VANCOUVER SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
[enJGENDERING THE DESERT OF LATE ANTIQUITY: EXPLORING PRESCRIPTIONS OF MASCULINIE BODY PERFORMANCE IN THE LIFE OF ANTONY
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
BY JEFFREY H. E. PREISS
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA APRIL 2008
REV. DR. HARRY O. MAIER
REV. DR. WENDY FLETCHER Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition
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The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission.
In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these.
While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada For my father CONTENTS
I. ESTABLISHING TRAJECTORIES OF IDENTITY 1
II. EXPLORING IDENTITY: THE AUTHOR, THE SUBJECT, AND THE TEXT 19
III. SETTING THE GENEALOGICAL PERSPECTIVE: SITUATING MASCULINITIES, SPACE, AND THE WORLD BEFORE THE TEXT 36
IV. BRINGING IT TO ANTONY: EXPLORING PAIN AND SUFFERING AS THE FORMATION OF A GENDERED SELF 63
BIBLIOGRAPHY 88
iv ABSTRACT
This thesis examines the construction of masculinity and the cultivation of the self in Late Antiquity. Specifically, reading Athanasius' Life of Antony, this thesis engages in the bodily performance of the central character of the text - Antony - in understanding how Christianity of the fourth century prescribed ways of being gender masculine. This study begins with locating the theoretical basis for exploring the Life. Reading alongside Michel Foucault, this thesis explores the construction of the self through his work in the History of Sexuality and then places the self within the bodily performance of gender as studied by Judith Butler and R.W. Connell. Moving away from its theoretical roots, Chapter Two locates the primary text in the life of its author, Athanasius, and examines the historical evidence for a historical Antony. Proceeding from that point, this work positions itself within a larger genealogy of gender and masculine performance in Late Antiquity by presenting the histories of gender performance in the writings of three influential early church figures: Clement, Origen, and Athanasius. Following that, this thesis explores five avenues of gender performance in Late Antiquity before engaging with the character of Antony and the performance of the masculinised Christian self.
v Chapter One: Establishing Trajectories of Identity
Identity is not as transparent or unproblematic as we think. Perhaps instead of thinking of identity as an already accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then represent, we should think, instead, of identity as a 'production,' which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside representation. This view problematises the very authority and authenticity to which the term 'cultural identity' lays claim.
- Stuart Hall, Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices
The story of Christianity is filled with larger-than-life characters that have shaped and moulded the ways in which followers of the Christian tradition have come to understand their selves and the communities of which they are a part. Many of these larger-than-life characters have acclaimed fame through sainthood while others have remained silent, off to the side, known only to a few. This thesis engages one of those larger-than-life characters. The focus of the thesis is Antony of the desert, as characterised by Athanasius (also a larger-than-life figure). Athanasius' hagiographical- biography of Antony - Life of Antony - is, for this work, the starting and ending point to an encounter and engagement with the construction of masculine identity and the cultivation of the self in the early church.1 The Life reads: "Antony's fame spread even to rulers. When Constantine Augustus and his sons Constantius Augustus and Constans
1 This work strictly explores the construction of masculinity. I am by no means suggesting that there is no worth in the study of the female and feminised body in Late Antiquity (nor the representation of gender and bodies outside the binary of male and female). The reasoning for my strict observance to the male body is that the character representation found in the primary text for this work, the Life, is found in the male body. Furthermore, as David Brakke argues reading alongside James E. Goehring, "Not only did me desert monastic movement represent something new; it was primarily ... a male institution." Athanasius himself focused on the masculine elements of the desert and monasticism in his writings for he found that he had to engage in the political voice (a male voice) with monastics. See David Brakke, Athanasius and Asceticism (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1995), 81.
1 Augustus learned of these things, they wrote to him as to a father and begged to receive responses from him."2 Like the emperors of days gone, I too seek to find wisdom from the character of Antony. Though I know he himself cannot come to me and provide wisdom, his characterisation in the Life provides me with a literary model and a textual history bringing me into direct dialogue with a gendered body of the past. This thesis argues that the character of the Life - Antony - is to be read as a character exemplifying the performance of a gendered masculinised Christian self for the man of Late Antiquity.
The performance of being a man is defined through the body that experiences self- mortification as a form of death in an attempt to reclaim the perfected body, known again through the Son incarnate in Jesus, of the pre-fallen Adam.
In the figure of Jesus as the Christ, the Son coeternal with the Father (to use the
Athanasian position), early Christians were introduced to a man living in a perfected state of existence. The Jewish traditions had already been passing along the story of the perfect man, Adam, in their written traditions of the Genesis story, which the exegetical works of the early Church Fathers, continued. However, Adam did not remain perfect.
In the Genesis story of the Fall, Adam and his companion were sent out of the Garden of
Eden, out of a perfect paradise, into an imperfect and corrupt world. God reminds Adam, in a profound use of imagery, that he was from the dust, and it is to the dust - to that which is walked and trampled upon - that humanity will now always return to (see
Genesis 3 particularly verse 19b).3 Adam and Eve disobeyed God's command that they
2 Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Macellinw, trans. Robert C. Gregg, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1980), 81.
3 For the purpose of this work, all Biblical references are from the New Revised Standard Version. See, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, ed. Michael D. Coogan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
2 were not to have eaten fromth e tree of knowledge that resulted in their expulsion (Gen.
2: 16). Once sin, through the act of disobedience, had entered into the story, they moved into an existence of decay, moving ever constantly away from God and fromth e perfected body of the pre-fallen Adam. However, in the narratives a Jesus, a new Adam emerges with a perfected body. Through the grace of God in the Son, the body of Jesus, through death and resurrection, brings witness to a perfected body once more.
Furthermore, through baptism, the ability of all humanity to regain the perfected body by being clothed in the body of the perfected Son figure became accessible. In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes: "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned.... But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many dies through the one man's trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man,
Jesus" (Rom. 5:12 and 15). Paul continues by saying that as one man's disobedience of
God led to the Fall, so the obedience of one has led to a reclaiming of the fallen for all
(see Rom. 5:18-21). Therefore, through obedience to Jesus as the Christ and the new head of a new humanity that was lost in the first parent Adam, all bodies are able to resurrect themselves to the bodies of a pre-fallen humanity. Paul stats in Galatians,
"There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free,ther e is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28).4
4 For a more detailed analysis of Romans 5, see Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, 1st ed., The Anchor Bible, vol. 33 (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 405- 428, Luke Timothy Johnson, Reading Romans: A Literary and Theological Commentary, Reading the New Testament Series (Macon: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, 2001), 83-100. The notion of Jesus the Son returning humanity to the state of humanity before the fall of Adam is also present in 1 Cor. 5:20-22 and in 2 Cor. 5:16-21.
3 Two particular early church authors, Origen and Irenaeus, both notice this notion of Jesus as the new Adam and the ability of Jesus to bring about, for all of humanity, a return to the bodily state of the pre-fallen Adam through the care of the inner self. First,
Origen argues in On First Principles that the body which humanity exists in, where the soul resides, has become corruptible. Reading alongside the same Pauline passages presented above, Origen affirms that in Jesus, which is the "perfect soul" and in whom we are clothed, returns our souls within our bodies to the site of incorruption.5
Furthermore, as the Son's incorruptibility comes through his obedience to the Father, so too must we return to incorruptibility through the Son in obedient to the Father.6 In
Irenaeus's Against Heresies, he states: For as the Son was with God from the very beginning, it is through the Son that "He commenced afresh the long line of human beings, and furnished us ... with salvation; so that what we had lost in Adam - namely, to be according to the image and likeness of God - that we might recover in Jesus Christ."7
He continues by stating that "For unless man had overcome the enemy of man, the enemy would not have been legitimately vanquished. And again: unless it had been God who had freely given salvation, we could never have possessed it securely." Furthermore,
"unless man had been joined to God, he could never have become a partaker of incorruptibility. For it was incumbent upon the Mediator between God and men, by His relationship to both, to bring both to friendship and concord, and present man to God,
5 Origen, "De Principiis," in The Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325: Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts First and Second, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907), III.2.
6 Ibid., V.6.
7 Irenaeus, "Against Heresies," in The Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325: The Apostolic Fathers. — Justin Martyr. — Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908), XVIII. 1.
4 while He revealed God to man." Both authors show that it is through the figure of Jesus as the Son that humanity is once again able to regain the perfected self and body lost in
Adam. In reading alongside Antony, this thesis will continue to argue that this literary model and theoretical positionality continued into the practice of a Christian cultivation of self.
Within the trajectory of this thesis, the body finds itself in a central location of consideration.9 It is through the site, the location, the locus of the body, particularly within the literary character Antony, that the reader of Late Antiquity is introduced to the
Christian masculinised self in its fourth century performative arrangement. The body has been defined by contemporary theorist Jean-Pierre Vernant in his essay "Dim Body,
Dazzling Body," as being "no longer positioned as a fact of nature, a constant and universal reality, but as an entirely problematic notion, a historical category, steeped in imagination, and one that must be deciphered within a particular culture by defining the functions it assumes and the forms it takes on within that culture."10 Following this definition, the body becomes for the historian a source of data and information of
8 Ibid., XVm.7.
9 In reflecting on the work done around the body in history, Kathleen Canning states: "In some historical studies, bodies, as signifiers, metaphors or allegorical emblems, promise new understandings of nation or social formation. In others the body, as a site of intervention or inscriptive surface, specifies and expands our grasp of the processes of social discipline or the reach of the interventionist welfare state, of medicalization, professionalisation, relational ization of production and reproduction. The body histories that have left a historiographical mark (in the sense of convincing readers that bodies are significant objects of historical investigation) have sought most frequently to analyze bodies as signifiers." It is the body as signifier that I hope becomes evident in this thesis. See, Kathleen Canning, "The Body as Method? Reflections on the Place of the Body in Gender History," in Gender History in Practice: Historical Perspectives on Bodies, Class and Citizenship (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 171.
10 Jean-Pierre Vernant, "Dim Body, Dazzling Body," in Fragments for a History of the Human Body, ed. Michel Feher, Ramona Naddaff, and Nadia Tazi (New York: Zone, 1989), 20.
5 cultural, social, and economic situations. Much of what this thesis intends to investigate in relation to performance of gender in and through the body has been formulated by the work of poststructural-feminist-queer theorist Judith Butler. When exploring the historical body, the body becomes first a question of ownership and rights: whose body is the historian exploring, analysing, abusing and what right does the historian have to that body? Butler argues, in Undoing Gender, that the "body is to be given over to others even as a body is, emphatically, 'one's own.'" The body, proceeds
Butler, "implies mortality, vulnerability, agency: the skin and the flesh expose us to the gaze of others but also to touch and to violence. The body can be the agency and the instrument of all these as well, or the site where 'doing' and 'being done to' become equivocal."13 As material objects of agency and instrument, bodies find themselves in the public sphere of the world and therefore constitute a "social phenomenon" where "my body is and is not mine. Given over from the start to the world of others, bearing their imprint, formed within the crucible of social life."14 In this public sphere, the body becomes a site and location for understanding history and the meaning of cultural attitudes and performances.
More than just ownership and more importantly for this particular work, the body becomes the site of performance and modelling of the masculinised Christian self in the
11 Historian Caroline Walker Bynum's history of the body, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 is an excellent example of a history of the body. See, Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336, Lectures on the History of Religions (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
12 Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004), 10.
13 Ibid., 21.
14 Ibid.
6 male gendered character of Antony. If we are to continue reading the body alongside
Butler, particularly her groundbreaking work in Gender Trouble, we are to read about a body that appears as a "passive medium on which cultural meanings are inscribed or as the instrument through which an appropriative and interpretive will determines a cultural meaning for itself."15 The body "is figured as a mere instrument or medium for which a set of cultural meanings are only externally related." Working along the lines Butler presents, David. M. Halperin defines the body as "not only a thing but a sign" that becomes the "site for the inscription of... meanings" which are then transcribed and passed on into discourse as "timeless and universal realities."16 Donna Haraway defines the body as a "'material-semiotic actor.'" The body is the location where signs and symbols are projected and prescribed upon and through which interpretation and analysis take place.
Within this discourse of the body, my intent is to show how the body of Antony, gendered within a presumed biological male body, becomes centrally a prescription for the gendered male body to perform the externalised performance of an internally regulated self. If we are to continue our engagement with Butler's work, we move away from the construction of the body to a performance of the body as the gendered self.
Gender, for Butler, is a ""corporeal style, an 'act,' as it were, which is both intentional and performative, where 'performative' suggests a dramatic and contingent construction of
15Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1999; reprint, 2007), 12.
16 David M. Halperin, How to Do the History of Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 83 and 84.
17 Donna Haraway, "The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies: Determinations of Self in Immune System Discourse," differences 1, no. 1 (1989): 10.
7 meaning." Following Foucault' s lead on how the discipline of the self is regulated through embodiment, Butler argues that gender is a process of repetition and performance in what I would argue is a system moving towards a hegemonic perfection. What comes to count as a male or a female sexed body (not to mention the sexed body of 'other' genders) is a result of repetitive performances of gendered gestures, movements, and compartments. "What I would propose," suggests Butler, "is a return to the notion of matter, not as a site or surface but as a. process of materialization that stabilizes over time to produce the effect of boundary, fixity, and surface we call matter."19 Nonetheless, though all bodies are material, it is important to notice that not all gendered bodies matter within a cultural discourse. "To 'concede' the undeniability of 'sex' or its materiality, is always to concede some version of 'sex,' some formation of 'materiality' ... What will and will not be included within the boundaries of 'sex' will be set by a more or less tacit operation of exclusion."20
The performance of gender in and through the body of Antony, the gendered masculine body, becomes for the reader a site of hegemonic performance of the male self.
In the theoretical study of masculinities and working alongside the theoretical work of gender performance presented by Butler, the work of sociologist R.W. Connell has become a significant source.21 Connell argues that masculinity, like gender, is a
18 Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 190, emphasis original.
19 Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits Of "Sex" (New York: Routledge, 1993), 10, emphasis original.
20 Ibid., 10-11.
21 In respect of gender identity, I will be using both her/his in reference to Robert W. Connell who is now recognised and gendered female and goes by the name of Raewyn. The texts I am engaging in were originally published under the name of Robert.
8 historical construct constantly undergoing change. In her/his research on recent notions of masculinity, Connell has differentiated between two forms: the first is hegemonic masculinities, which are masculinities that embody "the currently accepted answer to the problem of legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominance position of men." The hegemonic masculinity is the dominance of one notion of masculine gender performance over another: as Connell states, "'Hegemonic masculinity' is not a fixed character type, always and everywhere the same. It is, rather, the masculinity that occupies the hegemonic position" - the dominant or supreme position - "in a given pattern of gender relations, a position always contestable."23 In direct opposition to the hegemonic are the subordinated masculinities, those masculinities that are subject to the assertions of the hegemonic. These are masculine performances "at the bottom of the gender hierarchy among men."24 Working with the notions of dominant and submissive forms of masculinity opens up the box of gender by situating masculinity outside of a prescribed tablet that crosses historical periods and remains the same and constant. The insight found in Connell's work is that the hegemonic form of masculinity is always being challenged by the submissive forms and therefore never sustains itself totally over time or place.
Working with the notion of masculinity presented in the work of Connell, historian of masculinities and Late Antiquity Mathew Kuefler argues that the new
"Christian masculinity moved a previously subordinated masculinity into position as a
22 R. W. Connell, Masculinities, Second ed. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), 77.
23 Ibid., 76.
24 Ibid., 78.
9 hegemonic masculinity by means of the rhetoric of manliness and unmanliness." Kuefler continues by stating: "men adhering to subordinated masculinity (the Christian ideal for men) successfully challenged the manliness of the men adhering to the hegemonic ... (the classical ideal for men) in such a way as to appeal to men to transfer their allegiance from one to the other." Kuefler, reading Peter Brown's The Body and Society, quotes that
Brown "alludes to the same reformulation of masculinity ... when he writes of 'that exaltation of [bodily] integritas, which enabled the ... clergy to provide the most formidable of all the 'invisible frontiers' behind which the Roman populations of the post-Imperial West preserved their identity, long after the military frontiers of the Empire had been washed away by barbarian invasion and settlement.'" This transition of masculine normativity is evident in my work on the Life of Antony in the reshaping of the ideal masculinised self in the characters' body.
Within this work, the gendered masculine body as the site of performance is also the location where the performance of the internalised and culturally constructed self takes place. It is at this important juncture that the "cultivation of the self," to refer to the work of Michel Foucault in volume 3 of his History of Sexuality and to his essay
"Technologies of the Self," is considered within the discourse this thesis. David M.
