Rapp, ''Virgins of God'. The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity', Bryn Mawr Medieval Review 9504
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmmr/bmmr-9504-rapp-virgins

@@@@95.4.4, Elm, Virgins of God

Susanna Elm, <i>'Virgins of God'. The Making of Asceticism in
Late Antiquity</i>. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Pp.444.
$70.00. ISBN 0-19-814920-4.
     Reviewed by Claudia Rapp -- University of California (Los
Angeles
     rapp@histr.sscnet.ucla.edu

     As the study of Late Antiquity is becoming a field in its
own right, this is reflected in an increased volume of
publications. The last three decades have brought forth an great
number of studies on regional, social, institutional and
religious topics. In recent years, this process has culminated in
the emergence of a number of new 'revisionist' works, building on
earlier efforts to identify, assemble, and sift the source
material and approaching this material with a fresh mind and new
interpretive methods. 

     Susanna Elm's book is a significant contribution in this
vein. Broadly speaking, it deals with the variety of ascetic
lifestyles in the 4th century AD and the process by which
specific models of ascetic life, i.e. those of Pachomius in Egypt
and Basil of Caesarea in Asia Minor, became normative and
formative for the subsequent monastic tradition of the Middle
Ages. E. sets the framework of her inquiry in the introduction,
declaring her debt to the works of sociologists (Max Weber) and
historians of women's religiosity (Caroline Walker-Bynum). She
sees her topic as a test case for theories about the formation of
societies and the mechanisms for the control or exclusion of
marginal groups, thus also justifying her focus on the experience
of women. She argues convincingly that a complete picture of the
life of religious communities in the 4th century can only be
gained once we abandon our linear conception and cease to view
the early monastic movement through the lens of Benedictine
monasticism which grew out of it. 

     Having thus outlined her approach and established the
relevance of her work as an <i>exemplum</i> of historical
analysis, E. develops her argument. The book is divided into two
parts, Asia Minor and Egypt; thus it moves backward in terms of
chronology. Confusing though this may at first seem, this
arrangement enables E. to establish her interpretive model for
the region and period where the evidence is relatively abundant
and allows her then to apply the same model to her interpretation
of the situation in Egypt, where the documentation is much more
patchy and problematic. 

     She begins with the Councils of Elvira (306) and Ancyra
(314), which aimed to regulate the life of those who had
professed virginity, and then makes a few flashbacks to the 2nd
and 3rd centuries, in order to show that women who decided to
pursue an ascetic life as virgins had to do so within the
established institution of the household, either in their
parental home, under the authority of the <i>paterfamilias</i>,
or by breaking the ties with their family and joining the
household of a clergyman (as <i>virgines subintroductae</i>), a
mutually beneficial arrangement, granting economic security to
the virgin and affording household services and the opportunity
to practise charity for the cleric. 

     The second and third chapters are, in my view, the best of
the whole book. They contain a juxtaposition of the contribution
of Basil of Caesarea to the formulation of a monastic ideal in
theory and practice with the achievement of his sister Macrina in
forging an ascetic life. After the premature death of her fiance,
Macrina declared herself a 'widow' and devoted her life to the
pursuit of virginity and asceticism. It is significant that she
initially did so within her parental home (thus following
established precedent for the life of female virgins), first on
her own, then joined by her mother and younger brother Peter (who
supervised the other men in the household). Soon, they attracted
other women of noble and less noble background. This process
culminated in the transformation of the household into a
veritable monastic community of like-minded virgins of equal
social status. From E.'s careful analysis of Gregory of Nyssa's
<i>Life</i> of his sister Macrina, Basil's <i>Letters</i> and
other sources emerges a new interpretation which is nothing less
than revolutionary: it is Macrina whose resolve and initiative
give birth to the monastic model of communal life in Asia Minor,
Basil is merely its imitator as the leader of groups of ascetic
men (his first monastic retreat to the family estate in Annesi
dates to 357/8, more than a decade after the retreat of Macrina
and her mother) and his contribution is that of a 'reformer' who
formulates in his <i>Asketikon</i> the principles and precepts
which govern these communities. 

