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The Body and Society Page i The Body And Society LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS Sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies New Series, Number Thirteen Page iii The Body and Society Men Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity Peter Brown COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS New York Page iv Library of Congress Cataloging­in­Publication Data Brown, Peter Robert Lamont. The body and society. (Lectures on the history of religions; new ser., no. 13) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Celibacy—Christianity—History of doctrines—Early church, ca. 30­600. 2. Virginity—Religious aspects­ Christianity—History of doctrines—Early church, ca. 30­600. 3. Sex—Religious aspects—Christianity­ History of doctrines—Early church, ca. 30­600. 4. Asceticism—History—Early church, ca. 30­600. I. Title. II. Series. BT708.B77 1988 253'.2 87­30941 ISBN 0­231­06100­5 ISBN 0­231­06101­3 (pbk.) Columbia University Press New York Chichester, West Sussex Copyright © 1988 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 p 10 9 8 Clothbound Columbia University Press editions are printed on permanent and durable acid­free paper. Book design by Ken Venezio Page v This volume is the thirteenth to be published in the series of Lectures on the History of Religions for which the American Council of Learned Societies, through its Committee on the History of Religions, assumed responsibility in 1936. Under the program the Committee from time to time enlists the services of scholars to lecture in colleges, universities, and seminaries on topics in need of expert elucidation. Subsequently, when possible and appropriate, the Committee arranges for the publication of the lectures. Other volumes in the series are Martin P. Nilsson, Greek Popular Religion (1940), Henri Frankfort, Ancient Egyptian Religion (1948), Wingtsit Chan, Religious Trends in Modern China (1953), Joachim Wach, The Comparative Study of Religions, edited by Joseph M. Kitagawa (1958), R. M. Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity (I959), Robert Lawson Slater, World Religions and World Community (1963), Joseph M. Kitagawa, Religion in Japanese History (1966), Joseph L. Blau, Modern Varieties of Judaism (1966), Morton Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament (1971), Philip H. Ashby, Modern Trends in Hinduism (1974), Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (1978), and Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam (1982). Page vi Page viii Page xi CONTENTS Preface xiii Part One. From Paul To Anthony 3 1. Body and City 5 2. From Apostle to Apologist: Sexual Order and Sexual Renunciation in the Early 33 Church 3. Martyrdom, Prophecy and Continence: Hermas to Tertullian 65 4. "To Undo the Works of Women": Marcion, Tatian and the Encratites 83 5. "When You Make the Two One": Valentinus and Gnostic Spiritual Guidance 103 6. "A Faint Image of Divine Providence": Clement of Alexandria 122 7. "A Promiscuous Brotherhood and Sisterhood": Men and Women in the Christian 140 Churches 8. "I Beseech You: Be Transformed": Origen 160 9. "Walking on Earth, Touching High Heaven's Vault": Porphyry and Methodius 178 Page xii 10. Church and Body: Cyprian, Mani and Eusebius of Caesarea 190 Part Two. Asceticism And Society In The Eastern Empire 210 11. The Desert Fathers: Anthony to John Climacus 213 12. "Make to Yourselves Separate Booths": Monks, Women and Marriage 241 inEgypt 13. "Daughters of Jerusalem": The Ascetic Life of Women in the Fourth Century 259 14. Marriage and Mortality: Gregory of Nyssa 285 15. Sexuality and the City: John Chrysostom 305 16. "These Are Our Angels": Syria 323 Part Three. Ambrose To Augustine: The Making Of The Latin Tradition 339 17. Aula Pudoris: Ambrose 341 18. "Learn of Me a Holy Arrogance": Jerome 366 19. Sexuality and Society: Augustine 387 Epilogue. Body and Society: The Early Middle Ages 428 Bibliography 449 Index 495 Page xiii PREFACE In this book, I study the practice of permanent sexual renunciation—continence, celibacy, life­long virginity as opposed to observance of temporary periods of sexual abstinence—that developed among men and women in Christian circles in the period from a little before the missionary journeys of Saint Paul, in the 40s and 50s A.D., to a little after the death of Saint Augustine, in 430 A.D. My principal concern has been to make clear the notions of the human person and of society implied in such renunciations, and to follow in detail the reflection and controversy which these notions generated, among Christian writers, on such topics as the nature of sexuality, the relation of men and women, and the structure and meaning of society. My account begins in the second century A.D., in a pagan world where Christianity had begun to achieve a certain measure of public visibility. The