342 Jessica Kristionat What About the Position of Women in Manichaeism

342 book reviews

Jessica Kristionat Zwischen Selbstverständlichkeit und Schweigen. Die Rolle der Frau im frühen Manichäismus (Oikumene: Studien zur antiken Weltgeschichte 11), Heidelberg: Verlag Antike 2013, 494 pp., ISBN 978-3-938032-60-2, € 85,90 (hb).

What about the position of women in Manichaeism? In recent research their place and role have been described in more or less favourable terms, especially in studies by Kevin Coyle, Madeleine Scopello and Majella Franzmann. Coyle in particular—the scholar who may be hailed as the inaugurator of the study of women in Manichaeism1—suggested a favourable status. In her 2012 Augsburg dissertation, Jessica Kristionat, while dealing with the views of Coyle and others, offers the first extensive, profound and weighty study on the role of women in Mani’s religion. Her dissertation was prepared in the department of ancient history of the University of Augsburg (Doktorvater Gregor Weber), but it is evident from its contents that her previous studies at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster with its staff members Gregor Wurst (now Augsburg) and Siegfried Richter have made a lasting impression on its contents. In Münster, she appears to have made her first forays into Coptology and Manichaean studies, as well as into Arabic and Islamic studies. All these advantages could be exploited in Augsburg where she later also obtained an appointment at the Faculty of Theology with Wurst. Kristionat begins her book with a very brief intro and some considerations on method. She emphatically states (17) that her study is a historical one in which social-historical methods are applied to explain historical states of affairs (‘Sachverhalte’). She also articulates that she does not adopt feminist exegesis (‘Von einer feministischen Exegese wird in dieser Arbeit Abstand genommen’, 18), although in the course of her exposition it becomes evident that she is well informed of certain branches of feminist studies, in particular those dealing with early Christianity. A long exposition (22-50) makes clear on which sources she bases her enquiries, i.e. basically on the Western Manichaean and anti- Manichaean sources in Coptic, Greek, Latin and Syriac, as well as on a variety of Eastern texts. Although she intends to confine her analysis to Manichaean sources which date from pre-Islamic times (26), in the course of her inquiry it appears that now and then she needs to quote later sources to make her point.

1 J. Kevin Coyle, ‘Prolegomena to a Study of Women in Manichaeism’ (2001), now in idem, Manichaeism and Its Legacy (NHMS 69), Leiden-Boston: Brill 2009, 141-154. See also in the same collective volume ‘Mary Magdalene in Manichaeism’ (1991); ‘Rethinking the “Marys” of Manichaeism’ (2005) and ‘Women and Manichaeism’s Mission to the Roman Empire’ (2006).

Chapters Two and Three form the pièce de résistance of the dissertation, the first one studying the real historical Manichaean women we know of (‘Realtypen weiblichen Lebens’, 51-196) and the considerably longer third chapter focusing on the ‘ideal’ figures (‘Idealtypen weiblichen Lebens’, 197-357). This distinction of types is a heuristic one which enhances the clarity of the investigation and enables the author to better master the vast amount of material. Firstly, her ‘real’ Manichaean women turn out to belong to the class of the Elect. These women are considered to be office holders insofar as they partook—by means of their bodies—in the Elect’s duty of rescuing the parti- cles of Light encapsulated in food matter. Kristionat opines that this function is to be qualified as an ‘office’ (‘. . . denn die Stellung der männlichen und weiblichen Erwählten kann durchaus als Amt definiert werden’, 72), but this does not mean that these ‘officiating’ women were part of the Manichaean hierarchy. I miss the point she also claims to make, namely that she is correcting the terminology of all preceding research in this respect (‘Infolgedessen soll die in der Forschung bisher verwendete Terminologie modifiziert werden’). From her book it becomes crystal clear that women in Manichaeism did not exer- cise an official duty, i.e. any office or ministry which belonged to the offical hierarchy. In her exposition on ‘real’ Manichaean women Elect, the author describes their diverse functions as ascetics, prayers, missionaries, etc. In accordance with Coyle, Kristionat concludes that in the Manichaean sources we do not find any female missionaries mentioned by name.2 Other (mainly polemical) sources, however, emphasize the missionary activities of Manichaean women. As regards Βάσσα Παρθένος Λυδία Μανιχέα, famous for her inscription found near Salona (modern Split in Croatia), Kristionat ends her fine overview (134- 142) rather sceptically: ‘Dass sie fernab der Heimatstadt gestorben ist, lässt nicht automatisch auf eine missionarische Tätigkeit schließen’ (141-142). Her discussion of Julia of Antioch (158-163), well known from Marcus Diaconus’ Vita Porphyrii, ends even more sceptically: ‘Ob Julia wirklich als historische Person einzuschätzen ist, ist nicht sicher zu belegen’. In view of her preceding discussion, this final sentence comes ‘out of the blue’ and seems unwarranted. While in the case of the women Elect much in Kristionat’s description is based on conclusions per analogiam from texts only speaking of male Elect,

2 Cf. Coyle, ‘Women and Manichaeism’s Mission’, Manichaeism and Its Legacy, 204: ‘. . . nothing in Manichaean sources themselves clearly indicates that any woman collabo- rated in spreading Manichaeism, on Mani’s home turf or elsewhere’.

Vigiliae Christianae 70 (2016) 335-347