Early Christian Mystagogy and the Body 9042948507, 9789042948501

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Early Christian Mystagogy and the Body

Edited by

Nienke Vos and Paul van Geest

PEETERS

EARLY CHRISTIAN MYSTAGOGY AND THE BODY

ANNUA NUNTIA LOVANIENSIA

LXXXIII

Early Christian Mystagogy and the Body

Edited by

Nienke Vos and Paul van Geest

PEETERS

LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT

2022

Cover illustration: “The Healing of a Bleeding Woman (the Haemorrhoissa),” Rome, Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm or any other means without written permission from the publisher © Uitgeverij Peeters, Bondgenotenlaan 153, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium) ISBN 978-90-429-4850-1 eISBN 978-90-429-4851-8 D/2022/0602/39

Contents Paul van Geest and Nienke Vos Introduction: The Layered Valuation of the Human Body in Early Christian Mystagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Part 1:  The Ante-Nicene Period Henk Bakker Kissing Hermas: Convertive Mystagogy in the Shepherd. . . . . . . . 21 Peter-Ben Smit Let’s Get Physical: Ignatius of Antioch and Judith Butler. . . . . . . 49 Don Springer Embodied Spirituality in Irenaeus of Lyons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Vincent Hunink Female Bodies: Perpetua and Felicitas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Ilaria Ramelli The Soul-Body Relation in Origen of Alexandria: Ensomatosis vs. Metensomatosis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Mathew Kuefler Christian Self-Castration as Mystagogical Practice. . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Part 2:  The Post-Nicene Period: The Eastern Tradition Hanna Lucas The Humanity of Christ and Embodiment in the Sacraments: Theodorean Christology and Experiential Mystagogy. . . . . . . . . . 141 Nathan Witkamp A Multi-Layered Garment of Immortality: The Coverings of the Body in Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Baptismal Rite . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

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Wendy Mayer Training the Soul, Embracing the Body: John Chrysostom and Embodied Mystagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Yulia Rozumna St Basil of Caesarea on the Role of the Body in Life after Baptism. 199 Giulio Maspero The Role of the Body in Gregory of Nyssa’s Mystagogical Exegesis of The Song of Songs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Ilaria Vigorelli Mariology as Mystagogy? Eternity and the Body in Gregory of Nyssa’s Theology of Virginity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 Nienke Vos Early Christian Mystagogy and the Body: Obstacle and Opportunity in the Ascetic Tradition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Daniel Lemeni “It Is Enough for Me to See You”: The Saintly Body in Late Antique Monasticism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 Hans van Loon The Role of the Human Body in Cyril of Alexandria’s Mystagogy. 291 Part 3:  The Post-Nicene Period: The Western Tradition Metha Hokke Physical Virginity against the Background of Creation and Christology: A Comparison of the Virginity Treatises by Ambrose and Gregory of Nyssa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317 Manuel Mira The Concept of the Human Body in Ambrose of Milan’s Mystagogical Works and Parallels with John Chrysostom’s Baptismal Homilies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341



CONTENTS

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Paul van Geest The Care of the Body in Augustine’s Mystagogy as a Criterion for Orthodoxy? His Praeceptum and De haeresibus Reread . . . . . . . . . 365 Martin Claes Anthropocentric Christology in Augustine’s Confessiones 13: Sensory and Corporeal Aspects of Mystagogy in the Context of the Earlier Commentaries on Genesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 Laela Zwollo Aweful/Awesome St Augustine: Is the Body the Cornerstone of His Theology?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 Catherine Conybeare Writing the Self as a Route to God. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 Part 4: Towards the Medieval Period: Window and Bridge Giselle de Nie Victricius of Rouen on Relics as Divinized Bodies: Analyzing his Mystagogy with Modern Models of Perception. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443 Danuta Shanzer Food of Judgment: Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. . . 467 Abbreviations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499 List of Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501

Introduction

The Layered Valuation of the Human Body in Early Christian Mystagogy Paul van Geest and Nienke Vos I.  Early Christian Approaches to the Body and Their Antecedents Ground-breaking studies on the importance of asceticism and its implications, such as those by Henri Crouzel and later Elizabeth Clark, seem to leave no room for doubt. In his Virginité et mariage selon Origène (1963), the former already concluded what the latter emphasized even more emphatically in her Reading Renunciation. Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (1999): for early Christian authors, the origin of human impurity lies in human corporeity. Crouzel inferred from Origen’s work that this Church Father considered every human being to be born physically impure, because the sexual intercourse in which his or her parents engaged occasioned not only their own impurity, but also that of their child.1 It is true that Origen situated the origin of impurity not in the body as such, but in the selfishness and the passions that are inherent in being corporeal.2 For him, the passions awakened the sex drive, and these were thus at the root of the impurity that sexual partners caused in one another. By consequence, their prayers were no longer pure. It was no longer possible for them to live in God’s friendship. Origen saw Paul’s exhortation to spouses to refrain from sexual intercourse for the sake of prayer as proof that sexuality and prayer could never be mixed.3 And so, according to Crouzel, a need for purity underlay Origen’s asceticism. 1  Henri Crouzel, Virginité et mariage selon Origène (Paris and Bruges: Desclée De Brouwer, 1963), 11, 47, and passim. Cf. Origène, Homélies sur le Lévitique, ed. and trans. Marcel Borret, SC 286 and 287 (Paris: Cerf, 1981), SC 286, 51ff. Cf. also SC 287, 18, 20, and 22. 2  Crouzel, Virginité et mariage. Cf. Origen, Commentarii in Epistulam ad Romanos / Römerbriefkommentar: Liber quintus, liber sextus, ed. and trans. Th. Heither, FC 2/3 (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1993), 160-162. 3  Cf. Origène, Homélies sur l’Exode, ed. and trans. Marcel Borret, SC 321 (Paris: Cerf, 1985), 348-350.

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Clark approached Origen’s work from a different angle. She concluded that Origen and other early Christian authors legitimized asceticism by appealing to the cultic, ritual, and ethical purity laws of Leviticus and to Hebrew Law in general. They read these laws “with ascetic eyes,” so that the precepts intended for temporary sexual abstinence prior to temple service were interpreted as injunctions to lifelong sexual abstinence. In addition, these purity rules, which had originally been intended for Hebrew priests, were considered to apply to all Christians.4 Regardless of whether one looks at Origen primarily from Crouzel’s or Clark’s perspective, it is clear that the focus on radical asceticism demonstrates that Origen and his fellow Christians believed that it was necessary to escape the physical reality of being human as much as possible, because the body was the pre-eminent distraction from prayer and from contemplation of the invisible and immaterial Divinity. However, Irenaeus represented a long convention that also existed in early Christian heresiology, according to which “heretics” such as Tatian, Marcion, and others were condemned because they rejected sex altogether and denigrated the body. Irenaeus had denounced Tatian, as had Clement of Alexandria. In De haeresibus, Augustine would equally condemn various groups because of their hostility to the body. Moreover, many monks – including Augustine himself – and their ascetic practices, whether of Christian or non-Christian provenance, appear to have foreshadowed modern anthropology in the sense that their practical guidelines acknowledge the great importance of the body and of bodily processes for the spiritual life. Thus Augustine writes in his Praeceptum that fasting is permitted to the extent that it does not affect a person’s health, that the sick must be given the food they need, and that persons who need to take a public bath for health reasons must never be denied.5 Moreover, from 400 onwards, he believed that Adam and Eve, when 4  Elizabeth A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 59-61 (quotation), 208-209, 216. Recent research has also demonstrated that although Origen substantiates his vision of impurity and holiness in an ethical discourse, purity has no purely spiritual and no purely ethical meaning in his work. There is a tension between literal and metaphorical, existential (that is, prior to personal sins), and ethical understandings of the terms. Cf. Marian Geurtsen, Reinheid van lichaam en ziel: Vroegchristelijke discussies over procreatieve onreinheid van vrouwen en mannen en hun liturgische participatie, Netherlands Studies in Ritual and Liturgy 20 (Amsterdam and Groningen: Institute for Ritual and Liturgical Studies, 2019), 215-228. 5  Praeceptum 1.2-8; 2.1-4; 3.1-5; 5.1-11; Luc Verheijen, La règle de saint Augustin (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1967), 417-437 contains the critical edition of Augustine’s Praeceptum.

INTRODUCTION 3

they were still in paradise, were in possession of the same sexual organs and the same capacity to have sex as people after the Fall (with this difference that Adam and Eve were not driven by concupiscentia in paradise). They must therefore have had a healthy body, he concluded, not ruined by sickness or excess, and they must have had real intercourse in order to conceive offspring.6 Similarly, Athanasius mentions at the end of his Vita Antonii that when Antony died, he still had all his teeth even though they were eroded.7 The bishop of Alexandria apparently wished to highlight that his great model and example had remained of sound body as well of sound soul throughout his ascetic quest for God. In addition, Peter Brown’s masterly Body and Society shows that both the work of the aforementioned authors and the broader history of early Christianity show many shades between the two extremes, and sometimes the extremes even appear to meet. According to Brown, Origen, for instance, did not consider it to be a disaster that each individual soul was given a body, but regarded this as a token of divine grace, as the body was indispensable to “the slow healing of the soul.”8 He observes that Augustine thought that the body should be disciplined because sexual urges and feelings do not submit to the will. This discrepancy between body and soul was certainly not a blessing to human beings, but rather a fitting punishment for their disobedience in paradise (poena reciproca).9 Brown’s chapters on Ambrose and Chrysostom, furthermore, clarify that navigation between appreciation of the body in the search for God, on the one hand, and the pursuit of detachment from finite corporeal goods as propaedeutic to the ascent of the soul on the other is a constant throughout Church history. For Ambrose, baptism meant exchanging weak flesh for “reformed flesh,”10 and the study of Chrysostom’s work reveals that this Church Father believed that the body of a poor person was of the same dignity as the body of the rich person who passes him or her by without even noticing their presence: after all, all humans are descended from Adam. Chrysostom, then, understood corporeity itself as a call to solidarity with the poor.11  Augustine, De bono coniugali 8.8.  Athanasius, Vita Antonii 93; cf. 14.3. In Athanase d’Alexandrie, Vie d’Antoine, ed. and trans. Gerard J. M. Bartelink, SC 400 (Paris: Cerf, 1995), 372-374. 8  Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988; Twentieth-Anniversary Edition with New Introduction, Columbia Classics in Religion, 2008), 165. 9  Ibid., 416. 10  Ibid., 350. 11  Ibid., 316, 321. 6 7

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But even if assessments of the body are quite diverse, there seems to be no place in early Christianity for glorification of the body or elevation of corporeity to the highest standard of existence. Rather, the fundamental principles that govern the way corporeity is judged rely upon the fact that the body is finite. Thus Augustine at the end of his life interpreted “the body” as “the time of life in the body.”12 It is important to note that these early Christian interpretations of the body were informed by a variety of traditions. First, one fundamental influence on the Christian vision and experience of the body was the human image developed by Plato and Plotinus. In their view, the phase of sensory perception would ideally be followed by one in which people perceived the eternal, timeless and unchanging “realities” (“ideas”) in a non-sensory way, finding their fulfilment in the pure contemplation of Beauty, Truth, Goodness: “forms” and “ideals” which, they thought, found only faint expression in perceptible and perishable objects. Second, in addition to Plato’s representation of the body, Aristotle’s conception of corporeity also resonated in early Christian works. In this case, the interconnectedness between the physical and the spiritual existence was expressed in the notion that the soul is the form of the body, just as it is the form “chair” that makes a chair of this particular object. Moreover, form is permanent, and therefore the soul is permanent. Thus, like Plato’s image of the human, this idea of Aristotle’s contributed in early Christianity to an experience of spiritual life in terms of the highest goal and of “the time of life in the body” as a preparation for eternal life. A third aspect relates to both the impact of Plato’s spiritual vision in early Christianity and, more directly, to the equation of flesh and sin on the basis of the opposition between “flesh” and “spirit” as mentioned by Paul in his epistles. This led, among the Desert Fathers for example, to distrust of the body as a “medium,” because temptations in the form of sensations came to overwhelm human beings through their bodies. Humans were often unable to withstand these temptations, which would make them morally abject. The human body was thus conceived as an instrument of a constituent subject, but it was also believed that humans participated in a natural life that was infinitely more comprehensive than the individual body in which this natural life was at work.13 Both 12  Augustine, Liber de praedestinatione sanctorum 12.24 (PL 44, col. 977; Ut per corpus intelligamus, per corporis tempus). 13  An association with Merleau-Ponty’s “corps vécu” springs to mind. Cf. H. L. ­Dreyfus, “The Current Relevance of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Embodiment,” The Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy 4.4 (1996): 1-16.

INTRODUCTION 5

a­ ssumptions, (1) the body influences the human as a subject, and (2) a comprehensive natural life expresses itself through corporeity, meant that the body was conceived as a medium to be controlled or disciplined. For bodily sensations and the states of mind associated with them could distract one from the pursuit of a morally responsible, “spiritual” life, which was in accordance with the place provided to human beings as God’s co-creators in the order of creation, that is, the natural order. Finally, it should be noted that while the indebtedness of early Christian authors to Platonism implied that they regarded physical existence as secondary to the spiritual existence, they also conceived of it as a foreshadowing of the pure, divine forms of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness. Augustine frequently observes in this vein that the human body is a wonderful system, in which all parts are miraculously and harmoniously arranged and connected with each other in such a way that the body as a unity can do what it is meant to do. The aesthetic revaluation of the body which took place during the Renaissance and in humanism, can thus also be traced back to the way in which Church Fathers spoke about order in the body, even though they had become estranged from the practice of medical science, which Hippocrates had consciously based on empirical research. It was not until the Renaissance that people returned to Hippocrates; Mondino wrote his Anatomia Mundini after carrying out thirteen dissections, and the Council of Venice in 1368 decided that every year, the corpse of one executed man could be examined.14 Be that as it may, Augustine clearly shows in his Confessions that he values sensory perception, and therefore corporeity, in the context of human beings’ attempts to conceive an image of God. And at the end of his life he hastened to mention that not the body, but the soul and the spirit are the sources of wrong choices – it was not corruptible flesh that made the soul sinful, but it was the sinful soul that made the flesh corruptible.15 In short: early Christian conceptions of corporeity are not unambiguous. In works written by early Christian authors who reflected on the concrete experience of (their own) physicality, we come across divergent 14  T. Borsche‚ “Leib, Körper. Definition. I. Antike und Mittelalter,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Joachim Ritter and Karlfried Gründer, vol. 5 (Basel and Stuttgart: Schwabe, 1980), 173-178; R. Specht, “Leib–Seele–Verhältnis. I. Problemstellung. II. L.-S.-Verhältnis-Theorien seit dem Hellenismus,” ibid., 185-201; cf. Martin Carrier and Jürgen Mittelstraß‚ Mind, Brain, Behavior: The Mind-Body Problem and the Philosophy of Psychology, trans. Steven Lindberg (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1991), 271-282. 15  Augustine, De ciuitate Dei 14.3.2.; Augustinus, De civitate Dei, ed. Bernhard ­Dombart and Alphonsus Kalb, 2 vols., CCSL 48 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), 416-417.

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valuations of human physical existence. The ambiguity lies in the fact that the body is always conceived as an “object” inherent to the earthly subject, an object that requires care and attention; it must be controlled or disciplined so as not to distract the human being as a whole from his or her ultimate goal. In order to achieve this, formation and transformation are necessary. To understand the role that the body played in early Christian formation processes, we must now turn to the study of mystagogy in the broad sense of this word. II.  Early Christian Writers as Mystagogues For over a decade, the research agenda of the Dutch Centre for Patristic Research (CPO: Centrum voor Patristisch Onderzoek, now CSEC: Centre for the Study of Early Christianity – a joint venture of Tilburg University and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) has centred on the mystagogy of the Church Fathers. This was chosen as the Centre’s main focus because such research is reflective of the intentions of the Church Fathers themselves: more than theologians avant la lettre, they were mystagogues in the broad sense of the word, that is, they initiated processes of transformation in teaching and in the liturgy to awaken the awareness that God is both incomprehensible and paradoxically close.16 This approach also filled a gap in international scholarship. Compared to the research required to prepare critical editions and translations of works by early Christian authors, or the study of theological themes, the investigation of formation strategies during the first centuries of Christianity had received only little attention. The new topic of mystagogy was understood in both a more limited and a broader sense. “Mystagogy” literally means “leading into the mysteries” and it usually refers to lectures on the sacraments that were delivered to the newly baptized, the mystes.17 It is clear from a brief statement 16  Paul van Geest, “Studying the Mystagogy of the Fathers: An Introduction,” in Seeing through the Eyes of Faith: New Approaches to the Mystagogy of the Church Fathers, ed. Paul van Geest, LAHR 11; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 2 (Louvain: Peeters, 2016), 3-22. 17  For the similarities and differences between the roles of the mystagogue and the mystes in different religions, see Kees Waaijman, Spirituality: Forms, Foundations, Methods, Studies in Spirituality Supplements 8 (Louvain, Paris, and Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2002), 869-945 [a translation of Kees Waaijman, Spiritualiteit; vormen, grondslagen, ­methoden (Gent: Carmelitana; Kampen: Kok, 2000)]. For the role of the mystagogue and the mystes in the Early Christian East, see Irénée Hausherr, Spiritual Direction in the Early

INTRODUCTION 7

that Cyril of Jerusalem makes in the first of his mystagogical catecheses that he was not primarily interested in giving future Christians systematic information on the doctrines that were at that time being developed in Christianity. Rather, he sought to explain to the newly baptized the spiritual meaning of the sacraments (mysteries) that they had experienced during the Easter vigil.18 In line with Hellenistic, Jewish, and Christian tradition, Ambrose regarded it as improper for the explanation of the mysteries of the faith to precede faith itself, and consequently he presupposed reticence on the part of the mystagogue during the first stage of the mystagogical initiation.19 What the baptized person had experienced could only afterwards be explained and contemplated. Diakrisis and epistêmê, rational judgement and critical reflection, which are vital aspects of the transformation process effected by the rituals of the sacraments, follow (Aristotelian) fronêsis, “practical wisdom” – not the other way around. However, there is a broader understanding of mystagogy that must also be considered, including the formation techniques and strategies of formation used, as happens in all religions, to effect a transformation both of the initiates’ way of life and of their innermost being. In early Christian mystagogy, personal development went hand in hand with the grafting of the initiates onto the community and their assumption of a new identity, either in the context of the group of beginners or of the group of advanced students.20 Christian East, with a foreword by Bishop Kallistos Ware, Cistercian Studies 116 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990), 9-154 and 185-222 (translation of Irénée Hausherr, Direction spirituelle en Orient autrefois, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 144 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1955). 18  Cyrille de Jérusalem, Catéchèses mystagogiques, ed. and trans. Auguste Piédagnel and Pierre Paris, SC 126 (Paris: Cerf, 1966), 184. 19  Ambrose, De Cain et Abel 1.9.35 (Our Father), see PL 14, cols. 333-380 or Ambrosius, Exameron, De paradiso, De Cain et Abel, De Noe, De Abraham, De Isaac, De bono mortis, ed. K. Schenkl, CSEL 32/1 (Prague and Vienna: Tempsky; Leipzig: Freytag, 1896/1897), 313-397; ET: Ambrose, Hexameron, Paradise, and Cain and Abel, trans. John J. Savage, FOTC 42 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1961); Explanatio Symboli ad Initiandos (see e.g. Ambrosius, Explanatio symboli, De sacramentis, De mysteriis, De paenitentia, De excessu fratris, De obitu Valentiniani, De obitu Theodosii, ed. O. Faller, CSEL 73 [Prague and Vienna: Tempsky; Leipzig: Freytag, 1955], 12.26-27. Cf. De mysteriis, ibid., 1.2). 20  See for the etymology and reception of the early Christian concept of mystagogy in a broader sense, van Geest, “Studying the Mystagogy of the Fathers.” Cf. Thomas M. Finn, From Death to Rebirth: Ritual and Conversion in Antiquity (New York: Paulist, 1997), 244; A. de Jong-van Campen, Mystagogie in werking: Hoe menswording en gemeenschapsvorming gebeuren in christelijke inwijding (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2009), 51.

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The publication of Early Christian Mystagogy and the Body marks the conclusion of a trilogy.21 The first volume, Seeing through the Eyes of Faith: New Approaches to the Mystagogy of the Church Fathers, was the result of an international congress of the CPO that was held in Utrecht in 2011. This volume sketched the first outlines of the new study of the mystagogy of the Church Fathers. It focused on questions concerning the layered meaning of the word “mystagogy,” as well as on the rhetorical, polemical, and apologetic strategies used by Church Fathers to make their audiences receptive to the message of Christianity. The introduction to the Creed and the role of visual symbolism in mystagogical processes were also studied, as was the interaction between formation processes on the one hand and liturgical initiation and participation in the Eucharist on the other. Finally, this first volume of the trilogy explored the existential and transformational mystagogy of both Eastern and Western traditions in early Christianity. Philological, art historical, and theological approaches converged and were applied to “mystagogy” in both its strict and wider connotations, for example interpreting martyrdom as a path of formation. After the publication of Seeing through the Eyes of Faith, in which the forms, foundations, and methods of early Christian mystagogy were mapped out, scholars affiliated with the Centre initiated research into the two dimensions of being human that are most crucial to mystagogy: the mind and the body. Because prayer was regarded as an essential component in mystagogical processes of transformation, and because the practice of prayer is closely, although by no means exclusively, related to the first dimension, the second International Patristics Conference (Utrecht, 2014) had as its theme early Christian mystagogy in relation to prayer and learning how to pray. The research and the conference culminated in a second volume, entitled Prayer and the Transformation of the Self in Early Christian Mystagogy.22 Learning how to pray was regarded as an indispensable part of mystagogy in the strict sense of the word – the initiation of catechumens – during the first centuries of Christianity. On the one hand, Christians  The first volumes were Seeing through the Eyes of Faith (see note 16): New Approaches to the Mystagogy of the Church Fathers, ed. Paul van Geest, LAHR  11; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 2 (Louvain: Peeters, 2016) and Prayer and the Transformation of the Self in Early Christian Mystagogy, ed. Hans van Loon, Giselle de Nie, Michiel Op de Coul, and Peter van Egmond, LAHR 18; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 5 (Louvain: Peeters, 2018). 22  See previous footnote. 21

INTRODUCTION 9

were well aware that prayer had transformative power. On the other, it was assumed that the practice of prayer, whether vocalized or not, implies or even requires transformation. These two forms of interaction between prayer and mystagogy (in both the formal and the broader sense of the word) were examined by interpreting the prayer practices developed by the Fathers of the Church in the light of their mystagogy.23 Many aspects and dimensions of the mystagogy of early Christian prayer were addressed in this volume: different kinds of prayer, their antecedents and their development over time; their historical, theoretical, and ritual contexts and meanings; and their noetic, imaginative, and physical strategies. The contributions in Prayer and the Transformation of  he Self demonstrated that early Christian writers developed a variety of methods, techniques, and practices of prayer to intensify the awareness of God as invisible yet near. Thus prayer was shown to be an essential component in the transformative processes of mystagogy, both in its wider and more formal sense. The publication of this volume, Early Christian Mystagogy and the Body marks the completion of the trilogy. The involvement of the body in processes of initiation is a central theme in this volume. It is the outcome of the third international CPO conference, held in Utrecht in 2017, which focused on corporeity, or more concretely: the human body, as highly significant for the mystagogical process. The two older traditions on human physicality mentioned above formed a starting point for the conference: traditions which influenced both the Church’s vision and the development of initiation into the Christian faith. One tradition, deriving from the Bible as well as from particular strands in Greek philosophy, stressed the positive value of the body, also for the life of the soul. Not only did the Church apply its various rituals to the body, but the future state to which every believer was urged to aspire was imaged as resurrection and as joyous eternal life, experienced in a new, glorified body. The second tradition was Platonic dualism between soul and body. It tended to speak of the present body and its urges as the image of the old, uninitiated life, and to advise the practice of asceticism as part of the process of fleeing a physical reality that was a distraction from the contemplation of the invisible and immaterial Divinity. The Fathers found support for this emphasis on asceticism in the Apostle Paul’s 23  Giselle de Nie and Paul van Geest, “In oratione forma est desideriorum: The Transformation of the Self and the Practice of Prayer in Early Christian Mystagogy. An Introduction,” in Prayer and the Transformation of the Self in Early Christian Mystagogy, 3-16.

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l­etters (for instance, 1 Corinthians 9). The fact that the body was actually and intimately involved in the initiation process – most obviously in baptism – tended to be regarded as a metaphor. Significantly, attention was also given at the conference to the role that the dead body of holy men and women played in the Church’s mystagogy from the second century onwards (Polycarp). Churches were built over or near the tombs of the saints, which became places of veneration. Later, the martyr’s physical remains were experienced as a palpable conduit for the divine power of healing. Many stories recounting such events figure in sermons by ecclesiastical leaders, who intended them to contribute to an experience of conversion among their listeners. III.  Early Christian Mystagogy and the Body The contributions to this volume have been arranged according to chronology and geography. They have been organized into four parts, the first of which deals with the Ante-Nicene period, the second and third centuries. Parts two and three focus on the Post-Nicene period and address traditions of Eastern (Syriac and Greek) and Western (Latin) Christianity respectively. The closing section comprises two contributions that represent a bridge towards later times. They discuss thought-provoking conceptions that open up perspectives on later developments of early Christian mystagogy in the context of medieval Christianity. 1.  The Ante-Nicene Period The first three contributions deal with the second century. Henk Bakker starts by discussing the visionary work The Shepherd of Hermas. He focuses on the ninth parable and analyses the remarkably physical descriptions of Hermas’s visionary experience, exploring their mystagogical potential. Thus, the story becomes a highly original and effective tool to communicate values and practices that are central to the day-today realities of Christian living. Next, Peter-Ben Smit examines the work of an important theorist, Judith Butler, which sheds new light on the traditions of Ignatius’s martyrdom. The notion of “assembly,” with its particularly physical dimension, is introduced to clarify a core complex in Christian thought and

INTRODUCTION 11

praxis: the Eucharistic body that represents both Christ and the community that participates in Him. Such participation is mediated, or even constituted, by a very material ritual – the Eucharist – which not only signifies communion with Christ but also the interpersonal bond between the faithful. Thus, by introducing Butler’s approach into the discussion, the author is able to present original interpretations of Ignatius’s body and the journey that it took. The third contribution is by Don Springer and deals with the later second century: in examining the work of Irenaeus of Lyons we enter the world of what Frances Young has called “an overarching story.”24 The first contours of coherent theological narrative were developing at this time, in the context of vehement polemical attack. Against Gnostic depreciations of the body, Irenaeus positions himself as a defender of the body, which stands at the heart of the debate, as it represents the connection between the creator and the created. Based on this creational perspective, Springer explores the different aspects of the role that the body plays in the process of spiritual formation, and as a live expression of the faith. Vincent Hunink’s contribution on the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity brings us into the third century. A martyrological text is once again the focus, but now from the perspective of a woman. Hunink discusses the focus on the female body and its mystagogical function. His conclusion that the passio was probably written by a Roman man challenges a number of scholarly opinions. The fifth contribution of part one, the second of the third-century segment, returns to the world of scholarly theology that was the subject of the contribution on Irenaeus, as Ilaria Ramelli presents her thought-provoking analysis of Origen’s work. An important starting point for her contribution is the accepted idea that Origen’s Platonic paradigm caused him to believe in the creation of disembodied souls. This belief called the orthodoxy of his positions into question, for how could proper creation not involve matter? Based on a comprehensive reading of the – sometimes reconstructed – sources, Ramelli reaches the remarkable conclusion that Origen believed that souls were created as embodied beings, even if the bodies with which they were initially created were different from the heavy, earthly bodies that we know today. It is crucial to understand, therefore, that Origen postulated different degrees of corporeality. Ramelli’s reinterpretations shed a whole new light upon Origen’s oeuvre, including his mystagogical conceptions.  Frances Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 18. 24

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The third-century Alexandrian exegete also appears in the contribution of Mathew Kuefler, but in a different context: that of (self-)castration. It is often regarded as strange that the father of allegory should have taken the following words of Jesus so literally: “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” (Matt 19:12, NRSV). Thus, Origen is either ridiculed for the excessive, masochistic act of self-castration in which he engaged according to a report by Eusebius (HE 6.8), or it is conveniently believed that this never happened. Kuefler has studied the topic of castration extensively and argues that there is no need to instantly label references to castrations as metaphorical. On the contrary, the practice had its own rationale and also seems to have had a communal dimension. It made the erasure of gendered bodies possible, and as such played a pivotal role in mystagogical thinking, because the eradication of sexual desire and sinfulness, even of materiality itself, could bring a person closer to spiritual perfection. 2.  Syriac and Greek Writings from the Post-Nicene Period The first two contributions in the second part of the volume are on Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 380-428). Hanna Lucas highlights an intricate connection that we have encountered before, that between ­Christology and sacramentality. She discusses the originality of Theodore, who emphasized both the distinction of Christ’s two natures and the physicality of the sacraments. Her focus is on the Church Father’s mystagogical catecheses and the significance of embodiment and bodily experience. As in the contribution of Smit, deep connections between agency, humanity, and the physicality of the sacramental rites emerge. Nathan Witkamp also analyses the Syriac texts of Theodore, in particular his baptismal homilies, which testify to this bishop’s concern for the salvation of the body. Specific rituals are expressive of this concern, such as the full body anointing, which the Church Father interprets as a sign of the covering with immortality. We learn about Theodore’s sacramental eschatology, which implies that immortality is received symbolically through the ritual of baptism, but only in reality by the resurrection. The contribution on John Chrysostom by Wendy Mayer also focuses on Syria, but moves into the realm of the Greek language. Mayer applies modern research on rituals which integrates two dimensions that are often separated in the ancient sources: the senses and cognition.

INTRODUCTION 13

The author presents the classical triad of mind, soul, and body, relating this to both the physicality of the initiation rituals in Antioch and the ways in which modern conceptual frameworks, such as sensescape theory and enclothed cognition, provide new interpretations of these practices. Mayer also considers the significance of medical theory for mystagogy, and places the latter in the broader context of psychagogy and the health of the embodied soul. The contribution by Yulia Rozumna also involves the theme of baptism, but deals with a different region, Cappadocia in Asia Minor. Rozumna discusses the ways in which Basil of Caesarea envisages the role of the body in baptism and the Christian path that follows it. She shows that Basil does not reject the body as such. Rather, he is critical of the passions, and sees them as involving both body and soul. Salvation is regarded by Basil as dependent on the balanced cooperation of body and soul. The following contributions concern another Cappadocian Father, Basil’s younger brother Gregory of Nyssa. Giulio Maspero states that Gregory of Nyssa elaborated on Origen’s thinking, moving from knowledge to participation. Maspero examines Gregory’s Commentary on the Song of Songs and points to the central notion of infinite progress in the union with God. The dominant image is that of darkness, which means that every mental representation based on the created world is abandoned. The author argues that the commentary is in fact a great mystagogy whose foundation is essentially sacramental: the three sacraments of Christian initiation are related to the stages of spiritual progress, and once again, the physicality of the Eucharist is shown to be fundamental. Connected to this are the core concepts, also present in the contribution by Lucas, of the incarnation and Christ’s humanity. The work of Gregory of Nyssa again takes centre stage in Ilaria Vigorelli’s contribution, as she discusses the close links between the incarnation and virginity. She analyses Gregory’s Mariology to show how eternity and the body are held together and to indicate the ontological implications of this Church Father’s mystagogy. In addressing Gregory’s treatise on virginity we have entered the world of asceticism, the topic of the next two contributions, which relate to Egypt and the Desert Fathers. First, Nienke Vos discusses modern evaluations of the ascetic project, presenting the divergent voices of negative and positive judgements on the monastic lifestyle, specifically in view of chastisement of the body. Outright condemnation of asceticism as a body-negating practice was met by more nuanced approaches that

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emphasize the deep connections between the body, incarnation, and salvation. Vos eventually argues for the importance of ambiguity and paradox, because the body is a multidimensional concept and a reality that transcends black-and-white conceptualizing. Subsequently, Daniel Lemeni zooms in on one specific aspect of the ascetic life, its character as a quest for holiness. In stories about the Desert Fathers, this holiness found expression in the figure of the holy body, which was characterized by purity and perfection. As such, it represented the glorified body of the resurrection, thus opening a window onto the deeply desired life of heaven. This eschatologically charged transformation was especially apparent on the radiant face of the monks, which would shine with light. As expressions of both the quest for, and the attainment of holiness, accounts of holy bodies and holy faces can be interpreted as mystagogical narrations. Furthermore, the presence of this radiant body motif in the literature about the Desert Fathers attests to a conspicuous development in Late Antique Christianity, which demonstrated growing attention for the visual and the sensory.25 Apart from holy bodies, the Eucharist, icons, and relics could also be the carriers of divine presence, a topic which reappears in the penultimate contribution to this volume, Giselle de Nie’s exploration of Victricius of Rouen and his sermon on the special status of relics. In the final contribution to the second part of the volume by Hans van Loon on the work of Cyril of Alexandria, we remain in Egypt but move from the desert to the city. Van Loon analyses Cyril’s ideas about the body, which partly echo Basil of Caesarea’s perspective as discussed by Rozumna. Again, we encounter the importance of the incarnation as the basis for salvation, but also the struggle of asceticism, in which body and soul co-operate, notions which remind us of the previous contribution. In the work of Cyril, too, the glorified body is a guiding light. 3.  Latin Fathers from the Post-Nicene Period The third part of the volume discusses the Latin Fathers, more precisely Ambrose of Milan and Augustine of Hippo. Metha Hokke opens this section and focuses on a theme that was also present in part two, in Ilaria Vigorelli’s contribution: virginity. But the bishop of Milan c­ onceptualizes 25  See, for instance, Patricia Cox Miller, The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity, Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).

