1 Anastasia Theologou

Introduction So long as I keep my eyes closed, we are two; I here and he in the mirror. But when I  open my eyes, he will turn into me and I  into him, and that is the thing I  must prevent. I must see him without being seen. Is it possible? As soon as I see him, he will see me, and we will recognize ourselves. No, thanks! I don’t want to recognize myself; I want to know him, outside of me. Is it possible? My one supreme effort must be this: not to see myself in me, but to be seen by me, with my very own eyes, but as if I were another, that other whom all see, and I do not. Come, then, be calm, stop every sign of life, and look sharp! I opened my eyes. What did I see?2

In his novel One, None, and a Hundred-Thousand, Luigi Pirandello raises provocative questions regarding the self’s unity in multiplicity and the endless effort of discovering the real self. Similar concerns, but in another context, have been for many years at the forefront of research in philosophy. The idea of self and identity is a topic of contemporary philosophical discussions; thus, any attempt to reconstruct ancient considerations on this topic comes with the risk of anachronism. Keeping that in mind, there was no consensus on the notion of the self among ancient philosophers. In Plato’s Laws 959b3, the concept that we may call “the self” was indicated by the words autos or hekastos, which means “that which is each of us truly.” In Phaedo and Alcibiades, reason and intellect become respectively the essence of the real self. In this respect, the upper soul, the intellect, becomes the primary and real self. For the sake of the present analysis, this is the interpretation I am following. Significant studies on the self in antiquity have been published by Richard Sorabji, Pauliina Remes, and Danny Muñoz Hutchinson.3 It is also true that, whereas prior conceptions of the self as knower tended to posit a “transcendental” capacity for the ego (until Descartes), William James made this concept more congenial to psychologists by simply referring to it as the function that allows for continuity among thoughts and experiences. James’ classical distinction between the self as knower (or pure ego) and the self as known (or the empirical self) provides a useful scheme within which to view the multitudinous aspects of self-functioning.4 DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-7

58  Anastasia Theologou Recent studies have suggested that Plotinus was the philosopher in the Platonist tradition who outlined very early on an elaborated model of consciousness and a new approach for understanding cognition and the essence of the real self. This model precedes the Cartesian approach by many centuries and offers a radical alternative to it. Dominic J. O’Meara points out: Plotinus internalizes intelligible reality, as opposed to an externalizing conception that sees it as another world outside and beyond this world. This internalization of the intelligible is characteristic of modern philosophy, where it lacks, however, the cosmic significance it has in Plotinus: if intelligible principles are to be found within us, these principles do not, it is assumed, produce the world.5 In the present study, prompted by D. M. Hutchinson’s work,6 and following Pierre Hadot’s view on the self,7 I will argue that (1) the real self in Plotinus is the upper part of the partial soul (μερικὴ ψυχή)8 and is connected with the realm of the Intellect9 when the Intellect takes the form of a complete sight (ἰδοῦσα ὄψις); by “complete sight” I mean a seer (one who sees), an object seen, the act of seeing each other and the trace produced from this process;10 (2) the origin of the self as a complete sight goes back to Plotinus’ interpretation of Plato’s Theaetetus; and (3) unity overpowers the self and remains the criterion of its intellectual essence as long as there is this ὄψις. After exploring these three assumptions, I will conclude that Plotinus’ theory of consciousness indeed exceeds the Cartesian body-mind dichotomy, not because of the cognitive edifice of the mind manifested in a multilayered self, but primarily due to the role of the complete sight that makes the self fundamentally one. In terms of a brief outline of this chapter, I will first present the view that the real self in Plotinus is the individual intellect, which fluctuates in a multilayered realm based on its cognitive qualities. Then, I will explain the weakness of this theory. I will go on to show that, according to Plotinus, the real self is one and is identified with the higher soul, which is connected with the Intellect within an ontological structure of sights. For this assessment of Plotinus’ views, I will first need to show the connection of the partial soul to the Demiurgic activity and the whole soul. Then I will move on to explore the role of sight and the mutual seeing between the seer and the object seen and to elaborate on Plato’s myth on the birth of perception in the Theaetetus, considering this myth as the background of Plotinus’ thought in the birth of the real self in V.3.40. The Theory of the Multilayered Self In his book Plotinus on Consciousness, Hutchinson claims that Plotinus’ conception of consciousness is inseparable from his conception of metaphysics. He argues that, for Plotinus, the true self is the noetic self, which corresponds to and implements itself within the intelligible realm. How does this self acquire its individual form from the intellect? Hutchinson proceeds to identify the Intellect with

Plotinus  59 an “individual intellect,” without assuming Leibniz’s theory of identity (if x is the same as ψ, then they share the same attributes); instead, he brings evidence from Aristotle regarding the notion of sameness and from Plotinus IV.27.3, 2 using the analogy of science and theorems.11 What in the end individuates each intellect is each one’s unique perspective towards the Intellect; this is an approach that Hutchinson borrows from Tim Crane, a contemporary philosopher of mind.12 In this way, he identifies the higher intellectual level corresponding to the noetic part of the soul as the true self and discusses the subjective self in connection with the intellectual reality. Based on this theory, Hutchinson introduces a multilayered theory of consciousness, suggesting different levels of the self, which he identifies as the soul-spark, the lower soul, and the higher soul/intellect. Based on the view that the self is immaterial in Plotinus’ philosophy, Hutchinson claims that the true self is divided not into two, but rather into three parts: the higher soul, the lower soul, which informs the body, and the soul-trace or spark, which pertains to the body.13 Hutchinson does not confine himself to a dualistic structure of the self, presupposing that the power of cognition makes the self what it is, and considering that the soul-trace has also awareness of its activity, even if this is of a looser form than the two higher forms of the self. Hence, the soul-trace is considered as the lower self. However, it seems to me that Plotinus did not introduce a distinction of the self, and there is no definite textual evidence or any reference to “lower” or “higher” selves. In what follows, I will try to show that the real self is one and identified with the higher part of the soul, our intellect, which is connected to the Intellect with the presence of sight. To show this, I need first to establish the connection of the hypostasis soul, which Plotinus calls the “whole soul” (ἡ ὅλη ψυχή), with the world-soul, which Plotinus calls “the soul of the universe” (ἡ ψυχὴ τοῦ παντός), and the partial soul (ἡ μερικὴ ψυχή). In I.1.53 Plotinus states that we are the higher soul, which is simple, immortal, and eternal.14 If this is the case, how is it possible for the corporeal affections not to affect the higher soul and, also, in which sense do they (the souls) all have the same identity? All souls are forms (εἴδη) and are contained in the hypostasis soul as its parts. As Plotinus says: This then is how it is with the solution of this problem. Nor does the phenomenon of the sympatheia hinder our arguments: for since all souls derive from the same soul, from which the soul of the universe derives too, they have a community of feeling. For we have said already that the soul is both one and many. We have also explained how the part differs from the whole. (IV.3.27, 8, 1–6, translation by Armstrong) All souls have as common origin the hypostasis soul, and they are its parts sharing a communion of feeling. What makes this type of communication possible? First, the fact that although different in their functions, all of them belong to a whole (hypostasis soul), and second, I would suggest, that their unity is prior to the whole and comes from the perceptive power of the Intellect, which takes the form of a complete sight.

60  Anastasia Theologou Unity of All Souls: Galen’s Influence on Plotinus The partial soul, of which the higher part is identified as the self, is not the common Platonic view. Plotinus distinguishes the intellectual from the embodied part of the individual, and it seems to me that in this respect he follows Galen. Galen explicitly claims that the individual soul has two parts: the intellectual and the bodily one, which comes from the Demiurge’s activity. In this way, he establishes a connection between the two parts. However, he is agnostic regarding the nature of the Demiurge’s essence. For instance, in the Formation of the Foetus, Galen, while taking many precautions regarding the precise character of the nature that has formed the bodily parts, asserts emphatically that the ideas of the formation of the body come from the Demiurge, although he states that he does not know the essence of the Demiurge. He expresses his conviction of the distinction between the rational part of the soul and the soul that animates the bodily parts, and claims that the harmony that can be observed between the rational faculty, which wants to use the parts of the body, and the movements of these parts testifies to the unity “of the soul that has fashioned us [the Demiurge] and of that soul, which is now using each part.”15 As I  demonstrated in another study, Plotinus was influenced by Galen to an extent that is not recognized in the literature.16 He builds on Galen’s theory of the soul animating the irrational faculties being different from the rational soul and, just like Galen, identifies the Demiurge with the world-soul that animates our body. This is a major argument against the theory of the “multilayered self,” as the vegetative and animal functions of the human composite in the last analysis belong to another self, that of the world-soul. In this respect, the world-soul has the same essence as the partial souls, and all of them are in unity with the hypostasis soul. In IV.9.8, 5, titled Whether All the Souls Are One, Plotinus uses the analogy of the science and its theorems to show how this unity is possible: just as the science is a whole and its parts are the theorems that contain in potentiality science as a whole, in the same way the “Whole soul” exists in every partial soul (world-soul and individual souls). The individual soul contains the “Whole soul,” and when it reaches intellection it is pure and simple, it becomes also a whole in actuality.17 The Importance of the Term opsis So far, I tried to establish the connection of the higher soul, our intellect, with the cosmic soul and the “Whole soul.” However, how can we understand the relationship of the intellects within the Intellect with the intellects of individuals, namely, ourselves? Hutchinson assumes that individual intellects are the intellects of individuals, based on the assumption that individuation is each intellect’s perspective towards the Intellect. To prove this, he uses the analogy of theory and science in a model of separate perspectives. However, this view, namely, the intellects’ individuation due to their peculiar perspective towards the Intellect, and their assimilation to the intellects of individuals, has been criticized.18 Lloyd P. Gerson, in his review of Hutchinson’s book, points out that the theory of perspectivism is not so convincing, and our undescended intellects cannot be individuated in this realm, because images do not exist. Images are coming together with the body and discursive

Plotinus 61 reason in the realm of senses. In this respect, prompted by Gerson’s critique, I can think of a further correlation to the question of the present discussion, i.e., that our self in our everyday life is just an image of the real self. This could be explained in the following way: when body and discursive reason appear, then the image of the self emerges.19 We think discursively, and we distinguish ourselves from the others by having a construction of images of us and of them. Nevertheless, this everyday self is always connected to pure sight and becomes the real self when it contemplates and attains the Intelligible. Therefore, we cannot talk of real selves as individuated entities in the realm of Intellect. To avoid this problem, we need to understand the following: intellects have perspective, but not in the sense that they can see an image, as in the realm of soul;20 they are sights identified as they are active actualities of the Intellect. Sight for Plotinus, as for his predecessors,21 is an inner experience with outside activity; it is ἐνέργεια, knowledge, and movement: And knowledge is self-movement, since it is a sight of being and an active actuality, not a state; so that it also comes under movement—but, if you like, under rest, or under both; but if under both, it is as something mixed; and if so, the mixed is posterior. But Intellect, since it is being as intelligent and a composite of all [the genera], is not one of the genera; and the true Intellect is being with all its contents and already all beings, but being in isolation, taken as a genus, is an element of it. (VI.2.43, 18, 8–16, translation by Armstrong) In this chapter of On the Genera of Being, Plotinus says that Beauty is identical with its substance and belongs to the realm of substance. When we see something beautiful, we are affected, since any activity of seeing directed towards the intellectual realm causes movement. “Knowledge,” as he continues, “is self-movement, since it is a sight of being and an activity, not a state” (“καὶ ἡ ἐπιστήμη αὐτοκίνησις ὄψις οὖσα τοῦ ὄντος καὶ ἐνέργεια, ἀλλ’ οὐχ ἕξις”). Here, Plotinus refers to Aristotle’s Categories, where blindness and sight are categorized as states (ἕξιν).22 In his philosophical system, sight is ontologically upgraded and becomes part of the being, an active actuality (ἐνέργεια). Furthermore, it seems to me that the attempt to reconcile Aristotle and Plato that was widespread during Plotinus’ time23 is what prompted him to reflect on sight as mirroring both philosophies: sight is the active actuality of the “inner eye” looking for knowledge and at the same time becomes the activity of the Intellect, which sets in movement all beings. In this respect, and following Hutchinson, I claim that all of the passages related to the analogy of science and theorems should be read considering the previous one: knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) is the sight (ὄψις) and the theorems (θεωρήματα) are the contents of the complete sight (ἰδοῦσα ὄψις), which are active actualities contained as sights, perceived and produced by this first sight. The process of seeing adds to the science theorem analogy the immediacy of perceiving unity and wholeness in parts.

62  Anastasia Theologou Here comes the question of what the role of sight in respect to our self is, namely, our higher souls. In III.6.26, 2, 33–42, Plotinus claims that the reasoning part is connected to the Intellect with the power of an immediate seeing, which basically takes place through the actualization of a sight (ὄψις). This actualization is identified as intellection. There is no description of how this process is taking place, but it is obvious that sight acquires power, which enables the immediate seeing of the intelligibles. Now listening to reason is like seeing, not receiving a shape but seeing and existing actually when seeing takes place. For just as sight [ὄψις], which has both a potential and an actual existence, remains essentially the same [when it is potential and when it is actual], and its actuality is not an alteration but it simultaneously approaches what it has, and is in knowing it and knows without being affected; in the same way, too, the reasoning part is related to Intellect and sees, and this is the power of intellection; there is no stamp impressed on it. (Translation by Armstrong) On the other hand, and in another instance, Plotinus states that the soul’s power of sense-perception is aware of impressions (typoi), and these impressions are intelligible entities (Ennead  I.1.53, 7, 9–12). These entities are judgements or logoi and, by being in between the forms of the sensibles and the intelligible forms, they play a significant role in the process of the sight’s existence from the Intellect to the rational soul. We established earlier the connection to the world-soul and the individual soul. This connection plausibly also assures the connection between the forms of all levels. In this respect, these impressions do not only function as elements in cognition, but they are also the models on which the craftsman produces his work, and this is exactly analogous to the function of the forms in nature.24 In the sensible realm sight is still present, but it is more difficult for us to recognize and identify the real things through the veil of matter. This corresponds perfectly with Plato’s Timaeus 47A, where sight is defined teleologically as the cause of and benefit to human nature: without sight, we would not be able to observe the planets and give an account of all things.25 According to the previous analysis, we could conclude that (1) intellects are united and connected to the Intellect through sights, which is the Intellect’s active actuality, and (2) the intellects of individuals or the higher souls are linked to the whole Intellect through the “eye of the soul,” as Plato claimed in the Symposium26 by seeing the forms (εἴδη) and traces that are “left” by these sights in their endeavor to become one with their source.27 This endeavor starts from the sensible realm where the soul of an individual can see the planets. In the following section, I will show in which way Plotinus, going back to Plato, explains the opposite direction, i.e., the generation of the sight in the intellectual realm, the stage of its completeness, and its significant role as complete sight in the formation of the real self.

Plotinus 63 Plato’s Theaetetus and Plotinus V.3.49, 9–11: The Origin of Perception and the Self as the Manifold Eye of the Intellect The myth of Plato’s Theaetetus has been studied in relation to Plotinus’ theory of consciousness. Pavlos Kalligas, in his commentary on Ennead V.3, has indicated that Plotinus uses an expression in the myth of the Theaetetus on the birth of perception (συνεκπίπτειν, 156 b1–2) as an analogy to talk about the mind’s selfrealization, of the mind being both an object and subject of thinking (νόησις).28 Eyjólfur Emilsson and Pauliina Remes have also referred to Plotinus’ theory of the self, echoing parts of Theaetetus.29 Additionally, István Perczel argued for the birth of Intellect from a higher hypostasis, the “One Being,” offering textual evidence that connects the Theaetetus with Plotinus’ Ennead V.3.49.30 Building on their contributions and using only the parts needed for the argument advanced in this chapter, I will make clear that Plotinus’ view on the real self is based on the myth of Theaetetus.31 For this endeavor, I will first need to explore the philosophical myth of the Theaetetus.32 Plato, Theaetetus 156a-157c Theaetetus is Plato’s dialogue about epistemology. The protagonists of the dialogue are Socrates and Theaetetus, and the discussion evolves around the nature of knowledge. The backbone of the dialogue is the digression on midwifery. The digression appears in 148e-151d, but also sporadically all over the dialogue, and implies the role of Socrates as a midwife helping his interlocutors to bring forth knowledge. The metaphor reveals the deeper meaning of the dialogue: knowledge is like a birth process of the ideas coming from a higher level of reality, for which reason no definition of true knowledge exists.33 Before trying—and failing—to reach a conclusion about the question of what the nature of knowledge is, the dialogue explores the three layers of knowledge; from lower to higher, these are perception, opinion, and reasoning. Theaetetus first suggests that perception is knowledge, and in this respect two connected theories should be examined: Protagoras’ relativism and its foundation in Heraclitus’ theory of flux. Having agreed that knowledge is perception, Socrates goes on to explain how the theory of flux is founded on mysteries—“μέλλω σοι τὰ μυστήρια λέγειν”—which Socrates will soon reveal to Theaetetus. My interpretation is that, although by the end of the first section the hypothesis that knowledge is perception will be rejected, the theory of perception based on the principle of origin34 is introduced, but not entirely elaborated by Plato, and this is done purposefully.35 Οὐκοῦν οὕτω πως λέγει, ὡς οἷα μὲν ἕκαστα ἐμοὶ φαίνεται, τοιαῦτα μὲν ἔστιν ἐμοί, οἷα δὲ σοί, τοιαῦτα δὲ αὖ σοί· ἄνθρωπος δὲ σύ τε κἀγώ; Well, is not this about what he means, that individual things are for me such as they appear to me, and for you in turn such as they appear to you— you and I being “man”? (Translation by Harold N. Fowler)

64  Anastasia Theologou So, Theaetetus and Socrates examine whether we, as individual parts of this world, could know the real things from within. To reply to this inquiry, Socrates needs to go back to the source of everything, on which everything depends, namely, motion (152c). To make his claim stronger, he mentions various authorities (Heraclitus, Empedocles, even Homer), who draw back to motion as the principle of the world’s generation (152d). Socrates goes on to distinguish two offsprings of motion (κίνησις), locomotion and friction (φορά καὶ τρίψις), which bring about fire (153a). Fire is the material that constitutes the genus of animals (ζῴων γένος), and Socrates takes the opportunity to say that even the soul is motion (153c), and that the Sun’s and heaven’s motions give life to everything. After this, Socrates suggests to Theaetetus to apply the principle of motion to the theory of vision (153e), but Theaetetus, not being able to understand the correspondence, offers Socrates the opportunity to explain in detail how motion gives birth to the becoming of everything and how everything is coming to a view in front of us. The main point of this description is that the first motion has two kinds in infinite multitude, “πλήθει μὲν ἄπειρον ἑκάτερον” (156a): one active and one passive, “δύναμιν δὲ τὸ μὲν ποιεῖν ἔχον, τὸ δὲ πάσχειν.” It is because of the intercourse and first contact of these two motions that everything comes to be perceived (αἰσθητόν) and the process of perception (αἴσθησις) is generated. The most important point to mention is that perception is falling out always together with the perceived object (“ἀεὶ συνεκπίπτουσα καὶ γεννωμένη μετὰ τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ,” 156b), which means that there is no condition of causality, time, place, or order to make distinct these two entities. Here, the process and the object are generated and descending as one, although they appear at the end to be two, but still retaining this oneness within their relation. This part of the flux theory, as we will see, becomes very important for Plotinus’ theory of the self, too. Socrates is adjusting a tale, abridging the teachings of the great authorities mentioned earlier, elucidating the connection of the unity with multiplicity, and introducing in this sacred context the generation of perception and its products. The principle, on which all those things about we have just been speaking36 depend (from where all those things we have been speaking take their origin) is that all things were uniquely motion and nothing else, while the motion had two sorts, both in infinite multitude; one had the power to affect and the other to be affected. From the mutual intercourse and friction of the two, there are born products (children), in infinite multitude, being twins, one being perceptible, and the other being the perception, which is always falling out and is produced together with the perceived. The perceptions have the following names: sights, acts of hearing, of smelling, also of cooling down and warming up; there are also those called pleasures and sorrows, desires, and fears as well as yet others, those nameless, unlimited in number, and those that have got names—very many. As to the perceptible kind of these products, they are born together with each of the former: together with the sights of all sorts, colours of all sorts, and voices in the same way together with the acts of hearing as well as the other perceptible qualities, born as kindred to the other perceptions. . .

Plotinus 65 The myth wants to say that all these things are moving, as we are saying, and there is speed and slowness in their motion. Those which move, so to say, slowly, have their motion in the same place and in relation to those that are next to them, in this way they give birth and those born are, per consequent, faster. In fact, the latter are changing place, and, by nature, their motion in consists changing place.37 So when the eye and something from among those which are commensurate to the eye meet and give birth to the whiteness and the perception connatural to this—which would never come to being if both had met something else—then, sight and whiteness are moving in between, namely, sight coming from the eye and whiteness coming from the thing that gives birth—together with the eye—to the colour, then the eye had become full of sight and it sees by then and has become not just some sight but a seeing eye [οὔ τι ὄψις ἀλλ᾿ ὀφθαλμὸς ὁρῶν], while the thing that had given birth—together with the eye—to the colour, became fully endowed with whiteness and has become, on its turn, not whiteness but white wood, or stone, or anything else to which it has happened to be coloured by this colour. All the other qualities, the hard, the warm, and everything else, should be understood in the same way. Taken by themselves they are nothing, as we said this earlier, but everything becomes, and becomes variegated from the motion, since it is even impossible, as they say, to stably conceive of one of them to be active or passive. (156a-157c, translation by Perczel) Socrates, after naming the different kinds of perception, focuses on the foremost of them in connection with reality: the vision and the perception of the visible objects. The principle of this vision are two kinds of first motion: a passive and an active one. Therefore, the interpretation is as follows: if perception and the perceived are born together in higher reality, analogically, the object seen, and sight, are becoming together as well; and in material reality, it is not just some sight that perceives the things. When the eye and the color, coming from the object seen, meet, they are affected by each other, and then this sight takes its real embodied essence and becomes not some sight but a complete sight, the eye which sees (“οὔ τι ὄψις ἀλλ᾿ ὀφθαλμὸς ὁρῶν”). Therefore, there is no definition of the things themselves fixed by the human beings, since this definition cannot grasp the real nature of the things, the nature that includes the oneness in multiplicity and the multiplicity in oneness. Plotinus V.3.49, 9–11 The theory of flux presented in the form of a tale, which conveys the wisdom of the initiated philosophers as mentioned in the Theaetetus, instigates Plotinus to elaborate his own theory of the construction of reality. Plotinus’ reading of the Theaetetus transfers the meaning of the myth from the plane of sense-perception to that of intellectual intuition and uses the myth to explain the first origins of any

66  Anastasia Theologou knowledge. In this sense, Plotinus supplements Plato’s inconclusive dialogue with a solution to the problem of knowledge. More precisely, in V.3.49, 9–11,38 after clarifying that our soul’s purification comes with leaving aside the bodily dwelling, Plotinus goes on to explore the higher realm of existence, the upper part of the soul, and the intellect’s meeting with the One. In this exploration, he shows that the root of the self’s realization is at the level of the intellect. The way he demonstrates this is illustrative: if we wish to grasp this “first soul” (V.3.49, 9, 28–29),39 we need to start ascending from the realm of doxa or from the realm of sense-perception. Sense-perception becomes the means for exploring the human soul, which includes the extension of the intellectual forms and offers the place for their material manifestation. This is the primary step of the ascendance towards the primary soul, the intellectual soul, which becomes independent from sense-perception. This point shows that Plotinus’ interpretation of the Theaetetus considers real knowledge to be a process of ascendance to the forms, while sense-perception is the gate by which we enter the higher realm.40 But if someone is unable to grasp this first soul, which is purely intellective, let him take the one that forms opinions, and then ascend from this. But if he cannot even do this, let him take sense-perception which acquires the forms in broader extension and sense-perception by itself, together with what it is capable of, which is already in the forms. If someone wants to, let him descend to the soul that gives birth down to those which it produces. Then, from there, let him ascend from the last forms to the last forms of the other end, more precisely to the first. (V.3.49, 9, 28–35, translation by Perczel) Another point made, which shows the parallelism with Theaetetus, is that the realm of sense-perception is giving birth to its products just like the process in the intellectual realm. I assume that in this case Plotinus asserts that sense-perception imitates the intellect’s perception of itself, becomes a complete sight, a sight that becomes the generative principle of forms at different levels, higher and lower, in the intellectual world.41 So much for this. If there were only the forms that are produced, they would not be the last ones. There, the first are those productive/that are affecting, for which reason they are first. Therefore, there should also be the productive principle and the two are one, or, if not so, it would be in need of yet another. And then? Will it not need something beyond this one? This one is the mind. And then? Does this not see itself? But That has no need of sight. But this is for later. Now let us say again—for our investigation is “not about some casual matter”42—, so we should say again that this mind needs to see itself, first of all, because it is many,43 then, because it belongs to another and is, by necessity, a seer and a seer of That and its substance is sight.44 In fact,

Plotinus  67 only if there is something else can there be sight, if there were none, it would be in vain.45 Therefore, there must be more than one, so that there may be sight and the sight must fall out together with the object seen,46 and what it sees must be a universal multitude. For what is absolutely One has nothing to which to direct its activity but since it is “alone isolated,”47 It will remain absolutely at rest. For in so far as it is active, there is other and yet another. If there is no other and yet another, what would it do (what would it make/what would it affect)?48 Or where would it proceed? Therefore, that which is active must either be acting on something else or must itself be many49 if it is to be active within itself. But if something is not going to go forth to something else, it will be immobile; but when it is altogether immobile it will not have intellection.50 The intelligent principle, then, when it perceives intellectually, must be in two parts,51 and either one must be external to the other or both must be the same, and the intellection must be in otherness and necessarily also in sameness, and the proper objects of perception must be the same and other in relation to the mind. And again, each one of the intellectually perceived objects brings out together with itself [συνεκφέρει] this sameness and otherness.52 For certainly, if each one is a rational principle, it is many. Therefore, it comes to know itself by being a manifold eye or consisting of manifold colours.53 (V.3.49, 10, 1–31, translation by Perczel) This passage shows that sense-perception in the Theaetetus is indirectly connected to the role of the Intellect, the second level of reality, which perceives itself and, by perceiving itself, the one intellectual being ends up as two and then multiple.54 In fact, it is in this respect that the subject becomes object and then multiple objects. Multiplicity appears because the mind seeks to find completeness, unity defined by the desire for Intellect to become a whole.55 This need creates the first split, the first movement. This first movement renders the intellect a manifold eye, ποικίλον ὀφθαλμόν, which unfolds all the intelligible contents due to its desire to grasp the One. At the very moment that it turns to itself, while trying to grasp the One, it produces simultaneously the seer, the seeing, and the object seen, and thus the Intellect becomes ἰδοῦσα ὄψις, a fulfilled, complete sight. This is perfectly analogous to what the myth says about the sense of sight: when the sight and the colour, coming from the object seen, meet, they are affected by each other, and then this sight takes its real essence and becomes the eye which sees (“οὔ τι ὄψις ἀλλ᾿ ὀφθαλμὸς ὁρῶν,” 156e). According to Plotinus, before this phase the intellect is not a whole: it is just an inchoate or an “unimprinted sight” (ἀτύπωτος ὄψις).56 At this point, a further clarification on the complete and inchoate, or unimprinted, sight is required: Perczel suggested that the two first motions, passive and active, in the Theaetetus correspond to the two phases of the Intellect’s movement towards its source, the One, in V.3.49, 11. He states explicitly that the inchoate or unimprinted (ἀτύπωτος ὄψις) and the complete sight (ἰδοῦσα ὄψις) form the two phases of the Intellect’s vision of the One, which become the double source of all the sensations. He furthermore claims the correspondence of these two phases with

68  Anastasia Theologou the reception (παραδοχή) and “touch” (ἐπιβολή) of the One.57 If this is the case, then Perczel presupposes that the One has two activities: during the first, it constitutes the recipient Intellect, and during the second, the informed Intellect. However, Emilsson, following Lloyd, suggests that Intellect apprehends an already contained image of the One, for Intellect needs to move forward to its self-determination.58 In this respect, the stress is on the Intellect’s activity from a state of potentially being fully actualized to the state of full actualization. Thus, the correspondence of the first motion’s principle in Theaetetus with the Intellect’s unprocessed full actualization in V.3.49 takes this form: during the inchoate or unimprinted sight, Intellect has a pre-noetic experience of the One, and during the complete sight, it proceeds with the noetic experience of the One’s image and of itself and it becomes actualized. The present study explores consciousness and the emergence of the self as an effect of this complete phase and process of intellection. According to the previous scheme, we could also make sense of how, while the forms are being identified with the Intellect, they can “move” and produce other forms without losing their unity with their source. Intellect is omnipresent and it is omniscient; the forms or logoi are everywhere due to instrumental proximity to their source,59 both in the intellectual and the material world. This omnipresence requires the process of the first knowledge, the first sight, derived from the philosophical myth of the Theaetetus, to set everything in movement (in the intellectual realm), and then this movement to become the principle of everything in motion (the soul’s realm).60 In this respect, we can also imagine how unity assures multiplicity and the opposite, how the completion of the real self requires the two aspects and their product at the same time: while produced together from their source (Intellect), the two aspects (seen and seer) cannot be separated in this process (seeing), but just like a coin spun in the air when falling, they create twists that leave behind traces (typous) of countless noetic paths, of shaped relations between the oneness and multiplicity. These relations are becoming sets of more complex relationships while moving away from their source, the One, and approaching materiality. However, unity in sight is always there to assure completion and reality. This is also how otherness comes into the scene. The introduction of the primary opposites, identity and otherness, happens because of the Intellect’s attempt to see the One, and in failing to see the One, seeing itself and its content. Otherness automatically emerges with the differentiation of the Intellect with the One, but also with the subject and object distinction. The distinction signifies the bilateral seeing of the object seen and the seer, revealing the prerequisite for unity and the reception of the self’s completeness through otherness. As Emilsson puts it: “something which is going to think itself but doesn’t stand ‘in a relation of otherness towards itself’ (VI.7.38, 39, 6–8), must establish such a relation.”61 A precise expression of this view is found in the following passage: Most probably, in general, intellection is a consciousness of a whole in which many come together, when something itself conceives of itself, which is intellection properly speaking, but whatever is one, is something itself and

Plotinus  69 is not seeking anything. If the intellection refers to something external, it will be deficient and not intellection properly speaking. While that which is altogether simple and truly self-sufficient is not in need of anything, that which is self-sufficient in the second degree but needs itself, this is the one that needs to conceive of itself, and that which is deficient in relation to itself achieves self-sufficiency through wholeness, becoming sufficient from all things, being present to itself and directing its intellection toward itself. (V.3.13, 12–21, translation by Perczel) The parallelism of this part of V.3 with Theaetetus 156–157 points out Plotinus’ effort to establish unity between the knower and the known, while interpreting the dialogue as the one that indicated the principle of the objects, the forms, instantiated in materiality. Plotinus’ motivation to establish sight into a deeper and higher level of knowledge might also come from his need to oppose the Gnostic teachings, namely, to establish that the mind’s activity from rest to motion is not a mistake but an act of desire; an act of completion, of selfhood and unity, while trying to conceive of the highest power, the One. The One is self-sufficient and simple. The second hypostasis, that is, the Intellect, lacks its wholeness. Once the Intellect conceives of itself, this lack is fulfilled and the intellect becomes a self-knower, a two-sided entity, not divided in two, but self-identified as subject and object, or same and other. From the Intellect that conceives of itself, the intellectual essence is informed and accordingly informs the products of the Intellect, the intelligible beings, the first forms.62 The first forms imitate this process, and when they see themselves, they produce others informing them with the same intellectual essence and so on. The ontological structure of sights manifests an object of all faces, shining in living faces (“παμπρόσωπόν τι χρῆμα λάμπον ζῶσι προσώποις,” VI.7.38, 15, 26–27). From all of the aforementioned discussion, it seems that the real self is rooted in the realm of Intellect that, as a manifold eye, sees itself and produces the multiple forms, which were crumpled inside it and come forth as sights, but this real self takes its final form in the higher soul63 through the very same process explained in the Theaetetus of seeing as an eye.64 Hutchinson, though, bases his view of the multilevel self on a famous passage where Plotinus, having an out-of-body experience, meets the One; during this experience, the soul goes beyond the Intellect’s complete sight and the self that is, as I argued, an ἰδοῦσα ὄψις. In V.3, we came across the term “unimprinted or inchoate sight” (ἀτύπωτος ὄψις). This one is contained in or is beyond the Intellect,65 and since in this state there is no otherness and multiplicity and no impression left, consequently, there is no self. The inchoate sight is a higher level of unity that goes beyond the birth of the all-faced (παμπρόσωπoν) Intellect. Conclusion In this chapter I have argued that the real self takes its final form in the higher soul, but is born at the level of the Intellect as a sight that sees (ἰδοῦσα ὄψις). In this

70  Anastasia Theologou respect, the birth of the self requires the seer, the object seen, and the act of mutual seeing to exist. Plotinus, in his effort to follow the classical tradition and reconcile Aristotle and Plato, comes up with a significant innovation: he upgrades sight ontologically in order to assure that selfhood goes hand in hand with otherness. Our real self is originated when this advanced complete sight, while seeing itself, perpetuates its traces, up to the point where the traces left from this process become intelligible impressions and form the perception of the self; this is the level of the higher soul where we could grasp how the forms ascend and see who we really are. In this respect, we achieve the real self to be omnipresent and omniscient but recognized individually at the level of the soul. This interpretation does not miss the essence of the self, which is crumbled in a structure of sights of two poles, but more importantly, it shows that Plotinus developed a full-blown process, where the Intellect in need of finding completeness looks at itself and, full of providence, transmits unity and selfhood to all lower levels of existence. When this sight is embodied, the soul is eventually individuated and distracted, but able to see the otherness and identify itself with the beauty in the kosmos: in this way the upward process is starting for reaching the higher soul, the real self, until this self disappears and, in its union to It, becomes indistinguishable from the One. Returning to the beginning of this chapter and the question that Pirandello’s hero is asking: When I really open my eyes, I can see you in me, I can see All in me. Notes 1 I thank Georges Dimotsantos for the insights from an intense discussion about the question of the self. I would like to thank István Perczel for his invaluable help with this chapter, as well as Stanimir Panayotov for his comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 2 Luigi Pirandello, One, None, and a Hundred-Thousand, trans. Samuel Putnam (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1933), Book 1, Chapter 7. 3 Richard Sorabji, Self: Ancient and Modern Insights About Individuality, Life, and Death (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Pauliina Remes, Plotinus on the Self: The Philosophy of the “We” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Pauliina Remes and Juha Sihvola, eds., Ancient Philosophy of the Self (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008); Danny Muñoz Hutchinson, Plotinus on Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 4 See Corey L. Guenther and Mark D. Alicke, “Psychology of the Self,” in Oxford Bibliographies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, February 26, 2013), accessed May 26, 2023, www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199828340/ obo-9780199828340–0093.xml#obo-9780199828340–0093-bibItem-0002. 5 Dominic J. O’Meara, Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 21. 6 Hutchinson, Plotinus on Consciousness. 7 My analysis of the real self has been shaped by the view that “Plotinus is quite compelled to situate himself in the perspective of the ‘self,’ since it is a question of dissolving a false ‘self,’ the corporeal reflection, in order to make a true ‘self’ be born, the soul raised to the level of Intellect”; see Pierre Hadot, Plotinus on the Simplicity of Vision, trans. Michael Chase (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 18. 8 Sorabji has noted that “the self in the ancient philosophers is seldom identical with the soul.” Sorabji, Self, 34.

Plotinus  71 9 I will use “Intellect” with uppercase “I” when I refer to the divine intellect and with lowercase “i” to refer to the intellect of individuals. 10 Hadot identifies the real self with the intellect and shows its relationship with vision, without focusing on the importance of the term sight (ὄψις). My attempt here is to develop an argument based on the ontological structure of the term sight (ὄψις), which is rooted in Plato’s philosophy and reveals the real self in Plotinus. 11 Hutchinson, Plotinus on Consciousness, 18, and 20–32; Aristotle, Metaphysics Δ 6 and 9. 12 Hutchinson, Plotinus on Consciousness, 25. There has been a long contemporary debate on the nature of consciousness between the followers of reductivism and non-reductivism. Fundamentally, Hutchinson cannot share the reductionist view with Tim Crane, and neither do I, because the real self in Plotinus is based on its transcendental essence. 13 Hutchinson, Plotinus on Consciousness, 9, 65–66, 118–19. 14 I.1.53, 13, 1–8; I.1.53, 2, 10–14. 15 See Foet. Form. V, 697. 16 Anastasia Theologou, “Galen and Plotinus on the Principle of Sympatheia,” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 26 (2020): 31–44. I agree with Damian Caluori that the Demiurge in Plotinus is the immaterial soul, but his reference to Galen does not show structural affinity between Galen and Plotinus with respect to the relationship of the individual soul with the Demiurge; see Damian Caluori, Plotinus on the Soul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 2–4, and 112–14. For a study that recognizes the structural affinity between Galen and Plotinus, see Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson, Plotinus on Sense-Perception: A Philosophical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 58–62. 17 I.1.53, 11, 6; IV.3.27, 12, 6. Plotinus in 1.1.53, 12 states that the higher soul remains unaffected by the turbulences in the animated body, because while in a sinful state it receives another form of soul that bears the affections. For an extensive analysis, see Caluori, Plotinus on the Soul, 161–62. 18 Lloyd P. Gerson, “Review of D. M. Hutchinson, Plotinus on Consciousness,” Bryn Mawr Classical Review, October 7, 2018, accessed May 26, 2023, https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2018/2018.10.57. For another criticism of Hutchinson’s view, see also Damian Caluori, “Review of D. M. Hutchinson, Plotinus on Consciousness,” Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, December 13, 2018, accessed May 26, 2023, https://ndpr. nd.edu/reviews/plotinus-on-consciousness. 19 To the question “Who we are?” in the realm of the senses, Plotinus replies that to our pure souls another man wounded himself around us and he became part of us (VI.4.22, 14). This shows clearly that the real self belongs to our intellect. 20 Imagination of the soul is between perception and the grasp of intelligible forms. 21 Plato, Symp. 219a; Rep. 533d; and in Soph. 254a. For Plato’s theory of vision, see Andrea Nightingale, “Sight and the Philosophy of Vision: Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle,” in Sight and the Ancient Senses, ed. Michael Squire (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 57–62. The metaphor of cognition as vision is much older. For further analysis, see Sue Blundell, Douglas Cairns, Elizabeth Craik, and Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, “Introduction,” Helios 40, no. 2–1, Special Issue: Vision and Viewing in Ancient Greece, eds. Sue Blundell et al. (Spring/Fall 2013): 11; Douglas Cairns, “Bullish Looks and Sidelong Glances: Social Interaction and the Eyes in Ancient Greek Culture,” in Body Language in the Greek and Roman Worlds, ed. Douglas Cairns (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2005), 123–55; Douglas Cairns, “Looks of Love and Loathing: Cultural Models of Vision and Emotion in Ancient Greek Culture,” Mètis: Anthropologie des Mondes Grecs Anciens 9 (2011): 37–50. 22 Aristotle, Categories, 11b line 23. For Aristotle, sight is explicitly introduced as the “most developed sense” (“ἡ ὄψις μάλιστα αἴσθησίς ἐστι,” On the Soul 3.3, 429a). The Classical tradition considered the meaning of the term opsis to be both active and passive. “Archaic and Classical Greek languages of sight combine both aspects: on the one hand, the idea of looking, and on the other the ‘looks’ (which are understood as the subject’s appearance or aspect). Gérard Simon has pointed out that terms for the eye and for

72  Anastasia Theologou seeing, such as opsis, omma, and ophthalmos, have both an active and a passive meaning in Classical Greek: omma stands not only for the eye and for light, for example, but also for the face and (as pars pro toto) for a person.” Ruth Bielfeldt, “Sight and Light: Reified Gazes and Looking Artefacts in the Greek Cultural Imagination,” in Sight and the Ancient Senses, ed. Michael Squire (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 125, with reference to Gérard Simon and Douglas Cairns. I believe that Plotinus understands these sides of opsis not in opposition but in complementarity. 23 For an excellent analysis on this, see George E. Karamanolis, Plato and Aristotle in Agreement? Platonists on Aristotle from Antiochus to Porphyry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2013). 24 Emilsson, Plotinus on Sense-Perception, 134. 25 “ὄψις δὴ κατὰ τὸν ἐμὸν λόγον αἰτία τῆς μεγίστης ὠφελείας γέγονεν ἡμῖν, ὅτι τῶν νῦν λόγων περὶ τοῦ παντὸς λεγομένων οὐδεὶς ἄν ποτε ἐρρήθη μήτε ἄστρα μήτε ἥλιον μήτ᾿ οὐρανὸν ἰδόντων.” 26 “ἥ τοι τῆς διανοίας ὄψις ἄρχεται ὀξὺ βλέπειν ὅταν ἡ τῶν ὀμμάτων τῆς ἀκμῆς λήγειν ἐπιχειρῇ” (219a). 27 In this realm there is no individuation; individuation comes with the bodies. 28 See Kalligas’ Greek edition of Ennead V.3: Οι γνωριστικές υποστάσεις και το Επέκεινα. ΠΛΩΤΙΝΟΥ, ΕΝΝΕΑΔΕΣ. Αρχαίο κείμενο, Μετάφραση, Σχόλια Παύλος Καλλιγάς (Αθήνα: ΑΚΑΔΗΜΙΑ ΑΘΗΝΩΝ, 2013), 303. The whole introduction to this Ennead in the Greek edition has contributed significantly to understand how Plotinus was engaged with other philosophers regarding the mind’s intellection; see ibid., 275–283. 29 Emilsson, Plotinus on Sense-Perception, 90–91; Remes, Plotinus on the Self, 74–75. 30 See István Perczel, “L’‘intellect amoureux’ et l’‘un qui est’: Une doctrine mal connue de Plotin,” Revue de Philosophie Ancienne 15, no. 2 (1997): 223–63. In a still unpublished study, “Theaetetus 156a-157c: A  Platonic Philosophical Myth and Its Career in Late Antique Pagan and Christian Philosophy,” Perczel has offered further textual evidence that connects the Theaetetus with Plotinus’ Ennead V.3. I am grateful to István Perczel for allowing me to use his annotated translations of Theaetetus 156a-157c and of Plotinus V.3.49, 9–11 from this study. The philosophical interpretation of these texts, which I am giving in the present chapter, is entirely mine. 31 I will use the term “real self,” which is the higher soul or intellect. 32 Plotinus’ treatise on the virtues, I.2.19, contains an extensive commentary on the Theaetetus. However, there, his interest focuses on finding a method for establishing his theory of ethics by distinguishing the virtues in two categories: the social and the contemplative virtues. 33 This is the way I understand the meaning of the dialogue, and it is crucial for the aim of this chapter, namely, connecting Plato with Plotinus. There are numerous studies referring to the interpretations of the dialogue’s inconclusive end, but the restricted aim of this chapter does not permit their exploration. 34 This theory is part of the mysteries initiated by authorities, among them is that of Heraclitus. Plato’s respect for Heraclitus is acknowledged in many parts of his works. This makes stronger my suggestion that despite the refusal of the hypothesis that knowledge is perception, this part of the dialogue could reveal Plato’s views on the way we should perceive the real things. 35 This is not the only time that Plato leaves a question open-ended. Plato’s dialogues are playful and open to many interpretations. I believe that the theory of perception, which comes from the principle of origin, leaves hints for defining the “true knowledge” in the kingdom of forms. In the Theaetetus, though, nowhere does Plato refer to this. I am almost sure that this is where Plotinus takes the thread to talk about the generation of the forms in V.3. 36 These are the distinct things they were speaking about, including qualities, etc. 37 Perczel suggests that it is implied that the slower motion is alteration, while the faster is changing place. I would add to this that slower motion is friction between the seen

Plotinus  73 and the one that sees, as previously mentioned, and this is why the first seen light/fire is generated. 38 Emilsson has offered an extensive analysis of the generation of Intellect and V.3.49: Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson, Plotinus on Intellect (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), 80–123. 39 “First” was deleted by Dodds as a gloss. However, it is important not to miss this “first” since it denotes the upper, purely intellective, part of the soul. 40 In what follows, the translations from V.3.49, 9–11, and the notes (42–53) to the translations, are by Perczel. 41 Plotinus makes it clear in V.5.32 that the nous as a whole is all the forms together and that each form in turn is the entire nous in potentiality. 42 Plato, Republic I 352d5–6. 43 This refers to multitude in the Theaetetus. 44 Cf. Theaetetus 156a: “These are those people who think that nothing else exists but what they can hold fast in their hand but do not accept that acts, events, or anything invisible would fall in a lot of substance.” 45 Cf. Theaetetus 157a: “So from all these things about which we were speaking from the very beginning, none is itself in itself but is always coming to being together with something else.” 46 Cf. Theaetetus 156b: “From the mutual intercourse and friction of the two there are born products (children), in infinite multitude, being twins, one being perceptible and the other being the perception, which is always falling out and is produced together with the perceived.” Armstrong’s translation is erroneous here. See Armstrong: “There must, then, be more than one, that seeing may exist, and the seeing and the seen must coincide.” 47 Philebus 63b 7–8. 48 “τί καὶ ποιήσει”; a reference to the active movement in the Theaetetus. 49 This refers, once again, to Theaetetus 156a. See above n36. 50 Cf. Theaetetus 157a: “since it is even impossible, as they say, to stably conceive of one of them to be active or passive.” 51 Cf. Theaetetus 156a: “that all (things) were uniquely motion and nothing else, while the motion had two sorts, both in infinite multitude; one had the power to affect and the other to be affected.” 52 This is a combination of Sophist 254d-e with Theaetetus 156d-e: “then, sight and whiteness are moving in between [μεταξὺ φερομένων], namely sight coming from the eye and whiteness coming from the thing that gives birth—together with the eye—to the colour.” 53 See the previous note. 54 One may wonder whether this reuse of the Theaetetus’ myth on the birth of perception has also to do with Plotinus’ polemic with the Gnostics, running through his entire oeuvre. Gnostic teachings claim that the evil lies in multiplicity and generation, in a vertical, top-down creation. Also, in Plotinus’ school, Gnostics were considered a sort of schismatic school sprouting from the schools of “ancient philosophy” (see Porphyry, Life of Plotinus, 16.1–2). So, it is important for Plotinus to correct what he considered a misinterpretation of Plato’s dialogues. Thus, one may suppose that Plotinus’ transposition of the philosophical myth on perception to the level of the mind is based on the anti-Gnostic conviction that sense-perception is an analogous image of intellection. 55 Emilsson explains, and I fully agree with him, that it is not the intellectual nature that motivates the Intellect to split into subject and object, but the desire to become a whole; Emilsson, Plotinus on Intellect, 104. 56 V.3.49, 11, 12. 57 Perczel, “L’‘intellect amoureux,’ ” 235–36. 58 For an excellent overview of the discussion on this, see Emilsson, Plotinus on Intellect, 75–76.

74  Anastasia Theologou 59 James Wilberding provides a solution to the puzzle of how the mind could be nowhere and everywhere at the same time. I reuse here his term of “instrumental proximity” to show that unity and movement can be understood if the spatial connotation could be seen under the light of stationary and kinetic activity; see James Wilberding, Plotinus’ Cosmology: A Study of Ennead II.1 (40): Text, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 315–34. 60 Sight in the realm of senses becomes weak, blurred. For this reason, the self becomes less authentic and less subtle. For an analysis of the men’s weak vision related to a lower form of contemplation, see Pauliina Remes, “Human Action and Divine Power,” in Divine Powers in Late Antiquity, eds. Anna Marmodoro and Irini-Fotini Viltanioti (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 49–50. 61 See Emilsson, Plotinus on Intellect, 108. 62 Emilsson correctly points out that according to Plotinus, all kinds of forms even in materiality keep their unity with the intelligible realm; Emilsson, Plotinus on SensePerception, 133–34. 63 In Ennead IV.6.41, 1, Plotinus explains that perception is an internal activity of the higher soul, and that is why it can govern the composite’s perceptions. 64 Sight for Plato is a unified process of two poles, and this is what Plotinus expands on in V.3.49. Moreover, this part makes me question Hutchinson’s interpretation about the individual intellects that are distinguished because of their perspectives toward the One. 65 Perczel, “L’‘intellect amoureux,’ ” 240–41, suggested that beyond the intellect is the “One being.” In this respect the unimprinted sight could have been hypostasized beyond the Intellect but this is an insight for further consideration.

Bibliography Primary Literature Aristotle. On the Soul; Parva Naturalia; On Breath. Translated by W.S. Hett. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936. ———. The Categories; On Interpretation; Prior Analytics. Translated by Harold Cook and Hugh Tredennick. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938. Galen. De foetuum formatione. Corpvs Medicorum Graecorum 5.3.3. [German] Translated and Edited by Nickel Diethard. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2001. Accessed May 26, 2023. http://cmg.bbaw.de/epubl/online/cmg_05_03_03.html. Plato. The Republic. Translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. ———. Laws. Translated by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. ———. The Statesman; Philebus; Ion. Translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. ———. Theaetetus; Sophist. Translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. Plotinus. Plotini Opera. (editio maior), edited by Paul Henry and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer, 3 Vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951–1973. ———. Enneads. Translated by A. H. Armstrong, 7 Vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966–1988. ———. Porphyry on the Life of Plotinus; Ennead I. Translated by A. H. Armstrong. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. ———. ΕΝΝΕΑΔΕΣ. Αρχαίο κείμενο, μετάφραση, σχόλια Παύλος Καλλιγάς. Αθήνα: Ακαδημία Αθηνών, 1994–2014.

Plotinus  75 Secondary Literature Bielfeldt, Ruth. “Sight and Light: Reified Gazes and Looking Artefacts in the Greek Cultural Imagination.” In Sight and the Ancient Senses, edited by Michael Squire, 122–42. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. Blundell, Sue, Douglas Cairns, Elizabeth Craik, and Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz. “Introduction.” Helios 40, no. 1–2, Special Issue: Vision and Viewing in Ancient Greece, edited by Sue Blundell et al. (Spring/Fall 2013): 3–40. Cairns, Douglas. “Bullish Looks and Sidelong Glances: Social Interaction and the Eyes in Ancient Greek Culture.” In Body Language in the Greek and Roman Worlds, edited by Douglas Cairns, 123–55. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2005. ———. “Looks of Love and Loathing: Cultural Models of Vision and Emotion in Ancient Greek Culture.” Mètis: Anthropologie des Mondes Grecs Anciens 9 (2011): 37–50. Caluori, Damian. Plotinus on the Soul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. ———. “Review of D. M. Hutchinson, Plotinus on Consciousness.” Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, December  13, 2018. Accessed May  26, 2023. https://ndpr.nd.edu/ reviews/plotinus-on-consciousness. Emilsson, Eyjólfur Kjalar. Plotinus on Sense-Perception: A Philosophical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. ———. Plotinus on Intellect. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007. Gerson, Lloyd P. “Review of D. M. Hutchinson, Plotinus on Consciousness.” Bryn Mawr Classical Review, October  7, 2018. Accessed May  26, 2023. https://bmcr.brynmawr. edu/2018/2018.10.57. Guenther, Corey L., and Mark D. Alicke, “Psychology of the Self.” In Oxford Bibliographies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, February 26, 2013. Accessed May 26, 2023. www. oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199828340/obo-9780199828340– 0093.xml#obo-9780199828340–0093-bibItem-0002. Hadot, Pierre. Plotinus on the Simplicity of Vision. Translated by Michael Chase. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Hutchinson, Danny Muñoz. Plotinus on Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Karamanolis, George E. Plato and Aristotle in Agreement? Platonists on Aristotle from Antiochus to Porphyry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2013. Nightingale, Andrea. “Sight and the Philosophy of Vision in Ancient Greece: Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle.” In Sight and the Ancient Senses, edited by Michael Squire, 54–67. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. O’Meara, Dominic J. Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Perczel, István. “L’‘intellect amoureux’ et l’‘un qui est’: Une doctrine mal connue de Plotin.” Revue de Philosophie Ancienne 15, no. 2 (1997): 223–64. Pirandello, Luigi. One, None, and a Hundred-Thousand. Translated by Samuel Putnam. New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1933. Remes, Pauliina. “Human Action and Divine Power.” In Divine Powers in Late Antiquity, edited by Anna Marmodoro and Irini-Fotini Viltanioti, 38–60. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. ———. Plotinus on the Self: The Philosophy of the “We.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Remes, Pauliina, and Juha Sihvola, eds. Ancient Philosophy of the Self. Dordrecht: Springer, 2008.

76  Anastasia Theologou Sorabji, Richard. Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life, and Death. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Theologou, Anastasia. “Galen and Plotinus on the Principle of Sympatheia.” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 26 (2020): 31–44. Wilberding, James. Plotinus’ Cosmology: A Study of Ennead II.1 (40): Text, Translation, and Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

4 Sexless Henology, or, Is Plotinus’ One Neutral to Sex and Gender?1 Stanimir Panayotov

Introduction and Context In the vast literature on Plotinus we have witnessed in the past 60-plus years, a number of scholars are trying to pay a modicum of attention to matters pertaining to sex, gender, sexuality, materiality, and embodiment when it comes to the great Neoplatonist proselytizer of Plato.2 In light of the relatively accelerated—and now largely accepted by mainstream philosophy—feminist critiques of the “neutrality” of Reason3 and disembodiment of knowledge4 in ancient philosophy writ large, this development is logical, yet too slow. Given the relatively conservative embrace of feminist theory within contemporary Neoplatonist scholarship, the turn of events is welcome and perhaps too quick for insiders, who often rush to defend their timeless hero from what are seen as the depredations of politically motivated philosophical revenge, often contaminating as it does the original sources with unsound historical expectations. As I will show later, the existing niched literature that tries to read Plotinus, and especially his rather ineffable (if it can even be called that) notion of the One, is a careful compromise between tradition and innovation that does not fit well with either feminism or Neoplatonism. It is largely impossible to declare a conceptual victory on either side, which is why scholars are more than careful to not impute their theses on potential conversants. This development is understandable, yet still regretful, to the extent to which it is defensible, as it results in disengagement on both sides with the other party’s analysis: while feminist critics (even the most nuanced ones) are gladly repudiated by those of “conservative” repute, the latter (even the most impressionable ones) are all the more so courageously thrashed by the former as dehistoricizing the just contextualizing work of a theoretical movement in philosophy (feminism)5 that has long proved the irrelevance of supra-religious and supra-rationalist disembodied readings of Plotinus, or any other grandiose authority in discursive thinking, for that matter. My text seeks to put into conversation those two theory tribes, not because they do not exist in the same world, but because they are barely courageous to claim so. There is a widespread scholarly consensus that Plotinus’ original notion of the One is beyond all predicates.6 If so, logically, this includes sex and gender. The consensus is largely repudiated by and unacceptable, for the most part, for feminist historians of philosophy, because the acceptance of the One’s non-predicative DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-8

78  Stanimir Panayotov nature warrants rather unproblematically the standard feminist argument that any conceptual authority of disembodied knowledge is rooted in a form of (at least) conceptual oppression and subversion of the human nature.7 On the other hand, providing reasonable arguments that demonstrate that the One bears the mark of disembodiment, neutrality, and a covert form of degendering and/or desexualization is in turn repudiated by the standard classicist and philological critique that the original sources cannot retroactively serve contemporary political agendas in the theory (this even if we admit that science and humanities are, in fact, inherently political). Since in this text I intend to prove that the One cannot be unrelated to sex and gender, my own agenda will obviously be seen as serving what we could term the “feminist critique” rather than the philological one, as if the two cannot work together. Yet in no way do I claim that there are no significant and dramatic instances of philological and thus philosophical misnomers carried out by politically biased feminist thinkers.8 My own text is heavily dependent on other scholars’ topical exegeses of Plotinus; it is also not an attack on Plotinus as an authority of misogyny. The aim is to defend the idea that Plotinus deliberately produced a sexless notion of the One, which abets the disembodied and allegedly all-neutral status of the One. He did so by making the Indefinite Dyad the first feminine principle, in its association to (intelligible) materiality. On the one hand, the vast literature on Plotinus is brimming with specialized accounts on terminology, genealogy, and textual criticism that often lacks theoretical explanations speaking truth to power (that there is no power to his truth—or ours—is rather naïve). On the other hand, the niched feminist-leaning literature on Plotinus is all too nuanced, to the point where moderation is instrumentalized as arrogance by ahistorical readers. As a result, all sides are disappointed. To defend the thesis, I will first discuss why the aforementioned consensus prevails and present the argument that the thesis cannot explain away sex. Second, I will make the case for the One’s reliance on sex by relating it to the correlative Indefinite Dyad as a parallel “first” principle guaranteeing the One’s alleged sexless neutrality. Third, I will discuss what the presumed neutrality means based as it is on defining what I call the problem of grammatical neutrality.9 A Brief Overview of the One as Relative to Disembodiment Before approaching the very idea that the One is beyond all predicates, I will first summarize some of the central Plotinian claims on the One and will then proceed to defend the thesis that the One is, in fact, reducible to sex. Whenever I use a term that implies predication, I do so not to refute the textual evidence but because, quite simply, human language compromises the One before its actual articulation—and not because I want to pre-emptively set the stage for a dramatized sexed reading of the One. The One is somehow the “center” of all hypostases, provided that it is beyond all Being, having in mind that terms such as “hypostasis” are, strictly, incapable of qualifying it. This is why the One is expressive of a theistic-human drama: at its

Sexless Henology, or, Is Plotinus’ One Neutral to Sex and Gender?  79 best, humanity can intimately dance with the mystical One only in the stuttering fallibility of its hypostatical movements. The movement—the descent—of human thought from the One (which is not a “movement” of the One) all the way down to reality (Being and beings) and the sensible world is not a “deduction” from the One. A deductive procedure would warrant knowledge of the source, yet the One is only knowable for select few instances (“mystical union”) of the very select few knowers (the philosophers). The One is the “power of all things” (dynamis panton, see III.8.10, 1–14; V.1.7, 5–17; V.3.15, 32–35; V.4.1, 34–39; V.4.2, 34–43; VI.7.32, 29–39), the inexhaustible and productive dynamis of life (III.8.10.1–5), the active and infinite power (V.3.15, 32–35; VI.9.7–12), which generates Intellect through its “seeing,” Intellect being the second hypostasis (V.1.7, 5–17). The One is “all things and none of them” (V.2.1, 1, referring to Parmenides 160b2–3). It is “all things” because it is the source of all that is in the world but is “none of them” to the extent that it is transcendent and distinguished from every particular (V.2.1, 1–10). The One is the supreme principle because it defies all division and multiplicity (VI.9.5, 35–46; V.4.1, 34–39). For the One to be what it is, i.e., itself, as an identity, it needs to be considered and approached by the intellect as non-composite and, thus, irreparably ungraspable (consider VI.9.5, 28–37). Although intellection is the closest to the One, its separation from the One is necessary because intellection’s function is immersed in the world of composites, i.e., separation and thus otherness; however, otherness, expressive of beings, is itself generated by the One’s superabundance. It is dubitable whether the One can be the source of otherness (or anything really), as it does not participate in the sum total of Being. When the One generates what is other to it, this other looks toward the One, is “filled,” and becomes intellect, which in turn generates being (V.2.1, 11–13). The noematic drama Plotinus tries to elucidate is that, if the One can indeed be grasped by intellect, it will be manifestly closer to compositeness—and will thus be removed from the Good and goodness. The general problem of defining the One is that it cannot be referred to as a cause or first principle: it has nothing, it needs nothing. Everything emanates or overflows from it. In its “overflowing,” it “begets another than itself”—the Nous (V.2.1, 8–11), which can be qualified as a first principle. The One cannot produce something other than itself because it contains all existents and is impersonal to what bears the mark of existence and thus otherness. The One is thus neither a cause nor a first principle, yet it generates that principle without being it: it is therefore the ground zero of all countable principles, the supreme non-principle. Intellect and being are principles, generated and turning towards the One and trying to see it, but in fact always already miss it. Only a mystical thinker can substitute Being for the One. Before trying to defend the idea that the One can have sexed predicative character—even if there is only one such predicate, the idea is still a Neoplatonic blasphemy—one needs to ask: is the One a response to an actual human problem? If it does not, in fact, bear anything of all the things and beings (meta-)generated by itself, why bother articulating what does not meet articulation? As a project loyal to its Platonic past, the One in Plotinus appears as a practical solution to the problem

80  Stanimir Panayotov of anthropological self-actualization, to the extent to which it follows a philosophical ideal of escape from the world.10 As a system, the One “is the climax of a series of shifts in self-identification” (body—soul—intellect—One).11 According to Svetla Slaveva-Griffin,12 even though the One cannot be reduced to an existent (such as the number), an account providing understanding of the universe’s generation in terms of number is needed. The big question is, of course, whether the One is a number or a philosophical misnomer trumping the notion of number. Such a numerical account naturally implies that matter is wholly beyond the One. The One serves as a measure of independence from beings and multiplicity. On this account, the view that the One is itself not being and only “provides” its principle as it is beyond Being fosters an interpretation that exacerbates the distance between One and matter, and thereby the motif of disembodiedness. Because with the One the distance from matter grows bigger and more abstracted—Plotinus’ extreme realization is that even noetic matter should not be associated with the One; otherwise, the One would be the efficient cause of otherness and therefore of the material world—matter should be put further away from the goodness of Being, whatever the hierarchical conjugation with the One. This brief documentation on the One serves the purpose of summarizing in what sense the One is relative to Intellect and Being, and therefore first and second matter, and to provide a genealogical reading of the One’s relation to matter: only in this context can we understand the idea that it is reliant on sex and gender (which is not the same as repudiating them). The One is conceptually produced to be safeguarded from even the slightest conceptual approximation to Being, itself the guardian of matter. Now, accepting or rejecting the generation of matter is a whole different area of research, with which I do not engage here, but it is outsourced to the domain of Being and has to do with what is delivered to us as the One’s neutrality; however, this neutrality cannot be understood without the Indefinite Dyad and its femininity, in the following way. For the Pythagoreans, the One’s grammatical neutrality did not entail degendering, but in Plotinus the grammatical neutrality corresponded to gender neutrality. In Plotinus, the Monad is the One, the overflowing is the Dyad, while the moment of the return is the Triad, so it appears that Plotinus pursued something approximating a triune, if not familial, logic in the grammatical gendering of the hypostases (the One is neuter, the Dyad is female, the Nous is male, the Psyche is female). The same “familial” logic is true in the Pythagorean One as male and Dyad as female, but this changes in Plotinus, as the One is not qualified as male. While Plotinus retains a gendered Dyad in the female, which stands for first matter, he does not suggest that second matter comes directly out of it; that can only be inferred. In fact, it is nearly impossible to locate the source of matter, and therefore evil, anywhere,13 despite the fact the Dyad is intended to somehow explain multiplicity and thus otherness; the theodicy of the material world thus leaves materiality without locality. Clearly, the introduction of the Indefinite Dyad as a (quasi-)first principle served the purpose of inseminating the world of materiality and embodiment with the world of the feminine (in the sense of intelligible matter). Any adjudication on the One’s relationality to first matter is therefore relative to second matter and thus to the body to the extent to

Sexless Henology, or, Is Plotinus’ One Neutral to Sex and Gender?  81 which it is expressed via the Dyad, its hierarchical relation to matter as divided here and there, and is therefore an alienation from the One; this would be a proper descending from the One. On Plotinus’ account, no analytical procedures that are presumably pertaining to human reality can be had. While the Good is an aim for the human, and we can locate a gendered speculation inherent in it, this is allegedly not true of the One. On the contrary, in Plotinus the Pythagorean gendering of the One was reduced to grammatical neutrality, which is hardly accidental.14 I will return to this grammatical neutrality after I explain how various scholars have tried to discuss Plotinus’ relation to sex and gender. An Overview of the One as Relative to Sex and Gender That there be a science of the One (henology) is hardly Plotinus’ business: it is the lifework of the likes of Proclus. That there is a sex-relative aspect (or some kind of predication) to such a henology is, therefore, not in the least of the immediate interest, allegedly, of the authoritative sources that make what henology is. Here, I will briefly provide an account of how the One is relative to sex and gender, trying to uncover a sort of sexless henology, and explain why the main category of concern is sex rather than gender, although both are important for my argument. To understand these considerations, let me first explicate how gender and the body are important for studying Plotinus and Neoplatonism writ large. Studying gender/ing and the body in Neoplatonism (and not specifically in Plotinus) meets two general problems, which are not necessarily legitimate for Plotinus scholars. First, the source texts generally do not invite gendered analysis because the sources are organized around a spiritual tendency of anthropological self-perfection, as well as the metaphysical structure of reality. The soul-body dualism inherited in Neoplatonic thought does not provide an account of gender/ing and requires explication, the scholarly axiology notwithstanding. Unlike later Christian Neoplatonist and patristic thought,15 the source texts do not openly deal with the question of who (male or female) can achieve it. Arguments against such subject- and gender-centered readings are usually reliant on evidence that Plotinus’ seminar did include women and was therefore egalitarian. These are two correlative general reasons why there is not much scholarship on gender and the gendering of body and matter in Neoplatonism, and particularly in Plotinus, as he “scarcely mentions women and [that they are] not an obvious target of either praise or blame.”16 Second, in researching gender and the body in Neoplatonism, the focus constantly shifts between the categories of embodiment and disembodiment. This problem stems from the apophatic approach to the One: because the One is disembodied and unknowable, the only way to discuss it is non-discursive, yet our own camera obscura is embodied, as our mind has a place, it is in a body, unlike the One. When we study the body in Neoplatonism, we should avoid reducing it either to the Soul or the One or the Dyad, as in either case we will produce a degeneration of the higher term. The body, however, concerns sensible matter, while the Dyad is intelligible matter first and foremost: a realm before the “individuation” or the “sublation” of matter, so to speak. Can the Dyad be abstracted away from sensible matter?

82  Stanimir Panayotov The answer is no: while we can be highly skeptical of the idea that the body can be dismissed as an object of concern, matter and, therefore, the Dyad, the body cannot be excluded from the investigation, because it is through its mediation that Plotinus speaks of the world of materiality and therefore corporeality—and not because body and matter are the same thing (which they are not). The problem is not about the goodness of the material world but about “hierarchy,” and thus gender. Overall, Neoplatonism in general, and Plotinus in particular, are worth exploring for gendered subjects, such as the One and the Dyad, because this intellectual tradition has largely metaphysical and proto-theological perceptions of gender without obvious codifications of the latter in the flesh. This is why we can presume that whatever is central to the gendering of matter for Plotinus will be central to our reading of the body in his rendition of the One. Because Neoplatonism is largely a language of a dualistic system, of two realities—one describable but negligible and one indescribable but desirable— discussing gender and the body in Neoplatonism, even as it is mediated by the Dyad, entails their reduction to linguistic codifications of philosophical and Platonic ideals. The language represents a perfection and gradual development of the Platonist intellectual legacy that includes soul-body dualism and its radicalization, culminating in the idea of matter as evil and privation (a vast problematic that I do not discuss here). It is this radicalization—a form of philosophical innovation— which is alarming and can be read as a tendency towards disembodiment in Plotinus’ thought; and it is this radicalization that warrants a gendered reading of the One, for on its own, it tells us absolutely nothing about us—as it should—but it can tell us about ourselves via Plotinus’ mystical machinations. To the extent to which Plotinus’ philosophy can be (and at times should be) understood via feminist theory and considerations, especially as it pertains to the absolute disembodiedness of the One, the latter’s neutrality cannot be considered without thinking about gender, a fact warranted by the accompanying role of the Indefinite Dyad. Readings of Plotinus, Sex, and Gender Now, before arriving at my central discussion on the One’s grammatical neutrality, and to the extent to which I committed to the project of trying to bridge different theory tribes, I will need to focus on and explain the relevance of sex and gender/ ing (in) Plotinus, for the presence of women and/or femininity as such cannot guarantee relevance to an otherwise anthropologically meaningful metaphysics. On the other hand, when it comes to feminist-resistant interpretations of Plotinus, my simplest response is this: the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, or, the fact that the textual corpus does not employ a certain wording cannot be interpreted as the lack of thinking about such wording, pertaining to the world in which Plotinus has lived. To assume so would make Plotinus a god. But as with gods, gender here needs uncovering. The uncovering implies a certain covering, or, what I prefer to call degendering in Plotinus. Elizabeth J. Cooper focuses on Plotinian embodiment, as does Panayiota Vassilopoulou,17 in order to uncover gender in Plotinus. They both, however, do not

Sexless Henology, or, Is Plotinus’ One Neutral to Sex and Gender?  83 conflate matter and body, which is an extremely important aspect of the research, because the confusion between the two would automatically render Plotinus guilty of at least covert forms of misogyny. Cooper summarizes Plotinus’ views on women and the body: sense perception is implicitly gendered with the lower part of the soul and reasoning in the higher (I.6.8–15; I.7.13–14; I.1.3.23–24). In her overview, as Plato, Plotinus presents embodiment as an obstacle to the soul and offers a division between civic and intellectual virtues,18 but goes further than Plato to transcend knowledge and unite with the One. Based on the division, Cooper identifies the following three feminist concerns with respect to embodiment and the One:19 (1) the centralization of ontological power, which disembodies male reason and, at least on a standard feminist account, results in the (conceptual) oppression of women; but as Vassilopoulou and Margaret Miles, Cooper claims that Plotinus is no authoritarian, emphasizing the use of immanence and dynamism of the One as coinciding with feminist theologies; (2) the centrality of rational thought; because this is a rationality within a “rational mysticism,” and because Plotinus’ highest type of knowledge is intuitive, this can associate him easier with feminist emphasis on intuition; (3) the contemplative ideal: this ideal is closer to the ideal of disembodiment, as it suggests developing Plato’s motif of the escape from the body; Cooper claims that his one-soul thesis, along with his teaching on virtues, offers “a rational justification for human responsibilities.”20 Taken together, the three concerns bring Plotinus closer to a more essentialist feminism reliant on intuitive knowledge. If Cooper is right that Plotinus can be seen as a proto-feminist, then this is true only of a certain kind of maternalist feminism. Cooper does admit that the One makes the body a problem for feminist spirituality, and that Plotinus does not differentiate between those who have and those who do not have access to knowledge and wisdom.21 Even if the mother participates in giving form to the fetus, the one-soul thesis and the Platonic “psychophilic somatophobia”22 are still largely modeled on the male prototype of the ideal citizen and his soul. But what is truly central for our analysis here is that Plotinus has a context-specific notion of embodiment: “negative when related to the soul’s progress toward greater unity, but highly positive when countering the claims of the Gnostics that the material world is evil.”23 In short, his dualism is more pronounced in his psychology; none of this means, however, that he had no gendered considerations. What is not said is said otherwise, in silent subjugation to the ultimate One. Miles discusses24 Plotinus’ considerations on embodiment and relevance for feminism by focusing on his aesthetics (V.8).25 The distinction between soul and body is important for him because of the degree of his system’s independence from matter and sense perception, so soul is superior because it can exist without body and is thus identified with life. If we can identify a Plotinian pessimism on human actualization, it is the result of his view that the body is essentially lifeless, but soul enlivens it (I.1.3, 1–4, with reference to Phaedrus 246c5; and IV.7.2, 16–19). The lower status of bodies is derivative of their function: they stand for the human drama of dividing the living beings as ones separate from their noematic nature, as the world of becoming is one of division, and division and separation are always less desirable than the One. But desire is part of the system nonetheless: if the One

84  Stanimir Panayotov was not desired, if its attainment was not the subject of human volition, then there is no point for the body (and, correlatively, its sex) to be the object of disavowal. It is exactly in light of this volitional exclusion on the side of Plotinus that the One is at least relative (and not simply corelative) to gender, and, like Plato, he oscillates between pessimism and optimism, and is caught in a sort of inadvertent dualism of the One. Cooper and Miles both agree that Plotinus acknowledged the sensible world when challenged by the Gnostic despise of the body, but the ascent to the One always entails disparaging the body, Gnosticism notwithstanding.26 It is noteworthy that if the body and the world of matter are the subject of disapproval, then the Dyad is not disparaged. This divided and apparently nuanced approach to embodiment in Plotinus is both metaphysical and practical. Miles’ conclusion is that such combined approach demonstrates that both soul and body reveal interdependence, but it is not obvious that the distinction between intelligible and sensible was a pure demonstration of the interdependency of the two worlds. It seems to me that if it can be that, it is on account of at least a silent thinking about who is the subject of anthropological self-actualization—and this problem cannot be operated from the embodied realities of gender. Why else would a human need a philosophical mobility to ascend to the One? Like Vassilopoulou, Miles turns to Porphyry’s biographical data favoring Plotinus’ work with female students and living in a woman’s home.27 The suggestion here is that Plotinus confessed a counter-cultural respect for women and linked this attitude to the practice of his philosophical commitments.28 This is why it is very important for feminist scholars of Plotinus to not confuse (and require) social egalitarianism with falsely designed ontology as political philosophy: the political anachronizing of Plotinus needs to be functional and serve a purpose taken out of his work, and not stitched to it.29 Much more importantly, Miles claims that Plotinus might have literalized Plato’s maieutics (midwifery) and adopted the perspective of the woman who gives birth, which in turn can also explain why nurse is a better name for matter than mother. Both Vassilopoulou’s and Cooper’s arguments on the value of the body rely on Miles’ conclusion that Plotinus “did not disparage physical birth-giving in relation to visionary experience.”30 All of this is not to say that Plotinus’ views on childbearing and generation are a substitute for a viable and optimistic appreciation of embodiment: “it cannot be argued that he transcended the common gender assumptions of his time,” but clearly the Platonic motif of escape from the body from the Theaetetus was (at least philosophically) pacified.31 If the consensus that the One is beyond all predicates is so stubborn and timeless, then logically, if the One is somehow related to a predicate such as sex, it follows that all predicates can be relevant for the One. But can this truly be the case? One author who has forcefully suggested that this need not be the case is Zeke Mazur. While in every step of his analysis he demonstrates how One and sex are intimately bound, this demonstration should not in turn be read as the penultimate sublation of the One into the world of embodiment. Based on Mazur’s analysis, we can say that sex has a privileged status in the predicative business I  engage with here. In his strongly Gnosticizing interpretation, the author identifies not just images but “erotic imagery” relevant to what can be easily read as sexual

Sexless Henology, or, Is Plotinus’ One Neutral to Sex and Gender?  85 debasement of the One.32 The procession to the One follows a reproductive model that is not operated from the biological nature of the human being. Desire drives the procession: the Soul has unbounded love/desire for the One, thereby leading to the so-called mystical union. In this, Plotinus differs from Plato, who would not dare to approximate this mystical union to desire as sexual intercourse.33 This desire is mimesis “of the soul’s mystical union with the One,” again a move unthinkable for Plato; for Plotinus, all forms of love (including sexual desire) are thus reducible to the One. Because Eros mediates between lover/Soul and beloved/Intellect, the One is the primordial source to return to; for Mazur, Plotinus is more focused (from an “androgenetic” perspective) on biology and reproduction rather than eroticism. If the One is the point to return to, it receives all forms of love, in as much as “the One behaves as a self-fertilizing or monogenetic seed.” It is, after all, a “primordial ejaculation.”34 It is due to this kind of original Plotinian blending of mysticism and reproduction (with reference to VI.9.9) that, for Mazur, “the individual soul is said to become ‘pregnant’ with beauty and virtue when it is ‘filled’ by the One,” thereby achieving an identity between mystical union and sexual intercourse. In short, Plotinus’ entire dialectical cycle is organized as a “sexual model” torn between eroticism and sexual intercourse. It is the latter that indeed functions, for Mazur, as a “ ‘true image’ of the ultimate union with the One.”35 Despite Mazur’s Gnosticizing reading, Plotinus does not come off as an extreme dualist. On this reading, however, his entire system is entirely quagmired by the realities of human sex and reproduction. Recently, Danielle A. Layne has promoted a much less nuanced view on Plotinus and sexism, claiming that “[n]o amount of apologetics could sufficiently erase his repeated and consistent disparagement of that which is coded as feminine in his system, for example, the body, the indefinite, matter, weakness, and specular images that threaten to pervert the good life.”36 This should be read with caution, as her reading of sex, gender, and sexuality in Plotinus’ eroticism is actually a much more nuanced feminist one than what insiders would otherwise expect. Before she goes on to offer her careful (on feminist standards) reading, she seems to pledge a strange allegiance to Irigaray’s project, where not only mother and matter are spliced into a single unity, but the “formula” is said to embody precisely Irigaray’s famous notion of the speculum.37 Now, Layne’s instrumentalizing of Irigaray is much more gentle than mine; this is partly due to the fact that she does not analyze both the omitted key passages and the omission itself in Irigaray’s “verbatim” chapter on/of Plotinus, which I have done earlier. In her recourse to psychology, Layne explicitly states that not only is Plotinus radically embracing both male and female in his metaphysics via Eros, but that “there is certain feminine and even queer power haunting the Enneads, insofar as Aphrodite and Poverty are explicitly identified with Soul.” Her central thesis deserves to be spelled out in full: Plotinus attempts to maintain a kind of gender neutrality when it comes to sex and gender identity at the level of the embodied soul. Souls are sex indifferent, while sex and gender are consequences of bodily morphology, and

86  Stanimir Panayotov genital sex is simply a necessity for reproduction. . . these realities are not simply corporeal phenomena. . . all of these categories first exist originally at the highest levels of reality.38 This thesis, as will be shown later, is fairly standard exactly in what passes as feminist readings of Plotinus. Layne suggests that, because souls are not sex-reducible, a radical queerness (vs. gender neutrality) in the human as conceived by Plotinus is present. She then inquires how are sex, gender, and sexuality ingrained at these highest levels in the Enneads, which is the heart of her argument and study. As in Mazur, she focuses “on the derivation of all things, even morphological sex, from erotic desire.”39 Whereas Mazur intimates that the One (on account of both being one and many) is a kind of primordial ejaculation, Layne similarly claims that the One also loves itself (which is logical to the extent to which everything, including Intellect and Soul, and thus love, spring out of it), and thereby the human, in its Soul’s recourse to the One, has to analogically love herself. Obviously, this erotic move is teleological, as it is a return to the One. She further claims that difference in Plotinus is a necessary part of the Intellect, since Being cannot account of itself other than having in itself otherness, yet Intellect is more than two (subject/object, one/many), as it is desire/Eros “that is inherent to the activity of Intellect.”40 After this exegesis, Layne goes on to claim that apparently Plotinus has consistently reduced sex-biological wording in the Enneads, as opposed to a more expansive and allegedly sex-inclusive use of anthrôpos, particularly when discussing the soul as dis/embodied. Her main claim, therefore, is that it appears that Plotinus would argue for a fundamentally gender-neutral soul, whereby sex and gender differences would be a product of the World Soul in the creation and management of the sensible cosmos. For Plotinus, individual souls play no part in the constitution of their sex.41 This leads her to then defend the idea that whereas “the human soul is sex indifferent. . . the Plotinian Soul is not gender neutral.”42 Intellect and Soul are thus gendered (analogous to male/female; note, however, that here exactly Layne uses sexed, not gendered language). The overarching conclusion is that since all humans relate to both Intellect and Soul, both are not gender-neutral, as the gendered schema in Plotinus requires. Because desire seems to be the drive towards the human’s return to the One, a degendering type of neutrality is required by all of humanity. This, however, seems to be relevant for the World Soul. At an individual level, souls “are not gender indifferent but ‘both/and’ insofar as both are necessary for the soul’s good.”43 Because then it appears that each human is a mixture of two genders ensouled, the feminine cannot, as Irigaray claims, be seen as “impotent” and merely an “inscriptional space.” Eventually, since the domain of human desire, sex, and gender are inescapable, this does not mean that they need to be ignored: something which, on Layne’s view, Plotinus decidedly does not avoid, but rather promotes via an indifferent One that brings in and towards itself all the differences

Sexless Henology, or, Is Plotinus’ One Neutral to Sex and Gender?  87 of the material world, which are contacted to “the Good via Soul’s desire to touch the good in all things.”44 All that said, Layne might be silently correcting (if not refuting) Irigaray on account of examining Plotinian psychology, which can never be explicated if one follows Irigaray’s homologization of mother/matter with speculum. Importantly, she spells out that for Plotinus, “matter is only mother qua substrate,”45 despite the fact that this extremely important qualification has never had any bearing for Irigaray’s representation of Plotinus as misogynist, not to mention her followers for decades on end. It seems Layne introduces her study via Irigaray to correct something in her imputation, but this is never spelled out, which, if I am right, might be the exact same type of silent subversive mimesis of Irigaray’s feminism that Irigaray performs onto Plotinus’ metaphysics. Layne serves as the underlaborer of Irigaray’s ahistorical machinations, despite her conclusion: that in following Irigaray, Plotinus seems to reduce the feminine “to a handmaiden to masculine prerogative.”46 It is fairly difficult to understand why Layne follows Irigaray’s feminist crass generalizations as opposed to a very favorable reading of a gender-neutral (World) Soul. At any rate, Layne clearly shows how both sex and gender can be functional in analyzing the Plotinian scaffolding of the One. Other very recent studies can be cited to prove or disprove the idea that the One is either gender-neutral or not. As we have seen in both Mazur’s and Layne’s accounts, two distinct but related Gnostic and feminist readings (which, indeed, can rarely be opposite) reach fairly similar ends, justifying Plotinus as protoegalitarian on account of sex- and desire-inclusivity. The further studies outlined later share a similar, justificatory tendency, which adds up logically to the Doddsian spirit of presenting Plotinus as a silent Platonic innovator here, in the domain of sex equality and philosophical education. Strictly speaking, these studies have more to do with sex, and the sexual identity of Plotinus’ students, than with gender, which so far seems to be a conceptually and philosophically rich explanatory concept but is historically rather impoverishing. As Jana Schultz and James Wilberding state in their “Introduction” to the volume Women and the Female in Neoplatonism, “[s]urprisingly. . . although Neoplatonism is connected with such renowned names like Hypatia, Sosipatra, and Marcella, there has been to date no comprehensive study of women and femaleness in their own school of thought.”47 In just under two years, however, this volume appeared along with another one, namely, Women’s Perspectives on Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, edited by Isabelle Chouinard et al., adding precious analyses to the very limited existing literature on Plotinus and feminism overall, which was already reviewed earlier. Wilberding’s study in the aforementioned volume, and that of Mathilde Cambron-Goulet and François-Julien Côté-Remy,48 seem to share one common conviction: that Plotinus did not continue Plato’s tension of sex equality vs. inequality as it is documented in, respectively, the Republic and the Timaeus; in other words, philosophically, he has silently dismissed Plato’s inegalitarian tendencies, which, in fact, can also be discerned in the Republic on a closer look (e.g., 451c–457b).

88  Stanimir Panayotov In his article, Wilberding shows that Plotinus does not adopt the misogynistic aspects of Plato’s reincarnation thesis; rather, he regards male and female incarnations as equal in value. Furthermore, he demonstrates that—in his metaphysics— Plotinus does not simply take over the famous association of matter with the female or maternal, which can be found, for example, in Plato’s Timaeus, but instead points out that matter is barren while the mother takes active part in reproduction by contributing form-principles (logoi). Thus, the author shows that Plotinus avoids some aspects of the Platonic tradition that degrade women, while acknowledging that Plotinus passes over the most emancipatory aspect of Plato’s philosophy, the idea of philosopher-queens. This allows Wiberding to claim that “Plotinus is much less ambivalent and much more positive in his attitude toward women than Plato,”49 which he proves by reviewing the “reincarnation thesis” from the Timaeus in identifying just one instance of transmigration of the soul as relevant to sex (III.2.13, 14–15), and then stating that only “specific acts” (cowardice, injustice) are punished by female reincarnation, “[a]nd this is not because a female life is per se a punishment.”50 In short, the demotion of the soul in a female body is an act of providence and justice as a punishment for one’s previous life, but the female reincarnation does not index a Plotinian anti-female philosophical stance. Wilberding then considers the standard feminist (and somewhat misguided Irigarayan) reading of the mother-matter homology (which comes from feminist philosophers’ confusion of Plato and Aristotle on account of hylomorphism), which is often imputed from the Timaeus to the Enneads. This is exactly where sex, gender, and metaphysics seem to collate in standard feminist interpretations, because metaphysics and theory of sexual reproduction seem to be equated in a sex-inegalitarian interpretation, something Wilberding tries to refute.51 Here again he states that “Plotinus distances himself significantly from the maternal-material thesis” (on account of III.6.19). He rightfully notices that “Plotinus does not even attribute this view to Plato here,” because human reproduction is the result of mixtures (read concurrently with desire, in my view) of logoi that have been produced by both father and mother, but also Plotinus offers a view on logoi, not on seeds,52 an element missing in Plato’s Timaeus, but regretfully present in Irigaray’s analogy between mother = matter = speculum. Critically, as Wilberding states, one is left to wonder how the mother participates without seed, of which she is excluded, so the justificatory explanation of a homology between sex and metaphysics here is hinted at but is undertheorized. Females generate, but matter does not; somehow, mothers offer in the generation process form-principles. Wilberding ends on a self-critical note, identifying some missed chances in Plotinus to further egalitarianism, which might indicate some level of inherited sex ambivalence, if not sloppiness. Most importantly, he seems to differ from the consensual (feminist) defense of Plotinus via the account given of the two Aphroditai, as both Aphrodite and Zeus seem to have a claim to the Soul, which has led Plotinus to an internal division, whereby Intellect corresponds to Soul (Zeus); in his careful exegesis, Wilberding intimates Plotinus might not, after all, be willing to let Aphrodite, too, be equal to the Soul/ Zeus. But, as he concludes, at least Plotinus was aware of the inherited misogyny.53 In their study, Cambron-Goulet and Côté-Remy offer a historiography of women (thus, clearly on the way to investigate “sex”) as legitimate bearers of knowledge

Sexless Henology, or, Is Plotinus’ One Neutral to Sex and Gender?  89 in Plotinus and Porphyry. Their claim, similarly, is that Plotinus’ views allowed for a liberal egalitarian inclusion of women in philosophy, documenting first the presence of those women via Porphyry’s biography. Their central thesis is that the inclusivity “originate[s] in the way Plotinus and Porphyry conceived the soul and its relation to the body, where a person’s sex is incorporated.”54 If the task of the philosopher is to devote herself to Intellect, which requires disembodiment, then this requires disembodiment of one’s sex; on its own, this requires that sex has no bearing “on someone’s capacity to obtain a legitimate philosophical status within Plotinus’ school.”55 This study needs to be closely read along with Wilberding’s, as it provides, via Porphyry, a full prosopography of women56 in Plotinus’ school, which can then warrant something like the aforementioned claim and Wilberding’s thesis of non-ambivalence. The prosopography matches the conclusion that Plotinus distanced himself from Plato’s intra-textual inconsistencies, degenerating to the regrettable metensômatôsis (Timaeus 42b-c). In addition, the authors juxtapose the thesis against the tripartite division of virtues into civic, purifying, and intellectual.57 They claim that since the prosopography reveals that women were practicing philosophers in the school (although with a different bearing: namely, being educated to align with the existing elite of the time), then women could climb the ladder of virtues. The genderless notion of the human soul (with reference to IV.7.2, 10, 7–11) also warrants that women can overcome the “communion with the body” and attain purification.58 Finally, since the highest virtues are contemplative, it follows that, to the extent to which Plotinus has a universalist (read genderless) description of the human soul, “the inclusion of women in the ranks of philosophers is less problematic in the school of Plotinus than anywhere else.”59 Moreover, he does not despise sexuality as such, but aims at the attainment of a virtuous one (an idea spelled out in different ways by Mazur and Layne). Yet, because later Neoplatonists held more rigorous views on sex and women, Plotinus can often be a polluted source of feminist interpretation. Thus, once a philosopher (male or female) ascends in the scale of virtues, any philosopher transcends sex, imputing neutrality on the entire Plotinian system spearheaded by the One. How this sexless ethical ladder of virtues corresponds to a genderless metaphysics is a separate question, which the authors do not study in detail, but which Wilberding tried to synchronize. Three things need to be spelled out on account of these studies: (1) they largely seem to conflate the use of sex and gender as categories that can function harmoniously, which I  believe is not possible, because whereas gender is a clearly functional heuristic in metaphysics, sex is operative in historical analyses, but is easily confused with gender as soon as a harmonious interpretation of Plotinus’ views is offered (and the earlier readings all try to harmonize reproduction with metaphysics, via desire); (2) they entertain a strong justificatory tendency towards Plotinus’ egalitarianism, and carefully ward him off from his immediate students, who seem to be more occupied with hierarchy (or rather “rank,” as he never uses this late word) of the Soul than he was; and finally, (3) what these accounts seem to share (as well as with Layne and to a lesser extent Mazur) is that Plotinus offers a gender-neutral conception of the (World) Soul, which entertains philosophy as a sex-equality platform of sorts, against the grain of Platonic inconsistencies. These

90  Stanimir Panayotov justificatory readings of Plotinus, as indicated by Wilberding, cannot entirely exclude Plotinus from participation in the then existing forms of patriarchal societal order. Somehow following Wilberding’s moderate skepticism, Jana Schultz, in her response to Cambron-Goulet and Côté-Remy, begs to differ from this tendency to present a harmonious view between reproduction and metaphysics. She claims that in Plotinus’ metaphysics there remains the framework of the typical polarity between men-as-identity (although never spelled out, as per deconstruction’s standard critique), and women-as-otherness. In other words, despite something like Layne’s interpretation of difference as part and parcel of the human (soul), and the prosopography provided by Cambron-Goulet and Côté-Remy that is supposed to match a balanced gendered metaphysics, culminating in pedagogical universalism, Schultz identifies deliberate forms of inegalitarian deficiency in Plotinus’ thought, which cannot be subtracted from the system. Namely, she returns back to the Timaeus (a move which, indeed, is typical for inculpatory feminist readings) to claim that “there is nothing in Plotinus’ conception of the universal nature of soul which principally excludes a hierarchy between the souls of men and the souls of women.”60 Because of the internal division of the soul in a gendered fashion, the virtuous path seems to be obstructed; just because there is a universal, differenceinclusive conception of the soul, this does not preclude Plotinus from qualifying the soul as distinctly feminine to be avoided (with reference to IV.4.28, 31, 53–56). To the extent to which certain femaleness of the soul needs to be avoided and overcome, it is then the metaphysical burden of women to either be their own gender (sex, to be more precise, in my view) or ascend to the supposedly universalist human nature described by Plotinus. Simply, if Plotinus was radically egalitarian, he would not intimate that women need to transcend their own sex to become like the universal, something that males patently do not have to do.61 It appears Schulz overinterprets Plotinus’ teaching of the tripartite soul, however, to the effect that only the rational soul is identified with anthrôpos, who is read as a biological “man.” The entire discussion of souls born in male and female bodies is then questioning the universalism, so long as it can be read as a marker of Platonic continuity in Plotinus, a continuity and loyalty that then seems to deform Plotinus’ egalitarianism and silent dismissal of Platonic soul-relevant inconsistencies. The hierarchy (proteros/husteros, in the sense of a “rank”) of souls is dealt with as a legacy, but is not dealt with, on Schultz’s account, sufficiently: if there is a common origin of Intellect for all humans, which assumes universal human (genderless) soul, then why does Plotinus introduce ranks of bodies ensouled (with reference to IV.3.27, 11, 24–12)? As she then claims, Plotinus’ hierarchy (hypostasis Soul, World Soul), which is reducible to Intellect and the individual souls, indicates that Plotinus’ “emancipation” from Plato is not as thoroughgoing as Cambron-Goulet and Côté-Remy, and also Wilberding (albeit to a lesser extent), claim.62 She therefore concludes that Plotinus’ philosophical system would offer him everything needed to argue— like Plato—that souls born in female human bodies are weaker (that is, less

Sexless Henology, or, Is Plotinus’ One Neutral to Sex and Gender?  91 virtuous) than souls born in male human bodies. . . the strong emphasis Plotinus places on the universal nature of soul cannot explain this fact.63 In other words, a universal order of human nature as it moves towards union with the One does not in any way exclude gendered hierarchy. Whereas the ambivalence towards women is pacified, it is far from absolute.64 With the rare exception of Schultz, it is obvious that the idea of predicating non-neutrality to the One is extremely unprofitable because even feminist writers tend to defend Plotinus from philosophically rooted misogyny. All of the authors discussed seem to inspect sex, gender, and the body in Plotinus through a concern with the practical dimension of ascension, manifesting a decreased inculpatory reading. However, the practical dimension remains just that—it is still lower than the metaphysical, just as the Dyad remains a sort of first—or the first—second principle. The problem of this feminist pacified reading of a Plotinus who pacified some of Plato’s sharper dualisms is that avoiding a conservative masculinist theory of generation does not in itself evade the ineffable experience of ascent to the One, which requires the abandonment of all things human; the question whether all things human are human or, indeed, female, however, remains open. If all things human become superhuman in the domain of the One, then the point of discussing non/neutrality should be qualified and demoted to this practical dimension of a human/humane experiencing of the One, which includes sex historically and gender metaphysically. Here, practicality is overridden by ineffability; the One remains an escape route outside the labyrinth of embodiment. Whatever the alleged and documented intersection between Plotinus and feminism, it arrives at an ambiguity over the question whether Plotinus is an anti-feminist or not only when it comes to qualifying his conceptualization of the One.65 This is the by-product of Plotinus’ careful cosmological exegesis and his tendency to appease the reader with modifications of earlier “radicalizations,” as well as avoiding discursive reasoning where it does not belong—the noosphere. The Problem of the One’s Grammatical Neutrality Having framed a general understanding on the question in what sense Plotinus can be the subject of feminist analysis, and the necessary limitations of such a reading, I can now turn to the bone of the matter, namely, the problem of the grammatical neutrality of the One. Now that I have reviewed the existing accounts on Plotinus’ relevance to sex and gender (in the way they pertain to history and metaphysics), the question remains: is there a way to claim that Plotinus’ One is deliberately operated from gendered perspectives? In other words, given how much of the readings invest in Platonic and Plotinian psychology, can this genderless psychology (if it is that at all) be held accountable for the equally, if not more, genderless metaphysics of the One? In short, is a genderless psychology responsible for a sexless henology? It is here that my central argument lies: the One’s neutrality, while not a symptom of misogyny or “anti-woman” attitude, is epiphenomenal

92  Stanimir Panayotov to a silent discourse on gender in Plotinus’ One. This carefully crafted neutrality, I claim, formalizes a sexless henology that is prima facie superhuman and, in parallel, degendered. Here, I need to first pause and explain in what sense the term “degendering” is used so far and henceforth, so that the reader may fully understand the problem of neutrality, as it is the product of such “degendering.” The term originates from a debate in the aftermath of radical feminism in the late 1970s, pertaining to two major types of U.S. feminism as they relate to sociological and philosophical research on the body: one that entertains the view that women are universally sexed, and one that claims that gender is corporeally contingent. On the latter view, promoted and critically examined by feminist philosopher Moira Gatens, who responds to its psychoanalytic and medical use, if women are sex-universal, then their “nature” is the same as “biology,” and a conflation between sex and gender is performed in the sense that “female” and “femininity” are the same phenomenon.66 But how does this work? For Gatens, neutral/universalist assumptions are favored by “degendering feminists” who claim that: (1) the body is like a passive container of one’s consciousness, and the latter supports a rigorous rationalist (read causal) view; and (2) one’s “lived experience” can be altered via culture; it follows that bodyspecific meanings and significances are expressed by a “neutral consciousness” (a container), “which, in turn, acts upon an (initially) neutral body.” The alternative to the rationalist view is the so-called socialization theory. To make things worse, this theory “posits the social acquisition of a particular gender by a patriarchal sex [which] is, implicitly, a Rationalist account, an ahistorical account and an amount which posits a spurious neutrality of both the body and consciousness.”67 In other words, socialization (read: contingency of sex) can easily be confused with gender, if the latter is then interpreted as a neutral container of historically and culturally meaningful experiences for the self. Several years later, Val Plumwood tried both to summarize and to in her turn critically examine Gatens’ critique of the distinction, to distribute more meaningfully the charge of neutrality as something contingent, and thereby at least implicitly oppressive. Both Gatens and Plumwood seem to agree that “the subject is always sexed, that there can never be a neutral subject, and that gender is therefore always present in some form.” Yet, trying to alleviate the charge of neutrality presented as the feminist blasphemy of degendering, Plumwood states that the attempt to degender, to treat gender as eliminable or reconstructible is mistaken, and it is not to gender but to difference that we must attend and turn for enlightenment. A program of degendering is seriously mistaken, on this view. Gender itself is not the problem.68 If gender is not the problem, but degendering is, then what is to be done with the problem of gender-neutrality, and how to apply this critique? Plumwood offers a distinction in the term degendering, with the proviso that if the real problem is difference itself (a notion spliced with the contingency thesis), then an account of

Sexless Henology, or, Is Plotinus’ One Neutral to Sex and Gender?  93 different lived embodied experiences is needed, which cannot be universal. This is why she distinguished between two types of degendering: 1. Degendering 1 relative to society (say, Western society) implies some sort of radical restructuring or reformation of gender differences in that society, transforming that particular society’s gender structure. 2. Degendering 2 implies removing all structure of social difference and meaning attached to male and female biologies and bodies.69 Degendering 1 does not imply degendering 2, in the sense of erasing differences. Degendering 1 is closer to a sociological analysis (and thus to sex and history), whereas degendering 2 approximates philosophical analysis (and thus gender and metaphysics). Degendering 2 thus can be easily employed for universalist and neutral-leaning strategies of erasing differences. On Plumwood’s account, this is impossible, because different societies have different meanings of such diverging embodied experiences. In much the same way, the degendering of the One I analyze here is closer to degendering 2, because the One is supposed to eradicate not all differences, but all the possible relations of these differences to it—because it is metaphysical, not historical. So, in this sense of degendering 2, the idea of the One’s neutrality needs to be accounted for. If the One is ostensibly so powerful that it loves itself, that it is a primordial ejaculation, that it includes all forms of love and desire, then predication of sex/gender to the One is not only logical but also desirable (and not necessary or necessarily logical). The One’s degendered (grammatical) neutrality is, in fact, the same as its promoted sexless henology. The henology consists in how the One culminates in unknowability and so-called ineffability. Can such unknowability be qualified as unrelated to gender and embodiment in Plotinus? While it is easier to state that it is related to at least embodiment, and since my position is that it relates to both, I will need to defend the idea by resorting to the argument from neutrality stemming from previously accounted-for characterizations of the One. Plotinus abstracted the One away from its initial Pythagorean identification with maleness, culminating in the One’s grammatical neutrality as an escape motif to disembodiment.70 Based on feminist philosophical accounts I already presented, here I will disprove the argument that such neutrality entails the incidentality of gendering female principles.71 The fact that the Dyad is continuously and historically feminine indicates philosophically that the abstraction of its femininity does not override the metaphysical boundlessness and shapelessness that it indexes. Simply, if one is the guardian of something, then that guardian cannot be said to have nothing at all with what is guarded. This is why even though the two principles cannot be seen as identical, the retention of their gendering, despite their differing standing in terms of hierarchical metaphysics, can explain the One’s alleged neutrality beyond all predicates, if not its superhumanity. All that said, one can also argue that the Dyad’s gendering can be explained via the Nous’ masculine gender, where Plotinus indicates the hierarchies between souls; yet, even if everything about the One is negated, it is

94  Stanimir Panayotov still hard to see how it is neutral on its own terms, because it has no such terms, allegedly. The One is a correlatively degendered term: the correlate being otherness itself. The neuter is not treated as a gender, so it does not function as such. The problem of grammatical neutrality lies in how it culminates in unknowability and ineffability. What I am interested in is whether unknowability can be qualified as unrelated to gender and embodiment in Plotinus. Again, Plotinus does not tell us directly that the Dyad is the source of matter’s evil, but the Dyad’s femininity leaves the door open for evil to be generated there in her realm. Two steps are involved: the one is degendered (i.e., something is done to it), and the Dyad remains gendered (i.e., nothing is done onto it). The Dyad can be considered a move, a descending to some kind of matter to the extent to which it is a move towards Intellect and Being, yet it does not seem to “generate” individuated enmattered beings as such. But since it appears as a gendered “sibling” of the One, then it seems that the degendered neutrality of the One is precisely what indicates a form of disembodiment, which in turn is expressive of Platonist loyalty curtailing what is otherwise Plotinus’ egalitarianism. The escape to the One as an escape into neutrality is only possible because there is something to escape from (but the escape is only in the sense of going towards the One, not the Dyad)—the Dyad, matter, its offspring. The Dyad takes central stage as the effect of the One; the question then is to see if the One’s gender neutrality is the effect of Plotinus choosing to retain the gendering of the Dyad. The movement is strictly negative; as such, it befits the nature of what is among the earliest scholarly instances of negative theology. The degendered neutrality of the One is thus itself generated by the gendered non-neutrality of the Dyad: it is the “from” from which the One needs an escape. Whether or not matter is generated or not generated at the level of the Dyad (as the substrate of all existents) does not, of course, affect that neutrality. But if the One indexes the move upwards, and the Dyad downwards, the problem of gendering becomes even more problematic. This is why, in a sense, to claim that the One is self-sufficient, because neutral, and unrelated to its other and its gendering would amount to saying that the One does not need the Dyad as the principle of separation. Following Plotinus’ teaching quite simply means rejecting the logic of dichotomy and of contradiction as such.72 On Plotinus’ account, the One needs nothing. In light of such needlessness, the problem of the One’s grammatical neutrality reveals that there is a subtle hierarchy between itself and the Dyad, and even though the One is irreducible to otherness, the hierarchy exists and as such is irreducible to neutrality, but is reducible to sex and/or gender (and even their confusion) as soon as we look downwards, not upwards. In Plotinus’ One the political dimension of problematizing embodiment and thus femininity as an expression of boundlessness is largely covered over in philosophically gender-neutral lexis; again, this is why an uncovering is necessitated to begin with: this is why Plotinus is an object of analysis here. Plotinus has retained gendering only for the Dyad as the One’s other; Schultz’s argument cited earlier is thus, at least formally, justified. An almost-equal other, but other and thus unequal partner, nonetheless. Plotinus’ solution to introduce such subtle hierarchy

Sexless Henology, or, Is Plotinus’ One Neutral to Sex and Gender?  95 (somewhat analogous to the one between World Soul and individual souls) further abstracted the Platonic One from the Unwritten Doctrines from embodiment by guaranteeing the One’s “neutrality” and radicalizing its disembodiedness, as if the One necessitates a sort of philosophical insurance from the spontaneous depredations of our material world. And as if testifying to the escape to the One, the level of abstraction intensifies and becomes more significant in Plotinus. The more extensive the abstraction, the stronger the expression of disembodiment. If such an abstraction does express development of hierarchical metaphysics, in Plotinus’ One qualities are allegedly impossible to impute. Again, this is offset by the femininity of the Dyad. While it can be stated that the One’s irreducibility to anthropic realities is a gender-free category, what guarantees this genderlessness is the indefiniteness embodied by the Dyad. Plotinus’ harmonization of the Indefinite Dyad with the Unwritten Doctrines was presented as neutrality of the One. The Plotinian One as an escape from any sense perception is thus also an escape from embodiment and an escape into neutrality: and, not incidentally, an escape from intellection and knowledge and from all things.73 The One does not merely perpetuate the escape motif of Theaetetus 176b; it is also an escape from the Dyad’s correlative embodiment altogether and its femininity, culminating in grammatical “neutrality.” The neutrality is precisely what indicates disembodiment. Again, the escape to the One as an escape into neutrality is only possible because there is something to escape from—the Dyad and its offspring, that is, all things out there in the world. It is us, humans, that stand for this thingliness in the world, which is why the Dyad is a form of metaphysical anthropology, serving as a form of philosophical mobility between two worlds that cannot even be expressed in terms of oppositions. It is as if the neutrality guarantees a philosophical route for returning to a preternatural all-source that can only be returned to—thus seemingly defying the logic of escaping “from”—via the desolation of all effable predicates of the world. Yet sex is here not a minor detail of this powerful genealogy of return: it is the center to escape from. Why else would the Dyad be the second first principle? If the escape motif culminates in grammatical neutrality of the One, then one obvious question is why, if the One is no longer male in Plotinus (as it was for the Pythagoreans), the Indefinite Dyad is still female? This question should be asked as a reaction to the view that if female principles (Indefinite Dyad, World Soul, Matter) in Platonism are negative and “evil,” this is only incidentally so.74 Even when not evil and negative, female principles are intentional, not incidental, so if they are negative, they are such intentionally (read: contingently). John Dillon claims the principles are incidentally evil, likely because intentionality will impute evil to creationism, and so there is no presumed teleology, but the origin of this intentionality is hardly incidental.75 The view rejects causality between gender and evil. However, just as it is not an incident that the Dyad is still female (it stands for something: gender, matter, etc.), it is not an incident that the One is grammatically and functionally neutral (it stands for nothing). There is a decision on the side of Plotinus to alienate the category from the male-female binary, and this

96  Stanimir Panayotov decision cannot be imputed on the view of femininity’s “incidentality of evil”; nor, for that matter, on account of the One’s neutrality, whatever the mystical union with it might mean. Otherwise, we are left with the question: why is there a hierarchy to begin with? Its explanation via incidentality is a pure dehistoricization and dismissal—intentional at that, to use Dillon’s term—of feminist philosophy, a philosophy as pragmatic as Plotinus’ metaphysics is for the human soul. There is no offense in the fact that Dillon does not even mention feminist thought in his text; it lies in the unreflected use of the term. But since hierarchy exists, the question is whether the One and the Indefinite Dyad, as they seem to carry on an invisible dance, are gendered or gender-coded?76 And are they thus incidentally associated with the higher/lower levels of hierarchical metaphysics? Cooper’s solution is as follows: some concepts are “gendered” explicitly as masculine and feminine, and some are “gender-coded,” meaning that they are “incidentally and gratuitously linked with gender.”77 Cooper’s “gendercoding” can replace Dillon’s “incidentality,” because the notion warrants Plotinus’ non-committal to an evil wrongdoing on the side of his conceptual import: in Dillon, this gratuitousness is replaced by willful ignorance that cares little for Plotinus’ silent consideration of human properties such as gender (or desire), and thereby gender-coding. Grammar does not correspond to a notion’s metaphysical function (and thus gender). Neoplatonist terms, while being gendered, “do not consistently correspond with the grammatical gender of the entities [Plotinus] is describing.”78 Cooper claims that there are cases of gender-coding, but that generally in Plotinus most are predominantly gendered. While she does not claim the analysis of gendering needs to refute incidentality as such, she does admit it is exclusionary because it covers over intentionality79 with the garb of something of the “neutral” order. Neutrality is innocent only when accounted for. Although some scholars explicitly claim that female principles in Platonism are lower,80 the feminist literature on Plotinus is apologetic and justificatory about Plotinus’ potential harmonization with feminism. This careful ambivalence— ambivalent more with respect to feminism than to Plotinus—is important because the border between Plato and Plotinus becomes more expressed, and merging the two is a famous complication in the scholarship. Yet the thesis for a gender-neutral nature and language (of the One) is not the same as lack of continuity between Plato and Plotinus in hierarchical metaphysics,81 and on femininity as the avatar of embodiment. In fact, such position will be impossible without the notion of divided matter, and the question of whether it is generated or not, and which warrants from early on (II.4) that only the Dyad’s femininity has anything to do with intelligible and sensible matter. There are, of course, critics of the tendency to explain hierarchical metaphysics via a deliberate gender disparity, suggesting that there is a balanced cosmological complementarity of male and female principles, thus formalizing a long tradition of an apologetics of neutrality. John Macquarrie claims that the lower status of women is misleading in view of the Plotinian Triad, since there is an oft-met asymmetry between grammatical and functional role in Plotinus’ treatises.82 For him, the asymmetry complicates the sexual distinctions (as Mind is in the male and Soul in

Sexless Henology, or, Is Plotinus’ One Neutral to Sex and Gender?  97 the female) because the Triad as the moment of return is an attempt for a balanced notion of God.83 The ultimate reality of the One is beyond gender (as it is in neuter), because for Plato the Good (and by extension the One in Plotinus) is beyond Being. If Mind is grammatically male, it does not mean that its grammatical “nature” takes over its functions, for it is not appropriate to think of it merely as Mind = Father. On this account, Plotinus rejects language as such as the vehicle par excellence for expressing metaphysical truth: truth is self-certifying, and language is not, as it refers to entities outside the linguistic system.84 Because the reality of language does not pertain to the One, what better philosophical compromise to approach it, then, than formalizing it linguistically in the neuter? Is not the neuter the closest it gets in human language to nothingness? For the apologetics of neutrality, thinking philosophical categories via a certain grammatical gender is a wrongful practice, because language as sense data approximates belief even in its highest and most expressive forms of truth. The grammatical gender does not serve the function (think of Psyche, in female, but largely identified in feminist theory as masculine psychophilia), for the One is beyond all predicates. Thus, it should be enough that since the soul is oriented towards unity with the One, the negative rendition of embodiment and the ways the body is manifested as soul logically follows (cf. IV.8.5, 36–38), and as gender-indifferent practice at that, because as soon as “the soul becomes enmeshed in the world. . . [it] ceas[es] to recognize its divine nature and source” (IV.8.5, 36–38; IV.8.2, 43–44). The benefit offered by this small feminist-friendly, yet all too ambivalent, literature is the conclusion that we must maintain the difference between Plato and Plotinus and refuse to subsume the latter to a “caricatured ‘Platonism,’ ”85 which will bring him closer to feminism. I would add that we also must maintain the difference between sex and gender in Plotinus’ system. The Neoplatonization of Plato obfuscates the problem of gender and embodiment, because of Plotinus’ originality (e.g., calling God the One). But the justificatory emphasis on a “practical Plotinus” obscures the fact that we are dealing with hierarchical metaphysics: its incorrigible condition remains dividing lower and higher strata of reality—purely because they seem to exist. Margaret Miles and John Roemischer maintain this thesis of Neoplatonization, against Elizabeth Spelman. Resisting Neoplatonization means to “filter out those post-Hellenistic interpretations”86 of Plato.87 But the defect of the careful feminist exegesis and its ambivalence is that it implies that a feminist gendered reading of the One is always already in dialogue with—and a response to—Plato, a degeneration of Plotinus’ inventiveness: a veracious hierarchical instinct that nonetheless subverts the Doddsian truism that Plotinus’ One is an original intervention in Platonism. The thesis against the Neoplatonization is undisputedly beneficial, yet it does not explain continuity despite originality, and does not answer the question of why one out of the two principles—the Dyad—should be both female and responsible for division. The continuity with Plato is too expressly somatophobic to explain away Plotinus’ inventiveness on account of an alleged silent distancing with tradition. That is, why the Dyad as a “first second principle” remains gendered— why its grammatical gender is not neutralized if it barely has anything to do with

98  Stanimir Panayotov intelligible matter? On account of originality and invention, and grammatical neutrality, how would one explain the references of the One and the Good to the “father” (especially in VI.7 and VI.9)? The thesis, in short, cannot explain the interdependence between femininity and the abstraction of the One from gender. Thus, the political lacuna of the apologetics of grammatical neutrality is that all concepts describing the intelligible are equally part of it, but some are more equal than others. Avoiding this problem amounts to an apology of “grammatical femininity” and its “incidentality.”88 This apology only conceptually balances the schema, but this was probably enough for Plotinus. Most importantly, this account does not explain incidentality as the causality behind any principle’s ontological status. Simply, incidentality as a function cannot serve as its own argument. So, maintaining the distinction between Plato and Neoplatonism is important in order to avoid inhibiting gender (metaphysical) analysis, but it is impossible on account of admission of originality or grammatical neutrality to qualify Plotinus as a “feminist.” This does not exclude the idea that he had likely considered grammatical neutrality as derived from the socio-historical context of his time, but so it cannot include the thesis that his alleged “feminism” was well ahead of the spirit of that time. Conclusion It is profitable to say that while feminist theorizing on Plotinus, with all its considerate ambivalence, is often seen as all too political, a conservationist approach is too depoliticized, operating philosophy from history, not to say social relevance. Here, I defended the argument that achieving a sexless notion of the One radicalizes the disembodied status of the One via the relegation of the principle of materiality to the realm of and beneath the Indefinite Dyad. Simply, the One is a degendered form of grammatical neutrality, because Plotinus felt the need to hide in the One history itself, a man-made contingency that is sexual: with the One, metaphysics engulfs history. In hiding, degendering is a form of silent history of humanity’s Platonic drama to overcome—however pacified—the debasing foundation of the material world. By formulating the problem of grammatical neutrality, I showed that a female principle such as the Dyad is intentionally gendered, which then allows us to qualify matter variously as indefinite, boundless, etc., and this is only to disqualify the One as anything at all. The Dyad’s gendering serves the purpose of warranting the One’s abstraction from sex, and therefore the world, towards grammatical neutrality. The neutrality of the One guarantees its disembodiedness, correlative to the other first principle’s gender. The neutrality of language and the wish not to profane the intelligible does not mean lack of gendering. It does not mean that the body is rendered negative because it is human and not specifically a female one. In short, whatever subtle and original diversions Plotinus has performed in his discussion of matter, they cannot explain the hierarchization of the One as neutral on account of incidentality: they remain hierarchical, as they should, because hierarchies seem to exist. But the price to be paid for the system’s construction is precisely the one of gendering: something to be returned to, just as the One is something to be embraced back.

Sexless Henology, or, Is Plotinus’ One Neutral to Sex and Gender?  99 To claim that the One’s neutrality is self-sufficient and unrelated to its other and its gendering would amount to saying that the One does not need the Dyad as the principle of separation. Truly, the One needs nothing, but then its articulation serves no purpose at all, and thus needs no project of anthropology, no mobility to the One. I doubt that Plotinus was ready to admit as much. This is why the problem of the One’s grammatical neutrality reveals that there is a subtle hierarchy between it and the Dyad, and that the hierarchy itself is irreducible to neutrality, but is reducible to gender, which required exposing neutrality-as-degendering. This reduction could be the drama of the One to be dealt with by contemporary Plotinus scholarship, a theory tribe that has yet to make big strides towards admitting the problem. Notes 1 This text is a heavily rewritten and updated version of some extracts from my doctoral dissertation. See Stanimir Panayotov, “The Problem of Disembodiment: An Approach from Continental Feminist-Realist Perspective” (Doctoral Dissertation, Budapest, Central European University, 2020), 96–101, 116–17, 123–32. I am grateful for the careful and productive readings of both Anastasia Theologou and István Perczel, who helped me improve the quality of my argumentation, as well as some textual evidence. 2 Most feminist readings proceed from relating in some way to the object of my principled critique in my earlier work: Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian G. Gill (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985); see also: Margaret R. Miles, Plotinus on Body and Beauty: Society, Philosophy, and Religion in Third-Century Rome (London: Blackwell, 1999); Elisabeth Jane Cooper, “Is Rational Mysticism Compatible with Feminism? A Critical Examination of Plotinus and Kashani,” Doctoral Dissertation (Canterbury: University of Canterbury, 2006); Elizabeth Jane Cooper, “Escapism or Engagement? Plotinus and Feminism,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 23, no. 1 (2007): 73–79; Panayiota Vassilopoulou, “From a Feminist Perspective: Plotinus on Teaching and Learning Philosophy,” Women: A Cultural Review 14, no. 2 (2003): 130–43; Danielle E. Layne, “Divine Mothers: Plotinus’ Erotic Productive Causes,” in Otherwise Than the Binary: New Feminist Readings in Ancient Philosophy and Culture, eds. Jessica Elbert Decker, Danielle A. Layne, and Monica Vilhauer (New York: State University of New York Press, 2022), 235–62; Jana Schultz and James Wilberding, “Introduction,” in Women and the Female in Neoplatonism, eds. Jana Schultz and James Wilberding (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022), 1–8; James Wilberding, “Women in Plotinus,” in Women and the Female in Neoplatonism, eds. Jana Schultz and James Wilberding (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022), 43–63; Mathilde Cambron-Goulet and François-Julien Côté-Remy, “Plotinus and Porphyry on Women’s Legitimacy in Philosophy,” in Women’s Perspectives on Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, eds. Isabelle Chouinard, Zoe McConaughey, Aline Medeiros Ramos, and Roxane Noël (Cham: Springer, 2021), 179–99; Jana Schultz, “Soul, Gender, and Hierarchy in Plotinus and Porphyry: A Response to Mathilde Cambron-Goulet and François-Julien Côté-Remy’s ‘Plotinus and Porphyry on Women’s Legitimacy in Philosophy,’” in Women’s Perspectives on Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, eds. Isabelle Chouinard, Zoe McConaughey, Aline Medeiros Ramos, and Roxane Noël (Cham: Springer, 2021), 201–9; last but not least, although Zeke Mazur seems to have influence on some feminist insights (due to oft-met conceptual analogies between feminism and Gnosticism), his work does not have an explicit feminist agenda, see: Zeke Mazur, “Having Sex with the One: Erotic Mysticism in Plotinus and the Problem of Metaphor,” in Late Antique Epistemology: Other Ways to Truth, eds. Panayiota Vassilopoulou and Stephen R. L. Clark (Liverpool: University of Liverpool, 2009), 67–76. Finally, I do not include John Dillon’s work on

100  Stanimir Panayotov









femaleness and Platonism in this small canon of works (but discuss it later), as he seems to deliberately write as an outsider to what might pass as a debate on feminism in either Plato or Plotinus/Neoplatonism. 3 See the famous book by Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in Western Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, [1984] 2004). 4 See as primary examples, among many, those that pertain in significant ways to dis/ embodiment, soul, and mind: Sandra G. Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka, eds., Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1983); Sandra G. Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986); Anna Marmodoro and Sophie Cartwright, eds., A History of Mind and Body in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020); most recently, the edited volume of Keya Maitra and Jennifer McWeeny, “Introduction: What Is Feminist Philosophy of Mind?” in Feminist Philosophy of Mind, eds. Keya Maitra and Jennifer McWeeny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 1–40; as well as Lynne Rudder Baker, “Is the First-Person Perspective Gendered?” in Feminist Philosophy of Mind, eds. Keya Maitra and Jennifer McWeeny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 42–43. Notably, because Plotinus’ work requires a feminist re-reading of Plato, almost the entire feminist philosophical literature on Plato is not engaging with the relationship between soul and reproduction; instead, this is done in the feminist works on Aristotle. However, as I have claimed so far in my work, the feminist philosophy canon, predominantly hell-bent on Plato as it is, until now is extremely focused on debunking disembodiment rather than explaining it in its own historical context, for fear of reprisals relative to justifying alleged “neutrality” and/or disembodiment. This extreme focus, sadly, produces an aversion in both feminist philosophers and ones non-committed to feminist philosophy (which is not to say they are anti-feminist by default, as lack of engagement is not the same as implicit bias or defense of “traditionalism”). For more on this aversion, and a positive feminist view on disembodiment, see my “Feminisms Beyond the Body: A Feminist Theory of Disembodiment,” CAS Sofia Working Paper Series 13 (2023): 1–30. 5 As the aim of this text is not to introduce feminist philosophical accounts to convince the readership that they are legitimate, I  will only point out two significant sources meriting attention in the context of my research: Charlotte Witt, “Feminist History of Philosophy,” in Feminist Reflections on the History of Philosophy, eds. Lilli Alanen and Charlotte Witt (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004), 1–16; Cynthia A. Freeland, “Feminism and Ideology in Ancient Philosophy,” Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science 33, no. 4 (2000): 365–406. 6 The thesis of this originally is, famously, Dodds’. He claims that the One is older than Plotinus, but his One is an original contribution. Almost all other writers at the time have called God the Nous, but only Plotinus spoke of the One, and effectively the Platonic God was abstracted as the One. If the One gives access to the divine, then it should first present it to human consciousness. E. R. Dodds, “The Parmenides of Plato and the Origin of the Neoplatonic ‘One,’” The Classical Quarterly 22, no. 3–4 (July–October 1928): 141. 7 Whether it is seen as universal is an intra-feminist debate, too. That said, the feminist debates always risk anachronizing the material at hand; yet without it, it is difficult to understand the relevance of Plotinus’ authority in the contemporary scholarship. 8 See my work on Luce Irigaray in Panayotov, “The Problem of Disembodiment,” 117– 23, where I show how feminist philosophy can be engaged as the political projectile of a program in defense of feminist embodiment by falsifying the original Plotinian text via the creation of lacunae; and see also the much earlier work of Lynn Huffer on Kristeva, revealing a similar critique: Lynn Huffer, “Imperialist Nostalgia: Kristeva’s Maternal Chôra,” in Maternal Pasts, Feminist Futures: Nostalgia, Ethics, and the Question of Difference (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 73–95. Interestingly, Huffer’s chapter on Kristeva is preceded by one on Irigaray, which is much friendlier than my

Sexless Henology, or, Is Plotinus’ One Neutral to Sex and Gender? 101 own reading of her, because I do not seek to interpret the relationship between matter and motherhood/maternity as necessarily anti-metaphysical. See also my following discussion on Layne. 9 It is not possible in the present text to explicate the consequences of the sex-positive thesis I defend. I have provided partial answers on how the grammatical neutrality of the One impacts Plotinus’ notion of matter in Panayotov, “The Problem of Disembodiment,” 132–48, but I acknowledge they are not sufficient and require further investigation. 10 A. H. Armstrong, “The Escape of the One: An Investigation of Some Possibilities of Apophatic Theology Imperfectly Realized in the West,” in Plotinian and Christian Studies (London: Varorium Press, 1979), 77–89. 11 Cooper, “Escapism or Engagement?” 76; Enneads I.2.1.4–5; V.1.2.1–5.4; VI.9.1. 12 Svetla Slaveva-Griffin, Plotinus on Number (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 13 For discussion of the relation of matter to the Indefinite Dyad as a “second first principle,” see Panayotov, “The Problem of Disembodiment,” 107–14. 14 See Plotinus’ doctrine of the generation of being from the Dyad and of the generation of the perceptible universe through matter in II.4.12. The doctrine itself, however, does not explain the degendering and the grammatical neutrality. 15 See, for a paradigmatic example, Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Misogynism and Virginal Feminism in the Fathers of the Church,” in Religion and Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 150–83; Cambron-Goulet and Côté-Remy, “Plotinus and Porphyry,” 193–95. 16 Cooper, “Is Rational Mysticism Compatible with Feminism?” 25, 81–82. Consider that in the Enneads, “women” are mentioned some mere four times, only two of which deserve gender-coded analysis (II.17 on the value of women’s death and III.5.1 on love and copulation). Layne, “Divine Mothers,” 245, counts seven instances of gunaikos. 17 Cooper, “Escapism or Engagement?”; Vassilopoulou, “From a Feminist Perspective.” 18 Ibid., 76. 19 Ibid., 77–79. 20 Ibid., 79. 21 Ibid., 79, 81. 22 This much-discussed term in feminist studies of Plato is Elizabeth Spelman’s; see her “Woman as Body: Ancient and Contemporary Views,” Feminist Studies 8, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 109–31. 23 Cooper, “Escapism or Engagement?” 80; cf. Kevin Corrigan, “Positive and Negative Matter in Later Platonism: The Uncovering of Plotinus’s Dialogue with the Gnostics,” in Gnosticism and Later Platonism: Themes, Figures, and Texts, eds. John D. Turner and Ruth Dorothy Majercik (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000), 19–56. 24 Miles, Plotinus on Body and Beauty, 162–65. 25 Cooper mentions Miles, claiming that the sense perception of beauty creates a sense of universal community that unites us in the pursuit of wisdom and in becoming one with the One. The pursuit of continuity between aesthetics and ethics does not explain away the ideal for bodily detachment, but Plotinus’ view does not present the body as evil proper. Cooper, “Escapism or Engagement?” 92. 26 Miles, Plotinus on Body and Beauty, 163. 27 Ibid., 167–171. 28 Ibid., 168. 29 Historically, this is respected much more in feminist Plotinus scholarship than in the one on Plato. 30 Miles, Plotinus on Body and Beauty, 168. Miles discusses the same treatise, III.6.19. 31 Miles, Plotinus on Body and Beauty, 169. 32 Mazur, “Having Sex with the One,” 67. I thank Anastasia Theologou for suggesting to me that what Mazur might mean is that the erotic imagery has to do with “energy.” If we accept this, however, Mazur’s open Gnosticism has less meaning.