Halperin, reflecting on the work of Foucault, states that the self is the "relation of the human subject to itself in its power and its freedom."27 This cultivation of the self means
25 Mathew Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 6.
26 Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 362.
27 David M. Halperin, Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 76 and n.137.
10 the exploration and experience of "one's relation to oneself as a potential resource with which to construct new modalities of subjective agency and new styles of personal like that may enable one to resist or even to escape one's social and psychological determinations."28 Michel Foucault defines the care of the self as that which permits
"individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality." In this positionality, he argues that there are two historical understandings of the care of the self: the first is related to the ancient Greek and Roman worlds with the later associated with Christianity emerging in Late Antiquity. Both notions were understood in the Greek as epimelesthai sautou or "to take care of yourself," "to concern with self," "to be concerned, to take care ofyourself.""" Within the Greek world, argues Foucault, this notion of the care of the self was associated with cities and was "one of the main rules for social and personal conduct and for the art of life." The principle notion, continues Foucault, is to "know yourself or gnothi sauton?2 However, moving into the Christian period of Late Antiquity where this work situates itself, and working alongside Gregory of Nyssa, Foucault argues that the notion of caring for the self shifted. The care of the self became a "movement by which one
28Ibid.,76andn.l38.
29 Michel Foucault, "Technologies of the Self," in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 18.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid., 19.
11 renounces the world and marriage and detaches oneself from the flesh and, with virginity of heart and body, recovers the immortality which one has been deprived." It is this latter understanding of the care of the self that situates this thesis into its analysis of
Athanasius' Life of Antony.
In his work on the methodological process and the examination of how humans produce meaning and difference, Edward Said states the following: "we can regard a beginning as the point at which .. .the writer departs from all other works; a beginning immediately establishes relationships with works already existing, relationships of either continuity or antagonism or some mixture of both."34 Beginnings, continues Said,
"designatejs] a moment in time, a place, a principle, or an action." Engaging m an historical exploration of Late Antiquity brings any historian into an engagement with some of the most influential characters of western Christian history. Furthermore, it also locates the historian amongst the works of other historians engaging each with the other.
Amongst the most shaping texts, not to mention individuals, in regards to the study of gender, sexuality, and Christianity in Late Antiquity, is Peter Brown's seminal work The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early
Christianity. Exploring the development of a sexual ethic within Christianity, Brown returns to the works of Paul and begins his mission of exploration through to the death of
Augustine in 430. His general structure, as he presents in his preface is "to make clear the notions of the human person and of society" with regards to the act of renunciation,
33 Ibid., 20-21.
34 Edward W. Said, Beginnings: Intention and Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 3.
35 Ibid., 4.
12 "and to follow in detail the reflection and controversy which these notions generated, among Christian writers, on such topics as ... sexuality, the relation of men and women, and the structure and meaning of society." Part One, "From Paul to Anthony," explores the emerging Church from the period of persecutions and alienation from the mainstream to the fourth century and the emergence of a stabilised and generally organised church.
Part Two, "Asceticism and Society in the Eastern Empire," located the reader with the rise of the ascetic and monastic traditions of the eastern empire and the role of the desert and separation as the place for character cultivation. Finally, Part Three, "Ambrose to
Augustine: The Making of the Latin Tradition," analyses the roles of the three Latin
Fathers - Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine - and their influences on the Christian discourse of sexuality and renunciation. As a piece of social history at its best, the significance of Brown's text is its ability to trace the development of one element of the
Christian ethic through its first four centuries of influence. Focusing on the role of renunciation and sexuality, Brown's text moves away from a grand-narrative historiography into the realm of the micro-history exploring the ways in which the individual was influenced by the teachings of the church.
While still focusing on the history of gender within Christianity, Virginia Burrus's eloquent text "Begotten, Not Made ": Conceiving of Manhood in Late Antiquity is an example of continuation with Brown's work on gender while at the same time a site of breaking away and moving towards a construction of masculinity in the light of the
Trinitarian debates. Nonetheless, Burrus does state that her narrative "replays Brown's
Brown, xiii.
13 at many points, an act of homage no less where it may seem least faithful." Where her story transitions itself is on its strict focus of the late fourth century. Burrus argues that
"Nicene Christianity's articulation of the roles of Father, Son, and Spirit emerges as one of the most potent sites for reimagining manhood in the late Roman Empire." Reading textually and intertextually selected writings of the fourth century, Burrus focuses on three central characters that were instrumental in interpreting and spreading the Nicene doctrine: Athanasius of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, and Ambrose of Milan. In engaging with each of these larger-than-life characters, Burrus also engages in some of their primary historical writings in pulling out an understanding of manhood. Though working with a critical eye and avoiding the trap of the historical imagination, Burrus works from the realms of theology and history, and influenced by feminist and queer theory, states: "I interrogate ancient worlds of Christian thought and language that continue to grip me with the stubborn force of long centuries of habit."39
Moving from two texts that provide periodisation for this thesis, David Brakke's
Athanasius and Asceticism (originally published as Athanasius and the Politics of
Asceticism), pulls this thesis into a head-on engagement with asceticism in the fourth century. In an attempt to root asceticism in the Egyptian desert, Brakke "seeks to describe both how Athanasius' ascetic policies and theology contributed to bis policy of consolidating Christian Egypt around his episcopal hierarchy and how Athanasius himself understood his ascetic programme of self-formation to be a political programme
37 Virginia Burrus, 'Begotten, Not Made': Conceiving Manhood in Late Antiquity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 9.
38 Ibid., 7.
14 of church formation." At the heart of this text, and most influential on this particular thesis, is Chapter 4, "The Spirituality and Politics of the Life of Antony." In this chapter,
Brakke shows how Athanasius, through his authorship of the Life of Antony, "epitomizes
... [the] ascetic programme in both its practical and theoretical aspects" by making the character of Antony "the perfect instance of human appropriation of the Word's victory over sing and death."41 The Life is Athanasius' attempt to "foster the formation of the
Church as a shared 'way of life' ... by setting in motion a process of mutual imitation with his image of Antony as the catalyst."42 The role of the Life was to provide a rule of life where Christians could "admire Antony" and "imitate him" which would become a
"social discourse."43
In opening up the discourse on the rise of asceticism, the geographical location is an important matter of inquiry. The major work that pioneered the exploration of the desert is Derwas J. Chitty's The Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestinian Monasticism under the Christian Empire. Chitty expounds on the beginnings of monasticism in Egypt as presented in the lives of Antony (through
Athanasius) and Pachomius. Chitty then describes the golden age of organized monasticism in Egypt, fifth century controversies, and the move away from isolated hermitage living to communal living. Turning to monasticism in Palestine, Chitty describes its beginnings under Euthymios and his followers. Chitty also explores the role of the desert monastics in the Chalcedonian debates. The last chapters examine
40 Brakke, 16.
41 Ibid., 13.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid., 201 and 202.
15 Palestinian monasticism in the sixth and seventh centuries and the history of monasticism
at Sinai. In staying with the location of space, James E. Goehring's compilation of essays
under the title Ascetics, Society, and the Desert: Studies in Earl Egyptian Monasticism.
However, rather than focusing on the desert as a geographical location for the
development of monasticism, Goehring, in his essay "The Encroaching Desert: Literary
Production and Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt," argues that the desert was used by hagiographical authors, such as Athanasius, as a symbolic symbol held in opposition to the image and location of the city. The city, argued Goehring, had become
"symbolically the center of evil. Truth has left the city.... Truth now resides alone in the desert."44 In the character of Antony, the desert symbolised a withdrawal from humanity that had fallen into a state of corruption by the evils situated within the city.
Perhaps as important as the historical works presented above is the theoretical work completed by Foucault in his three volumes of his unfinished History of Sexuality.
The third volume, The Care of the Self, as well as two essays, "Technologies of the Self and "About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self," have established Foucault as a leading theoretician of understanding the self and its construction both in terms of historical discourse and the postmodern condition. In his work, Foucault attempts to open up a genealogy that looks at the self as the site where "mode[s] of behaviour,"
"ways of living," "procedures, practices, and formulas" were "developed, perfected and taught" constituting various engagements of "social practice" which eventually gave rise
James E. Goehring, "The Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt," in Ascetics, Society and the Desert: Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism, ed. James E. Goehring, Studies in Antiquity and Christianity (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999), 73.
16 to a "certain mode of knowledge and to the elaboration of a science. In The Care of the Self, Foucault traces the idea of the self, particularly means of self cultivation, through what he called, "a kind of golden" exploring such topics as the body (Part Four), the wife (Part Five), and boys (Part Six).46
This thesis is an attempt at exploring the gendered masculinised self of Late
Antiquity through the body of Athanasius' Antony; it is divided into three chapters. In chapter two, I examine three aspects of the primary text of this thesis. I explore its authorship by Athanasius of Alexandria by removing him from his larger involvement in the fourth century and isolating him in the very particular period historians have assumed he was able to pen the Life. I then present the image of the historical Antony before concluding with an assessment of the text itself. The significance of this chapter in my argument is to contextualise and locate the primary text, author, and character. In chapter three, I move away from the immediate period of Athanasius and Antony and take a step back to see how the subject of gender and masculinity was presented in the imperial prescription of Empire. Here I tackle the work of four contemporary historians in their engagement of gender and masculinity. Maud Gleason, Craig A. Williams, Carlin
Barton, and Mathew Kuefler offer this thesis a diverse background of gender performance. One theme remains constant in their work: gender performance was different for all strata's of society and economy. This is radically different and an important point, as we shall see, when set against the Christian discourse of gender
45 Michel Foucault, The Care of the Self: Volume 3 of the History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), 45. See also Foucault, "Technologies of the Self," 18, Michel Foucault, "About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self," in Religion and Culture: Michel Foucault, ed. Jeremy R. Carrette (New York: Routledge, 1999), 162 and 163.
46 Foucault, The Care of the Self: Volume 3 of the History of Sexuality, 45.
17 identity as open to all through the baptismal formulae. Within this discourse of the baptismal formulae, chapter three also locates the idea of gender and masculinity within the Christian story by examining three figures - Clement, Origen, and Athanasius - who engage in the shifting identities relation to the care of the self and locates identity not within particularly hierarchal strata's of society but on an equal platform in Christ.
Finally, in chapter four, pulling together information from previous chapters, I engage directly with the Life of Antony and the character Antony is opening the text to a larger understanding of the gendered masculine self and the performance of that self in the male body as the site for cultivation. These chapters will take us through a trajectory of histories and genealogies and open up an understanding of a Christian self projected in and through the male masculinised body. This thesis, then, will explore how a gendered self was established and projected through a textual example exemplifying suffering and pain in an attempt to regain the perfected body of a pre-fallen Adam.
18 Chapter Two Exploring Identity: The Author, the Subject and the Text
In modern life, our historical consciousness is constantly overstimulated. As a consequence ... some react to this overstimulation of historical change by invoking the eternal orders of nature and appealing to human nature to legitimize the idea of natural law. It is not only that historical tradition and the natural order of life constitute the unity of the world in which we live as men (sic); the way we experience one another, the way we experience historical traditions, the way we experience the natural givenness of our existence and of our world, constitute a truly hermeneutic universe, in which we are not imprisoned, as if behind insurmountable barriers, but to which we are opened.
-Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Introduction," Truth and Method
In all stories, the reader encounters a complex array of relationships. In some cases, a reader may not pay any attention to these fundamental constructs of the text, while at other times, specifically in the arena of analytical thought, the reader becomes engaged and sometimes absolutely obsessed with them. A particular individual (or group of individuals) known as the author writes every text. Each author writes on a particular subject within a text. Finally, each subject - each figure represented in a text either as a person, event, idea, etc - has in and of itself/themselves a particular essence, a history, a meaning. Stories - histories - are an array of encounters, as Gadamer points out, open up the "hermeneutic universe." In this chapter, I intend to explore these three particular avenues in an attempt to understand the primary text that will become the seminal tool in understanding constructs of the Christian masculine self in Late Antiquity. The fourth
19 century Bishop of Alexandria Athanasius authored the Life of Antony} The text's subject and main character is a simple man by the name of Antony, and in turn, this subject/character had his own history by being an actual historical figure with his own texts penned at with his own hand. In my endeavour to tackle these challenges, I will engage in a few particular events that will assist both the author and reader of this thesis; this chapter is structured around three basic themes: locating the Life of Antony in the career of Athanasius, examining the historical Antony, and engaging in the text and its subject. In this chapter, and following these avenues, it is my hope that engaging in this outline will allow the reader to find the location of the primary text and its author in the greater genealogy of gender that I explore in chapter three.
In a strange way, it is challenging to write about Athanasius. In his engagement with the theological discourses of the early church and through his defence of the positions taken at the Council of Nicea, adopted as normative by the creeds of the western church, Athanasius seems somewhat elusive (perhaps because out of a 46 year career as a bishop, he was in exile for a total of 17 years) and perplexing. This may also be a result of the copious amount of research that has accumulated on Late Antiquity, the
Council of Nicea, Athanasius, and those involved in its creation and following debates.
Khaled Anatolios states that there are two definitive ways in which scholarly research is executed on the historical Athanasius: first, works which focus on the history of doctrine, and secondly, histories that focus on the man himself.2 Anatolios' work is of this latter form of historiography and defines Athanasius as a lion, the "stalwart and inspired
1 Though there is some scholarly contestation on this point, I will side with the majority and the overarching tradition that holds this view. See below for the discussions surrounding authorship.
2 Khaled Anatolios, Athanasius: The Coherence of His Thought (London: Routledge, 1998), 1-2.
20 defender of the orthodox Christian faith."3 Anatolios continues by stating, "Athanasius' uncompromising stance toward his opponents and his indefatigable persistence were seen as illustrious reflections of his inalterable and incorruptible faith in the fullness of the
Son's divinity."4 Though this portrait of Athanasius depicts him as a defender of the faith, Athanasius is not without criticism. Early fifth century historian Ammianus
Marcellinus has described Athanasius as "a man who exalted himself above his calling" and who "tried to pry into matters outside his (ecclesiastical) province."5 Contemporary historian Timothy Barnes has gone so far as to label Athanasius a "gangster."6 Regardless of what circumstance we may now perceive Athanasius to be in, his biography is essential in understanding the early church, the construction of masculinity, and the authorship of the Life of Antony. In this section, I will engage in the life of Athanasius during which he wrote the Life of Antony. In the following chapter, I will focus more specifically on the role of Athanasius, along with two other early church characters, in the construction of masculinities in relation to the self in early Christianity.
Born between 295 and 299 CE,7 Athanasius grew up in an idol worshipping family but was eventually baptized and taken under the tutelage of Alexander, Bishop of
Alexandria. This relationship eventually led to Athanasius employed as Alexander's
3 Khaled Anatolios, Athanasius, ed. Carol Harrison, The Early Church Fathers (New York: Routledge, 2004), 33.
4 Ibid.
5 Marcellinus Ammianus, Ammianus Marcellinus, ed. John Carew Rolfe, trans. John Carew Rolfe, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935), XV.7.7. Reference found in W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia Fortress Press, 1984), 524.
6 Timothy David Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), 230.
7 For a detailed note on the debates around the birth of Athanasius, see: Anatolios, Athanasius, 243, n. 8.
21 assistant or scribe that situated him significantly at the Council of Nicea. This relationship most likely also led to a continuation of Alexandrian theology and thought through Athanasius' succession from Alexander. It was in 328, around the age of 30 years old, that Athanasius became the bishop of Alexandria. He would hold the episcopate for 46 years. The centre of his episcopate, Alexandria in Egypt, was a major city during the Late Antique period. It provided important access to the Mediterranean world as a port linking the west (the Roman Empire) to the eastern world of India, China, and Arabia. It was a major employer of shipbuilders and essential location for the production of papyrus. Furthermore, within Egypt, its position of dominance secured it as the administrative centre and was ruled over by a vice-general governor appointed by the emperor who resided in the city. This centrality also made it a centre of culture and learning supporting all the major schools of philosophy. In this plethora of thought and culture thrived a diverse range of races such as native Egyptians, Greeks, Jews and others who lived in a somewhat harmonious landscape. A population estimate from the third century situates Alexandria as one of the most populated centres with a population of
300,000 in comparison to Rome that had almost 1 million inhabitants in the third century.