INTRODUCTION 15

this familiar topic in an idiosyncratic way, as he uses explicitly physical language when speaking about virginity, including references to defloration and the hymen. Hokke draws a connection with part two as she integrates Gregory of Nyssa’s thinking on virginity into the discussion. Virginity after the Fall is seen as a return to paradise and – as in ­Vigorelli’s contribution – the virginal body and soul are connected to the incarnation. In their mystagogical works, both Ambrose and Gregory emphasize physical virginity in the context of their Nicene Christologies. Manuel Mira also deals with Ambrose’s work, but focuses on another topic, the sacraments, and draws a connection with another Greek Church Father from part two, John Chrysostom (cf. Mayer’s contribution). Mira explains that despite Ambrose’s Platonic leanings, he exhibits a positive valuation of the body. Platonic notions shine through in his sacramental mystagogy, which revolves around the duality of matter and spirit – of the external and the internal working together. As the author explores the related themes of the life of Christ and the Christian’s participation in that life via the sacramental rituals of the Church, he detects parallels with Chrysostom’s baptismal catechesis. The diptych on Ambrose is then followed by what might be called a mini-trilogy on Augustine’s work. This “trilogy” opens with the contribution of Paul van Geest on the role of the body in the spiritual life. Van Geest introduces the Stoic ne quid nimis principle (“nothing in excess”), which he uses as a lens through which to read the work of Augustine. The author first discusses the early dialogues De vera religione, De ordine, and De beata vita, and concludes that Augustine there already demonstrates a clear appreciation of the body and its significance for a good communal life. Van Geest observes that there is continuity with another genre, exemplified by the Praeceptum, in which care for the body is clearly present, albeit in the context of the ne quid nimis principle. In his work on marriage, Augustine first broaches the subject of orthodoxy, which he expounds more fully in the context of his heresiological work. Ne quid nimis acquires normative value in this setting. Next, Martin Claes focuses on another selection of works from Augustine’s immensely rich oeuvre. Performing a close reading of passages from 1) the work on Genesis against the Manichaeans, 2) the unfinished literal commentary on Genesis, and 3) Confessions 13, Claes analyses the way in which Augustine’s Christological anthropology coheres with his views on initiation and mystagogy. As in van Geest’s contribution, there is a connection with the bishop’s anti-heretical agenda, in this case his struggle against the Manichaeans. But it is clear that his thoughts on the

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creation of the body and on the sensorial and corporeal manifestations of Christ’s salvific action extend beyond polemical discourse, and suggest a close alliance between mystagogy and an anthropocentric Christology. The third contribution to focus exclusively on Augustine is by Laela Zwollo, who casts the net widely as she aims to assess the role of the human body in Augustine’s theology. A wealth of themes emerges, including original sin, sexuality, and marriage. Zwollo engages in dialogue with the prominent Augustine scholar Margaret Miles’s work, and contests some of Miles’s statements. Like Vos, Zwollo emphasizes the importance of ambiguity and paradox as core concepts in any approach to these subjects. And again similarly to Vos, she points to the multidimensional character of the body, which invites different evaluations in different contexts. Augustine’s most positive appreciation of the body, for instance, occurs in the context of the resurrection and the Eucharistic body. The contribution that concludes this third part on the Latin Fathers also examines Augustine. But in addition, it establishes a connection with the previous section on Eastern Christian traditions, because the third Cappadocian Father studied in this volume, Gregory of Nazianzen, plays an important part in it. The point of departure of Catherine Conybeare’s contribution, is a letter by Paulinus of Nola, which initiates an extended reflection on self-writing and the body. Familiar notions such as the incarnation reappear, but in a different setting and with a different aim. The body of Christ now features as the embodiment of the Word, which mirrors the words written by humans. The act of writing can only be practiced by embodied beings, but at the same time it hides the body, as writings are dispersed separately from their authors. Conybeare studies two such authors intensively, Augustine and Gregory of Nazianzen, and she interprets their self-narrations as mystagogical: they are both the fruit and a model of a relationship with God incarnate. 4.  Crossing the Bridge towards Medieval Europe Paulinus of Nola provides a bridge to part four, the last part of this volume. He was a native of Bordeaux in the region of Gaul, and he corresponded with Augustine, but also with Victricius of Rouen, the author who is the main focus of the penultimate contribution to this volume. The closing section, then, moves further afield, as first (in De Nie’s analysis) Rouen in northern Gaul becomes a focal point, followed by the even broader stage of the medieval West. In this final segment, Giselle de Nie’s and Danuta Shanzer’s contributions describe continuing ­developments

INTRODUCTION 17

and transformations of familiar, but also less familiar, more challenging conceptions and traditions. De Nie discusses a remarkable sermon by Victricius of Rouen on the veneration of relics. Victricius appeals to the imagination of the faithful as he moves beyond the limitations of the relics, evoking images of the martyrs as eschatological beings that are physically alive in the presence of God. De Nie highlights the daring claims of this preacher who envisages the relics in incarnational terms: similar to the body of Christ, they are able to communicate the presence of God. This is a clear example of what Patricia Cox Miller has referred to as the material turn in her study The Corporeal Imagination, which is highly relevant to our topic, especially in connection with relics and the wider context of the cult of the saints.26 Shanzer, finally, is the author of the closing contribution in this volume on food of judgement (iudicium offae). Her piece shows the wide scope of our theme – both temporally and in terms of content – as the source material ranges from the apocrypha of the Old Testament to medieval legal ordines, including non-Christian writings, covering subjects related to religion, folklore and superstition, history, exegesis, and legal history. Familiar themes emerge, but in a remarkably new configuration, as Shanzer discusses the Eucharist as a diagnostic for apostasy: the body, by ingesting holy food, itself becomes potential evidence for the truth. Epilogue As has been suggested in the opening section of this introduction, anatomical research in the Renaissance led to the objectification of the body, and at the same time it confirmed the Late Antique and early Christian intuition that the body was beautiful because it was well ordered. Today, medical and biological research on the human brain and nervous system has led to the insight that control of the human mind may be a much more physical process than was previously thought. Impulsive aggression and cruelty are often interpreted in terms of, and thus reduced to, genetic predestination or neurophysiological processes. They are seen not as a condition to be disciplined by the mind, but as an affliction that can be treated medically. This perspective can be very helpful in many ways. But it also means that the early Christian authors’ and Church Fathers’ ­conceptions of the body as a source of temptation, and of the mind as an  See previous footnote.

26

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instrument for the disciplining and regulation of the body, are completely obsolete. This would mean that the notions that have defined Christian anthropology for two millennia have become useless. In that case, traditional institutions of education that accept norms and values based on this understanding should be transformed into institutions that attempt to manage evil medically. This development also betrays an image of humanity that is at odds with that of the Church Fathers. It would mean that aggression and cruelty are tendencies for which human beings cannot really be held to account, and which do not intrinsically belong to the moral landscape in which human beings find themselves. A purely medical approach suggests that the body and the mind are somehow separate, or that the mind is simply an expression of the body, and nothing more – whereas the Fathers argued that body and mind are inseparable. Without wishing to detract from the great merits of medical science, we would like to suggest that the work of early Christian authors raises questions that are still meaningful. First, as the contributions in this volume make clear, they do not elevate the physical dimension of being human, or present these as the defining trait of being human, or turn them into unquestioned norms. The reality of human beings as a phenomenon transcends this kind of image of the human being. And because the Fathers see the spirit/mind as a driving force that is inherent in the constitutive subject, they continue to remind humanity of its moral responsibility: the need to keep society habitable. To them, to be human is esse ad, being towards, being in relation. Vice cannot be traced back exclusively to physical determination, but also to the motives that individuals unconsciously, but often consciously, develop in the complex array of forces and interests that exist within groups at any level of coexistence. In their work, the Church Fathers feel called upon to design a role model, a world view, and a view of humankind in which personal responsibility is not obfuscated by the emphasis on the physiological condition. Corporeal existence invites the human being to develop a frame of reference in which motives, experiences, and actions can be evaluated. Human beings remain responsible for their own frames of reference, including their moral choices.27

27  Peter Müssen, “Ethik als handlungsleitende Sinnwissenschaft und der Diskurs des Radikalen Konstruktivismus,” in Ethische Theorie praktisch: Der fundamental-moral­ theologische Ansatz in sozialethischer Entfaltung, ed. Franz Furger (Münster: Aschendorf, 1991), 36-65.

Part 1

The Ante-Nicene Period

Kissing Hermas

Convertive Mystagogy in the Shepherd Henk Bakker I. Introduction One of the most challenging (and puzzling) passages in the corpus of the Shepherd of Hermas is the ninth parable, which paints a picture of the Tower, Christ’s Church, which is in the process of being completed before the second coming of the Lord, but cannot yet be finished. The completion of the construction is being delayed because of irregularities in the stones used. Some of the stones, i.e. members of the Church, can be used again, but others cannot. A second, final, conversion is therefore offered to the stones so that they can be reused, and Hermas and his family are a live example.1 The exceptional character of the Shepherd has generally been recognized by scholars. It is almost a genre in its own right, nearly unparalleled. Its apocalypticism displays a reciprocity between heaven and earth that is rooted in individual experiences, as is the case in the Passio Perpetuae.2 As a young catechumen and future martyr, Perpetua receives visions and revelations in prison, some of which – the text claims – she wrote down herself.3 The apocalypticism of the prison diary is definitely lived theology, and so is its perspective. It was not written by an armchair theologian, but from the perspective of faith lived under dire  Sim 9.11 (88).1-8. The Greek text (and translation) of the Shepherd of Hermas is taken from The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations of Their Writings, ed. Michael W. Holmes (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 21992). 2  Cf. Martha Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish & Christian Apocalypses (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 69-71, 80-82, 110-114, and Osger Mellink, “Petrus en Hermas: Apocalyptiek in het Rome van de tweede eeuw,” in Visioenen aangaande het einde: Apocalyptische geschriften en bewegingen door de eeuwen heen, ed. Jan Willem van Henten and Osger Mellink (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 1998), 138-165, at 150-151. Cf. David Hellholm, Das Visionenbuch des Hermas als Apokalypse: Formgeschichtliche und texttheoretische Studien zu einer literarischen Gattung, Coniectanea Biblica. New Testament Series 13/1 (Lund: Gleerup, 1980). 3  Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis 4, 7, 8, 10. 1

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c­ ircumstances. The existence of such personal circumstances can equally be presumed for the Shepherd and its author. Hermas is addressed, and rebuked, as one of the Christians who run the risk of not persevering during the pending time of tribulation. He was an apocalyptic believer, maybe one of the prophets active in the Roman church he refers to in the eleventh mandate, but this is not certain.4 However, sociologically, Hermas and his family belonged to the rich of the church of Rome around the first half of the second century ce (somewhere between 70 and 150 ce).5 As a freedman he had become fairly wealthy and influential in the Christian community.6 There does not seem to have been a large group of Christian poor in Rome around 150 ce. The rich were dominant, and “acquire the things this world has to offer and rejoice in their riches.”7 A significant number relapsed and left the Church: “… aus der Mitte der Gemeinde spricht er gegen die Reichen, die sich durch ihren reichtumsgemäßen Lebensstil von der Gemeinde wegbewegt haben.”8 The focus is on the double-mindedness (διψυχία)9 of these people, and Hermas is both preacher and hearer at the same time, prophet and sinner, hammer and anvil. Moreover, his own role in the story of the book was exemplary for all who sought a second conversion, a last opportunity to escape the wrath of God. The historiography of the Shepherd shows a growing interest in and openness to the ecstatic involvement of the author in mystagogical processes of communal care and discipline.10 Texts not only function 4  J. Reiling, Hermas and Christian Prophecy: A Study of the Eleventh Mandate, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 37 (Leiden: Brill, 1973), 155-170. 5  See Andrew F. Gregory, “Disturbing Trajectories: 1 Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Development of Early Roman Christianity,” in Rome in the Bible and the Early Church, ed. Peter Oakes (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2002), 142-166. 6  Carolyn Osiek, Rich and Poor in the Shepherd of Hermas: An Exegetical-Social Investigation, Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series 15 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1983), 134-135. 7  Vis  1.1 (1).8: οἱ τὸν αἰῶνα τοῦτον περιποιούμενοι καὶ γαυριῶντες ἐν τῷ πλούτῳ αὐτῶν. 8  Christine Mühlenkampf, “Nicht wie die Heiden”: Studien zur Grenze zwischen christlicher Gemeinde und paganer Gesellschaft in vorkonstantinischer Zeit, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum. Ergänzungsband. Kleine Reihe 3 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2008), 166. 9  See Carolyn Osiek, “The Genre and Function of the Shepherd of Hermas,” Semeia 36 (1986): 113-121, and “The Problem of Dipsychia in the Shepherd of Hermas,” Studia Patristica 45 (2010): 303-308. 10  See in particular Mark Grundeken, Community Building in the Shepherd of Hermas: A Critical Study of Some Key Aspects, VCS 131 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2015), passim; Carolyn Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1999), 18-38; Cornelis Haas, De Geest bewaren: Achtergrond en



KISSING HERMAS

23

as communicative means of explanation and education, but also serve as vehicles of impartation. My contribution explores the state of the art, and goes beyond Grundeken, Osiek, Haas and Reiling in demonstrating that the ecstatic story of the Shepherd itself works as a mystagogical device. The person of Hermas and his book became a popular model of penance that Christians in the Early Church could relate to.11 In the course of the second and the third centuries, the issue of ecclesial penance became urgent. Opinions differed as to what Christians should do to find their way back to the Church after committing a cardinal sin.12 On the one hand Christians were inclined to be lenient with one another, because grace and forgiveness had come in abundance in Christ, on the other hand they imposed heavy burdens on the shoulders of sinners, so as not to render God’s grace cheap and ordinary. In the Constitutiones apostolorum (last quarter of the fourth century), bishops are instructed particularly to receive the penitent, “for G+od is a God of mercy,” “but yet do not thou, O bishop, presently abhor any person who has fallen into one or two offences …, since neither did the Lord refuse to eat with publicans and sinners,” and: “But if any one returns, and shows forth the fruit of repentance, then do ye receive him to prayer, as the lost son.”13 In the course of his visions and of the apocalyptic events, Hermas commits himself to voluntary penance (exomologesis conscientiae).14 The ninth similitude in many details alludes to the ritual that accompanied the paenitentia secunda that was recommended to him and to which he submitted. His example, and the penitential system that evolved from it, became the leading concept for most western churches of paenitentia functie van de pneumatologie in de paraenese van de Pastor Hermas (The Hague: Boekencentrum, 1985), 251-271; and Reiling, Hermas and Christian Prophecy, 5-19, 155-170. See also Kirsopp Lake, “The Shepherd of Hermas and Christian Life in Rome in the Second Century,” HTR 4 (1911): 25-46. 11  Mellink, “Petrus en Hermas,” 143-152, at 151-152. 12  The debate started as early as the time that Heb 6:4-6 and 10:26-31 were written. 13  Constitutiones apostolorum 2.12.1; 2.40.1; 2.41.1; “Constitutiones apostolorum / The Apostolic Constitutions,” in Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries: Lactantius, Venantius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, Homily, Liturgies, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson et al., The Ante-Nicene Fathers 7 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886; repr. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 385-509, at 400, 414, 415. 14  Joseph Grotz, Die Entwicklung des Bußwesens in der vornicänischen Kirche (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1954), 13-70, 438, 448: “diese paenitentia wurde meist freiwillig übernommen.” Cf. Ramon L. Bautista, “Discernment of Spirits in the Shepherd of Hermas and Origen,” Landas 28, no. 2 (2014): 1-43.

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plena: the form of penance that included all public elements known and embraced at that time.15 Thus Hermas became the leading voice in bringing together contradictory and conflicting traditions in his day.16 The author (redactor) reworked Jewish apocalyptic material, such as the mandates and some of the similitudes from the beginning of the Christian era, amended and added visions at the turn of the second century, and finally inserted a number of similitudes, in particular the ninth.17 In doing so, he developed a text that was authoritative and canonical for almost a hundred years among most non-Jewish churches,18 thus establishing vital consensus regarding ecclesiastical law and discipline. However, there is no basis for characterizing the book as Jewish Christian.19 Continuity between the Jewish traditions (including the Hebrew Bible) and the Church is not emphasized. It is not the Hebrew or Greek Scriptures that matter, but the moral situation of the Church in light of its new texts and revelations. The present Church seems more or less, separated from its past. The author shows sectarian tendencies, because the community is regarded as exclusive and consisting of the elect, and it lives in tension with the outside world.20 In order to control its exclusive character, the leaders of the community develop penitential practices that the members must live by. The book simultaneously has a conversionist and an introversionist stance.21 The Shepherd, the “angel of conversion,”22 leads Hermas to re-conversion through visions and actions that have a deep impact on him and his family. The mystagogical purport of the Shepherd lies in the effectiveness (even physical effectiveness) 15  The terminology is taken from Cyprian, De lapsis 16, 32; Epistulae 4.1-2; 64.1.1. See Grotz, Die Entwicklung des Bußwesens, 77-83, at 81 and 83. 16  Reinhold Seeberg, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, vol. 1 (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 41953), 152-164, at 158-159: “Das Hermasbuch ist wesentlich mit der Absicht geschrieben, die einander entgegengesetzten Meinungen zu versöhnen.” 17  L. W. Nijendijk, Die Christologie des Hirten des Hermas exegetisch, religions- und dogmengeschichtlich untersucht (diss. Utrecht University, 1986; supervisors J. Reiling and R. van den Broek), 236. Cf. J. Ramsey Michaels, “The ‘Level Ground’ in the Shepherd of Hermas,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 59 (1968): 245-250. 18  Cf. Dan Batovici, “The Shepherd of Hermas in Recent Scholarship on the Canon: A Review Article,” Annali di Storia dell’Esegesi 34 (2017): 89-105; Grotz, Die Entwicklung des Bußwesens, 13-14. Cf. Adolf von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, vol. 1 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1909; new ed. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964), 240, and Friedrich Loofs, Leitfaden zum Studium der Dogmengeschichte (Tübingen: ­Niemeyer, 1889; new ed. 1968), 64, 67, 69-72. 19  Grundeken, Community Building in the Shepherd of Hermas, 161-165. 20  Ibid., 51, 52, 68-83, 97. 21  Ibid., 84. 22  Vis 5 (25).7.



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of the visions, mandates, and similitudes revealed to him. I will first investigate the apocalyptic structure of the book and its focus on the climactic ninth parable, then I will analyse and reconstruct Hermas’ second conversion as a model for all who are in danger, and lastly I will explore the mystagogy of conversion as an act of spiritual and physical passage, with some of its gender-critical (syneisactic) implications. Finally, I will draw a number of basic conclusions from the research. II.  Working One’s Way to the Finale The structure of the Shepherd is apparent from its composition. It has a tripartite division, consisting of five visions, twelve mandates (or commandments), and ten parables (or similitudes).23 The three sections are clearly complementary. Five visions

Twelve mandates

Ten parables  The ninth parable has a transitory and convertive meaning, and brings the message to a climactic ending.

However, the central message within the tripartite narrative lies somehow hidden within a deeper structure, and is thoroughly connected with the revelatory figures that appear in the course of the work, i.e. the dramatis personae. The five visions are preparatory to the message of the mandates and the similitudes, and tell the underlying story of Hermas and his family. Their role is crucial, as they, in the front, highlight the rather vague presence of the characters in the back. I will first focus on a number of characters in the foreground, personae that can be considered to be preparatory “leads” to the clue of the story. In the foreground, particularly in the series of visions, a variety of women appear, who point to the core of the message. The opening scene of the book introduces Rhodè, Hermas’ mistress in Rome when he was sold into slavery to her years ago. Now Hermas is a freedman, as he meets her again

 Vis 1–5 (1–25); Mand 1–12 (26–49); Sim 1–10 (50–114).

23

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and begins “to love her as a sister,”24 probably implying that his affection to her developed into a Christian kind of affection. He is nevertheless reproached because of his lustful feelings towards her. He once saw her bathing in the Tiber, and when he helped her step out of the river, his thoughts were: “How happy I would be if I had such a wife, both in regard to beauty and manner,”25 She surely is a wonderful woman (γυναικὸς ἀγαθωτάτης26). The first vision is intended to remind Hermas of the grave sin he committed in setting his heart on her (on her beauty and her status).27 Rhodè herself appears to him in order to prepare Hermas and his household, and the whole Christian community, for the time of penance and healing that is to come.28 His wife, her name is not mentioned, is accused of “not holding her tongue,” and his children have renounced God and are out of control.29 In a second disclosure in the same vision Hermas is visited by a certain “elder lady,” who assures him that God will heal all previous evil deeds committed by his family.30 In the second vision divine orders instruct him to consider his wife merely “as a sister,” but not to neglect her, and not to be resentful of his children.31 Obviously, the words “as a sister” (repeated three times)32 are meant to establish new social ties between Rhodè and Hermas’ wife. In emphasizing the core of his message, the author in all probability used a mixture of facts and fiction in setting the biographical stage for his book. His unnamed wife, as well as their children, and Rhodè, may well be part of an accurate description of some of Hermas’ actual life circumstances.33  Vis 1.1 (1).1: καὶ ἠρξάμην αὐτὴν ἀγαπᾶν ὡς ἀδελφήν.  Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 41. 26  Vis 1.2 (2).3. 27  Vis 1.1 (1).4: ἣν ἐπεθύμησα. 28  Vis 1.1 (1).9: καὶ ἰάσεται τὰ ἁμαρτήματά σου καὶ ὅλου τοῦ οἴκου σου καὶ πάντων τῶν ἁγίων. 29  Vis 1.1 (3).1-2; 2.2 (6).2-3; 2.3 (7).1. 30  Vis 1.2 (2).2; 1.3 (3).1. 31  Vis 2.2 (6).3; 2.3 (7).1. 32  Vis  1.1 (1).1: καὶ ἠρξάμην αὐτὴν ἀγαπᾶν ὡς ἀδελφήν, and 1.1 (1).7: ὡς ἀδελφήν, and 2.2 (6).3: τῇ μελλούσῃ ἀδελφῇ. 33  Cf. Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 23-24, and Roelof van Deemter, Der Hirt des Hermas: Apokalypse oder Allegorie? (diss. Vrije Universiteit Delft, 1929), 155: “An dem historischer Charakter dieser Berichte soll man festhalten.” See also Martin Leutzsch, Die Wahrnehmung sozialer Wirklichkeit im “Hirten des Hermas”, Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 150 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & ­Ruprecht, 1989), 49, 59. 24 25



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Other female figures play vital roles in the unfolding of the revelations in the corpus.34 In the second vision, a year after the first, Hermas is enraptured by the Spirit once more and sees the same elder lady with a book in her hand, the little booklet Hermas is instructed to copy.35 This elder lady is identified as the Church, and hence represents the very heart of the message.36 She is in great distress and apathy, and needs to be rejuvenated.37 In her sadness she has grown old, but hope of renewal rises. She increases in courage, rejoices, and grows younger again, for good news is underway. The good news is that the great tower of Christ is under construction, which is an image of the Church, and that God has decided to delay completion of the tower in order to create an opportunity for the restoration, healing and reworking of many of its stones.38 In the third vision, the elder lady shows Hermas the work in progress on the tower. Some of the stones are cast far away, other stones lie nearby. When Hermas asks for an explanation of the second category, the lady answers him: … these are the ones who have sinned and wished to be converted. This is why they have not been thrown very far from the tower, because they will still be useful in the building, if they are converted. So those who are about to accept conversion, if they do so, will be strong in the faith if they do so while the tower is still being built. But if the building is finished, there will no longer be a place for them, but they will be cast out. But at least they have this advantage, that they lie alongside the tower.39

Times of great tribulation are imminent,40 and during these days of affliction generous opportunity will be offered for a second conversion. When Hermas asks the lady about these times (περὶ τῶν καιρῶν), “whether the end time (συντέλειά) is already there,” she raises her voice, saying that whenever the construction of the tower is completed, the end  Even though women are prominent in his revelations, Hermas displays ambivalent views of women. In public life, as in Church life, men have the most important functions. Even in the visions, women only have assisting roles, see Grundeken, Community Building in the Shepherd of Hermas, 113: “Only in Sim. 9,8,2-7 and 9,9,3 women (παρθένοι) are building the tower, but here the Shepherd is in charge (Sim. 9,8,2) … but overall Hermas envisions ‘traditional’ male-centred gender roles.” 35  Vis 2.1 (5).3. 36  Vis 2.4 (8).1; 3.3 (11).3. 37  Vis 3.11 (19).1-3; 13 (21).4 (cf. 3,1 [9].2; 3.10 [18].2-5; 4.2 [23].2). 38  Vis 3.2 (10).4; 4.1 (22).3; 3.7 (15).5-6. 39  Vis 3.5 (13).5, in Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 66. 40  Vis 4.2 (23).5. 34

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will be there (ἔσει τέλος). But it will be built quickly (ταχύ).41 This is the message that must be written in Hermas’ book and sent to Clement, Grapte and other Church officials who are responsible for reading the message to the churches in Rome and in the neighbouring cities.42 As for the author personally, in the fifth vision he is introduced to his “Shepherd,” a celestial angelus interpres, who will stay with him forever.43 This angel helps Hermas to finalize his message, and coaches him to work his way to the finale in the end of times. The Shepherd is an angelomorphic representative of the divine realm which needs to be explained and applied to human affairs on earth.44 He is the angel of conversion.45 The stage is set when the series of five visions ends with the introduction of this Shepherd. The divine countdown can begin, and Hermas’ own conversion is essentially part of it, as I will show below. The third vision and the ninth similitude evidently correspond with each other. There are stones that are cast far away from the tower (μακρὰν ἀπὸ τοῦ πύργου).46 These are the hypocrites, who pretended to abandon evil, but in fact did not. They are beyond salvation. Then there are many other stones lying around,47 which are not being used for the building, such as the scaly stones (who know the truth, but do not persevere in it), stones with cracks in them (who are not at peace with themselves), stunted stones (who live justly, yet with a measure of evil), and white and round stones (who have faith, but also wealth), from which category Hermas is taken (καὶ γὰρ σὺ αὐτὸς χρᾶσαι ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν λίθων).48 He too needs to become a square stone. Unless his wealth is cut away from him and his passions are kept under control, he cannot be useful to God. The same imagery is used in the ninth similitude. Moreover, the message of the tower is revisited “more clearly” by the Shepherd.49 The admonition of the elder lady is re-emphasized and deepened by the angel of conversion. He takes Hermas “in visio” to Arcadia, a famous mountainous area in the Peloponnese, where both Hermes and Pan were  Vis 3.8 (16).9, in Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 76.  Vis 2.4 (8).3. 43  Vis 5.1 (25).1-7; Sim 10.3 (113).1.5, and 10.4 (114).5. 44  Vis 5.1 (25).4: “While he was still speaking, his appearance changed [ἠλλοιώθη ἡ ἰδέα αὐτοῦ], and I recognised him, that it was he to whom I was handed over.” 45  Vis 5.1 (25).7; Sim 9.1 (78).1. 46  Sim 9.7 (84).2. 47  Vis 3.6 (14).1-7. 48  Vis 3.6 (14).7. 49  Sim 9.1 (78).3: δεῖ δέ σε παρ’ ἐμοῦ ἀκριβέστερον πάντα μαθεῖν. 41

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raised, according to classical Greek tradition.50 Here Hermas, once again and this time in more detail (apparently, Sim 9–10 form an appendix),51 is confronted by the way in which the tower of Christ is being built. Many stones which have already been incorporated in the construction are nonetheless rejected and taken out after critical inspection by the owner of the tower. He gives the order to remove black, scaly, cracked, stunted, rough and stained stones from the tower and to place them next to the tower (ἐτέθησαν δὲ παρὰ τὸν πύργον).52 Other stones, from a certain plain nearby, must be brought and put in their place. Square stones and round stones are then found and carried through the door by twelve young women who are posted at the gate. However, the round stones are not placed in the tower yet, because trimming them is difficult and time-consuming. They are stored beside the tower, fair as they are, until they can be cut and placed. Hermas himself is identified as one of these round and white stones that are lying next to the tower. Much attention is paid to these stones in the following paragraphs. Initially, the tone is humorous, but afterwards the atmosphere becomes more intimate.53 The Shepherd consults Hermas about the round white stones, and asks him what to do with these. Hermas’ reply is full of surprise, with a hint of indignation. “How should I know?” (Τί ἐγὼ γινώσκω;)54 The humorous connotation is: “why ask me? You can’t be serious, and you definitely know why! You are the expert, so please do what you think is best.” This is a moment of spontaneous surrender, which raises inner awareness of spiritual dependency and susceptibility, as if Hermas is hearing himself say: “how should I know how to change myself into a better Christian? You’re the expert, and you know that I know!” The Shepherd accordingly chooses and makes some of the white and round stones fit into the tower. Then he makes an important remark concerning the other white, round stones: they are put back on the plain, but are not rejected, because they are “very brilliant” (ὅτι λαμπροί  Sim 9.1 (78).4.  Cf. Mellink, “Petrus en Hermas,” 150 (and n. 9), and Sim 9.1 (78).3: “But you must see everything more clearly from me.” 52  Sim 9.6 (83).4-5; 9.7 (84).1. 53  Sim  9.9 (86).1-6, and 9.10 (87).1 – 9.11 (88).8. See esp. Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 225: “a humorous interlude”; 228: “full of erotic potential.” 54  Sim 9.9 (86).1-3: Τί, φημί, ἐγὼ γινώσκω, κύριε; … Ἐγώ, φημί, κύριε, ταύτην τὴν τέχνην οὐκ ἔχω, οὐδὲ λατόμος εἰμὶ οὐδὲ δύναμαι νοῆσαι … Εἰ οὖν, φημί, κύριε, ἀνάγκη ἐστί, τί σεαυτὸν βασανίζεις καὶ οὐκ ἐκλέγεις εἰς τὴν οἰκοδομὴν οὓς θέλεις καὶ ἁρμόζεις εἰς αὐτήν; 50 51

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εἰσι λίαν), and will somehow “fit” (ἁρμοσθῆναι) another time. After all, the tower is not finished yet.55 Because they are not to be trimmed, the rejected stones are handed over to twelve women who differ completely in appearance from the twelve maidens at the gate. These twelve women eagerly carry the stones back to where they were taken from. On the one hand, they are pleasing in appearance; on the other they look wild, clothed in black, with loosened hair.56 They seem to form a sort of counter-group to the other twelve women. The two groups are intended to be mirror images of each other.57 The description of these women makes their reputation questionable, especially because they are happy to do the dirty work and dispose of the rejected stones. At the core of the ninth similitude, right after Hermas’ brief interrogation, a spectacular interlude evidences the mystagogical approach of the book. The Shepherd leaves his protégé with the twelve maidens at the tower, is then delayed and eventually returns early in the morning. The seer quite reluctantly has to spend the night in the presence of the twelve maidens, and is caught up in a life-changing experience.58 Given the fact that the change is sudden and drastic, obvious questions arise as regards authenticity. How did the visions, mandates and similitudes come about? Is their apocalyptic character just a literary device, or is it informed by experience? In other words: how much is autobiographically inspired? In the ninth similitude, more specifically in the interlude of §11, we are given some of the details of how Hermas was brought to voluntary penance, and of the role that prophecy, catachresis and mystagogy played in the conversion. These observations will be developed in the next two sections. But first some critical hermeneutical distinctions are in order. The hermeneutics of body language is multilayered in the Shepherd. The experiences are all “in visio” of course, but they do have a prophetic agenda to be literally acted out. Thus, if the similitude uses words and images with erotic connotations (e.g. kissing, lying down), the denotations carry proleptic force in that (1) they first of all refer to  Sim 9.9 (86).4.  Sim 9.9 (86).5-6: εὐειδέσταται τῷ χαρακτῆρ … ἐδοκοῦσαν δέμοι αἱ γυναῖκες αὗτα ἄγριαι εἶναι … ἱλαραὶ ἦραν καὶ ἀπήνεγκαν πάντας τοὺς λίθους …. 57  See their names in Sim 9.15 (92).2-3 (cf. Vis  3.8 [16].3-5) (and their textual witnesses), and the restoration of the original order proposed by Alastair Kirkland, “The ‘Twelve Maidens’ and the ‘Twelve Women’ in the Shepherd of Hermas Sim. IX,” Ekklesiastikos Pharos 75, no. 2 (1994): 67-77. 58  Cf. Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 229. 55

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real-life situations, because this is where Hermas’ personal weakness lies, the thing he is reprimanded for, and that he should learn to control in the future; (2) Hermas should learn to enjoy deep fellowship in the Church, including with female Christians, without coming close to sinning; (3) in a serious attitude of penance, Hermas, finally, must also undergo bodily rituals, such as fasting, lying down on the ground, and possibly exorcism. The mystagogy of the words and images is that they anticipate (and are reminiscent of) bodily experiences in the Church, and because of their visionary power help to overcome and redeem sinful patterns of life. III.  Cathartic Prophecy The break in the structure of the ninth parable enables the inclusion of a rather seductive intermezzo, in which Hermas is tested in a compelling trial. Left behind at the tower by the Shepherd, he finds himself caught in a situation of temptation, where he has to spend the night with twelve maidens. The intermezzo clearly interrupts the explanation of the core of the book, as the test takes place just before the Shepherd gives his explanation of the ninth parable, the most urgent and extended one. The flow of thought seems to jump from Sim 9.10 (87).5 to 9.11 (88).9): But I took hold of him by his sack and began to adjure him by the Lord to interpret for me what he had shown me (ἠρξάμην αὐτὸν ὁρκίζειν κατὰ τοῦ κυρίου, ἵνα μοι ἐπιλύσῃ) … “As you wish,” he said, “I will interpret for you” (Καθὼς βούλει, φησίν, οὕτω σοι καὶ ἐπιλύσω).