102  Stanimir Panayotov 33 Mazur, “Having Sex with the One,” 72, 68. 34 Ibid., 69, 71. 35 Ibid., 72, 73. 36 Layne, “Divine Mothers,” 239; her account on sex, gender, and sexualitiy is on 240–247. 37 Layne, “Divine Mothers,” 236–40. 38 Ibid., 238, 239. 39 Ibid., 240. 40 Ibid., 242, 243. 41 Ibid., 245. 42 Ibid., 247. 43 Ibid., 254. 44 Ibid., 256. 45 Ibid., 238. 46 Ibid., 254. 47 Schultz and Wilberding, “Introduction,” 1. 48 Wilberding, “Women in Plotinus”; Cambron-Goulet and Côté-Remy, “Plotinus and Porphyry.” 49 Wilberding, “Women in Plotinus,” 44, 58. 50 Ibid., 46. 51 The accounts of both Mazur and Layne presented earlier, obviously, themselves refute the idea that an interdependency between metaphysics and sexual reproduction automatically leads to some anti-feminism. 52 Wilberding, “Women in Plotinus,” 47, 49, 49n17. 53 Ibid., 60. 54 Cambron-Goulet and Côté-Remy, “Plotinus and Porphyry,” 179. 55 Ibid., 180. 56 Ibid., 180–83. 57 Ibid., 188. 58 Ibid., 190. 59 Ibid., 192. 60 Schultz, “Soul, Gender, and Hierarchy,” 201. 61 Ibid., 204. 62 Ibid., 205–6 for the full analysis in terms of ranks. 63 Schultz, “Soul, Gender, and Hierarchy,” 207. 64 The problem of hierarchy between gendered (individual) souls Schultz is overwhelmed by (Schultz, “Soul, Gender, and Hierarchy,” 208) seems to have been addressed by Wilberding, because only “specific acts” are being punished with such demotion; see Wilberding, “Women in Plotinus,” 46. 65 From what I  have surveyed so far, in fact, the question almost never arrives beyond Irigaray’s falsified reading of Plotinus as misogynist. 66 Moira Gatens, “A Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinction,” in Beyond Marxism? Interventions After Marx, eds. Judith Allen and Paul Patton (Sydney: Intervention Publications, 1983), 142–61. 67 Ibid., 146–47. 68 Val Plumwood, “Do We Need a Sex/Gender Distinction?” Radical Philosophy 51 (Spring 1989): 8. 69 Plumwood, “Do We Need a Sex/Gender Distinction?” 10. 70 The thesis is mine, but builds on Armstrong. See again Armstrong, “The Escape of the One.” 71 John M. Dillon, “Female Principles in Platonism,” in The Golden Chain: Studies in the Development of Platonism and Christianity (Farnham: Ashgate, 1991), 107–213. 72 The thesis is Derrida’s, but regarding Plato’s receptacle. 73 I thank István Perczel for this clarifying observation.

Sexless Henology, or, Is Plotinus’ One Neutral to Sex and Gender? 103 74 Dillon’s view, “Female Principles,” 117. Dillon does not hold strongly they are evil but responds to feminist concerns. The argument in this section against Dillon’s view likewise does not assume femininity as evil, but femininity as responsible for division and becoming. 75 If at this point the reader is unconvinced, it is because the reader has not touched a single page of feminist philosophical scholarship. Again, Lloyd is among the standard places to begin with, as is Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (New York: Beacon Press, 1978). A useful introduction on the tradition of embodiment in (continental) feminist philosophy can be found in Claire Colebrook, “From Radical Representations to Corporeal Becomings: The Feminist Philosophy of Lloyd, Grosz, and Gatens,” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 15, no. 2 (Spring, 2000): 76–93. 76 It needs to be clarified that the gender-engaged readings of Plotinus dealt with here do not automatically subscribe to a feminist agenda; committal to thinking about gender and the feminine in Plotinus and the One is not the same as “feminism.” For example, whereas Layne’s or Cooper’s works can be indexed as feminist ones, the same is not necessarily true for Mazur’s, and is clearly not true for Dillon’s. 77 Cooper, “Is Rational Mysticism Compatible with Feminism?” 21, following Susan Bordo, “Feminist Skepticism and the ‘Maleness’ of Philosophy,” Journal of Philosophy 85, no. 11 (November 1988): 622–27. 78 Cooper, “Is Rational Mysticism Compatible with Feminism?” 41. 79 Ibid., 26. 80 John Macquarrie, In Search of Deity: An Essay in Dialectical Theism (London: SCM Press, 1984); John Roemischer, “ ‘Critical’ Feminism and ‘Misogyny’ in Philosophy,” Forum on Public Policy 2 (2012): 1–19. 81 Cooper, “Escapism or Engagement?” 73. 82 Resounding Dillon’s argument, “Female Principles,” 107; Cooper, “Is Rational Mysticism Compatible with Feminism?” 41. 83 Macquarrie, In Search of Deity. 84 Sara Ahbel-Rappe, “Metaphor in the Enneads,” Ancient Philosophy 15 (Spring 1995): 156. 85 Miles, Plotinus on Body and Beauty, 165, 169. 86 Roemischer, “ ‘Critical’ Feminism and ‘Misogyny’ in Philosophy,” 7. 87 “It is ‘sex,’ not Plato’s philosophy, which has to answer for itself today.” Stella Sandford, Plato and Sex (Oxford: Polity Press, 2010), 7. This also means that we cannot close the debate on Plato’s feminism, and by extension on Plotinus’. 88 If only Dillon used the term contingency, and not incidentality, then the entire argumentation on evil and femaleness will merit his inclusion within a feminist debate proper.

Bibliography Ahbel-Rappe, Sara. “Metaphor in the Enneads.” Ancient Philosophy 15 (Spring 1995): 155–72. Armstrong, A. H. “The Escape of the One: An Investigation of Some Possibilities of Apophatic Theology Imperfectly Realized in the West.” In Plotinian and Christian Studies, 77–89. London: Varorium Press, 1979. Baker, Lynne Rudder. “Is the First-Person Perspective Gendered?” In Feminist Philosophy of Mind, edited by Keya Maitra and Jennifer McWeeny, 41–53. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Bordo, Susan. “Feminist Skepticism and the ‘Maleness’ of Philosophy.” Journal of Philosophy 85, no. 11 (November 1988): 619–29.

104  Stanimir Panayotov Cambron-Goulet, Mathilde, and François-Julien Côté-Remy. “Plotinus and Porphyry on Women’s Legitimacy in Philosophy.” In Women’s Perspectives on Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, edited by Isabelle Chouinard, Zoe McConaughey, Aline Medeiros Ramos, and Roxane Noël, 179–99. Cham: Springer, 2021. Colebrook, Claire. “From Radical Representations to Corporeal Becomings: The Feminist Philosophy of Lloyd, Grosz, and Gatens.” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 15, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 76–93. Cooper, Elisabeth Jane. “Is Rational Mysticism Compatible with Feminism? A  Critical Examination of Plotinus and Kashani.” Doctoral Dissertation. University of Canterbury, Canterbury, 2006. Cooper, Elizabeth Jane. “Escapism or Engagement? Plotinus and Feminism.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 23, no. 1 (2007): 73–79. Corrigan, Kevin. “Positive and Negative Matter in Later Platonism: The Uncovering of Plotinus’s Dialogue with the Gnostics.” In Gnosticism and Later Platonism: Themes, Figures, and Texts, edited by John D. Turner and Ruth Dorothy Majercik, 19–56. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000. Daly, Mary. Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. New York: Beacon Press, 1978. Dillon, John M. “Female Principles in Platonism.” In The Golden Chain: Studies in the Development of Platonism and Christianity, 107–213. Farnham: Ashgate, 1991. Dodds, E. R. “The Parmenides of Plato and the Origin of the Neoplatonic ‘One.’ ” The Classical Quarterly 22, no. 3–4 (July–October 1928): 129–42. Freeland, Cynthia A. “Feminism and Ideology in Ancient Philosophy.” Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science 33, no. 4 (2000): 365–406. Gatens, Moira. “A Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinction.” In Beyond Marxism? Interventions After Marx, edited by Judith Allen and Paul Patton, 142–61. Sydney: Intervention Publications, 1983. Harding, Sandra G. The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986. Harding, Sandra G., and Merrill B. Hintikka, eds. Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1983. Huffer, Lynn. “Imperialist Nostalgia: Kristeva’s Maternal Chôra.” In Maternal Pasts, Feminist Futures: Nostalgia, Ethics, and the Question of Difference, 73–95. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Irigaray, Luce. Speculum of the Other Woman. Translated by Gillian G. Gill. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1985. Layne, Danielle E. “Divine Mothers: Plotinus’ Erotic Productive Causes.” In Otherwise Than the Binary: New Feminist Readings in Ancient Philosophy and Culture, edited by Jessica Elbert Decker, Danielle A. Layne, and Monica Vilhauer, 235–62. New York: State University of New York Press, 2022. Lloyd, Genevieve. The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in Western Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge, [1984] 2004. Macquarrie, John. In Search of Deity: An Essay in Dialectical Theism. London: SCM Press, 1984. Maitra, Keya, and Jennifer McWeeny. “Introduction: What Is Feminist Philosophy of Mind?” In Feminist Philosophy of Mind, edited by Keya Maitra and Jennifer McWeeny, 1–40. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.

Sexless Henology, or, Is Plotinus’ One Neutral to Sex and Gender? 105 Marmodoro, Anna, and Sophie Cartwright, eds. A History of Mind and Body in Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Mazur, Zeke. “Having Sex with the One: Erotic Mysticism in Plotinus and the Problem of Metaphor.” In Late Antique Epistemology: Other Ways to Truth, edited by Panayiota Vassilopoulou and Stephen R. L. Clark, 67–76. Liverpool: University of Liverpool, 2009. Miles, Margaret R. Plotinus on Body and Beauty: Society, Philosophy, and Religion in Third-Century Rome. London: Blackwell, 1999. Panayotov, Stanimir. “The Problem of Disembodiment: An Approach from Continental Feminist-Realist Philosophy.” Doctoral Dissertation. Central European University, Budapest, 2020. ———. “Feminisms beyond the Body: A Feminist Theory of Disembodiment.” CAS Sofia Working Paper Series 13 (2023): 1–30. Plotinus. Enneads. Translated by A. H. Armstrong, Vol. IV. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984. ———. Enneads. Translated by A. H. Armstrong, Vol. VI, No. 6–9. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. ———. Enneads. Translated by A. H. Armstrong, Vol. II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. Plumwood, Val. “Do We Need a Sex/Gender Distinction?” Radical Philosophy 51 (Spring 1989): 2–11. Porphyry. Life of Plotinus. Translated by A. H. Armstrong. In Plotinus, Enneads, Vol. I, 1–91. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. Roemischer, John. “ ‘Critical’ Feminism and ‘Misogyny’ in Philosophy.” Forum on Public Policy 2 (2012): 1–19. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. “Misogynism and Virginal Feminism in the Fathers of the Church.” In Religion and Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, edited by Rosemary Radford Ruether, 150–83. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974. Sandford, Stella. Plato and Sex. Oxford: Polity Press, 2010. Schultz, Jana. “Soul, Gender, and Hierarchy in Plotinus and Porphyry: A Response to Mathilde Cambron-Goulet and François-Julien Côté-Remy’s ‘Plotinus and Porphyry on Women’s Legitimacy in Philosophy.’ ” In Women’s Perspectives on Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, edited by Isabelle Chouinard, Zoe McConaughey, Aline Medeiros Ramos, and Roxane Noël, 201–9. Cham: Springer, 2021. Schultz, Jana, and James Wilberding. “Introduction.” In Women and the Female in Neoplatonism, edited by Jana Schultz and James Wilberding, 1–8. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022. Slaveva-Griffin, Svetla. Plotinus on Number. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Spelman, Elizabeth V. “Woman as Body: Ancient and Contemporary Views.” Feminist Studies 8, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 109–31. Vassilopoulou, Panayiota. “From a Feminist Perspective: Plotinus on Teaching and Learning Philosophy.” Women: A Cultural Review 14, no. 2 (2003): 130–43. Wilberding, James. “Women in Plotinus.” In Women and the Female in Neoplatonism, edited by Jana Schultz and James Wilberding, 43–63. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022. Witt, Charlotte. “Feminist History of Philosophy.” In Feminist Reflections on the History of Philosophy, edited by Lilli Alanen and Charlotte Witt, 1–16. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004.

5 The Two Aphrodites Plotinus, Proclus, and the Sublimation of Bodily Desires Chiara Militello

Aphrodite in Plotinus and Proclus (and Plato) The figure of Aphrodite plays a major role in the thought of two of the greatest philosophers of Late Antiquity, Plotinus and Proclus.1 Both of these Neoplatonists devote important passages of their works to this goddess. In Enneads III.5, concerned with the interpretation of the myth of Eros, Plotinus discusses the nature of Aphrodite, who in different myths is either the mother of Eros or otherwise associated with his birth. Proclus focuses on Aphrodite in two texts: in R. 6.1.15 he discusses the relationship between Ares and Aphrodite, and in Crat. 183 he identifies the etymology of the name “Aphrodite” itself.2 Plotinus discusses the kind of love that turns us towards the intelligible world. This love is Eros the son of Aphrodite, as mentioned by Plato in the Phaedrus. Plotinus is aware that in another Platonic dialogue, the Symposium, a different story about the birth of Eros is told. In this version, Eros is the son of Poverty and Plenty. However, in this myth, too, there is a strong link between the birth of Eros and Aphrodite, as the god of love was conceived at the party for the birth of Aphrodite. Plotinus concludes that Eros “was born from Aphrodite or at the same time as her.”3 In order to understand the nature of Eros, one must first tackle the question of whether Eros was born from Aphrodite or together with her, or—assuming it is possible—both from and together with her. In order to answer this question, one must in turn know who Aphrodite really is. The research on the goddess of love and beauty thus becomes an integral part of the treatise on Eros.4 The context in which Proclus mentions Aphrodite is different, as he does not focus on the goddess’ association with Eros, but rather on her relationship with Hephaestus and Ares. Specifically, in Essay 6 of his commentary on the Republic, Proclus defends Homer against Socrates’ criticism. In order to achieve this goal, the commentator has to show that the content poetically transmitted by Homer, if interpreted in the right way, agrees with the truth, that is to say, with Plato’s teachings. Proclus focuses on Aphrodite in the 15th section of the First Book of this Essay, devoted to the allegorical interpretation of the myth, according to which Hephaestus bound his wife Aphrodite and her lover Ares together.5 In Proclus’ reading, the divine husband casting bonds over the two lovers stands for rational principles (Hephaestus) joining together harmony (Aphrodite) and opposition (Ares) and producing as DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-9

The Two Aphrodites  107 a consequence all the sensible beings. Indeed, even the second part of the myth, where Poseidon compels Hephaestus to release Aphrodite and Ares from the chains, has a philosophical meaning according to Proclus. In fact, the freeing of the two lovers marks the nature of sublunar beings, which do not remain the same forever but are subject to generation and corruption. Everything on Earth has an ordered nature (represented by the bonds casted by Hephaestus) that does not last forever (release from the bonds).6 The most important part of the passage from the point of view of this discussion is the description of Aphrodite’s nature and of her relationship with Hephaestus and Ares, which is preparatory to the interpretation of the event of the two divine lovers being uncovered (and, in a different sense, covered) by the goddess’ husband. Aphrodite is also the subject of the 183rd section of Proclus’ commentary on the Cratylus, devoted to the interpretation of the passage in which Socrates accepts Hesiod’s etymology of the name of the goddess.7 Proclus strives to show that “Aphrodite” coming from aphros (foam) should not be interpreted in a materialist way. Both Plotinus and Proclus take as their starting point Pausanias’ speech in the Symposium. If one wants to provide a proper encomium of Eros, Pausanias argues, one must first specify which Eros is praised, as there are two Erotes. In order to prove the latter statement, the character argues that, given the close relationship between Eros and Aphrodite, if there are two Aphrodites, there must be two Erotes as well.8 Pausanias’ account of Aphrodite—or, more precisely, of the two goddesses bearing this name—is therefore preparatory to his speech on love. There are five main differences between the two Aphrodites, as they were born (1) at different times (2) from different parents, (3) these parentages provided them with unlike relationships with the male and female principles, (4) as a consequence they are associated with opposite kinds of love, and (5) these dissimilarities are reflected in the attributes that are parts of their names, i.e., respectively Ourania/Heavenly and Pandêmos/Common.9 While Heavenly Aphrodite is linked to love for males, and more specifically for boys who have been selected on the basis that they have already developed their intellect (nous),10 the love inspired by Common Aphrodite has as its object the bodies of the most witless persons of both genders, and generally, anyone who is available.11 It is clear that these two kinds of love are opposite along several dimensions: the gender of the loved one (male vs. male and female indifferently), their intellectual level (wise vs. stupid), the constituent of the human being that is admired (soul vs. body), and the kind of decision involved (carefully selecting vs. randomly accepting any chance). Of course, all the attributes of the love related to Heavenly Aphrodite are positive, whereas common love is seen in a negative light.12 These features of the two kinds of love related to the two Aphrodites derive from the traits of these goddesses. The gender of the loved one is indifferent in the case of Common Aphrodite because she, being born from a father and a mother, is influenced both by the male principle and the female one.13 Heavenly Aphrodite, on the contrary, is associated with a kind of love that is directed only toward boys because she descends only from a male parent.14 Heavenly Aphrodite was born from Uranus only—Pausanias highlights that she has no mother.15 Common Aphrodite, by

108  Chiara Militello contrast, has a mother, Dione. Her father is Zeus, who is Uranus’ grandson.16 Plato takes inspiration from the two different myths on the birth of Aphrodite. While in Hesiod’s Theogony Aphrodite is born when Cronus cuts the genitals of his father Uranus and throws them into the sea,17 in the Iliad it is said that the goddess is the daughter of Zeus18 and Dione.19 Their fathers belonging to different generations already hints at the fact that Heavenly Aphrodite is older than Common Aphrodite.20 It is explicitly stated that this age difference is the reason why the latter inspires a kind of love that is ruled by accidents and is only interested in the body of the loved one—passionate love.21 Pausanias also seems to allude to this link between age and passion, or lack of it thereof, when he says that Aphrodite Ourania is “older, freed from wantonness [hybreôs].”22 One of the most important points that should be taken in mind when analyzing the Neoplatonic interpretations of Aphrodite is that a link between gender and other features is not explicit in Plato.23 The male principle is mentioned together with the soul as opposed to the body, and more specifically to the higher psychological faculty, the nous. Common Aphrodite, which differs from the heavenly version of the goddess because of her additional link to the feminine, is linked to the bodily and irrational dimensions. Again, Plato does not say that the male is incorporeal, rational, and generally positive whereas the female is corporeal, irrational, and negative, but Plotinus and Proclus think that these associations are implied by the text.24 The importance given to a goddess—indeed, to the goddess who symbolized the typically female-related traits of beauty, love, and passion—may seem to show that Neoplatonists gave importance to the feminine. Indeed, Plotinus mentions Aphrodite as the paradigm of physical beauty when he investigates the nature of beauty itself. In fact, he wonders about the origin of the beauty of the human beings that are implied to be the most beautiful—the women who are likened to Aphrodite herself. Then, climbing the ladder of beautiful beings, Plotinus asks where Aphrodite’s beauty comes from;25 it is clear that the goddess is mentioned as the highest example of sensible beauty. Moreover, Aphrodite is the goddess of beauty and love, two features that play a fundamental role in Plotinus’ metaphysics. —Love is the mechanism through which multiplicity derives from the One, as Alberto Bertozzi has explained clearly.26 As Ota Gál has highlighted, when this multiplicity is dominated by unity and illuminated by the higher levels of reality, it becomes true beauty, which allows human beings to return to the hypostases—at least if one does not stop at beauty itself but looks for its source.27 When love for beauty becomes love for its source—i.e., ultimately, for the One (which is also, crucially, the source of love itself)—then the soul can return to the One; Bertozzi analyzes this inverse role of love, as well.28 However, a more critical analysis shows that Plotinus and Proclus hijack the myth of Aphrodite to support their rational, masculine project.29 In the works of the Neoplatonists, Aphrodite becomes the symbol of a love that is not associated any longer with the body (i.e., with the feminine principle), but rather with theoretical research, an endeavor typically associated with male traits. Plotinus and Proclus

The Two Aphrodites  109 turn the figure of Aphrodite from the goddess of bodily passion into the symbol of an immaculate path to knowledge. In the rest of this chapter, I will analyze this form of disembodiment operated by the two Neoplatonic philosophers, in the hope that such analysis can be useful for future contributions to the more general problem of disembodiment in Neoplatonism.30 Specifically, in the next section, I will explain what Plotinus and Proclus say about Aphrodite in the passages under analysis. On this basis, in the third section, I will try to explain the philosophical meaning of the way the two Neoplatonists report the myths about the goddess of beauty and love, with a special focus on the opposition between masculine and feminine principles. The Two Sides of Aphrodite The crucial move in this transformation of Aphrodite is differentiating, in the wake of Plato, two levels of the goddess and giving them, respectively, a positive and a negative worth.31 Plotinus explicitly states that there are two Aphrodites. The difference between the two Aphrodites is that one is heavenly and produces the appropriate kind of love, whereas the other (the goddess of marriage) is associated with the material world. The main distinction between the two Aphrodites is their relationship with marriages, that is, to the physical kind of love that bears reproduction. While the lower Aphrodite oversees marriages, the higher one has nothing to do with them, as physical love has no place in heaven.32 Plotinus’ opinion of physical love is clear from the attributes he uses to describe the lower Aphrodite: not only is she “vulgar” (pandêmos) but, by association with sex, in a sense she “has become a prostitute” (hetairstheisa).33 Plotinus explains that the heavenly Aphrodite is the one who is the child of Uranus34 (or Cronus, depending on the point of view),35 while the daughter of Zeus and Dione is the earthly Aphrodite.36 Even the double paternity of the higher Aphrodite is significant, as it links the goddess both to the intelligible realm and the intellect. In fact, Uranus is of course the personification of heaven, the higher and more ethereal sphere, while Cronus is identified by Plotinus, here and elsewhere,37 with the second hypostasis, that is, the Intellect. The link between Aphrodite and the intelligible world is expressed since the very first mention of the goddess, when, as I have already mentioned, Plotinus reminds us that sometimes Aphrodite is seen as the mother of the kind of love that drives us towards abstract beauty.38 Another difference between the two Aphrodites is related to the opposition between gods and daemons. Very generally, one can say that for Plotinus daemons are intermediaries between gods, who live at the intelligible level, and human beings, who are composed of soul and body and live in the material world. From this account it is already clear why Plotinus states that the heavenly Aphrodite, who has no share in matter, should be considered a god rather than a daemon.39 As for the lower Aphrodite, in order to understand her relationship with the god vs. daemon dichotomy, the thesis according to which many more Aphrodites stem from this Aphrodite must be introduced. The difference between the Aphrodite who is associated with the material world and the Aphrodites who derive from them is that, while the former is universal or complete (holê), the latter are partial (en merei).40

110  Chiara Militello The fragmentary nature of these Aphrodites is due to their close relationship to matter, which is also the reason why they are daemons.41 As a consequence, while Plotinus does not say that the lower Aphrodite is a daemon herself, she spawns daemons, and of course this contrasts with the godly nature of the higher version of the goddess. This opposition is clear in the lines after the ones about the partial Aphrodites. Here, Plotinus states that the Eros who is linked to the heavenly Aphrodite is a god, whereas the Eros belonging to the Aphrodite who has a share in matter is a daemon.42 The distinction between the two Aphrodites is central in Plotinus’ account of the goddess—an account which, as mentioned before, is instrumental to the definition of the nature of Eros—because each Aphrodite is linked to Eros in a different way. Indeed, the existence of two Aphrodites implies the existence of two Erotes as well. The heavenly Aphrodite generates the heavenly Eros by desiring her own father Cronus.43 The lower Aphrodite is linked to Eros not as his parent, but rather because he was born (from Porus and Penia) at the party to celebrate her birth.44 So this lower Eros is with the earthly Aphrodite from the beginning.45 As a consequence, like this Aphrodite, the lower Eros is linked with marriages since his birth.46 The distance between the heavenly Aphrodite and the feminine principle is very clear when Plotinus talks about the birth of this version of the goddess. Aphrodite may have two fathers, as she owes her birth both to Uranus and Cronus, but—and this is a point Plotinus stresses by repeating it twice—she certainly has no mother. Aphrodite was born from a male god—indeed, directly from the manliest part of his body—because of the action of another male god, with no intervention by a female actor. For this reason, the heavenly Aphrodite has the attributes of “motherless.”47 The pure form of the goddess is the one whose birth was not polluted by any involvement of a female. Plotinus states explicitly that the heavenly Aphrodite is pure because she was born directly from Cronus,48 that is, without needing the impurity that a mother would represent. It is also interesting to notice that, just as the heavenly Aphrodite has a father with no mother, she gives birth to the heavenly Eros without having sexual intercourse. As a consequence, there are two singleparent conceptions: the heavenly Aphrodite from Cronus and the heavenly Eros from the heavenly Aphrodite. This does not mean that the two genders are treated symmetrically, though, as no female figure is involved in the birth of the higher Aphrodite, whereas, in order to have a son, she has to love a male god (her own father Cronus).49 Even more interestingly, Plotinus links the pure birth of Aphrodite from a male god with the fact that she has no share in matter.50 This shows by contrast the connection between the feminine principle, matter, and impurity. This connection is made explicit in the next lines, where Plotinus states that when the poets say that the heavenly Aphrodite is “motherless,” this is just a figurative way to express the idea that this divine soul has nothing to do with matter.51 The female parent stands for matter. By contrast, the lower Aphrodite is mixed with the corporeal world.52 The duality between a higher Aphrodite and the goddess seen as a cosmic force is also found in Proclus.53 Following Plato, Proclus says that there are two different

The Two Aphrodites 111 Aphrodites—at least this is the interpretation of the myth he provides in the commentary on the Cratylus. The commentator states that the “divine doctrine”54 about Aphrodite is that there are two goddesses bearing this name, which differ from several points of view.55 Once again, one Aphrodite was born from Uranus’ genitalia, cut off and thrown away by Cronus,56 whereas the other, who is younger,57 is the product of the interaction of Zeus and Dione. However, in Proclus’ interpretation, Dione is not Aphrodite’s mother, as she just arouses Zeus, whose seed ends in the sea. As a consequence, the Dionian Aphrodite has just one direct cause (Zeus),58 as opposed to the Uranian version of the goddess, who counts both Cronus and Uranus as her causes. As these two gods play two different roles in the generation of the goddess, Uranian Aphrodite59 is said to have both an instrumental cause (a cause “through which”)60 and a generative cause. In fact, even though Aphrodite was born from the seed, i.e., the generative power, of Uranus, she would not exist had Cronus not tossed his father’s genitalia in the sea; so Cronus is the instrument through which Aphrodite’s birth was made possible.61 As nobody plays a similar role in the birth of Dionian Aphrodite, the latter just has a generative cause—Zeus’ semen.62 Given that Dione is not considered a cause of the generation of the second Aphrodite, it may seem odd that this version of the goddess is called “Dionian” by Proclus.63 The reason of this appellative is probably because Proclus wants to link this Aphrodite with the sensible, material realm and with the processes of generation that happens in them. The Dionian Aphrodite operates in the cosmos (intended as the whole of sensible heaven and earth), and through her joining power oversees all generations.64 This is in stark contrast with Uranian Aphrodite, who remains above the cosmos and has nothing to do with generation, as her role is to lead towards intelligible beauty65 (in other words, the two goddesses operate on different levels and have different powers).66 As in Plotinus, the association with the female (Dione) is what makes the second Aphrodite a material and generative power. As Dione is not the mother of the second Aphrodite and cannot be counted as a cause of her generation, the only reason for Proclus to call this Aphrodite “Dionian” seems to be that a link with a female figure is necessary to explain why the lower version of the goddess cares for the material world and supervises sexual and, generally, generative acts. Proclus associates the second Aphrodite with Dione, both by mentioning the latter in the description of the generation of the former and by calling the former “Dionian,” because a relationship with a female character was needed to understand why this Aphrodite is linked to matter and sex.67 Even though he highlights the differences between the male-like attributes of the Uranian Aphrodite and the female-like features of the Dionian one, Proclus also notes that the two goddesses are similar in that they both are born from the foam of the sea.68 This similarity is meaningful, because the foam stands for the generative power, which is the highest and purest aspect of life, just as the foam is what floats upon the sea.69 In fact, as we have seen, both Aphrodites were born from the generative power of a god—respectively, Uranus the maintainer (tou sunocheôs) and Zeus the demiurge (tou dêmiourgou).70 Concluding this reasoning, Proclus seemingly contradicts himself. So far, he has stressed that, while both Aphrodites

112  Chiara Militello are born from the foam, i.e., from a generative power, only the lower one has a generative power herself. This means that, strictly speaking, neither Aphrodite should be identified with the foam, as the foam is the environment from which they come, and even by expressing oneself less exactly, only the lower Aphrodite could be likened to the foam as a principle of generation. Yet, Proclus closes this section of the commentary by associating both Aphrodites with foam and its metaphysical meaning. In fact, he states that, given that the foam stands for the highest aspect of life, Aphrodite—Proclus uses the singular number because he is talking about the common nature of the two goddesses, and also because the Platonic passage he is commenting on refers to one Aphrodite—is the symbol of “the aspect of all life that is most unitary and purest.”71 It is worth checking if, as I  have just assumed, Proclus’ interpretation of the etymology of the name Aphrodite really applies to both goddesses bearing this name. Indeed, Tuomo Lankila thinks that in this passage Proclus is referring just to the higher, hypercosmic Aphrodite.72 However, it seems to me that the logic of the passage does not fully support the hypothesis that the commentator means only one of the two Aphrodites. Both goddesses arise from the foam and both are linked to the generative power (indeed, as I noted, the encosmic Aphrodite has a closer relation with generation).73 Also, Proclus has just made it clear that he is now talking about what is common between the Uranian and the Dionian Aphrodite. Trivially, they share the name “Aphrodite,” so, in the absence of strong reasons to think otherwise, one expects the explanation of this name to apply to them both. Indeed, Lankila states that, when Proclus says that Aphrodite stands for the highest aspect of life, he means something that is “present in every being,” and as a consequence not only at a hypercosmic level, but also at an encosmic one. The reason for Lankila to state that the etymology explained by Proclus only applies to the higher Aphrodite seems to be that (a) this goddess, by guaranteeing that the logoi of the sensible beings agree with the intelligible forms, is the caretaker of the highest level of providing form, i.e., of life; as a matter of fact, Proclus states that this Aphrodite “is the distributor of the pure life”; (b) this contrasts with the encosmic Aphrodite, who, uniting sensible forms and matter, produces the individual beings and, as a consequence, like the sea of the myth, represents all levels of life (as opposed to the highest level of it, which is like the foam); (c) Proclus himself states that “from the generative powers there proceeds, on the one hand, the gathering power, and on the other, the demiurgic power,” seemingly distinguishing what the higher Aphrodite does from the action of the lower goddess. Also, possibly Lankila means that, (d) when Proclus links Uranian Aphrodite to “pure life,” he refers to that kind of life that is symbolized by the foam, which “signifies the most pure. . . power.”74 While I do not think the issue can be solved definitively given the evidence we have, it is possible to argue against Lankila’s reasonings: (a) the “pure life” Proclus links to the higher Aphrodite may be not the reason-principles of nature, but rather a human existence devoted to intellect. This is what achrantos zôê means in other contexts where Proclus uses this expression.75 Indeed, this seems to be the straightest meaning, given the context, as Proclus states that Uranian Aphrodite “is

The Two Aphrodites 113 hypercosmic and aims upwards to the intelligible beauty and is the distributor of the pure life.”76 (2) As for the encosmic Aphrodite, it would be totally possible for Proclus to state that this goddess, who oversees generation, is represented by foam, that “signifies the. . . fertile power.” (3) Moreover, the sentence that I mentioned as the third reason in favor of Lankila’s interpretation can be interpreted differently. Proclus states that ἐκ γὰρ τῶν γεννητικῶν δυνάμεων προῆλθεν ἡ μὲν τοῦ συνοχέως ἡ δὲ τοῦ δημιουργοῦ.77 Now, in his translation of the commentary on the Cratylus, Brian Duvick renders this sentence as: For they proceed from the generative powers, one from the Connector, the other from the Demiurge.78 Of course, his interpretation of the passage would not support Lankila’s argument that one Aphrodite connects while the other acts as a demiurge. Duvick’s translation seems more well-founded to me as elsewhere in this section of the in Cra. The sunochikê power has been predicated of Uranus,79 but never of Aphrodite, and Zeus is said to be the demiourgos in several passages of the commentary,80 whereas again this is never an attribute of Aphrodite. (4) Finally, it is worth noting that the two occurrences of “pure” in Lankila’s translation render two different Greek words, i.e., respectively, achrantos and katharôtaton. One cannot assume that Uranian Aphrodite leading to an achrantos life is the same as foam signifying a katharôtaton life.81 Given that (1) the logic of the passage is consistent with the etymology of Aphrodite being relevant to both versions of the goddess and that (2) Lankila’s arguments for considering the explanation of the name Aphrodite as applying only to the Uranian one can be argued against, I think it is fair to assert that, when Proclus talks about the etymology of Aphrodite, he is referring to both the Uranian and the Dionian Aphrodite. This, in turn, is important, because it leads to a specific interpretation of Proclus’ account, which I will develop in the next section of this chapter, based on the fact that the similarities between the two Aphrodites are more important than their differences. Proclus’ account of Aphrodite is quite different in his commentary on the Republic. However, here, too, Proclus distinguishes two sides in the goddess, as he states that Aphrodite is everywhere, meaning that she is both in the intelligible realm and in the sensible one. These two sides of Aphrodite are related to her two lovers, since Hephaestus is the husband of Aphrodite as she looks at the realities that are above, whereas Ares has an affair with her inasmuch as she focuses on the lower levels of the universe. According to Proclus, these two kinds of attachment can be described in several ways, as Hephaestus loves Aphrodite hypercosmically (hyperkosmiôs) and in a heavenly way (ouraniôs), while Ares does it encosmically (enkosmiôs) and in a way that is typical of the sublunar (hypo selênên) world.82 Here what is double is less Aphrodite herself than the ways she can be loved. While in the commentary

114  Chiara Militello on the Cratylus, following Plato and Plotinus, Proclus states that there is one Aphrodite who is in the intelligible realm and a different one who is mixed with matter, in the commentary on the Republic he has only one Aphrodite, who encompasses all the different levels of reality. However, exactly because she transcends the difference between intelligible and sensible, the love for her can take either a spiritual or physical form. It is interesting to notice that in Proclus’ commentary on the Republic the duplicity of Aphrodite is related to different approaches to marriage, just as in the Enneads, even though these approaches are not the same for Plotinus. According to Proclus, the reason why Aphrodite’s union with Hephaestus is a legitimate marriage (“in accordance with Zeus’ wish”)83 while the one with Ares is an adultery, an unlawful affair, is that Aphrodite’s power of binding things together is consistent with the ordering of the sensible world, which is what Hephaestus does, whereas it is the opposite of the division supervised by Ares.84 Aphrodite and the Gods: The Feminine vs. the Masculine Plotinus subordinating Aphrodite as soul and principle of love to Cronus and Zeus, who stand for intellect and perfect knowledge, is a very clear sign of how Neoplatonic philosophers appropriated the meaning of the myth.85 Several features of Aphrodite as described by Plotinus can also be found in the philosopher’s account of the soul. Most importantly, Plotinus distinguishes two halves in the soul, the higher one turned towards the intelligible, and the lower one dealing with the material world. There is a clear parallel with the distinction between the two Aphrodites. Just as the hypostasis Soul spawns from the Intellect, the heavenly Aphrodite, being born from Cronus, one of the gods who symbolizes the intellect, must be an image of the soul.86 As a consequence, what has been said of this goddess is true of Soul as hypostasis: just as the heavenly Aphrodite has no share in the material world because she was born directly from a god, also the purity of the Soul is guaranteed by the fact that it is the immediate spawn of the Intellect.87 Conversely, since the Soul is subordinate to the Intellect, depending on it for its own existence88 and being less powerful, this comparison implies the subordination of the goddess to a god. Also, the Soul is strong only because it turns towards the Intellect, to which real strength belongs; the Intellect keeps the Soul high, far from matter, and the Soul cannot do anything to have this elevated position but long for its own maker.89 Translating these assertions into statements about the heavenly Aphrodite or, even more clearly, the female principle in its “pure” version, Plotinus’ text tells us that what is female totally depends on the male for anything good it can have. As for the lower Aphrodite, she too stands for the soul.90 More precisely, she stands for the Soul of the Universe (tou pantos psychê). As a consequence, Plotinus calls her “the Aphrodite of the cosmos [tou kosmou].”91 This link between the cosmic Aphrodite and the Soul of the Universe allows the reader to better understand both sides of the comparison. By stating that the lower Aphrodite, being the Soul of the Universe, is “not only [ou monon] soul nor absolutely [oude aplôs] soul,”92 Plotinus confirms that this Aphrodite is related to the corporeal world, to the bodily

The Two Aphrodites 115 dimension, to matter. Conversely, by comparing the Soul of the Universe with the goddess who oversees marriages, the philosopher makes it clear that this soul is different from the hypostasis Soul; while the Soul of the Universe oversees the “marriage” between the intelligible and the material, the third hypostasis is unmixed with matter and, by extension, with reproduction. The equivalence between the lower Aphrodite and the Soul of the Universe is used by Plotinus in order to confute the hypothesis that Eros stands for the universe, which is composed of a soul and a body. If this were true, given that the most important part of every psychosomatic compound is the soul, Aphrodite would be the most important part of Eros. Indeed, by recalling that one can identify one’s soul with one’s self, it is possible to say that Aphrodite would be the same as Eros,93 an absurd conclusion that shows that the premise that Eros stands for the cosmos is false. Even the partial Aphrodites are souls. In fact, just as the partial Aphrodites are derived from the cosmic Aphrodite, the Soul of the Universe produces the soul of each single living being.94 Generally, Plotinus states that “Aphrodite is soul”95 and that “all souls are Aphrodite.”96 He also provides a clear parallel between heavenly Aphrodite-cosmic Aphrodite-partial Aphrodites, on the one hand, and higher soulmixed soul-individual souls, on the other hand. These two triads, in their turn, correspond respectively to three versions of Eros and to three kinds of desire for the Good; particularly, while the heavenly Aphrodite is the mother of Eros as a god and the cosmic Aphrodite is linked to Eros as a daemon, there are individual Erotes belonging to the individual Aphrodites.97 According to Plotinus, both the higher and the lower Aphrodite are the soul, and as such this goddess must be linked and contrasted to Zeus, who symbolizes the intellect. Plotinus’ argument is linear: considering that (1) Aphrodite is the Soul, (2) Zeus is the cause of Aphrodite, and (3) the Intellect is the cause of the Soul, it follows that what the poets said about Zeus applies to the second hypostasis.98 Specifically, Aphrodite coming from Zeus, that is, having him as her father and being born in his garden, is a symbol of the Soul’s subordination to the Intellect.99 In order to fully understand the significance of Plotinus’ statements about the relationship between Aphrodite, on the one hand, and Cronus and Zeus, on the other hand, it is useful to remember that in Plotinus’ system, while the Intellect is always the same, the Soul is the principle of change. There is no movement in the levels above the Soul, even though this implies that the Soul is at least sometimes in an imperfect state, as every change is either from worse to better or, vice versa, from better to worse. Contrariwise, the Intellect never undergoes any change because it has always been a perfect identity of the knower and the known. Considering this, one can see how Aphrodite being subordinate to Cronus and Zeus means that the feminine principle of dynamism is less worthy than the masculine principle of perfect knowledge and depends on it for its very existence. The predicates applied to Zeus and Aphrodite are particularly telling, as, while the male god is said, on the wake of Plato, to be “great” (megas), “stronger” (kreittôn), “royal” (basilikos), and “leading” (hêgoumenos),100 the female goddess is only described in relation to Zeus, as belonging to him, coming from him, and only existing with him.101

116  Chiara Militello Indeed, Aphrodite’s subordination to Cronus and Zeus is part of a more general pattern, because, as Plotinus explicitly states, all the male gods stand for the Intellect and all the female goddesses represent the Soul.102 It is not by chance that the goddesses are in a way interchangeable: as Plotinus reminds us, the men who devote themselves to the gods, either as officiators or thinkers, sometimes identify Aphrodite and Hera or at least assign to the former the star of the latter.103 The consequences of this subordination of the female psychic principle to what is male and intellectual is drawn from Plotinus when he states that, as the soul comes from the god, she cannot help loving him.104 Apart from the explicit hierarchy that puts the male (Cronus and Zeus) above the female that tends towards the male (heavenly Aphrodite), which is in turn superior to the female (earthly Aphrodite), another, more hidden side of the relationship between genders can be found in Plotinus’ text. Talking about the higher Aphrodite, the philosopher says that this version of the goddess has no relationship to the material world because “she neither wants nor can.”105 This statement points out the irreducible difference between the male and the female principles. Of course in the eyes of Plotinus the male principle (which the heavenly Aphrodite embodies, even though imperfectly) has no reason to take share in the feminine (the earthly world), but—and this is the important point—even if it wanted to become “contaminated” with the female principle, it would not be able to do it.106 The male is superior to the female, but not in the sense that it could have female traits and it does voluntarily reject them. Plotinus seems to be aware that the two genders are absolutely irreducible, and this produces in a sense an independent dominion for everything feminine. Of course, since this dominion is composed of everything negative and impure (matter, bodily passion), this independence matters little to Plotinus. It can be interesting from a modern point of view, though, because, on the one hand, telling a heavenly, motherless version of Aphrodite apart from the earthly, feminine one is necessary for Plotinus to provide a positive account of the goddess. He has to find a way to praise a female figure—indeed, the traditional epitome of femininity—and the only way is to negate everything female in her. On the other hand, this move does nothing but reinforce the idea that the female universe cannot be grasped when one assumes a male point of view. All this holds true when one “translates” it into ontological terms. The intelligible (male) is good and superior to matter (female), which is the same as evil, but at the same time intellectual knowledge can only know matter as what it is not. Intellectually, matter can only be defined as the privation of any form. Matter is not graspable by the intellect. Indeed, the intellect cannot know matter because the latter is the lack of any intelligible form, i.e., of the mark of the hypostasis Intellect on the sensible world. So, the intellect is unable to understand matter because the latter is different from it.107 The fact that from an intellectual point of view matter is just privation does not mean that matter is useless, though. On the contrary, there could be no sensible world without matter. The sensible world is composed by the images of the intelligible world, i.e., by intelligible logoi that inform the material receptacle. In other words, the sensible world has the intelligible and matter as its

The Two Aphrodites  117 “parents.” This has of course a parallel in every human being—destined to return to higher, “male” levels of reality however much one wants—not being able to be born without a mother.108 Comparing the two Aphrodites (and the two levels of the soul) allows us to tell not just the differences within the female universe, but also the common features of everything female, no matter if pure or material. As we have seen, the two Aphrodites are contrasted because of their different approach to sex, as the heavenly version of the goddess has nothing to do with the intercourses that the earthly Aphrodite oversees; similarly, as we have also seen, the lower version of the goddess being linked to matter and to the maternal principle makes her different from the heavenly Aphrodite. However, the two goddesses also share some similar traits, as their link with the soul reveals. Being souls, both Aphrodites are dynamic and subordinate to the male principle. Also, desire (epithymia) can be found not only in the earthly Aphrodite but also in the hypostasis Soul,109 that is, in the heavenly Aphrodite. Indeed, the desire of the cosmic Aphrodite, while not completely overlapping with that of the heavenly one, can have the same object. Plotinus states that not only the hypostasis Soul represented by the heavenly Aphrodite, but also the universal soul, which is the cosmic version of the goddess, long for what is above them, that is, the intelligible and more specifically the Good.110 This is in a sense the conclusion of Plotinus’ account of Aphrodite/the soul/the female principle: while there is a fundamental difference between living by the rule of subordination to Cronus/the intelligible/the male principle (the “pure” way of life) and having a share in marriages/matter/the female as female (the “mixed” way of life), there is “hope” for the latter side of the contrast, as the cosmic Aphrodite can love what is above her, the soul involved with matter can aspire to the intelligible, and the female principle can be totally subjugated to the male. To sum up, in Plotinus the female is always characterized by a dynamic longing, by her subordination to the male and, as a consequence, by the desire for the male/ intelligible. The distinction within the female is due to two possible approaches to sex and maternity, and generally to anything material. Plotinus’ statements about Aphrodite do not tell enough about actual women to conclude that, just as the philosopher contrasts the heavenly Aphrodite and the earthly one, he also thinks that there are two kinds of women, or two possible approaches to life for women. However, the comparison between the lower Aphrodite and a prostitute opens the door to such an interpretation.111 Even though I have so far highlighted the negative characteristics of Plotinus’ account of Aphrodite, who is at best subordinate to the male gods but can also be impure, the philosopher also associates Aphrodite with positive features, namely, beauty and happiness. In fact, Plotinus states that the soul is Aphrodite because not only is the soul beautiful, but it also knows what is beautiful.112 As for happiness, it is a state that characterizes the gods after “life” (the word used by Plotinus is zôê) has come to light.113 As it is explained, e.g., in the Cambridge University Press edition of the Enneads, life is to be identified with soul, i.e., with Aphrodite.114 So Aphrodite brings happiness. However, the subordination of Aphrodite to the male principle also applies to these positive traits of her. Particularly, Plotinus remarks

118  Chiara Militello that the fact that Aphrodite (i.e., the Soul, or more specifically the Soul of the Universe) is beautiful proves that the hypostasis from which she derives is even more beautiful.115 Cronus and Zeus are not the only male deities to which Aphrodite is linked, though. As we have seen, the goddess is also important for the birth of Eros. More specifically, the heavenly Aphrodite generates the heavenly Eros, whereas the earthly Aphrodite accompanies the lower Eros since his birth. Now, the heavenly Eros is a god and he is given the noble task to urge souls towards the intelligible world,116 whereas the lower Eros is a daemon117 characterized by materiality.118 Generally, even though both gods and daemons are eternal, the former are unaffected and have a higher rank, whereas the lower are affected, and their place in the ontological hierarchy is intermediate between gods and human beings.119 It is especially interesting that Plotinus refers to the daemons’ attitude as a kind of fall from a previous state of grace: he states that they did not remain free from affection, and that they went down towards the inferior parts of the universe. Considering this, it is fair to say that one of the two Erotes loses his high, divine, intelligible, unaffected status to become low, daemonic, material, and affected. Comparing the fate of Eros with the condition of Cronus and Zeus, it is notable that only the male deity that depends on a female goddess loses his noble status and gets mingled with matter. More precisely, the Aphrodite standing for the feminine principle (the lower Aphrodite) is linked with the daemonic Eros. While the masculine principle in itself (Cronus, Zeus, heavenly Eros)120 is spiritual and unaffected by matter, the masculine principle that is polluted by the feminine one (the lower Eros, who is bonded to the lower Aphrodite) becomes material. Again, the feminine principle is inextricably linked to matter.121 In Proclus’ commentary on the Cratylus, as in the Enneads, the positive features of Aphrodite derive from a male god that fathered her. In fact, Proclus states that Aphrodite has the power to unite the different desires of all beings in a single motion towards intellectual beauty only because it derives from Uranus’ ability to connect things together.122 The subordination of the feminine in this text is also clear from the fact that, as we have seen, Proclus admits only male gods (Uranus, Cronus, Zeus) as the causes of the two Aphrodites. Given the Neoplatonic principle that the cause is always superior to its effect, Proclus’ interpretation of the generation of the two Aphrodites marks a clear hierarchy between male and female. In Proclus’ commentary on the Republic, one can find another form of subordination of Aphrodite to the male gods, as her two different natures are linked to the two different ways in which to be loved by, respectively, Hephaestus and Ares. In this sense, Aphrodite’s features depend on which male god loves her. Aphrodite is defined by her relationship with male subjects, so, in this sense, she is of lesser importance than them. However, Aphrodite’s relationship with male gods in in R. cannot be reduced to mere subordination. After explaining that Ares keeps the opposites apart and Hephaestus shapes the sensible universe, Proclus states that neither could act without Aphrodite. Hephaestus would not be able to make the universe beautiful without the beauty provided by Aphrodite, whereas Ares, who not only separates the opposites but also maintains them in agreement, could not bring

The Two Aphrodites  119 order to the universe without the harmony that only Aphrodite could convey.123 Even though the act of providing the universe with order is reserved to two male gods, the female traits of beauty and harmony symbolized by Aphrodite are necessary for this act to be actually carried out. The superiority of the male principle is not repudiated here, but the dialectic between male and female cannot be reduced to the subordination of the latter to the former. Indeed, in a sense the boundary between the male principle and the female is fuzzy in Proclus’ text on Hephaestus, Ares and Aphrodite. In fact, here there is a clear opposition between two sides of masculinity, as Hephaestus’ rationality and order (which more or less overlaps with the male principle in the Plotinian texts I have examined) is pitted against Ares’ belligerence.124 However, Aphrodite as the female principle is described in a way that overlaps with the former kind of masculinity: Aphrodite is “the cause producing beauty and binding things together” (the phrase used by Proclus is hê kallopoios aitia kai syndetikê),125 but Hephaestus is similarly described as producing beauty (kallos),126 making the universe the most beautiful (kalliston), and binding Aphrodite and Ares or their gifts—i.e., harmony and opposition—together (the verb used by Proclus is syndein).127 Aphrodite’s power seems to overlap with Hephaestus’.128 This is, by the way, the reason why their union is a marriage sanctioned by the higher authority (Zeus himself): as we have seen, Hephaestus and Aphrodite are legitimate spouses because their attributes, as opposed to the ones belonging respectively to Ares and Aphrodite, are similar and compatible.129 The main difference between Aphrodite and Hephaestus seems to be that the latter is more effective: the words dêmiourgeô (to craft), dêmiourgos (craftsman), dêmiourgêma (work of craft), and dêmiorgikos (of a craftsman) are used to talk about Hephaestus and his activities five times,130 whereas neither they nor verbs, nouns, or adjectives with a similar meaning are ever mentioned when Proclus talks about Aphrodite. Seen from this perspective, the female principle as embodied by Aphrodite is doubly less active than the male one, as first, war and opposition (symbolized by Ares) do not belong to the feminine, and second, while the goddess is as linked to beautifying and uniting as Hephaestus, only the latter takes these activities to the level of actually crafting. Anyway, Proclus elaborates on—and at the same time revises—the relationship between the principles Aphrodite, Hephaestus, and Ares stand for when he reads the traditional myth in the light of the philosophical fable narrated in Plato’s Timaeus. In this passage Proclus states that the demiurge imitates Hephaestus, as he too binds together what derives from Aphrodite, i.e., what is united, and what derives from Ares, i.e., what is divided.131 Here, on the one hand, Aphrodite is put on the same level as Ares, because, as the god of war separates, she joins. From this point of view, the feminine and the masculine are opposite and complementary. Aphrodite and Ares act on the same things in a contrary way, and only the co-occurrence of their operations ensures the existence of the sensible universe as we know it. On the other hand, Aphrodite is subordinated to Hephaestus (and the things she oversees are subordinated to the demiurge), because Hephaestus coordinates the interaction between joining and separating, that is, between the powers of

120  Chiara Militello Aphrodite and Ares. Aphrodite stands for a fundamental universal force, but only the supervision of a male god warrants the correct use of this force. Aphrodite has a crucial role in the genesis of the cosmos, but she can play such a role only thanks to the doing of Hephaestus. In this passage, the masculine is not only the principle of war and opposition (Ares) but also the guiding principle (Hephaestus). The male fights, but he also leads. The female, on her part, plays the fundamental role of caring for harmony (Aphrodite), but she is ultimately subordinated to a male master. Just like in the case of Plotinus, Proclus’ description of the two sides of the goddess seems to be linked to two different ways of life. In Proclus’ commentary on the Cratylus, just as in Plotinus’ Enneads, the two versions of the goddesses are linked to a pure way of life and to sex, respectively. While Proclus states that Uranian Aphrodite leads to an immaculate life (the expression used by Proclus is achrantos zôê),132 Dionian Aphrodite is said to supervise generation,133 which in human beings starts with a sexual act.134 Similarly, in the commentary on the Republic, Aphrodite as wife is opposed to Aphrodite as adulteress. Conclusions The analysis of the three texts I have focused on (Plotinus Enneads III.5, Proclus in R. 6.1.15 and in Crat. 183) has shown that Neoplatonists split the beauty Aphrodite stands for into two opposite kinds, as intelligible beauty has little or nothing in common with material attractiveness.135 Consequently, Plotinus and Proclus split Aphrodite herself, talking, in the wake of Plato, of two Aphrodites, or at least highlighting two different sides of the goddess. The lower Aphrodite is linked not only, as it is typical in the cult of the goddess, to material beauty, sex, and motherhood, but also, at the same time, to matter and impurity. This shows that there is a strong connection between the attributes of female, material, and impure. Conversely, it is possible to relate the higher Aphrodite to what is intelligible and pure only by distancing her from any female trait and any relationship with female characters and by associating her to the masculine principle. These male features make the heavenly Aphrodite superior to the cosmic one, but for the same reason, both versions of the goddess are subordinate to the male demiurgic intellect, embodied in turn by Uranus, Cronus, Zeus, and Hephaestus. However, behind these common features, the three texts exhibit some interesting differences. Not only do Plotinus and Proclus provide two different etymologies for the name “Aphrodite,” but they also have different opinions on the role of Dione in the generation of the lower version of the goddess. Plotinus presents Dione as the mother of earthly Aphrodite, but Proclus does not, seemingly because he does not want to raise a woman to the status of cause. The most important difference we have witnessed, however, is that, while in the commentary on the Cratylus Proclus distinguishes, like Plato and Plotinus before him, two Aphrodites, in the commentary on the Republic there is only one goddess bearing this name, even though her twofold mode of being, existing both in the intelligible and in the sensible realm, is highlighted. Consequently, Aphrodite’s relationship with male gods is more complex and cannot be dismissed

The Two Aphrodites 121 as just subordination.136 In Plotinus and in Proclus’ commentary on Cratylus, the relationship between Aphrodite and the male gods can be summarized as a form of subordination. In the Enneads, Aphrodite stands for the soul, which is inferior to the intellect, i.e., to Cronus and Zeus. As the soul depends on the intellect for its very existence and for any positive feature it has, so the generation of both Aphrodites involves primarily male gods, and the highest version of the goddess is the one that was born only from Cronus (and Uranus). While Zeus is described by using positive adjectives, Aphrodite is defined only by her relationship with Zeus. Moreover, the Aphrodite who participates in the masculine principle is described as better than the one who has typically feminine traits. Given all this, it is natural for Aphrodite to desire the male gods, just as the soul wants to return to the intelligible realm, Similarly, in Proclus’ commentary on the Cratylus, the fact that Aphrodite’s generation is caused exclusively by male gods means both that those gods are superior to her and that she has her power (to unite all desires in the love for the intelligible) only because a male character (Uranus) bestowed it upon her. The situation is more complex in Proclus’ commentary on the Republic, because Aphrodite’s relationship with Hephaestus and Ares cannot be reduced to a form of subordination. On the one hand, Hephaestus rules over Aphrodite. Indeed, Aphrodite’s own nature is determined by her connections to the two male gods, who are the only real agents. On the other hand, Hephaestus and Ares cannot act without Aphrodite—the male needs the female. Moreover, the traits of the male god with the higher status (Hephaestus) are not opposed to Aphrodite’s; on the contrary, the features of the two spouses overlap significantly. I have interpreted this fact as a sign that there is no necessary opposition between the two genders. Where such an opposition occurs, i.e., in the comparison between Ares’ and Aphrodite’s activities in the light of the Timaeus, the goddess is put on the same level as the god. One could even argue that, as far as Hephaestus’ powers are more important than Ares’, Aphrodite’s features are described (at least indirectly) in more positive terms than the faculties of a male god. The main result of my analysis is showing that, for Plotinus and Proclus, recovering Plato’s distinction between two versions of Aphrodite is a means to show the two possible fates of the feminine: either remaining immersed in matter, i.e., embodied and, as a result, impure, or losing these feminine traits and conforming to the masculine/intelligible/disembodied/pure standard. I hope that my analysis of the exact mechanics of Plotinus’ and Proclus’ disembodiment of Aphrodite can help future research on gender in Neoplatonism, and particularly on how Neoplatonists “articulate abstractly a desire to transcend the limitations of the factum of embodiment.”137 It would be particularly interesting to contrast the results of my analysis with those feminist readings of Plotinus and Proclus that see some form of egalitarianism and/or a positive view of embodiment in their philosophies.138 At a glance, the apparent difference between my take and theirs could be explained by a different focus, as I  have concentrated on Plotinus’ explicit statements and on obvious gender-coding, whereas “friendly” feminist readings of Plotinus are mostly based on deeper features of the philosopher’s thought. My results should be developed by taking into account these deeper features, and conversely, scholars

122  Chiara Militello who see Plotinus and Proclus as egalitarian or not hostile to embodiment could try to explain the role of the statements about Aphrodite that seem to imply the superiority of the masculine and a negative view of the body.139 Notes 1 I want to thank Stanimir Panayotov, István Perczel, and Anastasia Theologou for their useful comments. 2 There are not many studies on Neoplatonists’ views on Aphrodite, the main ones being about a single philosopher’s view on Aphrodite: Jean Pépin, “Plotin et les Mythes,” Revue Philosophique de Louvain 37 (1955): 8–14; Tuomo Lankila, “Aphrodite in Proclus’ Theology,” Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture 3 (2009): 21–43; Alberto Bertozzi, Plotinus on Love: An Introduction to His Metaphysics through the Concept of Eros (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021), 157–64. Of course, interesting notes on Aphrodite can be found in the commentaries on the Neoplatonic texts on Aphrodite, e.g., Anne D. R. Sheppard, Studies on the Fifth and Sixth Essays of Proclus’ Commentary on the Republic (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1980), 39–103; Plotin, Traité 50, trans. Pierre Hadot (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1990); R. M. van den Berg, Proclus’ Hymns: Essays, Translations, Commentary (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001), 41–42, 61–62, 65, 190–207, 238–51; R. M. van den Berg, Proclus’ Commentary on the Cratylus in Context: Ancient Theories of Language and Naming (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 189–92. Also, some pages are devoted to Aphrodite in studies on the general topic of the Neoplatonic takes on myths, e.g., Robert Lamberton, Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1986), 227–30. With this chapter, I try to contribute to the scholarship on the Neoplatonists’ views on Aphrodite, addressing the previous studies, comparing the perspectives of two different philosophers (Plotinus and Proclus), and analyzing the topic through the lens of the concept of gender. 3 Plot. III.5.2, II.11–12. 4 Plot. III.5.2, II.1–14. 5 On Proclus’ symbolic language, see Loredana Cardullo, Il linguaggio del simbolo in Proclo (Catania: Università di Catania, 1985). 6 Procl. in R. Vol. I, 142, II. 11–27. 7 Pl. Cra. 406c, I.7–406d, I.2. 8 Pl. Smp. 180c, I.1–180d, I.6. On the two Aphrodites in Plato and before him, see Gilbert Andrieu, Les deux Aphrodites (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2016). 9 Pl. Smp. 180d, I.6–181d, I.7. 10 Pl. Smp. 181c, I.2–181d, I.7. 11 Pl. Smp. 181a, I.7–181c, I.2. The preference for boys over other love interests—first of all women—can be seen as the establishment of the primacy of a social class, if one agrees with de Ste. Croix on women being a social class in the ancient world; see G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquest (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981). 12 More precisely, common love “can equally be either good or the opposite” (Pl. Smp. 181b, II.7–8), given the accidental nature of its acts. However, Pausanias explains that only what is always done in the right way deserves praise. What is not done in the right way is automatically wrong (ibidem 181a, II.1–6). 13 Pl. Smp. 181c, II.1–2. 14 Pl. Smp. 181c, II.2–3. Of course, this conflation of the sex of Aphrodite’s parents with her relationship with gender principles is a mythical representation of a simplistic view on gender. To mention just the most obvious difference with our sensibility, today we rightly distinguish between sex and gender.

The Two Aphrodites 123 15 Pl. Smp. 180d, II.6–8. 16 Ibid. 17 Hes. Th. II.188–198. 18 Il. XX, I.105. 19 Il. V, II.370–371. 20 Pl. Smp. 180d, I.7; I. 8; 181b, I.8; 181c, I.4. 21 Pl. Smp. 181b, I.8–181c, I.1. 22 Pl. Smp. 181c, I.4. 23 Given the male point of view of the participants in the dialogue, the good kind of love described by Pausanias is homosexual love (of rational boys), whereas the bad one is heterosexual love (and homosexual love of boys who are too young). In this sense, Pausanias’ speech can be considered as opposing homosexuality and heterosexuality, rather than the male and female principles. However, given that the lover being male is implied, homosexuality here means love of boys, and heterosexuality love of women, so orientations and genders tend to overlap. Pausanias supports romantic relationships with boys because this kind of relationship allows male values to develop, and he condemns relationships with women because these bonds are expressions of female values. I have focused on the male vs. female opposition because this opposition, rather than homosexuality vs. heterosexuality, influences Plotinus’ and Proclus’ takes on Aphrodite. In their analysis of the goddess, both philosophers seem to ignore the love relationship implied by Pausanias’ speech on the two Aphrodites. The reason for ignoring this kind of implication could be, at least in the case of Plotinus, a negative view of homosexuality. On Plotinus’ homophobia, see Robert H. Allen, The Classical Origins of Modern Homophobia (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland and Company, 2006), 127–28; Theodore Sabo, “Plotinus’ Seminar on the Symposium,” Journal of Late Antique Religion and Culture 11 (2017): 59–60; José María Zamora Calvo, “The Status of Sexuality in Neoplatonism,” Graeco-Latina Brunensia 25 (2020): 166. 24 The Neoplatonists’ reading is just one of the possible interpretations of the role of gender in Plato. Since the 1970s, many different interpretations have been given, ranging from Plato’s philosophy being extremely sexist to him being the first feminist. A recent brief summary of the debate, with references to the main studies on this question, is: Anne-Marie Schulz, “Feminism in Ancient Philosophy,” in The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Philosophy, eds. Kim Q. Hall and Ásta (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 28–30. 25 Plot. V.8.2, II.9–11. This passage is interesting from the point of view of gender studies, as, just before mentioning Helen and the other beautiful women as the paradigm of human beauty, Plotinus mentions menstrual fluid (and blood) as the paradigm of the ugly nature of matter without form (ibidem II.6–9). Here, Plotinus not only opposes women as beautiful to their nasty discharges, but also uses menses as an example of pure matter, not grazed by any form. 26 Bertozzi, Plotinus on Love, 53–138. 27 Ota Gál, Plotinus on Beauty: Beauty as Illuminated Unity in Multiplicity (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022). 28 Bertozzi, Plotinus on Love, 209–332. 29 More generally, Lamberton has shown how Proclus’ interpretation of the song of Ares and Aphrodite in the commentary on the Republic distorts the meaning of Homer’s text (Lamberton, Homer the Theologian, 229–30). 30 Unfortunately, there are still few studies on this problem. The main one is Stanimir Panayotov, “The Problem of Disembodiment: An Approach from Continental FeministRealist Philosophy” (for conformity: Doctoral Dissertation, Central European University, Budapest, 2020). 31 As I will point out in the third section, the heavenly Aphrodite has positive features because it stands for a hypostasis (the Soul), whereas the lower Aphrodite is seen in a negative light because she is the symbol of a being that is linked to the material world (the Soul of the Universe). So, for example, the kind of love produced by the heavenly Aphrodite is

124  Chiara Militello appropriate because it is the hypostasis Soul’s love for what is above itself, which, as I have noted, is the kind of love that ensures the return of the universe to the One. After describing the differences between the two Aphrodites as highlighted by Plotinus, I will show how the metaphysical associations of the two Aphrodites explain their different traits. 32 Plot. III.5.2, 2, 14–19. 33 Plot. VI.9.9, 1, 30. 34 Plot. III.5.2, 2, 15–16. 35 Plot. III.5.2, 2, 19; 2, 2–34. 36 Plot. III.5.2, 2, 16–17. 37 Plot. III.5.2, 1, 19; V.1.4, 2, 9–10. Also see ibidem V.8.13, 2, 11–17. 38 Plot. III.5.2, 2, 1–6. 39 Plot. III.5.2, 2, 25–27. 40 As I explain in the next section, where I discuss the metaphysical implications of the different Aphrodites, the partial Aphrodites stand for individual souls, and form, together with the heavenly version of the goddess and with the lower one, a triad that represents an important aspect of Plotinus’ ontology. 41 Plot. III.5.4, 2, 18–21. 42 Plot. III.5.4, 2, 23–25. 43 Plot. III.5.2, 2, 32–36. 44 Plot. III.5.5, 2, 1–4. 45 Plot. III.5.3, 2, 27–32. 46 Plot. III.5,3, 2, 32–33. 47 Plot. III.5.2, 1, 17; 1, 25. 48 Plot. III.5.2, 2, 19–22. 49 The meaning of the incestuous nature of this love may be an interesting research subject in its own right. Of course, one must always keep in mind that what Plotinus is primarily thinking about is the Soul turning back towards the hypostasis from which it came, i.e., the Intellect. 50 Plot. III.5.2, 2, 22–24. 51 Plot. III.5.2, 2, 24–25. 52 Plot. III.5.3, 2, 30–31. As I show in the next section, which is devoted to the explanation of the philosophical meaning of Plotinus’ (and Proclus’) approach to the goddess, the difference between the way the two Aphrodites were born highlights the contrast between the hypostasis Soul, which has positive features because of dependence on the (masculine) Intellect, and the Soul of the Universe, which is inferior because it has a share in (feminine) matter. 53 On Aphrodite in Proclus, see Lankila, “Aphrodite in Proclus’ Theology.” Lankila contextualizes Proclus’ multifaceted account on Aphrodite in his general theory of the divine series. 54 Procl. in Cra. 183, I.12. 55 Procl. in Cra. 183, II.12–46. 56 Procl. in Cra. 183, II.14–29. 57 Procl. in Cra. 183, II.32–33. 58 Procl. in Cra. 183, II.30–39. 59 In this passage Proclus does not use the epithet Ourania. I refer to “Uranian Aphrodite” anyway, because Proclus mentions the higher Aphrodite as “the one from Uranos” (hê . . . ek tou Ouranou). 60 Procl. in Cra. 183, I.14. 61 Procl. in Cra. 183, II.12–19. Uranus’ genitalia stand for a generative power. Given the features of the goddess that is produced by this penis (Uranian Aphrodite), it is clear that such power is purely spiritual (material generation is the realm of Dionian Aphrodite). As a consequence, the story of Cronus cutting Uranus’ penis has nothing to do with matter. 62 Procl. in Cra. 183, II.30–31. The effect is that the two Aphrodites are not caused in the same way (ibidem I.40).

The Two Aphrodites 125 63 Procl. in Cra. 183, I.44. 64 Procl. in Cra. 183, II.43–46. 65 Procl. in Cra. 183, II.41–43. 66 Procl. in Cra. 183, II.40–41. 67 It should also be noted that R. M. van den Berg has proposed a hypothesis about the reason why Proclus does not use here—or, for that matter, anywhere else in his works—the epithet “Pandemos”: Proclus would try to avoid implying any negative association for the gods (van den Berg, Proclus, 246). 68 Procl. in Cra. 183, II.32–33. The relationship of the two Aphrodites with foam is confirmed by quoting Orpheus in both cases (Procl. in Cra. 183, II.22–29; II.32–39). 69 The sea is like life, because they both have no limits and reach the deepest parts of the universe. 70 Procl. in Cra. 183, II.46–53. 71 Procl. in Cra. 183, II.53–54. As one can see, in a sense Proclus assimilates the two Aphrodites. He states that both Aphrodites are born from the foam, i.e., from a generative power, and specifically from the generative power of a male god; as a consequence, both Aphrodites stand for life in its purest aspect. As I elaborate in the next section, which is devoted to explaining (1) the metaphysical meaning of Plotinus’ and Proclus’ interpretations of the myths on Aphrodite, and (2) the implications of this metaphysical meaning from the point of view of gender, Proclus’ assimilation of the two Aphrodites is significant. The two versions of the goddess are similar because they both stand for feminine powers (guiding desire, giving life) that are caused by masculine powers (connecting things together, giving order to reality). Since what is caused is inferior to what causes it, this implies a clear hierarchy between masculine and feminine. 72 Lankila, “Aphrodite in Proclus’ Theology,” 39–40. 73 In Proclus’ philosophy, the hypercosmic gods oversee the intelligible realm, whereas the encosmic oversee the sensible realm, so, the hypercosmic Aphrodite is the Uranian one, and the encosmic Aphrodite is the Dionian one. 74 All quotes in this passage are from Lankila’s own translation. 75 Procl. in Alc. 60, I.3; 82, I.26. Id. in Ti. Vol. I, 104, I.15. 76 Unless otherwise specified, in this tentative rebuttal of Lankila’s argument I will keep quoting from Lankila’s own translation, in order to avoid slipping my interpretation into the rendering of Proclus’ words. 77 Procl. in Cra. 183, II.47–49. 78 Proclus, On Plato’s Cratylus, trans. Brian Duvick (London: Duckworth, 2007), 106. 79 Procl. in Cra. 183, II.21–22. 80 Procl. in Cra. 63, I.23; 99, II.13–14; 104, I.22; 111, I.7; 148, I.2; I.10; 161, II.1–2. 81 I am not assuming Lankila links the two occurrences of “pure.” 82 Procl. in R. Vol. I, 141, II.21–25. 83 Procl. in R. Vol. I, 141, I.25. 84 Procl. in R. Vol. I, 141, I.25–142, I.5. van den Berg proposes a different interpretation of the difference between Aphrodite’s marriage to Hephaestus and her affair with Ares. In this interpretation, the reason why the goddess’ relationship with Hephaestus has an official status would be that Hephaestus/the demiurge is more important than Ares/the opposites (van den Berg, Proclus, 244). 85 As Pépin notes, Plotinus “voit simplement dans l’allégorie un langage commode, parce que concret, pour exprimer sa propre pensée lorsqu’elle devient le plus difficilement exprimable” (Pépin, “Plotin et les Mythes,” 14). Similarly, Bertozzi, analyzing Plotinus’ take on Aphrodite and Eros, states that the philosopher “reshapes the seemingly conflicting identities of these mythical characters and elements to fit his metaphysics” (Bertozzi, Plotinus on Love, 160). Soul, and more precisely World Soul, being female and subordinate to the male demiurgic intellect, is something one can already find in Plato, who also sees the Dyad and the receptacle—two entities that play the role of matter relatively to the One and the Forms respectively—as feminine; see John Dillon, “Female Principles in Platonism,” Ítaca: Quaderns catalans de cultura clàssica 1 (1986): 108–12.

126  Chiara Militello 86 Plot. III.5.2, II.19–20. Knowing what Aphrodite and Cronus stand for makes it possible to understand the features of the higher Erotes. The Eros who has the heavenly Aphrodite as his mother is the love directed towards Cronus (Plot. III, 5, 2, II.36–37), that is, toward the intelligible. 87 Plot. III.5.2, II.25–30. According to Jesús Igal, the heavenly Aphrodite stands for the higher part of the Soul of the Universe, whose lower part would be referred to as Aphrodite Pandemos; this interpretation has been criticized by Pierre Hadot (Plotin, Traité 50, 51–53). 88 Plot. III.5.2, 2, 30. 89 Plot. III.5.2, 2, 27–30. 90 Plot. III.5.8, 2, 2–3. 91 Plot. III.5.3, 2, 27–32. 92 Plot. III.5.3, 1, 31. 93 Plot. III.5.5, 2, 10–15. 94 Plot. III.5.3, 2, 36–38. 95 Plot. III.5.4, 1, 22. 96 Plot. VI.9.9, 1, 31. 97 Plot. III.5.4, 2, 18–25. Although for the sake of clarity I have told apart the account of the different Aphrodites from the arguments about the different kinds of soul, Plotinus mixes symbolic and metaphysical languages. This is the reason why he can say, e.g., that “the love/Eros [Plotinus uses the word erôs, and the double meaning of this word is of course crucial for this blending of languages] of the higher soul would be a god” (ibidem 1, 24). 98 Plot. III.5.8, 2, 4–15. 99 Plot. III.5.9, 2, 17–23. 100 The last three attributes are declined neuter in the text, as they are predicated of Zeus as cause (aition). 101 Plot. III.5.8, 2, 4–15. 102 Plot. III.5.8, 2, 17–20. As Pierre Hadot has shown, this general exegetical principle guides Plotinus’ interpretation of traditional deities, and it is based on the metaphysical principle that each intellect has a soul that is linked with it (Plotin, Traité 50, 238–39). 103 Plot. III.5.8, 2, 21–23. 104 Plot. VI.9.9, 2, 26–27. Of course, above the Intellect, there is the One. Plotinus does not seem to refer to the One in the passages about the two Aphrodites, so I will not cover the supreme hypostasis in this chapter. However, a general assessment of how gender affects Plotinus’ metaphysics could not do without an analysis of the One. Such an analysis (like any study of gender in Plotinus) should consider that the grammatical gender of a noun does not automatically imply the thing referred by that noun (see Dillon, “Female Principles,” 107–8). Two studies on Plotinus’ One that take the difference between grammatical and philosophical gender into account are: Elisabeth Jane Cooper, “Escapism or Engagement? Plotinus and Feminism,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 23 (2007): 73–93 (that Cooper is aware of the mentioned difference is clear from: Elisabeth Jane Cooper, “Is Rational Mysticism Compatible with Feminism? A  Critical Examination of Plotinus and Kashani” [Doctoral dissertation, University of Canterbury, 2006], 41); Panayotov, “The Problem of Disembodiment,” 94–147. Cooper argues that, through the concept of a single source of all realities, Plotinus stresses the interconnectedness of all beings. Panayotov concludes that the One is not only grammatically neutral but also de-gendered, and that this is crucial in Plotinus’ views on embodiment and disembodiment. Panayotov reminds the reader that from the neutrality of the One it can be concluded that the genders are in Plotinus ultimately balanced (ibidem, 129). Cooper, despite not accepting the view that Plotinus’ concept of the One has authoritarian connotations, does not deny that Plotinus’ metaphysics is a hierarchy (Cooper, “Escapism or Engagement?” 78, 79). Surely such a hierarchy, with male/intellect/transcendence from matter being better than female/soul/relationship

The Two Aphrodites  127 with matter, is at work in Plotinus’ descriptions of the two Aphrodites. This could be not true of other Plotinian passages, but they are out of the scope of this chapter. Here I am trying to show what Plotinus’ account of Aphrodite tells us about the relationship between the masculine and the feminine, in the hope that my analysis can enter into dialogue with the study of other parts of the Enneads. 105 Plot. III.5.2, 1, 22. 106 Here Plotinus frames the superiority of the masculine principle as a deficiency: what is male cannot be female. This is an example of negation as a form of stating a positive feature. Another example is the One being unknowable; this means that it is beyond the other principles. 107 Plotinus’ account of form and matter seems to be fitter to be interpreted as a contrast between the male and female principle than in the oft-cited case of Aristotle; see Susan Moller Okin, Women in Western Political Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979); Lynda Lange, “Woman Is Not a Rational Animal: On Aristotle’s Biology of Reproduction,” in Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, eds. Sandra Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka (Dordrecht: Springer, 1983), 1–15; Charlotte Witt, “Form, Normativity, and Gender in Aristotle: A Feminist Perspective,” in Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle, ed. Cynthia Freeland (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 118–37. Not only form and matter are explicitly linked to male and female figures respectively, but the opposition between the two is starker than in Aristotle. As a matter of fact, while the Stagirite does not equal matter and privation, Plotinus does, and as a consequence the latter contrasts matter and form more clearly. One of the reasons why the gender associations with the Aristotelian concepts of form and matter is debatable is that in Aristotle matter is not the privation of form but the opposite of it. The philosophy of Plotinus, in which matter and privation are the same, is more easily read from a gendered lens. 108 It should be clear by now that, pace Armstrong, the distinction between the two Aphrodites is very meaningful for Plotinus; see Plotinus, III: Enneads III.1–9, trans. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 164. 109 Plot. III.5.2, 1, 28. 110 Plot. III.5.3, 2, 33–38. 111 The courtesan will be used as a metaphor for the body in Renaissance thinkers; see Sergius Kodera, Disreputable Bodies: Magic, Medicine, and Gender in Renaissance Natural Philosophy (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2010), 13–46. It would be interesting to study if they are influenced by the Plotinian passage about the lower Aphrodite having become a prostitute. 112 Plot. III.5.9, 2, 30–33. 113 Plot. III.5.9, 2, 37–39. 114 Plotinus, The Enneads, ed. Lloyd P. Gerson, trans. George Boys-Stones et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 303. 115 Plot. V.8.13, 2, 15–19. Also see ibidem V.5.8, 2, 9–13. 116 Plot. III.5.2, 2, 1–6; III.5.4, 2, 24–25; III.5.6, 2, 26–27. 117 Plot. III.5.4, 1, 25; III.5.5, 2, 1–4; III.5.7, 2, 19–27. 118 Plot. III.5.9, 2, 55–56. 119 Plot. III.5.6, 2, 7–13. 120 Of course, heavenly Eros, despite being born from a goddess, is not polluted by the feminine principle, because that goddess (heavenly Aphrodite) is devoid of female traits. 121 This is, of course, important for an account of the relationship between the female principle and the body. However, one should also consider that, although daemons participate in matter, they do not have a body (Plot. III.5.6, 2, 33–42), so the relationship between the two Aphrodites and the two Erotes is maybe more a matter of materiality than embodiment.

128  Chiara Militello 122 Procl. in Cra. 183, II.19–22. 123 Procl. in R. Vol. I, 141, II.4–21. 124 Procl. in R. Vol. I, 141, II.5–10; 141, I.27–142, I.2; 142, II.7–11. 125 Procl. in R. Vol. I, 141, I.28. 126 Procl. in R. Vol. I, 141, I.19. 127 Procl. in R. Vol. I, 141, II.2–3; 142, I.29; 143, I.9. 128 This overlap makes it hard to understand whether Proclus’ statement that beauty (to kallos) shines in the higher realms (Procl. in R. Vol. I, 142, II.7–8) can be referred to Aphrodite (as well as to Hephaestus). If this is the case, Proclus thinks that Aphrodite’s real nature is the one facing what is celestial and intelligible. 129 As van den Berg notes, for Proclus all the holy marriages the theologians refer to should be interpreted philosophically as “interweavings” of principles that cooperates (van den Berg, Proclus, 244). 130 Procl. in R. Vol. I, 141, I.16; I.19; I.27; 142, I.9; I.30 (in this last passage, what is “demiurgic” is the principles of the Timaeus, which are compared to the bonds cast by Hephaestus). 131 Procl. in R. Vol. I, 143, II.3–10. According to Anne Sheppard, Proclus’ interpretation of Ares and Aphrodite as the principles of, respectively, division and union is the metaphysical and Neoplatonic version of a physical and non-Neoplatonic identification of the two deities with the Empedoclean principles of Love and Strife. Sheppard also thinks that this Proclus’ take derives from Syrianus (Sheppard, Studies, 81). 132 Procl. in Cra. 183, I.43. 133 Procl. in Cra. 183, II.45–46. 134 However, the spotless nature seems to prevail, because, when he describes the common features of the two versions of the goddess, Proclus says that she is regarded as what is purest (katharôtaton; Procl. in Cra. 183, II.53–54). 135 This is not necessarily the case in other texts written by Plotinus and Proclus. For example, Margaret Miles has argued that bodily beauty plays a crucial role in Plotinus’ philosophy; see Margaret R. Miles, Plotinus on Body and Beauty: Society, Philosophy, and Religion in Third-Century Rome (Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999). Again, I am focusing on the statements about Aphrodite, in the hope that at a later time it will be possible to compare such analysis with conclusions reached from other passages (Miles does not cite Plotinus’ statements on Aphrodite). 136 Another difference between Proclus’ account of Aphrodite and Plotinus’ is the etymology of the name of the goddess. According to Plotinus, Aphrodite has this name because of the grace (habron) of the soul, with which (as we know) Aphrodite is identified (Plot. III.5.8, II.16–17). Proclus starts from Hesiod’s etymology of Aphrodite as being born out of foam (aphros, Hes. Th. I.196), as in the Cratylus Socrates states that this explanation of the name of the goddess should be accepted (Pl. Cra. 406c, I.7–407d, I.2). However, it is very important for Proclus to stress that this etymology should not be interpreted in a “playful” (Procl. in Cra. 183, I.1), “materialist” (l.3), “foolish” (l.7), and “vulgarized” (l. 11) way, but rather in an “intellectual” (l.2), “inspired” (l.10), and “divine” (l.12) way, that is, by understanding that the foam stands for the generative power, that is, the highest and purest aspect of life (ibidem, II.49–54). This is the only sane way to interpret the foam from which Aphrodite comes, because saying, as common people do, that the foam is the sperm and Aphrodite is pleasure, means subverting the order of reality by focusing on the corruptible cause, i.e., sexual intercourse, rather than on the eternal one, i.e., the power that generates all life (ibidem, II.3–8). 137 Panayotov, “The Problem of Disembodiment,” 1–2. 138 See Miles, Plotinus on Body and Beauty; Panayiota Vassilopoulou, “From a Feminist Perspective: Plotinus on Teaching and Learning Philosophy,” Women: A Cultural Review 14 (2003): 130–43; Cooper, “Rational Mysticism”; Cooper, “Escapism or Engagement?”; Danielle A. Layne, “Feminine Power in Proclus’s Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus,” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 36 (2021): 120–44.

The Two Aphrodites  129 139 Indeed, the analysis of the Neoplatonists’ take on Aphrodite can be further elaborated. To mention two passages I have cited, studying Plotinus’ statements about Aphrodite conceiving a son by desiring her own father Cronus and being identified with Hera, the wife of another of her male parents, may reveal more layers of the relationship between genders in the thought of this philosopher. Above all, though, several interesting passages on Aphrodite in the texts of the Neoplatonists could and should be studied in parallel, for example, Proclus’ hymns on Aphrodite.

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6 In/violability as Evidence in Heliodorus Nathalie Schuler

.  .  . εἰ μὲν δὴ θεῶν εὐμενείᾳ σῶμα τοὐμὸν περισέσωσται, τῆς αὐτῆς ἂν γένοιτο εὐμενείας καὶ τὴν ἐμὴν ἐμοὶ περισῶσαι ψυχήν, ἣν ἀληθῶς εἶναί μοι ψυχὴν ἐπικλώσαντες ἴσασιν. . . . if it is through the benevolence of the gods that my body has been saved from death, then it would be part of that same benevolence to save from death my soul also, which the gods know they fated to be my soul in very truth.1

This theological thought is uttered by Charikleia, the heroine of Heliodorus’ fourthcentury novel Aethiopica, after she has survived all but the last obstacle standing in the way of her marriage to Theagenes. Through an intricate combination of narrative voices, the novel tells us about the young couple’s voyage from Delphi via Egypt to the Ethiopian capital Meroë, where they will not only be married, but also declared heirs to the Ethiopian throne. The dangerous detours that delay this happy ending— abduction by pirates, near shipwreck, and imprisonment at the Persian court, to name but a few—pose serious threats to the protagonists’ bodily health and integrity. By examining the interrelation of body, soul, and truth in Heliodorus, I endeavor to shed light on the foundation for Charikleia’s hope that divine protection of her soul necessarily follows her bodily survival. In the Aethiopica, human bodies testify to a truth that transcends their own physical boundaries. However, we should not be too quick to state that these are generally truths about the individual’s soul, at least not without having carefully examined how the relation of body and soul is conceptualized in this text. One passage that can give a more concrete idea of this otherwise implicitly treated topic is situated at the beginning of Charikleia’s and Theagenes’ story but told only later in the novel. At a point in the narrative when a shift of focus has left the protagonists’ situation unclear, the internal narrator Kalasiris is looking back on their days in Delphi. Having described the couple’s first encounter and love at first sight during a religious festival, Kalasiris concludes: ὅτε, φίλε Κνήμων, καὶ ὅτι θεῖον ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ συγγενὲς ἄνωθεν τοῖς ἔργοις ἐπιστούμεθα· ὁμοῦ τε γὰρ ἀλλήλους ἑώρων οἱ νέοι καὶ ἤρων, ὥσπερ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐκ πρώτης ἐντεύξεως τὸ ὅμοιον ἐπιγνούσης καὶ πρὸς τὸ κατ’ ἀξίαν οἰκεῖον προσδραμούσης. DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-10

132  Nathalie Schuler In that instant the facts convinced us, dear Knemon, that the soul is a divinity and akin to a higher realm. For the young people, setting eyes on one another and falling in love was one and the same, as if the soul recognized its equal at the first encounter and hastened to meet that which was rightfully its own.2 Here, as well as in the passages that are to be discussed subsequently, it is evident that Heliodorus endorses the notion that body and soul are two distinct entities forming a dualism. While this basic assumption is shared universally within the text, the exact interrelation of body and soul is up for debate. According to Kalasiris, the soul is divine and capable of remembering a past that precedes it’s taking human form. Kalasiris’ statement is indebted to Plato, more precisely to the concept of eros as a recollection of seeing the divine, which Socrates expresses via the famous myth of the winged horses in the Phaedrus. As Socrates explains to Phaedrus, those souls whose recollection of seeing the idea of beauty is sufficiently strong will fall madly in love upon recognizing its image in the world of mortals.3 The novel emphasizes Charikleia’s and Theagenes’ strong connection to the gods at several points, and it is evident that their instant connection to one another is constituted by their shared appreciation of beauty and virtue. Beauty plays a central part in Kalasiris’ ekphrasis of the Delphic procession and their first encounter: when “wise and beautiful Charikleia” leaves the temple of Artemis to lead the procession, “we realized that even Theagenes could be eclipsed, but eclipsed only in such measure as perfect female beauty is lovelier than the fairest of men.”4 The Platonist interpretation provided by Kalasiris serves to sublimate the couple’s love at first sight: they are not merely enchanted by each other’s physical beauty, but their enchantment refers to their elevated religious status. Upon meeting for the first time in their embodied form, the young couple’s souls recognize the unity that they shared prior to entering the material world. In contrast to Plato, the soul does not seem to be immortal in Heliodorus. As we can see in the following passage, the danger of dying is described as a danger to the soul in the Aethiopica, which does not fit into a purely Platonist model. Sisimithres, the Ethiopian gymnosophist who rescued Charikleia after her mother abandoned her as a newborn baby, justifies his action to Charikles, asserting: .  .  . οὐδὲ γὰρ ἦν μοι θεμιτὸν ἐν κινδύνῳ ψυχὴν ἅπαξ ἐνανθρωπήσασαν παριδεῖν . . . once a soul had taken human form it would have been a sin for me to pass it by in its hour of peril5 Sisimithres might be referring to dangers for the soul, such as Charikleia becoming a victim to slave traders, as she will be in the course of the novel, or else her being brought up under unsuitable circumstances, but the death of the abandoned child is the more likely interpretation, and this is supported by Charikleia’s statement quoted at the beginning of this chapter. After she has escaped sacrifice and proven her parentage by way of yet another bodily sign, a black mark on her white arm,

In/violability as Evidence in Heliodorus 133 Charikleia’s remaining fear is for Theagenes. It is in this context that she maintains the necessity of the gods saving her soul, thereby implying that if Theagenes were to die, her soul would die with him. Let us take a second look at the passage quoted earlier: .  .  . εἰ μὲν δὴ θεῶν εὐμενείᾳ σῶμα τοὐμὸν περισέσωσται, τῆς αὐτῆς ἂν γένοιτο εὐμενείας καὶ τὴν ἐμὴν ἐμοὶ περισῶσαι ψυχήν, ἣν ἀληθῶς εἶναί μοι ψυχὴν ἐπικλώσαντες ἴσασιν. . . . if it is through the benevolence of the gods that my body has been saved from death, then it would be part of that same benevolence to save from death my soul also, which the gods know they fated to be my soul in very truth.6 The heroine’s reasoning is that her unharmed body points to a truth beyond its own boundaries. Here and elsewhere in the novel, the precise relation of body and soul is difficult to determine. Charikleia seems to suggest that the gods have assigned her pre-existent soul to her physical body to form a composite human being, and that they should therefore take greater interest in matters of the soul. There is a slight tension between this statement about Charikleia’s soul and the one made by Sisimithres. In both assertions, the soul forms the core of personhood; it is a superior entity precariously connected to its human form. The difference is that according to Sisimithres, any danger to the body affects the soul as well, whereas Charikleia differentiates between dangers to the body and dangers to the soul. The coexistence of these two perspectives in Heliodorus’ polyphonous novel is hardly surprising. Far from developing any single philosophical concept, the text juxtaposes competing beliefs. The narrative technique of having multiple voices tell the protagonists’ story both facilitates this variety of intratextual interpretation and provides a context for some of the conflicting statements. The emphasis that Heliodorus places upon the divine nature of the soul does not imply a degradation of the body. To the contrary, the bodies of Charikleia and Theagenes are the focal point without which the process of gaining insight into the soul, a process that is always aesthetic, as well as hermeneutic in Heliodorus, would not be possible. There are several more passages in the Aethiopica where either a single character or a crowd reads the body of another character, i.e., their physical beauty, the way that their body acts, their invulnerability or, by contrast, their wounds and symptoms of disease. In all of these instances, multiple competing interpretations point to the difficulty of establishing truth in this way. One of the most intriguing examples is the last dangerous situation that Charikleia and Theagenes find themselves in before their wedding, and Charikleia’s reunion with her parents. They have arrived in Meroë with the Ethiopian army and their king Hydaspes after the conquest of Syene. As the first prisoners of war, Charikleia and Theagenes are about to be sacrificed to the goddess Selene and the god Helios, respectively. Local custom demands that the prisoners step on a gridiron wrought with gold, which has the power to reveal their ritual purity or impurity: if they are impure, the metal will burn their feet; if they are pure and thus suitable for sacrifice,

134  Nathalie Schuler they will be able to stand on it without pain. The precise meaning of purity in this context seems obvious at first but becomes more complex as the scene unfolds. Pitying the beautiful young woman who is about to die, Hydaspes says that she could be saved: . . . εἰ τῆς ἐσχάρας ἣν οἶσθα ἐπιβᾶσα μὴ ἁγνεύουσά πως ὁμιλίας τῆς πρὸς ἄνδρας ἐλεγχθείη. . . .  .  . if, when she stepped onto the gridiron that you know of, she were discovered to be not altogether clean of the taint of intercourse with men. . .7 Hydaspes specifies sexual intercourse with a person of the opposite sex as the act that makes someone unsuitable for sacrifice to Selene or Helios. The use of a participle of ἁγνεύω establishes a link between sexual renunciation and religious purity. The Ethiopian King also refers to the status of being suitable for sacrifice as being καθαρός. At the same time, sexual renunciation has an impact on a person’s social prospects. While Queen Persinna is thinking of making Charikleia her servant, were she to survive, her husband warns her that it might be unseemly (οὐκ εὐπρεπές) to grant this honor to “such a woman,” clearly implying that virginity is also a prerequisite for becoming a servant in the royal household.8 As some of the prisoners step on the gridiron and instantly jump down again, with their feet burnt, the narrator explains that the device is designed not only to burn whoever is impure (μὴ καθαρόν), but also those who have sworn falsely (καὶ ἄλλως ἐπιορκοῦντα).9 The text never mentions the prisoners taking an oath, and the startling reference to juridical (dis)honesty therefore cannot be explained by the immediate context. The ability to detect perjury, however, serves as a marker of the gridiron’s reliability: the physical reaction of the person touching it is evidence for that person’s past and more trustworthy than anything they might say about themselves, even under oath. Abstinence and honesty appear as two distinct but related concepts. Both are introduced ex negativo as the absence of the taint of past actions; both are somehow located in the individual’s body and govern its reaction to the touch of the metal; and both are made public in this trial scene by being extracted from a prisoner’s body and put on a stage for the crowd to judge. Throughout the conversation between Hydaspes and Persinna, juridical vocabulary such as ἐλέγχω and φωράω suggests that the following events will exceed the limits of religious practice and extend to the sphere of jurisdiction. The crossing of this boundary has a twofold effect. On the one hand, the perceived will of the gods informs decisions about the protagonists’ lives and the future of the Ethiopian monarchy; on the other, the process of making these decisions will change future religious practice. At the nexus of trial and ritual is the body of Charikleia, testifying as much to her personal history as to her relationship with the gods. As Theagenes is standing on the gridiron unharmed, we are told, first, that the crowd marvels at his height and beauty and, second, that it is surprising to have found an adult man who has lived an abstinent life. Watching the prisoners take the ritual test combines an aesthetic experience with a moral evaluation. This is

In/violability as Evidence in Heliodorus 135 even more evident once Charikleia passes the test as well, albeit in a more dramatic manner than her fiancé: Ἡ δὲ “Πλησίον ὁ ἀγὼν” εἰποῦσα “καὶ νῦν ταλαντεύει τὰ καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἡ μοῖρα” μηδὲ κελεῦσαι τοὺς ἐπιτεταγμένους ἀναμείνασα ἐνέδυ τε τὸν ἐκ Δελφῶν ἱερὸν χιτῶνα, ἐκ πηριδίου τινὸς ὃ ἐπεφέρετο προκομίσασα, χρυσοϋφῆ τε ὄντα καὶ ἀκτῖσι κατάπαστον, τήν τε κόμην ἀνεῖσα καὶ οἷον κάτοχος φανεῖσα προσέδραμέ τε καὶ ἐφήλατο τῇ ἐσχάρᾳ καὶ εἱστήκει πολὺν χρόνον ἀπαθής, τῷ τε κάλλει τότε πλέον ἐκλάμποντι καταστράπτουσα, περίοπτος ἐφ’ ὑψηλοῦ πᾶσι γεγενημένη, καὶ πρὸς τοῦ σχήματος τῆς στολῆς ἀγάλματι θεοῦ πλέον ἢ θνητῇ γυναικὶ προσεικαζομένη. Θάμβος γοῦν ἅμα πάντας κατέσχε· καὶ βοὴν μίαν ἄσημον μὲν καὶ ἄναρθρον δηλωτικὴν δὲ τοῦ θαύματος ἐπήχησαν τῶν τε ἄλλων ἀγασθέντες καὶ πλέον ὅτι κάλλος οὕτως ὑπεράνθρωπον καὶ τὸ ὥριον τῆς ἀκμῆς ἄθικτον ἐτήρει καὶ ἔχειν ἐνεδείκνυτο σωφροσύνῃ πλέον ἢ τῇ ὥρᾳ κοσμούμενον. “The hour of my trial is at hand,” replied Charikleia. “Even now destiny is weighing our fate in the balance.” Then, before the people supervising the test could tell her what to do, she produced, from a little pouch that she was carrying, her Delphic robe, woven with gold thread and embroidered with rays, and put it on. She let her hair fall free, ran forward like one possessed, and sprang onto the gridiron, where she stood for some time without taking any hurt, her beauty blazing with a new and dazzling radiance as she stood conspicuous on her lofty pedestal; in her magnificent robe she seemed more like a statue of a goddess than a mortal woman. A thrill of wonder ran through the crowd, who in unison made the heavens resound with their cry, wordless and unmeaning, but expressive of their astonishment. What they found especially awesome was that she had preserved pure and undefiled a beauty so far surpassing that of humankind, even in the springtime of its years: visible proof had been furnished that, for all her youthful charms, the greatest ornament to her beauty was chastity.10 The successive trial of several unnamed prisoners, Theagenes, and finally Charikleia creates a climax that carefully introduces the reader to the logic behind the test: physical integrity renders a person invulnerable to the otherwise harmful contact with the gridiron. Paradoxically, both kinds of bodily evidence—vulnerability and invulnerability—constitute a death sentence, as impure prisoners are sacrificed to Dionysus. Charikleia introduces a previously unseen form of evidence: not only does her body not react to the golden bars, but her appearance on the gridiron—which, instead of letting her fall, lifts her up like a pedestal—also points to her divine genealogy. A descendant of the sun-god Helios, Charikleia cannot be burnt, but instead almost burns everyone else with the radiance of her beauty (“τῷ τε κάλλει. . . ἐκλάμποντι καταστράπτουσα”). In her case, the evidence provided surpasses her personal history and points to the divine plan that has already been linked to her story by way of the prophecy predicting her priesthood in Ethiopia. The spectators resort to pre-verbal forms of expression as they are aesthetically

136  Nathalie Schuler overwhelmed by their first encounter with the heroine. Their cry is described with the hendiadys ἄσημον μὲν καὶ ἄναρθρον—unintelligible and inarticulate. Moral judgement and jurisdiction have thus exceeded their limitations: we are brought back to the realm of religious practice. While inarticulate ritual cries formed a part of the preparations for sacrifice since archaic times, the crowd’s reaction quickly dispels any anxiety that their cries are the prelude to Charikleia’s sacrifice. Charikleia’s epiphany, along with her subsequently told history, is perceived as proof of divine protection; she is therefore exempt from sacrifice. From the heroine’s invulnerability, onlookers induce her inviolability. Shortly thereafter, the gymnosophists argue that this miraculous protection is evidence for the gods disapproving of human sacrifice in general. The interconnectedness of trial and ritual remains mutually productive, informing the process of establishing truth in both domains. There is rarely a case in the Aethiopica where a single interpretation of any given event is presented as uncontested. As vividly as Charikleia’s appearance on the gridiron is described, there remains a trace of doubt about the validity of the virginity test. The protagonist’s assertion that she and Theagenes belong together leads King Hydaspes to wonder, if only rhetorically, whether the gridiron might have lied about her virginity. This is an example for a situation where the truth is determined almost without any doubt, whereas in most cases, alternative interpretations remain more plausible. The homodiegetic narrator Kalasiris, for instance, who tells the story of the protagonists’ voyage from Delphi to Egypt, prides himself on his ability to deceive, thereby suggesting that his narrative might be unreliable. When the Athenian Knemon asks him about his connection to Charikleia and Theagenes, he describes how he first met them in Delphi and how they first met each other. Love at first sight has led to a severe case of love sickness, but Kalasiris, abusing his status as an Egyptian priest, fools Charikleia’s father into thinking that she has caught the evil eye. Worried about his daughter, Charikles consults the doctor Akestinos, who explains what seems to be the real cause for her disease: “Οὐ γὰρ καὶ παιδὶ γνώριμον” ἔφη “ψυχῆς εἶναι τὸ πάθος καὶ τὴν νόσον ἔρωτα λαμπρόν; οὐχ ὁρᾷς ὡς κυλοιδιᾷ μὲν τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς καὶ τὸ βλέμμα διέρριπται καὶ τὸ πρόσωπον ὠχριᾷ, σπλάγχνον οὐκ αἰτιωμένη, τὴν διάνοιαν δὲ ἀλύει καὶ τὸ ἐπελθὸν ἀναφθέγγεται καὶ ἀπροφάσιστον ἀγρυπνίαν ὑφίσταται καὶ τὸν ὄγκον ἀθρόον καθῄρηται; Ζητητέος σοί, Χαρίκλεις, ὁ ἰασόμενος· γένοιτο δ’ ἂν μόνος ὁ ποθούμενος.” “Is it not plain even to a child,” he said, “that her disorder is one of the soul and that we have here a clear case of love sickness? Can you not see the dark rings under her eyes, how restless her eyes are, how pale her face is, although she does not complain of any internal pain? Her concentration wanders; she says the first thing that comes into her head; she is suffering from inexplicable insomnia, and has suddenly lost her self-confidence. There is only one person that can cure her, Charikles, and that is the man she loves: He is the one you must find.”11

In/violability as Evidence in Heliodorus  137 Situated at the beginning of Kalasiris’ narrative, before the protagonists have left Delphi, this conversation introduces the idea that not all dangers to the body are external. Akestinos’ careful observation of Charikleia’s bodily symptoms convinces him that it is a condition of the soul, love sickness, that is detrimental to her physical health. Nowhere else in the novel does a description of Charikleia’s physical state sound this alarming. Even after the heroine has suffered severe mistreatment in a Persian dungeon, the narrator emphasizes her beauty over the signs of exhaustion. In the Aethiopica, the suffering of the soul is thus presented as the most dangerous threat to the human body. Both this perilous state and its counterpart, the demonstration of invulnerability, are framed as a hermeneutic process. Gazing at the protagonists’ bodies, the doctor, just like the large crowds in Memphis and Meroë, and the internal narrator himself, observes, lists, and discusses the signs of a truth concerning the soul becoming visible and tangible. There is evidence for a material concept of the soul in the Aethiopica, namely, Kalasiris’ remarks on the evil eye and the particulars of Charikleia’s conception; hence, this is rather a process of embodiment than of materialization. In a parallel scene to the one discussed before, Charikleia is falsely accused of murder. The attempt to burn her at the stake not only leaves her unharmed, but also leads to a similarly epiphanic appearance as on the gridiron in Meroë. Interpretations of this event within the text either view Charikleia as innocent and protected by the gods or as a sorceress. Some of the onlookers, the narrator informs us, have their own reasons for believing Charikleia to be guilty, while others merely submit to the dominant interpretation maintained by Arsake, the wife of the Persian satrap. In the complex interplay of body, soul, and knowledge, power is a factor not to be underestimated, and this extends to the final scene in Meroë. Appearing before her people for the first time, the heroine displays regal and religious power and thereby renders the hermeneutic process of deciphering her appearance difficult. Discrepant awareness ensures that the reader is not as aesthetically overwhelmed as the spectators within the text; piecing together the information conveyed by various narrative voices, they are invited to evaluate her embodiment of power from a distance. Heliodorus’ intricate narrative is evidence for the intense preoccupation with the interrelation of body and soul that characterizes many late antique literary and philosophical writings. As much as the “soul-body” problem is fundamental for any theory of what it means to be human, the—closely related—distinction between the material and the immaterial world points to key problems of epistemology. Can higher principles that govern the material world be deduced from what we can see, hear, and feel? How can we definitely know anything to be true? There are many instances in the Aethiopica where characters base their interpretation of the events in which they are involved on material evidence—namely, the protagonists’ bodies. Charikleia and Theagenes seem to embody their story. Beauty, invulnerability and symptoms of disease all serve as evidence that is suggested to be more reliable than narrative. In the context of a polyphonous discourse in which at least one narrator is notoriously adept at contorting facts to suit his purposes, visible and tangible evidence seems to guarantee truth. The trustworthiness of this physical evidence,

138  Nathalie Schuler however, is undermined by doubts that are expressed throughout the novel: Does the gridiron test actually prove a person’s virginity? Is Charikleia’s invulnerability a sign of her innocence and elevated religious status, or in fact proof of her being a sorceress? By means of a narrative strategy that juxtaposes conflicting views, the Aethiopica show material evidence to be subject to interpretation. The protagonists’ bodies tell their story—and they are but two among many contesting narrators in this complex and intriguing novel. Notes 1 Aeth. X, 20, 2. I  am quoting from the following edition: Héliodore, Les Éthiopiques (Théagène et Chariclée), 3 Vols., second edition, eds. Thomas Wallace Lumb, Jean Maillon, and Robert Mantle Rattenbury (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1960); and the translation by John R. Morgan (published as An Ethiopian Story) in: Collected Ancient Greek Novels, ed. Bryan Peter Reardon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 407– 676, unless otherwise stated. 2 Aeth. III, 5, 4. The translation is my own, and I am indebted to István Perczel in the interpretation of this passage. 3 Plato, Phaedrus 249d-250a, in Platonis opera, Vol. 2, ed. John Burnet (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), reprinted 1967: St III.227a-279c. 4 Aeth. III, 4, 1. 5 Aeth. II, 31, 1. 6 Aeth. X, 20, 2. 7 Aeth. X, 7, 7. 8 Ibid. 9 Aeth. X, 8, 2. 10 Aeth. X, 9, 3–4. 11 Aeth. IV, 7, 7.

Bibliography Héliodore. Les Éthiopiques (Théagène et Chariclée). Edited by Thomas Wallace Lumb, Jean Maillon, and Robert Mantle Rattenbury, 3 Vols., 2nd ed. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1960. ———. “An Ethiopian Story. Translated by John R. Morgan.” In Collected Ancient Greek Novels, edited by Bryan Peter Reardon, 407–676. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Plato. “Phaedrus.” In Platonis opera, Vol. 2, edited by John Burnet. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901 (reprinted 1967).

II.2

Gender, The Body, and Christian Theology

7 Male and Female in the Protevangelium Jacobi György Geréby

In the following paper, I am going to show through the example of an early Christian text that in the second century of the Christian era, there was a complex debate about the meaning of the opposition between the sexes, that is, between the male and the female principles. The debate was about the metaphysical principles governing the world, the cosmos, and its origin. The division of the sexes was debated with “metaphysical ferocity.”1 I argue that the opposition of the male and the female was understood not as a gender issue motivated by social and political vectors, but rather as an issue originating from theological concerns. The foci of these controversies were the meaning of material existence, the nature and origin of the physical world, the nature of matter, and the purpose of the human body. Hence the problem of the male and the female resulted from reflections on the metaphysical character of the material world, loosely based on some of Plato’s remarks, especially in the Timaeus¸ which then served as an inspiration for the understanding of the creation account in Genesis. A surprisingly wide range of theological ideas resulted from this combined reading of Scripture and Greek philosophy, elaborated in different ways by the various schools of thought in the period. The proper understanding of Genesis was a shared concern for the Hellenized Jewish thinkers, the Platonizing philosophers, the various Gnostic sects, and the theologians of the Great Church. Hence the origins of “holy misogyny,” detected by modern scholars in many early Christian texts, originated not only in the social system of the later Roman Empire, but from a set of theological problems resulting from reading the Greek Bible, the Septuagint, side-by-side with the doctrines of the philosophers.2 In the second century, the problem of the dichotomy or division of the sexes (since sexus comes from the Latin verb seco, to divide, cleave, separate) was considered a fundamental trait of the material realm. While hints in the Timaeus of Plato can be considered starting points for the debates, how and why the debates flared up in the context of the early imperial centuries remains a puzzle. The Protevangelium Jacobi, a second-century Christian text, testifies to this debate from the point of view of the Great Church. In the following, I attempt to show how this text relates to the contemporary problems. First, let me introduce this puzzling work in a few sentences. The Protevangelium (henceforth PJ) was “discovered” for the West by Guillaume Postel, a French orientalist, in 1552.3 His “discovery” was rather a rediscovery since the PJ had been DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-12

142  György Geréby a standard part of the Byzantine synaxarion (collection of the lives of saints) and the minea of the Greek Church (the offices of the feasts of the Byzantine church) while in its actual form, the PJ was unknown to the West. (In fact, the West was in possession of a version of the PJ in the form of the so-called Pseudo-Matthew apocryphon.) Postel rather naïvely created the misnomer Protevangelium for the text, which has become accepted by scholarship, even though in the manuscript tradition it was never claimed to be a gospel, but only a “history” or a “book” or an “apocalypse of James” at best. The PJ is usually dated around 180.4 It is a short text of about 4,500 words in Greek. It was never accepted into the canon of the Church, but as an “orthodox apocryphon,” it has always been on the margins, exercising a vast influence on iconography, hymnography, homiletics, and theology.5 The narrative of the Protevangelium begins with the shaming of Joachim and his wife Anna, because of their sterility. Then Anna, like Sarah, conceives Mary, whose first birthday is celebrated with the blessing of the Jewish high priests. Mary’s parents keep her infancy in ritual purity, and at the age of three, she is presented to the Temple to be raised there.6 Here ends the story of Anna and Joachim. The adolescent Mary is then entrusted to the widower Joseph by divine portent. The priests of the Temple decide on a new curtain for the Holy of Holies (the Sanctuary of the Jerusalem Temple), and the spinning of the purple thread is given to Mary. While spinning, she receives the Annunciation in two acts, first at a well and then in her house. Her visitation to Elisabeth is followed by the return of her custodian, Joseph, who discovers her pregnancy. After being denounced to the High Priest, both Mary and Joseph are subjected to the bitter water trial at the Temple, which exonerates them. Because of the census, Mary, Joseph, and his sons set out to Bethlehem. After Mary feels birth pangs, they stop halfway and take refuge in a cave. In a curious narratological insert, Joseph switches to the first-person singular and sees the universe stop. The Nativity happens in the cave, and two witnesses, a midwife and Salome testify to the virgin birth. Mary’s story ends with the visit of the Magi. In the last chapters, Herod orders the Massacre of the Innocents, but Elisabeth flees with the infant John the Baptist. Herod unsuccessfully tries to cajole Zachariah into betraying the whereabouts of his son, and in his wrath, Herod orders the murder of Zachariah, too. The priests and the people mourn for Zachariah. In the epilogue, the author identifies himself as “James” and claims to have written this “history” during the commotions after Herod’s death. The PJ received the classification “apocryphon” in modern biblical scholarship and attracted extensive scholarly interest in the compartment of New Testament studies. After the editions, many more manuscripts emerged, including important papyri in the 20th century. The standard edition was by Tischendorf in the mid19th century.7 It became standard until the discovery of the Bodmer papyrus V in the mid-20th century. Émile de Strycker then attempted to reconstruct the earliest version of the PJ.8 Presently, 138 mss. are known of the text.9 The popularity of the PJ is shown not only by a large number of manuscripts, but also by versions of the text in Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and Ethiopic.

Male and Female in the Protevangelium Jacobi  143 Smid provided a very detailed commentary.10 Another commentary was published recently by Toepel.11 In addition, several special studies have been devoted to the PJ. van Stempvoort established the 180s CE as the likely date of the emergence of the PJ and identified specific aspects of its motivation.12 Éduard Cothenet’s chapter in the Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (ANRW) suggested the “midrash” genre for the PJ, but at the same time he declared that “there is no theology in the Protevangelium.”13 So far, commentators were satisfied with classifying the PJ as a “childhood gospel.” Every collection of the early Christian apocrypha subsumed this text under this heading.14 Its character and purpose were identified as a naïve story in the style of Hellenistic novels motivated by the popular need to fill in the gaps of the Nativity account of the gospel of Matthew and Luke, or to provide an encomium for the Mother of God in the service of Marian piety. 19th-century hypercritical scholarship considered it a patchwork of various parts, and even recently, a complex redaction-historical theory was proposed for its formation.15 Scholarship largely agrees that the PJ is a simple text. The present paper, however, indicates a different view. By identifying the context of the PJ’s “mysterious” traits, it becomes clear that the author was embedded in the debates dominating the second- and third-century CE theological scene, and answered theological challenges with the help of a biblical-style narrative. The PJ is indeed a curious text. It is short, written in a simple paratactic register, and stitched together from biblical vocabulary, reminiscent of the Alexandrian cento technique in prose form. Because of the cento (κέντρων) genre, the PJ is not quoting the Bible (the Bible being the Greek Septuagint and the gospels of Matthew and Luke), but it is imitating the biblical style. The PJ wants to read as a biblical text.16 The richness of the implied references, not least the author’s superb command of the Septuagint style, allows me to argue that the PJ is an original work by a talented and sophisticated author who attempted to present proto-Orthodox solutions to the vexing theological problems of his times. The author created a unitary work addressing debated issues in a narrative form, relying on traditions available in his times, and fusing them. However, the fusion proved somewhat awkward from the literary point of view, hence the impression of the patchwork. On closer inspection, the PJ proves to be a complex work of narrative theology. In the guise of biblical language, the PJ demarcates specific core theological points of proto-Orthodox nature against contemporary challenges to Christianity, raised by philosophical, Jewish, and Gnostic opponents. For example, a curious aspect of the PJ is its programmatic philo-Judaism, most likely countering Marcionite tendencies. Again, the author of the PJ adopts specific Platonic imagery, such as the famous Cave, albeit in an inverted sense.17 The many and various commentaries so far have heaped up a huge amount of material for illustrating various particles of the text, primarily with the help of the Quellenforschung method. There were dissenting voices here and there, pointing out the unsatisfactory categorization,18 or identifying curiously complex elements, but the overall result remained uncertain. The mystery persists: How to explain its composition of clearly disparate parts? What is its purpose? How could this

144  György Geréby childishly pious tale achieve a nearly canonical status, influencing theology, iconography, homiletics, and hymnography? The dating of the PJ was of great importance; it was the pioneering study of van Stempvoort that had proven that the PJ should be relegated to the end of the second century. This means that the “intertextuality” of the PJ depends on the intellectual environment of this period, a highly complex time of competing schools of theology.19 The fog of the second century engulfs the text. 19th-century scholarship was puzzled about the composite character of the PJ, that is, the story of Mary, the insert-like Vision of Joseph and the appendix about Zachariah. However, the issue of unity came to a standstill with the discovery of early papyri. de Strycker, the most recent editor of the text, had to admit that every piece of evidence, primarily the testimony of the papyri, points to a unitary work. On the other hand, there is no trace of an independent presence of any of the three supposed components. However, the failure to find evidence for these constituents continues to cause some uneasiness since one ought to suppose that there is some original unity in the PJ’s account despite the disparate parts. Scholarship accepted faute de mieux, the unitary character of the PJ. However, this leads to the third difficulty, namely the programme of the PJ. What is the message? There have been few attempts to find doctrinal points in the PJ apart from the Mariological. The Mariological interpretation, however, cannot sufficiently explain the second part containing the events of the Nativity and the account of Zachariah’s death. Only the first part of the PJ is about the birth of Mary, whereas the rest relates to the Vision of Joseph, the Nativity in the Cave, and finally, the circumstances of the killing of Zachariah. At this point, it becomes significant that the PJ never claimed to be a gospel and is not about Jesus’ childhood. While the stories of the Gospel of Thomas are clearly about the little Jesus and his divine capabilities, the PJ, in contrast, speaks precious little about Christ, except succinctly about the baby in the context of the Nativity. The insufficiency of the standard interpretations was criticized in the recent book by Bart D. Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše, who suggest that “it is a mistake. . . to see this account driven exclusively by biographical concerns, or even by the impulse to provide a story in praise of Mary.”20 Ehrman and Pleše accept rather the suggestion made occasionally in earlier scholarship that the PJ is motivated by a marked apologetic impulse. The PJ “attempts to dispel charges levelled against the Christians by its learned opponents.” In a broad sense, this approach is correct, but it does not explain the curious features of the text, which go beyond the story of Mary. Hence a more complex approach ought to be adopted. This contextual approach abandons traditional interpretations and reads the PJ in the milieu of its wider intellectual environment. The new reading relies on the specific intertextuality of the PJ, that is, it identifies the contemporary background as the frame of reference and reconstructs the logic of the PJ. In short, it attempts to do justice to the text’s theological motifs. The clues for the new interpretation are taken from what can be termed “Alexandrian narrative methodology.” This contemporary way of interpreting and producing texts meant an unusually complex and sophisticated reading and writing.

Male and Female in the Protevangelium Jacobi  145 Philo of Alexandria called it the “small-minded” or “pedestrian” way as opposed to the “high-minded” approach to the Law.21 Plutarch demonstrates the two-tier reading in the case of the myth of Isis and Osiris.22 According to Stobaeus, speaking in symbols, mixing words with silence, like in an oracle is a characteristic of Pythagorean philosophy. The teaching only opens up to the experienced, while to the uninitiated, it remains meaningless.23 Apuleius’ Metamorphoses is well known to have a subtext of the Isis mysteries, and it also alludes to (or rather pokes at) the Christians in a concealed way.24 The Christian authors agreed to this strategy. Origen remarks that the surface meaning of a text is different from the second level, the doctrinal meaning.25 While this method is applied only to interpreting difficult scriptural passages, the technique can be used to write texts in such a way. Hermas, for example, speaks in his Shepherd about two versions of the book, one for the orphans and widows, and another for the presbyters.26 What are the signs, then, indicating a second-level meaning? In his De antro nympharum (The Cave of the Nymphs), Porphyry engages with this issue when he must justify his interpretation of the Homeric verses.27 First, he shows with the help of the geographical writers that this precise cave cannot be found, and then he points out all the unlikely or even absurd elements of Homer’s description. Finally, he identifies the strange and unlikely images that would be nonsensical if they did not carry a secondary, doctrinal meaning. Hence, it points to a deeper meaning if poetic license cannot explain the unexpected obscurities of the narrative.28 Such curious elements are indicative of a deliberate point by the author. Awareness of this Alexandrian narrative technique helps understand the program of the PJ. Following the spirit of Porphyry’s methodology, I take that assuming a modicum of inventiveness on the side of the author, the unusual might indicate a special reason. Odd and distinctive motifs, especially their repetitions, or immoderate stress on particular elements, or the occurrence of a strange move in the narrative without a clear function or explanation, are markers of a second meaning. Setting aside chance developments in the text, these consistent occurrences signal particular intent and purpose, especially if there is a coherent pattern, and the motifs have identifiable contemporary rival views that these elements oppose or serve to demarcate. Most modern editors and commentators have not considered the possibility of this kind of reading and thereby missed out on significant points of the PJ. A notable exception was van Stempvoort’s study, which dated the PJ by identifying a secondary message in the narrative. He noted that the excessive stress of the PJ on the riches of Joachim in the very first chapters of the PJ was meant to counter the charge known from the pagan Celsus, who relied on contemporary Jewish calumnies that Mary was a poor dayworker (χερνῆτις) whom a Roman soldier, Panthera, seduced. The malicious allegation that Jesus was born out of wedlock (hence of uncertain pedigree) was meant to discredit Jesus as descending from the house of David. His poor background brings depravation, so it is a small surprise that Jesus became the apprentice of Egyptian sorcery (implying his miracles being tricks). This is the charge the PJ opposes by showing the extreme richness of

146  György Geréby Mary’s parents, their piety, and their devoted care in keeping Mary’s ritual purity, so far as to offer her to the Temple like a female nazir. Many such mysterious elements in the PJ clearly require further explanation. For example, why does the PJ insist that the high priest takes up his robe with the 12 bells? Why was Christ born in a cave, against the Lukan account? Why is Mary credited with Davidic descent? Since scholarship shows that the author knows the gospels of Matthew and Luke, why does the PJ deviate from their accounts? Why are the high priests and the people described in such favorable terms? What does the vision of Joseph refer to?29 Why does the curtain of the Temple (the καταπέτασμα) play such a central role in the story? What does the spinning of Mary mean? Why are there two annunciations? These issues must be dealt with elsewhere. However, the commentators have not addressed one particular issue so far, which I will address now. Why are there so many female figures in the PJ? Why is there a strictly symmetrical role of Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anna? Why is there such stress on childbirth? Why is there stress on the celebration of Mary’s birthday? The Symmetric Roles of Men and Women The attentive reader will notice a curious parallelism in the narrative of the PJ. While they are on the scene, the parents of Mary play the same symmetrical role in the narrative.30 Joachim is childless, and Anna is childless. Joachim is reproached (by Reuben), and Anna is reproached (by Juthine) (PJ 1,1 and 2, 2). The great day of the Lord approaches for Joachim, and the same festivity is the context of Anna’s humiliation (PJ 1, 2 and 2, 2.) Joachim complains that he is the only one who has not produced a child in Israel (PJ 1.6), and Anna laments her childlessness (PJ 2.1). In 1.4, Joachim is withheld from sacrifice (PJ 1.4), and in 3.3 Anna says, “I am mocked and reviled and banished from the Temple of the Lord.” In 1.6 (and 9), Joachim becomes very upset, and in 2.7, Anna becomes very upset.31 Joachim turns to the example of Abraham, while Anna turns to the example of Sarah. The angel visits Anna in 4.1, and in 4.4, angels visit Joachim. Later, another remarkable symmetry can be found in the case of the bitter water test in Chapter 16. When Mary and Joseph are denounced to the High Priest, he summons them and tests them with the bitter water test for adultery, as stipulated in Numbers 5:11–31. However, contrary to the description in the book Numeri, the test is administered both to Joseph and Mary, while it was originally meant only for the woman charged with adultery.32 The twist added by the author of the PJ shows a special program: to stress the symmetry of the male and the female roles. In general, the PJ is dominated by female actors: Anna, Mary, Elisabeth, the midwife, and Salome are central characters of the narrative. Joachim listens to Anna’s advice (PJ 7.1). Angels are talking to all four of them. Mary is blessed by the high priests in 6.2, and the people acclaim her. Two women, the midwife and Salome are the witnesses of the divine birth and the post-partum virginity of Mary. The “messenger of the Lord” helps Elisabeth and her child.