Alexandria's population would be, by the fourth century, as large as Rome.8
8 Ibid., 1-3. Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christianity: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000 (Maiden; Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 54 and 115, Frend, 286-89. For a more detailed analysis of Alexandria, see: Michael Haag, Alexandria: City of Memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), Christopher Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict, Ancient Society and History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), Anthony Hirst and M. S. Silk, Alexandria: Real and Imagined (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). For a larger perspective of Egypt with reference to geography, social setting, economics, and the rise of Christianity and monasticism, see Roger S. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), Roger S. Bagnall, Later Roman Egypt: Society, Religion, Economy and Administration, Variorum Collected Studies Series (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), James E. Goehring, "Withdrawing from the Desert: Pachomius and the Development of Village Monasticism in Upper Egypt," Harvard Theological Review 89 (1996), James E. Goehring, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert: Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism, ed. James M. Robinson, Studies in Antiquity and Christianity (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999), Goehring, "The Encroaching Desert: Literary
22 The most important characteristic of Alexandria for this study is the centrality of
the Christian faith in Alexandria. In Egypt, Christian communities existed before 135,
but otherwise very little actual knowledge survives providing us with knowledge of
whom exactly these people where. However, three streams seem to have been developed
in Alexandria at this time. The first was a form of Christianity that attempted to rectify
itself with Platonism based on the works of Philo. The second form derived from a
Christian-rabbinic element. The third was the existence of a Jewish-Christian sect
represented in some of the early writings of the church such as the Gospel of Hebrews,
the Gospel of the Egyptians, and the Sherpherd ofHermas? Clement, bishop of
Alexandria during the late second and early third century was a convert to the Christian
faith and head of the catechetical school in Alexandria. The presence of this school
clearly shows a presence of Christianity in the third century. By the fourth century and the period of Athanasius, Alexandria served as the ecclesiastical centre of Egypt and, after the council of 325, the bishop of Alexandria became the direct authority of the entire
Egyptian church appointing bishops for Egypt, Libya, and the Pentapolis.10
From this geographical positionality, we move to a biographical sketch of
Athanasius around the time of authoring the Life of Antony. By 328, after the main proceedings of the Council of Nicaea, Athanasius became the bishop of Alexandria as
Alexander's successor. "From the start of his episcopate," writes Timothy D. Barnes,
Production and Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt.", C. Wilfred Griggs, Early Egyptian Christianity: From Its Origins to 451 C.E, 3rd ed., Coptic Studies, vol. 2 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993), Haas, Colin H. Roberts, Manuscript, Society, and Belief in Early Christian Egypt (London: Oxford University Press, 1979).
9 Frend, 129-30. See also, Roberts, particularly chapter 3.
10 Anatolios, Athanasius, 2, Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols., vol. 1 (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990), 8-9.
23 "Athanasius faces a war on two fronts - in Egypt, against the Melitians and a rival bishop
... who claimed his see, and outside Egypt, against the allies of Alius."11 According to the Life, if Athanasius is to be understood as the author, he wrote in response to a request regarding information and insight into the historical life of Antony: "Since you have asked me about the career of the blessed Antony ... so that you also might lead yourselves in imitation of him -1 received your directive with ready good will."12 The purpose of the Life continues its author, was to show how "Antony's way of life provides monks with a sufficient picture for ascetic practice." In determining authorship date and location, some very brief insights are provided but which do not in themselves offer any exact information. The author states that he had wanted to contact the monks who had been near to Antony to get further information about him but that the "season for sailing was coming to a close, and the letter-bearer was eager."14 Writing frommemory , it is unknown from what sources, whether oral, written, or first hand, the author used.
Did the author know Antony? Did he stay for a period with him and learn his ascetics' ways? What can be determined from the Life itself was that the author was concerned with providing the reader with "the truth" (according to his position and needs) about
Antony's life to quash the possibility of other interpretations of the monks' life.15
Timothy D. Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius: Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 20.
12 Athanasius, Introduction.
13 Ibid. See also Brakke who argues that the Life is to be read as a spiritual programme: Brakke, 201-265.
14 Athanasius, Introduction.
"Ibid.
24 If we assume for the time being that Athanasius was the author of the Life then we must pursue a date and location of its writing. Robert C. Gregg and Dennis E. Groh present Athanasius as a bishop in contact with monastic and ascetic communities in
Egypt. A number of epistles penned by Athanasius were sent to various monks in Egypt that discuss various theological issues including, according to Gregg and Groh, "doctrine, ascetic theory, and ... the necessity of a monk's acceptance of election to the episcopate."16 Gregg and Groh also state that Athanasius' journeys along the Nile River brought out monks from their secluded living to meet with the Alexandrian bishop that created supposed alliances between the bishops and the monks. Furthermore, the Life of
Pachomius states "Athanasius, Antony, and Pachomius (and his successors) enjoyed a cooperative relationship which included a number of mutually beneficial transactions."
The Life of Pachomius insists on a relationship between Antony and Athanasius and the literature produced post-Zi/e of Antony supports the position that both men had known each other and that Athanasius was the texts' author.18 In chapter 71 of the Life, a "we passage" is found which Gregg and Groh suggest may indicate a relationship between the author and the subject: "When he was departing, and we were escorting him... ,"19 In reflecting upon the possible relationship between the two characters and exploring when
16 Robert C. Gregg and Dennis Groh, Early Arianism: A View of Salvation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 135.
17 Ibid., 136. 18 Gregg and Groh, 136.
19 Athanasius, 71. Robert C. Gregg suggests in his notes the following: "the text suggests that Athanasius here gives a firsthand report of Antony's presents in Alexandria, a visit that is thought to have occurred in 337 or 338. The fact that only in one instance do we find a "we passage" points to the possibility that Athanasius' contact with the monk was less frequenttha n the introduction of the Life might lead a reader to suppose." See Athanasius, n. 132., and Gregg and Groh, 137.
25 in Athanasius' life he could have penned the Life, Gregg and Groh determine it would
have been around 356 or 357 immediately after the death of Antony.
If we are to accept this dating we must then begin to explore where in Athanasius
troubled career he was. In 350, Constans, the emperor of the west and supporter of
Athanasius, died resulting in the empire being under the sole rule of Constantius. In 351,
Constantius called a council to take place in Sirmium that discounted the homoousios
position (that of Athanasius) of the relation between the Father and Son. Athanasius
responded to the conference by writing On the Council ofNicaea in which he defended
the traditional Nicene position of homoousios and refers to the Arians, in their denial of
the full divinity of the Son, as Jews and as persons who have "denied the Word and
Reason of God," that is the Son. The divinity of the Son as equal to the Father and in
existence from the beginning is an important fact of Athanasian soteriology. Only the
Son, as fully the Father, could save the corruption of the world. For salvation to take
place and bring the body back to a state of incorruption - that is a body of the pre-fallen
Adam - the Son as fully God had Himself to come and save through death on a cross.
This point is important to remember for the character of Antony is a model of the perfect
and excellent follower of Nicene theology. It is very clear that Athanasius would not waiver on the issue ofNicaea and its conclusions. At the same time, Constantius was pressuring the bishops of the western church to denounce Athanasius; Constantius
20 Gregg and Groh, 138. Anatolios dates the life around the same period. See Anatolios, Athanasius, 30.
21 Athanasius, "Chi the Council ofNicaea {De Degratis)," in Athanasius, ed. Khaled Anatolios (New York: Routledge, 2004), II.
22 Athanasius, "The Incarnation of the Word of God," in St. Athanasius on the Incarnation: The Treatise De Incarnatione Verbi Dei ed. A Religious of C.S.M.V. (Crestwood: St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1982), VII.5.
26 himself was not in favour of the Nicene position. As a result, he sent his own secretary to use force and remove Athanasius from his see. The mission then passed onto Syrianus, a
Roman general, who built up imperial military forces around Alexandria. Athanasius recounts the following events in Defence of his Flight where he states that "Syrianus suddenly appeared with more than five thousand soldiers bearing arms.... He surrounded the church and stationed the soldiers nearby so that no one would be able to pass." He continues by stating that he remained "upon the throne and urged that first the deacon should read a psalm .... When most of the people had gone ... the monks who were with us and some of the clergy came up and dragged us away .... Guided and protected by the
Lord, we escaped" leading to a third exile from 356-362.24 During this exile, Athanasius found refuge in the Egyptian desert and considered most important as it resulted in a proliferation of texts authored by Athanasius including the Defence before Constantius,
Defence of his Flight, History of the Arians, Letters to Serapion, and On the Councils of
Ariminum and Seleucia.
Moving from a biographical history swamped in debates and controversies represented in historical literature, we now move to a more 'distant' story. I am not speaking of distance in its geographical sense, but distant in the sense that Athanasius is inseparable from the literature of fourth century authors while the voice of the man named Antony of the desert is more challenging to hear outside of what has been authored by Athanasius and a few letters attributed to him.25 Nonetheless, this work now
23 Anatolios, Athanasius, 25-26.
24 Athanasius, "Defence of His Flight," in Athanasius, ed. Khaled Anatolios (New York: Routledge, 2004), XXIV.
25 See Antony, Letters of Saint Antony the Great, trans. Derwas J. Chitty (Faircares: Sisters of the Love of God, 1975), Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint,
27 moves away from Athanasius to our other central character: Antony. The challenge is the lack of actual historical evidence about the life of the historical Antony that has not been tainted by the creation of myth surrounding the man. The contested Life of Antony is the one source that has remained a focus for historical research. A warning given at the very start of the Life reads: "Do not be incredulous about what you hear of him from those who make reports. Consider, rather, that from them only a few of his feats have been learned."26 This is an interesting insight as it indicates that others had already been speaking (or even writing) about the life and career of Antony when the author of the Life began writing. This signifies that Antony was well known and significant in his time and afterward. However, compilations of letters translated by Derwas J. Chitty and attributed to the pen (or at the very least spoken to a scribe) by Antony are published.
Though the Life of Antony does not provide an account of Antony's birth, it does provide a glimpse, though I would argue heavily mythologized by Athanasius, of his death. The Life reads: "When he had said this [to his followers], and they embraced him
(Antony), he lifted his feet, and as if seeing friends who had come to him and being cheered by them ..., he died and was taken to the fathers."28 This event took place in
January of 356 on a remote mountain between the Nile River and the Red Sea where
Antony's desert retreat was located. Antony was, according to tradition, 105 years of
Studies in Antiquity and Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), Janet Timbie, "Translating and Interpreting the Letters of Antony," in A Multiform Heritage: Studies on Early Judaism and Christianity in Honor of Robert A. Kraft, ed. Benjamin G. Wright, Scholars Press Homage Series (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999).
26 Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Macellinus, Introduction.
27 Antony.
28 Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Macellinus, 92.
28 age. The Life continues by testifying that upon Antony's death, his followers made
"preparations and wrapping his body, buried it in the earth, and to this day no one knows where it has been hidden." The same year that Constantine confirmed the Edict of
Milan, 313, ensuring the freedom of religion in the Empire and thus marking a '"Coming of Age' of the Christian Church," Antony started his life in the desert at the age of forty.31 At the age of fifty-five, Antony emerged from the desert with the perfected body of the pre-fallen Adam "possessed" by God and went to Alexandria to support those persecuted in the last of the persecutions. He returns to Alexandria in 338 to support
Athanasius against the Arians. Other than these two specific events, Antony remains in the desert.32 A former bishop and follower of Antony, Serapion, recounts in a letter the importance of Antony and his role within the Egyptian church during his life. Serapion portrays Antony as a new Aaron whose prayers rise up to God like incense and protect
Egypt. A portion of the letter reads:
As soon as this earth's great elder, the blessed Antony, who prayed for the whole world, departed, everything has been torn apart and is in anguish, and the Wrath devastates Egypt.... While he was truly on earth, he extended his hands and prayed and spoke with God all day long. He did not let the Wrath descend on us. Lifting up his thoughts, he kept it from coming down. But now that those hands are closed, no one else can be found who might halt the violence of the Wrath ... that may devastate the whole
William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 57. See also Derwas J. Chitty, "Introduction," in The Letters of Saint Antony the Great, ed. Derwas J. Chitty (Faircares: Sisters of the Love of God, 1975), v, Frend, 946. Peter Brown cites the birth date of Antony as 250. See Brown, The Rise of Western Christianity: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000, 81.
30 Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Macellinus, 92.
31 Chitty, v and vi.
32 Ibid., vi.
29 region. ... I write to you therefore because the churches are filled with desolation, and the city streets are filled with blasphemies. Many crimes, fornication, all sorts of filth fill our city.... The source of the corruption: the mad minds of the Arians.... The Church of God has no ministers,... the sanctuaries stand deserted.... People have left the churches deserted, empty.
This account, though possibly steeped in the politics of the period through its mentioning of the Arian controversy and the "Wrath" which most likely was the 356 arrest attempt of
Athanasius, still presents to the historian an account of the importance that the historical
Antony played within Egyptian Christianity.34
Moving away from the historical man Antony, it is more pressing to engage in the text that is the focus of this research. Robert C. Gregg describes the Life of Antony as follows: "An encounter with the Vita Antonii could have a traumatic effect.... [T]hough the taste for stories about the exploits of holy men and women is present in most cultures and times, this appetite was especially strong in late Roman society." He continues that in our postmodern world, "the figure of Antony is thoroughly startling - even offensive.
Other centuries did not think him so bizarre, but from the first there must have been a mixture of admiration and puzzled fascination." Working on the presupposition that
Athanasius was the author of the Life, David Brakke sets out to describe why the Life was written in the first place. His thesis, that the Life was written as a biography for hearers
Serapion of Thmuis cited in Harmless, 57. Originally found in: Serapion of Thmuis, Ep. ad discipulos Antonii 5,7-8 and 19-20, trans. William Harmless. See also, Brakke, 208. Brakke presents three sources of historical evidence concerning the historical Antony found outside the Athanasian Life. These include not only the letter cited above by Serapion but also reference to letters attributed to Antony (Antony.) but also the Lives ofPachomius which describes Antony as the "founder and representative of a group within monasticism, the anchorites, and hence as the chief rivalt o the coenobites' founder." See, Brakke, 208.
34 For a brief account of the "Wrath," see, Anatolios, Athanasius, 28.
35 Robert C. Gregg, "Introduction," in The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus, ed. Robert C. Gregg, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1980), 2.
30 to read and then imitate its central character, is the major position influencing my read of the Life.36 According to Brakke, the Life was a "spiritual programme" where Christians could learn how to ascend "to heaven by means of the way up that the devil and his demons once blocked by that the Word of God had made accessible by his death and resurrection." What the Life does is translate "this complex vision into the story of a single person ... whose career functions as a pattern for the successful Christian life."38
In my pursuit in laying out the Life of Antony, I will explore four specific avenues.
First, and possibly most important, I will explore the debates of authorship and dating of the text. Second, I will also briefly examine the varied early translations and copies that have survived. Third, I will then contextualise the text by briefly reviewing its structure and themes. Finally, I want to survey the influence the Life of Antony has had. However, before any of these avenues are followed, a basic outline of the text itself is needed. The text is divided into 94 chapters starting with the history of Antony's early ascetical career/life and ending in chapter 94 with his death. A few chapter highlights are of importance. Chapter 8-14 provide a reading of Antony's Anachoresis or withdrawal including his time spent in a tomb, his move to the desert, and the emergence of the desert as a city by chapter 14.39 Chapters 15-48 explore the role of Antony as father of other monks examining the monastic life and settlement as a heavenly city in chapter 44, a rule of life and the care of the body in chapter 45, and an examination of daily
36 Brakke, 201.
37 Ibid., 216-17.
38 Ibid., 217.
39 For a definition of Anachoresis see, Antoine Guillaumont, "Anachoresis," in The Coptic Encyclopedia, ed. Aziz Suryal Atiya (New York: Macmillan, 1991), 119-20.
31 martyrdom in chapter 47. Chapters 49-66 provides the reader with an account of
Antony's move into the inner mountains of the desert between the Nile River and the Red
Sea as well as an account of the visions, healings, and miracles he performed. Chapters
67-88 give an overview of the virtues that Antony had such as his humility in chapter 67,
Christian orthodoxy (following the positions of the tridentate position of Nicaea) in chapters 68-71, and his wisdom of the illiterate in chapters 72-80. Finally, in chapters
89-94 an account of Antony's final address and eventual death are provided ending with words of sending forth and encouragement to Antony's followers and those who would read the Life.
The Life has been heralded as the first hagiographical text of the Christian church.