     The following chapters penetrate even deeper into the
sources and trace the history of communal asceticism in Asia
Minor back another few decades, to around 330, and to the
'dynamic figure' (p. 124) of Eustathius of Sebaste, an advocate
of the homoiousian (Arian) doctrine. He was condemned by the
Synod of Gangra (340 or 341) because his followers engaged in
unacceptable customs. He and his fellow-ascetics, E. argues,
caused offense because of their belief that women can be
transformed through asceticism into 'manly virgins' (who cut
their hair and wore men's clothes--in contrast to Macrina's group
who adhered to the traditional modes of female conduct) and that
both men and women vowed to chastity can transcend their
sexuality and live a communal life. Basil, an adherent of Nicene,
homoousian doctrine, sought to counteract the popularity of
Eustathius by marginalizing the most powerful elements in his
movement: he insisted that ascetic communities move to the
countryside, away from the urban centers where they had made a
name for themselves as pressure groups and trouble-makers in the
doctrinal debates, and he aims to further curb their growing
strength by advocating the strict segregation of men and women,
thereby binding women to their subordinate role. Through such
repressive measures, Basil was, as bishop of Caesarea (370-379),
able to safeguard orthodoxy and at the same time to assert the
superiority of the institutional clergy. 

     The case of Egypt is even more complex: Since the 3rd
century, women pursued a variety of ascetic lifestyles: at home
or in the household of a clergyman. In addition to these patterns
with which we are familiar from the discussion of Asia Minor, we
also encounter ascetic women living in secluded communities of
women or withdrawing as solitaries to the desert, where they
either remained in one place or roamed about, but always
maintained some form of contact with the male hermits. With
regard to the communal monasticism of women, three different
modes of organization can be distinguished according to their
historical origin, which gives definition to the relation of the
nuns to male authority. Pachomius' foundation for his younger
sister Maria (in 329) is aptly labelled 'a family affair' (p.
291), where the <i>paterfamilias</i> (in this case the male
superior of the men's community) holds the highest authority also
over the adjacent women's establishment. Shenoute of Atripe, by
contrast, the superior of the White Monastery from 383/5 to 466,
established the monastic rules for a community that already
consisted of a male and a separate female settlement in the
vicinity, and therefore granted relative autonomy to the
<i>mater</i> of the women's branch. 

     Finally, there is Athanasius of Alexandria and his attitude
towards monasticism and female ascetics. E. coaxes the sources
with the help of some ingenious guess-work to reveal a scenario
parallel to that which Basil so forcefully tackled in Asia Minor.
In Egypt, it was the ascetic groups around Hieracas and the
Melitians, both groups opponents of the Council of Nicaea, i.e.
Arians, who accorded a prominent role to women and brought unrest
to the cities. In addressing this situation, Athanasius made
every effort to win the ascetics and especially the <i>ordo</i>
of virgins over to his side (or at least to assure their
neutrality) and at the same time strove to increase the authority
of the orthodox clergy. 

     In a concluding chapter, E. explains how differing ascetic
views and practices of homoousians and Arians were rooted in
their conceptions of the relation between God and His creation
and the human ability to attain salvation, reflected in their
attitudes to the body as an instrument towards this goal.

     There are various subtexts one could read into this book:
One might discover a narrative of increased masculinization of
the ascetic ideal and deliberate strategies to bring the female
element under control. E. does not make this much of an issue,
although she sometimes bases her argument on the assumption that
women demanded their share of power and self-determination.
Another constant theme which underlies the argument, directly
connected with the former, is the growth of the clergy in the age
after Constantine, which increasingly monopolized the
interpretation of doctrine and the regulation of the life of
Christian men and women. 

     This is an ambitious book. Instead of three venerable
patristic figures, Basil, Pachomius and Athanasius, as the
founding fathers of the monastic tradition, we are now faced with
a variegated ascetic tradition in which women and heretics played
the pivotal role. E.'s argument is based on an impressive mastery
of the sources and of the secondary literature (the bibliography
will prove very useful to students of this period). As the
argument unfolds, it goes into great detail, which the general
reader may find overwhelming. But this is counterbalanced by
frequent summaries in apposite places. The specialist reader may
be disappointed by inaccuracies in the Greek citations (due to
negligent proofreading?) and puzzled by the consistent use of
<i>koine</i> to denote the rural areas of Egypt. 

     If the book sometimes seems too narrow in its focus, to the
exclusion of larger developments affecting the role of women and
the attraction and mode of operation of 'heretical' movements in
4th century society, this is easily excused by the complexity of
the phenomenon the author has successfully addressed in over 400
pages. It would be a work of lesser value if it did not invite
the reader to probe deeper into the fascinating transformation of
Church and Empire in Late Antiquity.