Male and Female in the Protevangelium Jacobi  147 For the modern mind, the role of manifest parallelisms may not seem as significant as for the contemporary reader, for whom the female’s equal role was not given. In the intellectual environment of the PJ, it must have been remarkable since the subordination of the female to the male was socially and culturally justified.33 For our purpose, however, there are noteworthy philosophical foundations already present in Plato. While the role of women in the Republic is a matter of debate,34 the genesis story of the Timaeus is unequivocal. As Dorothea Wender states, “[t]he Timaeus is a real treasure-trove of classic male chauvinism.”35 According to the Timaeus, of the two natures of the human being, the better is the male.36 (It is a recurrent theme mentioned in 42b and 76d-e.) At the end of the dialogue, it is forcefully stated again that all men “that were cowardly and spent their [the soul’s] time in wrongdoing were, according to the probable account, transformed at the second birth into women.”37 By implication, passion, that is, movement and instability, is identified with the female. It is unclear whether Philo of Alexandria relied directly on the Timaeus; however, he was aware of some of its unique elements. He consistently applied the same dualist anthropology and spoke of the human being in the same way as in the Timaeus, as both mortal and immortal.38 He distinguished between the higher and lower parts in a similar vein.39 The lower part, Philo variously called the bodily, the sensible, the vital, the irrational, or the passionate, and it is inferior to the higher part, the soul, the reasonable, the heavenly, and the image of the divine.40 The lower part is called the female, the passive, while the higher part is the male, the active component.41 These two are woven together by the “young gods” (the inner-cosmic gods, who later become the rulers or archons), weaving together the mortal with the immortal.42 Another significant aspect of Philo’s cosmic anthropological vision is assigning human nature’s duality to the cosmic realm. That is, the male-female division characterizes the earthly human being, while in the higher realm, God and the rational souls are not divided according to male and female.43 Philo summarizes his anthropology in Chapters 134–135 of the Creation of the World: There is a vast difference between man as generated now, and the first man who was made according to the image of God. For man as formed now is perceptible to the external senses, partaking of qualities, consisting of body and soul, man or woman, by nature mortal. But man, made according to the image of God, was an idea, or a genus, or a seal, perceptible only by the intellect, incorporeal, neither male nor female, imperishable by nature. But he asserts that the formation of the individual man, perceptible by the external senses is a composition of earthy substance, and divine spirit. For that the body was created by the Creator taking a lump of clay, and fashioning the human form out of it; but that the soul proceeds from no created thing at all, but from the Father and Ruler of all things. For when he uses the expression, “he breathed into,” etc., he means nothing else than the divine spirit proceeding from that happy and blessed nature, sent to take up its habitation here on earth, for the advantage of our race, in order that, even if man is mortal

148  György Geréby according to that portion of him which is visible, he may at all events be immortal according to that portion which is invisible; . . . and that he was born at the same time, both mortal and the immortal. Mortal as to his body, but immortal as to his intellect.44 There is no room to discuss the reasons for Philo’s speculations about the “ideal” man, who was neither male nor female and was supposed to be superior by its unity over the material, the divided, and mortal earthly humans. However, he offers two contrasting points relevant to the context of the PJ, and on both scores, the PJ tacitly disagrees. First, the PJ maintains the unqualified duality of the male and the female; and second, stresses their equality. The strange exclamation of Anna in 4.1. that “if I bear a child whether male or female” is a declaration of adherence to Genesis 1:27 in a literal sense, that is, when God created man, He created them “male and female.” Since the PJ is a history and not an explicitly theological treatise, this is how to maintain adherence to the literal meaning of Genesis 1:27. The PJ is most likely not arguing against Philo directly but against a certain Platonizing school of thought of which Philo was an earlier representative. The issue concerns the role of the division of sexes in the metaphysical-theological sense. While Philo does not go as far as to claim that the duality of the heavenly and the earthly human being brings about something wrong, the assumed hierarchy between the First Man and the second material creation anticipates the later Gnostic theologies. Although “Gnostic” is a family resemblance term, most theological schools subsumed under this heading maintained that the original unity of the human being in the divine realm suffered a division of sexes because of a cosmic failure. Redemption required overcoming this separation. In the case, the soul is from the divine realm, if it is immaterial as either being the image of God (in the sense of Genesis 1:27) or emanating from the one and unitary divinity (it is not appropriate to use here the ambiguous term “god”), the soul, since immaterial, ought to be indivisible. Being united with the body is against its nature. Returning to its original state or homeland requires abrogating the primary division of the material world, the duality of the sexes. Early Christian texts preserved this idea in various forms. For example, in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Clement of Rome mentions an extracanonical saying of Jesus. “Being asked by someone when will the kingdom come, the Lord answered: when the two will be one, and the external will be like internal when the male will be beyond the female, neither male nor female.”45 The persistence of the debate is witnessed by Clement of Alexandria, who reports another succinct formula attributed to Jesus in the apocryphal Gospel of the Egyptians: “I came to dissolve the works of the female. Female means the desire, and the works of the female the generation and corruption.”46 In a characteristic Gnostic myth, the curse of sexuality plays a central role.47 According to the Apocryphon of John, sexual intercourse is a machination of the ignorant and malicious demiurge, Yaldabaoth. It is him who is responsible for planting sexual desire in Adam and Eve.48

Male and Female in the Protevangelium Jacobi  149 According to another treatise, On the Origin of the World, those who have sexual desires are liable to trouble since the woman they desire brings with her marriage, reproduction, and death. “The woman followed [the man; G. G.], and marriage followed the woman. And reproduction followed marriage. And death followed reproduction.”49 The common trait between these texts is the association of sexuality with the realm of the “rulers,” that is, with the material world. The material world being moving, divisible, and perishable determines the function of the duality of the human species, which is a trick of the demiurge (or his minions) to keep human beings under their rule. In other words, sexuality serves the procreation of the human race, who, in this way, continue to be mortal and thereby remain under the rule of the “rulers,” the archons. If the woman had not separated from the man, she should not die with the man. His separation became the beginning of death. Because of this, Christ came to repair the separation, which was from the beginning, and again unite the two, and to give life to those who died as a result of the separation and unite them. But the woman is united to her husband in the bridal chamber. Indeed, those who have united in the bridal chamber will no longer be separated. Thus, Eve separated from Adam because it was not in the bridal chamber that she united with him.50 Here the “bridal chamber” is a technical term for the divine realm and the remedy of the created division is the escape into the unity guaranteed in the transcendent, divine sphere.51 This is the “escape,” hearkening back to the Platonic suggestion of the φυγή in the Theaetetus. The escape “there” should be as urgent as possible, and the escape should come with assimilation to God as far as possible.52 Text after text testifies to the widespread adherence to this vision, which is based on a consistent fusing of the ideas just mentioned. The Gnostic treatises of the Nag Hammadi Library offer various formulae: The perishable has [gone up] to the imperishable, and the female element has attained to this male element.53 Flee the madness and the bondage of femaleness and choose for yourselves the salvation of maleness. . . you have to come to escape your bondage.54 Jesus said to them: “When you make the two into one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside and the above like the below—that is, to make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female will not be female—and when you make eyes instead of an eye and a hand instead of a hand and a foot instead of a foot, an image instead of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom].”55 Jesus said: “Look, I will draw her in so as to make her male, so that she too may become a living male spirit, similar to you.” (But I say to you): “Every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”56

150  György Geréby When Eve was still with Adam, death did not exist. When she was separated from him, death came into being. If he enters again and attains his former self, death will be no more.57 Quoting these texts is necessary since the idea of the principled philosophical rejection of procreation seems incomprehensible to the modern mind. In addition, the male-female problem was thought to have had linguistic justification, too. Origen debated with the Valentinian Heracleon, according to whom—let me set aside the complex exegetical argument now—the prophetic voice (ἡ φωνή, feminine) turns into the incarnate Christ the Word (ὁ λόγος, masculine), the paradigm for the female becoming male.58 The explanation is clear: the female prophetic word is imperfect and it will acquire its truth when Christ brings it to its male fulfilment.59 However, the problem of the division of the sexes is not standalone, but is inherently related to another issue: childbearing. The Issue of Childbearing The narrative of the PJ begins with Joachim being humiliated for not having a “seed in Israel.” The charge of childlessness looks like an Old Testament reminiscence. However, the curious fact is that scriptural example or halachic ruling would have prohibited sacrifice for the childless. If childlessness were a sin, then all the parents of the miraculously born children, who were formerly barren, that is, Abraham and Sarah or Elkana and Hanna, would have been sinners, too. Given the Alexandrian methodology mentioned earlier, this pseudo-biblical charge against the parents of Mary is once again indicative of a second-level problem. In one of the beautiful poetic sections of the PJ (3, 1–3), Anna laments her barrenness and compares it to the fertility of God’s creation: Alas! Who begot me? and what womb produced me? because I have become a curse in the presence of the sons of Israel, and I have been reproached, and they have driven me in derision out of the temple of the Lord. Alas! To what have I been likened? I am not like the fowls of the heaven because even the fowls of the heaven are productive before Thee, O Lord. Alas! To what have I been likened? I am not like the beasts of the earth because even the beasts of the earth are productive before Thee, O Lord. Alas! To what have I been likened? I am not like these waters because even these waters are productive before Thee, O Lord. Alas! To what have I been likened? I am not like this earth, because even the earth bringeth forth its fruits in season, and blesseth Thee, O Lord.60 Anna’s praise of fertility is not alone. In 4.8, Joachim celebrates the conception of the child, [b]ring me hither ten lambs without blemish and spot, and they shall be for the Lord my God, and bring me 12 tender calves, and they shall be for the priests and for the assembly of the elders, and a 100 kids for the whole people.

Male and Female in the Protevangelium Jacobi  151 Later Anna sings a hymn to celebrate her child: “behold the widow no longer a widow, and I the childless shall conceive” (PJ 4.9). In a sense, the whole series of events leading to the Nativity legitimizes the creation. Mary’s childhood will bring salvation to the people in the form of another, divine birth, which is not shameful for the divine (PJ 19, 2; 20, 2). This repeated stress on the importance of childbearing is the opposite of what the Gospel according to the Egyptians says. Clement of Alexandria preserves the saying of Jesus, or logion answering the question of Salome about how long there will be death: “as long as the women give birth.” This logion is so important for Clement for characterizing the Gnostics’ standpoint that he repeats it three times.61 Gnostics widely denied the need for procreation since—as mentioned earlier—it was considered a trick of the Demiurge. As we have seen, the precept of Genesis 1:28 was understood as an injunction of this failed divinity, who wanted to maintain the rule of archons over the human being. The Demiurge’s stratagem was to keep the human beings in the captivity of the body. Therefore, the Demiurge instilled the sexual desire in Adam and Eve, forcing them to have children. Being born, however, implied in terms of Platonic metaphysics corruption and death. According to this principle, also originating from the Timaeus, whatever is born is perishable.62 Hence, everyone who was born will perish, too.63 Christian authors such as Clement of Alexandria also accepted and adopted this general principle.64 Consequently, it is hardly surprising that Valentinians and Marcion ruled out marriage and sexual life for their acolytes. The members of Marcion’s Church were not allowed to have children, as, according to his teaching, marriage is not only “a filthy disgrace” (πορνεία) but also brings about destruction (φθορά).65 Contrary to the mainstream Gnostic view and against Marcion, the position of the Great Church adhered to 1 Timothy 2, 15: “she shall be saved in childbearing,” quoted in this context by Clement of Alexandria.66 He also adds the argument against Cassian, Marcion, and Valentinus: If generation is bad, these blasphemers should say that the Lord, partaking in generation, was in the wrong, and the virgin, who gave birth to him was in the wrong! Oh, these evil people, who blaspheme the plan of God and the mystery of creation, rejecting generation!67 Similarly, logion 37 of the Gospel of Thomas emphasizes innocence, that is, abstinence from the consequences of the body.68 In this text, the image of divesting the “clothes” and “trampling on them” means putting off the robe of the body and rejecting its temptations. The Dialogue of the Savior (NH III, 5) instructs to the same effect: “Pray in a place where there is [no woman], he tells us, meaning ‘Destroy the works of womanhood, not because there is any other [manner of birth], but because they will cease [giving birth].’ ”

152  György Geréby Birthdays and Birth Pangs Two other issues are closely related to the previous two aspects. The first is the significance of the birthday. In the sixth chapter of the PJ, Joachim plans to celebrate the first anniversary of Mary (PJ 6, 2.) He convenes “the priests, the high priests, the scribes, the council members, and the whole nation,” who bless and acclaim the child Mary. Why is this issue significant? Nowadays, celebrating birthdays comes as a natural event without religious significance. In the second century CE, however, celebrating birthdays was not self-evident. In his Life of Plotinus, Porphyry notes that “Plotinus. . . seemed ashamed of being in the body. . . he never disclosed the month or day [of his birth]. This was because he did not desire any birthday sacrifice or feast.”69 Plotinus’ view is consistent with his philosophical anthropology. Since the nature of the soul is transcendent, its real homeland is “there” (ἐκεῖ), that is, in the divine realm. The presence of the soul in the body is transient, and since its enclosed sojourn here on earth is a burden, there is no reason to celebrate this captivity. The other related issue is the reality of Christ’s birth. The widespread Gnostic idea maintained that Jesus Christ did not have a proper body but only an apparent body enveloping the divine nature of Christ as a phantasm. This view is a natural consequence of how His divine nature becomes present in the material world. Hence, the birth was understood as Christ passing through the womb of Mary as water passes through a pipe without proper gestation. A different image illustrates the widespread rejection of proper birth in the period. It is related about another savior, Mithra, who was also associated with extreme misogyny. When he wanted a son, he did not wish this son to be born from a woman. He had to be born out of a rock.70 Against these approaches, the PJ indicates the reality of the Nativity by several facets. First, Mary feels birth pangs before the delivery. Second, a midwife is needed for the birth (her exact role is left in the dark, though), and she says the words of Simeon (cf. Luke 2:30–32). Third, Salome becomes a second witness who checks the permanent virginity of Mary. Finally, Christ reaches out for his mother’s breast: “The infant appeared and went and took the breast from his mother Mary” (PJ 19, 3). This remark is especially intriguing compared to logion 79 of the Gospel of Thomas: “Blessed is the breast. . . that has not given suck,” another quip against childbearing. Conclusion: The Metaphysical Origins I tried to show herein that the PJ does not stress the equal role of the sexes because of some kind of feminism avant la lettre. When it states that the female child is as welcome as a male, or when the PJ repeatedly stands for the fertility of nature and childbearing, the author wants to demarcate a theology against powerful alternatives. When the celebration of the birthday of Mary is a testimony for bodily existence, it is also a preparation for the reality of the birth of Jesus. The PJ stands

Male and Female in the Protevangelium Jacobi  153 by the two principles of Genesis. First, man is created male and female (Genesis 1:27). Second, fertility is good. The divine blessing is a command: “Increase and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). As we have seen, the intellectual environment of the PJ thinks differently. Interpreting Genesis based on tenets from the Timaeus, but also the Republic and the Theaetetus, the Gnostics, and to some extent Philo, understood the Creation in another way. As Bertil Gärtner pointed out, “in the Gnostic systems, the manwoman relationship is motivated basically by the structure of the heavenly world, the male and female powers which are striving after unity.”71 A little later, Gärtner suggests an even stronger interpretation concerning logion 114 of the Gospel of Thomas: “Logion 114 should apply not so much to the distinction between the two sexes as metaphorically to the cosmological aspect.”72 The “cosmological aspect” of the Gnostic understanding (broadly taken) and the implied “structure of the heavenly world” and its relation to the creation seem to depend on four Platonic principles. The first and main starting point was Plato’s “first distinction” in the Timaeus, which stipulated an ontological chasm between the realm of being and the realm of change, the realm of stability and the realm of generation and corruption.73 The second principle depends on another hint of the Timaeus. It maintains that whatever is born is perishable.74 Hence everyone who was born will perish, too.75 Christian authors generally accepted this principle, too, as seen earlier.76 Third, the human being is composed of soul and body. According to the dualism of the first principle, the soul belongs to the first, higher realm, being of transcendent nature, while the body belongs to the second, the lower ontological realm. Hence, the relationship between the body and the soul becomes asymmetric, like a higher nature clad in the robe of matter, like a captive in prison. At this point, the ways begin to part. While the Christians also accepted the soul-body dualism, adhering to the creation account of Genesis required a this-worldly orientation. (There were instances, such as in the case of Origen, when the pre-existence of the soul seemed to be a theological possibility, but this debate came later than the times of the PJ.) Finally, the fourth Platonic principle is a hint in the Timaeus that the material body is subordinate. The material and the sensual are associated with the female and are of a worse nature than the elevated male, as mentioned previously.77 These Platonic principles yield a consistent view of the world. Since the immaterial soul is indivisible, the difference between the sexes eo ipso implies imperfection of a lower level of existence. In the Gnostic view, only if the cycle of birth and death is broken will death cease to exist, which means that the difference between the sexes must be overcome. Hence the succinct formula: “I came to destroy the work of the female.” One overlooked aspect of the PJ is that it opposes the Gnostic view with the help of a quasi-biblical narrative. The narrative of the PJ juxtaposes a “history” to the philosophical theologies, rejecting both the acosmic, the antinomian, and the hierarchical trends of contemporary theologies. The PJ can be summarized as an extension of Galatians 4:4: “But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.”

154  György Geréby Notes 1 Peter Brown. The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 107. I  thank Aleksander Anđelović for his suggestions and comments. 2 April D. DeConick, Holy Misogyny: Why the Sex and Gender Conflicts in the Early Church Still Matter (London: Bloomsbury, 2011), or Silke Petersen, Zerstört die Werke der Weiblichkeit! Maria Magadalena, Salome, und andere Jüngerinnen Jesu in christlich-gnostischen Schriften (Leiden: Brill, 1999), assign practically no space to discuss the philosophical aspects. 3 Iréne Backus, “Guillaume Postel, Théodore Bibliander et le ‘Protévangile de Jacques,’ ” Apocrypha: International Journal of Apocryphal Literatures 6 (1995): 7–65. 4 Pieter A. van Stempvoort, “The Protevangelium Jacobi, the Sources of Its Theme and Style, and Their Bearing on its Date,” Studia Evangelica 3 (1964): 410–26. 5 The following feasts of the liturgical year depend on the PJ: September 8 (birth of the Theotokos), November 21 (presentation to the Temple), and the Roman Catholic feast of December 8 (Immaculate Conception). For the influence of the PJ on art, see David R. Cartlidge and Keith J. Elliott, Art and the Christian Apocrypha (London and New York: Routledge, 2001). 6 Lily C. Vuong, Gender and Purity in the Protevangelium of James (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). 7 Constantin von Tischendorff, Evangelia apocrypha, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: H. Mendelssohn, 1876; reprint: Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 1966). 8 Émile de Strycker, La forme la plus ancienne du Protévangile de Jacques: Recherches sur le papyrus Bodmer 5 avec une édition critique de texte grec et une traduction annotée (Brussels: Société des Bollandists, 1961). 9 A heroic attempt at a synoptic edition can be found in the dissertation of Boyd Daniels, The Greek Manuscript Tradition of the Protevangelium Jacobi, 3 vols. (Unpublished Dissertation, Durham, NC: Duke University, 1956). 10 Harm R. Smid, Protevangelium Jacobi: A Commentary (Assen: van Gorcum, 1965). 11 Alexander Toepel, Das Protevangelium des Jacobus. Ein Beitrag zur neureren um Herkunft, Auslegung und theologische Einordnung (Münster: Aschendorff, 2014). 12 See n4. 13 Éduard Cothenet. “Le Protévangile de Jacques: origine, genre et signification d’un premier midrash chrétien sur la Nativité de Marie,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Band 25/6, Teilband Religion: Vorkonstantinisches Christentum: Leben und Umwelt Jesu; Neues Testament; Kanonische Schriften und Apokryphen (Schluss), ed. Wolfgang Haase (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1988), 4263. Also Ferdinand Kattenbusch, “Die Geburtsgeschichte Jesu als Haggada der Urchristologie,” Theologische Studien und Kritiken 102 (1930): 454–74. 14 Keith J. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993). 15 George Themelos Zervos, The Protevangelium of James: Greek Text, English Translation, Critical Introduction, Vol. 1 (London: T&T Clark, 2018). For the composite character, the first arguments were put forward by Adolf Hilgenfeld, Kritische Untersuchungen über die Evangelien Justins (Halle: Schwetschke, 1850), and then by Alexander Berendts, Studien über Zacharias-Apokryphen und Zacharias-Legenden (Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1895). 16 Detailed proof will be provided in my commentary under preparation. 17 Ernst Benz, “Die heilige Höhle in der alten Christenheit und in der östlich-orthodoxen Kirche,” Eranos: Acta philologica Suecana 22 (1953): 365–432; Anthony Meredith, “Plato’s Cave (Republic VII 514a-517e) in Origen, Plotinus, and Gregory of Nyssa,” Studia Patristica 31 (1993): 49–61.

Male and Female in the Protevangelium Jacobi  155 18 John L. Allen, “The ‘Protevangelium of James’ as an ‘Historia’: The Insufficiency of the ‘Infancy Gospel’ Category,” in Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers 30, ed. Euegen H. Lovering Jr. (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 1992), 508–17. 19 William S. Vorster, “The Protevangelium of James and Intertextuality,” in Text and Testimony: Essays on New Testament and Apocryphal Literature in Honor of A. F. J. Klijn, eds. Tjitze Baarda et al. (Kampen: Uitgeversmaatschappij J. H. Kok, 1988), 262–75. 20 Bart D. Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 21. 21 “μικροπολῖται vs. οἱ δὲ δὴ μείζονι ἐγγραφέντες πατρίδι.” Philo, De Somniis 1, 39. 22 “Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἔξωθεν εἰρήσθω κοινὴν ἔχοντα τὴν ἱστορίαν· οἱ δὲ σοφώτεροι τῶν ἱερέων . . .” Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 364a6. W. Sieveking, ed., Plutarchi Moralia, Vol. 2.3 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1935). 23 Stobaeus, Anthologium 3.1.199, edited by O. Hense and C. Wachsmuth. 24 “Visetur et in fabulis audietur doctorumque stilis rudis perpetuabitur historia asino uectore uirgo regia fugiens captiuitatem.” Apuleius, Metamorphoses, 6, 29, 7–9; Danuta Shanzer, “ ‘Asino vectore virgo regia fugiens captivitatem’: Apuleius and the Tradition of the Protevangelium Jacobi,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 84 (1990): 221–29. 25 “Οὐ γὰρ νομιστέον τὰ ἱστορικὰ ἱστορικῶν εἶναι τύπους καὶ τὰ σωματικὰ σωματικῶν, ἀλλὰ τὰ σωματικὰ πνευματικῶν καὶ τὰ ἱστορικὰ νοητῶν.” Origen, De principiis 1, 3; 8, ed. Koetschau. Cf. Origen, In Johannem commentaria 10.18.110, ed. Blanc. 26 Hermas, Pastor 8, 3, 1, in Die apostolischen Väter I. Der Hirt des Hermas, edited by M. Whittaker (Berlin: Akademis, 1967), GCS 48. 27 Porphyry, De antro nympharum, ed. Seminar Classics 609 (Buffalo, NY: Department of Classics, State University of New York, 1969). Porphyry offers a philosophical, or probably Mithraic, interpretation of Odyssey 13, 101–112. 28 “.  .  . ἔκδηλον εἶναι οὐ τοῖς σοφοῖς μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ἰδιώταις ἀλληγορεῖν τι καὶ αἰνίττεσθαι διὰ τούτων τὸν ποιητήν . . .” Porphyry, De antro c. 4. 29 François Bovon, “The Suspension of Time in Chapter 18 of Protevangelium Jacobi,” in The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Köster, ed. Birger A. Pearson (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991), 393–405. 30 I use the chapter and section numbering of the edition of von Tischendorff. Translations by Keith Elliott (private communication). 31 1.3. “Καὶ ἐλυπήθη ᾿Ιωακεὶμ σφόδρα. 2.7. Καὶ ἐλυπήθη ῎Αννα σφόδρα.” 32 Smid lists other differences, too. First, the sending into the desert is not mentioned in the PJ, in opposition to Sotah 2, 2. Second, there is no meat offering, although both Philo and Josephus mention it. Third, the pronouncement of the oath is missing, and finally, the object in Philo, Josephus, and Mishnah is the punishment of the sinner, while in the Protevangelium, it is the revealing of sin. 33 John P. Gould, “Law, Custom and Myth: Aspects of the Social Position of Women in Classical Athens,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 100 (1980): 38–59. 34 For the Republic, see Julia Annas. “Plato’s Republic and Feminism,” Philosophy 51 (1976): 307–21; Arlene W. Saxonhouse, “The Philosopher and the Female in the Political Thought of Plato,” in Plato’s Republic: Critical Essays, ed. Richard Kraut (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), 95–113. Also: Gregory Vlastos, “Was Plato a Feminist?” in Plato’s Republic, ed. Richard Kraut (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), 115–28. 35 Dorothea Wender, “Plato: Misogynist, Paedophile, and Feminist,” Arethusa 6, no. 1 (1973): 75–90; Annas, “Plato’s Republic and Feminism,” 81. 36 Plato, Timaeus 42a, in Platonis Opera, vol. 4, edited by John Burnet (Oxford: C ­ larendon Press, 1902). 37 Plato, Timaeus 90e-91a, trans. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology. The Timaeus of Plato (Indianapolis, IN and Cambridge, MA: Hackett, 1935), 353.

156  György Geréby 38 Plato, Timaeus 41d. 39 Philo, De opificio mundi 135. L. Cohn, ed., Philonis Alexandrini opera quae supersunt, Vol. 1 (Berlin: Reimer, 1896). Reprint: Berlin: De Gruyter, 1962. 40 The variable terminology of Philo is presented in parallel in Richard A. Baer, Philo’s Use of the Categories Male and Female (Leiden: Brill, 1970), 15. 41 Philo, Legum Allegoriarum libri 2, 38. I-III, ed. Leopold Cohn (Berlin: Reimer, 1896). 42 Plato, Timaeus 41d. 43 Philo, De opificio mundi 134. Cf. Baer, Philo’s Use, 19. 44 Philo, De opificio mundi 134, trans. C. D. Yonge. 45 Clemens Romanus, Ep 2 ad Corinthios 12, 2. K. Bihlmeyer and W. Schneemelcher (post F. X. Funk), eds., Die apostolischen Väter, 3rd ed. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1970). (Emphasis added.) 46 Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata 3.9.63.2. L. Früchtel, O. Stählin, and U. Treu, eds., Clemens Alexandrinus, Vol. 2 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1960). 47 Petersen, Zerstört die Werke der Weiblichkeit!, 309–38. 48 Apocryphon of John. Synopsis of Nag Hammadi Codices II, 1; III, 1; and IV, 1 with BG 8502, 2, eds. Michael Waldstein and Frederik Wisse (Leiden, New York and Köln: Brill, 1995), 140 (BG 63:3–8); 141 (NH I1 24:6–8). 49 On the Origin of the World (NH II, 5 and XIII, 2), quoted by Gedaliahu A. G. Stroumsa, Another Seed: Studies in Gnostic Mythology (Leiden: Brill, 1984), 39. 50 Gospel of Philip (NHC II, 3) 70, 15, trans. W. W. Isenberg, in The Nag Hammadi Library: Revised Edition, ed. James M. Robinson (San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1990), 151. 51 Petersen, Zerstört die Werke der Weiblichkeit!, 309–38. 52 Plato, Theaetetus 176b1. J. Burnet, ed., Platonis Opera, Vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900). 53 The (first) Apocalypse of James (NHC V, 3), 41, trans. W. R. Schoedel, in The Nag Hammadi Library, ed. Robinson, 267. 54 Zostrianos (NHC VIII, 1) 132, trans. J. N. Sieber, in The Nag Hammadi Library, ed. Robinson, 430. 55 Gospel of Thomas (NHC II, 2), 22, 4–6, trans. the Berlin Working Group for Coptic Gnostic Writings, revised by Stephen J. Patterson and James M. Robinson, in The Fifth Gospel: The Gospel of Thomas Comes of Age, eds. Stephen J. Patterson, Hans-Gebhard Bethge, and James M. Robinson (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998), accessed May 6, 2023, Gnosis.org, www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gth_pat_rob.htm. 56 Gospel of Thomas (NHC II, 2), logion 114, trans. the Berlin Working Group for Coptic Gnostic Writings. 57 Gospel of Philip (NHC II, 3), 68, 24, trans. W. W. Isenberg, in The Nag Hammadi Library, ed. Robinson, 150. 58 “. . . τὴν γυναῖκα εἰς ἄνδρα μετατίτεσθαι.” Origen, In Johannem commentaria VI, xx, 111, ed. Blanc (Paris: Éditions du Cerf 1996–1975), 212. SC 157. 59 Hippolytus, Refutatio V, 7, 15: “ἐπὶ τὴν αἰωνίαν ἄνω μετελήλυθεν οὐσίαν, ὅπου, φησίν, οὐκ ἔστιν οὔτε θῆλυ οὔτε ἄρσεν, ἀλλὰ ‘καινὴ κτίσις,’ ‘καινὸς ἄνθρωπος,’ ὅ ἐστιν ἀρσενόθηλυς.” M. Marcovich, Hippolytus. Refutatio omnium haeresium (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1986). 60 PJ 3, trans. Alexander Walker, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 8, eds. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886). 61 “μέχρι πότε θάνατος ἰσχύσει; .  .  . μέχρις ἂν εἶπεν ὑμεῖς αἱ γυναῖκες τίκτητε.” Clemens Alexandrinus, Excerpta ex Theodoto 4, 67, 2; Stromata 3.6.45.3; 3.9.63.1; 64, 1; 3.13.92.2. 62 “τὸ μὲν οὖν δὴ δεθὲν πᾶν λυτόν,” Plato, Timaeus 41a. 63 Eugnostos (NHC III, 3), in The Nag Hammadi Library, ed. Robinson, 224. 64 “γενέσει γὰρ πάντως ἕπεται καὶ φθορά.” Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata 3.6.46.1.1

Male and Female in the Protevangelium Jacobi  157 65 Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott. Eine Monographie zur Geschichte der Grundlegung der katholischen Kirche. Zweite verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage (Leipzig: J. C. Heinrich’s, 1924), 148–50. 66 Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata 3.12.90.2. 67 “Εἰ δὲ ἡ γένεσις κακόν, ἐν κακῷ λεγόντων οἱ βλάσφημοι τὸν γενέσεως μετειληφότα κύριον, ἐν κακῷ τὴν γεννήσασαν παρθένον. οἴμοι τῶν κακῶν, βλασφημοῦσι τὸ βούλημα τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τὸ μυστήριον τῆς κτίσεως, τὴν γένεσιν διαβάλλοντες. διὰ ταῦτα ἡ δόκησις Κασσιανῷ, διὰ ταῦτα καὶ Μαρκίωνι, ναὶ μὴν καὶ Οὐαλεντίνῳ τὸ σῶμα τὸ ψυχικόν, ὅτι φασίν· ‘ὁ ἄνθρωπος παρωμοιώθη τοῖς κτήνεσιν’ εἰς συνδυασμὸν ἀφικνούμενος.” Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata 3.17.102.3. 68 Gospel of Thomas (NHC II, 2), logion 37. “His disciples said: ‘When will you appear to us, and when will we see you?’ Jesus said: ‘When you undress without being ashamed and take your clothes (and) put them under your feet like little children (and) trample on them, then [you] will see the son of the Living One, and you will not be afraid.’ ” Trans. T. O. Lambdin, in The Nag Hammadi Library, ed. Robinson, 130. 69 Porphyry, Vita Plotini c. 1–2, in Plotini Opera, Vol. 1, eds. Paul Henry and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), 1–2. 70 “Μίθρας υἱὸν ἔχειν βουλόμενος καὶ τὸ τῶν γυναικῶν γένος μισῶν πέτρᾳ τινὶ προσεξέθορεν.” Ps-Plutarch, De fluviis 23, 4. 71 Bertil Gärtner, The Theology of the Gospel According to Thomas, trans. E. J. Sharpe (New York: Harper, 1961), 253. 72 Ibid., 255. 73 “Ἔστιν οὖν δὴ κατ' ἐμὴν δόξαν πρῶτον διαιρετέον τάδε· τί τὸ ὂν ἀεί, γένεσιν δὲ οὐκ ἔχον, καὶ τί τὸ γιγνόμενον μὲν ἀεί, ὂν δὲ οὐδέποτε.” Plato, Timaeus 27d5. 74 “τὸ μὲν οὖν δὴ δεθὲν πᾶν λυτόν.” Plato, Timaeus 41a. 75 Eugnostos (NHC III, 3), in The Nag Hammadi Library, ed. Robinson, 224. 76 “γενέσει γὰρ πάντως ἕπεται καὶ φθορά.” Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata 3.6.46.1.1 77 Plato, Timaeus 42b.

Bibliography Primary Literature Apocryphon of John. Synopsis of Nag Hammadi Codices II, 1; III, 1; and IV, 1 with BG 8502, 2, edited by Michael Waldstein and Frederik Wisse. Leiden, New York and Köln: Brill, 1995. Apuleius Madaurensis. The Golden Ass, Being the Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius. Translated by William Adlington, revised by Stephen Gasele. London and Cambridge, MA: William Heinemann, 1971. Clément d’Alexandrie. Éxtraits de Théodote (Excerpta ex Theodoto). Texte grecque, introduction, traduction et notes de François Sagnard, OP. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1948. ———. Stromata. Edited by Otto Stählin, Ludwig Früchtel, and Ursula Treu, 3 Vols. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1960–1970. Clemens Romanus. “Ep 2 ad Corinthios.” In Die apostolischen Väter, edited by K. Bihlmeyer and W. Schneemelcher (post F. X. Funk), 3rd ed. Tübingen: Mohr, 1970. Gospel of Thomas (NHC II, 2). Translated by the Berlin Working Group for Coptic Gnostic Writings, revised by Stephen J. Patterson and James M. Robinson. In The Fifth Gospel: The Gospel of Thomas Comes of Age, edited by Stephen J. Patterson, Hans-­Gebhard Bethge, and James M. Robinson. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998. Accessed May 6, 2023. Gnosis.org, www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gth_pat_rob.htm. Hermas. “Pastor.” In Die apostolischen Väter, Vol. I: Der Hirt des Hermas, edited by M. Whittaker, 2nd ed. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1967.

158  György Geréby Hippolytus. Refutatio omnium haeresium (= Philosophumena), edited by Miroslav Marcovich. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1986. Hock, Ronald F. The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas: With Introduction, Notes, and Original Text Featuring the New Scholars Version Translation. Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 1995. Origen. “In Johannem commentaria.” In Origène, Commentaire sur Saint Jean, edited by C. Blanc. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1966–1970. ———. De principiis. Vier Bücher von den Prinzipien. Origenes. Herausgegeben, übersetzt, mit kritischen und erläuternden Anmerkungen versehen von H. Görgemanns und H. Karpp. Dritte, gegenüber der zweiten unveränderte Auflage. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgemeneinschaft, 1992. Philo. “De opificio mundi.” In Philonis Alexandrini opera quae supersunt, edited by Leopold Cohn, Vol. 1, 1–60. Berlin: Reimer, 1896. ———. “De somniis.” In Philonis Alexandrini opera quae supersunt, edited by P. Wendland, Vol. 3. Berlin: Reimer, 1898. Reprint: Berlin: De Gruyter, 1962. ———. “Legum Allegoriarum libri. I-III.” In Philonis Alexandrini opera quae supersunt, edited by Leopold Cohn, Vol. 1, 61–169. Berlin: Reimer, 1896. Plato. “Theaetetus.” In Platonis Opera, edited by John Burnet, Tomus I. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1900. ———. “Timaeus.” In Platonis Opera, edited by John Burnet, Tomus IV. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1902. Plutarchus, “De Iside et Osiride.” In Plutarchi moralia, edited by Wilhelm Sieveking, Vol. 2.3. Leipzig: Teubner, 1935. Reprint: 1971. Porphyry. Vita Plotini c. 1–2. In Plotini Opera, 3 Vols. edited by Paul Henry and HansRudolf Schwyzer, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964. ———. De antro nympharum. Edited by Seminar Classics 609. Buffalo, NY: Department of Classics, State University of New York, 1969. Protevangelium Jacobi, translated by Alexander Walker. In Ante-Nicene Fathers, edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, Vol. 8. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886. Ps-Plutarch. “De fluviis.” In Geographi Graeci minores, edited by Karl Müller, Vol. 2, 637– 65. Paris: Didot, 1861. Reprint: Hildesheim: Olms, 1965. Robinson, James M., ed. The Nag Hammadi Library: Revised Edition. San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1990. Stobaeus. Anthologium, edited by Otto Hense and Curt Wachsmuth, 5 Vols. Berlin: Weidmann, 1994. von Tischendorff, Constantin. Evangelia apocrypha. 2nd ed. Leipzig: H. Mendelssohn, 1876. Reprint: Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 1966. Zervos, George Themelos. The Protevangelium of James: Greek Text, English Translation, Critical Introduction, Vol. 1. London: T&T Clark, 2018. Secondary Literature Allen, John L. “The ‘Protevangelium of James’ as an ‘Historia’: The Insufficiency of the ‘Infancy Gospel’ Category.” In Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers, edited by Euegen H. Lovering Jr., Vol. 30, 508–17. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 1992. Annas, Julia. “Plato’s Republic and Feminism.” Philosophy 51 (1976): 307–21. Backus, Iréne. “Guillaume Postel, Théodore Bibliander et le ‘Protévangile de Jacques.’ ” Apocrypha: International Journal of Apocryphal Literatures 6 (1995): 7–65. Baer, Richard A. Philo’s Use of the Categories Male and Female. Leiden: Brill, 1970.

Male and Female in the Protevangelium Jacobi  159 Benz, Ernst. “Die heilige Höhle in der alten Christenheit und in der östlich-orthodoxen Kirche.” Eranos: Acta philologica Suecana 22 (1953): 365–432. Berendts, Alexander. Studien über Zacharias-Apokryphen und Zacharias-Legenden. Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1895. Bovon, François. “The Suspension of Time in Chapter 18 of Protevangelium Jacobi.” In The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Köster, edited by Birger A. Pearson, 393–405. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991. Bovon, François, and Paul Geoltrain, eds. Écrits apocryphes chrétiens, Vol. I. Paris: Pléiade, 1997. Bremmer, Jan N., Andrew J. Doole, Thomas R. Karmann, Tobias Nicklas, and Boris Repschinski, eds. The Protevangelium of James. Leuven: Peeters, 2020. Brown, Peter. The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Cartlidge, David R., and Keith J. Elliott. Art and the Christian Apocrypha. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Cornford, Francis M. Plato’s Cosmology. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 1935. Cothenet, Éduard. “Le Protévangile de Jacques: origine, genre et signification d’un premier midrash chrétien sur la Nativité de Marie.” In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Band 25/6, Teilband Religion: Vorkonstantinisches Christentum: Leben und Umwelt Jesu; Neues Testament; Kanonische Schriften und Apokryphen (Schluss), edited by Wolfgang Haase, 4252–69. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1988. Daniels, Boyd L. The Greek Manuscript Tradition of the Protevangelium Jacobi. Unpublished Dissertation, 3 Vols. Durham, NC: Duke University, 1956. de Strycker, Émile. La forme la plus ancienne du Protévangile de Jacques: Recherches sur le papyrus Bodmer 5 avec une édition critique de texte grec et une traduction annotée. Brussels: Société des Bollandists, 1961. DeConick, April D. Holy Misogyny: Why the Sex and Gender Conflicts in the Early Church Still Matter. London: Bloomsbury, 2011. Elliott, Keith J. The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993. Ehrman, Bart D., and Zlatko Pleše. The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Gärtner, Bertil. The Theology of the Gospel According to Thomas. Translated by Eric J. Sharpe. New York: Harper, 1961. Gould, John P. “Law, Custom, and Myth: Aspects of the Social Position of Women in Classical Athens” Journal of Hellenic Studies 100 (1980): 38–59. Hilgenfeld, Adolf. Kritische Untersuchungen über die Evangelien Justins. Halle: Schwetschke, 1850. Kattenbusch, Ferdinand. “Die Geburtsgeschichte Jesu als Haggada der Urchristologie.” Theologische Studien und Kritiken 102 (1930): 454–74. Meredith, Anthony. “Plato’s Cave (Republic VII 514a-517e) in Origen, Plotinus, and Gregory of Nyssa.” Studia Patristica 31 (1993): 49–61. Petersen, Silke. Zerstört die Werke der Weiblichkeit!: Maria Magadalena, Salome, und andere Jüngerinnen Jesu in christlich-gnostischen Schriften. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Saxonhouse, Arlene W. “The Philosopher and the Female in the Political Thought of Plato.” In Plato’s Republic: Critical Essays, edited by Richard Kraut, 95–113. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997. Shanzer, Danuta. “ ‘Asino vectore virgo regia fugiens captivitatem’: Apuleius and the Tradition of the Protevangelium Jacobi.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 84 (1990): 221–29.

160  György Geréby Smid, Harm R. Protevangelium Jacobi: A Commentary. Assen: van Gorcum, 1965. Stroumsa, Gedaliahu A. G. Another Seed: Studies in Gnostic Mythology. Leiden: Brill, 1984. Toepel, Alexander. Das Protevangelium des Jacobus. Ein Beitrag zur neureren Diskussion um Herkunft, Auslegung und theologische Einordnung. Münster: Aschendorff, 2014. van Stempvoort, Pieter A. “The Protevangelium Jacobi, the Sources of Its Theme and Style, and Their Bearing on its Date.” Studia Evangelica 3 (1964): 410–26. Vanden Eykel, Eric. “But Their Faces Were All Looking Up”: Author and Reader in the Protevenagelium of James. London: T&T Clark, 2016. Vlastos, Gregory. “Was Plato a Feminist?” In Plato’s Republic: Critical Essays, edited by Richard Kraut, 115–28. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997. von Harnack, Adolf. Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott. Eine Monographie zur Geschichte der Grundlegung der katholischen Kirche. Zweite verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage. Leipzig: J.C. Heinrich’s, 1924. Vorster, William S. “The Protevangelium of James and Intertextuality.” In Text and Testimony: Essays on New Testament and Apocryphal Literature in Honor of A. F. J. Klijn, edited by Tjitze Baarda et al., 262–75. Kampen: Uitgeversmaatschappij J. H. Kok, 1988. Vuong, Lily C. Gender and Purity in the Protevangelium of James. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013. Wender, Dorothea. “Plato: Misogynist, Paedophile, and Feminist.” Arethusa 6, no. 1 (1973): 75–90.

8 Identical, But Not Alike The Resurrection of the Body According to Amphilochius of Iconium István Pásztori-Kupán The Early Christian notion of the resurrection of the body generated many disputes and dissensions throughout the centuries. Although the Apostle Paul had made a significant distinction between the risen body and the fallen one,1 the available Early Christian sources still present us with a considerably colored picture concerning the various views about the resurrection. The limits of my chapter do not permit an in-depth analysis of every creedal formula concerning bodily resurrection, yet it should be observed that while the notion appears in the so-called Apostolic Creed of Western Christendom as the “resurrection of the flesh” (Lat. carnis resurrectio), the term “of the flesh” (τῆς σαρκός) is absent from the NicaenoConstantinopolitanum (381). One important study in the field was provided by Luise Abramowski,2 who based her argument partly on Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Catechetical Works, which had survived in a Syriac translation.3 According to Abramowski’s theory, the precursor of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed must be sought within the theological interaction between Rome (Pope Damasus) and Antioch. One possible scenario could be that Western theologians—e.g., the participants of the Council of 369 held by Damasus4—expanded the Nicene Creed of 325, and this augmented version was then adapted to the local circumstances by neo-Nicene theologians of Antioch. Abramowski labels this formula, hypothesized by her, as Romano-Nicaenum.5 According to Abramowski, this could have been the basis for later textual changes, including the so-called Antiochene Creed of 379. It is true that Abramowski’s theory concerning the formation of the Antiochene Creed in 379 and then of the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitanum of 381 was challenged and that important differences of opinion appeared among scholars,6 but these divergences have no direct relevance upon the focus of the present investigation: one may argue about the manner how these formulae came about, yet it remains indisputable that the notion of bodily/fleshly resurrection is present in the Apostolic Creed and absent from the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitanum, and this fact is what I am concerned with here. It is also important from my present perspective that the Antiochene Formula of 379 did not simply contain the phrase “we are looking forward to the resurrection of the dead” like the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitanum of 381, but rather “the resurrection of the flesh.”7 The Syriac translation of the Antiochene Formula, commented DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-13

162  István Pásztori-Kupán on by Theodore of Mopsuestia, contains the term pagrā, which is primarily the equivalent of the Greek σῶμα (body), yet it had also been used in the sense of σάρξ (flesh) as well. Consequently, the passage quoted by Theodore, which survived only in Syriac, could be interpreted either as ἀνάστασις σώματος (resurrection of the body), or ἀνάστασις σαρκός (resurrection of the flesh).8 We should also observe that the Syriac language has a separate term to denote σάρξ, i.e., “flesh”: this is the word besrā, the equivalent of the Hebrew BaSaR.9 We do not know whether in this sense the so-called Romano-Nicaenum (postulated by Abramowski) may have influenced the formation of the Antiochene text, but, as clarified earlier, this aspect has no direct bearing upon our investigation. Due to lack of evidence, it is difficult to explain why the Fathers who had been gathered in Constantinople in 381 finally decided to leave out the passage concerning the “resurrection of the body/flesh” from the Antiochene Creed of 379, and replace it with “the intense expectation” (see the term προσδοκῶμεν) of “the resurrection of the dead.” The fact that they knew and accepted the Antiochene Creed of 379 is nonetheless attested by the fifth canon attributed to this council of 381, a canon that was in fact composed by the subsequent Council of 382, held also in Constantinople, having mostly the same participants as in the previous year. This fifth canon speaks both of the letter/treatise (Tome) of the westerners and that of the Antiochenes: Περὶ τοῦ τόμου τῶν Δυτικῶν καὶ τοὺς ἐν Ἀντιοχείᾳ ἀπεδεξάμεθα τοὺς μίαν ὁμολογοῦντας πατρὸς καὶ υἱοῦ καὶ ἁγίου πνεύματος θεότητα.10

Concerning the Tome of the Westerns, we also recognized/received the Antiochenes, who acknowledge the one Godhead of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Turning now to our main theme, we ought to realize that the following questions emerge almost by necessity: are the various formulae professing the “resurrection of the dead” (ἀνάστασις νεκρῶν), the “resurrection of the body” (ἀνάστασις σώματος), or the “resurrection of the flesh” (ἀνάστασις σαρκός, carnis resurrectio) respectively equivalent? If they express the very same thing, why should one present them in so many versions? If they do not have identical meanings, what are the detectable nuances, which distinguish them from one another? Due to the scarcity of the available evidence from Early Christian centuries, it is almost impossible to provide a complete answer to all these and related issues with any certainty. Instead, for a partial, yet still relevant clarification of a germane question, we invoke here an often forgotten teacher of the fourth century, namely Amphilochius of Iconium (ca. 340/345—ca. after 394), who was a contemporary of Theodore of Mopsuestia and a sharp-eyed witness to the formation of these formulae, as well as a close friend of the famous Cappadocian Fathers, highly likely being the first cousin of Gregory Nazianzen.11 Although the times have been quite adverse towards his legacy, based on the surviving quotes and fragments we can conclude that Amphilochius was a great thinker endowed with a remarkably good sense of humor and a rare ability to formulate his points epigrammatically.12 It

Identical, But Not Alike 163 was he who had encouraged Basil of Caesarea to compose his work On the Holy Spirit.13 According to the testimony of Theodoret of Cyrus, Emperor Theodosius, who, by his famous edict Cunctos populos published in the year 380, had made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, issued an edict against the Arians, Macedonians, and Apollinarists in September 383 as a direct result of his encounter with Amphilochius,14 whose formulae concerning one’s identity, personhood, and other related issues are indeed worthy of our attention. I agree with the observation of István Bugár, namely, that “the notion of person came about as a result of Ancient Christian disputes.”15 Many experts have expressed their views on the matter, and instead of providing a lengthy overview of the question, I  would like to draw the reader’s attention to George Leonard Prestige’s excellent analysis.16 The first meaning of the Greek πρόσωπον is indeed “face,” “countenance” (also depicting a character in a drama), yet although these actors wore representative masks in order to be identifiable from a distance by the public in the amphitheatre, we should remember that the scholars of old were able and did in fact distinguish the “face” or “person” (πρόσωπον) from the mask (προσωπεῖον) itself. One of our best witnesses in this matter is Clement of Alexandria, who says that the women painting their faces are effectively “making their faces into masks” (προσωπεῖα ποιούσας τὰ πρόσωπα).17 Furthermore, just as Bugár observes, quoting Thomas Aquinas, personhood also involves a relationship.18 The explanations, provided by the Cappadocians, and the resulting emergence of the so-called neo-Nicene terminology is also seminal in understanding the concept of “person” in these Early Christian times. The famous “Epistle 38” initially attributed to Basil the Great and later restored to his younger brother, Gregory of Nyssa—especially its famous comparison or metaphor of the rainbow—is a milestone in the history of theological distinction between universal essence and individual reality.19 Since Amphilochius was close to the other three Cappadocians not only on a personal level of friendship, but also concerning his theological thought and doctrine, it can be observed that he was in substantial agreement with his friends concerning the notion of “individual reality” or “person.” Before turning our attention to Amphilochius, a few ideas may need some clarification. Our current notions of “person” and “personal identity” are inseparably linked to the realizations of modern psychology. Without even attempting to discuss the relevant literature, we may assert that the idea of “person” could be brought close to the notions of “soul” and “spirit,” or to some extent even detached from the notions of “flesh” and “body,” yet not entirely. This is amplified further by their very usage in common human language. For example, if I say that I was somewhere “in spirit,” it is unmistakably clear for everyone that I was not in that place in my physical, bodily form. Yet if I say that I was “personally present” at a particular event, then everyone, without exception, will understand that I was there physically, i.e., bodily. Therefore, I could not have been anywhere else. To put it simply: according to the common usage of notions, my “person” is/was still there and then, where and when my body is/was. Consequently, if we express ourselves in such terms even in the 21st century, i.e., after the realizations formulated by

164  István Pásztori-Kupán modern psychology, sociology, and other contemporary sciences concerned with individual and communal human existence, we really cannot find fault with the ancient authors for having used certain ideas and limitations in their age, confines that are still very much lurking in the background of our own verbal manifestations. Nonetheless, it is fascinating to observe how some of these writers may provide us with interesting clarifications that are relevant to our modern perception of a far more nuanced picture regarding personhood. The second point is the spatial and temporal limitation of the idea of “person.” For us, humans, a “person” is somehow bound to a place, or, better said: a “person” is not infinite. This is one of the reasons why we find it difficult to perceive God as a Person, because we try to imagine God based on our limited personal existence, and not the other way around. Nonetheless, arguably from both theological and philosophical perspectives, God is the perfect, i.e., infinite Person, and we, humans, are the copies. To offer a practical example: if someone is praying, he/ she could be said to be “in a private conversation” with God. Now, what if seven billion people were praying at the same time? Would each one of them be “in a private conversation” with God? The answer is yes, because God’s personhood is infinite, even if we cannot perceive this within our limited personal state, bound to space, time, and body. God does not have to constantly shift his attention from one praying human to the other, thus trying to catch a brief moment of “privacy” with each of the seven billion: instead, God “keeps both his eyes” on each one, at the same time, without ever missing out on any of these simultaneous “private conversations.” The third and last observation concerns the legal or judicial interpretation of “person.” Human legal systems usually define a physical person as being strongly bound to the body, to the flesh. For example, I  can have an alibi only if I can prove that I  was personally, i.e., bodily, in a different place from where an act took place. Whenever I am asked by my theology students: “Is there anything God cannot do?” my answer usually is, “Yes, there is. God is unable to provide an alibi.” There is no such case that God was “personally not there” in any given moment, time, or space. Furthermore, our outward, physical features are organically linked to the characteristics of our personhood. Any legal document issued by the police or other official authorities describing our bodily features (eye color, shape of face, height, weight, etc.) is labeled as “personal description.” This trend continues even in the case of modern filmmaking, e.g., the question of CGI (computer-generated imagery), which can bring to the screen both the appearance and the voice(s) of long-dead actors, causing a whole new series of ethical and legal battles.20 To put it in simple terms: if Peter Cushing’s legal heirs are entitled to even the smallest amount of income generated by the film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, as a post-mortem royalty for the role played by Cushing’s likeness in the movie (because Cushing had died in 1994 and the film was made in 2016), then the point is clear. Human law—even 21st-century human law—cannot, and indeed does not, neatly separate the person from his/her body, voice, physical appearance, or even his/her likeness.

Identical, But Not Alike 165 Consequently, if the idea of “person” is inseparable from the body even in our own daily relational and legal thinking, then this must have been the case even more for the people in Antiquity. Very few individuals attempted to overcome this limitation and introduce a harsh separation of person and body: Plotinus is said to have been ashamed of being in a body and to have refused to allow a portrait to be made of him.21 Yet, one was still made. One may not be far off the mark postulating that for ancient Christians the idea of the resurrection of the body represented the recognition and confession of preserving one’s personal identity. In the case of Jesus’ resurrection, not only the idea of becoming alive is important, but also the fact that he could be recognized in this risen state. Of course, not in the same manner as before, but rather in the way how and when he intended to be recognized. Mary acknowledges him based on his voice first;22 the disciples on the road to Emmaus identify him only at the destination,23 i.e., after a two-hour walking journey and discussion,24 and even then, based on his particular mode of breaking the bread. The case of Thomas is by far the clearest evidence of Jesus’ personal identification based on his body.25 I avoid here the theological discussion concerning the similarities and differences of his body before and after resurrection (the so-called glorious or glorified body of Christ, etc.), yet we emphasize that for the personal identification of Jesus it was utterly important for him to be recognized also on the basis of his physical, bodily appearance. The thought of “bodily resurrection” is therefore closely connected to the preservation or continuation of one’s personal identity, starting from the earliest Christian centuries up until our time. This is true even if the notion of “personhood” in earlier centuries was not so developed or complex as it is today. This intention of introducing the “resurrection of the body/flesh” into some Early Christian creedal formulae, on the one hand, signifies that everyone will be resurrected personally (i.e., he/she will not be swallowed up into a larger “world spirit,” thus losing one’s personal features). On the other hand, it follows that on “judgment day” God will discuss with each person individually: a person will meet another person. Based on this approach, any speculation concerning the quality and features of a risen “body” (if we can or even should apply that notion to it) becomes largely irrelevant. It is exactly on this point where fragments or sometimes morsels of Amphilochius’ thought can provide us with some useful clues, especially since he was not only able to distinguish between flesh (σάρξ) and body (σῶμα) but was also keen on insisting upon a personal resurrection, i.e., that the fallen one is identical with the resurrected one, regardless of whether we speak of Christ or ourselves. The main thesis of our present chapter is thus the following: if we interpret correctly the notions and formulae applied by Amphilochius, even his fragmentarily preserved writings show that by using the means and phrases of his own time, he provided us with a definition of the event of resurrection, which we can safely label as the idea of preserving one’s personal identity. In the following text, it is useful to keep an eye on the usage and meaning of flesh (σάρξ) and body (σῶμα). Amphilochius argued not only against any concept of Jesus’ risen body being a mere phantasm, but intended to emphasize that

166  István Pásztori-Kupán Jesus remained the same one after his resurrection and glorification as he had been before: Μετὰ γὰρ τὴν ἀνάστασιν ὁ κύριος τὰ συναμφότερα δείκνυσι, καὶ ὅτι οὐ τοιοῦτον τὸ σῶμα, καὶ ὅτι τοῦτο τὸ ἀνιστάμενον. Ἀναμνήσθητι τῆς ἱστορίας. ῏Ησαν οἱ μαθηταὶ συνειλεγμένοι μετὰ τὸ πάθος καὶ τὴν ἀνάστασιν καὶ τῶν θυρῶν κεκλεισμένων ἔστη μέσος αὐτῶν ὁ κύριος. Οὐδέποτε τοῦτο πρὸ τοῦ πάθους ἐποίησε. Μὴ γὰρ οὐκ ἠδύνατο ὁ Χριστὸς καὶ πάλαι τοῦτο ποιῆσαι; Πάντα γὰρ τῷ θεῷ δυνατά.

After resurrection the Lord shows both things: first, that his body is not alike, yet that this is that which had been risen. Remember the story. After the passion and resurrection, the disciples were assembled, and while the doors were shut, the Lord stood in their midst. [John 20:19]. He had never done such a thing before his passion. Is it because that the Christ was unable to do this before? For with God all things are possible [Mark 10:27]. Ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐποίησε πρὸ τοῦ Yet he did not do this before his passion, πάθους, ἵνα μὴ νομίσῃς φαντασίαν to prevent you from either considering the τὴν οἰκονομίαν, ἢ δόκησιν, μηδὲ “oikonomia” [incarnation, dispensation] πνευματικὴν οἰηθῇς τοῦ Χριστοῦ τὴν as being a phantasy or an appearance, or σάρκα, μηδὲ ἐξ οὐρανῶν κατελθοῦσαν, deeming the flesh of Christ as being spirμηδὲ ἑτεροούσιον τῇ ἡμετέρᾳ σαρκί.26 itual, or as descending from heaven, or as of different essence from our flesh. Despite the change in quality and features of Jesus’ body, Amphilochius emphasizes: not someone else was resurrected on the third day, but the very same Lord, who had suffered death. The change of the properties or even abilities of the body, moreover, the demonstration of these capabilities after the resurrection do not modify the basic and crucial fact: Christ is and remains the same one, whom the disciples had already known before his passion and death. The basis of our communion with Christ according to Amphilochius is our common human nature. His friend and relative, Gregory Nazianzen, had claimed that whatever was not assumed into the person of Christ could not be cured, yet that which had been assumed by Christ was implicitly saved.27 Amphilochius applies this idea to the body, and implicitly to the person, arguing that we may be in communion with Christ only if he had taken on the very same human nature (and a similar body) like ours: Εἰ γὰρ ἕτερον ἀνέλαβε σῶμα, τί πρὸς τὸ ἐμὸν τὸ τῆς σωτηρίας δεόμενον; Εἰ ἐξ οὐρανῶν κατήγαγε σάρκα, τί πρὸς τὴν ἐμὴν σάρκα τὴν ἐκ τῆς γῆς εἰλημμένην;28

For if he had taken on a different body, what does it have to do with my body needing redemption? If he had brought his flesh from heaven, what does it have to do with my flesh, which had been taken from the earth?

Identical, But Not Alike  167 Well, according to our human categories the body has indeed something in common with the person. Even Christ had a real human body, in which he could be recognized as Jesus of Nazareth. When the Word takes on our body, he implicitly submits and adapts himself to the laws of our reasoning. This is how God accommodates himself in Christ to our simpler concepts of person and body. According to Amphilochius’ prior quoted statement, the personal connection between Christ and us is inseparable from corporeality. His message can be reformulated by using contemporary expressions, as follows: if Jesus is a different type of person (e.g., infinite), what does he have to do with my limited person needing redemption? If he had brought his infinite personhood from heaven, what does he have to do with my person, which had been taken from dust and subjected to time and space? The assertions of this ancient teacher make perfect sense in our time as well if we try to interpret his words in the aforementioned manner. Such a reading is supported by the very reason why Early Christians kept emphasizing Jesus’ bodily presence, i.e., that he is a real human being, a true human person. This was practically the only way to formulate such a thesis at the time. Moreover, expressing it in any better way even in our own age appears to be more difficult than we may initially assume. Jesus became known and then recognized in this body—before and after his resurrection. This is how his personal identity was maintained for all those who had followed him before and after his passion. Amphilochius grasps the teaching of the Apostle Paul about the two aspects of the body (σῶμα) in a similarly adequate fashion. It is worth observing that Paul speaks here of σῶμα, not of σάρξ,29 and that in his interpretation, the σῶμα ψυχικόν (natural/physical body) does not differ from the σῶμα πνευματικόν (spiritual body) by not having anything in common—since the identity of the person can be discerned in both—but rather that the latter is the glorified, exalted version of the former, having been freed from corruption and mortality. According to Amphilochius’ epigrammatic formulation: it is identical but not alike. Διὰ ταῦτα μὲν οὖν, οὐ πρὸ τοῦ πάθους, ἀλλὰ μετὰ τὸ πάθος, τῶν θυρῶν κεκλεισμένων ἔστη τῶν μαθητῶν μέσος ὁ κύριος, ἵνα γνῷς ὅτι καὶ σοῦ τὸ ψυχικὸν σῶμα σπαρὲν ἐγείρεται σῶμα πνευματικόν. Ἵνα δὲ μὴ πάλιν ἄλλο νομίσῃς εἶναι τὸ ἀνιστάμενον, τοῦ Θωμᾶ πρὸς τὴν ἀνάστασιν ἀπιστήσαντος, δείκνυσιν αὐτῷ τοὺς τύπους τῶν ἥλων, δείκνυσιν αὐτῷ τῶν τραυμάτων τὰ ἴχνη. Ἆρ’ οὐκ ἴσχυεν ἑαυτὸν ἰάσασθαι καὶ ταῦτα μετὰ τὴν ἀνάστασιν, ὁ πάντας καὶ πρὸ τῆς ἀναστάσεως ἰασάμενος; Ἀλλὰ δι’ ὧν μὲν τοὺς τύπους τῶν ἥλων δείκνυσι, παραδίδωσιν ὅτι τοῦτο· δι’ ὧν δὲ κεκλεισμένων τῶν θυρῶν εἴσεισι,

This is why the Lord did not appear through the shut doors amidst his disciples before his passion, but after it, for you to perceive that your “sown physical body will raise as spiritual body” [1 Corinthians 15:44]. Yet, so that you may not think that the risen body is adifferent one, when Thomas disbelieved the resurrection, he shows him the imprints of the nails [John 20:25–27], and shows him the traces of the wounds. Could he really be unable to heal himself after his resurrection, when he had cured everyone even before his resurrection? On the contrary: by showing the imprints of the nails he shows that the body is identical; yet by passing

168  István Pásztori-Kupán through the shut doors, he shows that δείκνυσιν ὅτι οὐ τοιοῦτο. Τοῦτο μέν, ἵνα πληρώσῃ τὸν τρόπον τῆς οἰκονομίας the body is not alike. It is the same, ἐγείρας τὸ νενεκρωμένον, οὐ τοιοῦτον so that he may fulfill the course of the δέ, ἵνα μὴ πάλιν ὑποπέσῃ φθορᾷ, μηδὲ oikonomia having risen the dead body; on the other hand, it is not alike, to avoid πάλιν ὑποστῇ θάνατον.30 falling under corruption and undergoing death again. This passage shows most clearly that Amphilochius, using the terms of his own time, does not simply discuss the sameness of the body, but the sameness of the person. The resurrected Christ is identical not only according to his body, but He is the one and the same person. This is the very reason why he does not cure himself and does not make his wounds disappear, since he had already submitted himself to the laws of human thinking about bodies and persons: if Thomas truly needs to see the wounds in order to identify his Master, then this should not be an obstacle. Nonetheless, Thomas does not identify the Master’s body, but rather his person, and addresses the eternal One as such: “My Lord and my God!”31 Amphilochius’ key sentence bears a message both for the fourth and the 21st centuries: the body of the risen Christ is the same but not alike. Despite the change in quality of the body, the identity of the person is preserved. Furthermore, this is the most important creedal statement concerning the resurrection, which consequently applies to both Christ and the believers. Christ did not resurrect a different body, even less a different person. This is what he will perform with us, as the following fragment states: Οὐδὲ γὰρ εἶχε φύσιν ὑπὸ φθορᾶς κατέχεσθαι τὴν ζωήν, διόπερ οὐχ ἡ θεότης εἰς πάθος κατεσπάσθη. Πῶς γάρ; Ἀλλ’ ἡ ἀνθρωπότης εἰς ἀφθαρσίαν ἀνεκαινίσθη.

For his nature was not such as corruption could have prevailed over ife: this is why the Godhead was not dragged down into suffering. How is it, then? It is rather the manhood which was renewed for incorruptibility. Δεῖ γάρ, φησί, τὸ θνητὸν τοῦτο “It is necessary, he says, for this ἐνδύσασθαι ἀθανασίαν καὶ τὸ φθαρτὸν mortal to put on immortality, and for this τοῦτο ἐνδύσασθαι ἀφθαρσίαν. Ὁρᾷς corruptible to put on incorruptibility.” τὴν ἀκρίβειαν; Τὸ θνητὸν τοῦτο ἔδειξε [1Cor 15:53]. Do you notice the preciδεικτικῶς, ἵνα μὴ ἄλλης νομίσῃς sion? He clearly denotes “this mortal,” σαρκὸς ἀνάστασιν.32 lest you suppose the resurrection of a different flesh.

The divine nature of Christ did not undergo corruption. On the contrary: human nature achieved incorruptibility through the agency of the divine. The only reason and purpose of all this is to reassure every believer of the certainty of their resurrection. Amphilochius brings forward this issue of resurrection bound with the preservation of one’s self-identity as an entirely and unmistakably personal question. Do not think of the resurrection of another flesh, of another body, or of another person,

Identical, But Not Alike  169 because the whole story is about you. In this context, many much-debated issues become secondary and irrelevant: for example, will God “reassemble” the person to be resurrected from the atoms, molecules, or cells that had been long destroyed by fire, water, the sea, clawed by wild beasts, or putrefied in the tomb? The key to a correct interpretation of the creedal formula concerning the resurrection of the flesh or of the body is provided by Amphilochius: it is identical, but not alike. It is the same person, yet not alike to how we may have known him/her in earthly life. Additionally, this life is not the same as the earthly one anymore. For “we do not look at what is visible but at what is invisible, for what is visible is temporary, but the invisible is eternal.”33 Notes 1 1 Corinthians 15: 36–37: “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.” 2 Luise Abramowski, “Was hat das Nicaeno-Constantinopolitanum (C) mit dem Konzil von Konstantinopel zu tun?” Theologie und Philosophie 67, no. 4 (1992): 481–513. 3 For the Syriac and English edition of Theodore’s work, see Alphonse Mingana, Commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Nicene Creed, Woodbroke Studies 5 (Cambridge: W. Heffer ans Sons, 1932). 4 Karl Joseph Hefele, A History of the Christian Councils, Vol. II (V Vols.), trans. William Clark (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1872–1896), 360–61. 5 Abramowski, “Was hat das Nicaeno-Constantinopolitanum,” 498–503. 6 See, e.g., Adolf Martin Ritter, “Noch einmal: Was hat das Nicaeno-Constantinopolitanum (C) mit dem Konzil von Konstantinopel zu tun?” Theologie und Philosophie 68, no. 4 (1993): 553–60. 7 See Mingana’s English translation: “Our blessed Fathers, therefore, after having said, Remission of sins, added: For the resurrection of the flesh and life everlasting.” Mingana, Commentary of Theodore, 115. 8 Abramowski, “Was hat das Nicaeno-Constantinopolitanum,” 511. See also Heinrich Joseph, Dominicus Denzinger, and Adolf Schönmetzer, eds., Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, 33rd ed. (Freiburg: Herder, 1965), *51. 9 The Peshitta, i.e., the Syriac version of the New Testament, is also inconsistent in translating σῶμα with pagra and σάρξ with besra respectively. For example, the very same term σάρξ, present twice in Matthew 19:5 and 19:6, is translated in the Peshitta with besra in verse 5, yet with pagra in verse 6. Similarly, whilst the Greek text of Romans 12:5 and Colossians 3:15 contains σῶμα, yet 1 Corinthians 6:16 has σάρξ, and we encounter pagra in all three corresponding passages of the Peshitta. To put it in simplest terms, since the text of the Antiochene creedal formula has come down to us only in a Syriac translation, we cannot decide with any certainty whether the Greek original of 379 had contained the resurrection of the σῶμα (body) or of σάρξ (flesh). 10 Hefele, Councils, Vol. II, 360. 11 See, e.g., Joseph Barber Lightfoot, s.v. “Amphilochius of Iconium,” in A Dictionary of Christian Biography, eds. William Smith and Henry Wace, Vol. I (IV Vols.) (London: John Murray, 1877–1887), 104. 12 For a modern edition of Amphilochius’ works, see Amphilochii Iconiensis Opera, Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca 3, ed. Cornelis Datema (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978). 13 Basil dedicated this work to Amphilochius. See Basile de Césarée, De spiritu sancto I, 1, in Sur le Saint-Esprit, Sources chrétiennes 17, ed. Benoît Pruche (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1947), 106.

170  István Pásztori-Kupán 14 See Theodoret of Cyrus, Historia ecclesiastica V, 16 in Kirchengeschichte, Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller 44, eds. Léon Parmentier and rev. F. Schweidler (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1954), 305–6. 15 István M. Bugár, Szabadság, szeretet, személy. Az ókeresztény teológia antropológiai vetülete, Catena Monográfiák 15 (Budapest: Catena, 2013), 70. 16 George Leonard Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: SPCK, 1964), 157–78. 17 See Clément d’Alexandrie, Paedagogus III, 2, 11, 2, in Le pedagogue, Livre III, Sources chrétiennes 158, trad. Claude Mondésert and Chantal Matray (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1970), 30–31. See also Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, 157. 18 “Persona significat relatio.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q9, a4. See Bugár, Szabadság, szeretet, személy, 77. 19 See Pseudo-Basil (Gregory of Nyssa), “Epistle 38,” 5, in Lettres, Vol. I, ed. Yves Courtonne (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1957). See also Reinhard M. Hübner, “Gregor von Nyssa als Verfasser der sog. Ep. 38 des Basilius,” in Épektasis: Mélanges patristiques offerts au Cardinal Jean Daniélou, eds. Jacques Fontaine and Charles Kannengiesser (Paris: Beauchesne, 1972), 463–91; Johannes Zachhuber, “Nochmals: Der ‘38. Brief’ des Basilius von Cäsarea als Werk des Gregor von Nyssa,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 7, no. 1 (2003): 3–90. 20 Christopher Hooten, “Rogue One: Peter Cushing Resurrected as Grand Moff Tarkin Via CGI Was Impressive, But Was It Ethical?” Independent, December 19, 2016, accessed July  9, 2020, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/rogue-one-cgigrand-moff-tarkin-actor-peter-cushing-princess-leia-carrie-fisher-animated-a7483991. html. 21 Porphyry, Vita Plotini I, 1–10, in Plotin, Plotini Opera I, eds. Paul Henry and HansRudolf Schwyzer (Leiden: Brill, 1951). 22 John 20:16. 23 Luke 24:13–33. 24 According to Luke 24:13, the distance between Jerusalem and Emmaus was 60 stadia, i.e., 60 by 178 meters (178 meters was the usual length of a Greek stadium). So, we are talking about covering a distance of almost 11 kms (almost seven miles), which compared to the average walking speed of five-six km/h takes about two hours. 25 See John 20:24–29. 26 Concerning that the Son “can do nothing by himself” (John 5:19), in Amphilochius, Fragmenta 6, 8–17, in Datema, Amphilochii Iconiensis Opera, 233. 27 “Τὸ γὰρ ἀπρόσληπτον, ἀθεράπευτον· ὃ δὲ ἥνωται τῷ θεῷ, τοῦτο καὶ σῴζεται.” “For that which had not been assumed, cannot be cured; yet that which had been united with God, that is also saved.” Gregory Nazianzen, “Epistle 101 to Cledonius,” 32, in Grégoire de Nazianze, Lettres théologiques, Sources chrétiennes 208, ed. Paul Gallay (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1974), 50. 28 See n26 above. 29 See 1 Corinthians 15:44: “σπείρεται σῶμα ψυχικόν, ἐγείρεται σῶμα πνευματικόν. Εἰ ἔστιν σῶμα ψυχικόν, ἔστιν καὶ πνευματικόν.” “It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.” 30 Amphilochius, Fragmenta 6, 24–36 in Datema, Amphilochii Iconiensis Opera, 233–34. 31 John 20:28. 32 See n26. 33 2 Corinthians 4:18.

Identical, But Not Alike  171 Bibliography Abramowski, Luise. “Was hat das Nicaeno-Constantinopolitanum (C) mit dem Konzil von Konstantinopel zu tun?” Theologie und Philosophie 67, no. 4 (1992): 481–513. Basile de Césarée. “De spiritu sancto.” In Sur le Saint-Esprit. Sources chrétiennes 17, еdited by Benoît Pruche. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1947. ———. Lettres. Edited by Yves Courtonne, Vol. I. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1957. Bugár, István M. Szabadság, szeretet, személy. Az ókeresztény teológia antropológiai vetülete. Catena Monográfiák 15. Budapest: Catena, 2013. Clément d’Alexandrie. Le pédagogue. Sources chrétiennes 158. Translated by Claude Mondésert and Chantal Matray. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1970. Datema, Cornelis, ed. Amphilochii Iconiensis Opera. Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca 3. Turnhout: Brepols, 1978. Denzinger, Heinrich Joseph Dominicus, and Adolf Schönmetzer, eds. Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum. 33rd ed. Freiburg: Herder, 1965. Grégoire de Nazianze. Lettres théologiques. Sources chrétiennes 208. Edited by Paul Gallay. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1974. Hefele, Karl Joseph. A History of the Christian Councils, Vol. II (V Vols.). Translated by William Clark. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1872–1896. The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University, 1996. Hooten, Christopher. “Rogue One: Peter Cushing Resurrected as Grand Moff Tarkin Via CGI Was Impressive, But Was It Ethical?” Independent, December 19, 2016. Accessed July 9, 2020. www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/rogue-one-cgi-grand-mofftarkin-actor-peter-cushing-princess-leia-carrie-fisher-animated-a7483991.html. Hübner, Reinhard M. “Gregor von Nyssa als Verfasser der sog. Ep. 38 des Basilius.” In Epektasis: Mélanges patristiques offerts au Cardinal Jean Daniélou, edited by Jacques Fontaine and Charles Kannengiesser, 463–91. Paris: Beauchesne, 1972. Lightfoot, Joseph Barber. s.v. “Amphilochius of Iconium.” In A Dictionary of Christian Biography, edited by William Smith and Henry Wace, Vol. I (IV Vols.), 104. London: John Murray, 1877–1887. Mingana, Alphonse. Commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Nicene Creed. Woodbroke Studies 5. Cambridge: W. Heffer ans Sons, 1932. Porphyry. Vita Plotini. In Plotin, Plotini Opera I, edited by Paul Henry and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer. Leiden: Brill, 1951. Ritter, Adolf Martin. “Noch einmal: Was hat das Nicaeno-Constantinopolitanum (C) mit dem Konzil von Konstantinopel zu tun?” Theologie und Philosophie 68, no. 4 (1993): 553–60. Sancti Thomae Aquinatis. Doctoris Angelici, Opera omnia. Rome: Typographia Polyglotta S. C. de Propaganda Fide, 1882. Theodoret of Cyrus. “Historia ecclesiastica.” In Kirchengeschichte. Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller 44, edited by Léon Parmentier and rev. F. Schweidler. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1954. Zachhuber, Johannes. “Nochmals: Der ‘38. Brief’ des Basilius von Cäsarea als Werk des Gregor von Nyssa.” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 7, no. 1 (2003): 3–90.

9 Fatherhood and Sonship The Use of Concepts of Reproduction and Gendered Perspectives in the Ninth-Century Arabic Christian Controversy Orsolya Varsányi Introduction This contribution is a continuation of my article titled “Incarnation/Tağassud Lexicon in Ninth-Century Arabic Christian Controversy: A Gender Issue.”1 There, with a philological-terminological approach, I explored the terms and forms applied to the body and to the Incarnation, as well as mapped related notions. Through examples taken from the works of the Chalcedonian (“Melkite”) Theodore Abū Qurra (d. ca. 820‒825 CE),2 the Syrian-Orthodox (“Jacobite”) Ḥabīb ibn Ḫidma Abū Rāʾiṭa (d. probably soon after 830 CE),3 and the East Syrian (“Nestorian”) ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī (d. possibly mid-ninth century CE),4 I demonstrated that due to their different Christologies, they applied different approaches to gender, reproduction, body, and soul, when they elaborated on the Incarnation and birth of the Messiah in their defense of their teachings challenged by Muslims, particularly the doctrine of the Trinity and divine filiation, or in controversy with other Christian denominations, especially in the field of Christology. In that first part of the investigation, I examined those models of human/animal reproduction that the authors used in their argumentation. While the “Nestorian” author applied a one-seed model that is mostly in line with the Aristotelian teaching, the “Melkite” one, in order to secure the teaching concerning Mary as Theotokos, subscribed to a two-seed model, which is probably Galenian; and the “Jacobite” theologian adapted his teaching to a Platonic notion of men and women being embodied souls. All authors turned to these models and representations in an attempt to rationalize their teaching and defend it against charges of absurdity, and all exploited the notion of the soul/spirit-body duality of human beings, in order to provide an analogy for the humanity and divinity of the Messiah. Other questions that were linked to the main issue include those that could be termed as the issues of ensoulment, embryology, and spermatogenesis. All three authors were seen to apply hylomorphism, too. Here, I  seek to present some addition (studying examples from ʿAmmār’s and Abū Rāʾiṭa’s texts) that may further contribute to our understanding of the approaches to reproduction these authors subscribed to, as well as the gendered perspectives that are manifest in their works when they elaborate on the question of DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-14

Fatherhood and Sonship  173 divine filiation. In this second part, I turn to parallels taken form plant reproduction models, as well as linguistic reinterpretative techniques. The extracts illuminate the concepts of “fatherhood” and “sonship” that underlie the discourse on the Incarnation and birth of the Messiah. ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī The East Syrian (“Nestorian”) ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī, in his Kitāb al-burhān (The Book of the Proof, written in, or soon after 838 CE,5 composed in the literary form of a dialogue: questions and answers, i.e., by posing questions Muslims could address to Christians and answering them), speaks to the hypothetical opponent in the following way: Why do you shrink from [tanfur]6 our mention [ḏikr] of fatherhood [ubuwwa] and sonship [bunuwwa]? They are not physical [wa-laysa (sic!) hiya min al-ağsām].7 It is possible [kān yağūz] that a human proceeds from another human like him [yaḫruğ al-insān min insān miṯlahu] without the first being called [fa-lā yusammā] a “father” and the second a “son.” Just as when Eve proceeded [ḫarağat] from Adam, she was not called [lam tusammā] his son, nor was he called her father. Just as fruit comes from [yaḫruğ] a tree, the tree is not called a father, nor the fruit a son [wa-lā tusammā al-šağara aban wa-lā al-ṯamara ibnan]. Also, when beasts give birth [in kānat talid] they are not called “fathers” and “sons.” Just as you say “lion cubs,” “dog pups,” and “sheep lambs”, they are not called “sons” and “fathers” lest they share with humans in the dignity [waqār] of fatherhood and sonship, which are two properties of the Creator.8 The extract is part of an answer, formulated by the Christian interlocutor. As his choice of the word tanfur indicates, the literary persona of the opponent allegedly has an aversion to, or a distaste for, the idea of divine fatherhood and sonship. This reference to the opponent’s attitude is an implication that the adversary finds the question under discussion contrary to reason, i.e., it makes it clear for the reader that the arguments are formulated in facing a challenge of the Christian doctrine of divine filiation, which, in the context of the controversy, is understood as an Islamic challenge. The arguments presented in the reaction might seem unrelated at first sight, but if their implications are taken into consideration, they are all found to aim at dismissing the accusation of irrationality. The first sentence (“They are not physical [wa-laysa (sic!) hiya min al-ağsām]”) states that the Fatherhood and Sonship characteristic of the First and Second divine Hypostaseis are not of a bodily nature. This statement is the most essential one in the answer, because it serves as a basis for the Christian apology or polemics directed at Muslims as the first step in rebutting the claim of irrationality. If the fatherhood and sonship are not bodily or physical, then there is no contingency, susceptibility to corruption, or anthropomorphism introduced to the divine entity. This assertion gives the key to the understanding of how the examples given by the author are related, i.e., it gives the cohesion of the passage.

174  Orsolya Varsányi The second statement (“It is possible that a human proceed from another human like him [yaḫruğ al-insān min insān miṯlahu] without the first being called [fa-lā yusammā] a ‘father’ and the second a ‘son’ ”) is not a continuation of the first one, as it speaks of a human being’s coming from and/or originating in another one, while it is not a father-son or parent-child relationship. This claim is surprising inasmuch as the very coming forth is usually at the core of Arabic Christian explanations of divine as well as human fatherhood, or more generally, of generation: the terms F/father and S/son indicate consubstantiality and the former’s being a source/ cause of the latter.9 The intention here is the presentation of another approach, namely, the indication that even a physical relatedness does not necessarily mean fatherhood and sonship through sexual reproduction, while still being considered as a kind of generation or origination. The reference to one human being’s coming forth from another, without indicating a father and fatherhood, also means that gender is absent from this origination and generation, and that ʿAmmār aimed at establishing the possibility of consubstantiality between two beings and the former’s being a source/cause of the latter without gendered and sexual reproduction. Another curious turn is the very example of Adam and Eve that follows the second statement (“Just as when Eve proceeded [ḫarağat] from Adam, she was not called [lam tusammā] his son, nor was he called her father”). The mention of only Adam and Eve instead of Adam, Eve, and Abel is in contrast with the practice of general Arabic Christian discourse on the Trinity, since in such texts, the human triad often figures as an analogy, in which Adam’s begetting Abel and Eve’s “procession” from Adam serve as specific qualities according to which the human being is the imago Dei: the Father’s begetting the Son and the Spirit’s emanation from the Father are reflected in the first human beings.10 From this analogy, the relation that the reader would expect to be relevant for the question that places the problem of fatherhood and sonship in the focus (“Why do you shrink from our mention [ḏikr] of fatherhood [ubuwwa] and sonship [bunuwwa]?”) is Adam’s (physical and sexual) begetting of Abel. However, this generation is neglected here, which again is seen to be ʿAmmār’s effort to distance himself from the notion of physical reproduction. From the triad of the analogy, here only the origination of Eve in Adam and her procession and coming forth from him are presented, i.e., that component and relatedness of the human triad that are usually meant to illustrate the FatherSpirit relationship. Gender roles/categories are also blurred: while the case of the First and the Second Divine Persons can generally be seen to be described by male categories, namely, those of father and son, from the triad of the human analogy, a male and a female being are presented. The example might only fit the context (namely, fatherhood and sonship, which are not physical) if we interpret Eve’s procession from Adam in the framework of consubstantiality, which is also the most important notion underlying divine Fatherhood and Sonship: while Eve originates in Adam, and then exists along with him, she is not physically begotten by him. The use of the verb ḫarağa is probably deliberately chosen to be distinct from references to generation and reproduction, which is generally expressed by some form of the verb walada. This latter term, similarly to the Greek γέννησις, is not

Fatherhood and Sonship  175 a gendered notion, it can refer to the engendering of an offspring by either a male parent—in this case meaning “begetting”—or by a female one, in which case it is “giving birth”; however, both imply sexual reproduction.11 Ḫurūğ, on the other hand, can be paralleled to the Greek ἐξέρχομαι, which in patristic usage occurs as a reference to the procession of the Spirit12 and the coming forth of the Son from the Father,13 as well as to ἔξοδος, which in the works of the Church Fathers (Athanasius Alexandrinus, Anastasius Sinaita, Joannes Chrysostomus,14 and Gregory of Nyssa,)15 refers to the coming forth of the Son from the Father. This coming from and coming forth indicates an origination, a coming into being without reference to sexual reproduction, i.e., it implies a virginal generation. The choice of the example may be understood as an intention to place an emphasis on one’s being the source of the other, on the two’s being consubstantial, without sexual generation, which is further stressed by the elimination of any gendered notion of begetting, fatherhood, or sonship. The simile that follows in the text (“Just as fruit comes from [yaḫruğ] a tree, the tree is not called a father, nor the fruit a son [wa-lā tusammā al-šağara aban wa-lā al-ṯamara ibnan]”) presents the case of the tree and its fruit, which is even more unexpected, with the two not being consubstantial, while the fruit comes forth from the tree, i.e., originates in it. A possible explanation of the choice of the image of the tree and its fruit is that it provides an example for reproduction and generation, while it is considered to be asexual. To evaluate the significance of such an example and its possible implications, one needs to consider what models were available to the author and his audience concerning this issue.16 Though no direct textual evidence can be established that would relate ʿAmmār’s text to any of them, a variety of works and theories that must have circulated in ninth-century Iraq concerning this argument can be identified.17 We will see that in two instances (1.c, 1.d), evidences somehow imply male/female is not a dichotomy inherent to nature; and in two others (1.a, 1.b), even if there is the dichotomy, reproduction is still considered asexual. 1.a

The first work on agriculture in Arabic, the al-Filāḥa al-Nabaṭiyya (The Nabatean Agriculture), was translated from Syriac at the beginning of the tenth century CE18 and is “part practical farming manual, part botanical treatise, and part speculative theory on the influence of stars and the elements on plants, interspersed with a great deal of magical lore, myths, ancient stories, and religious traditions.”19 It includes a long theoretical exposition about the genesis and causes of plants—along the lines of the treatises of Aristotle and Theophrastos, but independent from them.20 The work comes from a Northern Mesopotamian milieu, reflecting its rural reality around the time of the Muslim conquest; its elements are derived from ancient Babylonian and Assyrian sources, as well as from Greek-Byzantine Geoponica, and were transmitted through Syriac or Aramaic.21 Only a part of the book is continuous with late antique Greco-Latin preliminaries; rather, it represents the Northern and Central Iraqi tradition.22 The circulation of the Arabic version must have started

176  Orsolya Varsányi later than ʿAmmār’s composing of his works; however, its contents, even if in other languages, had been formulated and available in Iraq, ʿAmmār’s homeland, long before his lifetime. For the scope of this chapter, the relevant feature of this work is that it shows awareness of sexual differentiation in plants and their diverse manifestations, while stating that fructification is a result of the action of heat on the nourishment received by the plant.23 In this, there is a possible parallel to what ʿAmmār sought to express: one being’s origination in and coming from another is possible in an asexual way, without the implications of physical fatherhood and sonship. 1.b

Arabic botany became independent from agriculture under the influence of two Greek sources, translated into Arabic, and becoming the starting point of Arabic botanical science: the Causes of Plants by Theophrastus (372–287 BCE), Aristotle’s disciple, of which the Arabic translation is now lost; and the Materia medica by Dioscorides (first century CE).24 The Causes of Plants by Theophrastus was translated during the second half of the ninth century CE by Ibrahim b. Bakkūš, a physician from Baghdad, as Asbāb al-Nabāt, i.e., almost contemporaneously, but slightly later than ʿAmmār’s writing of his books, however, geographically speaking, very close to him—which allows us to ask if the work could have been in circulation in some form available to ʿAmmār. The topics elaborated on (place of plants on the scale of living beings, concept of species, measure in which species were fixed or variable, reproduction, spontaneous and artificial generation, sensibility of plants, the function of parts) were later discussed by Arab natural philosophers.25 For the scope of this investigation, the fact that Theophrastus spoke of male and female plants, but did not consider plant reproduction sexual, is significant, as it could have contributed to the framework ʿAmmār relied upon, namely, that he could merely take the asexual nature of plant reproduction into consideration when formulating this analogy. Since the Arabic version is not available anymore, and also because it was formulated contemporaneously to ʿAmmār’s literary activity, i.e., ʿAmmār himself could not have knowledge of the Arabic translation, and if anything, the contents of the original might have in some way reached him, this chapter turns to the original Greek version. Theophrastus speaks of trees “pregnant” with produce/fruit: [i]n connexion with what was said a short while before one might enquire whether during winter trees are pregnant with the fruits they produce [τὰ δένδρα κατὰ χειμῶνα κύει πρὸς καρπογονίαν] and bring forth in spring [δ’ ἧρος ἀποτíκτει] (I. 12.10)[,]26 which may evoke a mother-child image, and/or alludes to a parent-child relationship. The reference to “bringing forth” the fruit can be paralleled to the way ʿAmmār refers to the fruit’s “coming forth” from the tree. The consideration of

Fatherhood and Sonship  177 the meaning of the Greek verb ἀποτίκτω as bringing to birth, bringing to life, also confirms the idea of the fruit’s being a result of the reproduction and generation of the tree, implied by ʿAmmār, too, and then modified in the dismissing of the relationship’s being a father-son one. Theophrastus makes parallels between trees and (female) animals, and/or human beings, too, e.g.: For the tree that is to produce fruit [καρποτοκῆσον] must have an open texture, offer easy passage, and be fluid; the close texture, on the other hand, is unfavorable to generation as it is in women and animals [ἐπὶ τῶν γυναικῶν καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἄλλων ζῴων]. (I. 15.4)27 What is required not only for the generation of animals but for the production and ripening of fruit [καὶ εἰς τὴν ζῳογονίαν καὶ εἰς τὴν καρποτοκίαν] is a right amount of heat, and no excess of it, since the excess leads to too much dryness and too close a texture. (I. 22.2)28 But fruit production [καρποτοκία] requires a natural residue [τῆς φυσικῆς περιττώσεως] since from this comes the fruit [ἐκ ταύτης γὰρ ὁ καρπóς], like the semen in animals [ὥσπερ καὶ τοῖς ζῴοις τὸ σπέρμα]. (II. 10.1)29 There is no identifiable textual dependence between Theophrastus’ Causes of Plants and ʿAmmār’s The Book of the Proof; however, the general idea of likening fruit production (which is expressed in the extracts cited earlier with the form referring to giving birth, as seen in the second part of the compound καρποτοκία) to the generation of animals and origination of one human being in another shows a similar way of considering the plant-animal reproduction.30 Finally, Theophrastus connects seed and fruit to generation (as seen also in the closing reference in the last example): There is sure to be a concoction [πέψις] of the pericarpion, but there is another of the fruit proper [αὐτῶν τῶν καρπῶν]; and the former concoction serves to provide man with food, the latter serves the generation and perpetuation of the tree [πρὸς γέννησιν καὶ διαμονὴν τῶν δένδρων], this being what fruit and seed are for [οἱ γὰρ καρποὶ καὶ τὰ σπέρματα τούτων χάριν]. (I. 16.1)31 Since of the several modes of generation in plants [πλείους αἱ γενέσεις τῶν φυτῶν] the one most common to all (or common to all that have seed and fruit), is generation from seed [ἡ ἀπὸ σπέρματος (ἢ ὄσα ἔχει σπέρμα καὶ καρπóν)]” (IV. 1.1)32

178  Orsolya Varsányi All of these examples show that the eventual—and even indirect—knowledge of the contents of Theophrastus’ work could have provided ʿAmmār with the idea of maleness and femaleness in plants, fruit being the result and means of generation, while there was no description of a sexual mingling. In light of this, ʿAmmār’s allusion to the coming forth of the fruit from the tree stands for asexual reproduction. 1.c

Dioscorides’ Materia medica—presenting botanical lore as part of his pharmacology, namely, the origin, physiology, and evolution of plants—was translated to Arabic in the ninth century CE in the time of Mutawakkil (847–861 CE),33 contemporarily to ʿAmmār’s literary activity, but no such reference to plant reproduction, tree, and fruit could be detected in it by the author of the present chapter that would give a basis for a possible parallel to ʿAmmār’s work. 1.d

Of Aristotle’s lost book on plants, the De plantis, the Arabic tradition only possessed Nicolaus Damascenus’ commentary (first century BCE). It was preserved in Syriac, and subsequently translated into Arabic by Isḥāq ibn Ḥunayn (d. 910 CE) and revised by Ṯābit b. Qurra (d. 901 CE) in Baghdad, i.e., later then ʿAmmār’s composing of his works, but it had already circulated in Syriac in the region, and its contents might have been (indirectly) available to ʿAmmār. It incorporated parts of Theophrastus, too.34 The work offers various possible parallels, or ideas that might have been used in an argumentation that ʿAmmār sought to carry out. Given that it is now available only in Arabic, for a tentative comparison and a consideration if eventually it had an influence on ʿAmmār’s work, this version is used. When considering a description and/or a classification of plants, it speaks of reproduction, tawālud, as a characteristic feature: There are people who state that plants have a soul, because of their reproduction [tawālud], nutrition, growth, youth, and old age that they [i.e., the people who claim so] have observed.35 ʿAmmār often uses this word, along with tanāsul, for procreation, sexual reproduction, producing offspring, mostly referring to human beings, sometimes to animals, but not in relation to plants. However, as ʿAmmār’s example in question shows, he made a connection by placing the different kinds of reproduction (human, animal, and vegetative) side by side in his argument. The Arabic De plantis raises the question whether plants have a division between male and female: The most specific of all the things in this science is the examination of what Empedocles said: is there female and male among plants? Or [is there] a single species [nawʿ] that unites the male and the female [ğāmiʿ li-l-ḏakar

Fatherhood and Sonship  179 wa-l-unṯā] as he claimed? It is in the nature of the male [min šaʾn al-ḏakar] to beget the offspring [yūlid al-walad] in something else [fī ġayrihi], and it is in the nature of the female to give birth from something else [talid min ġayrihā],36 and [in the nature of] both of them to be separated [muʿtazil] from the other one. There is no such thing in plants, because [in] every species of the plants: the male is solid and hard, and the female has a lot of fruits. . . . Also, there is not any substance that brings into being [yūğid] its female and male together in one existent [šayʾ]. Because if it were so, then plants would be more complete/perfect [akmal] than animals, because they would not need anything external in their reproduction [tawlīd]. Instead, plants need the [different] seasons of the year, the Sun, and balance, more than anything. We find them in need of these at the time they bring forth their fruit [ibrāz al-ṯamar]. The beginning of the nutrition of the plant is from the earth, and the beginning of its reproduction is from the sun. This is why a man called Alcmaeon said that the earth is the mother, and the sun is the father of the plant.37 As for the mixing of the male plant with the female one, we need to imagine [nataḫayyal] it in another way [ʿalā ğiha uḫrā], because the seed [bizr] of the plants is similar to conception [ḥabal], which is the mixing of the male with the female. Just as there is in the egg the faculty of reproduction for the young chicken [quwwat tawallud al-farrūğ] as well as the matter for its nutrition [mādda ġiḏā’ihi] up to the time of its growth and coming forth [ḫurūğ] from it, and the female lays the egg at one [specific] time, the plants are like that, too.38 Empedocles already expressed it well [ğawwada] in his statement that the tall trees do not generate [tūlid] young [firāḫ], because the thing [i.e., the case is] that the trees only sprout/produce plants [yanbut] in the part of the seed [bizr]. That which is in it becomes in the beginning the nutrition of the root [aṣl], and the means of subsistence [sabab]; . . . That is why we have to think of the mixing of male plants with the females. There are some animals that are similar to plants in some of their states because [in the case of] animals, if the male has sexual intercourse [wāqaʿa] with the female, their faculties mix after they had been separated. And if nature mixes male plants with females, it has made that which is right. We do not find that the plants perpetrate anything else than the reproduction of fruits [mā nağid al-nabāt faʿʿālan siwā tawlīd al-ṯimār], animals [on the other hand] are isolated and separated in the times in which they do not have sexual intercourse [munfarid muʿtazil fī al-awqāt allatī lā yuğāmiʿ fīhā] only because of the multiplicity of their actions.39 It is clear from the extract that if the work was known in some way to ʿAmmār, then a plurality of views included and cited were also familiar to him. Some of the points mentioned here (e.g., “It is in the nature of the male [min šaʾn al-ḏakar] to beget the offspring [yūlid al-walad] in something else [i.e., not in himself] [fī ġayrihi], and it is in the nature of the female to give birth from something outside from her [talid min ġayrihā]”) are in accordance with the views ʿAmmār presented on the incarnation, conception, and birth of the Messiah.40 The idea behind

180  Orsolya Varsányi “if it were so, then plants would be more complete/perfect [akmal] than animals, because they would not need anything external in their reproduction [tawlīd],” if known to ʿAmmār, could have inspired him in formulating his argument under discussion here, inasmuch as fruit would be produced by the tree without any external contribution to its reproduction. The following part of the extract (“at the time they make their fruit appear/bring forth their fruit [ibrāz al-ṯamar]”) is of interest, even if the form ibrāz al-ṯamar in the Arabic De plantis is of a different lexical stem than ʿAmmār’s reference to the coming forth of the fruit from the tree (yaḫruğ al-ṯamar min al-šağar—as seen in ʿAmmār’s extract); however, the underlying meaning is similar. As it was stated earlier, there cannot be direct textual relatedness between the texts, as ʿAmmār’s work precedes the Arabic translation of the De plantis; however, some conceptual similarity can be identified. Soon after this, the statement that “the seed/kernel [of the fruit] [bizr] of the plants is similar to conception [ḥabal], which is the mixing of the male with the female,” expresses the understanding of the role of the seed/fruit in reproduction, explained by the analogy of conception resulting from animal coital union, yet clearly not identified with it, but rather differentiated from it. This idea could have influenced ʿAmmār in choosing the image of the fruit as his example, i.e., the result of a conception, of a reproduction, yet not through sexual intercourse—an idea that is further explained and confirmed by the ensuing reference to Empedocles’ claim. The Arabic De plantis also discusses what it means to be a part of a plant and arrives at the conclusion that fruit is not a part—the analogy being the mother and the embryo: It would be correct that the parts of plants are not limited, if all these parts were parts of the plant. We find it wrong [qabīḥ binā] to state about a thing in which the animal grows and becomes complete that it is not its part, for which we have to not render the fruit of the plant among its parts [yanbaġī lanā an lā nağaʿal ṯamar al-nabāt min ağzā’ihi], because the embryo is not a part of his mother [al-ğanīn laysa huwa bi-ğuzʾ li-ummihi], but as for the leaves and the rest that is in it, they are its parts.41 If it is possible that ʿAmmār could have been informed by this analogy and idea, then his application of the example is clearer and fits well the context. The fruit, i.e., the outcome of reproduction, is not a part of a tree—as the embryo of the mother—but it comes from it, and then exists alongside with it. This is why it is still applicable for the parent-child, i.e., the Father-Son relationship, while being asexual. In the Arabic De plantis, the reference to plants bearing fruit uses the same verb that is used for pregnancy, ḥaml: if a strong attraction [ğaḏb] occurs from the plant or the tree, then it brings forth [yantiğ] fruit once a year.42 If there comes no attraction from it, nature originates [aḥdaṯat] the concoction in subsequent times, and in every concoction, fruit is brought forth [yuntağ]. That is why some plants carry [yaḥmal]

Fatherhood and Sonship  181 fruit several times a year. And those plants that have a nature like water [mā ṭabʿuhu ka-l-māʾ] can carry [yaḥmal] fruit only with difficulties, because of the prevailing of humidity over it[,]43 which can be seen synonymous to bringing forth (nitāğ). The agency underlying fruitification is attributed to nature and attraction, a strong movement, i.e., it is seen to be asexual. The Arabic De plantis uses the verb “cause to come forth, bring forth,” aḫrağa, i.e., the fourth stem, or also ḫarrağa, the second stem (with the same meaning) of the same verb that appears in ʿAmmār’s extract, ḫarağa and yaḫruğ: There are plants that bring their fruit and leaves out quickly [yusriʿ fī iḫrāğ al-ṯimār], and others that do this slowly.44 The viscosity brings out [ḫarrağat] fruit, or the humidity brings out [ḫarrağat] leaf under the same condition [fī ḥāla wāḥida].45 Though there is no attestable textual relation between ʿAmmār’s work and the Arabic De plantis, this example is still informative, showing that the idea of the trees producing fruit was generally expressed by a derivative of this verb. Finally, in this work, the fruit is referred to as a result of concoction, i.e., the terminology and conceptualization of seed, semen, is used in its description. If the trees are planted into a balanced soil [arḍ muʿtadila], they carry the concoction out quickly [tusriʿ fī al-ṭabḫ], before the time of spring. This is so, because if the heat is balanced, then the fruit does not need much heat during the procedure of the concoction [ʿamalīyat al-ṭabḫ]. This is why the concoction is completed quickly, and happens before the spring days. The bitterness and thickness/crudeness [ġalaẓ] of the food prevail in the trees beginning with their planting. The reason for this is that when there is humidity in its sides/extremities [aṭrāf], while concoction happens in the parts that can be found in the middle of the tree [yaḥduṯ al-ṭabḫ fī al-ağzāʾ al-mawğūda fī wasaṭ al-šağara], which the matter of the fruit comes from [allatī minhā taʾtī māddat al-ṯamara], there originates dryness [yanšaʾ al-ğafāf], and humidity rises. Therefore, concoction is first sour or bitter or astringent. The reason is that concoction takes place through heat and humidity, and if humidity or dryness prevail over heat, then the resulting fruit becomes this way: it will have a full ripening, and this is why the procession of the fruit [nitāğ al-ṯamar] will first be lacking in sweetness.46 Fruit is the means of reproduction in plants/trees just as semen is in animals. Lexically, it is noteworthy that fruit (or, more exactly, its matter) comes from, taʾtī, the middle of the tree, and this coming from can be paralleled to coming out, coming forth, ḫurūğ, as used by ʿAmmār. Similarly, the procession of the fruit, nitāğ al-ṯamar, expresses the same idea.

182  Orsolya Varsányi 1.e

Finally, the Kitāb sirr al-ḫalīqa, or Kitāb al-ʿilal of Balīnūs, i.e., Pseudo-Apollonios of Tyana, of which Book IV is dedicated to plants, was composed in Arabic in the time of the Caliph al-Maʾmūn (813–833 CE)—probably a pseudepigraph written in the fifth century CE and later translated into Arabic—so it was available by the time ʿAmmār carried out his literary activity.47 The function of fruiting is stated in it: Why came there to be fruits for the trees? We would say: for “delivery”/“birth” [wilāda]. . . . That blood in the trees moved according to the winds’ moving them, and it got concocted [inṭabaḫa] by the heat of the trees, and it was moved by the winds that moved it from the branches, and it became a “delivery”/“birth” for the trees that has the same status as the “delivery”/“birth” for the animals [ṣāra wilādatan lahā bi-manzalat al-wilāda allatī fī al-ḥayawān], and the fruit came to take the same status in the tree as the seeds in the animals [ṣāra al-ṯamar fī al-ašğār bi-manazalat al-niṭāf fī al-ḥayawān], and this is the cause of the procession/coming forth of the fruit [ʿillat ḫurūğ al-ṯamar].48 The text then explicitly places the production of fruit as parallel to animal and human birth, in the framework of reproduction, and fruit itself as a plant equivalent of animal seed—while sexual reproduction is excluded, and gender references are also missing; both birth/begetting, as well as seed/semen, can be found in trees, so sexual differences, as well as a sexual intercourse, are not necessary. The concluding phrase in this passage uses the same formula for the coming forth of the fruit as does ʿAmmār. 1.f

It is also worth mentioning that a case of general linguistic use is also present in Arabic, as e.g., Quran 36:33–35, speaking of trees and the bringing forth of fruit, uses the formula ḫarrağa ṯamar. After the mapping of the possible sources that ʿAmmār could have known in any way, we may say that the introduction of the tree and the fruit as a parallel for a parent-child relationship has its theoretical basis, while it is suitable for negating a sexualized “father-son” relationship. To conclude the examination of this example of the passage, it is also necessary to mention that the very image of fruit has another significance for which it might have been introduced. In patristic literature, the Greek word for fruit, ὁ καρπός, apart from meaning fruit and produce, also means offspring, and is even used in a Christological context, where Christ is indicated by it.49 The author then goes on with closer analogies in that they are taken from the field of generation and procreation, namely, that of animals. It was presented in the Incarnation/Tağassud Lexicon that ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī mostly follows Aristotle’s one-seed model, in which the material cause of generation is the female menstrual

Fatherhood and Sonship  183 blood, while the efficient cause is the male semen, the formal and final ones being the goal of creating a new individual.50 The Generation of Animals is commonly held to be translated into Arabic by Yaḥyā ibn al-Biṭrīq (fl. on the turn of the eighth/ ninth century CE), so it was available by the time ʿAmmār composed this work; however, his reference to begetting in this extract is too short and general to provide a basis for comparison, or to establish the same conclusion in the case of animal reproduction. The following part of the phrase “when beasts give birth/beget [in kānat talid],” however, is indicative, as it is followed by the statement “they are not called ‘fathers’ and ‘sons,’ ” i.e., among the two parents of an animal, only the male is mentioned. The added explanation then also shows that in this latter case, it is not the gendered model of sexual procreation that serves as the basis of the argument; instead, the focus shifts to a conceptual-semantical level. Given that in case of animal wilāda, there is no doubt concerning its sexual nature, ʿAmmār here touches the issue from another point of view, namely, by concentrating on the begetting male and the offspring, and states that the concepts of fatherhood and sonship are not applicable to them. These concepts have a certain “dignity,” which is only pertinent to human beings and to the divine hypostaseis. Tentatively, the concept of dignity might be paralleled with that indicated by the Greek term axia, which is recurrent in the works of patristic literature (Symbolum Antiochenum, John of Damascus, Origen, etc.; with the general meaning “honor, high reputation,” but a more particular meaning is that of “dignity, high status, worthiness,” i.e., of God).51 ʿAmmār’s aim here might have been to reinterpret fatherhood and sonship in order to show that it is not correlated with sexual reproduction: even where there is undeniable sexual procreation, the categories of fatherhood and sonship are not necessarily applicable. In this, he sought to establish a division between the two. Further minutiae include the references to “being called,” tasmiya, which, along with name, ism occurs frequently in ʿAmmār’s work. The usage of these two terms and notions might reflect the contemporarily ongoing, partly theological, partly grammatical-semantical debate on whether the words are identical with their nominata or with the actual inventing of the words—the act of using them—for the nominata. The majority of grammarians—among them Baṣran Muʿtazilites—rejected the identity of nomen and nominatum. The theory favored instead by Muʿtazilites was the identity of ism and tasmiya.52 When ʿAmmār expresses his view concerning the essence or quality of something, this “being (not) called” might stand for its being or not being identified with that, described by that, i.e., if such a proposition can or cannot be made. Abū Rāʾiṭa The Syrian-Orthodox (“Jacobite”) Ḥabīb ibn Ḫidma Abū Rāʾiṭa addresses another issue concerning Sonship, or filiation: Now, if they say, “Tell us about the Messiah, the Son of God [ibn Allāh], is He adopted [tabannā], that is, did He take Him up [ittaḫaḏahu] without His being a real son [min ġayr an yakūn ibnan ḥaqqan], or did He beget

184  Orsolya Varsányi Him from His ousia [walad waladahu min ğawharihi]?”53 it should be said to them: the Messiah. . . is according to us the Son of God, Whom He begot without time and without beginning [al-Masīḥ ladaynā ibn Allāh waladahu bi-lā zamān wa-lā badī], because an adopted son is not a true son [al-muttaḫaḏ ibnan laysa ibnan ḥaqīqiyyan], even if he is described as a son [wa-in wuṣifa ibnan]. If they say: “Did not Mary give birth to Him at the time of the Israelites [a-wa-laysa innamā waladathu Maryam fī zaman banī Isrāʾīl]? How do you claim [kayfa zaʿamtum] that [the Messiah] did not take up sonship [annahu lam yattaḫiḏ ibnan],54 so that He is a son, whom [God] adopted, without begetting Him [Innahu ibn tabannāhu min ġayr an yalid]?”55 it should be said to them: We do not describe the Messiah, may He be praised! as a son of God because of what was born of Mary later as incarnated [innā lam naṣif al-Masīḥ . . . ibnan li-Allāh li-ḥāl mā wulida min Maryam mutağassidan aḫīran], but because He was begotten from the Father previously without time and without beginning [wulida min al-Ab bi-lā zamān wa-lā badī].56 This example sheds light on the notion of “sonship” via a negative approach, i.e., by elaborating on concepts that are not considered to make part of its connotation. Two forms are used to refer to a non-biological sonship, i.e., to being adopted. Abū Rāʾiṭa’s usage is unique in the case of the first form, tabannā, as this form does not make a part of the contemporary Christian authors’ lexicon. The form he uses is a derivation from ibn, “son”: by using the fifth stem of its root b-n-y, the literal meaning would be “make someone become a son for oneself.” This implies that the object of such an action is already existent and is chosen to be one’s son. The other form, ittaḫaḏa, take something/someone up (for oneself), is more generally used by Christian authors,57 which is due to the complex background of the form. On the one hand, it might have been chosen by Christian writers because of its being a Quranic term that refers to an action of God, who took Jesus for himself, thus signifying not physical generation, but a relation of adoption.58 Christians, however, sought to make it clear that their usage implies the pre-eternal Son’s taking up a human form, i.e., they applied this form to a notion previously described in Greek by proslepsis in patristic texts.59 The extract also makes it evident that this would not be real sonship (“without His being a real son [min ġayr an yakūn ibnan ḥaqqan]”), i.e., some kind of generation is a necessary constituent of its meaning, as the offered alternative states it: “walad waladahu min ğawharihi” (“a Son that He [God, the Father] begot from His substance”). In Arabic, the meanings and the lexical forms emphasize this connection even further, as a son, a child (walad) comes from the same stem as the verb “to generate, beget, give birth to,” walada. In this latter phrase the implication is that only someone who is begotten and comes from the substance of his parent can be considered a son. This phrase is confirmed in a kind of creed (as ladaynā, “according to us,” implies): the Messiah is the Son of God, whom He begot without time and without beginning (al-Masīḥ ladaynā ibn Allāh waladahu bi-lā zamān wa-lā badī). This birth/begetting is defined only through the Father, and there is no mention of a mother in it: this part of the begetting is virginal, asexual.

Fatherhood and Sonship  185 The following statement is close to a definition that is carried out with a negative approach, by defining what does not make part of its connotation: “an adopted son is not a true son [al-muttaḫaḏ ibnan laysa ibnan ḥaqīqiyyan], even if he is described as a son [wa-in wuṣifa ibnan]”; the latter part implies an act of attribution (waṣf) on behalf of someone who could call an adopted child a son. This attribution (as seen in the passive verb wuṣifa) is similar to the notion of “calling, naming,” tasmiya, seen in the case of ʿAmmār earlier. The problem is both posed and resolved on an interpretative level: on the one hand, it is established that Sonship substantially comes from and is related to God, while, on the other hand, Mary’s giving birth to Him at the time of the Israelites (a-wa-laysa innamā waladathu Maryam fī zaman banī Isrāʾīl) is posed. The implication of this objection would be the invalidation of the divine and substantial begetting (as seen in the question “How do you claim that He did not take up/ adopt a son? Indeed, He is a son, whom [God] adopted, without begetting Him”), which is rebutted by the gendered separation of two kinds of births/begetting in the answer. The gendered division, which is also related to a separation of immanence and transcendence, was introduced alongside its justifications in the Incarnation/ Tağassud Lexicon.60 Conclusion The examples show that the first known Christians who wrote in Arabic, who were heirs to Greek and Syriac religious and intellectual traditions, used the ideas and models available to them in formulating their arguments concerning divine Fatherhood and filiation. Even where no direct textual dependence is traceable, a transmission on the level of notions and ideas is still attested by similarities and parallels. The investigation (together with the previous one in Incarnation/Tağassud Lexicon) demonstrated that various models of reproduction were in circulation in the ninth century CE when the first known Arabic Christian authors composed their apologies. Here, I  investigated a specific question, namely, how the claim of an asexual filiation is argued for, as the Arabic Christian authors presented Fatherhood and Sonship as a relationship resulting in an asexual begetting. The first example, that of the East Syrian author, first presented a model of origination/generation that is not reproductive: the procession of Eve from Adam, to illustrate the possibility of one being’s coming into being in another, and their consubstantiality without sexual reproduction. The second analogy he introduced was that of the coming forth of the fruit from the tree—and searching for his sources, we could find a variety of plant reproduction models. The texts that ʿAmmār might have relied on when choosing his tree-fruit analogy presented plant reproduction as asexual (and ʿAmmār followed them in this); or in some cases, the male/ female dichotomy was even missing. His last argument used animal examples, where it would have been impossible to negate sexual reproduction, so in this case he switched to another level and approach: a semantic one, placing the “dignity” of fatherhood-sonship in the focus, which excludes that this name be applied to animals. By this, he sought to create a distance between fatherhood-sonship and

186  Orsolya Varsányi sexual reproduction; introducing new elements into the connotations of the previous names, he could exclude the latter. The East Syrian author presented a selection of analogies that demonstrated that in the divine filiation Sonship cannot be materially generated, and then turned to semantics, reinterpreting the connotations of fatherhood and sonship. In the case of the Syrian Orthodox author, arguments were based on language and semantics, and an attempt of reinterpretation of meanings was witnessed; however, also in his case, in his first argument, a reference to virginal, asexual begetting was made. The authors examined here were seen to have a straightforward theory of language, assuming what is described in the language reflects the (theological) reality. This study, along with its first part, “Incarnation/Tağassud Lexicon in NinthCentury Arabic Christian Controversy: A Gender Issue,” also revealed that the investigation of Arabic Christian texts with a gendered approach, i.e., by seeking to identify gender-related models of reproduction and parenthood, results in an increased knowledge and a deeper interpretation of these works. Works by ninth-century Arabic Christian writers also provide data for an understanding of gender distinctions, notions of fatherhood and filiation that were in circulation in the region at the time. The first part of the study examined how the Christian theologians made use of sexual reproduction models, as well as arguments concerning the male and female roles in conception, along with a body-soul/spirit dichotomy; the second part, i.e., this chapter, examined approaches that sought to avoid the implications of sexual reproduction (models of plant reproduction, linguistic approaches), which showed that these authors were aware of a variety of ideas and theses, and chose from them according to the necessities of individual arguments. Notes 1 Orsolya Varsányi, “Incarnation/Tağassud Lexicon in Ninth-Century Arabic Christian Controversy: A Gender Issue,” The Arabist: Budapest Studies in Arabic 42 (2021): 57–89. The first version of the article was prepared for and presented at the conference Dis/embodiment and Im/materiality: Uncovering the Body, Gender and Sexuality in Late Antiquity ‒ In Memoriam Marianne Sághy (1961‒2018), Central-European University, Budapest, Hungary, June 6‒8, 2019. 2 See John C. Lamoreaux, “Theodore Abū Qurra,” in Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, Vol. 1: 600–900, eds. David Richard Thomas and Barbara Hjördis Roggema (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), 439–91. 3 See Sandra Toenies Keating, “Abū Rāʾiṭa al-Takrītī,” in Christian-Muslim Relations, eds. David Richard Thomas and Barbara Hjördis Roggema (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), 567–81. 4 See Mark Beaumont, “ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī,” in Christian-Muslim Relations, eds. David Richard Thomas and Barbara Hjördis Roggema (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), 604–10. 5 Ibid., 609; Michael Hayek, ed., ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī: Apologie et controverses (Beyrouth: Dar el-Machreq, 1986), 39. 6 Or: “have an aversion, distaste.” 7 While accepting Mikhail’s translation, I find it important that the exact form be articulated as well: the part of the phrase “They are not physical” can be rendered literally as “these are not [coming] from the bodies.”

Fatherhood and Sonship  187 8 Mikhail’s translation. Wageeh Y. F. Mikhail, “ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī’s Kitāb al-Burhān: A Topical and Theological Analysis of Arabic Christian Theology in the Ninth Century” (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, 2013), 384, accessed February 5, 2021, http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/4162/1/Mikhail13PhD.pdf. Arabic text: fa-limā tanfur ayyuhā al-sāmiʿ min ḏikr al-ubuwwa wa-l-bunuwwa wa-laysa hiya min al-ağsām, wa-kāna yağūz an yaḫruğ al-insān min insān miṯlahu fa-lā yusammā ḏālika aban wa-lā hāḏā ibnan, ka-mā ḫarağat Ḥawwāʾ min Ādam, fa-lam tusamma ibnahu, wa-lā summiya abūhā [sic!], wa-ka-mā yaḫruğ al-ṯamar min al-šağar, wa-lā tusammā al-šağara aban wa-lā al-ṯamara ibnan. Wa-hāḏihi al-bahā’im in kānat talid fa-laysa [sic!] tusammā ābā’ wa-lā banīna: ka-mā taqūl ašbāl al-sibāʿ wa-ğarī al-kilāb wa-saḫl al-ġanam, wa-lā yuqāl banūn wa-lā ābāʾ, li-an-lā yašrukū al-insa fī waqār al-ubuwwa wa-l-bunuwwa allatayni humā ḫāṣṣatān li-l-Ḫāliq. ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī, Burhān = ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī, Kitāb al-Burhān, in ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī: Apologie et controverses, ed. Hayek, 50–60. 9 See, e.g., in Gregory of Nyssa’s presentation, as described by Verna E. F. Harrison, “Gender, Generation, and Virginity in Cappadocian Theology,” The Journal of Theological Studies 47, no. 1 (1996): esp. 42–43. 10 See another example in Abū Qurra, Maymar fī wuğūd al-ḫāliq = Ṯāwdūrus Abū Qurra, Maymar fī wuğūd al-ḫāliq wa-d-dīn al-qawīm, ed. Ignace Dick (Jounieh: al-Maktaba al-Būlusiyya, 1982), 227. On Theodore’s presentation of the notion, see Mark N. Swanson, “The Trinity in Christian‐Muslim Conversation,” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 44, no. 3 (2005): 258. The same idea can be found in Abū Rāʾiṭa, “Fī iṯbāt dīn al-naṣrāniyya = Ḥabīb ibn Ḫidma Abū Rāʾiṭa al-Takrītī, Risāla li-Abī Rāʾiṭa al-Takrītī fī iṯbāt dīn al-naṣrāniyya wa-iṯbāt al-ṯālūṯ al-muqaddas,” in Die Schriften des Jacobiten Ḥabīb ibn Ḫidma Abū Rāʾiṭa, ed. Georg Graf (Louvain: Secrétariat du CSCO: 1951), 145–46, too. 11 Cf. Harrison, “Gender, Generation, and Virginity,” 38. 12 Geoffrey William Hugo Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), 495. 13 In Gregory of Nyssa’s writings: e.g., GNO I (Contra Eunomium Lib. I), 114: ἵνα τοίνυν μὴ ἀναπόδεικτος ἡμῶν ὁ διορισμὸς ὑπάρχῃ, ἀλλὰ ταῖς τῆς γραφῆς μαρτυρίαις ἠσφαλισμένος, τοῦτο τοῖς εἰρμένοις προσθήσομεν, ὅτι οὐκ ἐκτίσθη ὁ κύριος, ἀλλ' ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς ἐξῆλθε, καθὼς αὐτὸς ὁ θεὸς λόγος αὐτοπροσώπως ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ μαρτύρεται κατὰ τὸν ἄρρητον ἐκεῖνον καὶ ἀνεκδιήγητον τῆς γεννήσεως ἤτοι τῆς ἐξόδου τρόπον. 14 Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon, 498. 15 In Gregory of Nyssa’s writings: e.g., GNO I (Contra Eunomium Lib. I), 114. See again citation under n13. 16 On the availability of various Greek arguments on conception and reproduction to Arab authors, see also Etin Anwar, Gender and Self in Islam (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2000), 75. 17 See Tawfīq Fahd, “Botany and Agriculture,” in Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science: Technology, Alchemy, and Life Sciences, eds. Roshdi Rashed and Morelon Régis, Vol. 3 (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 813–52. 18 Remke Kruk, “Nabāt,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, eds. Clifford Edmund Bosworth, Emeri Johannes van Donzel, Wolfhart Peter Heinrichs, and Charles Pellat, Vol. 7 (MifNaz) (Leiden and Köln: Brill, 1993), 832; Tawfīq Fahd, “Ibn Waḥshiyya,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, eds. Bernard Lewis, Victor Louis Ménage, Charles Pellat, and Joseph Schacht, Vol. 3 (H-Iram) (Leiden and Köln: Brill, 1971), 963. 19 Filāḥah Texts Project, “Ibn Waḥshīyah Al-filāḥah al-nabaṭīyah  =  Nabataean Agriculture,” in The Filāḥah Texts Project, November  18, 2013, accessed January  1, 2021, www.filaha.org/author_Ibn_wahshiyah.html.

188  Orsolya Varsányi 20 Fahd, “Botany and Agriculture,” 813, 817, 840; Tawfīq Fahd, “Matériaux pour l’histoire de l’agriculture en Irak: al-filāḥa al-nabaṭiyya,” in Geschichte der Islamichen Länder, Vol. 6: Wirtschaftgescichte des Vorderen Orients in Islamischer Zeit, Part 1, ed. Bertold Spuler (Leiden and Köln: Brill, 1977), 290, 314. 21 Filāḥah Texts Project, “Ibn Waḥshīyah Al-filāḥah al-nabaṭīyah  =  Nabataean Agriculture”; Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, “Ibn Waḥshiyya and Magic,” Anaquel des Estudios Árabes 10 (1999): 39‑48; Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, The Last Pagans of Iraq: Ibn Waḥshiyya and His Nabatean Agriculture (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), ix, 3–52. 22 Robert H. Rodgers, “Hail, Frost, and Pests in the Vineyard: Anatolius of Berytus as a Source for the Nabataean Agriculture,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 100 (1980): 1‑11; Hämeen-Anttila, “Ibn Waḥshiyya and Magic,” 44. 23 Agr. Nab. I 663–759 E (i). 24 Fahd, “Botany and Agriculture,” 813. 25 Ibid., 817; Kruk, “Nabāt,” 833. 26 Theophrastus, De causis plantarum, Vol. I, 104–5: ζητήσειε δ' ἂν τις ἐκ τῶν μικρῷ πρότερον εἰρημένων πρότερον τὰ δένδρα κατὰ χειμῶνα κύει πρὸς καρπογονίαν, τοῦ δ' ἧρος αποτíκτει. 27 Ibid., 126–27: ἁπλῶς δ' οὐ τὰ ἰσχυρότερα καὶ τροφιμώτερα, καθάπερ οὐδ' ἐπὶ τῶν ζῷων, ἀλλ' ἑτέρα τις καθ' ἑαυτὴν πρóς καρπογονíαν ἰσχὺς καὶ δύναμις. μανόν γὰρ καὶ εὐδíοδον καὶ ὑργὸν εἶναι δεῖ καρποτοκῆσον, ἡ δε πυκνότης ἐναντíον, ὥσπερ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν γυναικῶν καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἄλλων ζῴων; 28 Ibid., 186–87: ἀλλὰ καὶ εἰς τὴν ζῳογονíαν καὶ εἰς τὴν καρποτοκίαν καὶ πέπανσις συμμετρíας τινὸς δεῖ τοῦ θερμοῦ καὶ οὺχ ὑπερβολῆς, εἴπερ αὔτη μὲν ξηραíνει καὶ πυκνοῖ μᾶλλον. . . 29 Ibid., 282–83: ἡ δὲ καρποτοκία δεῖται μὲν τῆς φυσικῆς περιττώσεως, ἐκ ταύτης γὰρ ὁ καρπóς, ὥσπερ καὶ τοῖς ζῴοις τὸ σπέρμα. 30 Plant-woman parallels in Arabic theoretical works are rare. On another occurrence, see the case of the prominent, though much later Ibn Rušd (d. 1198 CE), as cited in Catarina Belo, “Some Considerations on Averroes’ Views Regarding Women and Their Role in Society,” Journal of Islamic Studies 20, no. 1 (2009): 9, 11. 31 Theophrastus, De causis plantarum, 126–29: ὅτι πέψις ἐστὶν ἡ μὲν οὖν τῶν περικαρπíων, ἡ δ' αὐτῶν τῶν καρπῶν, καὶ ἡ μὲν πρὸς τὰς ἡμετέρας τροφάς, ἡ δὲ πρὸς γέννησιν καὶ διαμονὴν τῶν δένδρων, οἱ γὰρ καρποὶ καὶ τὰ σπέρματα τούτων χάριν. . . 32 Theophrastus, De causis plantarum, Vol. II, 191: ἐπειδὴ πλείους αἱ γενέσεις τῶν φυτῶν, τούτων δὲ κοινοτάτη πᾶσιν ἡ ἀπὸ σπέρματος (ἢ ὄσα ἔχει σπέρμα καὶ καρπóν). 33 Kruk, “Nabāt,” 832; John M. Riddle, “Review of Mahmoud M. Sadek, The Arabic Materia medica of Dioscorides,” Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society 76, no. 4 (1985): 633; Fahd, “Botany and Agriculture,” 817; Mahmoud M. Sadek, The Arabic Materia medica of Dioscorides (Saint-Jean-Chrysostome, Quebec: Sphinx, 1983), 7–9; Charles Singer, “The Herbal in Antiquity and Its Transmission to Later Ages Author(s),” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 47, no. 1 (1927): 48. 34 Kruk, “Nabāt,” 833; Fahd, “Botany and Agriculture,” 817. 35 My translation, as well as all the following citations from the same work. Aristotle, De plantis (Arabic) = “al-Nabāt” al-mansūb ilā Arisṭūṭālīs, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī, in al-Ārāʾ al-ṭabīʿīya” al-mansūb ilā Flūṭarḫas. “al-Ḥāss wa-l-maḥsūs” li-Ibn Rušd. “al-Nabāt” al-mansūb ilā Arisṭūṭālīs (Cairo: Maktabat al-nahḍa al-miṣrīya, 1954), 244: “Min al-nās man qāla inna li-l-nabāt nafsan, li-mā raʾā min tawāludihi wa-iġtiḏāʾihi wa-namāʾihi, wa-šabābihi wa-haramihi, iḏ lam yağid min [hāḏihi] al-ašyāʾ allatī lā nafsa lahā mā yušārik al-nabāt fī hāḏihi al-ašyāʾ.” 36 Cf. Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. A. L. Peck (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942), 10–11, Book I, Ch 2. (76a14–15). 37 Cf. ibid. 38 On the parallel between eggs and seeds, cf. Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 120, 122– 21, 123, Book I, Ch. 23.