Peter Brown states that the accounts of saint "Lives" "presented the holy man interacting with all manner of persons. They emphasised specific incidents of healing, good advise, cursing and successful intercession, but with God in heaven and with the powerful on earth."40 Furthermore, as Brown continues, what these texts did was place the holy man
"like a figure in a Chinese landscape, against a mist-laden and seemingly measureless background."41 Moving to the more particularity of the text under examination in this research, Virginia Burrus has described the Life of Antony as "a text that got the distinctly late-ancient genre of Christian biography swiftly off the ground."42 However, this "Life" or "Lives" genre was not a new Christian invention. For example, it has been argued that the author of the Life may have based the text on earlier examples such as Philostratus's
40 Peter Brown, Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World, Canto Edition (1997) ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 59.
41 Ibid.
42 Burrus, 36.
32 Life ofApollonius ofTyana and Lucian's Philopseudes. In Philopseudes the reader is introduced to a character who lived a life of anachoresis in tombs in Egypt emerging as a mystic able to demonstrate particular powers.44 Along with these texts, the "Life" of philosophers were also prominent in Late Antiquity. For example, Plato's Apology and
Porphyry's Life ofPlotinus were read and circulated. Patricia Cox Miller has described these works as "creative historical works, promoting models of philosophical divinity and imposing them on historical figures thought to be worthy of such idealization."45 In the case of the Life of Antony, the philosophical positionality taken by the author was the life of asceticism and withdrawal from society; this mode of living was then placed onto the shoulders, so to speak, of a particular man who himself exemplified this modality.
Much debate has circulated in regards to the authorship of the Life of Antony. For much of this thesis, I have been working with the assumption that Athanasius is the author of the text. I will remain fixed in this position; nonetheless, it is important that we briefly explore the authorship debate and then focus on the reasons, following the work of L.W. Barnard in "The Date of S. Athanasius' 'Vita Antonii'", I believe Athanasius was the author.46 Historian Timothy D. Barnes argues that the Greek translation of the
Life was not authored by Athanasius nor an original composition.47 Two basic
43 Harmless, 71. See also, Rubenson, 129-30.
44 Lucian, "Philopseudes," in Loeb Classical Library, ed. A. M. Harmon, K. Kilburn, and M. D. Macleod (London: W. Heinemann, 1913), 370-72.
45 Patricia Cox Miller, Biography of Late Antiquity: A Quest for the Holy Man, Transformation of the Classical Heritage (Berkeley University of California Press, 1983), 45.
46 L.W. Barnard, "The Date of S. Athanasius' "Vita Antonii"," Vigilae Christianae 28, no. 3 (1974): 169-75.
47 T.D. Barnes, "Angel of Light or Mystic Initiate? The Problem of the Life of Antony," Journal of Theological Studies 37 (1986): 353.
33 conclusions by Barnes have led to this position: first, if Athanasius was indeed the author
(or a later editor of the text), he would not have downplayed his own role in that particular history; secondly, the text, particularly chapter 14 where Antony emerges from his mountain isolation, is in a language that is not typical of Athanasius.48 However, historian L.W. Barnard argues that, based on external evidence from the years after the death of Athanasius, the historian can be confident in Athanasius' authorship. It is to this external evidence I now turn and have based my own position. Jerome, in his Vita Pauli, mentions the Life and Athanasius and later states that the Life was authored by
Athanasius and translated by Evagrius. Secondly, Ephrem othe Syrian quotes Athanasius as the biographer of Antony. Thirdly, Gregory Naziansus, a late 4th Century
Cappadocian bishop who a defender of the Nicene Creed at the Council of the
Constantinople in 381, stated that Athanasius compiled a history of Antony. Fourth,
Rifinus states that he would provide a "life" of Antony but that Athanasius had already done so. Fifth, the Life ofPacholius mentions the Life of Antony as a work of Athanasius.
Finally, Augustine mentions the Life though not the author.49 Internal to the text, Barnard argues that one particular phrase highlights his position for Athanasian authorship; in chapter 82, a passage reads: "We all came to understand then that the vision of these kicking mules had announced in advance to Antony what the Arians now do senselessly, like beasts."50 Barnard interprets this particular event, of which I am in agreement, to refer to the "troubles during the intrusion of George as bishop in 339."51
48 Ibid.: 367.
49 Barnanl: 169-70.
50 Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Macellinus, 82.
51 Barnard: 170.
34 Bringing together the author, text, and subject, this chapter has begun to open up a larger understanding of the workings that produce the Life of Antony. The Life of
Anthony offers a particular path of care of self in Late Antiquity and in doing so urges a particular formation of the male reader. What is important to pull away from this chapter is the realisation that the character of Antony which Athanasius presents is the most excellent of adherents to Nicene theology. In positioning the Son as the same substance as the Father, and through the Son bringing salvation to a corrupt people, following and having faith in the Son brings the body back to a state of perfection before the Fall. At the Son's "actual trophy over death - the Cross I mean - all creation was confessing that
He was made manifest and suffered in the body was not man merely, but the Son of God and Saviour of all."52 Focusing on the body, particularly that of a male body, opens up an avenue into the genealogical discourse of chapter three that attempts to read a discursive formation of a gendered self in late antiquity in the biological body of man. Furthermore, the suffering body of the Son witnessed on the cross and later resurrected into a state of perfection exemplifies the argument I make in chapter four that to bring the body to a former glory, the body must be made subject to pain and suffering which will be best characterised in the body of Athanasius' Antony. Antony's body, through the Son as the
Father and bringing of salvation to corruption, returns to a perfected body of the incorrupt.
Athanasius, "The Incarnation of the Word of God," XIX.3.
35 Chapter Three Setting the Genealogical Perspective: Situating Masculinities, Space, and The World Before the Text
Do not think that just as the belly is made for food and food for the belly, that in the same way the body is made for intercourse. If you wish to understand the Apostle's train of reasoning, for what reason the body was made, then listen: it was made that it should be a temple of the Lord; that the soul, being holy and blessed, should act in it as if it were a priest serving before the Holy Spirit that dwells in you. In this manner, Adam had a body in Paradise; but in Paradise he did not 'know' Eve.
- Origen, "Fragments on 1 Corinthians'
And so, from then on, there were monasteries in the mountains and the desert was made a city by monks, who left their own people and registered themselves for the citizenship of the heavens.
Through regular conversation he strengthened the resolve of those who were already monks, and stirred most of the others to a desire for the discipline, and before long, by the attraction of his speech, a great many monasteries came into being, and like a father he guided them all.
- Athanasius, The Life of Antony, excerpts from 14 and 15
It seems like a cliche to begin where I do: "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light" (Genesis 1:1-3). Genesis opens at a beginning, a starting point, a point of embarkation that takes us on a voyage of discovering a new land, a new world, and new peoples (not to mention an ever changing and developing God).
This chapter is about beginnings; it is about beginning a process of contextualisation for
36 the reader and author. The purpose of this chapter is to lay out a genealogy - a body of
history that has "moments of intensity,... lapses,... extended periods of feverish
agitation, [and] fainting spells" - of Late Antiquity. Intentionally, both reader and author
are brought onto a common ground of understanding that will better place both the Life
of Antony and the construction of the Christian ascetic self found in the text.1 In this
process, I will focus on three distinct fronts: first, I will work with other texts in
positioning this thesis, particularly the notion of gender and masculinities in Late
Antiquity. Within this dialogue, I will find my starting place within the discourse of
gender (particularly the performances of masculinities) in the Roman Empire that play in
this work as the overarching power of the period. For this task, I will directly engage in
the work of four historians and their work on Roman and early Christianities notions of
gender and sexuality. These three avenues will be very diverse and may seem to have no
immediate relevance to this larger project; however, their use as examples of gender performance will become evident. Following that, I will briefly engage with three
individual characters - Clement, Origen, and Athanasius - whose histories and writings will emerge as examples of shifting identities in relation to the care of the self. In order to engage with these characters, I will be reading alongside historians Peter Brown and his text The Body and Society and Virginia Burrus in "Begotten, Not Made ": Conceiving
1 Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 83. Foucault describes genealogy as a history that will "cultivate the details and accidents that accompany every beginning; it will be scrupulously attentive to their petty malice ... await their emergence ... not be reticent in 'excavating the depths.'" Genealogy as history is not an "acquisition" or a "possession that grows and solidifies" but "an unstable assemblage of faults, fissures, and heterogeneous layers that threaten the fragile inheritor from within or from underneath" (82). It is a history that "disturbs what was previously considered immobile; it fragments what was through unified; it shows the heterogeneity of what was imagined consistent with itself (87). My use of the term genealogy in relation to the study of gender and masculinity in this chapter is an attempt to show that the heteronormative views of today's society which, I still believe cling to modernity's construction of gender roles, were and are not timeless.
37 Manhood in Late Antiquity. The second front is that of geographical space. The Life of
Antony situates its main character in a dichotomy of shifting space - from urban city/village to rural desert. Within this space, the rise of Egyptian or desert monasticism took place. This geography will allow us to re-imagine the constructed roles of bodily performance and then lead into a dialogue with Peter Brown's notion of the holy man in
Late Antiquity situated in the space of the desert. Following this, the third front will continue the genealogy and bring us to the world before the text - that is - the world that heard and read the Life of Antony. By laying out this genealogy of Late Antiquity, I intend to find a beginning place that will situate for the reader and the author the Life of
Antony and the characters and constructed self of the text.
Michel Foucault describes the first two centuries of Imperial rule as "a kind of golden age in the cultivation of the self." Individuals of the period, he suggests, sought to make oneself "as adequate as possible to one's own status by means of a set of signs and marks pertaining to physical bearing, clothing and accommodations, gestures of generosity and munificence, spending behaviour, so on.' Within this particular discourse of the self, the self through the body becomes the site of performance in which the body is constructed and instructed to act out roles, gestures, postures, etc. that present the self in a state of excellence. Within this need to care for the self, sexuality and gender are regulated into particular modes of behaviour and performance. Continuing his work on ancient Greece and the notion of the aphrodisia, Foucault focuses his attention on the
2 Foucault, The Care of the Self: Volume 3 of the History of Sexuality, 45.
3 Ibid., 85.
38 regulation sexuality and gender in The Care of the Self.4 He prescribes four regimens that sexual acts are placed under. First, in regards to procreation, the self must be conditioned create the ideal embryo; in other words, the self must be "free of pain, or worries accompanied by fatigue, and of any other affliction; and the body must be healthy and not spoiled in any way."5 Secondly, one must consider one's own age in the act of sexual intercourse so as to refrain from cause harm to the self if sex is engaged in too young.6
Third, persons engaged in the act of procreation must determine the most favourable time and season.7 Finally, one needs to consider the temperature of the environment where
o procreation is to take place. In working alongside Foucault, we are brought into dialogue with four particular historical modes of exercising the self within the gendered male body. Using this example as a starting point, I wish to draw the readers' attention to the transition that is evident in the genealogical endeavour presented in Foucault's
History of Sexuality. Particularly with reference to the notion of the care of the self,
Foucault's work presents a discourse that presents a system originally dictated to a particular class of society. However, with the proliferation of literature and with the rise of Christianity, the genealogical care of the self shifts from the realm of the upper classes and urban elites to the individual not centrally located. This will become more clear in chapter four where I engage in the discourse of Christian baptism; however, I want to
4 For Foucault's work on the aphrodisia in the ancient world, see: Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure: Volume 2 of the History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), particularly Part One, Chapter 1.
5 Foucault, The Care of the Self: Volume 3 of the History of Sexuality, 125.
6 Ibid., 129.
7 Ibid., 130-31.
8 Ibid., 132.
39 make clear here that a transition does take place between the work of Foucault's volumes two and three. With the rise of Christianity, the socio-cultural location of this genealogical formation of the self shifts to encompass all persons.
Stepping back from the period of Antony and the isolation of the desert, this exploration of masculinities finds its beginnings in the work of four contemporary historians exploring gender and male constructions in Antiquity through to Late
Antiquity. Though much work has recently been conducted in regards to the role of gender in both the Roman Empire and early Christianity, the four authors presented have unique insights, which in the greater history of Christianity and masculinity can make significant contributions. It should be noted that my focus on masculinities is challenging for no such thing as a single definition of masculinity that can transcend time and space exists. As I have already presented in the Introduction to this work reading alongside
R.E. Connell, "'Masculinity' is not a coherent object about which a generalizing science can be produced."9 Furthermore, argues Connell, masculinity is itself a modern concept of late modernity and therefore, as historians look to the past speaking of masculinity, are actually in the process of '"doing gender' in a culturally specific way."10 In this sense, masculinities as gender are fractured and shifting because of the multiple intersections of discourse placed at the site of the body and the individual.11
In examining the art of rhetoric during the Second Sophist period (second century
CE), Maud Gleason in Making Men: Sophists and Self-presentation in Ancient Rome,
9 Cornell, 67.
10 Ibid., 68. 11 Wendy Hollway, "Gender Diffemece and the Production of Subjectivity," in Changing the Subject: Psychology, Social Regulation and Subjectivity, ed. Julian Henriques (London: Methuen, 1984), 227-30.
40 finds in this work a beginning point around gender performance. Gleason's work on rhetoric presents two opposite ends, or if one prefers two opposite poles, of masculine performance. Focusing on two performers of rhetoric, Favorinus of Aries and Polemo of
Laodicea, Gleason is able to argue that masculinities were determined by how the subject was able to perform his art; in other words, "one's adequacy as a man was always under suspicion and one's performance was constantly being judged."12 Polemo performs and presents his body as "the trained body" embodying the cultural normative ideal of masculinity. According to Virginia Burrus reflecting on Gleason's work, Polemo's body is "a flawlessly embodied performance of a culture's conception of virility - hard rather than soft, erect rather than slack or aslant, dry rather than moist or slippery, and rough ... rather than smooth."13 Polemo's self-presentation is an attempt to play into the notion of hegemonic masculinity as defined at the time of his performance. Favorinus's performance, on the other hand, is more slant or skewed with his physical self- presentation that of a "defective male" presenting himself in a womanish style.14 His performance works against the normative constructs of male gendered performance.
What these two opposite poles suggest is that "in accordance to the way gender roles were constituted ..., manhood was not a state to be definitively and irrefutably achieved,
12 Maud W. Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and Self-Representation in Ancient Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), xxii. Erik Gunderson examines the role of the body and performance of orators and argues that their bodies became the site of social construction. See Erik Gunderson, "Discovering the Body in Roman Oratory," in Parchments of Gender: Deciphering the Bodies of Antiquity, ed. Maria Wyke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). For an extensive examination of how the rhetorician became the image of social morality and performance in Roman antiquity, see George Alexander Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World 300 B.C.- A.D. 300 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972).
13 Burrus, 19.
14 Gleason, 161-62. This performance on the slant may also be read within postmodern discourse as being a "queer" performance, that is a "positionality vis-a-vis the normative." See Halperin, Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography, 62.
41 but something always under construction" therefore, "adults needed to keep practicing the arts that made them men."15
In dealing with the constructions of masculinities, particularly around notions of same biological gender (male/male) sexual relations, Craig A. Williams in Roman
Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity, presents three distinct protocols for masculine behaviour. In the first instance, men are required to take the active role when engaging in sexual activities; in other words, masculinity is defined by the biological males' ability to penetrate the other.16 This notion of penetration - to top, to insert, to fuck - is supported by the idea that man's role within a society is domination over all other things and persons. The very act of penetration is the very act of dominating the other (the woman, the slave, the pre-pubescent boy/young man).17
Secondly, a man's masculinity was defined by the status of their partners. Men could have sex with their wives, slaves, prostitutes, and non-citizens of either biological sex; on the other hand, a man could not have sex with equals such as other freeborn Roman
15 Gleason, xxii.
16 Craig A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity, ed. David M. Halperin, Ideologies of Desire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 18.
Foucault also presents this position in volume 3 of The History of Sexuality. According to Foucault, "All texts plainly show that it [men sleeping with boys[ was still common and still regarded as a natural thing." However, continues Foucault, "What seems to have changed [in the Roman Empire] is not the taste for boys, or the value judgment that was brought to bear on those who had this partiality, but the way in which one questioned oneself about it." See, Foucault, The Care of the Self: Volume 3 of the History of Sexuality, 189. Two other texts shed some general reflection on male/male sexual relations during the years of the Roman Empire. The reader should be cautious in reading both of these texts for their notions of male/male sexual relations are very much tied to modern notions of homosexuality (which did not exist in the period of this investigation). See, John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), particularly chapter 3. See also Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), particularly chapters 4 and 5.
