Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2015 Agnes in Agony: Damasus, Ambrose, Prudentius, and the Construction of the Female Martyr Narrative Eric James Poche' Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Poche', Eric James, "Agnes in Agony: Damasus, Ambrose, Prudentius, and the Construction of the Female Martyr Narrative" (2015). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 3991. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/3991 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. AGNES IN AGONY: DAMASUS, AMBROSE, PRUDENTIUS, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE FEMALE MARTYR NARRATIVE A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of History by Eric Poché B.A., University of New Orleans, 2007 M.A., Louisiana State University, 2009 August 2015 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Maribel Dietz for her support throughout this entire project. Steven Ross offered his support at several crucial moments and was always willing to lend advice on difficult issues regarding context. Christine Kooi was kind enough to join my committee when she was needed most. Without their help, this Dissertation would not have been possible. I also need to thank my grandmother Jackie Poché, my parents Louis and Mary Poché, and my beautiful wife Lauren Doughty Poché. My grandfather, James Poché, deserves special mention for the inspiration and support he has always offered and continues to offer. He is the paterfamilias of my family without whom none of this would have been possible. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………….…………………………………....ii ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………….…........v CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION……………………………………………....……….1 THE EVOLUTION OF A FEMALE MARTYR ARCHETYPE………………3 THE INFLUENCE OF POPE DAMASUS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE AGNES NARRATIVE.........................................................................8 THE EVOLUTION OF PAPAL AUTHORITY……………………………....14 DEVELOPING A NARRATIVE TO BOLSTER AUTHORITY…….………32 CHAPTER 2: FAMA REFERT: DAMASUS AND THE ROMANIZATION OF THE CHURCH……………………..………………………………………….……............35 DAMASUS AND CHRISTIANITY…………………………...………...……38 DAMASUS AND THE ROMANIZATION OF ORTHODOXY…….....…….48 AGNES AND THE ROMANIZATION OF THE MARTYR CULT……....…62 CHAPTER 3: DE VIRGINIBUS: AMBROSE AND THE ROMAN CHURCH ...........68 FROM MAGISTRATE TO BISHOP……………………....……...……….….70 AMBROSE AND DE VIRGINIBUS………………….…...…………….……..78 AMBROSE AND HIS ROMAN AUDIENCE………………………...….…....97 CHAPTER 4: AGNES BEATAE VIRGINIS: AMBROSE AND THE MILANESE CHURCH………..……………………………………...……………….105 THE DISPUTE WITH JUSTINA OVER THE PORTIAN BASCILICA….…109 FROM PSALMS TO HYMNS…………………………….…………...….......122 AGNES BEATAE VIRGINIS………………………………….……....………..133 THE END OF THE PERSECUTION…………………….……………….….140 AMBROSIAN HYMNS AND THE BATTLE OVER FAITH………..……..146 CHAPTER 5: PERISTEPHANON: THE IBERIAN APPROPRIATION OF THE AGNES CULT….……………………………………………….…………………….148 A PREFACE TO A LIFE……………..…………………………………....…152 MARTYR AS EPIC HERO………………………..……………….……...….156 THE TONGUE OF PRUDENTIUS…………...…………………………..….164 THE JOURNEY TO ROME…………………………………………….....…174 REPLICATING THE VIRGIN MARTYR:…………….………...…...…..….183 A DOUBLE CROWN FOR THE VIRGIN MARTYR………...……...…..…196 CHAPTER 6: GESTA AGNETIS: MULTIPLYING THE FEMALE MARTYR NARRATIVE…………………………………...………………………………....….200 ASCETICISM AND THE GESTA MARTYRUM ROMANORUM…….…..…202 THE GESTA AGNETIS AND THE ROMAN ARISTOCRACY……..........…208 iii REMAKING THE MARTYR WITH AGATHA AND LUCY…….……......220 THE VIRGIN MARTYR NARRATIVE AND PAPAL AUTHORITY…......227 CONCLUSION: AGNES IN AGONY……………….………….…………………230 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………...…………………………….....236 ABBREVIATIONS…………………………………………………………...236 PRIMARY SOURCES………………………………………………………..236 SECONDARY SOURCES……………………………………………………237 VITA……………………………………...