Studia Philologica Valentina Vol. 20, n.s. 17 (2018) 111-140 ISSN: 1135-9560 Domestic violence against women as a reason to sanctification in Byzantine hagiography Ángel Narro <
[email protected]> Universitat de València Fecha de recepción: 15/09/2018 Fecha de aceptación: 29/11/2018 1. Introduction Domestic violence against women represents one of the major issues of modern civilization regarding social relationships between men and women. Traditionally, women have been observed as being inferior to men in terms of physical strength and intelligence, and were considered a mere belonging on the hands of a male authority: firstly, her father, then her husband, and when widowed, eventually her confessor. This need of guardianship must be interpreted in a broader conception which has its roots in the Classical world and is highly developed in Early Christian literature, where women are said to pass through three different states along their lives: virgin, wife-mother and widow (Giannarelli, 1980: 10- 14). These three stages (girldhood, marriage and motherhood, and wid- owhood and old age) will be maintained in Late Antiquity and Byzantine times (Talbot, 1997: 119-129), where mixed conceptions about social life and religion, inherited from both Graeco-Roman world and Christianity, will persist. Early Christian thought has incorporated most of the social values of Graeco-Roman society, adapting and modelling them in some cases ac- cording to its own doctrine. In the case of gender differences, the physical 112 Ángel Narro and intellectual weakness (ἀσθένεια) of women, based on both biological and philosophical presumptions (Mattioli, 1983: 228-229), is considered one of the main features of female sex, as it appears in 1Pet.