42 citizens. The third protocol is not so much a rule to follow as a clear distinction as to the two binary poles of who men could engage with in sexual pleasure: on the one spectrum were women and girls while on the other were young men or boys.19 Both were acceptable in society and both were widely practised by individuals considered male/masculine. What Williams' work exemplifies is the fact that desire for physical pleasure was not necessarily linked with the gendered body of the biological other. It should not be assumed that all male persons engaged in such activities as sex with boys, however, what Williams' work offers, as well as that of Foucault, Boswell, and
Crompton, is that it was not as frowned upon provided the gendered and biological male was performing in the socially accepted positions within the act of sex. Even so, the sexual engagement presented by Williams is significant for it shows a clear social hierarchy and the displacement of the gendered self. The constructions of gender that
Williams presents were structured around the activities of a select few located in the dominant positions of society; these were practices engaged by very few of the total population. Williams' analysis of gender performance is limited to a small segment of the socio-cultural world he historically engages in. This is not to the fault of Williams, but it is significant for it shows the opening up of gender performance and the care of the self in the Christian era explored in Chapter Four.
On another plateau of gender performance in Antiquity we turn to the work of
Carlin Barton in The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster.
Barton uses the gladiator as the focus of the text as the figure "through which [the]
18 Williams, 19.
19 Ibid.
43 extremes of emotions were enacted and expressed." The gladiator becomes the opposite extreme of Gleason's figures of rhetoric. However, like the rhetorician, the gladiator presents another example of gender performance. The gladiator becomes represented as
"crude, loathsome, doomed, lost..., a man utterly debased by fortune, a slave, a man altogether without worth and dignity, almost without humanity." The gladiator's self- representation is that of the man desiring death. The gladiator takes an oath that he will die "willingly and freely." Barton, reading Cicero, states that this desire for death
"allows the gladiator to be one model and paradigm of 'the good man,' the soldier/philosopher who through his consistent and unflinching fierceness in the face of death and his complete collusion in his own powerlessness couples his slavery with honor." Should the gladiator fail to achieve his ultimate goal of death because of his inability or unwillingness to go "to his slaughter" he both fills the audience of his performance with disgust and is himself deprived of any glory or honour.24 The gladiator plays a significant part in the unfolding of this work. Much like the gladiator, the development and self-representation of the early Christian community, as we shall see in the next chapter but which can briefly be mentioned here, was very much tied to the notion of pain and suffering. As Judith Perkins argues, the Christian self was presented in the image of the suffering, pain ridden, and dying body that therefore "contributed to
20 Carlin A. Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 3.
21 Ibid., 12.
22 Ibid., 16.
23 Ibid., 18.
24 Ibid., 22.
44 Christianity's attainment of social power by helping to construct a subject that would be present for its call."
Finally, I wish to examine the role of eunuchs and their challenge to masculine gender performance through their ambiguity as presented by Mathew Kuefler in The
Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late
Antiquity. Kuefler suggests that the eunuch "existed in many ways as a constant reminder of the tentative nature of sexual difference and thus of masculine privilege."
One of the challenges was the assigning of gender roles in a world of gender binaries. If masculinity was defined, as indeed Keufler argues it was, by the ability to reproduce and attain fatherhood, as well as by the dichotomies of male and female, the eunuch's inability to perform such biological functions was thus left in a state of ambiguity. One of the fears surrounding eunuchs was the notion that through castration they were able to change their gender and therefore identity.28 This problem eventually led to the legal prohibition of eunuchs and a continuing debate around what legal status and rights should be given to them. However, with the rise of Christianity, a different notion of eunuch needed to be presented. The challenge was a passage from the gospel of Matthew 19:12 attributed to the words of Jesus, which reads: "For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let
25 Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in Early Christian Era (London Routledge, 1995), 3.
26 Kuefler, 31. See also Walter Stevenson, "The Rise of Eunuchs in Greco-Roman Antiquity," Journal of the History of Sexuality 5(1995).
27 Kuefler, 31. See also 6-13 and 70-102.
28 Ibid., 32.
45 anyone accept this who can.'" What emerges within the early Christian creation of the self is a need to reaffirm the role of the eunuch. From this, our move into the rise of monasticism becomes evident. The eunuch emerges as the spiritual eunuch in the form of the monk. These excursions into the construction of the masculinised gendered self of Antiquity and Late Antiquity offer a theoretical backdrop in examining the performance of gender and the self in the character of Antony and projected into the early
Christian discourse of monasticism. Though the performance of gender analysed above provides us with a starting point, they also raise issues of inclusivity such as questions of for whom these performances of gender and self opened to and prescribed for? These historians offer this work the elements of a grammar to parse a new setting and genealogical development and to exegete the unfolding notion of the self in Late
Antiquity and within the Christian discourse available to all through the baptismal formula.
From these three avenues of gender in Antiquity and Late Antiquity shaping and moulding our genealogy, we move to a fuller reading of three prominent figures in the early church and the shaping of the self in and through their work: Clement, Origen, and
Athanasius. Clement of Alexandria situates our attention in second century Alexandria.
Though all three of our characters will be located in this city, the focus here will remain on the individuals; below I will explore the constructions of Alexandria and its larger role in the development of asceticism. However, what is important to note in the life of
29 My emphasis.
30 Kuefler, see specifically chapter 8. For further analysis of the emergence of eunuch's and its relation to the construction of masculinities in the early Jesus movement and in particular relation to notions of space and place, see Halvor Moxnes, Putting Jesus in His Place: A Radical Vision of Household and Kingdom, 1st ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), specifically chapter 4.
46 Clement is the presence of Encratites in Alexandria. Clement's challenge was the
Encratite view on sexuality. They held the conviction that it was through sexuality that the fallen state of humanity could most vividly be witnessed. They went so far as to renounce marriage for it supported acts of sex.31 In this milieu, Clement was faced with determining the role of sexuality in the emerging Christian community/church. Clement presented himself and his role as "Christ's gardener. He would cut twigs from the rank, dried-back and brittle bushes of pagan literature, and graft them on to the succulent root- stock of Christ's truth."32 In response to the Encratite presence and working alongside the Gnostic tradition present in Alexandria and very much an influence on Clement,
Clement began to develop his care of the self around the notion of the Christian sage.
The basis of this sage's life was to be found in an extensive use of pagan thought and
Greek source material to shape a way of living - a rule of life - for the Christian to follow in their daily living. Unlike later developments, this sage was not to be separated from the society in which they were engaged; rather, they were to follow codes that reminded the follower of the "God-given importance of every moment of daily life, and especially of the life in the household" while remaining active as a full member of society. Clement's Stromata and Paidagogos were his main works that provide the reader with instructions of how to live and groom the self. For the care of the self, one
31 Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, 131-32.
32 Ibid., 124. See specifically Clement, "The Stromata, or Miscellanies," in The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908), VI. 1.
33 Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, 126-128.
47 had to first engage in examining the passions of one's life in the attempt to train oneself in the art of "self-restraint, laying this as the foundation of the virtues."34 These passions were the "colored perceptions of the outside world with nonexistent sources of fear, anxiety, and hope" and the "false glow of pleasure and potential satisfaction."35 These passions were found intimately connected with the body, but their eradication would be done in the mind. For example, in working with the abundant pleasures of food,
Clement suggests that, through the use of the mind over the desire of the body, "We are not, then, to abstain wholly from various kinds of food, but only are not to be taken up about them.... We are to partake in what is set before us ... by a harmless and moderate participation." What does remain significant is that Clement recognises there are certain natural urges which are inescapable or unavoidable such as "hunger, dumb fear of extinction, the sensations necessarily associated with sexual desire: these were unavoidable, muted creakings of the biological self which could "never be abandoned." What Clement imagined for the Christian sage was a life of apatheia - the freeing of the self from all passions in the Gnostic tradition. In Stromata, Clement states:
"For this also is one of the things which God wished, to covet nothing, to hate no one.
For all men are the work of one will." He also continues by stating that "the Gnostic will
34 Clement, 11.20.
35 Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, 129. See also Clement, 360-61.
36 Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, 129.
37 Clement, "Paedagogus (the Instructor)," in The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908), II. 1.
38 Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, 129.
48 not ask himself for abundance of wealth to bestow, but will pray that the supply of what they need may be furnished to them. For so the Gnostic gives his prayer to those who are in need, and by his prayer they are supplied, without his knowledge and without vanity."39 Peter Brown, commenting on this same passage states Clement's apatheia is a
"state of final serenity of purpose. No longer held back by the fears and uncertainties engendered by the passions, good actions must spring from right knowledge as gently as a shadow fell from the body."40
But there is more to Clement than this single notion of the self. Far more important to this thesis is his constructions of gender, particularly the performative role of men and masculinities, in the second and third century church. In this regards, Brown presents Clement's positioning on the nature and means of procreation. What remained a focal point in Clement's thought was the fear of death. As a result of this fear, and the need for a continuous population, procreation became an important element of his thought. As Brown states, "the frail flesh, so easily withered by death, must be renewed in every generation by procreation; otherwise the word of the Lord would not abide.
'Without the body, how could the divine plan for us in the church achieve its end?'"41
The role of the man, what made a man who he was, was his ability to engage in the act of procreation. This is why such persons as eunuchs, described above, were such a challenge to gender roles. Sexual intercourse, in defining the man, was to be completed
39 Clement, "The Stromata, or Miscellanies," VII. 13.
40 Clement of Alexandria paraphrased in Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, 131.
41 Clement, "The Stromata, or Miscellanies," III. 16. The English translation of the Latin was taken fromBrown , The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, 132.
49 in the service of God in a Stoic manner - that is without the experience of pleasure.42
Those who experience pleasure in the act of sex are sinners and "he who sins, in the degree in which he sins," states Clement, "becomes worse and it of less estimation than before; and he who has been overcome by base pleasures, how now licentiousness wholly attached to him." Clement additionally states that "Wherefore he who commits fornication is wholly dead to God, and is abandoned by the World as a dead body by the spirit. For what is holy, as is right, abhors to be polluted."43 The sole purpose of intercourse was also for the begetting of children. Unlike later developments within the ascetic and monastic movements where chastity would become normative, Clement's
Christian sages were still able to engage in sexual relations within marriage for the purpose of procreation.44 The main emphasis of Clement is that the care of the Christian self and the expression of the body with that self was to take place within community, particularly the household. Marriage and procreation would ensure the construct of the household, of community, of the wellbeing of the Christian self.
42 Clement, "Paedagogus (the Instructor)," 11.10. See also Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, 133. For Stoic interpretation of procreation and marriage, see Foucault, The Care of the Self: Volume 3 of the History of Sexuality, 150-58. For Stoicism and sex with boys, see Foucault, The Use of Pleasure: Volume 2 of the History of Sexuality, 199-200. Foucault presents three Stoic positions which argue for the removal of sexual pleasure in the marriage bed: first, "by introducing one's wife to overly intense pleasures one risks giving her lessons she will put to bad use and which one will regret." Secondly, experiencing pleasure in bed could lead to "an excessive austerity and a conduct too close to that of profligates." And finally, allowing pleasure into the bedroom could lead to a man treating his wife as though she were an adulteress. See Foucault, The Care of the Self: Volume 3 of the History of Sexuality, 177.
43 Clement, "Paedagogus (the Instructor)," 11.10.
44 Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, 134-35.
50 While remaining in Alexandria, the landscape of this genealogy changes. Origen was confronted in his early life and career by imminent persecutions in Alexandria.45
Death becomes the common connection between Clement and Origen. However, their positioning on sexuality and pleasure in relation to the self are drastically different - one could say they were on extreme ends of a pole. For Clement, the pleasures of the" body through sexual acts, though regulated and restricted for the purpose of procreation, still remained. The body could still engage in the activities that it was designed to do. Though pleasure was not the full experience of God, it could be seen and experienced as a slurred state of being with the divine. Furthermore, the self was to be regulated for and in community. The household was, for Clement, a strategic location for the care of the self.
However, in Origen, the regulation of the self, particularly the sexual self, became more rigid, more structured, and less pleasurable. With Origen we move into the early to mid third century. The body, for Origen, was a '"microclimate"' of the larger society in which it existed.47 Within this microclimate existed the soul that had a substance and life and which, "after its departure from the world, be rewarded according to its desert, being destined to obtain either an inheritance of eternal life and blessedness,... or to be delivered up to eternal fire and punishments."48 The purpose of the present human body was to provide for the soul habituating in each body a vessel to exist in while they
45 Ibid., 161.
46 Ibid., 173.
47 Ibid., 170.
48 Origen, "De Principiis," Preface.5.
51 progressed back to regain their "former, limitless identity." Origen defines the body as follows: the body is in a state "of meanness, and corruption, and weakness, is not a different body from that which we shall posses incorruption, and in power, and in glory."
He continues by stating that the same body of this world, "when it has cast away the infirmities in which it is now entangled, shall be transmuted into a condition of glory, being rendered spiritual, so that what was a vessel of dishonour may ... become a vessel unto honour, and an abode of blessedness."50 This language of the body is very much representative of the notion of the fallen Adam and the need to reclaim the fallen body and restore it to its former glory. This outlook has already been explored in the
Introduction in regards to its direct relation to Antony. What is important here is the development of Origen's thought around sexuality and the performance of gender. For him, the ultimate state of existence was that of virginity. Virginity "preserved an identity already formed in a former, more splendid existence and destined for yet further glory."51
Furthermore virginity "stood for the original state in which every body and soul joined.
It was a physical concretization, through the untouched body, of the pre-existing purity of the soul."52 Living in a state of virginity allowed the Christian a sense of "basic freedom so intense, a sense of identity so deeply rooted, as to cause to evaporate the normal social and physical constraints that tied the Christian to his or her gender."53 Living as a virgin
49 Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, 167.
50 Origen, "De Principiis," III.6.
51 Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, 169.
52 Ibid., 170.
53 Ibid, 171.
52 allowed one to be a member of a different and more splendid city where the soul and the body could move ever more closer to obtaining "precise 'knowledge' of Christ" and reclaiming the fallen body.54 This would be living in the existence of a spiritual body - the body "inhabited not only by all the holy and perfect souls, but also by all those creatures which will be liberated from the slavery of corruption" which is most "pure,"
"refined," and "glorious."55 Gender and sexuality were more stages or phases that bodies had to experience; gender is neither an identifying state nor a stable and permanent essence of being.56
Our final character, Athanasius of Alexandria, may be the most influential of all on the character central to this thesis - after all, tradition does hold him as the author of the Life of Antony. Situating Athanasius, Peter Brown states the fourth century was a the period where "the upward ceiling of human contact with the divine has come to be drawn more firmly" where the settlements of the desert will become the space of "geographical
en proximity to the settled land with a sense of measureless imaginative distance." The literary works of Athanasius, particularly as we will see in this works final chapter on the
Life of Antony, will show his "preoccupation with the boundary between the created and CO divine realms, as well as the frontier zones of human possibility." This living on the
54 Ibid., 171 and 73.
55 Origen, "De Principiis," III.4.
56 Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, 168.
57 Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity, Carl Newell Jackson Lectures (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 98, Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, 215.
58 Burrus, 37.
53 "frontier zones of human possibility" is directly linked to Athanasius' relation to the
Nicaea debates. These debates and council, according to Virginia Burrus, "came to function as the touchstone of a newly crystallizing orthodoxy that would eventually fix the masculine terms of theological language and pull down the cosmic veil separating the transcendental triad of Father, Son, and Spirit from material creation."59 What Nicaea did was allow the divine to become human (or the human to become divine). With the Son being of the same essence (homoousios) to the Father (God), the Son became incarnate in the flesh of Jesus and the divine essence (homoousios) of the other. That is, the Son was,
"Wisdom itself, Word itself, Truth itself, Righteousness itself, Virtue itself, and indeed the imprint and radiance and Image of the Father. To sum up, he is the perfect offshoot of the Father."60 This dichotomy of existence as Father and Son, as Burrus states,
"inscribes a sharp cosmological opposition between the human and the divine and reassigns 'divine' status to men."61 This contextualization is significant for our reading the Life of Antony. The Nicaea debates around the essence (homoousios) of the Son reconstruct the idea of the self. The ideal Christian self, which I will expound upon in the
Burrus is here working alongside the Nicaea debates surrounding the term homoousios which Athanasius understood to mean as an expression of the Son (Jesus) as "belonging properly to the Father's essence." It should be noted that, though the above quote by Burrus refers to the "Spirit", the debates surrounding the positionality of the Holy Spirit within the Trinitarian triad would not take place until the 350s. For further reference to the Trinitarian debates and the Council of Nicaea, particularly the theological discussions, see: Johannes Roldanus, The Church in the Age ofConstantine: Theological Challenges (London: Routledge, 2006), with particular reference to Chapter Four, "Defining Christ's Relation to God". For a more political reading with reference to the role ofConstantine and the Roman Empire during the period of the Nicaea, see T. G. Elliott, The Christianity ofConstantine the Great (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 1996), particularly pp. 163-252.