Fatherhood and Sonship  189 39 Cf. Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 18–19, Book I, Ch. 4; and 124–25, Book I, Ch. 23; Aristotle, De plantis (Arabic), 248–50: Aḫaṣṣ al-ašyāʾ kullihā bi-hāḏā al-ʿilm al-baḥṯ ʿammā qāla Hamfadūqlis: hal yūğad fī al-nabāt ināṯ wa-ḏukūr, aw nawʿ ğāmiʿ li-l-ḏakar wa-l-unṯā. Li-anna min šaʾn al-ḏakar an yūlid al-walad fī ġayrihi, wa-min šaʾn al-unṯā an talid min ġayrihā, wa-an yakūn kull wāḥid minhumā muʿtazilan ʿan ṣāḥibihi. wa-laysa yūğad fī al-nabāt šayʾ min hāḏā, li-anna kull nawʿ min al-nabāt al-ḏakar minhu mā kāna ḫašinan ṣulban, wa-l-unṯā kaṯīrat al-ṯamar. .  .  . Wa-ayḍan innahu laysa yūğad ğawhar min al-ğawāhir ināṯuhu wa ḏukūruhu fī šayʾ wāḥid maʿan. Wa-law kāna hāḏā hākaḏā, la-kāna al-nabāt akmal min al-ḥayawān, li-annahu kāna lā yaḥtāğ fī tawlīdihi ilā šayʾ min ḫāriğ, bal huwa muḥtāğ ilā azminat al-sana wa-ilā al-šams wa-l-iʿtidāl akṯar min kull šayʾ. Wa-nağiduhu yaḥtāğ ilā ḏālika fī waqt ibrāz al-ṯamar. Wa-mubtadaʾ ġiḏāʾ al-nabāt min al-arḍ, wa-mubtadaʾ tawlīduhu min al-šams. Wa-li-ḏālika qāla rağul yuqāl lahu Alqmāūn inna al-arḍ umm al-nabāt, wa-l-šams abūhu. Wa-ammā iḫtilāṭ ḏukūr al-nabāt bi-ināṯihi fa-lanā an nataḫayyalahu ʿalā ğiha uḫrā, li-anna bizr al-nabāt šabīḥ bi-l-ḥabal, wa-huwa iḫtilāṭ al-ḏakar bi-l-unṯā; wa-kamā anna fī al-bayḍa quwwat tawallud al-farrūğ wa-māddat ġiḏāʾihi ilā waqt namāʾihi wa-ḫurūğihi minhā, wa-l-unṯā tabīḍ al-bayḍa fī waqt wāḥid, fa-kaḏālika al-nabāt ayḍan. Wa-qad ğawwada Hamfadūqlis fī qawlihi inna al-šağar al-ṭiwāl lā tūlid firāḫan, li-anna al-šayʾ al-nabāt innamā yanbut fī ğuzʾ al-bizr, wa-yaṣīr mā fīhi fī badʾ al-amr ġiḏāʾ al-aṣl wa-l-sabab; . . . Wa-li-ḏālika yanbaġī lanā an nufakkir fī iḫtilāṭ ḏukūr al-nabāt bi-ināṯihi. Wa-min al-ḥayawān mā yušbih al-nabāt fī ḥāla min al-ḥālāt, li-anna al-ḥayawān iḏā wāqaʿa ḏukūruhu bi-ināṯihi iḫtalaṭat quwwatuhumā baʿada mā kānā muftariqayn. Fa-in kānat al-ṭabīʿa ḫalaṭat ḏukūr al-nabāt bi-ināṯihi faqad faʿalat al-ṣawāb wa-mā nağid al-nabāt faʿʿālan siwā tawlīd al-ṯimār; wa-innamā ṣāra al-ḥayawān munfaridan muʿtazilan fī al-awqāt allatī lā yuğāmiʿ fīhā li-kaṯrat afʿālihi. 40 Discussed in Varsányi, “Incarnation/Tağassud Lexicon.” 41 Aristotle, De plantis (Arabic), 252–53: Fa-qad ṣaḥḥa anna ağzāʾ al-nabāt ġayr maḥdūda: in kānat hāḏihi al-ağzāʾ hiya ağzāʾ al-nabāt, wa-in kānat ġayr ağzāʾahu. Wa-qabīḥ binā an naqūl fī šay allaḏī bihi yanmū al-ḥayawān wa-yakmulu innahu laysa bi-ğuzʾihi; wa-mimmā yanbaġī lanā an lā nağaʿal ṯamar al-nabāt min ağzāʾihi li-anna al-ğanīn laysa huwa bi-ğuzʾ ummihi; wa-ammā al-waraq wa-sāʾir mā fīhi fa-innahu min ağzāʾihi. 42 Cf. Aristotle. Generation of Animals, 66–67, Book I, Ch. 18. 43 Aristotle, De plantis (Arabic), 277: Iḏā ḥadaṯa min al-nabāt aw al-šağar ğaḏb šadīd, natağa al-ṯamar marratan fī al-ʿāmm; wa-iḏā lam yakun minhu ğaḏb, aḥdaṯat al-ṭabīʿa al-ṭabḫ fī marrāt mutawālīyāt, wa-fī kull ṭabḫ yantiğ al-ṯamar, wa-li-hāḏā kāna baʿḍ al-nabāt yaḥmal ṯamaran marrāt ʿadīda fī al-ʿāmm. Wa-mā kāna min al-nabāt ṭabʿuhu ka-l-māʾ lā yakād yaḥmal ṯamaran illā bi-ṣuʿūba, li-ġalabat al-ruṭūba ʿalayhi. Other examples include: “Some plants carry [yaḥmal] their fruit above their leaves, others carry their fruit beneath their leaves” (“Min al-nabāt mā yaḥmal ṯamarahu fawq waraqihi, wa-minhu mā yaḥmal ṯamarahu taḥt waraqihi”), ibid., 253; “There are plants that carry [yaḥmal] fruit, and there are that do not” (“Min al-nabāt mā yaḥmal al-ṯimār, wa-minhu mā lā yaḥmal”), ibid., 256. 44 Aristotle, De plantis (Arabic), 258: “Wa-min al-nabāt mā yusriʿ fī iḫrāğ al-ṯimār wa-lwaraq, wa-minhu mā yubṭiʾ fī ḏālika.” 45 Aristotle, De plantis (Arabic), 275: “Fa-ḫarrağat al-luzūğa ṯamaran aw ḫarrağat al-ruṭūba waraqan fī ḥāla wāḥida.”

190  Orsolya Varsányi 46 Aristotle, De plantis (Arabic), 280: iḏā ġurisat al-ašğār fī arḍ muʿtadila tusriʿ fī al-ṭabḫ qabla zaman al-rabīʿ, wa-ḏālika li-annahu iḏā kānat al-ḥarāra muʿtadila fa-inna al-ṯamara lā taḥtāğ ilā ḥarāra kaṯīra ḫilāl ʿamaliyyat al-ṭabḫ. Wa-li-hāḏā fa-inna al-ṭabḫ yatimm sarīʿan wa-yaqaʿ qabl ayyām al-rabīʿ. Wa-marārat al-ṭaʿām aw ġilaẓuhu taġlib fī al-ašğār kullihā badʾ ġarsihā.Wa-l-sabab fī hāḏā annahu ḥīnamā takūn al-ruṭūba fī aṭrāfihā wa-yaḥduṯ al-ṭabḫ fī al-ağzāʾ al-mawğūda fī wasaṭ al-šağara allatī minhā taʾtī māddat al-ṯamara, yanša al-ğafāf wa-yatlū al-ruṭūba, wa-yakūn al-ṭabḫ al-awwal ḥāmiḍan aw murran, aw ʿafiṣan. Wa-l-sabab huwa anna al-ṭabḫ yaqaʿ bi-l-ḥarāra wa-l-ruṭūba, fa-iḏā ġalabat al-ruṭūba aw al-ğafāf ʿalā al-ḥarāra, takūn al-ṯamara al-nātiğa ʿalā hāḏā al-naḥw qas naḍiğat nuḍğan tāmman, wa-li-hāḏā yakūn nitāğ al-ṯamar fī al-awwal ʿadīm al-ḥalāwa. 47 Martin Plessner, “Balīnūs,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. 1 (A-B), eds. Bernard Lewis, Charles Pellat, and Joseph Schacht, assisted by C. Dumont and Roger Mervyn Savory (Leiden and Köln: Brill, 1960), 995; on a possible earlier dating, see Mohammad Karimi Zanjani Asl, “Sirr al-Khalīqa and Its Influence,” Al-Qanṭara 37, no. 2 (2016): 438, 441. 48 My translation. Balīnūs, Sirr al-ḫalīqa = Balīnūs [Pseudo-Apollonius of Tyana], Sirr al-ḫalīqa wa-ṣanʿat al-ṭabīʿa. Kitāb al-ʿilal, ed. Ursula Weisser (Aleppo: Ğāmiʿat Ḥalab, 1979), 379–380: Limā ṣārat al-ṯimār fī al-ašğār? Qulnā: li-l-wilāda. .  .  . taḥarraka ḏālika al-dam fī al-ašğār bi-taḥrīk al-riyāḥ lahā, fa-inṭabaḫa bi-suḫūnat al-ašğār wa-ḥarrakathu al-riyāḥ, fa-inṭalaqathu min al-aġṣān fa-ṣāra wilādatan lahā bi-manzalat al-wilāda allatī fī al-ḥayawān, wa-ṣāra al-ṯamar fī al-ašğār bi-manazalat al-niṭāf fī al-ḥayawān. fa-hāḏihi ʿillat ḫurūğ al-ṯamar. 49 Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon, 704. 50 Varsányi, “Incarnation/Tağassud Lexicon,” 64 and passim. 51 Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon, 167. 52 Cf. Cornelius Henricus Maria Versteegh, Greek Elements in Arabic Linguistic Thinking (Leiden and Köln: Brill, 1977), 154–60. 53 The translation does not consider the noun, which, if translated, would change this phrase to “or is he a son that He [God] begot from His substance?” The form tabannā means to adopt, so here, literally, the question is if God adopted the Messiah, as it is also expressed in the continuation of the quote. 54 I read the part: “annahu lam yattaḫiḏ ibnan” as referring to God, the Father, and translate it as “He did not take up/adopt a son.” Or: “annahu lam yuttaḫaḏ ibnan,” “He was not taken up/adopted as a son.” 55 I read this part “Innahu ibn tabannāhu min ġayr an yalid” as a new phrase, introduced by the particle of stress, inna. In my interpretation, it is an emphasized statement of the opponent, who stresses that the Messiah is “a son, whom [God] adopted, without begetting Him,” as a continuation of the idea introduced in the immediately preceding question. 56 Keating’s translation: Abū Rāʾiṭa, The Second Risāla = Ḥabīb ibn Ḫidma Abū Rāʾiṭa al-Takrītī, The Second Risāla li-Abī Rāʾiṭa al-Takrītī on the Incarnation, in Sandra Toenies Keating, Defending the “People of Truth” in the Early Islamic Period: The Christian Apologies of Abū Rā’iṭah (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), 273. Arabic text: Abū Rāʾiṭa, al-Risāla al-ṯāniyya, ed. Graf, 48: Fa-in qālū aḫbirūnā ʿan al-Masīḥ ibn Allāh tabannā ay ittaḫaḏahu min ġayr an yakūn ibnan ḥaqqan aw walad waladahu min ğawharihi yuqāl lahum in alMasīḥ—subḥānahu—ladaynā ibn Allāh waladahu bi-lā zamān wa-lā badī li-an

Fatherhood and Sonship  191 al-muttaḫaḏ ibnan laysa ibnan ḥaqīqiyyan wa-in wuṣifa ibnan. Fa-in qālū a-wa-laysa innamā waladathu Maryam fī zaman banī Isrāʾīl fa-kayfa zaʿamtum annahu lam yattaḫiḏ ibnan? Innahu ibn tabannāhu min ġayr an yalid, yuqāl lahum innā lam naṣif al-Masīḥ—subḥānahu—ibnan li-Allāh li-ḥāl mā wulida min Maryam mutağassidan aḫīran. Walākinnahu ḥīna wulida min al-Ab bi-lā zamān wa-lā badī. 57 On its usage by ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī, Theodore Abū Qurra, and Ḥabīb ibn Ḫidma Abū Rāʾiṭa, see Orsolya Varsányi, Ninth-Century Arabic Christian Apology and Polemics: A Terminological Study of ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī’s Kitāb al-Masāʾil wa-l-Ajwiba (Piliscsaba: Avicenna Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, 2015), 129–32. 58 Varsányi, Ninth-Century, 130; Mark Beaumont, Christology in Dialogue with Muslims: A Critical Analysis of Christian Presentations of Christ for Muslims from the Ninth and 20th Centuries (Carlisle, Cumbria: Paternoster Press/Regnum Books, 2005), 39–40. 59 Cf. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon, 1179. 60 Varsányi, “Incarnation/Tağassud Lexicon,” 68–69, 78–79, 81–82.

Bibliography Primary Literature Abū Qurra. Maymar fī wuğūd al-ḫāliq = Ṯāwdūrus Abū Qurra, Maymar fī wuğūd al-ḫāliq wa-d-dīn al-qawīm. Edited by Ignace Dick. Jounieh: al-Maktaba al-Būlusiyya, 1982. Abū Rāʾiṭa. “al-Risāla al-ṯāniyya  =  Ḥabīb ibn Ḫidma Abū Rāʾiṭa al-Takrītī, al-Risāla al-ṯāniyya li-Abī Rāʾiṭa al-Takrītī fī al-tağassud.” In Die Schriften des Jacobiten Ḥabīb ibn Ḫidma Abū Rāʾiṭa, edited by Georg Graf, 27–64. Louvain: Secrétariat du CSCO, 1951. ———. “Fī iṯbāt dīn al-naṣrāniyya = Ḥabīb ibn Ḫidma Abū Rāʾiṭa al-Takrītī, Risāla li-Abī Rāʾiṭa al-Takrītī fī iṯbāt dīn al-naṣrāniyya wa-iṯbāt al-ṯālūṯ al-muqaddas.” In Die Schriften des Jacobiten Ḥabīb ibn Ḫidma Abū Rāʾiṭa, edited by Georg Graf, 129–58. Louvain: Secrétariat du CSCO, 1951. ———. “The Second Risāla = Ḥabīb ibn Ḫidma Abū Rāʾiṭa al-Takrītī, The Second Risāla li-Abī Rāʾiṭa al-Takrītī on the Incarnation.” In Defending the “People of Truth” in the Early Islamic Period: The Christian Apologies of Abū Rā’iṭah, edited by Sandra Toenies Keating, 217–98. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006. ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī. “Burhān  =  ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī, Kitāb al-Burhān.” In ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī: Apologie et controverses, edited by Michael Hayek. Beyrouth: Dar el-Machreq, 1986. Aristotle.  Generation of Animals. Translated by A. L. Peck. Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 366. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942. ———. “De plantis (Arabic) = ‘al-Nabāt’ al-mansūb ilā Arisṭūṭālīs.” In al-Ārāʾ al-ṭabīʿīya” al-mansūb ilā Flūṭarḫas. “al-Ḥāss wa-l-maḥsūs” li-Ibn Rušd. “al-Nabāt” al-mansūb ilā Arisṭūṭālīs, edited by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī. Dirāsāt islāmīya, Vol. 16, 243–81. Cairo: Maktabat al-nahḍa al-miṣrīya, 1954. Balīnūs. Sirr al-ḫalīqa = Balīnūs [Pseudo-Apollonius of Tyana], Sirr al-ḫalīqa wa-ṣanʿat al-ṭabīʿa. Kitāb al-ʿilal. Edited by Ursula Weisser. Aleppo: Ğāmiʿat Ḥalab, 1979. Gregory of Nyssa. GNO I.  =  Gregorii Nysseni Opera I. Contra Eunomium Libri, Pars Prior. Edited by Werner Jaeger. Berlin: Weidmann, 1921. Ibn Waḥšīya. Al-Filāḥa al-Nabaṭīya  =  Ibn Waḥšīya, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʻAlī ibn Qays al-Kasdānī, Al-Filāḥa al-Nabaṭīya Al-tarğama al-manḥūla ilā Ibn Waḥshīya, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʻAlī ibn Qays al-Kasdānī. Edited by Tawfīq Fahd. Dimashq: al-Ma‘had al-‘Ilmī al-Faransī lil-Dirāsāt al-‘Arabīyah, 1993.

192  Orsolya Varsányi Theophrastus. De causis plantarum, Vol. I: Books 1–2. Translated by Benedict Einarson and George K. K. Link. Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 471. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976. ———.  De causis plantarum, Vol. II: Books 3–4.  Translated by  Benedict Einarson and George K. K. Link. Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 474. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. Secondary Literature Anwar, Etin. Gender and Self in Islam. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2006. Beaumont, Mark. Christology in Dialogue with Muslims: A Critical Analysis of Christian Presentations of Christ for Muslims from the Ninth and 20th Centuries. Carlisle, Cumbria: Paternoster Press and Regnum Books, 2005. ———. “ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī”. In Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, Vol. 1: 600–900, edited by David Richard Thomas and Barbara Hjördis Roggema. History of Christian-Muslim Relations 11, 604–10. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009. Belo, Catarina. “Some Considerations on Averroes’ Views Regarding Women and Their Role in Society.” Journal of Islamic Studies 20, no. 1 (2009): 1–20. Fahd, Tawfīq. “Ibn Waḥshiyya.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, edited by Bernard Lewis, Victor Louis Ménage, Charles Pellat, and Joseph Schacht, Vol. 3 (H-Iram), 963–65, 2nd ed. Leiden and Köln: Brill, 1971. ———. “Matériaux pour l’histoire de l’agriculture en Irak: al-filāḥa al-nabaṭiyya.” In Geschichte der Islamichen Länder, Vol. 6: Wirtschaftgescichte des Vorderen Orients in Islamischer Zeit, edited by Bertold Spuler, Part 1, 276–378. Leiden and Köln: Brill, 1977. ———. “Botany and Agriculture.” In Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science: Technology, Alchemy, and Life Sciences, edited by Roshdi Rashed and Morelon Régis, Vol. 3, 813–52. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Filāḥah Texts Project. “Ibn Waḥshīyah Al-filāḥah al-nabaṭīyah = Nabataean Agriculture.” In The Filāḥah Texts Project, November 18, 2013. Accessed January 1, 2021. www.filaha. org/author_Ibn_wahshiyah.html. Hämeen-Anttila, Jaakko. “Ibn Waḥshiyya and Magic.” Anaquel des Estudios Árabes 10 (1999): 39‑48. ———. The Last Pagans of Iraq: Ibn Waḥshiyya and His Nabatean Agriculture. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006. Harrison, Verna E. F. “Gender, Generation, and Virginity in Cappadocian Theology.” The Journal of Theological Studies 47, no. 1 (1996): 38–68. Hayek, Michael, ed. ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī: Apologie et controverses. Beyrouth: Dar el-Machreq, 1986. Karimi Zanjani Asl, Mohammad. “Sirr al-Khalīqa and Its Influence.” Al-Qanṭara 37, no. 2 (2016): 435–73. Keating, Sandra Toenies. “Abū Rāʾiṭa al-Takrītī.” In Christian-Muslim Relations, edited by David Richard Thomas and Barbara Hjördis Roggema, 567–81. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009. Kruk, Remke. “Nabāt.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, edited by Clifford Edmund Bosworth, Emeri Johannes van Donzel, Wolfhart Peter Heinrichs, and Charles Pellat, Vol. 7 (MifNaz), 831–34. Leiden and Köln: Brill, 1993. Lamoreaux, John C. “Theodore Abū Qurra.” In Christian-Muslim Relations, edited by David Richard Thomas and Barbara Hjördis Roggema, 439–91. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009.

Fatherhood and Sonship  193 Lampe, Geoffrey William Hugo. A Patristic Greek Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon, 1961. Mikhail, Wageeh Y. F. “ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī’s Kitāb al-Burhān: A  Topical and Theological Analysis of Arabic Christian Theology in the Ninth Century.” Doctoral Dissertation, ­University of Birmingham, Birmingham, 2013. Accessed February 5, 2021. http://etheses. bham.ac.uk/4162/1/Mikhail13PhD.pdf. Plessner, Martin. “Balīnūs.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, edited by Bernard Lewis, Charles Pellat and Joseph Schacht, Vol. 1 (A-B), 994–95. Assisted by C. Dumont and Roger Mervyn Savory. Leiden and Köln: Brill, 1960. Riddle, John M. “Review of Mahmoud M. Sadek, The Arabic Materia medica of Dioscorides.” Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society 76., no. 4 (1985): 633–34. Rodgers, Robert H. “Hail, Frost, and Pests in the Vineyard: Anatolius of Berytus as a Source for the Nabataean Agriculture.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 100 (1980): 1‑11. Sadek, Mahmoud M. The Arabic Materia medica of Dioscorides. Saint-Jean-Chrysostome, Quebec: Sphinx, 1983. Singer, Charles. “The Herbal in Antiquity and Its Transmission to Later Ages Author(s).” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 47, no. 1 (1927): 1–52. Swanson, Mark N. “The Trinity in Christian‐Muslim Conversation.” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 44, no. 3 (2005): 256–63. Varsányi, Orsolya. Ninth-Century Arabic Christian Apology and Polemics: A Terminological Study of ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī’s Kitāb al-Masāʾil wa-l-Ajwiba. Piliscsaba: Avicenna Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, 2015. ———. “Incarnation/Tağassud Lexicon in Ninth-Century Arabic Christian Controversy: A Gender Issue.” The Arabist: Budapest Studies in Arabic 42 (2021): 57–89. Versteegh, Cornelius Henricus Maria. Greek Elements in Arabic Linguistic Thinking. Leiden and Köln: Brill, 1977.

II.3

Augustine on Soul, Body, and Sexuality

10 Man, Woman, and Serpent as the Inner State of One Person Anthropology Based on the Interpretation of Genesis 3 in Didymus the Blind and Augustine of Hippo Peter D. Steiger and Makiko Sato Introduction The interpretation of Genesis by Jewish and Christian thinkers in Late Antiquity has often been blamed for establishing a patriarchal understanding of the relationship between man and woman and has been criticized for perpetuating a view of femininity that relegates women as being inferior to men. Augustine of Hippo, whose view of women is frequently expressed in his exegesis of scripture, has been a principal target for criticism, since his theology played a major role in the formation of western theological anthropology during and after the Middle Ages. However, many Church Fathers, including Augustine and Didymus the Blind interpreted Genesis in light of the Pauline letters; these exegetes nuanced their interpretation to argue that the male-female relationship presented in Genesis is not merely about physically gendered humans in the current fallen condition but more about the complex interactions within the soul of each human, the “inner man,” as termed by Paul in Romans 7:22 and 2 Corinthians 4:16. In this reading, physically gendered women and men both possess femininity and masculinity within their one human person. Caution should be exercised in considering patristic exegesis of Genesis so as not to falsely accept the idea that these writers were simply applying the gendered hierarchy of the external fallen world to the inner human soul as an allegory justifying patriarchy, since, if, as these exegetes argued, all human beings have a masculine and feminine aspect within their higher faculties, then physical gender alone should not be enough to determine the social hierarchy. Greater attention must be given to the Church Fathers’ views on the “inner man” and how these relate to their broader anthropological concerns. In this chapter, we focus on the interpretations of Genesis 3 by Didymus of Alexandria (c. 313–398) and Augustine of Hippo (354–430). Didymus’ Commentary on Genesis is dated prior to 370 and Augustine’s De Genesi contra Manichaeos is dated 388/389. In these commentaries, they read Genesis allegorically and explicate the figures of man, woman and serpent according to the Pauline idea of “inner man” when they interpret God’s creation of humans. Both exegetes were working on their commentaries in a situation where they had to be conscious of the DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-16

198  Peter D. Steiger and Makiko Sato need to refute Manichaeism.1 Didymus’ exegesis of Genesis is universally held to be representative of the Alexandrian allegorical tradition, whose principal figure was Origen. It is not clear whether Didymus’ interpretation of Genesis had any influence on Augustine’s, although preceding scholarship has pointed out the influence of Origen on Augustine’s interpretation in De Genesi contra Manichaeos.2 Perhaps Didymus’ ideas reached Augustine indirectly through Ambrose, since Didymus enjoyed some reputation among the Latin authors of the time. We hope to demonstrate that there are intriguing similarities between them. This chapter examines their exegesis of Genesis 3 and hopes to contribute to clarifying their understanding of anthropology as it was developed in the late fourth century. Didymus the Blind on Genesis 3: An Allegorical Interpretation of the Fall Didymus conceived exegesis as a way to elaborate his doctrine of the spiritual life, and this is especially true with Genesis 3, where his goal was to appropriate the text to the journey of the soul.3 Didymus had already offered hints as to how the soul is misled in his exegesis of the Hexaemeron.4 These examples speak of the fall of the mind or soul, rather than the fall of man. Several anti-Origenists thought that Didymus maintained the doctrine of the fall of pre-existent souls into the body. A closer reading of his description of the fall reveals a more nuanced perspective. In fact, Didymus argues for a strong link between soul and body, principally because he rejects the Manichaean claim that the material flesh is the cause of sin.5 Instead, Didymus emphasizes that sin begins in the soul and derives from the improper use of freedom; details from his interpretation of Genesis 3 will demonstrate this. One of the persistent features of Didymus’ interpretation of Genesis is that he always follows a two-step exegesis, which begins with a consideration of the historical or literal meaning of the text, before moving on to its allegorical or spiritual meaning. But his exegetical procedure changes when he interprets the fall, because for the first 15 verses of Genesis 3, Didymus provides only an allegorical reading.6 What explains this departure from his established practice? There are three possible reasons why Didymus does not provide a historical exegesis for Genesis 3:1–15. The first, and most obvious, concerns the anthropomorphic elements of the text. For example, serpents do not speak and, therefore, the figure of the serpent cannot be taken literally. Beginning at GenT 81, where Didymus takes up the narrative of the woman and the serpent, it is assumed that the one proposing temptations to her is the devil, and there is no hint of a conversation between any reptile and a female human in the literal sense. It is the devil who, under the title of the serpent, is condemned by God in Genesis 3:13, because he is the father of evil.7 Didymus follows Paul in this interpretation: It is evident that God does not inflict punishment on this reptile, for this latter one is not of a nature to utter a word of untruth, which would incite God to punish it. Paul knew well that the one of whom it [that is, Scripture] spoke was not an animal without reason, when he wrote to the Corinthians “I fear,

Man, Woman, and Serpent as the Inner State of One Person  199 just as the serpent in his malice deceived Eve, lest your thoughts similarly become corrupted or be turned aside from simplicity,”. . . this comparison shows well that the serpent is not a reptile but the enemy that Scripture has the custom of calling the devil.8 Didymus is not saying that a physical, sensible serpent can be understood to be the devil; he is saying that allegorizing the serpent as the devil is the only interpretation worthy of the narrative of Genesis 3. No literal interpretation is possible, so none is given. Another reason why Didymus gives only an allegorical reading of Genesis 3:1–15 is his repeated assertion that Paradise is a super-cosmic place beyond this physical world, not some hidden, hard to reach, but truly physical garden of pleasures.9 He states, “[s]ince in the preceding pages we have allegorically interpreted Paradise as a divine place, a dwelling of the blessed powers, it is necessary for us to give a corresponding sense to the narrative of man and woman.”10 Didymus did not provide a literal interpretation of Genesis 3:1–15, because he did not believe Paradise to be a physical, historical place. There is a third, more theoretical reason why Didymus only provides an allegorical reading for Genesis 3:1–15. When he addresses Genesis 3:7, Didymus criticizes those whom he labels as the “lovers of history,” because they propose a historical interpretation of the fall that would be unworthy of the sacred text.11 That an interpretation must be worthy of the divine author is a recurring theme in Didymus and was a guiding principle of Alexandrian exegesis. Didymus applies this principle here to suggest that no historical interpretation can explain the details in a manner fitting to its divine author. He points out that, in Genesis 3:7–8, the scriptures follow the logic of the story in order to convey its message in a way appropriate to humans and to speak about spiritual realities that do not have material referents, such as the soul, its progress, and the attributes of God.12 Didymus does not provide a literal interpretation of the narrative because he does not think the details could render a coherent physical sense that would follow the logic of the story. Only with Genesis 3:16 does he return to his two-tier treatment of the literal, as well as allegorical sense of the passages in question.13 Didymus’ allegorical treatment of the fall begins with the words of the serpent to the woman contained in Genesis 3:5–6, but due to a lacuna, we do not know how he introduced the dialogue. Later references in the commentary suggest that God created woman on an equal level of responsibility to the man as another protoplast, but because man preceded woman, he was her senior and she was expected to learn from him.14 We also lack a description of the creation and fall of the devil, though elsewhere Didymus stresses that the devil is not evil by nature but by choice.15 Confrontation with demonic powers appears frequently in Didymus’ works and is based on Ecclesiastes 10:4 (“the ascent of the spirit of power”); this reference to the “spirit of power” opens the extant commentary on Genesis 3, so that the dialogue between the serpent and the woman provides the opportunity to explain the first assault by the demonic opponent.16 Didymus suggests that this first temptation contains the characteristic motive for all evil, namely, the “spirit of power,” the devil.17 The devil begins to deceive the

200  Peter D. Steiger and Makiko Sato woman through a subtle interjection that God is jealous of the protoplasts and his command is not for prevention of harm, but to keep them in ignorance so as not to become discerning of good and evil.18 These deceitful words are given a hearing by the woman, but this does not yet constitute the fall.19 The serpent desires that the protoplasts become “skillful,” but not in doing good, but rather in wickedness, by “opening their eyes” to evil.20 Didymus argues that this does not refer to sensible vision, he states: “When virtue is active, these (sensible) eyes are not opened; they are shut and support a salutary blindness.” The inner eyes “guard purity by their vigilance, not in the sensible order, but in that of intelligible realities.”21 They possess “an anterior knowledge, and they apply reason to sensation, hiding it according to the passage ‘the wise will conceal sensation.”22 Didymus contrasts seeing sensibly and spiritually, but this does not imply the denigration of material reality; rather, emphasis is on the proper ordering between reason and sensation, as had been proposed in the creation narrative, where the Divine Logos governs the sensible cosmos and any human, who is “in the image of God,” must follow this pattern to mimic God. To fall is to imitate Satan who knew good and evil, but chooses not to do the good. This shows the first step on the descent into vice, namely, a willful closing of the eyes of the inner man.23 Didymus, then, introduces a teaching dimension and the impact on the soul’s faculties: So, this is the devil’s lie—the things that the pure vision of the soul considers according to true reason, he makes them appear in an opposite way; he suggests the pleasurable in place of the good and reveals the good as troublesome. Thus are opened the eyes which formerly had been advantageously closed. There is, indeed, in the soul an eye which bears itself to the intelligible things, and an ear which obeys the teaching received from another. It is by distracting this eye and ear from their object that the devil fulfilled his lie, and the consequence of it is that the senses as well as the mind have been damaged. For when the senses are distracted from their object, the choices of the mind present themselves from all sides. It is written concerning those who turn aside things from their normal usage, “woe to those who call the evil good and the good evil!” So, they are subjected to pleasure, cause of all falls. . . [m]ost people prefer indeed ease over virtue because they do not like the exertion, and they themselves also are “placed in the nude,” stripped of virtue. Thus, it is necessary to despise the agreeable which becomes an occasion for sin.24 Didymus accents the shift from spiritual to sensible apprehension, which is the aim of the devil’s deceit and how this shift produces confusion in both the senses and the mind.25 This confusion causes people to forfeit the difficulty of virtue for the ease of pleasure. The allegory of ears open to teaching enables the universal application of these details to every soul, whereby the soul’s reasoning faculty is understood as male and sense perception as female. To introduce this interpretation, Didymus refers to “some authors” who present Adam’s eating with the woman as condescension for the woman’s sake so that she will not be destroyed.26

Man, Woman, and Serpent as the Inner State of One Person 201 Didymus’ interpretation of Genesis 3:7–8a presents the woman as fully responsible and possessed of all the faculties that make her the suitable helpmate to the man, so “after having perceived by sensation, the woman, under the influence of the serpent, ‘takes the fruit’ with full consent and, carrying out the deed to the end, she eats it.”27 Seeing with the senses alone causes the woman to have an abnormal discernment, because vision cannot judge if something is good for food.28 Didymus shows that pleasure has overruled reason in directing the soul so that what is pleasurable now becomes the good to be sought. The result is the mind misdirecting the actions with the consequence that evil deeds are done.29 With its inner eye closed by sensation, the soul now believes virtue to be troublesome and undesirable.30 This outlines the development of sin: first, there is perception by sensation under demonic influence instead of reason; second, the woman offers consent to the devil’s temptation; finally, she brings her mental consent to conclusion by carrying out the deed of eating. For Genesis 3:8b-12, Didymus appropriates the text to the behavior of the sinner once sin has occurred. First, there is an attempt to fashion protection and covering in the form of excuses, sewn together like a fig-leaf girdle, a poor substitution for the beautiful garment of virtue.31 In God’s question, “Where are you?” Didymus sees the loss of Paradise—before the fall, Adam’s place was not bound to one locale, his soul was eternally free; now sin binds man to time and space.32 As a sinner, he has lost confidence to stand before God.33 The sinner hides under the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and Didymus suggests that this attempt to distinguish good and evil without practicing virtue makes the sinner a hypocrite.34 Didymus also revisits the master-disciple relationship, noting that Adam’s response to God’s query “who taught you that you were naked?” does not answer God’s question. Didymus says that this reveals man’s role, since “he must have first thought that, having received his wife from God, he had necessarily received her for his good, and then that he had not received her so that she give him lessons, but, on the contrary, that she follow his example.”35 The image of Adam teaching his wife connects to the woman’s initial response to the serpent in Genesis 3:2–3, where she said regarding the tree of knowledge, that they may not touch it. Didymus claims this additional prescription derived from Adam’s instruction of the woman in view of her more lowly estate.36 Didymus asks: “How does a teacher allow himself to be wronged by a student?” His response links Genesis 3:12 to 1 Timothy 2:14: Adam is portrayed as condescending to teach his wife in order that she, who was given for his good, will not be expelled for disobedience, just as Christ condescends for the Church.37 In this allegorical context, the devil becomes a sophist misleading people through deceptive arguments and flattering promises. In the remaining lemmata concerning the fall, Didymus provides further summative statements to describe the descent of the soul into vice. When he addresses the three actors in the narrative who are culpable for the transgression—the man, the woman, and the serpent—he explains that allegorically these represent the process of the descent of any soul into vice: “We interpret allegorically as above the rank of the three characters. Pleasure, which is the serpent, penetrates first into sensation, that we have said to be the woman, then sensation serves the intelligence, that we have said is the man.”38

202  Peter D. Steiger and Makiko Sato Augustine on Genesis 3: An Allegorical Interpretation Against the Manichaeans39 Augustine’s De Genesi contra Manichaeos has two books. Book 1 comments on Genesis 1:1–2:4a (the book of Creation) and Book 2 on Genesis 2:4b-3:24 (on Paradise). In the beginning of Book 2, Augustine says that “[t]hen [after the book of Creation] it begins to report about man with greater care. This whole narrative unfolds, not clearly, but in figures [non aperte, sed figurate].”40 Like Didymus, Augustine intentionally interprets the Paradise myth in a more figurative, allegorical way.41 Listening to sermons by Ambrose of Milan, Augustine was convinced that accusations by Manichaeans against the Old Testament were resolved by spiritual interpretation.42 In the beginning of Book 2 of De Genesi contra Manichaeos, Augustine says that “if Manichees preferred to search out the secrets of these words, without fault and making accusations, but investigating with reverence, they would, of course, not be Manichees.” Augustine adopted the allegorical interpretation in this book in order to refute the Manicheans.43 According to an allegorical reading, the Church Fathers interpreted the Serpent in Genesis 3 not as a physical, sensible serpent but as the devil. Augustine, too, follows this interpretation and quotes the same words of Paul in Corinthians (2 Corinthians 11:2–3), as Didymus does,44 when he starts to explain that the Serpent signifies the devil.45 The devil does not approach the woman and the man in Paradise by visible, physical ways. The devil “suggests in marvelous ways whatever he can by thoughts [miris modis per cogitationes suggerit quidquid potest].”46 To whom does the devil suggest? “The devil deceives by means of the woman [per mulierem].”47 Augustine does not say that the devil deceives the woman. Augustine explains that “nor can our reason be brought to the consent that is sin, except when delight [delectatio] is aroused in that part of the soul [animus] which ought to obey reason [ratio] as its ruling husband.” The suggestion is what arouses pleasure through “thought or the sense of the body.” The part that feels pleasure in a person or the pleasure itself is the woman. As far as a person feels the delight/pleasure by some things, or feels attracted in thought by some evil ideas, the sin is not carried out. When the reason “consents and decides that what desire has stirred up should be carried out,” the serpent’s deception is completed.48 It is interesting that Augustine mentions not only the pleasure by bodily senses but also the one by thought, when he interprets the woman. By this, the role of reason/the man, is clear. The reason is not only an ability of thinking. The woman also has the ability. The reason, the man, has a freedom of choice. In this manner, Augustine applies the scheme of suggestion, delight, and consent, to the serpent, the woman, and the man, just like Didymus.49 Augustine thinks of the relationship of the three as an inner dynamic state that every human being has in oneself. When he explains that the Serpent signifies the devil, Augustine, who quoted Paul’s words to the Corinthians, focuses on the word “simplicitas.” Augustine says that the devil “was certainly not simple.”50 He mentions the word again when he interprets the eyes by which the woman and man saw themselves naked in Genesis 3:7.51 He explains the eyes as the ones “of cunning to which simplicity is displeasing

Man, Woman, and Serpent as the Inner State of One Person 203 [oculos astutiae, quibus simplicitas displicet].” Both “astutia” and “simplicitas” are the words found in 2 Corinthians 11:3. Astutia is a character that is applied to the serpent in the scripture, but here, Augustine says that, when they were persuaded by the serpent, the man and the woman got the same evil eyes as the serpent had. The eyes are of course not sensible, physical ones. They are inner eyes that do not see the “intimate and hidden light of truth.”52 Augustine explains as follows: From this there also arises the hypocrisy by which men think that they are very wise if they can deceive and beguile whomever they wish. For the woman gave to her man and they ate, and they were opened those eyes of theirs, of which we have just spoken. Then they saw that they were naked by perverted eyes to which that simplicity signified by the term, nakedness, seemed to be something to be ashamed of.53 It is notable that Augustine uses the word “hypocrisis” here. As we saw earlier, Didymus also mentioned the word. People, who got the evil eyes by consenting to the evil suggestion, “think that they are very wise [cordati].” The word “cordatus” itself does not have a negative meaning. Being wise is actually a positive inner state. They are in fact not wise in that they do not see the light of truth, but their perverted inner eyes make them see as if they are wise, just like a hypocrite is deceptive, but at the same time he or she looks true and good. Thus, the point is that a hypocrite does not like simplicity, in that “the heart of him who lies is said to be double.”54 In his Confessiones, Augustine says that they (the Manichaeans) have “not turned away from all notion of joy.”55 Augustine, who tries to refute the strict ontological dualism of the Manichaeans that says evil is unchangeably evil, does not consider even the hostile Manichaean heretic as unable to be changed and converted. After mentioning the word “hypocrisis,” Augustine starts to explain the sin of Adam and Eve by referring to the concept of lying. Augustine interprets the leaves of the fig tree by which they hid themselves as signifying a certain itching that the mind suffers from “the desire and pleasure of lying [cupiditas et delectatio mentiendi].” The focus on the devil’s state as the liar is connected to the interpretation that the first parents conceived the inner desire for lying. Augustine says that Adam and Eve “were clothed with a lie.”56 He also says later in the interpretation of Genesis 3:21 that, “having abandoned the face of truth, they sought the pleasure of lying, and God changed their bodies into this mortal flesh in which deceitful hearts are hidden.” Augustine does not introduce a teaching dimension in this commentary as Didymus does in his, but it is an interesting fact that, during the same year as writing this commentary, Augustine wrote De magistro, where he proposed that there is no teacher except God who teaches humans knowledge.57 A year after De magistro, Augustine relates deception and sin in De vera religion: The falsehood does not arise from things themselves being deceptive. . . . Nor does it arise from the senses themselves’ being deceptive. . . . But it is

204  Peter D. Steiger and Makiko Sato sins that deceive souls, when they go seeking what is true after forsaking and neglecting Truth.58 The focus on the devil’s state as the liar and the interpretation of man, woman, and serpent as inner states of one person, which is seen also in Didymus’ commentary, seems to lead Augustine to deepen his anthropology.59 At the end of the commentary, Augustine stresses that the devil is not evil by nature but by choice, just like Didymus does. Augustine asks the question: “ ‘Who made the devil?’ He made himself; for the devil was made by sinning, not by nature.”60 Augustine stresses this idea again by mentioning the Manichaeans, saying that, [s]ince they cannot deny that the human race is in the misery of sin, they say that that nature of God is in misery. We deny this and say that the nature God made from nothing is in misery and that it came to this state, not under compulsion, but by the will to sin.61 The devil is not something outside of us. When one thinks of man, woman and serpent as the inner states of one person, the serpent can be regarded as a temptation, and the sin is found in the person’s choice to imitate the devil.62 Augustine does not adopt the figurative interpretation in his later commentaries on Genesis, but his consistent argument on the sin that is found in the inner state of the human mind seems to signify that his change of the way of interpretation does not simply mean the rejection of his anthropology that he gained in his earliest commentary on Genesis 3. Conclusion As we saw earlier, Didymus and Augustine used common ideas in their interpretations of Genesis 3. Their exegesis clearly suggests an anthropology where every human being has both masculine and feminine capacities of mind, regardless of one’s physical gender.63 Both of them emphasized the problem of deceit within one’s self and tried to lead readers to integrate their inner states to become truly wise. Didymus used the idea of a master-disciple relationship to show how to integrate these inner states, and Augustine agrees with him in the idea that what is necessary for the integration is not the unilateral domination or exclusion of the passive capacity, but the collaborative relationship based on love. Augustine expressed this relationship with the words “marriage in oneself [coniugalis in seipso].”64 Didymus’ and Augustine’s endeavor of interpreting Genesis in the context of the Manichaean challenge to a Christian interpretation leads to a “Christian philosophical life,” which respects monastics who wish to devote their life to study and prayer without denigrating the marriage of man and woman. These facts suggest the possibility that Augustine may have learned of Origen through Didymus by way of Ambrose. Our further collaborative research, including De Paradiso by Ambrose of Milan, could yield more insights.

Man, Woman, and Serpent as the Inner State of One Person 205 Notes 1 Didymus only mentions Manichaeism once in his Commentary on Genesis, but it is clear that he was conscious of the threats of Manicheans when he wrote it. For references to Manichaeism interspersed throughout Didymus’ biblical commentaries, see Byard Bennett, “Didymus the Blind’s Knowledge of Manichaeism,” in The Light and the Darkness: Studies in Manichaeism and Its World, eds. Paul Mirecki and Jason BeDuhn (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001), 40. 2 See György Heidl, Origen’s Influence on the Young Augustine: A Chapter of the History of Origenism (Louaize and Piscataway, NJ: Notre Dame University—Louaize Press and Gorgias Press, 2003). 3 The following research is a revision of segments of one of the authors’ dissertation, entitled “Theological Anthropology in the Commentary On Genesis by Didymus the Blind,” completed at the Catholic University of America in 2006. 4 The critical edition of Didymus’ Commentary on Genesis, discovered at Tura, Egypt (hereafter abbreviated GenT, followed by the papyrus pagination with line numbers), is by: Pierre Nautin and Louis Doutreleau, Didyme l’Aveugle: Sur la Genèse, Sources chrétiennes, Vols. 233 and 244 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1976–1978). Cf. GenT 51.2–3 and 59.19–24, where in describing a soul of the earth in Genesis 1:10, he argues that such a soul flooded with worldly concerns causes the mind to be submerged in sin. In GenT 61.7–10, he points out that when the soul falls into error, it is defeated by the powers of darkness, which reside in dark chasms of the earth. Elsewhere he describes this as an illness of the soul and equates it with ignorance in GenT 72.4–20. 5 This may be the reason he did not comment on Genesis 2, to avoid giving the Manicheans any opportunity to denigrate the body. 6 While we do not possess his comments on Genesis 3:1–5, it is possible to speculate that the content and procedure was similar to that found in verses 3:6–15, as will become evident from the later discussion. 7 GenT 94.13–95.1. 8 GenT 96.4–14. 9 This would apply to any exegesis of Genesis 2 that Didymus may have written, though it seems he never interpreted this text fully. 10 GenT 102.8–11. 11 GenT 84.12–18. The identity of these “lovers of history” is hard to establish; is he referring to the Manichaeans or to other Christian interpreters who are attempting to present Paradise as a physical place? 12 GenT 86.6–13, 22–25, GenT 88.19–25. 13 There is an anthropological significance to this, because Didymus does not consider mortal embodiment to occur until after the Fall. 14 GenT 93.12–23. This is the basis for the allegorical interpretation of the male-female relationship as one of master-disciple. 15 GenT 109.2–14. Didymus also composed an entire treatise against the Manichaeans, much of which emphasized that Satan was not evil by nature. For this paper, the Greek text with English translation of Contra Manichaeos utilized is found in the dissertation of Byard Bennett, “The Origin of Evil: Didymus the Blind’s Contra Manichaeos and Its Debt to Origen’s Theology and Exegesis” (Doctoral Dissertation, Toronto, Canada: University of St. Michael’s College, 1997), 302–27. 16 Richard A. Layton, Didymus the Blind and His Circle in Late-Antique Alexandria: Virtue and Narrative in Biblical Scholarship (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 128–34. Scholars note that Didymus’ teaching concerning propatheia is based on this and other similar verses. Propatheia was a term of Stoic derivation that Christian ascetic teachers (Origen, Didymus, Jerome) employed to describe the preliminary movement, prior to rational judgment, toward a passionate response to external stimuli. Didymus proposed that it was possible for the rational mind to stem this movement

206  Peter D. Steiger and Makiko Sato

17 18 19 20 21 22 23

toward passion by overcoming psychological inertia to show that the impression is false by nature. In this sense, passions always require the assent of the mind. Layton shows that Didymus understood these propathic impressions to derive from demonic forces, thus relocating them from the external world to the internal operations of the soul and posing temptations for the rational mind. They become indicative of the spiritual warfare occurring within the soul of the ascetic. GenT 81.2–4. GenT 81.8–9, 127.21, 141.22. Recalling Layton’s description of propatheia, we can see that this is the stage of the initial impression, either interior or exterior, without yet reaching the level of intellectual assent. GenT 81.14–20. We note that the emphasis is not on the doing of evil, but the very thought of it, again a central concern to a monastic audience. GenT 81.20–22, 28–29. Didymus explains this capacity of the inner eyes by using the examples of the physician, who applies reason to sensation in order to determine health through touching the pulse, and the artist, who comprehends a work of art by reason and not with the senses alone. GenT 82.7–14: Man possessed, before the fall, eyes which looked at things as it was necessary, meaning a mind which applied itself scientifically to things. As far as he had these eyes which applied their glances to spectacles that were appropriate, man knew not evil—far from the experience of it, he did not give it entry. But when these eyes become blocked so that those will be opened that incline toward evil, then they will be chased out. This is what the devil desired and for this reason, he deceives the woman, slipping to her the idea that God is envious.

24 GenT 83.7–25. 25 Layton shows that Didymus follows Philo in much of this exegesis. Cf. Richard A. Layton, Didymus and His Circle, 98. 26 This interpretation, which Pierre Nautin, Sur la Genèse, 1976, Introduction to GenT, 23–24, assigns to Origen, relies on 1 Timothy 2:4. It serves to insulate the rational faculty from culpability in the fall and also to preserve some basis for considering the mind as still capable of knowing the truth. Didymus could not conceive that the mind would lose the ability to know the truth. This points to the emphasis on rationality in Didymus; he would never suggest that one knows the truth simply through revelation without the use of reason. Reason condescends, but it is not completely “deprived” of knowledge. In this sense, it remains “in the Image” even after the fall. 27 GenT 82.26–28. 28 GenT 82.22–24. 29 GenT 82.24–83.1. 30 GenT 83.7–12. 31 GenT 84.20–86.6. 32 GenT 90.12–91.11. 33 GenT 92.8–22. 34 GenT 88.17–90.1. 35 GenT 93.12–14. 36 GenT 93.19–22. 37 GenT 93.22–94.10. 38 GenT 95.18–21. 39 This section’s work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI, Grant Number 19K00103. 40 Aug. Gen.Man. 2.1.1. The Latin text of Augustine’s Gen.Man. in this paper is Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vol. 91, ed. Dorothea Weber (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1998). The English translation is

Man, Woman, and Serpent as the Inner State of One Person  207 by Roland J. Teske from: On Genesis: Two Books on Genesis against the Manichees and On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis: An Unfinished Book, Fathers of the Church, Vol. 84 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991). 41 Allegorical interpretation is what is said in figures. Augustine says that “it is a matter of allegory when things spoken in figures [figurate] are understood” (De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus 2.5); “According to allegory [secundum allegoriam], when it is taught that certain things which have been written are not to be taken in the letter but are to be understood in a figure [figurate]” (De utilitate credendi 3.5). 42 Cf. Aug. Confessiones 6.3.5. 43 Yoon Kyung Kim says that “[t]o Augustine, figurative interpretation is not only a proper hermeneutic method to understand the opening chapters of Genesis, but also an efficient weapon to countercharge the Manichaean criticism.” See Yoon Kyung Kim, Augustine’s Changing Interpretations of Genesis 1–3: From De Genesi contra Manichaeos to De Genesi ad litteram (Lewiston and Queenston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2006), 105. At the same time, by the allegorical reading, Augustine appropriates the Hexaemeron to the journey of the soul in the final chapter of Book 1, saying that “in good works and a just life each of us has something like these six distinct days” (Aug. Gen.Man. 1.25.43). Augustine also seems to have a similar aim of exegesis of Genesis with Didymus. 44 GenT 96.4–14. 45 Aug. Gen.Man. 2.13.19. Like Didymus, Augustine does not think the devil is evil by nature. 46 Aug. Gen.Man. 2.14.20. 47 Ibid. 48 Cf. Aug. Gen.Man. 2.14.21. 49 Following Eugene TeSelle’s argument that points out the difference between the theory of Augustine and the one of Ambrose and Philo, György Heidl also points out that “Didymus insisted upon the scheme of suggestion, delight, and consent, which may well have been elaborated by Origen”—an idea that Augustine has also adopted. Cf. Heidl, Origen’s Influence on the Young Augustine, 155–59. 50 Aug. Gen.Man. 2.14.20. 51 Aug. Gen.Man. 2.15.23. 52 Ibid. 53 Idem: Hinc enim et hypocrisis nascitur, in qua multum sibi videntur cordati, qui potuerint fallere et decipere quem voluerint. Dedit enim mulier viro suo, et manducaverunt, et aperti sunt oculi eorum, de quibus iam dictum est; et tunc viderunt quod nudi essent, sed oculis perversis, quibus illa simplicitas, quae nuditatis nomine significata est, erubescenda videbatur. 54 Aug. De mendacio 3.3. 55 Aug. Conf. 10.22.32. 56 Aug. Gen.Man. 2.16.24: “habebant cooperimenta mendacii.” Roland J. Teske points out that the Greek word for truth means “non-hiddenness,” and says that “Augustine is playing on that etymology when he says that the first parents turned away from the face of truth and are now hidden in bodies that conceal thoughts.” (The reference cited is in Saint Augustine, On Genesis, trans. Teske, 127, n28). 57 Aug. Retractationes 1.12: “non esse, qui docet hominem scientiam, nisi Deum.” See also De magistro 11.38–14.46. 58 Aug. De ver. rel. 36.67. English translation by O.P. Edmund Hill, in: On Christian Belief, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, Vol. I/8, ed. Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2005), 74. 59 Regarding Augustine’s development of the concept of “mendacium” according to his exegesis of Genesis 3, Makiko Sato presented a paper titled “Deception and

208  Peter D. Steiger and Makiko Sato Self-Knowledge in Augustine’s Interpretation of the Paradise Myth” at 10ème Édition du Congrès Celtique en Études Classiques (Celtic Conference in Classics), July  22, 2017, Montreal, Canada, as well as in a paper titled “Lying as Human Nature: Augustine’s Concept of Lie in the Pelagian Controversy,” at Asia-Pacific Early Christian Studies Society, 11th Annual Conference: Early Christian Responses to Conflict, Australian Catholic University, September  24, 2017, Melbourne, Australia. Augustine develops and deepens the concept of “mendacium” connecting the idea of original sin from Gen. Man. through Conf. to De civitate Dei and Enchiridion ad Laurentium. 60 Aug. Gen.Man. 2.28.42. 61 Aug. Gen.Man. 2.29.43. 62 Augustine’s focus on the free will is, as known well, developed in his De libero arbitrio, which he started to write in the same year as Gen.Man. 63 Miyako Demura points out that the pejorative or negative expressions of the female inherent in Middle Judaism are gradually weakening in the Alexandrian exegetical tradition of the male-female relationship in the Genesis stories from Philo. See Miyako Demura, “The Relationship Between Man and Woman in the Alexandrian Exegetical Tradition,” in Men and Women in the Early Christian Centuries, eds. Wendy Mayer and Ian J. Elmer (Strathfield, NSW: St. Paul’s Publications, 2014), 135–48. 64 Aug. Gen.Man. 2.12.16. Makiko Sato already examined the idea of “marriage in oneself” in Augustine in the context of clarifying his concept of philosophy from the viewpoint of gender equality. Cf. Makiko Sato, “Woman and Philosophy: A Rethinking of the Concept of Philosophy through Augustine of Hippo,” in Contribution of Woman to Con-viviality: In/Ad Spiration to Convivials, ed. Jean H. Miyamoto (Narashino, Japan: Kyoyu-sha, 2019), 113–34.

Bibliography Primary Literature Didymus. Didyme l’Aveugle: Sur la Genèse. Translated and edited by Pierre Nautin and Louis Doutreleau. Sources chrétiennes, Vols. 233 and 244. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1976–1978. Saint Augustine. On Genesis: Two Books on Genesis against the Manichees and On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis: An Unfinished Book. Translated by Roland J. Teske, The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 84. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991. ———. De Genesi contra Manichaeos. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. Edited by Forothea Weber, Vol. 91. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1998. ———. On Christian Belief. Edited by Boniface Ramsey. Translated by O. P. Edmund Hill, Matthew J. O’Connell, and Bruce Harbert. The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, Vol. I/8. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2005. Secondary Literature Bennett, Byard. “The Origin of Evil: Didymus the Blind’s Contra Manichaeos and Its Debt to Origen’s Theology and Exegesis.” Doctoral Dissertation, Toronto, Canada: University of St. Michael’s College, 1997. ———. “Didymus the Blind’s Knowledge of Manichaeism.” In The Light and the Darkness: Studies in Manichaeism and Its World, edited by Paul Mirecki and Jason BeDuhn, 38–67. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001.

Man, Woman, and Serpent as the Inner State of One Person  209 Demura, Miyako. “The Relationship between Man and Woman in the Alexandrian Exegetical Tradition.” In Men and Women in the Early Christian Centuries, edited by Wendy Mayer and Ian J. Elmer, 135–48. Strathfield, NSW: St. Paul’s Publications, 2014. Heidl, György. Origen’s Influence on the Young Augustine: A  Chapter of the History of Origenism. Louaize and Piscataway, NJ: Notre Dame University—Louaize Press and Gorgias Press, 2003. Kim, Yoon Kyung. Augustine’s Changing Interpretations of Genesis 1–3: From De Genesi contra Manichaeos to De Genesi ad litteram. Lewiston and Queenston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2006. Layton, Richard A. Didymus the Blind and His Circle in Late-Antique Alexandria: Virtue and Narrative in Biblical Scholarship. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004. Sato, Makiko. “Deception and Self-Knowledge in Augustine’s Interpretation of the Paradise Myth.” Paper presented at 10ème Édition du Congrès Celtique en Études Classiques (Celtic Conference in Classics), July 22, 2017, Montreal, Canada. ———. “Lying as Human Nature: Augustine’s Concept of Lie in the Pelagian Controversy.” Paper presented at Asia-Pacific Early Christian Studies Society, 11th Annual Conference: Early Christian Responses to Conflict, Australian Catholic University, September  24, 2017, Melbourne, Australia. ———. “Woman and Philosophy: A Rethinking of the Concept of Philosophy through Augustine of Hippo.” In Contribution of Woman to Con-viviality: In/Ad Spiration to Convivials, edited by Jean H. Miyamoto, 113–34. Narashino, Japan: Kyoyu-sha, 2019.

11 From Matter to History Towards a Disembodied Interpretation of Human Sexuality in Augustine Isabelle Koch Augustine is an important figure in the occidental history of sexuality. He is well known for his early commitment to Manichaeism, a heretical sect whose doctrines established a strong link between matter, sexuality, and evil. Manichees had a physicalist conception of evil: evil is a dark substance, an obscure matter opposed to the light, conceived as a pure matter; so the moral improvement implies to keep oneself away from bodies, because bodies are made of this dark substance. Therefore, as far as sexuality is concerned, Manichees preached abstinence: lust and sexual intercourses were designed as a fall into the bad corporeal nature. Consequently, for them the only way to purify oneself was by refraining from sexual activities, and they all pledged not to have children so as not to increase the number of fallen beings in the material world.1 The Manichaean doctrine of evil as a bad corporeal substance opposed to God had a strong explanatory power, and such a power undoubtedly constitutes the primary motivation for the young Augustine’s adherence to the theses of Mani.2 It is also the last thesis that Augustine continued to embrace, even after having lost confidence in the intellectual leaders of the sect. In Confessions Book V,3 considering what remains of Manichaean beliefs in him, when he has already begun to have serious doubts about the coherence of their system, here is what he finds out: “I still believed that it is not we who sin, but I do not know what other nature in us sins; and it pleased my pride to be free from sin.”4 As Peter Brown wrote, “the Manichaean answer to the problem of evil is the core of the Manichaeism of the young Augustine. It was simple and drastic.”5 This core thesis had the fascinating power to stop a questioning on the cause of evil otherwise doomed to infinite regression.6 As far as sexuality is concerned, Augustine was reluctant to go so far as to practice abstinence,7 but he severely and repeatedly blames his willingness to seek sexual adventures. Despite the length of his involvement with the Manichees as an “auditor,” we know that Augustine progressively felt disappointed by the lack of theoretical precision of Manichaean positions.8 As soon as he returned to Africa, after the Milanese period, he launched into anti-Manichaean polemics, which occupied him from 388 to 404–407.9 The targeted theses are multiple: the Manichean cosmogony, the moral life, the principles of reality, the substantiality of evil, with the aim of “defeating dualism” in all areas where Manichees assert it.10 Thereafter, in DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-17

From Matter to History 211 line with this aim, Augustine developed an understanding of sexuality completely opposed to the substantialist conception of the Manichees, by focusing on human will, not on the flesh, materiality, or animality of our bodies. His debates with the Pelagians, and particularly with Julian of Eclanum, played a key role in this transformation. I will defend the thesis that Augustine, moving away from Manichaean dualism, has developed new ethical positions and new ideas about libido or concupiscentia, which shape a conception of sexual lust disconnected from matter, physicality, and gender.11 Augustine’s Concept of Original Sin and Its Interpretation by Julian of Eclanum My thesis can sound paradoxical: Augustine’s name is committed to the theological and anthropological idea of “original sin,” and this idea, in his works, is often expressed by some related formulations—peccatum naturale, natura vitiata, tradux peccati—suggesting that sin, at least after the Fall, is understood as a native state of the human nature: everyone is born sub peccato. Expressions such as “peccatum naturale” or “natura vitiata” imply that the human body, with its sensual and carnal desires, is intrinsically bad, by virtue of a kind of hereditary disease, since the very first moment of its existence, and even since the very first instant of fertilization. So the body is bad and a source of bad desires in its own nature, because it is an animal and material body, a soiled thing. This is, among others, the picture of the Augustinian theory of sexual lust one can find in the polemical writings of one of the most famous opponents to it, Julian of Eclanum. One will not be surprised by the fact that Julian, of course, was convinced that Augustine had never ceased to be a Manichee, even after having openly rejected this doctrine.12 Let us say a few words about Julian’s position and his critics against Augustine.13 The anthropology of Julian can be summed up as an absolutely literal way of understanding the Creator’s goodness: God is the good creator of good realities, and human beings are part of these good realities.14 According to Julian, there is no evil in the nature of the body, neither in the nature of the human soul, and only the use that each one makes of one’s natural capacities can be bad. Every man is born with an intact nature and a full free will, and there is no need for baptismal reparation at birth since we are born without sin. Adam, at worst, is only a bad example that we can refrain from following, by our will. Julian therefore defends a coherent combination of theological and anthropological optimism, on the one hand, and sacramental minimalism, on the other. The idea of “natural evil” or intrinsically bad nature of the flesh has no place in his conception, because evil has only one figure: it is what we do by our free will, when we use it viciously instead of striving for virtue. In other words, evil has an exclusively ethical meaning, not a metaphysical or substantial meaning. That is the reason why the Augustinian concepts most criticized by Julian, as related to a substantialist conception of evil, are linked to the “original sin” doctrine: peccatum originale, peccatum naturale, natura vitiata, tradux peccati. If the expression naturale peccatum gradually becomes rare in Augustine’s texts, who prefers over time

212  Isabelle Koch the expression originale peccatum, it does not completely disappear, for instance, in Book XIII of The City of God, about the first couple and the Fall: The first men were certainly created not to suffer any kind of death if they sinned not; but having become the first sinners, they were punished with death, so that whatever would be born of their strain [quidquid eorum stirpe esset exortum] would also be subject to the same penalty. For nothing could be born of them that was different from them. It is certainly in response to the magnitude of this great fault, that the condemnation changed their nature into something worse [naturam damnatio mutavit in pejus], so that what first existed in the first sinful men as a punishment [poenaliter praecessit] then followed by adding a natural character in all their descendants [naturaliter sequeretur].15 Julian for his part considers that the two formulas are interchangeable,16 and he even seems to think that the first one (naturale peccatum) expresses Augustine’s doctrine more faithfully, while the second one (originale peccatum) tries to hide its closeness to the Manichaean idea of natural evil or bad nature. This is probably why Julian uses naturale peccatum preferably in the polemic against Augustine about concupiscence and marriage. This closeness of Augustine’s theory to Manichaeism becomes obvious when the unclear expression “original sin” is analyzed on the basis of the disconnection between natural and voluntary. I quote the Ad Florum: Which, whatever it is, is natural, it is obvious that it is not voluntary. If then sin is natural, it is not voluntary; if it is voluntary, it is not from birth [ingenitum].17 So a “natural” sin can only be an essential property, not a voluntary act or an effect of a voluntary act. Whoever speaks of “natural sin” means that the human body, as well as the desires of the soul attached to it, are bad, in the power of the devil. The same applies to the concept of “transmission of sin,” tradux peccati.18 It implies a biological transmission, autonomous from the order of voluntary action and ethics: whatever everyone does, and even before doing anything, sin is transmitted to people and is part of the human nature from the very first day of the life. The same analysis is also applied to the notion of natura vitiata: it goes well beyond the ontological theme of “deprivation of good” suffered by a nature that would nevertheless be good as created. According to Julian, all these Augustinian notions are not different from the Manichaean theory of bad substance, whatever Augustine may say, and Julian’s arguments seek to prove this identity in various ways. In the Ad Florum, he summarizes the difference between Manichaean and Catholic (Pelagian) doctrines as follows: the difference between piorum et impiorum dogmata is that “we write that all sin comes from evil will, while they write that it is from evil nature.”19 On the one hand, evil is an ethical question, while on the other, it is an ontological one—and for Julian, Augustine is on the second side.

From Matter to History 213 This disjunction argument (either the will or the nature) is used to send Augustine back to the side of the Manichees on several issues. Thus, on the baptism of children, about what Julian asks: “If sin is not natural, why baptize children, when it is an established fact that they have done nothing wrong by themselves?”20 Augustine’s recognition of the need for the liturgy of pedobaptism is clearly a sign of his belief in a substantial evil, inherent in human nature and therefore identical to the mala substantia of the Manichees. It is on the issue of marriage and sexuality that Julian focuses his most detailed and powerful criticisms. According to him, marriage is part of what God wants for man, in order to ensure the development of the human race. This is why God expresses what we can call a fertility imperative, in Genesis 1:27–28, talking to the first couple: Male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.”21 Marriage is therefore a reproductive institution, and as such it implies that sexual excitement and pleasure are also good, as physiological conditions of fertilization: as “a necessary by God given instrument for the virilitas propagationis,” they “must be labeled as instituted by God.”22 Julian’s conviction about their natural goodness and innocence is so firm that he sees no justification for refusing the concupiscentia naturalis to Christ himself. He considers that Augustine, by refusing it, must be placed among Docetists: if Augustine thought that Christ is a true human being, he should attribute a libido to him. By refusing that, and arguing that libido is connected to sin, and that it engenders beings who are immediately subjected to sin, Augustine clearly shows he never ceased to be a Manichee. It is easy to imagine what Julian could conclude from some of Augustine’s sentences, for example, this one, in De nuptiis et concupiscentia: Such a wound, inflicted on the human race by the devil, forcibly submits to the devil all that is born of it, as if the devil were picking the fruit of his own tree by his own right [de suo jure].23 This doctrine, which derives sin, in which every man is born from the initial fault, by which the devil has made man his prisoner, offers a concatenation of evils to which Julian responds by a concatenation of goods: But God, he says, has differentiated by sex what [i.e., bodies] he would unite by intercourse [diuisit in sexu quod in operatione coniungeret]. It is thus from him that comes the act by which the bodies mingle, he from whom the bodies draw their origin. . . . Thus, then, bad fruits cannot come from so many good things—namely, bodies, sexes, their unions—nor men can exist, because they are made by God, so that the devil (according to your formula, he says) may hold them by a legitimate right.24

214  Isabelle Koch The affirmation of the goodness of bodies, sexes, and their union implies other equally positive assertions: sexual arousal, before the Adamic fault, as well as today, is a “natural desire” (naturalis adpetitus),25 and not a sin; “the act by which the bodies mingle with warmth, with voluptuousness, with seed is recognized as done by God and, in his way, praiseworthy.”26 On the basis of such a strong divergence of views, it is not surprising that Julian attaches great importance to the sexual implications of the doctrine of original sin supported by Augustine. According to him, these implications offer a privileged ground on which it is easy to detect the signs of Augustine’s persistent Manichaeism. We may note that the value of human sexuality is the only topic on which Julian makes a precise textual study, comparing passages from Mani’s Letter to Menoch and Augustine’s book on Marriage and Concupiscence.27 This comparison highlights several common features to both texts. Mani and Augustine give the same evidence of the evil nature of sexual desire, through three types of proofs. The first type is gathering psycho-social evidences, given by the shame attached to nudity and, more particularly, to the nudity of sex, which is hidden by clothing; and the shame attached to sexual intercourses, hidden by the secrecy of the room, or by the setting aside, in the urban space, of places of prostitution.28 The second kind of proof is physiological: Augustine as much as Mani insisted on a kind of alienation that violently affects any individual during sex.29 Here, the evidence is found in the motus inordinati, “disordered movements” of sexual organs that the libido excites (or, on the contrary, refuses to excite) independently of the will, “as if it was autonomous.”30 Thirdly, Julian is sensitive to the common biblical inspiration of the two thinkers: Augustine and Mani look in the sacred text for scriptural evidence of their doctrine, and both rely on the same passages in Paul,31 quoting Letter to the Galatians 5:17 (on the opposition between the flesh and the spirit) and V, 19 (on the “works of flesh” as lust, impurity, debauchery), Letter to the Romans 7:19 and 9:16 (on human inability to do the good that one wants or to refrain from the evil that one does not want).32 This comparative study leads Julian to assimilate Augustine’s originale peccatum to Mani’s mala substantia, while considering that, since it is the same doctrine, Mani is more coherent and honest in his presentation. Augustine plays on the words and tries to straddle the fence: he claims to blame the evil of lust, which subjects us to the devil, while saying that the human body is a good creature and keeping the imputability of sin even if no one can escape it anymore. Some conclusions can be drawn from the notion of natura vitiata or tradux peccati: the contradictions of the Augustinian theory are only a symptom of his persistent Manichaeism and his attachment to a substantialistic conception of evil in sexuality’s theory. Good Sexuality: The Literal Exegesis of Genesis 1:27–28 in Augustine Julian’s criticisms, however, meet with a serious objection: undeniably, Augustine’s position evolved, so far as to admit good sexual activities, accompanied by feelings free of any sin. This aspect is obvious in his treatment of the Adamic

From Matter to History 215 sexuality. The main texts on this topic can be found in Book XIV of The City of God, Book XI of the Literal Commentary on Genesis, and in the polemical writings against Julian. Let us take a look at these texts. We know that, not immediately but quite quickly, Augustine considered sexuality as an integral part of human nature. He adopts a literal reading of Genesis 1:27–28 and breaks with a tradition of allegorical exegeses, which took sexuality and marriage as characteristics of human existence after the Fall and only after the Fall.33 According to these allegorical exegeses, before the first sin Adam and Eve were pure creatures, almost angelic, with a spiritual body; only after the first sin have they become animals, with a mortal body, animated by a sexual instinct.34 By abandoning this type of exegesis, Augustine is led to develop a new conception of body and human sexuality.35 Animal body and sexuality can no longer be bad in themselves, since they exist before the first sin, in paradise. What is bad is not the sexual relationship, attributed to the first couple according to Augustine; it is the necessary presence of a sexual desire (libido) to arouse this relationship and generate offspring. Here again we must specify the meaning of this assertion: the evil of libido is not about its sexual nature; it is about its autonomy from the will.36 This is why Augustine offers the Pelagians the choice between two options for imagining Adamic sexuality: either the Adamic body was a body entirely moved by will, to which the sexual organs obeyed “in the total absence of desire there”;37 or it was already a desiring body, but a desiring body whose libido would have been awakened “at the command of the will,” when “by a chaste foresight, they would have sensed that they had to have sex.”38 In the controversy with Julian about the good or evil of sexual concupiscentia, Augustine will not hesitate to go so far as to concede to his opponent that, perhaps, Adamic sexuality was, like our, linked to a specific desire, and even more, to sexual pleasure: This carnal concupiscence, whose movements lead to the ultimate voluptuousness that gives you so much pleasure, would never have arisen in paradise except at the command of the will [ad nutum voluntatis exsurgeret], when it would have been necessary for procreation. This concupiscence, if it seems good to you to place it in paradise, . . . we are not opposed to it [non repugnamus].39 The point can be conceded to Julian, because the criterion used by Augustine to distinguish Adamic sexual intercourses from ours is not carnal or physical, but concerns the control that the will exerts over our thoughts, emotions, and movements. Consequently, Augustine can include in Adamic sexuality all the physiological and emotional features of love, up to arousal (libido, concupiscentia carnis) and orgasm (summa voluptas), as long as these sexual phenomena obey the will and are felt “ad nutum,” on command.40 The literal exegesis of Genesis 1:28 thus fulfills a central hermeneutical function in Augustine. To understand human existence, in its psychological, social, and biological dimensions, it is essential to go back to an origin, which is the human existence in paradise before the Fall. This origin is not a past that would

216  Isabelle Koch be homogeneous to our present (as the event of Adamic fault is, in Julian’s conception). For Augustine, the time of paradise is a time prior to our own time and governed by another anthropology than the anthropology the first fault has produced and that human history continues to transmit. So Augustine says that we must imagine this origin in a different form from what we know through our common experience. Dealing with the topic of Adamic sexuality, and encouraging his reader to imagine the possibility of such sexual intercourses, Augustine expresses a very interesting methodological rule: Those, who do not believe that this [i.e., sexual relations between Adam and Eve] could have been, so pay attention to nothing but the ordinary course of nature [nihil aliud quam consuetudinem naturae], which follows sin and the punishment inflicted on man. But we must not be the kind of people who believe in nothing but what they are used to see.41 This methodological rule implies to reconstruct, in a partially fictional way, the anthropology of origins, because the “ordinary course of nature” (consuetudo naturae) cannot allow us to access it: “How could it have been done, there is no example today that can show us that,” Augustine admits about the sexual relations of the first couple.42 The testimony of Scriptures cannot give us access to it either, because the Bible says nothing about it. As far as the time before our own fallen history is concerned, Augustine considers that the letter of the sacred text takes the place of facts where no experience is available or kept in memory; but this letter, in Genesis, does not mention any sexual relationship between Adam and Eve before the exile from paradise: “It is mentioned that they joined together and bore children when they had already been expelled from Paradise.”43 Augustine adds that, despite this textual datum and the lack of clear information about what the first couple was doing in the Garden of Eden, he “does not see what could have prevented them from having, even in Paradise, an honourable marriage and a bed without stain.”44 However, he is well aware that the scriptural text provides no support for his thesis. Accordingly, he decides to do the exegesis of an alternative version of Genesis, which might have mentioned a sexual relation of the first couple before the fault: that means becoming an imaginative exegete, who describes in a plausible way what the sexual relations of the first couple would have been if they had not sinned so quickly. Book XIV of The City of God is partly devoted to it. Augustine uses various strategies to support his somewhat scandalous fiction: analogies with common experience, arguments of non-impossibility, a call to overcome the feeling of obscenity felt by his readers, etc. The point he tries to make is the following: If sin had not occurred, this marriage worthy of the bliss of paradise would have produced an offspring worthy of love without feeling a desire worthy of shame. But how could this have been done, there is no example today that could show it to us. However, it must not seem incredible, for this one [i.e., reproductive] organ, that it could have obeyed the will without this naughty desire, will to which so many organs today obey.45

From Matter to History  217 In the absence of scriptural testimonies, Augustine seeks in empirical observations some elements able to build an argument by analogy and a fortiori. The natural control that we exercise at our discretion over most of our limbs and organs provides a first argument. We move at will not only the organs supported by an articulated bone structure, but also “the softest of all viscera,” such as lungs, thanks to the mechanics of the breath, “like the bellows of blacksmiths or organs.”46 A second argument is found in the example of certain animals, more skillful with their bodies than humans, but also in the example of craftsmen in whom the regular practice of a specialized activity has developed a “superior agility,”47 or acrobats and trick makers, “who do with their bodies certain things of which others are absolutely incapable and whose narrative is scarcely believable.”48 Consequently, what our present body cannot do under the impulse of the will is not impossible to do at all: these other men do it with their own body, at will, without the slightest difficulty. By analogy, these mirabilia incite us to admit that, in the first humans, the same bodily docility could have been extended to the reproductive organs: such a sexual docility, Augustine argues, would have been neither more nor less extraordinary than that which we admire today in craftsmen or street artists. These argumentative efforts, in which Augustine does not always avoid the grotesque, clearly show that Adamic sexuality is a key element of Augustinian anthropology: Augustine uses it as a “norm for measuring the disorder of concupiscence,” as well as all other characteristic disorders of the fallen human nature.49 Without this counterpoint, the characteristics of our current condition cannot be conceived in any other way than as normal and natural properties. Considering these natural properties, we will say they are good if we are a Pelagian, and we will say they are bad if we are a Manichee, but their meaning in both cases will remain unknown. This is the reason why Augustine needs to produce a credible and realistic image of corporeality in paradise, through what Michel Foucault calls “a metahistorical requalification of the conjugal relationship.”50 This image, shaped by the literal exegesis of the first human couple, is used to denaturalize fundamental features, including sexuality, of our current carnal condition, making visible their historicity. The Concept of Concupiscentia nuptiarum It has to be stressed that Adamic sexuality is not the only theme that gives rise to a positive approach of sexuality between married people. Even in the case of postlapsarian couples, Augustine attempts to preserve a distinction between good and bad sexual desires. Among his anti-Pelagian writings, of particular interest here is the Letter 6*, probably addressed to Atticus, bishop of Constantinople. This letter can be dated at the earliest from the year 420, and its context is obviously the debate with Julian (even if the latter is not named in it) about the implications of the theory of original sin.51 Augustine exposes to Atticus his reply to an accusation brought against him by “certain Pelagians.” This accusation attacks the liturgy of pedobaptism, which the doctrine of original sin makes necessary and of primary importance, while in the Pelagians’ opinion it is useless since they reject any idea of original sin and affirm that every child is born without sin and therefore has no need of baptism. The argument chosen to carry out this attack concerns the value of

218  Isabelle Koch marriage, recognized as a good by Augustine, both in paradise for the first couple and in postlapsarian history for men and women. The Pelagians try to show that the two opinions—children need to be baptized because they are sinners from birth, and the marriage from which children are born is good—are contradictory: They think they can reinforce this ungodly error [i.e., their opinion that children are born free of sin] by praising marriage, saying that marriage too is doomed, if what is born of it is doomed unless it is reborn [i.e., through baptism].52 The Pelagian argument goes as follows: if children are born sub peccato, as Augustine says, and would be damned if they were left unbaptized, then the cause of children—that is, marriage—cannot be a good thing; on the contrary, it must have the same status as its effect and be damned as well.53 This modus tollens can easily be completed: but marriage is a good thing, as the author of De bono conjugali cannot fail to recognize; therefore, children are not born sub peccato, and they do not need baptism. In response to this argument, Augustine begins by recalling the distinction between natural goods, given by God to man from the moment of his creation, and the alteration that the first fault caused to these goods: But these people, because of the perversity of their mind, confuse with an obstinate blindness the evils which have arisen to our nature because of the fault, with the natural goods.54 There is therefore no contradiction between the goodness of marriage and the evil of its offspring, which calls for the redemption of baptism. Marriage is good from the beginning, and continues to be good, but the Adamic fault has changed our nature: the poena reciproca has deprived humans of all control over their bodies, now doomed to death and subject to the uncontrollable impulses of libido, and this low status is transmitted like a hereditary defect, through a tradux peccati.55 By concluding from the native state of sin to the evil of marriage itself, the Pelagians prove that they are insensitive to the anthropologically constitutive dimension of human history, and that they conceive sexuality only as nature, in which everything is either good or bad, from the beginning to the end of time. The interest of Letter 6* is that Augustine does not limit himself to this reply (which resumes his interpretation, recalled earlier, of the first fault and its sanction). He gives an original formulation of it, which is not found in his other writings, by elaborating the opposite notions of “concupiscentia carnis” and “concupiscentia nuptiarum.” The latter deserves our attention, because Augustine claims that this kind of concupiscence is the one through which humankind would have propagated “even if nobody had sinned,”56 and continues to be one of the goods of marriage even after the Fall. In other words, even if an indocile libido has replaced the imperium voluntatis in human sexual intercourses, by a sanction of the first fault, which is also a symbol of it, Augustine maintains that there is, before as well as after the

From Matter to History  219 Adamic fault, a common form of concupiscence, and a form that is praiseworthy. I would therefore like to take a closer look at this enigmatic notion of concupiscentia nuptiarum. The expression is only found in Letter 6*, and does not appear anywhere else in the Augustinian corpus.57 It is possible that its use was motivated by a similar formula that Augustine attributes to Julian: in one place, he reproaches him for adding the qualifier “nuptial” to the concupiscence, and thus for confusing the libido, which the Apostle calls carnal concupiscence, with the “nuptial concupiscence, which could have existed in paradise even if no one had sinned, and which consists in the appetite for fecundity and not in the pruritus of pleasure.”58 It can therefore be assumed that, in the special context of a clarification addressed to the bishop Atticus,59 Augustine chose to reformulate his doctrine of Adamic sexuality, contrasted with the postlapsarian indocile sexuality, through the doublet of concupiscentia carnis and concupiscentia nuptiarum, in order to designate with more precision the confusions made by his adversary between what comes from nature, i.e., from God, and what comes from sin, i.e., from human beings. As it is clear through the wording, the “concupiscence of marriage” is a form of desire related to a marital situation. This marital situation involves affective, sexual and social aspects that Augustine analyzes here and in some other writings about marriage. This theory has been the subject of profound analysis in Peter Brown’s great work on the “renunciation of the flesh” in early Christianity, and Brown sees in Letter 6* the expression of a final state of Augustine’s thought on marriage, not only because of its late date, but also because of the precision and finesse of the formulation.60 However, Brown does not offer a detailed examination of the long passage he quotes, but invites the reader to pay attention to the words of Augustine’s letter. Other scholars who mention this “so exceptional notion”61 do not give an in-depth analysis of it either, or even do not take it seriously and consider it as negligible. Richard Sorabji notes that Letter 6* introduces a new distinction between concupiscientia carnis and concupiscentia nuptiarum, but he does not pay great attention to it and seems more interested by the systematic formula of a four-hypothesis choice (“by an either-or”) found in polemic texts such as Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum and Contra Julianum.62 Following the same approach in his extensive study on the Augustinian notion of concupiscence, Timo Nisula mentions the Letter 6* to Atticus, but focuses on its presentation of two hypotheses on the Adamic concupiscence (either absent from the sexual intercourse, or obeying the will), which would prepare the more systematic formulation “either-or” in the debate with Julian: here the expression concupiscentia nuptiarum is simply discarded from the analysis, as a mere rhetorical device that does not deserve consideration.63 But Augustine, in Letter 6*, is addressing an important bishop, and he must certainly weigh his words carefully in order to offer Atticus a refined formulation of his position on the question of marriage, the focus of Julian’s attacks.64 It is therefore necessary to take a closer look at this atypical passage. How is this form of concupiscence characterized by Augustine? The affective, sexual, and social aspects of the marriage are identified by the following terms: “concupiscentia pudicitiae conjugalis,” “concupiscentia legitime propagandae

220  Isabelle Koch prolis,” “concupiscentia vinculi quo uterque inter se sexus obstringitur.” These three types of desire taken together form a single one called concupiscentia nuptiarum, which Augustine opposes to the concupiscentia carnis (much more frequent in his writings),65 by a distinction that the Pelagians, for their part, are wrong not to make: As a result of this error [i.e., about the uselessness of baptism], they do not differentiate between the concupiscence of marriage—which is concupiscence of conjugal decency, concupiscence of an offspring legitimately propagated, and concupiscence of the social bond by which both sexes are bound to each other—and the concupiscence of the flesh, which is inflamed indiscriminately for the licit and the illicit.66 Because they do not make this distinction, believing that there is only one form of concupiscence—the libido sexualis as a powerful desire that moves our flesh out of any voluntary control—the Pelagians are led to suppose that such a sexual lust was already the kind of desire that would have pushed Adam and Eve towards each other to reproduce, if they had not been driven out of Heaven. That is why they consider this sexual desire to be intrinsically good, and the offspring born of it to be without sin, even now. The function of the distinction between concupiscentia nuptiarum and concupiscentia carnis in Augustine’s letter is therefore clear: what is common to the first couple and to present-day humans is not sexual lust, but it is nevertheless a concupiscence, as required by a literal reading of Genesis, which states that Adam and Eve formed a true couple from their creation. A true couple implies emotional, social, and sexual relationships. The point that I want to make regarding Letter 6* is not so much about the argumentative function of this distinction in the debate with the Pelagians, as the very notion of concupiscentia nuptiarum. As stated previously, the three desires that form the concupiscentia nuptiarum are identified as “desire for marital decency,” “desire to legitimately propagate an offspring,” and “desire of the social bond by which both sexes are bound to each other.” We can find elsewhere other similar formulations of this triple determination of marriage. The most frequent and classic formulation is somewhat different from the one adopted in Letter 6*. For instance: Marriage is therefore a good in every single thing proper to it. These things are three: the procreative purpose, the confidence in modesty, the sacrament of the marital union [generandi ordinatio, fides pudicitiae, conubii sacramentum].67 These goods serve to defend the value of marriage as early as De bono conjugali, written in 401. In this text, to the question: “Why is marriage a good?” Augustine answers with the triptych proles, fides, sacramentum.68 Christian marriage is a specific form of union between a man and a woman, which is a good because of its purpose (offspring), the authority that seals this union (sacrament), and the commitment that the spouses make to each other (fidelity). Non-Christian marriages

From Matter to History 221 also have a certain goodness “among all peoples and all humans,” but they are inferior because they meet only two of the criteria for goodness: “procreation and chaste fidelity,” without the guarantee of the divine sacrament (which is why these unions can be dissolved and their members can form other unions with other partners, Augustine explains).69 The same triptych can be found in the later De nuptiis et concupiscentia: the bona nuptiala that can be loved in marriage are proles, fides, sacramentum.70 Sometimes (such as in Letter 6*) Augustine does not mention the sacrament but the social bond as the third good of marriage. The substitution of one criterion for another can be based on the authority of Genesis, which reports that God chose to create not several human individuals to populate the earth, but only one, from whom he then drew a woman. For Augustine, this choice (which seems to have been reserved for the human race) has a clear meaning: God created the human species from a single couple so that it would possess not only the biological unity of a species but also the emotional and social unity of a large family.71 The social bond value of marriage is therefore directly anchored in the Creator’s will, and this may explain the variation between the two triptychs—proles, fides, sacramentum or proles, fides, sociale vinculum. Letter 6* uses the second one to respond to the Pelagians by distinguishing carnal concupiscence and marital concupiscence. Since Augustine asserts that marital concupiscence is the concupiscentia by which the human race would have spread even if no one had ever sinned, it is interesting to examine what this assertion implies for each of its constitutive aspects (namely, concupiscentia pudicitiae coniugalis, concupiscentia legitime propagandae prolis, and concupiscentia uinculi). Transposition poses no difficulties with regards to the desire to engender children and the desire for social bonding. In paradise, as in the Roman world, marriage is a fundamental structure of society, and its major function is to produce legitimate offspring.72 But the case of the desire for conjugal modesty is more enigmatic. Is it simply a reminder that adultery is outlawed? Probably not, because the pudicitia conjugalis is not a purely legal notion in Augustine, just like that of fides.73 But the marital decency is not reducible to the fides either; more accurately, one could say it is one of the two aspects of the fides, which must bind both the souls and the bodies of spouses. On the first part, fides has nothing to do with the bodies, and Augustine specifies that in the conjugal relationship, the fides retains all its strength and goodness even when there is no longer sexual relations between the spouses (especially in old age).74 On the second part, the fides defines a relationship between the bodies of spouses, inseparable from a relationship to one’s own body, as it is brought into play in the desire for the partner’s body. In other words, fides has to do with sexual desire, and in that respect Augustine refers to it as pudicitia conjugalis.75 The first condition of conjugal decency is the exclusivity of the sexual relationship, about which Augustine quotes Paul: “The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife” (1 Corinthians 7:4).76 As Michel Foucault notes, Augustine interprets this quote not as a positive expression of the right each spouse has over the other’s body, but rather negatively, as “the prohibition of violating

222  Isabelle Koch the conjugal covenant” through adulterous relationships: marital decency has to do with “non-treason, rather than possession,” i.e., with bonds that “belong to the register of fides.”77 The second condition of the pudicitia conjugalis no longer concerns the relationship to the partner’s body, but the relationship that each partner has, using the body of the other, to himself or herself and to his or her own will. Marriage assigns two good purposes to sexual intercourses.78 The first one, which is most important and well-known, is offspring, as stated earlier, but Augustine recognizes a second purpose, even if he does not put it at the same rank and does not include it among the canonical marital goods: The spouses therefore owe each other not only fidelity in the union of their sexes [non solum ipsius sexus sui commiscendi fidem], which aims for procreation of children and which is the primary association of the human race in this mortal life; but also, in order to avoid forbidden sexual intercourse [etiam infirmitatis invicem excipiendae], they owe each other a kind of reciprocal servitude [mutuam quodam modo servitutem] which is the mutual support of their weakness, so that even if one of them chose perpetual continence, he could not do so without the consent of the other.79 The sexual regulation that fides prescribes is therefore twofold: it prohibits sexual intercourse with extra-marital partners, and it establishes a “carnal duty” (carnale debitum)80 whose purpose is to allow each spouse to escape the risk of sin, taking into account the weakness that each one has towards his or her own impulses: “Each one owes this service, this servitude, not according to the control of the other over the spouse’s body, but according to his or her weakness with regard to his or her own body.”81 The assignment of this dual purpose makes possible to define the proper use of the libido, i.e., the concupiscentia pudicitae conjugalis, which is the sexual component of the good of marriage. Here, a distinguishing feature of the analysis of conjugal modesty is the importance Augustine gives to the theme of usus. The pudicitia conjugalis is that loving disposition “by which carnal pleasure is brought back to the good use which is the procreation of children in accordance with the order”82 (or, we can add, the protection for each partner’s weaknesses). Marital decency uses desire and pleasure for one of the legitimate ends of marriage, instead of enjoying them for themselves. The desire for pudicitia is therefore that negative desire which refuses pleasure at the very moment of giving in to it, resisting it without being able to spare its disobedient movements. In this tension, the concupiscentia pudicitiae operates, as far as possible, the reduction of concupiscentia carnis to the status of a means, converting its disorder into a good: “This concupiscence of the flesh by which the flesh covets against the spirit (Galatians 5:17), through marriage, the faithful people turn it [convertunt] into a use conforming to justice.”83 The conceptual distinction between use (usus) and enjoyment (fruitio) is a key distinction in Augustine’s thought and is frequently used in all his works.84 It offers a very simple and radical manner of expressing the difference between a morally

From Matter to History 223 good and a morally bad way of life. Sin consists in enjoying creatures as goods in themselves, preferring them to their Creator; virtue consists in using creatures in view of God, the only good worthy of enjoyment. Thus, the virtuous man in the Christian sense is not only the one in whom reason dominates the passions, but is the one who uses temporalia in view of aeterna. Every human activity makes this good use possible: that is why the concept of usus can also be applied to define good marriage, as a good use of concupiscentia carnis, i.e., a use that aims at conjugal ends set by God (proles, and preservation of conjugi infirmitas). One may wonder about the exact meaning to be given to the notion of use in the context of the Augustinian theory of marriage, and in particular, about the weight to be given to its possible instrumental significance. In the mirror case of Adamic sexuality, Augustine clearly takes the side of an instrumental interpretation of Adam’s use of his own libido for procreation. Before the Fall, as we saw earlier, either the first couple would have mated by movements totally controlled by will alone, without any sexual desire, or under the impulse of a sexual desire triggered “ad nutum,” on command, and for the strict duration necessary for fertilization. In other words, in each member of the Adamic couple, the relationship between will and desire is conceived as a complete instrumentalization of libido, subordinated to an all-powerful voluntas that moves the body without hindrance. Because the fallen condition is characterized by a generalized loss of self-control (the malum discordiosum as poena reciproca), it is clear, on the other hand, that usus cannot have such an instrumental meaning in the analysis of marriage after the Fall. The relationship between the end sought (i.e., procreation as recommended by God) and the means used (i.e., libido) is to be understood in another way. Mathijs Lamberigts proposes to conceive it as a relationship between an action and its motivation, insofar as a motivation or an intention determines the morality of acts carried out with this intention, whatever this act may be: in the Augustinian theory of marriage, “the reasonable appropriation of sexual desire for procreative purposes was precisely what constituted the correct motivation.”85 In some texts, this idea is clearly expressed about the use of libido in marriage: That is why the union of man and woman for generation [copulatio itaque maris et feminae generandi causa] is the natural good of marriage. But misuses this good the one who uses it in a bestial way, so that his or her intention [eius intentio] is about the pleasure of desire, not about the will to have offspring [non in uoluntate propaginis].86 The decisive role of bona voluntas or arbitrium in good use is also mentioned to explain why the marital intercourse is not sinful even though it is never without lust: The conjugal sexual union [coniugalis concubitus] which is carried out with the intention of begetting [intentione generandi] is not itself a sin, because it is the good will of the soul [bona uoluntas animi] that directs the pleasure that follows it, and not the will that follows a directing bodily pleasure; and

224  Isabelle Koch it is not human free will [humanum arbitrium] that is trained, subject to sin, when the wound of sin is rightly brought back for the use of the generation.87 Further on, Augustine proposes a closer determination of the good of marriage. The end which allows that “the marriage of the faithful turns into a use of justice” is not simple procreation, but the begetting of future baptized persons: the faithful can perform this requalification of libido “for they intend to beget beings who are destined to be regenerated.”88 Such a determination of intention and purpose logically leads to a division between true and false conjugal decency, because the respect for matrimonial laws is not a sufficient condition for a genuine pudicitia conjugalis: That is why those who do not beget their children with this intention, with this will, for this end [qui non hac intentione, hac uoluntate, hoc fine], . . . even if they have such great respect for the law that they only sleep together, in accordance with the matrimonial Tables, for the purpose of procreating children, there is no true conjugal decency in them [in eis uera pudicitia coniugalis].89 At this stage of the analysis, it is interesting to compare the position adopted in these texts on marital sexuality with the perspectives explored by Augustine almost 20 years earlier in De bono conjugali. In this first work, Augustine attributed to marriage, because of its procreative purpose, the power to produce a transformative change of sexual lust itself, due to the awareness that the partners have of their future offspring at the very moment of their carnal union: Marriage also has that good that brings carnal or juvenile incontinence [carnalis vel juvenilis incontinentia], even if it is vicious, back to the honesty of propagating offspring, so that from the evil of sexual desire, the conjugal sexual union does something good [ut ex malo libidinis aliquid boni faciat copulatio conjugalis]. This is why, then, the lust of the flesh, which is tempered by parental sentiment [quam temperat parentalis affectus], is repressed and bubbles up in a more reserved way [reprimitur et quodam modo verecundius aestuat]. Indeed, a kind of gravity comes to oppose the burning pleasure, when, at the moment when a man and a woman embrace, they think they are father and mother.90 The idea that marriage “turns into good” the evil of concupiscence, here, is understood according to a psycho-physiological model: a certain representation of oneself as a parent moderates the heat of desire and puts a brake on its possible excesses, whose boiling is all the more violent as the couple is younger. Such a theory is, after all, in line with the ancient naturalistic conceptions of the sexual activity, linked to a warm-up that involves degrees, and which degrees depend on physiological parameters such as age, health, or food.91 According to this model of degrees, it is in terms of just measure and excess that the relationship between

From Matter to History 225 the libido and its conjugal use must be thought of: carnal lust “receives from marriage the just measure of chaste procreation [modum caste procreandi],” while, as a sanction for the first sin, libido “has on its own an immoderate impulse to sexual intercourse [progressum immoderate coeundi].”92 Quite different is the model developed in the later works written during the anti-Pelagian polemic. The good of marriage is no longer to moderate, weaken, or temper, through the filter of certain representations of oneself and one’s spouse, the violence of a libido that is henceforth conceived as structurally removed from the command of will. The good of marriage is understood in a completely different way now: it lies in the intention in which certain acts of desire are performed within the framework of Christian marriage, through a specific form of will that Augustine calls usus. That is why the same acts will be here praiseworthy, there vicious, depending on the purpose for which one consents while performing them. This change of model is signaled by the equivocity that marks the vocabulary of conjugal virtue: “He is therefore far from being called, in the true sense of the word, decent [pudicum ueraciter dici], the one who keeps to his wife the fidelity of marriage, but not for the true God [non propter Deum verum].”93 Such an equivocity means that the good (or evil) of the acts no longer lies in what these acts are, objectively, i.e., in their bodily characteristics—of degree, of movement, of disorder, of materiality, etc.—and in their legal compliance. The good of sexual acts lies in the internal, invisible, and perhaps secret principle that they are aimed at; its value is determined by the purpose for which one consents, the propter quod one agrees to when he or she performs sexual acts and submits himself or herself to the power of concupiscentia carnis. If oneself wants to experience these movements not for the pleasure they bring, but in order to realize one of the two ends of marriage (the baptized proles or the protection of the infirmitas of the other), then he or she does a good use of his or her own lust, as well as a good use of his or her partner’s lust. Conclusion It is time now to return to the hypothesis formulated at the beginning of this study. So was it formulated: Augustine, moving away from the Manichaean dualism, has developed a new ethic, which distinguishes itself as much from the moral universe of the Pelagians as it does from that of the Manichees. This ethic is linked to a new conception of sexual lust that is, in some way, dissociated from issues about matter, physicality, and gender. As we saw earlier, the idea that concupiscentia sexualis is bad, far from the good and useful instinct that Julian saw in it, can be found in Augustinian works, no doubt; and the common points observed by Julian between Mani’s and Augustine’s texts are obvious. But the Augustinian condemnation of lust has little to do with the meaning Julian gave to it, namely, a naturalization of evil that would be clear evidence of Augustine’s irreducible Manichaeism. For Augustine, the physical and psychological disorders produced by human libido require neither a purely ethico-practical approach, which would push them away by a regime based on a purification scheme, nor a naturalistic approach, which would seek only to limit

226  Isabelle Koch the excesses of an intrinsically good vital impulse. He holds these disorders to be structural, as evidenced by the fact that even depraved people can live the painful and humiliating experience of impotency, which is another way for the libido to manifest its insubordination.94 But “structural” does not mean “natural.” The motus inordinati do not attest that, by nature, in its substance, the body is under the power of the devil: they are an embodied symbol of a dramatic break in human history since the Fall. As a consequence, the “proper use” of libido in marriage, as reinterpreted by Augustine, no longer has anything to do either with a hygienic ethic of moderation of impulses or with an ethic of purity as recommended by the Manichees. Each of the three ethics—Manichaean, Pelagian, and Augustinian—can be characterized by a guiding question. The Manichaean ethic of purity deals with the relationship between my physical actions or gestures and soiling: Are the gestures I perform pure or impure? Do they put me in contact with soiled and contaminating substances? For the naturalistic ethic of Pelagians, the question is that of appropriate degree and excess: given different parameters such as age, is my sexual activity measured, adequate, or excessive? The Augustinian ethic can be called an ethic of use, because it is structured by the question of the end that my will is aiming at: when I abandon myself to the disordered movements of the libido, what end do I pursue? Am I enjoying them for themselves or using them for a procreative purpose? These three questions are entirely different, and the question posed by the Augustinian ethic implies a paradigm shift. As Foucault points out, The huge discussion with the Pelagians that Augustine was to lead for more than 15 years introduces us to a system of morals and rules of conduct in which the two great categories that were fundamental to Antiquity and primitive Christianity—impurity and excess—will not, of course, disappear, but will begin to lose some of their preponderant and organizing role.95 By developing, first against the Manichees, then against Julian, an ethic of use, Augustine proposed a profoundly new model about sexuality, which imported into morality and philosophical anthropology new categories entirely different from those (impurity, excess) that had been the main figures of sexual lust in ancient ethics. Notes 1 A synthetic and recent presentation of Manichaeism can be found in Johannes van Oort, “Manichäismus,” in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Vol. 5: Handwörterbuch in Gemeinverständlicher Darstellung, ed. Friedrich Michael Schiele (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, [2002] 2008), 732‒41; Samuel Lieu, “Manichaeism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, eds. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 221‒36. See also, about the topic of dualism, Ludwig Koenen, “How Dualistic Is Mani’s Dualism?” in Codex Manichaicus Coloniensis: Atti del Secondo Simposio Internazionale, ed. Luigi Cirillo (Cosenza: Marra Editore, 1990), 1‒34; and Iain Gardner, “Dualism in Mani and Manicheism,” Chôra 13, Issue Supplement (2015): 417‒36.

From Matter to History  227 2 See De libero arbitrio I 4. Book III of the Confessiones describes how Augustine became a hearer of the sect, a status he maintained for nine years, from his 19th to his 28th year. About the relations between Augustine and the Manichees, see François Decret, Aspects du manichéisme dans l’Afrique romaine: Les controverses de Fortunatus, Faustus et Felix avec saint Augustin (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1970); Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. New Edition, with an Epilogue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 35‒49; John Kevin Coyle, Manichaeism and Its legacy (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), 251‒63, 307‒28; Nicholas Baker-Brian, “Manichaeism,” in Augustine in Context, ed. Tarmo Toom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 137‒44. 3 Here and later, Augustine’s texts are quoted in my translation, from the Latin text published in the Bibliothèque Augustinienne (e.g., “BA 13, 496” indicates the volume and the quoted page in this collection). 4 Confessiones V 10, 18 (BA 13, 496) and Brown’s commentary in Augustine of Hippo, 39‒40. 5 Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 35. 6 On the infinite recurrence of the question, see Conf. VII 3, 5. 7 See Conf. III 6, 11; IV 2, 2. 8 See Conf. V 3, 3; 6, 10‒7, 13. 9 See Cornelius Mayer, “Die antimanichäischen Schriften Augustins,” Augustinianum 14 (1974): 277‒313; Marie-Anne Vannier, “L’interprétation augustinienne de la création et l’émanatisme manichéen,” in Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West: Proceedings of the Fribourg-Utrecht Symposium of the International Symposium Association of Manichaean Studies (IAMS), ed. Johannes van Oort, O. Wermelinger, and Gregor Wurst (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001), 287‒97 (particularly 288‒89). 10 Vannier, “L’interprétation augustinienne,” 289: “À considérer dans leur ensemble les écrits anti-manichéens, force est de constater que l’essentiel de l’effort d’Augustin porte sur la mise en échec du dualisme et sur l’affirmation de l’unité du Dieu créateur.” 11 For a linguistic analysis of libido and concupiscentia, see Gerald Bonner, “Libido and concupiscentia in St. Augustine,” Studia Patristica 6 (1962): 303–14; Gerald Bonner, s.v. “Concupiscentia,” Augustinus-Lexikon, Vol. 1, Fasc. 1/2, ed. Cornelius Meyer (Basel and Stuttgart: Schwabe, 1986), 1113–22; also Timo Nisula, Augustine and the Functions of Concupiscence (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), 15–58, which provides a review of the uses of libido, cupiditas, and concupiscentia in Roman and prior Christian literature. 12 Most of Julian’s writings are known to us by the quotations and paraphrases that Augustine makes of them for polemical purposes. In particular, the six books of his Contra Julianum respond point by point to Julian who criticized in several books the doctrine of original sin and sought to show that its defenders were Manichees: see Against Julian, trans. Matthew A. Schumacher (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004). This work is continued in the unfinished text Contra Julianum opus imperfectum: Answer to the Pelagians, Vol. 3: Unfinished Work in Answer to Julian, introduction, trans. and notes by Roland J. Teske (New York: New City Press, 1999), whose six books (out of the eight planned) alternate excerpts from Julian’s letter to Florus, and Augustine’s refutations and replies. Among the major pieces of the corpus, we must add the works De nuptiis et concupiscentia. On Marriage and concupiscence, trans. Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis and rev. Benjamin B. Warfield (Savage, Minnesota: Lighthouse Publishing, 2018), and Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum. A Treatise against Two Letters of the Pelagians, trans. Peter Holmes, Robert Ernest Wallis and rev. Benjamin B. Warfield (Savage, MN: Lighthouse Publishing, 2018). 13 A detailed chronology of the steps that mark the controversy between Julian of Eclanum and Augustine can be found in Jean-Marie Salamito, Les virtuoses et la multitude: Aspects sociaux de la controverse entre Augustin et les Pélagiens (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 2005), 303‒9. On this controversy, see also Stuart Squires, The Pelagian

228  Isabelle Koch Controversy: An Introduction to the Enemies of Grace and the Conspiracy of Lost Souls (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2019). On Julian, see the preface by Albertus Cornelius de Veer in Vol. 23 of the Bibliothèque Augustinienne, devoted to the first polemics against Julian: “Préface,” in Premières polémiques contre Julien. De nuptiis et concupiscentia. Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum, introduction, traduction et notes par FrançoisJoseph Thonnard, Émile Bleuzen, and Albertus Cornelius de Veer (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1974), 9‒25; Mathijs Lamberigts, “Julianus IV (Julianus von Æclanum),” Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 19 (1999): col. 483‒505; and Josef Lössl, Julian von Æclanum: Studien zu seinem Leben, seinem Werk, seiner Lehre und ihrer Überlieferung (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001). On the various criticisms that Julian made of Augustine, see Elisabeth A. Clark, “Vitiated Seed and Holy Vessels,” in Ascetic Piety and Women’s Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity (Lewiston and Queenston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986), 291‒349. 14 On the theological and scriptural foundations of Julian’s optimistic anthropology, see Mathijs Lamberigts, “The Philosophical and Theological Background of Julian of Æclanum’s Concept of Concupiscence,” in Die christlich-philosophischen Diskurse der Spätantike: Texte, Personen, Institutionen, ed. Therese Fuhrer (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2008), 246‒49. 15 De civitate Dei XIII 3 (BA 35, 254). The sanction of the Adamic fault has changed the status of the human body: while being mortal by its animal nature, it could escape death through the tree of life and was qualified as mortalis sine morte; after the fault, it lost that opportunity and became “dead,” mortuus. 16 See Lamberigts, “The Philosophical and Theological Background,” n32: “We must emphasize that Julian equalizes peccatum originale to peccatum naturale.” 17 Ad Florum IV 92‒93, Patrologia Latina (hereafter abbreviated to PL) 45, col. 1393. 18 On Julian’s criticisms of the biological aspects of this transmission, seeking to show that the weaknesses and contradictions of the Augustinian theory are a symptom of its persistent Manichaeism, see Clark, “Vitiated Seed and Holy Vessels,” 302‒40. 19 Ad Florum I 22, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum (hereafter abbreviated to CSEL) 85, 1, 18: “quod nos omne peccatum voluntati malae, illi vero malae conscribunt naturae.” 20 Ad Florum I 187, CSEL 85, 1, 487: “Si peccatum naturale non est, quare baptizantur infantes, quos nihil per se mali egisse constat?” 21 Here and later, I quote the Bible in the King James version. 22 Lamberigts, “The Philosophical and Theological Background,” n41–50 for the most significant passages in Ad Turbantium, Ad Florum, and the letter Ad Romanos. 23 De nuptiis et concupiscentia I 23, 26 (BA 23, 112). However, Augustine hastens to add: “Not that human nature comes from him, which comes only from God, but vice, yes, that which does not come from God,” ibid. 24 De nuptiis et concupiscentia II 6, 16 (BA 23, 180). 25 De nuptiis et concupiscentia II 17 (BA 23, 182). In Book I, Pelagians are said to praise the concupiscentia carnis as a “bonum naturale”: 35, 40 (BA 23, 140). 26 De nuptiis et concupiscentia II 12, 25: “Ista, inquit, corporum commixtio cum calore, cum voluptate, cum semine a Deo facta et pro suo modo laudabilis adprobatur” (BA 23, 200). 27 E.g., De nuptiis et concupiscentia I 7‒8; I 13; I 26; II, 36. 28 Cf. in particular the developments in De civ. Dei XIV, Chapters 17‒21. 29 About the motus inordinate, see De civ. Dei XIV 16 and the references given by Mathijs Lamberigts, “Was Augustine a Manichaean? The Assessment of Julian of Æclanum,” in Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West, 287‒97. Lamberigts mentions in particular Ad Florum V 25, PL 45, col. 1462; IV 23, PL 45, col. 1350; IV 67, PL 45, col. 1377‒1378; IV 120, PL 45, col. 1413‒1414; V 8, PL 45, col. 1438. 30 De nuptiis et concupiscentia I 6, 7: “ea velut sui juris libido commoveat” (BA 23, 68).

From Matter to History  229 31 On the importance of Paulinian exegesis in Western Manichaeism and anti-Manichaean polemics, see Josef Lössl, “Augustine, ʽPelagianism,’ Julian of Æclanum and Modern Scholarship,” Journal of Ancient Christianity 11, no. 1 (2007): 129‒50 (particularly 131‒33). 32 Galatians 5:17: “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would”; Galatians 5:19: “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness”; Romans 7:19: “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” Mani also quotes Romans 9:16: “So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.” 33 Exegesis to which Augustine still subscribes in his treatises De Genesi contra Manicheos (circa 389), De vera religione, and De bono conjugali (see Retractationes I 10, 2 and 13, 8). On this evolution from an allegorical to a realistic interpretation of the primitive couple formed by Adam and Eve, see Émile Schmitt, Le mariage chrétien dans l’œuvre de saint Augustin: Une théologie baptismale de la vie conjugale (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1983), 18‒105. 34 E.g., see the exegesis of Genesis 1:27 in Gregory of Nyssa (On the Мaking of Мan, 17; On Virginity, 12), and John Chrysostom (Sermons on Genesis, XVIII, 1; On Virginity, 14). 35 See Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 399‒401. 36 While stressing that “generally Augustine denies to Adam anything remotely resembling what we know as sexual pleasure and desire,” David F. Kelly remarks: “Passages can be found which suggest that some degree of bodily pleasure might have been present to Adam before the fall,” a possibility that the controversy with Julian will intensify. David F. Kelly, “Sexuality and Concupiscence in Augustine,” The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 3 (1983): 93‒94; see also 103‒7 on a few passages implying a distinction between sexual pleasure and evil concupiscence, within a general tendency of Augustine to identify them. 37 Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum I 17, 34: “nulla ibi omnino existente libidine” (BA 23, 376). 38 Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum: “aut tunc ad nutum voluntatis libido consurgeret, quando esse concubitum necessarium casta prudentia praesensisset.” 39 Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum I  17, 35 (BA 23, 378). Elsewhere, Augustine accepts the hypothesis of an Adamic orgasm while pointing out to Julian that this is just a concession made “so as not to sadden you too much about the libido,” Contra Julianum IV 11, 57. 40 See Schmitt, Le mariage chrétien, 96 and 101‒5; Brown, The Body and Society, 417. 41 De Genesi ad litteram IX 3, 7 (BA 49, 98). 42 De civ. Dei XIV 23. The same doctrine is defended in De christiana gratia et peccato originale II 35, 40; 36, 41. 43 De Gen. ad litt. IX 3, 6 (BA 49, 96). 44 Ibid. 45 De civ. Dei XIV 23 (BA 35, 444). 46 De civ. Dei XIV 24 (BA 35, 450). 47 De civ. Dei XIV 23 (BA 35, 446). 48 De civ. Dei XIV 24 (BA 35, 452). On these analogies, see Isabelle Koch, Sex and the City of God. La Cité de Dieu Livre XIV (Nantes: Cécile Defaut, 2012), 64‒68. 49 John Hugo, St. Augustine on Nature, Sex, and Marriage (Chicago: Scepter Publishers, 1969), 91. 50 Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité, IV: Les aveux de la chair (Paris: Gallimard, 2018), 345, my translation. 51 On issues of dating and context of this letter, see Yves-Marie Duval, “Introduction à la Lettre 6*,” in Œuvres de saint Augustin, BA 46B, nouvelle édition du texte critique et introduction par Johannes Divjak (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1987), 444‒56.

230  Isabelle Koch 52 Epistula 6*, 4 (BA 46B, 130). 53 Duval notes that, although Julian’s name is not mentioned in the letter, the argument that the necessity of baptism implies the condemnation of marriage is late in the antiPelagian controversy, and mainly developed by the bishop of Eclanum (Duval, “Introduction à la Lettre 6*,” 447). This theme appears in De gratia Christi et de peccato originali (II 33, 38–40, 45) and is fully developed in De nuptiis et concupiscentia, of which several arguments are taken up or condensed in Letter 6*. 54 Ep. 6*, 4 (BA 46B, 130). 55 See ibid.: “For they do not see that another is the good of marriage—a good of which, even after sin, marriage has not lacked—another is the primal evil which marriage did not create and does not create now, but which it now finds created” (BA 46B, 130). 56 Ep. 6*, 3. 57 Source: Cetedoc Library of Christian Latin Texts (CLCLT Database, Brepols). See Duval, “Introduction à la Lettre 6*,” 452: Ep. 6* “distingue, en effet, de façon unique à ma connaissance, mais détaillée, la concupiscentia nuptiarum et la concupiscentia carnis.” 58 Contra Julianum opus imperfectum IV 19, Responsio Augustini: “Quid addis ʽnuptiali,’ et dicis ʽde concupiscentia nuptiali’? .  .  . concupiscentiam carnis dixit apostolus Iohannes, non concupiscentiam nuptialem, quae posset in paradiso esse, etiam si nemo peccasset, in appetitu fecunditatis, non in pruritu voluptatis” (CSEL 85, 2, 19). 59 Duval points out that, when Augustine argues with Julian, he sometimes recalls that concupiscentia can also have a praiseworthy meaning, such as the “concupiscence of wisdom,” but concupiscentia nuptiarum remains a hapax in the letter and is not found in the Contra Julianum or the Opus imperfectum. (Duval, “Introduction à la Lettre 6*,” 452). On the positive meaning of the term, see De nup. II 52: “There is also a spiritual concupiscence, worthy of praise, by which one covets wisdom” (BA 23, 264); the same linguistic remark in De nup. II 23 (BA 23, 194). 60 Brown, The Body and Society, 423: “This letter is remarkable for its careful choice of words and for the concision with which Augustine spelled out his final position.” 61 Duval, “Introduction à la Lettre 6*,” 452: “une expression aussi exceptionnelle.” 62 Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 407. See Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum I 34 (BA 23, 376) and Contra Julianum IV 14, 69. 63 Nisula, Augustine and the Functions of Concupiscence, 116 n187. The expression concupiscientia nuptiarum is mentioned in a footnote, with the following commentary: “The letter includes a rare occurrence of a ‘good concupiscence’ (concupiscentiam nuptiarum) but the pleonastic style here should warn against any complicated interpretations” (309 n.173). 64 Despite his interest in the texts where Augustine develops the idea of a “goodness of the conjugal embrace,” David F. Kelly does not take into account the Letter 6* and the notion of marital concupiscence (Kelly, “Sexuality and Concupiscence in Augustine,” 90). The same silence is found in Elisabeth A. Clark, who examines “Augustine’s ambivalent assessment of the physical and non­physical elements of marriage” by resituating it in the Early Christian debate: “ ‘Adam’s Only Companion’: Augustine and the Early Christian Debate on Marriage,” Recherches Augustiniennes 21 (1986): 140. 65 Concupiscentia carnis is applied to the condemnable bodily desires inventoried in the introspection of Confessions Book X (Chapters 41–66). It is not limited to sexual desire but designates the concupiscence of the flesh in a broader sense, whose forms are attached to the different sensory organs (sexual concupiscence, gluttony, pleasures of hearing, smell, etc.). In the debate with the Pelagians, however, concupiscentia carnis becomes synonymous with sexual lust (Nisula, Augustine and the Functions of Concupiscence, 35–57). 66 Ep. 6*, 5 (BA 46B, 130).

From Matter to History 231 67 De gratia Christi et de peccato originali II 34, 39 (BA 22, 242). 68 De bono conjugali 24, 32: “Haec omnia bona sunt, propter quae nuptiae bonae sunt: proles, fides, sacramentum” (BA 2, 94). 69 De bono conjugali 24, 32: “Bonum igitur nuptiarum per omnes gentes atque omnes homines in causa generandi est, et in fide castitatis” (BA 2, 92). 70 De nuptiis et concupiscentia I 17, 19: “In nuptiis tamen bona nuptialia diligantur: proles, fides, sacramentum” (BA 23, 96). 71 See De civitate Dei XIV 1 and XXII 30, 3. De bono conjugali 1, 1 interprets the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib as a deliberate reinforcement of the first social bond that is the couple: “God did not create them each separately to unite them like strangers, but produced one from the other, even marking the strength of their association in the body” (BA 2, 22). 72 See Brown, The Body and Society, 400‒2. 73 Foucault, Les aveux de la chair, 361‒65, underlines the discrepancy between the legal concepts and the notions by which Augustine designates the type of bond woven by marriage (fides, pactum, foedus). If pactum or foedus have obvious legal connotations, they cannot be reduced to the law: “Augustine also interprets the pactum in another register, that of relations between souls and between bodies” (my translation, 361); “the fides supports the convention, it manifests itself in the accuracy with which it is observed, but it is not of the same nature as the convention” (362). For instance, Foucault cites De bono conjugali 5, where Augustine asserts that cohabitation, if it is based on a fides shared by the cohabitants, “can without absurdity be called marriage,” connubium (BA 2, 32). This concession could be related to Augustine’s personal experience of fides between concubines in his youth: see Brown, The Body and Society, 389‒90. 74 De bono conjugali 3, 3. 75 Among the 101 occurrences of the term pudicitia in the Augustinian corpus, half of them are accompanied by the qualifier conjugalis, and several others by synonymous formulations (pudicitia in conjugio, pudicitia uxoris, etc.) or by an adjective specifying a marriage-related condition (widowhood, celibacy). A recurring triptych is that of the pudicitia sive conjugalis, sive vidualis, sive virginalis (e.g., Contra Julianum I 651, 42; IV 762, 40; De nuptiis I 4, 5). Source: CLCLT. 76 See De bono conjugali 4, 4 which quotes this verse about the fidelity that spouses equally owe each other, “fidem tamen sibi pariter debent” (BA 2, 28). 77 Foucault, Les aveux de la chair, 361. 78 The main texts are collected by Elisabeth A. Clark, St. Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality: Selection from the Fathers of the Church, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996). 79 De bono conjugali 6, 6 (BA 2, 34‒36). 80 De bono conjugali 11, 12 (BA 2, 52): “Marital glory, then, is the chastity of the procreative act and the fidelity in fulfilling the carnal duty: this is the work of marriage [decus ergo conjugale est castitas procreandi et reddendi carnalis debiti fides: hoc est opus nuptiarum].” 81 Foucault, Les aveux de la chair, 370. 82 De gratia Christi et de peccato originali II 33, 38 (BA 22, 240): “pudicitia conjugalis, qui in bono usus ordinate filios procreandi redigitur libido carnalis.” 83 De nuptiis et concupiscentia I 4, 5 (BA 23, 62). 84 See Henry Chadwick, s.v. “Frui—Uti,” in Augustinus-Lexikon, Vol. 3, Fasc. 1/2, Figura(e)—Hieronymus, ed. Cornelius Meyer (Basel: Schwabe, 2006), 70–75, who counts 450 occurrences of frui, 190 of perfrui, 6 of perfruitio (fruitio is never used by Augustine); 1650 occurrences of uti, and 570 of usus. 85 Mathijs Lamberigts, “A Critical Evaluation of Critiques of Augustine’s View of Sexuality,” in Augustine and His Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner, eds. Roberto Dodaro and George Lawless (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 182‒83. The

232  Isabelle Koch distinction of motivation vs. instrumental use is a key point in Lamberigts’ comparison between Augustine and Julian: “For Augustine, therefore, the concupiscentia carnis was far more than a material instrument at the uncomplicated service of procreation as Julian had opined.” Lamberigts, “A Critical Evaluation,” 186. 86 De nuptiis et concupiscentia I 4, 5 (BA 23, 60). See also De gratia Christi et de peccato originali II 38, 43 (BA 22, 252). 87 De nuptiis et concupiscentia I 12 (BA 23, 84). 88 De nuptiis et concupiscentia I 4, 5: “habent quippe intentionem generandi regenerandos” (BA 23, 62). 89 De nuptiis et concupiscentia I 4, 5 (BA 23, 62). 90 De bono conjugali 3, 3 (BA 2, 28). 91 About these naturalistic conceptions, see Brown, The Body and Society, 494–500. As Brown underlines, Julian’s notion of calor genitalis, or ignis vitalis, is in line with this tradition: see also Peter Brown, “Sexuality and Society in the Fifth Century AD: Augustine and Julian of Eclanum,” in Tria corda: Scritti in onore di Arnoldo Momigliano, ed. Emilio Gabba (Côme: New Press, 1983), 49‒70; Lamberigts, “The Philosophical and Theological Background,” 254–55. 92 De bono conjugali 5, 5 (BA 2, 34). 93 De nuptiis et concupiscentia I 3, 4 (BA 23, 60). 94 E.g., De civitate Dei XIV, 16. 95 Foucault, Les aveux de la chair, 384.

Bibliography Primary Literature: Augustine Against Julian. Translated by Matthew A. Schumacher. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004. Confessiones I-VII. In Œuvres de saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 13. Turnhout: Brepols, 1998. Confessiones VIII-XIII. In Œuvres de saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 14. Turnhout: Brepols, 1992. Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum. A Treatise against Two Letters of the Pelagians. Translated by Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis, revised by Benjamin B. Warfield. Savage, MN: Lighthouse Publishing, 2018. Contra Julianum I-III. In Œuvres de saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 25A. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021. Contra Julianum opus imperfectum. Answer to the Pelagians, Vol. III: Unfinished Work in Answer to Julian. Introduction, Translation and Notes by Roland J. Teske. New York: New City Press, 1999. De bono conjugali. In Œuvres de saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 2. Turnhout: Brepols, 1948. De civitate Dei XIV. In Œuvres de saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 35. Turnhout: Brepols, 1993. De Genesi ad litteram I-VII. In Œuvres de saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 48. Turnhout: Brepols, 2000. De Genesi ad litteram VIII-XII. In Œuvres de saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 49. Turnhout: Brepols, 1972. De Genesi contra Manicheos. In Œuvres de saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 50. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005.

From Matter to History 233 De gratia Christi et de peccato originale. In Œuvres de saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 22. Turnhout: Brepols, 1975. De libero arbitrio. In Œuvres de saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 6. Turnhout: Brepols, 1999. De nuptiis et concupiscentia. Contra duas epistolas Pelagianorum. In Œuvres de saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 23. Turnhout: Brepols, 1974. De nuptiis et concupiscentia. On Marriage and Concupiscence. Translated by Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis, revised by Benjamin B. Warfield. Savage, MN: Lighthouse Publishing, 2018. De vera religione. In Œuvres de saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 8. Turnhout: Brepols, 1982. Lettres 1*-29*. In Œuvres de saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 46B. Turnhout: Brepols, 1987. Retractationes. In Œuvres de saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 12. Turnhout: Brepols, 1950. Primary Literature: Other Authors Cetedoc Library of Christian Latin Texts (CLCLT Database). Turnhout: Brepols. Centre Traditio Litterarum Occidentalium (CTLO). www.brepols.net/series/llt-o. Grégoire de Nysse. La Création de l’homme. Translated by Jean Laplace. Sources chrétiennes, Vol. 6. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1944. ———. Traité de la Virginité. Translated by Michel Aubineau. Sources chrétiennes, Vol. 119. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1966. Jean Chrysostome. La Virginité. Translated by Bernard Grillet. Sources chrétiennes, Vol. 125. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1966. ———. Sermons sur la Genèse. Translated by Laurence Brottier. Sources chrétiennes, Vol. 433. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1998. The King James Bible. Accessed April 22, 2023. www.kingjamesbibleonline.org. Secondary Litterature Baker-Brian, Nicholas. “Manichaeism.” In Augustine in Context, edited by Tarmo Toom, 137‒44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. BeDuhn, Jason. Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma, Vol. I: Conversion and Apostasy (373– 388 CE). Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2010. ———. “Did Augustine Win His Debate with Fortunatus?” In In Search of Truth: Augustine, Manichaeism, and Other Gnosticism. Studies for Johannes van Oort at 60, edited by Jacob Albert van den Berg, Annemaré Kotzé, Tobias Nicklas, and Madeleine Scopello, 463–80. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011. Bonner, Gerald. “Libido and concupiscentia in St. Augustine.” Studia Patristica 6 (1962): 303–14.ƒ ———. “Concupiscentia.” In Augustinus-Lexikon, edited by Cornelius Meyer, Vol. 1, Fasc. 1/2, 1113–22. Basel and Stuttgart: Schwabe, 1986. Brown, Peter. “Sexuality and Society in the Fifth Century AD: Augustine and Julian of Eclanum.” In Tria corda: Scritti in onore di Arnoldo Momigliano, edited by Emilio Gabba, 49‒70. Côme: New Press, 1983. ———. The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

234  Isabelle Koch ———. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. New Edition, with an Epilogue. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Chadwick, Henry. s.v. “Frui—Uti.” In Augustinus-Lexikon, edited by Cornelius Meyer, Vol. 3, Fasc. 1/2, 70–75. Basel and Stuttgart: Schwabe, 2006. Clark, Elizabeth A. “ ‘Adam’s Only Companion’: Augustine and the Early Christian Debate on Marriage.” Recherches Augustiniennes 21 (1986): 139–62. ———. “Vitiated Seed and Holy Vessels.” In Ascetic Piety and Women’s Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity, 291‒349. Lewiston and Queenston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986. ———. St. Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality: Selection from the Fathers of the Church, Vol. 1. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996. Coyle, John Kevin. Manichaeism and Its Legacy. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009. de Veer, Albertus Cornelius. “Préface.” In Premières polémiques contre Julien. De nuptiis et concupiscentia. Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum. Introduction, traduction et notes par François-Joseph Thonnard, Émile Bleuzen, and Albertus Cornelius de Veer, 9‒25. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1974. Decret, François. Aspects du manichéisme dans l’Afrique romaine: Les controverses de Fortunatus, Faustus et Felix avec saint Augustin. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1970. Duval, Yves-Marie. “Introduction à la Lettre 6*.” In Œuvres de saint Augustin: Lettres 1*-29*. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 46B, 444‒56. Nouvelle édition du texte critique et introduction par Johannes Divjak. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1987. Evans, Gillian. “Neither a Pelagian Nor a Manichee.” Vigiliae Christianae 35, no. 3 (1981): 232–44. Foucault, Michel. Histoire de la sexualité, IV: Les aveux de la chair. Paris: Gallimard, 2018. Gardner, Iain. “Dualism in Mani and Manicheism.” Chôra 13, Issue Supplement (2015): 417‒36. Kelly, David F. “Sexuality and Concupiscence in Augustine.” The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 3 (1983): 81–116. Koch, Isabelle. Sex and the City of God. La Cité de Dieu Livre XIV. Nantes: Cécile Defaut, 2012. Koenen, Ludwig. “How Dualistic Is Mani’s Dualism?” In Codex Manichaicus Coloniensis: Atti del Secondo Simposio Internazionale, edited by Luigi Cirillo, 1‒34. Cosenza: Marra Editore, 1990. Lamberigts, Mathijs. “Julianus IV (Julianus von Æclanum).” Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 19 (1999): col. 483‒505. ———. “A Critical Evaluation of Critiques of Augustine’s View of Sexuality.” In Augustine and His Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner, edited by Roberto Dodaro and George Lawless, 176‒95. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. ———. “Was Augustine a Manichaean? The Assessment of Julian of Æclanum.” In Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West: Proceedings of the Fribourg-Utrecht Symposium of the International Symposium Association of Manichaean Studies (IAMS), edited by Johannes van Oort, Otto Vermelinger, and Gregor Wurst, 113‒36. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001. ———. “The Philosophical and Theological Background of Julian of Æclanum’s Concept of Concupiscence.” In Die christlich-philosophischen Diskurse der Spätantike: Texte, Personen, Institutionen, edited by Therese Fuhrer, 245‒60. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2008. Lieu, Samuel. “Manichaeism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, edited by Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter, 221‒36. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Lössl, Josef. Julian von Æclanum: Studien zu seinem Leben, seinem Werk, seiner Lehre und ihrer Überlieferung. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001.