The whole interlude (ten verses), in fact, could easily be deleted, it seems, so why was it inserted, why is the full explanation of the Shepherd suspended? Why is Hermas suddenly held captive in an awkward situation? The answer seems to be that the full explanation, the crux of the matter in the climactic end, is suspended for a while because Hermas is not yet ready to understand it or to have a full grasp of the book he is about to complete. After the test the Shepherd says: “I will hide absolutely nothing from you” (οὐδὲν ἄλως ἀποκρύψω ἀπὸ σοῦ), meaning that the full content of the message is to be revealed only after the embarrassing experience with which Hermas’ night began. The excuse the Shepherd makes, “I am occupied for a little while … Wait for me here until

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I return,”59 is rather weak, but helps to change the scene completely. After all, the Shepherd’s necessity corresponds perfectly with Hermas’ mystagogical momentum. Sometimes situations are divinely simulated with the purpose of occasioning alternatives.60 The occasion that arises, since the Shepherd is gone for a while, is one in which the twelve maidens take the lead. They are in charge now (“You were handed over to us”),61 and represent holy spirits, as well as Christian virtues and the powers of the Son of God.62 By consequence, these women act at the behest of the master of the tower.63 They know about the “delay” of the construction,64 and have set their minds on the adaptation of the white and round stone named Hermas. The stone has to be purified and “become square,” that is: “trimmed,” overnight. It will incur blows, because pieces have to be “cut off and discarded,”65 otherwise it will not fit into Christ’s tower. For this reason the round stones, including Hermas, are temporarily kept in the forecourt, beside the tower.66 They are soon to be trimmed (ὡς μελλόντων αὐτῶν λατομεῖσθαι), but the job is hard and time-consuming (βραδέως ἐγένοντο).67 Indeed, the forecourt has to be cleaned with brooms, even sprinkled with water, after the stones have undergone their radical treatment.68 The interlude – the mystagogical momentum – shows explicitly what happens overnight, how the inappropriate form of the “fine” stone is battered away.69 Hermas spends the night in the forecourt of the tower, the very place where remorseful sinners remain during their time of penance. “Das ganze Zwischenspiel vollzieht sich auf dem Vorplatz des Turms, der gerade der Platz der zu behauenden Steine, der Büßer, ist.”70 Thus the forecourt of the church is a place of transformation, reserved for penitents, who are precious to God.  Sim 9.10 (87).5.  Cf. Luke 24:28, “he walked ahead as if he were going on.” Jesus pretended to go on, just to give his companions the opportunity to express their wish to receive him in their home. 61  Sim 9.11 (88).2, Ἡμῖν παρεδόθης. 62  Sim 9.13 (90).2; 9.15 (92).2; 9.24 (101). 2; cf. Vis 3.8 (16).5. 63  Sim 9.6 (83).1; 9.9 (86).4: ὁ δεσπότης τοῦ πύργου; 9.12 (89).7. 64  Sim 9.5 (82).1: ἀνοχὴ τῆς οἰκοδομῆς. 65  Vis 3.6 (14).6: ἐὰν μὴ περικοπῇ καὶ ἀποβάλῃ ἐξ αὐτοῦ τι, οὐ δύναται τετράγωνος γενέσθαι, and Sim 9.6 (83).8: λατομηθῆναι … λατομεῖσθαι …. 66  Grotz, Die Entwicklung des Bußwesens, 8 (cf. 51, 53, 64). 67  Sim 9.6 (83).8. 68  Sim 9.10 (87).3. 69  Sim 9.6 (83).8: λίαν γὰρ λαμπροὶ ἦσαν. 70  Grotz, Die Entwicklung des Bußwesens, 50-53, at 50. 59

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However, Hermas gives no real description of how conversion, the major subject of the book, actually takes place.71 Conversion is at the back of his mind, because the call for penance is at its front. The delay, ordained by God, creates time for pause and penance.72 The two merge in the prophetic play in the ninth similitude § 11 (88), in which even cathartic elements are incorporated. The narrative comes close to a cathartic tale, evoking in its listeners or readers striking emotions of relief and wonder. The miracle may not sound realistic, but it is believable. As Aristotle writes: “What is impossible but can be believed should be preferred to what is possible but unconvincing.”73 Hermas’ adventure at the tower certainly sounds unrealistic, but should nevertheless be believed. As such, the reader is struck by it. Again, the adventure happens merely “in visio,” but anticipates real-life situations in his church. Hermas’ brief account is as follows. The Shepherd is occupied for a little while, and instructs him to wait for him until he returns. Hermas’ first reaction is: “Sir, what will I do here alone?,” but the Shepherd then entrusts him to the twelve young women (“I hand him over to you”). After they inform him of the length of the delay, revealing that the Shepherd will not be back until the next day, his second reaction is one of uneasiness. The women suggest that Hermas should stay with them as long as necessary. But then he says: “I will wait for him until the evening, but if he does not come, I will go to my house and return early the next morning.” However, the women react with steely determination: “You were handed over to us. You cannot go away from us.” So, Hermas is somehow locked up in an embarrassing situation from which he cannot escape. Almost panicking, Hermas acclaims: “But where will I stay?” Their candid reply is: “You will sleep with us as a brother and not as a husband, because you are our brother, and besides, we are going to live with you because we love much.”74 These words are revealing for several reasons. If any indecent thought should cross Hermas’ mind, as it probably did, the indication that he would sleep with them as a brother, and not as a husband, would rule 71  Lage Pernveden, The Concept of the Church in the Shepherd of Hermas, Studia Theologica Lundensia 27 (Lund: Gleerup, 1966), 245. 72  Grotz, Die Entwicklung des Bußwesens, 49. 73  Aristotle, Poetica 24.10 (1460a); in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, trans. with an introd. by G. M. A. Grube, Library of Liberal Arts (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1958), 53. Aristotle exemplifies catharsis as a literary device in tragic play in his Poetica 9.12 (1452a) and 24.8 (1460a). Catharsis refers to emotions of wonderment and shock (τὸ θαυμαστόν), which purge the public’s feeling. 74  Sim 9.10 (87).6 – 9.11 (88).3.

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out any improper expectations he might have. After all, the book starts with a confession of seductive thoughts he had after seeing Rhodè bathe in the river. The sight of her beauty made him think how happy he would be if he had a wife as beautiful as she is.75 Hermas portrays himself as someone who struggles with his sexual feelings.76 Right from the start of the book sexual desire is a topic of interest, and it is present on several occasions, such as when the elder lady spontaneously touches Hermas on the chest while talking to him about wrong sexual desire.77 Twice he is explicitly warned against sexual immorality, in particular against letting anything enter his heart regarding “someone else’s wife.”78 He is addressed as “Hermas the continent,”79 so it is clear he must learn to love women as sisters.80 After all, the human body should not be defiled, because it is the flesh in which the Spirit of God dwells.81 By consequence, the awkward situation in which Hermas finds himself in the forecourt of the tower deliberately elicits erotic associations. He cannot but interpret “die ganze Situation als eine erotisierte.”82 In any case, the “erotic potential” is overtly present in the rather subtle way nuances are presented in the personal account.83 A reconstruction of the episode shows that the twelve guiding spirits occasion an acute mood swing in their trainee, from feelings of fear and shame to feelings of release and exultation. This is what happens.84 Hermas’ pressing question, “But where will I stay?” (Ποῦ οὖν μενῶ;) is filled with anxiety; afterwards he feels ashamed (ἐγὼ δὲ ᾐσχυνόμην) and privileged at the same time, because the most prominent woman starts to kiss and embrace him, and the others do the same. Hermas feels rejuvenated when the maidens embrace him, start  Vis 1.2 (2).3.  Grundeken, Community Building in the Shepherd of Hermas, 112. 77  Vis 1.4 (4).2. Cf. Vis 3.1 (9).6. 78  Man 4.1 (29).1: περὶ γυναικὸς ἀλλοτρίας; Man 12.2 (45).1 ἐπιθυμία γυναικὸς ἀλλοτρίας ἡ ἀνδρός. 79  Vis 1.2 (2).4: Ἑρμᾶς ὁ ἐγκρατής. 80  Vis 1.1 (1).1; 1.1 (1).7; 2.2 (6).3; Sim 9.11 (88).3. 81  Sim 5.7 (60).1-2. 82  Leutzsch, Die Wahrnehmung sozialer Wirklichkeit im “Hirten des Hermas”, 182. Cf. Grundeken, Community Building in the Shepherd of Hermas, 169-170; and Der Hirt des Hermas, ed. and trans. Norbert Brox, Kommentar zu den Apostolischen Vätern 7 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991), 406: “die Geschichte … bietet ungemein große Schwierigkeiten,” and 412: “Diese ganze Geschichte, die bis 8 Uhr morgens dauert, lebt von der Freude an der erotischen Inszenierung und zugleich von der ihr widersprechenden Demonstration absoluter Askese.” 83  Osiek mentions “erotic potential” twice, see The Shepherd of Hermas, 228-229. 84  Sim 9.11 (88).3-8. 75

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playing with him and lead him around the tower. Some of them dance, some move rhythmically, some sing (αἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐχόρευον, αἱ δὲ ὠρχοῦντο, αἱ δὲ ᾖδον). Even though he remains silent himself, Hermas feels happy. However, the young women must still prevent him from leaving the tower when evening falls. They literally hold on to him and refuse to let him go (ἀλλὰ κατέσχον με). Obviously, the guiding spirits were not yet successful in captivating the mind and heart of their penitent. He therefore spends the night in their company beside the tower. Finally, the women spread their linen tunics on the ground of the forecourt and have Hermas lie down among them (καὶ ἐμὲ ἀνέκλιναν εἰς τὸ μέσον αὐτῶν). The text emphasizes that the twelve sisters and their brother Hermas do nothing but pray all night (καὶ οὐδὲν ὅλως ἐποίουν εἰ μὴ προσηύχοντο). At last, early in the morning, the trainee meets the Shepherd, to whom he affirms that the women treated him well, and that he feels happy, having dined only on the word of the Lord during the evening and the night. The interlude has a cathartic ending in that the Shepherd’s first question, after his return shortly after sunrise, is a rather surprising one directed at the maidens: “Have you dishonoured him in any way?”85 The question is suggestive, in an accusatory tone, as if these women were sexually in control and might have violated the sexual honour of their protégé.86 Their reply “ask him” (Ἐρώτα, φασίν, αὐτόν), is peculiar as well, as if Hermas’ personal testimony is needed to prove their innocence. The whole epilogue is the exact opposite of the regular state of affairs, where a judge asks a man “have you dishonoured her in any way?,” and he responds with: “ask her.” But this is what catharsis is all about, as Aristotle said: convincing impossibilities are more impressive than unconvincing possibilities. At any rate, sexual preoccupation is evident throughout the story of Hermas’ spiritual rejuvenation. The outcome of this idiosyncratic story is the anticipation of a deep bond between Hermas and the maidens and all that they represent. The vision sets a prophetic agenda, “sees” the passions Hermas should control, and provisionally redeems him. The new bond is clearly defined as antisexual in content, even though the text is erotically charged. Bodily aspects play a central role in the convertive mystagogy of the story. At least seven aspects pertaining to mystagogy and the body can be identified.  Sim 9.11 (88).8: Μή τινα αὐτῷ ὕβριν πεποιήκατε;  Cf. Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 229: “‘doing harm’ can mean dishonour/rape, and ‘playing’, shame.” 85

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(1) The text indicates that penance starts with full compliance. When the Shepherd announces his delay, a delay of two days,87 Hermas agrees to remain in the forecourt of the tower, with the young women, to whom he is officially entrusted. The official character of this moment corresponds with developing practices of penance in many western churches during the first half of the second century. When the Shepherd reflects on the ninth similitude afterwards, he remarks that even Christians who acted like real servants of God, but were derailed “because of the women dressed in black, with bare shoulders, loosened hair, and attractive appearance,” may find their way back to God, if they “return to the young women.”88 This means that voluntary and spontaneous compliance with penance does not entail merely passive acceptance, but also requires active commitment. Hermas has to take some drastic steps to reach the forecourt of the church, in other words: the penitent has to personally apply him- or herself, and as a matter of fact, has to be physically present. In Hermas’ case the act is rather spontaneous,89 and may be classified as an endeavour to confess his sins and clear his conscience (exomologesis conscientiae), which interestingly matches the ritual that both Origen and Cyprian developed decades later for the remission of minor sins (paenitentia non plena).90 This is probably the reason why the maidens love him so much,91 and why he is counted among the stones that are precious.92 He is not forced to repent of grave sins, but spontaneously complies with the suggested two days’ penance for minor sins.93

 Sim 9.7 (84).6.  Sim  9.13 (90).8 – 9.14 (91).3: καὶ ἐπανακάμψωσιν ἐπὶ τὰς παρθένους (verse 1). Cf. Sim 1.1 (50).2.5: ἐπανακάμψαι … ἐπανακάμψαι (“to go back to a place or person”). 89  Grotz, Die Entwicklung des Bußwesens, 50, 51, 53, 70. 90  Cf. ibid., 164-168, 283-287, 292-293. 91  Sim 9.11 (88).3: λίαν γὰρ σε ἀγαπῶμεν. 92  Sim 9.6 (83).8: λίαν γὰρ λαμπροὶ ἦσαν. 93  Grotz, Die Entwicklung des Bußwesens, 70 (cf. 366): “daß es die Kirche gerne sah, wenn sich die Sünder spontan zur Übernahme der Buße gemeldet haben … Es ist keineswegs so … daß die kirchliche Buße nur da bestand, wo die Kirche mit mehr oder weniger scharfen Mitteln dazu zwang, sondern es muß schon von Anfang an das Gegenteil die Regel gewesen sein: die freiwillige Übernahme der Buße von seiten der Gläubigen. Möglicherweise haben sich Gläubige gelegentlich den Büßern zugesellt, auch ohne daß sie sich eigentlich solcher Sünden bewußt waren, die notwendig der kirchlichen Buße bedurft hätten. Wahrscheinlich ist das Zwischenspiel des Hermas mit den Jungfrauen beim Turm in Sim. IX 1 in diesem Sinn zu verstehen.” 87 88



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(2) The penitent complies with physical separation in the forecourt of the church (vestibulum), where penitents stay at a certain distance from the congregation of the faithful.94 They do not participate in prayer, the Eucharist, or the blessing until the set term has been completed. The model for physical separation of the penitent in the Early Church is found in Luke 18:13-14: but the tax collector stood at a distance (μακρόθεν ἑστώς). He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” I tell you that this man … went home justified before God.95

(3) On several occasions the penitents lie down in the forecourt (suniacentes or substrati; ὑποπιπτόντες or γονυκλινόντες). They bow down and bend their knees and heads, for example to receive the blessing of the penitents.96 Sometimes they need help from those who are in charge. Hermas’ guiding spirits gently force him to lie down in the forecourt.97 Genuine penance cannot come about without bodily segregation and submission. The human body is an indispensable mystagogical tool in bringing the penitent to heartfelt repentance. (4) The twelve maidens definitely play the most decisive role in the mystagogy by introducing renewal. Central to this is that they take care tenderly of Hermas, and embrace and kiss him, and whenever necessary, take hold of him and lay him on the ground.98 The scenes described are taken from different practices of Church life: the holy kiss, penance in the forecourt, eating/fasting and praying together, dancing and making music. The atmosphere is happy and the focus is on the body, but has a radical mystagogical side to it. Twelve guiding spirits join their efforts to almost lure their mystes into spiritual transformation. First, the most prominent maiden of the twelve starts kissing and embracing him, then the others follow, leading him around the tower, and playing with him. The result is that Hermas becomes young again and also starts playing with them. Without letting him out of their sight, they lavish the candour and intensity of sisterly love and affection upon  Grotz, Die Entwicklung des Bußwesens, 19, 28, 51 (cf. 285, 296, 297, 302, 367, 368). Cf. Tertullian, De paenitentia 7.10: Deus “collocavit in verstibulo paenitentiam secundam”. 95  This verse inspired the emerging tradition of the “Jesus prayer” in the East among the Desert Fathers and in the Philokalia. 96  Grotz, Die Entwicklung des Bußwesens, 5-8, 171, 308, 389, 400-402, 432, 433. 97  Sim 9.11 (88).7: καὶ ἐμὲ ἀνέκλιναν εἰς τὸ μέσον αὐτῶν. 98  Sim 9.11 (88).4-7; 9.14 (91).1-2. 94

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him. The purport of this intimacy obviously points to a Jewish-Christian background.99 It was customary practice to greet fellow believers in the early Christian period.100 The mutual kiss was a mark of honour, a gesture of respect and affiliation, and should be regarded as an expression of asexual love which transcends the erotic.101 However, the intimacy suggested in the physical contact between the young women and Hermas deliberately provokes erotic connotations. This is not merely a greeting. The women take the initiative for the kissing and embracing.102 It seems that two drastic changes happen when these women take the lead, as they are his guides to a deeper conversion. Firstly, an exchange of spirits takes place; secondly, Hermas’ attitude towards intimacy changes. The first result of the “kissing mystagogy” is that kissing, here something that women initiate, seductively invites the male mystes to surrender his spirit to a ritual of inclusion. By being carried away into experiences and feelings of sisterly intimacy, he must acquire the strength, i.e. the virtues, of the young women.103 This is what the magic of kissing conveys, as is frequently noted in contemporary literature. For example, in the pseudepigraphic Jewish love story of Joseph and Aseneth (Egypt, c. 110 ce)104 Joseph puts his arms around Asenath, and she puts her arms around him, and they kiss. In doing so, both come to “life in their spirit.” Next, Joseph kisses Asenath and “gives her spirit of life”; then he kisses her a second time and “gives her spirit of wisdom”; finally, he kisses her a third time and “gives her spirit of truth.”105 The idea that life (spirit) can be transferred or exchanged or taken away by a kiss is well  Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 228.  Cf. 1 Cor 16:20; Sim 9.6 (83).2. Generally, early Christian texts neither encourage, nor discourage kissing fellow Christians. Yet Christians should take care not to be too close, see: Athenagoras, Legatio 32.2; Tertullian, Ad uxorem 2.4.3, Constitutiones apostolorum 2.57.17; 8.11.9. 101  Grundeken, Community Building in the Shepherd of Hermas, 172-173, 179. Cf. Paul F. Bradshaw, Maxwell E. Johnson, and L. Edward Phillips, The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2002), 99, who suggest that Hermas is hinting at the holy kiss meant to welcome people at the holy meal. 102  Grundeken, Community Building in the Shepherd of Hermas, 174-178. This is also the case in Luke 7:37-38, “a woman …, and she kissed his feet ….” 103  Sim 9.13 (90).8; 9.14 (91).2. 104  Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, vol. 3.1, rev. ed. Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, and Matthew Black (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986), 546-550. 105  Joseph and Aseneth 19.10-11 (cf. 22.9), in James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday; London: Darton, 1985), 233 (and see note ad loc.). 99

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known. Likewise, in the Odes of Solomon a kiss can impart life. There the believer is comforted because he rests in God’s “incorruptible arms.” Indeed, he also uses words of intimacy, embracing and kissing, to describe his state of consolation: “immortal life embraced me, and kissed me.”106 Hence, the conclusion is warranted that the mystagogy of kissing signifies a ritual of inclusion, marking the beginning of Hermas’ companionship with the virgins, because he is spiritually endowed by their tokens of life and virtue.107 The second result of the kissing mystagogy is that it thoroughly alters Hermas’ attitude to intimacy. Just before the kiss he feels ashamed, immediately after the kiss he feels rejuvenated. Kissing and embracing are not repressed, but controlled, and their meaning is de-eroticized. According to the flow of thought in the book, this is the decisive stage in the process of change with regard to his sexual feelings for women. The first stage is his awareness of the sinfulness of sexual desire (lust) for Rhodè. The second includes his relationship with his wife, which becomes asexual. The final stage comprises the perception that being close to women should not be an erotic experience, and marks the beginning of Hermas’ awareness of asexual intimacy among brothers and sisters in the faith.108 This concept of asexual living and working together resonates with the early Christian practice of syneisaktism. (5) The mystagogy of the interlude results in the intended experience of ceaseless prayer for Hermas. When the women spread their linen tunics on the ground, this act offers double-minded believers the opportunity to put on these tunics. Deluded by the women dressed in black, with loosened hair and bare shoulders and of attractive appearance, they desired these women and took off their former clothing, the clothing of the young maidens. By putting off the clothes of these spirits, they also lose their former power. By returning to the twelve spirits (ἐπανακάμψωσιν ἐπὶ τὰς παρθένους)109 the spirits make them ready to take up their power again, by putting on the right clothing.110 The proof of Hermas’ successful reintegration is given with the observation that he lies on the ground (καὶ ἐμὲ  Odes of Solomon 28:6-7, in Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2, 760. Cf. Michael Lattke, Odes of Solomon: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2009), 384, 391, 392. Compare also Gen 2:7. 107  Grundeken, Community Building in the Shepherd of Hermas, 177. 108  Ibid., 151, 161-168. 109  Sim 9.14 (91).1. 110  Sim 9.13 (90).8; 9.14 (91).2. 106

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ἀνέκλιναν), and has been praying restlessly, all night, “no less than they did.” Finally, he has received a kindred spirit, and the maidens rejoice.111 The gift of unceasing prayer marks the cathartic ending of the mystagogy, after which the Shepherd unfolds the deeper meaning of the last and most urgent similitude to Hermas.112 The mystes has been successfully transformed into an initiate, and this is where the time of penitence for Hermas ends. He did not eat or sleep, but only prayed, to clear his conscience.113 Yet the components of an average church gathering were all there, such as eating,114 dancing,115 and going around the tower.116 The outer scene in the forecourt (vestibulum), beside the tower, forms the background to the inner scene of repentance, forgiveness, release, joy, and fellowship. The paradox (not contrast) only heightens the cathartic element of successful penitential mystagogy. (6) The eleventh mandate is an instructional vision in which two types of prophets are contrasted: the false prophet, who ruins the mind of the double-minded, and the true prophet, who is silent, meek and humble.117 The central question is how anyone is to distinguish between a true and a false prophet.118 The answer, however, is not to be found in theory, but in practice, in the lifestyle of the prophet, and in the way he or she portrays him- or herself in the Church. Thus, when a prophet “enters the assembly” of the just,119 the true prophet will receive the spirit of prophecy and speak as the Lord wishes, but not so the false prophet. The false prophet will 111  Sim  9.11 (88).7: κἀγὼ μετ’ αὐτῶν ἀδιαλείπτως προσηυχόμην καὶ οὐκ ἔλασσον ἐκείνων. καὶ ἔχαιρον αἱ παρθένοι οὕτω μου προσευχομένου. 112  Sim 9.11 (88).9: “What did you have for dinner?” 113  Grotz, Die Entwicklung des Bußwesens, 50: “Gebet und Nachtwachen sind ja doch Hauptmittel der Buße.” 114  Sim 9.11 (88).8. 115  Cf. Matthias Klinghardt, “Tanz und Offenbarung: Praxis und Theologie des gottesdienstlichen Tanzes im frühen Christentum,” Spes Christiana 15-16 (2004-2005): 9-34, at 24, and Brox, Der Hirt des Hermas, 411. 116  Grundeken, Community Building in the Shepherd of Hermas, 151, 161-168. cf. the owner of the tower “around the tower,” Sim 9.6 (83).2: περιπατεῖν κύκλῳ τοῦ πύργου; Shepherd and Hermas “around the tower” Sim  9.9 (86).6: καὶ μηκέτι κεῖσθαι λίθον κύκλῳ τοῦ πύργου, λέγει μοι ὁ ποιμήν· Κυκλώσωμεν τὸν πύργον καὶ ἴδωμεν, μή τι ἐλάττωμά ἐστιν ἐν αὐτῷ. καὶ ἐκύκλευον ἐγὼ μετ’ αὐτοῦ; maidens and Hermas “around the tower” Sim 9.11 (88).4: καὶ περιάγειν κύκλῳ τοῦ πύργου – they danced around the tower hand in hand. 117  Man 11 (43).1-21. 118  Man 11 (43).7: Πῶς οὖν, φημί, κύριε, ἄνθρωπος γνώσεται, τίς αὐτῶν προφήτης καὶ τίς ψευδοπροφήτης ἐστίν; 119  Man 11 (43).9.14: ὅταν οὖν … ἔλθῃ εἰς συναγωγὴν …, ὅταν δὲ ἔλθῃ εἰς συναγωγὴν.



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first try to flee from just people, but if he or she does enter the congregation of the just (probably a defined party in the Church),120 he or she is brought to naught.121 In fact, the false prophet is “emptied and the earthly spirit flees from him or her in fear, and that person is rendered speechless, completely shattered, unable to say anything.”122 The image of Hermas lying on the ground brings to mind the confrontation between divergent spirits in the Early Church. The eleventh mandate shows a struggle for power between opposing spirits in the assembled church. The mandate seems to have been inserted by the hand of a redactor, and is of later date. The text is reminiscent of the warnings the Didache contained against false prophets several decades earlier.123 In Hermas’ days the urgency of discerning between true and false prophets was no less acute. The eleventh mandate in particular indicates a thriving prophetic activity,124 in which regulations were more than necessary for the church. Hermas’ concern is with the living church, the church he knows, i.e. “nur die empirische Kirche.”125 Could it be that Hermas, who suffers from minor sins and doublemindedness, and who is specifically instructed to avoid false prophets, has experienced a power struggle himself?126 He may not have been a Roman prophet,127 but evidently presents himself as an apocalyptic visionary in the book. Moreover, a visionary can also suffer from doublemindedness, which must be defined as the presence of two spirits in one and the same person.128 From the moment of their baptism on, the Spirit of God dwells in Christians, but they can still harm and even expel the Holy Spirit by habitual sinning.129 Trespassing God’s rules implies 120  Grundeken, Community Building in the Shepherd of Hermas, 140. According to the author of the book of Hermas, the congregation consisted of a mixture of believers who were changed by real (second) conversion, and (still) sinful members. Change had to come about from the inside out. 121  Man 11 (43).13: ἀλλ’ ἀποφεύγει αὐτούς. 122  Man 11 (43).14: ἀπὸ τοῦ φόβου φεύγει ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ, καὶ κωφοῦται ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἐκεῖνος καὶ ὅλως συνθραύεται, μηδὲν δυνάμενος λαλῆσαι. 123  Didachè 11.3–13.7. 124  Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 141. 125  Grotz, Die Entwicklung des Bußwesens, 48. 126  Man 11 (43).21. 127  Reiling, Hermas and Christian Prophecy, 155-170. 128  Man 5.1 (33).5; 9 (39).1-12. The idea of “spirit” in the Shepherd of Hermas may be influenced by the idea of genius tradition in Rome, see Helmut Opitz, Ursprünge frühkatholischer Pneumatologie: Ein Beitrag zur Entstehung der Lehre vom Heiligen Geist in der römischen Gemeinde unter Zugrundelegung des 1. Clemens-Briefes und des “Hirten” des Hermas, Theologische Arbeiten 15 (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1959), 137, 145, 149. 129  Man 3 (28).1; 10.1 (40).2; 10.2 (41).1; 10.3 (42).1-4; Sim 5.7 (60)2.4.

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­ arming the Spirit, because the Spirit of God equals the perfection of the h Christian law (nova lex).130 In the interlude of the ninth similitude, Hermas initially tries to evade confrontation with the guiding spirits at the tower. When he is held, embraced, kissed and brought down to the floor, the Holy Spirit takes over again. The text does not say that Hermas is “emptied,” that the earthly spirit “flees” from him, and that he is rendered “speechless.” However, implicitly the text comes close to saying this. Perhaps some sort of exorcism may have taken place. (7) A time of ecclesial penance is brought to a close by the laying on of hands by the bishop. The penitents bow their heads and bodies and receive the blessing of the penitents, which allows them to take part again in the communion of the faithful.131 Personal peace is restored.132 However, it is not clear whether Hermas received this blessing. Thus far, these observations corroborate the hypothesis that the interlude halfway through the ninth similitude describes a mystagogical penitential process for the person of Hermas. It comprises a moment of transition and transformation of inner motifs and desires, especially as regards his attitude towards women.133 Nonetheless, the emphasis is not on abstinence, but on reconciliation.134 The change he experiences seems to be the model that others must follow, in particular because the church of Hermas has many “stones” like him, relatively rich people who tend to become lukewarm in the faith. The use of the apocalyptic genre is his tool to address, and re-establish, the communal identity.135  Opitz, Ursprünge frühkatholischer Pneumatologie, 85.  Cf. Grotz, Die Entwicklung des Bußwesens, 4, 28, 388-391, 402: “Das Niederfallen ist die Haltung der eigentliche Büßer, die zum Segensgebet des Liturgen auf den Boden sanken. Nach der Segnung – vor Beginn des Gläubigengottesdienstes – wurden sie entlassen.” The penitents sunt sub manibus sacerdotum, who prayed, for example: “Look down upon these persons who have bended the neck of their soul and body to Thee … And do Thou restore them to Thy holy Church, into their former dignity and honour” (Constitutiones apostolorum 8.9, the so-called Clementine Liturgy; The Ante-Nicene Fathers 7, ed. Roberts, Donaldson et al., 485). 132  Grotz, Die Entwicklung des Bußwesens, 18, 49, 50, 65. 133  See Haas, De Geest bewaren, 199, 240-241, 256-268 (“een ingrijpende innerlijke verandering,” 266), 275-279. 134  Man 4.1 (29).8. 135  See Edith McEwan Humphrey, The Ladies and the Cities: Transformation and Apocalyptic Identity in Joseph and Aseneth, 4 Ezra, the Apocalypse, and the Shepherd of Hermas, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement Series 17 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 144. Cf. Pernveden, Concept of the Church, 223-307. 130 131



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The strong physical presentation of the experience plays a key role in the process of change. In the following section the dynamics of language and its transformational qualities are investigated in more detail. IV.  Catachrestic Theory and Convertive Mystagogy Hermas’ quest for ecclesial penance causes him to allude to a rather controversial paradigm in Church life, that is, erotic desire. Nevertheless, desire may become a vehicle for a higher cause. This is how mystagogical susceptibility is elicited, not only with Hermas, but also with every Church member who cares for his or her soul. Paradoxically, sexual symbolism is used for the purpose of promoting an asexual life.136 Various terms with erotic overtones are used with a non-erotic meaning.137 For example: “we love you so much,” “began to kiss and embrace me,” “they began to play with me,” “dancing,” “move rhythmically,” “I spent the night with them,” “they spread their linen tunics on the ground and made me lie in the middle of them.”138 The dynamics of these words pull the listeners into the realm of the body and of desire, only to push them further into the world of penance, agony and abstinence. These striking literary findings bring us to the basic idea of dynamic equivalence, which is a rhetorical device, and has been hotly debated as a professional translator’s instrument in recent decades.139 To put it rhetorically, dynamic equivalence is primarily about the translation of effects. It seeks to move a given target reader as deeply as the source text once moved the source reader. In classical rhetoric this equivalence was considered to be a metaphor, not as a replacement of existing words, but only as indicating analogy by naming something that does not have a proper name of its own. Aristotle calls this type of metaphor catachresis. If something does not have a proper name of its own, a metaphor can be used to denote it. However, this metaphor should not be far-fetched 136  In her book Christianity and Roman Society, Gillian Clark poses a related rhetorical question: “… if you can sell anything with sex, does that include abstinence?” See Gillian Clark, Christianity and Roman Society, Key Themes in Ancient History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 69. 137  Grundeken, Community Building in the Shepherd of Hermas, 179. 138  Sim 9.11 (88).3-7. 139  See Eugene A. Nida and Charles R. Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation, with Special Reference to Bible Translating (Leiden: Brill, 1969), 200. Cf. Glenn J. Kerr, “Dynamic Equivalence and Its Daughters: Placing Bible Translation Theories in Their Historical Context,” Journal of Translation 7, no. 1 (2011): 1-19.

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(οὐ πόρρωθεν), but derived from related things that are of a similar species (ἐκ τῶν συγγενῶν καὶ τῶν ὁμοειδῶν). It should always be clear that the terminology used is related (δῆλόν ἐστιν ὅτι συγγενές).140 However, Cicero differentiates between pure metaphors, which he calls “transferred” words (tralata verba), and catachresis, which he calls “borrowed” words (mutata verba). A “borrowed” word means that a proper word is substituted for another “with the same meaning drawn from some other suitable sphere” (idem significet sumptum ex re aliqua consequenti).141 Cicero also differs from Aristotle in stating that one word is borrowed for another, whereas according to Aristotle there could be no proper name in such cases. Quintilian clearly agrees with Aristotle’s definition when he confirms that catachresis adapts the nearest available term (accomodat quod in proximo est) to describe something for which no actual term exists (quae non habentibus nomen suum).142 A proper word is missing to say what must be said, so the nearest available word is borrowed for this purpose. Also, the means of catachresis is deemed to be an abuse of words or a principle of “inexact use” (abusio or inopia verborum),143 halfway between barbarism and the effective use of a trope.144 140  ἔτι δὲ οὐ πόρρωθεν δεῖ ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ τῶν συγγενῶν καὶ τῶν ὁμοειδῶν μεταφέρειν ἐπὶ τὰ ἀνώνυμα ὠνομασμένως ὃ λεχθὲν δῆλόν ἐστιν ὅτι συγγενές, Aristotle, Technè rhetorikè 3.2.12 (1405a). Cf. Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, trans. with introd., notes and appendices by George A. Kennedy (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 224. 141  Cf. Cicero, Orator 27.92-94: oratory style illumine (illustrant) by the stars of transferred words (or metaphor) and borrowed words (tralata verba atque mutata). Transferred words make a metaphor, borrowed words make catachresis, in Cicero’s own words: “by ‘borrowed’ I mean the cases in which there is substituted for a ‘proper’ word another with the same meaning drawn from some other suitable sphere” (mutata, in quibus pro verbo proprio subicitur aliud idem significet sumptum ex re aliqua consequenti); Cicero, Brutus. Orator, trans. G. L. Hendrickson and H. M. Hubbell, LCL 342 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939; repr. 1988), 372-373. Cf. Rhetorica ad Herennium 4.33: “the inexact use of a like and kindred word in place of the precise and proper one,” according to the “principle of inexact use” (ratione abusionis). 142  Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 8.6.34: quae non habentibus nomen suum accomodat quod in proximo est. 143  Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 8.2.6: Unde abusio, quae katachrèsis dicitur, necessaria. Rhetorica ad Herennium 4.33: “the principle of inexact use” (ratione abusionis). 144  Catachresis is: “a conventional word used wrongly to indicate something for which there is no conventional word,” and: “one of several solutions when an author is looking for a word to describe something for which there is no conventional term.” Catachresis “thus lies on the border between barbarism and the effective use of a trope,” Roger Dean Anderson, Glossary of Greek Rhetorical Terms Connected to Methods of Argumentation, Figures and Tropes from Anaximenes to Quintilian, Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology 24 (Louvain: Peeters, 2000), 66.



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Hence, catachresis is all about the creative moulding of language in order to express that for which there is no definite word yet.145 By analogy, and because language is full of creativity and vitality, words and sentences may become porous, and change from one narrative to the other, just because other words and stories are nearby and available (ἐκ τῶν συγγενῶν καὶ τῶν ὁμοειδῶν, Aristotle; idem significet sumptum ex re aliqua consequenti, Cicero; accomodat quod in proximo est, Quintilian). Words are borrowed, however “abusively,” for the sake of translating thoughts and images from one context to the other. In bridging worlds, cultures, and subcultures, catachrestic inexactness may be inevitable in attempting to explain oneself to someone else. Words are not inexhaustible, they cannot mean anything and everything, but they can change by proxy as “Übersetzungslehnworte.”146 Jacques Derrida took catachresis as a general theory of understanding. As such, language is always incomplete, insufficient, and inexact (inopia). There is no exactness of language whatsoever, and this is where the deep fibre of his deconstructionist approach to a hermeneutic of being as it is lies. All systems of meaning prove to be incomplete and even abusive, since they tend to be controlled by hierarchy. No author, producer or generator of a text is the sole owner of its meaning. Meaning cannot be limited by rules superimposed by mere controllers. After all, meaning is not confined by conformity of word and matter, but by absence. This is radical catachrestic reasoning. Not what we read, but what we do not read in the text is decisive for understanding. Our interpretive horizons cannot merge with the author’s horizon; on the contrary, horizons disperse or disseminate. In order to detect what is absent, readers have to look for intertextuality and signs of otherness. Susceptibility to otherness leaves the text open to new meaning, another meaning, another context, and another subset of pre-understanding.147 145  Cf. Shireen R. K. Patell, “Now You Don’t: The Work of Metaphor,” The Free Library, 2009, https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Now+you+don%27t%3A+the+work+of+me taphor.-a0213025187 (accessed 18 December 2020). Rev. version of a paper presented at Visuality and Violence panel (2008, chaired by Elisabeth Bronfen); Viviane K. Namaste, “The Use and Abuse of Queer Tropes: Metaphor and Catachresis in Queer Theory and Politics,” Social Semiotics 9 (1999): 213-234; and William M. Purcell, “Tropes, Transsumptio, Assumptio, and the Redirection of Studies in Metaphor,” Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 5 (1990): 35-53. 146  A. D. Leeman and A. C. Braet, Klassieke retorica: Haar inhoud, functie en betekenis (Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1987), 106. Cf. Heinz Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik: Eine Grundlegung der Literaturwissenschaft (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1990), §577, 297-298. 147  Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1982), 255-256.