60 Athanasius, De Incamatione, trans. Robert W. Thomson, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), XVIII.
61 Burrus, 39. I should make clear that I am not stating that at the Council of Nicaea any firm position was taken as to how Jesus could be both the Son and human/flesh at the same time. The Council of Chalcedon, 451, would determine that position and lead to an eventual split between the church in the west and the church in east. For a brief synopsis of Chalcedon, see Frend, 770-73.
54 final chapter, is witnessed and performed by the figure of Jesus. By recognising the
divine status of the Son, notions of the self were reconstructed connecting this world with
that world, bringing flesh into the realm of divinity (the non flesh) and the divine into the
flesh.62
In following the genealogical structure of this chapter, it is equally important to not only consider the individual characters influencing or constructing the Christian self, but to reflect upon the space, the geography, the landscape of the text. In Matthew 4:1-3 we are introduced to the character of Jesus finding solitude in the desert where he is tempted by the devil: "Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, 'If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.'" Like the author of Matthew (or may be even following by example), the author of the Life of Antony situates Antony is the desert. The desert becomes the site, the space, the location where the body of Antony, representing the Christian self, performs. In his analysis of space, Foucault differentiates between two forms or conceptualisations of thinking about space: Utopias and heterotopias.63
Utopias are not real places; they are, instead, space and society "in a perfected form, or
Following the work of Peter Brown in "The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity," Burrus argues, "the incarnate Logos is an idealized 'exemplar' but not a representative 'example' of humanity. ... [A]s Christ, the Logos embodies and thereby signifies what humanity desires and emulates but as body will never really 'have,' namely, absolute transcendence of materiality, the status of undefiled Word or Image, and the stable security of ontological Sonship. The divinization of humanity thus comes in a (dis)guise of a put-on, a cover-up, a veil, shrouding the ebb and flowo f bodily existence." From this positionality, humanity can never quite attain the self that is projected from and through the image of Jesus the Logos for humanity can never gain the divine status which Jesus has. In a sense, echoing the work of Homi Bhabha in "Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse," the Christian becomes the colonised body "almost the same but not white," or in other words, almost like Jesus the Logos or Son but not quite. See Burrus, 47. For reference to Bhabha see Homi K. Bhabha, "Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse," in The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge Classics, 2004), 126.
63 Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces," Diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986): 24.
55 else society turned upside down." These Utopias are the space which all other space is aiming to achieve, wanting to become, but cannot. On the contrary, the heterotopias are the spaces that do exist, do constitute materiality, and are "founded in the very founding of society - which are something like counter sites, a kind of effectively enacted Utopia in which the real sites, and the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted."65 The heterotopias are
"simultaneously a mythic and real contestation of the space in which we live."66 In the
Life of Antony the desert becomes the actual space of living and the character Antony has one eye on its landscape which is the heterotopia. At the same time, Antony is aiming for a or the Utopian space in which the heavenly body/bodies, for example the resurrected body of Jesus, is/are to be found. In his desire to attain the fallen body of Adam, Antony is searching for the Garden of Eden - the biblical Utopia.
What we are interested in here is the performance of the masculine body within the desert. The works of Henri Lefebvre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty are significant for my analysis of space because both authors situate the body within a geographical space and the relationship body has to space and space to body. In his analysis of space,
Lefebvre suggests that "Activity in space in restricted by that space; space 'decides' what
David Harvey, in his text The Condition ofPostmodernity, reads Foucault's notion of "heterotopias" as the space where "The body exists in space and must either submit to authority ... or carve out particular spaces of resistance and freedom." These carved spaces of resistance to the dominant and hegemonic space become heterotopias. See David Harvey, The Condition ofPostmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1990), 213.
65 Foucault, "Of Other Spaces," 24.
56 actually may occur, but even this 'decision' has limits place upon it. A body can only do and perform what the space it inhabits allows it to do. In this sense, the body, proposes
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, is "no longer merely an object of the world," bur rather "it is our view of the world." Merleau-Ponty continues by insisting that "Our bodies are not in space like things; it inhabits or haunts space. It implies itself to space like a hand on an instrument and when we wish to move about we do not move the body as we move and object" but rather the body becomes a form of expression, a making visible of our intentions (or the intentions of the literary author of a body).69 In following this line of thought, Sara Ahmed concludes that within space, "bodies are submerged, such that they become the space they inhabit; in taking up space, bodies move through space and are affected by the 'where' of that movement" which eventually allows "the surface of spaces as well as bodies (to take) shape."70 Within the Life of Antony, the character's suppression of a desiring self- the suppression of this world - trying to obtain a perfected body may actually be read as the body of the desert. Antony moves into the desert - a land within which the imagination is barred, empty, filled with death, and without substance - and as a result his body itself turns into its surrounding.
In reading the Life of Antony, the reader is introduced to the desert as the place where Antony lives out his ascetic life and regains the perfected body of the fallen
67 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 143.
68 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception, and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History, and Politics, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 5.
69 Ibid.
70 Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 53.
57 Adam. The author of the Life states "the desert was made a city by monks, who left their own people and registered themselves for the citizenship in the heavens."72 In describing the desert, Peter Brown states it was the space where one could "flee 'the world'" leaving behind "a precise social structure for an equally precise and ... equally social alternative. The desert was a 'counter world,' a place where an alternative 'city' could grow." Settling into a new land, a new space, the ascetic was able to grapple with a "sense of measureless imaginative distance" creating a "new humanity, settled where no human beings should be found."74 The monks who followed this example of living, continues Brown, "settled on the social equivalent of an Antarctic continent, reckoned from time immemorial to be a blank space on the map of Mediterranean society." The desert was "a no man's (sic) land that flankedth e life of the city, flouted organized culture, and held up a permanent alternative ... of the villages." In his seminal text on the rise of desert monasticism, Derwas J. Chitty defines the desert as the "natural domain of the demons, to which they have retreated on being driven out of the cities by the triumph of the Church, and into which the heroes of the faith will pursue them." This
71 Goehring, "The Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt," 74. It is interesting to note that the Life of Antony, according to William Harmless who does accept Athanasius as its author, is penned, so to speak, by Athanasius while he himself was in exile in the desert between 356 and 358. See, Harmless, 59.
72 Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Macellinns, 14.
73 Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, 217.
74 Ibid., 215-16.
75 Peter Brown, Late Antiquity, ed. Paul Veyne, From Pagan Rome to Byzantium ed., The History of Private Life, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 287-289.
76 Derwas J. Chitty, The Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestinian Monasticism under the Christian Empire (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966), 6.
58 definition leads the reader into a belief that the Christian Church was very much in a dominant position within the city (in this case Alexandria); however, the reader should be cautious to accept such grand narrative positions (for the Christianity of Alexandria was not united resulting in the expulsion of Athanasius a few times). Furthermore, the reader should equally be cautious not to assume that by demons the author necessarily is meaning physical beings. I will discuss demons further in chapter four and Antony's relation to them. Nonetheless, working alongside Chitty, James E. Goehring states the following: "When the image of the desert as the home of demons comes to the fore in the literary portrayal, the flood of ascetics to the desert can be understood as an effort by the
77 monks to expand divine civilization into the uncivilized realms of Satan." Within the
Life of Antony, space is divided into two dichotomies: that of the city and that of the 78 desert. The city is represented as that space in which truth has left and falsehood reigns.
The body and the self are unable within the person to reclaim the perfected body lost in the fall of Adam and available again through performance and perfection through Jesus the Christ in the cities. From this position, argues Goehring, "Christian renunciation of or withdrawal from traditional societal expectations ... which initially could occur within the home, the village, or the city, became in the literary sources ... demands for physical separation from society at large." In this need to separate the self, "the desert or enclosure behind monastery walls became ... the visible expression of the ethical, 79 ascetical stance." 77 Goehring, "The Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt," 75.
78 Ibid., 73-76.
59 The persons who moved out into the desert, what Peter Brown calls holy men, were those who stood "outside the ties of family, and of economic interest; whose attitude to food itself rejected all the ties of solidarity to kin and village that... had always been expressed by the gesture of eating." Furthermore, the holy man "owed nothing to society. He fled women and bishops ... because both threatened to rivet him
on to a distinct place in society." From this definition in which the holy man performs as a non-normative representation of the Late Antique body (even a queer representation),
Brown argues in a 1983 article that these holy men became "vivid persons as objects of a personal loyalty and imitation."81 In this regard, the holy men of the desert became exemplars of Christian manhood. Within the monotheistic religiosity of both Judaism and early Christianity, there emerged a strong understanding of the connectedness of God on to/with humanity. Particularly within the Christian tradition where God, as Jesus the
Son within the Trinity, became human at the same time as being divine, it was believed that through his imitation (which the examples became), humanity could again reclaim the perfected human body of the pre-fallen Adam. The Life of Antony even presents the image of a perfected (possibly resurrected) body: "Antony came forth as through from some shrine, having been led into divine mysteries and inspired by God.... [W]hen they beheld him, they were amazed to see that his body had maintained its former condition, 80 Peter Brown, "The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity," Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971): 92. This article has been recently republished: Peter Brown, "The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity," Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1998). Also, a recent anthology edited by James Howard-Johnston and Paul Antony Hayward celebrates the importance of Brown's pioneering work on the role of holy men in Late Antiquity. See, James Howard-Johnson, and Paul Antony Hayward, ed., The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). See specifically the following two essays: Averil Cameron, "On Defining the Holy Man," and Philip Rousseau, "Ascetics as Mediators and as Teachers." 81 Peter Brown, "The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity," Representations 2 (1983): 3.
82 Ibid.: 6.
60 neither fat..., nor emaciated ..., but was just as they had known him prior to his withdrawal. The state of his soul was one of purity."83 The Christian holy man became
"treated as a prolonged and deeply circumstantial 'imitation of Christ'" present in this world; the imitation of Christ as represented by the holy men was not for a world ahead or to come, but was to represent or bring to this world the "elusive touch of the majesty of Adam."84 Imitating Christ and "making Christ presented by one's own like in one's own age and region," according to Brown, "appears to be the aim and effect of the Early
or Christian Imitatio Christi." Not only did the holy men of the desert act as imitators of
Christ, they also brought with them a touch of Christian theology. As Brown writes, the holy man "was Christianity" who became "a little drop of the 'central value system' of
Christianity oozing tremulously to the surface."86
Within the discourses of early Christianity, the Life of Antony was not a text that was written and then forgotten about. Gregory of Nazianzus, who for a brief while was patriarch of Constantinople and a supporter of Nicene orthodoxy, stated that in the Life
Athanasius had "composed a rule for the monastic life in the form of a narrative."87 In his text On Illustrious Men, which was written in 392, Jerome remarks that Antony was
83 Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Macellinus, 14.
84 Brown, "The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity," 8.
85 Ibid.
86 Ibid.: 9 and 10. Though I am here focusing on Brown's initial arguments that the holy man functioned outside of the city, I am by no means suggesting that this is true. Work after Brown's initial analysis of the holy man show that the phenomena was not limited to the desert but found within cities and also the pagan/non- Christian traditions. See Garth Fowden, "The Pagan Holy Man in Late Antique Society," Journal of Hellenic Studies 102 (1982): 33-59.
87 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio, cited in David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 201.
61 among the '"illustrious."' Jerome and Sulpicius Severus would use Athanasius' Life as
a template model for their own hagiographical texts: Life of Paul and Life of Martin of
Tours. Paulinus of Milan's hagiographical text, the Life of Ambrose, and Palladius's
Lausiac History, both make reference to the Life of Antony as its literary model.89 One of
contemporary Christianities most well read texts, Augustine's Confessions, states that
when Augustine, dealing with his own internal torment of sinfulness, flung himself
beneath a fig tree and while weeping, remembers the story of Antony. His Confessions
reads: "I had heard the story of Antony, and I remembered how he had happened to go
into a church while the Gospel was being read and had taken it as a council addressed to
himself when he heard the words Go home and sell all that belongs to you. Give it to the poor, and so the treasure you have shall be in haven; then come back and follow me. By
this divine pronouncement he had at once been converted to you."90 Augustine continues
be presenting his return to his lodgings and himself opening a book of Paul's Epistles.
Augustine states: "I seized it and opened it, and in silence I read the first passage on
which my eyes fell."91 Antony's story became a model for Christian living. As we shall
see in the next chapter, the character of Antony acted in the role of exemplar by showing
how the self was to be moulded; furthermore, as I have already stated, because the body of the character was male, this reshaping of the Christian self constructed a masculine
Christian self.
88 Jerome, On Illustrious Men, cited in Harmless, 97.
89 Paulinius of Milan, Life of Ambrose, preface and Palladius, Lausiac History, 8, 6, 26, and 28. See Harmless, 98.
90 Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin, The Penguin Classics (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1961), Xn
91 Ibid.
62 Chapter Four Bringing it to Antony: Exploring Pain and Suffering as the Formation of a Gendered Self
By nature, of course, man is mortal, since he was made from nothing; but he bears also the Likeness of Him Who is, and if he preserves that Likeness through constant contemplation, then his nature is deprived of its power and he remains incorrupt. So is it affirmed in Wisdom: 'The keeping of His laws in the assurance of incorruption.' And being incorrupt, he would be henceforth as God, as Holy Scripture says, 'I have said, Ye are gods and sons of the Highest all of you" but ye die as men and fall as one of the princes.'
- Athanasius, The Incarnation of the Word of God
At the beginning of his ascetic journey, Antony increasingly "mortified the body and kept it under subjection, so that he would not, after conquering some challenges, trip up in others."1 It is further illustrated that he "endeavoured each day to present himself as the sort of person ready to appear before God - that is, pure of heart and prepared to obey his will, and no other." In his attempt to live a mystical and ascetic life following the figure of Jesus the Christ and trying to attain his own Christ-like way of living, the self of Antony is shaped and presented as a rejection of the earthly world. Antony rejects the abundant pleasures of earthly living as a way to find eternal life in the Christ and as a way to reclaim for himself the body of a perfected humanity known through the original
Adam, lost in the fall and in the expulsion from Eden, and attainable once more through the imitation of the Christ. This thesis will follow a particular trajectory of avenues leading to my concluding remarks. First, based on materials already presented in the
1 Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Macellinus, 7.
2 Ibid., 7.
63 introduction and earlier chapters, I want to re-examine notions of the self and body.
Secondly, I will provide an analysis of the body in the Life of Antony followed by a brief examination of Antony's own Letters. Finally, I will conclude with exploring how the
Life is to be read against the backdrop of the care of the self. These avenues will lead to the central focus of this chapter and the heart of this overall thesis - namely - the exploration of the Life of Antony and the ways in which the self was created and recreated in the character of Antony into a new self-presentation of a masculinised body. My intent in this chapter, working on and with material presented in earlier chapters, is to
[en]gender the characters' self and read the text as an example of a reshaping of a cultivated masculinised self that then became a textual example of how to live in the body. In this pursuit I am not interested in searching out a historical Antony; I am equally disinterested in trying to present Antony through the lens of Athanasius or any other proposed author. Though I have explored in previous chapters the development of the Life of Antony and its role within hagiography, my gendered reading is an attempt to read a discursive formation of the self and the self s relation to masculinities in Late
Antiquity. It is through the rhetorical representation of the self and the treatment of that self in the text that urged readers and hearers of the text to construct their own selves through this particular representation.
What remains a focal point in this chapter, though it may never quite be a stable and consistent point of reference, is the construction and notion of the self. Returning to
Foucault as introduced in the introduction, the care (or technology) of the self is that which permits "individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way
64 of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality."3 To think of masculinities is to think in terms of a constructed self that is moulded by society, economics, geography, etc.