From Matter to History 235 ———. “Augustine, ʽPelagianism,’ Julian of Æclanum, and Modern Scholarship.” Journal of Ancient Christianity 11, no. 1 (2007): 129‒50. Mayer, Cornelius. “Die antimanichäischen Schriften Augustins.” Augustinianum 14 (1974): 277‒313. Nisula, Timo. Augustine and the Functions of Concupiscence. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012. Oort, Johannes van. “Manichäismus.” In Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Vol. 5: Handwörterbuch in Gemeinverständlicher Darstellung, edited by Friedrich Michael Schiele, 732‒41. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, [2002] 2008. Salamito, Jean-Marie. Les virtuoses et la multitude: Aspects sociaux de la controverse entre Augustin et les Pélagiens. Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 2005. Schmitt, Émile. Le mariage chrétien dans l’œuvre de saint Augustin: Une théologie baptismale de la vie conjugale. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1983. Sorabji, Richard. Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Squires, Stuart. The Pelagian Controversy: An Introduction to the Enemies of Grace and the Conspiracy of Lost Souls. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2019. Vannier, Marie-Anne. “L’interprétation augustinienne de la création et l’émanatisme manichéen.” In Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West: Proceedings of the FribourgUtrecht Symposium of the International Symposium Association of Manichaean Studies (IAMS), edited by Johannes van Oort, Otto Vermelinger, and Gregor Wurst, 287‒97. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001.

12 Augustine on the Uniqueness of Sexual Desire Among the Passions and on the Ambivalent Character of Sexual Life Within a Christian Marriage Gábor Kendeffy With respect to Augustine’s position on sexuality and marriage, we can distinguish three periods. The first is represented by the writings before his episcopal consecration, i.e., before 396, the second by the works written between 396 and the outbreak of the Pelagian controversy (411), and the third from the time of the Pelagian controversies. In this chapter, I will follow the evolution of Saint Augustine’s position on the issue. In the first and shortest section, I will examine the concept of sexual desire, the evaluation of the sexual act, and the ideal of Christian marriage in the works of the first period. My most important claim will be in this section that even if Augustine tends to give a low evaluation to the body in this period, sexual desire does not play a particularly negative role among the other passions. The second chapter is devoted to the Bishop of Hippo’s On the Good of Marriage (De bono coniugali) (401/4), the first work where he systematically develops his ideas on Christian marriage. Here, I will primarily stress that in this work Augustine to a great extent derives the values of marriage from the idea that it can be regarded as the archetype of all human community, and second, that this treatise has a circumspect, weighing, and—in a sense—relativistic approach to the sexual life within a Christian marriage. In the third section, I will study in three subsections the works written during the Pelagian controversy. The first subsection is about Augustine’s theory on the uniqueness of sexual desire in relation to other passions. As I will show, in Book 14 of the City of God, Augustine puts strong stress on the power and autonomy of sexual arousal as it is experienced and does not apply to sexual desire the two-tiered schema of emotions, which he applies to it in other passages and which he is always aware of in the case of other passions. Nevertheless, he claims that sinfulness is associated with all forms of emotions that are opposed to the will of the good, but this rebellious character is most striking in the case of sexual desire. The second subsection follows Augustine’s reflections on the possibility of sexuality in Paradise. Here, my most important claim will be that Augustine was less concerned with the specific aspects of sexuality in Paradise than with the way in which the positive evaluation of a non-ascetic Christian marriage can be supported by the idea of marriage in Paradise. The third subsection focuses on the anti-Pelagian works from the 420s and concludes that Augustine paints a more DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-18

Augustine on the Uniqueness of Sexual Desire  237 ambivalent and dramatic picture of marriage after the Fall than ever before, and that he sees the dynamics of marriage as having greater amplitude. This does not only mean that he attributes more importance to the influence of carnal desire even in a Christian marriage but also that he discovers further positive elements in marital life. For Augustine, sexuality manifests one of the characteristics of the fallen human nature, which lies in the fact that good and evil are intermingled and that, therefore, it often happens that we can only fulfill God’s commands in a sinful way. Early Works In the works written in the 380s and the 390s, terms used to denote sexual desire are mostly general and negative. Libido is defined in the dialogue On the Free Choice of the Will as “the love of things one can lose against one’s will,”1 as opposed to the love for God, the object of which one cannot lose against one’s will. The term refers to the sinful desire for the created world, through the body.2 As Augustine writes, this alone “reigns over the whole realm of sin.”3 The occurrence of the word “lust” in the sense of “sexual desire” is negligible in the works of this period.4 The verb concupisco and the noun concupiscentia also occur mostly in general, not necessarily negative, connotations.5 The biblically derived constructions concupiscentia carnalis and concupiscentia carnis (John 2:15–16; Galatians 18:51) are of course always negative in meaning, but are also used in a rather broad, not explicitly sexual sense.6 As to the evaluation of sexual lust in this period, Augustine regards it as one particular form among many others of ill-directed love, all resulting from the Fall. However, at the same time, as the literature rightly states, this particular “ill-directedness” is towards the flesh, which means that at this time Augustine saw the essence of sin, which, from 388 onwards, he calls “pride” (superbia), as a turning towards the body and the carnal world.7 By the end of the 380s, the view that pride is the seed of the first and subsequent sins appears in parallel with the former view and is further developed in the 390s. The main concepts in this theory are: “the soul’s intention ‘to imitate God rather than serve him,’ ”8 “the desire for power,”9 and the preference to buzz about one’s own things rather than contemplating God.10 As Robert Markus has pointed out, since the 390s Augustine laid increasing emphasis on the aspect of pride that one chooses private goods rather than common goods.11 During this time, instead of a struggle between soul and body, Augustine speaks of a struggle within the soul that is ruptured and thus not fully autonomous.12 At a first glance, it would seem that in one of his first commentaries on Scripture (The Exposition of Genesis against the Manichees), Augustine, in contrast with what I have just argued for, prioritizes sexuality compared to the other consequences or manifestations of the turning towards the body. Here he explains that, had they not committed the sin, the first human couple would not have performed sexual acts. In support of this, he quotes the words of the Lord: “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage” (Luke 20: 34–36). He interprets the blessing “Be fruitful

238  Gábor Kendeffy and multiply” in an allegorical way, just as Origen did: it is a virginal union (casta coniunctio) that produces spiritual fetuses (spiritualis fetus). In one place he identifies the latter with the immortal pleasures that can be grasped by the intellect alone, and in another13 with virtuous deeds for the glorification of God.14 This position, however, is part of a general condemnation of the body. At this time, Augustine was still interpreting the paradisiacal state allegorically. He believed that in Paradise man had a spiritual body and that the mortal body, made from flesh and blood, was given to him later—this is what is meant by the skin tunic given to him as a gift by God. According to this view, the corruption of the body from spirit to flesh has many other aspects besides the development of sexuality in the modern sense.15 As Augustine explains in the same work, before the Fall, the intellect was able to persuade the motions of the soul (motus), which are also found in animals, to consent to it (consentire) and obey it. Under rational control, these motions were operating in a sublime way as joys (gaudia)16 or as holy, pure, and good loves (amores sancti, casti et boni). However, after the Fall, they were freed from the control of reason, that is, they became passions (perturbationes), also known as impulses (libidines) or evil desires (concupiscentiae malae), rendering the reason itself more or less animalistic.17 Therefore, in this work, sexual desire does not play a particularly negative role among the other passions. Likewise, in a contemporary writing called On the Morals of the Catholic Church, also in a debate with the Manichaeans, Augustine also argues that sexual desire, along with other passions, can be re-humanized to a certain extent already in this life. Through the communion of the Church, which permeates all human communion, the commandment of love is applied to all human relationships, master and servant, husband and wife, citizen and citizen, people and people, subject and king, each in a different way. Christian marriage is primarily intended to ennoble sexual desire and to restrict the sexual act to the purpose of procreation.18 On the Good of Marriage (De bono coniugali) Written in 401 or 404, this work marks a significant milestone in the development of the Augustinian understanding of sexuality and marriage. It is here that the question of sexual desire is first seriously examined in the context of inter-Christian marriage.19 He already regards it possible that the first human couple had not spiritual but animal bodies, and would therefore have produced offspring even in the absence of sin.20 However, he does not build a line of reasoning on this option, and attributes a similar probability to two other alternative hypotheses: (1) God would have miraculously bestowed a child on the first human couple, not unlike the way he created the body of Christ in the womb of the virgin; and (2) the divine injunction to multiply must be understood allegorically, spiritually (see the solution given in the aforementioned Commentary on Genesis against the Manichees).21 In this work, Augustine takes a stand in the debate between Iovinian and Jerome, the main issue of which is whether celibacy or the married way of life is superior. Although in his later retrospect he identifies the purpose of the writing as a refutation of Iovinian’s doctrine, the view exposed there is significantly closer to the

Augustine on the Uniqueness of Sexual Desire  239 position of Iovinian than to that of Jerome.22 He believes that, in theory, the ascetic lifestyle is superior to the married life, but that, given man’s fallen state, the latter is safer.23 Implicitly polemicizing with Jerome, he declares that, in accordance with 1 Corinthians 7:38, marriage is not to be considered a lesser evil compared to the promiscuous way of life, but a lesser good compared to the virginal way of life.24 Augustine attributes value to marriage primarily on the basis that God created man as a communal, social being who, by nature, seeks a loving relationship. In the first sentence of the work, he considers it important to state as a starting point that every man is a part of the human race, and human nature is something social that possesses the capacity for friendship [vis amicitiae] as a great and natural good; every human being is part of the human race, which is a community by nature and one of its great natural goods is the power of love relationship. This he said to explain that “God wished to create all men from one, so that they might be held together in their society, not only by the similarity of race, but also by the bond of blood relationship.”25 From this, in his view, it follows logically that man and woman, or husband and wife (vir et uxor), are united, which is the first natural relationship of human community.26 The origin in one man alone would not have been felt by Augustine to be sufficient to establish fraternity and communion for all posterity. For God might as well have allowed the first man alone to give life to his offspring. For communion as a vocation to be evident, a first community, the married couple, was needed—which is why he created woman from man. So, the male-female community is the basis of all subsequent communities. This is hinted at in the next chapter, where Augustine lists the various ways in which procreation would have taken place had the sin not occurred, as we have seen earlier. Explaining the first alternative, he puts it this way: “Had our first parents not sinned, they would have had children in some other way, without physical coition, out of the munificence of the almighty Creator.”27 So, even if there had not been any sexual intercourse and offspring by blood, the two of them would have had children. Adam and Eve were spouses (vir et uxor) and designated parents in Paradise, and their marriage (coniugium)28 was a friendly and fraternal relationship, even though hierarchical, until the Fall.29 Woman and man were designated for each other from the beginning.30 In the time of writing this treatise, Augustine thought that the union of man and woman could have been the basis for a brotherhood between human beings in a world without sin, even if there had been no sexual relations between them, so that their offspring would have been produced in some other way. Indeed, if we recall the Commentary on Genesis against the Manichees, he probably even thought that this brotherly communion could only exist if the generations were born without sexual intercourse. In addition to the literal interpretation, Augustine gives to the scriptural statement that God created Eve from Adam’s rib a spiritual one as well, according to which the first man and woman, as joined at the rib, were looking towards one end, pursuing one purpose.31 This communion of love is the essence of marriage; if it exists, we can speak of marriage even if there is no procreation or even sexual intercourse. From this first, archetypal community,

240  Gábor Kendeffy Augustine argues, follows the community between children.32 Also, indirectly, all human community and solidarity go back to the same origin. Augustine, thus, founds the value of marriage precisely on the communal nature of man, on the aspiration for a loving relationship. This is a more fundamental purpose of marriage than procreation.33 In a later chapter of the work, Augustine places love relationship, marriage, and the sexual act in a two-tiered ethical hierarchy of “goods” (bona) given to us by God.34 The loving communion (amicitia) is one of the goods at the top of the hierarchy (bona propter se ipsa expetenda), desirable for their own sake, alongside wisdom and health. At the second level are the goods that are necessary for the sake of other things (quae propter aliquid sunt necessaria). These include marriage and the sexual act (nuptiae vel concubitus), since both are desirable for the sake of a loving communion, “for they ensure the propagation of the human race in which loving communion is a great good.”35 Both—the sexual act being, as a matter of course, subordinate to marriage—belong to the category of goods that are means and not ends, so that their value is conditional, relative, and dependent on how one uses them. They are good insofar as they are truly at the service of the loving communion. Moreover, not everyone needs marriage for the latter. Celibacy can also be a means to human association (ad humanam societatem). It is also better if one can do this and does not need marriage and sex to live a loving communion, However, many people can only do this in marriage, so they must strive for it.36 This hierarchy of God-given goods for man, including marriage and the sexual act, is not at all an ad hoc idea in this writing. We find a very similar division in two other works.37 In this work, Augustine first discusses the three components of the value of marriage (i.e., the three goods of marriage—bona): procreation (proles), fidelity (fides), and sacred symbolism (sacramentum). Due to the latter component, marriage is a sign and a foreshadowing of the future unity within the city of God under the rule of Christ.38 All three are based on the principle of the loving communion as a goal, but especially fidelity, which for Augustine—as we shall see—is the most important value of marriage. On the other hand, because of their common roots, they also merge into one another in the practice of the marital life. Deeming sexual desire to be something evil, Augustine nevertheless believes that it cannot be eliminated completely from the marital relationship.39 In the context of Christian marriage, this evil can be put at the service of a good thing, procreation: Marriage has also this good, that carnal or youthful incontinence, even if it is bad, is turned to the honorable task of begetting children, so that marital intercourse makes something good out of the evil of lust [ut ex malo libidinis aliquid boni faciat copulatio coniugalis].40 It also enables the married couple to discover a new quality both in themselves and in each other—a father and a mother, that is, a partner to form a community.41 Childbearing, as I  have already pointed out, is the fulfillment of our inherent communality and is obeying a divine command—if we take the blessing “Be

Augustine on the Uniqueness of Sexual Desire 241 fruitful and multiply!” as a command and interpret it literally. Hence, in fact, Christian marriage is harnessing something evil, sexual desire, at the service of a higher good. Marital relationship thus ennobles sexual desire by transforming it into something higher. In fact, what food is to the health of man, intercourse is to the health of the race, and both are not without carnal pleasure, which, however, when modified and put to its natural use with a controlling temperance, cannot be a passion.42 The second valuable aspect of marriage is fidelity (fides), which the author explains in most detail, and to which he attributes the greatest importance in the treatise. The maintenance of fidelity is essential, he stresses, even if sexual pleasure may take on greater importance in a marital relationship than the command to “be fruitful and multiply.” This virtue “even in material and base things is a great good of the soul; so it is certain that it ought to be preferred even to the health of the body wherein his life is contained.”43 Augustine draws a parallel between marital fidelity and honesty in commercial transactions, and derives it from the universal sense of honesty and trustworthiness, a general virtue that pervades all forms of community life.44 From the leading role given to fidelity in the work follows a reflective, to a certain extent optimistic, realistic, and—in the good sense of the word—relativistic conception of marriage. The reflecting and relativistic approach to marriage makes Augustine say that even if the conjugal partners are motivated for sexual intercourse mainly by concupiscence and not in the least by the intention of procreation, they live in venial sin, and their relationship deserves to be called marriage, if they remain faithful to each other and do not take deliberate measures to avoid begetting an offspring. In such a case, he considers their fornication an excusable sin.45 If one of the spouses leaves the other to live with another woman or man, there are three morally different ways in which they can continue their lives. The best thing the guilty party can do is to leave his or her partner and return to his or her legal partner. Worse, but still not the worst, is to remain faithful for the rest of his or her life to the person who made him or her leave the marriage. The worst option is not to remain faithful even to that person. Augustine draws a parallel between this case and complicity between partners in crime in general (peccati societas). Fidelity—as he says—is of value even in that kind of partnership—although it would be better if the partners gave up the sinful activity.46 To repeat: complicity, as in other human relationships, is of some relative value in marriage, because there is still a worse alternative. Moreover, if one of the conjugal partners is devoted to having sexual intercourse exclusively for the sake of begetting children, while the other yearns to do this more frequently for sheer pleasure’s sake, the more temperate partner, Augustine argues, should yield to the desire of the more concupiscent one. He or she should react in this way according to the saint, because otherwise he or she may force the

242  Gábor Kendeffy more lascivious individual to commit adultery and, by doing so, would commit an even greater sin.47 Augustine’s judgment is similar when one of the partners intends to lead a virginal common life with his or her spouse. In this case, he insists, the decision should also be taken by mutual agreement, for the same reason as in the preceding situation.48 If only one of the partners is firm enough to make and stick to such a decision, he or she should partially renounce on his or her ascetic ambitions. To my mind, it is highly characteristic of Augustine’s moderate and—in a positive sense—relativistic approach that he describes this kind of agreement between the stronger and the weaker conjugal mates as “chaste and religious concord” (casta religosaque concordia).49 In Sermon 354, Augustine argues that in this situation the stronger partner, her/himself exempt of sexual desire, but yielding to the desire of the weaker one, is acting out of mercy (misericordia). Otherwise, by guarding his own virtue and driving the other to greater sin, he commits a sin after all, the sin of pride and hard-heartedness.50 It seems to me all this means that, according to Augustine’s judgment, conjugal virtue requires one’s coming to grips with, adapting oneself to, and to some extent even accepting the moral deficiencies of the other.51 Complicity in this conjugal constellation is not a mere relative good from the point of view of the doer, but the best possible act, the one most in harmony with the commandment of love. It is, thus, not enough to tolerate the sin of the other, but to be a partner with her or him, provided that for the other there is only a worse alternative.52 As can be seen from the prior discussion, according to Augustine, the intrinsically evil sexual desire is not only ennobled by the intention to procreate but also by fidelity, even without procreation. This is also indicated by the positive tone in which he characterizes the sexual act as the first social connection after the loss of immortality (prima. . . humani generis in ista mortalitate societas).53 In my interpretation, in this writing Augustine sees sin and virtue never as separate, but always as intermingled, which is why we must constantly weigh them and calculate their proportion. This means that, on the one hand, sin can be put at the service of virtue in so far as sexual desire is used in procreation, and, on the other hand, virtue can also be practiced in a sinful relationship, such as fidelity in adultery. The third valuable element of marriage is its symbolical aspect (sacramentum), which lies in its prefiguring the unity of the city of God. It ensures that the members of a couple are considered to be spouses even if they happen to be divorced.54 The sacramentum character, like fidelity, can override the aspect of procreation, which means that a husband is forbidden to send away his barren wife.55 From this, Augustine also infers that the party who has abandoned or sent away his or her spouse should in principle not remarry until his/her death. Augustine also stresses that these biblical prohibitions could not be explained in any other way.56 This may seem odd, since we have previously seen that Augustine had deduced a similar prohibition from the essence of marriage as loving community, and more directly from fidelity. If we consider the latter as immanent value, and sacramentum as transcendent, transcending the human relationship itself, we must say that these two kinds of values are not strictly separated.57 However, I do not think that we

Augustine on the Uniqueness of Sexual Desire 243 can speak of a contradiction. As Augustine writes, the sacramentum character was already present in the first couple who were the first to marry in the city of God: Once. . . marriage is entered upon in the City of our God, where also from the first union of the two human beings marriage bears a kind of sacred bond, it can be dissolved in no way except by the death of one of the parties.58 The natural communion of the first human couple can therefore be traced back to the divinely designed communion of the city of God. It is a community based on the common possession of God. This divine possession is this single win-win game; there is therefore no envy among the citizens of the city of God, and each considers the salvation of others as an end in itself.59 The conjugal union of Adam and Eve is the first attempt to implant this relationship on earth, to establish the city of God as a non-empirical community that nevertheless is operating in empirical societies. It is therefore not surprising that there is an overlap between the manifestations of the sacramentum aspect and those of the two other aspects of marriage. For the first two aspects of marriage express the natural community inherited from the first couple,60 and the third, the sacramentum, goes back to the model of this first community, the divinely designed civitas, and its laws.  ugustine on Sexual Desire and Marriage During the Pelagian A Controversies The Place of Sexual Desire Among the Passions

In Book 14 of De civitate Dei, Augustine tries to justify the primacy of sexual desire among the passions by trying to place the libido in the context of Hellenistic theories of passion. The classical problems of the passions are already dealt with in Book 9 of the work. There he criticizes the Stoics’ theory, claiming that they are merely arguing about words when they deny that there can be passions in the sage (perturbationes sive affectiones sive passiones). In his interpretation, Stoics are in fact advocating the moderation, not the eradication, of passion. In support of this claim, he quotes Gellius’ well-known text about a Stoic philosopher who, on a boat, turns pale at the signs of an approaching storm, and then, he explains his behavior referring to a passage of Epictetus.61 According to Augustine’s summary of Gellius’ text, Epictetus expounded in the passage in question that impressions (phantasies) of frightening, extraordinary things inevitably move even the wise man’s soul, so that he too would feel fear (metuere) and sadness (tristitia) for a short time. The reason for this is that passions (passiones) precede the work of reason and intellect. The foolish soul submits to them and judges them with the approval of reason, while that of the wise, “though it cannot help being invaded by them, yet retains with unshaken firmness a true and steady persuasion of those things which it ought rationally to desire or avoid.”62 There is, thus, no difference between the theory of passion maintained by the Stoics and that of other prominent

244  Gábor Kendeffy schools of philosophy, such as the Peripatetics, for in fact the Stoics did not reject the presence in the sage of passions either, but only cautioned against the approval of the passions by the reason. As Brachtendorf and Sorabji have pointed out, in the text in question, Gellius does not in fact say that the sage could have passions, nor does he admit that the latter would be afraid or sad.63 He merely says that “even the soul of the wise man is briefly moved, convulsed and paled [sapientis quoque animum paulisper moveri et contrahi et pallescere].” This doctrine, which survives in a developed form not only in Gellius, but also in Cicero, Seneca, Origen, and Philo of Alexandria, acknowledged that certain involuntary emotional reactions, which in the foolish give rise to passions, also occur in the wise under the influence of unexpected events. These are not, however, passions, because they do not involve the consent of the intellect (synkatathesis), but only pre-passions or preliminary emotions (propatheiai, principia proludentia adfectibus).64 Augustine, therefore, slightly falsifying his source, emphasizes here the necessity of the passions and outlines a two-tiered system within the passions themselves: one level is instinctive, for which the subject is not responsible, and the other is conscious, for which he is morally accountable. These two levels are in two different layers of the soul, the rational and the irrational. Brachtendorf rightly points out that the interpretation of the Stoic theory of passion in De civitate Dei 14, where the bishop of Hippo also deals with the nature of sexual desire, differs somewhat from the interpretation of Book 9. Here, Augustine calls passion (passio) the conscious volitional approval or rejection of a lower level of our will or non-will.65 Thus, desire and pleasure are wills inherent in the approval we give to the acquisition or enjoyment of things we want, and fear and sorrow are nothing other than wills inherent in the rejection directed to something we do not want to happen to us. However, I would not agree with Brachtendorf that the theories of passions expounded in the two books in question are fundamentally different. Admittedly, the two texts do not call passion the same thing: the former also uses this term for the instinctive, morally indifferent emotional reaction, while the latter only for the higher, conscious level of the will. Yet both analyses distinguish between two levels of mental act (in Book 14: wills): a visceral, morally indifferent level and a morally accountable, conscious level.66 In both schemes, for a real decision, the conscious mental act must assent to the suggestion of the unconscious one. According to Augustine, the uniqueness and special shamefulness of sexual desire among the passions lies in the fact that, while the other passions can only move certain parts of the body with the consent of the will, sexual desire is able to operate the sexual organ against voluntary decision.67 Another difference is that, while other passions, such as anger, are not indispensable for the movement of the parts of the body that they can move—for instance, hand and mouth can move without anger—sexual desire has exclusive rights over the sexual organ, that is, the latter is unable to function without it.68 Consequently, sexual excitement is more resistant to the control of reason than any other spontaneous desire. It engages the whole soul to a greater extent than any other sensual pleasure, and distracts it

Augustine on the Uniqueness of Sexual Desire 245 from all other thoughts, such as those of God, by quite exceptional power.69 The autonomy of the libido is most vividly expressed, according to Augustine, in the fact that it is independent even of “itself”: But even those who delight in this pleasure are not moved to it at their own will, whether they confine themselves to lawful or transgress to unlawful pleasures; but sometimes this lust importunes them despite themselves, and sometimes fails them when they desire to feel it, so that though lust rages in the mind, it stirs not in the body. Thus, strangely enough, this desire [libido] not only fails to obey  the legitimate desire to beget offspring, but also refuses to serve lascivious lust itself [lasciviendi libidini]; and though it often opposes its whole combined energy to the soul that resists it, sometimes also it is divided against itself, and while it moves the soul, leaves the body unmoved.70 The consequence of all this is that in the sphere of sex life the situation has arisen that, whereas in other spheres the soul generally commands itself more easily than the body, here the soul can command neither itself nor the body. That is to say that it neither can keep itself safe from sexual desire nor can make sure that the body moves by its will and not by sexual arousal.71 Augustine specifically compares sexual desire with anger. Referring to Plato’s triple division of the soul (reason, anger, desire),72 he admits that reason is in constant struggle with anger just as much as with sexual desire, although for the sake of parallelism he omits that Plato is not speaking of sexual desire specifically, but of desire in general in connection with the third part of the soul to which desires belong. However, he stresses that, whereas in the case of anger the soul cannot command itself, sexual desire makes the soul ashamed to have no control even over the body, which is of a lower order than itself. For he who in his anger rails at or even strikes someone, could not do so were not his tongue and hand moved by the authority of the will, as also they are moved when there is no anger. But the organs of generation are so subjected to the rule of lust, that they have no motion but what it communicates. It is this we are ashamed of; it is this which we blushingly hide from the eyes of onlookers.73 By saying that, Augustine does not seem to realize that not only sexual desire but also other passions have an instinctive psychological reaction that is expressed in physical manifestations. This is striking because he could use the aforementioned theory of propatheia to describe this phenomenon. However—as we have seen— he falsified it when describing the story of the Stoic sage turning pale in a storm, by replacing the terms used by Gellius to denote pre-passions (quidam motus rapidi et inconsulti) with the term referring to the “passions” (passiones). He also ignores Seneca’s findings when discussing anger. Seneca considers the passion of anger to be the “volitional defect of the soul” and distinguishes it from the first shock of the

246  Gábor Kendeffy soul (primus ille ictus animi) caused by a sudden belief that someone did wrong to you. The latter is not, in his view, a passion, but an initiative that precedes a passion (in plural: principia proludentia adfectibus), that is, a pre-passion.74 He also states that such a visceral, unconscious, physically symptomatic antecedent is not only of anger, but of all passions, including sexual desire.75 When Augustine marks the substantive difference between libido and other passions in the former’s irresistible power over and the latter’s obedience to the will, he is in fact ignoring the theory of propatheia, which he knows well. Furthermore, he employs a linguistic trick: he introduces sexual desire as one of the passions, and thus, as we have said before, he identifies it with a will that approves a prior will. If we read the relevant passages of Book 14 and Book 9 of The City of God, this prior will, called itself a passion, is the suggestion of the irrational part of the soul. It is roughly what the Stoics called pre-passion. Yet, in all his discussion in Book 14 on the causes of the exceptional shame surrounding the libido and on the uniqueness of sexual desire among all the passions, Augustine, with one exception, refers the word libido not to sexual desire as a will, but as a sexual arousal. I have already quoted the exception, but I will soon come back to it. So, what do we see so far? As Sorabji points out, to justify the uniqueness of sexual desire among the passions, i.e., its exceptional irresistibility, Augustine does not examine the extent to which the pathos-propatheia structure—or, more generally, the dynamic between an instinctive and a conscious level of mental reactions— is a common characteristic of all passions, including sexual desire.76 Had he done so, it would have been much harder for him to argue for the uniquness of the sexual lust among the passions. However, if we examine a little bit more thoroughly Book 14 of The City of God and other works on the subject, we may see that this two-tiered dynamic is not at all unknown to Augustine. It appears implicitly in the sentence quoted earlier from Book 14: “this desire [libido] not only fails to obey the legitimate desire to beget offspring, but also refuses to serve lascivious lust itself [lasciviendi libidini].” As we can see, the word libido is used here twice and in different senses: in the first instance it denotes the visceral arousal (libido1), and in the second instance the actual sexual desire (libido2), which is the result of the approval of this arousal and is directed towards sexual intercourse. Libido1 could be classified as a pre-passion, and libido2 can be identified with what Book 14, in the discussion of the theory of passion, refers to as passion or will. The same dynamics can be found in several other works of Augustine. In a passage of his early anti-Pelagian writing On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins and On Baptism, he distinguishes between sexual arousal (concupiscentiae fervor) and the will by wich members of the Christian Church can rightly use it. By this he implies that there is also a wrong use of sexual arousal. A typical instance of this wrong use may be the will to achieve the immediate goal of a sexual arousal—and this is what I termed earlier as libido2. The anti-Pelagian treatise On Marriage and Concupiscence (to be discussed later in more detail), written in 420, about the same time as Book 14 of The City of God, links the law of sin with the shame of the first human couple through the

Augustine on the Uniqueness of Sexual Desire  247 concept of sexual desire. The reason Adam and Eve had to be ashamed was that they first perceived the law in our members in action. But if, in like manner, the question is asked to the concupiscence of the flesh, how it is that such acts now bring shame, which once were free from shame, will not her answer be, that she only began to have existence in men’s members after the sin? And, therefore, that the apostle designated her influence as the law of sin [Romans 7:23] inasmuch as she subjugated man to herself when he was unwilling to remain subject to his God; and that it was she who made the first married pair ashamed at that moment when they covered their loins; even as all are still ashamed, and seek out secret retreats for cohabitation, and dare not have even the children, whom they have themselves thus begotten, to be witnesses of what they do. It was against this modesty of natural shame that the Cynic philosophers, in the error of their astonishing shamelessness, struggled so hard: they thought that the intercourse indeed of husband and wife, since it was lawful and honourable, should therefore be done in public.77 With the law in our members, Augustine often explicitly identifies carnal desire as sexual arousal—that is, what we have called libido2 earlier (I will point out later that these statements do not fully reflect his position). He does not consider this to be sin in the strict sense of the word, but rather the consent of the will to it. The statement that “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out” (Romans 7:18) is interpreted by Augustine as expressing the state of the devout believer (the saint) who does not consent to the sinful desires within him, but cannot rid himself of them, for ridding himself of them would mean carrying out (perficere) what is good. In the following sentence, “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do” (Romans 7:19), the verb “do” (facio, ago) is used to refer to inner actions, the sinful desires.78 The law of sin incites members not to follow the decision of the good will, but to move according to their own decision—that is, as if they had a real decision and judgment.79 In these passages, then, Augustine describes a similar two-tired dynamic in the case of sexual desire to that which the Stoics point out in connection with all passions by distinguishing propatheia and pathos. As we have seen, the theory of propatheia is taken up by Augustine in Book 9 of The City of God with some distortion—classifying the pre-passions as passions; however, he guards the two-layered structure of the emotions. The theory of passions of Book 14, where we find a distinction between an instinctive and a consciously approving “will,” is also consistent with this twolevel description of sexual desire.80 Thus, Augustine’s thinking is not at all alien to a two-tiered theory of emotions, which in its basic structure corresponds to the propatheia-pathos distinction that has developed within the Stoa, regardless of whether sexual desire itself or other passions are discussed. Therefore, Knuuttila, as it seems to me, is right to disagree with Brachtendorff and Sorabji and conclude that Augustine does not

248  Gábor Kendeffy misunderstand the Stoic theory of the propatheiai, but explicitly builds on it, only giving the pre-passions a negative sense to some extent.81 The uniqueness of sexual desire, in the eyes of Augustine, does not only consist in its autonomy, but also in the pedagogical role it plays in the history of human sin and salvation. The sexual desire, according to him, does not obey the will precisely because the latter did not obey God at the Fall. Even the first human couple realized this primeval disobedience when they became aware of the involuntary movements of their own bodies and felt ashamed for their nakedness.82 The unlimited power of sexual desire over the body and its independence from the will is a glaring punishment of the human will’s disobedience to reason and God.83 Divine pedagogy has used the sexual desire as the most striking instrument of punishment precisely because its operation is linked to the part of the body by which the first sin is transmitted from generation to generation.84 The first real object of shame was that the flesh, which is inferior to the soul, is capable of resisting the soul. The second is the sin itself, the disobedience of the soul to God, of which the tyranny of the autonomy of the sexual desire reminded the first human couple.85 According to Augustine, it was the disobedience of the sexual organ, or more precisely of the sexual arousal, which was the first to confront fallen man. The sexual organ occupies a special place among all the human organs because its movement illustrates best the corruption of human nature and the opposition of the law of sin in our members to the law of God.86 More generally, the pedagogical bearing of the sexual desire lies in its role in letting man know about the difference between right and wrong. Through sexual desire, the promise or threat that the tree of knowledge of right and wrong carries in its name could become a reality: “Then, indeed, did man perceive within himself what he had done; then did he distinguish evil from good—not by avoiding it, but by enduring it.”87 This phenomenon has retrospectively given meaning to the name of that tree: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.88 Speaking of the uniqueness that Augustine attributed to sexual desire in relation to the other passions, it is essential to note that, even if he identifies the “law of sin” with sexual desire, he does not claim that sexual arousal is the only consequence of the fall into sin on man’s sensual life. He considers the dynamics between prepassion and passion in general to be a consequence of the Fall and relates the law of sin that dwells in our members not specifically to sexual desire but to carnal desire (concupiscentia carnis) in a more general sense.89 As he writes, even in the most innocent and noble use of all our senses, desires awaiting approval lurk before us. The man after the fall must seek to use evil for good not only when he is feeling sexual pleasure but also in the presence of all sensual pleasures.90 Nevertheless, according to Augustine, in the case of sexuality the difficulty of attaining some good without some kind of sin is most palpably manifested.91 Sexuality in Paradise?

I am consciously using the more ambiguous word sexuality, not sex, since in Augustine’s case this question must be divided into two parts: (1) would there have

Augustine on the Uniqueness of Sexual Desire  249 been a sexual act without the Fall? and (2) would there have been sexual desire before the Fall? The relevant literature speaks of a linear progression in Augustine’s vocabulary on the subject, and it is believed that the two formulations of the question followed each other chronologically.92 I would like to nuance this picture to some extent, and in addition, I intend to highlight the anthropological implications of Augustine’s stance and his message on Christian marriage, so that, in the final chapter, I can build upon this to discuss the late Augustine’s understanding of marriage. First, he asks the question: would there have been a sexual act without a sin? As we have seen, after the categorical denial of the Commentary on Genesis against the Manicheans, On the Good of Marriage takes the affirmative position as a possible answer. In the literal interpretation of Genesis, however, he already explicitly states that the first sin is not the sole cause of procreation, and thus the main purpose of the latter is not to enable the sin to be repaired in future generations.93 The proof of this is that God created the woman from Adam’s rib as a helpmate in childbearing and indirectly in the creation of family and community—a claim that Augustine must also argue for, since it is not explicitly stated in the Scripture.94 Procreation, according to plan A, would have served to bring about the number of people to be born, until the animal body (corpus animale) of the human kind becomes transformed into a spiritual body (corpus spirituale).95 Had this happened, it would have contributed to the beauty of the earth and the universe at least as much as the compensation for sin through many mortal generations according to the currently realized scenario B, which includes original sin.96 At the same time, Augustine takes for granted that there was no sexual life before the sin, and the only question for him is why not.97 He gives two tentative answers to this. First, it is possible that before they could get there, sin had already occurred, because it immediately followed the creation of Eve. But Augustine admits that the Book of Genesis does not specify how much time elapsed between the creation of Eve and the birth of Cain, who was conceived after the expulsion. The other answer is that, before the Fall, the first human couple were only obeying God’s commandments, and they were not commanded to have sex, because God knew in advance that Adam and Eve would sin and that the mortal human race therefore would have to be perpetuated by human reproduction.98 This begs the question in the reader whether the blessing (benedictio) “Be fruitful and multiply!” might not also be interpreted as the imposition of a task,99 especially if we agree with Augustine that the help for which God created Eve is precisely the one related to the procreation of children.100 The context for further reflection on this question is the Pelagian controversy about whether the fall has caused damage without the reparation of which salvation is not possible. Augustine examines the actual sexual desire as the most striking consequence of the Fall, the most sensual symptom of the fallen state. A positive answer to the first question (Would there have been sexual intercourse without sin?) raises a new set of questions: (1a) would the sexual act have been motivated by sexual desire?; if not, then (1aa) by what? and if yes, then (1ab) in what sense? Augustine considers both the “yes” and “no” answers to (1a) as

250  Gábor Kendeffy conceivable. To the affirmative answer, however, he adds that this sexual desire would have been quite different from what we currently feel; if it existed, it would not have controlled the sexual organ in opposition to the will, but would have automatically yielded to the right will.101 He formulates this innovation as a concession to the Pelagians.102 Indeed, in so doing, he comes somewhat closer to the position of Julian, who argues that the nature of sexual intercourse in Paradise will be exactly as it is in our world today,103 while maintaining the distinction between the psychological background of the hypothetical sexual act before the fall and that of the actual post-lapsarian sex. As to the negative answer to the question (1a) (Would the sexual act have been motivated by sexual desire, if any, before the Fall?), Augustine qualifies it as possible as well, claiming that in that case, instead of sexual desire, the genitals would have been as much controlled by will as the other organs.104 It should be noted that even the answer just mentioned does not imply that the sexual act was a mere compliance with a command. Augustine emphasizes that, had they not fallen into sin, it is quite possible that Adam and Eve would have had sexual intercourse because of a feeling of divine love (solo piae caritatis affectu),105 directed both towards God and towards each other.106 In line with this, in Book 14 of The City of God, he describes the state of mind of the first human couple before sin in the following way: “Their love  to God was unclouded, and their mutual affection was that of faithful and sincere marriage; and from this  love  flowed a wonderful delight, because they always enjoyed what was loved.”107 However, in the 420s, at least twice—in the polemic treatise Against Julian and in one of the so-called Divjak Letters discovered at the end of the 20th century—the question is not asked in relation to the sexual act, but—as I have already pointed out previously—merely in relation to sexual desire, and not in the past conditional tense, but in the declarative past: (2) was there sexual desire in Paradise?108 In both writings, Augustine responds to Julian’s accusation that he, like Catholics in general, condemns sexual desire within marriage, even though limited to procreation. His opponent is of the opinion that the sexual desire in the first human couple and in their offspring is of the same nature, that is, it is equally good and can be used for good or bad purpose. Behind their accusation lies the intention to prove, in opposition to the Catholic claim, that babies have no sin and therefore do not need to be born again by baptism to escape damnation. This point of contention strongly influences Augustine’s answer to question (2) (Was there sexual desire in Paradise?). He supplements the possible positive answer to this question by a version put in the declarative mode of the possible positive answer which he offered, as we saw, to the merely hypothetical question (1a): Would the sexual act have been motivated by sexual desire, if it had been, before the Fall? The answer sounds like this: this desire was perfectly submissive to the will to procreate, it arose only when it was needed, only to the extent that it did not distract from thinking about God, and that its satisfaction was only a means, never an end.109 To the negative answer, which is also not excluded, he adds in both works that in this case the alternative to sexual desire could either be mere good will (see the negative answer to question 1a)110 or—an innovation only introduced in the 6th Divjak Letter—a so-called conjugal

Augustine on the Uniqueness of Sexual Desire 251 desire (concupiscentia nuptiarum), which, unlike the sexual desire after the Fall, does not oppose the will but is neither identical with it nor simply submissive to it. This desire preserves the calm love of husband and wife which, just as the choice of the mind orders the hands and the feet to their appropriate actions, likewise orders the sexual organs to the work of generation. In that way, the offspring would be conceived in paradise in a marvellous way without the ardor of the flesh’s lust, just as the offspring would also be born in a marvellous way without the pains of childbirth.111 Here, the idea is further developed that the sexual act would have been accompanied by emotion even without sin, and that it would have been the noblest kind of emotion. The sexual act would therefore not have been guided simply by the right will to obey God, but by another desire, the object of which would have been to love the other and to keep God’s commandments. Similarly, in a polemic writing written shortly after the 6th Divjak Letter, Augustine argues that in a sexual relationship without the possibility of sin, the taking of virginity—and this can obviously be applied to the sexual act in general—would not have been marked by violent lust, but by tranquillissima caritas. That is to say, the sexual organ would not have been subject to a mere will to fulfill a function, but ultimately to the love of God and of one’s partner at the same time.112 Asking the question in the declarative mode (“Were there any sexual intercourse before the Fall?”) does not at all mean that the question in the past conditional tense (“Would you have had sexual intercourse without sin?”) loses its relevance. In both works, both questions are raised. In the treatise Against Julian, Augustine explicitly asserts, on the one hand, that there would have been sexual intercourse even if the first pair of men had not fallen, and, on the other hand, he takes the position that as long as they had not fallen, it is quite conceivable that they had some kind of sexual desire purer than the actual one.113 This is also suggested by the 6th Divjak Letter. Here, Augustine disapprovingly quotes the Pelagians’ claim that, had they not sinned, Adam and Eve would still have begotten children with the sexual desire as we understand it today, and then, precisely to refute this claim, raises and answers the question mentioned earlier, whether there was sexual desire in the first human couple.114 As we have seen, in both works, formally it is only one of the possibilities that there was really a sexual desire before the Fall. However, the negative answer in the 6th Divjak Letter also allows for the possibility that there was a nobler, purer form of sexual desire, the so-called conjugal desire, which at least in principle could have guided the sexual act before the Fall. Both this, and the fact that the question no longer refers to the hypothetical case where there had been no Fall but to the period before the actual Fall, can, in my view, be explained in part by the accusations of the Pelagians. In order not to be judged as an opponent of sexuality within marriage or as an outright Manichaean, Augustine, albeit in a purified, nobler form, brought sexuality back to the pre-lapsarian period.115

252  Gábor Kendeffy Nor does the bishop of Hippo, from this new position, raise the question of whether there was, or at least, whether it is conceivable that there was, a sexual act before the fall, nor does he make it as clear as he used to say earlier that there was not, and explain why not with more convincing reasons. For if it were possible that there was any sexual desire, it would obviously not have been against God’s will but in the paradisiacal state Augustine rules out the struggle between desire and will. So, if we disregard the time factor, it is possible that there was sex; but perhaps we can disregard that, since it really did not take much time for the desire to exist. On the other hand, it may be argued against this line of thought that, according to the Book of Genesis, Cain was begotten only after the expulsion. The strength of this latter counterargument, however, depends on what we think of Augustine’s conception of fertility in Paradise: were there monthly cycles, or periods of barrenness, in the lives of living beings and humans? In his interpretation of Paradise, we do not get an answer to this question, so we can only make hypotheses. If we assume that his unscripted answer was “yes,” we can also guess that he did not consider the sexual act unthinkable in Paradise. Nevertheless, the fact that in the 420s Augustine neither confirmed nor retracted his old exclusionary position can be interpreted both as a simple refusal to repeat himself and as a feeling that he had been put in an uncomfortable position by the Pelagians’ accusations.116 Provided that the latter option is true, he could prefer not to draw the consequences of his new position on sexual desire in Paradise for the answer to the question whether or not there was sex in Paradise. In my opinion, Augustine was not really trying to imagine whether Adam and Eve had sex in Paradise, and if so, how. His position was partly determined by the polemical situation and partly by a noteworthy and respectable conviction. According to this, God designed marriage, in both scenarios, with and without sin, as a blissful way of being for man and as the archetype of all human community, and God placed procreation in the service of the cohesion of the human community in view of both possibilities. Contrary to his youthful conception, he did not then feel that the assertion that, whatever the way in which new generations are born, the child will always be the child of a human couple, was sufficiently solid in itself. Thus, he came to regard procreation in the physical sense as a basis both for the family and, through the latter, for belonging together within the whole “family” of mankind. He is not content with supposing that in the original human nature the functional will, instead of the later sexual arousal, was meant to be responsible for procreation. As we have seen, he derived procreation from the love of God and of one’s fellow humans, the fulfillment of which was accompanied by intense joy. He therefore came to conceive sexuality in the noble, purified sense of the word, as independent of the sinful state, and as inherent in human nature. The View of Marriage in the Anti-Pelagian Writings

The works of this period most relevant for our topic are the treatise On Concupiscence and Marriage, Book 14 of The City of God, Against Julian, and the Book on Continence. Their author’s primary aim is to prove against the Pelagians that

Augustine on the Uniqueness of Sexual Desire 253 even though marriage is good, sexual lust is not.117 The treatise On Concupiscence and Marriage, entirely devoted to the question, has some fundamental ideas in common with On the Good of Marriage. These include, as a matter of fact, the threefold list of the values of marriage (procreation, faithfulness, prefiguration of the relationship between Christ and the Church).118 Further, here we can read again that having sexual intercourse with the exclusive motivation of pleasure within marriage is only a venial sin, provided that one is faithful and does not deliberately avoid begetting children. Another recurrent claim is that abortion is a mortal sin.119 On the other hand, he still does not believe that marriage can only be understood as involving sexual relationship and procreation of children.120 The latter is one of the elements of Augustin’s conception of sexuality and marriage that Julian focused on when trying to attach the label of Manichaeism to the bishop of Hippo.121 To pass to differences, the balanced, circumspect, and somewhat relativistic approach is less peculiar to this treatise than it was to that in On the Good of Marriage. In this period, the bishop of Hippo accords less indulgence towards those practicing sexual life exclusively motivated by concupiscence than he did in the earlier work. Further, he does no longer admit that marriage can in any way ennoble concupiscence and transform it into something else. He is also less willing to see some relative value in adulterous fidelity and is generally less inclined than before to a circumstantial, weighing judgment of the particular situations. The tension between the evaluation of sexual desire and that of marriage, already evident in his earlier work On the Good of Marriage, becomes more dramatic in the antiPelagian works. As we have just seen, in this period Augustine, even though he did not identify the law of sin, despite several statements to that effect, with the lust for sex, saw the workings of the law of sin most clearly manifested in it. The even more negative assessment of the sexual desire was partially due to the stronger emphasis on its decisive role in the transmission of original sin.122 However, the judgment on marriage was not only negative in this period of Augustine’s literary career but also became enriched with positive elements. As mentioned earlier, from the Literal Interpretation of Genesis onwards, he is clearly committed to the notion that Adam and Eve—and, of course, all the couples in human history—would have had a sexual relationship even in the absence of the Fall.123 In his polemical treatise On Marriage and Concupiscence, he draws from this statement the conclusion that marriage is good. For marriage in its totality preceded all sinful desires, including sexual lust, since the latter was not needed for any of the three valuable ingredients (procreation, fidelity, prefiguration), not even as an enemy to be conquered.124 Marriage, then, is a human relationship that is in no sense dependent on the Fall. To enrich the positive elements, I  would remind of the concept of conjugal desire (concupiscentia nuptiarum), which we encountered in the previous section. It is important to emphasize that, according to the 6th Divjak Letter, this noble kind of sexual desire was not confined to the first human couple but characterizes partially all Christian marriages. Partially, since after the Fall conjugal desire necessarily includes the restraint of sexual arousal. This noble version of concupiscence, according to Augustine’s definition, is directed to conjugal modesty, to procreation

254  Gábor Kendeffy according to the law, and to the social bond that binds the two sexes together.125 As he explains, this kind of sexual desire does not simply control the sexual organs, as it did in the first human couple, but uses them, that is, leads them within limits and, when necessary, overcomes the ignoble, carnal version of concupiscence (concupiscentia carnis).126 Sexuality within marriage is meant to be, as far as possible, subject to a passionless emotion that is directed at the realization of the divine will. Augustine does not cease to trust that sexual desire can be controlled by love if one adheres to the three values of marriage. In this sense, he declares: conjugal intercourse is not in itself a sin, when it is performed with the intention of producing children; because the mind’s good-will leads up to the ensuing bodily pleasure, instead of following its lead; and the human choice is not distracted by the yoke of sin pressing upon it, inasmuch as the blow of the sin is rightly brought back to the purposes of procreation.127 As he claims, the control over carnal concupiscence is made possible by baptism.128 Augustine attaches a further merit to marital life when he emphasizes that procreation is one of the values of marriage not only on the physical level of begetting biological children, but also in the spiritual sense of assisting one’s children to be spiritually reborn by having them baptized and educated in the Christian faith.129 As he writes, this wish [for procreation] in the marriages of believers is not determined by the purpose of having such children born as shall pass through life in this present world, but such as shall be born again in Christ, and remain in Him for evermore. (Translation by Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis, revised by Benjamin B. Warfield)130 In light of the enumeration of the positive and the negative elements in Augustine’s judgment on sexual life in a Christian marriage, we can claim that he sees sexual desire and marriage in dramatic tension. As it has been shown, in his anti-Pelagian period, the tension between the low evaluation of sexual desire and the high esteem of marriage was increased both by the further devaluation of the sexual desire and by the attribution of some additional merit to marital life. According to Augustine’s judgment, the Pelagians are unable to accept at the same time the two facts that marriage is good and natural, and that sexual desire is bad and unnatural. Indeed, we can say that, judging from Augustine’s accounts and counterarguments, Julian had a much simpler, more harmonious view of man than did the bishop of Hippo. In Julian’s eyes, marriage, like sexual desire, is a natural and good thing, but only if it is used properly. In contrast, for Augustine, marriage is, on the one hand, a good and natural thing, so much so that it can even make something good out of sexual desire, which is bad. On the other hand, according to the writings of this period, the questions of sexuality and marriage have an ambivalent nature.131 Even if concupiscence can be handled and mastered, sexual

Augustine on the Uniqueness of Sexual Desire 255 life always involves something inextricably sinful. As evidence for this, let me quote a passage that illustrates the relation between concupiscence and marriage with the example of a lame man: Suppose him to attain to some good object by limping after it, then, on the one hand, the attainment itself is not evil because of the evil of the man’s lameness; nor, on the other hand, is the lameness good because of the goodness of the attainment. So, on the same principle, we ought not to condemn marriage because of the evil of lust; nor must we praise lust because of the good of marriage.132 This example happily expresses the paradoxical character of the Christian man’s or woman’s married life in Augustine’s understanding. On the one hand, it seems that the limping of a man with a sick leg is a hindrance, a slowing down of the journey. If he or she reaches his destination, it is despite the limp. But, on the other hand, limping is also a means to an end: it is the only way a lame man may attain his or her goal. Similarly, sexual lust is hampering someone from attaining the values of marriage, but at the same time, feeling sexual lust is the only way the fallen human being can attain these values. Augustine maintains that even “permissible and decent sexual intercourse” between believing spouses is closely linked to sinful desire.133 The libido is shameful even if it is used for the best possible purpose, i.e., for what it would not be possible to achieve without it in our fallen condition:134 that cohabitation (which would have no adjunction of unwholesome lust, were it not for the fact that man’s perfect freedom of choice had become so disabled by the preceding sin that it has this fatal adjunction) should not be a matter of will, but of necessity, without which, nevertheless, it would be impossible to attain to the fruition of the will itself in the procreation of children.135 Conclusions As I believe to have demonstrated, in the works before the episcopate, Augustine presents human life in a corrupted body in a generally negative light, while he does not give sexual desire a negative value in comparison to the other passions. According to the treatise On the Good of Marriage, sexual desire, which is evil in itself, becomes ennobled in Christian marriage. In this work, Augustine takes a relatively down-to-earth view of the sexual side of married life, carefully considering the circumstances. Starting from the assumption that marriage is the archetype of all community, he attributes particular importance to the ideal of fidelity (fides) and is very differentiated in his condemnation of sexual desire as a form of procreation. He accepts that in Christian marriage sin and virtue are intermingled and places the emphasis on their proportion. He takes this realistic approach to the point of encouraging the ascetic spouse, in the name of love, to be a partner in sin

256  Gábor Kendeffy with his or her partner in the bondage of sexual desire, in order to maintain a loving communion. In Book 14 of The City of God, he stresses the uniqueness of sexual desire in comparison with other passions, and he sees this uniqueness primarily in the fact that this form of desire defies and successfully resists the will. What we see here is that Augustine lays stress on the power and the autonomy of sexual arousal as it is experienced and does not apply to sexual desire the two-tiered schema of emotions, which he applies to it in other passages, and which he is aware of in the case of other passions. He deliberately does not use the distinction between propatheia and pathos, which seems in any case suitable to show the difference between involuntary, visceral sexual arousal (libido1) and volitional sexual desire (libido2). Although he identifies sexual desire with the law of sin in the works produced during the Pelagian controversy, he is aware that sinfulness is associated with all forms of emotions that are opposed to the will of the good, only that this rebellious character is most striking in the case of sexual desire. In the period of the Pelagian controversies, Augustine clearly argues that there could be a sexual act even without the Fall. In so doing, he makes all the valuable elements of marriage independent of the Fall. As to the question of whether sexual intercourse was motivated by some kind of desire, he considers both answers possible. The negative answer, which merely presupposes the will to procreate in accordance with the divine commandment, is supplemented by an emotional reason, the love of neighbor coupled with love of God. He arrives at a similar explanation when he asks whether there was sexual desire before the Fall. Here again, he considers both scenarios possible, but he nuances the possible negative answer by replacing—in the case of the first couple—carnal concupiscence with conjugal desire (concupiscentia nuptiarum), which he welcomes as a characteristic of Christian marriages. Augustine’s explorations about sexuality in Paradise in the 420s leave open the question of why there was no sex in Paradise if there was a human need and a divine will. This uncertainty can be to some extent explained by the fact that Augustine was caught in an awkward position between the Manichaeans, who rejected the body, and the Pelagians, who regarded sexual desire as a divine gift and accused Augustine of Manichaeism. In addition, it is also likely that Augustine was less concerned about the specific aspects of sexuality in Paradise than about the way in which the positive evaluation of a non-ascetic Christian marriage can be supported with the idea of marriage in Paradise. In the 420s, Augustine paints a more ambivalent and dramatic picture of marriage after the Fall than ever before and sees the dynamics of marriage as having greater amplitude. By tracing the origin of marriage to antecedents independent of the Fall, he became able to see its higher dignity. He maintains that the purpose of marriage is not just physical procreation but also procreation in the spiritual sense: not just generatio but regeneratio. On the other hand, he also stresses that in marriage one can only achieve the good of the procreation of children through evil, for the unrestrained sexual desire is a constant accompaniment to sexual intercourse even within Christian marriage. For Augustine, then, the human condition since the Fall is such that we can only do what is right by doing what is wrong: we can only

Augustine on the Uniqueness of Sexual Desire  257 fulfill God’s command in a sinful way. At the same time, he also uses the concept of conjugal desire to highlight the serene and rightly joyful side of Christian sexuality within marriage. He traces sexuality in accordance with God’s commandments not simply to the will to obey the commandments, but to a particular spousal love subordinate to divine love, and does not think that sexuality can only involve inappropriate desire and perverted pleasure in the life after the Fall. Notes 1 Lib. arb. I.4, 9. 2 Ord. 1, 2, 4; I.8, 24; II.18, c. 50; C. acad. II.1, 2; II.3, 7; II.9, 22; Gn. c. man. I.20, 31 (synonym of concupiscentia and perturbatio); Lib. arb. I.3, 8; I.4, 9–10; II.18, 48; III.1, 2; III.2, 5; III.10, 31; III.19, 53. 3 Lib. arb. I.3, 8. 4 Lib. arb. II.4, 12; Mor. I.30, 63. 5 C. acad. I.1, 3; I.3, 9; I.8, 23; III.2, 3; III.4, 3; III.18, 51 (quoting Galаtians 18: 51); Lib. arb. III.18, 51; Mor. I.17, 31; I.17, 32; Gen. c. man. I.20, 31. 6 Mus. VI.4, 13; VI.13; VI.33, 44; Gn. c. man. I.23, 40; II.2, 16; Div. qu. Simpl. I.1, 2; I.1, 3; I.1, 4; I.1, 9; I.1, 12–17; I.2, 20; Conf. II.2, 2; VIII.7, 17; VII.17, 23; Doctr. I.24, 25; III.1, 1; VI.12, 12. For agonistic terminology on lust and sexual desire, see Gerard Bonner, “Libido and concupiscentia in St. Augustine,” in Studia Patristica VI, ed. Frank Leslie Cross (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1962), 314; Timo Nisula, Augustine on the Functions of the Concupiscence (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1989), 35–58. 7 Gn. c man. II.5, 6; cf. David G. Hunter, “Augustinian Pessimism? A  New Look at Augustine’s Teaching on Sexuality, Marriage, and Celibacy,” Augustinian Studies 25 (1994): 154–155. 8 Mus. VI.13, 40. 9 Gn. c Man. II.15, 22; Lib. arb. III.25, 76. 10 Mus. VI.16, 53. 11 Robert Austin Markus, “De civitate dei: Augustine on Pride and the Common Good,” in Augustine: “Second Founder of the Faith,” eds. Joseph C. Schnaubelt and Frederick Van Fleteren (New York, Bern, Frankfurt-am-Main and Paris: Peter Lang, 1990), 31–32. 12 Paula Fredriksen, “Beyond the Body/Soul Dichotomy: Augustine on Paul against the Manichees and the Pelagians,” Recherches Augustiniennes 23 (2018): 110–14. 13 Gn. c man. I.19, 30. 14 Gn. c. man. II.10, 15. 15 Cf. Elisabeth A. Clark, “Adam’s Only Companion: Augustine and the Early Christian Debate on Marriage,” Recherches Augutiniennes 21 (1986): 142–43. For the eventual Christian sources of this conception, see György Heidl, The Influence of Origen on the Young Augustine: A Chapter of the History of Origenism (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009), 132–33. 16 In the Latin terminology of Stoic passion theory, joy (gaudium, chara) is one of the good emotions (eupatheiai; constantiae), the positive counterpart of desire (cupiditas, libido, epthymia). See Cicero, Tusc. IV.6, 12. Cf. Augustine, Civ. XIV.8, 2. 17 Gn. c. man. I.20, 31. 18 Mor. I.30, 63. 19 B. coniug. 2, 2. 20 B. coniug. 1, 1. 21 B. coniug. 2, 2. 22 Robert Austin Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 45–46; Hunter, “Augustinian Pessimism?” 158–59. 23 B. coniug. 3, 3.

258  Gábor Kendeffy 24 B. coniug. 8, 8. 25 B. coniug. 1, 1. Cf. Civ. I.22. A similar idea is expressed earlier by Lactantius in Inst. 5.6, 10. 26 B. coniug. 1, 1. 27 B. coniug. 2, 2. 28 B. coniug. 3, 3. 29 B. coniug. 2, 2. 30 Cf. M or. I.35, 79. 31 B. coniug. 1, 1. See Catherine Conybear, “On the Creation of Eve,” Augustinian Studies 49, no. 2 (2018): 181 and 190. 32 B. coniug. 1,1. On this, see Hunter, “Augustinian Pessimism?” 160, and Conybear, “On the Creation of Eve,” 197–98. 33 B. coniug. 3, 3. 34 B. coniug. 9, 9. 35 U o. 36 U o. 37 Ep. 130, 6, 13; C. mend 7, 18. In the latter locus, Augustine includes the sexual act and marriage in a similar ethical hierarchy among the relative goods whose value depends on their purpose and motivation. 38 B. coniug. 7, 7; 18, 21; 24, 32. Later he defines the sacramentum character of marriage in that it is the forerunner of the relationship between the Church and Christ (Nupt. et conc. I.10, 11; I.24, 32). 39 B. coniug. 13, 15. 40 B. coniug. 3, 3. 41 B. coniug. 3, 3. 42 Towards the end of his life, Augustine corrects this statement (Retr. II.22, 2). Cf. Nupt. et conc. II.21, 36; C. Iul. III.7, 16; V.16, 60). 43 B. coniug. 4, 4. 44 B. coniug. 4, 4. 45 B. coniug. 5, 5; 6, 6. cf. p. 354A* (see Sermon Dolbeau 12, in Sermons Dolbeau 11–20, eds. Martine Dulaey and François Dolbeau [Turnhour: Brepols, 2023]); cf. Hunter, “Augustine, Sermon 354A*,” 46–47. 46 B. coniug. 4, 4. 47 b. coniug. 6, 6. 48 B. coniug. 6, 6; 13, 15. Augustine treats the same problem and forms the same judgment in Ep. 262, 2–4, and Sermo 354A* 13. 49 B. coniug.13, 15. 50 Sermo 354A* 13. See Hunter, “Augustine, Sermon 354A*,” 48. Cf. Ep. 262, 2–4. 51 Cp. gen. litt. 9, 7, 12: I mean, just because immoderate sexual activity is an evil, it does not follow that marriage, even between over-sexed persons, is not something good. On the contrary, not only does that evil not make this good blameworthy but this good makes that evil pardonable, since what the goodness of marriage lies in [quo bonae sunt nuptiae] can never be a sin. (Translation by Edmund Hill) 52 I therefore disagree with Clark’s interpretation (Clark, “Adam’s Only Companion,” 158), who derives Augustine’s position described above merely from the traditional male-centered view of Roman law. 53 B. coniug. 6, 6. 54 B. coniug. 15, 17. 55 B. coniug. 7, 7. 56 B. coniug. 7, 7. 57 On the relationship between the two values, see Hunter, “Augustinian Pessimism?” 162–63.

Augustine on the Uniqueness of Sexual Desire  259 58 B. coniug. 15, 17. Translation by R. T. Wilcox. 59 Sol. I.13, 22; Lib. arb. II.12, 33–14, 37; Vera rel. 46, 88; Div. qu. LXXXIII.79, 1; Doctr. I.22, 20; Gn. litt. XI.14, 18; Trin. XII.9 14; XII.11, 16. On the Augustinian notions of private and common, see Goulven Madec, “Le communisme spirituel,” in Homo spiritualis. Festgabe für Luc Verheijen zu seinem 70. Geburstag, ed. C. P. Mayer (Würzburg: Augustinus Verlag, 1987), 225–39; N. Joseph Torchia, “The Commune/Proprium Distinction in St. Augustine’s Early Moral Theology,” in Studia Patristica XXII: Papers Presented at the 11th International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 1987, ed. Elizabeth Anne Livingston (Leuven: Peeters, 1989), 356–63; Markus, “De civitate Dei: Augustine on Pride and the Common Good,” 248; Raymond Canning, “Saint Augustine’s Vocabulary of the Common Good and the Place of Love for Neighbour,” in Studia Patristica XXXIII: Papers Presented at the 11th International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 1991, ed. Elisabeth Anne Livingstone (Leuven: Peeters, 1997.), 48–54; Gábor Kendeffy, “Spiritual Communism: The Career of a Theory from Saint Augustine to MacIntyre,” in Past and Present Political Theology, eds. Dennis Vanden Auweele and Miklos Vassányi (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 142–53. 60 Hunter, “Augustinian Pessimism?” 60 and 169–70. 61 Gellius, Noctes XIX.1. 62 Civ. IX.4, 2. 63 Johannes Brachtendorf, “Cicero and Augustine on the Passions,” Revue d’Etudes Augustiniennes et Patristiques 43, no. 2 (1997): 297–98; Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 380–83; Nisula, Augustine on the Functions of the Concupiscence, 238–40. 64 See Cicero, Tusc. III.82–83; Seneca, Ira 2, 1–4; Ep. II.57, 3–5; 71, 29; 74, 31–32. Gellius, Noctes XIX.1; Philo, Qu. Gn. 4, 73; Origenes, Comm Ps. 4, 5. 65 Brachtendorf, “Cicero and Augustine on the Passions,” 296–300. 66 The same two levels are also evident when Augustine describes the different passions in terms of love instead of will. See Civ. XIV.10, 2. 67 Civ. XIV. 19; XIV. 20. Cf. Pecc. mer. (411) I.29, 57. In my opinion Hunter (“Augustinian Pessimism?” 168) correctly points out: Augustine does not claim that the function of the sexual organ was changed by original sin, but that the sovereignty of the will was lost by the sexual arousal. 68 Civ. XIV.19. 69 Civ. XIV.6; Nupt. et conc. I.6, 7; C. Iul. XIV.14, 71. 70 Civ. XIV.16. Cf. Nupt. et. conc. I.6, 7. 71 Civ. XIV.23, 2. 72 Civ. XIV.19. 73 Ibid. 74 Ira II.2, 2–5. 75 Ira II.3, 2. 76 Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind, 380–81. 77 Nupt. et conc. I.22, 24. Cf. Nupt. et conc. III.25; Ep. 6, 7–8; Gr. et pecc. or. 34, 39. 78 Ep. 6* 7–8. 79 Gr. et pecc. or. 34, 39. Cf. C. Iul. IV.2, 7. 80 Cf. S. dom. m. 12, 3; Conf. VIII.5, 11; VIII.9, 21. 81 Simo Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 168–71. 82 Civ. XIV.17. Cf. Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind, 380–81. According to him, Augustine examines the phenomenon of sexual arousal from an exclusively male perspective. This may well be true in the place quoted, but later Augustine makes it clear that he is thinking not only of Adam but also of Eve. According to him, there are also involuntary movements in the female genital organ. See C. Iul. IV.13, 62; C. duas ep. Pel. I.15, 32.

260  Gábor Kendeffy 83 In his monograph, Nisula (Augustine on the Functions of the Concupiscence, 95–104) analyzes the texts that express this idea and puts them into an appropriate context. 84 Civ. XIV.17; XIV.20. V ö. Nupt. conc. I.6, 7; II.5, 15–16. 85 V ö. Nupt. et conc. I.22, 24. 86 Nupt. et conc. I.6, 7; II.5, 15–16. 87 Nupt. et conc. I.6, 7. 88 See for a continuation of the text Civ. XIV.17. 89 Pecc. et mer. II.4, 4; III.2, 2. 90 C. Iul. IV.14, 68. See Mathijs Lamberigts, “A  Critical Evaluation of Critiques of Augustine’s View of Sexuality,” in Augustine and His Critics, eds. Robert Dodaro and George Lawless (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 180–81. 91 As Hunter rightly notes, in Augustine’s conception, the loss of harmony between body and soul is evident not only in sexual desire but in all dysfunctional reactions of the body. David G. Hunter, “Augustine on the Body,” in The Blackwell Companion to Augustine, ed. Mark Vessey (Oxford: Blackwell, 2012), 360. 92 Emil Schmitt, Le mariage chrétien dans l’oeuvre de saint Augustin. Une théologie baptismale de la vie conjugale (Paris: Éditions des Etudes Augustiniennes, 1989), 94–105; after Schmitt: Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind, 406–7. 93 Gn. litt. IX.3, 6; Civ. XIV.23, 1. 94 Gn. litt. IX.3, 6; IX.7, 12; IX.9, 14–15; IX.10, 18. 95 Gn. litt. IX.3, 6. 96 Gn. litt. IX.7, 12; IX.9, 14. 97 Gn. litt. IX.4, 8. 98 U o. 99 Gn. litt. IX.5, 9; Civ. XIV.22. Augustine here follows the wording of Genesis 1:28. 100 Gn. litt. IX.9, 15. 101 C. duas ep. P. I.17, 34 (420); C. Iul. IV.11, 57 (421); C. Iul. op. imp. I.68; I.70 (429–30). 102 C. duas ep. P. I.17, 34–35. 103 C. Iul. op. imp. I.68; I.70. 104 Gn. litt. IV.10, 18; Civ. XIV.23, 2; Gr. et pecc. or. 35, 40 (426). 105 This could have been an alternative to the corruptionis concupiscentia (sexual desire arising from corruption). 106 Gn. litt. III.21, 33. 107 Civ. XIV.17. 108 C. Iul. IV.14, 69; Ep. 6* 5–7 (425). For the context of the letter and its rhetorical strategy, see Peter Brown, “Sexuality and Society in the Fifth Century AD: Augustine and Julian of Eclanum,” in Tria corda: Scritti in onore di Arnaldo Momigliano, ed. Emilio Gabba (Como: Edizioni New Press, 1983), 50–55. 109 C. Iul. IV.14, 69. 110 C. Iul. IV.14, 69; Ep. 6* 7. 111 Ep. 6* 7. Translation by Roland Teske, with some modifications. The concupiscentia nuptiarum is in fact the main subject of the letter. Augustine takes this adjectival construction from Julian and uses it first when he describes the accusation of the Pelagians. This is what, according to them, the Catholics considered as the work of the Satan. Here, the term can even be translated simply as desire between spouses. It is only in the development of the theme that the term acquires the normative content that I am trying to convey with “conjugal desire.” 112 Gr. et pecc. or. 35, 40. 113 C. Iul. IV.11, 57; IV.14, 69. 114 Ep. 6*, 5. 115 Lamberigts, “A Critical Evaluation,” 176–97, 180–84, in my opinion rightly dismisses this charge, saying that (1) for Augustine, sexual desire is one of the cases, albeit perhaps the most striking one, of concupiscentia carnis in the broad sense of the word,

Augustine on the Uniqueness of Sexual Desire 261 which occurs as a consequence of the fall, and (2) Augustine, instead of rejecting the body as a creation of Satan and with it procreation, extends the blessing “Be fruitful and multiply!” to all human history from Paradise to the end of the world. At the same time, the strong stress on the prominence of sexual passion may be traced back to Manichaean antecedents. This was, of course, first pointed out by Julian, drawing a parallel between Augustine’s statements and the formulations of the Epistula ad Menoch, which was considered Manichaean in his day. See Ad Florum, 166–70. Cf. van Oort, “Augustine on Sexual Concupiscence and Original Sin,” in Studia Patristica XXII, ed. Livingstone, 385–86. According to Lamberigts, the influence of Manichaeism on Augustine can be seen in that, just as Mani defined matter, so the Church Father defined sexual desire as “disorderly movement.” 116 On this, see Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind, 404. 117 See nupt. et conc. II.21, 36: Now we do not reprehend bread and wine because some men are luxurious and drunkards, any more than we disapprove of gold because of the greedy and avaricious. Wherefore on the same principle we do not censure the honourable connection between husband and wife, because of the shame-causing lust of bodies. For the former would have been quite possible before any antecedent commission of sin, and by it the united pair would not have been made to blush; whereas the latter arose after the perpetration of sin, and they were obliged to hide it, from very shame. (Translation by Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis, revised by Benjamin B. Warfield) 118 Nupt. et conc. I.19, 27. 119 Nupt. et conc. 1.24, 27. 120 Nupt. et conc. I.11, 12–13. The relationship between Mary and Joseph was therefore a marriage. Cf. Nupt. et conc. II.6, 7. Cf. C. Faust. II.1; III.1; Cons. ev. II.1, 2–5, 16; C. Iul. V.46–47. 121 This is pointed out by Clark, “Adam’s Only Companion,” 150 and 154. 122 Nupt. et conc. I.13, 14; II.1, 1. 123 Gn. litt. IX.7, 12. 124 Nupt. et conc. II.13, 26; II.14, 29. 125 Ep. 6*, 5 126 Ibid. 127 Nupt. et conc. 1, 12, 13. 128 Pecc. mer. I, 6, 6; I, 14, 21; II, 4, 4; II, 7, 9; II, 2, 28, 46; Gr. et Pecc. or. II, 39, 44–45. For the doctrine, see Nisula, Augustine on the Functions of the Concupiscence, 296–302. 129 Nupt. et conc. I.4, 5 130 Nupt. et conc. I.8, 9. 131 For a theological comparison of the understanding of Julian and Augustine, see Lamberigts, “A Critical Evaluation,” 176–97, at 177–78. For the causes of the conflict in terms of the history of mentalities, i.e., how Augustine’s theologically based understanding of the role of sexual desire in Christian marriage clashed with the traditional, permissive Christian position held by Julian, see Brown, “Sexuality and Society,” 54–60. 132 Nupt. et conc. I.7, 8. 133 Brown interprets Augustine’s position in a similar way. As he writes, Augustine considered sexual desire, because of its uncontrollability, to be fundamentally antisocial even in Christian marriage, which seeks to make the best out of it, especially regarding procreation (Brown, “Sexuality and Society,” 64–70). 134 Nupt. et conc. II.35, 59. 135 Nupt. et conc. I.8, 9.

262  Gábor Kendeffy Bibliography Primary Literature: Augustine Confessiones. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vol. 33. Prague, Vienna, and Leipzig: F. Tempsky, 1896. Contra academicos. Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, Vol. 29. Turnhout: Brepols, 1970. Contra duas Epistulas Pelagii. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vol. 60. Prague, Vienna, and Leipzig: F. Tempsky, 1913. Contra Faustum. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vol. 25.1. Prague, Vienna, and Leipzig: F. Tempsky, 1891. Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vol. 85.1–2. Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1974; 2004. Contra Julianum I-III. In Œuvres de saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 25A. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021. De bono coniugali. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vol. 41. Prague, Vienna, and Leipzig: F. Tempsky, 1900. De civitate Dei. Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, Vol. 47, 48. Turnhout: Brepols, 1955. De consensu evangelistarum. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vol. 43. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2018. De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum. Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, Vol. 44. Turnhout: Brepols, 1970. De doctrina Christiana. Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, Vol. 32. Turnhout: Brepols, 1962. De Genesi ad litteram I-VII. In Œuvres de saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 48. Turnhout: Brepols, 2000. De Genesi contra Manichaeos. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vol. 91. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1998. De gratia Christi et de peccato originali. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vol. 42. Prague, Vienna, and Leipzig: F. Tempsky, 1892. De libero arbitrio. Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, Vol. 29. Turnhout: Brepols, 1970. De moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum. In Œuvres de saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 1. Turnhout: Brepols, 1947. De musica. In Œuvres de saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. 7. Turnhout: Brepols, 1947. De nuptiis et concupiscentia. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vol. 42. Prague, Vienna, and Leipzig: F. Tempsky, 1892. De ordine. Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, Vol. 29. Turnhout: Brepols, 1970. De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum ad Marcellinum. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vol. 60. Prague, Vienna, and Leipzig: F. Tempsky, 1987. De sermone Domini in monte. Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, Vol. 35. Turnhout: Brepols, 1967. Epistulae. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Vols. 34, 44, 57. Prague, Vienna, and Leipzig: F. Tempsky, 1895, 1904, 1911. Retractationes. Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, Vol. 57. Turnhout: Brepols, 1974. Sermones. Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina, Vols. 38–39. Leiden: Brill, 1990. Sermons Dolbeau 11–20, edited by Martine Dulaey and François Dolbeau. Turnhour: Brepols, 2023. Soliloquia. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesasticorum Latinorum, Vol. 89. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1986.

Augustine on the Uniqueness of Sexual Desire 263 Primary Literature: Other Authors Annaeus Seneca, L. Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, ad Lucilium, Vol. 1: Libri I-XIII Epistulae morales. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. ———. De ira ad Novatum in Lucii Annaei Senecae Dialogorum libri duodecim. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Aulus Gellius. Attic Nights, Books 11–20 (Auli Gelli Noctes Atticae: Libri XI-XX). Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Caelius Firmianus Lactantius, L. Divinarum Institutionum libri septem 3: libri V et VI. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009. Marcus Tullius Cicero. Gespräche in Tusculum. Tusculanae Disputationes. München: Artemis und Winkler, 1998. Origenes. Selecta in Psalmos. Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca, Vol. 12. Paris: Migne, 1862., col. 1053–84. Philo. Quaestiones in Genesim et in Exodum: fragmenta Graeca. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1978.

Secondary Literature Brachtendorf, Johannes. “Cicero and Augustine on the Passions.” Revue d’Etudes Augustiniennes et Patristiques 43, no. 2 (1997): 289–308. Bonner, Gerard. “Libido and concupiscentia in St. Augustine.” In Studia Patristica, edited by Frank Leslie Cross, Vol. VI, Texts and Studies on the History of Ancient Christian Literature 81, 303–14. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1962. Brown, Peter. “Sexuality and Society in the Fifth Century AD: Augustine and Julian of Eclanum.” In Tria corda: Scritti in onore di Arnaldo Momigliano, edited by Emilio Gabba, 49–70. Como: Edizioni New Press, 1983. Canning, Raymond. “Saint Augustine’s Vocabulary of the Common Good and the Place of Love for Neighbour.” In Studia Patristica XXXIII: Papers Presented at the 11th International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 1991, edited by Elisabeth A. Livingstone, 48–54. Leuven: Peeters, 1997. Clark, Elisabeth A. “Adam’s Only Companion: Augustine and the Early Christian Debate on Marriage.” Recherches Augutiniennes 21 (1986): 139–62. Conybear, Catherine. “On the Creation of Eve.” Augustinian Studies 49, no. 2 (2018): 181–98. Fredriksen, Paula. “Beyond the Body/Soul Dichotomy: Augustine on Paul against the Manichees and the Pelagians.” Recherches Augustiniennes 23 (2018): 87–114. Heidl, György. The Influence of Origen on the Young Augustine: A Chapter of the History of Origenism. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009. Hunter, David G. “Augustinian Pessimism? A New Look at Augustine’s Teaching on Sexuality, Marriage and Celibacy.” Augustinian Studies 25 (1994): 153–77. ———. “Augustine, Sermon 354A*: Its Place in His Thought on Marriage and Sexuality.” Augustinian Studies 33 (2002): 39–60. ———. “Augustine on the Body.” In The Blackwell Companion to Augustine, edited by Mark Vessey, 353–64. Oxford: Blackwell, 2012. Kendeffy, Gábor. “Spiritual Communism: The Career of a Theory from Saint Augustine to MacIntyre.” In Past and Present Political Theology, edited by Dennis Vanden Auweele and Miklos Vassányi, 142–53. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. Knuuttila, Simo. Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

264  Gábor Kendeffy Lamberigts, Mathijs. “A Critical Evaluation of Critiques of Augustine’s View of Sexuality.” In Augustine and His Critics, edited by Robert Dodaro and George Lawless, 176–97. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. ———. “Augustine on Marriage: A Comparison of De bono coniugali and De nuptiis et concupiscentia.” Louvain Studies 35 (2011): 32–52. Madec, Goulven. “Le communisme spirituel.” In Homo spiritualis. Festgabe für Luc Verheijen zu seinem 70. Geburstag, edited by C. P. Mayer, 225–39. Würzburg: AugustinusVerlag, 1987. Markus, Robert Austin. Conversion and Disenchantment in Augustine’s Spiritual Career. Villanova, PA: Villanova University Press, 1989. ———. “De civitate Dei: Augustine on Pride and the Common Good.” In Augustine: “Second Founder of the Faith, edited by Joseph C. Schnaubelt and Frederick Van Fleteren. New York, Bern and Frankfurt-am-Main, 245–59. Paris: Peter Lang, 1990. ———. The End of Ancient Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Nisula, Timo. Augustine on the Functions of the Concupiscence. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1989. Schmitt, Emil. Le mariage chrétien dans l’oeuvre de saint Augustin. Une théologie baptismale de la vie conjugale. Paris: Éditions des Etudes Augustiniennes, 1989. Sorabji, Richard. Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Torchia, N. Joseph. “The Commune/Proprium Distinction in St. Augustine’s Early Moral Theology.” In Studia Patristica XXII: Papers Presented at the 11th International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 1987, edited by Elizabeth Anne Livingston, 356–63. Leuven: Peeters, 1989. van Oort, Johannes. “Augustine on Sexual Concupiscence and Original Sin.” In Studia Patristica, Vol. XXII, edited by Elizabeth Anne Livingstone, 382–86. Leuven: Peeters, 1989.

II.4

Bodily Transformations in Hagiography and Magic

13 Shame in the Development of Christian Identity in the Acts of the Christian Martyrs Ana-Maria Răducan

For Marianne, and her beloved family, who made my stay in Budapest more cheerful Erant autem uterque nudi Adam scilicet et uxor eius et non erubescebant. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2:25 KJV)

Shame Between Paradise and Hell The aim of this chapter is to analyze different instances of the idea of shame in the development of Christian identity, using some examples of female martyrs from the Acts of the Christian Martyrs, such as Crispina, Potamiaena and Basilides, and Perpetua and Felicitas, where the feeling of shame is properly illustrated. One may think that shame is mostly a psychological phenomenon. However, I  argue that it is a complex concept, including social, cultural, ethical, and even theological perspectives. The latter ones are based on the book of Genesis, where shame is connected to nudity of the body (Genesis 2:25 KJV). Shame is also used with an eschatological aim, in one of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus’ works, where αἰσχύνη is linked with the eternal damnation: For the others, instead, together with the other tortures, or rather, even more than the other tortures, there shall be the torture of being cast away by God and the interminable shame of one’s conscience [καὶ ἡ ἐν τῷ συνειδότι αἰσχύνη πέρας οὐκ ἔχουσα].1 Therefore, the feeling of shame seems to encompass both body and soul, both this world and the afterlife. The lack of shame is connected to the origins of the world, to the kingdom of heavens, while shame seems to be related with sin, guilt, and Hell. The shame and the lack of shame seem to be, first, internal, connected to a sense of self, of one’s own identity, as it is shown in the passage of Genesis. Second, shame implies also being exposed in front of an external audience—and both passages point to God.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-20

268  Ana-Maria Răducan Shame and the Perfect Self From a psychological perspective, if, according to Freud, women’s shame is perceived as “a concealment of genital deficiency,”2 shame may also be seen, in psychoanalytic terms, as a tension between the real ego and the ideal ego.3 As the Christian martyr Secunda points out, it is all about “I want to be what I am” (“Secunda dixit Quod sum, ipsud uolo esse”).4 In Karen Horney’s work, shame is linked to pride and to the development of a new identity, of a perfect self: The individual may first have relatively harmless fantasies in which he pictures himself in some glamourous role. He proceeds by creating in his mind an idealized image of what he “really” is, could be, should be. Then comes the most decisive step: his real self fades out. . . . The claims are his attempt to assert his place in the world, a place that is adequate to the significance of the idealized self and one that supports it. With his shoulders, he drives himself to actualize the perfection of this self. . . . Pride and self-hate belong inseparably together, they are two expressions of one process.5 One may discover this process in the development of the new Christian identity, which proposes to all his believers an idealized image of a perfect Christian, following God’s perfection. The path of conversion and ultimately the path to martyrdom are an actualization of the “real self” of the sinner, an inner journey to become the person who is meant to be, from the very beginning, the image of God. In this case, the negative affect of shame may be conceived as a functional tool in the search for identity of an individual. One can speak about the shame of being a sinner in front of God, starting from Adam and Eve, a shame that is localized by Paul in the members of the body (Romans 7, 23) and that should be cleansed by God (1 John 1, 9). Moreover, Gershen Kaufman, in his work The Psychology of Shame: Theory and Treatment of Shame-Based Syndromes, published in 1989, investigated the power of shame in shaping the evolving identity of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. According to him, shame is linked to guilt, seen as a learned behavior consisting of a blame thas is self-directed, and can be internalized, self-blame having the same dynamic that blaming of others represents when it is applied interpersonally. From this point of view, one may argue that, in the case of the early Christian martyrs, the persecutors’ horrible behaviors, designed to humiliate, uncover, or expose the martyrs’ bodies (specifically women’s bodies), are used to place shame on their victims, in order to regulate their social role and activity. In the case of female martyrs, one can better perceive the dynamics between being a victim and being ashamed. This is the reason why, for example, Anullinus orders Crispina to be shaved: “that her beauty might first thus be brought to shame” (“ut eius primum facies ad ignominiam deveniat”).6 In this way, Crispina loses her beauty and her womanly appearance, being ashamed in public, but this gesture can be perceived by the future martyr as an expiation of her sins. Shame is often perceived as a moral feeling, caused by violations or transgression of very important rules, and a widely held assumption is that shame can also

Shame in the Development of Christian Identity  269 prevent people from doing wrong, so it can be a catalyst of respecting the moral and social standards. However, just as Crispina, the martyrs perceived this shame inflicted on their bodies as a mark of Christian identity, which is developing precisely in these times. Stricto sensu, there is the portrayal of the martyrs’ courage in the face of the most terrible tortures and humiliations: After she had said this, she nobly endured the end: boiling pitch was slowly poured drop by drop over different parts of her body, from her toes to the top of her head. Such was the struggle that this magnificent young woman endured.7 But like in the story of Creation, they are not ashamed of being naked and exposed, as their aim is to become citizens of the Heavenly Kingdom. Herein this point, the discussion moves towards an eschatological sense, in which the Christian identity is fulfilled. Of course, one may assume that there is a return to the original state of Adam and Eve, as created by God, but this return may suppose the recreation of a perfect self, by the redeeming of the original sin and the cleansing of the sinful body. The perfect self should be achieved starting from this life and should be embodied. All of the strategies of persecution, involving shame, inflicted on the bodies of the martyrs, seem to be useful tools to erase the “old self” and help them to achieve their idealized image of perfection. A New Christian Identity As Paul points out, “[t]here is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28 KJV): a largely accepted dogma, although challenged in the past decades,8 claims that the Christian identity is universal, and it develops without any regard of nationality, social condition, or gender.9 I will argue in this chapter that for the writers of the first Christian martyrdoms, and for their audience, this identity is forged against these marks of identity: they become Christians by not manifestly honoring or even by transgressing their older identities, shaped by the community in which they lived, their kinship, and their social, cultural, and gender roles. Such is the case of the Saints Agape, Irene, and Chionia: When the persecution was raging under the Emperor Maximian, these women, who had adorned themselves with virtue, following the precepts of the Gospel, abandoned their native city, their family, property, and possessions because of their love of God and their expectation of heavenly things, performing deeds worthy of their father Abraham. They fled the persecutors, according to the commandment, and took refuge on a high mountain. There they gave themselves to prayer: though their bodies resided on a mountain top, their souls lived in heaven.10 The transgression of their former condition brings them dishonor and disgrace. The image of the feminine naked body, which is going to be exposed, is used as a sign

270  Ana-Maria Răducan of shame and punishment, in total contradiction to the ascetic ideals of purity and holy life: Instead, I  sentence you to be placed naked in the brothel with the help of the public notaries of this city and of Zosimus the executioner; and you will receive merely one loaf of bread from our residence, and the notaries will not allow you to leave.11 However, this image of being shamefully cast away from the community might be seen as a reversed image of the banishment from Paradise of Adam and Eve. One may talk in this sense of an expiation of the original sin, in order to regain a lost Paradise. The nude body exposed in public, as a punishment for a guilty transgression, may be conceived as mirroring the scene of Genesis 6. If Adam and Eve, in their nudity, are ashamed of God, because of their dissent and lack of obedience, the martyrs are ashamed in public, by their persecutors, also because of transgressing the rules of the supreme authority. If Adam and Eve lose the citizenship of heaven and their condition offered by God from the beginning, the martyrs also willingly lose their old identity, in order to reshape the first state of perfection, the image of God. One can assume that citizenship is a mark of identity12 and sometimes a privilege. In the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, the earliest dated document from the Latin Church, the proconsul spares the martyrs of all humiliating tortures and decides to behead them, as if they were Roman citizens. This offered a more “shameless” form of execution. In almost all the martyrdoms, the Roman officials are fairly portrayed: they beg the martyrs to take time for reflection, they want to grant them a stay, and they feel curious about the doctrines of Christianity,13 while it is obvious that the future martyrs are transgressing the religious rules of the Empire, and often they argue with the Roman officials. Such is the case of the “battle of words” between proconsul Anullinus and Crispina: “You are a stubborn and insolent woman,” said Anullinus, “and you will soon begin to feel the force of our laws against your will.” “Whatever happens,” said Crispina, “I shall be glad to suffer it on behalf of the faith which I hold firm.”. . . Anullinus then turned to the court notary and added: “Let her be completely disfigured by having her hair cut and her head shaved with a razor till she is bald, that her beauty might first thus be brought to shame” [“ut eius primum facies ad ignominiam deueniat”].14 One can argue that shame is a concern only for the persecutors, being associated with the guilty deed of transgressing the rules. However, the martyr suffers this in her body, reflects this image. The symbolic gesture of shaving the feminine hair is a sign of shame with social and moral complex implications: Cutting off a woman’s hair removed her beauty, showed that she was disqualified from the protection of family and husband, showed that she was disqualified to wear the veil and marked her as an adulteress for all to see.15

Shame in the Development of Christian Identity  271 Being Ashamed That They Are Women The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas—the archetype of all later Acts of Christian martyrs, written in a personal tone and emotional style, full of naturalistic images—is perhaps the most paradigmatic case. It is one of the rare testimonies authored by women in Late Antiquity. Perpetua, a young aristocratic lady, does not obey the male authority from her family, renouncing, with great pains, to play all the roles required by kinship: wife, daughter, and mother. Her ability to transcend the social distinctions is demonstrated even in the very moment of her martyrdom—she dies alongside her slaves. Although she is married, her husband is absent; she does not obey his father, who finally rejects her as a daughter. For him, the shame inflicted by his daughter is only external, connected with the rules and opinions of the community. As a Roman citizen and an aristocrat, he had to be devoted to the Roman state: “Do not abandon me to be the reproach of men [dedecus hominum]. . . . Give up your pride! You will destroy all of us! None of us will ever be able to speak freely again if anything happens to you!” This was the way my father spoke out of love for me, kissing my hands and throwing himself down before me. With tears in his eyes, he no longer addressed me as his daughter but as a woman [me iam non filiam nominabat sed dominam].16 Although both Perpetua and Felicitas have newborn children, they seem to reject motherhood, in order to remain loyal to Christ and to fight a spiritual battle: But as God willed, the baby had no further desire for the breast, nor did I suffer any inflammation; and so I was relieved of any anxiety for my child and of any discomfort in my breasts.17 In a vision she has, Perpetua is no longer a woman but a man who fights against the devil, in the form of an Egyptian: I was condemned to die by the beasts. Then out came an Egyptian against me, of vicious appearance, together with his seconds, to fight with me. There also came up to me some handsome young men to be my seconds and assistants. My clothes were stripped off, and suddenly I was a man [facta sum masculus]. My seconds began to rub me down with oil (as they are wont to do before a contest).18 It is very interesting that Perpetua realizes she is a man, in her vision, only when she is naked. This could be an inverted image of the reality and the mark of great tension between her current position and her divine expectations: if the naked and exposed body of a woman offered to the beast is a sign of shame and weakness, then in her vision, the naked warrior man she incarnates is strong and powerful, succeeding to win over the Egyptian and to receive a bough from the Tree of Life, a connection with the Paradise and the afterworld. The same transformation happens

272  Ana-Maria Răducan also with Felicitas, who does away with the role of the mother in order to become a gladiator for Christ; this quotation highlights a shameful dimension of the act of giving birth, the impurity that must be washed: With them also was Felicitas, glad that she had safely given birth so that now she could fight the beasts, going from one blood bath to another, from the midwife to the gladiator, ready to wash after childbirth in a second baptism.19 Without arguing about the authorship of this martyrdom, one may claim that females were (self-)perceived as weak, sinful, and needing to expiate, in order to become worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven. It could be argued that this gender reversal alleviates the female martyr from the mark of her gender, helping her to better endure the persecution to come. In a psychological analysis of the martyrdom, von Franz shows that Perpetua’s visions confirmed the reality of her spiritual transformation and strengthened her so that she faced her death with such grace and bravery, that even the blood-thirsty crowd pleaded for mercy on her behalf. She opened herself to him in a deep feminine way, embracing, holding, and containing her spirituality steadfastly. . . . This spirit gives her the inner conviction of God’s existence, . . . for this very reason, her actual death becomes simply one more step in the inner development which is implied.20 This tension between the real world and the spiritual ideal exceeds only in the final moment of her death, when Perpetua seems to regain her pudor in the eyes of the community, being reinvested in her feminine roles, in the spiritual world, as beloved of God and wife of Christ: Perpetua went along with shining countenance and calm step, as the beloved of God, as a wife of Christ, putting down everyone’s stare by her own intense gaze.21 Once Perpetua gains her inner battle during the vision, in the real world the audience does not accept anymore the shame of an exposed feminine body sent to death: So they were stripped naked, placed in nets and thus brought out into the arena. Even the crowd was horrified when they saw that one was a delicate young girl and the other was a woman fresh from childbirth with the milk still dripping from her breasts. And so they were brought back again and dressed in unbelted tunics.22 The final gestures of dressing the female body, of covering her parts, and fastening the hair seem to regain her dignity. It seems that there is no more tension left

Shame in the Development of Christian Identity  273 between the real ego of the aristocratic Roman lady and the ideal ego of the Christian martyr, between the feminine fragile appearance and the spiritual glory in the hour of death: Then sitting up she pulled down the tunic that was ripped along the side so that it covered her thighs, thinking more of her modesty [pudoris] than of her pain. Next, she asked for a pin to fasten her untidy hair: for it was not right that a martyr should die with her hair in disorder, lest she might seem to be mourning in her hour of triumph.23 Conclusion In conclusion, acquiring the Christian ideal means shaping a new identity, which is both internal and external. This new Christian identity seems to develop after casting away, in a radical way, all of the previous identities, offered by nationality or citizenship, kinship, and even gender. The dynamics of shame played in reshaping this new identity deserve to be better developed in a wider study, as it is related both with the inner perception of self and with the expiation of a transgression, with the exposure, marginalization, and even exclusion of a community. The dynamics of dressing and undressing the body of the future female martyr, and of exposing her hair properly, illustrates the transition from shame to dignity, from human condition to heavenly one. Notes 1 Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 16, 9, translation quoted from: Claudio Moreschini, “Is It Possible to Speak of ‘Cappadocian Theology’ as a System?” in Studia Patristica XCV: Papers Presented at the 17th International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2015, ed. Markus Vinzent (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 163. 2 Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis: The Standard Edition (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1965), 132. 3 See Gerhart Piers and Milton B. Singer, Shame and Guilt: A Psychoanalytic and a Cultural Study (Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 1953). 4 The Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs 9.3, in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, Vol. 2, ed. Herbert A. Musurillo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 88. . 5 Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Towards Self-Realization (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1950), 109. 6 The Martyrdom of Crispina 3, 5, in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. Musurillo, 306. 7 The Martyrdom of Potamiaena and Basilides 4–5, in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. Musurillo, 133. 8 See, for example, Denise Kimber Buell, Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). 9 Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, AD 200–1000 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 15. 10 The Martyrdom of Agape, Irene, Chione, and Companions 1, 2–3, in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. Musurillo, 281. 11 The Martyrdom of Agape, Irene, Chione, and Companions 5–8, in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. Musurillo, 22.

274  Ana-Maria Răducan 12 Thomas Franck, The Empowered Self: Law and Society in the Age of Individualism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 61–75. 13 The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, Vol. 2, ed. Musurillo, lv. 14 The Martyrdom of Crispina 1, 5; 3, 1, in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. Musurillo, 303, 307. 15 Curtis E. Montier, “Let Her Be Shorn: 1 Corinthians 11 and Female Head Shaving in Antiquity” (MA Thesis, Denton, University of North Texas, Texas, 2015), 72. 16 The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas 5, 4–5, in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. Musurillo, 113. 17 The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas 6, 8, in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. Musurillo, 115. 18 The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas 5, 4–5, in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. Musurillo, 119. 19 The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas 10, 6–7, in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. Musurillo, 127. 20 Marie-Louise von Franz, The Passion of Perpetua: A Psychological Interpretation of Her Visions, ed. Daryl Sharp (Toronto: Inner City Books, 2004), 52. 21 The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas 10, 5, in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. Musurillo, 127. 22 The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas 20, 1, in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. Musurillo, 129. 23 The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas 20, 2–3, in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. Musurillo, 129.

Bibliography The Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Edited by Herbert A. Musurillo, Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. The Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs. In The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, edited by Herbert A. Musurillo, Vol. 2, 86–89. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Brown, Peter. The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, AD 200–1000. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Buell, Denise Kimber. Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Franck, Thomas. The Empowered Self: Law and Society in the Age of Individualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Freud, Sigmund. New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis: The Standard Edition. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1965. Horney, Karen. Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Towards Self-Realization. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1950. Kaufman, Gershen. The Psychology of Shame: Theory and Treatment of Shame-Based Syndromes. Dordrecht: Springer, 2004. The King James Bible. Accessed April 22, 2023. www.kingjamesbibleonline.org. The Martyrdom of Agape, Irene, Chione, and Companions. In The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, edited by Herbert A. Musurillo, Vol. 2, 280–93. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. The Martyrdom of Crispina. In The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, edited by Herbert A. Musurillo, Vol. 2, 302–9. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas. In The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, edited by Herbert A. Musurillo, Vol. 2, 106–31. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Shame in the Development of Christian Identity  275 The Martyrdom of Potamiaena and Basilides. In The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, edited by Herbert A. Musurillo, Vol. 2, 132–35. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Montier, Curtis E. “Let Her Be Shorn: 1 Corinthians 11 and Female Head Shaving in Antiquity”. MA Thesis. University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, 2015. Moreschini, Claudio. “Is It Possible to Speak of ‘Cappadocian Theology’ as a System?” In Studia Patristic XCV: Papers Presented at the 17th International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2015, edited by Markus Vinzent, 139–63. Leuven: Peeters, 2017. Piers, Gerhart, and Milton B. Singer. Shame and Guilt: A Psychoanalytic and a Cultural Study. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 1953. von Franz, Marie-Louise. The Passion of Perpetua: A Psychological Interpretation of Her Visions. Edited by Daryl Sharp. Toronto: Inner City Books, 2004.

14 Historicizing Trans Saints Gender, Sexuality, and Agency in the Life of Pelagia Mariana Bodnaruk

According to the Life of Pelagia, after her baptism, the actress Pelagia, for no immediately apparent reason, assumed permanently the garments of a male monk traveling from her home in Antioch to the future seat of her cult in Jerusalem (§41).1 There, in a lavra monastery on the Mount of Olives, the repentant harlot lived out in men’s clothing under the name of Pelagius (§§43–49). John Chrysostom says nothing of the travel to Jerusalem by the penitent Antiochene entertainer,2 but the legend of Pelagia is one of the earliest major trans monk archetypes—the others being Thecla, Perpetua, and Eugenia3—before trans saints came to be a favorite theme of late antique hagiography. Among 15 known lives from the medieval Eastern Roman Empire, the most relevant to the discussion of the Life of Pelagia is the undated legend of Margaret of Antioch, a bride who, in order to escape a forced marriage, left the nuptial chamber donning men’s clothes under the name Pelagius.4 One can see more than coincidence that Pelagia the harlot was called in Antioch by the name Margarito, “Pearl,” because of her shining beauty, but also her rich jewelry (§30).5 Since the late 19th century, hagiography critics have taken up these legends attempting to reinsert them into socio-historical analysis. Two issues, in particular, stand out in their research: historicity and agency. Whereas the former is an act of historical recovery that aims to excavate the agency of actors, the latter is the emphasis on the agency itself. The feminist theory claims to uphold the social agency of dominated groups, particularly women. I  intend to examine how the scholarship on late antique trans saints analyzes the female agency and the place of resistance in gender relations in the Life of Pelagia. Feminist analysis of trans saints frequently confronts a conflict of interpretations. Much feminist theorizing regards them exclusively as cross-dressing women in the struggle for individual autonomy in the face of patriarchal domination. For one thing, it views them as victims and denies any kind of resistance on their part. Some feminist scholars have argued that dressing as men reduces, rather than strengthens, saints’ active role as women. In the hagiographies of these figures, “female holiness,” if possible at all as such, is grounded in pain, silence, and ultimately death. Conversely, the same saints have also been taken to embody “empowerment,” challenging late antique social models of male authority and the subjection of women. They are seen as struggling for autonomy in the face of an DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-21

Historicizing Trans Saints  277 oppressive, controlling society, or the father as a family patriarch. According to Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, saints’ lives “open up the possibility of resistant readings, which in particular contexts may constitute relative empowerment or recuperation.”6 The critics of hagiography have rarely attempted to negotiate the conflict between victimization and empowerment that appear to characterize the condition of subjugated minorities as portrayed in late antique vitae. The concern of feminist scholars has been to recover instances of women’s agency in highly patriarchal settings of the later Roman Empire and women’s striving for the preservation of their individual autonomy against the weight of male authority. They insist that authors of the lives considered the trans monks to be in the first place women, and wanted to present their piety as womanly piety and their sanctity as female sanctity. Focusing on the Life of Pelagia, which functioned as a model for the following hagiographies, I argue that these scholars fail to make the case on account of showing female resistance. I contend that they mistake choice constraints for an agency. Despite their unbending claims, in place of upholding women’s liberation, feminist critics redefine agency in such a way that acquiescence to patriarchy is brandished as female empowerment against it. This failure of feminist historiography has opened the way to the scholarship equipped with intersectional trans theory, which views these saints not merely gendered as women, but argues precisely for a “transgender” identity. It revisited the notion of the “transvestite saint” and showed how the reliance on pathologizing discourses about “cross-dressing” and the trope of “disguise” and deception produced distorted historical accounts.7 A  trans reading demonstrates how masculine gender expression and male sex identity were outwardly and inwardly manifested through the ascetic practices recounted in the narratives of these figures’ lives. Adhering to the latter interpretation of the Life of Pelagia, this chapter proposes to take up an issue of agency, while shifting the focus to an agenda of the narrative, as a text produced in a particular historical setting, to generate a more encompassing transmaterialist reading of the trans saints’ lives. Historicity and Agency in the Trans Lives I start with a general survey of previous research. To begin with, Hermann Usener, advancing the view that early Christians embraced some pagan rituals and transformed deities into saints, first postulates that Pelagia, a penitent harlot, is the original trans saint and a vestige of the hermaphroditic goddess of the Cypriote Aphrodite, whose cult entailed cross-dressing.8 Associating Pelagia with other trans saints (e.g., Marina and Margarita), whose name or legend evokes Pelagia, Usener asserts that both the fusion of sexual pleasure and ascetic continence in the Life and reevaluation and destabilization of gender boundaries show a connection of the saint to the goddess.9 There is surely a historical fact in the story of the anonymous Antiochene penitent of Chrysostom, just as in that of a virgin Pelagia celebrated in a treatise by Ambrose.10 The saint’s legend that has later come to call the repentant courtesan Pelagia is thus the product of an intertextual development. Later critics have found vestiges of the cross-dressing motif in the Greek novel instead of viewing

278  Mariana Bodnaruk it as a remnant of earlier Greek rites, such as that of Aphrodite, with other themes more imaginary than historical, which could be attractive for an audience fond of entertaining themes and plot twists, superimposed with a didactic function in early Christian literature.11 Further, Hippolyte Delehaye discards Usener’s association between the trans saint and the Aphroditic cult, whose celebration dates do not conform, and declares that the subsequent legends simply represent romanticized adaptations of Pelagia’s account, which has a historical core.12 Delehaye is the first to establish that the legend is most probably the product of a conflation between the story of the 15-year-old Antiochene martyr who threw herself from her housetop to preserve her virginity and the anonymous actress of the same city who abandoned her life of dissolution to become the penitent, praised as an example by Chrysostom. Depriving the subsequent legends of originality, Delehaye ends by claiming that Mary, Apolinaria, Euphrosyne, and Theodora “are simply literary replicas” of “Jacob’s” Pelagia; or otherwise, as in the case of Eugenia, “the theme of a woman hiding her sex has intruded into a narrative about some historical person.”13 On the whole, early Christian hagiography, in Delehaye’s words, is the “anonymous product of that abstraction which is called a people’s genius.”14 Since the 1950s, Marie Delcourt has been one of the first critics to revisit the question of the early Christian “transvestite saints,” approaching the issue from the psychoanalytic perspective.15 Examining in detail the cross-dressing rites cited by Usener to support his theory of cultic origins, she shows that they ordinarily include fewer female than male partakers in the clothing of the opposite sex.16 She assesses the legends not as a possible relic of archaic rituals, but offers a psychoanalytic reading, exploring them on the apolitical and ahistorical foundation of psychological thought as a product of universal human hermaphroditism.17 Although few would contest the transhistorical existence of a psychic human apparatus, the universalized application of Jungian psychoanalytic categories (collective archetypes) seems a risky enterprise, particularly when it comes to assuming, metacritically, notions whose historical production needs to be properly theorized. For Delcourt, the protagonist’s assumption of masculine disguise manifests a break with Pelagia’s not merely sinful, but rather “feminine past.” In the Life, this violent rupture with a former mode of existence signifies the renunciation of the sexual life, while other legends center on the rejection of family and authority structures. The heroine’s act of taking on men’s dress is thus regarded as an outward symbol of the sexual and social tensions in the early Christian setting. Delcourt rejects Usener’s localization of the psyche of the “transvestite saint” in the ancient Greek ritual context. She equally objects to Delehaye’s view of the legend as merely an invention to elaborate on a vague story recounted by Chrysostom. Instead, Delcourt finds the motif to be entrenched in the psychological context of early Christian asceticism, whose most rigorous form “preached total renunciation of material possessions and all sexual life.”18 In this attempt at historicization, she compares the women’s act of cross-dressing to better themselves in order to reach androgynous completion as a psychological counterpart to male self-castration. She uncovers that the theme conveys the “Gnostic image of an ideal androgyny.”19

Historicizing Trans Saints  279 Since, in the early Christian culture, Delcourt notes, male was received as superior to female, a woman’s abolition of femaleness while accepting symbolic maleness denoted spiritual advance. According to her, the Christian heroine, distinct from cultic antecedents, establishes herself explicitly through irreversible abandonment and negation of her femininity, hence challenging the social norms. Such reading suggests that women’s gender reversal was a powerful gesture.20 In the early 1970s, in the field dominated by psychological and psychoanalytic readings, John Anson examined the textual structure of hagiographies of “transvestite monastics” and declared that they were “products of a monastic culture written by monks for monks.”21 His critique of Delcourt concerns her analysis of the stories in terms of the psychology of women protagonists. In this way, he precludes the possibility of discovery of female agency as the legends could not even potentially have represented the psychology of actual late antique women: “they neither record real female behavior nor do they reveal any real interest in characterization.”22 In Anson’s structuralist study, the “psychological significance” of the hagiographical stories is principally to be found in the narrative structure and monastic culture as the social setting of their composition. As for historicity, in Anson’s reading of the legends, one finds evidence for early Christian monastic psychology. This “hermeneutic of suspicion” uncovers in particular a tangible conflict between monastic hostility towards women as temptresses and the male ascetics’ repressed sexual desire. Female heroines are read as a result of this double bind—the result of the monastic need to glorify exempla of female piety to atone not only for female guilt, but also for the very guilt of the monks themselves—which in fact re-focuses the attention on the veiled gender aspect and agency. For Anson, the motif produced at a certain historical moment and recorded by male celibate clerics poses the query not of female psychology but rather of “monastic fantasy.” Pelagia is thus the paradoxical creation of male insecurities about women. The issue resurfaces later in the ideology critique seeing the trans saints as products of gender expectations because male authors endorse their own beliefs through the saintly figures. It is hardly surprising that Anson was critiqued by both social historians and feminist reviewers on account of his rigid conclusion that these saints are molded by men’s gender expectations.23 He has attempted to press the drama of the Life into the libidinal unconscious of its male author(s). Anson’s reduction of the text to individual psychology abolishes, however, its character as an ideological production of a determinate historical matrix. Feminist scholars emphasize that Pelagia acts of her own will, thus manifesting female self-awareness and social independence. Her faith is no longer attached to the figure of Nonnus, which establishes her individuality. They counter Anson’s idea that Pelagia was lacking life-like individuality. Viewing the saint as a symbol of repentance and hope of salvation, Benedicta Ward objects to the reading of these legends as gender-rejecting literature, as suggested by Delcourt, or as symptomatic accounts that manifest secret longing for female presence as repressed desire in the author’s unconscious, as argued by Anson.24 For Ward, Pelagia did not reject femininity—just the opposite: “in fact it was an assertion of it,” for before God all souls are feminine, “and it is this femininity that the women claim,” equally to the men of the desert.25

280  Mariana Bodnaruk Equally, since the 1970s, feminist scholars have exploited trans saints to demonstrate the social freedom and emancipation that asexuality brought to women in Late Antiquity. With Evelyne Patlagean, the structuralist study of legends abandons the search for recurrent patterns of psychological significance and embraces a socio-historical explanation of how these lives reflected contemporary Christian thought and practice.26 For Patlagean, one is in fact referred not to the experience of these women, as imagined by Delcourt, but, echoing Anson, merely to the conceptions and standards of the monastic hagiographers.27 Similarly to him, Patlagean, who endeavors to trace the textual and historical formation of these legends, distinguishes a tripartite structure of the stories—ascetic withdrawal, cross-dressing, and exposure of sexual identity—pursuing a structuralist reading of the legends. As maintained by Patlagean, the motif of holy women “disguised as men” would have contested late antique social models of patriarchal authority and female subjection. For her, the so-called cross-dressed saints paradoxically stand for female independence and autonomy as they assume the identity of male eunuchs in the late antique monastic world. According to Patlagean, the legends manifest a paradigm of transgressive sanctity that questions male authority. Tracing the literary development of the legends by applying sociological and anthropological analysis, she contextualizes the story of Pelagia within the socio-historical milieu of early Christian asceticism. As Stephen Davis put it, [b]y portraying heroines who “became male” both in dress and in physical appearance, the monks were proposing a model of female sanctity in which “the female” was negated (at least in part). . . . Women . . . were called in this literature to flee their own nature through ascetic practice.28 The monastic literature concerned with salvation reflects the apprehension that the female sex constitutes an impediment to its achievement. Most scholarship on trans saints highlights that the society that informed these stories regarded the female body as an impediment to spirituality. For Patlagean, “female transvestism” is equivalent to voluntary mutilation by certain male ascetics. Both gestures express radical condemnation of the flesh, characteristic of extremes of ancient Christianity. She equally points to Gnostic influences. Patlagean refers to the case of the anchoress in a collection of monastic anecdotes by Moschus, who deprives herself of sight because her eyes had inspired male desire, as well as a secular variation on the theme of Mary the Egyptian.29 In the legends of trans saints, she finds “a fundamental negation of femininity, where the physical divestment manifests a spiritual escape from the native condition.”30 In the view of Patlagean, these women substitute femininity for masculinity to attain a religiosity ordinarily denied to them. Likewise, Vern L. Bullough observes that “progress meant giving up the female gender, the maternal, passive, corporeal, and sense perceptive world, and taking the active rational male world of mind and thought.”31 As concluded by Bullough, women dress in the garb of men experiencing a crisis, and “cross-dressing” appears to signify a rupture with their previous existence. Both Patlagean and Bullough were critiqued for missing the point that, “while religion

Historicizing Trans Saints  281 held the female sexual persona to blame for deficient rationality, the culture that received this religion nevertheless identified roles that validated women,” because “faced with excising sexuality from gender in the encomium of holy women, the culture that fabricated the transvestite saints found a metaphorical way that enabled it to praise a woman’s gender but not her sex.”32 In the 1990s, feminist critics such as Valerie Hotchkiss took up the “transvestite saints” to focus on misogyny and ideological conformity masculinizing women. For her, among the “cross-dressed women,” Pelagia rejects both her past life of sin, as well as her female nature. Here, “transvestite disguise” serves as the recompense for her sexual misconduct. She chooses maleness to atone for her sins as a woman. The “appropriation of maleness” is viewed as a symbol of the denial of female sexuality, the origin of women’s sinfulness.33 Donning men’s clothes is posited as a struggle to “eradicate gender entirely,” and not only its inversion: by solitary confinement, Pelagia “effectively renders sex irrelevant” and, similarly to the voluntary eunuch, she strives for asexuality.34 According to Hotchkiss, the legends of cross-dressed women “substantiate the view that male disguise symbolizes female attainment of superior (i.e., male) spirituality:” the “transvestite saints” are hence nothing more than “actualizations of male metaphors for faith.”35 Similarly, Elizabeth Castelli examines the theme of becoming masculine in late antique asceticism and martyrdom, the two most lauded early Christian models of bodily piety.36 For her, “transvestism” served as “bodily signifiers,” or images by which late antique Christian culture was blurring the gender distinction in a theology that insisted on personal and corporal transformation. Castelli identifies the agenda of these hagiographical texts as the promotion of the rejection of the material and, by implication, sexual world. For this critic, the saints’ figures are shaped by the Gnostic ideology on account of the female body, evoking gender transformation and blending in the Gospel of Thomas. According to Castelli, the “male disguise” in these legends, viewed as an exterior marker of the decisive split with the secular world, is a “highly controversial sign of female piety,”37 epitomizing “moments of slippage” and “spaces where the self-evidence of gender conventions and the relationships for which they were foundational might have been thought otherwise.”38 In the 2000s–2010s, scholars turned to poststructuralist theory and the study of intertextuality, while recontextualizing trans saints in the framework of late antique discourses on gender and the female body. For example, Stephen J. Davis argues that the three-part structure of these legends—ascetic retreat, transvestitism, the revelation of sexual identity—is more varied than structuralist interpreters such as Anson and Patlagean have proposed.39 In retracing the footsteps of her intertextual model Thecla, Pelagia is understood to be actualizing anything but distinctively female piety. Like Eugenius, Pelagius, too, is viewed as a eunuch—as one whose piety is no longer “female” nor wholly “male.” For Davis, the crossed sex of the trans saint “actually destabilizes binary gender categories by undermining even the fundamental opposition of sexual division/nondivision itself”40—a conclusion not dissimilar from that of Castelli. Stavroula Constantinou scrutinizes the “holy cross-dresser” characters applying a version of the misunderstood Butlerian theory of performativity,

282  Mariana Bodnaruk and re-categorizes female monk lives into gendered hagiographical subgenres adjusting the tripartite plot structure of Anson and Patlagean.41 Feminists made attempts at recuperation and rescue of female agency in trans saints’ lives. Although the legends of these saints are not wholly successful in promoting genuine female selfhood and a specifically female model of holiness, Patricia Cox-Miller believes, [u]nlike the hagiographic paradigm of ascetic women that stripped such women of their femaleness by declaring them to be manly women or “female men of God,” vitae like those of Pelagia and Mary [of Egypt] are not successful in suppressing the femaleness of their subjects.42 She argues that they grant agency to women, like Pelagia, before but also after the conversion, yet the female identity is both affirmed and negated as connected with sexuality which, contrary to Patlagean and Davis, does not dissolve in eunuchry or androgyny. Also, Laila Abdalla dismisses the view exemplified by Patlagean that “transvestite women” achieve a masculine (hence higher) status by rejecting their feminine selves.43 In the lives of sex-gender crossing saints who overcome their female weakness and irrationality donning male clothing, albeit the trans saints are not historical figures, they are literary constructions of late antique society. Their fictional accounts use historical verisimilitude to allow them to manifest in a realistic way what could not actually exist. Abdalla discerns their pre-disguised “continued femininity” as spiritual virgins. Like Anastasia, Euphrosyne, and Athanasia, Pelagia pretends to be a man but excels as a woman. She transcends sexuality, yet not her sex. Pelagia takes on a male exterior but never denies her female nature. A decade later, a study by Crystal Lynn Lubinsky, analyzing the intersexuality of the texts that interpellate women to their roles, still claimed that the masculinization that accompanies “transvestism,” the adoption of men’s names, and the male attributions of saints’ holiness, is in fact not the masculinization “in any genuine sense.”44 She vehemently defends the “genuine essence” of womanhood— and, more precisely, the “essence” of womanly piety—that she discovers in the heroines from start to end in their stories. Lubinsky highlights that the women’s holiness was characterized by their consistent ascetic aspirations. Albeit protagonists assume transmasculine identities and pass as male-presenting eunuchs, she, nevertheless, considers their piety to be exclusively womanly.45 In contrast, in 2020, Roland Betancourt’s intersectional reading first argued, against Lubinsky in particular and the feminist scholarship relying on the trope of “disguise” in general, for a “transgender” identity of these saints. He assumes that “masculine gender expression and identity were outwardly and inwardly manifested through the practices recounted in the narratives of these figures’ lives.”46 In line with trans theory, he emphasizes Pelagia’s “transition” (to a male-gendered eunuch), instead of merely spiritual transformation.47 Betancourt rightly objects to the use of the terms “transvestite” and “cross-dresser” in reference to non-cis-gender and genderfluid persons of the transgender saints’ vitae. This contemporary re-reading clearly clashes with feminist attempts to retrieve women’s agency and sanctity. It is this

Historicizing Trans Saints  283 commitment of feminist critics to advancing female agency to the focus of research on the trans monks to which I now turn. Liberation of the Female Saint and Feminist Critique The feminist analysis foregrounds the forms of social agency and identity that have tended to remain at the periphery of considerations, in particular, gender and sexuality, which have been central foci of the feminist theory since its inception. Seeking to reinstate gender into the reading of the late antique hagiography, feminist critics claim to have excavated the sources of female agency. Yet the claims they make with regard to the nature of women’s agency are flawed, and their own evidence challenges them. Feminist scholars conceptualize women’s resistance in the vitae—as taking shape around gender—in order to demonstrate their agency. However, inasmuch as hagiography critics try to make a case for women’s agency, they do so by redefining the notion in such a manner as to turn it into its opposite. In her feminist contribution to this debate, Lubinsky sets out to distance herself from the scholarly consensus, which, in her opinion, misrepresents the lives of women donning male attire as concerned with questioning conventional gender distinctions, elevating the heroines to a different gendered identity.48 To recover specifically women’s sainthood, Lubinsky argues that the hagiographers were operating within the masculine conception and language of holiness and piety, and this is the reason why they utilized masculine vocabulary to eulogize their heroines. She believes that the authors of the lives still considered these saints to be women and wanted to portray their sanctity as womanly. Lubinsky identifies a triple-layered structure in which gender functions in the stories: (1) outward masculinity—the heroines’ gender performance of masculinity through crossdressing, adopting male names, and entering all-male monasteries; (2) social masculinity—readers’ perception that the protagonists were men, hence permitting them to operate socially as males; and (3) inner masculinity—the heroines’ appropriations of masculine personae or aims at gender alteration. Examining the legends on account of these layers, Lubinsky determines that the hagiographers portrayed the saints as manly only based on outward and social layers of gender and exclusively as a practical strategy that enabled them to pose as monks without being revealed. She deems “a true metamorphosis of an internal womanhood to an internal manhood” as “practically non-existent,”49 and finds that there are no instances to “pinpoint an inward masculinity within the internal nature of the women themselves.”50 However, in the Apophthegmata Patrum, Amma Sarah, who dwelled alone by the Nile for 60 years, reportedly pronounced, “according to my nature I  am a woman but not according to my thoughts,” and addressing some visiting monks, “[i]t is I who am a man, you who are women.”51 Lubinsky argues, however, that in the lives, such remarks have to be viewed as chiefly symbolic. Opposing masculinization of the saintly woman, Laila Abdalla similarly critiqued Anson and Bullough, who “have speculated that transvestism substantiates the patristic doctrine that in masculine form women attain a virile, rational (male) religiosity that is more pleasing to God than an affective, irrational (female)

284  Mariana Bodnaruk piety.”52 She queries why, then, an independent woman in male clothing is “validated by a religion and culture that iterated a deep suspicion of womankind” and determines that, “unlike patristic theology, popular belief did not equate the denial of a woman’s sexuality with a denial of her gender,” as “a nonsexual woman is not a man, nor was she perceived as such.”53 However, Christian theologians clearly see virginity and sexual abstinence as masculine. As early as in the 1970s, Patlagean contended that the central motif of donning male attire would have defied the tradition of relegating women to an inactive, voiceless, subjugated existence. In her reconstruction of the events of the Life of Pelagia, she begins by establishing the context for the decisions Pelagia made. For Patlagean, the acts of resistance to women’s subjugation and, by implication, against a patriarchal order are to be found in Pelagia’s decision to dress as a man and to withdraw from society together with the woman’s consequent actions to carry it out. Importantly, Patlagean reads the saint’s initiative as a choice made by the woman entirely on her own, without male authority, forcing her to act in such a way, hence establishing it as an act of resistance. Pelagia is able to travel independently as far as Palestine wearing bishop’s clothes. Patlagean thereby presents her actions as an assertion of women’s autonomy.54 Abdalla echoes Patlagean and extends her argument by stating that “when women look like men, they frequently achieve liberation from the male sexual gaze,” and thus are “able to pursue their preferred life role,”55 in Pelagia’s case, that of a recluse,56 solely “when freed from the constraints of sexuality imposed upon them by (male) others.”57 In Antioch, Pelagia lives in circumstances that sexualize her all the time. For Abdalla, the saint actively resists the objectification that she faces, hence, she “cross-dresses” to become sexually invisible. The feminist critic thus views emancipation as the ability to pursue the role that women have chosen. According to Abdalla, these saints “embody a paradoxical phenomenon: by modifying their physical appearance from female to male, they purchase the opportunity to be the women they desire to be, not the men that patristic authority required them to be.”58 In the monastic discourse, women’s bodies were read as inherently dangerous, inherently deserving of being punished. Late antique collections of monastic anecdotes exhibit countless tropes against women as the source of monks’ sexual desire. Like other women saints, Pelagia is obliged to avoid men’s sexual obsession. For Abdalla, “eluding a context that sexualizes them enables the women to define themselves in non-sexual but nevertheless feminine terms.” She identifies “the saint’s concept of womanhood” as “decided not by an external male authority but by an internal female individuality.” The male disguise protects virginity or ensures women’s bodily self-preservation, which then “grants self-government to the saint.”59 Ascetic continence displaces female sexuality while “liberating” women to pursue an avenue to spiritual and social power. Abdalla concludes that male attire allows the saints to fulfill the conflicting demands of medieval femininity. In turn, Lubinsky argues that whereas previous scholars held that the legends portray the “transvestite saints” incorporating male piety, the heroines’ masculinity is only superficial and instrumental.60 While masculine ruses are heavily relied upon in the lives, she discerns no detailed threefold masculinity around the

Historicizing Trans Saints  285 character of Pelagia as developed by her hagiographer. Identifying no “layered masculinity,” she claims that “cross-dressing” is used only vaguely during the latter third of Pelagia’s legend with no consequence or observable necessity. As stated by Abdalla, “by choosing one of the three positive female roles that were culturally available to them”—virgin (“a denial of the voracious female sexual appetite”), mystic intercessor (“a contemplative and quasi-spousal relationship with God”), or mother (“an affective bond that ensures the survival of the vulnerable”)—“the women continue their feminine personas behind the camouflage of male attire.”61 Paradoxically, in Abdalla’s opinion, the disguise assumed by Pelagia empowers one of the three female life roles, namely, a virgin. Albeit clearly not a virgin in the story, the repentant actress nevertheless belongs to this category by her own choice, for she “redeems her fallen sexuality and reclaims for herself a virginal chastity.”62 All of these scholars turn against their own presentation of the episodes of Pelagia’s Life and assert that, what they claim to be a choice made out of pure practicality of male attire, was actually a rational enactment of female agency, empowerment, and resistance. The greater problem has to do with what this argument implies about the agency itself. Pelagia’s desire to become an ascetic is formed by the spiritual idea of Nonnus. Subsequently, she abandons the bishop, an intimate Paul-like figure, to practice seclusion autonomously as a monk at the lavra. Lubinsky claims that “it seems that she would have been free to practice ascesis under the supervision of Nonnus,”63 but Pelagia departs alone, assuming male clothing, to pursue the life of a recluse. The choice to partake in monasticism was to surpass gender differences either by joining a single-sex community, a convent of nuns, or by becoming solitary in the desert.64 Pelagia was given a choice between two alternatives, a choice that was the result of the contemporary religious setting, but her will is dictated by the Christian doctrine governing sexual attitudes, of which the ascetic Nonnus assumes its extreme version. Nonnus, a monk-bishop from the desert, impels Pelagia towards a rigorist version of this doctrine that views prostitution as one of the greatest mortal sins, more detestable than homicide. As Anson’s reading of the vitae has shown, the emphasis on hostility towards women as demonic seductresses ultimately underlines the male “guilty desire.”65 With the female body thus viewed as fraught with danger, the patriarchal ideology led Pelagia to interiorize the idea that she is a grave sinner. She neither had any possibility nor did she reveal any predisposition or intent to alter the choice set or even contest the terms on which the alternatives were proposed. Her agency was constricted to opting for one or the other—monasticism or asceticism. Eventually, Pelagia follows the religious extremists and pays for it with her life, deciding between two choices that have been produced by an oppressive social structure, which amounts to acquiescence to the patriarchal order. It is not, thereby, something to be lauded in terms of empowerment and liberation. Even worse, if the decision by Pelagia is made from necessity, it appears in submission to that order laid out by the male authority, which feminists see challenged. While critiquing the view that “spiritual cross-dressing” was a revolutionary act because it enabled women to “escape their social, and indeed their biological destiny,”66 Lynda Coon holds that Pelagia’s Life presents “a feminized portrait

286  Mariana Bodnaruk of ascetic spirituality” rather than an example for women to escape their fate.67 She dismisses the reading inferring that the saints improve their piety when they counterfeit the male. She points out that Pelagia’s spiritual devotion predates her “masculinization.” Similarly, Abdalla believes that donning male attire grants women “opportunities to avoid restraints imposed upon their femininity” by the patriarchal society in which they live.68 Pelagia eludes the whoredom to which she was subjected and circumvents the lavra’s gender barrier to lead a life of a recluse. Subsequent to “disguise,” all the women saints, including Pelagia, “sustain fundamentally female roles.”69 Determined to excavate the woman agent, Abdalla states that, unlike the other saints, Pelagia’s disguise is seen by some to mark her “unwomaning” as she dons male clothing. Yet, for the critic, Nonnus’ enrapturement by Pelagia’s beauty “functions to prevent the interpretation that Pelagia’s transvestism is a passage from cupidinous female to rational male.” While Nonnus is male, Christian, and bishop, Pelagia is female, polytheist, and “representative of the unredeemed masses.” The rational piety signified by her male attire is annulled; Pelagia’s “feminine strength” gives her victory in the confrontation with the devil. It is witnessed, before her “disguise,” in “her triumph as a woman over Satan,” who addresses her as Margarito, in “a reference to her criminal femininity,” imploring her to revert to sin. Pelagia “metaphorically rightens her femininity,” transforming it from sin to virtue.70 As Karl Vogt has pointed out, in most of the “women-monk” vitae, the ascetic life does not represent an escape from matrimonial bonds and domesticity, which is common in the female saints’ lives. On the contrary, women leave the world with the consent of paternal authority, as a fulfillment of fatherly figures’ ascetic desires.71 Moreover, to see repentance as enacted entirely within the woman’s body not merely misconstrues the following of the male authority as an assertion of autonomy, but it considerably distorts feminists’ claim regarding sexuality and the body itself. The feminist theory contends that women’s liberation from patriarchal oppression presumes transcendence of the biological, which the hagiography critics offer as the natural domain for women’s agency. According to the Life, Pelagius’ eunuchry is qualified by male clothing. It functions as a narrative device to rationalize the unchanging, beardless state of Pelagius. However, for Abdalla, Pelagia and other saints are “indeed eunuchs, in as much as they are not male,” in the sense that “they have transcended sexuality altogether.”72 Here, she clearly confuses gender with sexuality. According to Abdalla, one of the criteria of eunuchry is again a choice as one makes oneself a eunuch: “the conscious and deliberate act of surpassing sexuality is indicative of achieving a spirituality that is unhampered by temporal limitation.”73 Since, for her, eunuchry and virginity coincide in their asexuality, it “becomes second, perhaps even first, nature to the devotee,” and “Pelagia personifies transcendence of concupiscence.”74 For Kyle Harper, “Pelagius has achieved, through gruesome self-mortification, a state beyond biological sex, transcending male or female,” that is rather intersex.75 In Abdalla’s words, “this saint becomes, in effect, neither man nor woman but an example of the more complete achievement of the ideal defeat of the sexual self.”76 One can only wonder how Abdalla can insist on recuperating Pelagia’s womanhood in this way.