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Derrida did not build a system of catachrestic theory; rather, he attacked modernist hermeneutical theory, because of what he believes are its unrealistic pretentions and ambitions. The construction of meaning on the basis of texts follows a more creative path than people think. This is exactly what the author of the ninth similitude in the Shepherd of Hermas did, though quite intuitively. The text uses the realm of sexual emotion as a dynamic equivalence (quod in proximo est) for deep longing for the divine unknown (for which no words exist). It seems inappropriate, insufficient and inexact (inopia) to use erotic imagination to direct the heart towards the exact opposite, but this is not in fact the case. Physical longing, even sexual longing, can become a vehicle for new God-given experiences, and can effect inner transformation. Thus words like “she began to kiss me,” “she began to play with me,” and “I spent the night with her” do appeal to the body, but are preparatory to a deep longing to guide the heart towards the burning desire to surrender to the love of God, to be kissed by grace and forgiveness, to play with joy and release, to spend the night with prayer and newness of thought. Such desires are as important for the heart as erotic desires; indeed, they could well be more important. V. Conclusion Within the fabric of the Shepherd of Hermas, the ecstatic genre of the book evidently serves an intended mystagogical goal, i.e. impartation of the spirit of penance and (second) conversion. The person of Hermas is not only a historical author, he also represents anyone who reads the book and risks the coming wrath of God upon Christians who suffer from double-mindedness (being δίψυχος). Even though the Shepherd of Hermas reflects a rather isolated gentile-Christian church, its practice of exerting penance and Church discipline marks the beginning of a long search for liturgy and pastoral care for backsliders and “lapsi” (those who have fallen in major sin). The main characters in the first half of the book may be described as figures who prepare Hermas for the road to the finale, leading him (and the reader) to reflect on a deeper level, such as materialism and desire/ lust. Hermas is subsequently defined as one of the stones that have to be reworked (healed) in order to fit into the construction of the tower, which is the Church of Christ in the end time. Within the course of the ninth parable a challenging interlude provokes the author to take part



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in a “play” of spiritual renewal that hits him physically where it hurts (mentally). The ecstatic-cathartic event, albeit “in visio,” anticipates reallife situations and true physical involvement, and for that reason should be described as a mystagogical interlude.148 Quite paradoxically, the erotic play anticipates elements of personal conversion, such as voluntary penance in the vestibulum, praying on the ground, and learning new expressions of intimacy. The strong physical presentation catachrestically connects “body words” with their spiritual counterparts, so that the ecstatic event truly leads the mystes from the ideal to the concrete and vice versa. For that reason the story operates as a mystagogical tool, using the instrument of bodily surrender, in which expressions such as “she began to kiss me” not only move the body, but rather prepare one for deeper longings. The ultimate desire of the mystes is the inner surrender of the heart to God’s love. Hence, the language of mystagogy in the ninth similitude can be typified as porous. In an almost osmotic way, meanings of words change because they are used for a realm of longing for which proper words are as yet lacking. Thus words for physical longing can also serve as definitions of inner healing (quod in proximo est). Aristotle was right in stating that the impossible should be judged by reference to a higher reality and the morally excellent. Indeed, sometimes the inexplicable does not violate reason at all. In fact, it is rather likely that unlikely things should happen.149

 Sim 9.11 (88).1-8.  Aristotle, Poetica 25.17 (1461b); in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, trans. Grube, 60: “We must judge the impossible in relation … to what is morally better … The inexplicable … when rightly interpreted, is not found to be inexplicable at all, for it is also likely that unlikely things should happen.” 148

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Ignatius of Antioch and Judith Butler Peter-Ben Smit I. Introduction Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” (1981) tickles the imagination with lyrics such as “Let’s get physical, physical / I want to get physical / Let’s get into physical / Let me hear your body talk, your body talk.” Yet early Christian bodies are often remarkably silent, even if bodies obviously played a key role in early Christian initiation: no rituals without bodies; no ascetism without bodies, for instance. In fact, even when they are present, bodies have a tendency to disappear in early Christian studies, and even more so in the adjacent field of New Testament studies. The body of Jesus, for instance, disappears into the grave and rises only to be submerged again in a discussion about its own risen reality; the bodies of Jesus’ followers disappear behind texts, the body at the Eucharistic banquet is frequently invisible.1 Also, the conceptualization of the body, questions as to what one is and is not allowed to do with it, and the assemblies of early Christian bodies vanish into debates about the social and ethical ideals of representatives of the early Jewish sect of Christ devotees. Discussions of physicality and its fundamental role for early Christian communities are few and far between, excepting research into ascetism, gender and the body, which is probably more developed in patristics than in New Testament studies. I would like to see some change in this respect. The reason for entertaining this wish is simple: early Christianity is all about bodies: the body of Christ, the 1  See for a study of Paul as a theologian of the body in 1 Corinthians 11: Peter-Ben Smit, “Het lichaam van Christus aan tafel: Paulus van Tarsus en Judith Butler in Korinthe,” in Rond de tafel: Maaltijd vieren in liturgische context, ed. Mirella Klomp, Peter-Ben Smit, and Iris Speckmann, Meander 17 (Heeswijk-Dinter: Abdij van Berne, 2018), 47-59; revised and translated as “The Resurrection of the Body of Christ in 1 ­Corinthians 11: Paul as a Theologian of the Body in Conversation with Judith Butler,” Lectio Difficilior 2019:1, http://www.lectio.unibe.ch/19_1/pdf/smit_peter_ben_the_resurrection_of_the_body_of_christ%20.pdf (accessed 27 May 2020).

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bodies of people who interact with Christ and with each other, and beyond that: communication is about bodies and bodily actions. In order to help effect this change, I will draw on a theoretician who has recently discussed the expressive dimension of physical bodies at somewhat greater and thought-provoking length: Judith Butler in her recent Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly.2 In this book, Butler argues for the added value of the physical dimension of assemblies. The word assembly evokes a key notion in Ignatius of Antioch’s work, that of the Eucharistic body, participation in which has a clear mystagogical function. Simultaneously, Ignatius’ own body is the site of an intense and initiatory encounter with Christ through the prolonged process of martyrdom that he is engaged in, all the way to Rome. This also has initiatory value.3 This contribution will argue that Butler’s theory of the physical is an aid for understanding the way in which the communio between Ignatius and the churches that he writes to (an exchange that is intended to further their mutual relationship and their relationship to Christ) is constituted both by the physicality of the persons involved and by the physicality of the Eucharist they all (physically) partake of. This approach is encouraged by observations such as Schoedel’s that “the various channels of physical and spiritual nourishment are not sharply distinguished by Ignatius or by those to whom he writes.”4 Thus new light will be shed on the physical aspect of the mystagogical dimensions of Ignatius’ letters to 2  Judith Butler, Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015); Smit, “Lichaam” / “Resurrection” contains presentations of Butler’s views similar to the presentation in this essay. The association of Butler’s work with early Christianity is indebted to a discussion with Marco de Waard of Amsterdam University College. 3  Cf. the exploration of this in Peter-Ben Smit, “Mystagogy and Martyrdom in Ignatius of Antioch,” in Seeing through the Eyes of Faith: New Approaches to the Mystagogy of the Church Fathers, ed. Paul van Geest, LAHR 11; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 2 (Louvain: Peeters, 2016), 593-607. 4  Cf. William R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1985), 141; the full comment there is on the work of the deacons: “He reminds the deacons that their work has other dimensions: they are deacons of the ‘mysteries’ of Jesus Christ and ‘servants of the Church’. Mysteries may refer to the word of God (cf. 1 Cor 4:1, compare Phil 1:1), but Ignatius may also have had the eucharist in mind since deacons are soon found distributing the bread and wine (Justin, Apol. 1.65.7; 1.67.5, cf. http://earlychristianwritings. com/text/justinmartyr-firstapology.html). Such a development was natural in a setting where a variety of links obtained between the eucharist, common meals and charity. In any event, the various channels of physical and spiritual nourishment are not sharply distinguished by Ignatius or by those to whom he writes. The solidarity of the community itself was experienced as the fundamental spiritual reality.”



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the communities that he writes to. In addition, the heuristic value of Butler’s proposal, developed with twenty-first century political movements in mind, will be tested on a historical case. After outlining key aspects of Butler’s thought, I will explore its potential for highlighting overlooked aspects of one of Ignatius’ letters, that to the Trallians (for which I accept the commonly assumed early date).5 A broader exploration of the Ignatian epistles would be inviting, but it appears that the analysis of one letter already suffices to demonstrate the fruitfulness of the approach pursued here; moreover, a discussion of the full corpus of letters would go widely beyond the available space. II.  Judith Butler: Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly The starting point of Butler’s Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly is the role of physical assemblies during the past few years, especially in the context of the Arab spring. Her central thesis concerning the physical body and the assembly is that “Assemblies of physical bodies have an expressive dimension that cannot be reduced to speech, for the very fact of people gathering ‘says’ something without always relying on speech.”6 In this way, public space is always shaped in an embodied way and bodies are always communicative bodies. To some extent, this is obvious: when I think of the day I attended the funeral of the scholar of early Christianity Professor Tjitze Baarda (1932-2017) prior to delivering this paper at the  Cf., for example, the judgement of Eginhard Meijering, Geschiedenis van het vroege christendom: Van de jood Jezus van Nazareth tot de Romeinse keizer Constantijn (Amsterdam: Balans, 2004), 162; The Apostolic Fathers. Volume I: I Clement. II Clement. Ignatius. Polycarp. Didache, ed. and trans. Bart D. Ehrman, LCL 24 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 212-213, whose edition and translation of the letters is also followed here. See also the excellent and nuanced discussion of the dating and other introductory matters by Jonathon Lookadoo, The High Priest and the Temple: Metaphorical Depictions of Jesus in the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament II/473 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 15-24, see also the extensive review, especially of the various recensions (short, middle and longer) of the Ignatian letters, of Markus Vinzent, “Ignatius of Antioch: A Mysterious Martyr,” in idem, Writing the History of Early Christianity: From Reception to Retrospection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 266-464. See for a different view e.g. Walter Schmithals, “Zu Ignatius von Antiochien,” ZAC 13 (2009): 181-203. N.B. the work of Lookadoo and Vinzent appeared too late to be considered fully in this study. 6  Butler, Notes, thesis on the book jacket. 5

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CPO conference: being there physically communicated something else than just sending my condolences would have.7 In Butler’s essay, the body is continuously linked to the notion of precariousness, specifically as the locus of its experience, in the sense of that politically induced condition of maximized vulnerability and exposure for populations exposed to arbitrary state violence, to street or domestic violence, or other forms not enacted by states but for which the judicial instruments of states fail to provide sufficient protection or redress.8

The public assembly of bodies – in the social and political sense of the word, to be sure – is the main topic of her work. The repertoire of performativity, including notions of performative space and the performing body, that Butler developed in her earlier work is key to her analysis of the assembly. She argues that “performativity characterizes first and foremost that characteristic of linguistic utterances that in the moment of making the utterance makes something happen or brings some phenomenon into being.”9 The performing body and the performance of the body are central to the performance of relationships, in particular of relationships of power at large. As such, the body and its performance are also the locus of precariousness. On the occasion of a public assembly, such precarious bodies, connecting with each other, can become “an embodied form of calling into question the inchoate and powerful dimensions of reigning notions of the political.”10 In fact, such an assembly makes visible the claim to, and in doing so actually claims and exercises, all sorts of rights that may have been denied to these precarious bodies. This includes the right to mobility and association (or, if no assembly can take place: the lack of such freedoms). 7  This resonates not just with Butler’s thought, but also with that of Rowan Williams, who has similarly dwelled recently on the physicality of communication, though he approaches it from the other side: the use of language and speech. According to him, the body implicates a person in a more inextricable way in communication than “mere” speech or thought could – as if this could exist apart from the body! In particular, he refers to the “acknowledgment of our bodiliness, the fact that we do not speak from a safe distance above and beyond the flesh but in the whole of our physical presence, whether we are ‘literally’ speaking or not.” See: Rowan Williams, The Edge of Words: God and the Habits of Language (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 155. 8  Alexis Bushnell, “Book Review: Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly by Judith Butler,” http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/book-review-notes-toward-aperformative-theory-of-assembly-by-judith-butler/ (accessed 1 October 2017). 9  Butler, Notes, 28. 10  Ibid., 9.



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Freedom of ­assembly only really exists when a physical assembly as such happens; this widely surpasses the theoretical right of assembly. This is also of key importance for the embodiment of gender, given that precisely those who, usually involuntarily, embody non-hegemonic genders, be they non-hegemonic masculinities, femininity, or any (other) kind of queer identity, are usually the bodies that make up such public assemblies. Gender, therefore, is a key element in the dynamics of the public assembly of bodies, but is not its only characteristic; in fact, gender politics is broader than just gender. As a reviewer of Butler’s book commented, “questions surrounding which humans count as human and are eligible to appear, what justice is, what we call those who do not and cannot appear as ‘subjects’ within hegemonic discourse, how the excluded appear and the living and social conditions of agency”11 are among the issues raised by an assembly and the collective and connected presence of bodies in the public sphere. A similar issue that is raised in this physical manner is that of being seen and of seeing others. From the perspective of the powers that be, precarious bodies ought not to be seen in public, given their non-hegemonic and therefore private character, and even if they are seen, they are subjected to and determined by the dominant point of view, the gaze of those in power. However, bodies that appear in public can also publicly observe others, return the gaze, as it were, and this quite publicly and visibly. Butler uses the example of filming police actions in this context. In this manner, people in the street can influence visualization themselves, thus gaining agency. In her dialogue with the work of Hannah Arendt in significant sections of her own book, Butler criticizes Arendt, especially for not sufficiently considering the role of power in relationships, but she also takes an important cue from her: Freedom does not come from me or from you; it can and does happen as a relation between us, or indeed, among us. So this is not a matter of finding the human dignity within each person, but rather of understanding the human as a relational and social being, one whose action depends upon equality and articulates the principle of equality … The claim of equality is not only spoken or written, but is made precisely when bodies appear together, or rather, when through their action, they bring the space of appearance into being.12 11  Bushnell, “Book Review: Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly by Judith Butler.” 12  Butler, Notes, 89.

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Freedom, of any kind, therefore virtually always has a physical dimension and exists in relation to (physical) others.13 On this note, I will cut short my discussion of Butler and turn to Ignatius, in particular to his Letter to the Trallians. I will look for aspects of bodiliness that stand out more clearly against the background of Butler’s considerations, looking in particular for gender in relation to the bodily assembly. III.  Bodies in Ignatius’ Letter to the Trallians When reading Ignatius’ Letter to the Trallians while looking out for bodies and bodiliness, a number of aspects stand out. These have to do with: (1) the relationship and communication between Ignatius and the Trallians; (2) the relationship and communication of the Trallians with each other; (3) the relationship and communication between Ignatius and Christ. 1.  Ignatius and Polybius – Ignatius and the Trallians A first text in which physicality and communication play an important role concerns episkopos Polybius’ visit to Ignatius while the latter is en route for Rome and is staying in Smyrna. Tralles itself is not on Ignatius’ route to Rome, and the Trallian bishop has therefore taken a lot of trouble to reach Ignatius and visit him in person. Ignatius comments on this in terms that underline bodiliness.14 First, he notices that Polybius “showed me” (ἐδήλωσέν μοι, Trall. 1.1) the blameless way of thinking and the unwavering endurance of the Trallians (Ἄμωμον διάνοιαν καὶ ἀδιάκριτον ἐν ὑπομονῇ ἔγνων ὑμᾶς ἔχοντας, Trall. 1.1). In fact, he communicates that he “saw your entire congregation in him” (τὸ πᾶν πλῆθος ὑμῶν ἐν αὐτῷ θεωρεῖσθαι, Trall.  1.1).15 This 13  See also Williams’ emphasis on responsivity in The Edge of Words, passim; that language is a reaction to something is a key part of communication. 14  For this and the following, see also Allan Brent, Ignatius of Antioch and the Second Sophistic: A Study of an Early Christian Transformation of Pagan Culture, Studies and Texts in Antiquity and Christianity 36 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 179 (and his entire argument on “typology” and embodiment; a term not used by him – in fact, the body as such is remarkably absent in his study): “The churches welcomed his procession and sent representative figures to join it. Those representative figures bore in their flesh [emphasis added] the τύποι of the Christian cult effecting their unity with the divine and creating a common identity thus expressed …” 15  As also stressed by Allan Brent, The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order: Concepts and Images of Authority in Paganism and Early Christianity before the Age of Cyprian, VCS 45 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 219.



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s­ tressing of the visual aspect strongly suggests that the physical presence of Polybius demonstrates both the quality of the Trallian ekklesia and the representation of the Trallians through the company of his body. Without a body it is hard to “see” someone. One can also wonder whether the joint rejoicing that Ignatius reports (Trall 1.1: μοι συνεχάρη δεδεμένῳ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ) is related to the arrival of Polybius only. In fact, the rejoicing together seems to be the way in which Ignatius recognizes the entire congregation (πᾶν πλῆθος) of the Trallians in their episkopos (cf. ὥστε in 1.1). Second, somewhat later on in the letter, Ignatius returns to the subject of Polybius’ presence and again comments on some of its physical aspects. In Trall. 3.2, Ignatius refers to him as the ἐξεμπλάριον τῆς ἀγάπης ὑμῶν, which can be rendered (as Ehrman does) as “the embodiment of your love.” Even when a translation is used that places less stress on bodiliness, the fact that the κατάστημα (Trall. 3.2), that is the behaviour or “deportment,” of Polybius is singled out as a “great lesson” to Ignatius shows that physical presence is what is meant here.16 All this emphasis on bodies that meet each other also achieves something else: it transforms space. When reading the letter, it is easy to forget at times that Ignatius writes from a situation of imprisonment. Yet this is very much the case – he also states it in his opening lines (cf. the self-description in Trall. 1.1: δεδεμένῳ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ). The space of the prison – whatever its physical form may have been in Smyrna – is transformed and reinterpreted by the bodily meeting of Ignatius and Polybius. Precarious as Ignatius’ body in particular may be, together they reclaim the space of the prison (both as a physical and as a social space) and their performance of the right to assemble creates a communion not just between them, but between Ignatius and all the Trallians, which is a source of encouragement for Ignatius. In this sense, the letter to the Trallians and Polybius, who likely also served as the bearer of the letter, have a sacramental function. Conybeare has described this function of letters well with reference to the correspondence between Paulinus of Nola and Augustine of Hippo, when she referred to “the primary purpose of the letter” as “to serve as a tangible sign of an invisible communion between writer and recipient,” also explicitly mentioning the sacramentality of the letter in this context.17 16  See for a different view: Mikael Isacson, To Each Their Own Letter: Structure, Themes, and Rhetorical Strategies in the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch, Coniectanea Biblica. New Testament Series 42 (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 2004), 108-109. 17  Catherine Conybeare, Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbols in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 55.

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2.  Ignatius and the Trallian Bodies in Tralles A second way in which bodies play a role in Ignatius’ letter to the Trallians has to do with his comments on the internal affairs of the Trallian community. It is in this regard that Ignatius makes some of his bestknown remarks on the social coherence of the community and the activities that its members undertake. For instance, in 2.2 he states that one should do nothing without the bishop (ἄνευ τοῦ ἐπισκόπου μηδὲν πράσσειν). Whereas this can be understood in a very generic sense, it appears from other texts, such as Magn. 6–7 and Smyrn. 8 (passim and esp. ἐκείνη βεβαία εὐχαριστία ἡγείσθω ἡ ὑπὸ ἐπίσκοπον οὖσα ἢ ᾧ ἂν αὐτὸς ἐπιτρέψῃ),18 that cultic activities, that is, the (Eucharistic) liturgy, are intended here. The remarks in Trall. 7.2: “the one who is inside the sanctuary is pure but the one outside the sanctuary is not pure” (ὁ ἐντὸς θυσιαστηρίου ὢν καθαρός ἐστιν ὁ δὲ ἐκτὸς θυσιαστηρίου ὢν οὐ καθαρός ἐστιν – see also the continuation: τοῦτ᾽ ἔστιν ὁ χωρὶς ἐπισκόπου καὶ πρεσβυτερίου καὶ διακόνων πράσσων τι οὗτος οὐ καθαρός ἐστιν τῇ συνειδήσει – “This means that the one who does anything apart from the bishop, the presbytery, and the deacons is not pure in conscience”) also suggest this. Ignatius is likely using a metaphor here, or, even more likely, extending what is valid for the liturgy – for him arguably the core activity of the Church both empirically and theologically – to other aspects of the life of the Church. All ritual involves bodies and the shaping of space through them, and this also applies to these remarks. Only bodies operating in communication and conjunction with – and in submission to – each other can validly constitute the Church. The point of this is that through this physically gathered and ordered community of human beings, salvific communion with God becomes possible. Ignatius indicates this in different ways, for instance by means of visual imagery in Trall. 3, where the bishop is called the τύπος of the Father, while the comparisons relating to the diakonoi and the presbyteroi of the Trallian community in this section also invite visualization. Again, for someone to function as an image, physical presence is required, otherwise this kind of signification will not work, or it will work only partially. The reverse also occurs in Trallians: the readers are to keep their physical distance from “heretics” (cf. 6–7), be deaf (9, Κωφώθητε) when someone confesses “heresies,” and flee such people (cf. 11, Φεύγετε).  Cf. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 140.

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These and other texts could be discussed in more detail, but the main question is: how does this contribute to understanding Ignatius’ way of thinking? I would like to offer the following observations. First, as gatherings of bodies, certainly in a liturgical setting, imply the occupation of space, either wholly publicly (Butler’s focus) or semi-publicly (as meals in Antiquity can best be described), authentic faith for Ignatius exists only when it is embodied in physical communion with others. This may also be one reason why he values the presence of Polybius so much. As is clear from Ignatius’ remarks on the subject, this social space is also subject to interpretation, in this case in terms of embodied soteriology (that is, ecclesiology). As Schoedel rightly points out, the basis for this can be found in the passion: “A community based on the passion is a community that stands united (with the bishop and with one another …) in the face of a hostile world.”19 This leads me to the following observation: physical communion such as this – and this is an aspect that Butler emphasizes to a lesser extent – also implies (social and physical) discipline and, although assembled bodies always claim freedom and rights, they also create mutual interdependence and, therefore, restrict freedom, or so it would seem. This has both physical and noetic aspects: the bodies create a space which is demarcated both physically and mentally, as meaning is attributed to it. This thought can, in fact, also be reversed: if assembling as a community means acquiring freedom and rights communally, then to separate oneself from this community (and its inherent structures) is also to lose such freedoms and rights as may have been acquired. Does Ignatius’ emphasis on submission to the bishop, unpleasant as it sounds, in actual fact not enhance freedom-in-communion because it furthers the freedom achieved through physical assembly? In addition, it is necessary to examine Brent’s thesis on Ignatius’ journey towards Rome in terms of the procession of a martyr, possibly (or according to Brent: probably) mimicking ritual as it was practiced in the context of Greco-Roman (imperial and/or mystery) cults.20 A full discussion of Brent’s proposal cannot be offered here, but attention should be  Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 140-141.  Cf. Brent, The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order, 210-250; for a more reluctant view that constructively receives some of Brent’s key insights, see: Katharina Waldner, “Letters and Messengers: The Construction of Christian Space in the Roman Empire in the Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch,” in The Changing Face of Judaism, Christianity, and Other Greco-Roman Religions in Antiquity, ed. Ian H. Henderson and Gerbern S. Oegema, Studien zu den Jüdischen Schriften aus Hellenistisch-Römischer Zeit (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2006), 72-86. 19

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given in particular to its relevance for Trall. 12.1: Ἀσπάζομαι ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ Σμύρνης ἅμα ταῖς συμπαρούσαις μοι ἐκκλησίαις τοῦ θεοῦ, οἳ κατὰ πάντα με ἀνέπαυσαν σαρκί τε καὶ πνεύματι (“I greet you from Smyrna, along with the churches of God that are present with me and that have refreshed me in every way, in both flesh and spirit”), which can be understood as meaning that Ignatius is accompanied on his “procession” into the arena by the “churches of God” that are with him by means of the physical presence of persons from these churches. Their physical presence connects Ignatius with these churches and they now also greet the Trallians through these representatives.21 Just as these churches are represented physically to Ignatius, Ignatius himself represents Christ to them, precisely in his physicality, in his bodily suffering in imitation of Christ. This is probably most apparent in Ignatius’ use of himself as an example and his reflection on himself in Trall. 3.3–5.2: 3.2. ἀγαπῶν ὑμᾶς φείδομαι, συντονώτερον δυνάμενος γράφειν ὑπὲρ τούτου. οὐκ εἰς τοῦτο ᾠήθην, ἵνα ὢν κατάκριτος ὡς ἀπόστολος ὑμῖν διατάσσωμαι. 4.1. Πολλὰ φρονῶ ἐν θεῷ, ἀλλ᾿ ἐμαυτὸν μετρῶ, ἵνα μὴ ἐν καυχήσει ἀπόλωμαι. νῦν γάρ με δεῖ πλέον φοβεῖσθαι καὶ μὴ προσέχειν τοῖς φυσιοῦσίν με. οἱ γὰρ λέγοντές μοι μαστιγοῦσίν με. 4.2. ἀγαπῶ μὲν γὰρ τὸ παθεῖν, ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ οἶδα, εἰ ἄξιός εἰμι. τὸ γὰρ ζῆλος πολλοῖς μὲν οὐ φαίνεται, ἐμὲ δὲ πλέον πολεμεῖ. χρῄζω οὖν πραότητος, ἐν ᾗ καταλύεται ὁ ἄρχων τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου. 5.1. Μὴ οὐ δύναμαι ὑμῖν τὰ ἐπουράνια γράψαι; ἀλλὰ φοβοῦμαι, μὴ νηπίοις οὖσιν ὑμῖν βλάβην παραθῶ· καὶ συγγνωμονεῖτέ μοι, μήποτε οὐ δυνηθέντες χωρῆσαι στραγγαλωθῆτε.

3.2. I am sparing you out of love, though I could write more sharply about this matter. But I have not thought that I, a condemned man, should give you orders like an apostle. 4.1. I am thinking many things in God, but I take measure of myself so as not to be destroyed by my boasting. For now I must fear all the more and pay no attention to those who make me self-important. For those who speak to me flog me. 4.2. For indeed I love to suffer; but I do not know if I am worthy. For envy is not obvious to many, but it is escalating its war against me. And so I need humility, by which the ruler of this age is destroyed. 5.1 Am I not able to write to you about heavenly things? But I am afraid that I may harm you who are still infants. Grant me this concession – otherwise you may choke, not being able to swallow enough.

21  Cf. Brent, The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order, 228, see also idem, Ignatius of Antioch and the Second Sophistic, 41-230, cf. Waldner, “Letters and Messengers,” 80.



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5.2. καὶ γὰρ ἐγώ, οὐ καθότι δέδεμαι καὶ δύναμαι νοεῖν τὰ ἐπουράνια καὶ τὰς τοποθεσίας τὰς ἀγγελικὰς καὶ τὰς συστάσεις τὰς ἀρχοντικάς, ὁρατά τε καὶ ἀόρατα, παρὰ τοῦτο ἤδη καὶ μαθητής εἰμι. πολλὰ γὰρ ἡμῖν λείπει, ἵνα θεοῦ μὴ λειπώμεθα.

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5.2. For not even I am a disciple already, simply because I am in bondage and am able to understand the heavenly realms and the angelic regions and hierarchies of the cosmic rulers, both visible and invisible. For many things are still lacking to us, that we may not be lacking God.

The same is true for Ignatius’ concluding salutation in 12.1-3, with its references to the “flesh and the spirit” (12.1); the “chains” (12.2) and the indication of Ignatius’ upcoming martyrdom (12.3); this can be unpacked further, as well as Ignatius’ opening salutation. In the latter, he speaks of being refreshed (ἀνέπαυσαν) in body and spirit (σαρκί τε καὶ πνεύματι, Trall. 1.1; assuming that this text is part of Trall.). This is an interesting remark, I believe, because apparently the communion between him and the Trallians through Polybius and the letter has had an effect not only on Ignatius’ spirit (as one might expect), but also on his body. The fellowship among them is, therefore, also physical in nature. Moreover, Ignatius mentions his body even prior to mentioning his spirit when he speaks about being refreshed. As Nicklas has suggested in relation to Eph. 2.2 (κατὰ πάντα με ἀνέπαυσεν – relating to Crocus’ ministry to Ignatius), this refreshment may well have included the provision of food.22 Furthermore, Ignatius uses a common term for greeting that, in fact, refers to a physical act, ἀσπάζομαι, embracing. He does this in Eph. 1.1 (ἀσπάζομαι ἐν τῷ πληρώματι) and subsequently towards the end of the letter: Ἀσπάζομαι ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ Σμύρνης (Eph. 12.1) and Ἀσπάζεται ὑμᾶς ἡ ἀγάπη Σμυρναίων καὶ Ἐφεσίων (Eph. 13.1). Even if ἀσπάζομαι here has a more generic meaning in terms of “greeting,” it is nonetheless noteworthy that Ignatius employs this term and thus at least provides some scope for imagining an embrace, a physical greeting across the distance covered by the letter and its bearer. 3.  Bodies, Suffering and Communion with Christ A final instance of assembled bodies that I regard as relevant concerns Ignatius’ body in relation to that of his guards and – by extension – the relationship between the bodies of the Trallians in relation to whoever 22  Cf. Tobias Nicklas, “Ancient Christians’ Care for Prisoners,” in Perspectives on the Socially Disadvantaged in Early Christianity, ed. François Tolmie, Acta Theologica Supplementum 23 (Bloemfontein: Faculty of Theology, 2016), 49-65, esp. 58.

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is making them suffer (Ignatius seems to think or know that they are suffering). A key text in this regard is Trall. 4, in Ehrman’s translation: (1) I am thinking many things in God, but I take measure of myself so as not to be destroyed by my boasting. For now I must fear all the more and pay no attention to those who make me self-important. For those who speak to me flog me. (2) For indeed I love to suffer; but I do know if I am worthy. For envy is not obvious to many, but it is escalating its war against me. And so I need humility, by which the ruler of this age is destroyed.

Here we enter one of the more controversial parts of Ignatius’ witness: his somewhat paradoxical emphasis on suffering. Paradoxical, because on the one hand he desires it, as it will bring him closer to Christ, but on the other he is wary of it, given that he constantly doubts whether he is worthy of it, something he will only know when he breathes his last in the arena – or not. What interests me is how Ignatius perceives the relationship between his body and the bodies of his guards – of those who are inflicting suffering upon him, here in the shape of flogging. Flogging obviously implies physical proximity, so we may interpret Ignatius’ journey in chains together with his guards as yet another instance of assembled bodies. As in the case of the community in Tralles, this fellowship established through assembled bodies and the manner in which these relate to each other is also subject to interpretation. The perspective of Ignatius’ guards is not made explicit in the text, but it is not difficult to make an educated guess: they will have seen their own bodies as dominant, as exercising control over Ignatius’s in the name of the emperor, and the flogging is an expression of this dominance. Ignatius, however, subversively reverses the interpretative gaze, creating a hidden discourse in the relative privacy of his letters, and thus “off stage,” invisible to the public sphere; a discourse that reveals the true meaning of his predicament, that is, true from Ignatius’ perspective, in which he makes his readers (or the “audience” of his letters, as they were likely read aloud in assembly) complicit. The guards’ treatment of him brings him closer to Christ, in fact, it may be that “those who make me self-important” are the very guards that are flogging him. If I understand him correctly, Ignatius needs to learn humility vis-à-vis his flogging, not by means of his flogging! In fact, he needs to learn humility in order to be or remain worthy of the flogging (Trall. 4.2, cf. 12.3).23 Like other kinds 23  Cf. in general also the argument of Gregory Vall, Learning Christ: Ignatius of Antioch and the Mystery of Redemption (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 155, who notes that it is all about the sanctification of the flesh, i.e. of the concrete, enfleshed existence that needs to be oriented in a particular way in order to



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of suffering, for Ignatius, the flogging is an expression of adherence to Christ, of experiencing fellowship with Christ by means of sharing in a suffering that is similar to Christ’s and on behalf of Christ.24 The backdrop to all of this is his belief that Jesus Christ “was truly crucified and died” (Trall. 9.1) and it explains why he has such an abhorrence of “Docetism.”25 He substantiates this rejection as follows in Trall. 10: But if, as some who are atheists – that is, unbelievers – say, that he only appeared to suffer (it is they who are the appearance), why am I in bondage, and why also do I pray to fight the wild beasts? I am then dying in vain and am, even more, lying about the Lord.

He also applies this view of suffering, in which to suffer is to be incorporated into Christ, to the Trallians: “through the cross, by his suffering he calls you who are the parts of his body” (“Thus, the head cannot be born without the other parts, because God promises unity”) (Trall. 11). Understood and interpreted in this way, suffering is quasi-sacramental: Christ’s own suffering is his means of calling the faithful to become his members (ἐν τῷ πάθει αὐτοῦ προσκαλεῖται ὑμᾶς ὄντας μέλη αὐτοῦ, Trall. 11.2), and experiencing suffering in a faithful and humble manner is a means of experiencing communion with Christ.26 All of this rests on a bold reinterpretation of the otherwise unpleasant physical proximity of Ignatius’ and the Trallians’ tormentors (however distinct these may be). Yet bodiliness is a precondition for this reinterpretation. By stating that he both loves to suffer and needs to do so humbly, remain on the road towards salvation. Carl B. Smith, “Ministry, Martyrdom, and Other Mysteries: Pauline Influence on Ignatius of Antioch,” in Paul and the Second Century, ed. Michael F. Bird and Joseph R. Dodson, Library of New Testament Studies 412 (London: T&T Clark International, 2011), 37-56, does discuss martyrdom, but hardly bodiliness. This is very different in Finbarr G. Clancy, “Imitating the Mysteries That You Celebrate: Martyrdom and Eucharist in the Early Patristic Period,” in The Great Persecution: Proceedings of the Fifth Patristic Conference, Maynooth, 2003, ed. Vincent Twomey and Mark Humphries (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009), 106-140, who shows the broad relationship between incarnation, sacramental physicality and the physicality of the martyrs’ witness. 24  Cf. also the general outline in Smit, “Mystagogy and Martyrdom in Ignatius of Antioch,” and cf. especially Gillian Clark, Christianity and Roman Society, Key Themes in Ancient History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 38-59. 25  For a brief treatment of this, in the context of Ignatius’ emphasis on following the way of the cross, see: Tobias Nicklas, “Leid, Kreuz und Kreuzesnachfolge bei Ignatius von Antiochien,” in Gelitten – Gestorben – Auferstanden: Passions- und Ostertraditionen im antiken Christentum, ed. Tobias Nicklas, Andreas Merkt, and Joseph Verheyden, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament II/273 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 267-298, esp. 280-283. 26  Cf. with this emphasis also Romulus D. Stefanut, “Eucharistic Theology in the Martyrdom of Ignatius of Antioch,” Studia Patristica 73 (2013): 39-47.