Exploring what the self was in Antiquity was not new; the Stoic Marcus Aurelius states:
"To what use am I now putting the powers of my soul? Examine yourself on this point at every step, and ask, 'How does it stand with that part of me called the master-part?"4
This "master-part" which Aurelius refers is the notion of the self. Epicurus, in a letter to
Menoeceus, insists in guides for right living to construct the self and ensure "happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it."5 He further continues by insisting that readers of his letter and the directions he gives follow them as a prescribed way of living: "those things which without causing I have declared unto thee, those do, and exercise thyself therein, holding them to be the elements of right life."6 Shifting into Late Antiquity, Patricia Cox
Miller argues that the self of is to be understood in the same way that ancient thinkers thought of the soul - as an "orientation to context."7 In relation to this construction of the self, it is equally important to note the increase of individualism in the Roman world that resulted from the "weakening of the political and social framework within which the lives
3 Foucault, "Technologies of the Self," 18.
4 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. Maxwell Staniforth, The Penguin Classics (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964), V.ll.
5 Laertius Diogenes, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. Robert Drew Hicks, Revised Edition ed., 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), X.121-23.
6 Ibid.
7 Patricia Cox Miller, "Shifting Selves in Late Antiquity," in Religion and the Self in Antiquity, ed. David Brakke, Michael L. Satlow, and Steven Weitzman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 16-17.
65 of individuals used to unfold." By this increased individualism, people isolated themselves from the collective of community and sought means to live their personal lives by. As Foucault continues, "individualism ... accorded more and more importance to the 'private' aspects of existence, to the values of personal conduct, and to the interest that people focused on themselves."9 He argues that this individualism arose by people's decreased attachment to cities and a increased reliance of people on themselves. As a result of this, people "sought in philosophy rules of conduct that were more personal" giving rise to literature on the cultivation of the self.10 Searching for a cause to this increased individualism in daunting to say the least. The economic reforms under the rule of Diocletian (c. 236-316), particularly the capitatio-iugatio to use just one example, supported the transition. This reformed system of taxation focused on the individuals' personal plot of land that could support living for one person rather than on land communally owned and/or shared. This new system of property taxation, continued during our period of Late Antiquity by Constantine. However, Constantine expanded it to include merchants and businesspersons who previously had only to pay taxes of agriculture. The auri lustralis collation taxed these individuals on property and turnover. ** Within the ecclesial structure of the church itself an established understanding of democratic individuality existed. The sacraments of the church established an individual self forged within community. For example, Clement of
8 Foucault, The Care of the Self: Volume 3 of the History of Sexuality, 41.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Karl Christ, The Romans: An Introduction to Their History and Civilisation, trans. Christopher Holme (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 182-83 and 187.
66 Alexandria states that through the sacrament of baptism, that official marking of a
Christian into communion, believers are "illuminated; illuminated, we become sons;
being made sons, we are made perfect; being made perfect, we are made immortal."12
This baptism is democratic, available to all members; reading alongside Gal. 3:26-28,
Clement argues, "all who have abandoned the desires of the flesh are equal and spiritual
before the Lord." All members became involved in the care of the self in its attaining
of the perfection of the Son.
The notion of the individual isolating the self from community is evident in the
Life through Antony's self removal into the desert; though this form of Christian living
was evident in the Life, it should be noted that later forms of living invited the cultivation
of the self to take place within organised and ruled communities.14 For the cultivation
and care of the self to materialise in both its ascetic and coenobite forms, people needed
prescribed ways of living or rules of life. The cultivation of the self required the turning
of one's thoughts upon one's own self and the pervasive use of regimens and tests to
control the self: dietetics, regularly scheduled self-interrogations, self-imposed denials
12 Clement, "Paedagogus (the Instructor)," I.VI.
13 Ibid., I.VI. This purity through baptism is also found in Clements "Stromata." See, Clement, "The Stromata, or Miscellanies," IV.XXVI.
141 am here making reference to the rise of monasticism and the cultivation of communities in which members worked together in the care of the 'communal' self. John Cassian describes both those monks who live in solitude (anchorites) and those who live communally (cenobites) as "quite excellent." For Cassian's overview of the three types of monks, see, John Cassian, "Conferences," in Conferences, ed. Colm Luibheld and Eugene Pichery (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 183-201. For a general text on the rise of monastic communities, see Mark Williams, The Making of Christian Communities in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (London: Anthem Press, 2005). and Harmless. For two specific case studies of monasticism in Egypt during Late Antiquity, see Philip Rousseau, Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage, vol. 6 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). and Rebecca Krawiec, Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery: Egyptian Monasticism in Late Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
67 and temptations. The development of literature around these topics, though not new to this era and found in ancient Greece, allowed for what Foucault called "a kind of golden age in the cultivation of the self."16 The importance of this discourse on the cultivation of the self is essential to my reading of the Life of Antony. For the Christian world of Late
Antiquity, the care of the self was related to the attainment of a Christ-like perfection in which the desires of this world, the bonds that those desires create, are broken.17 The
Christian cultivated self no longer then desires for the appetites of creation.18 Doing a gendered reading of the Life of Antony against the backdrop of the care and cultivation of the self and focusing on masculinities, it becomes evident that what the Life provides is another lens of understanding a masculinised self in Late Antiquity.
In relation to the construct of the self, the body too, as I have shown in the
Introduction, becomes a focal point in this endeavour to [enjgender Antony's self. The body is defined by contemporary theorist Jean-Pierre Vernant in his essay "Dim Body,
Dazzling Body," as being "no longer positioned as a fact of nature, a constant and universal reality, but as an entirely problematic notion, a historical category, steeped in imagination, and one that must be deciphered within a particular culture by defining the
15 Foucault, The Care of the Self: Volume 3 of the History of Sexuality, 50-64. Foucault provides three primary source references in his endnotes to the Care of the Self which the text engages the reader to look inwardly to a individual exploration of the self. These three sources are: Seneca, On Anger, III; Epictetus, Discourses, 11,21 ff; III, 101-5; and Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 3; XII, 19.
16 Ibid., 45.
17 The desire to attain the perfected body of the fallen Adam is evident in the early churches notion, found strongly in the letters of Paul particularly Gal.3:27-29, of believers becoming clothed in Christ in the baptismal rituals of the early church. The imagery of becoming clothed in the perfect Christ would, I argue, affect the notion of the self.
18 Harry O. Maier, "Clement of Alexandria and the Care of the Self," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62, no. 3 (1994): 734.
68 functions it assumes and the forms it takes on within that culture." For poststructuralist
Judith Butler, the body "appears as a passive medium on which cultural meanings are inscribed or as the instrument through which an appropriative and interpretive will determines a cultural meaning for itself."20 The body becomes an "instrument"1 or
"medium" where "cultural meanings are only externally related."21 In other words, the body becomes a stage where the play of society expectations is performed and which, in return, then creates or constitutes the reality of the body.22
Searching the letters of Paul for an early Judeo-Christian definition of the body, one which might have continued into Late Antiquity, is a challenge. Paul does not necessarily refer to the body but rather, according to Kallistos Ware, Paul focuses on the notion of the flesh. This flesh, in Paul, "signifies, not the bodily or physical aspect, but total humanity - soul and body together - in so far as it is separated from God."23 The body in Paul also expands out of the flesh. In 1 Corinthians 6:15, the body is that bread which we take at communion as the body of Christ. Furthermore, Paul uses the body as the symbol of the emerging church in 1 Corinthians 12:12,27. Paul's notion of the body is fixed, therefore, on both the flesh and on the notion of community.24 Peter Brown argues that the body as presented by Paul is one already infused with the pain and
19 Vernant, 20.
20 Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 12. A recent anthology has just examined the influence of Judith Butler within religious discourse. See Ellen T. Armour and Susan M. St. Ville, eds., Bodily Citations: Religion and Judith Butler (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).
21 Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 12.
22 Ibid., 185.
23 Kallistos Ware, '"My Helper and My Enemy': The Body in Greek Christianity," in Religion and the Body, ed. Sarah Croakley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 93.
24 For further analysis of these two Corinthian passages see Ibid., 94.
69 suffering in its constant weakness and perishable state for carrying the cross of Jesus which can be read, alongside the work of Butler, as being infused with the cultural meanings of early Christianity and the carrying of Jesus' cross. One important body image in Paul is that of the androgynous body of Christ which, through baptism, allowed bodies to remove their gendered skins and become "no longer male or female" (Gal.
3:28).26 The androgynous body is very significant in the formation of the early church during the Pauline missions because of late Hellenization of a consolidated Roman
Empire. According to Wayne A. Meeks, during the period of the missions, "the identification of what was properly masculine and properly feminine could no longer be taken for granted, but became the object of controversy." Meeks continues by stating that the "differentiation of male and female could therefore become an important symbol for the fundamental order of the world, while any modification of the role differences could become a potent symbol of social criticism or ... total rejection of the existing order."
Working alongside the baptismal formulae in Galatians 3, Meeks argues the combination of the Adam-Adrogyne myth with the sacrament of baptism produced a new Christian gender in which through baptism, "the Christian has put on ... the image of the Creator, in whom 'there is no male and female,' then for him the old world has passed away and, behold! the new has come."27 In this early construction of the gendered Christian self, we
Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, 47.
26 Diana M Swancutt, "Sexing the Pauline Body of Christ: Scriptural Sex in the Context of the American Culture War," in Toward a Theology of Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discipline, ed. Virginia Burrus and Catherine Keller (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), 67.
27 Wayne A. Meeks, "The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity," History of Religions 13, no. 3 (1974): 206 and 207.
70 read of an elimination of gender binaries within Christ. However, I would argue that this somewhat Utopian understanding did not actually continue into the Christian tradition.
The cultivation of the self in Late Antiquity and specifically for the purpose of this thesis centred on the emergence of Christianity, also unfolded amongst a matrix of other philosophical thought patterns in which the self was a focal point. Within Stoicism, the central tenet "was the control of emotions" and "a life without passions."29 The Stoic cultivated self was the individual in control over what was in their power. Their aim was personal self-mastery, which included mastery of the body. In the works of Epictetus, a self was constructed and represented "for whom pain, grief, and hardship had no effect."30 The self, contained within the body, according to Epictetus, was rejected: "the paltry body, which is not mine, which is a corpse by nature."31 He further states that "the body is nothing to me; the parts of it are nothing to me."32 Stoic desire was to feel, experience, and show no pain of the body. The Stoic body was sick and needed a cure to free itself for the irrationality of bodily desire. Medicine, as a form of philosophical
I base this position on the work of Virginia Burrus who, as we have and will continue to see through this thesis, argues that the Trinitarian debates of the fourth century are infused with the constructions of genders, particularly constructions of masculine gender, within the Trinitarian God particularly in the roles of the Father and the Son. This gendered male God is also explored by Peter Widdicombe. See Burrus, Peter Widdicombe, The Fatherhood of God from Origen to Athanasius, Oxford Theological Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
29 Perkins, 79.
30 Ibid., 89.
31 Epictetus, Epictetus: Works, trans. W.A. Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925), 3.10.15.
32 Ibid., 3.22.21.
33 Maier: 723. For further sources on the topic of Stoicism and the cultivation of the self, see Keith Campbell, "Self-Mastery and Stoic Ethics," Philosophy 60, no. 233 (1985): 327-340, Nicholas P. White, "The Basis of Stoic Ethics," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 83 (1979): 143-78.
71 inquiry, also played a major part in the cultivation of the self. The purpose of medicine in the Roman world was to "form a corpus on knowledge and rules, a way of living, a reflective mode of relation to oneself, to one's body, to food, to wakefulness, and sleep, to the various activities, and to the environment." The medical world provided a discourse for living in the self and the relation of that self to the world. The practice of one's health became a "permanent framework of everyday life." The body became a focal point of the cultivation and care of the self; medicine structured the self and the ways of the body. What both of these examples solidify is the understanding that in Late
Antiquity, the care of the self was a pronounced element of society, and therefore, it is not surprising that the emerging Christianities of the period themselves became concerned with the self.
Returning to the formative years of Christianity, Judith Perkins examines second century Christianity and the role of the suffering body. Perkins argues that the Christian self was presented in the image of the suffering, pain ridden, and dying that therefore
"contributed to Christianity's attainment of social power by helping to construct a subject that would be present for its call." The Christian was seen by non Christian authors as a
TO sufferer and having a desire for death and all the pains associated with it. Other essential texts were those that dealt with the early martyrs and the image of the gladiator.
34 Foucault, The Care of the Self: Volume 3 of the History of Sexuality, 99-144.
35 Ibid., 100.
36 Ibid., 101.
"Perkins, 3.
38 Ibid., 22. For specific reflections of various non Christian texts written in the second century, see pages 20- 24; for references made by second century Christian authors see pages 24-39
72 Perkins argues that these texts "need to be considered as key documents in early Christian
self-fashioning" which existed as an example of Christianity's attempt to understand
human existence and as a challenge to Roman imperialism. The importance of these
texts is the power obtained by the characters because of their martyrdom. This power
was the martyr's ability to reject "their contemporary social order for another where the
power would be theirs, a reversed world in which ... even the emperor will be judged."40
In the Martyrdom ofPolycarp, the reader is reminded that martyrdom is the physical
acting out of the "gospel story" - the death and resurrection of Jesus. "[B]y his
(Polycarp's) martyrdom [he] set his seal as it were upon the persecution, and put an end
to it. For nearly all the preceding events came to pass in order that to us the Lord might
once again give an example ... which resembles the gospel story."41 Their importance
and power of the martyrs was in their ability to be "Exemplars" or "vivid persons as
objects of personal loyalty and imitation" to the early Christian communities who proposed an alternative to the Roman imperial ideology. Peter Brown also presents the
ascetic case for the hatred of the body. This hatred was a result of the ascetics' desire to obtain their own transfiguration and the "eventual transformation of their own bodies on the day of the Resurrection."43 The ascetics of the desert, including Antony, most likely believed that their hatred for their own bodies on this earth of sin would lead to them to
39 Ibid., 104.
40 Ibid., 122.
41 "Martyrdom ofPolycarp," in A New Eusebius: Documents Illustrative of the History of the Church toAD. 337, ed. James Stevenson (London: S.P.C.K., 1987), 23.
42 Brown, "The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity," 3.
43 Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, 222.
73 "regain a future glory for their bodies" which was lost in the fall of Adam and is once again regained through Jesus the Christ. Seeing the transfigured bodies of ascetics spoke to persons of Late Antiquity and spoke to them of the "eventual transformation of their own bodies on the day of the Resurrection."44
The body of Antony as we read in the Life of Antony, and as I will explicate below, is one that bore the scars of this world and through battle with the demons of another. One of the most pronounced features of the Life of Antony is the considerable amounts of pain and suffering which Antony's body endured. In the attempt to self- present an ascetic body free from the flesh of this world, Antony's body became the body of mortified flesh. He himself mortifies his body and flesh by avoiding the pleasures of food and the need for a proper diet, refusing the comfort of the bed to the discomfort of the bare ground, and allows demons to so butcher his flesh that when a friend comes to see Antony, he assumed Antony was dead.45 It maybe the case that this bodily punishment was a way for Antony to experience the suffering and pain of martyrdom which he yearned and prayed for but was never to have endured. As the Life reads: "He yearned to suffer martyrdom, but because he did not wish to hand himself over, he rendered service to the confessors both in the mines and in the prisons."46 In the work of
Clement of Alexandria, one reads about a particular kind of martyrdom, which does not prescribe physical death or the biological death of the flesh, but rather a death through apatheia or passionlessness by way of self-mastery based on Gnostic systems of self-
44 Ibid.
45 Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Macellinus, Introduction - 8.
46 Ibid., 46.
74 cultivation. As Harry O. Maier states in his essay "Clement of Alexandria and the Care of the Self," working alongside Clement's Stromata, this form of martyrdom, "white martyrdom," is "the renunciation of 'worldly' kindred, and wealth, and every possession, in order to lead a life free from passions." Through this form of martyrdom, "the diligent
Christian ... who progresses by careful self-training beyond this stage of the Gnostic life, self-cultivation will blossom into a life where he or she no longer battles with passion, but lives a life so like the passionless perfection of God."47 This desire to become a martyr was one in which Antony would have found rewarding. During is career, Antony left his cell to follow the martyrs: "and when the holy martyrs were led into Alexandria, he also left his cell and followed saying, 'Let us go also, that we may enter the combat, or look upon those who do.'"48 We have already learned that he was raised in a Christian household and can therefore assume stories were shared about the Christian martyrs of previous generations and the glory that their pain would have given them. Furthermore, the very fact that early church writers were engaging in the discussion of self-cultivation,
I would argue, shows that there was an institutionalisation of the body and how one was to care for it.
The first of two major themes, which are played in Antony's self-presentation of the suffering body, is that of human need for food. Fasting was one of the major ways in which Antony was able to ward off the demons that visited and tempted him into sin. For example, the Life reads: "we need not fear their (demons) suggestions, for by prayers and
47 Maier: 734.
48 Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Macellinus, 46.