Historicizing Trans Saints  287 Conversely, George Sidéris, scrutinizing the characters of hagiographic literature from performative and theological viewpoints, uses Pelagia to revisit gender categorization and point to the limitations of the asexual view.77 He reminds that both late antique gender, as well as spiritual ideals for men and women, were constructed by male Christian intellectuals. However, it appears that Sidéris distinguishes some kind of “true” sexual identity from a socio-sexual identity within a gendered culture. For him, contrary to the vita, Pelagia is a female eunuch. Unlike Lubinsky, he believes that this category of saintly woman existed in reality and was viewed as a eunuch. While Nathalie Delierneux claims that female ascetics lose femininity, becoming not androgynous but asexual, similar to angels, estranged from their own sex,78 Sidéris rejects the correspondence between the eunuchial state and the asexual angelic one. Arguing for asexuality, Abdalla, however, focuses on the “triumph,” as she qualifies it, of the medieval “temporal woman.” For both Abdalla and Lubinsky, the saints assume a male exterior only as a superficial layer to conceal and guard a societally threatened femininity. The former maintains that “the legends subsequently manifest that the saints do not deny their femininity for a more austere masculinity,” but, on the contrary, they “fulfil interior potentials of womanhood” by assuming male guise. The fiction expresses “the theoretical vision of temporal womanhood” essentially inexpressible in reality.79 Yet, in Pelagia’s figure, it renders this behavior realizable, and, in turn, “empowers the female character as a female,” for the “disguise” of the “transvestite saints” of the early monastic period as men “in truth refer to the original, undisguised, and puissant woman.”80 But to accept eunuchs’ presumed asexuality is to deny the subversive character of these women’s sex-gender crossing. As the Life recognizes Pelagius as a eunuch, it employs the descriptive masculine language used by her hagiographer to praise his virtues. In Sidéris’ typology of the gender structure in the Byzantine culture—male, female, male and female eunuch—the eunuchial transformation (of both men and women) takes place at the expense of neither gender nor sex. However, Sidéris does not find a place within his categorization for women explicitly qualified by their hagiographers as male eunuchs. He, nevertheless, recognizes with regard to sex-gender crossing women that their becoming a eunuch was viewed in specifically masculine terms.81 Harlot Turned Saint: Female Voices and Women’s Empowerment If some feminist critics find an act of female resistance in Pelagia’s asexuality, others find one in woman’s self-mortification. Yet, all seek to recuperate and celebrate instances of overlooked female voices that were sidelined or silenced. In his article “Can the Virgin Martyr Speak?”, Robert Mills, applying both postcolonial theory and theory of speech acts, predictably concludes that the medieval female virgin saint indeed cannot speak.82 Unlike in historical examples, Pelagia’s identity is seen predominantly as an effect of discourse, rather than a discernible reality. The critics have thereby discarded material, historical specificities of late antique social relations to raise the debate to a suitably abstract level to indulge in effusive poststructuralist readings about subaltern—especially women’s—desire, agency, and subject status of the discourses in which they are inscribed. While not objecting

288  Mariana Bodnaruk to the cross-cultural and transhistorical ambition of postcolonial theory as such, I insist on an approach to these texts grounded in the material conditions of their production and existence, in which the particular forms of ideological relations cannot be deduced a priori, but have to be made historically specific. The arguments in the hagiographic scholarship that surround the representation of Pelagia’s death also hinge on questions of female agency. In this case, a woman’s death is turned into an iconic act of spiritual struggle. One cannot but notice Nonnus’ simultaneous idealization and mistrust of Pelagia. In the Life of Thaïs the Harlot, Paphnutius the Ascetic forces the sinful woman into the desert, where he leaves her in a female monastery, immured in a cell with no outlet even for her own filth, ordering her to repeat only one prayer: “You who made me, have mercy upon me.”83 Ward finds it possible that the author recognized Paphnutius’ action to be extreme, since the ascetic is portrayed as being concerned about the very life of the repentant woman, and hence incorporated a vision of the harlot’s salvation.84 After the penitent is sealed in a fetid cell for three years, coincidentally just as long as Pelagia, Paphnutius takes Thaïs out of her confinement, and she lives for another 15 days before passing away. Both Pelagia and Thaïs are sealed into a cell as if into a tomb, in which the former eventually dies. The enclosure of the young, delicate, and luxury-loving lady in a cell, dark and small, and without the outlet in these stories, if read as historical accounts of events, is far from attractive. Hagiographers construct self-mortification in terms of the ascetic practice, portraying it as an individual decision of the repentant, invested with the ingredients of radical devotion and self-sacrifice. These associations are reminiscent of the discourse of “becoming male” espoused in Christian patristic discourse. Yet, even if the Life depicts Pelagia deciding to mortify her body, the woman’s choices were constrained by a deluge of patriarchal ideology and religious indoctrination. Once again, with the subject of Pelagia’s death, the scholarship finds agency, where the woman’s will is a hagiographic construct. Mills suggests shifting the emphasis from discerning the woman’s intentions, conscious or otherwise, to her practice, which highlights her experience, where she is the subject of action and agency. In the earliest, Syriac version of the legend, the narrator reports Pelagia’s direct speech that seems to allow for the manufacture of an empowering model of subjectivity. For Mills, the saint’s discursive formation is predicated on the sainthood in the wake of her heroic death.85 It is ultimately in death that her female identity is disclosed and her holiness is established. But does Pelagia become effectively silenced with her death or, on the contrary, acquire a voice of authority? If the trans saints’ lives reflect patriarchal ideology and make women articulate predominantly masculine concerns, their authors and audiences merge into one, leaving no place for female voices. If, as Abdalla has argued, the legends invite a more radical interpretation with regard to female agency, is this desire for recuperation of resistant female subjects a misrepresentation that de-emphasizes the patriarchal violence of these accounts? Seeking to excavate the perceivable female voices, Lubinsky has claimed that it is possible to discover women, beneath layers of masculinity and patriarchal discourse, without ignoring the complex workings of gender in the context of

Historicizing Trans Saints  289 hagiographic writing, reading, and viewing. However, Mills claims that, instead of recuperating the “authentic” female (or male) voice, it may ultimately be more productive to deconstruct the binary representational systems by which those gendered voices are constituted in the first place, to consider the ways in which dichotomous sexual difference acts as a screen for the projection of other categories of difference.86 Similarly, Davis’ poststructuralist reading of the vitae reasserts the polyphony of their gender discourses—“a fugal chorus of competing voices that echo in the ear of the reader.” For him, in the figure of the “transvestite saint,” polyphonic “cultural discourses collide and coalesce, and fragments of previous ‘texts’ are re-collected and reconfigured.”87 Kristi Upson-Saia contends that these legends deliberately received little censure because “they worked to strip cross-dressing of its transgressive nature.”88 The lives attempted to downplay the challenge of “cross-dressing” to the conventional gender binary opposition “by inscribing and naturalizing femininity onto the ascetic’s hidden body.”89 Nonetheless, the gendered language—which switches names and pronouns—destabilized the gender binary of the protagonists. Whereas the hagiographers intended to construct distinct categories of “male” and “female,” the writing of sex-gender crossing blurred those distinctions. The ascetic destruction of the feminine flesh is a theme proper to the lives with a sex-gender-marked narrative structure that foregrounds the protagonists’ sexuality. Pelagia is so physically attractive that she leads her male admirers to sin, and her hagiographer stresses the woman’s beauty to an exasperating extent, placing the blame for men’s desire on the actress. In the story of Pelagia, who turned from female to male, the narrator himself, deacon Jacob, once a witness of her guilty splendor, then of her conversion, sees the saint again without recognizing her in the cell of the solitary. For Abdalla, Pelagia alters the patriarchal discourse trying to fulfill its contradictory demands. By offering physical proof of repentance in an ultimate act of her death, sexually incontinent Pelagia took up the sanctioned motive of ascetic self-mortification to end, by trying to reject the inscription of her body by men and their desires. While her self-mortification epitomizes the ascetic practice, the recording of her legend inscribes her into the patriarchal order. Patristic fathers differed on the issue of women’s asceticism,90 yet they were united in denying female agency, whether supporting the practice or condemning it, never even considering women’s views on the issue pertaining to them in the first place. The absence of women’s voices in a debate that was essentially about them exemplifies the erasure of their agency.91 If Christian theology suppressed the female voices in this way, so did the legal discourse of the empire unconcerned with women’s subjectivity.92 Scholars face absences in the texts as they attempt to find female or trans agents in these accumulated erasures. Feminist critics have noted that Pelagia can hardly exemplify the inability of action when even her act of self-mortification is retrieved as a sort of agency of the young woman. In establishing the incentive behind Pelagia’s choices, these

290  Mariana Bodnaruk scholars assign subjectivity to her. Mills accepts that it is possible for the subaltern to act on their own will, while at the same time denying that the female saint can speak. One cannot but point out the inconsistency in the reconstruction of Pelagia’s actions both as an effort to resist the patriarchy and its opposite. Her decision to show emphatically that she repented by means of self-mortification does not show, however, that Pelagia undermined patriarchal norms. It is rather an attempt on her part to proclaim her penance in the face of accusations of immorality and sin generated by socio-religious conventions of her time—and thus, by inference, an acquiescence to those very bonds. Pelagia was not fighting for women to be able to attain sanctity. Having interiorized patriarchal ideology in its religious form, she was merely striving through repentance to erase her sin once and for all. Her progress toward holiness is marked clear-cut by her death. To be sure, Pelagia’s volitional stance did embody agency of a kind, but it was also an imploration to be no longer associated with impurity and transgression of prostitution perpetuated by that very same patriarchal order. Her confession is driven by self-loathing guilt: “I know that my sins are heavier and more numerous than all the grains of sand on the seashore; and all the sea’s water is not sufficient to wash away my wicked and evil deeds,” and “I too have acknowledged and do acknowledge that I am wicked and bad” (§29).93 Guilt-ridden, she zealously practices ascesis, turning societal religious violence against herself. As Tommasi put it, the lives of the sex-gender crossing saints “manifest the tension between male monastic milieus and heroic examples of women’s piety that serve as a sort of atonement for alleged female guilt.”94 Pelagia went to great lengths in her penitence to assert repentance of her depraved deeds but never questioned the accusations and grounds on which they were deemed immoral and sinful.95 Coon, specifying that Pelagia’s legend features a woman, who “only symbolically becomes a man,” “presenting a very feminized portrait of desert asceticism,” holds that the recluse, similar to the other female hermits of the desert, “mortifies her flesh to atone for the fall of Eve.”96 For Patlagean, the accomplishment of her ascesis is an effective annihilation of her femininity, just as the announcement of the truth about her nature is inseparable from her death. Likewise, in Gianarelli’s words, in the act of corporal self-mortification, beauty and femininity, viewed as instruments of sin, were completely destroyed, and it was only post mortem that the “real nature” of the protagonist appeared again, eliminating any possibility of a monastic scandal.97 Thus, much like Abdalla and Lubinsky, feminist critics uncover female agency in the Life not by recuperating it in patriarchal power structures but come to invert it by effectively redefining it as its opposite and thus enacting erasure. Mills identifies the double bind between the acknowledgment of women’s agency and that of its suppression. He demonstrates that in order to bypass “the methodological crisis posed by maintaining the stark division between victimization and empowerment,” theorists tend to “redefine subject-status itself, to view victim as subject.” Much in a similar way, he resolves that no matter on which element of the legends one focuses, no choice between victim and agent is in fact needed. These figures “can be seen as subjects and at the same time as objects”; they are inescapably both. For him, to require feminist analysis to make a choice between “subject-constitution”

Historicizing Trans Saints  291 (resistance to objectification) and “object-formation” (a passive victim of patriarchal violence) causes interpretative paralysis. The critic is cautious to highlight that the case he makes “is not a plea for historicity,” for reading the female saint “on her own terms,” because “the fictionality of the legends precludes such investigations.”98 Mills concludes that the “female agency” of the saint “cannot be idealized as force totally separate from the order it opposes.”99 Even if the woman tries, to her death, to resist, she remains caught between two ideologies: subjugated to patriarchal violence and at the same time celebrated as a model of female resistance, the protagonist carries a double burden. The gender and sexual politics of lives is entangled in intersectional oppressions, including class, ethnicity, and religious identity. For instance, one issue to be raised is how a slave-owning wealthy actress can be characterized as a “subaltern,” so that she falls into the same category of oppression or marginalization as enslaved sex workers. On account of her riches, Pelagia belonged to an upper stratum of society, even though dishonored as a woman of “easy virtue,” while lower-class prostitutes were ordinarily slaves and routine victims of sexual exploitation. The realities of late antique sex work expose the brutality of the patriarchal order. For Pelagia, nicknamed Margarito because of her jewels and pearls, gifts are a key source of material support. A well-to-do woman, she possesses a household of servants reflecting her lofty social position. For Coon, Pelagia’s “spirited independence” stems from the fortune she earns from offering sexual intercourse as a commercial transaction.100 She first appears to Nonnus with her cortege, a great throng of her servants and she herself was decked out with gold ornaments, pearls, and all sorts of precious stones, resplendent in luxurious and expensive clothes. On her hands and feet she wore armbands, silks, and anklets decorated with all sorts of pearls, while around her neck were necklaces and strings of pendants and pearls (§4).101 In distinctly material terms, she dispossesses herself of the great wealth that she has amassed. Pelagia’s steward goes to her house on her instruction and brings an inventory listing her entire fortune. The woman bequeaths all her estate to Nonnus, which he, in turn, passes to the church at Antioch. She presents suitable gifts when she manumits her slaves, previously appearing adorned with golden girdles and jewelry strung around their necks, thus substituting the iron slave collars worn by the ordinary unfree. As Ward put it: Life in the desert, anachoresis, was a practical demonstration of freedom from the limitations and responsibilities of society. It seems that it was very often the wealthy women of the ancient world who were able to take advantage of the desert as an arena of freedom. She adds, “[b]y their successful careers they had achieved a freedom from the men’s control and domesticity.”102 Much like the great widows of Rome and unlike

292  Mariana Bodnaruk lowly bound slaves, Pelagia was both free and rich and, for Ward, her entering into the monastic world of the desert was only the further stage of that freedom. Studies of late antique gender have to inquire how its historical and literary construction was concurrently that of other intersecting identities. Conclusion Whatever its folkloric origin, the Life of Pelagia is a written text. As such, it occupies a specific place in the religious literature of the time and locates itself in contemporary ideology. It arranges gender hierarchies and social classes in the space of ideological struggle, but it is not a resistance itself. It does not locate itself on the positions of women or other subjugated minority groups. The class viewpoint from which the Life is conceived and composed is, in its ideology, the viewpoint of its monastic authors. Most of the champions of Palestinian monasticism, of whom there are some biographical details, were men of the urban elite or sons of wealthy landowners. Just as the great monastic centers of Egypt, those in Palestine had their share of the leading classes from all over the late Roman Empire.103 As such, the text translates a certain ideological representation that involves the class viewpoint. The materialist reading, unlike its psychoanalytic counterpart, views the text as an ideological product that totally transcends the psyche of its author, while it may well begin with the subjective understanding that people had of their own society. Particular ideological structures are not to be seen as originating in the interior of the individual or collective unconscious. The localized production of these ideological categories is to be specified historically. The Life cannot be read only on the transhistorical plane of theory, “mined” with the aim to recuperate the visibility and presence of the female and trans subjects in the past;104 it must be understood as an intervention in a specific religious and social conjuncture.105 All in all, this chapter aimed to review, metacritically, the feminist theoretical apparatus that hagiography critics bring to bear on the text. The Life accentuates the values of sexual continence and repentance, inasmuch as it offers an exemplary sanctity model to be followed by women, while, simultaneously, it opens a possibility for readings that foreground the women’s autonomous role, with sexual denunciation allowing for confounding social constrictions. However, whereas it is anachronistic to argue that “cross-dressing” dispossessed women of their feminine individuality, is it equally inconsistent to claim that this was a means to emancipate them.106 This is not to deny their agency or to say that one should discard all attempts to discover representations of female power and militancy. Finally, the more female to male “cross-dressing” of these figures is aligned with “gender imitation”—the burden placed on them by the feminist critics—the less pronounced the point about resistance would be. Mills believes that in order “to foreground ‘empowerment’ or ‘victimization’ as the hermeneutical framework for exploring medieval hagiography [it] is not necessary to engage in readings that are politically valuable or ‘gender positive.’ ”107 Yet feminist just as much as trans readings are consciously political and restorative ones. By not recognizing these saints as trans men, the feminist hagiographic scholarship risks following a pattern

Historicizing Trans Saints  293 of saving women at the expense of other categories of difference. If one accepts that the transgender monks such as Pelagius chose to live their lives and die as men, then one simultaneously uncovers both their agency and an act of genuine gender resistance. Notes I am grateful to the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University for the Global IAS Fellowship, which enabled me to spend a year there working on my project on the transgender saints. 1 I refer to the Syriac version of the Life: Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, trans. Sebastian O. Brock and Susan Ashbrook Harvey (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987), 41–62. 2 Chrys., Hom. 67 (PG 58.636–637). 3 The motif is too diffused to be traced to one figure, and the legends of Thecla, Perpetua, and Eugenia antedate Pelagia. Since the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, sex-gender crossing became a dominant theme in the lives of a whole group of trans saints, at least one of which blatantly promotes Thecla as a role model for aspiring ascetic virgins. Besides the Greek Thecla, the Roman Perpetua is taken to be paradigmatically representative of sex-gender crossing. In its early versions, Eugenia’s legend, which has a second-century setting, portrays a trans monk and martyr, who is explicitly said to have imitated Thecla. 4 Hippolyte Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction to Hagiography, trans. Donald Attwater (New York: Fordham University Press, 1962), 150–53, pointed to the kinship of these legends, both in theme and names (Pelagia/us and Margarita/o). He has discovered that in the fifth century the redactor of the Life of Pelagia merged a vague version of a story of an Antiochene virgin with the story, first recounted by Chrysostom, of an anonymous repentant actress, forming from them the Christian romance of Pelagia and bishop Nonnus. 5 Alan Cameron, “The Poet, the Bishop and the Harlot,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 41 (2000): 184–85, points out that it may also be more than accidental that the hagiographer chose to refer to the week after Pelagia’s baptism as “bridal days” (§41), although it is not uncommon to juxtapose the white baptismal and bridal robes. 6 Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, “The Virgin’s Tale,” in Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature: The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect, eds. Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson (London: Routledge, 1994), 180. 7 C. Libby, “The Historian and the Sexologist: Revisiting the ‘Transvestite Saint,’ ” Transgender Studies Quarterly 8, no. 2 (2021): 172–87. For trans and genderqueer studies terminology, see Alicia Spencer-Hall and Blake Gutt, eds., Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021), 281–325. 8 Hermann Usener, Legenden der heiligen Pelagia (Bonn: Adolph Marcus, 1879). 9 Ibid., xx–xxiii. 10 Amb., De Virginibus 3.7.33. 11 Kyle Harper, From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 226, views the Life as “highly conscious of its status as an antiromance,” which counterposes Nonnus and the redoubtable Pelagia, in the symmetrical fashion of Greco-Roman novels, often seen as a Christianized rendition of Xenophon’s Ephesiaca. Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints, 5, speaks of a “hagiographical romance,” with partly real and partly imaginary elements of the saint’s life. 12 Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints, 150–54, discovers the starting point of the whole series of legends in Chrysostom and Ambrose. 13 Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints, 153–54, argues that the “cross-dressed” saints’ narratives are all “replicas” of the legend of Pelagia, and that the cult originated from

294  Mariana Bodnaruk the “legendary ferment.” He states that historical tradition about local saints disappears as the legend develops, and that the legendary narratives “shed all contact with history.” They are popular or folkloric elaborations of the stories that may have had historical roots. The correspondence of commemoration days for Pelagia and two other saints of the same name along with geographical considerations preclude the veracity of the story, as Delehaye emphasizes that certain saints share the time of worship with those on whom they may have been modeled. 14 Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints, 5. 15 Marie Delcourt, Hermaphrodite: Myths and Rites of the Bisexual Figure in Classical Antiquity (London: Studio Books, 1961), 84–102. 16 Ibid., 85. 17 Marie Delcourt, “Le complexe de Diane dans l’hagiographie chrétienne,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 153 (1958): 1–33. 18 Delcourt, Hermaphrodite, 100. 19 Ibid. 20 Stephen J. Davis, “Crossed Texts, Crossed Sex: Intertextuality and Gender in Early Christian Legends of Holy Women Disguised as Men,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 10, no. 1 (2002): 7. 21 John Anson, “The Female Transvestite in Early Monasticism: The Origins and Development of a Motif,” Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 5 (1974): 5. 22 Ibid., 5. 23 Laila Abdalla, “Theology and Culture: Masculinizing the Woman,” in Varieties of Devotion in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Susan C. Karant-Nunn (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 17–37. See also Susanna Elm, Virgins of God: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994). 24 Benedicta Ward, Harlots of the Desert: A Study of Repentance in Early Monastic Sources (Oxford: Mowbray, 1987). 25 Ibid., 63. 26 Evelyne Patlagean, “L’histoire de la femme déguisée en moine et l’évolution de la sainteté feminine à Byzance,” Studi Medievali 3, no. 17 (1976): 597–623. 27 Ibid., 622–23. 28 Davis, “Crossed Texts, Crossed Sex,” 9. 29 John Moschos, The Spiritual Meadow, trans. John Wortley (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1992), 46–47 and 139, respectively; Patlagean, “L’histoire de la femme déguisée,” 605. 30 Patlagean, “L’histoire de la femme déguisée,” 605. 31 Vern L. Bullough, “Transvestites in the Middle Ages,” American Journal of Sociology 79, no. 6 (1974): 1383; reprinted in Vern L. Bullough and Bonnie Bullough, Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 50. 32 Abdalla, “Theology and Culture,” 21. 33 Valerie Hotchkiss, Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe (New York: Garland, 1996), 32. 34 Ibid., 33. 35 Ibid., 40 and 41. 36 Elizabeth A. Castelli, “ ‘I Will Make Mary Male’: Pieties of the Body and Gender Transformation of Christian Women in Late Antiquity,” in Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, eds. Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub (London: Routledge, 1991), 29–49. 37 Ibid., 44. 38 Ibid., 47. 39 Davis, “Crossed Texts, Crossed Sex,” 7–8, 14–36. 40 Ibid., 36.

Historicizing Trans Saints  295 41 Stavroula Constantinou, Female Corporeal Performances: Reading the Body in Byzantine Passions and Lives of Holy Women (Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 2005); Stavroula Constantinou, “Holy Actors and Actresses: Fools and Cross-Dressers as the Protagonists of Saints’ Lives,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, ed. Stephanos Efthymiadis, Vol. 2 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2014), 343–62. 42 Patricia Cox-Miller, “Is There a Harlot in This Text? Hagiography and the Grotesque,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33, no. 3 (2003): 424. 43 Abdalla, “Theology and Culture,” 36. 44 Crystal L. Lubinsky, Removing Masculine Layers to Reveal a Holy Womanhood: The Female Transvestite Monks of Late Antique Eastern Christianity (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 216. 45 Ibid., 221. 46 Roland Betancourt, Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020), 226 n5. On the shortcomings of Betancourt’s liberal reading, see Mariana Bodnaruk, “Intersecting Inequalities: The Representation of Religious, Gender, and Sexual Identities in the Life of Pelagia,” Review of Ecumenical Studies 13, no. 3 (2021): 419–36. 47 Betancourt, Byzantine Intersectionality, 104. 48 Kristi Upson-Saia, “Review of Removing Masculine Layers to Reveal a Holy Womanhood: The Female Transvestite Monks of Late Antique Eastern Christianity by Crystal Lynn Lubinsky,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 23, no. 4 (2015): 631–32. 49 Lubinsky, Removing Masculine Layers, 12. 50 Ibid., 221. 51 Benedicta Ward, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection (Oxford: Mowbray, 1984), Sarah 4 and 9. 52 Abdalla, “Theology and Culture,” 17. 53 Ibid., 21. 54 Patlagean, “L’histoire de la femme déguisée,” 597–623. 55 Abdalla, “Theology and Culture,” 21–22. 56 Albeit a hermit, Pelagia has an active role and function as a contributor to the spiritual welfare of society: she is “very well known in the area and held in high honor” (§44), she engages in discourses with her visitors (§46), and she performs miracles (§47). See Peter Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” The Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971): 80–101. 57 Abdalla, “Theology and Culture,” 22. 58 Ibid., 18. 59 Ibid., 22. 60 Lubinsky, Removing Masculine Layers, 216. 61 Abdalla, “Theology and Culture,” 18. 62 Ibid., 28. 63 Lubinsky, Removing Masculine Layers, 18. 64 Another example of ascetic meretrices is Mary, the niece of Abraham. Ward, Harlots of the Desert, 58, holds that these stories were deliberately employed to balance the accounts of lives of the “good women” within monasticism. Compare Moschos, The Spiritual Meadow, 22–23 on the conversion and life of the Cilician Mary the harlot placed by monks in the women’s monastery after her repentance. 65 Anson, “The Female Transvestite,” 30. 66 Joyce Salisbury, Church Fathers and Independent Virgins (London: Verso, 1991), 110. 67 Lynda L. Coon, Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 80. 68 Abdalla, “Theology and Culture,” 28. 69 Ibid. 70 Abdalla, “Theology and Culture,” all quotes at 30.

296  Mariana Bodnaruk 71 Karl Vogt, “ ‘The Woman Monk’: A Theme in Byzantine Hagiography,” in Greece and Gender: Papers from the Norwegian Institute at Athens, 2, eds. Brit Berggreen and Nanno Marinatos (Bergen: Norwegian Institute at Athens, 1995), 145. 72 Abdalla, “Theology and Culture,” 30. 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid., 31. 75 Harper, From Shame to Sin, 228. 76 Abdalla, “Theology and Culture,” 31. 77 Georges Sidéris, “Le sexe des anges: la byzantinologie et les questions de genre,” in Byzance en Europe, ed. Marie-France Auzépy (Saint-Denis: Presses universitaires de Vincennes, 2003), 217–33. See also Constantinou, Female Corporeal Performances. 78 Nathalie Delierneux, “Virilité physique et sainteté féminine dans l’hagiographie orientale du IVe au VIIe siècle,” Byzantion: Revue Internationale des Études Byzantines 67 (1997): 179–243. 79 Abdalla, “Theology and Culture,” all quotes at 37. 80 Ibid., 37. 81 Sidéris, “Le sexe des anges,” 217–233. 82 Robert Mills, “Can the Virgin Martyr Speak?” in Medieval Virginities, eds. Anke Bernau, Ruth Evans, and Sarah Salih (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 187–213. 83 Ward, Harlots of the Desert, 84. 84 Ibid., 80. 85 Mills, “Can the Virgin Martyr Speak?” 188. 86 Ibid., 194. 87 Davis, “Crossed Texts, Crossed Sex,” both quotes at 36. 88 Kristi Upson-Saia, “Gender and Narrative Performance in Early Christian CrossDressing Saints’ Lives,” Studia Patristica 45 (2010): 43. 89 Ibid., 43. 90 Ibid., points out that whereas early Christian leaders, like Jerome, were willing to attribute spiritual “virility” to ascetic women, they often counseled ascetic women not to represent such “manliness” by dressing as men. 91 Nivedita Majumdar, “Silencing the Subaltern: Resistance and Gender in Postcolonial Theory,” Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy 1, no. 1 (2017). 92 While the Synod of Gangra (340) anathematized ascetic women donning men’s attire, the imperial legislation (390) (Codex Theodosianus 16.2.27) prohibited cross-dressed Christians from participating in the mass: Theodosiani libri XVI cum constitutionibus Sirmondianis et leges novellae ad Theodosianum pertinentes, eds. Theodor Mommsen and Paul Meyer, Vol. 1.2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1905), 843–44. 93 Brock and Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, 52. 94 Chiara O. Tommasi, “Cross-Dressing as Discourse and Symbol in Late Antique Religion and Literature,” in Transantiquity: Cross-Dressing and Transgender Dynamics in the Ancient World, eds. Domitilla Campanile, Filippo Carlà-Uhink, and Margherita Facella (London: Routledge, 2016), 127. 95 Ward, Harlots of the Desert, 59. An actress in Antioch, Pelagia belonged, in the eyes of the Church, to a class of immoral persons, which included jesters, mimics, jongleurs, clowns, as well as prostitutes. 96 Coon, Sacred Fictions, all quotes at 82. 97 Elena Gianarelli, “Body, Clothing, and Female Identity,” Studia Patristica 44 (2010): 468. 98 Mills, “Can the Virgin Martyr Speak?” all quotes at 201. 99 Ibid., 201. 100 Coon, Sacred Fictions, 84. 101 Brock and Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, 42.

Historicizing Trans Saints  297 102 Ward, Harlots of the Desert, 61. 103 Leah Di Segni, “Monk and Society: The Case of Palestine,” in The Sabaite Heritage in the Orthodox Church from the Fifth Century to the Present, ed. Joseph Patrich (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters en Departement Oosterse Studies, 2001), 31. 104 On recovery of trans histories and gender pluralities, see Jules Gill-Peterson, Histories of the Transgender Child (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2018); Greta LaFleur, Masha Raskolnikov, and Anna Kłosowska, eds., Trans Historical: Gender Plurality Before the Modern (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021), 1–19. 105 For an intersectional-materialist transfeminist approach, see Mariana Bodnaruk, “Transgender Materialism: Gender, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in the Passion and Life of Susanna,” (forthcoming). 106 Hotchkiss, Clothes Make the Man, 13; Tommasi, “Cross-Dressing as Discourse,” 129. 107 Mills, “Can the Virgin Martyr Speak?” 204.

Bibliography Abdalla, Laila. “Theology and Culture: Masculinizing the Woman.” In Varieties of Devotion in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, edited by Susan C. Karant-Nunn, 17–37. Turnhout: Brepols, 2003. Ambrosius. “De Virginibus Ad Marcellinam Sororem Sua Libri Tres. PL 16. Cols. 187–232.” In Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina, edited by Jacques Paul Migne. Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1845. Anson, John. “The Female Transvestite in Early Monasticism: The Origins and Development of a Motif.” Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 5 (1974): 1–32. Betancourt, Roland. Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020. Bodnaruk, Mariana. “Intersecting Inequalities: The Representation of Religious, Gender, and Sexual Identities in the Life of Pelagia.” Review of Ecumenical Studies 13, no. 3 (2021): 419–36. ———. “Transgender Materialism: Gender, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in the Passion and Life of Susanna” (forthcoming). Brock, Sebastian O., and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, trans. Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, 41–62. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987. Brown, Peter. “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity.” The Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971): 80–101. Bullough, Vern L. “Transvestites in the Middle Ages.” American Journal of Sociology 79 (1974): 1381–94. Bullough, Vern L., and Bonnie Bullough. Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. Cameron, Alan. “The Poet, the Bishop, and the Harlot.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 41 (2000): 175–88. Castelli, Elizabeth A. “ ‘I Will Make Mary Male’: Pieties of the Body and Gender Transformation of Christian Women in Late Antiquity.” In Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, edited by Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub, 29–49. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. Constantinou, Stavroula. Female Corporeal Performances: Reading the Body in Byzantine Passions and Lives of Holy Women. Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 2005. ———. “Holy Actors and Actresses: Fools and Cross-Dressers as the Protagonists of Saints’ Lives.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, edited by Stephanos Efthymiadis, Vol. 2, 343–62. Burlington: Ashgate, 2014.

298  Mariana Bodnaruk Coon, Lynda L. Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. Cox-Miller, Patricia. “Is There a Harlot in This Text? Hagiography and the Grotesque.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33, no. 3 (2003): 419–35. Davis, Stephen J. “Crossed Texts, Crossed Sex: Intertextuality and Gender in Early Christian Legends of Holy Women Disguised as Men.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 10, no. 1 (2002): 1–36. Delcourt, Marie. Hermaphrodite: Myths and Rites of the Bisexual Figure in Classical Antiquity. London: Studio Books, 1961. ———. “Le complexe de Diane dans l’hagiographie chrétienne.” Revue de l’histoire des religions 153 (1958): 1–33. Delehaye, Hippolyte. The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction to Hagiography, translated by Donald Attwater. New York: Fordham University Press, 1962. Delierneux, Nathalie. “Virilité physique et sainteté féminine dans l’hagiographie orientale du IVe au VIIe siècle.” Byzantion: Revue Internationale des Études Byzantines 67 (1997): 179–243. Di Segni, Leah. “Monk and Society: The Case of Palestine.” In The Sabaite Heritage in the Orthodox Church from the Fifth Century to the Present, edited by Joseph Patrich, 31–36. Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters en Departement Oosterse Studies, 2001. Elm, Susanna. Virgins of God: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994. Gianarelli, Elena. “Body, Clothing, and Female Identity.” Studia Patristica 44 (2010): 461–69. Gill-Peterson, Jules. Histories of the Transgender Child. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2018. Harper, Kyle. From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. Hotchkiss, Valerie. Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe. New York: Garland, 1996. John Chrysostom. “In Matthaeum homiliae, 67. PG 58. Cols. 631–36.” In Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca, edited by Jacques Paul Migne. Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1862. LaFleur, Greta, Masha Raskolnikov, and Anna Kłosowska, eds. Trans Historical: Gender Plurality Before the Modern. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021. Libby, C. “The Historian and the Sexologist: Revisiting the ‘Transvestite Saint.’ ” Transgender Studies Quarterly 8, no. 2 (2021): 172–87. Lubinsky, Crystal Lynn. Removing Masculine Layers to Reveal a Holy Womanhood: The Female Transvestite Monks of Late Antique Eastern Christianity. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. Majumdar, Nivedita. “Silencing the Subaltern: Resistance and Gender in Postcolonial Theory.” Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy 1, no. 1 (2017). https://catalyst-journal. com/2017/11/silencing-the-subaltern. Mills, Robert. “Can the Virgin Martyr Speak?” In Medieval Virginities, edited by Anke Bernau, Ruth Evans, and Sarah Salih, 187–213. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. Moschos, John. The Spiritual Meadow. Translated by John Wortley. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1992. Patlagean, Evelyne. “L’histoire de la femme déguisée en moine et l’évolution de la sainteté feminine à Byzance.” Studi Medievali 3, no. 17 (1976): 597–623. Salisbury, Joyce E. Church Fathers and Independent Virgins. London: Verso, 1991.

Historicizing Trans Saints  299 Sidéris, Georges. “Le sexe des anges: la byzantinologie et les questions de genre.” In Byzance en Europe, edited by Marie-France Auzépy, 217–33. Saint-Denis: Presses universitaires de Vincennes, 2003. Spencer-Hall, Alicia, and Blake Gutt, eds. Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021. Theodosiani libri XVI cum constitutionibus Sirmondianis et leges novellae ad Theodosianum pertinentes, edited by Theodor Mommsen and Paul Meyer, Vol. 1.2. Berlin: Weidmann, 1905. Tommasi, Chiara O. “Cross-Dressing as Discourse and Symbol in Late Antique Religion and Literature.” In Transantiquity: Cross-Dressing and Transgender Dynamics in the Ancient World, edited by Domitilla Campanile, Filippo Carlà-Uhink, and Margherita Facella, 121–33. London: Routledge, 2016. Upson-Saia, Kristi. “Gender and Narrative Performance in Early Christian Cross-Dressing Saints’ Lives.” Studia Patristica 45 (2010): 43–48. ———. “Review of Removing Masculine Layers to Reveal a Holy Womanhood: The Female Transvestite Monks of Late Antique Eastern Christianity by Crystal Lynn Lubinsky.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 23, no. 4 (2015): 631–32. Usener, Hermann. Legenden der heiligen Pelagia. Bonn: Adolph Marcus, 1879. Vogt, Karl. “ ‘The Woman Monk’: A Theme in Byzantine Hagiography.” In Greece and Gender: Papers from the Norwegian Institute at Athens, edited by Brit Berggreen and Nanno Marinatos, Vol. 2, 141–48. Bergen: Norwegian Institute at Athens, 1995. Ward, Benedicta. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Oxford: Mowbray, 1984. ———. Harlots of the Desert: A Study of Repentance in Early Monastic Sources. Oxford: Mowbray, 1987. Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn. “The Virgin’s Tale.” In Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature: The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect, edited by Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson, 165–94. London: Routledge, 1994.

15 The Im/materiality of the Will? The Life of Dositheus and Delicia Children in Late Antiquity Jonathan Cahana-Blum

10. . . Again, after a few days, Dositheus sent for the old man, saying “Master, I cannot suffer any more.” And then the Old Man sent for him, saying “Go in peace, stand by the Holy Trinity, and intercede for us.” 11. But when the brethren heard the answer of the Old Man, they started murmuring and said “what did he actually do or what did he accomplish that he received such a message?” And indeed, they have never seen him fasting every other day, like some of them did, or waking up for an early vigil. Actually, he didn’t even wake up for the (regular) vigil, at least not before the second service has already ended. They have also never seen him accomplish even one ascetic deed. On the contrary, they have seen him slurping a bit of the patients’ soup, if he had the chance, or a head of fish or some other leftovers.1

The brethren’s murmur is certainly understandable. Saints are rarely known to sleep in or devour remains of other people’s meal when they get the chance. Yet, our hagiographer insists that their hero, Dositheus, after being relieved from his life by the Holy Great Abba, Barsanuphius, became a saint, and was even seen in the vision by another great man who visited the monastery shortly after Dositheus died.2 Apparently, the writer of this sixth-century Vita, someone of the circle of Abba Dorotheus of Gaza, is quite at ease with the idea that sainthood does not necessarily require overcoming the feminine body and becoming a pure masculine spirit, or what Daniel Boyarin aptly termed “the metaphysics of substance” that results in a “masculinist inscription of the abstract (spirit) over the concrete (body).”3 The Obedient Dositheus And indeed, the text feminizes Dositheus from its very beginning. This adolescent boy’s exact slave status—ignored by almost all modern commentators but thoroughly acknowledged by the hagiographer—is a crucial part of his feminization and will be discussed in the second part of this chapter. At this stage, however, we should note that Dositheus is said to have heard about the beauty of Jerusalem, and his owner, a well-to-do general in the Byzantine army, has asked a personal favor from a friend to carry him along to do some sightseeing in the holy city. Having DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-22

The Im/materiality of the Will? 301 seen the horrors of hell depicted in a wall painting in a church on the Mount of Olives, he asks a majestic lady who appeared out of nowhere how to evade them. She tells him to “fast, do not eat meat, and pray unceasingly.”4 However, when he finally enters a monastery, he seems to excel in neither, as we have just seen. Moreover, when he just arrives at the monastery near Gaza, the abbot Seridus is unsure whether to accept him. He is worried that he may “belong” to someone important, and he might have run away or stolen something and tries to use the monastery as a safe haven. Even when the abbot Seridus is convinced of Dositheus’ sincere intentions, he is still worried that a person with a look as his, “which does not fit a person who wishes to become a monk,” will stay among the brethren, and thus entrusts him to the personal care of Abba Dorotheus, who ran the monastery’s infirmary.5 Once in the monastery and under the supervision of Dorotheus, Dositheus admittedly gradually gets used to eating less, although, as we have just seen, he finds his ways to compensate for that. In no way does he overcome his body or become masculinized.6 He thoroughly remains entrenched in feminine-encoded materiality, and even his modest attempts in spiritual matters end with him returned to his proper stature in a most bodily way—probably well known to him from his days as a slave: At another time, he came and asked (Dorotheus) about a certain issue in the Holy Scriptures. For, due to his purity, he started to understand some of them. But Dorotheus did not want him to busy himself with such matters, but preferred that he would keep his humility. So when he asked him, (Dorotheus) said to him “I do not know.” (Dositheus) however, did not get his point, and came again, asking about another chapter. Then (Dorotheus) said “I do not know, but go and ask the abbot.” And he went to him without suspecting anything. Now (Dorotheus), without (Dositheus’s) knowledge, spoke with the abbot in advance and said to him: “If Dositheus comes to you and asks about scripture, be a little harsh on him.” So, when he went, (the abbot) was harsh on him and said: “You are not keeping quiet, even though you know nothing? You dare to ask such things, and are not worried about your impurity?” and said other such things, and sent him away after slapping him on his face twice. And (Dositheus) went to Abba Dorotheus, showing him his cheeks which were fiery red from the slaps, and said “I got them, and I got them hard.”7 This being so, one indeed ponders how did he become a saint? His hagiographer is well-aware of the problematics but tries to turn it to their favor by emboldening their own axe to grind. Gazan monasticism has underlined the ideal of obedience and the negation of one’s own personal will.8 According to the hagiographer, this is where Dositheus excelled, and through this and this alone he won his sainthood, even without any ascetic feats. For, informs us the hagiographer, his glory was won by his obedience in everything and in the way he never followed his own will. Yet, while the Vita heaps one example after another of Dositheus’ charming and childlike obedience in his service at the infirmary, a critical reader would still

302  Jonathan Cahana-Blum remain puzzled. First, it is quite surprising that a former slave would need to learn obedience and that this would be a crowning achievement for him. Second, the most crowning example of Dositheus’ apparent “obedience” on his very deathbed seems to turn everything on its head, and what is more, to do this in ways that are unrecognized by the hagiographer and undermine their intention. Dositheus’ Will Picture the following scene: Dositheus is dying, probably from tuberculosis he contracted from one of the patients. He starts spitting blood and hears from someone that soft-boiled eggs could be helpful to him. Then, the following exchange occurs: And (Dositheus) said to (Dorotheus), “Master, I want to tell you that I heard that something can help me. But I do not want you to give it to me, since my thought is bothering me.” And (Dorotheus) said to him: “Tell me what is it, Dositheus, tell me what is this thing.” And (Dositheus) said “Give me your word that you would not provide me with it.”. . . And (Dorotheus) said “Very well, I will do as you wish” [Καλῶς, ὡς θέλεις ποιῶ]. And then (Dositheus) said: “I have heard from some people that soft-boiled eggs help those who spit blood, but, by the Lord, if you please, since you did not think to give it to me of yourself, do not provide me with it because of my thought.” And (Dorotheus) said: “Very well, if you do not want it, I will not give it to you. Do not worry.” [Καλῶς, ἀφοῦ οὐ θέλεις, οὐ παρέχω σοι, μὴ θλίβῃς]9 Now, whose will is actually being undermined here? Note that Dositheus cleverly reverses the power structure. He insists on telling Dorotheus of the cure, but insists on doing this only on his own terms. Only after Dorotheus agrees to his terms and explicitly promises to follow Dositheus’ wishes, does the latter agree to reveal the possible remedy, as if to further taunt his master. Thus, Dositheus actually forces his former teacher and master to be subdued to him, and by doing so gets to decide his own fate. Dorotheus, as well as the hagiographer, seems to miss the irony that a text that meant to crown the obedience of Dositheus culminates in Dorotheus telling this allegedly obedient monk that he will do as the latter wills, or, to quote that remarkable phrase again, “Very well, I will do as you wish” (“Καλῶς, ὡς θέλεις ποιῶ”). And this indeed calls for an explanation. How come that a text that freely admits the bodily inclined nature of its would-be saint, and argues that this is a side issue for the real achievement, obedience, and negating one’s own will, ends up with a saint who apparently does neither? To answer such a vexing question, we must perform a postcolonial reading strategy in which the text would be read against the intentions of its author. Many years ago, and in quite a different context, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak asked “Can the Subaltern Speak?”10 I would suggest that, at least as this text is concerned, he can, as long as we are ready to listen to him. Quasi-historical Dositheus can be given voice if we are to overcome our own heteronormative neoliberal reading, which assumes—contrary

The Im/materiality of the Will? 303 to the ancient text’s own attestation—that Dositheus was really a liberal subject free to mold his own future and make his own decisions. In other words, when modern translators and commentators speak of Dositheus as someone who “had worked as a page for the provincial military commander and led a life of relative privilege,”11 it continues and even perfects the colonizing patriarchal viewpoint of the hagiographer—who, for what it is worth, at least gave some attention to Dositheus’ slave status. It completely erases his voice from history and amplifies his hagiographer in a way the latter probably did not even imagine possible. On the contrary, to properly reach out to Dositheus’ story, we must acknowledge that, as a slave, he was a colonized subject, and his tactics of opposition where always embedded in the colonized world he inhabited. It thus may almost seem that Homi Bhabha was describing Dositheus’ deathbed scene, when he remarked, again in a very different context, that [t]he progressive reading is crucially determined by the adversarial or agonistic situation itself; it is effective because it uses the subversive, messy mask of camouflage and does not come like a pure avenging angel speaking the truth of a radical historicity and pure oppositionality. . . in the very practice of domination the language of the master becomes hybrid—neither the one thing nor the other. The incalculable colonized subject—half acquiescent, half oppositional, always untrustworthy—produces an unresolvable problem of cultural difference for the very address of colonial cultural authority.12 Applying Bhaba’s analysis to the ancient world, Daniel Boyarin succinctly noted that, in such cases, “the instability of colonial discourse makes possible the subaltern’s voice, which colonizes, in turn, the discourse of the colonizer.”13 In this instance, the colonized former slave has been treated like a spoiled and braggart child by the monastic establishment (embodied by Dorotheus) that colonizes the discourse of the colonizer as a means of resistance. Perhaps for this first time in his life, Dositheus articulates his own will and takes full control of his own fate and uses the same ideal of “obedience” to turn the tables upon his master in particular, but also the whole cultural apparatus that denied him subjectivity from the start. Yet to fully appreciate this delicate interchange, we need to have a thorough look into Dositheus’ slave status as a delikion. Delicia Children in Antiquity We already heard that the abbot Seridus was hesitant to accept Dositheus to the monastery since he worried that he may be a runaway slave belonging to someone important. Once he decided to accept him, he is also worried lest he stay among the brethren due to his looks.14 The hagiographer, for his part, does not mince words and reveals Dositheus’ proper status: And indeed he was a delikion of a certain general, and spent his life in great luxury. For delikia of such persons are always extremely spoiled. [Ἦν δὲ

304  Jonathan Cahana-Blum οὗτος δηλίκιόν τινος στρατηλάτου, διάγων ἐν πολλῇ τρυφῇ· ἀεὶ γὰρ ἐν πολλῇ βλακείᾳ εἰσὶ τὰ δηλίκια τῶν τοιούτων·]15 While it is certainly possible that Dositheus was spoiled with food and other comforts, it is important to note what he certainly did not have: what we may call subjectivity, or what the ancient author would call “his own will.” Delikion in Greek or Delicium in Latin are technical terms for a slave boy kept by wealthy and well-to-do “gentlemen,” for aesthetic and sexual purposes. Many of them have been sold on the market for this very purpose, after being exposed, sold by their poor parents, or kidnapped.16 They were considered precious playthings by their masters, and the third-century historian Herodian of Antioch gives us a rather vivid example of such a slave boy who was the emperor Commodus’ favorite. Naturally, the latter named him “Philocommodus”: But there was in the palace a very young little boy, one of those who went about bare of clothes but adorned with gold and costly gems. The Roman voluptuaries always took delight in these lads. Commodus was very fond of this child and often slept with him; his name, Philocommodus, clearly indicates the emperor’s affection for him.17 No less graphic is the engraving on the famous Julio-Claudian Warren cup, which, according to some art historians, depicts the common use of such children slaves, who were thoroughly at the mercy of their masters.18 Dositheus as a delikion With that knowledge—ubiquitous among scholars of ancient sexuality yet all but absent among many scholars of monasticism—we are now to return to Life of Dositheus. Importantly, the Vita does not stand on its own when it comes to the historicity of this delikion child. Letters written by or for him while on his deathbed have been preserved independently in the correspondence of the monastery spiritual leaders—Barsanuphius and John.19 Moreover, Dorotheus himself—who was most probably not the author of the Vita—mentions Dositheus in his discourse, saying: [w]hat kind of person was that blessed Dositheus, from what kind of life (he came), how spoiled, what luxury! He never heard a word of God, and yet you have heard to what did his obedience and negation of his own will brought him in such a short time!20 Ironically, we are to heed Dorotheus’ suggestions and consider what life Dositheus actually led before arriving at the monastery, but not through the colonizing masculine patriarchal viewpoint in which it was said. Whether Dositheus enjoyed ample food and luxurious lifestyle is beside the point, and even more so since, even according to his very hagiographer, he never excelled in asceticism, to say

The Im/materiality of the Will? 305 the least.21 As for his age, delicia children were considered “past-due” once they started growing pubic and facial hair, and thus we are safe to assume that Dositheus was no older than (and perhaps younger than) 12 years old when he came to the monastery.22 Whatever his heartbreaking story was, neither after nor before he was sold and became the precious property of that nameless general, who the hagiographer cares to tell us, considered him as an expensive “thing” (“εἶχεν αὐτὸν ὡς μέγα τίποτε”), he surely never had his own will to begin with.23 Almost by definition, property, even expensive property of which one must take good care in handling, lest it loses its “value,” lacks any “will.” This “property’s” decision to enter a monastery and apparently obey everything Dorotheus commanded him was his courageous attempt to form his subjectivity and get control over his own life and destiny. By entering the monastery, he ceased being a sexual pet slave and formed his own person. On his deathbed, as we have seen, Dositheus even made his apparent master subdued to his own will, and decided the terms of his death. Here one cannot but be reminded of Judith Butler’s understanding of the subject who is being queered into public discourse and ends up citing their own subjugating devices as means for opposition.24 This, in turn, can be considered as a rather lurid example of what Kate Bornstein would call camp, which is made in order to “point the silliness, exaggerate the roles, shine big spotlights on the gender dynamic.” As if speaking to our context, Bornstein underlines that “[c]amp is only possible when there is no fear of humiliation and at that point, social control becomes very difficult.”25 Thus, for Dositheus, at the very least, this new Christian ideological prospect that did not always unreservedly criticize materiality, given that other important qualities are met, combined with the socio-historical development of monastic communities, and perhaps also the favor libertatis of Justinian’s reign, proved liberatory.26 As such, these combined phenomena could be seen as widening the conceivable opportunities not only for women, but for other subjugated and femininely encoded classes in Late Antiquity as well, whom society never viewed as thoroughly formed subjects.27 As far as we, or at least those of us who would like to think of themselves as standing outside the heteronormative neoliberal masculine “neutral,” are concerned, Judith Halberstam’s call to “embrace these awkward, undignified and graceless childhoods and. . . make them part of our political future” may be important to heed when listening to Dositheus’ all-but-silenced voice who still tries to make himself heard, almost 1,500 years after dying in a Gazan monastery in his late teens.28 Conclusion The hagiographer, of course, is completely oblivious to such considerations. For them, Dositheus was a spoiled kid who learned obedience and was sanctified for that achievement. That the Vita takes such a viewpoint is pitiable but understandable. That modern scholarship accentuates such a viewpoint, piety-washes the text, and completely erases Dositheus’ subjectivity by making him a heteronormative neoliberal subject who “worked as a page for a general” and used to live a life of “privilege,” is inexcusable. Finally, that this leads to a situation in which researchers

306  Jonathan Cahana-Blum of ancient sexuality bemoan the paucity of late attestations about delicia children, and try to second-guess their gradual disappearance without reference to this text, dwarves the irony of a text in which a slave becomes a saint by learning obedience and negating his own will. Notes 1 Life of Dositheus 11–12. For the Greek text and French translation, see Dorothée de Gaza, Œuvres spirituelles, eds. and trans. Lucien Regnault and Jacques de Préville (Sources chrétiennes 92; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1963), 122–45. The English translation is mine. 2 Life of Dositheus 13. 3 Daniel Boyarin, “Gender,” in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. Mark C. Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 126. The Life of Dositheus is anonymous, but very likely stems from a disciple of Dorotheus of Gaza. For discussion, see Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Aryeh Kofsky, The Monastic School of Gaza (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 42–46. 4 Life of Dositheus 3. 5 Life of Dositheus 4. 6 The monastic ideal of asceticism is largely built upon the classical Greco-Roman association of masculinity with self-control of the passions, and of femininity with daintiness and excess, thus the related concept of the “feminine disease” that could soften and eventually destroy men. For discussion, see Caroline T. Schroeder, “Queer Eye for the Ascetic Guy? Homoeroticism, Children, and the Making of Monks in Late Antique Egypt,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 77 (2009): 333–47; Diana M. Swancutt, “ ‘The Disease of Effemination’: The Charge of Effeminacy and the Verdict of God (Romans 1:18–2:16),” in New Testament Masculinities, eds. Stephen D. Moore and Janice Capel Anderson (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 193–233. Dositheus, with his lack of any real asceticism or self-control regarding sleep or food, remains safely in the “feminine” sphere. 7 Life of Dositheus 12. As will be demonstrated throughout this chapter, modern scholarship tends to “piety-wash” this text to make him fit a preconceived agenda regarding what monasticism was or was supposed to be. The crux is willfully ignoring Dositheus’ slave status as a delikion, which will be discussed in detail later, but this tendency can be demonstrated throughout the text, this incident included. Thus, here is how this incident is “paraphrased” in a recent article: “ ‘Dositheos,’ it says, ‘came to ask Dorotheos about a word from the Holy Scriptures. He had begun to understand, on account of his purity, certain passages of Scripture. But [Dorotheos] did not want him to concern himself with that, but rather that he guard himself through humility. Therefore when he asked him, Dorotheos said, “I do not know.” ’ Dositheos, the disciple, immediately accepted Dorotheos’ answer and stopped pursuing the matter.’ ” Alexis Torrance, “Barsanuphius, John, and Dorotheos on Scripture: Voices from the Desert in Sixth-Century Gaza,” in What Is the Bible? The Patristic Doctrine of Scripture, eds. Seraphim Danckaert, Matthew Baker, and Mark Mourachian (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016), 73–74. 8 For discussion, see Ashkelony and Kofsky, The Monastic School, 44–45, 152–53 and passim. 9 Life of Dositheus 9. 10 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (London: Macmillan Education, 1988), 271–313. 11 Jennifer L. Hevelone-Harper, Disciple of the Desert: Monks, Laity, and Spiritual Authority in Sixth-Century Gaza (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press,

The Im/materiality of the Will?  307 2005), 69. Unfortunately, such “identification” is ubiquitous in scholarship on this text. See also, for instance, Tamás Dudás, “Vita Dosithei: A Way to the Sanctity,” in Aparxai: Lectures Held at the Sixth Conference of Collegium Hungaricum Societatis Europaeae Studiosorum Philologiae Classicae (28–29 May 2011), ed. Péter Jutai (Budapest: Collegium Hungaricum, 2011), 69–70: “Dositheus was a military leader’s page who lived in great luxury.” And: Jonathan L. Zecher, “The Meaning of κλύστας and the Value of a μαχαίριον: Vita Dosithei (BHG 2117) and Health Care in Gazan Monasteries,” Analecta Bollandiana 136 (2018), 43: “a young man of delicate constitution who, inspired by vivid artistic depiction of Hell, fled a life of luxury to become a monk.” 12 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 38, 49. 13 Danuel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judeo-Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 15. 14 As Caroline T. Schroeder has shown, the presence of children in monastic communities was problematized as a source of temptation for older monks, as the erotic ideal in many of the texts stemming from late antique Egypt remains “the adolescent or pre-adolescent male” (Schroeder, “Queer Eye for the Ascetic Guy?” 337, 334). On the profound influence of Egyptian monasticism on Gazan monasticism, see Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky, The Monastic School, passim. That delicia children were an extreme case of femininely encoded males can also be adduced from their representation in art, in which they “were mistakenly thought to be girls because of their feminized hairstyle.” John Pollini, “The Warren Cup: Homoerotic Love and Symposial Rhetoric in Silver,” Art Bulletin 81 (1999): 34. 15 Life of Dositheus 3. 16 The literature on delicia children, while not vast, is steadily growing. See, for instance, Hanne S. Nielsen, “Delicia in Roman Literature and in the Urban Inscriptions,” Analecta Romana Instituti Danici 19 (1990): 79–88; Christian Laes, “Desperately Different? Delicia Children in the Roman Household,” in Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, eds. David L. Balch and Carolyn Osiek (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 2003), 298–324; John Pollini, “Slave-Boys for Sexual and Religious Service: Images of Pleasure and Devotion,” in Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text, eds. Anthony J. Boyle and William J. Dominik (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 149–66; and Christian Laes, “Delicia-Children Revisited: The Evidence of Statius’ Silvae,” in Children, Memory, and Family Identity in Roman Culture, eds. Véronique Dasen and Thomas Späth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 245–72. Unfortunately, none of these studies mentions the evidence of the Life of Dositheus, and some of them, while certainly not involved in “piety-wash,” tend to treat the primary sources from colonial neoliberal position. Thus, we find it argued that for delicia children “talkative and impudent behavior” was “part of the job” and that delicium is a “professional” term, although the author is well-aware that these persons were slaves, bought and sold, and not neoliberal subjects freely choosing their profession (Nielsen, “Delicia,” 80–81). As in the case of Dositheus, this colonial flippancy does not remain in the safe distance of Antiquity, but will inescapably be transferred to contemporary issues. Thus we find John Pollini arguing that “[s]uch a close relationship between handsome boys for sex and for religious ministry should not come as a surprise, in any case, judging from the number of recent lawsuits brought against priests and ministers who have had sexual relations with boys, some of whom had even served as ‘altar boys’—a testimony itself to the endurance of the ‘classical tradition’ ” (Pollini, “Slave-boys,” 159). To this, my only reply would be “I believe you misspelled ‘rape.’ ” 17 Herodian of Antioch, Roman History 1.17.3. Herodian of Antioch’s History of the Roman Empire, trans. Edward C. Echols (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1961), 40–41. Cf. the discussion of this text in Laes, “Desperately Different?” 301– 2. Despite Laes’ hesitancy, his later publication actually proves the lurid situation of the delicia, especially when they were owned and cherished as favorites by famous

308  Jonathan Cahana-Blum persons. In his analysis of poems by Publius Papinius Statius (first century CE) dedicated to such delicia children, we learn, on the one hand, that these ones were special, as they were not of the common stock bought in the Egyptian markets. They were taken and separated from their biological parents (slaves in the same household) immediately after birth, and to preserve their beauty, they were castrated when they started showing the first signs of puberty. But one should not worry, since “the god Asclepius himself was summoned from remote Pergamum to carry out the operation, a ‘gentle’ surgery which was carried out painlessly and without causing wounds,” which probably means “that the testicles were not cut off, but pressed fine” (Laes, “Delicia-Children Revisited,” 262). It may be that from the point of view of the slave, the common “vulgar” Egyptian stock considered themselves lucky in comparison. Although they certainly did not “obtain[ed] other positions within the household” when they grew up, as argued by Nielsen (“Delicia in Roman Literature,” 81, once again mixing a slave with a neoliberal free subject), their bodies had better chance of being left intact, and they could have some hope of being freed. 18 See Pollini, “The Warren Cup,” 34–36, who also provides a wealth of other examples for portrayal of delicia children in art. Regarding the authenticity of the artifact, see Dyfri Williams, “A Cantharus from Ancient Betar Near Jerusalem (the So-Called Warren Cup) and Roman Silver Plate,” BABESCH: Annual Papers on Mediterranean Archaeology 90 (2015): 155–98, who, however, disagrees with Pollini’s identification of the boys in question as delicia (166–67). 19 Barsanuphius and John, Questions and Answers, 220–23. For the Greek text and French translation, see Barsanuphe et Jean de Gaza, Correspondance, tome II, Lettres 72–223, eds. François Neyt and Paula de Angelis-Noah, trans. Lucien Reganult (Sources chrétiennes 427; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1998). Interestingly enough, in Letter 222, when the brothers entreat Barsanuphius to pray for Dositheus so that he will be cured, he answers that “it is enough for him that he was considered worthy and, freed from slavery, suddenly became rich” (“ἀρκεῖ αὐτῷ εἴ τι κατηξιώθη λαβεῖν, ὅτι ἄφνω πλούσιος ἐγένετο καὶ ἐκ δούλου ἐλεύθερος”). While one could not completely rule out that Barsanuphius used “slavery” here figuratively, from the use of the past tense and the hinting toward “real” richness, one may surmise that the Old Man was much more sensitive regarding Dositheus’ horrifying childhood than either the hagiographer or Dorotheus. 20 Dorotheus of Gaza, Instructions 1.21. For the Greek text and French translation, see Dorothée de Gaza, Œuvres spirituelles, 152–54. English translation is mine. 21 Even this undisputable fact has been “piety-washed” in modern scholarship much further than the hagiographer would have warranted. Hevelone-Harper, for instance, argues, without a shred of evidence in the Vita, that Dositheus “performed his acts of asceticism in private” (Hevelone-Harper, Disciples of the Desert, 71), while Irénée Hausherr refers to Dositheus’ clearly illegitimate nibbling of patients’ food as “the mitigations he enjoyed” (Irénée Hausherr, Spiritual Direction in Early Christian East [Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990], 77). 22 As we have seen, if the master decided to keep them as delicia for a longer time, he may have ordered a castration: see Laes, “Delicia-Children Revisited,” 262, and the discussion above. 23 If it were not so sad, Constantine Scouteris’ piety-washed translation of this phrase as “loved him a great deal” could have been comical. See Abba Dorotheos, Practical Teaching on the Christian Life, trans. Constantine Scouteris (Athens: University of Athens, Department of Theology, 2000), 56. 24 Judith Butler, “Critically Queer,” GLQ: Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1 (1993): 23. 25 Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 136. 26 It is, of course, an open question why Seridus, even though originally hesitant, decided to accept him to the monastery without fearing any reprimand from the general. A possible

The Im/materiality of the Will?  309 answer may lay in the judicial climate of the first half of the sixth century, the favor libertatis of Justinian reign, who “fought against the sale of [freeborn] children late into his reign” (Kyle Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275–425 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011], 415; cf. also 421). Assuming that Dositheus was freeborn and sold as a child (whether by his poor parents or after being exposed or kidnapped), the general may have thought it unwise to steer the waters in such a climate, and Seridus, for his part, felt more secure in accepting Dositheus into the monastery. 27 Interestingly, some studies noted the gradual disappearance of delicia children as Christianity in general and the monastic movement in particular took hold in the Roman empire, and tried to analyze how exactly these phenomena are correlated: see, for instance, Laes, “Desperately Different?” 323–24; Youval Rotman, “A  Will of Their Own? Children’s Agency and Child Labor in Byzantium,” Imago Temporis: Medium Aevum 11 (2017): 135–57 (the latter does not discuss delicia children specifically). None of these studies, unfortunately, refer to the Life of Dositheus, although it may provide an extremely rare concrete example of how such a process took place. 28 Judith Halberstam “Queer Studies Now,” in Quer durch die Geisteswissenschaften: Perspektiven der Queer Theory, eds. Elahe H. Yekani and Beatrice Michaelis (Berlin: Querverlag, 2005), 18.

Bibliography Primary Literature Abba Dorotheos. Practical Teaching on the Christian Life. Translated by Constantine Scouteris, Athens: University of Athens, Department of Theology, 2000. Barsanuphe et Jean de Gaza. Correspondance. Edited by François Neyt and Paula de Angelis-Noah, translated by Lucien Reganult. Sources chrétiennes 427, tome II, Lettres 72–223. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1998. Dorothée de Gaza. Œuvres spirituelles. Edited and translated by Lucien Regnault and Jacques de Préville. Sources chrétiennes 92. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1963. Herodian of Antioch. Herodian of Antioch’s History of the Roman Empire: From the Death of Marcus Aurelius to the Ascension of Gordian III. Translated by Edward C. Echols. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1961. Secondary Literature Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Bitton-Ashkelony, Brouria, and Aryeh Kofsky. The Monastic School of Gaza. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Bornstein, Kate. Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Boyarin, Daniel. “Gender.” In Critical Terms for Religious Studies, edited by Mark C. Taylor, 117–35. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. ———. Border Lines: The Partition of Judeo-Christianity. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Butler, Judith. “Critically Queer.” GLQ: Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1 (1993): 17–32. Dudás, Tamás. “Vita Dosithei: A Way to the Sanctity.” In Aparxai: Lectures Held at the Sixth Conference of Collegium Hungaricum Societatis Europaeae Studiosorum Philologiae Classicae (28–29 May 2011), edited by Péter Jutai, 68–74. Budapest: Collegium Hungaricum, 2011.

310  Jonathan Cahana-Blum Halberstam, Judith. “Queer Studies Now.” In Quer durch die Geisteswissenschaften: Perspektiven der Queer Theory, edited by Elahe H. Yekani and Beatrice Michaelis, 17–30. Berlin: Querverlag, 2005. Harper, Kyle. Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275–425. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Hausherr, Irénée. Spiritual Direction in Early Christian East. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990. Hevelone-Harper, Jennifer L. Disciple of the Desert: Monks, Laity, and Spiritual Authority in Sixth-Century Gaza. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2005. Laes, Christian. “Desperately Different? Delicia Children in the Roman Household.” In Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, edited by David L. Balch and Carolyn Osiek, 298–324. Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 2003. ———. “Delicia-Children Revisited: The Evidence of Statius’ Silvae.” In Children, Memory, and Family Identity in Roman Culture, edited by Véronique Dasen and Thomas Späth, 245–72. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Nielsen, Hanne S. “Delicia in Roman Literature and in the Urban Inscriptions.” Analecta Romana Instituti Danici 19 (1990): 79–88. Pollini, John. “The Warren Cup: Homoerotic Love and Symposial Rhetoric in Silver.” Art Bulletin 81 (1999): 21–53. ———. “Slave-Boys for Sexual and Religious Service: Images of Pleasure and Devotion.” In Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text, edited by Anthony J. Boyle and William J. Dominik, 149–66. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Rotman, Youval. “A Will of Their Own? Children’s Agency and Child Labor in Byzantium.” Imago Temporis: Medium Aevum 11 (2017): 135–57. Schroeder, Caroline T. “Queer Eye for the Ascetic Guy? Homoeroticism, Children, and the Making of Monks in Late Antique Egypt.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 77 (2009): 333–47. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271–313. London: Macmillan Education, 1988. Swancutt, Diana M. “ ‘The Disease of Effemination’: The Charge of Effeminacy and the Verdict of God (Romans 1:18–2:16).” In New Testament Masculinities, edited by Stephen D. Moore and Janice Capel Anderson, 193–233. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003. Torrance, Alexis. “Barsanuphius, John, and Dorotheos on Scripture: Voices from the Desert in Sixth-Century Gaza.” In What Is the Bible? The Patristic Doctrine of Scripture, edited by Seraphim Danckaert, Matthew Baker, and Mark Mourachian, 67–81. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016. Williams, Dyfri. “A Cantharus from Ancient Betar Near Jerusalem (the So-Called Warren Cup) and Roman Silver Plate.” BABESCH: Annual Papers on Mediterranean Archaeology 90 (2015): 155–98. Zecher, Jonathan L. “The Meaning of κλύστας and the Value of a μαχαίριον: Vita Dosithei (BHG 2117) and Health Care in Gazan Monasteries.” Analecta Bollandiana 136 (2018): 43–55.

16 Menopause and Agency in Late Antiquity A Case for Magical Gems Jordan Poole

Over the last decade, both menopause and female-orientated magical gems have been the focus of more attention within the scholarship, although never together. It was previously the case that menopause was not considered at all due to the lack of direct evidence on the topic, but figures such as Susan Mattern have helped bring this key life stage into focus.1 Scholarship pertaining to magical gems,2 on the other hand, has largely remained on the same trajectory since 1950, with attempts being made to understand their purpose as therapeutic or apotropaic artifacts.3 There is a tendency by scholars to link some of the magical gem corpuses, especially the so-called uterine gems, with gynecological conditions, or more generally with specific conditions, which they were supposedly intended to treat.4 Such readings have been made possible due to references to gems made by the likes of Galen, who seemingly linked Chnoubis gems and stomach ailments, although instances where gems are recognized as a targeted therapy are extremely few.5 This study argues against this trend within the scholarship to define magical gems as artifacts that were intrinsically associated with specific conditions, and instead argues in favor of their innate interpretative malleability and ability to conform their purpose to the needs of their wearer at different life stages. Uterus motifs have invited confined interpretations, including the likes of fertility or love-magic, yet it is here argued that they resist restricted frameworks, especially when contextualized with the other characteristics of the gem. Sacred iconographies, vox magica, characteres, the form, as well as the skill and knowledge required to produce these objects, suggests that their unintelligibility was, in part, an intentional feature to grant agency to their owner in reimagining their purpose as new circumstances presented themselves. This emerging picture of such sacred and deeply personal artifacts refutes the idea that there was a need for them to be limited therapies, but instead capable of, among other things, affecting life-stages that were previously thought to be ignored, such as menopause. Instead, women covertly influenced such experiences within a framework that understood individual symptoms and experiences differed from person to person—an elusive notion within normative approaches to medicine in Late Antiquity.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-23

312  Jordan Poole Menopause: The Condition in Search of a Treatment We can identify two main trends from the medical literature: the age at which menopause was thought to occur, as well as its connection to the condition of the wandering womb. In both cases, menopause is not framed as a positive experience, either causing an end to a gender-defining bodily function or causing dysfunction. This conceptualization of the fertile body and the implications for menopause find their origins in Classical Greek medical thought. Although details differ and inconsistencies abound, in general, women’s bodies were judged primarily by their ability to conceive, carry, birth, and raise children. The body is then largely ignored once it lost these functions. Although there is some variability (as would be expected), in general, the ancients held a mostly consistent belief that women became post-menopausal between the ages of 45 to 50.6 The recognition of a woman’s earlier loss of fertility in Classical Greek thought led to the belief that women must age quicker than men.7 The Hippocratic authors hinted that this was likely due to an inherent weakness and domestic life.8 Aristotle was more explicit: women were inferior and naturally weak so therefore aged quicker.9 This philosophy of body coincides with Aristotle’s general biology of heat and moisture. Women cannot concoct sperm due to their lack of heat, and because the aging body becomes colder and drier in old age, women naturally become less feminine with age and therefore lose their ability to conceive.10 Later writers of the Imperial period generally agreed with the classical Greek views. Pliny the Elder agrees with Aristotle that most women cease menstruating at the age of 40 and cannot bear children after 50.11 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in his examination of the family of the Roman king Tarquinius, states that Tarquinius’ wife was 50 when she gave birth to her last son, thus ensuring the ages of the family members are correct upon Tarquinius’ death. Dionysius subsequently states that female reproduction ends at 50.12 The most noteworthy addition of this period was Soranus’ Gynaecology, the most extensive gynecological treatise that has survived from Antiquity.13 Soranus also confirms the age range of 40 to 50 years for the cessation of menses, but he adds some additional information about menstruation over the course of a woman’s life: τὸ δὲ πλῆθος τῆς ἀποκρίσεως ἀρξάμενον ἀπὸ ὀλίγου πρόεισιν ἐπὶ πλεῖον καὶ χρόνον μεῖναν ἐπὶ τοῦ αὐτοῦ πάλιν ἐλαττοῦται καὶ οὕτος ἀποπαύεται τελείως, οὔτε τάχιον έτῶν τεσσαράκοντα κατὰ τὸ πλεῖστον οὔτε βράδιον έτῶν πεντήκοντα. καὶ νῦν δὲ πρόσκειται τὸ ‘κατὰ τὸ πλεῖστον’ [γινόμενον], ἐνίαις γὰρ καὶ μέχρι τῶν ἐξήκοντα παραμένει ἡ κάθαρσις.14 The amount of menstrual flow begins as a little amount, increases to more, and then for some time it remains the same. It decreases again, and then finally stops completely. The end of menstruation occurs not sooner than the age of 40, usually, and not later than the age of 50. Now the adverb, “usually” has been added, for in some women, menstruation continues until the age of 60. Soranus caveats his age limit of 50 for menopause by stating that this is “usually,” κατὰ τὸ πλεῖστον, the case, as it has been known for women to continue

Menopause and Agency in Late Antiquity 313 menstruating until they are 60. This nuance reflects Soranus’ understanding that women’s bodies did not function according to strict, predetermined laws of nature.15 Instead, he acknowledges the individuality of the female body. Yet, it is notable that menopause is not explored any further, and there are no references to symptoms or experience that were linked with the ending of menstruation. Once again it is clear that this life stage was not the concern of the normative medical narrative. Turning to Late Antiquity, the previous observations remain consistent. Oribasius, writing in the fourth century CE, places the average age of menopause at 50 years, with the qualification that some women continue menstruating until the age of 60.16 In addition, Oribasius observes that obese women can begin menopause as early as 35 years.17 The only voice of contention in this period comes from Aëtius, who in his Tetrabiblos, written in the sixth century CE, gives the ages of 35 to 50 as the normal range for menopause.18 He, too, claims 60 years to be the maximum age for a woman to continue menstruating and posits a relationship between corpulence and early menopause. So far menopause has been indirectly mentioned with reference to the age at which women stop menstruating. The condition and life stage of menopause was never the focus. It was not treated as a separate condition. The mentioning of the end of menstruation was a practical note, informing readers when women should expect to no longer be fertile. This was not viewed as a transitionary period, but rather as an end of the primary function of the female body, mothering. The cultural value judgments were explicit in their absence. After this point, women’s bodies were not the concern of medical literature, so they were not recognized. These bodies were ignored and sidelined for younger reproductive bodies, which embodied correct health.19 Given the evidence provided here, it should be concluded that references to menopause, indirect though they are, in ancient literature are most unhelpful in understanding the experience of menopause. No symptoms or treatments are noted, nor any suggestions for how menopause would be experienced by the women going through it.20 Mattern has offered a theory for why ancient accounts are strangely silent on menopause, considering the importance attributed to healthy menstruation: [T]he same humoral theory that contributed to the preoccupation with menstruation also suggested a reason for menopause—bodily constitution changed with age, and Greek physicians may have assumed that women became dryer and more like men as they got older, so that they did not need to purge blood anymore. In this view much of the female life cycle was spent in a state of humoral imbalance that had to be managed, but childhood and post-menopausal life presented no special challenges and thus are largely absent from medical treatises.21 This theory coincides with the ancient view that women’s bodies bled, and so after menopause they became less conceptually female.22 They were not considered within the literature, as they could now be treated as men were. However, an examination of approaches to old age do not appear to corroborate this view. Medical approaches to gerontology do not associate female and male bodies, nor state

314  Jordan Poole that elderly bodies become free of complaints. Galen’s De sanitate tuenda advises its readers on maintaining health into old age. Within the treatise, Galen speaks generally, without differentiating his readers according to their sex; however, most of his examples are clearly directed towards the generic male reader, providing advice that focuses on diet, bathing, and exercise.23 Instead, female readers might take note of Galen’s most staunch advice, that the ideal patient will lead a consistently healthy life, which will delay unnecessary aging and reduce problems in old age.24 Women, like men, should focus on maintaining health throughout their life and seek therapies that are in line with this goal. Another of Mattern’s explanations for the lack of focus on menopause is more convincing, that women could have treated symptoms of menopause (headaches, fever, etc.), which were never formally attributed to menopause in the literature, and as such we are unaware of it.25 This approach is more individualistic and places emphasis on women knowing the needs of their bodies. Menopause was covertly mentioned, covertly symptomized, and perhaps covertly treated. Within this context, medical literature is the wrong place to look for this evidence. Women sought their own treatments. The need for treatments was exacerbated by associated diseases. Aside from age, menopause is referenced as a contributing factor to the wandering womb, a condition whereby the womb moved within the body, causing blockages or otherwise disrupting the healthy state of the body.26 Menstruation was believed to keep the uterus in place and maintain the bodily health.27 Without the filling of the uterus in anticipation of menses, the organ becomes light and so can move around the body, causing problems wherever it goes. Most notably, it was believed that the womb could suffocate a woman if not treated, and was therefore a life-threatening condition.28 Many medical treatises and authorities from Antiquity weighed in on this condition, from Hippocrates to Galen and beyond, until it evolved into “hysteria”—a diagnosis that was still provided in the 20th century.29 The symptomatology and case studies of wandering womb from Antiquity vary as much as the physiology of the female body. Within Diseases of Women, the Hippocratic author links this condition with old age: Τὰ δὲ νουσήματα πάντα τὰ τοιουτότροπα γεραιτέρῃσι μᾶλλον γίνεται ἢ νεωτέρῃσι, πρὸς τὰς ἀπολείψιας τῶν ἐπιμηνίων·30 All these sorts of diseases happen more in older women than in younger women, due to the cessation of menses. Ἢν δὲ πνὶξ προστῇ ἐξαπίνης, γίνεται δὲ μάλιστα τῇσι μὴ συνούσῃσιν ἀνδράσι καὶ τῇσι γεραιτέρῃσι μᾶλλον ἢ τῇσι νέῃσι· κουφότεραι γὰρ αἱ μῆτραι σφέων εἰσί· γίνεται δὲ μάλιστα διὰ τόδε· ἐπὴν κενεαγγήσῃ καὶ ταλαιπωρήσῃ πλέονα τῆς μαθήσιος, θερμανθεῖσαι αἱ μῆτραι ὑπὸ τῆς ταλαιπωρίης στρέφονται, ἅτε κεναὶ ἐοῦσαι καὶ κοῦφαι· εὐρυχωρίη γάρ ἐστι σφὶν ὥστε στρέφεσθαι, ἅτε τῆς κοιλίης κενεῆς ἐούσης·31 If suffocation suddenly occurs, this happens mainly in women that are not having intercourse with men, and more in older women than in younger ones: for their uterus is lighter. Generally, it comes about as follows: When a woman has empty vessels and exerts herself more than she is used to, as her

Menopause and Agency in Late Antiquity 315 uterus is warmed by the exertion, it turns to the side because it is empty and light: for there is open space into which it can turn, seeing that the cavity is empty. Unlike younger women, who could treat the symptoms of the wandering womb with regular sexual activity, older women were susceptible due to their age. This association continues into the Imperial Roman period, as Soranus states: “in most cases the disease is preceded by recurrent miscarriages, premature birth, long widowhood, retention of menses and the end of ordinary childbearing or inflation of the uterus.”32 Soranus places emphasis on gynecological conditions that were deemed unhealthy, equating miscarriages and menopause in their potential to cause harm. The focus here is placed on fertile bodily functions, not menopause. The threat of diseases, such as the wandering womb, implied that the old body was unhealthy and was best avoided. The negative connotations of senescence, with menopause being the medically defined turningpoint between medical acknowledgement and youth, and invisibility and old age, all contributed to the cultural notions that defined it. However, the extent to which these ideas made it into the social consciousness of the women in Late Antiquity cannot be known. We can but guess at the power of these ideas to influence the minds of women who were conscious of going through menopause. Perhaps many worried about the potential of their aging bodies and womb to betray them, or perhaps this was a fringe idea that existed more in the lines of a medical treatise than in the minds of ancient women. Nevertheless, given the existence of therapies for conditions such as the wandering womb, and the continual use of such artifacts as anatomical votives and uterine amulets into the Imperial period and even Late Antiquity, it appears that such gynecological conditions remained concerns for women. Without a normative framework in which to support them, they would have sought modes that agreed with their lived experience. Magical Gems: The Treatment in Search of Conditions In this section I will discuss the limitations of interpretating Roman-era magical gems in relation to their capacity to support their owners with specific conditions and illnesses. It will be argued that gems were not always designed and used with explicit purposes in mind, but instead were intentionally malleable and so able to conform to their owner’s needs.33 Consider the amulets CBd-111 and CBd-112.34 These gems are classified as kerbenstil, “notch style,” and are characterized as minimalistic and simplified carvings that are difficult to identify.35 These gems present their owners with a challenge unlike other gems in the magical corpus, because they are near-impossible to decipher based off the visual cues. It is only with reference to another gem, for instance CBd-100, that one realizes that the designs of the kerbenstil gems are primitive versions of more complex designs.36 From this, we can determine that owners did not “read” such gems to gain an understanding of them, but rather had to be familiar with their purpose, with the design being a minimal suggestion of this. The readability of the entire corpus of magical gems is

316  Jordan Poole highly questionable and should not be taken for granted. Magical gems are small, typically with dimensions ranging from one to three centimeters. Carving grooves can often be sub-millimeter, and many motifs, such as deities, uteruses, etc., can be but a few millimeters in length.37 Without the aid of microscopy, owners who were otherwise uninitiated into the mystery of their gem could easily be left guessing about what the tiny details were supposed to represent. Moreover, material choice and the shallowness of the carving can make many designs extremely difficult to read, even in preferable lighting conditions. Gems are often carved on both faces and on the bevelled edge. When these gems were mounted in rings, or other mountings, the reverse of the gems would be obscured when worn.38 Why decorate the gem with motifs that would not be seen?39 It must be proposed that these gems were not designed to convey their meaning and purpose upon being read. The form of gems was adopted, not because they were the best to visibly convey their message, but because they were small, mobile, precious, personable, unique, and sacred. If gems were intended to visually communicate themselves clearly and unambiguously, the craftspeople who created them would have made them so.40 Yet, it would be incorrect to view motifs as a completely blank canvas, as they served to orientate the owner’s sacred beliefs while inspiring a personal reading without being confined to a fixed interpretation. Anyone who studied their gem would appreciate the miniscule details placed there by a knowledgeable and skilled artisan, undoubtedly reassuring them that it was made with powerful and purposeful intentions to support them, irrelevant of what those specifics might be. In this way, the authorial intentions of the carver remained as a guiding hand to future owners. The standard approach to interpreting gems within the scholarship has been to identify a dominant motif, i.e., a uterus, Heracles, Chnoubis, etc., which is then used to categorize gems into sets.41 In some cases of gems, these features are the only notable aspect of the carved design, so they must have been intended to be the focus of attention, the dominant motif.42 Nevertheless, attributing predefined notions of function and purpose to these gems assumes that they were considered to be from a homogenous corpus. The reality of the gem corpus contradicts this reading, as no two gems are the same, and most bear additional motifs that added to their uniqueness. There have been many efforts to reassess readings of gem motifs. This has been made possible by the vague nature of the available evidence, which allows many interpretations that cannot be substantiated beyond a doubt, any more than they can be conclusively refuted.43 If indeed the logic within Antiquity followed that, say, gems bearing a uterus were de facto “uterus gems,” which were intended to control menstruation or control with love magic, then why go through the time and energy of further complicating their creation by making each gem different?44 It would be far simpler to create a template “uterus” gem design that could be mass-produced, especially as any extra motifs would only be submissive to the uterus, no matter their composition or intricacy.45 This trend also cannot be explained by supposing the unique designs of gems were attempts to personalize them for a specific owner, as the more direct way of doing this would have been to carve the owner’s name onto the gem or provide an unambiguous spell.46 No, the choice to make them out of gemstone added an aspect of permanence, which,

Menopause and Agency in Late Antiquity  317 when considered alongside their non-personalization, strongly suggests that magical gems were intended to be kept beyond a single use or to change hands. In doing so, any strict adherence to a reading that was held by its previous owner would have been, at minimum, warped by its new owner, and so it would have adapted a new meaning and function. To assume that a gem’s interpretation was focused or fixed is to assume it did not travel.47 Magical gems could be found all over the Roman Empire.48 Scholars are yet to identify any strict geographical trends with the motifs that appear within the corpus.49 The dissemination of designs such as the Anguiped (Abraxas) and Chnoubis motifs across the Empire should question the capacity for such a unique symbol to keep a fixed meaning. Perhaps it was because these divine figures did not have an established mythos that could associate them with a set of purposes based on established connotations that enabled them to be ideal subjects for magical gems. The consistency of the motifs demonstrates that such figures were not loosely defined, but they were ideal candidates for assuming amorphous roles for those who wished to channel their support. Unlike the popular Greco-Roman or Egyptian deities, the (possibly) Jewish beings would have been unknown to any eyes who were not educated in them. The knowledge required to decipher a magical gem would have been extensive. There have been many attempts to understand the meaning of the χαρακτήρες (characteres) that appear across the corpus, but no definitive answer has been reached.50 There has been more success with some of the vox magica, which at face value appear to be nonsense, although there are some convincing interpretations for terms such as Ὀρωριούθ (and its variations).51 What of the argument that these objects were intended for a restricted audience who would have been versed in their meaning? Aside from this presenting a convenient excuse to enable modern scholarly tendencies, we might question how such meanings would have been passed to their owners. Árpád M. Nagy argues that magi conveyed the meaning of the gems through praxis.52 No doubt this would have been the case some of the time, whereby the meaning was established when it was created and passed on to its new owner. What that meaning was, its consistency of application, and its longevity of use is what remains contentious. A magical gem’s applicability was not limitless. The gem’s function was the result of the imagination and needs of its owner, but it appears that the form and design of the gem created a framework within which the gem would function. There is no reason to frame a predefined purpose as the norm by which to guide examinations of the material. There is more reason to view the opposite as being the case, that the purpose was tacitly implied through connotations but, being covert and malleable, invited any reading that its owner wished to place upon it. It is almost as if scholars believe that granting these objects specific purposes makes them more important and heightens their contribution to their owners. The opposite can be truer, because their flexibility made them useful in a wider range of circumstances. The presence of a uterus, for instance, suggests that the gem would have been viewed by any owner who could read the motif as having within its repertoire an influence over female experience,

318  Jordan Poole be they gynecological or holistically. One instance worth exploring is the life stage of menopause. A gem’s permanence lends itself to being kept by its owner indefinitely or passed on to others when it is no longer needed. It is possible that a gem could be kept for many years, supporting its owner as they grew up and had to face many health challenges and life stages. A gem that once could have helped with puberty, fertility, and childbirth could find new applications later in life. We have little idea how women framed this part of their lives, but we do know that it is experienced with a diverse range of symptoms, from few to many and from malign to impactful. Menopause then is a perfect case study for demonstrating how a gem could conform to the changes and unspecified needs of its owner, who could not have known how they would experience menopause until it happened. Magical Gems as Treatments of Menopausal Conditions This chapter has thus far proposed two arguments, that menopause was a condition searching for a treatment and that magical gems were treatments searching for conditions. Given the poor cultural perception of the aging female body and the implicit suggestion that menopausal bodies were inclined to become diseased with conditions such as the wandering womb, it is unthinkable to assume that women passively accepted this situation. The invisibility of menopause presumes that support networks for its symptoms were also covert. Therefore, among the limitless circumstances that magical gems could be applied to, their deeply personal form and malleable application makes them ideal treatments for conditions such as menopause, without them becoming a defined “menopause” gem. Surely, if it was not deemed necessary to explore menopause in the medical (or broader) literature of the time, then the idea that gem craftspeople were unique in constructing therapies is unlikely, but that does not mean that their design ruled out the possibility of their owners imprinting their needs on them. Using case studies of individual gems, the modern analyst can review the ability of a gem to adapt its application. Consider CBd-1357, usually labelled as a “Tantalus” gem, bearing an inscription, iconography, vox magica, and χαρακτήρες (characteres). This has been given a confident reading within the scholarship; Christopher A. Faraone has categorically stated that this and other “Tantalus” gems “were used only in the case of menstrual bleeding.”53 More specific applications are not explored, but given the standard scholarly interpretation, the gem could have fitted into a gynecologically orientated experience of menopause. The case for this reading is strong, but it is worth considering the alternative possible applications, which would support the general purpose of the gem, to support one’s well-being. This will also open its application to experiences and symptomatizing of menopause beyond the cessation of menstruation. The gem is hematite, as was most common for such amulets. Lapidaries and medical texts attributed therapeutic properties to hematite, with the focus being on the stone’s association with blood.54 It is likely that for those wearers who considered the sympathetic magical properties of hematite to be intrinsic to their purpose, the focus

Menopause and Agency in Late Antiquity  319 was on the wearer’s blood. The inscription, arranged in a pterygoma (winged) form, strengthens this association. μαπιε| διψαστανταλεαι| ιψαστανταλεαιμαιπιε̣| αστανταλεαιμαιπιε| στανταλεαιμαιπιε| τανταλεαιμαιπιε| ανταεαιμαιπιε| νταεαιμαιπιε| ταεαλιμαιπε| αεαλιμαιπε| εαλιμαιπε| αλιμαιπε| λιμαιπε| ιμ[α]ιπε| μα[ιπ]ε| αιπε| πε| ε55 In its normalized form, this inscription reads διψᾷς Τάνταλε, αἷμα πίε. Different interpretations of this text have been put forward, although the most convincing is “O Tantalus, because you thirst, drink blood.”56 This gem anchors itself on the understanding that its wearer would be familiar with the Greek story of Tantalus.57 The modern reading of the spell supposes that by beckoning Tantalus to drink, he reaches for the waters, and in turn they flee from his touch. The water is thereby sympathetically linked by the gem with the flow of blood, and as such Tantalus’ reach will cause it to recede. The presentation of the inscription reinforces such a reading. The Tantalus inscription is typically given in pterygoma (winged) form on amulets, removing the first letter in successive lines.58 Bonner first argued that this triangular text invoked sympathetic magic that would stop bleeding by removing letters; the text and blood would be bound to each other, and as the text reduced, so too would the bleeding.59 The disappearing nature of the pterygoma text has also been argued by Faraone to both allow bleeding to be brought forth or reduced.60 This is corroborated by Attilio Mastrocinque, who argues that aspects of the iconography lend themselves to the magical production of liquids: the figure often paired alongside the pterygoma text is identified as Ares, who symbolizes bleeding wounds, and the aïrmorrous snakes that flank the uterus symbol could bite, leading to bleeding.61 This reading could have proven useful to younger owners of the gem who sought methods of controlling their menstrual cycle or who hoped for a sign of pregnancy. Also, for older users who wished to instigate bleeding, they would reverse their reading and the spell. We might imagine a menopausal woman

320  Jordan Poole seeking to maintain their menstrual cycle and deter the onset of menopause. The gem is fulfilling Galen’s advice, summarized earlier, to continually maintain health throughout life to ease the transition into old age. However, the link with menstrual blood comes from the identification of the “uterus” symbol on the gem’s reverse. Despite claims to the contrary, this identification remains uncertain, with interpretations of a trophy being as likely, given the spurious evidence.62 Most notably, the motif is unique and is dissimilar from the typical uterus motif that is commonly observed in the magical gem corpus, and there is no clear reason why this should be so. Nevertheless, definitive readings aside, we can evaluate the motif’s positioning on the gem to extrapolate its significance. The motif sits on the reverse of the gem, apart from the inscription. Why, if the “uterus” was intended to restrict the application of the inscription, was a warrior figure placed on the obverse instead? In modern readings of the gem, the warrior figure is rarely considered to be as critical for the gem’s purpose as the “uterus.” This is an example of the “dominant” motif trend discussed earlier. For those who did not see this as a uterine gem, perhaps because it never was, or because they acquired the gem without the magical knowledge needed to understand its restricted use, the gem lost its link with gynecology. If instead, the figure is placed next to the inscription because it was more closely related to its possible applications, the gem’s malleability becomes clear, and the “uterus” becomes intrinsic only in the eye of the beholder. At face value, the figure and the inscription together create an intimidating presence on the gem. The beckoning of Tantalus to drink blood and the warrior (Ares?) to uphold the spell, and possibly facilitate blood shedding, appear apotropaic. Whatever ailments or demons are assailing the gem’s owner, Tantalus could be called upon to scare them away. If the “uterus” was instead viewed as a trophy, then the reverse celebrates victory over the defeated symptoms and the return to good health. Therefore, the treatment of a wider array of symptoms, not only controlling physical processes, becomes possible. These symptoms were addressed by women seeking relief from their experiences, permitting the gem to become a panacea. The divine Jewish names, ιαω μεαθαδωα| νοεισαβαωθ (Ἰαω, Ἀδωναΐ and Σαβαώθ), whose purpose on gems have resisted modern attempts to restrict them, develop connotations that contribute to treatment.63 If these beings were known to the wearer as benevolent forces, they contributed to the victory over the symptoms. Or else, they joined the Greek vowel series at the foot of the gem to add an aura of mystique and exoticism to the magic. The complexity and intricacy of the gem created perceptions of its sacred unintelligibility, while providing opportunities for malleability. The design created opportunities for its wearer to apply their own reading, without undermining the notion that it was created by knowledgeable minds for a purpose. The inscription, which was permanently inscribed into the stone, created a locality for the magic to work when the spell was not being read aloud or thought in the mind of the user.64 Its full presence on the amulet remained as a manifest representation of the wearer’s intent, which upheld the therapeutic magic when they did not. In this way, the power of the spell was eternal, providing continual protection. Thus, there was no need for a conscious manipulation of the gem by the owner, only the trust that the gem would adapt as needed.

Menopause and Agency in Late Antiquity 321 Conclusion The tendency to categorize magical gems and give them strictly defined purposes is not always necessary, especially as the evidence for these readings is reliant on formal and extensive sacred knowledge frameworks. Gems appear to have been made to be consciously mysterious and capable of many readings. Once they became detached from the context of their creation, any associations that matched their form and the motifs they were decorated with become possible. The intricate and sacred knowledge was present on the gems and related a magic that was permanent and not necessarily intended to be visually communicated. Instead, an implicit trust relationship was created between the gem carver, the gem, and the owner, whereby it was understood that the gem was made to embody its purpose, the details of which did not need to be understood, but were believed to work, no matter the reading or application. In instances where normative medicine ignored the needs of patients, such sacred objects were able to garner an important use. This chapter examined how personal objects, such as magical gems, acknowledged and supported menopausal bodies, which were not recognized by medical discourse due to the loss of their primary role, producing children. The “Tantalus” gem illustrates that “dominant” features, which have guided modern scholars towards ideas of use and purpose, are unnecessarily restrictive. Not every gem lent themselves to any and all applications, but each provided enough connotations to afford a wearer the freedom to assist with life-stages that were as diverse in their experience as menopause. Notes 1 Susan Mattern, The Slow Moon Climbs: The Science, History, and Meaning of Menopause (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019). For age of menopause in the Classical world, see Darrel W. Amundsen and Carol Jean Diers, “The Age of Menopause in Classical Greece and Rome,” Human Biology 42, no. 1 (1970): 79–86. 2 Magical gems could be found in all corners of the Roman Empire, and were made and mainly used between the late first and fifth centuries CE. 3 See Campbell Bonner, Studies in Magical Amulets: Chiefly Greco-Egyptian (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1950). For definition of magical gems, see Véronique Dasen and Árpád M. Nagy, “Gems,” in Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic: Religions in the Greco-Roman World, ed. David Frankfurter (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019), 416–55. 4 Nagy states that “magical healing gems were recommended primarily for ‘indeterminate’ or non-specific ailments.” This argument has been underdeveloped within the literature. See Árpád Nagy, “Daktylios Pharmakites: Magical Healing Gems and Rings in the Greco-Roman World,” in Ritual Healing: Magic, Ritual, and Medical Therapy from Antiquity until the Early Modern Period, eds. Ildikó Csepregi and Charles Burnett (Firenze: SISMEL—Edizioni del Galluzzo), 80. For links to love magic, see Eleni Tsatsou, “Uterine Amulets: Amulets that Protect the Uterus or that Reinforce Erotic Desire?” in Magical Gems in Their Contexts: Proceedings of the International Workshop Held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, February 16–18, 2012, eds. Kata Endreffy, Árpád M. Nagy, and Jeffrey Spier (Rome: L’erma di Bretschneider, 2019), 271–82. For links to childbirth and fertility, see Véronique Dasen, “Healing Images. Gems and Medicine,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 33, no. 2 (2014): 177–91. On linking gems to uterine conditions such as wandering womb, see Anne E. Hanson, “Uterine Amulets and Greek Uterine Medicine,” Medicina nei secoli: Journal of History of Medicine and

322  Jordan Poole Medical Humanities 7, no. 2 (1995): 281–99. For links to menstruation, see Attilio Mastrocinque, “Amuleti e medicina: Rimedi per problemi mestruali,” in Cultural Constructions of the Uterus in Pre-Modern Societies, Past and Present, eds. Erica Couto-Ferreira and Lorenzo Verderame (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018), 113–25. 5 Gal., De simpl. 10.19 (XII, 207, ed. Kühn): Ἰδιότητα δέ τινες ἐνίοις λίθοις μαρτυροῦσι τοιαύτην, οἵαν ὄντως ἔχει καὶ ὁ χλωρὸς ἴασπις, ὠφελῶν τὸν τε στόμαχον καὶ τὸ τῆς γαστρὸς στόμα περιαπτόμενον. ἐντιθέασί τε καὶ δακτυλίῳ αὐτὸν ἔνιοι καὶ γλύφουσιν ἐν αὐτῷ τὸν τὰς ἀκτῖνας ἔχοντα δράκοντα, καθάπερ καὶ ὁ βασιλεὺς Νεχεψὼς ἔγραψεν ἐν τῇ τεσσερακαιδεκάτῃnβίβλῳ. τούτου μὲν οὖν τοῦ λίθου κἀγω πεῖραν ἱκανὴν ἔχω, καὶ ὁρμάθιόν γέ τι ποιήσας ἐκ λιθιδίων τοιούτων ἐξῆ τον τοῦ τραχήλου σύμμετρον οὕτως ὡς ψαύειν τοὺς λίθους τοῦ στόματος τῆς γαστρός. ἐφαίνοντο δὲ μηδὲν ἧττον ὠφελοῦντες ἢ εἰ τὴν γλυφὴν οὐκ ἔχοιεν ἣν ὁ Νεχεψὼς ἔγραψε. The testimony of some authorities attributes to certain stones a peculiar quality which is actually possessed by the green jasper. Worn as an amulet, it benefits the stomach and oesophagus. Some also set it in a ring, and engrave on it the radiate serpent, just as King Nechepsos prescribed in his 14th Book. I myself have made a satisfactory test of this stone. I made a necklace of small stones of that variety and hung it from my neck at just such a length that the stones touched the position of the cardiac orifice. They seemed just as beneficial even though they had not the design that Nechepsos prescribed. I follow the translation of Bonner, Studies in Magical Amulets, 54. For interpretations, see Christopher A. Faraone, “Text, Image, and Medium: The Evolution of Greco-Roman Magical Gemstones,” in “Gems of Heaven”: Recent Research on Engraved Gemstones in Late Antiquity c. AD 200–600, eds. Chris Entwistle and Noël Adams (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 2012), 50–61; Jacques Jouanna, “Médecine rationnelle et magie: Le statut des amulettes et des incantations chez Galien,” Revue des études grecques 124, no. 1 (2011): 47–77. 6 Hippoc. Coac. 30.502 (7.700.5–7L), notes the female reproductive years as 14 to 42, which coincides with the tendency to divide life into sets of seven (hebdomades). There is variation within Aristotle’s works, with menopause set as between the ages of 40 and 50: Arist. HA 545b; 585a. See Amundsen and Diers, “The Age of Menopause.” 7 Aristotle uses the age discrepancy between female and male fertility to recommend a 19-year age difference in the ideal marital age: men can procreate up to the age of 70, whereas females cease at 50. Arist. Pol. 7.1335a.⁠ Therefore, women are recommended to marry at the age of 18, whereas men should marry at 37. The inconsistency of ages given in Aristotle (40 and 50) may be attributed to the spurious authenticity of Book 7 of Politics, although it is still dated to the third century BCE. 8 Hippoc. Septim. 9, 7.450.10L. 9 This notion is repeated multiple times. See: Arist. GA. 775a15; HA 582a23; HA 583b26–28. 10 Arist. GA 648a29–30. Laqueur’s one-sex model attempts to reconcile the humoral approach to gynecology by positing that “the boundaries between male and female are of degree and not of kind.” Thomas W. Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 25. This view has been challenged by King, who argues that women were “not just cold men” in classical Greek thought. See Helen King, Hippocrates’ Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece. (London: Routledge, 1998). 11 Plin. Nat. 7.14.61. 12 D. H. AR. 4.6.5. 13 It is known that Galen also wrote a gynecological treatise, but this has been since lost.

Menopause and Agency in Late Antiquity 323 14 Sor. Gyn. 1.20.1. 15 Soranus likewise was the first to claim that women’s menses did not follow a strict schedule and were not influenced by such things as the moon (Gyn 3.29). 16 Orib. Eclogae medicamentorum 142. 17 This is echoed in the work of Paul of Aegina in the seventh century CE, who appears to be quoting Oribasius (Aeg 3.60). 18 Aët. Tetrabiblos 16.4. 19 The Hippocratic author states: “if she becomes pregnant, she is healthy” (“κἢν ἐν γαστρὶ ἴσχη, ὑγιἠς γίνεται”), Mul. 2. 119; 2. 121 (VIII. 260, 264L), my translation. 20 Menopause is now understood to be a biopsychosocial condition, with symptoms and experiences differing depending on who is talking, the language used, the audience, the time, the place, and the context. For an overview of the development of attitudes towards menopause, see Louise Foxcroft, Hot Flushes, Cold Science: The History of the Modern Menopause (London: Granta, 2009). Also, for a holistic introduction to menopause as a biopsychosocial condition and the diversity of experience, see Mattern, The Slow Moon. 21 Mattern, The Slow Moon, 267. 22 For an overview of the Hippocratic and humoral evidence for the menopausal body being synonymous with the female body, see King, Hippocrates’ Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece. 23 The two examples of healthy old bodies both belong to men. San. Tu 5.4 (Koch 143.16– 144.20 = K. 6.332–334). 24 San. Tu 5.1 (Koch 137.15–32 = K. 6.310–311). For more details, see John M. Wilkins, “Treatment of the Man: Galen’s Preventive Medicine in the De sanitate tuenda,” in Homo Patiens: Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World, eds. Georgia Petridou and Chiara Thumiger (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 413–31. 25 Mattern, The Slow Moon, 286. 26 Galen believed the position of the uterus, facing downwards, is ideal for receiving male seed during intercourse and delivering a baby with minimal pain (De usu partium 14.3). 27 Galen Loc. Aff 6.5 (Kühn 8.420) explains that uterine suffocation is caused by retention of menses. 28 For the wandering womb as a cause of suffocation, Hysterike Pnix, see such examples as Sor. Gyn. 3.26; Gal. De loc. affect. 6.5 (8.414K); Aret. SA 2.11, CA 2.10; Paul. Aeg. 3.71. For more, see Susan P. Mattern, “Panic and Culture: Hysterike Pnix in the Ancient Greek World,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 70, no. 4 (2014): 491–515. 29 See, most notably, Stanley W. Jackson, Melancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 1986; Andrew Scull, Hysteria: The Disturbing History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Sander L. Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau, and Elaine Showalter, Hysteria Beyond Freud (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993); Amy Koerber, From Hysteria to Hormones: A Rhetorical History (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018). 30 Hippoc. Mul. 2.137, 8.310.10–11L. 31 Hippoc. Mul. 1.7, 8.32.1–7L. 32 Sor. Gyn. 3.26. 33 We have very limited evidence about who these owners were; however, named gems demonstrated they were worn by women as well as men. Names on gems are rare, but female example include CBd-520: Zyroua; CBd-1741: Alexandra/-os; CBd-2765: Amphiklés. 34 All magical gems will be referenced from The Campbell Bonner Magical Gems Database, eds. Katalin Bélyácz, Kata Endreffy, and Árpád M. Nagy (Budapest: Collection of Classical Antiquities of the Museum of Fine Arts, 2015), accessed April 15, 2023, http:// cbd.mfab.hu.

324  Jordan Poole 35 The term kerbenstil was tokened by Simone Michel, who dated them to the third century CE. See Simone Michel, Die magischen Gemmen im Britischen Museum, Vol. 1 (London: The British Museum Press, 2001), 261–63. 36 In this case, we can see that the singular vertical carved lines of CBd-111 become multiple in CBd-112 and are suggestive of humanoid bodies. CBd-100 provides yet greater detail, indicating that the lines were intended to depict deities such as Isis, Anubis (or Duamutef), Chnoubis, and Osiris. For a review, see Bonner, Studies in Magical Amulets, 22–44; Michel, Die magischen Gemmen, Vol. 1, 1–62. Dasen considers the bilingualism of motifs and deities carved onto magical gems, offering Greek and Egyptian readings of the iconography. See Véronique Dasen, “One God May Hide Another: Magical Gems in a Cross-Cultural Context,” in Magical Gems in Their Contexts: Proceedings of the International Workshop Held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, February 16–18, 2012, eds. Kata Endreffy, Árpád M. Nagy, and Jeffrey Spier (Rome: L’erma di Bretschneider, 2019), 47–58. 37 The manufacturing processes of magical gems, and Roman intaglios in general, has received minimal attention with the scholarship. No gem “workshops” have been definitively identified, and no contemporary texts detail their production. Experimental work has shown that carving wheels, chisels, and files were the primary tools of carving gemstone. See Margaret Sax, J. McNabb, and N.D. Meeks, “Methods of Engraving Mesopotamian Cylinder Seals: Experimental Confirmation,” Archaeometry 40, no. 1 (1998): 1–21. A  more thorough handling of the manufacturing processes is the focus of my doctoral dissertation, with relevant publications forthcoming. 38 Ring settings can be made to allow the reverse of the gem to be viewed when the ring was removed. Gems with boreholes could be mounted to be reversible. Yet, gem edges were bevelled to support mounting and would always be obscured. 39 The stress here is placed on the gaze of the human owner. It is possible that hidden motifs were designed to be seen by the gods and supernatural powers. This does not have any bearing on the argument being given here. 40 This is verified by the existence of gems with inscriptions, which indicate the function (given in normalized Greek): “Stomach digest!,” “στόμαχε πέπτε” (CBd-1244, 1252); “Stay in your place/contract, uterus, lest Typhon seize you! Ororiouth,” “[.]ταλη[. . .] υφωνκα|λαβη[. . .]ριουθ → στάληθι μήτρα μή σε Τυφῶν καταλάβῃ, Ὀρωριούθ” (CBd750). Interpretations of the magical term Ὀρωριούθ are addressed in n51. It must be noted that interpretations of gems bearing inscriptions are not fixed. See, for overview, Nagy, “Daktylios Pharmakites,” 71–106. 41 It is typical for scholars to frame their discussions of magical gems around these categories. This approach was popularized by Bonner’s Studies in Magical Amulets. The trend has continued since; see various entries in notable volumes such as Entwistle and Adams’ Gems of Heaven and Endreffy, Nagy, and Spier’s Magical Gems in Their Contexts. 42 See, for instance, CBd-1 for a uterine gem; CBd-6 for a Chnoubis gem; CBd-19 for a Pantheos gem; CBd-42 for an Anguiped gem. 43 It is ironic that the malleability that scholars tacitly push against, by applying restrictive readings to gems, has allowed them to imagine many different interpretations that are by their nature unfalsifiable. 44 See above n3. 45 Also, gems often have complicated designs that incorporate many motifs that are usually examined in isolation within the scholarship. CBd-100 bares a uterus, ouroboros, Chnoubis, Isis, and Anubis, each of which have been identified as being dominant features. Why should one take precedent over the others? It is likely this is a modern scholarly precedent rather than logic that was applied in Antiquity. 46 For example, CBd-534. For other examples, see also n33. Such examples suggest that a minority of gems were intended for either a single user or perhaps by those close to them within the context of an heirloom.

Menopause and Agency in Late Antiquity 325 47 As far as gem categories were established in Antiquity, it is likely that notions of their interpretation existed within a community. 48 For an overview, see Attilio Mastrocinque, Kronos, Shiva, and Asklepios: Studies in Magical Gems and Religions of the Roman Empire (Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 2011). 49 This has proven not possible to do with Roman intaglios more generally. See Gabriella Tassinari, “La produzione glittica a Roma: La questione delle officine nel mondo romano in epoca imperial,” Rivista di studi liguri LXXIV (2008): 251–317. 50 For identifying and interpreting characteres, see Kirsten Dzwiza, “Insight into the Transmission of Ancient Magical Signs: Three Textual Artefacts from Pergamon,” MHNH: Revista internacional de investigación sobre magia y astrología antiguas 15 (2015): 31–56. 51 Indeed, the range of variations for this term implies that it was far from being stable, both in form and potentially in meaning. The meaning of the magical word Ὀρωριούθ is unclear. It often appears on uterine gems, but as Tsatsou has shown, “is not certainly connected with the uterus” and possibly has solar qualities. The magical nature and its elusive meaning further support a malleable reading of its intent. See Tsatsou, “Uterine Amulets,” 276. 52 “It is through the praxis that the magos defines what the piece will represent.” Nagy allows the possibility that the carver (daktyliographos) and the magus could have been identical. See Árpád M. Nagy, “Engineering Ancient Amulets: Magical Gems of the Roman Imperial Period,” in The Materiality of Magic, eds. Dietrich Boschung and Jan N. Bremmer (Paderborn: Verlag Wilhelm Fink, 2015), 211. 53 See Christopher A. Faraone, Vanishing Acts on Ancient Greek Amulets: From Oral Performance to Visual Design (London: Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, 2012), 36. 54 Hematite, blood stone, received its name for its ability to turn water or oil a dark red color after being heated and pulverized. For example, the Hippocratic corpus details the use of a red stone as a pharmakon that was rubbed on a woman’s eyes to test her ability to conceive a child (Hippoc. Nat. mul. 99). For a detailed review of the link between hematite and its medical applications, in particular the uterus, see Hanson, “Uterine Amulets,” 290–92. For an overview of the relationship of color and sympathetic magic, Attilio Mastrocinque, “The Colours of Magical Gems,” in “Gems of Heaven”: Recent Research on Engraved Gemstones in Late Antiquity c. AD 200–600, eds. Chris Entwistle and Noël Adams (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 2012), 62–68. 55 The non-restored form is given here, prioritizing the structure of the Greek as it is presented on the gem. Aside from the translation that follows (a restored form of line 3), the other lines need not be translated. The reducing lines allude to the full form and its meaning and therefore must be understood as parts of a whole. To give each a translation would be misinterpreting the intention of the gem. 56 The most recent interpretation has been Faraone’s, who uses Homer’s Odyssey as inspiration for his reading, relating back to the circumstance of Tantalus’ punishment, and adds context with parentheses to get to the heart of the spell’s purpose. See Christopher Faraone, “Does Tantalus Drink the Blood, or Not? An Enigmatic Series of Inscribed Hematite Gemstones,” in Antike Mythen: Medien, Transformationen und Konstruktionen, eds. Ueli Dill and Christine Walde (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), 248–73. Alternatives include Bonner, who equated διψάς to a viper snake, whose bite caused great thirst for its victim. However, this interpretation has no links with the myth of Tantalos. See Bonner, Studies in Magical Amulets, 279. The first term, διψᾷς, is translated by Seyrig as an adjective form of διψᾶν (to thirst), noting the intrinsic quality of Tantalus as being thirsty due to his circumstances in Hades. See Henri Arnold Seyrig, “Invidiae medici,” Berytus: Archaeological Studies 1 (1934): 3. Other scholars suggested the infinitive διψᾶν (to thirst) in their interpretations. Festugière reformed this into the rhetorical question: “Tu as soif, Tantale? Bois du sang!” See André-Jean Festugière, “Amulettes

326  Jordan Poole magiques: à propos d’un ouvrage récent,” Classical Philology 46, no. 2 (1951): 81–92. Rose and Barb reached similar conclusions. See Herbert J. Rose, “A Blood-Staunching Amulet,” The Harvard Theological Review 44, no. 1 (1951): 60; Alphonse A. Barb, “Bois du sang, Tantale,” Syria: Archéologie, art et histoire 29, no. 3/4 (1952): 274. 57 One might presume that someone who could read the Greek inscription would have the cultural knowledge of the Tantalus myth. Homer’s Odyssey 11.582–587 is our earliest source for the punishment of Tantalus. Pindar would later hint at the cannibalistic themes in his Olympians 1. Tantalus, son of Zeus and Plouto, was an infamous figure within Greek stories for his transgressions against the gods. There are several variations of the Tantalus story, the most infamous of which tells of Tantalus committing filicide and attempting to feed his murdered son, Pelops, to the Olympian gods. His scheme only worked with one of the gods, Demeter, whose attention was being taken up by the absence of her daughter, Persephone. The Olympians took great offence at Tantalus’ crimes and placed him in Hades as punishment. He was tormented by a fruit branch that was forever moving just out of his reach and a lake beneath him that receded whenever he attempted to quench his unending thirst. 58 The triangular form of the text is described within magical recipes. It is common for both the first and last letters to be systematically removed in following lines, making an isosceles triangle shape. See Papyri Graecae Magicae (PGM) 2.2 and Brashear for other examples of πτερυγοειδῶς. William M. Brashear, “The Greek Magical Papyri: An Introduction and Survey; Annotated Bibliography (1928–1994),” in Heidentum: Die religiösen Verhältnisse in den Provinzen (Forts.), Band 18/5, Teilband Religion, ed. Haase Wolfgang (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1995), 3433. 59 See Bonner, Studies in Magical Amulets, 88. This idea has since been echoed by Mastrocinque, who draws parallels with the use of magic to vanquish a demon by naming it and having the name disappear slowly during the incantation. See Attilio Mastrocinque, “Studi sulle gemme gnostiche,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 130 (2000): 131–38; Faraone, Vanishing Acts, 36, evidences the general agreement in scholarship of this approach. 60 See Faraone, Vanishing Acts, 47. The user who wishes to bring their bleeding to an end begins reading the incantation from the top of the amulet; as they continue to read the following lines, the spell length shortens, creating a link with their bleeding. There is also the possibility that reading from the bottom-up had the same intention as the spell grew in length and power, exerting its will on Tantalus and imploring him to attempt to drink the blood, making it recede away from his touch. 61 Seyrig, “Invidiae medici,” 4, proposed that this figure was Tantalus, but this view has been thrown out by the scholarly community since Tantalus is described as an old man in Homer. Analogous gem designs appear to verify the identity as Ares. See Faraone, Vanishing Acts, 40; Mastrocinque, “Amuleti e medicina,” 116. 62 Despite claim of a consensus by Faraone, Vanishing Acts, 35, Delatte and Derchain suggested that the “uterus” was a trophy, connecting the gem with the figure of Ares on the obverse. See Armand Delatte and Philippe Derchain, Les intailles magiques gréco-égyptiennes (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1964), 281–86. The arguments for and against the uterus identity are provided by Katherine A. Marino, who argues that the amulet was instead intended to staunch bleeding or cure the pains associated with another organ closely associated with blood, the liver. See Katherine R. Marino, “Setting the Womb in Its Place: Toward a Contextual Archaeology of Greco-Egyptian Uterine Amulets” (Doctoral Dissertation, Brown University, Providence, RI, 2004). 63 These names are common within PGM. A notable instance is PGM XII.263–67, which states that Adonai and Sabaoth are Jewish names for a kingly deity who is known across cultures, including by the Egyptians, Greeks, and Parthians. For an analysis of the spell, see Jacco Dieleman, “The Greco-Egyptian Magical Papyri,” in Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic: Religions in the Greco-Roman World, ed. David Frankfurter (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019), 311.

Menopause and Agency in Late Antiquity  327 64 The eternal nature of the gem and the spells can be found in other motifs found on gems, including the ouroboros and palindrome, which have no clear beginning nor end.

Bibliography Primary Literature Aëtius of Amida. Aetii medici contractae ex veteribus medicinae tetrabiblos, hoc est quaternio, id est libri universales quatuor, singuli quatuor sermones complectentes, ut sint in summa quatuor sermonum quaterniones, id est sermones xvi per Janum Cornarium. . . Latine conscripti. Translated by Janus Cornarius. Basel: Froben and Episcopius, 1542. Aretaeus of Cappadocia. The Extant Works of Aretaeus, The Cappadocian. Aretaeus. Edited and translated by Francis Adams LL.D. Boston: Milford House Inc., 1972. Aristotle. Politics. Loeb Classical Library, Vol. XXI. Translated by Harris Rackham. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1932. ———. Generation of Animals. Loeb Classical Library, Vol. XIII. Translated by Arthur Leslie Peck. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1963. Betz, Hans Dieter. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. Translated by John M. Dillon and Edward N. O’Neil. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Dionysius. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities. Loeb Classical Library, Vols 1–2. Translated by Earnest Cary. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1937. Galen. Opera omnia. Edited by Karl Gottlob Kühn. Leipzig: Carolus Cnobloch, 1826. ———. Galen on the Affected Parts. Translated by Rudolph E. Siegel. Basel: Karger, 1976. ———. Galeni De locis affectis I-II: Edidit, in linguam Germanicam vertit, commentatus est. Edited by Florian Gärtner. Berlin, München and Boston: De Gruyter, 2015. ———. Hygiene. Loeb Classical Library, Vols 1–4. Translated by Ian Johnston. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2018. Hippocrates. De octimestri partu, De septimestri partu (spurium). Translated by Hermann Grensemann. Corpus Medicorvm Graecorum I 2, 1. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1968. ———. Coan Prenotions: Anatomical and Minor Clinical Writings. Loeb Classical Library, Vol. IX. Translated by Paul Potter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. ———. Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness. Loeb Classical Library, Vol. X. Translated by Paul Potter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. ———. Diseases of Women. Loeb Classical Library, Vol. XI. Translated by Paul Potter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Homer. Odyssey, Books 1–12. Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 104. Translated by Augustus Taber Murray. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919. Oribasius. Oribasii Collectionum medicarum reliquiae, libri XLIX-L, libri incerti, eclogae medicamentorum. Corpus Medicorvm Graecorum VI 2. Edited by Joannes Raeder. Leipzig and Berlin: Bibliotheca Teubneriana, 1933. Paulus Aegineta, Libri I-IV. Corpus Medicorvm Graecorum IX 1. Edited by Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Leipzig and Berlin: Bibliotheca Teubneriana, 1921. Pliny. Natural History, Books 3–7. Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 2. Translated by Harris Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942. Soranus. Sorani Gynaeciorum libri IV, De signis fracturarum, De fasciis, Vita Hippocratis secundum Soranum. Corpus Medicorvm Graecorum IV. Edited by Joannes Ilberg. Leipzig and Berlin: Bibliotheca Teubneriana, 1927.