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Ignatius turns the tables of what ought to be an unpleasant physical experience on his torturers. In doing so, he reclaims agency and, thereby, reorders the social space that comes into being through the fact of being assembled with his guards.27 In doing so, Ignatius does more than pursuing “the most excessive form of imitation of the gods,”28 rather, he turns the tables on those who seem to control him by envisioning his ordeal as martyrdom rather than punishment.29 IV.  Ignatius’ Love of Suffering as a Way of Reclaiming Masculinity? In this context, the question of gender also needs to be raised. As Butler has pointed out, (physical) presence and the possibility of appearing in the public space is always gendered. This was no different in the ancient world, where the “outside” tended to be gendered masculine and the “inside” feminine (see for instance the positioning of Thecla on a windowsill, between the inside and the outside as she hears Paul preach in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, cf. Act. Paul. 2). Without wishing to rehearse the entire discourse on hegemonic masculinities here, it is worth noting that key elements are autonomy, self-control and, ideally, control of others. As Maier has observed in relation to the “silent bishop” in Ignatius’ letters: “The bishop of Philadelphia is the perfect gentleman who manifests all the self-control of speech and character of the carefully self-regulated ancient male urged upon his pagan contemporaries.”30 It is obvious that Ignatius’ situation as a prisoner who is apparently also being flogged (cf. Trall. 4.1-2), a shameful and humiliating treatment, clearly involved the surrender of his own body to the control of others.31

27  As Henk A. Bakker, Exemplar Domini: Ignatius of Antioch and His Martyriological Self-Concept (diss. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 2003), 172-173, puts it well: “[N]either the executioner nor the beasts have the initiative, but Ignatius himself. He gives the impression that he alone is orchestrating [the] bizarre spectacle.” See similarly: Clark, Christianity and Roman Society, 38-59. 28  As Anders Klostergaard Petersen, “Attaining Divine Perfection through Different Forms of Imitation,” Numen 60 (2013): 7-38, esp. 35, has it. 29  Cf. also the emphasis placed by Timothy McDonnell on the urgency of the question as to how he would die for Ignatius, “Ignatius of Antioch: Death Wish or Last Request of a Condemned Man?,” Studia Patristica 45 (2010): 385-389. 30  Harry O. Maier, “The Politics of the Silent Bishop: Silence and Persuasion in Ignatius of Antioch,” JTS 55 (2004): 503-519. 31  Cf. representatively: Jennifer A. Glancy, “Boasting of Beatings (2 Corinthians 11:23-25),” Journal of Biblical Literature 123 (2004): 99-135, esp. 108-113.



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Ignatius’ rhetoric concerning the body, in particular his own suffering and subjected body, can be further understood against the background of this ancient discourse on masculinity. Especially its deeply subversive character is highlighted in this way, and its gendered nature becomes more apparent. What Ignatius achieves is, quite simply, a total reversal of perspective and hence a total reinterpretation of his role. Rather than agreeing with the role imposed on him, i.e., that of a prisoner who is to be thrown to the wild beasts in the Roman arena, he presents himself as a faithful follower of Christ, a bishop who speaks (and writes) with authority. He appears as a highly masculine figure, therefore, because such a role would be gendered masculine in Antiquity. In this way, he casts those who accompany him and those he visits as participants in his triumphal journey to what others will see as his ultimate undoing, but which he views, if all goes well, as the crowning achievement of his life. The manner in which Ignatius achieves this is by interpreting everything he undergoes in terms of, on the one hand, identification with the suffering Christ, and on the other, of a struggle (ἀγών) that will test his faithfulness and by his endurance of which he will demonstrate this faithfulness, thus both setting an inspiring and exhortatory example and successfully achieving his own salvation. In terms of gender, Ignatius moves from a “feminized” or “unmasculine” position back to one that conforms to hegemonic ideals concerning masculinity in the ancient world. However, this kind of gendered beauty exists quite clearly only in the eye of the beholder: for others who do not share Ignatius’ Christocentric perspective, there is little here to convince them. Yet in operating as he does, Ignatius carves out a space for an alternative view of masculinity in Christ, in which social marginalization and physical humiliation can be integrated. This may have been just as attractive and empowering to him as it may have been to other Christ devotees who were marginalized due to their faith. V.  Bodies and Mystagogy? Is there anything mystagogical about Ignatius’ comments on bodies and physical experiences in his Letter to the Trallians? I would propose that there is. Three aspects stand out in particular. They have to do with the second and third points of discussion above, regarding Ignatius and the Trallian bodies in Tralles, and with the theme of bodies, suffering and communion with Christ. So far, I cannot see many mystagogical elements in the “physical” encounter between Polybius and Ignatius.

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Concerning the bodies of the Trallian faithful: physically belonging together and acting in physical harmony, an idea that is probably liturgical in nature but is extended, as it were, to other parts of the life of the Trallian community, is key to existence in general, and to growth in existence in Christ in particular. Bodies are needed to enter into communion with Christ through communion with others, around the bishop. Accordingly, the creation of a new social space “in Christ,” and entering this space, means on the one hand claiming freedom and rights, such as the right to assemble, and on the other it also means (physical) submission to each other, and thus a (voluntary and intentional) limitation of such freedom. In other words: true freedom implies a certain kind of asceticism, if it is to be a freedom-in-communion.32 With regard to suffering bodies, both Ignatius’ and others’, the suffering itself is a means of growth in Christ, and is in that sense mystagogical. At the same time, Christ’s own physical suffering calls people to become members of his body. Suffering is so important that Ignatius, who was getting a fair share of it, was even worried that he would lose his humility due to this. A substantial reinterpretation of the “assembly” of bodies that leads to inflicting pain and suffering is required, and a shift of (mental) agency from those who are doing the flogging to the one who is undergoing it – the gaze is reverted, in Butler’s terminology – to achieve this effect. Yet, properly suffered suffering is certainly mystagogical in nature. In this case, it is the mind that needs to be disciplined vis-à-vis the physical experience, both by reinterpreting it and by not becoming proud because of it. Finally, Ignatius also physically represents Christ (and Christ’s suffering) to the Trallian community, and in doing so he acts as a τύπος of the divine, which is necessarily embodied. Controversial as this body may be, it nonetheless has an initiatory function, as Brent has noted, given that it represents Christ to the community and thus enables the community to enter into (Ignatius’ understanding of) its identity in Christ.33 32  Cf. Peter-Ben Smit, “Prayer and Participation in the Eucharist in the Work of Ignatius of Antioch,” in Prayer and the Transformation of the Self in Early Christian Mystagogy, ed. Hans van Loon, Giselle de Nie, Michiel Op de Coul, and Peter van Egmond, LAHR 18; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 5 (Louvain: Peeters, 2018), 81-92. 33  Cf. Brent, Ignatius of Antioch and the Second Sophistic, 206: “There are in the Christian mysteries no painted, carven, or molten images …Yet … the basic form of his understanding of the Eucharist was that of a mystery drama with Christian clerics assigned a function and role. … The individual drama of replay, re-enacted on the Day of the Sun’s



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VI. Conclusions This brings me to the end of my exploration of Ignatius’ Letter to the Trallians, read with Judith Butler’s considerations on the body in mind. All that is left is to draw a few conclusions based on this experiment. A first conclusion is that reading Ignatius’ letter in the light of Butler’s considerations – and I am sure this applies to other letters by him and can easily be extended to other early Christian writers as well – simply makes one more aware of where bodies are in play. This move towards the physical is, I think, both interesting and promising. So far, scholarship has focused either on the noetic, that is, ideas, concepts, etcetera, or on the social, considering how people relate to each other or should do so, but the physical, whether in terms of human bodies or of other aspects of the physical world, has received less attention. This may, again, be more true for New Testament studies than certain areas of patristics, but it does seem to be true for Ignatius, in whose case physical suffering has received the most attention, but usually only with regard to its theological role (and sometimes as a reason to doubt his sanity). A second and more specific conclusion is that in the communication between Ignatius and Polybius (especially concerning the visual aspect), in the life of the Trallian community, and in Ignatius’ communion with Christ, bodies are of paramount importance. In the first two cases, I do not think this has been stressed sufficiently so far, and in the third case, the interpretative tour de force that Ignatius performs regarding his own physical “assembly” with his guards may also still be able to yield new insights. What is clear in any case is that assembled bodies have added value. Without a physical encounter with Polybius, communication between Ignatius and the Trallians would have been vastly different, life in communion without disciplined physical assembly is an impossibility, and Ignatius’ soteriology hinges on his communion with Christ, communicated or mediated through his own physical suffering. Thus, the emphasis on disciplining the body as a prerequisite for living in communion may shed light on an aspect of assembled bodies that Butler has stressed to a lesser extent. Third, in at least two of the kinds of physical assemblies considered here, those of the Trallians and of Ignatius and his guards, this e­ ncounter can be called mystagogical, in the sense that it furthers a person’s ­initiation rising. … could now be carried over into his martyr cult, with him enacting as μαθητής the role of the suffering God, with images of the Roman arena and the Sunday Eucharist fusing into one in the enthusiastic frenzy of his prophetic imagination.”

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into the mystery of, in this case, Christ. In the former instance, the creation of a shared “social space” is better understood when one realizes that assembling always implies a claim to the (physical) right to do so and, consequently, a certain kind of freedom. The latter situation draws attention to the importance of interpretation and agency when it comes to bodies, their positioning, and their claiming of space. Ignatius makes up his own mind about the kind of assembly and encounter he has with his guards, and in doing so reclaims his body, even if it is being flogged.

Embodied Spirituality in Irenaeus of Lyons Don Springer I. Introduction St Irenaeus was a bishop, theologian, and apologist writing in the late second century. He served in the important Roman outpost of Lugdunum, now known as Lyon in Southern France. Often viewed as the “star witness of the post-sub-apostolic period of early Christianity,”1 Irenaeus and his writings have generally been well received (even if not by those who do not share his theological convictions).2 One of the reasons he enjoyed a favourable reputation stemmed from his unique connection to the apostles. He claimed to have learned under St Polycarp of Smyrna, who, in turn, had sat under the apostle John.3 As such, Irenaeus was something akin to an apostolic grandson, a unique position which lent him great credibility. What the ancient bishop is perhaps most known for, is his spirited defence of the (proto-)orthodox faith against Christian heresies.4 His 1  Sara Parvis and Paul Foster, “Introduction: Irenaeus and His Traditions,” in Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, Legacy, ed. Sara Parvis and Paul Foster (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2012), 1-12, at 1. 2  For a different perspective, see the many works of Elaine Pagels, including Elaine H. Pagels, “Conflicting Versions of Valentinian Eschatology: Irenaeus’ Treatise vs. the Excerpts from Theodotus,” HTR 67 (1974): 35-53. 3  Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 3.3.4; in Irénée de Lyon, Contre les Hérésies, Livre III, Tome II, ed. and trans. Adelin Rousseau and Louis Doutreleau, SC 211 (Paris: Cerf, 1974; rev. ed. 2002), 38-39; ET: St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against the Heresies: Book 3, trans. Dominic J. Unger and Matthew C. Steenberg, ACW 64 (New York: Paulist, 1992), 33-34. 4  The most frequent recipient of Irenaeus’ critique were the Valentinians, whom he generally distinguished from other heretical groups. These, he generally referred to as Gnostic. See Lewis Ayres, “Irenaeus vs. the Valentinians: Toward a Rethinking of Patristic Exegetical Origins,” JECS 23 (2015): 153-187; Giuliano Chiapparini, “Irenaeus and the Gnostic Valentinus: Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Church of Rome around the Middle of the Second Century,” ZAC 18 (2014): 95-119; David Brakke, The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2010); Michael A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); Rowan A. Greer, “The Dog and the Mushrooms: Irenaeus’s View of the Valentinians Assessed,” in The Rediscovery of Gnosticism: Proceedings of the International Conference on

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primary work, generally known as Against Heresies, serves as both a catalogue of second- century heresy, as well as Irenaeus’ own interpretation of Christian orthodoxy.5 The purpose and tone of the work is better reflected in its full title, The Refutation and Overthrow of Knowledge Falsely So-Called.6 One of the principle issues identified as false knowledge in the treatise was the heretics’ view of the human body. Irenaeus portrayed his opponents’ theology such that it reflected a rigid, platonic dualism. A prominent feature of that view was the belief that the body, along with the rest of the material realm, was a cosmic accident at best, or, a wretched and doomed evil at worst.7 Against such claims, the secondcentury theologian-apologist levelled scathing critique. As for his own teachings about the body, scholars of Irenaeus tend to focus on three key issues: the divine fashioning of the human race; the real, fleshly incarnation of Christ; and the literal, physical resurrection and eternality of the human body. In this contribution those three subjects will be briefly highlighted, but the primary focus will be to illustrate the emphasis on the connection between the body and the spiritual life, that is to say, Irenaeus’ embodied spirituality.8 II.  Theological Foundations As noted, the theme of embodiment intersects with three important subjects of Irenaeus’ doctrinal theology. His teachings on anthropology Gnosticism at Yale, New Haven, CT, March 28-31, 1978, ed. Bentley Layton, Studies in the History of Religions 41 (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 146-171. 5  Translations of Against Heresies are modified from existing English texts, alongside the SC critical editions. English translations consulted include The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, The AnteNicene Fathers [ANF] 1 (New York: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987); St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against the Heresies: Book 3, trans. Unger and Steenberg. The other extant work of Irenaeus is the summary of Christian doctrine entitled, Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching. See John Behr, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, On the Apostolic Preaching, Popular Patristic Series 17 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997); Iain M. MacKenzie, Irenaeus’s Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching: A Theological Commentary and Translation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). 6  For a discussion of the treatise’s title (including the use of the term “heresy”), see the introduction to St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against the Heresies: Book 3, trans. Unger and Steenberg. 7  Paul M. Blowers, Drama of the Divine Economy: Creator and Creation in Early Christian Theology and Piety, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 80-85; Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”, 96-101. 8  For a recent, excellent patristic study on embodiment, see Hans Boersma, Embodiment and Virtue in Gregory of Nyssa: An Anagogical Approach, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).



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(with specific reference to the creation narrative), eschatology, and Christology all feature a prominent role for the body. As such, they form the theological foundation for his spirituality. 1. Creation Concerning the creation of Adam, Irenaeus asserted that the One God … formed man, taking clay of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life … God did not stand in need of [any other] … as if He did not possess His own hands. For with Him always were the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit, by whom and in whom He made all things, to whom also He speaks, saying, “Let Us make man after Our image and likeness.”9

Against gnostic cosmogony which stressed the true divine being as one far removed from the creative process, Irenaeus sought to emphasize with clarity the intimate connection between the most-high, Creator God and his creation; a connection so intimate that it was described in physical terms. Thus, there is this vivid, Biblical picture of the divine power taking up the earth with his own fingers and directly fashioning the human being. This connection is cemented with an even greater sense of intimacy by the assertion that this divine fashioning was made according to the very image and likeness of God. Thus, following the Genesis narrative, Irenaeus asserted and indeed made as a foundational point for his entire theological enterprise, the crucial significance of the human body. John Behr quotes Against Heresies 5.15.2, where the work of God is simply identified with the “fashioning of man” and comments that “this is the basic structure of Irenaeus’s thought. It determines [Irenaeus’] theology at all levels.”10 Far from being a Gnostic-envisioned cosmic accident or crude and wholly inferior substance, the human body is extolled for its profound connection to the One, great God.11  Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 4.20.1, in Irénée de Lyon, Contre les Hérésies, Livre IV, Tome I-II, ed. and trans. Adelin Rousseau, Bertrand Hemmerdinger, Charles Mercier and Louis Doutreleau, SC 100/1-2 (Paris: Cerf, 1965), 624-626; ET: ANF 1, ed. Roberts and Donaldson, 487. 10  John Behr, Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 116. 11  Matthew C. Steenberg, Irenaeus on Creation: The Cosmic Christ and the Saga of Redemption, VCS 91 (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Anthony Briggman, Irenaeus of Lyons and the Theology of the Holy Spirit, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Jackson Lashier, Irenaeus on the Trinity, VCS 127 (Leiden: Brill, 2014); D. Jeffrey Bingham, “Himself within Himself: The Father and His Hands in Early Christianity,” Southwestern Journal of Theology 47 (2005): 137-151. 9

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2. Eschatology The second anthropological issue that intersects with Irenaeus’ view of the body concerns the eschaton. Against Heresies characterizes the Valentinian and Gnostic positions such that everything material is required to be stripped away. There is no compatibility between the flesh and the spiritual. Irenaeus’ thought is radically different. To be truly human, that is, to be the created being that is fashioned according to the image of God, is to be truly raised in the flesh. Irenaeus stated that the perfect human will experience “the commingling and the union of the soul receiving the Spirit of the Father and joined to the flesh which was moulded after the image of God.”12 Moreover, to lack any of the three elements – soul, spirit, or flesh – is to be incomplete,13 to be something other than a human being. John Behr points out the important distinction between the human spirit and the Spirit of God. The latter is not intrinsically a part of the human, rather, it is the divine strength which animates him. Indeed, without this assistance from God a person has no hope of life. The ontological distinction between Creator and created was always upheld by Irenaeus; it is an axiomatic principle from which he would not depart.14 Despite the exalted status and superiority of the Spirit, Behr notes that in certain texts it is the body which dominates Irenaeus’ argument. “Irenaeus’s emphasis on this fact is striking: what is important for him is not so much the presence of the Spirit in man, but the reality of the flesh.”15 Over and against his opponents’ claims the bishop repeatedly stresses the goodness of the human body, both in this realm and the one to come. Humanity is to reside with God eternally, vivified by the Spirit, alive and flourishing in the resurrected flesh.16 12  Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 5.6.1, in Irénée de Lyon, Contre les Hérésies, Livre V, Tome II, ed. and trans. Adelin Rousseau, Louis Doutreleau, and Charles Mercier, SC 153 (Paris: Cerf, 1969), 72; ET: ANF 1, ed. Roberts and Donaldson, 531. 13  Behr, Asceticism and Anthropology, 98-101. 14  Steenberg observes, “This monumental gulf between Adam and God, a gulf founded here in Adam’s own being as newly created man, is not one of physical distance nor deprivation of grace, but the natural difference of being that exists between Creator and created. One is infinite, the other finite; the distinction between the two is of the highest order. It is this concept which grounds the notion of radical incompleteness that stands as a driving theme behind Irenaeus’ larger conception of humankind.” Matthew C. Steenberg, “Children in Paradise: Adam and Eve as ‘Infants’ in Irenaeus of Lyons,” JECS 12 (2004): 1-22, at 15-16. 15  Behr, Asceticism and Anthropology, 100. 16  See also Eric Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 211-230; Christopher R. Smith, “Chiliasm and Recapitulation in the Theology of Irenaeus,” VC 48 (1994): 313-331.



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3. Incarnation Embodied eschatology is intrinsically tied to another doctrine, Christology. Specifically, the meaning of Christ’s incarnation was especially important for Irenaeus.17 As it relates to the theme of embodiment, one point stands above the rest: that the Son, the incarnate Word of God, took up real flesh was a non-negotiable point. This was yet another issue contested by many in the second century. For Irenaeus, however, there was no possibility of salvation without Christ taking up a literal and true body. The possibility for reconciliation between the most-high God with those imprisoned in the sinful flesh, necessitated the coming of the Divine into a life of flesh. According to the bishop, any who remain ignorant of this fact are deprived of His gift, which is eternal life. And since they do not receive the Word of imperishability, the continue in the mortal flesh and are debtors to death, because they do not accept the antidote to life … [Those] who despise the incarnation of the pure generation of the Word of God, defraud humankind of its ascent to God, and are ungrateful to the Word of God who was incarnate for their sakes. For the Word of God became man, and He who is God’s Son became the Son of man to this end, [that man,] having been united with the Word of God and receiving adoption, might become a son of God. Certainly, in no other way could we have received imperishability and immortality unless we had been united with imperishability and immortality.18

Through his understanding of Christ’s incarnation, and through his recapitulation of all things, salvation required a Saviour who was both truly man and God.19 III.  Spiritual Life and Growth If the body featured prominently in some of the major categories of Irenaeus’ doctrinal theology, the question remains whether such prominence ­ nfortunately true extends to his understanding of the spiritual life.20 It is u 17  Among the most comprehensive studies is Gustaf Wingren, Man and the Incarnation: A Study in the Theology of Irenaeus, trans. Ross Mackenzie (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1959). 18  Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 3.19.1, in SC 211, ed. Rousseau and Doutreleau, 372-374; ET: ANF 1, ed. Roberts and Donaldson, 448. 19  Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons, 104-106. 20  It is not my intent to create a false dichotomy between Irenaeus’ theology and spirituality. Such a thought would have been foreign to this bishop of the second ­century. I treat the major categories of his dogmatic/systematic theology separately from his spirituality only to illustrate the unique way issues of embodiment permeate his

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that his writings do not contain extensive discussion of many of the themes typically associated with Christian spirituality. Neither the disciplines of the contemplative life nor mystagogical routines are seriously discussed. Nevertheless, it is clear that his thoughts on spirituality were influenced by his theological interest in the body. One of the most significant ways this is expressed is in the special concern in Against Heresies for growth. Growth, Irenaeus argued, is fundamental to human experience and he wrote a great deal about development, maturity, and life-progression. These teachings are spiritual, in that they address the spiritual condition and the spiritual potential for humanity. Very briefly, I will highlight three key themes related to growth that frequently appear in Irenaeus’ writings. First, let us consider perfection. Irenaeus is clear that eschatological perfection is the destiny for God’s people. Whatever he may have meant by creation in the divine image and likeness, whatever he may have had in mind with his repeated references to communion with the Trinitarian God, there can be no doubt he saw perfection as the telos for those redeemed by the Word. The destiny for the people of God is to find their eschatological fulfilment in eternal relationship with the divine. Through the Word, his children are set free, adopted, and, in time, become recipients of “an incorruptible inheritance, for the purpose of bringing man to perfection.”21 Thus, growth from imperfection to wholeness is a key principle in Irenaean theology, one he revisited often.22 The meaning of this perfection is identified in the next paragraph. A second key aspect of growth concerns the emphasis on conformity to the divine image. This conformity is, for Irenaeus, thoroughly Christocentric. The Incarnate Word is the true divine likeness on the one hand, and the means by which humanity progresses unto that likeness on the other hand. The ascending pilgrimage of growth is made possible thinking. For a discussion of the intersection between his theology and spirituality, see Mary Ann Donovan, “Irenaeus: At the Heart of Life, Glory,” in Spiritualities of the Heart: Approaches to Personal Wholeness in Christian Tradition, ed. Annice Callahan (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1990), 11-22. 21  Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 4.11.1, in SC 100, ed. Rousseau et al., 498; ET: ANF 1, ed. Roberts and Donaldson, 474. 22  Behr, Asceticism and Anthropology, 86-127; Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons, 211-231; Ben C. Blackwell, Christosis: Pauline Soteriology in Light of Deification in Irenaeus and Cyril of Alexandria, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 314 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011); Anna Marie Aagaard, “‘My Eyes Have Seen Your Salvation’: On Likeness to God and Deification in Patristic Theology,” Religion and Theology 17 (2010): 302-328; Mark Edwards, “Growing Like God: Some Thoughts on Irenaeus of Lyons,” in Visions of God and Ideas on Deification in Patristic Thought, ed. Mark Edwards and Elena Ene D-Vasilescu, Routledge Studies in the Early Christian World (New York: Routledge, 2016), 37-51.



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only through the descending journey of the Son. This mirrors Irenaeus’ famous assertion that the Church follows “the only true and steadfast Teacher, the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be what He is Himself.”23 Scholars frequently look to this and the related texts as being among the earliest to express the doctrine of theosis, or deification, a teaching rooted in the hope and expectation for growth.24 Divine ascent is the third theme related to growth. Ascent is a point frequently addressed by Irenaeus, whether it is in the context of divine communion, divinization, or any other promises related to spiritual progression or the resurrection. One of the most explicit of these references is found in Against Heresies 4.38, where he asserted that the Spirit brings nourishment and growth for the faithful to make progress day by day, and ascend towards the perfect, that is, approximating to the uncreated One. For the Uncreated (God) is perfect. Now it was necessary that man should in the first instance be created; and having been created, should receive growth; and having received growth, should be strengthened; and having been strengthened, should flourish; and having flourished, should be healed; and having been healed, should be glorified; and being glorified, should see his Lord. For God is He who is yet to be seen, and the beholding of God brings immortality, and immortality renders one near unto God.25

These texts relating to perfection, conformity to the divine likeness, and ascent offer just a glimpse of the substantial concern Irenaeus had for growth. The question, however, is how these relate to the body. There are, I suggest, at least two ways his interest in the body fuelled his emphasis on growth and spirituality. IV.  Human Progression as a Motif for Spirituality First, I suggest that Irenaeus’ concern for growth and progress is likely rooted in his presuppositions related to the stages of human ­development 23  Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 5.pref., in SC 153, ed. Rousseau et al., 14; ET: ANF 1, ed. Roberts and Donaldson, 526. 24  Wingren, Man and the Incarnation; Briggman, Irenaeus of Lyons and the Theology of the Holy Spirit; Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons, 211-220; Behr, Asceticism and Anthropology; Steenberg, Irenaeus on Creation; Jacques Fantino, L’homme, image de Dieu chez saint Irenée de Lyon (Paris: Cerf, 1986); Antonio Orbe, Antropología de San Ireneo, Biblioteca de autores cristianos 286 (Madrid: BAC, 1969). 25  Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 4.38.3, in SC 100, ed. Rousseau et al., 954-956; ET: ANF 1, ed. Roberts and Donaldson, 521, with emendation.

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and the need for each of those stages to be sanctified by the flesh of Christ. This emerges from one of the more interesting – even bizarre – elements of his theology. In Against Heresies 2 he argued that the Word really and truly came in the flesh because he was required to come as a real human being to redeem humankind. Irenaeus probed the issue with great detail, arguing that Christ came to save those of every stage of life. Infants, children, youth and the elderly – he came to save all. But his understanding of incarnational theology required a unique twist. To save the lives of every age necessitated that Christ truly experience every stage in the flesh. He argued that to sanctify all Christ was required to live through each period: “He therefore passed through every age, becoming an infant for infants, thus sanctifying infants; a child for children,” and so on for every age. The bizarre element emerges when he concluded that Christ “likewise was an old man for old men.”26 With some creative exegesis, he argued that Jesus assuredly lived well into his forties, thus becoming the old man necessary to sanctify the elderly.27 The salvation of individual stages of life is not my central concern here, but rather, the idea that the Word was required to come in the flesh, in bodily form to save humanity. The insistence on living through every season of life reinforces the emphasis on the true, bodily incarnation, and draws a connection between salvation and the life lived in the body, particularly through the various stages of life. This connection is perhaps clearer in a passage from Against Heresies 4, which represents the second possibility for connecting spiritual growth to the body. At the end of the first paragraph of 4.11, Irenaeus again asserted that God intends for humankind to grow and move towards perfection. In this passage he argued the divine intention for human growth was present from the very beginning, that God formed humanity for “growth and increase, as the scripture says: “increase and multiply.”28 Whereas most might hear the call to a man and woman to increase and multiply as a command related to childbearing, Irenaeus understood it to be a reference to advancement and progress in the spiritual sense. In the next paragraph, he asserted that God alone is uncreated and perfect, whereas  Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 2.22.4, in Irénée de Lyon, Contre les Hérésies, Livre II, Tome II, ed. and trans. Adelin Rousseau and Louis Doutreleau, SC 294 (Paris: Cerf, 1982), 220-222; ET: ANF 1, ed. Roberts and Donaldson, 391. 27  Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 2.22.6, in SC 294, 222; ET: ANF 1, ed. Roberts and Donaldson, 391. 28  Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 4.11.1, in SC 100, ed. Rousseau et al., 500; ET: ANF 1, ed. Roberts and Donaldson, 474. Cf. Gen 1:28. 26



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man is made, and thus, is imperfect. As such, “that which is made must receive both beginning, and middle, addition, and increase. [Humankind is] skilfully made … God is the fount of all good, and man receives advancement and increase towards God.”29 The point is that Irenaeus drew an important connection between creation and ascent. It is a vivid, material image; the emphasis on the human body and its sacred value is clear. Not only does God, with his own hands fashion Adam from the dust of the earth, and not only does the Son, the Word incarnate come in the very same flesh in order to redeem, but Irenaeus stressed the fact that humanity was purposefully designed and created in the body, so as to grow. Physically, yes, but in the same way the physical body changes and matures, so is this to be the trajectory in a spiritual, eternal sense. V.  Spiritual Life and the Body As expressed above, Irenaeus wrote infrequently about specific spiritual practices.30 There are important texts on baptism and the Eucharist and how these nourish the life of the believer, and these have received considerable attention.31 At this point, space only permits me to isolate one important text from Against Heresies 4.39. It is a passage that brings together the previous themes of embodiment and adds an element of practical spirituality. Irenaeus asked: How then will you be a god, when you are not yet made man? How perfect, when only recently begun? … It is necessary for you first to hold the rank of man, and then to participate in the glory of God. For you do not create God, but God creates you. If, then, you are the work of God, await the Hand of God … you, who are being made. Offer to him your heart, soft and pliable, and retain the shape with which the Fashioner shaped you, having in yourself his water, lest you turn dry and lose the imprint of his fingers. By guarding this framework, you will ascend to perfection; the mud in you will be concealed 29  Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 4.11.2, in SC 100, ed. Rousseau et al., 502; ET: ANF 1, ed. Roberts and Donaldson, 474. 30  For brief discussion of Irenaean spirituality, see Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St. John of the Cross (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1979; 2nd rev. ed. 1990), 33-41; Donovan, “Irenaeus: At the Heart of Life, Glory.” 31  For example, see Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 2.24.1. For commentary on the Eucharist and other communal practices, see Wingren, Man and the Incarnation, 165-169; Behr, Asceticism and Anthropology, 177-180.

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by the art of God. His Hand created your substance; it will gild you, inside and out, with pure gold and silver, and so adorn you that the King himself will desire your beauty. But if, becoming hardened, you reject his art, you have lost at once both his art and life … If, therefore, you offer to him what is yours, that is, faith in him and subjection, you will receive his art and become a perfect work of God …32

For Irenaeus, humanity’s design and hope is predicated upon the life and work of Christ, the Word of God come in the flesh. As to the practicalities of the Christian life, and to the enabling of a progressive spirituality, these concerns are also rooted in humankind’s bodily creation, restoration, and glorification. Here again is a material, bodily emphasis from this bishop of antiquity. We are meant to offer ourselves, soft and workable, to be shaped by the hands of God. As Denis Minns puts it, what we need, above all else, is “to relax in the hands of God, to let God be the creator.”33 This concept is remarkable on the one hand in that it preserves the radical ontological distinction between Creator and created; on the other hand, Irenaeus describes the Christian life with a vivid physicality that demonstrates how the Divine has breached the divide and how humanity can respond. In both cases, fulfilment comes via the body. VI. Conclusion The body is a central theological motif for Irenaeus. Not only does it serve to illustrate the connection between Creator and created, not only does it inform his progressive, ascending vision for spirituality, but the motif also offers a simple picture for the practical spiritual life. As the body was formed by God, so must his children allow him to continue his work, becoming the proverbial clay in the potter’s hands. For St Irenaeus the body is an illustration for the Christian life, but it is also more than this – it is the very vehicle for its progress. A progress marked by physical and active humility and obedience. There is always an element of mystery to the early Church’s understanding of mystagogy, but for Irenaeus, there is no confusion as to how spiritual progress is initiated: it is within and through the body. 32  Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 4.39.2, in SC 100, ed. Rousseau et al., 964-968; ET: ANF 1, ed. Roberts and Donaldson, 523. Translation closely follows Behr, Asceticism and Anthropology, 117. 33  Denis Minns, Irenaeus, Outstanding Christian Thinkers Series (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1994), 64.

Female Bodies

Perpetua and Felicitas Vincent Hunink I. Introduction In Christian martyr accounts, the human body often receives particular attention. The life of the martyr, in all its earthly and temporal aspects, is contrasted with the heavenly aspirations and expectations of eternity raised by possible martyrdom. Moreover, Christian martyrs are not only subjected to interrogation on their daily life and practice, but also to torture and final punishment in the form of execution. The body is central to most of this. Early Christian martyr acts can thus include remarkably “physical” elements, highlighting the martyr’s contempt for earthly life and exemplary endurance of pain and hardship. One of the earliest and most influential early Christian Latin martyr acts, the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity (henceforth Passio),1 both conforms to the general pattern and shows some interesting special features. Most importantly, the human bodies involved here are female: the protagonists are two women whose names figure in the title of the text. In the light of early Christian concerns with sexuality, a focus on women, and so on female bodies, as positive models may a priori be said to be somewhat problematic. In addition, Perpetua and Felicity are described in striking terms that further highlight their bodily aspects and femininity. In this contribution, I will deal with the most important references to the body in the text, and their relevance to early Christian readers as mystagogical 1  The best modern edition is The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, ed. Thomas J. Heffernan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Other widely used editions are: Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis, ed. Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen, trans. Gioachino Chiarini, in Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen et al., Atti e passioni dei martiri, Scrittori greci e latini (Milan: A. Mondadori, 1987), 107-147 and 412-452 and Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité suivi des Actes, ed. and trans. Jacqueline Amat, SC 417 (Paris: Cerf, 1996). The classical text edition is: Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis, ed. Cornelius I. M. I. van Beek (diss. Nijmegen, 1936). This text has served as the basis for a useful Italian, bilingual edition: La passione de Perpetua e Felicità, ed. Marco Formisano, Classici greci e latini (Milan: Biblioteca Università Rizzoli, 2008).