75 fasting and my faith in the Lord they (demons) are brought down immediately." Even while Antony fasts, the demons tempt him with food while appearing to him as a fellow monk: "while I was fasting, the cunning one even came as a monk, having ... loaves of bread."50 Finally, the text leads readers to believe that in the absence of Antony's martyrdom which he so desired, his abstinence from food became his daily martyrdom.51
Antony maintained a simple diet of bread, salt, water, neither meat nor wine and on many occasions only ate every second day. "He ate once daily, after sunset, but there were times when he received food every second and frequently even every fourth day. His food was bread and salt, and for drinking ... only water." In this weakness, Antony felt that his soul would become intensely stronger.54 It was believed in Late Antiquity that the body could survive the harshest of conditions and "thought capable of running on its own 'heat.' ... [T]he body had acted like a finely tuned engine, capable of 'idling' indefinitely."55 The purpose of fasting and regulating - severely in most cases - the intake of food, it was believed that the body could slowly remake itself into the perfection of Adam before the fall which is evident in Antony's body at the end of his life.56 Upon death, it was noted that Antony's body had not "succumbed" to old age or "frailty of the
49 Ibid., 23. My emphasis.
50 Ibid., 40.
51 Ibid., 46.
52 Harmless, 61-62.
53 Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Macellinus, 7.
54 Ibid.
55 Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, 223.
76 body," but that he had "remained free of injury" retaining his "teeth" and the working of his hands and feet.57 The desert itself represented the body of the ascetic - that land deprived of nourishment and food. In the desert, it became the triumph and greatest achievement of the ascetic to be able to release himself or herself from the needs of food.
This ability to relinquish the self of needing food allowed for, what Brown calls, "the most majestic and the most haunting images of a new humanity."58 Antony's release from the needs of food is significant for its projection of his own attaining of a new and perfected body.
However astonishing this abstinence from food may have been to the reader of the
Life, it was hardly a new phenomenon in the notion of cultivation and care of the self.
Within the discourse of bodily regiment found in Late Antiquity, as already laid out above, great concern surrounded notions of food and the proper use in relation to the body and self. The Encratites of the early Church maintained food regulations that they linked to sexual renunciation: "for the eating of meat was held to link human beings to the wile, carnivorous nature of animas, as intercourse linked them to the sexual nature of brute beasts."59 The pagan Porphyry was strongly opposed to the human consumption of meat that he linked to the humans needs for the materiality of this world.60 The fifth century author Oribasius places great emphasis on the regimen of food intake and the
57 Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Macellinus, 93.
58 Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, 218.
59 Ibid., 93.
60 Ibid., 182.
77 conditions to which various types of foods are to be consumed. This need to regulate food would become an ingrained aspect of monasticism. For John Cassian, fasting became central in one's journey towards communal living during the discernment process and continued as a practice of communal living.62 In The Rule of St. Benedict, the regulation of food and drink insisted no so much on the strict regiments of early Christian periods - such as the great fasting that the Life presents us with - but rather a balance of good food (both hot and cold) and of drink (including alcohol) to ensure the health and ability to work of the monks.
The second major theme of the Life of Antony is its attention to Antony's battle and ongoing struggles with demons. James E. Goehring argues that the image of the desert as the home of demons is significant because it symbolises the expansion of divine civilisation - the Christian world of God - into the "uncivilized realms of Satan."64 For
David Brakke, the demons represent a two fold binary. First, there is the relation of the vertical, or this world versus the other world, the conflict between heaven and hell. The second binary is the horizontal conflict between the settled land and civilised person
(Antony) and the desert (demons). 5 I would further suggest that the demons could be representations of Antony's own self, which he is fighting against in his own work to regain the body of the fallen Adam. Antony may be able to shed some light on this in his
61 Foucault, The Care of the Self: Volume 3 of the History of Sexuality, 140-41.
62 Cassian, Conferences. 61-62, 64, and 76.
63 Benedict, St. Benedict's Rule for Monasteries, trans. Leonard J. Doyle (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1948), Sections 39 and 40.
64 Goehring, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert: Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism, 75.
65 Brakke, Athanasius and Asceticism, 217.
78 own letters where he argues that demons have no bodies and are invisible and that they work within the human and have access to our thoughts.66 The bodily tortures and mortifications that I describe below are then viewed through the lens of personal abuse of one's own body inhabited with demons. We first read about Antony's battle with demons in chapter 8 of the Life. In this section, the demons visit him to mutilate his body by whipping him "with such force that he lay on the earth, speechless from the tortures."67 After this first ordeal, it is clear from the text that Antony was ready to battle the demons saying, "Here I am - Antony! I do not run from your blows, for even if you give me more, nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ." This is Antony's giving of his body in the battle of self cultivation. Those who followed Antony at this time witnessed his battle as they, hearing sounds from where Antony was staying, could see nobody other than Antony and concluded that his adversaries were demons.69 My interpretation of these particular events, reading alongside the cultivation of the self, was
66 Antony, VI.
67 Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Macellinus, 8.
68 Ibid., 9.
69 Ibid., 13.
79 that Antony's battle was with his own self and therefore constituted his followers inability to see any 'other' involved in the battle. The text also states that the demons
"saw [their] own weakness in the face of Antony's resolve, and say that [they] instead
[were] being thrown for a fall by the sturdiness of this contestant, and being by his great faith and falling over Antony's constant prayers."70 Antony's relationship with the battle was one of contest, wrestling, and temptation. An engraving by German artist Martin
Schongauer clearly depicts the suffering body of Antony at the hands of the demons (or his inner self). This artist's medieval rendition shows demons pulling at various parts of
Antony's body. However, the body is still
=^S. shown to be in a state of good condition. This
possibility may be the artists understanding of
Antony's ability to ward off demons later in life
as a result of his reaching a level of superiority
through his asceticism - attaining the perfected
body of the fallen Adam or the body the Son
incarnate in Jesus. Antony's means of defeating
the demons was through strict and observant
asceticism and through strength in this practice,
Saint Anthony Tormented by Demons engraved by German artist Martin Schongauer, c. 1475. the demons would fail to defeat Antony: "let us (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1920. [20.5.2]). Copied from William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early devote ourselves to our own purpose in the Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 63. discipline, and not be led astray by them, though they do all things with cunning.",7 1 It was not a battle that was fought alone, however.
' Ibid., 5.
80 Antony believed fully that as "the Lord, as God, silenced the demons" so too was he capable of such an act since on his side was the Lord. {Life, 51)
The role of the demon is key in Antony's cultivation of the self, but it was not new to the Christian discourse of the self in Late Antiquity. Pin-pointing one particular denotation of demon in Antiquity and into Late Antiquity is difficult. The notion of demon as presented in the Life would have been created in relation to Judeo-Christian notions of evil and ancient Greek and Roman philosophy and religions. Frederick E.
Brenk, in his work on demonology, states that no one meaning of the term "daimon"
(demon) can be found. Demons were seen as spirits who worked opposite the gods. In
Plutarch's De Defectu Oraculorum, demons are the temptations of the persons' soul which, when given in to, return the body to its mortal state, a life of dimness and darkness.73 In Plutarch's Lives, Marcellus, possession of a demon is described as a body being taken over by other forces: "he tore off his mantle, rent his tunic, and leaping up half naked, ran towards the exit from the theatre, crying out that he was pursued .... No man venturing to lay hands upon him or even to come in his way, out of superstitious fear."74 In Philo's On the Giants, the demons are represented as part of an inner struggle with the self and soul to situate themselves in a philosophy which would allow the person to die in the flesh of this world to soar into the world of God. Those souls and selves which do not obtain this ability to die sink beneath the surface and can only remain of the
71 Ibid., 26.
72 See Frederick E. Brenk, "In the Light of the Moon: Demonology in the Early Imperial Period " Aufstieg undNiedergang der romischen Welt 16, no. 3 (1986): 2068-2145.
73 Wendy Cotter, Miracles in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook for the Study of the New Testament Miracle Stories (London: Routledge, 1999), 78.
74 Ibid., 79.
81 flesh. This positioning of the self in relation to an inner struggle well situates what I
have already said about Antony. The demons that he was facing were inner demons, the
battling of his own self in relation to the vices of the flesh. What is clear about this presentation of demons in relation to the care of the self in Antiquity is the idea that the
self is never in a state of peaceful bliss. The self is in a constant or semi-constant battle with a construct of the other. Whether this other is necessarily an actual being or just an element of the self engaged in an inner battle, the notion of demons is essential. Demons are able to represent the conflict of this world and the desire to be rid of that state for perfection. In the case of Antony, the character's self-representation of battling with demons and his eventual victory through regaining the body of the fallen Adam through
Jesus the Christ is significant. Readers of this ancient text would be able to recognise the dualistic cosmic battle between good and evil, sin and redemption, Satan and God.
Through this recognition and the correlation of the flesh with evil (or the realm of demons), the self could be recultivated to attain the body of the fallen Adam.
The Life of Antony has remained the focal primary source for this thesis.
However, in my above work on the historical Antony, situating him in his own world, I also made note of his own writings, The Letters of Saint Antony the Great. In order to fully grasp the presentation of the self through the character of Antony in the Life, it is important to explore that reflection of the self in Antony's own writings. Like the Life, the body as presented in the Letters is one which requires regulation along with the soul so as to be "purified and enter together into their inheritance."76 According the work of
75 Ibid., 95.
76 Antony, I.
82 Samuel Rubenson, both the Life and the Letters present the body is in need of "stability and peace in accordance with the spiritual in man (sic)."71 Again, like the Life, the body is the be purified through fasting, vigils and prayers, and through one's disconnecting from the desires and lusts of the flesh.78 Demons, or in this case evil spirits, are once again present; the purpose of the demons, according to Antony, is to "tempt us ... and seek to define those who are setting out on a way of purity."79 This sounds quite similar as to the presence of demons in the Life. However, unlike the mortification of the flesh found in the Life that is the central focus of recreating the body in the image of the pre fallen Adam, the purification of the body in the Letters starts not with the fleshbu t with the mind allowing the spirit and the mind to connect and work to purify the flesh. The self is not to be found enduring the self-induced pains of the flesh as they are in the Life.
This comparison on texts around the cultivation of the self does show some surprising similarities that may be further evidence of a common discourse within Christianity about the ways to care for the self. The major comparison which can be made is the need for the body to exist within and of a self that is regulated. The examples of food and of battling with demons can be found in both texts.
Foucault's work in the Care of the Self"and "Technologies of the Self opens up a discourse within Christianity about how the self was seen and cultivated. Equally, the development of masculinity studies has opened up new avenues in understanding gender.
77 Rubenson, 136.
78 Antony, I.
79 Ibid.
80 Ibid. This notion is expanded upon by Rubenson who argues that the severe mortification of the flesh found in the Life is not present in the Letters for the author of the former had different perspectives on the fall of man (sic) and the history of salvation. See Rubenson, particularly page 137.
83 This thesis opens up that discourse by presenting a theoretical mode for masculinity gender performance. A gendered reading of the Life of Antony and its central character allows the text to open up to new possibilities of understanding and interpretation and how that text may have reshaped the masculinised self of Late Antiquity within the
Christian constructions of the self. David Barkke, in his text Athanasius and Asceticism, argues that Athanasius (who he assumes through historical evidence is the author of the
Life) wrote the Life to be a spiritual programme. This programme described the Christian life in terms of a myth, "according to which Christians ascended to heaven by means of a way up that the devil and his demons once blocked but that the Word of God had made accessible." Brakke continues by stating that the Life "translates this complex vision into the story of a single person, the monk Antony, whose career functions as a pattern for the successful Christian life." Much the same as the gospels are not able to present a historical biography of Jesus, my reading of the Life, as I mentioned before, is not an attempt to discover a historical Antony. Like Brakke, the Life serves as a literary model, a rule of life, for the construction of the Christian self. More than just the self, the masculinised self becomes moulded. The central character of the Life is presented in the body of a male and therefore becomes read through the lens of masculinity.
In chapter three of this thesis, I presented a genealogy of masculinities in Late
Antiquity. Working alongside Maude Gleason, I was able to show how the performance of the body established a construct of gender. My engagement with Craig A. Williams explored the performative roles of masculinity through biological males' ability to
81 Brakke, Athanasius and Asceticism, 216-17.
82 Ibid., 217.
84 penetrate those of lower status. My assessment of Carlin Barton's work showed how
masculinity was understood within the context of the gladiator. In all three examples,
one particular aspect remains critical: all three forms of masculinity were exclusive to the
group or social class to which they were prescribed. For example, Williams' analysis of
masculinity has masculinity understood by one's ability to penetrate those of a lower
class. The work of Maude Gleason presents masculinity in the age of rhetoric through a
man's ability to perform in the theatre of academics and man's ability to partake in civic
government.84 Carlin Barton's masculinity is prescribed for the man desiring death as a
form of honour.85 All three of these examples construct masculinity under the pretences
of an exclusion of some who may have biologically been male. None prescribes masculinity inclusive to all members of society. However, within the Christian discourse, particularly with reference to the sacrament of baptism in which all become, regardless or class, economy, or geography, full members, the construct of masculinity as presented in the body of Antony is available to all. The Life itself was not a text exclusive to only a select group of people. Though it is presumed that it was written at the request of monks who had heard of Antony, it was written so that all "might lead yourselves in imitation of him."
The masculine body presented in the Life is one who endures the pain and suffering of the earthly world in an attempt to regain the body of the fallen Adam through imitation of the Son, that is the same as the Father, incarnate in Jesus. The body of
83 Williams, Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity, 18.
84 Gleason, 27-28. Working with this text, Virginia Burrus also presents this notion in Burrus.
85 Barton, 16 and 18.
86 Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Macellinus, Introduction.
85 Antony - particularly his body after fully achieving his ascetic way of life and his
regaining of the body of the fallen Adam - becomes that body which readers of the text
would want to obtain. The masculine body of the ascetic becomes a hegemonic body for
the Christian man; that is to say, these bodies become "exemplars" of what the Christian
male self and body are to be like. The hegemonic body of the ascetic becomes that, at
least for a time, the body that all other bodies are compared to. It is not necessarily a
fixed state and is contestable, but one which, by ways of cultural ideals and institutional
power, becomes the dominant ideal.87 This dominance and normalizing of the Christian
self performed in the body is a clear example of the cultural and political shifts of empire;
a new imperial colonization of the body takes place that is not centred within the
discourse of the Roman Imperial order but rather in the new empire of Christianity. To
obtain the new body of Christianity, that is the body of the pre-fallen Adam, was to
follow the Life as a programme of regimen - as a regiment for the cultivation of the self.
Like the Greek and Roman texts that Foucault presents which regulate the body and self
around modes of eating and drinking, when to have sex, how much sex to have, who to
have sex with, when to participate in sports, etc. in order to live the best possible life, the
Life too sets forth such regiments in an ingenious way to establish a soteriology moving
away from a state of corruption to a state of incorruption opened through the sacrifice of the Son on the cross. The mortification of the body in the Life shows a continuation of
87 I would argue that the masculine body of the ascetic becomes a hegemonic body for the Christian man; that is to say, these bodies become "exemplars" of what the Christian male self and body are to be like. The hegemonic body of the ascetic becomes, at least for a time, the body that all other bodies are compared to. It is not necessarily a fixed state and is contestable, but one which, by ways of cultural ideals and institutional power, becomes the dominant ideal. For further works on the notion of hegemonic masculinities see Tim Carrigan, Bob Connell, and John Lee, "Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity," Theory & Society 14, no. 5 (1985), R.W. Connell, Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), R.W. Connell, Masculinities: Knowledge, Power, and Social Change (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), R.W. Connell, Gender (Maiden: Blackwell Publishers, 2002).
86 the care of the self (though it may be easily argued that causing the body pain and suffering does not necessarily constitute the same type of care of the self prescribed by earlier authors and presented by Foucault). However, returning to the work of Judith
Perkins who argues that the Christian self of the second century was constructed around the notion of pain and suffering, the Christian care of the self is the recognition that the body of this world - the site of performativity of the interior self- is one that needs to be perfected through pain and suffering. This Christian self is then set against the backdrop of Adam before the fall again attainable through the Son. The Life becomes for its readers a "social discourse" of how once again through the Son and through the remoulding of the self presented in the body of a male, the follower is able to regain the self and body of the pre-fallen Adam and be prescribed into a gendered performance through character imitation.
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