328  Jordan Poole Secondary Literature Amundsen, Darrel W., and Carol Jean Diers. “The Age of Menopause in Classical Greece and Rome.” Human Biology 42, no. 1 (1970): 79–86. Barb, Alphonse A. “Bois du sang, Tantale.” Syria: Archéologie, art et histoire 29, no. 3/4 (1952): 271–84. Bonner, Campbell. Studies in Magical Amulets: Chiefly Greco-Egyptian. University of Michigan Studies Humanistic Series, Vol. XLIX. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1950. ———. The Campbell Bonner Magical Gems Database. Edited by Katalin Bélyácz, Kata Endreffy, and Árpád M. Nagy. Budapest: Collection of Classical Antiquities of the Museum of Fine Arts, 2015. Accessed April 15, 2023. http://cbd.mfab.hu. Brashear, William M. “The Greek Magical Papyri: An Introduction and Survey; Annotated Bibliography (1928–1994).” In Heidentum: Die religiösen Verhältnisse in den Provinzen (Forts.), Band 18/5, Teilband Religion, edited by Haase Wolfgang, 3380–684. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1995. Dasen, Véronique. “Healing Images. Gems and Medicine.” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 33, no. 2 (2014): 177–91. ———. “One God May Hide Another: Magical Gems in a Cross-Cultural Context.” In Magical Gems in Their Contexts: Proceedings of the International Workshop Held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, February 16–18, 2012, edited by Kata Endreffy, Árpád M. Nagy, and Jeffrey Spier, 47–58. Rome: L’erma di Bretschneider, 2019. Dasen, Véronique, and Árpád M. Nagy. “Gems.” In Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic: Religions in the Greco-Roman World, edited by David Frankfurter, 416–55. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019. Delatte, Armand, and Philippe Derchain. Les intailles magiques gréco-égyptiennes. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1964. Dieleman, Jacco. “The Greco-Egyptian Magical Papyri.” In Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic: Religions in the Greco-Roman World, edited by David Frankfurter, 283–321. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019. Dzwiza, Kirsten. “Insight into the Transmission of Ancient Magical Signs: Three Textual Artefacts from Pergamon.” MHNH: Revista internacional de investigación sobre magia y astrología antiguas 15 (2015): 31–56. Endreffy, Kata, Árpád M. Nagy, and Jeffrey Spier. Magical Gems in Their Contexts: Proceedings of the International Workshop Held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, ­February 16–18, 2012. Rome: L’erma di Bretschneider, 2019. Entwistle, Christopher, and Noël Adams. “Gems of Heaven”: Recent Research on Engraved Gemstones in Late Antiquity c. AD 200–600. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 2011. Faraone, Christopher A. “Does Tantalus Drink the Blood, or Not? An Enigmatic Series of Inscribed Hematite Gemstones.” In Antike Mythen: Medien, Transformationen und Konstruktionen, edited by Ueli Dill and Christine Walde, 248–73. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009. ———. “Text, Image, and Medium: The Evolution of Greco-Roman Magical Gemstones.” In “Gems of Heaven”: Recent Research on Engraved Gemstones in Late Antiquity c. AD 200–600, edited by Chris Entwistle and Noël Adams, 50–61. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 2012. ———. Vanishing Acts on Ancient Greek Amulets: From Oral Performance to Visual Design. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement. London: Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, 2012.

Menopause and Agency in Late Antiquity  329 Festugière, André-Jean. “Amuletes magique: à propos d’un ouvrage récent.” Classical Philology 46, no. 2 (1951): 81–92. Foxcroft, Louise. Hot Flushes, Cold Science: The History of the Modern Menopause. London: Granta, 2009. Gilman, Sander L., Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau, and Elaine Showalter. Hysteria Beyond Freud. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993. Hanson, Anne E. “Uterine Amulets and Greek Uterine Medicine.” Medicina nei secoli: Journal of History of Medicine and Medical Humanities 7, no. 2 (1995): 281–99. Jackson, Stanley W. Melancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986. Jouanna, Jacques. “Médecine rationnelle et magie: Le statut des amulettes et des incantations chez Galien.” Revue des études grecques 124, no. 1 (2011): 47–77. King, Helen. Hippocrates’ Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece. London: Routledge, 1998. Koerber, Amy. From Hysteria to Hormones: A Rhetorical History. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018. Laqueur, Thomas W. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. Marino, Katherine R. “Setting the Womb in Its Place: Toward a Contextual Archaeology of Greco-Egyptian Uterine Amulets.” Doctoral Dissertation. Brown University, Providence, RI, 2004. Mastrocinque, Attilio. “Studi sulle gemme gnostiche.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 130 (2000): 131–38. ———. “Kronos, Shiva, and Asklepios: Studies in Magical Gems and Religions of the Roman Empire.” In Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 101, No. 5. Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 2011. ———. “The Colours of Magical Gems.” In “Gems of Heaven”: Recent Research on Engraved Gemstones in Late Antiquity c. AD 200–600, edited by Chris Entwistle and Noël Adams, 62–68. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 2012. ———. “Amuleti e medicina: Rimedi per problemi mestruali.” In Cultural Constructions of the Uterus in Pre-Modern Societies, Past and Present, edited by Erica Couto-Ferreira and Lorenzo Verderame, 113–25. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018. Mattern, Susan P. “Panic and Culture: Hysterike Pnix in the Ancient Greek World.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 70, no. 4 (2014): 491–515. ———. The Slow Moon Climbs: The Science, History, and Meaning of Menopause. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. Michel, Simone. Die magischen Gemmen im Britischen Museum, Vol. 1. London: The British Museum Press, 2001. Nagy, Árpád M. “Daktylios Pharmakites: Magical Healing Gems and Rings in the GrecoRoman World.” In Ritual Healing: Magic, Ritual, and Medical Therapy from Antiquity until the Early Modern Period, edited by Ildikó Csepregi and Charles Burnett, 71–106. Firenze: SISMEL—Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2012. ———. “Engineering Ancient Amulets: Magical Gems of the Roman Imperial Period.” In The Materiality of Magic, edited by Dietrich Boschung and Jan N. Bremmer, 205–41. Paderborn: Verlag Wilhelm Fink, 2015. Rose, Herbert Jennings. “A Blood-Staunching Amulet.” The Harvard Theological Review 44, no. 1 (1951): 59–60.

330  Jordan Poole Sax, Margaret, J. McNabb, and N. D. Meeks. “Methods of Engraving Mesopotamian Cylinder Seals: Experimental Confirmation.” Archaeometry 40, no. 1 (1998): 1–21. Scull, Andrew. Hysteria: The Disturbing History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Seyrig, Henri Arnold. “Invidiae medici.” Berytus: Archaeological Studies 1 (1934): 1–11. Tassinari, Gabriella. “La produzione glittica a Roma: La questione delle officine nel mondo romano in epoca imperiale.” Rivista di studi liguri LXXIV (2008): 251–317. Tsatsou, Eleni. “Uterine Amulets: Amulets that Protect the Uterus or that Reinforce Erotic Desire?” In Magical Gems in Their Contexts: Proceedings of the International Workshop Held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Februart 16–18, 2012, edited by Kata Endreffy, Árpád M. Nagy, and Jeffrey Spier, 271–82. Rome: L’erma di Bretschneider, 2019. Wilkins, John M. “Treatment of the Man: Galen’s Preventive Medicine in the De sanitate tuenda.” In Homo Patiens: Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World, edited by Georgia Petridou and Chiara Thumiger, 413–31. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015.

17 From the Depths of Sin to the Highness of Holiness The Female Body as Witness of the Journey to Sanctity in the Life of Mary the Egyptian Andra Jugănaru To Marianne Sághy (1951–2018), caring teaching and patient mentor, a funny, creative, and inspiring scholar, a joyful and energetic friend of all, and an avid lover of life. I am grateful for her unforgettably insightful courses, for the endless support, which she generously offered, for the wonderful memories that I will always cherish, and for the good spirit that she gifted me with. May her memory be eternal.

Introduction Having been before a woman full of all kinds of sins, today you have been proven a Bride of Christ through repentance. You desired the citizenship of the angels, and you trampled down the demons with the weapon of the Cross. For this, most glorious Mary, you are a Bride of the Kingdom!1 These verses are one of the kontakia sung on the fifth Sunday of the Great Lent, when the Eastern Church celebrates Mary the Egyptian as a model of spiritual ascension. Her life is read at the matins of that week’s Thursday and is presented as an icon of repentance. Her story of life is known at least since the sixth century, when it was already widespread within male monasteries. Soon after, it also spread rapidly in the West through several Latin forms, so much so that she was even mixed up with the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene.2 How did Mary, believed to be “a sinful woman,” just like other deprived women, become “the Bride of Christ,” with a totally transformed, even angelic body, who surpassed in holiness even the most zealous ascetics, such as Zosimas? In the following chapter, I will survey the earliest (written) account of Mary’s bios, focusing on the literary portrayal of her body in her transition towards the angelic life. By following the representation of the successive stages through which her body passes during Mary’s earthly life, I will argue that Mary’s hagiographer constructs her body both as a vehicle and as a testimony of her metamorphosis.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-24

332  Andra Jugănaru The Vita of a Holy Harlot Attributed to the Patriarch Sophronius of Jerusalem, the Life of Mary the Egyptian belongs to a rich tradition of hagiographical literature dedicated to the so-called holy harlots. Other similar texts, such as the Life of Saint Pelagia of Antioch, the Life of Saint Thaïs, and the Life of Mary, the Niece of Abraham, propose similar models of sanctity, valuing women for more than their “manly” character, a pattern recognized in most of the hagiographical accounts of late antique women. Whether it is a genuine work of Sophronius, the Bishop of Jerusalem, who recorded in writing an oral legend of Mary the Egyptian, in Greek, or the author was someone else, the text existed in the seventh century, and by the eighth century it was already translated into Latin.3 The author titled the work4 “Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας τῆς ἀπὸ ἑταιρίδων ὁσίως ἀσκησάσης κατὰ τὴν ἔρημον τοῦ Ἰορδάνου.”5 This vita shares literary topoi of biographical texts dedicated to saints of the desert, written since the fourth century. One such text is Jerome’s Life of Paul the First Hermit.6 The author of the vita merges the biblical topos of the corrupted woman, who, through her penitence, after washing the feet of Christ with her own tears, thanks to the love of Christ, becomes forgiven, with the generally acknowledged figures of the recluses in the desert. As Benedicta Ward observed, the story of Mary the Egyptian follows the pattern of stories whose main character is a former prostitute (the most socially despised sin of a woman) who becomes a saint. She argued that such stories were intentionally written by male authors with the purpose not only to provide a model of genuine repentance but also to illustrate what awareness of the need for salvation means for an ascetic.7 Patricia Cox-Miller explained, however, that the oxymoronic literary construction of the “harlot-saint” illustrates best another image, contradictory for the late antique monastic audience: that of the “holy woman.”8 Among the many models used stands also the one of the sinful woman despised by a group of male ascetics, apparently thriving with ascetic practices but hiddenly proud of what they believe represents the results of their own efforts. Such a woman, apparently hopelessly damned, repents and thus overcomes the male ascetics’ pride precisely through her harsh ascetic practices and modesty. One such example is the nun at the monastery in Tabennesi, who was despised by male ascetics as being “foolish,” and thus with no hope of being ever saved.9 As far as the structure of the narrative is concerned, the Life of Saint Mary the Egyptian focuses on two figures: that of Mary and that of the monk Zosimas. In the story, Zosimas is presented as the only eyewitness to Mary’s proven sanctity. In the beginning of the tale, Zosimas, a 53-year-old monk living in a Palestinian monastery since his early childhood, finds himself facing a danger: he has so much progressed spiritually in his monastery that he cannot improve anymore. Is there a monk on earth who is capable to hand over to me anything new, or who is able to provide to me a form of asceticism that I do not know or have not practiced? Is there a man among those leading a philosopher’s life in the desert, who surpasses me in practice or in contemplation?10

From the Depths of Sin to the Highness of Holiness 333 Apparently willing to learn more on ascetic practices, the monk Zosimas, who was otherwise experienced, wonders whether there is any other man who might practice an ascetic life higher than his. An unnamed being appears to him and tells him: You did it well to struggle as much as it was possible for a human being and you accomplished well the ascetic path. However, there is no one among the human beings who would achieve perfection. Yet, the struggle that is before you is greater than the one that you have completed, even if you do not know it.11 The same being guides Zosimas towards a monastery near the river Jordan, where the abbot welcomes him. The author describes this settlement as a place where the monks “were admirably recreating the divine paradise.” At this point of the story, the author reveals the aim of their asceticism: For all of them there was one and first only endeavor, each of them to be dead with respect to the body, as if once for all he had died to the world and to everything in the world and would not exist at all. They were having an inexhaustible nourishment, the divinely inspired words; they were feeding their bodies only with the necessary things, bread, and water, as each one was inflamed for the divine love.12 Later in the vita, Mary actually achieves the aim of “being dead with respect to the body.” The story continues with an exposition of the rules of the monastery. Accordingly, almost all the monks were supposed to spend the Lenten period outside the monastery, in the desert. Every monk had to live on his own, without seeing or talking to anyone. Before leaving the monastery, each monk was allowed to take with himself an amount of food, enough for the fasting period. The monks were supposed to return to the monastery on the Palm Sunday, and they were not allowed to tell the experience they lived in the desert. According to the custom, Zosimas left the monastery where he was a new member. His first experience of wandering into the desert during the Lent resembles the intricate journeys into the desert of Moses. The image of Zosimas also recalls the prophet Elijah,13 and his way of fasting recalls John the Baptist, and even Christ, who fasted for 40 days. In each of the episodes of loneliness in the desert, recalled in the Old and the New Testaments, the main characters are part of a significant event or live an astonishing experience after the fasting period. Following the rule, Zosimas departed from the monastery and crossed the Jordan River. It was there that he decided to walk deeper and deeper into the desert, to look for a more spiritually advanced ascetic “man,” from whom he could learn more about askesis. Following the schedule of all the monks at the monastery that he had just temporarily left, Zosimas prayed, kept vigils, ate very little food, and wore only his monastic garb without any change.14

334  Andra Jugănaru His daily practices in the desert follow the same pattern for the first 20 days of the Lent: he walks into the desert, prays facing East, and sleeps on the ground. After 20 days, precisely in the middle of the Lent, and not at the end of the entire fasting period as it is the case with the other biblical characters mentioned earlier, he lives a turning-point experience. While he is praying as usual, he sees “a shadow as of a human body.”15 Thinking that it is a vision of the devil, a temptation, according to a well-known topos of the ascetic literature, he “seals himself with the sign of the Cross, to shake off the fear.”16 Thus, he understands that the image he sees in front of his eyes is the real body of a real woman, walking at noontime.17 This proves to be the answer revealed to his initial quest. Indeed, no “man” surpasses him in ascetic practices, but a woman does. His expressed desire for meeting a spiritual teacher is about to be fulfilled. The appearance (rendered in words of neutral gender, “τὸ ὁρώμενον”) is unusual: “the appearance was naked, its body was black as it was blackened from the flame of the sun, and its hair on the head was white as wool, but just a few and it reached no further than the neck of the body.”18 The body he sees reflects the harshness of the ascetic life lived in the harshness of the desert, in the burning heat of the sun. The nakedness of the body is a proof of the appearance’s loneliness in the desert. As the prophets, the appearance (at this stage, Zosimas thinks that he sees a man, as rendered in the text in masculine)19 lives an independent and secluded life there.20 The appearance, perceived by Zosimas as a man, seems pious, but without the help or intervention of any clergyman. The hagiographer inserts this detail, emphasizing once more the strength of the anchoritic lifestyle. The putative man’s physical appearance is striking, as the portrait that the hagiographer creates for him resembles in turn both the bride of the Song of Songs 1:5–6 (“Dark am I, yet lovely,/daughters of Jerusalem,/dark like the tents of Kedar,/like the tent curtains of Solomon./Do not stare at me because I am dark,/because I am darkened by the sun”) and the Son of Man in Revelation 1: 14–15 (“The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace”). The hagiographer compares this first encounter with the meeting between Christ and Satan in the desert. Since the appearance is running from his sight, Zosimas tries to catch it. This is when he breaks the Lenten rule of not seeing or talking to anyone, a rule that he had previously assumed at his departure from the monastery.21 After running for a while in the direction of the appearance, when he finally manages to come close enough to it, he cries out: “Why are you running away from me, an old and sinful man? O servant of the true God, wait for me, whoever you are.”22 Here, too, Zosimas addresses his interlocutor as a male person: “δοῦλε τοῦ ὄντος Θεοῦ.” He would never imagine that the “servant of the true God” whom he had spotted could be a woman. Zosimas is exhausted and cannot go further. He and the appearance eventually stop on opposite banks of a dry streambed. The appearance answers, turning its face away: “Father Zosimas, forgive me for the sake of the Lord, I am not able to turn and be seen by you so in person, because I am a woman, and naked, as you see, and I have the privy parts of my body uncovered.”23 The appearance has transformed the body so much that Zosimas has to be told that he was seeing a woman. She then asks Zosimas to throw her his own cloak “so that

From the Depths of Sin to the Highness of Holiness 335 I may cover the woman’s weakness, and I may turn toward you.”24 Zosimas was overwhelmed with “terror and the stupor of the mind.”25 His surprise was that the woman knew his name, a fact that he sees as a sign of her holiness. Moreover, he does not know hers. He will learn it only after her death. The woman desires to have what she calls “woman’s weakness,” that is, her privy parts, covered, because of Zosimas’ presence. Further in the story, as she is finally dressed in the old and torn cloak, the woman can look at Zosimas, whom she feels the need to ask: “Why, Father Zosimas, did you decide to look at a sinful woman?”26 Zosimas’ answer is to kneel down and to ask for her blessing. She kneels in turn and asks for the same favor. Again, the hagiographer inserts a well-known episode from the Life of Saint Paul the First Hermit, in which Antony and Paul invite each other to break the bread.27 After asking one another for blessing and prayers for a long time, the woman agrees to perform what she was asked to, in a humble gesture of obedience which, in fact, assigns her a superior role.28 During her deep and intense prayer, Zosimas sees that “she had risen a cubit from the earth and was hung up in the air and thus she was praying,”29 her body surpassing the physical laws and natural boundaries and being detached from the earth. Zosimas is again tempted to believe that she is a demon, and her prayer is only an illusion. The woman assures him that she is “not a spirit, but earth and dust and altogether flesh, which is incapable of conceiving of anything spiritual.”30 However, seeing that she is able to understand his thoughts, he makes a surprising gesture: he embraces her feet with tears, in a symbolic reversal of roles in the scene of Luke 7: 36–50, in which a sinful woman embraced Christ’s feet, washed them with tears, and dried them with her hair.31 By doing this gesture, Zosimas takes the role of the sinful woman, while he acknowledges the ascetic woman’s superiority. Zosimas explains to her that he was aware of the reason for which she “had clothed the nakedness and for whose sake she had consumed the flesh”: the reason was Christ himself.32 He then begs her to reveal to him the story of her asceticism, thinking that it was not by chance that God had led him to her. Despite her shame, she agrees: “But since you have seen my naked body, I reveal you naked also my deeds, so that you may know with how much shame and humiliation my soul is filled.”33 Her deeds are many and the story of her life complicated. It started in Egypt, where, as she turned 12 years old, she left her parents, excited by the life she could have in Alexandria. There not only did she defile her body, but she abused and destroyed it. She confesses: “how without control and insatiably I threw myself into intercourse. . . for more than 17 years I continued to be a public provocation for debauchery, truly without any payment.”34 As she confesses, she was, in fact, not even a proper prostitute, but something that she judges as worse, since she was not receiving anything, although often men wished to pay her. Her desired lust was, thus, a “free gift.” You should not think that I did not accept payment because I was rich, for I lived by begging and often by spinning hemp, but I was having an unsatisfied and uncontrollable love to roll in mud. For me, this was and was considered to be life: to perform continuously the violation of nature.35

336  Andra Jugănaru After she confesses the abuse of and even insult against her own body, which she did for a very long time, she then focuses on one particular episode. One day a large group of Egyptians and Lybians was embarking on a ship to Jerusalem, to celebrate the feast of the Elevation of the Cross.36 Out of curiosity, she wanted to join the pilgrims, and she was not worried for not having money, since she planned to use her body to pay for her trip. She saw the journey to Jerusalem as an opportunity “to have more lovers for my lust.” Like Jezebel, Mary’s aim was to seduce men. What tongue can speak or what ears can bear to hear what happened on the ship and during the journey and the things which I obliged those wretched to do against their will? There is no kind of debauchery, speakable or unspeakable, of which I had not became a teacher to those miserable men.37 Once she arrived in Jerusalem, she even engaged in worse practices, corrupting “both citizens and foreigners.”38 On the feast day, she attempted to follow the crowd again. People were heading to the church of the Holy Sepulcher, where she wanted to enter in the middle of the crowd. However, an invisible “divine force”39 suddenly “prevented” her from crossing the threshold of the church. After several attempts at entering the church failed because of the same invisible force, she gave up this purpose, astonished. It was the first time when she was prohibited from obtaining what she wanted. Thus, she started to reflect on her own corruption. The sight of the icon of the Theotokos was the turning point of her entire life. She started crying and beating her breasts for her past sins; remembering the tax collector of the parable (Luke 18: 9–14), she confessed her previous life to the Theotokos herself and she begged the Theotokos to let her enter the church. She took the Theotokos as a guide and acknowledged the purity of the Virgin’s life as the antithesis of hers. Thus, she promised that, if she was granted the permission to venerate the Holy Cross, she will no more insult this flesh by any shameful intercourse whatsoever, but when I look at the wood of the cross of your Son, I will immediately renounce to the world and to everything in the world, and immediately I will go wherever You, as the guarantor of salvation, suggest and guide me.40 Due to her repentance, the Theotokos miraculously allowed her to enter the church and go to the Holy of Holies to venerate the Cross. As she relates, “I, the wretched one, threw myself on the earth and venerated that holy ground.”41 She then returned to the icon and reiterated the promise of transforming her life under the guidance of the Theotokos. She heard a voice telling her to cross the Jordan River. In this moment, as a result of this dialogue with the Virgin Mary, her body showed the first signs of transformation. She was no more attractive to men. On the contrary, someone called her “amma” (mother) and gave her three coins, with which she bought three loaves of bread and went out of the city gates.42 As she reached the Jordan River, she washed her hands and face in the river, a symbolic gesture of cleansing her defiled body, and then she performed a surprising action: she baptized herself, by throwing herself in the water of Jordan,

From the Depths of Sin to the Highness of Holiness  337 not assisted by any priest. Previous hagiographical accounts record Saint Thecla performing the same ritual alone, not assisted by any priest. After this moment, she took the Holy Communion, ate half a loaf, and drank water from the Jordan. On the following day, she crossed the river, and under the Theotokos’ guidance, she started her wandering in the desert, eating from time to time from the remaining two-and-a-half loaves. Zosimas had found her 47 years after this episode.43 Zosimas is astonished. He asks her how she was able to endure the sudden change of her life. She confesses that she was “fighting the wild beasts of irrational desires”44 for meat, fish, wine, which had made her drunk in the past, as well as with the “unreasonable desire for erotic songs.”45 The remedy for such temptations was not only the desert itself, with its harsh conditions. After her repeated repentance and deep prayers to the Theotokos, she was surrounded by a light, which protected her from evil thoughts. The same light, which has become a cloth of the nude body, saved her from a new threatening depravity. She had to struggle with such temptations for 17 years, the same amount of time in which she had been previously devoted to fornication.46 Her body had been exposed to extreme treatments: in Alexandria, for 17 years it had been the object of carnal pleasures. In the desert of Jordan, on the contrary, it had been deprived of food, drink, and any protection against extreme temperatures. Naïvely, Zosimas asks her whether during this period she had food or clothing. She answers that the loaves were her food for those 17 years, after which she was fed with the herbs of the desert. Like the loaves of Elisha (III Kingdoms 17:12–16, LXX) and Christ (Matthew 14:13–21; Mark 6:31–44; Luke 9:10–17; John 6:5–15), her loaves multiplied too. As for her own clothes, after 17  years of exposure to extreme weather, they were torn and fell to pieces, so she “bore much privation from the cold and also from the flame of the summer, being burned up by the heartburn and being frozen and trembling from frost.”47 She narrated that “often I fell to the ground and remained almost without breath and unmoved. Well, I have fought with many misfortunes and incurable temptations.”48 After 17 years of repentance for 17 years lived in fornication, she was left without anything of her previous life, neither food, drink, songs, nor clothes. As a result of her spiritual cure from her past life, her body transforms again. It becomes strong enough to resist the extreme weather of the desert, and at the same time its appearance, when Zosimas discovers her, is totally different. She finishes her story with an abundance of quotations from the Books of Moses, the Psalter, Job, and the Gospels, making Zosimas marvel again about her wisdom, acquired despite her illiteracy. When I  only think of those evils from which he delivered me, I  have an inexhaustible nourishment, the hope of my salvation; for I am nourished and am covered by the Speech of God which holds the universe together [see Hebrews 1:3]. For man shall not live by bread alone [Deuteronomy 8:3, cited in Matthew 4:4] and because they had no covering, those who put off the tunic of sin [Genesis 3:21] have clothed themselves in the Rock. (Job 24:8 according to the Septuagint)49

338  Andra Jugănaru The “tunic” of this text refers to the leather tunics, in which God clothed Adam and Eve after the Fall. “Rock,” πέτρα, is a divine name. Therefore, those who have put off the tunic of sin, coming from the sin of Adam and Eve and repeated by every personal sin, are becoming clothed in the Rock, that is, God. Here, the Rock is identified to the Speech of God, ῥήμα τοῦ Θεοῦ, which is traditionally interpreted as meaning the Holy Spirit. So, it is the Holy Spirit that those who are delivered from sin and attain a state of sinlessness, just as Mary does, are putting on as a cloth that protects them from all harshness of the weather and of the temptations. This is the symbolism of Mary’s nakedness. She is not naked, because the Spirit surrounds her as divine light clothes her. In this way, her food is no longer a physical one. She is now nourished with the hope for salvation. She then begs Zosimas to return to his monastery and come back to her on the bank of Jordan, in the inhabited part, one year later, “on the holy evening of the Mystical Supper,”50 with the Holy Communion kept in a “holy vessel, worthy of such mysteries.”51 The hagiographer reinserts the motif of venerating the ground: after the woman had left, “he bent his knees and venerated the ground in which the soles of her feet stood.”52 One year later, Zosimas came to the appointed place with the Eucharist. He was worried that she would not be able to cross the river, but he saw that she sealed the Jordan with the sign of the precious cross (for the night was a full-moon one, as he said) and as soon as she sealed it, she set foot on the water and walked over the waters and she proceeded towards him.53 The hagiographer inserts this episode, which imitates the miraculous stepping over the waters of Christ and Peter (Matthew 14:14–21), through which he shows again that the woman’s body surpassed the laws of nature. For Zosimas, this crossing is the last proof of her achieved perfection: “Indeed, truthful is the God who has promised that those who clean themselves become like God [Plato, Theaetetus 176b].”54 Exalted with joy, she asks him for another favor: to return in one year on the same spot where they first met. Zosimas returns at the settled time but, not being able to find her, he prays to be shown “your inviolate treasure that you have hidden in this desert.  .  . the angel in a body, of whom the world is not worthy.”55 The woman’s body is finally transformed: in the eyes of Zosimas, it incarnates an angel, a being above humans. A little later, Zosimas saw at the eastern side [of the river] the holy woman lying dead, as she placed her hands as they had to and was lying so that she was looking toward the East. He ran to her and washed the feet of the blessed woman with his tears, because he was not daring to touch any other part [of her body].56 Again, the scene of the sinful woman washing the feet of Christ with her own tears is repeated. The woman’s body was partly covered with the torn monastic cloak,

From the Depths of Sin to the Highness of Holiness  339 which Zosimas had given her two years before. It is the moment when Zosimas realizes a marvelous strength of her body, which she had acquired after having taken the Holy Communion. Even though the woman was illiterate, she left a will written on the sand, in which she made known her name and the time of her passing away. Thus, Zosimas understands that, immediately after receiving the Communion, Mary reached the place of her death, crossing in an hour the same distance that he had been able to cover with difficulty in 20 days.57 Again, the body of the woman transcends the natural laws. This time, it transcends the laws of time, not only by the marvelous one-hour journey, but also since her dead body remained unaltered for one year, despite the extreme heat of the desert. It is the moment when Zosimas can learn her name, Mary. Zosimas was not able to bury her, as he had no tools with him. He found a twig thrown on the ground, but the earth was too arid and thus impossible to be dug.58 He then saw “a big lion standing by the dead body of the blessed one and licking her soles.”59 As in the Life of Paul, the lion digs the grave, and Zosimas entombs Mary’s entirely transformed body. Conclusions The story of a sinful woman who enters the Holy Sepulcher and then repents in the desert is not unique. The mid-sixth-century Life of Saint Kyriakos, by Cyril of Scythopolis, follows the same pattern as the Life of Mary the Egyptian. Another story of a nun seduced in Jerusalem was well-known by the desert fathers.60 Besides the earlier hagiographical account of Paul the first hermit and biblical motives, Sophronius combines in his narrative elements from the other two lives. The evolution of Mary’s life is strongly related to the use of her body. The turning points of her existence, towards the depth of sin, in Jerusalem, after the decay of her clothes, the last markers of her previously sinful life, and finally towards the highness of sanctity, are marked by the extreme exposure of her body. Mary’s askesis in the desert totally transforms her body. Her appearance in front of Zosimas takes the eschatological image of Christ: just as Christ transfigured his body in key moments of his teaching on earth or after the resurrection, so also was Mary’s body transformed. Thus, transformed in her body, she is revealed to Zosimas as the teacher in asceticism for whom he had been eagerly searching. At their first encounter, Zosimas cannot perceive that the appearance he sees is in fact a woman. As it turns out in the narration, Zosimas venerates her as a saint, and she becomes his ascetic road. The hagiographer not only intertwines the stories of Zosimas and Mary, but he also crosses their genders. Twice in the narrative, Zosimas plays the role of the sinful woman washing with her tears the feet of Christ, who is represented by Mary. When Zosimas finds Mary dead, he does not dare to touch her, as Mary Magdalene was told not to touch Christ. On the other hand, the story of Mary illustrates the theological principle of the quasi-equality of the saints with Christ—often accused as being an Origenist tenet. As Zosimas acknowledges Mary as equal to Christ, he acts accordingly, performing gestures of veneration.

340  Andra Jugănaru To conclude, the Vita of Mary is indeed the story of a corporeal metamorphosis: from the vessel of sin to the vessel of sanctity, through her extreme erotic force, redirected from carnal pleasure to the love for her Divine Bridegroom. Mary needs 17 years of intense asceticism in the desert in order to overcome the intensity of the 17 years she had spent as “a public provocation for debauchery.”61 During this process, the markers of her previous life disappear entirely: the clothes are torn apart by the weather and the temptations disappear. For another 30 years, Mary lives in the harshness of the desert and her body is again transformed, so much so that Zosimas perceives the appearance he initially sees as a man. Finally, Mary becomes Christ-like, as she is able to perform Christ-like miracles. Thus, it is not by chance that the story has become so well-known and influential in the following centuries. Notes 1 The Lenten Triodion, trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2002), 456, accessed May 10, 2023, www.ponomar.net/data/ lenten_triodion.pdf, revised. Kondakion of the Sixth Canticle of the canon of Saint Mary of Egypt, sung in the matins of the fifth Sunday of the Great Lent: “Ἡ πορνείαις πρότερον μεμεστωμένη παντοίαις, Χριστοῦ Νύμφη σήμερον, τῇ μετανοίᾳ ἐδείχθης, Ἀγγέλων τὴν πολιτείαν ἐπιποθοῦσα, δαίμονας, Σταυροῦ τῷ ὅπλῳ καταπατοῦσα· διὰ τοῦτο Bασιλείας, ἐφάνης νύμφη Μαρία ἔνδοξε.” Τριῴδιον κατανυκτικόν, περιέχον ἅπασαν τὴν ἀνήκουσαν αὐτῷ ἀκολουθίαν τῆς ἁγίας καὶ μεγάλης Τεσσαρακοστῆς, second edition, eds. Ioannes and Spyridon Veloudes (Venice: Ἐκ τοῦ ἑλληνικοῦ τυπογραφείου τοῦ Ἁγίου Γεωργίου, 1856), 295–96, accessed May 10, 2023, https://anemi.lib.uoc.gr/ metadata/d/5/7/metadata-159–0000102.tkl. 2 Benedicta Ward, Harlots of the Desert: A Study of Repentance in Early Monastic Sources (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1986), 26. 3 Saint Sophronius, Life of St. Mary of Egypt, trans. Maria Kouli, in Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints’ Lives in Translation, ed. Alice-Mary Talbot (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1996), 66. 4 The Latin translation of the Greek text, by Paul the Deacon, is to be found in PL 73, col. 671–690. An English translation of the text is provided by Maria Kouli, Life of St. Mary of Egypt, in Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints’ Lives in Translation, ed. Alice-Mary Talbot (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1996), 65–93. There is a French translation of the Greek text, by Arnauld d’Andilly from 1644, with an introduction by Jacques Lacarrière: Saint Sophronius, Vie de Marie Égyptienne pénitente, in Vie de sainte Marie Égyptienne pénitente suivie de Vie de Saint Syméon stylite (Montbonnot-St. Martin: Éditions Jérôme Millon, 1985), 27–96. I have found Kouli’s translation too imprecise for permitting a close analysis of the text, so in the following, all translations from the vita are mine. 5 The Greek text has two editions: BHG 1042, PG 87 (3), col. 3693–3726, and Ἁγιος Σωφρόνιος Πατριάρχης Ἰεροσολύμων, Βίος τῆς ὁσίας Μαρίας τῆς Αἰγυπτίας, third edition, ed. the Holy Monastery of Stavronikita (Mount Athos: Ekdoseis Domos, [1988] 2008). As the latter edition was not available to me, I  consulted only the text of the Patrologia Graeca. To my knowledge, there is no critical edition of the text. Brief details about the Greek text and its Latin translation are available in the article of Onnaca Heron, “The Lioness in the Text: Mary of Egypt as Immasculated Female Saint,” ­Quidditas: Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 21 (2000): 23–44.

From the Depths of Sin to the Highness of Holiness 341 6 See Jérôme, Trois vies de moines: Paul, Malchus, Hilarion, ed. and trans. Adalbert de Vogüé (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2007). Part of these elements were discussed by François Delmas “Remarques sur la Vie de Sainte Marie l’Égyptienne,” Échos d’Orient 4, no. 1 (1900): 35–42. 7 Ward, Harlots of the Desert, 33–34. 8 See Patricia Cox-Miller, “Is There a Harlot in the Text? Hagiography and the Grotesque,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33, no. 3 (2003): 423. 9 Virginia Burrus, The Sex Lives of Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 149; Lynda L. Coon, Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia University Press, 1997), 87. 10 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 3, 3700 C: “Ἆράγε ἔστιν ἐν τῇ γῇ μοναχός, ὁ δυνάμενος ξένον τι παραδοῦναί μοι, ἢ ὠφελῆσαί με ἰσχύων, ὅπερ οὐκ οἶδα, οὐδὲ πέπραχα, εἶδος ἀσκήσεως; ἆρα εὑρίσκεται τῶν ἐν ἐρήμῳ φιλοσοφούντων ἀνὴρ ὃς κατὰ πρᾶξιν ἢ θεωρίαν πρωτεύει μου;” The reference for all the quotes is: Jacques Paul Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus (series Graeca), MPG 87.3 (Paris: Migne, 1857–1866), 3697–726. 11 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 3, 3700 C: “καλῶς μὲν καὶ ὡς ἦν δυνατὸν ἀνθρώπῳ ἠγώνισαι, καλῶς δὲ καὶ τὸν ἀσκητικὸν δρόμον διήνυσας· πλὴν οὐδεὶς τῶν ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἐστὶν ἔχων τὸ τέλειον, ἀλλὰ μείζων ἐστὶν ὁ ἀγὼν ὁ προκείμενος τοῦ παρῳχηκότος ἥδη, κἂν ὑμεῖς οὐ γινώσκετε.” 12 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 5, 3701 B-C: “ἓν ἦν καὶ πρῶτον καὶ μόνον τὸ σπουδαζόμενον πᾶσι, τὸ ἕκαστον αὐτῶν νεκρὸν εἶναι τῷ σώματι, ὡς ἅπαξ τῷ κόσμῳ καὶ τοῖς ἐν κόσμῳ ἅπασιν ἀποθανόντα, καὶ μὴ ὑπάρχοντα. Τροφὴν δὲ εἶχον ἀδάπανον, τὰ θεόπνευστα λόγια· ἔτρεφον δὲ καὶ τὸ σῶμα τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις μόνοις, ἄρτῳ καὶ ὕδατι, ὡς ἕκαστον εἶναι πρὸς τὴν θείαν ἀγάπην διάπυρον.” 13 Coon remarks that Mary resembles Elijah, Saul, and Christ. See Coon, Sacred Fictions, 84–85. 14 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 9, 3074 C: “αὐτὸ τὸ ῥάκος ὅπερ ἠμφίεστο.” 15 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 10, 3075 A: “ἀποσκίασμα φανὲν ὡς ἀνθρωπίνου σώματος.” 16 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 10, 3075 A: “τῷ δὲ σημείῳ τοῦ σταυροῦ σφραγισάμενος [καὶ τὸν φόβον ἀποσεισάμενος].” 17 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 10, 3075 A: “ὁρᾷ τινα κατὰ ἀλήθειαν πρὸς μεσημβρίαν βαδίζοντα.” “He sees someone who in reality walks at noon.” The moment of the day, corresponding to the sixth hour, is the time when, according to the monastic tradition, the demonic temptations are the strongest. 18 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 10, 3075 A: “γυμνὸν δὲ ἦν τὸ ὁρώμενον, μέλαν τῷ σώματι, ὡς ἐξ ἡλιακῆς φλογὸς μέλαν γενόμενον, καὶ τρίχας ἔχοντα ἐν τῇ κεφαλῇ [λευκὰς] ὡσεὶ ἔριον, ὀλίγας δὲ καὶ αὐτάς, ὡς μὴ πλέον τοῦ τραχήλου τοῦ σώματος καταφέρεσθαι.” 19 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 10, 3075 Β 2–3: “Ἐζήτει γοῦν γνῶναι τίς καὶ ποταπὸς ὁ ὁρώμενος” (“he wanted to know who and of which kind was the man whom he saw”). 20 Coon, Sacred Fictions, 82. 21 This episode recalls Antony’s pursuit of Paul in Jerome’s, Life of Paul the First Hermit. 22 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 11, 3075 B: “Τί με φεύγεις γέροντα καὶ ἁμαρτωλόν; δοῦλε τοῦ ὄντος Θεοῦ, μεῖνόν με, ὅστις ἂν εἶ.” Here, too, Zosimas addresses his interlocutor as a male person: “δοῦλε τοῦ ὄντος Θεοῦ.” He would never imagine that the “servant of the true God” whom he had spotted could be a woman, “θεάσασθαι γύναιον.” 23 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 12, 3075 C:“Ἀββᾶ Ζωσιμᾶ, συγχώρησόν μοι διὰ τὸν Κύριον, οὐ δύναμαι ἐπιστραφῆναι καὶ ὀφθῆναί σοι οὕτως εἰς πρόσωπον·γυνὴ γάρ εἰμι. καὶ γυμνή, καθάπερ ὁρᾷς, καὶ τὴν αἰσχύνην τοῦ σώματός μου ἀπερικάλυπτον ἔχουσα.” 24 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 12, 3075 D: “ῥίψον μοι τὸ ῥάκος ὃ περιβέβλησαι, ὅπως ἐν αὐτῷ συγκαλύψω τὴν γυναικείαν ἀσθένειαν καὶ στρέψομαι πρός σε.” 25 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 12, 3075 D: “Τότε φρίκη καὶ φρενῶν ἔκστασις ἔλαβε τὸν Ζωσιμᾶν.”

342  Andra Jugănaru 26 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 13, 3078 A: “Τί σοι ἔδοξεν, ἀββᾶ Ζωσιμᾶ, ἁμαρτωλὸν.” Here, too, Zosimas addresses his interlocutor as a male person: “δοῦλε τοῦ ὄντος Θεοῦ.” See again n22. 27 A resemblance acknowledged by Ward, Coon, and Burrus in the aforementioned works. 28 Burrus, The Sex Lives of Saints, 250. 29 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 15, 3078 D: “ὁρᾷ αὐτὴν ὑψωθεῖσαν ὡς ἕνα πῆχυν ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς καὶ τῷ ἀέρι κρεμαμένην καὶ οὕτω προσεύχεσθαι.” 30 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 15, 3079: “καὶ πνεῦμα οὐκ εἰμί, ἀλλὰ γῆ καὶ σποδὸς καὶ τὸ ὅλον σάρξ, μηδὲν πνευματικὸν ἐννοήσασα.” 31 See also the same story in Matthew 26: 6–16 and Mark 14: 3–9, where the woman is not called a sinful one. 32 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 15, 3709 A: “κατὰ [τοῦ ὀνόματος] τοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἡμῶν . . . δι’ ὃν ταύτην ἠμφίεσο τὴν γύμνωσιν, δι’ ὂν τὰς σάρκας ταύτας οὕτω κατεδαπάνησας.” 33 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 17, 3709 C: “πλὴν ἐπείπερ γυμνόν μου τὸ σῶμα τεθέασαι. ἀπογυμνώσω σοι καὶ τὰς πράξεις μου, ἵνα γνῶς πόσης αἰσχύνης καὶ ἐντροπῆς ἡ ψυχή μου πεπλήρωται.” 34 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 18, 3709 D: “πῶς ἀκρατῶς καὶ ἀκορέστως εἶχον περὶ τὸ πάθος τῆς . . . μίξεως, . . . δέκα ἑπτὰ καὶ πρὸς ἐνιαυτούς . . . διετέλεσα δημόσιον προκειμένη τῆς ἀσωτίας ὑπέκκαυμα, οὐ δόσεώς τινος, μὰ τὴν ἀλήθειαν, ἕνεκεν.” 35 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 18, 3709 D-3711 A: “μηδὲ γὰρ νομίσῃς με ὡς εὐποροῦσαν μὴ δέχεσθαι· προσαιτοῦσα διέζων, καὶ πολλάκις στύππιον νήθουσα, ἐπιθυμίαν δὲ εἶχον ἀκόρεστον καὶ ἀκατάσχετον ἔρωτα τῷ ἐν βορβόρῳ κυλίεσθαι· καὶ τοῦτό μοι τὸ ζῇν ἦν τε καὶ ἐλογίζετο τὸ διαπαντὸς ἐκτελεῖν τὴν ὕβριν τῆς φύσεως.” 36 On September 14, this feast commemorates the discovery of the cross on which Christ was crucified, a cross that is exposed to the public on that day. The legend attributes this discovery to Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, who commissioned the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. This was the pilgrims’ destination. 37 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 21, 3712 C: “ποία γλῶσσα ἐξείποι ἢ ἀκοὴ παραδέξεται τὰ ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ καὶ κατὰ τὴν ὁδοιπορίαν γενόμενα; ἅπερ μὴ θέλοντας ποιεῖν τοὺς ἀθλίους ἠνάγκαζον; Οὐκ ἔστι εἶδος ἀσελγές, ῥητόν τε καὶ ἄῤῥητον, οὗπερ οὐ γέγονα τοῖς ταλαιπώροις διδάσκαλος.” 38 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 21, 3712 D: “πολίτας τε καὶ ξένους.” 39 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 22, 3713 A: “θεία τις ἐκώλυσεν δύναμις.” 40 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 23, 3713 C-D: “ὡς οὐκέτι τὴν σάρκα ταύτην ἐνυβρίσω δι’ αἰσχρᾶς οἱασδήποτε μίξεως, ἀλλ’ ἡνίκα τὸ ξύλον τοῦ σταυροῦ τοῦ Υἱοῦ σου θεάσομαι, κόσμῳ καὶ τοῖς ἐν κόσμῳ πᾶσιν εὐθὺς ἀποτάσσωμαι, καὶ αὐτίκα ἐξέρχωμαι, ὅπου δ’ ἂν αὐτή, ὡς ἐγγυητὴς σωτηρίας, ὑποθῇς καὶ ὁδηγήσῃς με.” 41 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 24, 3713 D-3716 A: “Ῥίψασα τοίνυν ἐμαυτὴν ἐγὼ ἡ ἀθλία ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς καὶ τὸ ἅγιον ἐκεῖνο προσκυνήσασα ἔδαφος.” 42 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 26, 3716 B: “Δέξαι ταύτας, ἀμμά μου. εἰπών.” 43 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 27, 3716 C. 44 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 28, 3716 D-3717 A: “θηρσὶν ἀνημέροις ταῖς ἀλόγοις ἐπιθυμίαις πυκτεύουσα.” 45 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 28, 3717 A: “τῶν πορνικῶν ᾀσμάτων ἐπιθυμία ἡ παράλογος.” 46 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 29, 3717 B-C. 47 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 30, 3717 C: “Πολλὴν ἐκ τοῦ κρύους καὶ αὗθις ἐκ τῆς τοῦ θέρους φλογὸς ἀνάγκην ὑπέμεινα, συγκαιομένη τῷ καύσωνι, καὶ τῷ παγετῷ πηγνυμένη καὶ τρέμουσα, ὡς πολλάκις με χαμαὶ πεσοῦσαν ἄπνουν μεῖναι σχεδὸν καὶ ἀκίνητον.” 48 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 30, 3717 C: “πολλάκις με χαμαὶ πεσοῦσαν ἄπνουν μεῖναι σχεδὸν καὶ ἀκίνητον. Πολλαῖς τοίνυν καὶ πολλαῖς συμφοραῖς καὶ πειρασμοῖς ἀνηκέστοις ἐπύκτευσα.”

From the Depths of Sin to the Highness of Holiness 343 49 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 30, 3717 C-D: “ἐννοοῦσα γὰρ μόνον ἐξ ὁποίων κακῶν με ἐῤῥύσατο, τροφὴν ἀδάπανον κέκτημαι, τὴν ἐλπίδα τῆς σωτηρίας μου·τρέφομαι γὰρ καὶ σκέπομαι τῷ ῥήματι τοῦ Θεοῦ διακρατοῦντος τὰ σύμπαντα· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐπ’ ἄρτῳ μόνῳ ζήσεται ἄνθρωπος, καὶ παρὰ τὸ μὴ ἔχειν σκέπην, πέτραν περιεβάλοντο, ὅσοι τὸ τῇς ἁμαρτίας ἀπεδύσαντο περιβόλαιον.” 50 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 32, 3720 B: “τῇ δὲ ἁγίᾳ ἑσπέρᾳ τοῦ δείπνου τοῦ μυστικοῦ.” 51 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 32, 3720 B: “εἰς σκεῦος ἱερὸν καὶ τῶν τοιούτων μυστηρίων ἐπάξιον.” 52 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 32, 3720 C: “Ὁ δὲ Ζωσιμᾶς κλίνας τὰ γόνατα, καὶ προσκυνήσας τὸ ἔδαφος ἐν ᾧ ἔστησαν τὰ ἴχνη τῶν ποδῶν αὐτῆς.” 53 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 35, 3721 B: “Ὁρᾷ δὲ αὐτὴν τῷ σημείῳ τοῦ τιμίου σταυροῦ τὸν Ἰορδάνην σφραγίσασαν (πανσέληνος γὰρ ὑπῆρχεν ἡ νύξ, ὡς ἔλεγεν), καὶ ἄμα τῇ σφραγῖδι ἐπιβᾶσαν τῷ ὕδατι, καὶ περιπατοῦσαν ἐπὶ τῶν ὑδάτων ἐπάνω, καὶ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον βαδίζουσαν.” 54 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 35, 3721 C: “Ὄντως ἀψευδὴς ὁ Θεὸς ἐπαγγειλάμενος ὁμοιοῦσθαι Θεῷ καθόσον ἐφικτὸν τοὺς ἑαυτοὺς ἐκκαθαίροντας.” It is remarkable that, according to the hagiographer, Zosimas refers here to the Theaetetus of Plato: “ὁμοίωσις θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν.” Definitely, this is not in the Bible but had become a standard reference in patristic literature. 55 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 37, 3724 B: “τὸν θησαυρόν σου τὸν ἄσυλον, ὃν ἐν τῇδε τῇ ἐρήμῳ κατέκρυψας· . . . τὸν ἐν σώματι ἄγγελον, οὖ οὐκ ἔστιν ὁ κόσμος ἐπάξιος.” 56 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 37, 3724 B: “καὶ εἶδεν πρὸς τὸ μέρος αὐτοῦ τὸ πρὸς ἀνίσχοντα τὸν ἥλιον, κειμένην τὴν Ὁσίαν νεκράν. καὶ τὰς χεῖρας οὕτως ὥσπερ ἔδει τυπώσασαν. καὶ πρὸς ἀνατολὰς ὁρῶσαν κειμένην τῷ σχήματι. Ὁ δὲ προσδραμὼν τοὺς πόδας τῆς Μακαρίας δάκρυσιν ἔπλυνεν· οὐδενὸς γὰρ ἑτέρου μέρους ἐτόλμα προσψαῦσαι.” 57 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 38, 3724 C. 58 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 39, 3724 C-D. 59 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 14, 3724: “ὁρᾷ λέοντα μέγαν τῷ λειψάνῳ τῆς ὁσίας παρεστῶτα, καὶ τὰ ἴχνη αὐτῆς ἀναλείχοντα.” 60 Ward, Harlots of the Desert, 28–34. 61 Βίος Μαρίας Αἰγυπτίας 18, 3709 D.

Bibliography Primary Literature Jérôme. Trois vies de moines: Paul, Malchus, Hilarion. Edited and translated by Adalbert de Vogüé. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2007. The Lenten Triodion. Translated by Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware. South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2002. Accessed May  28, 2023. www.ponomar.net/data/ lenten_triodion.pdf. Migne, Jacques Paul. Patrologiae cursus completus (series Graeca), col. 3693–3726. MPG 87.3. Paris: Migne, 1857–1866. Saint Sophronius. Vie de Marie Egyptienne pénitente. In Vie de sainte Marie Égyptienne pénitente suivie de Vie de Saint Syméon stylite, 27–96. Translated by Arnauld d’Andilly, revised by Jacques Lacarrière. Montbonnot-St. Martin: Éditions Jérôme Millon, 1985. ———. Life of St. Mary of Egypt. Translated by Maria Kouli. In Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints’ Lives in Translation, edited by Alice-Mary Talbot, 65–93. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1996. Ἁγιος Σωφρόνιος Πατριάρχης Ἰεροσολύμων. Βίος τῆς ὁσίας Μαρίας τῆς Αἰγυπτίας. Edited by the Holy Monastery of Stavronikita. 3rd ed. Mount Athos: Ekdoseis Domos, [1988] 2008.

344  Andra Jugănaru Τριῴδιον κατανυκτικόν, περιέχον ἅπασαν τὴν ἀνήκουσαν αὐτῷ ἀκολουθίαν τῆς ἁγίας καὶ μεγάλης Τεσσαρακοστῆς. Edited by Ioannes and Spyridon Veloudes. 2nd ed. Venice: Ἐκ τοῦ ἑλληνικοῦ τυπογραφείου τοῦ Ἁγίου Γεωργίου, 1856. Secondary Literature Burrus, Virginia. The Sex Lives of Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Coon, Lynda L. Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity. Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia University Press, 1997. Cox-Miller, Patricia. “Is There a Harlot in the Text? Hagiography and the Grotesque.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33, no. 3 (2003): 419–35. Delmas, François. “Remarques sur la vie de Sainte Marie l’Égyptienne.” Échos d’Orient 4, no. 1 (1900): 35–42. https://doi.org/10.3406/rebyz.1900.3313. Heron, Onnaca. “The Lioness in the Text: Mary of Egypt as Immasculated Female Saint.” Quidditas: Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 21 (2000): 23–44. Ward, Benedicta. Harlots of the Desert: A Study of Repentance in Early Monastic Sources. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1986.

II.5

Virility in Roman Rhetoric

18 “Neglegentissimus Vernula” Manliness and Imperial Legitimation in Pacatus’ Panegyric in Praise of the Emperor Theodosius’ Civil War Victory Susanna Elm In memoriam, Marianne Sághy Cum ad imperatorem Maximum, ferocis ingenii virum et bellorum civilium victoria elatum, plures ei diversis orbis partibus episcopi convenissent et foeda circa principem omnium adulatio notaretur seque degenere inconstantia regiae clientelae sacerdotalis dignitas subdidisset, in solo Martino apostolica auctoritas permanebat.1

In her article “Veste Regia Indutus: Representations of the Emperor in the Vita Martini,” Marianne Sághy emphasized three ways in which late antique elite men presented themselves to the public. Or, rather, Sághy discussed how Sulpicius Severus portrayed three models of late Roman auctoritas as the negative foil to praise the sole model of leadership he considered relevant and worthy of emulation: the apostolica auctoritas embodied by his hero Martin of Tours. As Sághy points out, Sulpicius Severus contrasted Martin’s apostolica auctoritas with the ferocity of the imperator Maximus, who had recently won victory in a civil war; with the degenerate inconsistency of other bishops, who had submissively accepted lesser honors at an imperial banquet; and with someone who was surrounded by a purple light. . . by the brilliance of the splendor assumed, clothed also in a royal robe, and with a crown of precious stones and gold encircling his head, his shoes too being inlaid with gold, while he presented a tranquil countenance, and a generally rejoicing aspect. This was none other than Satan appearing “veste regia indutus,” clad in the ornate vestments of the Roman emperor.2 Sulpicius’ Martin demonstrated his auctoritas likewise in three different forms: first, as a soldier of God and Christ, who refused to bloody his hand in battle but rebutted the consequent accusation of cowardness (ignavia) by vowing to stand unarmed against ferocious barbarians (a fate from which he was miraculously spared by a timely peace agreement);3 second, as a bishop not afraid to practice free speech; and third, as an ascetic inured to the lures of glittering imperial jewels. In Sághy’s words, the contrasting encounters “take DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-26

348  Susanna Elm place in military, ceremonial, and religious context. At each appointment, Martin has the upper hand: as soldier, as ascetic, as bishop. Each emperor is humiliated by Martin’s superior God and by Martin’s superior morals.”4 Sághy focused on three encounters to illustrate how Sulpicius Severus established Martin as the quintessential monk-bishop. However, her evocation of Martin’s superior morals gestures toward the common threat that will be central to what follows: late Roman concepts of manliness. After all, when speaking of Martin’s superior morals, what Sághy has in mind is the Roman notion of virtue, virtus, with its inescapable connotations of being a proper Roman vir, or elite man.5 Martin, after all, had been a Roman soldier, first of the emperor Julian, then of God and Christ. While highlighting his rejection of military service under Julian, Sulpicius Severus remained intensely conscious of proving his virtus, his courage, when accused of wishing to withdraw from battle out of cowardly fear (metus) rather than faith. Martin again demonstrated courage, virtus, at a banquet of Magnus Maximus in Trier, where he alone stood up to the imperator while his fellow bishops preferred to submit to the vir ferocis ingenii with degenerate inconsistency. Finally, a clairvoyant Martin triumphantly vanquished the purple-clad forma of the one impersonating the Roman emperor in all his manly splendor by evoking the habitus and beauty (forma) of the suffering Christ he wished to emulate— triumphant because naked and derided. In short, as Clare Stancliffe emphasized, “virtus and virtutes are at the heart of Sulpicius’ presentation of Martin, and of the controversy that arose from this; and we are ill-equipped to understand them.”6 Sulpicius Severus wrote his Life of Martin around 400 CE at Primuliacum in southwestern Gaul, shortly after the death of the bishop of Tour in 397.7 The imperator Magnus Maximus had perished nine years prior, defeated by another imperator, Theodosius I, a loss that cost Maximus not only his life but also his virtus. He has entered history as a usurper or, as yet another man from Gaul described him in the summer of 389 on the occasion of Theodosius’ triumphant entry into Rome after Maximus’ defeat, as a purple-clad butcher, carnifex purpuratus, and most negligent little slave-girl, neglegentissimus vernula.8 That Latinius Pacatus Drepanius, like Sulpicius Severus, a Christian from Gaul, denigrated Maximus, the erstwhile ferocious vir, as neglegentissimus vernula, using both masculine and feminine word endings, indicates that “virtus and virtutes” were not only at the heart of Sulpicius’ endeavor.9 Rather, virtus, what it entailed, and what it ought to look like were concerns for many members of the elite during the last two decades of the fourth century, above all in the Western part of the Roman empire, and one of the principal tenets of virtue was proper Roman manliness. Virtus and virtutes are central Roman concepts that we are indeed ill-equipped to clarify succinctly. As mentioned, the term virtus implies ways of being a man. However, more than offering clear descriptions of behaviors actual men ought to engage in or ways in which they should display themselves at any given moment— or, conversely, how they should not behave themselves—virtus and manliness offered ways in which contemporaries could “think with” and argue about themselves. That such thinking involved effeminate men clad with sumptuous robes and acting in ways described as foreign, quintessentially non-Roman, or displayed

“Neglegentissimus Vernula”  349 coarse, brute strength that marked them as equally foreign, albeit of a different kind, should not let us forget that such barbarian effeminates and the others we shall encounter in what follows were all quintessentially Roman; these were the kinds of men that elite Roman men utilized to think with about themselves and their own manliness.10 In other words, arguments concerning virtus and hence manliness were less arguments about male behavior and comportment but more reflected fierce competition about leadership and Roman imperial power: who should exercise it and whether or not those exercising it did so legitimately and appropriately.11 Many of these arguments revolved around the person of the emperor, the apex of Roman power. His virtus, his manliness, embodied Rome. Of course, the emperors actively shaped how they wished their virtus and manliness to be portrayed and perceived, through legislation, coins, statues, and panegyrics, but for the most part, and this includes panegyrics such as that of Pacatus, debates over virtue and appropriate forms of manly behavior reflected competition among members of the ruling elites broadly conceived, including learned men such as Sulpicius Severus and Pacatus.12 What matters in what follows, therefore, is less a description or definition of manliness or masculinity, but rather a look at competing masculinities at a particular moment in time: how specific late Roman elite men used manliness to think about themselves at a moment—one of many—when Roman imperial power was under intense pressure.13 Civil War Triumphs, or, Pacatus’ Men When Latinius Pacatus Drepanius delivered his panegyric, or laudes, of the emperor Theodosius in 389, he was in effect praising victory won in a civil war.14 The challenge was evident and the man having to rise to the occasion was Pacatus. As was wellknown to all present in the Roman Senate house on that hot day in August, the urbs aeterna had been quite welcoming to the carnifex purpuratus. Many of its inhabitants, including aristocrats now present in the Senate, had expressed their loyalty to Magnus Maximus as the legitimate emperor, as the imperator and victor in a civil war as Sulpicius Severus described him and that he had to all extents and purposes been.15 Theodosius, the Eastern emperor, had moved his armies west to confront Maximus only in June of 388.16 Five years earlier, in 383, Magnus Maximus— like Theodosius a Spaniard, seasoned army officer, and staunch Christian of the Catholic or Nicene variety—had fatally defeated Gratian, the senior Augustus of the West, near Lyons in Gaul and had taken up residence in Trier.17 Four years prior to that, in 379, a then 20-year-old Gratian had elevated Theodosius as emperor of the East, one year after the disastrous defeat of Valens at the hands of mostly Gothic troops near Adrianople.18 Theodosius’ first concern had been to reorganize the Eastern frontier, but even though he had concluded a peace treaty with Gothic leaders in 382, he had not moved against Maximus to react to Gratian’s execution, neither in 383 nor in any subsequent year until 388. Indeed, all signs indicate that Theodosius and by default the Western emperor Valentinian II, Gratian’s half-brother who was 12 years old in 383, accepted Maximus as legitimate ruler, albeit in a low-key fashion. In 383 or

350  Susanna Elm 384, shortly after Theodosius had made his six-year-old son Arcadius co-Augustus, Maximus reciprocated by making his infant son Flavius Victor co-Augustus also; in 386, Maximus’ choice of consul was recognized in the East and paired with Theodosius’ son Honorius, then two years old; statues of Maximus were displayed in Alexandria and hence presumably throughout the Eastern empire, and the imperial mint in Constantinople issued coins bearing Maximus’ name.19 However, in the summer of 387 Magnus Maximus crossed a line that he, in hindsight, should not have crossed: he invaded Italy, a move that included control of Africa and hence of Rome’s grain supply, forced Valentinian II, whose sister Galla Theodosius had just married, to flee to Thessalonica, and prompted the latter to take up arms. In 388, Theodosius defeated Maximus, who was executed in Aquileia together with his unfortunate son.20 Now, in 389, the Roman senators witnessed a triumph in a war that had cast Romans against other Romans they had defeated in a bloody, costly civil war. Civil war triumphs were by 389 not entirely novel, but they remained a fraught endeavor. The first to celebrate a triumphant victory in Rome after a bloody civil war had led to the death of an emperor right outside the city’s boundaries at the Milvian Bridge had been Constantine.21 It was a high-risk strategy, because the defeat of Maxentius was also that of a significant part of the Senate and the aristocracy who had supported him. Celebrating such a defeat in Rome forced Constantine and his court to craft new forms of representation to make sure the triumphal procession carried the message they intended.22 The Barbarian Within Two panegyrics delivered in Trier in 313 and in Rome in 321 present the new imperial message with remarkable consistency.23 While the authors of earlier panegyrics had consciously avoided detailed descriptions of civil war battles, using instead successful foreign campaigns to highlight the military prowess of the victor, the panegyrist of 313 and Nazarius, who praised Constantine in 321, portrayed the emperor’s hands-on engagement in the fiercest battles against Maxentius in vivid detail as a sign of his extraordinary, divine virtue. Constantine had been a praesens numen, impatiently storming into the densest fray and emerging from the blood baths with “heaving breast, and bloodied hands. . . most savage in battle and most gentle when safety has been procured.”24 Indeed, Constantine’s fierce opponents forced him to shed so much blood “that victory became almost distasteful [paene displicuit ipsa uictoria].”25 Such direct engagement was called for, so said the panegyrists, because Constantine’s opponents were not the “little Greeks” (Graeculi) known from earlier civil wars.26 Rather than fighting against weak Medes, unwarlike Syrians, the Parthians’ flighty arms, and Asians desirous of a change of servitude, you had to conquer soldiers (for shame!) shortly before Roman, armed with every weapon in the manner of the first rank and because of their consciousness of wrongdoing prepared never to yield except in death.27

“Neglegentissimus Vernula”  351 Constantine had fought real Roman fighting men whom he destroyed in battles of extraordinary cruelty.28 Emphasizing the might of the battle-hardened Roman soldiers he had to overcome enhanced the extraordinary dimension of Constantine’s military virtus and hence manliness, his bloodied hands. It also demonstrated that this was only necessary and indeed possible because these defeated Roman soldiers had been led astray by a particularly terrible leader. The usual rhetoric according to which the defeated opponents had been “merely” pirates, bandits, or entirely illegitimate barbarians no longer sufficed: for the first time, the defeated enemy in a civil war was declared a Roman tyrant; this was the beginning of the new, late Roman custom of conflating tyrant and usurper. Consequently, defeating such a tyrant was the liberation of a Rome enslaved.29 As tyrant, Maxentius became the emblem of absolute illegitimacy, a debauched leader supported by a small coterie of equally debauched followers. Maxentius became a hideous, deformed prodigy (turpissime, deforme prodigium), “contemptibly small in stature, twisted and slack of limb,” a monster (monstrum), abomination, and disgrace (dedecus).30 Victory over this vile monstrum who had cowardly squatted in the city required exceptional brutality because nothing less than Rome’s liberty was at stake.31 Constantine’s triumphal procession reflected this: After the body [of Maxentius who had drowned in the Tiber] had been found and hacked up, the entire populace of Rome broke out in vengeful rejoicing, and throughout the whole City where it was carried affixed to a spear that sinful head did not cease to suffer disfiguration, and meanwhile, in the customary jests of a triumph [ioci triumphales], it was mocked.32 Thus the new narrative: here the victorious warrior emperor, splattered with the blood of defeated Roman soldiers rather than “timid creatures unfit for war, such as the pleasant regions of Greece and the charms of Asia produce, who can barely tolerate a light cloak and silken garments;”33 there the dismembered corpse of the monstrous tyrant who, supported by a small coterie, had enslaved the rest of the city, himself now denigrated as a vernula purpuratus, as a little homeborn slave girl clad in imperial purple.34 Constantine’s triumphal adventus into the city of Rome after his victory over Maxentius represented “the first time in Roman history [that] the head of a toppled emperor was paraded through the city. . . to the jubilation of the masses,” a fate previously reserved only for defeated public enemies.35 Pacatus, who had in fact edited the volume that included the two panegyrics to which I just referred, and hence was very well aware of what his precursors had done, mastered the challenge he now faced by introducing something novel: in praising Theodosius’ bloody victory in a civil war, he actually mentioned the defeated Magnus Maximus by name and devoted nearly half of his panegyric to the description of the defeated imperator.36 It was a study in competing masculinities.

352  Susanna Elm Manliness at (the) Stake Addressing the Senate in the presence of the august emperor, Pacatus exalted the majesty of the city, its Senate, and above all that of Theodosius, who had defended Rome’s liberty and thus also free speech while in arms, and increased its dignity when clad in the toga (“cuius et libertatem armatus adseruisti et auxisti dignitatem togatus”).37 Pacatus’ Theodosius was a sacratissimus imperator and divine numen, a “god we can see [deum. . . quem uidemus],” whom “all the votes of all men” would have gladly chosen as emperor because his “native land was blessed, [his] house illustrious, [his] beauty divine, [his] age perfect, and [he] was experienced in military and civilian affairs [cui felix patria cui domus clara cui forma diuina cui aetas integra cui militium ciuilumque rerum usu contigisset].”38 In Pacatus’ panegyric, Theodosius’ divine beauty or form assumed distinctly Republican features, skillfully combined with those that made him into an exemplary emperor in the mold of Trajan.39 Already Theodosius’ father—whom Pacatus praised in keeping with the rules of the genre together with Spain, the fatherland he shared with Trajan—had been a unique man, a divine gift, because he had combined in himself all the virtues that are highly praised when encountered singly.40 Consequently, the ruling emperor was blessed by inheritance as well as his own achievements: O nobility worthy of an Emperor, for a ruler to be the son of a man who should have been a prince himself. . . because of his bravery and wisdom, but also because of the beauty [decus] of his body and his dignified bearing—just like this venerable beauty [forma uenerabilis] of yours, which is equal to its good fortune, and which, conspicuous far and wide, so graces imperial power, that to put it plainly it is a moot point whether it is rather your virtue/manly courage which insinuates itself into our minds or your face into our eyes!41 Theodosius’ beauty and virtue were honed “in the camps, the winters spent under canvas, the summers sweated through in the midst of battle, days, and nights expended in fighting and keeping watch, the fiercest of fights on land and on sea.”42 However, such military glory (bellicae rei gloria, 8.2–3) was subsequently tempered by a period of civil life, spent both in cities and in the countryside. There the future emperor had “always rubbed off the rust of insidious leisure with [hard farm] work [labor],” rusticating just as the Curii, Coruncani, and Fabricii of old had done, who had exchanged their consular robe, or trabea, for the farmer’s cloak once they were done fighting and ruling.43 As emperor, Theodosius had preserved just those virtues, living “in public and private with the hardness of old [priscorum duritia].”44 Yet the ruler did not stop there. “You wished the moral reform to begin with yourself. . . living frugally and contentedly,”45 but “when you first took command of the state, you were not content that you yourself were far removed from vice: in addition, you took pains to correct the vices of others.”46 As it happened, to correct the vices of others was a tall order indeed. Perhaps prompted by extended exposure to the habits of the East (Orientium usu)

“Neglegentissimus Vernula”  353 or encouraged by the laxity (remissio) of Theodosius’ precursors, certain Romans had become “so devoted to their luxurious living [quosdam luxus]” that their selfindulgence (adulta consuetudo lasciviae) was very nearly beyond remedy.47 Only a leader of the caliber of Theodosius could hope to reform such effeminate and dissolute men [delicati illi ac fluentes].  .  . who considered themselves rather inelegant unless their luxuries inverted the seasons, unless roses floated in their bowls in winter, and their Falernian wine melted the ice in their crystal cups in the summer. . . who paid 100 million sesterces not for a meal, but often for a single course. (14.1–4) Only a dignified, virtuous, and that means manly emperor such as Theodosius, more hardened (duriorem) and frugal (frugalis) than a Spartan (13.4), whose valor, whose very name struck terror in any barbarian, could correct such vices and liberate Rome from the grip of such effeminate and dissolute men.48 Such corrective action became all the more urgent, so Pacatus—because while Theodosius was taking care of said barbarians and looked after the well-being of the East, a tyrant, leader of a band of gladiators (mirmillionum agmen), pirates, and fugitive slaves (fugitiuis) rose up just like a Spartacus redux—assumed the imperial robes, and erupted out of small beginnings into a raging pestilence: none other than Magnus Maximus.49 This tyrant came to full fruition in Gaul. There the raging beast (belua furens) first drank the blood of innocents and impoverished everyone with his insatiable avarice, before the purple-clad butcher, carnifex purpuratus (24.1–6), driven by insanity, turned his fury toward Italy (30.1–2). This prompted Theodosius to take action, and as soon as he did, the raging beast and purple-clad butcher revealed himself to be as cowardly as Herodotus’ famous band of Scythian ex-slaves, who turned their backs cowed by the whip of their master.50 Magnus Maximus advanced toward Theodosius with an army that Pacatus could only compare to that led by Cleopatra (and Anthony), sent forth by the enervating Pharus and effeminate Canopes, draped in diaphanous robes and light linen to protect them against the sun while advancing to the rhythm of the sistra. That army of Egyptians, led by a queen, encountered Theodosius’ army of mighty battle-hardened (durator) bodies, “burdened by breast-plates and sheathed in iron.”51 As the army, so their leaders: faced with the onslaught of hardened bodies, Maximus’ army crumbled and he “looked over his shoulder, flew away, frenzied, like a madman,” frantically wondering in a piece of prosopopoeia, or “in-character speech” in the manner of tragic heroines, whether he should kill himself as a man ought to without having the courage to embrace such a dignified death.52 In sum, this embodiment of “impiety, lust, cruelty and a whole company of the worst crimes and vices [impietatem libidinem crudelitatem et omnium scelerum postremorumque uitiorum stare collegium]” (31.3), dithered like a woman until he was caught, “the diadem toppled from his head, his robe. . . snatched from his shoulders, the ornaments from his feet. . . and the despoiler of the public was publicly stripped” (43.2–4)—and decapitated.53

354  Susanna Elm Theodosius’ triumphant procession in 389 did not feature Maximus’ head on a stake. However, as Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe has shown, Pacatus evoked vivid word pictures of the decapitated “tyrant” so that those listening could easily envision just such a scene:54 Immediately your most valiant generals undertook to arrange your triumph, the diadem was toppled from his head, his robe was snatched from his shoulders, the ornaments from his feet, and finally the whole man was fitted out to receive his deserts. The despoiler of the public was publicly stripped, his rapacious hands were bound, the fugitive’s legs were bared, in short he was presented for your inspection just as a captive should be presented to the victor, a slave to his master, a tyrant to his emperor.55 Theodosius, whose 3own accession to the purple had occurred in ways rather similar to a usurpation, had been victorious and was thus the virtuous champion of liberty, while Magnus Maximus became through his defeat another “most delinquent little homeborn slave-girl [neglegentissimus vernula].”56 Pacatus’ panegyric made sure that no one, neither those present nor anyone else in the realm, would forget the lesson: It is important to the security of every age for what has been done to be seen so that if anyone has ever entertained any nefarious desires, he may review the monuments of our times and drink in innocence with his eyes. If anyone at any time dreams of draping his shoulders with royal purple, may he encounter the depiction of Maximus being stripped. If anyone wishes to decorate his simple citizen’s feet with gold and gemstones, may barefooted Maximus appear before him. If anyone contemplates placing the diadem upon his head, may he gaze at the head of Maximus plucked from his shoulders, and at his nameless corpse.57

Manliness Transformed One lesson everyone understood perfectly well was this: divinely beautiful, dignified, battle-hardened emperors, shining exemplars of Roman manliness or virtue who led Roman troops into combat, and overwhelmed in the shimmering sparkle of their imperial regalia, their diadem, their gem-encrusted shoes, could become a deformed monstrum, a purple-clad little verna, in sum, a tyrant, in an instance. At that moment their supporters too morphed from Roman senators into a coterie of effeminate men.58 All it took was loss against an opponent in a civil war. Maxentius and Magnus Maximus had been divine Roman emperors, at the apex of Roman virtue, glorious in their battle-hardened manliness, until they lost to equally divine Roman emperors. Their loss condemned them for posterity to the fate of the ambiguous, compromised manliness of effeminate slave girls. Elite manliness, virtus, in short, was as precious as it was fragile.

“Neglegentissimus Vernula”  355 Conversely, however, such malleable manliness meant that what could be lost in an instant could also be swiftly regained. All it took to restore the delicati illi ac fluentes who had supported the loser back to proper Roman virtue and manly dignity was swift, punitive action for a few, combined with imperial clemency resulting in amnesty and restitution for most. While a few of the Moorish enemy. . . two or three trainers of that raging gladiator were slain as expiatory victims of the war, pardon embraced all the rest, enfolded as it were in a maternal bosom. No one’s liberty was forfeited, no one’s previous rank diminished. . . all were restored to their homes, all to their wives and children, all finally—which is sweeter—to innocence. See, Emperor, what the consequences of this clemency are for you: you have so managed things that no one feels that he has been conquered by you, the victor.59 The victorious emperor granted men their Roman manliness. Those who supported the victor were true Roman viri, virtuous, dignified, splendid Roman men, but the victor, as benevolent liberator from the clutches of a monster, could also bequeath such manliness to those thus liberated, even if they had been effeminate and soft, as unfree persons were want to be, while under the yoke of the tyrant. Victory made men, but so did imperial clemency. New Romans One reason, then, why Roman manliness, once dramatically lost, could also be easily restored, was the very fact that the war fought had been a civil war where now the opponents were acknowledged as Roman regardless of their ethnic affiliation. As Pacatus had pointed out, both Theodosius and Magnus Maximus fought with troops that included significant Gothic, Alan, and Hunnic contingents. These soldiers became, however, Roman, assumed Roman manliness, under the right commander. Those who fought for Maximus, the looser, became effeminate “Egyptians” just as his elite supporters at Rome had morphed into effeminate men devoted to “foreign” luxuries, while those commanded by Theodosius acted as real Republican Roman men should: The Goth, the Hun, and the Alan responded to their names, and stood watch in their turn. . . there was no disorder, no confusion. . . as is usual among the barbarians. . . they demanded as their sole reward and salary this one thing, that they be spoken of as yours.60 Such malleability made a signal component of a civil war victory all the more potent: in contrast to foreign enemies who should be crushed, after a civil war it was imperative to show clemency to the vanquished. Sextus Aurelius Victor, a historian of emperors, made the point visibly and succinctly when he erected a statue of Theodosius in the Forum of Trajan between 388 and 389 as Rome’s urban prefect,

356  Susanna Elm bearing an inscription praising the victor for having “exceeded the clemency, uprightness, and generosity of the emperors of old.”61 Imperial clemency could turn a civil war victory into one that made the vanquished forget their fate by allowing them to return unscathed to their innocence as true, manly Romans. According to Pacatus, Theodosius was such a victor. Because he was an emperor of superlative, divine virtue, civility, and manliness—in sum, Romanness—he could turn barbarians and effeminate men into true manly Romans as well. Therefore, Rome, the city that had witnessed so many civil wars, has now “seen a civil war ended with the slaughter of enemies, a peaceful soldiery, the recovery of Italy, and your liberation; you have seen I repeat a civil war ended for which you can decree a triumph.”62 Civil wars, like debates about Roman manliness, were a constant in the history of the Roman empire. At the time of Cicero, Sallust, Lucan, and others, a civil war could only be resolved with any legitimacy if the Romans who had suffered defeat had been Romans in name only, lesser men devoid of humanitas, led by a gladiator, pirate, or brigand; or involved person who were foreign or acted in such a manner that their defeat was the equivalent of a victory over foreign foes.63 Such persons, usurpers in short, were, as everyone knew, characterized by arrogance (superbia) and unrestrained desire (libido) that resulted in excessive avarice and equally excessive luxuries, which could only make men soft and hence effeminate, traits duly mirrored by the usurper’s followers, who were no longer hard Romans but effeminate foreigners as well. Theodosius and Magnus Maximus fit those molds. But by the time of Pacatus and Sulpicius Severus, who was a foreign barbarian and who was Roman, had become an entirely different proposition than it had been when Cicero, Livy, Sallust, Lucan, and even Pliny, all of whom provided intertexts for Pacatus and Sulpicius, created the effeminate manliness of the civil war opponent. In the 380s, a large number of the Roman men fighting each other were in fact “barbarian,” but they were “barbarians” who were part of the regular Roman army, indeed, Roman army commanders with names such as Arbogast or Bauto. Who was a Roman, a true Roman man or vir, was a matter of victory, of power—and of having cast one’s lot with the right strong man. Romanitas and Roman manliness could, therefore, be lost but also (re-) gained in an instant. The boundaries of who was a Roman man and what Roman manliness should look like had expanded. On the one hand, a Roman emperor who lost in a civil war became a tyrant and a monster, a “most negligent little house-born slave-girl,” but those who had desired the wrong strong man were in their majority merely effeminate, soft, delicate, and fluid lesser Romans, so that the clemency of a benevolent victor could instantly restore them into real Roman men after his image. That image was the true Roman vir, exemplified by the victorious emperor: battle-hardened, austere, restrained, ascetic in fact, but also stunning in his luminous, divine beauty, displayed in the jewel-encrusted vestments of his office. It was a difficult balance to maintain, but that too was nothing new in the history of Roman virtus. Notes 1 With heartfelt thanks to Stanimir Panayotov.—Sulp. Sev. Vita Martini 20: “When a number of bishops from various parts had assembled to the Emperor Maximus, a man of fierce character, and at that time elated with the victory he had won in the civil wars,

“Neglegentissimus Vernula”  357 and when the disgraceful flattery of all around the emperor was generally remarked, while the priestly dignity had, with degenerate submissiveness, taken a second place to the royal retinue, in Martin alone, apostolic authority continued to assert itself;” trans. Marianne Sághy, in her “Veste Regia Indutus: Representations of the Emperor in the Vita Martini,” IKON: Journal of Iconographic Studies 5 (2012): 47–56, at 50; Sulpice Sévère, Vie de Saint Martin, vols. I-III, ed. Jacques Fontaine (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1967–1969); for the context of the Vita Martini, see Clare Stancliffe, Saint Martin and His Hagiographer: History and Miracle in Sulpicius Severus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983); and see now Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini, ed. Philip Burton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 2 Sulp. Sev. Vita Martini 24: quodam enim die praemissa preceet circumiectus ipse luce purpurea, quo facilius claritate assumpti fulgoris illuderet, veste etiam regia indutus, diademate ex gemmis auroque redimitus, calceis auro illitis, sereno ore, laeta facie. 3 Sulp. Sev. Vita Martini 4: patere ut nunc militem Deo: donativum tuum pugnaturus accipiat, Christi ego miles sum: pugnare mihi non licet. Tum vero adversus hanc vocem tyrannus infremuit dicens, eum metu pugnae, quas postero die erat futura, non religionis gratia detractare militiam. at Martinus intrepidus, immo illato sibi terrore constantior, si hoc, inquit, ignaviae adscribitur, non fidei, crastina die ante aciem inermis adstabo et in nomine Domini Iesu, signo crucis, non clipeo protectus aut galea, hostium cuneos penetrabo securus. “Allow me now to become a soldier to God: let the man who is to serve you receive your donative: I am the soldier of Christ: it is not lawful for me to fight.” Then truly the tyrant stormed on hearing such words, declaring that, from fear of the battle, which was to take place on the morrow, and not from any religious feeling, Martin withdrew from the service. But Martin, full of courage, the more resolute from the danger that had been set before him, exclaims, “If this conduct of mine is ascribed to cowardice, and not to faith, I will take my stand unarmed before the line of battle tomorrow, and in the name of the Lord Jesus, protected by the sign of the cross, and not by shield or helmet, I will safely penetrate the ranks of the enemy.” 4 Sághy, “Veste Regia,” 47–48; for the Vita Martini as model of episcopal authority, see also Eva Elm, Die Macht der Weisheit: Das Bild des Bischofs in der Vita Augustini des Possidius und anderen spätantiken und frühmittelalterlichen Bischofsviten (Leiden: Brill 2003), 79–90. 5 Mark Masterson, Man to Man: Desire, Homosociality, and Authority in Late-Roman Manhood (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2014), 28; Erik Gunderson, Staging Masculinity: The Rhetoric of Performance in the Roman World (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 7–57, 65–67, 132–42, 187–222; Christopher Nappa, Making Men Ridiculous: Juvenal and the Anxieties of the Individual (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2017), 100–4, 121–26, 179–90; Mathew Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 19; Thomas Späth, Männlichkeit und Weiblichkeit bei Tacitus: Zur Konstruktion der Geschlechter in der römischen Kaiserzeit (Frankfurt: Campus, 1994), 58–120; for the relation between virtue and vir in the Republic and High Empire, see especially Craig A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Catherine Edwards, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 11–22; Myles McDonnell, Roman Manliness: Virtus and the Roman Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 6 Stancliffe, Saint Martin, 9. 7 Ibid., 2–6, and 15–19.

358  Susanna Elm 8 Pacatus, Panegyric of Theodosius = Pan. lat. (2)12, in In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini, eds. Roger A. B. Mynors, C. E. V. Nixon, and Barbara Saylor Rodgers (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994), English: 448–516, Latin: 647–74; in what follows I use Nixon and Rodger’s translation with my own modifications unless otherwise noted. It is very probable that Pacatus had in fact assembled the collection of the Panegyrici Latini; for the collection and the genre of panegyrics as a means to read imperial representation in general and Pacatus in particular, see Nixon and Rodgers, In Praise, 437–47; Adrastos Omissi and Alan J. Ross, “Imperial Panegyric from Diocletian to Honorius,” in Imperial Panegyric from Diocletian to Honorius, eds. Alan J. Ross and Adrastos Omissi (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020), 1–22; Roger D. Rees, Layers of Loyalty in Latin Panegyric: AD 289–307 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 12–17; Roger D. Rees, “Pacatus the Poet Doing Plinian Prose,” Arethusa 46 (2013): 241–59; Roger D. Rees, “Bright Lights, Big City: Pacatus and the Panegyrici Latini,” in Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity, eds. Lucy Grig and Gavin Kelly (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 203–22; Roger D. Rees, “Authorizing Freedom of Speech under Theodosius,” in Imaging Emperors in the Later Roman Empire, eds. Diederik W. P. Burgersdijk and Alan J. Ross (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 289–309; René Pichon, “The Origins of the Panegyrici Latini Collection,” in Latin Panegyrics, ed. Roger D. Rees (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 55–76. 9 Johannes Wienand, Der Kaiser als Sieger: Metamorphosen triumphaler Herrschaft unter Constantin I (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2012), 26–43; Adrastos Omissi, Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire: Civil War, Panegyric, and the Construction of Legitimacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 269–90; Adolf Lippold, “The Ideal of the Ruler and Attachment to Tradition in Pacatus’ Panegyric,” in Latin Panegyrics, ed. Roger Rees (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 360–86; Anne-Marie TurcanVerkerk, Un poète Latin chrétien redécouvert: Latinius Pacatus Drepanius, panégyriste de Théodose (Brussels: Latomus, 2003), 71–130, discusses Pacatus’ poetic qualities and his potential conversion from Priscillianism to Nicene orthodoxy at 139–41. 10 See the remarks of Michèle Lowrie, “The Egyptian Within: A  Roman Figuration of Civil War,” in Translatio Babylonis: Unsere orientalische Moderne, ed. Barbara Vinken (Paderborn: Fink, 2015), 13–28; and of Mary Beard, “The Roman and the Foreign: The Cult of the ‘Great Mother’ in Imperial Rome,” in Shamanism, History, and the State, eds. Nicholas Thomas and Caroline Humphrey (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 164–90, at 166. 11 For a more detailed discussion, see Susanna Elm, The Emperors’ Eunuch: Civil War, Manliness, and Imperial Representation in the Early Theodosian Age (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, forthcoming). 12 Manliness rather than masculinity strikes me as the more apt translation of this important tenet of virtus, because this slightly antiquated term better emphasizes the specifically Roman connotation of the courage, ethics, morals, and forms of behavior at stake. Another translation might be masculinities, because even though masculinity is an aspect of virtus and of the ways in which a Roman vir behaved viriliter, masculinities as conceptualized by Raewyn W. Connell, elucidate the set of ideals, behaviors, practices, and the habitus emphatically, as well as implicitly associated with maleness as understood by a particular group as virtus better; thus, effeminacy is a specific form of masculinity because it expresses characteristics that matter only if applied to a man (or a eunuch); Raewyn W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), 55–56, 76–81, 89–181; and especially Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 2nd ed. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008). 13 Similarly, Jacob Latham, “ ‘Fabulous Clap-Trap’: Roman Masculinity, the Cult of Magna Mater, and Literary Constructions of the galli at Rome from the Late Republic to Late Antiquity,” The Journal of Religion 92 (2012): 84–122, esp. 90–93; see also Shaun Tougher, “The Aesthetics of Castration: The Beauty of Roman Eunuchs,” in Castration

“Neglegentissimus Vernula”  359 and Culture in the Middle Ages, ed. Larissa Tracy (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), 48–72, esp. 56–66. 14 Omissi, Emperors, 72 rightly highlights that the most massive fourth-century Roman losses occurred when Romans fought each other rather than against external enemies. 15 Sulp. Sev. Vita Martini 20.2–3 described Maximus’ reign as following nutus divinus; among his prominent supporters had been Symmachus who had delivered a panegyric to Maximus in Milan; Symm. Ep. 2.32; John F. Matthews, Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court AD 364–425, revised ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 229–31; Neil B. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994), 311–12; Cristiana Sogno, Q. Aurelius Symmachus: A Political Biography (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 76. 16 For what follows, see Meaghan A. McEvoy, Child Emperor Rule in the Late Roman West, AD 367–455 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 83–95; Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, “Commemorating the Usurper Magnus Maximus: Ekphrasis, Poetry, and History in Pacatus’ Panegyric of Theodosius,” Journal of Late Antiquity 3 (2010): 316–36, here 319–23; Christopher Kelly, “Pliny and Pacatus,” in Contested Monarchy: Integrating the Roman Empire in the Fourth Century AD, ed. Johannes Wienand (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 215–38, 215–16. 17 Thus, in 386 Maximus addressed a letter, Coll. Av. 40, to bishop Siricius of Rome, which was in the territory of the homoean Valentinian II, promising to take care of church-related issues while stressing his legitimacy; Otto Günther, Epistulae imperatorum pontificium aliorum inde ab a. CCCLXVII ad a. DLIII datae Avellanae quae dicitur collectio, I. Prolegomena. Epistulae I-CIV, II. Epistulae CV-CCXXXXIIII. Appendices. Indices (Prague, Vienna, and Leipzig: Tempsky and Freytag, 1895–1898), I, 88–90; María Victoria Escribano Paño, “Maximus’s Letters in the Collectio Avellana: A Comparative Study,” in The Collectio Avellana and Its Revivals, eds. Rita Lizzi Testa and Giulia Marconi (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019), 50–85, esp. 66–74, with further bibliography. 18 Whether Theodosius’ accession was a usurpation has long been debated; Omissi, Emperors, 255–90, has most recently and convincingly argued for usurpation; see also McEvoy, Child Emperor Rule, 71–80; Joachim Szidat, “Gaul and the Roman Emperors of the Fourth Century,” in Contested Monarchy: Integrating the Roman Empire in the Fourth Century AD, ed. Johannes Wienand (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 119–34; Hagit Sivan, “Was Theodosius I a Usurper?” Klio: Beiträge zur alten Geschichte 78 (1996): 198–211. 19 Aur. Vic. Epit. 48.6; Soz. HE 7.13; Zos. 4. 37.3 and 4.71. The extent to which Theodosius recognized Maximus as legitimate remains subject to debate; Omissi, Emperors, 263–69, the notion of a low-key acceptance is Omissi’s at 267; Domenico Vera, “I rapporti fra Magno Massimo, Teodosio e Valentiniano II nel 383–384,” Athenaeum 53 (1975): 267–301; Lunn-Rockliffe, “Commemorating,” 320–23; Johannes Szidat, Usurpatur tanti nominis: Kaiser und Usurpator in der Spätantike (337–476 n. Chr.) (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010), 112–13, 222–32, 282–86. 20 Soz. HE 7.13; Zos. 4.53; CIL 8.22076; Omissi, Emperors, 266–269; McEvoy, Child Emperor Rule, 87–92. 21 Scholarship on the battle of the Milvian Bridge and its antecedents is abundant; see Omissi, Emperors, 117–44; Wienand, Der Kaiser als Sieger, 98–127, 139–46 for the need to adjust to rapidly changing circumstances, 152–65 for ways to downplay cruelty toward a civil war opponent,199–225 with further bibliography for what follows. 22 Pan. lat. (12)9.18. 3: “ioci triumphales”; Pan. lat. (4)10.30.5; 32. 1: “triumphus”; whether or not one follows Johannes Wienand, “O tandem felix civili, Roma, victoria! Civil-War Triumphs from Honorius to Constantine and Back,” in Contested Monarchy: Integrating the Roman Empire in the Fourth Century AD, ed. Johannes Wienand (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 169–97, in considering Constantine’s entry

360  Susanna Elm into the city in 312 an actual triumph or rather a triumphant adventus, the complexity of the representational challenge is evident; moreover, Roman triumphs adapted and changed thus eliding the distinction as convincingly argued by Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 289, and 314–28; more cautious regarding a formal triumph in 312 is Steffen Diefenbach, Römische Erinnerungsräume: Heiligenmemoria und kollektive Identitäten im Rom des 3. bis 5. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007), 126. 23 Wienand, Der Kaiser als Sieger, 200–5; Omissi, Emperors, 123–24. 24 Pan. lat. (12)9.9.4–5: “densissimis hostium globis miscuisti . . . in media hostium tela deueneris et, nisi uiam tibi caedibus aperuisses . . .”; 10.3–5: “anhelum pectus, cruentas manus et quidquid de sanguine profundae caedis emerserat . . . in proeliis ferocissimus et parta securitate mitissimus”; Pan. lat. (4)10.26.1–5. 25 Pan. lat. (12)9.5.5; 7.3; Pan. lat. (4)10.7–8. 26 Pan. lat. (12)9.6.1–2; 24.1–2. 27 Pan. lat. (12)9.5.3: “contra leues Medos et imbelles Syros et Parthorum arma uolatica et Asiaticos optantes mutare seruitium rem gesit proelii unius euentu: tibi uincendi erant milites (pro nefas!) paula ante Romani, armis omnibus more primae classis armati et pro facinorum conscientia numquam nisi morte cessuri”; Pan. lat. (4)10.14.3–5; 17.3– 18.6; 22.3–4; 24.1–7. 28 Wienand, Kaiser als Sieger, 211–14. 29 CIL VI. 1139; for the first use of tyrannus for usurper Timothy D. Barnes, “The Meaning of ‘Tyrannus’ in the Fourth Century,” in Historiae Augustae Colloquium Barcinonense, eds. Giorgio Bonamente and Marc Mayer (Bari: Edipuglia, 1996), 55–65, here 60–62; Valerio Neri, “Usurpatore come tiranno nel lessico politico della tarda antichità,” in Usurpationen in der Spätantike: Akten des Kolloquiums “Staatsstreich und Staatlichkeit,” 6.-10. März 1996, eds. François Paschoud and Joachim Szidat (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1997), 71–86. 30 Pan. lat. (12)9.4.3–4; 7.1; 17.2, 3.5, 3.4; for a recent discussion of the monstrous in Horace and Ovid, inter alia, see Thomas Emmrich, Ästhetische Monsterpolitiken: Das Monströse als Figuration des eingeschlossenen Ausgeschlossenen (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Verlag, 2020), 11–18, 31–86. For descriptions of Constantine’s corresponding sublime beauty, see, e.g., Pan. lat. (4)10.14.3–5. 31 Pan. lat. (12)9.14.2–3; Pan. lat. (4)10.29.5–30.3. 32 Pan. lat. (12)9.17.2–3; Pan. lat. (4)10.31.4–5; Wienand, Kaiser als Sieger, 217. 33 Pan. lat. (12)9.24.1–2. 34 Pan. lat. (12)9.16.3; Humphries, “Emperors, Usurpers,” 157–58; Wienand, Der Kaiser als Sieger, 240–43. 35 Quote by Wienand, “O tandem felix,” 177; for the display of the heads of decapitated opponents in civil wars, see Michael McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 40–46. 36 Lunn-Rockliffe, “Commemorating,” 324–32; Kelly, “Pliny and Pacatus,” 224–26. 37 Pan. lat. (2)12.1.2; and 2.2–4 for free speech, securitas loquendo. 38 Pan. lat. (2)12.3.6–8; 4.5; 7.2; 8.3; 47.2–3. 39 For the relationship between imperial beauty and the regalia of office, see further Susanna Elm, “An Icon of Ugliness: Eutropius the Eunuch,” RIHA Journal: Journal of the International Association of Research Institutes in the History of Art Article 0226 (September 30, 2019): 1–19, https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2019.2.70054. 40 Pan. lat. (2)12.5.4: “dixisse sufficiat unum illum diuinitus exstitisse, in quo uirtutes simul omnes uigerent quae singulae in omnibus praedicantur”; Laurent Pernot, “What Is a ‘Panegyric’?” in Imperial Panegyric from Diocletian to Honorius, eds. Alan J. Ross and Adrastos Omissi (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020), 25–39, here 29–33.

“Neglegentissimus Vernula”  361 41 Pan. lat. (2)12.6.2–3: O digna imperatore nobilitas, eius esse filium principem qui princeps esse debuerit . . . non solum fortitudine atque sapientia, sed decore etiam corporis et dignitate potuerit aequare!—uelut tua haec forma uenerabilis quam fortunae suae par est, quam longe laeteque conspicua commendat imperium, ut plane in ambiguo sit utrumne te magis nostris mentibus uirtus an obtutibus uultu insinuet! 42 Pan. lat. (2)12.8.3–4: “castrense collegium, actas sub pellibus hiemes, aestates inter bella sudatas, dies noctesque proeliando aut uigilando consumptas, grauissimas pugnas terra marique pugnatas”; on forma, decus, durus, and duritia, and manliness and/or dignity, see Gunderson, Staging Masculinity, 133, 179, 192–213; and on the implication of such manliness or virtues for dominion over feminized “foreigners” in Republican and early imperial authors, see Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 132–42. 43 Pan. lat. (2)12.9.4–7. 44 Pan. lat. (2)12.20.4–6. 45 Pan. lat. (2)12.13.2 and 4: “a te uoliusti incipere censuram . . . parce contenteque uiuentem . . .. ” 46 Pan. lat. (2)12.13.1–2: “quin ubi primum te imperio praestitisit, non contentus ipse ultra uitia recessisse, aliorum uitiis corrigendis curam adiecisti.” 47 Pan. lat. (2)12.13.2. 48 Pan. lat. (2)12.22.1–2: “uirtutis tuae fulmen exceperint, nominis terrorem percussi . . .”; Robert Stone, “Inviting the Enemy In: Assimilating Barbarians in Theodosian Panegyric,” in Imperial Panegyric from Diocletian to Honorius, eds. Alan J. Ross and Adrastos Omissi (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020), 233–54. 49 Pan. lat. (2)12.23. 50 Pan. lat. (2)12.30.4–5; see Hdt. 4.1–4; Claud. In Eutr. 1.505ff. 51 Pan. lat. (2)12.33.2–5; Lowrie, “The Egyptian Within,” 13–28. 52 Pan. lat. (2)12.38.1–5; Roger D. Rees, “(Not) Making Faces: Prosopopoeia in Late Antique Panegyric,” in Imperial Panegyric from Diocletian to Honorius, eds. Alan J. Ross and Adrastos Omissi (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020), 41–65, especially 56–59. 53 As Donna W. Hurley points out in her: Suetonius, The Caesars (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 2011), 281, “[f]or the Romans, the manner of dying weighed heavily in the assessment of a life.” 54 Lunn-Rockliffe, “Commemorating,” 324–32; McCormick, Eternal Victory, 40–46. 55 Pan. lat. (2)12.43.2–4: Actutum fortissimi duces instruendo accinguntur triumpho, capiti diadema decutitur, humeris uestis aufertur, pedibus ornatus euelittur, totus denique homo aptatur ad meritum. Publice publicus spoliator exuitur, nectuntur manus rapaces, nudantur crura fugitiuo, talis denique offertur oculis qualem offerri decebat uictori captum, domino seruum, imperatori tyrannum. 56 Pan. lat. (2)12.31.1–2. 57 Pan. lat. (2)12.45.1–3; cf. Virgil, Aen. 2.557–558 on the death of Priam; Lunn-Rockliffe, “Commemorating,” 329–30. 58 Massimiliano Vitiello, “Emperor Theodosius’ Liberty and the Roman Past,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 108 (2015): 571–620, esp. 573–98. 59 Pan. lat. (2)12.45.5–7; the allusion here is probably to Maximus’ generals, including Andragathius who committed suicide; Hartmut Leppin, “Coping with the Tyrant’s Faction: Civil-War Amnesties and Christian Discourses in the Fourth Century AD,” in Contested Monarchy: Integrating the Roman Empire in the Fourth Century AD, ed. Johannes Wienand (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 198–214, esp. 207–9.

362  Susanna Elm 60 Pan. lat. (2)12.32.5. 61 CIL 6.1186 = ILS 294; on Aurelius Victor’s career and his De Caesaribus, see Liber De Caesaribus of Sextus Aurelius Victor, trans. H. W. Bird (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1994), vii–xii; on the statue, see Robert R. Chenault, “Statues of Senators in the Forum of Trajan and the Roman Forum in Late Antiquity,” The Journal of Roman Studies 102 (2012): 103–32, here 122–24; Kelly, “Pliny and Pacatus,” 219. Pacatus repeatedly exhorted Theodosius’ clemency, e.g., Pan. lat. (2)12.24.2–3; 36.3–4; 45.5–7; 46.4. 62 Pan. lat. (2)12.46.4. 63 Pan. lat. (2)12.46.6; the literature on Republican and early imperial civil war rhetoric is immense, e.g., Ingo Guildenhard, Creative Eloquence: The Construction of Reality in Cicero’s Speeches (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 197–218, 300–326, 334, 338–341, and passim; Lowrie, “The Egyptian Within,” 15–23; Shadi Bartsch, Ideology in Cold Blood: A Reading of Lucan’s Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 15–19 on dismembered bodies; Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides and Michael B. Charles, “Unmanning an Emperor: Otho in the Literary Tradition,” The Classical Journal 109 (2014): 199–222.

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“Neglegentissimus Vernula”  365 Suetonius. The Caesars. Translated by Donna W. Hurley. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 2011. Sulpice Sévère. Vie de Saint Martin. Edited by Jacques Fontaine, Vols. I–III. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1967–1969. ———. Vita Martini. Edited by Philip Burton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Symmaque. Lettres. Vol. I-IV. Translated by Jean-Pierre Callu. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1972–2002. Szidat, Johannes. Usurpatur tanti nominis: Kaiser und Usurpator in der Spätantike (337– 476 n. Chr.). Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010. ———. “Gaul and the Roman Emperors of the Fourth Century.” In Contested Monarchy: Integrating the Roman Empire in the Fourth Century AD, edited by Johannes Wienand, 119–34. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Tougher, Shaun. “The Aesthetics of Castration: The Beauty of Roman Eunuchs.” In Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages, edited by Larissa Tracy, 48–72. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013. Turcan-Verkerk, Anne-Marie. Un poète Latin chrétien redécouvert: Latinius Pacatus Drepanius, panégyriste de Théodose. Brussels: Latomus, 2003. Vera, Domenico. “I rapporti fra Magno Massimo, Teodosio e Valentiniano II nel 383–384.” Athenaeum 53 (1975): 267–301. Virgile. Énéide. Tome I: Livres I-IV. Translated by Jacques Perret. Collection Budé, Vol. 233 Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2018. Vitiello, Massimiliano. “Emperor Theodosius’ Liberty and the Roman Past.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 108 (2015): 571–620. Wienand, Johannes. Der Kaiser als Sieger: Metamorphosen triumphaler Herrschaft unter Constantin I. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2012. ———. “O tandem felix civili, Roma, victoria! Civil-War Triumphs from Honorius to Constantine and Back.” In Contested Monarchy: Integrating the Roman Empire in the Fourth Century AD, edited by Johannes Wienand, 169–97. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Williams, Craig A. Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Zosime. Histoire nouvelle. Tome II, 2e partie: Livre IV. Collection Budé, Vol. 267. Translated by François Paschoud. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2003.

19 From Inanity to Ideology The Allurements of Narrative in Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii David Rollo Some books are boring. In many cases, the negative judgment reflects objective facts that few, if any, would dispute: the author of the book in question was, quite simply, incompetent and wrote without grace, energy, or any due recognition of the desirability for interesting, complex characters. In such cases, the disaffected reader can be left wondering just how such a book was ever published in the first place. Other cases may entail more impressionistic personal judgments: although by no means unprepossessing to all, the waiting room at a large railway station may strike some as a dull and uninspired setting as the narrative intrigue unfolds; although by no means universally condemned, a style that privileges speech over description may strike some as lightweight and lacking in ambient density. Boring books are, then, a phenomenon that each reader has encountered and negotiated in his or her own way. Some readers simply stop reading. Others plod on to the bitter end in the hope that the end may not prove to be so bitter after all. An extremely rare sub-category of the boring book is the boring book that internally announces itself to be boring. The implicitly stated but contextually clear message imparted by this kind of warning is simple: what the reader has already started reading will become so dull that, at one point, a choice of the type I delineate earlier will of necessity have to be made: the reader will abandon or continue, in this latter case with a willful disregard of the admonition expressed from within the book itself. The primary effect (although not necessarily the intentional function) of a warning of this kind is to make the reader appraise the book as it has so far progressed and agree or disagree with its own internal caveat. One book that internally announces itself to be boring is Martianus Capella’s prosimetrum, the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii. Although the precise date of composition is unknown, the De nuptiis is couched in the florid North African Latin of Late Antiquity, and internal allusions to contemporary events suggest that it was begun in Carthage during the first decade of the fifth century.1 Some 80 years later, Cassiodorus, writing from Rome, states he was familiar with it,2 and by the beginning of the High Middle Ages, it had circulated throughout Western and Northern Europe: as early as the ninth century, it had given rise to three commentaries by scholars active in France,3 and in the late tenth/early 11th centuries, its first two books had been translated into Old High German by Notker Labeo.4 DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-27

From Inanity to Ideology  367 The work’s immense diffusion and influence can in part be attributed to the pedagogical function it came to assume. Although this is not so much suggested by its modern title, the De nuptiis is in fact first and foremost a circumscription of the Seven Liberal Arts, viewed at the time as crucial classical resources to be channeled to new, Christian purposes: one-by-one, Grammar, Dialectic, Rhetoric, Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Harmony appear as personified categories in order to deliver an extended survey of the disciples they each represent. Partly by institutional imposition, therefore, for centuries the De nuptiis came to be known throughout Western Europe by young men studying at cathedral schools and universities (and, no doubt, occasionally by young women working under the supervision of a personal tutor). It is presumably in the light of this pedagogical centrality that some modern scholars have made bold claims with regard to the standing of Martianus and his work in the Western medieval canon. According to one critic, the De nuptiis was “perhaps the most widely used schoolbook of the Middle Ages.”5 In the judgment of another, it was “one of the most popular books of Western Europe for nearly a thousand years.”6 Finally, moving beyond period altogether, another states that the De nuptiis is “the most successful textbook ever written.”7 There is, of course, a great deal of hyperbole to such comments, and it must be noted that “most popular” and “most successful” are not synonymous. Many students became acquainted with the De nuptiis because they were obliged to do so and not necessarily to gain pleasure. Moreover, by the simple law of averages, it is safe to assume that not every one of them found the dry scholasticism of the Trivium and the Quadrivium particularly to his or her liking. Although no ill-disposed medieval reader of this type has left any record of his or her views, hyperbolically negative criticisms have nonetheless been in existence for as long as the De nuptiis itself. Even as he wrote, Martianus was well aware of the boredom his scholarly writing could elicit and gave light-hearted warning to this effect. In formal design, the De nuptiis is in fact three texts: the treatise on the Seven Liberal Arts; a mythological frame-narrative involving the Greco-Roman gods and the marriage of Philology and Mercury; and a meta-fictional dialogue, in which an authorial surrogate (“Felix Capella”) and the literary principal of Satyra (his chosen genre, Menippean Satire) at intervals debate over the relative merits of the work as it so far stands. The De nuptiis is thus not only a textbook; it is also an exercise in auto-referentiality through which the author comments upon his own undertaking, particularly with regard to the mythological fabula and the reader responses that it internally elicits. Furthermore, as I shall demonstrate at a later stage, an aspect of this tripartite textuality did indeed go on to enjoy popularity in the Middle Ages. It was not, however, the handbook on the Seven Liberals Arts, however extensively it may have been read (again, popularity and diffusion are not the same thing). It was the fabula of the Greco-Roman gods into which that handbook is inserted, the story of the wedding of Philology and Mercury that is presented as no more then a pretext to more scholarly concerns. The story begins with the senior among the gods determining that the noweligible Mercury must marry. At their bidding, the entire pantheon convenes to

368  David Rollo discuss suitable brides. Several young goddesses are mentioned. All, however, are otherwise disposed. Apollo finally suggests Philology, who, although mortal, incarnates the human yearning for an intellectual union with the divine. The gods agree to the match, as do bride and groom, and after a number of initiation rituals undertaken by Philology, the Gods again assemble, this time to celebrate the wedding proper. At this juncture the Seven Liberal Arts, who act as Philology’s bridesmaids, appear to explain to the gods (and to the reader) the disciplines they represent. Grammar speaks first and is politely greeted. However, once her informative, yet unrelenting peroration gets underway, the initial benevolence of those obliged to listen begins to wane. This sets a precedent for the rest of the Arts and the responses they receive. The more exhaustively detailed the accumulation of scholasticism, the more tedious the gods find the proceedings. Those making their displeasure the most clearly felt represent anything but classroom learning: they are Bacchus and Silenus, a couple of drunks; Cupid, an adolescent prone to overseeing amorous dalliance; Voluptas, patroness of sensual pleasure; and, most importantly, Venus, goddess of Love itself. However, despite their apparent disqualification for judging matters of erudition, they are simply expressing views also held by other, more conventionally respectable deities. Even though Bacchus interrupts Dialectic to accuse her of being not just a dullard but a charlatan trafficking in dubious equivocations,8 Mercury and Pallas finally put a definitive end to her perorations.9 Venus outwardly expresses her boredom at the performance of Grammar, but all the other senior gods, including Jupiter, agree with her assessment and prompt Pallas to intervene.10 Boredom finally permeates the assembly to such a degree that the gods decide to accelerate the scholastic expositions. The two remaining Liberal Arts (we discover there were in fact nine!), Medicine and Architecture, are postponed until the next day, and the seven Mantic Arts are canceled altogether. To continue to elicit frustration and boredom through the persistent display of scholasticism would be to deny the very reason for the assembly: to bless a marriage and facilitate its consummation. Martianus has made a straightforward but enduring observation, one that, in an ideal world (but probably not the real one), every teacher has had to make and negotiate: it is one thing to put forth subject matter in a classroom; it is quite another to encourage students to listen and learn. In laconic but effective terms, Martianus makes this point in the meta-fictional dialogue with Satyra that punctuates the text. In the fabula, Cupid and one of the satyrs forming his retinue, overwhelmingly bored, take to slapping Silenus, who, equally unimpressed, has fallen into a deep, snoring sleep. At this, Satyra interrupts: Hac iocularis laetitiae alacritate feruente Satura illa, quae meos semper curae habuit informare sensus “ne tu,” ait, “Felix, uel Capella, uel quiquis es, non minus sensus quam nominis pecudalis,11 huius incongrui risus adiectione desipere uel dementire coepisti? ain tandem non dispensas in Iouiali cachinnos te mouisse concilio uerendumque esse sub diuum Palladiaque censura

From Inanity to Ideology  369 assimulare quemquam uelut cerritulum garrientem? At quo etiam tempore Cupido uel Satyrus petulantis ausus procacitate dissiliunt?” (8.806–07) At the height of all this joking around, Satyra, who always took it upon herself to try to tell me how I should be feeling, said “Hey you, Felix, Capella, or whoever you are with even less sense than that beast than you’re named after, have you so started to lose your senses that in your lunacy you can’t see how inappropriate it is to introduce laughter like this? Don’t you realize that you’ve brought frivolity into the assembly of Jove and that, to the gods and especially Pallas, it’s shameful to depict someone prattling as though he’s lost his mind? And what a time to have Cupid and a satyr see fit to prance around with no regard for decency.”12 To parry this reprimand, Martianus simply responds: Est quod rabido feruebas cerebrosa motu ac me Sileni somnum ridentem censorio clangore superciliosior increpabas? ergone figmenta dimoueam et nihil leporis iocique permixti taedium auscultantium recreabit? (8.809) Why are you flying into a towering rage and criticizing me in such shrill, supercilious tones for laughing at the sleeping Silenus? Am I  supposed to get rid of my story altogether and mix in no wit or jokes to help alleviate the boredom of my listeners? In referring to “listeners” (“ausculantes”), the authorial surrogate first and foremost means those internal to the narrative, the Greco-Roman gods, who have by this time listened and in some cases expressed their displeasure. Yet these comments also embrace the extra-diegetic recipients of the text that Martianus, as author, envisages as a historical reality. In both cases, it will be noted, author and surrogate are unequivocal in their judgment: the Seven Liberal Arts do not simply carry the potential to be boring. Left to themselves, they are boring. Two things are mentioned as palliatives to this tedium: not only the dissolute and disrespectful behavior by the likes of Cupid, Silenus, and Bacchus, but also the figmenta, the frame-narrative of the wedding and the gods who attend. Martianus is able to avail himself of quite precisely these latter fictions to extricate himself from what seems an impasse: fortunately, the last of the Seven Liberal Arts to speak is Harmony, who at once puts an end to the dissension that has infiltrated the pantheon. As ward of both Pallas and Venus, she brings together the domains of mind and body, and implicit in her two allegiances are a recognition that, to be effectively imparted, scholasticism must be tempered by an appeal to the senses, and must, in short, be delivered in a form that some, if not all, will find interesting and, perhaps, entertaining. With all else thus harmonized, the gods bow as one

370  David Rollo before the higher nous to which even they are subordinate, and with the marriage thus blessed, Harmony leads bride and groom to the nuptial chamber. Therein, with doors now firmly shut, Philology, humanity’s desire for congress with divine knowledge, and Mercury, patron of divine discourse, consummate their union. Thereupon, having reached a point at which mortal language cannot describe its own apotheosis, the story by necessity ends.13 We today can only conjecture over the extent to which educators heeded Martianus’ advocacy of wit and humor (“lepus” and “iocus”) as effective means of imparting knowledge. One thing we do know, however, is that, reflecting his defense of fiction as a palliative to boredom and as a medium for intellectual inquiry, several authors of the High Middle Ages took to the narrative as a means both to entertain and instruct. In most cases, this is perhaps coincidental. In one, however, it emphatically is not, and entails the clear and unequivocal rewriting of Martianus’ frame-narrative, the betrothal and wedding of Philology and Mercury. The author in question is Chrétien de Troyes, held by most medievalists today (the present medievalist included) to be one of the greatest Western writers of the entire era. The text in question is Erec et Enide, a narrative devoted to the betrothal and wedding of the eponymous couple and held by most medievalists (the present medievalist again included) to be the earliest Arthurian romance. In the prologue, Chrétien unequivocally announces his work to be fiction based upon “an adventure story” (“un conte d’avanture”).14 This acknowledgment on Chrétien’s part flies in the face of a still-virulent Augustinian conservatism that held all figments to be at best frivolous distractions from the contemplation of God’s word and works, and at worst seductive snares of the devil designed to lure the Christian into a sensual concupiscence tantamount to sexual arousal. (Augustine was certainly a brilliant man. He was equally certainly an unrelenting killjoy.) While it would be an exaggeration to say that pagan letters were one of the loves of Augustine’s life, it is an exaggeration that is nevertheless permitted by the patriarch’s own hyperbole. In the Confessions, Augustine witheringly denounces his boyhood infatuation with Virgil’s Aeneid, which he retrospectively casts as not only an illicit pleasure, but also a snare seemingly designed to prevent him from turning his attention to other, more useful disciplines: item si quaeram, quid horum maiore vitae huius incommodo quisque obliviscatur, legere et scribere an poetica illa figmenta, quis non videat, quid responsurus sit, qui non est penitus oblitus sui? peccabam ergo puer, cum illa inania istis utilioribus amore praeponebam vel potius ista oderam, illa amabam. iam vero unum et unum duo, duo et duo quattuor odiosa cantio mihi erat et dulcissimum spectaculum vanitatis equus ligneus plenus armatis et Troiae incendium atque ipsius umbra Creusa.15 If I were to ask which of the following would be the more inconvenient to someone’s life, to forget how to read and write or to forget those poetic figments, who does not see what he would reply, unless he has completely forgotten himself. I therefore sinned as a boy when in my affections I gave greater priority to those frivolities than to those more useful disciplines, or

From Inanity to Ideology  371 rather when I hated the latter and loved the former. To me it was odious to chant aloud “one and one make two,” or “two and two make four.” Of the greatest sweetness, however, was the empty spectacle of a wooden horse full of armed men and the burning of Troy and even the shade of Creusa. Augustine rejects the poetry of Virgil not simply because, unlike the alphabet, it is lacking in practical application. He does so because it is false. Stating that educated Carthaginians would deny Aeneas and his wanderings any historicity,16 he proceeds to reject the Aeneid as a spectacle of no substance (“spectaculum vanitatis”) and as a tissue of frivolities (“inania”) and fictions (“figmenta”). Such fables, Augustine maintains, are in fact more than frivolous: they are potentially deadly to the soul of the Christian. The principles of reading and writing, he states, are infinitely better quam illae [litterae] quibus tenere cogebar Aeneae nescio cuius errores oblitus errorum meorum et plorare Didonem mortuam, quia se occidit ab amore, cum interea me ipsum in his a te morientem, deus, vita mea, siccis oculis ferrem miserrimus. (1.13) than those texts through which I was made to become acquainted with the wanderings of a certain Aeneas, even as I forgot the extent of my own error, and to cry over the death of Dido, who killed herself out of love. In this I was all the while dying as I strayed from you, O God, my life, and at my utter misery I wept never a tear. Augustine contrasts the living death he unrepentantly underwent with the death of Dido, an unreal fable that nonetheless brought him to tears. This seductive capitulation to the allurements of fiction becomes tantamount to a sin of the flesh, categorized and rejected in the same section as a variety of fornication: non te amabam et fornicabar abs te et fornicanti sonabat undique “euge, euge.” amicitia enim mundi huius fornicatio est abs te et “euge euge” dicitur, ut pudeat, si non ita homo sit. et haec non flebam et flebam Didonem extinctam ferroque extrema secutam, sequens ipse extrema condita tua relicto te et terra iens in terram. (1.13) I did not love you and I fornicated against you and, as I fornicated, it was to resounding, ubiquitous cries of “well done, well done.” The friendship of this world is fornication against you and “well done” is said in an effort to discourage, in shame, anyone who wishes to become a different man. I did not weep over this. I  wept over Dido, whose life was extinguished as she pursued the extremity of death with the sword. I abandoned you when, as dust returning to dust, I for my part pursued the extremity of degradation in your created order.

372  David Rollo These are strong and potentially intimidating words: to weep over the death of Dido is in itself to die and to fornicate against the caritas that should be the guiding principle of all Christians.17 Strong and potentially intimidating as these words may be, not all Christians of the High Middle Ages were ardent Augustinians. By the late 12th century, authors as varied in interest and personal disposition as William of Malmesbury and Alain de Lille begin to pay lip service to the patriarch’s injunctions while subversively participating in the fleshy sins of fiction they appear to reject. Both authors grammatically berate frivolous or demonic stories of the Greco-Roman gods, yet both, with no apparent acknowledgment of contradiction, write allegories involving, quite precisely, the Greco-Roman gods. This is not to say that anything systematic or coordinated took place. Rather, a number of individuals writing in isolation began to chafe against the dogmatic repudiation of fiction and the pleasures it may bring.18 Another 12th-century author resoundingly, if implicitly to dismiss Augustine’s distrust of fiction, is Chrétien de Troyes, who, as already observed, unapologetically states that his romance is based on no more and no less than “an adventure story” (“un conte d’avanture”). To this it can now be added the fact that one author of exactly the type of potentially pernicious inanity that Augustine rejects is Martianus Capella: coincidentally, but eloquently to the reception of the De nuptiis during the Middle Ages, “figmenta,” the term Augustine uses to dismiss the Aeneid, is precisely the term that Martianus’ authorial surrogate, Felix Capella, uses to refer to his frame-narrative as he dismisses the criticism of Satyra: “ergone figmenta dimoueam?” (8.809). The classical fiction Martianus here defends provides another component of Chrétien’s intertextual undertaking: Chrétien combines thematic props from both the Celtic tale of Erec and Enide and the classical fable of Mercury and Philology to create what he calls “une molt bele conjointure,” “a most fine conjunction” of culturally disparate, yet ideologically complementary narratives.19 Here I emphasize “ideologically complementary.” Augustine rejects the Aeneid not just because it has no basis in fact and functions as a seductive distraction from the duties of the Christian. He does so also because it consists of “inania” and is in essence a “spectaculum vanitatis,” an extravagance that is vain, empty, and devoid of social or cultural significance. Central to the anti-Augustinianism I have rehearsed is a forceful rejection of such sentiments: pagan letters could indeed be meditations upon social and even emotional issues that were of direct relevance to Christian culture because they were still part of the lived experiences of men and women. Fictions of all kinds, moreover, could act as vehicles through which such aspects of the fallen condition could be contemplated and potentially negotiated. Both the frame-narrative of the De nuptiis and the adventure story of Erec and Enide fall into these categories. To return to the topic of the boring book with which I began, this time to push hypotheses one stage further: some books are not simply boring. They are also, to use Augustine’s reproaches, vain, frivolous, and utterly devoid of social or cultural utility. In short, they are not even worth reading.

From Inanity to Ideology  373 One snare into which Chrétien could have fallen is precisely that of inanity. He could have written a bad romance that taught no one anything and thereby inadvertently confirmed Augustine’s suspicions. This, however, is emphatically a snare into which he did not fall. Erec et Enide is a dense and subtle meditation upon the social roles of men and women, dramatized through the eponymous heroine’s accession to wisdom and a voice through which to articulate her agency.20 As even the minimal plot summary I have so far provided will show, such concerns are not in fact far removed from those of the De nuptiis itself, the frame narrative of which is a glorifying paean through which, however idealistically, Martianus anticipates the human intellect ascending to the level of the gods and acceding to universal knowledge and wisdom. This is made clear early in the text by the hymn that the muse Thalia offers to celebrate the effects of the wedding: nunc, nunc beantur artes, quas sic sacratis ambo, ut dent meare caelo, reserent caducis astra ac lucidam usque ad aethram pia subuolare uota. per uos uigil decensque nus mentis ima complet, per uos probata lingua fert glorias per aeuum. uos disciplinas omnes ac nos sacrate Musas. (2.126) Now, now the arts are blessed, so sanctified by you both that they open a path to the heavens, unlock the stars for the fallen, and let pious invocations fly from below up into the unclouded ether. Through you, the keen and noble intellect fills the void and proven language finds glory through the eons. Sanctify, then, all the disciplines, and sanctify us, the Muses. This is heady, optimistic stuff, inspiring across religions and cultures. Obviously, no medieval reader would have believed Martianus to be a Christian. Some could, however, have read Thalia’s song as an intimation (blinkered, vague, and misguided, because pagan) of the innate vocation of all men and women, but understood only by followers of Christ: to study, via disciplines such as the Seven Liberal Arts, the workings of the world, and as far as permissible, of the universe, in order to gain an even partial knowledge of the one true God. At this juncture, let us consider, however briefly, the one major and socially eloquent change that Chrétien makes to his paradigm. Although the De nuptiis reaches closure with the union of two categories that are apparently perfectly matched, Martianus emphasizes that, before their conjunction, Philology and Mercury were not in fact equals. In the rigidly patriarchal cultures of Late Antiquity

374  David Rollo and the Middle Ages, it could be expected, of course, that, if either partner in the marriage were said to be superior, it would be the man (or, in this case, since we are dealing with one of the gods, male character). This, however, proves not to be the case. Amid the enthusiastic responses to Apollo’s suggestion that Mercury marry Philology, Thalia, earlier in the song quoted earlier, supportively states, “doctus ille divus, sed doctior illa puella” (“the god in question is learned, but this girl is more so” [2.126]). In the Latin paradigm, this superiority in learning becomes something of an irrelevance once Philology and Mercury finally unite. In Chrétien’s vernacular transposition, however, it becomes significant. Throughout the varied adventures Erec and Enide undergo together, and the varied trials and tribulations Erec contrives to test his wife, it is Enide, true to the Latin paradigm, who proves not so much the more learned, but by far the wiser of the two. Yet this superiority in wisdom not only receives no textual recognition. It is ultimately occluded altogether. The young couple eventually returns to court, where Erec learns that his father has died and that he has acceded to all his lands and his title as vassal king to Arthur. Yet, textually, he in fact accedes to far more. The following is the beginning of the description of the robe Erec dons when formally invested with his new powers and prerogatives: Quatre fees l’avoient fet Par grant san et par grant mestrie. L’une i portraist Geometrie Si com ele esgarde et mesure Con li ciax et la terre dure Si que de rien nule n’i faut Et puis le bas, et puis le haut, Et puis le lé, et puis le lonc Et puis esgarde par selonc Con la mers est lee et parfonde, Et si mesure tot le monde. Ceste oevre i mist la premerainne, Et la seconde mist sa painne En Arimetique portraire. (6682–94) Four fairies had made it. With great intelligence and mastery, one of them had depicted Geometry there, its appearance and measurement, the extent of the earth and the sky, and had done so with such precision that nothing is lacking. Then came depth and height, width and length, and a record of the extent and profundity of the sea. In this way she measures the entire world. This is the work that the first of the fairies added, while the second busied herself portraying Arithmetic. This reads, in massively abbreviated form, as a mise-en-abîme of Book Six of the De nuptiis, and it establishes a series of textual fragments/intertextual allusions that cover the next 35 lines, which are devoted to the disciplines of Arithmetic, Music,

From Inanity to Ideology  375 and Astronomy, sewn onto the mantle by the three remaining fairies. Erec’s coronation robe emerges, then, as no less than a visual representation of the Quadrivium. This has two primary effects. It reinforces the intertextual presence of Martianus’ De nuptiis. It raises crucial questions that remain textually unanswered. First, now that the intertextual presence of the Latin paradigm has been so forcefully re-invoked (again, unmistakable thematic transpositions have preceded), what has happened to Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric, the three verbal arts of the Trivium? Second, what has happened to Enide, the woman who, again through intertextual contrast, we could have expected to be the wiser of the couple (“doctus ille divus, sed doctior illa puella” [2.216]). For reasons that are never clarified, Enide quite simply misses the part of the ceremony devoted to Erec’s regal investiture: at this juncture, a mere 146 lines before the end of the romance, it is never explained whether this is by Enide’s own volition or at the command of her husband (or of their liege Lord, Arthur himself). This opens several avenues of interpretation. On the negative side, Enide is thoroughly peripheralized by a patriarchal society and the woman’s voice she articulates, and on a wider cultural level, represents, is forcefully muted, leaving the man hyperbolically (and unfairly) to assume the mantle of wisdom he does not deserve. Alternatively, and on the more positive side, neither Enide nor the verbal arts need to be present because they have so far coalesced in Enide’s own voice and made their importance so forcefully felt in influencing narrative developments that their glorification is unnecessary: let the man bear the flashy, external insignia of wisdom, but let the woman, who has so far always advised the wisest course, unceremoniously but confidently enjoy the knowledge and agency she has demonstrated herself to possess. These alternatives are not exclusive and are not intended to be (neither, for that matter, do they capture the full subtlety of the romance). Of importance here is the simple fact of irresolution and the inevitable invitation it brings to re-evaluate all that has preceded, and this open-ended call to re-interpret is of crucial importance. The reasons readers such as Chrétien de Troyes returned to the frame-narrative of the De nuptiis were to entertain (his romance is a love story set against a background of adventure) and, by failing to conclude, provocatively to instruct (his romance is a socially informed meditation on the relationship between the sexes set against a background of patriarchy and the peripheralization of women). Certainly, Martianus contributed to the curious sub-category of the boring book that internally announces itself to be boring. As already mentioned, the circumscription of the Seven Liberal Arts, left unadorned, is indeed stiflingly dull. Yet one of the palliatives that Martianus advances to alleviate this tedium, the “figmenta” of the wedding of Philology and Mercury, contributed to the 12th-century renaissance in fiction itself, an epistemology for centuries muted by the colossal authority of Augustine. Notes 1 Martianus Capella, Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, eds. William H. Stahl, Richard Johnson, and E. L. Burge, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 1.15. 2 See Cassiodorus, Institutiones, 2.17 and 3.20, in Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones, ed. R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon, 1937).