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elements. This focus on female bodies in the Passio can also shed light on important questions concerning the text as a whole, such as its authorship (who wrote the Passio? What is its intended audience?) and authenticity (was Perpetua’s so-called “prison diary” written by Perpetua herself?).2 But first, let us consider the special nature of the text in question. We are dealing with one of the finest and most intriguing ancient texts that was actually partly written by a woman. I refer here to the section of the Passio which is often called “the prison diary of Perpetua.” The phenomenon of texts written by women in Antiquity is so rare that even most classicists can hardly think of anyone other than Sappho (sixth century bce), Sulpicia (first century ce) and at best one or two minor authors. Invariably, these writers were all poets, as were the Christian women authors Proba (fourth century ce) and Eudocia (fifth century ce). (One or two names from inscriptions could be added.) Greek or Latin prose texts written by a woman, therefore, are nearly non-existent before 200 ce. On several occasions I defended the authenticity, that is Perpetua’s authorship, of the prison diary, for example in an article focusing on Perpetua’s four major “dreams” or “visions.”3 However, I always continued to have some doubts. An amazing, breath-taking Latin prose text written by a young girl in prison, just before her martyrdom and violent death: this is surely exciting, thrilling, unique, a rare chance for readers to think like a young, Roman woman, or, in a way, to become one. But perhaps it is just too good to be true in terms of history and biography. Maybe Perpetua did not write her prison account herself. Or, to view it from a different perspective, the text may be a successful case of ancient 2  Scholarly literature on the PPF is vast. Among the most important recent items, see notably Jan N. Bremmer and Marco Formisano, Perpetua’s Passions: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), and Petr Kitzler, From ‘Passio Perpetuae’ to ‘Acta Perpetuae’: Recontextualizing a Martyr Story in the Literature of the Early Church, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 127 (Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2015). Further references may be found for instance in Joyce E. Salisbury, Perpetua’s Passion: The Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman (New York: Routledge 1997); Jan N. Bremmer, “Perpetua and Her Diary: Authenticity, Family, and Visions,” in Märtyrer und Märtyrerakten, ed. W. Ameling (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2002), 77-120; Peter Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter, oder Bilder des Bösen im frühen afrikanischen Christentum: Ein Versuch zur Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis, TU 140 (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2004), 267-275. 3  Vincent Hunink, “‘With the Taste of Something Sweet Still in My Mouth’: Perpetua’s Visions,” in Dreams as Divine Communication in Christianity: From Hermas to Aquinas, ed. Bart J. Koet, Studies in the History and Anthropology of Religion 3 (Louvain and Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2012), 77-91. For an earlier discussion see idem, “Did Perpetua Write Her Prison Account?,” Listy Filologické 133 (2010): 147-155. See further Passion, ed. Heffernan, 5-6.



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mystagogical writing by what seems the most likely kind of author, a man. In this contribution I will reread the Passio, including Perpetua’s own text, in search of clues referring to femininity and female bodies, and ask to what extent these gendered elements contribute to the persuasive power of the text. In the second half, I will return to the vexed question of the authenticity of the prison diary. II.  Perpetua’s Account Perpetua’s prison diary runs to some 1500 words (four or five modern pages) and comprises paragraphs 3 to 10 in the larger composition that is commonly called the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis. It is a document consisting of rather different sections, seemingly written by two, three, or even more writers. A theological introduction (1) and a statement of facts (2) by the editor are followed by Perpetua’s ego-document (3–10). Then Saturus’s account is briefly announced (11) and quoted (12–13). The final section of the Passio is devoted to a description by the editor of the martyrs’ execution and death, and rounded off with a final prayer. Thus, the Passio contains texts ascribed to at least three different authors.4 Throughout this aggregate of texts by, so it seems, at least three authors, interesting references are made to the femininity of the two female protagonists, Perpetua and Felicity. First, we will run through Perpetua’s text and highlight the most important of these elements. Right from the start, gender seems to be on the primary author’s mind. In the theological introduction in chapter 1, the point is made that the Holy Spirit operates even today, not just in the distant past. In support of this, the text gives a quotation from Acts 2:17-18 and Joel 2:28-29: “In nouissimis enim diebus,” dicit dominus, “effundam de spiritu meo super omnem carnem, et prophetabunt filii filiaeque eorum; et super seruos et ancillas meas de meo Spiritu effundam; et iuuenes uisiones uidebunt, et senes somnia somniabunt” (1.4). “In the last days,” says the Lord, “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; and their sons and daughters shall prophesy; and I will pour out my Spirit on my servants and handmaidens and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams.”5 4  Texts ascribed here to the primary author or editor may also be attributed to two or even more authors. However, it is commonly assumed that only one editor was involved. 5  Unless stated otherwise, all quoted English translations from the PPF are from Passion, ed. Heffernan, 125-135, sometimes with minor changes.

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As Thomas Heffernan has noted in his magnificent edition with commentary of the Passio, a minor shift has taken place in the order of the quotation: the element of servos et ancillas has been moved from the fourth and last place to the second place. Heffernan relates this to the fact that some of the persons involved in Perpetua’s story are slaves, for instance Felicity.6 It might equally be pointed out that this reinforces the combination of male and female persons, which comes first in filii filiaeque. Next is the “fact sheet” in chapter 2: Apprehensi sunt adolescentes catechumeni, Reuocatus et Felicitas, conserua eius, Saturninus et Secundulus; inter hos et Vibia Perpetua, honeste nata, liberaliter instituta, matronaliter nupta, habens patrem et matrem et fratres duos, alterum aeque catechumenum, et filium infantem ad ubera. Erat autem ipsa circiter annorum uiginti duo (2.1-3). Some young catechumens were arrested: Revocatus and Felicity, his fellow slave; Saturninus; and Secundulus. And among these was also Vibia Perpetua – a woman well born, liberally educated, and honorably married, who had a father, mother, and two brothers, one of whom was also a catechumen. She had an infant son at the breast and was about twenty-two years of age.

Here we see Felicity, who is, intriguingly, introduced before Perpetua, and is characterized as a slave.7 The protagonist Perpetua, obviously not a slave but a freeborn young woman is introduced next. In only a few lines, we are given something like a short biography: she is of high birth, well-educated and married, she has a father, a mother and two brothers, and, most strikingly, a little baby “at her breast,” and she is twenty-two years old. The Latin words ad ubera are the first clear reference to the body in the Passio, and surprisingly they refer to one of the most typical parts of the female body. One may wonder whether the phrase should be taken in a general sense, that of Perpetua (still) nursing a baby son,8 or literally, that she was arrested while feeding her baby boy. The phrase ad ubera  Passion, ed. Heffernan, 141-142.  There has been some discussion concerning conserva. Most scholars agree that this is meant as a reference to the social condition of slavery, but some doubts have been raised. According to Bastiaensen (Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis, 415), the word primarily refers to their being Christians (that is, “servants of Christ”). Amat (Passion, 193) mentions the interpretation of the word as “épouse.” 8  Curiously, Heffernan (Passion, 151) states that the text refers to a child of about eighteen months (he accordingly translates “an infant son still at the breast”). However, there is no indication of the baby’s age in chapter 1. 6 7



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is by no means standard Latin, with only a handful of attested occurrences before the Passio, mostly referring to animals.9 The phrase certainly draws the (male) reader’s attention to the female body. The remainder of chapter 2, which discusses Perpetua’s testimony of her martyrdom, consists of a highly debatable phrase, to which I will return later. For this moment it suffices to say that she is called ipsa, a clearly female form of the normal pronoun ipse. In Perpetua’s first-person story, the so-called “prison diary,” she recounts her experiences while under arrest. The passage is perhaps best known for the extensive story about four successive “dreams,” or rather “visions.” I will briefly list some elements from her account in which she seems very much aware of her femininity. While she is still being questioned (which means she is not yet in prison), her father tries to persuade her to repent and yield. In this context she proudly calls herself “Christiana” (3.2). In the same context, she is baptized and receives what may be considered a preliminary “vision,” which does not seem to have been noticed as such in scholarship: in ipso spatio paucorum dierum baptizati sumus, et mihi Spiritus dictauit non aliud petendum ab aqua nisi sufferentiam carnis (3.5). In the space of a few days we were baptized. The Spirit told me that nothing else should be sought from the water other than the endurance of the body.

Of course, the general sense is clear: Perpetua is attempting to find encouragement and to prepare herself for the expected physical suffering. But the strikingly physical reference in carnis (rather than the neutral corporis) is noteworthy. On the one hand, it seems to strike a rather theological note,10 on the other hand it suggests that Perpetua is really thinking about her body in a very concrete, physical manner. In the next 9  Three references in poetry: Calpurnius Siculus 3.67, cf. http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/calpurnius.html (heifer); Statius, Thebaid 4.563, cf. http://www. thelatinlibrary.com/statius.html (of the mythological Ino pressing her child against her breast) and 4.748 (of the mythological Hypsipyle with Opheltes); two in prose: PseudoQuintilian, Declamationes minores 306.22 (cf. Quintilian, Declamationes Minores, ed. Michael Winterbottom [Los Altos, CA: Packard Humanities Institute, 1991]; of animals having a natural urge ad ubera); Pliny, Natural History 8.165 (cf. penelope.uchicago. edu, accessed 23 January 2021; about horses refusing to suckle foals). Uber therefore does not seem to have been the most natural word as used by women themselves; mamma or papilla were probably better candidates for this. 10  One is reminded of the use of caro by the contemporary author Tertullian.

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sentence we find Perpetua in prison, and writing about it in quite impressive terms: Post paucos dies recipimur in carcerem; et expaui, quia numquam experta eram tales tenebras. O diem asperum! Aestus ualidus turbarum beneficio, concussurae militum. Nouissime macerabar sollicitudine infantis (3.5-6). After a few days we were taken into the prison. I was terrified because I had never before known such darkness. Oh cruel day! The crowding of the mob made the heat stifling; and there was the extortion of the soldiers. Last of all, I was consumed with worry for my infant in that dungeon.

The main impression the reader is meant to get is, it seems, basic and sensual: we learn about darkness (a visual element), oppressive heat (relating to touch), a large crowd (perhaps also suggestive of the sense of “hearing”), and intrusive soldiers. The vignette ends with a motherly touch: Perpetua worries about her baby, a somewhat puzzling phrase.11 The accused are given the chance to move to a better place in prison, either for a while or permanently, or outside prison (this is not clear either), where she has the opportunity to feed the child: ego infantem lactabam iam inedia defectum (3.8), “I nursed my baby, who was now weak from hunger.” Two details are a bit strange here: first, there is the obvious historical problem of the noble young woman Perpetua actually nursing her baby son herself (ad ubera still leaves some room for doubt, but here the Latin is explicit), an uncommon phenomenon, since women from high society normally employed nurses.12 In addition, the use in chapter 3 of macerare and tabescere, two verbs that seem quite physical again, points to careful choice of words, suggesting an author with literary skill. By contrast, the famous first vision (recounted in chapter 4) hardly contains any elements that are relevant to our present quest:13 Perpetua here seems to transcend her female bodily nature. Only at the end, she is left with the impression that she is still chewing a bit of the cheese (or yoghurt) she was given during the vision (4.10).  The precise cause of her worry is not specified. Is the baby absent from her original place in prison? Is it in bad health, as the following lines suggest? In 3.8 she seems to entrust her baby son to her mother and brother, only to ask for him again after “many days” to have him stay with her in prison (3.9). 12  Passion, ed. Heffernan, 164. 13  I will not discuss Perpetua’s brother’s initial address of her as Domina soror (4.1), surprising as it is, since it does not suggest any specifically bodily association. 11



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Chapter 5 brings us back to earth, in prison. Perpetua’s father appears again, and delivers an emotional address to his daughter.14 Chapter 6 opens with a reference to a meal (cum pranderemus, 6.1),15 and brings more emotion, once again involving Perpetua’s father. At the end Perpetua says she feels sorry for him (dolui pro senecta eius misera, 6.5). A compressed, highly interesting section follows next: Tunc nos uniuersos pronuntiat et damnat ad bestias; et hilares descendimus ad carcerem. Tunc quia consueuerat a me infans mammas accipere et mecum in carcere manere, statim mitto ad patrem Pomponium diaconum, postulans infantem. Sed pater dare noluit. et quomodo Deus uoluit, neque ille amplius mammas desiderauit neque mihi feruorem fecerunt ne sollicitudine infantis et dolore mammarum macerarer (6.6-8). Then Hilarianus pronounced sentence on us all and condemned us to the beasts. And we descended the platform and returned cheerfully to prison. But because my baby had become accustomed to nurse at my breasts and to stay with me in prison, I immediately sent Pomponius, the deacon, to ask my father for the child. But my father would not give him back. And as God willed, the baby no longer desired my breasts, nor did they ache and become inflamed, so that I might not be tormented by worry for my child or by the pain in my breasts.

So the accused are finally convicted,16 and go down into the dungeon “full of joy,” with Perpetua engaging once again in negotiations about her baby son. Her use of the word mamma, a normal and, it seems, colloquial word for “breast,”17 is striking. Once again, the reader’s mental gaze is firmly directed to this characteristic part of the female body, all the more so since Perpetua repeats the word twice. The final sentence even introduces a medical element: her breasts no longer hurt, and so her double worry, about her baby and about her painful breasts, is resolved with God’s help. It seems difficult to believe that such lines, especially the final, captivating and highly private lines, would have been produced and written 14  He seems to fulfil an almost feminine role: he implores her more like a chorus or female protagonist in a tragedy than like a Roman pater familias. By contrast, in her reply, she seems to represent Reason and male composure. 15  For details on such meals in prison, see Passion, ed. Heffernan, 197. For some Christian martyrs it may have been no more than water and bread, but the noble and respected Perpetua may have enjoyed something better than that. 16  It may be observed that a common feature of early Christian martyr texts, the verbal exchange between the Roman official who presiding over the trial and the accused Christian, is reduced to the very minimum (6.2-4) and is almost overshadowed by yet another debate between Perpetua and her father. 17  See OLD s.v., with some instances from Roman comedy.

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down by a female writer in Antiquity. Can we really imagine a young woman proudly elaborating on such intimate detail, whereas she was normally expected to remain within the domain of the house or even of women’s private rooms? And, to take it one step further, can we imagine a young Roman woman writing down such detail in a text that is supposed to have an edifying effect on fellow Christian readers, both male and female? This would seem to turn everything in the realm of Roman literature, that male domain par excellence, upside down. Chapters 7 and 8, the second and third visions, again are largely free from such bodily references,18 while the rather repetitive chapter 9 conjures up Perpetua’s father yet again as the Final Day approaches, with one last supplication, which, as readers meanwhile have come to realize, is bound to remain ineffectual. By contrast, the fourth and final vision, in chapter 10, includes some strongly physical elements. Perpetua imagines that she and others are being led into the arena, where they arrive out of breath (anhelantes, 10.3), and where she herself has to fight a huge Egyptian and his assistants. She in turn has some beautiful young men as helpers;19 she is stripped naked and “becomes male”; she is rubbed with oil by her helpers and sees the Egyptian rolling in the sand. I quote these much debated lines: Et exiuit quidam contra me Aegyptius foedus specie cum adiutoribus suis pugnaturus mecum. Veniunt et ad me adolescentes decori, adiutores et fautores mei. Et expoliata sum et facta sum masculus; et coeperunt me fauisores mei oleo defricare, quomodo solent in agone. Et illum contra Aegyptium uideo in afa uolutantem (10.6-7). And a certain Egyptian, foul in appearance and intending to fight with me, came out against me, surrounded by his helpers. Handsome young men came to me as my helpers and supporters. And I was stripped naked, and I became a man. And my supporters began to rub me with oil, as they are accustomed to do for a match. And I saw that Egyptian on the other side rolling in the dust.

Many scholars have zoomed in on the paradoxical et facta sum masculus (“I became a man”), for which many, often far-reaching interpretations have been advanced.20 But it has not often been acknowledged that this  However, the element of bodily “thirst” is clearly present, as is the element of physical mutilation. But it is her dead brother Dinocrates, who is said to be thirsty and to have a face disfigured by an awful disease, not Perpetua herself. 19  The reference is very clearly physical, even though Heffernan (Passion, 262) rather weakly protests that a nonphysical beauty or grace may be suggested. 20  See for instance Hunink, “With the Taste of Something Sweet,” 87 with references. 18



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scene as a whole carries clearly erotic and even sexual overtones. The combination of “female nudity,” “being rubbed with oil by friends,” and “a physical encounter with a giant man” seem quite enough to fire up the imagination of most (present-day heterosexual) male readers, something which scholars seem reluctant even to mention. I would suggest that this is an effect that the author of this text consciously aimed for. That is, erotic, sexual elements are employed to catch the reader’s attention, to capture his imagination, and to direct it to a spiritual level. After all, the text does not present itself as a sample of ancient pornography, but clearly pursues a spiritual aim. It may seem a curious form of mystagogy, but the term seems appropriate nonetheless. The end of Perpetua’s tale rounds off the fighting scene, with a focus on physical details (fists, feet, grabbing, heels, face, hitting, hands, fingers, head, victory kiss, waking up; 10.10-13), and ends with a teasing, but perhaps inevitable cliff-hanger: Hoc usque in pridie muneris egi; ipsius autem muneris actum, si quis uoluerit, scribat (10.15). This is the story of what I did the day before the final conflict. But concerning the outcome of that contest, let whoever wishes to write about it, do so.

On the whole, Perpetua’s writing may be considered to be strongly coloured by references to the body, especially the female body, with particular attention being paid to her breasts. The intended average male reader (the most obvious target group of any ancient text) is almost inevitably attracted by such details.21 III.  Saturus and Felicity Having read Perpetua’s personal account (the most important part of the Passio) in detail, we will now take a glance at some more female bodily elements in the rest of the Passio. I will concentrate on three sections. First, there is the first-person account by Perpetua’s Christian friend, the apparent leader of their group, Saturus. His account is not as long as Perpetua’s, but nonetheless comprises three chapters (11–13). It would be strange if he were to mention female body parts, but it may be useful  One can only speculate about the possible effects on female readers. Whether Perpetua did envisage female readers remains a matter of debate. 21

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to briefly compare his account with Perpetua’s in terms of references to the body. In the course of his account he does refer to hands and feet, hair and face, and his vision refers to moving towards what looks like paradise or heaven. However, the general impression is more spiritual, that is, Saturus’ account seems to reflect a neutral approach, such as might be expected from a man. There is only one detail that is fascinating. In describing his vision, he mentions a remark he made to Perpetua: Dixi Perpetuae (erat enim haec in latere meo): “Hoc est quod nobis Dominus promittebat” (11.4). I said to Perpetua (for she was at my side): “This is what the Lord promised us.”

The words in latere meo are commonly interpreted as “at my side,” “next to me.”22 However, they are definitely not normal Latin, and the phrase cannot be found in this sense, that is, referring to a person, in earlier pagan texts. It is tempting to think of Saturus suggesting some form of intimate physical contact between him and Perpetua, but it is probably better to take the phrase simply as a minor biblical echo that seems to have gone unnoticed by Perpetua scholars.23 While Saturus’ account is different from Perpetua’s, the following section about Felicity again abounds in physical detail. I quote it here in full (with some words and phrases highlighted): Circa Felicitatem uero et illi gratia domini eiusmodi contigit. Cum octo iam mensium uentrem haberet (nam praegnans fuerat adprehensa), instante spectaculi die in magno erat luctu ne propter uentrem differretur (quia non licet praegnantes poenae repraesentari) et ne inter alios postea sceleratos sanctum et innocentem sanguinem funderet. Sed et conmartyres grauiter contristabantur ne tam bonam sociam quasi comitem solam in uia eiusdem spei relinquerent. Coniuncto itaque unito gemitu ad Dominum orationem fuderunt ante tertium diem muneris. Statim post orationem dolores inuaserunt. et cum pro naturali difficultate octaui mensis in partu laborans doleret, ait illi quidam ex ministris cataractariorum: “Quae sic modo doles, quid facies obiecta bestiis, quas contempsisti cum sacrificare noluisti?” Et illa respondit: “Modo ego patior quod patior; illic autem alius erit in me qui patietur pro me, quia et ego pro illo passura sum.” Ita enixa est puellam, quam sibi quaedam soror in filiam educauit (15.1-7). 22  Cf. Passion, ed. Heffernan, 278: “The emphasis of their physical closeness also underscores their spiritual connection.” The Greek translation of the PPF simply has: πλησίον γάρ μου ἦν. 23  Cf. Prov 3:26 Dominus enim erit in latere tuo et custodiet pedem tuum ne capiaris (“For the Lord will be at thy side, and will keep thy foot that thou be not taken”).



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As for Felicity, the Lord’s favor touched her in this way. She was now in her eighth month (for she was pregnant when she was arrested). As the day of the games drew near, she was in agony, fearing that her pregnancy would spare her (since it was not permitted to punish pregnant women in public), and that she would pour forth her holy and innocent blood afterwards, along with common criminals. But also her fellow martyrs were deeply saddened that they might leave behind so good a friend, their companion, to travel alone on the road to their shared hope. And so, two days before the games, they joined together in one united supplication, groaning, and poured forth their prayer to the Lord. Immediately after their prayer her labor pains came upon her. And when – because of the natural difficulty associated with an eighth-month delivery – she suffered in her labor, one of the assistant jailers said to her: “If you are suffering so much now, what will you do when you are thrown to the beasts which you scorned when you refused to sacrifice?” And she replied: “Now I alone suffer what I am suffering, but then there will be another inside me, who will suffer for me, because I am going to suffer for him.” And she gave birth to a baby girl, whom a certain sister brought up as her own daughter.

It is easy to see the physical aspects here. Right from the start nearly all attention is directed to her belly, as she is pregnant and on the brink of giving birth to a baby. Since pregnant women could not be put to trial or executed,24 she fears that she will not be allowed to enter the arena, and the Christians pray that she may deliver her child, which – as is to be expected – in fact happens. Not for the first time, a medical element can be observed, in the author’s remark about the natural difficulty of an eight-month delivery. The intervening altercation with an assistant jailer first seems to strike a more spiritual tone, but we must note that it is physical suffering (Passio) which is central, with four forms of the verb patior occurring in the only sentence ascribed to Felicitas herself. The portrait ends with childbirth. If we compare Felicity with Perpetua, it is evident that she receives much less attention in the Passio as a whole. This may be partly due to her social status as a slave, or simply to the absence of a full first-person account. As an aside, it would have been an interesting literary and rhetorical exercise for any skilled ancient author to rewrite the short account of chapter 15 into a full, first-person account as Felicity might have written it herself, or, conversely, to compress Perpetua’s text into a brief descriptive section.25 As it is, from a literary point of view the short 24  Heffernan (Passion, 306) quotes, among others, Gaius, Inst. 14.183: quasdam tamen personas sine permissu praetoris in ius vocare non licet. 25  The latter is what in fact has happened in Late Antiquity with the so-called Acta Perpetuae, on which see Kitzler, From ‘Passio Perpetuae’ to ‘Acta Perpetuae’.

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chapter 15 comes as a welcome variation after the two longer and personal accounts by Perpetua and Saturus. The third and final passage that requires our attention is the long account of the martyrs’ execution in the arena and their death, with Perpetua’s death a proper climax at the very end. The passage begins as follows. Illuxit dies uictoriae illorum, et processerunt de carcere in amphitheatrum quasi in caelum hilares, uultu decori, si forte gaudio pauentes non timore. Sequebatur Perpetua lucido uultu et placido incessu ut matrona Christi, ut Dei delicata, uigore oculorum deiciens omnium conspectum. Item Felicitas, saluam se peperisse gaudens ut ad bestias pugnaret, a sanguine ad sanguinem, ab obstetrice ad retiarium, lotura post partum baptismo secundo (18.1-3). The day of their victory dawned, and they marched from the prison to the amphitheatre, joyously, as if going to heaven, their faces radiant; and if by chance they trembled, it was from joy and not from fear. Perpetua followed, with a shining face and a calm step, as a wife of Christ and darling of God, and the intensity of her stare caused the spectators to look away. Likewise Felicity rejoiced that she had given birth safely, so that she might fight with the beasts – advancing from blood to blood, from the midwife to a net-bearing gladiator – now to be washed after childbirth in a second baptism.

The two women are presented very much as two female bodies again. Perpetua has a radiant face and a worthy manner of walking, truly like a lady, her gaze forcing everyone to look down.26 She is literally “God’s darling,” with delicata striking a surprising, particularly erotic tone.27 In turn, Felicity is almost exclusively pictured as a suffering female body, passing from blood (of childbirth) to blood (of martyrdom).28 The arena section is too long to analyse in full detail, so I will merely focus on the fate of the two women. Three points stand out. First, there is the first confrontation of the women with a ferocious animal: Puellis autem ferocissimam uaccam ideoque praeter consuetudinem conparatam diabolus praeparauit, sexui earum etiam de bestia aemulatus. Itaque dispoliatae et reticulis indutae producebantur. Horruit populus 26  In a text which constantly directs the reader’s eye towards bodies such as Perpe­ tua’s, this remark may perhaps be taken as a subtle touch of irony. 27  See the helpful note in Passion, ed. Heffernan, 328. 28  The special phrases with which she is connected are strangely unspecific from a narratological point of view. They do not seem to be normal qualifications by the primary author, but rather vividly and indirectly capture Felicitas’ joy or cries by the audience (much as in 21.2 salvum lotum). The result is a piece of writing that looks almost modern, and makes the author once more seem extremely skilful. None of the commentators mentioned in notes 1 and 2 has remarked on this literary issue.



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alteram respiciens puellam delicatam, alteram a partu recentem stillantibus mammis. Ita reuocatae et discinctis indutae. Prior Perpetua iactata est et concidit in lumbos. Et ubi sedit, tunicam a latere discissam ad uelamentum femoris reduxit pudoris potius memor quam doloris. Dehinc acu requisita et dispersos capillos infibulauit; non enim decebat martyram sparsis capillis pati, ne in sua gloria plangere uideretur. Ita surrexit et elisam Felicitatem cum uidisset, accessit et manum ei tradidit et suscitauit illam. Et ambae pariter steterunt (20.1-7). For the young women, however, the devil prepared a wild cow – not a traditional practice – matching their sex with that of the beast. And so stripped naked and covered only with nets, they were brought out again. The crowd shuddered, seeing that one was a delicate young girl and that the other had recently given birth, as her breasts were still dripping with milk. So they were called back and dressed in unbelted robes. Perpetua was thrown down first and fell on her loins. Then sitting up, she noticed that her tunic was ripped on the side, and so she drew it up to cover her thigh, more mindful of her modesty than her suffering. Then she requested a pin and she tied up her tousled hair; for it was not right for a martyr to suffer with disheveled hair, since it might appear that she was grieving in her moment of glory. Then she got up; and when she saw Felicity crushed to the ground, she went over to her, gave her her hand and helped her up. And the two stood side by side.

The girls’ gender is explicitly mentioned by the author in his description of the animal that is brought out against them, a “wild cow,” whatever that may specifically refer to.29 Then the scene turns erotic and sexual again: the young mothers are undressed, yet another case of public stripping, no longer imaginary as in Perpetua’s vision (Et expoliata sum et facta sum masculus, 10.7), but all too real. To make matters worse, they have to wear nets, thus making it all the easier for the beast to attack them.30 The people think this is excessive when they see them exposed. The use of respiciens, delicatam,31 and mammis once again directs the reader’s gaze straight to the women’s breasts. In what is the last reference to breasts, a form of climax is reached with Felicitas’ breasts dripping with milk.32  See Passion, ed. Heffernan, 344 for discussion.  In a modern context, this may evoke images of sex toys like those used, for instance, in an SM setting. However, I do not know of any ancient testimony of nets having such an association. In some forms of Roman gladiator fight, nets were of course commonly used. 31  The adjective here surely means something like “tender,” “vulnerable,” but inevitably also echoes 18.2 Dei delicata (see above). 32  I would suggest that here, too, a conscious erotic effect is at play: the drops of milk may have reminded readers of semen. 29 30

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This almost pornographic scene is then quickly concluded with both women being ordered to dress, and with the beginning of the fight. But the first thing we then learn is that Perpetua falls down and covers her naked thigh with a piece of her torn tunica. Again and again, the female body is made the centre of attention. Finally, in the ultimate lines of the text (apart from the final prayer), Perpetua is portrayed as dying, first being pierced between her bones, and then even helping the soldier who is supposed to kill her, by directing his hand: Perpetua autem, ut aliquid doloris gustaret, inter ossa conpuncta exululauit, et errantem dexteram tirunculi gladiatoris ipsa in iugulum suum transtulit. Fortasse tanta femina aliter non potuisset occidi, quae ab inmundo spiritu timebatur, nisi ipsa uoluisset (21.9-10). Perpetua, however – so that she might taste something of the pain – screamed out in agony as she was pierced between the bones. And when the right hand of the novice gladiator wavered, she herself guided it to her throat. Perhaps such a woman, feared as she was by the unclean spirit, could not have been killed unless she herself had willed it.

The female body, exposed to blows and penetration by deadly weapons, effectively is the last element readers are presented with. If we read the Passio as a whole, we may safely conclude that the text is literally scattered with all sorts of references to bodies, notably the female bodies of Perpetua and Felicity. Particularly their breasts are a constantly recurring motif, while their nudity is also repeatedly thematized in the motif of stripping, with various uncommon phrases or images that have a sexual connotation (Dei delicata, being oiled by friends, the uncovered thigh). Of course this may be explained as an easy literary instrument to direct the (male) reader’s attention towards the most likely, supposedly higher aim of the text: to present a morally uplifting and edifying example for Christians. The erotic elements thus serve to attract the reader and bring his mind to a higher level. This could indeed be called a form of mystagogy.33 Considering the whole of the Passio, I think we may conclude that the consistent presentation of female bodies is a strategy which unites 33  Many readers may feel rather uneasy about this. Can a higher spiritual aim be really reconciled with such an intruding gaze directed at female bodies? Furthermore, should we really assume that it is Perpetua herself, and her “prison diary” that first points the reader’s attention in this direction?



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Perpetua’s own text and the rest of the Passio (from the opening section until the very end). This raises the question of the authorship of the various parts of the Passio. Could it not be that just a single author wrote the entire Passio? IV. Authorship How do we know that Perpetua’s “prison diary” was actually written by the martyr herself? I will briefly survey some of the major arguments in favour of her authorship of that section, as held by the majority of scholars,34 and also discuss one or two dissident voices that argue for a different solution. The best and main argument in favour of authenticity is a statement in the text itself. The editor announces the diary as follows: Haec ordinem totum martyrii sui iam hinc ipsa narravit, sicut conscriptum manu sua et suo sensu reliquit (2.3) (“From this point there follows a complete account of her martyrdom, as she left it, written in her own hand and in accordance with her own understanding”). At first sight at least, this clearly suggests that Perpetua is the author of the text as it is written. However, on closer scrutiny, the phrase seems confusing and strange. Even apart from any historical or social considerations, what does this line actually say? First, the main verb is in fact not conscripsit or anything referring to writing, but narrauit, which suggests an oral performance. However, conscriptum manu sua seems difficult to read in any other way than “written in her own hand.” But then again, why the added suo sensu? As Heffernan rightly notes,35 if she wrote it, how could it be anything else than her own ideas? He suggests that the added words underscore that the editor is a faithful copyist, that he is merely a transmitter, reassuring an audience unfamiliar with female writers, and that the document is nonetheless genuine. These points may seem plausible, but are not entirely convincing. The phrase remains awkward, and translators have struggled with it accordingly.36  For general comments on the question of authorship of Perpetua’s text, see Passion, ed. Heffernan, 5-6. 35  Ibid., 152. 36  E.g. “Het is door haar eigenhandig op schrift gezet en het is zó overgeleverd als zij zich heeft uitgedrukt” (Hunink, in Vincent Hunink, Elisabeth van Ketwich Verschuur, Arie Akkermans, and Toon Bastiaensen, eds., Eeuwig geluk: De passie van de vroegchristelijke martelaressen Perpetua en Felicitas & drie preken van Augustinus (Zoetermeer: 34

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The difficulty was even felt in the early Christian Greek translation of the Passio: ὡς καὶ τῷ νοῒ αὐτῆς καὶ τῇ χειρὶ συγγράψασα κατέλιπεν, οὕτως εἰποῦσα… We may perhaps deduce an argumentum ex silentio from the contested sentence: if Perpetua had indeed written this account herself, and in a relatively good style at that, this miraculous aspect would have been adduced as a special feature of the saint, and it would have been clearly discussed. As it is, the confused sentence suggests a confused situation.37 A clearer statement suggesting Perpetua’s authorship appears only much further on in the text. As soon as Saturus has also been quoted, the text reads: Hae uisiones insigniores ipsorum martyrum beatissimorum Saturi et Perpetuae, quas ipsi conscripserunt (14.1) (“These were the extraordinary visions of the most blessed martyrs Saturus and Perpetua, which they themselves wrote”). This implies that it was Saturus and Perpetua themselves who wrote their texts. Perhaps inevitably, the “prison diary” contains many Latin forms that clearly reflect a female author.38 These have mostly been taken at face value, but there is of course no real proof that they were written by a female writer. It must also be pointed out here that later references to the story of Perpetua almost invariably omit any reference to writing, and instead have telling and reporting, that is, oral rather than written testimony.39 Meinema, 2004); “According to her own ideas and in the way that she herself wrote it down” (Musurillo, in Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. Herbert Musurillo, Oxford Early Christian Texts [Oxford: Clarendon, 1972; repr. Oxford University Press, 2000], 106); “Così come ella stessa l’ha scritta, di suo pugno e di propria voluntà” (La passione, ed. Formisano, n. 1); “Written in her own hand and in accordance with her own understanding” (Passion, ed. Heffernan, n. 1). 37  Compare the introduction of Saturus’ vision, which seems so much simpler: Sed et Saturus benedictus hanc uisionem suam edidit, quam ipse conscripsit (11.1) First comes edidit as a main verb, suggesting “making publicly known” rather than writing, then the plain and unambiguous quam ipse conscripsit. If Perpetua’s account had been announced like this, the problem would not have arisen. The authenticity of Saturus’ account is rarely discussed, let alone questioned. 38  I merely quote the first five forms, all from c. 3: … ego aliud me dicere non possum nisi quod sum, christiana …; … et expaui, quia numquam experta eram tales tenebras …; … sollicita pro eo adloquebar matrem …; … tales sollicitudines multis diebus passa sum …; … et statim conualui et releuata sum a labore et sollicitudine infantis. 39  Among the most important later sources, the Acta both refer explicitly to oral delivery by Perpetua, without any specific mention of her writing. E.g. Acta 1 3.1 alia die retulit sanctis commartyribus suis ita dicens: “Vidi in uisu hac nocte scalam aeream…”; further Acta 2 3.7-8 experge facta est. Haec cum martyribus retulisset … There are similar phrases in Acta 2 7.2-3.