…………………………………………..242 iv ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the earliest surviving sources on the virgin martyr Agnes. Agnes is significant due to the popularity of her cult and the large number of early sources recounting her martyrdom. This dissertation argues that the fourth-century bishops Damasus and Ambrose, along with the Christian poet Prudentius, helped construct the narrative of Agnes’ passion in order to help popularize her cult throughout western Christendom. In an effort to promote virgin asceticism to their communities, they endorsed Agnes as the dominant exemplum for female piety in the west. By doing so, they associated themselves with the influential martyr. Since Agnes was a Roman martyr, the role of Damasus, the bishop of Rome, is particularly significant in the formation of the Agnes narrative. This dissertation examines how the Agnes narrative developed from the simple nine-line elogium of Pope Damasus into the complex accounts of Ambrose, Prudentius and the Gesta Martyrum Romanorum. It demonstrates that the account of Pope Damasus—although short and seemingly less influential than the near contemporary accounts of Ambrose—was the primary motivator for the development of female hagiography. Damasus was the chief Christian administrator in a city coming to terms with its Christian identity. His elogia, which he heavily modeled on Virgilian epic verse, gave Rome a Christian past just as glorious as its pagan heritage. The influence of Damasus can be seen in the works of his younger contemporary Ambrose of Milan, who references the Agnes elogium, and the Christian poet Prudentius, who fervently embraces the elogium when writing his own classicizing Christian epic. v These authors transformed Agnes from an innocent victim into a classical hero. She was the embodiment of Roman family values that earlier, more controversial female martyrs, like Perpetua of Carthage, could never hope to be. This re-writing of the female martyr narrative was crucial in fourth-century Rome, where Damasus and his successors still struggled with a Roman aristocracy, recently converted to Christianity. Women were the battlefield in a slow conversion process. Agnes was the hero that influential Roman women could look to as a proper Christian exemplum. vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION The Roman martyr Agnes died during the Great Persecution of Diocletian, around 305 C.E. According to tradition, Agnes was a young virgin who was just reaching marriageable age. In addition to defending her faith against pagan opposition, Agnes is famous for preserving her virginity. This made Agnes a particularly popular martyr with fourth-century bishops, who increasingly began to call for devotion to an ascetic lifestyle. Liberius and Damasus, both prominent bishops of Rome, and Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, were particularly influential in developing a narrative for this female martyr to serve as an exemplum for their congregations and the larger Roman public. The story of Agnes, which developed into the standard narrative for the female saint by the sixth century, was a story inextricably linked to the city of Rome. Its creation is steeped with classical Latin influence, and the imperiled virgin motif that it is built on is as fundamental to Roman tradition as Lucretia or Rhea Silvia. This dissertation will examine the earliest surviving sources on Agnes and put them into their historical context in order to demonstrate the importance of this particular martyr in establishing episcopal authority over the western church. The ancient Mediterranean world was built upon the interdependence of various cultures, religions, languages, and ethnicities. The Roman Empire was not the product of one city or one political tradition, or one language. The study of early Christianity is the study of an elaborate cultural milieu, which produced countless thoughts and ideas. It is therefore not surprising to see so much debate on the subject of Rome’s fall. In 509 B.C.E., Rome was nothing more than a small Italic city-state with a new and unusual form of government. Defining Rome at the “End” of its ancient past is a more difficult 1 task.1 Its political institutions had evolved into a Mediterranean empire that had long since abandoned the city called Roma. Its language and culture had changed significantly over the course of more than one thousand years of Greek influence. But the customs and traditions of the Romans, the ever important mos maiorum of the Roman historians, lived on in new expressions of religion and culture. This dissertation attempts to understand this transformation of traditional values. This debate on the fall of Rome is tied to the study of early Christianity. In The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity, Peter Brown defines a new periodization for Roman history dependent not on the physical foundations of a religion, but on the power and influence of its ideas. Brown, like most historians, saw ancient history divided into grand epochs: “The classical period conjures up the image of the great temple; the Middle Ages, of a Gothic Cathedral.”2 Brown had a different kind of monument in mind for what he came to describe as the Late