376  David Rollo 3 Johannes Scotus Eriugena, Johanis Scotii Annotationes in Marcianum, ed. Cora E. Lutz (Cambridge, MA: The Medieval Academy of America, 1939); Martin of Laon, whose glosses also circulated under the authorship of “Dunchad,” Dunchad: Glossae in Martianum, ed. Cora E. Lutz (Lancaster, PA: The American Philological Association, 1944); Remigius of Auxerre, Commentum in Martianum Capellam, ed. Cora E. Lutz as Remigii Autissiodorensis commentum in Martianum Capellam, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1962–65). 4 Notker der Deutsche, Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, ed. James C. King, as Vol. 4 of Die Werke Notkers des Deutschen, eds. James C. King and Petrus W. Tax (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1979). For the influence of the De nuptiis on the work of Notker and, more generally, German writing of the Middle Ages as a whole and the early Renaissance, see: Herbert Backes, “Die Hochzeit Merkurs und der Philologie.” Sudien zu Notkers Martian Übersetzungen (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1982); Nikolaus Henkel, Deutsche Übersetzungen lateinischer Shultexte: Ihre Verbreitung und Funktion im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters 90 (Münich: Artemis, 1988). 5 Henry Osborn Taylor, The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1901), 49. 6 Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, 1.21. 7 Percival Richard Cole, A History of Educational Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), 78. 8 “ ‘Nimirum’ inquit Bromius [Bacchus], qui facetior est deorum eamque penitus nesciebat, ‘haec aut ex harenis Libyae anhelantis adducitur, quod et capillitium implexum docet et amicitia uenenorum, aut fidendum pharmacopolam esse Marsicae nationis; ita namque agnitione uiperea et blanda anguium adulatione diligitur. quod ni est, ex illius hami fraude colligitur, quod circulatrix pellacissima et metarum Marsicarum incola comprobatur.’ ” The text is from Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, ed. Adolf Dick, with addenda by Jean Préaux (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1969). Reference is to book and section number, here 4.331. 9 “Talibus insistente Dialectica et ad quaedam non minus inextricabilia quam caligosa properante Pallas nutu Maiugenae [Mercury] festinantis interuenit.” Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, 4.423. 10 “Haec cum Grammatice uelut rerum exordium instauratura dixisset, propter superi senatus Iouisque fastidium Minerua talibus interuenit” (3.326). 11 “Capella” is the feminine form of “caper,” “goat.” 12 The translation is mine, as are those that follow, whether from Latin or Old French. 13 For a far more detailed (and nuanced) reading of this linguistic apotheosis and its implications for western European literature of the later Middle Ages, see my Kiss My Relics: Hermaphroditic Fictions of the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), passim, but especially Chapters 1 and 2, on Martianus and his primary ninthcentury commentator, Remigius of Auxerre. 14 Chrétein de Troyes, Erec et Enide, ed. Mario Roques (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1981). Reference is to line, here 13. 15 The edition of Augustine used is that of Martin Skutella, H. Jürgens and W. Schaub, S. Aureli Augustini Confessionum Libri XIII (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1969). Reference is to book and section number, here 1.13–14. 16 “si proponam eis interrogans, utrum verum sit quod Aenean aliquando Carthaginem venisse poeta dicit, indoctiores nescire se respondebunt, doctiores autem etiam negabunt verum esse” (1.13). 17 For more information on Augustine’s relationship with the works of Virgil (which became more fraught and dismissive with age), see Sabine MacCormack, The Shadows of Poetry: Vergil in the Mind of Augustine (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: The University of California Press, 1998).

From Inanity to Ideology  377 18 This anti-Augustinianism is one of the underlying themes of my Kiss My Relics. See above all Chapter 3 on William of Malmesbury and Chapters 4–6 on Alain de Lille. 19 For Chrétien’s thematic transpositions of the De nuptiis, see Karl D. Uitti, “A propos de philologie,” trans. Eric Hicks, Littérature 41 (1981): 30–46; Karl D. Uitti, “Vernacularization and Old French Romance Mythopoesis with an Emphasis on Chrétien’s Erec et Enide,” in The Sower and His Seed: Essays on Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Rupert T. Pickens (Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1983), 81–115; Sally Musseter, “The Education of Chrétien’s Enide,” The Romanic Review 73 (1982): 147–66. 20 I analyze these subtleties elsewhere. See my “From Apuleius’ Psyche to Chrétien’s Erec and Enide,” in The Search for The Ancient Novel, ed. James Tatum (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 347–69.

Bibliography Augustine. S. Aureli Augustini Confessionum Libri XIII. Edited by Martin Skutella, H. Jürgens, and W. Schaub. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1969. Backes, Herbert. “Die Hochzeit Merkurs und der Philologie.” In Sudien zu Notkers Martian Übersetzungen. Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1982. Cassiodorus. Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones. Edited by R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford: Clarendon, 1937. Chrétein de Troyes. Erec et Enide. Edited by Mario Roques. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1981. Cole, Percival Richard. A History of Educational Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937. Dunchad [Martin of Laon]. Dunchad: Glossae in Martianum. Edited by Cora E. Lutz. Lancaster, PA: The American Philological Association, 1944. Henkel, Nikolaus. Deutsche Übersetzungen lateinischer Shultexte: Ihre Verbreitung und Funktion im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit. Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters 90. Münich: Artemis, 1988. Johannes Scotus Eriugena. Johanis Scotii Annotationes in Marcianum. Edited by Cora E. Lutz. Cambridge, MA: The Medieval Academy of America, 1939. MacCormack, Sabine. The Shadows of Poetry: Vergil in the Mind of Augustine. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: The University of California Press, 1998. Martianus Capella. De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii. Edited by Adolf Dick, with addenda by Jean Préaux. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1969. ———. Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts. Edited by William H. Stahl, Richard Johnson, and E. L. Burge, 2 Vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977. Musseter, Sally. “The Education of Chrétien’s Enide.” The Romanic Review 73 (1982): 147–66. Notker der Deutsche. “Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii.” Edited by James C. King. In Die Werke Notkers des Deutschen. Edited by James C. King and Petrus W. Tax, Vol. 4. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1979. Remigius of Auxerre. Commentum in Martianum Capellam. Edited by Cora E. Lutz as Remigii Autissiodorensis commentum in Martianum Capellam, 2 Vols. Leiden: Brill, 1962–65. Rollo, David. “From Apuleius’ Psyche to Chrétien’s Erec and Enide.” In The Search for The Ancient Novel, edited by James Tatum, 347–69. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. ———. Kiss My Relics: Hermaphroditic Fictions of the Middle Ages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

378  David Rollo Taylor, Henry Osborn. The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages. New York: Columbia University Press, 1901. Uitti, Karl D. “A propos de philologie.” Translated by Eric Hicks. Littérature 41 (1981): 30–46. ———. “Vernacularization and Old French Romance Mythopoesis with an Emphasis on Chrétien’s Erec et Enide.” In The Sower and His Seed: Essays on Chrétien de Troyes, edited by Rupert T. Pickens, 81–115. Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1983.

III

To the Ancient Mediterranean and India

20 Solomon’s Song of Songs and Adi Shankara’s Soundarya Lahari A Comparison1 Susan Visvanathan Words in themselves have magical power. They carry with themselves the sense of their immediate effect upon the mind. As a result, those reading or hearing these works, the Song of Songs of Solomon and Soundarya Lahiri of Adi Shankara, whether they fully understand them or not, are lulled into a state of willing acceptance. Gods/Goddesses exist, love exists, the complementarity of the male and female states must exist. Androgyny often becomes the site of multi-sitedness, so that religious poetry carries with it the performative aspects of theatre, of the dramatic. There is often anxiety among practitioners of ritual, whether as priests or as devotees offering the oblations, that ritual must not be seen as drama or a play. They believe that it negates the sacrosanct aspect of ritual. Yet, when we look at the Greeks, we know that the power of the narrative, represented by the voice of the Sibyl, appears most in the formulaic language of prophecy. Here, the poets are content to describe the authenticity of their experience, the remembrance of states that surely the gods must know. This is the infallible function of mystical poetry. It is to circumscribe the truth value of that which cannot be described, that may not be approximated with many caveats as to what is being attempted. The dating of these two works, the Song of Songs and Soundarya Lahari, is not known and is sometimes seen to be placed between 1,000 BCE and 800 CE. However, the intentions of the text are known. Both compilations use female energy as the source of their syncretistic function. The images created by King Solomon and Adi Shankara center around the exquisite symbols of the weaving of the natural and the divine. I will locate, in this chapter, the two texts as being within the function of erotic poetry, which compounds into mysticism or the state of bliss and its interlocution of a primeval state of nature. Words, sounds, phrases, and symbols all become carriers of the possibility of entering into a state of ecstasy. Should we then separate ourselves from the authorial voices of our poets, who may have been legion, before the compilation of the verses historically occurred? At what point may textual analysts, linguists by profession, demand that we see the interpolation as historically notated? However, today, the digital text actually appears as an extraction from the “original,” which would have traversed a multiplicity of sites, when travelling between the oral and the inscribed. There are many reasons for the use of digital texts, because the reader may no longer be able to go into the variations in the narrative, for lack of training or access to resources. DOI: 10.4324/9781003157779-29

382  Susan Visvanathan The digital text is superimposed for public viewing, through a work of continuous reflection, and the varieties of the translation may be provided to us as footnotes to understand the origin of the given text.2 We find this occurring independently in other interpretative compilations, such as Robert Alter and Frank Kermode’s The Literary Guide to the Bible.3 Authors of essays on the Old Testament noted that translation is a continuous exercise, and they were woeful about the erroneousness of earlier translations of the Hebrew Bible.4 If time is such a fulcrum in the understanding of the sacred text, how may we legitimize juxtaposing two works, such as the Song of Songs and Soundarya Lahari, both being literary works of such variety and effervescence? Even the time of translation of the two texts from Hebrew, Aramaic, or Sanskrit may be separated by 500 or more years. Many of these textual problems about frequently circulated texts, from orality to writing, and the manner by which they acquire legitimation by becoming household texts, is well documented by Raziuddin Aquil and Partha Chatterjee, in their edited book History in the Vernacular.5 Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Velcheru Narayana Rao, in their essay “History and Politics in the Vernacular,” discussing the Kural of Valluvar, show how the verses of the poet were frequently read in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.6 It was partially translated by Constantino Beschi, and Christian missionaries for many centuries thought that it was similar to Christian ideas, possibly due to the influence of St. Thomas, friend and Apostle of Christ, on Thiruvalluvar himself. It was a work that the Malabarians (according to Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, writing in 1708) knew by heart and quoted very often. The language of transmission of the text thus becomes very important, and we can imagine the appropriation of other texts if the collation takes place over a long period of time.7 The inscriber, whichever the epoch, becomes the utmost authority. Through his/ her political ideologies (as in the verse of women poets who were followers of Basavanna) and dramatical interpolations, the detail of mundane descriptions in the narrative, the suppression of the problematic, the enhancement of the politically expedient, and the engineering of silences are implicit within this exercise of passing down the text, as historians show.8 In both the Song of Songs as well as the Soundarya Lahari of Adi Shankara, the preoccupation with extricating the self from the dangerousness of dualism is manifest. The lyrical aspect is bent upon the use of nature symbolism as always accessible, in which the poet(s) provide us with images of fruition, flowers, bees, sunrise, light and dark, and latticed windows, to encourage our looking in. Rurality as a maxim of simplicity is central to the assumption that, over the centuries, these are continually recognizable, or at least imaginable, to readers. The danger of dualism is mitigated by love, erotic in the first instance, where images of the woman’s body bring about the fruition of a state that is one of excess, but recognizable by both men and women as the Mother’s body. In the Soundarya Lahiri, Adi Shankara writes in verse 6, as edited by Sarma Rachakonda: O! Daughter of the snow mountain! What to say about your blessings! Manmadha’s bow is sugarcane twig. Its string is made of beeline. His five arrows are flowers. Vasanta [spring season] is his friend and companion. Gentle

Solomon’s Song of Songs and Adi Shankara’s Soundarya Lahari  383 [Malaya] mountain breeze is his chariot to wage his war. Thus, though all his instruments and associates are so inefficient, Ananga (Manmadha) triumphs over this entire world. Isn’t this because of the compassionate glance from the corner of your eye?9 She is essentially the mother who entices, as verse 7 says: Let the Divine Mother dwell intimately in our hearts. . . with Her tinkling filigree girdle, Her full bosom—akin to the frontal lobes of a young elephant— making her bend forward (reaching us), Her lean waist enhancing her beauty, Her face akin to the full autumnal moon. She sports in her palms a bow and arrow, a noose, and a goad. I revere this Divine Mother who is the “I” consciousness in the Lord, Parama Shiva.10 This similitude of sister and wife and mother and wife also enact the nature of the sibling bond not necessarily as incestuous, but of the primary enclosed fecundity of the recognition of the Mother. Whether it is in tantric rites, where the significance and correctness of the verse and its emblematic messages are prescribed, or the acceptance of the erotic in mysticism in the Semitic religions, the reader understands the homologous leap to the love for the mother country. Between the recognition of mother as Shakti as constantly desirable and the map of belonging transposed in nationalism to the mother country, the movement is linear. Solomon’s verse says: You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain. Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates with choice fruits, with henna and nard, nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of incense tree, with myrrh and aloes and all the finest spices. You are a garden fountain, a well of flowing water, streaming down from Lebanon. (Song of Songs 4:12–14) Later in the poem, the Beloved answers: Under the apple tree I roused you; there your mother conceived you, there she who was in labor gave you birth. Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, the jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like a blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned. (Song of Songs 8:5–7) The spiritualism of the Song of Songs and the Soundarya Lahari is then transposed to a new vocabulary of longing and fear of losing the country before appropriating it. The long journeys that Adi Shankara makes and the enclosure in the fragrant moment of the one love, in the polygamous garden, by Solomon, are both poetic

384  Susan Visvanathan means to mark the ways in which the reader must accept the dangers that lie in this hunger for the manifest. Of course, the polysemy of the verse could also be read in a moment of lewdness, which Natalie Zemon Davis well argues in her essay “Proverbial Wisdom and Popular Errors.”11 She looks at the printed version of the Sayings of Solomon in the late 15th century in Paris. It was a popular work and circulated in Europe in its manuscript version. It was called “The Sayings of Solomon with the Answers of Marcolf.” Zemon Davis writes: On the title page of one of them was a woodcut of a bookish, decorous king talking with a disheveled, barefoot rustic. In the text Solomon gave forth rhymed proverbs of high moral tone; Marcolf then answered back in earthy verse, after redoing Solomon’s sayings in shrewd practical language or going him one better in a joke. Thus Solomonww observes: “A load upon a mare May be silver or be brass, Which one the beast won’t care.” To which Marcolf responds: “The whore doesn’t care Which man jumps on her ass, To her it’s all one fare.”12 Conquest is a term that defines pilgrimage, and marriages across borders as ways by which the poets bring about the stability of the discourse of territorialization. Strangeness is domesticated and virility is propounded as the manner of the consecration of territory and the female body. Abhaya for Adi Shankara stands for Advaita. It is the pronouncement of fearlessness in the giving up of dualism. The danger of identification with Parmeswara is limited to the experience of similitude but cannot appropriate Shakti as wife. Yet, Soundarya Lahari is about the glances of Shakti even while she is absorbed in Shiva, resulting in the enticement of the sādhaka. It is through the metaphor of the body that the excess which results in mystical transcendence arises, and yet the goal is the achievement of the attributeless form of Parmeswara through Samadhi.13 As the verses from the second part of the Soundarya Lahiri make clear, whatever the tenacity of the devotee, however great his power, Adi Shakti is enclosed within Shiva: O! Mother! Several great poets by virtue of their linguistic skills become dearer to Goddess Saraswati and are her loved ones. Somehow, with acquisition of wealth of all sorts, who does not become Lakshmi pati (lord of the goddess of wealth)? But, Mother, You are truly the Sati indeed! Your heart is only adored by Maha Deva. None can ever boast of being intimate to You—not even the inanimate Kuravaka (gorinta) tree. There is only one Parvati pati.14

Solomon’s Song of Songs and Adi Shankara’s Soundarya Lahari  385 This theme of conquering the body of the mother country and consolidating it is implicit in the verses of Solomon. Solomon’s empire is established on the fratricide of his brother Adonijah, as the latter promotes himself as king before his father is dead. Bathsheba, hearing of this, intervenes and demands kingship for her son Solomon on David’s deathbed, describing Adonijah’s premature triumphal march. Adonijah loses to Solomon because of Bathsheba’s assertiveness and David’s love for her, and the presence of the prophet Nathan, who argues in favor of Solomon. Solomon first releases Adonijah but then murders him because he believes his brother will wrest the kingdom from him by marrying David’s last slave woman, who had been brought to warm the old King’s deathbed (1 Kings 1: 17–29, 1 Kings 2:17–22). This complex story serves to inform the reader that Solomon fears for his kingdom, for himself, is loyal to the Lord whom he worships, but can never resolve the problem of his spiraling ambition, to protect the Kingdom of David. As successor to these many conquests, he understands the poignancy of the psalms. Those poems represent the continuous fear, anxiety, dread, and terror, which escalate during times of war and plague and can only be concluded through a litany of repetition. However many women Solomon marries, however many concubines he has, he can never forget the danger to his property. This is the greatest divide between God and himself, because the religions of the women he loves become his own religion, variously, as he sets up temples and sacrifices to them (1 Kings 1:4, 11). The Song of Songs thus becomes the verse of conquest: How beautiful your sandaled feet, O prince’s daughter! Your graceful legs are like jewels, the work of a craftsman’s hands. Your navel is a rounded goblet that never lacks blended wine. Your waist is a mound of wheat encircled by lilies. Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are the pools of Heshbon by the gate of Bath Rabbim. Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon looking toward Damascus. Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel. Your hair is like royal tapestry; the king is held captive by its tresses.15 The problem of borders and boundaries become concealed in the manner in which Solomon promotes this cosmopolitan vocabulary of 1,500 songs and 3,000 proverbs. The proverb is formulaic verse; it compounds the wisdom of tradition with the language of power. The listener must hear the “discernment and wisdom” that is captive in language. It is the manner in which Solomon is able to herald his presence through millennia, although the continuity of this preoccupation with the prostitute as the one central enemy of the believing subject is often announced. The subject/reader must remember that the harlot can waylay, can take the honorable man from his steadfast past. The servant, Abishag the Shunammite, who slept with the shepherd King David in his old age, becomes the possible wife of his brother, who then claiming marriage with the queen/concubine/slave of David’s old age will hope to rule over Solomon and his principalities (Kings 1:13–25). Solomon has his brother murdered for fear of being overthrown from the kingdom his mother Bathsheba had procured for him from David.

386  Susan Visvanathan This terror is further propounded in Solomon’s first case of rule as King, where two prostitutes fight over a baby, and he rules that the baby must be sliced in two, and thus simply divided between the contestants. The real mother leaves the order suspended, as she wishes the child to live, and the false mother agrees to the division by two (Kings 3:16). Hidden in these stories is the continual preoccupation with segmentalization and freedom, loss and conquest. How may a King rule, and how may his judgments bring him fame so that people begin to visit him from many places, his kingdom extending from Egypt to Babylonia? His marriage to an Egyptian princess is the first of these forays into marriage diplomacy, and the venue of trade, consumption, and architectural wonders. And his fame spread to all the surrounding nations. He spoke three thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered a thousand and five. He described plant life, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of walls. He also taught about animals and birds, reptiles, and fish. Men of all nations came to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, sent by all the kings of the world, who had heard of his wisdom. (1 Kings 4:31–34) His friendship with Hiram, King of Tyre, had a positive consequence because the latter became the procurer of cedars needed for the building of the Temple. “So give orders that cedars of Lebanon be cut for me. My men will work with yours and I will pay you for your men whatever wages you set” (1 Kings 5:6). The narrative continues: King Solomon conscripted laborers from all Israel—thirty thousand men. He sent them off to Lebanon in shifts of ten thousand a month, so that they spent one month in Lebanon and two months at home. Adoniram was in charge of forced labor. Solomon had 70,000 carriers and 80,000 stonecutters in the hills, as well as 3,300 foremen who supervised the project and directed the workmen. At the king’s command they removed from the quarry large blocks of quality stone to provide a foundation of dressed stone for the temple. The craftsmen of Solomon and Hiram and the men of Gebal (that is Byblos) cut and prepared the timber and stone for the building of the temple. (1 Kings 5:13–18) The mystical poetry of the pleasure of gardens is thus the propitiation of God who had closed the doors of Eden, and the psalms of David were a fitting prelude to the premonition of danger that always lurked—that of exclusion or death. The temple that Solomon made was to fulfill the promise his father David had made. A tent for the lord and a palace for the King? David’s anguish had been communicated adequately to his people. He had bought Araunah the Jebisite’s threshing floor and constructed an altar (2 Samuel 24:18–24). Solomon, however, said according to sacred history: Now I am about to build a temple for the Lord my God and to dedicate it to him for burning fragrant incense before him, for setting out the consecrated

Solomon’s Song of Songs and Adi Shankara’s Soundarya Lahari  387 bread regularly and for making burnt offerings every morning and evening and on Sabbaths and New Moon and at the appointed feasts of the Lord our God. . . . The temple I am going to build will be great, because our God is greater than all other gods. But who is able to build a temple for him, since the heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain him? Who then am I to build a temple for him, except as a place to burn sacrifices before him? (2 Chronicles:4–6) The palace he built for himself was even grander, and the Song of Solomon represent the garden as the site of consummation, where the women gather, where songs are sung. The garden, as opposed to devastation, warfare, desert, forest, which is cut down to build the temple, and the palace, become symbols of power and honor. Solomon decreed that he had not yet been devoured by the fate of his father, David, who had murdered his own son Absalom and whose poetry represented the songs of defeat, exile, and enmity. The pastoral equanimity of the Song is about this surcease of war, the stabilization of the kingdom. But as Montefiore reminds us, “[y]et, Solomon’s own magnificence came first. He took seven years to finish the Temple, and 13 to build his own palace, which was larger.”16 Solomon took a census of all the aliens who were in Israel, after the census his father David had taken, and they were found to be 153,600. He assigned 70,000 of them to be carriers and 80,000 to be stonecutters in the hills, with 3,600 foremen over them to keep the people working. (2 Chronicles 2:17–18) This power over conquered people contributed to his grandiloquence and pride, leading to his ultimate downfall. The lord became angry with Solomon for his love of foreign wives and his building of temples to the gods of alien people. The Lord said, “Since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant and my decrees which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates” (1 Kings 11:11–13). It was not done during his lifetime, and even after the dispersion into ten tribes of Israel, one tribe remained in the name of David, whose lineage would always burn a lamp in the name of God (1 Kings 1:34–36). Montefiore suggests that Solomon’s grandeur may be overemphasized, “but his decline rings only too true: the king of wisdom became an unpopular tyrant who handed his monumental extravagances through high taxes and the ‘chastisement of whips.’ ”17 Approximately 500 years after escaping the Pharaohs, the King of Israel was the one who moved away from monotheism so beloved to the Jews, married the Pharaoh’s daughter, and cracked the whip on slaves. The Song of Songs thus becomes an act of mapmaking, where the boundaries and actors keep changing, where the whore and the beloved may not change places, but the very artifacts of war become sites of conquest on the physical body of the beloved. Towers, mountains, valleys, far-off lands still to be won, the singer of the song is confident that the dialogue between him and the beloved will be comprehended by her friends. Kingship is domesticated by the garden, the dream, and the

388  Susan Visvanathan tendrils of vines. Chris Perkins says, in “Playing with Maps,” that mapmaking tells us a lot about intended journeys: There is an assemblage of actants. The analogies with play are obvious here: a progressive sense of “map skill acquisition” leading to serious map use; playing with maps as a kind of precursor to adult mapping; power and competition in the mapping—who is in control of the map; notions of identity— preconceptions of who reads best; playing as embodied practice; and the active role of the artefact in the process and also the fun of using the map.18 The drama of loss and the beloved’s response to the dream are frightening to read for the intensity evoked for sleeping long and missing the call of the beloved. Solomon describes the sleep, which is so deep that the inability to waken and throw the covers, dispenses with the aromatic oils to open the door, results in the lover disappearing into the night. Poetry calls to us, and the heart is opened, it remembers the possibility of loss. Solomon’s verse beckons the spiritualist heart of prayer into the bliss of connubium. That is its only purpose for the sadhaka or spiritual aspirant. Boredom and/or fear of death are foreclosed in the need to write abstract verse. The Song of Songs in the modern Bible follows the lamentations of Job, which is a significantly powerful poem about the trickster angel challenging God and the need for God to prove his power over Job who, in this debate over virtue, is reduced to sackcloth, skin diseases, and ashes. The angel is excluded too, and becomes a competitor to God, over the sin of pride. His/Her/Their beauty substitutes for Venus and becomes the symbol of the Morning Star, which is also simultaneously the brightest of all the night stars. The terribleness of the verse and the misfortune that accompanies this game between the Adversary and God brings to us the foreknowledge that time recognizes the true worth of humans. In the intermeshing of events that are identified as the play between God and the Adversary (who is thought to be the angel who wanders the Earth, looking at the choices that humans make), Job’s responses are collated, particularly in responses to his friends.19 The origin of good and evil, however these are recognized, are representational forms of its very source. If God created everything, then the evil that arises in humans is a god-given test, but choice or the will to choose is what makes humans unique. What the Soundarya Lahari and the Song of Songs do is to assert the awfulness of Shiva/Yehovah within the origin of existence itself. The expulsion from Paradise, which is the myth of Adam and Eve from Eden, is also thought to be collated by poets who experienced this sending away from home. The psalmist’s preoccupation with war, disease, treachery, sorrow, solitude, lost homes, and the simplicity of pastoralism are inscribed in these songs, which are a shadow play of the uses of pleasure in the Song of Songs. Should we then say that Solomon’s Song represents the stability of the discourse, where the lover and the beloved prove the certainty of their destiny in a known garden? For Adi Shankara, the cosmos must be interlinked with Devi, every element of existence is an aspect of Prakriti, within which Purusha is engaged, elementally

Solomon’s Song of Songs and Adi Shankara’s Soundarya Lahari  389 as well as symbolically.20 Gregory Bateson, in his conversations with his daughter Mary Catherine Bateson, refers to the certainty of this presence, undivided in the garden and in the journey as Pleroma, where the map may point to us the nature of territory, where the very symbols of evolution are forged.21 This homology between the united body of lovers, whether in the mortal garden or the terrestrial landscape where Shiva and Parvati reign, is the map we traverse in a vicarious way as readers. It is a tapestry in verse, abundant in images and words, which creates a surreal space where everything is conjoined, the real and the abstract, and we begin to focus our minds on the very synthesis that the poets of both works long for, which is of all the senses. The compounding of the senses is what Adi Shankara describes in Soundarya Lahari as the essence of Abhaya, the woman who engages in philosophical discussion and is non-judgmental in her pursuits, and is seen to be Advaita itself. It is necessary for Adi Shankara through the verse to domesticate and then deify her. The sadhaka is never absent in erotic poetry and merges the presence of lotus and bees in the same breath. When will the goddess turn jealous or angry? She is merged in Parmeswara.22 One of the most interesting articulations of spiritual love is the essay “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” by Joan Kelly,23 who explained that the mystical love that the knight represented for the lady was, in essence, unattainable. She belonged to someone else, but the ardor that he felt for her caused some of the most beautiful verses to be written. No wonder, then, that Mariology provided the epiphenomenon of the Virgin Mother adored by medieval priests. She became theologically the culmination of desires, prayer, accessibility, in truth, the Church. Combined with this were questions of adoration, companionate love, access to the body or its repudiation by both, and the questions raised by the aristocracy in Europe about the right of women to both sexuality and property. Adultery then was not as much sin, or illegitimacy of children, if the husband’s absence made the lady agree to courtship by the knight in terms of abstract or corporeal transactions. Valor in times of war, as during the crusades, made the currency of love and longing much more potent than questions of coinciding patriarchy with ownership of the woman’s body or territories controlled by her. In this sense, prostitution again becomes a deadly risk, as Solomon refutes the tenderness toward the Shulammite, his father’s last slave mistress. “Why would you gaze on the Shulammite as on the dance of Mahanaim?”24 The Soundarya Lahiri Advaita is about clarity and love for the simplicity of truth. The dualism of jñāna and bhakti are transcended by the love for Amba.25 In the later verses of the Soundarya Lahiri, Adi Shankara becomes essentially absorbed in the physical beauty of the goddess within whom the attributes of Nature are all-encompassing, but implicit in the gazing is the act of chastity. As one acts and performs dynamic service firmly embedded in total dedication, then that bestows sukham, or enjoyment; indeed, there cannot be such happiness without dedicated service backed up by nishtha and shraddha. This happiness is certainly not in reference to material context, which is tantamount to endless craving and flimsily fleeting! The joy that is under reference is most hard-earned as a

390  Susan Visvanathan result of a long chain of variables starting from speech enabled by strong knowledge of appropriate nature, clean mind, strong will, thought, meditation, understanding, physical energy brought up by good food and water of suitable heat and relief space, good memory, aspiration, vital energy, truthfulness, thinking capacity and mental sharpness, faith, determination, nishkama karma! Indeed, a Sadhaka ought to aspire for that kind of Happiness!26 Roland Barthes, in A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, puts it sharply as the embrace, the two-headed love which is the return to the mother: In this companionable incest, everything is suspended; time, laws, prohibition; nothing is exhausted, nothing is wanted; all desires are abolished, for they were definitively fulfilled.27 The garden and its beauties, its fruit and flowers, its shade and light, its seasons, embraces, and songs are about the fetishization of these, for they have touched the lovers or vice versa. Memoryscapes of these and the colors red, pink, white, and green become like ribbons that have entangled the lovers, who will survive time’s ravages.28 The continual appearance of lilies and lotus, bees and forest and trees are a reminder of these. As Carsten L. Wilke reminds us, there is a fluidity in the movement between wilderness (encompassing forest and desert), the court and palace, the vineyard, and the city.29 The dialectic between the crystallization of the garden and the construction of the temple and palace is well maintained in the Song of Solomon as the relation to the felling of the forest from which the timber must be brought. The Tamil poems of the Sangam era are a clear representation of the different voices that appear in each, defining the landscapes of exteriority and interiority in the territorialization of landscapes represented as lovers meet, by the mediation of friends, obfuscating hierarchies between princes, hunters, and agrarian communities.30 The rituals of affirmation that echo through both poems or songs involve what is also the fading out, in Barthes’ terms, the image of the mother and death, the possibility of no return. Anticipation of this loss is completed through deification, where connubial bliss is the legitimation for that which will never be lost in memory. Barthes says: The voice supports, evinces, and so to speak performs the disappearance of the loved being, for it is characteristic of the voice to die. What constitutes the voice is what, within it, lacerates me by dint of having to die, as if it were at once and never could be anything but memory.31 The bridge built between the sounds of lovers and the meanings are then embellished as a meta-language of verse that can be transposed according to need. Soundarya Lahari exults in verdant sexuality, where the games played between Parmeswara and Shakti, including power play, concealing, hierarchy, and power, are transferred to the reader through verse.32 Rao cites Maha Swami of Kanchipuram33 interpreting

Solomon’s Song of Songs and Adi Shankara’s Soundarya Lahari  391 stanza 22 of Soundarya Lahari. According to Maha Swami, there can never be equality between the godhead and the devotee: Though Vaishnavism does not speak of Nirguna Advaita nor accepts it as a part of the system, it has a concept according to which an individual, on his being liberated, attains the state of Saguna Maha Vishnu; he will have all the qualities of Vishnu, all the godliness, except that of being the husband of Lakshmi. Non-dualist Shaivism, too, says that on his liberation a man will become Parameshvara but he will not have the status of being the husband of Uma/Parvati. Vaishnavas and others are unlike us, the Advaitis who, on liberation, have only one entity and no attributes.34 Both Song of Songs and Soundarya Lahari intensely describe the beauty of the world, giving to the form and biography of women the splendor of the morning sun, the colors of the world, and the primevality of touch. Yet, because polygamy and celibacy are mirror opposites, king and renunciant are both left empty-handed. This inability to transcend the tactile creates verse, words, and legitimation of their absence. They want us to believe they exist, but in reality, they are not there other than how time transposes them as legendary or historical figures, who cannot be pinned down as authors or persons. Like Rama in the Vashishta Yoga, who, after he returns from many journeys, cannot find meaning in things, Solomon’s great work, Ecclesiastes, announces that everything is meaningless.35 Readers are then initiated into the discourses of wisdom through the search for meaning, where the transformation from boredom to enlightenment is accompanied by such grievous costs that epics are born. In the end, both poetic texts carry what George Steiner refers to as ambiguities and silences in text: He does not exhaust the possible responses of the reader’s own imagining, but delights in the fact that we fill in from our own lives, from resources of memory and desire proper to ourselves the contours he has drawn.36 The poet imbibes this divine revelation, and Adi Shankara uses the images of great bounty on all poets and those meditating on the universe. The apsaras or visions of great female beauty are allowed entry into the world, and redemption is made possible. There is no competition here; it is the supremacy of the androgynous form that is sought in Advaita. By renouncing the commerce of the body, the integration of male and female takes place without death. This is the sustenance sought by the poet, the ceasing of desire. At the same time, the dedication of the devotee as ever passive in the face of this divine aradhaneswara figure is conjoined. In the acceptance of the fusion of nature and divinity, the world is ever confounded: O! Daughter of the snow mountain! The best of poets such as Virinchi (Brahma) and others are unable to compare, at least somehow or other, your beauty (with anything they know of). Out of their ardent curiosity to witness

392  Susan Visvanathan your glory, the celestial women (apsaras) enter the Lord Shiva’s mind through contemplation and total surrender. O! This experience is impossible even by any rigorous penance.37 Notes 1 This text was commissioned and written for the present volume by invitation from István Perczel, while the author was a Visiting Professor at Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, in 2018; however, it was published earlier, for various reasons, as: Susan Visvanathan, “Songs of Solomon and Adi Shankara’s Soundarya Lahari: A Comparison,” in Word, Work, and the World: Essays on Habitat, Culture, and Environment (London: Bloomsbury, 2022), 152–68. We consider that its proper place is in our volume. The present text is a slightly edited version of the one published in 2022.—The Editors 2 Adi Shankara, Quintessence of Soundarya Lahari (Bliss and Beauty Waves of Flood), trans. and ed. Velcheru Narayana Rao (Chennai: Kamakoti, 2017), accessed April 10, 2023, www.kamakoti.org/kamakoti/books/Quintessence-Soundarya-Lahari.pdf; Adi Shankara, The Soundarya Lahiri: Jagad Guru Sri Sankaraacharya’s Immortal Creation, ed. Sarma Rachakonda (self-published, 2013), previously available at: http:// drsarma.in, now available at: Scribd, no date, accessed April 10, 2023, www.scribd. com/document/120450162/Soundarya-Lahari-English. 3 Robert Alter and Frank Kermode, eds., The Literary Guide to the Bible (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987). 4 Robert Alter, “Introduction,” in The Literary Guide to the Bible (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987), 21, 26. 5 Raziuddin Aquil and Partha Chatterjee, History in the Vernacular (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2010). 6 Velcheru Narayana Rao and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “History and Politics in the Vernacular: Reflections on Medieval and Early Modern South India,” in History in the Vernacular (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2010), 25–65. 7 Ibid. 8 Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Symbols of Substance: Court and State in Nayaka Period Tamil Nadu (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, [1992] 2004); Vijaya Ramaswamy, Walking Naked: Women, Society, Spirituality in South India (Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1997); John B. Alphonso Karkala, “A Comparative View: Gita Govinda and Song of Songs,” Indian Literature 28, no. 3 (May–June 1985): 95–102. 9 Shankara, Soundarya Lahiri, ed. Rachakonda, 2, verse 6. 10 Ibid. 11 Natalie Zemon Davis, “Proverbial Wisdom and Popular Errors,” in Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1975). 12 Ibid., 227. 13 Shankara, Soundarya Lahari, trans. Rao, 15, verse 16. 14 Shankara, Soundarya Lahari, ed. Rachakonda, 25, verse 96. 15 Song of Songs, 7:2–6. 16 Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2011), 33. 17 Ibid., 35. 18 Chris Perkins, “Playing with Maps,” in Rethinking Maps: New Frontiers in Cartographic Theory (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), 174. 19 Moshe Greenberg, “Job,” in The Literary Guide to the Bible (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987), 286.

Solomon’s Song of Songs and Adi Shankara’s Soundarya Lahari  393 20 Shankara, Soundarya Lahari, trans. Rao, verses 42–45. 21 Gregory Bateson and Mary Catherine Bateson, Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred (Toronto: Bantam, 1988), 20. 22 Shankara, Soundarya Lahari, trans. Rao, verses 34, 57, 61. 23 Joan Kelly-Gadol, “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, eds. Renate Bridenthal, Claudia Koonz, and Susan Mosher Stuard (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 137–64. 24 Song of Songs 6:13. 25 Shankara, Soundarya Lahari, trans. Rao, verse 27. 26 Ibid., verse 72. 27 Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1985), 105. 28 Ibid., 173. 29 Carsten L. Wilke, Farewell to Shulamit: Spatial and Social Diversity in the Song of Songs (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2017), 35. 30 Richard K. Wolf, The Black Cow’s Footprint: Time, Space, and Music in the Lives of the Kotas of South India (Urbana, IL and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006). 31 Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse, 114. 32 Shankara, Soundarya Lahari, trans. Rao, verse 22. 33 Maha Swami Chandra Sekhara Sarasvati of Kanchi (1894–1984) was the 68th Acharya of Kanchi Kamakoti Pitam, an ashram (monastery) in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, believed to be founded by Adi Shankara. He was one of the most important spiritual authorities in modern Hinduism, was considered a reincarnation of Adi Shankara, and a god. In his introduction to Essence of Soundarya Lahiri, Velcheru Narayana Rao calls him “our Family God.”—The Editors. 34 Shankara, Soundarya Lahari, trans. Rao, 62. 35 Swami Venkatesananda, The Supreme Yoga: A New Translation of the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha, Vol. 1 (New Delhi: New Age Books, 2005). 36 George Steiner, Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, [1967] 1998), 74. 37 Shankara, Soundarya Lahari, ed. Rachakonda, 4, verse 12.

Bibliography Adi Shankara. The Soundarya Lahiri: Jagad Guru Sri Sankaraacharya’s Immortal Creation. Edited by Sarma Rachakonda. Self-published, 2013. http://drsarma.in. Scribd, no date. Accessed April 10, 2023. www.scribd.com/document/120450162/ Soundarya-Lahari-English. ———. Essence of Soundarya Lahiri (Bliss and Beauty Waves of Flood). Translated and edited by Velcheru Narayana Rao. Chennai: Kamakoti. 2017. Accessed April  10, 2023. www.kamakoti.org/kamakoti/books/ESSENCE%20OF%20SOUNDARYA%20 LAHARI%20-ADI%20SHANKARA.pdf. ———. Quintessence of Soundarya Lahari (Bliss and Beauty Waves of Flood). Translated and edited by Velcheru Narayana Rao. Chennai: Kamakoti, 2017. Accessed April  10, 2023. www.kamakoti.org/kamakoti/books/Quintessence-Soundarya-Lahari.pdf. Alter, Robert. “Introduction.” In The Literary Guide to the Bible, edited by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode, 11–35. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987. Alter, Robert, and Frank Kermode, eds. The Literary Guide to the Bible. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987. Aquil, Raziuddin, and Partha Chatterjee. History in the Vernacular. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2010.

394  Susan Visvanathan Barthes, Roland. A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1985. Bateson, Gregory, and Mary Catherine Bateson. Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred. Toronto: Bantam, 1988. Dodge, Martin, Rob Kitchin, and Chris Perkins, eds. Rethinking Maps: New Frontiers in Cartographic Theory. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. Greenberg, Moshe. “Job.” In The Literary Guide to the Bible, edited by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode, 283–304. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987. The Holy Bible: New International Version. Chennai: India Bible Literature, 1987. Karkala, John B. Alphonso. “A  Comparative View: Gita Govinda and Song of Songs.” Indian Literature 28, no. 3 (May–June 1985): 95–102. Kelly-Gadol, Joan. “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” In Becoming Visible: Women in European History, edited by Renate Bridenthal, Claudia Koonz, and Susan Mosher Stuard, 137–64. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Montefiore, Simon Sebag. Jerusalem: The Biography. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2011. Perkins, Chris. “Playing with Maps.” In Rethinking Maps: New Frontiers in Cartographic Theory, 167–88. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. Ramaswamy, Vijaya. Walking Naked: Women, Society, Spirituality in South India. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1997. Rao, Velcheru Narayana, David Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. Symbols of Substance: Court and State in Nayaka Period Tamil Nadu. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, [1992] 2004. Rao, Velcheru Narayana, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. “History and Politics in the Vernacular: Reflections on Medieval and Early Modern South India.” In History in the Vernacular, 25–65. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2010. Steiner, George. Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, [1967] 1998. Venkatesananda, Swami. The Supreme Yoga: A New Translation of the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha, Vol. 1. New Delhi: New Age Books, 2005. Wilke, Carsten L. Farewell to Shulamit: Spatial and Social Diversity in the Song of Songs. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2017. Wolf, Richard K. The Black Cow’s Footprint: Time, Space, and Music in the Lives of the Kotas of South India. Urbana, IL and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006. Zemon Davis, Natalie. “Proverbial Wisdom and Popular Errors.” In Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1975.

IV

Appendix

Marianne Sághy: Bibliography Andra Jugănaru

1985 “A legisták és a keresztesháború a XIV. századi Franciaországban Pierre Dubois De recuperatione Terre Sancte c. műve alapján. [The Legists and the Crusade in 14th-Century France Based on Pierre Dubois’ De recuperatione Terre Sancte].” Master’s Thesis. Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, 1985.

1987 “Történész voltam Oxfordban.” [I Was a Historian at Oxford]. Sic Itur Ad Astra 1 (1987): 115–26.

1989 “Politikai álmok: politika s elmélet a 14. század végén Franciaországban. [Political Dreams: Politics and Theory in France at the End of the 14th Century].” D. habil. Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, 1989.

1993 “Az ókor alkonya?” [The Twilight of Antiquity?]. Café Babel 3 (1993): 63–76.

1994 “A nők városa.” [The City of Women]. Café Babel 4 (1994): 109–18. “A  nők városa.” [The City of Women]. In Társadalomtörténeti tanulmányok a közeli és régmúltból: Emlékkönyv Székely György 70. Születésnapjára, edited by Ilona Sz. Jónás, 108–15. Budapest: ELTE Bölcsészettudományi Kar, 1994. “Una storia delle donne.” Café Babel 4 (1994): 199–201.

1995 “754, 1054, 1077, 1356.” In Ötven nagyon fontos évszám: Fejezetek az egyetemes és a magyar történelemből, edited by Przemysław Urbańczyk, 51–55. Budapest: Lord Kiadó, 1995.

398  Marianne Sághy: Bibliography “Conversio Animae.” Augustinian Studies 26 (1995): 81–108. “A rózsák harca.” [The Battle of the Roses]. Rubicon 6, no. 9 (1995): 7–9. “Templomosok a máglyán.” [Templars at the Stake]. Rubicon 6, no. 6–7 (1995): 6–7.

1996 “Aspects of Female Rulership in Late Medieval Literature: The Queens’ Reign in Angevin Hungary.” East Central Europe/L’Europe de Centre Est 20–23 (1996): 69–86. “History of the Research Project ‘Women and Power in Medieval East Central Europe.’ ” East Central Europe/L’Europe de Centre Est 20–23 (1996): 219–25.

1997 “Aspects de la christianisation des Hongrois aux IXe-Xe siècles.” In Early Christianity in Central and East Europe, edited by Przemysław Urbańczyk, 53–65. Warsaw: Instytut Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej, 1997. “La christianisation de la Hongrie.” In Gerbert l’Européen: Actes du colloque d’Aurillac, 4–7 juin 1996, edited by Nicole Charbonnel and Jean-Éric Iung, 255–62. Aurillac: Éditions Gerbert, 1997. “A nemzeti monarchiák kialakulása.” [The Emergence of National Monarchies]. Rubicon 8, no. 5–6 (1997): 24–28.

1998 “Le baptême de saint Étienne de Hongrie.” In Clovis: Histoire et mémoire, Vol. 2: Le baptême de Clovis, son écho à travers l’histoire, edited by Michel Rouche, 437–52. Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 1998. “Patrons and Priests: The Roman Senatorial Aristocracy and the Church, AD 355–384.” Doctoral Dissertation. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 1998.

1999 “The Adventus of Constantius II to Rome 357 AD.” In The Man of Many Devices Who Wandered Full Many Ways. . . Festschrift in Honor of János Bak for His 70th Birthday, edited by Balázs Nagy and Marcell Sebők, 148–59. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 1999. “Keresztes háború és nemzeti propaganda: Pierre Dubois: A Szentföld visszafoglalásáról.” [Crusade and National Propaganda: Pierre Dubois: On the Reconquest of the Holy Land]. In A középkor szeretete: Történeti tanulmányok Sz. Jónás Ilona születésnapjára, edited by Gábor Klaniczay and Balázs Nagy, 121–31. Budapest: ELTE Bölcsészettudományi Kar, 1999. “Prayer at the Tomb of the Martyrs? The Damasan Epigrams.” In La preghiera nel Tardo antico. Dalle origini ad Agostino: XXVII Incontro di studiosi dell’antichità Cristiana, Roma, 7–9 maggio 1998, 519–37. Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1999.

2000 “Chlodvig megtérése: Franciaország születése.” [The Conversion of Clovis: The Birth of France]. Rubicon 11, no. 1–2 (2000): 4–5.

Marianne Sághy: Bibliography  399 “A király emberei: Legátusok, jogásztársadalom és hivatalnokréteg.” [The King’s Men: Legates, Legal Society, and Official Class]. Rubicon 11, no. 1–2 (2000): 11–13. “Les femmes de la noblesse angevine en Hongrie.” In La noblesse dans les territoires Angevins á la fin du moyen âge. Collection de l’École Française de Rome 275, edited by Noël Coulet and Jean-Michel Matz, 165–74. Rome: École Française de Rome, 2000. “Scinditur in Partes Populus: Pope Damasus and the Martyrs of Rome.” Early Medieval Europe 9 (2000): 273–87.

2001 “Az ezredik év Clunyi apátja: Szent Odilo.” [The 1000th Year of Cluny Monastery]. Rubicon 12, no. 7 (2001): 43–45. “Crusade and Nationalism: Pierre Dubois, the Holy Land, and French Hegemony.” In The Crusades and the Military Orders: Expanding the Frontiers of Medieval Latin Christianity, edited by Zsolt Hunyadi and József Laszlovszky, 43–50. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2001. “A Francia Királyság megalapítása.” [The Founding of the French Kingdom]. Rubicon 12, no. 7 (2001): 40–42. “L’organisation des l’Eglises en Hongrie autour de l’An Mil: le cas de l’évêché de Csanàd.” In Gerberto d’Aurillac da abate di Bobbio a papa dell’anno 1000. Atti del congresso internazionale, Bobbio, Auditorium di S. Chiara, 28–30 settembre 2000, organizzato dalla rivista Archivum Bobiense e dell’Università Cattolica di Milano, con la collab. del Comune di Bobbio, edited by Flavio G. Nuvolone, 469–82. Bobbio: Editrice Associazione culturale Amici di Archivum Bobiense, 2001. “Magyarok a Purgatóriumban.” [Hungarians in Purgatory]. Vigilia 66 (2001): 104–11. “The Making of the Christian Kingdom in Hungary.” In Europe around the Year 1000, edited by Przemysław Urbańczyk, 451–64. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo DiG, 2001.

2002 “Corpora sanctorum retinent veneranda sepulcra: Vértanúkultusz és keresztény frakcióharcok Damasus pápa korában.” [Corpora sanctorum retinent veneranda sepulcra: The Cult of the Martyrs and Christian Factional Fights in the Age of Pope Damasus]. In A Magyar Patrisztikai Társaság I. konferenciája az ókori kereszténységről: Kecskemét, 2001. június 21–23. Studia Patrum 1, edited by Péter Nemeshegyi and Zoltán Rihmer, 207–19. Budapest: Szent István Társulat, 2002. “Püspök és város: Gelasius és a Lupercalia az V. század végi Rómában.” [Bishop and City: Gelasius and the Lupercalia in Rome at the End of the Fifth Century]. In Mirsusne-xum: Tanulmánykötet Hoppál Mihály tiszteletére, edited by Eszter CsonkaTakács, Judit Czövek, and András Takács, 435–53. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2002.

2003 Versek és vértanúk: A római mártírkultusz Damasus pápa korában. [Poems and Martyrs: The Cult of the Martyrs in Rome in the Age of Pope Damasus]. Budapest: Kairosz Kiadó, 2003.

400  Marianne Sághy: Bibliography 2004 “Az avignoni pápaság és a nagy egyházszakadás.” [The Avignon Papacy and the Great Schism]. In Európa ezer éve: A középkor I-II. kötet, edited by Gábor Klaniczay, 169–85. Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 2004. “Egyház, szerzetesség, térítés a kora középkorban (IV-VIII. század).” [Church, Monasticism, Conversion in the Early Middle Ages (IV-VIII Centuries)]. In Európa ezer éve: A középkor I-II. kötet, edited by Gábor Klaniczay, 117–32. Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 2004. “A  késő középkori nemzetállamok és a rendiség Nyugat-Európában (XIV-XV. század).” [The Late Medieval Nation-States and the Order in Western Europe (XIV-XV Centuries)]. In Európa ezer éve: A középkor I-II. Kötet, edited by Gábor Klaniczay, 310–22. Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 2004. “A lerinumi Paradicsom: szerzetesség az 5. századi Provance-ban.” [The Paradise of Lerinum: Monasticism in Fifth-Century Provence]. In Változatok a történelemre: Tanulmányok Székely György tiszteletére, edited by Gyöngyi Erdei and Balázs Nagy, 103–10. Budapest: Budapesti Történeti Múzeum, 2004. “Népvándorlás, új etnikumok, lovas nomádok (IV-VIII. század).” [Population Migration, New Ethnic Groups, Equestrian Nomads (IV-VIII centuries)]. In Európa ezer éve: A középkor I-II. kötet, edited by Gábor Klaniczay, 87–98. Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 2004. “Új európai dinasztiák (X-XII. század).” [New European Dynasties (X-XII centuries)]. In Európa ezer éve: A középkor I-II. kötet, edited by Gábor Klaniczay, 244–55. Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 2004.

2005 “Angyali élet: Az egyiptomi szerzetesség hatása Itáliában és Galliában a 4–5. században.” [Angelic Life: The Influence of Egyptian Monasticism in Italy and Gaul in the FourthFifth Centuries]. Ókor: Folyóirat az Antik Kultúráráól 4 (2005): 45–53. “ ‘Heaven and Earth’: The Madonna, Saint Gerard, and Angevin Kingship. The Rediscovery of Medieval Paintings at the Shrine of Saint Gerard in Budapest.” Anachronia 9 (2015): 18–26. Isten barátai: Szent és szentéletrajz a késő antikvitásban. [God’s Friends: The Saint and the Sacred Biography in Late Antiquity]. Budapest: Kairosz, 2005.

2006 “550 éve történt: A nándorfehérvári csoda.” [It Happened 550 Years Ago: The Miracle of Nándorfehérvár]. Rubicon 17, no. 7 (2006): 8–9. “Christo vivere: Egyház, világ, aszkézis a késő antik Galliában.” [Christo vivere: Church, World, Asceticism in Late Antique Gaul]. In Memoriae tradere: Tanulmányok és írások Török József hatvanadik születésnapjára, edited by Ádám Füzes and László Legeza, 281– 93. Budapest: Mikes Kiadó, 2006. “Isten szegénykéje: Assisi Szent Ferenc.” [The Little-Poor of God: Saint Francis of Assisi]. Rubicon 17, no. 4 (2006): 68–72. “Jadwiga of Poland.” In Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, edited by Margaret C. Schaus, 421. London and New York: Routledge. “Kapisztrán Szent János és a nándorfehérvári csata—bővített változat.” [Saint John of Capistrano and the Battle of Nándorfehérvár—Extended Version]. Rubicon Online Plusz 17, no. 7 (2006).

Marianne Sághy: Bibliography 401 “A katharok.” [The Cathars]. Rubicon 17, no. 5–6 (2006): 90–92. “A keresztény tökéletesség: Aszkézis és kereszténység.” [Christian Perfection: Asceticism and Christianity]. Rubicon 17, no. 4 (2006): 54–58. “La notion du ‘lieu saint’ dans les premières vies de saints.” In Pèlerinages et lieux saints dans l’Antiquité et le Moyen Âge: Mélanges offerts à Pierre Maraval, edited by Béatrice Caseau, Jean-Claude Cheynet, and Vincent Déroche, 429–42. Paris: Collège de France and Centre de recherche d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance, 2006. “Mary of Hungary I.” In Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, edited by Margaret C. Schaus, 535. New York: Routledge, 2006. “Mary of Hungary II.” In Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, edited by Margaret C. Schaus, 536. New York: Routledge, 2006. “Nők a keresztes háborúban.” [Women in the Crusades]. Rubicon 17, no. 8 (2006): 50–53. “Ora et Labora! Imádkozz és dolgozz! Nursiai Szent Benedek.” [Ora et Labora! Pray and Work! Saint Benedict of Nursia]. Rubicon 17, no. 4 (2006): 62–64. “Pannonhalma patrónusa: Szent Márton.” [The Patron of Pannonhalma. Saint Martin]. Rubicon 17, no. 4 (2006): 44–45. “Remete Szent Antal.” [Saint Antony the Hermit]. Rubicon 17, no. 4 (2006): 59–61. “A vörös barátok: A templomosok titkai.” [The Red Friends: The Secrets of the Templars]. Rubicon 17, no. 5–6 (2006): 92–93.

2007 “Krisztus vére.” [The Blood of Christ]. Rubicon 18, no. 6–7 (2007): 126–29. “A lerinumi paradicsom: szerzetesség az V. századi Provence-ban.” [The Paradise of Lerinum: Monasticism in the Fifth-Century Provence]. In Elmélet és gyakorlat a korai szerzetességben: A Magyar Patrisztikai Társaság II. konferenciája az ókori kereszténységről: Kecskemét, 2002. június 21–23. Studia Patrum 2, edited by István Baán and Zoltán Rihmer, 210–26. Budapest: Szent István Társulat, 2007.

2008 “Az Arnolfini házaspár.” [The Arnolfini Couple]. Rubicon 19, no. 5 (2008): 70–71. “Az ezredik év.” [The Year 1000]. Világtörténet 30 (2008): 12–23. “Keresztény mártírok: Kínzás és identitás.” [The Christian Martyrs: Torture and Identity]. Rubicon 19, no. 7–8 (2008): 20–29. “Középkor.” [The Middle Ages]. Café Babel 17 (2008): 73–82. “Le révolté ‘hongrois’: conspirations, attentats et conflits nationaux dans le royaume de Hongrie à la fin du Moyen Âge.” In Revolte und Sozialstatus von der Spätantike bis zur Frühen Neuzeit. Révolte et statut social, de l’Antiquité tardive aux Temps modernes, edited by Philippe Depreux, 205–13. Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2008. “A Mester és Marcella. Szent Jeromos a Biblia női olvasóiról.” [The Master and Marcella. Saint Jerome on the Female Readers of the Bible]. Vallástudományi Szemle 4 (2008): 103–16. “Poems as Church History: The Epigrams of Pope Damasus.” In Motivi e forme della poesia cristiana antica tra Scrittura e tradizione cristiana: XXXVI incontro di studiosi dell’antichità cristiana, Roma, 3–5 maggio 2007, Part 1, 487–97. Rome:  Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2008. “Redite ad cor: A barát halála Szent Ágoston Vallomásaiban.” [Redite ad cor: The Death of the Friend in the Confessions of Saint Augustine]. In Redite ad cor: Tanulmányok

402  Marianne Sághy: Bibliography Sahin-Tóth Péter emlékére, edited by Lilla Krász and Teréz Oborni, 11–20. Budapest: ELTE Kiadó, 2008.

2009 “1100 éve alapították a cluny apátságot—Közösségépítő csúcstechnológia.” [The Abbey of Cluny Was Founded 1100 Years Ago—Community-Building Top Technology]. Élet és Tudomány 64 (2009): 1110–11. “Codex to Catacomb: Uses and Functions of the Roman Bishops’ List in Fourth-Century Rome.” In The Charm of a List: From the Sumerians to Computerized Data Processing, edited by Lucie Doležalová, 46–66. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. “Hic est locus: A római zarándokhelyek kialakulása a késő antikvitásban.” [Hic est locus: The Development of Roman Pilgrimage Sites in Late Antiquity]. Vallástudományi Szemle 5 (2009): 27–50. “Katalán kapcsolat: Királylányok messze földről.” [The Catalan Connection: Queens from Far Away]. Rubicon 20 (2009): 4–9. “A  középkori magyar-katalán kapcsolatok—Királylányok és keresztes háborúk.” [Medieval Hungarian-Catalan Relations—Queens and Crusades]. Élet és Tudomány 64 (2009): 1172–75. “Medieval Perspectives after the Fall.” In Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 15, edited by Judith Rasson, Marianne Sághy, and Béla Zsolt Szakács, 171–76. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2009. “The Monk and the World: Ascetic and Episcopal Power in the West.” In Church, Society, and Monasticism: Acts of the International Symposium, Rome, May 31-June 3, 2006, edited by Eduardo López-Tello García and Benedetta Selene Zorzi, 317–22. Rome: Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo, 2009. “A nőtisztelettől a nőgyülöletig—Középkori panoráma a szerelemről.” [From Respect for Women to Misogyny—The Medieval Panorama of Love]. Élet és Tudomány 64 (2009): 781–83. Rasson, Judith, Marianne Sághy, and Béla Zsolt Szakács, eds. Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 15. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2009. “Should Monks Become Bishops? A  Debate on Asceticism and Episcopal Power in the Fourth-Century West.” In Church, Society, and Monasticism: Acts of the International Symposium, Rome, May 31—June 3, 2006, edited by Eduardo López Tello García and Benedetta Selene Zorzi, 39–45. Rome: Pontificio Ateneo Sant’ Anselmo, 2009. “Split várostörténete—Palota vagy szövöde?” [The History of the City of Split—Palace or Weaving?]. Élet és Tudomány 64 (2009): 1136–38.

2010 “Amator castitatis: Pope Damasus and the Politics of Asceticism.” In Studia Patristica, Vol. XLV: Ascetica, Liturgica, Orientalia, Critica et Philologica, First Two Centuries, edited by Jane Baun, Averil Cameron, Mark Edwards, and Markus Vinzent, 49–53. Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2010. “Dévotions diplomatiques: Le pèlerinage de la reine-mère Élisabeth Piast à Rome.” In La diplomatie des étâts Angevins aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles. Actes du colloque international de Szeged, Visegrád, Budapest, 13–16 septembre 2007, edited by Zoltán Kordé and István

Marianne Sághy: Bibliography 403 Petrovics, 219–24. Szeged and Rome: Accademia d’Ungheria in Roma, Istituto Storico Fraknói, 2010. “Martyr Cult and Collective Identity in Fourth-Century Rome.” In Identity and Alterity in Hagiography and the Cult of Saints, edited by Ana Marinković and Trpimir Vedriš, 17–35. Zagreb: Hagiotheca, 2010. “The Pauline Order.” In The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, edited by Robert E. Bjork, Vol. 1, 1847. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. “Salamon temploma.” [The Temple of Solomon]. Rubicon 20, no. 2 (2010): 50–51. “A templomosok: Az első titkos társaság.” [The Templars: The First Secret Society]. Rubicon 20, no. 2 (2010): 46–49.

2011 “Fido recubans sub tegmine Christi: Rewriting as Orthodoxy in the Epigrammata Damasiana.” In Invention, Rewriting, Usurpation: Discursive Fights over Religious Traditions in Antiquity. Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity, Vol. 11, edited by Jörg Ulrich, AndersChristian Jacobsen, and David Brakke, Vol. 11, 41–55. New York: Campus Verlag, 2011. “The Master and Marcella: Saint Jerome Retells the Bible to Women.” In Retelling the Bible: Literary, Historical, and Social Contexts, edited by Lucie Doležalová and Tamás Visi, 127–38. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag, 2011. “Pope Damasus and the Beginnings of Roman Hagiography.” In Promoting the Saints: Cults and Their Contexts from Late Antiquity until the Early Modern Period. Essays in Honor of Gábor Klaniczay for His 60th Birthday, edited by Ottó Gecser, József Laszlovszky, Balázs Nagy, Marcell Sebők, and Katalin Szende, 1–17. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2011. “Századok vándora. In Memoriam Robert A. Markus (1924–2010).” [The Wanderer of Centuries. In Memoriam Robert A. Markus (1924–2010)]. Vigilia 76, no. 3 (2011): 223–26.

2012 “Középkor.” [The Middle Ages]. Café Babel 21 (2012): 87–94. “Martyr Bishops and the Bishop’s Martyrs in Fourth-Century Rome.” In Saintly Bishops and Bishops’ Saints, edited by John S. Ott and Trpimir Vedriš, 31–45. Zagreb: Hagiotheca, 2012. “Renovatio memoriae: Pope Damasus and the Martyrs of Rome.” In Rom in der Spätantike. Historische Erinnerung im städtischen Raum, edited by Ralf Behrwald and Christian Witschel, 251–67. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2012. “Review of Clement William Barraud, S.J, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. Historical Drama in Five Acts (1892).” AHEA: E-Journal of the American Hungarian Educators Association 5 (2012): 1–3. “Veste Regia Indutus: Representations of the Emperor in the Vita Martini.” Ikon: Journal of Iconographic Studies 5 (2012): 47–57.

2013 Rasson, Judit, and Marianne Sághy, eds. Annual of Medieval Studies 19. Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2013. “Hungarians in Hell: The Visions of Laurentius de Tar.” Ikon: Journal of Iconographic Studies 6 (2013): 29–37.

404  Marianne Sághy: Bibliography “Mézières Magyarországról. A késő-Anjou kori kormány és külpolitika kritikája.” [Mézières about Hungary. The Criticism of the Late Anjou Government and Foreign Politics]. In Francia-magyar kapcsolatok a középkorban, edited by Attila Györkös and Gergely Kiss, 241–52. Debrecen: Debreceni Egyetemi Kiadó, 2013. “Might, Money, Memory: New Perspectives on Central European Queenship.” In Annual of Medieval Studies, Vol. 19, edited by Judith Rasson and Marianne Sághy, 145–46. Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2013. “Róma a Rhône partján. Az avignoni pápaság.” [Rome on the Banks of the Rhône. The Papacy of Avignon]. Rubicon 24 (2013): 130–43.

2014 “A  Biblia újratöltve. A  keresztény életrajz a késő antikvitásban.” [The Bible Reloaded. The Christian Biography in Late Antiquity]. Aetas: Történettudományi Folyóirat 29.1 (2014): 5–24. “Csodálatos középkor: Beszélgetés Bozóky Edinával.” [The Wonderful Middle Ages: Conversation with Edina Bozóky]. Aetas: Történettudományi folyóirat 29.1 (2014) 152–58. “Lieu de tentation, espace du salut: Le désert comme hétérotopie dans la Vie d’Antoine d’Athanase d’Alexandrie.” Verbum: Analecta neolatina 15 (2014): 9–16. “Nagy Károly 1200.” [Charlemagne 1200]. Világtörténet 4, no. 36 (2014): 685–90. “Szent Móric, a birodalom védőszentje: Az ereklyék története: Az ezerötszáz éves SaintMaurice d’Agaune-apátság kincstárának kiállítása a párizsi Louvre-ban.” [Saint Maurice, Patron Saint of the Empire: The Story of the Relics: Exhibition of the Treasury of the 1,500-Year-Old Abbey of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune at the Louvre in Paris]. Világtörténet 4, no. 36 (2014): 337–46. “Szentírás és szent-írás Sulpicius Severus Szent Márton-életrajzában.” [Scripture and Holy Writing in the Biography of Saint Martin by Sulpicius Severus]. In Arcana tabularii: Tanulmányok Solymosi László tiszteletére, Vol. I -II, edited by Attila Bárány, Gábor Dreska, and Kornél Szovák, 279–90. Budapest and Debrecen: ELTE Bölcsészettudományi Kar, 2014.

2015 “The Bishop of Rome and the Martyrs.” In The Bishop of Rome in Late Antiquity, edited by Geoffrey D. Dunn, 37–56. Burlington: Ashgate, 2015. “Egyháztörténet és patrológia.” [Church History and Patrology]. In Katolikus egyháztörténelem az oktatásban: Nemzetközi trendek, új szempontok, edited by Zoltán Gőzsi and Szabolcs Varga, 47–66. Pécs: Pécsi Hittudományi Főiskola and Pécsi Egyháztörténeti Intézet, 2015. Sághy, Marianne, and Judit D. Tóth, eds. Férfi és nő az ókori kereszténységben: Válogatás a Magyar Patrisztikai Társaság XII. konferenciáján elhangzott előadások szerkesztett változataiból. [Man and Woman in Ancient Christianity: Selection of the Hungarian Patristic Society 12th Edition. From the Edited Versions of the Papers Delivered at the Conference]. Budapest: Szent István Társulat, 2015. Salzman, Michèle Renée, Marianne Sághy, and Rita Lizzi Testa. “Introduction.” In Pagans and Christians in Late Antique Rome: Conflict, Competition, and Coexistence in the Fourth Century, 1–9. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. ———, eds. Pagans and Christians in Late Antique Rome: Conflict, Competition, and Coexistence in the Fourth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. “Sivatag, hatalom, szent a késő antik szentéletrajzokban.” [Desert, Power, and the Saint in Late Antique Biographies]. In Térérzékelések-térértelmezések, edited by Anikó Ádám and Anikó Radvánszky, 77–89. Budapest: Kijárat Kiadó, 2015.

Marianne Sághy: Bibliography 405 “Romanae Gloria Plebis: Bishop Damasus and the Traditions of Rome.” In Pagans and Christians in Late Antique Rome: Conflict, Competition, and Coexistence in the Fourth Century, edited by Michele Rebee Salzman, Marianne Sághy, and Rita Lizzi Testa, 314– 27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. “Ubi tu, ibi et ille: Monica ábrázolása Ágoston Vallomásaiban.” [Ubi tu, ibi et ille: The Portrait of Monica in Augustine’s Confessions]. In Fehér Lovag. Tanulmányok Csernus Sándor 65. Születésnapjára, edited by László Gálffy and Janos Saringer, 15–31. Szeged: Lazi Könyvkiadó and SZTE BTK Középkori Egyetemes Történeti Tanszék, 2015. “Ubi tu, ibi et ille: Monica ábrázolása Ágoston Vallomásaiban.” [Ubi tu, ibi et ille: The portrait of Monica in Augustine’s Confessions]. In Férfi és nő az ókori kereszténységben: Válogatás a Magyar Patrisztikai Társaság XII. konferenciáján elhangzott előadások szerkesztett változataiból, edited by Marianne Sághy and Judit D. Tóth, 118–39. Budapest: Szent István Társulat, 2015.

2016 Budapesti ostromnapló: 1944. december  10–1945. május 4. Farkass Jenő. Farkass Jenő életrajzát írta Sághy Marianne [The Diary of Budapest Siege: December 10, 1944— May 4, 1945, by Jenő Farkass. The Biography of Jenő Farkass as Written by Marianne Sághy]. Máriabesnyő: Attraktor, 2016. “Divided Cloak: Saint Martin and Pannonia. Two Exhibitions at Szombathely and Pannonhalma.” Hungarian Archeology E-Journal (Autumn 2016): 1–4. “Review of Gillian Clark, Monica: An Ordinary Saint.” The Classical Outlook 91, no. 3 (2016): 105–6. “Strangers to Patrons: Bishop Damasus and the Foreign Martyrs of Rome.” Hungarian Historical Review: New Series of Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 5 (2016): 465–86. “Sulpicius Severus Szent Márton-életrajza. Történeti kontextus, szerzetesi püspökmodell, historiográfiai értelmezések” [The Biography of Saint Martin by Sulpicius Severus. Historical Context, the Model of the Monk-Bishop, and Historiographical Interpretations]. Világtörténet 6, no. 1 (38) (2016): 3–36. “A Szentírás útja: Bibliai modellek Sulpicius Severus Szent Márton-életrajzában.” [The Way of the Scripture: Biblical Models in Sulpicius Severus’ Biography of Saint Martin]. In Via Sancti Martini: Szent Márton útjai térben és időben, edited by Ferenc Tóth and Balázs Zágorhidi Czigány, 13–33. Budapest: MTA BTK Történettudományi Intézet, 2016. “A  város peremén: A  theodosiusi fal mint kultúrtáj. On the Fringe: The Istanbul Land Walls in Urban History and Daily Life.” Magyar régészet (19 October 2016–2 January 2017): 1–5. “Wealth and Poverty in the Lives of Late Antique Ascetic Bishops.” In Poverta e ricchezza nel cristianesimo antico (I-V sec.): XLII Incontro di Studiosi dell’Antichita Cristiana, edited by Massimiliano Ghilardi and Gianluca Pilara, 355–66. Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2016.

2017 “Le saint de la frontière barbare: saint Séverin de Norique.” In Les saints face aux barbares au haut Moyen Âge: Réalités et legends, edited by Edina Bozóky, 17–28. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2017.

406  Marianne Sághy: Bibliography “Monica, the Ascetic.” Studia Patristica 91 (2017): 363–76. “Pénz, pezsgő, Párizs: A  tüneményes Második Császárság.” [Money, Champagne, Paris: The Phenomenal Second Empire]. Art Magazin 92 (2016): 20–25. Sághy, Marianne, and Edward M. Schoolman, eds. Pagans and Christians in the Late Roman Empire: New Evidence, New Approaches (Fourth-Eighth Centuries). Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2017. ———. “Sopianae Revisited: Pagan or Christian Burials?” In Pagans and Christians in the Late Roman Empire: New Evidence, New Approaches (Fourth-Eighth Centuries), edited by Marianne Sághy and Edward M. Schoolman, 295–340. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2017. “A sivatagtól a holtak városáig. Kairói művészeti körkép.” [From the Desert to the City of the Dead. The Map of Cairo’s Art]. Art Magazin 98 (2017): 40–41.

2018 “Ad Aegypti Extrema Contendi: Egyptian Monasticism in Sulpicius Severus’ Dialogues.” In Across the Mediterranean—Along the Nile: Studies in Egyptology, Nubiology, and Late Antiquity Dedicated to László Török on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday, edited by Tamás A. Bács, Ádám Bollók, and Tivadar Vida, 805–18. Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2018. Sághy, Marianne, and Izsák Baán. “Thébától a Bakonyig: Szent Móric és vértanútársainak tisztelete Európában (4–21. század).” [From Thebes to Bakony: Veneration of Saint Moritz and His Fellow Martyrs in Europe (4th-21st Century)]. Világtörténet 8, no. 40 (2018): 175–95. Szent Márton, Krisztus katonája. [Saint Martin, Soldier of Christ]. Szombathely: Szülőföld Kiadó, 2018.

Translations Brown, Peter. A szentkultusz: Kialakulása és szerepe a latin kereszténységben. [The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity]. Translated into Hungarian by Miklós Tamás and Marianne Sághy. Budapest: Atlantisz Könyvkiadó, 1993. ———. Szent Ágoston élete [Augustine of Hippo: A Biography]. Budapest: Osiris, 2003. Carrel, Alexis. Utazás Lourdes-ba [A Trip to Lourdes]. Budapest: Ecclesia/Jel Kiadó, 1995; Budapest: Kairosz, 2004. Fontaine, Jacques. “Klasszikus és keresztény értékek a nagybirtokos arisztokrácia lelkiségében a 4. század végi latin Nyugaton.” [Classical and Christian Values in the Spirituality of the Aristocrat Landowners in the Latin West at the End of the Fourth Century]. Világtörténet 6, no. 1, 38 (2016): 37–68. Hedvig Deák, Viktória. La légende de sainte Marguerite de Hongrie et l’hagiographie dominicaine. Translated into French by Alexis Léonas, in collaboration with Bruno Meynadier and Marianne Sághy. Paris: Éditions du Cerf. Hudák, Krisztina, and Levente Nagy. A Fine and Private Place: Discovering the Early Christian Cemetery of Sopianae/Pécs. Translated into English by Marianne Sághy. Phot. András em Török. Pécs: Pécs/Sopianae Örökség Kht., 2005. Jean-Michel, Carrié. “Thébaiak nyugaton? Hadtörténet és hagiográfia.” [Thebans in the West? Military History and Hagiography]. Világtörténet 8, no. 40 (2018): 197–228. Kelly, John Norman Davidson. Aranyszájú Szent János: szerzetes, prédikátor, püspök. [Saint John Chrysostom: Monk, Preacher, and Bishop]. Translated into Hungarian by Fanni M.

Marianne Sághy: Bibliography  407 Dalnoki, Johanna Rákos-Zichy, Zsuzsanna Ürmössy, and Marianne Sághy. Budapest: Kairosz, 2011. Markus, Robert A. Nagy Szent Gergely és kora. [Gregory the Great and His World]. Budapest: Paulus Hungarus/Kairosz 2004. McKinley, Allan Scott. “Tours-i Szent Márton tiszteletének első kétszáz éve.” [The First 200 Years of the Veneration of Saint Martin of Tours]. Világtörténet 6, no. 1 (38) (2016): 119–45. Nagy Szent Gergely. A lelkipásztor kézikönyve. [Saint Gregory the Great. The Book of Pastoral Rule]. Budapest: Paulus Hungarus, 2004. Riché, Pierre. Oktatás és művelődés a barbár Nyugaton: 6–8. század. [Education and Culture in the Barbarian West: Sixth—Eighth Century]. Budapest: Szent István Társulat, 2016. Salernói, János. Szent Odó élete [The Life of Saint Odo]. Bakonybél: Szt. Mauríciusz Monostor; Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2009. Szabó, Ferenc. Mindennap hazajöttem: Szabó Ferenccel beszélget Sághy Marianne. [I Came Home Every Day: Marianne Sághy Talks to Ferenc Szabó]. Budapest: Kairosz, 2009.

Posthumous Publications “Damasus and the Charioteers: Crowds, Leadership and Media in Late Antique Rome.” In Leadership, Ideology, and Crowds in the Roman Empire of the Fourth Century AD, edited by Erika Manders and Daniëlle Slootjes, 117–34. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2019. Dubois, Pierre. De la reconquête de la Terre Sainte. De l’abrègement des guerres et procès du royaume des Francs. [French] Introduction, translation and commentary by Marianne Sághy, Alexis Léonas, and Pierre-Anne Forcadet. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2019. Földi és égi szeretet: Tanulmányok Szent Ágoston Vallomásairól [Earthly and Heavenly Love: Studies on the Confessions of Saint Augustine]. Budapest: Kairosz, 2019. “Greek Monasteries in Early Árpádian Hungary.” In Piroska and the Pantokrator: Dynastic Memory, Healing, and Salvation in Komnenian Constantinople, edited by Marianne Sághy and Robert G. Ousterhout, 11–38. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2019. “Heavenly Patrons: Epigraphy and the Material Culture of Martyr Commemoration in Damasan Rome.” In The Recruiting Power of Christianity: The Rise of a Religion in the Material Culture of Fourth-Century Rome and Its Echo in History, edited by Sible de Blaauw, Eric M. Moormann, and Daniëlle Slootjes, 121–32. Rome: Edizioni Quasar di Severino Tognon, 2021. “Making the Most Out of Exile: Hilary of Poitiers, Orthodox Bishop and Ascetic Patron.” In Confinamiento y exilio en la Antigüedad Tardía, edited by Margarita Vallejo Girvés and Juan Antonio Bueno Delgado, 65–66. Madrid: Editorial Dykinson, S. L., 2020. A Rózsaregény: kontextus, üzenet, recepció. [Le Roman de la rose: Context, Message, Reception]. Compiled by Marianne Sághy, edited by Eszter Nagy and Veronika Novák. Budapest: ELTE Bölcsészettudományi Kar, Középkori Történeti Tanszék, 2019. Sághy, Marianne, and Robert G. Ousterhout, eds. Piroska and the Pantokrator: Dynastic Memory, Healing, and Salvation in Komnenian Constantinople. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2019. “Teaching Philosophy Statement.” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 25 (2019): 136–39. “Teaching Philosophy Statement.” In Írások és megemlékezések Sághy Marianne-ról, edited by Hedvig Bubnó and Balázs Nagy, 3–6. Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University, 2019.

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Marianne Sághy: Bibliography

Commemorative Volumes Bubnó, Hedvig, and Balázs Nagy, eds. Írások és megemlékezések Sághy Marianne-ról [Writings and Memories about Marianne Sághy]. Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University, 2019. https://btk.elte.hu/dstore/document/1176/Írások%20és%20megemlékezések%20 Sághy%20Marianne-ról.pdf. Panayotov, Stanimir, Andra Jugănaru, Anastasia Theologou, and István Perczel, eds. Soul, Body, and Gender in Late Antiquity: Essays on Embodiment and Disembodiment. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2023.

Index

Abba Dorotheus of Gaza see Dorotheus of Gaza Abdalla, Laila 282 – 290 Abel 174 Abhaya 284, 389 Abraham (Biblical) 146, 150, 269; Mary, niece of 295n64 Abramowksi, Luise 161 – 162 abstinence 15, 134, 151, 210, 284 Abū Qurra see Theodore Abū Qurra 8, 172 Abū Rāʾiṭa, Ḥabīb ibn Ḫidma 8, 178, 183 – 185 Adam and Eve 148 – 151, 173 – 174, 185, 200 – 203; Augustine on 203, 216, 243, 247, 249 – 253; expulsion from Paradise of 216, 249, 252, 388; Paul on 268 – 270; shame of 203, 214, 247, 268, 270; tunic of sin worn by 338 Adamic fault (sexuality and the body) 214 – 220, 223 Adam’s rib 231n71, 239, 249 Adi Shankara 5, 381 – 392 adulteress 120, 270 adultery 114, 146, 221 – 222, 242, 253, 389 Advaita 384, 389, 391 Aeneas 371 Aeneid (Virgil) 370 – 372 Aethiopica (Heliodorus) 131 – 138 Aëtius of Amida 41, 313 Africa 210, 350, 366 Agape (Saint) 269 Akestinos 136 – 137 al-Biṭrīq, Yaḥyā ibn 183 Alcibiades (Plato) 57 Alcmaeon of Croton 39, 52n65, 179 Alter, Robert 382 Alētheia 5, 33, 34, 36 – 38, 40, 45

Alexandria 335, 337; see also Clement of Alexandria; Didymus of Alexandria; Philo of Alexandria Alexandrian: allegorical tradition 198; Christian type 7; cento technique of 7, 143; exegesis 199; exegetical tradition 208n63; methodology 150; narrative 145 Amba 389 Ambapali 21 Ambrose of Milan 1982, 202, 204, 207n49, 277 ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī 8, 172, 173 – 183 Amma Sarah 283 Amphilochius of Iconium 8, 161 – 169 Ananda 18 – 20, 25n13 Anastasia 282 Anastasius Sinaita 175 Anaxagoras 39, 41 androcentrism 34 – 35, 40, 52n65 androgenetic perspective on biology 85 androgyny 282, 287, 391; ideal 278; multi-sitedness of 381 angels 146, 287, 331 anger 244 – 246 Anna (Biblical, wife of Joachim) 142, 146, 148, 150 – 151; barrenness of 150 anna tithiyas 16 Annunciation, the 142, 146 Anson, John 279 – 283, 285 Antioch 161, 284, 291; Margaret of Antioch 276; see also Pelagia Antiochene Creed of 379 8, 161 – 162 Antiochene martyr-virgin 278 Antiochene penitent of Chrysostom 277 Antony see Cleopatra Antony (Saint) 335, 341n21 Aphrodite 85, 85, 88, 106 – 129; Aphroditai or Aphrodites (two) 6 – 7, 88, 107,

410 Index 109 – 114; Common 107 – 108, 112; cosmic 112 – 113, 125n73; Dionian 111 – 113, 120, 124n61, 125n73; earthly 110; encosmic 113; Heavenly 7, 108 – 110, 114, 116 – 118, 120, 123n31, 126n87; as image of the soul 114; motherlessness of 110, 116; Neoplatonic interpretations of 108; partial 115; Soul and 88; as soul and principle of love 114; Theogony 108; Uranian 111 – 113, 120, 124n59, 124n61, 125n73; see also Eros; Soul of the Universe apocrypha: Acts of Paul and Thecla 293n3; early Christian 143; see also Gospel of the Egyptians apocryphon see Protevangelium Jacobi Apocryphon of John 148 Apolinaria 278 Apollo 38, 368, 374 Apostle of Christ (Thomas) 382 Apostle Paul 161, 167, 219 Aquileia 350 Aquil, Raziuddin 382 Aramaic 175, 382 Arbogast 356 Arcadius 350 Ares (Aries) 106 – 107, 113 – 114, 118 – 121, 319 – 320; see also Aphrodite Arians 163 Apollinarists 163 Apollo 38, 368, 374; Pseudo-Apollo of Tyana 182 Apostle Paul 161, 167 Apuleius 145 Aquinas, Thomas 163 aristocracy: European 389; Magnus Maximum supported by 349 – 350; Perpetua as member of 271 – 273 Aristotle: De plantis 178; feminist literature on 4, 100n4; hierarchical view of men and women 46n6; hylomorphic confusion involving 88; identification of matter with privation 3; on marital age 322n7; on materiality and femininity/ the female 3, 7; on menopause 322n6; one-seed model of 172, 182; Parmenides and 34, 39, 41 – 45; Plato and 61, 70, 88; Plotinus and 59, 61, 70; on sameness

59; treatises of 175; see also Theophrastus Armstrong, A. H. 59, 61, 62, 73n46, 127n108 ascension 91 ascesis 285, 290 asceticism and ascetics: desert 290; Dositheus’s lack of 304, 306n6; early Christian 278, 280; history of 1; late antique 281; Life of Saint Mary the Egyptian (Mary and Zosimas) 332 – 333, 335, 339 – 340; meretrices 295n64; monastic ideal of 306n6; of Pelagia 285, 290; women 289 asexual begetting or reproduction 178, 184 – 186 asexuality 175 – 176, 178, 180 – 181, 184; of women in Late Antiquity 280 – 281 Athanasia 282 Athanasius Alexandrinus 175 Atticus, bishop of Constantinople 217, 219 Augustine of Hippo: Aeneid (Virgil) and 370 – 372; allegorical interpretation against the Manicheans 202 – 204, 237 – 239, 249; anti-Manichean polemic of 210; as “auditor” of Manicheanism 210; on celibacy 238, 240; concept of Original Sin 211 – 214; Concupiscentia Nuptiarum, concept of 217 – 225; Confessiones 203, 227n2; De Genesi contra Manichaeos 202 – 204, 237, 239, 249; early commitment to Manicheanism 210; Exposition of Genesis against the Manichees 237, 239, 249; on good sexuality 214 – 217; on human sexuality 210 – 226; “hypocrisis” 203; Letter 6* 217, 219 – 221; Literal Commentary on Genesis 214 – 217, 220, 253; as Manichaean 251, 256; refutation of Manicheanism 202; On Marriage and Concupiscence 9, 214; On the Good of Marriage 236, 238 – 243, 253; On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins and On Baptism 246; On the Morals of the Catholic Church 238; pagan letters 370, 372; on original sin 211 – 214, 216; Pelagian controversies and 243 – 255; on sexual desire and marriage

Index  411 243 – 255; on sexual life within Christian marriage 236 – 257; see also Genesis Book 3 (three); Pelagian controversy autos (self) 57 Bacchus 368 – 369 Bakkūš, Ibrahim b. 176 baptism: necessity of 230n53; On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins and On Baptism (Augustine) 246; of Pelagia 276, 293n5; uselessness of 220 baptismal reparation 211 baptism of babies 250 baptism of children 213, 254; pedobaptism 217 – 218 barrenness: of Abraham and Sarah 150; of Elkana and Hannah 150; of matter 88; in marriage 242; in Paradise 252 Barsanuphius 300, 304, 308n19 Barthes, Roland 390 Basavanna 382 Basilides (Saint) 267 Basil of Caesarea 163, 169n13 Bateson, Gregory 389 Bateson, Mary Catherine 389 Bauto 356 “Be fruitful and multiply!” 213, 237 – 241, 249, 261 benedictio 249; see also “Be fruitful and multiply!” Beschi, Constantino 382 Betancourt, Roland 282 Bhabha, Homi 303 bhikkhunī 17, 19, 21 – 23 birthday: celebration of 152; of Christ 152; first, in Jewish tradition 142; of Mary 146, 152 blood: flesh and, of material body 238; hematite associated with 318 – 319, 325n54; humoral theories involving 313; matter and 123n25; menstrual 123n25, 182, 313, 320; spitting of, eggs as cure for 302; Tantalus’ drinking of 319 – 320, 325n56, 326n57 blood bath 272 blood bonds 24, 239 blood stone (hematite) 318 – 319, 325n54 Bodnaruk, Mariana 9 – 10, 276 – 297 Bonner, Campbell 319, 325n56

Bonner, Gerald 227n11 Brachtendorf, Johannes 244, 247 brahmana, brahmanas 16, 21 breasts (female): Perpetua’s breastfeeding of baby 271; Perpetua’s vision of warrior women with milk dripping from 272; suckling of Christ 152; suckling of infants 19, 152 body: Adamic 215, 228n15; animal 215, 249; body/bodily reality of Christ 144 – 145, 148 – 152, 167; corrupted 255; cosmic 6; courtesan as metaphor of 127n111; earthly, of Christ 8; escape from, Plato on 83; evil of 211; fallen body of Christ 161, 164; female, in Life of Mary the Egyptian 331 – 340; feminist research on 92; gender and 81; Gnostic despising of body 83 – 84; God’s creation of 147; ideas of formation of 60; innocence as abstinence from consequences of 151; Manichean rejection of 256; mind-body dualism 58; natural sin of 212; Neoplatonic ideas of 81 – 82; out-of-body experience 69; resurrection of, according to Amphilochius of Iconium 8, 161 – 169; as religious vessel 9; risen body of Christ 8, 161, 165 – 168; scholarship on 3 – 4; self and 61; sin and 10; spiritual 215; Thomas the Apostle and the body of Christ 165, 167 – 168; women and, Plotinus’ views on 83; women associated with 15; see also resurrection of Christ; risen body of Christ body and embodiment 3, 6 body and matter 82 – 83 body and soul 4, 6, 11, 59, 97; asymmetric relationship between 153; Didymus on link between 198; doctrine of the fall of pre-existent souls into the body 198; female body, demotion of soul in 88; human beings as being composed of 109; Plotinus and Porphyry on 89; soul–body dualism or dichotomy 81, 186; soul vs. body 107; unity of 60; Whether All Souls Are One (Plotinus) 60 body–soul–intellect–One 80 body, soul, truth, in Heliodoros 131 – 137

412 Index Bornstein, Kate 305 botanical treaties and lore 175, 178 botany, Arabic 176 Boyarin, Daniel 300, 303 bride 52n74; legend of Margaret of Antioch 276 Bridegroom, Divine 340 Bride of Christ 331 Bride of Song of Songs 334 Bridesmaids of Philology 368 Brown, Peter 3, 210, 219 Buddha 15 – 24 Bugár, István 163 Bullough, Vern L. 280, 283 Butler, Judith 281, 305 Caelius Aurelianus 39 Cain 249, 252 Calliope 50n42 Cambron-Goulet, Mathilde 87 – 88, 90 camp (performative) 305 Capella, Martianus 11, 366 – 375 carnal concupiscence 215, 219, 221, 222, 224, 254, 256 carnal desire and lust 211, 225, 237, 247, 248 carnal duty 222, 231n80 carnal pleasure 241, 337 carnis resurrectio 8, 161 – 162 Cartesian 6, 58 Carthage 366, 371 Castelli, Elizabeth 281 castration 278, 308n17; see also delicia children; eunuchs celibacy: Augustine on 238, 240; in Early South Asia 15 – 24; male celibate clerics 279; polygamy and 391 Central European University (CEU) 1 – 11 CEU see Central European University Chakravarti, Uma 5, 15 – 26 Charikleia 7, 131 – 138 childbearing 150 – 151 childlessness 146, 150, 151 Chionia (Chione) (Saint) 269 Chouinard, Isabelle 87 Chrétien de Troyes 11, 370, 372 – 375 Church Fathers 175 Cicero 244, 356 Clement of Alexandria 151, 163 Clement of Rome 148 Cleopatra 353 Colebrook, Claire 103n75 concupiscentia carnalis 237

concupiscentia carnis 215, 218 – 220, 222 – 223, 225, 228n25, 232n85, 237, 248 concupiscentia nuptiarum 217 – 225, 230n63, 251 concupiscentia pudicitae conjugalis 222 Confessiones (Augustine) 203, 227n2 Constantine (Emperor) 350 – 351 Constantinople 8, 162, 350 continental philosophy, feminist 103n75 corporeality 40, 82; see also incorporeality; materiality cosmos 36, 39, 44, 86, 111, 114 – 115, 120; Devi and 388; genesis of 120; sensible 86, 200 Côté-Remy, François-Julien 87 – 88, 90 Council of 369 161 Council of 381 8, 162 Council of 382 162 Constantinou, Stavroula 281 Coon, Lynda 285, 290 – 291 Cooper, Elizabeth Jane 82 – 84, 96, 103n76, 126n104 COVID-19 24n1 Cox Miller, Patricia 282, 332 Crispina (Saint) 267 – 270 Cronus 108 – 111, 114 – 118, 120 Cupid 368 – 369 daimôn 44, 49n41, 51n57 Damascenus, Nicolaus 178 Damascus, city of 385 Damasus (Pope) 161 damnation 218, 250, 267, 332 David (biblical): house of 145 – 146; King David 385 – 387; Kingdom of 385 Davis, Natalie Zemon 384 Davis, Stephen 280 – 282, 289 degendering 78, 80, 82, 96, 92 – 94, 98; neutrality-as-degendering 99 Delcourt, Marie 278 – 280 Delehaye, Hippolyte 278, 294 Delierneux, Nathalie 287 delicia children 305 – 306, 307n14, 307n16, 307n17; castration of 308n22; cultural disappearance of 309n27 delikion 304 – 305, 306n7 Delphi 7, 131 – 132, 135 – 137 Delphic priestess 53n76 Demeter 53n76, 326n57 demiurge and demiurgic power: Aphrodite and 112; Hephaestus as 119, 125n84; as immaterial soul 71n16;

Index  413 male intellect as 120, 125n85; Zeus as 111; world-soul or whole soul as 6, 58, 60 Demiurge, the (Yaldaboth) 148 – 149, 151 demonic: forces and powers 199, 206; influence 201; seductresses 285; stories 372; temptation 341n17 demon, vanquishing of 326n59 De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (Capella) 366 – 375 Descartes 57 Devi 388 devil 198 – 204, 212 – 214, 226, 271, 286, 334, 370 Didymus of Alexandria 197; see also Didymus the Blind Didymus the Blind 9, 197 – 204; allegorical interpretation of the Fall 198 – 201 Dikê 33, 44 Dione 108 – 109, 111, 120 Dioscorides 176; Materia medica 176, 178 disembodied interpretation, of human sexuality in Augustine 7, 210 – 226 disembodiedness: of the One 80 – 82, 93 – 95, 98 disembodiment 3 – 4, 89; of Aphrodite 121; embodiment and 81; ideal of 83; Neoplatonic 109; Plotinus’ views on 126n104 dis/embodiment 4, 7, 9, 11 disembodiment of knowledge 77 – 78 Divjak Letters 250 – 251, 253 Dodds, E. R. 73n39, 87, 97, 100n6 Dorotheos (Abba) 306n7 Dorotheus of Gaza 300 – 305, 306n3, 308n19 Dositheus 10, 300 – 306; as delikion 304 – 305, 306n7; horrifying childhood 308n19 Doxa 5, 33 – 40, 42, 44 – 45 Dyad, the 6, 78, 80 – 82, 84, 91 – 99; Indefinite 6, 78, 80, 82, 95, 96, 98, 101n13 eggs 179, 188n38; as cure for spitting blood 302 ego 57; poetic 5, 33 elaphron 42 Eden (Biblical) 216, 386, 388; see also Adam and Eve; Expulsion; Paradise Elijah (Prophet) 333, 341n13 Elisabeth (Biblical) 142, 146 Elkana and Hannah 150

Elm, Susanna 11, 347 – 362 embodiment: body and 4; femininity and 3, 96; gender and 6, 93, 94, 97; labyrinth of 91; materiality and 80, 127n121; matter and 3; monastic 10; One and 83, 84, 95; Plotinian 82, 93 – 95, 122; Proculus and 122; see also disembodiment; dis/ embodiment Empedocles 41, 50n42, 52n65, 64, 128n131, 178 – 179 Ennead (or Enneads) (Plotinus) 63, 74n63, 85 – 86, 88, 106, 114, 117 – 118, 120 êpion 42 Erec et Enide (Chrétien de Troyes) 11, 370, 372 – 375 eros, concept of 132 Eros (god) 85 – 86, 106 – 107; daemonic 118; heavenly 110, 118, 127n120; materiality and 118; myth of 106; three versions of 115; see also Erotes Erotes 107, 110, 115, 118, 126n86, 127n121 eunuch 280 – 282; male 280, 287; voluntary 281; female 287 eunuchry 282, 286 Euphrosyne 378, 382 Expulsion, the 216m 249, 252, 388; see also Fall, the fallen body of Christ 161, 164 fallen condition of man 197, 210, 216 – 217, 223, 237, 239, 248 – 251 Fall, the: allegorical interpretation of 198 – 201, 211 Faraone, Christopher A. 318 – 319, 325n56 fatherhood and sonship: 9th century Arabic Christian concepts of 8, 172 – 186 Felicitas (Saint) 267, 271 – 272 female saint 283 – 287 female voices 287 – 292 feminine: epistemic valorization of 40 – 44; metaphysical valorization of 43 – 44; Parmenides and 33 – 45 fertility and procreation 8; the Fall and 211; of God’s creation 150, 153; of nature 152; self-fertilisation of seed 85; virilitas propagationis 213; see also barrenness; childlessness fertility imperative 213 Festugière, André-Jean 325n56 fetus see foetus

414 Index figmenta 369 – 372, 375 Flavius Victor 350 foetus 83; Formation of the Foetus (Galen) 60; spiritual 238 Foucault, Michel 217, 221, 226 Freud, Sigmund 268 fructification 176 fruit branch, torment of Tantalus with 326n57 fruit in Garden of Eden 201 fruitio 222, 231n84 fruition of the will 255 fruit of conversion 18 fruits or fruiting as a metaphor: fruits as blessing from the Lord (fertility) 150; fruit from a tree (asexual reproduction) 178; fruit from a tree (human pregnancy) 176 – 182; see also “Be fruitful and multiply!” fruits or fruiting as a simile: fruit from a tree is not a son from a father 173, 175 Galen: Chnoubis gems and stomach ailments linked by 311; De sanitate tuenda 314; Formation of the Foetus 60; gynecological treatise 311, 322n13; influence on Plotinus 6, 60, 71n16; theory of the numerical difference of the higher or rational soul 6, 60, 71n16; two-seed model of 172; uterine gems 311, 320 Galla Theodosius 350 Gál, Ota 108 Gaul 348 – 349, 353 Gellius, Aulus 243 – 245 gender: Aethiopica and 7; Augustine’s views of 8, 9; degendering 78, 80, 82, 96, 92 – 94, 98 – 99; embodiment and 6, 93, 94, 97; genre and 11; Greek philosophy and 5, 31; Life of Pelagia and 10, 276 – 293; Parmenides’ views of 34, 38 – 40; Plotinus, sex, and 82 – 91; sex and 6, 78; sexless henology and 77 – 99; sexuality and 11; two 110, 116, 121 gender coding 96 gendered hierarchy 197 gendered metaphysics 90 gendered perspectives on 9th century Arabic Christian concepts of fatherhood and sonship 172 – 186

gendered polarities 42 genderless metaphysics 89, 91 genderless soul 89 – 90 genderlessness 95 gender-neutral soul 85 – 86 gender reversal 272 gender studies 1 – 4 gender transitioning 2; see also transgender Genesis, Book of: Augustine’s Letter 6 (six) on 221; creation account in 141, 153; Genesis 1:27 148, 153; Genesis 1:27 – 28 214 – 217; Genesis 1:28 151, 153; Genesis 2:25 267; Genesis 3:9 197 – 204; Genesis 6:6 270; Pauline interpretation of 197; shame and nudity in 267 Genesis Book 1: Literal Commentary on Genesis (Augustine) 214 – 217, 220, 253 Genesis Book 3 9, 197 – 204; Augustine’s allegorical interpretation against the Manicheans 202 – 204, 237 – 239, 249; Didymus the Blind’s allegorical interpretation of the Fall in 198 – 201 genus 61, 64, 147 Geoponica 175 Geréby, György 7, 141 – 157 Gianarelli, Elena 290 Gnosticism 7 – 8, 69; on body of Christ 152; cosmological aspect of 153; creation story of 153; despising of body 83 – 84; curse of sexuality in 148; on evil of materiality 83; feminism and 87, 99n2; myth 148; Nag Hammadi Library treatises 149; need for procreation denied by 151; sects 141; theologies 148 gospel: infancy 7 gospel narrative 8 Gospel of Luke 143, 146 Gospel of Matthew 143, 146 Gospel of the Egyptians 148, 151 Gospel of Thomas 144, 151 – 153, 281 Gospels, the 337 Gotamī see Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī Gratian 349 Gregory of Nazianzus (Gregory Nazianzen) 162, 166, 267 Gregory of Nyssa 163, 174 gynecology 10, 311 – 312, 315, 318, 320, 322n10, 322n13

Index  415 Ḥabīb ibn Ḫidma Abū Rāʾiṭa see Abū Rāʾiṭa, Ḥabīb ibn Ḫidma Hades 325n56, 326n57 Halberstam, Judith 305 Harper, Kyle 286 Hausherr, Irénée 308n21 Helena (Empress) 342 hematite 318 – 319, 325n54 henology 81; sexless, in Plotinus 6, 77 – 99 Hephaestus 106 – 107, 113 – 114, 118 – 121 Heracleon 150 Heracles 316 Heraclitus 36, 41; Plato and 72n34; theory of flux 63 hermaphroditism 50n50, 277, 278 Hermas 145 hermit 15; female 290; Pelagia as 295n56 Herodian of Antioch 304 Hesiod 34, 37, 45; on Aphrodite, etymology of name 107, 108, 128n136; on danger of sexuality for men 46n6; Theogony 108 heterosexuality 123n23 Hevelone-Harper, Jennifer 308n21 Homer 37; malakos (“soft, gentle”) conjoined with speech (logos, epos) in 53n75; moira kakê as reference to death 49n35; Muses of 50n42; Odyssey 155n27, 325n56, 326n57; Porphyry on 145; Socrates and 64, 106 homosexuality 50n50, 123n23 Horney, Karen 268 Hotchkiss, Valerie 281 Hutchinson, Danny Muñoz 57 – 61, 69 Hypatia 87 hypocrisis 203 hypocrisy 203 Ibrahim b. Bakkūš 176 Igal, Jésus 126n87 immateriality 3; Aphrodite and 7; disembodiment and 4; of self 59; of soul 3, 148 im/materiality of the Will 301 – 306 incarnate Christ 150 incarnation: cycle of 51n57; oikonomia 166; pre-incarnation unity of pre-existing souls 7 Incarnation/Tağassud Lexicon 172, 182, 185 – 186

Incarnation, the (of Messiah/Christ) 172 – 173, 179, 184 incoporeality: knowledge, light, the feminine and, in Parmenides 33 – 45 Iovinian 238 – 239 Irene (Saint) 269 Irigaray, Luce 85 – 87, 100n8, 102n65 Isis and Osiris 145; as jewelry motif 324n36 Isis mysteries 145 James, William 57 Jerome 205n16, 238 – 239, 296m90; Life of Paul the First Hermit 332, 341n21 Jesus of Nazareth (Jesus the Christ): body/bodily reality of 144 – 145, 148 – 152, 167; Paulian doctrine on 269; resurrection of 165; sonship of 184; Thomas the Apostle and the body of Christ 165, 167 – 168; see also fallen body of Christ; Incarnation; Messiah; resurrection of Christ; risen body of Christ Jezebel 336 Joannes Chrysostomus 175, 276 – 278, 293n4 John of Damascus 183 John the Baptist 142, 333 Joseph (Biblical) 142, 144, 146, 261n120 Josephus 155n32 Julian of Eclanum 9, 211 – 217, 219, 225 – 226, 250 – 254 Jugănaru, Andra 1 – 11, 331 – 343 Kalasiris 131 – 132, 136 – 137 Kaufman, Gershen 268 Kelly, David F. 229n36, 230n64 Kendeffy, Gábor 9, 236 – 261 Knuuttila, Simo 247 Koch, Isabelle 9, 210 – 232 kouros 5, 33 – 38, 40, 44, 48n32, 49n34, 52n74, 53n77 Labeo, Notker 366 Lamberigts, Mathijs 223, 232n85 Lamberton, Robert 122n2, 123n29 lambs 150, 173 Lankila, Tuomo 112 – 113 lapidaries 318 Layne, Danielle A. 85 – 87, 89 – 90 Letter 6* (Augustine) 217, 219 – 221 Letter to Menoch (Mani) 214, 261n115 Letter to the Galatians (Paul) 214

416 Index Lex CEU 2 libido 9, 211, 213 – 215, 218 – 226; autonomy of 245; conjugal use of 225; De civitate Dei (Augustine)’s placing among the passions of 243; definition of, in On the Free Choice of the Will 237; evil of 215; impulsive 218; indocile 218; instrumentalization of 223; requalification of 224; as sexual arousal not sexual desire 246, 247, 256; shame of 246, 255; sin of 213 libido sexualis 220 Life of Mary, the Niece of Abraham 332 Life of Saint Mary the Egyptian (Patriarch Sophronius of Jerusalem) 10, 331, 332 – 340 Life of Saint Paul the First Hermit (Jerome) 332, 335, 339, 341n21 Life of Saint Pelagia of Antioch 332 Life of Saint Thaïs 332 Livy 356 logion 151 – 153 Logos 33, 53n75; Divine 200 Lubinsky, Crystal Lynn 282 – 285, 287 – 288, 290 Lucan 356 magical amulets 311; uterine amulets 315, 325n51 magical gems and menopause 9 – 10, 311 – 321; Anguiped (Abrasax) 317, 324n42; Chnoubis motif 311, 316, 317, 324n36; kerbenstil 315; uterine gems 311, 320, 325n51, 325n54 Magnus Maxiumus 348 – 351, 353 – 356 Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī (Mahāpajāpatī the Gotamī) 17 – 21, 26n15 Maha Swami of Kanchipuram 390 – 391, 393n33 malakoisi logoisin 44 malakos 53n75 Mani 214, 261n115 Manichaeans 202; anti-Manichean polemic of Augustine 210; Augustine as 251, 256; Augustine as “auditor” of 210; Augustine’s early commitment to 210; Augustine’s refutation of 202; on baptism of children 213; De Genesi contra Manichaeos (Augustine) 202 – 204, 237, 239, 249; Didymus on 205n1; doctrine

of evil 210, 212, 214; dualism of 225; ethic of purity 226; Exposition of Genesis against the Manichees (Augustine) 237, 239, 249; Julian of Eclanum’s opinion of Augustine’s Manicheanism 211 – 213, 253; On the Morals of the Catholic Church (Augustine) 238; on natural properties 217; physicalist conception of evil of 210; substantialist conception of sexuality of 211 Manichees see Manichaeans Manicheism 9, 198, 256 manifold eye 67, 69 Marcella 87 Marcion 151 Marcionite narratives 7, 132 Margaret of Antioch 276 marriage: of Aphrodite and Hephaestus 119, 125n84; Aphrodite and 114, 115, 117; Augustine on 219; Chariklea and Theagenes 131; Christian 220 – 221; concupiscence of marriage 219 – 220; death and 149; Eros and 110; goddess of 109; good or goodness of 218, 220 – 225; holy 128n129; Julian’s critique of Augustine on 212 – 214; kinship and, in the age of the Buddha 26n32; Marcion Church and 151; On Marriage and Concupiscence (Augustine) 9, 214; On the Good of Marriage (Augustine) 236, 238 – 243, 253; Pelagian controversies, Augustine on sexual desire and marriage 243 – 255; in Paradise 256; proper use of libido in 226; sexual intercourse and 222; sexuality within 17; sexual life, within Christian marriage 9, 236 – 261 marriage in oneself 204, 208n64 Martianus Capella see Capella, Martianus Mastrocinque, Attilio 319, 326n59 materiality: Augustine and 211; corporeality and 82; Eros and 118; femininity and 3; im/materiality of the Will 301 – 306; instantiated 69; the One and 68; Plotinus and 77, 78, 80, 82, 98; soul and 11 Materia medica (Dioscorides) 176, 178 Matter 95

Index  417 matter: Aphrodite and 109 – 118, 120 – 121; body and 82; body and, conflation of 83; female or maternal associated with 88, 117, 118; gendering of 82, 98; Indefinite Dyad and 81, 91, 94, 101n13; human sexuality in Augustine and 210 – 225; intelligible 81, 98; Layne on Plotinus’ understanding of 85; mother/matter homology 84 – 85, 87 – 88, 101n8; the One and 80; Plotinus’ sexless henology and 80; privation, ugliness, femininity, and 3; sensible 81; veil of 62 Mattern, Susan 311, 313 – 314 Maximus see Magnus Maximus Mazur, Zeke 6, 84 – 87, 89, 99n2, 101n32, 102n51, 103n76 menopause in Late Antiquity 9 – 10, 311 – 321; magical gems and 9 – 10, 311 – 321 menses 123n25, 312, 314 – 315; moon’s influence on 323n15 menstruation 312 Mercury (Roman god): marriage of Philology and 11, 366 – 368, 370, 372, 374 – 375 meretrices 295n64 Messiah 172 – 173, 179 – 180, 183 – 184, 190; Incarnation of 172 – 173, 179, 184 Milesians 36 Miles, Margaret 83 – 84, 97, 101n25, 128n135 milk 19; breastmilk 272 milk mother 20, 25n15 Militello, Chiara 6 – 7, 106 – 129 misogyny: Aristotle 45; Buddha 19, 25n13; Hesiod 45; holy 141; Mithra 152; Parmenides 34; Plato 88; Plotinus 78, 83, 87, 91, 102n65; self-misogyny 10 Mithra 152 Mithraic interpretation of the Odyssey 155n27 Mogyoródi, Emese 5, 33 – 53 “monastic fantasy” 279 monasticism 304; Dositheus as delikion and 304, 306n7; Gazan 301; Pelagia and 285; Palestinian 292; South Asia 5, 15 – 24 Moschos, John 280

mother: birth mother 20; death of 19; foster 17; role of 272; see also milk mother; Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī; Virgin Mother motherless: Aphrodite as 110, 116 mother/matter homology 84 – 85, 87 – 88, 101n8 Mother of God 143; Son of God 184 multilayered or multitudinous self 6, 57 – 58, 60 multilayered theory of consciousness 59 multiplicity derived from and defied by the One 79 – 80, 108 multiplicity in oneness 65, 68 multiply: “Be fruitful and multiply” 213, 237 – 241, 249, 261 Muses 33, 37, 50n42 Muslim conquest 175 Muslims 8, 172 – 173 Mutawakkil 178 Nanda 20 Nazianzen, Gregory 162, 166 Nazianzus, Gregory of 267 Nazarius 350 nazir 146 Neoplatonism 97; on Aphrodite and the feminine 106, 108 – 109, 118, 120 – 122, 129n139; doctrine of love 7; feminist theory in 77; gender/ing and the body in 81 – 82, 96; sexed predicative character of the One as blasphemous in 79; sex and women, views of 89; women and femaleness in 87; see also Plotinus; Proclus Neoplatonization of Plato 97 – 98 neutrality: gender 85 – 86; of the One 6, 77 – 78, 80 – 82, 89, 91 – 99 Nicaeno-Constantinopolitanum 161 Nicene 349; neo-Nicene 163 Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed 161 Nicene Creed 325 161 Nirguna Advaita 391 Nisula, Timo 219, 260n83 Nonnus 285 Nous, the (God, One, or First Principle) 73n41, 79 – 80, 93, 100n6, 370 nous, the (intellect) 107 – 108 One, science of see henology one-seed model 172, 182 – 183 opsis 60 – 62

418 Index Origen 145, 183; anti-Origenists 198; Augustine’s knowledge of 9, 204; on pre-existence of the soul 153; Valentinian Heracleon, debate with 150 original sin 211 – 214, 216, 227n12, 249, 253, 259n67, 270 Ourania/Heavenly 107 Pacatus 11, 347 – 356 pagan letters 370, 372 Pallas 368 – 369 Panayotov, Stanimir 1 – 10, 77 – 104 pandemic see COVID-19 Pandêmos/Common 107, 109, 125n67; Aphrodite Pandemos 126n87 Pandora 46n6 Paradise: Adam and Eve as parents in 239; Augustine on 215 – 219; Didymus on 199, 201; loss of 201; marriage in 218, 221, 236; mortal body in 238; sex in 252, 256; sexual desire in 252; sexuality in 236, 248 – 252; shame in 267, 270 – 271; see also Expulsion; Genesis, Book of Paradise Myth 202 Parvati 389; Uma/Parvati 391 Parvati pati 384 Pásztori-Kupán, István 8, 161 – 170 pathos-propatheia structure 246 – 247, 256 Patlagean, Evelyne 280 – 282, 284, 290 patristics 1, 4, 9, 11; dis/embodiment in 7 Paul (Saint; Paul the Apostle) 161, 167, 268 – 269; Augustine’s quoting of 221; exegesis in Western Manichaeism 229n31; letters of 9, 197 – 198, 202; Letter to the Galatians 214; Letter to the Romans 214 Pausanius 107 Pelagia: Life of Pelagia 276 – 293 Pelagian controversy: Augustine’s debates with Julian of Eclanum 9, 211 – 217, 219, 225 – 226, 250 – 254; Augustine’s debate with Pelagians 9 – 10, 211 – 212, 215, 217 – 221, 225 – 226, 236; Augustine on sexual desire and marriage 243 – 255 Pelagius 276, 286 – 287, 293 Pelops 326n57 penis, cutting off of (Uranus) 124n61 Perczel, István 1 – 11, 63, 65 – 69 Perpetua (Saint) 267, 271 – 273

Persephone 326n57 personhood 133, 163 – 165, 167 Phaedo 57 Philology: marriage to Mercury (Roman god) 367 – 368, 370, 372, 374 – 375 Philo of Alexandria 145, 147 – 148 Pirandello, Luigi 57, 70 Plato 4; Alcibiades 57; Laws 57; Neoplatonization of 97 – 98; Parmenides and, dialogue between 5; two Aphroditai described by 7; triple division of soul 245 – 246; see also Neoplatonism; Theaetetus; Timaeus Platonic myth of the cave 7, 8 Pleroma 389 Pliny 356 Pliny the Elder 312 Plotinus: Aphrodite in thought of 6 – 7, 106 – 122; Demiurge 60, 71n16; Dione 108 – 109, 111, 120; Ennead (or Enneads) 63, 74n63, 85 – 86, 88, 106, 114, 117 – 118, 120; Galen’s influence on 60; on One and gender 77 – 99, 126n104; opsis, importance to 60 – 62; on Pausianus 107; seeing Self in unity, views on 6, 57 – 70; see also degendering Plutarch 145 Pollini, John 307n16, 308n18 Poole, Jordan 10, 311 – 327 Porphyry 84, 89, 145, 152; De antro nympharum (The Cave of the Nymphs)145 Prakriti 388 pregnancy 21, 24; ḥaml, of fruit 180; impregnation 23; magical assistance for 319; of Mary 142; metaphor of 85, 176, 180 Prestige, George Leonard 163 Proclus 81; Aphrodite in thought of 6 – 7, 106 – 122 Proem (Parmenides) 5, 33, 35, 37 – 38, 44 propotheia 205n16, 206n19, 244 – 248, 256 prosopopoeia 353 prosopography 89 – 90 Protevangelium Jacobi 7, 141 – 153; dating of 142 – 143 proto-feminism, of Plotinus 83, 87 proto-Orthodoxy 143 protoplasts 199 – 200 proto-theological perceptions of gender 82 Pseudo-Apollo of Tyana 182

Index  419 Pseudo-Matthew apocryphon 142 pterygoma (winged) form 319 pudicitia 222 Purusha 388 Pythagoras 35, 52n65, 53n76 queering 4, 305 queerness, radical 86 queer studies 3 queer theory 10 Quran 182, 184 Rachakonda, Sarma 282 radical egalitarianism, of Plotinus 90 radical feminism 92 radicalizations 82, 91 radical queerness 86 radical monist metaphysics 36 – 37 Răducan, Ana-Maria 9, 267 – 274 reincarnation: of Adi Shankara 393n33; female 88 reincarnation thesis 88 Remes, Pauliina 57, 63 resurrection of Christ 165 – 169 resurrection of the body/flesh 8, 161 – 162, 165, 169, 237 risen body of Christ 8, 161, 165 – 168 Rollo, David 11, 366 – 377 Sághy, Marianne: bibliography of works of 397 – 408; death of 1; “Veste regia indutus” 11, 347 – 348; on virtue 348; see also Severus Sallust 356 Salome 142, 146, 151, 152 same-sex relations 2; see also homosexuality Samos 47n12 sangha 15, 17 – 19, 21 – 24, 25n13, 26n15 Sarah (Biblical) 142, 146, 150 Sato, Makiko 8, 197 – 208 Schroeder, Caroline T. 307n14 Schultz, Jana 87, 90, 91, 94 Scouteris, Constantine 308n23 seductresses, demonic 285 seed (i.e., semen) 39, 50n48, 179, 214; female seed 50n49, 50n50, 52n65; Galen on best position of uterus to receive 323n26; self-fertilizing or monogenetic (One) 85; Uranus 111; Zeus 111; see also one-seed model; two-seed model

seed of fruit: as metaphor for human sexual conception 177, 179 – 182 seed of sin: pride 237 semen 183; animal 177, 181; seed as 181, 182; Zeus 111 Semitic religions 383 Seneca 244, 245 Serpent (Edenic) 9, 197 – 204 Seven Liberal Arts 367 – 369, 373, 375 Severus, Sulpicius 11, 347 – 349, 356 sex: Aphrodite and 117; associations of lower Aphrodite with 109, 120; one-sex world 35; Plotinus, sex, and gender 82 – 91; same-sex relations 2 sex and gender: distinction between 122n14; neutrality of Plotinus’ One to 77 – 99 sexes: binding of both to each other 220, 254; distinction between 153; division of 141, 148, 150; duality of 148; equality of 8, 34, 40, 87; equal role of 152; opposition of 141; relationship between 375; union of 222; valorization of 38, 39 sexism 33, 34, 51n65; Plotinus and 85 sexless see androgyny; asexuality sexless henology see henology sexual abstinence see abstinence sexual arousal 246, 247, 256 sexual desire 246, 247, 256; Adam and Eve 151; Augustine’s views on, as one of the Passions 9, 236 – 261; sexual arousal and 246, 247, 256; Yaldabaoth and 148 – 149 sexual intercourse 110, 128; Hydaspes’ definition of 134 sexuality: curse of 148; gender 11; heterosexuality 123n23; homosexuality 123n23 sexuality studies 9 sexual life, within Christian marriage 9, 236 – 261 sexual renunciation 3 sexual reproduction 174 Shaivism 391 shame 267 – 273; of being a woman 271 – 273; new Christian identity and 269 – 270; perfect self and 268 – 269 Shankara see Adi Shankara Shiva 383, 384, 389, 392; Shiva/ Yehovah 388

420 Index Sidéris, Georges 287 Silenus 368 – 369 Slaveva-Griffin, Svetla 80 Socrates: theory of flux according to 63 Solomon (King) 334; Song of Songs of 5, 381 – 394 somatophobia 83 Song of Songs (Solomon) 5, 381 – 394 Sophronius of Jerusalem 10, 332, 339 Sorabji, Richard 57, 219, 244, 246 Soranus 312 – 313, 315, 323n15 Sosipatra 87 soul: animus as 202; body–soul– intellect–One 80; body, soul, truth, in Heliodoros 131 – 137; divine 110; eye of 200; female goddesses as representation of 116 – 118, 121; feminist reading of 3; gendered division of 90; genderless 89 – 90; gender-neutral 85 – 86; hierarchies between 93; higher 62, 69 – 70, 72n31, 74n63; hypostasis 59, 114, 117, 123n31, 124n52; immaterial 71n16; Intellect and 114; lower 59; as motion 64; one-soul thesis 83; partial 58; Plato’s triple division of 245 – 246; pre-existence of, Origen on 153; purification of 66; rational 6; sin and 198; Soul of the Universe 115, 118, 124n52, 126n87; unbounded love of the One 85, 86; unity of 60; upper 57, 66; Whether All Souls Are One (Plotinus) 60; whole 58, 59; World Soul 87, 95, 125n85; see also body and soul Soul of the Universe 115, 118, 124n52, 126n87 Soundarya Lahari (Adi Shankara) 5, 381 – 394 Sparta 35, 47n12, 353 Spartacus 353 speculum 85, 87, 88 Spelman, Elizabeth 97, 101n22 sperm 128n136, 312; see also seed; semen spermatogenesis 172 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 302 Steiger, Peter D. 8, 197 – 208 Stobaeus 145 Subrahmanyam, Sanjay 382 Symbolum Antiochenum 183 Syriac Christians 8 Syriac language 142, 161 – 162, 175, 178

Syriac religious and intellectually traditions 185 Ṯābit b. Qurra 178 Tantalus 319 – 320, 325n56, 326n57 Tantalus gem 318, 321 tantric rites 383 Theaetetus (Plato) 6, 58, 63 – 69, 84, 153; φυγή in 149; escape motif of 95, 149 Theagenes 7, 131 – 137 Thecla (Saint) 276, 293n3, 337 Theodore Abū Qurra 8, 172 Theodore of Mopsuestia 161 – 162 Theodoret of Cyrus 163 Theodosius (Emperor) 11, 163, 347 – 356 Theologou, Anastasia 1 – 11, 57 – 74 Theophrastus 41 – 42, 175 – 178 Thomas the Apostle: body of Christ and 165, 167 – 168 Timaeus (Plato) 62, 87 – 90, 121, 151; “first distinction” in 153; metaphysical characteristics of material world in 141; Philo of Alexandria and 147; philosophical fable narrated in 119; reincarnation thesis in 88; sex equality vs. inequality in 87 Tischendorff, Constantin von 142 Tommasi, Chiara O. 290 Trajan 352 tranquillissima caritas 251 transgender identity 288, 282, 293 trans theory 282 transvestite saints 9 – 10, 277 – 293 Trier 348 – 350 two-seed model 172 Upson-Saia, Kristi 289 Uranus (Roman god and personification of heaven) 108 – 111, 113, 118, 120 Usener, Hermann 277 – 278 uterine amulets 315, 325n51 uterine gems 311, 320, 325n51, 325n54 Vaishnavism 391 Valentinian II 349, 350, 359n17 Valentinians 151; Heracleon and 150 van Stempvoort, Pieter A. 143 – 145 Varsányi, Orsolya 8, 172 – 191 Venus (goddess of Love) 368 – 369, 388 Virgil 370 – 371, 376n17 virgin: “Can the Virgin Martyr Speak?” (Mills) 287; eunuchry and 286;

Index  421 martyr of Antioch 278; masculinity of 284; medieval female 287; Pelagia 277, 285, 286; spiritual 282; Thecla 293n3 virginal common life 242 virginal union (casta coniunctio) 238 virginal way of life 239 virgin birth 142, 184, 186 virginity 134; taking of 251 virginity of Mary 146, 151 – 152 Virgin Mary 336 Virgin Mother 389 virginity test 136, 138 virilitas propagationis 213 virility: Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii and 366 – 375; in Roman rhetoric 10; spiritual, in women 296n90 virtus and virtutes 348 – 349, 351, 354, 356, 358n12 Visvanathan, Susan 5, 381 – 392 Vogt, Karl 286 voluntas 223 Wender, Dorothea 147 Wilberding, James 74n59, 87 – 90 Wogan-Brown, Jocelyn 277 women 10: sangha, right to be admitted into 17 – 19, 21 – 23; body associated with 15; Freud’s view of

268; goddesses not identified as 38, 44; Parmenides’ belief that women are physically hotter than men 41; Parmenides’ bias against 33 – 34, 46n4; Parmenides’ valorization of 40; Pausanius’s views of 123n23; plant-women parallels in Arabic works 188n30; Platonic tradition of degrading 88; Plotinian Triad and 96; Plotinus’ views of 81 – 84, 88 – 91; Pythagorean attitudes towards 34; sex-universality of 92; shame of/being ashamed by 268, 271 – 273; status in Sparta of 35; symmetric roles of men and women in the Protevangelium Jacobi 146 – 150 women-as-otherness 90 women-monk 286 Xenophanes 36 Xenophon 293n11 Yaldaboth 148 – 149, 151 Yehovah 388 Zeus 88, 108 – 109, 111, 113 – 116, 118 – 121 Zosimas the Monk 332 – 335, 337 – 339 Zosimus the Executioner 270, 331