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Perpetua’s impressive character has made such a lasting impression on readers throughout the ages, whether Christian believers or not, that the voice of doubt has rarely been heard. The tradition of an early Christian martyr cult has made Perpetua into a remarkable witness of early persecution. It might be said that we have grown accustomed to simply believing her, to taking her words for granted. She wrote this text herself, because we know and wish to believe that she did. On the other hand, the text presents us with some rather embarrassing problems. As soon as one takes a critical stand, many questions arise. Let me quote Heffernan’s note on 2.3, where he aptly presents a number of these in one sentence: “Yet one is bound to ask how she managed to write this text under such appalling conditions as crowding, lack of light, hostile jailers, an infant to care for during at least part of her stay, and her own terrible anxieties.”40 To briefly elaborate on this: a real female Christian prisoner would most likely have had many other concerns than to write down her personal impressions from jail and her visions. If she cared for personal fame, which seems rather unlikely to start with for a girl in Antiquity, particularly the more personal elements, such as details from prison or feelings of fear, would even seem irrelevant. (This is different in respect of her visions, as these may be said to serve a wider interest.) In addition, it may be doubted whether a girl like her, even though she was honeste nata, liberaliter instituta, matronaliter nupta possessed the technical ability and means to write a five-page text. I do not know much about a young girl’s education in Roman Africa around 200 ce, but the skill of writing at such length can hardly have ranked high in the teachers’ curriculum. Given these internal and external doubts, a number of dissenting voices have made themselves heard in recent decades. They argue that this is a text not written by a woman, but a text allegedly written by a woman, that is, a construction, a fiction, possibly sprung from the pen of a male author. Ross Kraemer and Shira Lander,41 for instance, have argued that writing in someone else’s name was actually a widespread practice in Antiquity, and that a man could easily write like a woman, as many ancient  Passion, ed. Heffernan, 152.  Shira L. Lander and Ross S. Kraemer, “Perpetua and Felicitas,” in The Early Christian World, ed. Philip F. Esler (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 1048-1068. Ross Shepard Kraemer, ed., Women’s Religions in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 5-6 and 356-357. 40 41

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plays and novels abundantly show. Hence the allegedly “female” characteristics of Perpetua’s text, such as her emotional, personal, and colloquial style, cannot count as proofs that the writer really was a woman. Or to put it more bluntly: these personal and female elements would seem to plead against her authorship. Somewhat later still, an article by Erin Ronsse42 drew attention to the numerous rhetorical features of the text, for instance, rhetorical altercations and even contests, notably between Perpetua and her father, and the carefully composed fourfold visions. These seem to be the literary work of someone other than Perpetua herself, Ronsse cautiously suggests, perhaps composed on the basis of (the transcript of) an orally delivered lecture, which would explain the obviously oral features of the account. So both the stylistically “highbrow” elements of rhetoric and the “lowbrow” elements of oral language may well speak against Perpetua’s authorship. The hypothesis that results from this suggestion is attractive indeed. It involves (1) Perpetua speaking to her circle of friends and fellow martyrs, surrounded by guards, the faithful, and passers-by, about her visions of heaven; (2) someone else writing down her words; and (3) an editor, some (not many) years later, who uses this to compose a literary document of great intensity and variation, bound to reach a wide audience in the ancient world. An audience that may well have included women. There is even some ancient evidence that may be adduced here to support the notion of a talking rather than a writing Perpetua. In one of his works, St Augustine refers to Perpetua as follows: De fratre autem sanctae Perpetuae Dinocrate, nec scriptura ipsa canonica est, nec illa sic scripsit, vel quicumque illud scripsit, ut illum puerum qui septennis mortuus fuerat, sine baptismo diceret fuisse defunctum (De anima et eius origine 1.10.12). Concerning the brother of saint Perpetua, Dinocrates: her text is not canonical, neither did she write in such fashion, or whoever wrote this, that she said the boy, who had died at the age of seven, had passed away without baptism.43

Some discussion of this has taken place in recent years.44 These words do not prove that Augustine believed that Perpetua did not write her account. Rather, he makes a theological point about the boy being 42  Erin Ronsse, “Rhetoric of Martyrs: Listening to Saints Perpetua and Felicitas,” JECS 14 (2006): 283-327. 43  My translation. 44  See Hunink, “With the Taste of Something Sweet,” 149-151, and Kitzler, From ‘Passio Perpetuae’ to ‘Acta Perpetuae’, 84-85.



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b­ aptized or not, with Perpetua speaking about water and drinking, but not about baptism; the issue of authorship is of no concern to him here, and elsewhere Augustine does not express any doubts. But his words do prove that doubts concerning her authorship did exist in Antiquity.45 Even Perpetua’s own final words in her prison diary (already quoted above) can be adduced to support this idea that she delivered her personal story by telling it rather than writing it down: Hoc usque in pridie muneris egi; ipsius autem muneris actum, si quis uoluerit, scribat (10.15). There is no suggestion of Perpetua actually writing here. She might easily have expressed herself as follows: “si quis uoluerit, ipse scribat” (“if anyone wants to, let him write it himself,” or “si quis uoluerit, cetera scripto addat” (“if anyone wants to, let him add the rest to the text”), or by using a similar phrase referring to writing. Her final words do, however, manifest a strong concern to have her story recorded. V.  A Female Persona The result of these reflections is that I am feeling increasingly uneasy about regarding Perpetua as the author of a written prison diary, who, with her unique, female “simplicity” and “emotions” reflects on the darkness of prison and the brightness of heaven above. Her “prison diary,” like the rest of the Passio, shows a remarkable amount of attention for the female body. This special focus seems particularly well suited to draw the attention of a male audience to the allegedly more exalted aims of the document as a whole. Women’s bodies thus function as a stepping stone or starting point for higher authorial strategies. It remains tempting to regard the prison diary as an authentic piece of text by a “real” Perpetua. But there is surprisingly little evidence, either external or internal, that she really wrote it. On the other hand, there are good reasons to be doubtful, not only social and historical, but also rhetorical and literary. The uniqueness of female prose (at this time) and the intrinsic improbability of composition and publication by a young woman called Perpetua, the dubious terms referring to writing in the Passio, and the general, later notion in sources that Perpetua “told” 45  In other texts, Augustine refers to Perpetua’s story as indeed being her story. But he does so using terms such as quale sibi beata Perpetua de se ipsa revelatum esse narravit (Sermo 281.2), In hoc agone Perpetua, sicut ei per visionem revelatum fuerat (Sermo 282auct., 4). These terms suggest an oral delivery by Perpetua herself, but prove nothing about writing.

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rather than wrote her tale, the rhetorical language and deliberately female-gendered words; all this seems to reflect a theologian’s concern and a rhetorician’s expertise (rather than a form of direct autobiography). And the almost “sexual” imagery at many points in the Passio, both in the diary and elsewhere, seems to reflect predominantly male fantasy. I contend that the notion of “a male editor deliberately introducing Perpetua as a writing woman” to achieve variety and add to the attractiveness of his text explains the entire Passio better than the traditional theory, and hence seems worthy of serious consideration. Maybe in the end the historical author of the Passio was a man. Could he have been a learned member of the Christian community, perhaps a lawyer or a doctor?46

46  One cannot help thinking of one of the few learned and proficient early Christian authors from North Africa whom we actually know, Tertullian. The theory that Tertullian was the editor of the PPF is very old (Passion, ed. Heffernan, 137-139 discusses some examples of studies proposing Tertullian as the editor of the PPF) but seems to have few friends nowadays. I would tentatively suggest that the hypothesis that Tertullian was the author of the whole PPF must be considered. A deep interest in, or even obsession with, (female) bodies is surely one of the most noticeable features of his oeuvre. Cf. his works De virginibus velandis, De pudicitia, De cultu feminarum, or the sexual puns in his De ­pallio 4 and 5. On the latter, see Vincent Hunink, Tertullian, De Pallio, a Commentary (Amsterdam: Gieben, 2005), 187-192, 204-206, 233-236.

The Soul-Body Relation in Origen of Alexandria

Ensomatosis vs. Metensomatosis Ilaria Ramelli I.  Origen, the Body, Mystagogy, and the “On the Soul” Tradition: Misunderstanding His Anthropology The connection between the body and mystagogy in Origen is paramount, since in his view the body is the foundation for any kind of spiritual progress and mystagogy. The problem of the soul-body relation for Origen was part and parcel of the philosophical discourse Περὶ ψυχῆς, that is, On the Soul. Origen never wrote a Περὶ ψυχῆς, since, as he clarified, this subject was large, difficult to disentangle, and uncertain; even the apostles failed to give an account of the origin of souls (as Origen would have liked).1 But Origen refers to the philosophical tradition περὶ ψυχῆς in Commentarii in Iohannem 2.182 and in Canticum Canticorum 2.5.21-28, where he “zetetically” lists the main issues in philosophical psychology, among which the soul-body relation.2 Origen remarks that Scripture and the apostolic teaching have left the origin of the soul and its relation to the body unclarified (De principiis 1 pref. 5). Therefore, it is necessary to investigate whether the soul is incorporeal, simple or composite, and created (C.Cant. 2.5.21-22). Investigating the relation between the soul and the body, Origen rejects both traducianism and the idea that the soul is infused into a body formed in the womb. 1  C.Io.  6.85, in Origenes, Der Johanneskommentar, ed. Erwin Preuschen, GCS 10; Origenes Werke 4 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1903); Pamphilus, Apol. 8. 2  We must rely here on Latin translations, mostly by Rufinus, given that in many cases Origen’s works in Greek have been lost. See the discussion of this problem and of Rufinus’ substantial reliability in Ilaria Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena, VCS 120 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2013), chapters on Origen and Rufinus, and further my monograph on Origen, in preparation. Origen’s “zetetic,” heuristic, philosophically informed method will be further examined in a specific article devoted to this and in the Origen monograph, both in preparation.

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Origen denies that the soul is created “when the body appears to be moulded” – as though created by necessity, simply to animate the body: Origen here is speaking of the heavy, mortal body, not the body tout court.3 He dismisses the notion of the creation of a soul after the mortal body in a temporal sense as ridiculous, and moves on to an alternative: “or the soul was created long before (prius et olim) and then must be thought to have assumed a body for some reason … what is this reason?” Again, he means the mortal body, not the spiritual one, as is clear from a passage shortly before (2.5.16): Job affirms that every human life is a shadow on earth.4 This is so, “I believe, because every soul in this life is shadowed by velamento crassi huius corporis, the veil of this thick body.” Since Origen offered no specific, plain discussion περὶ ψυχῆς, his ideas on the soul-body relation have often been misunderstood. The doctrine of the pre-existence of disembodied souls is regularly attributed to him. For example, the Cappadocians “in the case of the pre-existence of the soul” could associate this doctrine with “their own master, Origen.”5 Peter Martens6 expressly accepted my perspective on Origen’s relation to Platonism and his position in the Hellenization of Christianity, speaking of “Christianised Platonism.”7 However, adhering to a widespread assumption, he described Origen’s “doctrine of pre-existence of souls” as the theory “that human souls originally flourished in a discarnate state prior to a transgression that led to their subsequent embodiment”; this (purported) doctrine of Origen “has often been considered a spectacularly embarrassing episode in the Hellenization of Christianity.”8 Even Henri Crouzel criticized Origen’s supposed doctrine of the preexistence of disembodied souls as a myth stemming from Platonism.9 For  Utrum nuper creata veniat et tunc primum facta cum corpus videtur esse formatum, ut causa facturae eius animandi corporis necessitas exstitisse credatur; C.Cant. 2.5.23, in Origène, Commentaire sur le Cantique des cantiques I (Livres I-II), ed. Luc Brésard, Henri Crouzel, and Marcel Borret, SC 375 (Paris: Cerf, 1991). 4  Job 8:9. 5  David Bradshaw, “Plato in the Cappadocian Fathers,” in Plato in the Third Sophistic, ed. Ryan C. Fowler, Millennium Studies 50 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 193-210, at 193. 6  Peter Martens, “Embodiment, Heresy, and the Hellenization of Christianity: The Descent of the Soul in Plato and Origen,” HTR 108 (2015): 594-620. 7  Ilaria Ramelli, “Origen, Patristic Philosophy, and Christian Platonism: Re-Thinking the Christianisation of Hellenism,” VC  63 (2009): 217-263; eadem, “Origen the Christian Middle/Neoplatonist,” Journal of Early Christian History 1 (2011): 98-130 (cited at 599, 619); eadem, “Origen, Greek Philosophy, and the Birth of the Trinitarian Meaning of Hypostasis,” HTR 105 (2012): 302-350 (cited on 611). 8  Martens, “Embodiment,” 595. 9  Henri Crouzel, Origen, trans. A. S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), 207, 217, passim. 3



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Gerald Bostock, it derives more from Philo than from Plato.10 However, in Philo it was a Platonic doctrine, possibly associated with metensomatosis or the transmigration of a soul into several different bodies, which Philo might have supported esoterically (although this is highly debated).11 Origen himself noted that metensomatosis belonged to the Jews’ secret teaching (C.Io. 6.73), but he personally rejected metensomatosis and the pre-existence of disembodied souls, as will be argued below. Already in the late third century, the pre-existence of disembodied souls was attributed to Origen.12 Pamphilus remarks that Origen never composed a περὶ ψυχῆς, because psychology bristles with incertitude, and the apostolic tradition did not clarify the origin of the soul (Apologia 8). Only pre-existence – Pamphilus observes – can explain humans’ various states without holding God responsible for them. Pamphilus, like Rufinus later, realized that Origen’s concern was theodicy and the rejection of “Gnostic” determinism, specifically in the form of predestinationism. Epiphanius spread the mistaken view that Origen regarded embodiment as exclusively a punishment for fallen souls;13 moreover, he represented Origen’s speculations on the origin of the soul as dogmatic.14 But both Pamphilus and Athanasius stressed the “zetetic” nature of Origen’s philosophical theology, specifically with respect to the issue of the origin of the soul.15 Martens assumes that Origen hypothesized the pre-existence of disembodied souls to defend theodicy against Gnostics and Marcionites.16 This is correct,17 except that in order to defend theodicy against them Origen had no need to postulate the pre-existence of disembodied souls.18 Intellectual souls initially equipped with spiritual 10  Gerald Bostock, “The Sources of Origen’s Doctrine of Pre-Existence,” in Origeniana quarta: Die Referate des 4. internationalen Origeneskongresses, 1985, ed. Lothar Lies, Innsbrucker theologische Studien 19 (Innsbruck and Wien: Tyrolia, 1987), 259-264, at 260. 11  As argued by Sami Yli-Karjanmaa, Reincarnation in Philo of Alexandria, Studia Philonica Monographs 7 (Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2015). 12  Ante corpus (animam) factam dicat exsistere (Pamphilus, Apol. 159). 13  Adversus haereses 64.3-4. Epiphanius likewise transmitted a biased biography of Origen: see Rebecca Lyman, “The Making of a Heretic,” Studia Patristica 31 (1997): 445-457; Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, Heidi Marx-Wolf, and Ilaria Ramelli, eds., Problems in Ancient Biography: The Construction of Professional Identity in Late Antiquity, forthcoming. 14  Letter to John of Jerusalem ap. Jerome, Ep. 51.7. 15  Apol. 3.160, passim; De decretis Nicenae synodi 27. 16  Martens, “Embodiment,” 609-613. 17  See Ilaria Ramelli, “Origen, Bardaisan, and the Origin of Universal Salvation,” HTR 102 (2009): 135-168. 18  “Rational minds (discarnate, equal and alike, and possessing free will)” (Martens, “Embodiment,” 610).

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bodies can also serve to defend theodicy: no passage in Origen’s extant oeuvre is incompatible with this hypothesis. The Letter to the Synod about Origen and the Letter to Mennas by Justinian – deemed to have promoted the “condemnation of Origen”19 – also misrepresent Origen’s anthropology. Based on a dossier gathered by anti-Origenistic monks,20 Justinian ascribed to Origen the pre-existence of disembodied souls. The description of this theory is embedded in the protological theory of the initial monad-henad, lost by sin but to be restored in the end. But this is a radicalization of Evagrius’ doctrine found among the “Isochristoi.” Scholars still ascribe the pre-existence of disembodied souls to Origen, often on the basis of Princ. F*15 and *17a Koetschau, stemming from late and hostile sources such as Epiphanius and Justinian. The latter claimed that for Origen, souls, who were coeternal with God, pre-existed before their bodies, received these only as a punishment for sin, and will undergo metensomatosis, entering other bodies, even animals. Photius, Bibliotheca 8.3b-4a also testifies to a charge against Origen of teaching metensomatosis in De principiis 1. But even in Justinian’s quotations, the phrase “so to say” indicates that Origen’s references to depraved souls becoming “beasts” are metaphorical. Eusebius spells out the misunderstood metaphorical nature of the assimilation: “it was necessary to take what was said of animals as metaphorical representations of certain kinds of humans.”21 Justinian explicitly connected the transmigration of souls to their pre-existence (Men.  88-90), associating these theories with Pythagoras, Plato, and Plotinus.22 He cited Gregory 19  See my The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, 724-738, and reviews by Anthony Meredith, International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 8 (2014): 255-257; Mark J. Edwards, JTS 65 (2014): 718-724; Johannes van Oort, VC 64 (2014): 352-353; Chris de Wet, Journal of Early Christian History 5 (2015): 1-3; Steven Nemes, Journal of Analytic Theology 3 (2015): 226-233; George Karamanolis, International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 10 (2016): 142-146; Robin Parry, International Journal of Systematic Theology 18 (2016): 335-338. An investigation into the rejection of apokatastasis in Late Antiquity, in the Eastern as well as the Western Church, is underway. 20  Justinian never read Origen’s whole masterpiece, commentaries, or other works. See Ilaria Ramelli, “Decadence Denounced in the Controversy over Origen: Giving Up Direct Reading of Sources and Counteractions,” in Décadence: “Decline and Fall” or “Other Antiquity”?, ed. Marco Formisano and Therese Fuhrer, Bibliothek der klassischen Altertumswissenschaften II/140 (Heidelberg: Winter, 2014), 263-283. 21  In Isaiam, p. 90.117-118, in Eusebius, Der Jesajakommentar, ed. Joseph Ziegler, GCS 66; Eusebius Werke 9 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1975). 22  Like the “pagan” Porphyry, Justinian charges Origen with applying Greek allegoresis, used by philosophers in executing “pagan” myths, to Scripture. The common root of Justinian’s and Porphyry’s criticism is the conviction that Christianity is incompatible with philosophy; Origen already had to justify his Christian philosophy against



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of Nyssa’s refutation of the pre-existence of souls (Men. 92-93;96), arguing that it was directed against Origen, which is misguided. Nyssen too connected metensomatosis with the pre-existence of the soul in a causal connection, but he was not targeting Origen.23 In Anathemas 1, 14, and 15, appended to the decrees of the Council of 553 by Justinian’s will, a parallel is drawn between the pre-existence of disembodied intellectual souls and the restoration of disembodied intellects. But Origen supported neither. As I shall show, he thought that rational creatures had a body from their creation, and he repeatedly rejected metensomatosis as incompatible with the biblical doctrine of the end of the world.24 His own doctrine was ensomatosis: a soul does not change bodies, but always has one single body, which may change from spiritual to mortal or vice versa, depending on its deserts. For Plato, the real human is the soul (1 Alcibiades 130C); for Origen, it is the rational/ intelligent creature (λογικόν, νοῦς), including its spiritual body. Celsus deemed the resurrection to be a misunderstanding of metensomatosis (Contra Celsum 7.32), but Origen distinguished ensomatosis from metensomatosis, claiming that each body possesses a “seminal principle” (ibid.),25 similar to the Stoic “seminal principle,” which he also called “form” (εἶδος). Origen criticized Platonic metensomatosis, which entailed the eternity of the world (given that Platonists hypothesized an eternity of time in which transmigrations would continue without end) and clashed with Scripture, but Plato himself intimated this only m ­ ythically.26 this prejudice (see Ramelli, “Origen, Patristic Philosophy, and Christian Platonism”). Due to the same prejudice, Justinian accuses Origen, Arius, and the Manichaeans of deriving from Plato their “heresies,” such as, again, the embodiment of souls as punishment after a disembodied pre-existence. Justinian concludes: “the human is neither a body without a soul nor a soul without a body” (74) and the “soul neither pre-exists nor is it embodied because of its sin” (84). But Origen concurred with such conclusions, thinking that the Fall transformed rational creatures’ existing bodies into mortal/dark bodies, but did not cause their embodiment. 23  See Ilaria Ramelli, “‘Preexistence of Souls’? The ἀρχή and τέλος of Rational Creatures in Origen and Some Origenians,” Studia Patristica 56/4 (2013): 167-226; further eadem, “Gregory of Nyssa’s Purported Criticism of Origen’s Purported Doctrine of the Preexistence of Souls,” in Lovers of the Soul, Lovers of the Body: Philosophical and Religious Perspectives in Late Antiquity, ed. Svetla Slaveva-Griffin and Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, Hellenic Studies 88 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2022), 277-308. 24  See, e.g., Panayotis Tzamalikos, Origen: Philosophy of History & Eschatology, VCS 85 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 48-53, and here below for the connection between metensomatosis and the eternity of the world. 25  In Origène, Contre Celse, ed. and trans. Marcel Borret, SC 132, 136, 147, 150, 227 (Paris: Cerf, 1967-76). 26  See Ramelli, “Preexistence of Souls?”

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Origen distinguished μετενσωμάτωσις, “transcorporation” – a soul enters different bodies – from “incorporation” (ἐνσωμάτωσις, C.Io. 6.85), his own, Christian doctrine: a soul uses one single body, which changes according to the state of its soul. This doctrine continues in Proclus’ “first body.”27 A few scholars agree with me that Origen did not support the pre-existence of disembodied souls: Mark Edwards,28 Georgios Lekkas,29 Panayiotis Tzamalikos,30 and John Behr.31 Alfons Fürst also seems to concur with me that “for Origen, the soul is always connected to a body; even in the preexistent world (only the Trinity is incorporeal).”32 II.  The Soul-Body Relation as Philosophical Question: “Pagan” and Christian Platonism; Creation and Resurrection The soul-body relation was a core question for “pagan” Neoplatonists too. Porphyry asked Plotinus “how the soul is in the body”; Plotinus answered for three days (Vita Plotini 13.10-11). He devoted his fourth Ennead to the soul’s origin and union with the body, and criticized Epicurean and Stoic psychology (Enneades 4.7.2-4) basing his argument on Plato’s Phaedo. Porphyry, too – who knew Origen’s De principiis and probably his Commentary on John – discussed the soul in several places,33 and defended its 27  Ilaria Ramelli, “Proclus and Apokatastasis,” in Proclus and His Legacy, ed. David D. Butorac and Danielle A. Layne, Millennium Studies 65 (Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2017), 95-122, at 113-122. 28  “Origen No Gnostic, or, on the Corporeality of Man,” JTS  43 (1992): 23-37, at 21-27; Origen against Plato, Ashgate Studies in Philosophy and Theology in Late Antiquity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 89-97, 160. 29  Liberté et progrès chez Origène, Monothéismes et Philosophie 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), 124-140. 30  Tzamalikos, Origen: Philosophy of History & Eschatology, with my review in Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica 100 (2008): 453-458; Panayotis Tzamalikos, Anaxagoras, Origen, and Neoplatonism: The Legacy of Anaxagoras to Classical and Late Antiquity, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 128 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 1279-1306. 31  Origen, On First Principles, ed. and trans. John Behr, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), lxxx-lxxxii. 32  As discussed in Alfons Fürst’s panel, “Body and Soul in Origen’s Theology” at the Origeniana duodecima congress, Jerusalem. Cf. Alfons Fürst, “Matter and Body in Origen’s Christian Platonism,” in Origeniana duodecima: Origen’s Legacy in the Holy Land – a Tale of Three Cities: Jerusalem, Caesarea and Bethlehem. Proceedings of 12th International Origen Congress, Jerusalem, 25-29 June 2017, ed. Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, Oded Irshai, Aryeh Kofsky, Hillel Newman, and Lorenzo Perrone, BETL 302 (Louvain, Paris, and Bristol, CT: Peeters, 2019), 573-588, at 587-588. 33  E.g. in Against Taurus, Miscellaneous Questions, On the Powers of the Soul, etc. See Ilaria Ramelli, “Gregory of Nyssa on the Soul (and the Restoration): From Plato to



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immortality against the Peripatetic Boethus as well as against Stoic and Epicurean conceptions.34 Longinus also devoted a monograph to the examination of the soul and its pre-existence, against Stoic and Epicurean notions. Nyssen would do the same in De anima et resurrectione, on the basis of Origen’s De resurrectione, also in light of Methodius, Bardaisan, and the Dialogue of Adamantius.35 Plotinus used μετενσωμάτωσις twice (Enn. 2.9.6;4.3.9), but never Origen’s ἐνσωμάτωσις. Plotinus seems to know Origen’s ensomatosis theory and to be aware that Origen refused to call it metensomatosis. In Enn. 4.3.9.1-13, in a “zetesis” or philosophical research on how souls come to be in bodies, he lists two ways: one, which he goes on to develop, is “when the soul comes to any body whatsoever from a disembodied state,” which Plato contemplated. The other, which Plotinus does not entertain, is when an already embodied soul changes bodies (μετενσωματοῦσθαι) or goes from an airy or fiery/pneumatic body to an earthly one. This “they do not call metensomatosis, because the starting point of the entrance is unclear.” “They” likely refers to Christian Platonists such as Origen, who rejected metensomatosis in favour of ensomatosis: the latter is in fact the theory described here by Plotinus as “nonmetensomatosis.” For Origen, souls were in ethereal/spiritual/pneumatic bodies from the beginning, but after the Fall these bodies became earthly for humans. Plotinus knew Origen’s doctrine, but did not pursue it. On the basis of Plato’s Myth of Er (Respublica 617E620E) and Iliad 6.4889 and Odyssey 1.324, Porphyry argues that evil arises when individuals, endowed with ἐφ’ ἡμῖν, self-determination (αὐτεξουσίους) and choice (ἑλέσθαι), disregard the divine and forego rationality.36 Origen,” in Exploring Gregory of Nyssa: Philosophical, Theological, and Historical Studies, ed. Anna Marmodoro and Neil B. McLynn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 110-141. 34  See Porphyry, Περὶ ψυχῆς πρὸς Βόηθον, On the Soul, against Boethus; see Eusebii Pamphili Praeparationis evangelicae libri XV, ed. Friedrich Adolph Heinichen, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Serigiana Libraria, 1843). 35  On Gregory’s knowledge of Bardaisan’s On Fate, on misinterpretations of Bardaisan’s thought, and for a comparison between his ideas and Origen’s, see Ilaria Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa: A Reassessment of the Evidence and a New Interpretation (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2009; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), received by Patricia Crone, s.v. “Daysanis,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, Third Edition (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 116-118. On Gregory’s dialogue see Ramelli, “Gregory of Nyssa on the Soul.” 36  Ap. Stobaeus Anthologion 2.8.42, 172.9–173.2 Wachsmuth = fr. 271.105-126 Smith (Ioannis Stobaei anthologium, ed. C. Wachsmuth and O. Hense [Berlin: Weidmann, 1884-1912]; Porphyrius, Fragmenta, ed. A. Smith, Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana [Leipzig: Teubner, 1993]). Porphyry shows that Homer anticipated Plato; see also Ilaria Ramelli, “Stoic Homeric Allegoresis,” in Brill’s Companion

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­ onsequently, God is not responsible for evil; the choice of existences C in the Myth of Er is that of the first existences, which Necessity makes inexorable (τὸ ἀπαραίτητον): the demon forces (συναναγκάσων) souls to respect their first choice. Porphyry’s concern for theodicy is the same as Origen’s: for Origen’s theodicy, too, the Myth of Er was paramount. The main difference with respect to Origen lies in Porphyry’s acceptance of metensomatosis. For Origen, the ideal paradigms of rational creatures pre-existed eternally in God’s Logos (the Son, Wisdom containing many forms, the intelligible world)37 with the logoi of all things, but they became substances only once they were created as independent beings.38 They were created ex nihilo (Princ. 2.9.2) and are not coeternal with God (only the Son and Spirit are coeternal with the Father):39 they pre-existed as projects (“paradigms and logoi”) in God’s Logos-Wisdom and were only subsequently created as substances, receiving their “structure (πλᾶσις), forms (εἴδη), and substances (οὐσίαι), from the archetypes in Wisdom, so as to become beings and matter.”40 Rational creatures were equipped with bodies from the moment of their creation. This was not yet a heavy body, but a fine, luminous, and immortal body, which was transformed into a mortal body in the case of humans, or a “ridiculous” body in the case of demons. After the Fall, the devil “became worthy of being enchained before everyone else to a material body”: not “a body” tout court; before the Fall, he had an “immaterial” body, light and spiritual. He is not the beginning of the Lord’s material creation (πλάσμα) in general, but the beginning of the many beings made to be laughed at by angels, while others may be in a moulded body, but not thusly” (C.Io. 1.17.9798). He was the first to fall from the superior state, wishing a different to the Reception of Homer from the Hellenistic Age to Late Antiquity, ed. Christina-Panagiota Manolea, Brill’s Companions to Classical Reception 22 (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 229258. 37  C.Io. 1.9.11; 19.22.5. 38  Secundum praefigurationem et praeformationem semper erant in Sapientia ea, quae protinus etiam substantialiter facta sunt (Princ. 1.4.5), in Origène, Traité des Principes I (Livres I et II), ed. Henri Crouzel and Manlio Simonetti, SC 252 (Paris: Cerf, 1980). 39  See Panayiotis Tzamalikos, Origen: Cosmology and Ontology of Time, VCS 77 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 21-38, with my review in Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica 99 (2007): 177-181; Ilaria Ramelli, “Origene ed il lessico dell’eternità,” Adamantius 14 (2008): 100129. 40  C.Io. 1.19.114-115. My translation, as ever, and italics. See Ilaria Ramelli, “CristoLogos in Origene,” in Dal Logos dei Greci e dei Romani al Logos di Dio: Ricordando Marta Sordi, ed. Roberto Radice and Alfredo Valvo, Temi metafisici e problemi del pensiero antico (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2011), 295-317.



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life. Thus, “he deserved to be the principle, not of the foundation (of the Son) (κτίσμα),41 nor of the creation (of logika) (ποίημα), but only of what was moulded (πλάσμα) with clay by the Lord” (C.Io. 20.22.182). Ποίημα designates the creation of intellects with spiritual bodies, and πλάσμα what was moulded as the transformation of spiritual bodies into bodies apt to the life of fallen intellects. “Really most dialectically,” in accord with Plato’s diairetic dialectics, Scripture does not say, “before I created (ποιῆσαι) you in the womb, I know you,” because the Divinity “created” (πεποίηκε) when creating the human in its image; but when making the human from earth, God “moulded” him (ἔπλασεν). Therefore, the “created” (ποιούμενον) human is not the human “formed in the womb,” but “what is moulded from earth is what is founded in the womb”:42 the mortal, postlapsarian body. This body – not any body – Origen associates with death and sin. He deplores the obscuring of “God’s image” by the “image of the earthly and dead.”43 Humans should never forget their “better essence” and submit to what has been moulded (πλάσμα) from clay and thus assume the image of that which is “earthly” (χοικοῦ, literally “earthy,” “of the soil,” C.Io. 20.183). Origen explicitly speaks of two kinds of bodies, “an earthly body” or “any other kind of body,” with reference to spiritual bodies (Mart. 3). Angels too have a body, heavenly, ethereal, and pure; their food is spiritual.44 Caesarius will emphasize the relativity of “corporeal/incorporeal,” “material/immaterial”: angels are “incorporeal (ἀσώματοι) in comparison with us, but in themselves they have bodies … fine and immaterial (ἄϋλα), free from our bodies’ density.”45 The same is the case with daemons in “pagan” Neoplatonism.46 Adam and Eve’s postlapsarian “skin tunics” (Gen 3:21) are not bodies tout court, which they had before sinning, but postlapsarian mortality inflicted upon their immortal bodies;47 heavy, corruptible bodies (Fr.1Cor. 29). Epiphanius is incorrect in saying that Origen interpreted the skin 41  Also in C.Io. 1.19.114-115 κτίσις designates the atemporal foundation of God’s Wisdom – the agent of creation. 42  Homiliae in Ieremiam 1.10, in Origenes, Jeremiahomilien, Klageliedkommentar, ­Erklärung der Samuel- und Königsbücher, ed. Erich Klostermann; 2nd ed. Pierre Nautin, GCS 6; Origenes Werke 3 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1983). 43  C.Io. 20.229; H.Gen. 13.4, in Origène, Homélies sur la Génèse, ed. Henri de Lubac and Louis Doutreleau, SC 7bis (Paris: Cerf, 1976). 44  Or. 7.23.4; 27.9-10. 45  Quaest. resp. 47. 46  I use “demons” for the Christian meaning of “devils,” fallen angels, and “daemons” for the “pagan” meaning of intermediary beings, good or bad, between the gods and humans. 47  Pelliciis, inquit, tunicis, quae essent mortalitatis, quam pro peccato acceperat (H.Lev. 6.2).