second chapter returns in time to the Palestine of Jesus, to Saint Paul and to the role of continence in the obscure and stormy first century of the Christian movement. By around the year 150, sexual renunciation had come to mean many things to many Christian groups. For this reason, chapters 3 through 6 will move around the Mediterranean and the Near East, from Lyon and Carthage to Edessa. Page xiv I hope to do justice, in this way, to the range of options faced by Christians in the remarkable fifty years that stretched from the generation of Marcion, Valentinus, and Tatian to that of Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria. The towering genius of Origen dominates all accounts of the further development of notions on sexuality and the human person in the Greek world. But the fascination that came to be exercised by Origen's peculiarly majestic ideal of virginity is difficult to understand if we do not risk an opinion on the role of continence in the relations between men and women within the changing structures of the churches of his generation. Chapter 7, devoted to this topic, precedes our account of the thought of Origen. Chapter 9 delineates the parting of the ways between pagan notions of abstinence and the Christian ideal of virginity in the later third century. The first part of the book closes, in chapter 10, with a survey that presents some of the varied meanings taken on by the practice of sexual renunciation in the different regions of the Christian world, and then considers the relations established between continent and married members of the churches in the age of Saint Anthony and Constantine. The second part of the book opens with the traditions of spiritual guidance associated with the Desert Fathers, who came to flank the churches of the settled land, in Egypt and elsewhere, from the reign of Constantine to the last days of the Roman Empire in the East. The next chapters take up in detail, topic by topic and region by region, the impact of ascetic ideals on the thought and practice of the churches of the Eastern Empire throughout the fourth and early fifth centuries. Part III deals with the Latin world, which is closer in many ways to the traditions with which many modern Western readers can identify themselves. I set the attitudes of three outstanding authors—Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine—against the dilemmas peculiar to their place and generation, and measure the degree to which the Catholic tradition, to which they contributed so decisively, differed from the traditions that we have met in the eastern Christian world. The Epilogue forms a doublet to the first chapter: it sums up the changes in the notion of the human person and of society that had taken place between the age of the Antonines and the beginning of the Middle Ages. A book of this size and span demands some explanation and, above all, a frank statement of the limitations and renunciations that came to be imposed upon it in the course of writing. It is a book about Early Page xv Christianity. I have been concerned with recapturing the distinctive flavor of that period in the history of Christianity which distinguished it from all subsequent centuries. It will soon become apparent, to any reader, that the notions of sexual renunciation it considers are profoundly different from those to which we have become accustomed from our acquaintance with medieval Catholicism and with the Christianity of modern times. This is a book where the cult of the Virgin Mary emerges only toward the end. Clerical celibacy, though finally advocated by some, was practiced in a manner totally unlike that now current in the Catholic Church. The ascetic movement, though a constant, fascinating presence for much of this period, lacked the clear and orderly profile later associated with the Benedictine monasticism of the Latin West. Even the notion of perpetual virginity, though it dazzled many writers in the late third and fourth centuries, came into clear focus only in fits and starts: above all, it never acquired the unambiguous association with specifically female chastity that it achieved in other ages, both in the pagan world and in later forms of Catholic Christianity. The Early Church remains a period still charged with more than academic interest for many readers. Stereotypes, alternately placid and histrionic, gravitate around it with remarkable ease. If my book gives back to the Christian men and women of the first five centuries a little of the disturbing strangeness of their most central preoccupations, I will consider that I have achieved my purpose in writing it. But the reader must be aware of the limitations of this book. It became a book about Early Christianity in particular, and not about late antiquity in general. This was a hard renunciation for me to have made.
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