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tunics as the body as such.48 The same misleading identification can be found in Aglaophon’s speech in Methodius Res. 1.4. Epiphanius reports that Origen ridiculed and dismissed the idea of God who, like a leathercutter, works with skin cuts and sews tunics (Ancoratus 62.3). This confirms Origen’s authorship of a fragment quoted by Theodoret, probably from Origen’s Commentary on Genesis:49 it is “unworthy of God” to think that God, “like a leather-cutter who works with skins, cut and sewed those tunics.” Some – Theodoret relates – identified the skin tunics with mortality (νέκρωσις) which covered Adam and Eve, “put to death due to sin.” This is Origen’s position; Clement already warned against the identification of the skin tunics with bodies tout court (Stromateis 3.14.95.2). Origen claimed that the skin tunics conceal a “mystery” deeper than that of the fall of the soul according to Plato (Cels. 4.40), who postulated a disembodied soul which, losing its wings, becomes embodied. Origen posits rational creatures which, equipped with a subtle body from their creation, had this body changed into a heavy and mortal one after sinning. Origen’s interpretation is likely reported by Procopius:50 according to “those who allegorize Scripture,” these tunics are not the body, since humans in paradise already had one, “fine (λεπτομερές) and suitable for life in Paradise.” Some allegorizers called it “luminous” (αὐγοιδές) and immortal. The skin tunics are postlapsarian, mortal, heavy corporeality: “They say that initially the soul used the luminous body as a vehicle (αὐγοειδεῖ ἐποχεῖσθαι πρώτῳ); this was later clothed in skin tunics.” Origen also described rational creatures’ spiritual body as both αὐγοιδές and an ὄχημα, as will be seen in the following. His description of the spiritual bodyvehicle as αὐγοιδές is corroborated by Gobar, a Byzantine theologian and connoisseur and admirer of Origen, who reports his use of αὐγοιδές in this connection.51 He too attests to Origen’s identification of the skin tunics with postlapsarian mortality, heavy corporeality, and susceptibility to the passions, which will be shed at the resurrection.52 Gobar’s use of αὐγοιδές in his paraphrase of Origen reveals that ­Procopius, by using αὐγοιδές, was also reporting Origen’s words: both were adopting Origen’s terminology.  Anc. 62.3; 64.4.  Fr. 121 Collectio Coisliniana in Genesim = Orig. C.Gen. D11 (Die Kommentierung des Buches Genesis, ed. and trans. Karin Metzler, Origenes: Werke mit deutscher Übersetzung 1/1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010). 50  C.Gen. 3.21 (PG 87, col. 221A). 51  Ap. Photius, Bibl. 232.288a; see the whole 232.287b-291b (see Photius, Bibliothèque. I: Codices 1-83, ed. René Henry, Collection des universités de France. Série grecque 137 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1959; repr. Univ. of Michigan, 2009). 52  Photius, Bibl. 232.288a. 48

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The main confirmation comes from Origen himself. In a Greek, authentic passage, mortal bodies, “transformed” at the resurrection, become like angelic bodies: “ethereal” (αἰθέρια) and “bright light” (αὐγοειδὲς φῶς, C.Matth. 17.30.48-59). Origen calls the risen body “finest,” which corresponds to λεπτομερές, “purest,” and “brightest,” which corresponds to αὐγοιδές (Princ. 3.6.4). And its description as “a suitable dwelling place” for life in Paradise, “as the rational nature’s condition and deserts require,” corresponds to Procopius’ report. These passages and Gobar confirm that Procopius meant Origen when he was referring to “allegorical exegetes of Scripture” who postulated a λεπτομερές and αὐγοιδές prelapsarian body. Origen alludes to the vehicle – the intermediate between the soul and the visible body – also in Cels.  2.60 and elsewhere,53 as does Plotinus in Enn.3.6.(26.)5.22-29. Porphyry connected the pneumatic vehicle with the soul’s lowest part. Origen and Porphyry agreed that demons’ pneumatic bodies required sacrificial smoke and vapours.54 The vehicle theory, inspired by Plato and Aristotle,55 and used by Galen, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and Numenius, who all influenced Origen,56 was well known to Origen, Plotinus, and Porphyry, but while Plotinus made little of it, both Origen and Porphyry developed it. Porphyry probably had Origen in mind as well. Proclus identified two vehicles: a “first body” without temporal origin,57 53  See Henri Crouzel, “Le thème platonicien du véhicule de l’âme chez Origène,” Didaskalia 7 (1977): 225-237; Lawrence Hennessy, “A Philosophical Issue in Origen’s Eschatology,” in Origeniana quinta: Historica – Text and Method – Biblica – Philosophica – Theologica – Origenism and Later Developments. Papers of the 5th International Origen Congress, Boston College, 14-18 August 1989, ed. Robert J. Daly, BETL 105 (Louvain: Leuven University Press and Peeters, 1992), 373-380; Hermann S. Schibli, “Origen, Didymus, and the Vehicle of the Soul,” ibid., 381-391. 54  See Heidi Marx-Wolf, Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority: Platonists, Priests, and Gnostics in the Third Century c.e., Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 27-28; my Origen of Alexandria, in preparation, chapter 1. 55  Phaedo 113D; Phaedrus 247B; Timaeus 41E, 44E, 69C; Leges 898E-899A. Aristotle, De generatione animalium 2.3.736b.27-38 (see Aristotelis De generatione animalium, ed. H. J. Drossaart Lulofs, Oxford Classical Texts [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], linking πνεῦμα to “the element of the stars” and human soul). See Proclus, C.Tim. 3.238.20. For pneuma in Aristotle: Abraham Bos, The Soul and Its Instrumental Body: A Reinterpretation of Aristotle’s Philosophy of Living Nature, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 112 (Leiden: Brill, 2003). 56  For Galen see my “Origen, Greek Philosophy, and the Birth of the Trinitarian Meaning of Hypostasis”; for Alexander, Ilaria Ramelli, “Alexander of Aphrodisias: A Source of Origen’s Philosophy?,” Philosophie Antique 13 (2013): 1-49. 57  Elementa Theologiae 196; 205. See Jean Trouillard, “Réflexions sur l’ὄχημα dans les Éléments de Théologie de Proclus,” Revue des études grecques 70 (1957): 102-107; Lucas Siorvanes, Proclus: Neo-Platonic Philosophy and Science (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), 131-133.

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called αὐγοιδὲς ὄχημα – like in Origen, as seen – and the lower soul’s pneumatic vehicle, composed of “tunics” added later (Commentarii in Platonis Timaeum 3.298.1).58 The former is “perpetually and congenitally attached to the soul that uses it” and “immutable in its essence,” a “perpetual” (ἀίδιον) body that “each soul” possesses and that “participates in that soul primarily, from its first existence” (Elementa Theologiae 207). This is the same position as Origen’s, that the soul has a body from its origin on (the latter is explained by Plato’s Timaeus), and represents a rejection of the pre-existence of disembodied souls. For Proclus, divine souls have a luminous, immortal, impassive, and immaterial body; demons also have a pneumatic vehicle, made of elements; humans have yet another body in addition to this, the earthly, mortal body, while they dwell on earth.59 The luminous, spiritual body as the vehicle of the soul in Οrigen describes the risen body and excludes the pre-existence of disembodied souls. Origen remarks: “The rational soul is superior to any corporeal nature and is an invisible and incorporeal substance”; “all bodily nature is, so to say, a burden and slows down the spirit’s vigour,” and “the rational nature will grow little by little, not as it did in the present life, when it was in the flesh, or body, and soul, but in intelligence and thought, and will reach perfect knowledge, because fleshly thoughts will no longer be an obstacle for it.”60 All “pagan” Neoplatonists would have subscribed to this, although Origen, unlike Plato and Plotinus, thought that the rational soul cannot exist without any body. The body that impedes contemplation is the mortal body. III.  Problematic Passages Explained and the Relative Use of “Corporeal” – “Material’ It is often maintained on the basis of H.Ier. 1.10.1; C.Matt. 14.16; H.Luc. 39.5; C.Io. 20.18261 that for Origen rational creatures were originally disembodied.62 However, none of these passages excludes the hypothesis of 58  See Ramelli, “Proclus and Apokatastasis.” A separate investigation into Neoplatonic psychology and soteriology is underway. 59  Theologia Platonica 3.5.125ff. 60  Cels. 6.71 (SC 147, ed. Borret); Princ. 1.7.5; 2.11.7 (SC 252, ed. Crouzel and Simo­ netti). 61  E.g. Martens, “Embodiment,” 611. 62  This communis opinio was held, e.g., by Henri Crouzel, Théologie de l’image de dieu chez Origène, Théologie (Paris: Aubier, 1956), 148-153; Giulia Gasparro, “Doppia creazione e peccato di Adamo nel Peri Archon di Origene: Fondamenti biblici e presupposti



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rational creatures originally provided with spiritual bodies. In H.Ier. 1.10.1, Origen differentiates ποιέω from πλάσσω: the former indicates the original creation of rational creatures, the latter their assumption of a mortal body in the womb; in the double account of creation in Genesis, the former is the human “in God’s image,” the latter that moulded from earth. Nothing suggests here that the prior creation was bodiless; the point is that the spiritual body is not moulded in the womb or from earth. H.Luc. 39.5, too, distinguishes the human created in God’s image from the human who, after sin, received an earthly image, but, again, it gives no indication that the human in God’s image is disembodied: he or she may have a spiritual body. Nor does C.Io.  20.182 indicate that logika were created disembodied – only that they had no heavy/mortal bodies. Origen, as mentioned, hypothesizes that the devil, after sinning, became the principle, not of God’s creation of Wisdom/Son and logika (κτίσμα, ποίημα), but of God’s moulding (πλάσμα) from earth. The spiritual body, not moulded from earth, can be included in the first creation. In C.Matt. 14.16, Origen contrasts the human created in God’s image with that moulded from earth, male and female. The latter characteristic belongs to the earthly body, not to the spiritual, immortal body. Consequently, none of the texts above disproves that rational creatures originally possessed immortal, spiritual, fine, and luminous bodies. Origen frequently mentions “a contrast between a discarnate and incarnate existence, and this distinction seems to lose its force if discarnate does not really mean discarnate (e.g., Princ.  1.6.4; 1.7.1).”63 However, in Princ. 1.6.4 Origen observes that, should matter eventually perish, he cannot imagine how substances will exist without bodies (sine corporibus), since only God can live “without material substance” (sine materiali substantia) and without “the addition of a body” (corporeae adiectioni). Thus, Origen surmises that every corporeal substance (substantia corporalis) will become spiritual: pure, purified, ethereal, celestial:64 it will be as it was originally. Origen, indeed, in Princ. 1.7.1 differentiates corporea from incorporea, stating – with all of Platonism, both “pagan” and Christian – that souls are incorporeal, and equates uisibilia with corporalia and inuisibilia with incorporeas substantiuasque

Platonici dell’esegesi Origeniana,” in La doppia creazione dell’uomo negli Alessandrini, nei Cappadoci e nella gnosi, ed. Ugo Bianchi (Rome: Ateneo e Bizzarri, 1978), 45-82, at 63-64. 63  Martens, “Embodiment,” 614. 64  Pura, purgata, aetheris in modum, caelestis puritatis ac sinceritatis (cf. n. 59).

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uirtutes (angels). But elsewhere, as mentioned above, he insists that angels have spiritual bodies. Therefore, incorporeus is a relative term. Origen and Nyssen, indeed, use “corporeal” and “incorporeal” in a relative sense: they contrast the presence of the earthly, heavy body (“corporeal”) with its absence (“incorporeal”), not the presence or absence of any body tout court. From De principiis onward, Origen repeatedly speaks of degrees of corporeality: thicker, earthly bodies vs. luminous, ethereal, spiritual, pure bodies. Sometimes the corporeus/incorporeus binary refers to the presence or absence of any body, but more often it concerns heavy bodies alone. Origen describes demons’ bodies as fine (Princ. 1 prol. 8); this is why, he notes, demons are called incorporeal. Now, this is a relative designation: demons do have bodies.65 According to Aristotle, incorporeality could be conceived as a matter of degree … a thing that could not be seen or touched in the usual ways might nonetheless be described as “incorporeal” – not like an ordinary body, but not strictly immaterial, either. According to Origen … this usage reflected “general custom” … he also used “incorporeal” freely in reference to souls, angels, and other “rational natures,” despite his repeated insistence that absolute immateriality belongs only to God.66

Indeed, sometimes “corporeal” and “material” are synonyms, like “incorporeal” and “immaterial,” but not always. They are synonyms in Princ. 1.1.6, where Origen, like Clement, programmatically describes God as nous,67 “monad and henad,” being a “simple noetic nature.” Being simple and nous, God is adiastematic, beyond space and time: “nous needs no corporeal space (loco corporeo),” nothing “proper to body or matter (corporis vel materiae).” Here, σῶμα and ὕλη are synonyms, whereas in Princ. 2.1.4 Origen distinguishes between them (“matter is the ὑποκείμενον of bodies” (subiecta corporibus); bodies “consist in matter with the addition of qualities,” ex qua inditis atque insertis qualitatibus corpora subsistunt),68 but he also insists that one cannot exist without the 65  Tale corpus quale habent daemones, quod est naturaliter subtile quoddam et velut aura tenue, et propter hoc vel putatur a multis vel dicitur incorporeum (cf. n. 59). 66  Gregory Smith, “Physics and Metaphysics,” in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, ed. Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, Oxford Handbooks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 513-561; DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195336931.013.0016), 7. 67  Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 4.25.155.2, which also states that Plato’s definition of God was right. See my “The Logos/Nous One-Many between ‘Pagan’ and Christian Platonism: Bardaisan, Clement, Origen, Plotinus, and Gregory of Nyssa,” Studia Patristica 102 (2021): 11-44. 68  On Origen’s discussion see Ilaria Ramelli, “The Dialogue of Adamantius: A Document of Origen’s Thought?,” Studia Patristica 52 (2012): 71-98 and Studia Patristica 56/4



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other and he speaks of “bodily matter,” corporalis materia (σωματικὴ ὕλη): matter cannot exist without qualities. In Princ. 1.1.6 Origen sets forth his oft-repeated tenet that only God as Form-ousia (deitatis species)69 can “exist without mixture with any body” (totius corporeae ammixtionis). God is ousia proper (κυρίως οὐσία, C.Io.  20.18.159) because only the incorporeal nature can be real Being, and God is “invisible and incorporeal ousia” (Cels. 6.71). Here “incorporeal” is not relative, but absolute. It is often assumed that, in a “range of passages,” Origen “speaks of souls or minds existing before their bodies, including those passages that speak of these rational creatures falling in the primordial realm prior to their embodiment (among others, Princ. 1.6.2; 2.9.1-2; 2.9.6; 3.5.4; Hom. Gen.  1.13; Comm. Cant. 2.8; Hom. Jer. 1.10.1; Comm. Matt. 14.16-17; 15.34-36; Hom. Luc. 34.5; Comm. Jo. 2.181-82; 20.182; Dial. 15–16; Cels. 1.32-33; 5.29–33).”70 However, in these passages, the embodiment is the assumption of the mortal body; no passage implies that, prior to that, a logikon is without any kind of body. I have already examined H.Ier. 1.10.1; C.Matt. 14.16; H.Luc. 39.5; C.Io.  20.182. Let me now briefly address the other passages. In C.Io.  2.181-182 Origen claims that John the Baptist’s soul was “anterior to his body” (πρεσβυτέραν τοῦ σώματος) and “existed before (πρότερον) it.” Origen clearly means John’s mortal body, glossed as “flesh and blood,” “fashioned in his mother’s womb.” This cannot refer to a spiritual body. There is no reference to a disembodied pre-existence of John’s soul: it could have a spiritual body, later transformed into a heavy and mortal one, when fashioned in the womb. “The general theory concerning the soul,” indeed, teaches that this “exists before (πρό) the body and for various reasons becomes clothed with flesh and blood”: he again means the mortal body. Martens notes: the Baptist … leaping for joy in Elizabeth’s womb … pointed to … John’s soul pre-existing his embryo. Origen also wondered how Jeremiah could have been known by God “before he was fashioned in the womb” … if God was not unjust, there had to be a reason prior to Rebecca’s womb that explained why Jacob was allowed to supplant Esau there.71 (2013): 227-273. Further in eadem, “The Dialogue of Adamantius: Preparing the Critical Edition and a Reappraisal,” Rheinisches Museum 163 (2020): 40-68. 69  Origen regards God as nous and ousia (Princ. 1.1.6; 1.3.5) but also as beyond nous and ousia (Cels. 7.38; 6.64). 70  Martens, “Embodiment,” 614. 71  Ibid., 602.

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This is correct, but does not mean that Origen deemed John’s, Jeremiah’s, Jacob’s, and Esau’s souls to be disembodied before putting on a heavy body in the womb. They may have lived, and made moral choices, in spiritual bodies. Origen remarks that the souls of the stars were created before their bodies (Princ. 1.7.4), meaning their visible bodies. This is clear from his immediately following parallel with Jacob’s soul and body, where Origen means Jacob’s rational soul and mortal body, formed in his mother’s womb. In Cels. 1.32-33, God is said to send souls down into human bodies. This refers to the taking up of a mortal body, not of any kind of body. Here Origen also insists on the principle, defended elsewhere too, that each soul must have a body according to its deserts, but again this does not entail the pre-existence of disembodied souls. There is nothing about this in Cels. 5.29-33; only 5.29 contains an allusion to “the theory concerning souls wrapped in a body, albeit not as a result of metensomatosis.” Origen refrains from explaining this theory to Celsus (as pearls should not be cast before swine). This theory is Origen’s doctrine of ensomatosis, which is different from metensomatosis: rational creatures have one single body which is transformed according to their moral choices; they do not change bodies.72 Thus, this passage does not confirm the original existence of disembodied souls. H.Gen.  1.13 again presents the (Philonic) distinction between the human created (factus) in God’s image and that moulded from earth (plasmatus, corporalis). The former is the inner human, the intellect: interior homo, inuisibilis, incorporalis, incorruptus, immortalis. It cannot be the body, otherwise – based on the logic of the imago Dei – God would be corporeal. The intellect remains incorporeal even when in a body, be it heavy and mortal or immortal and light. This passage says nothing about an original pre-existence of disembodied souls; it describes the different constituents of the human being, inner and outer; it does not even contemplate the totality of rational creatures (including angels and demons) and their origin. The same distinction emerges in Dialogus cum Heraclide 15–16: “two humans (ἄνθρωποι) in each of us … the outer (ἔξω) and the inner (ἔσω).” In C.Cant. 2.8.4 Origen states that even before the foundation of the world (ante constitutionem mundi),73 God chose the elect in Christ: only 72  See above; further Ramelli, Origen of Alexandria. That Origen rejected metensomatosis is also maintained by Tzamalikos, Anaxagoras, Origen, and Neoplatonism, 1293-1298. 73  Eph 1:4-5.



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“in a mystical sense” can logika be said to exist “before the foundation of the world.” This refers to their predestination and/or paradigmatic existence in God’s Logos–Wisdom before their creation as substances, and not to souls’ disembodied existence as individual substances. In Princ. 1.6.2, Origen mentions the initial unity of rational creatures, their fall therefrom, and their final recovery of unity at the restoration – there is no mention of their initial disembodied state. In Princ. 2.9.1-2, Origen describes rational, intelligent creatures, mutable and self-determining, but he never says they were disembodied. Instead he states that they were created by God with corporeal/bodily matter (materia corporalis). Rational creatures and matter were created by God initially, before anything else. In Princ. 2.9.6 Origen deals again with the creation of logika, all equal and free; their moral choices determined the variety of their conditions – but again there is no mention of any initial disembodied state. Princ. 3.5.4 also speaks of moral choices, not of disembodied souls; here Origen maintains that souls are immortal and eternal (since they live forever and their creation by God is beyond time), not that they live at any point in a disembodied state. Thus, none of the passages adduced above entails disembodied souls who receive a body only as a result of sin, and some, such as Princ. 2.9.12, clearly gainsay this hypothesis. IV.  Various Degrees of Corporeality Depending on Rational Creatures’ Deserts; Only the Trinity Is Incorporeal Like the Valentinians, who speculated about Christ’s pneumatic, psychic, and hylic body,74 Origen postulated various degrees of corporeality and types of bodies, analogously to the Neoplatonists.75 Porphyry used the same notion of “skin tunic” (Abst. 2.46; 1.31) as Origen and Scripture: Bernays and Dodds suggested an influence of Valentinian exegesis of the skin tunics (Gen 3:21) as fleshly body.76 Origen’s influence seems possible as well. Both Origen and Porphyry posited a light, invisible body as the soul’s vehicle that can become thicker and visible, enabling 74  On which see Einar Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed: The Church of the Valentinians, NHMS 60 (Leiden: Brill, 2008). 75  See my Origen; a specific investigation into “pagan” Neoplatonic psychology and soteriology is ongoing. 76  E. R. Dodds, Proclus: The Elements of Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), 308.

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the apparitions of some dead persons as ghosts.77 This explanation by Origen – that the αὐγοειδὲς σῶμα allows the dead to appear (Cels. 2.60) – is adopted by Gregory of Nyssa (De anima 88). Iamblichus attributes the theory that the soul cannot exist without a body to “the school of Eratosthenes, the Platonist Ptolemy, and others,”78 who thought that souls do not receive a body for the first time when they begin to ensoul the mortal body, but had “finer” (λεπτότερα) bodies from the beginning. This is also Origen’s stance. Plotinus also posited a “finer” body, λεπτότερον, as the soul’s vehicle (Enn. 3.6.5), but denied that the soul possesses it from the beginning: unlike Origen, Plotinus maintained the pre-existence of disembodied souls and metensomatosis. For Plotinus, souls acquire this light body only during their descent, and later acquire “earthlier and earthlier bodies,” and may drop these during their subsequent ascent, a return to their original place.79 Initially, humans were “pure souls,” some even gods (Enn. 6.4.13). Some daemons have bodies, others are bodiless (Enn. 3.5.(50.)6, as part of a commentary on Plato’s Poros myth, which Origen assimilated to the Eden account in Genesis:80 here Plotinus uses δαίμονες as “spirits,” rational creatures sharing the same φύσις/οὐσία and distinct from the gods, although they are occasionally called gods. Likewise, Origen’s logika share the same φύσις/οὐσία and are different from God, although they are also called gods). For Plotinus, daemons participate in matter, but not “corporeal matter,” since they are not sense-perceptible. They assume “airy or fiery bodies,” but “earlier” (πρότερον), being pure, had no bodies, “though many opine that the substance of the spirit qua spirit (δαίμων) implies some body (τινος σώματος), whether airy of fiery” (3.5.[50.]6.40-42). These “many” may include Origen (who perhaps composed a treatise On Spirits/Daimones, Περὶ δαιμόνων).81 In this case, Plotinus would refer again to Origen’s theory, but without adopting it.

 Nymph. 11; Abst. 2.47.  Ap. Procl. C.Tim. 3.234.32ff. 79  Enn. 4.3.15; 4.3.24. The notion of return to the origins or apokatastasis in ancient philosophy and especially Platonism is the object of a future, systematic investigation. 80  See Ilaria Ramelli, “Origen’s Allegoresis of Plato’s and Scripture’s Myths,” in Religious Competition in the Greco-Roman World, ed. Nathaniel Desrosiers and Lily Vuong, Writings from the Greco-Roman World Supplement Series 10 (Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2016), 85-106. 81  Discussion in my “Origen, Patristic Philosophy, and Christian Platonism”; further Origen of Alexandria, chapter 1. 77 78



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But for Origen, intellectual creatures possess a fine body from the beginning, and keep this after the death of the earthly body – which is the same as the risen body with respect to individual identity – and in the eventual apokatastasis. Porphyry sided with Plotinus against Origen in teaching that the light body is not with the soul from the beginning or forever, but is acquired during the soul’s descent,82 being gathered from the heavenly bodies, and is later discarded by the rational soul during its ascent.83 The same line is later represented by Macrobius.84 Origen’s line, that the luminous, light body always accompanies the soul, was continued within Neoplatonism by Iamblichus,85 Hierocles, and especially Proclus, as mentioned. Damascius will also theorize a gradation of bodies, mortal to pneumatic to luminous, but identifies the ideal state with disembodiment (C.Phaed. 1.551). No creature can ever live disembodied. Only the Creator-Trinity is absolutely incorporeal, while all creatures need a body, whether spiritual or mortal, to live; bodies can be separated from logika only theoretically, not actually: If it is absolutely impossible to claim that any other nature besides the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can live without a body, the argument’s coherence compels to understand that logika were created as the principal creation, but material substance (materialem substantiam) can be separated from them – and can thus appear to be created before or after them – only theoretically and mentally (opinione et intellectu solo), because they can never have lived, or live, without matter (numquam sine ipsa). For only the Trinity can be correctly thought to live incorporeally (incorporea vita existere). Therefore … the material substance, capable by nature of being transformed from all into all, when dragged to inferior creatures is formed into a dense, solid body … but when it serves more perfect and blessed creatures, it shines forth in the splendour of heavenly bodies and adorns with a spiritual body both God’s angels and the resurrected (Princ. 2.2.2; my translation, as always, and italics).

Origen makes this point again in, for example, Princ. 1.6.4: “I cannot understand how so many substances could live and subsist incorporeally, whereas it is a prerogative of God alone … to live without material  Sent. 13.8; Gaur. 11.3.  Ap. Proclus, C.Tim. 3.234.18-26. 84  Somn. 1.11.12; 1.12.13. See Ilaria Ramelli, “Macrobius: Astrological Descents, Ascents, and Restorations,” MHNH: Revista Internacional de Investigación sobre Magia y Astrología Antiguas 14 (2014): 197-214. 85  An. 38; Ilaria Ramelli, “Iamblichus, De Anima 38 (66.12-15 Finamore-Dillon): A Resolving Conjecture,” Rheinisches Museum 157 (2014): 106-111; Origen of Alexandria, chapter 3. 82 83

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s­ubstance and any union with corporeal elements.” In this heuristic passage, Origen argues that eventually there will be “no total destruction or annihilation of material substance (substantiae materialis), but a change of quality (immutatio qualitatis) and transformation of habit (habitus transformatio)”: the transmutation of bodies from mortal into spiritual.86 Origen syllogistically argues that it is impossible for any creature to live without a body: if any could do so, then all would be able, but then corporeal substance would be useless; therefore, it would not exist. But it does exist. Therefore, all creatures must have a body (Princ. 2.3.2). 1 Cor 15:53 denies that it is possible for any creature to live without a body: “This same corporeal matter, which is now corruptible, will put on incorruptibility, when the perfect soul, instructed on the incorruptible truths, begins using the body” at resurrection: incorruptibility and immortality are God’s Wisdom, Logos, and Justice, which will wrap the soul as its body (Princ. 2.3.2-3). The objection in Princ. 2.3.3 comes from people who – like most “pagan” Platonists and “Gnostics” – taught that intellectual creatures can live disembodied. Origen repeatedly denied this, asserting that only God can live incorporeally: “no one is invisible, incorporeal (incorporeus), immutable, without beginning or end but the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (H.Ex.6.5). The substance of the Trinity is neither corporeal nor endowed with a body, but absolutely incorporeal (Princ. 4.3.15). This was also the position of another Christian (Middle) Platonist, Clement, but with a difference concerning Christ: even angels and the Protoctists, the first created intellectual beings, need a body; “not even the Son can exist without form, shape, figure, and body (ἀσώματος)” (Excerpta ex Theodoto 10.1). Clement also contemplated degrees of corporeality. Stars are incorporeal (ἀσώματα) and formless (ἀνείδεα) compared with earthly things, but are measurable and sensible bodies (σώματα μεμετρημένα, αἰσθητά) in comparison with Christ, as the Son is also measured and corporeal in comparison with the Father (Exc. 11.3). Clement here uses “incorporeal” relatively; Origen, instead, stressed the Son’s absolute incorporeality qua divine hypostasis. Again and again, Origen argues that logika always need bodies: as long as they exist, there has been and will be bodily nature (semper erit natura corporea), for them to make use of their “corporeal garment/tunic” (indumento corporeo, Princ. 4.4.8). They need it because they are mutable from their creation: their goodness or evilness is not essential; “because of this mutability and convertibility, the rational nature necessarily had  See my “Dialogue of Adamantius.”

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to use a corporeal garment of different kind, having this or that quality according to the deserts of rational creatures” (ibid.). So, spiritual bodies can become mortal or demonic; degrees of corporeality depend on the merits or demerits of rational creatures (this is why Origen speaks of a corporeal garment “of different kinds” and “of this or that quality”). Only God, being immutable, requires no such garment. Therefore, rational creatures were endowed with a body from the outset of their substantial existence, when God created them and matter: The noetic nature must necessarily use bodies (necesse erat uti corporibus), because, qua created (facta), it is mutable and alterable (commutabilis et convertibilis). For what was not and began to exist (esse coepit) is for this very reason mutable by nature (naturae mutabilis) and possesses good or evil, not substantially, but accidentally … The rational nature was mutable and alterable so that, according to its deserts, it could be endowed with a corporeal garment of different kinds (diverso corporis uteretur indumento), of this or that quality (illius vel illius qualitatis). Therefore God, foreknowing the different conditions of souls or spiritual powers, created the corporeal nature too (naturam corpoream), which, according to the Creator’s will, could be transformed, changing qualities (permutatione qualitatum) as needed (Princ. 4.4.8).

Spiritual bodies changed qualities after the Fall, becoming mortal (while they were immortal) in the case of humans. Matter, created by God for their bodies, enabled rational creatures’ volitional movements and diversification, since “there cannot be diversity without bodies” (Princ. 2.1.4). God, “receiving all those germs and causes of variety and diversity, according to the diversity of the intellects (mentes ≈ νόες),87 i.e. rational creatures (rationabiles creaturae) …, rendered the world varied and diversified” (Princ. 2.9.2). The cause of diversity in the world is “the variety of movements and falls of those who have abandoned the initial unity” (Princ. 2.1.1). Before the diversification, matter had already been created, so that logika could be equipped with their vehicles from the beginning of their existence as substances.88 God  Reconstruction of the Greek based on the Latin.  The view that for Origen rational creatures had a spiritual body from the beginning is shared, e.g., by Manlio Simonetti, “Osservazioni sull’interpretazione origeniana di Genesi 2,7; 3,21,” Aevum 36 (1962): 370-378; Henryk Pietras, “L’inizio del mondo materiale,” in Origeniana nona: Origen and the Religious Practice of His Time. Papers of the 9th International Origen Congress. Pécs, Hungary, 29 August – 2 September 2005, ed. György Heidl, Robert Somos, and C. Németh, BETL 228 (Louvain: Peeters, 2009), 653-668; Benjamin Blosser, Become Like the Angels: Origen’s Doctrine of the Soul (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 176-180. 87 88

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created matter along with rational creatures: “God created all ‘by number and measure’: we shall correctly interpret ‘number’ in the sense of rational creatures or minds… and ‘measure’ in the sense of bodily matter … These we must believe were created by God in the beginning, before anything else” (Princ. 2.9.1). Bodies were created with intellects, to serve them in the movements of their free will as vehicles. Origen often insists that each soul has a body in accordance with its spiritual progress and deserts: “each soul that takes up a body does so in accordance with its merits and former character … all bodies conform to the habits of their souls” (Cels. 1.32-33). God alone needs no body-vehicle, as God is immutable qua essential Goodness. The Trinity alone (the three ἀρχαί) is incorporeal, according to Origen. Porphyry, who knew Origen, also claimed that only Plotinus’ Triad,89 the three ἀρχαί, are incorporeal (Ad Anebonem 3). All other beings have bodies, ethereal (gods), aerial (daemons), or earthly (souls). In his debate with a “pagan” Middle Platonist, at Cels. 7.32, Origen similarly claims that the soul, which is per se incorporeal (ἀσώματος), always needs a body suited (σώματος οἰκείου) to the place/state where it happens to be according to its spiritual progress; “a soul inhabiting corporeal places must necessarily use bodies suited to the places where it dwells.”90 Souls can become thicker or finer, depending on their moral choices: the soul becomes thicker and, so to say, “fleshly” by sinning, while virtue refines a soul; we have thickened our soul, while we should exit the flesh (Homilia 2 in Psalmum 38.8). Souls must use a body even after death:91 while all risen bodies are spiritual and immortal, the blessed will possess a luminous, glorious body, those in the torments of hell will have bodies adapted to suffering, bodies that are obscure, and reflect their intellect’s “darkness of ignorance” on earth,92 according to their moral quality. Origen considered whether “becoming divine” entails becoming bodiless, as God is.93 But this would only apply to the final “deification” and is but one alternative; the other is that we keep a spiritual body: “the corporeal substance will continue to stick even to the purest and most  On the identification of the three ἀρχαί in Origen and Plotinus–Porphyry and Origen’s influence on Porphyry, see my “Origen, Greek Philosophy, and the Birth of the Trinitarian Meaning of Hypostasis.” 90  C.Ps. 1 ap. Pamphilus, Apol. 141. 91  Ap. Photius, Bibl. 234.301a. 92  Res. 2, ap. Pamphilus, Apol. 134; Princ. 2.10.8. 93  Princ. 3.6.1; 2.3.3-5. 89



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perfect spirits, and, transformed into an ethereal state, shine forth in proportion to the merits and conditions of those who assume it.”94 Rational creatures will maintain spiritual bodies in the final restoration: “all this corporeal substance of ours will be brought to that state when every being will be restored to be one and God will be all in all … Once all rational souls will have been brought to this condition, then the nature of this body of ours, too, will be brought to the glory of the spiritual body,” similar to the prelapsarian body (Princ. 3.6.6). V.  Short Conclusions The body, as seen, is fundamentally implicated in the process of salvation, as it provides the basis for spiritual growth and mystagogy, the ascent towards God – something that will be developed by Nyssen and Evagrius.95 The problem of the relation between soul and body is crucial to Origen’s philosophical anthropology, just as it is to that of Plotinus, but it has often been misrepresented in scholarship, ultimately due to a misunderstanding of Origen’s doctrines during the Origenistic controversy. Therefore, this essay has endeavoured to investigate Origen’s available works, so as to unravel his ideas on intellectual creatures and the evolving relation between their souls and bodies. It has emerged, among other things, that it is imprecise, and likely incorrect, to ascribe to Origen the doctrine of the pre-existence of disembodied souls before any kind of body: rather, they pre-exist before mortal bodies, but not before spiritual ones. For the same reasons, it is misleading to attribute to Origen the theory of metensomatosis. It has also been pointed out that Origen postulated various degrees of corporeality, and that his terminology of “corporeal-mental/spiritual” is relative. Missing this point produces a misconstruction of Origen’s philosophical theology, and in particular of his anthropology and doctrine of logika.

 Princ. 2.3.7.  See Ilaria Ramelli, “Apokatastasis and Epektasis in Cant and Origen,” in Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum canticorum. Analytical and Supporting Studies. Proceedings of the 13th International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa (Rome, 17-20 September 2014), ed. Giulio Maspero, Miguel Brugarolas, and Ilaria Vigorelli, VCS 150 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 312-339; “Gregory and Evagrius,” Studia Patristica 101 (2019): 177-206. 94 95

Christian Self-Castration as Mystagogical Practice Mathew Kuefler I.  Castration as Religious Practice Let us start with the words of Eusebius, describing the third-century Christian teacher Origen: He committed an act characteristic of an immature and youthful mind, yet, notwithstanding, including abundant proof of faith and self-control. For he took the words “There are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven” in too literal and extreme a sense, thinking … to fulfill the words of the Savior …1

Leaving aside the irony of accusing Origen, who was known for his championing of allegorical exegesis, of too literal an interpretation of Scripture, one sees in these words the themes that dominated the patristic discussion of Christian self-castration. Eusebius’ denunciation, offered 1  Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 6.8, in Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. Eduard Schwartz, GCS 9/2; Eusebius Werke 2/2 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1908), 534; ET: Eusebius Pamphili, Ecclesiastical History, Books 6-10, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, FOTC 29 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1955; 2nd ed. 1969), 16. Greek text: … Ὠριγένει πρᾶγμά τι πέπρακται φρενὸς μὲν ἀτελοῦς καὶ νεανικῆς, πίστεώς γε μὴν ὁμοῦ καὶ σωφροσύνης μέγιστον δεῖγμα περιέχον. «τὸ γὰρ εἰσὶν εὐνοῦχοι οἵτινες εὐνούχισαν ἔαυτοὺς διὰ τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν» ἁπλούστερον καὶ νεανικώτερον ἐκλαβών … τὴν σωτήριον φωνὴν ἔργοις ἐπιτελέσαι ὡρμήθη … Schwartz (535) also includes Rufinus’ Latin translation, who omitted the phrase about “in too literal and extreme a sense”: … Origenes, gestum quid ab eo traditur, quod iuvenilis fortasse et minus perfecti sensus videatur, sed perfectae fidei ac nimiae castitatis indicium continens. illud namque, quod scriptum est in evangelio: ‘quia sunt eunuchi, qui se ipsos castraverunt propter regnum dei’ … dominicam vocem re atque opere in semet ipso adgressus est adimplere. According to Timothy Barnes (see “The Editions of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 20 [1980]: 191-201, at 201), he composed this part of his text in about 295 ce. Eusebius of Caesarea praised a second-century eunuch bishop, Melito of Sardis in Anatolia, but without providing details as to whether his castration was voluntary or involuntary (Historia ecclesiastica 5.24, in Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. Eduard Schwartz, GCS 9/1; Eusebius Werke 2/1 [Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1903], 492: …καὶ Μελίτωνα τὸν εὐνοῦχον…).

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with a hint of admiration, continues by suggesting that the deed avoided any possibility of slander, since Origen taught both women and men. Now there are reasons to question whether it really happened, but others believed it: Jerome, for example, repeated much the same thing about Origen in a letter.2 Eusebius was not the only bishop to have described the practice of Christian self-castration. All Christians had to read meanings into the forceful words of Jesus about making oneself a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, as well as his command to cut off a part of the body if it causes one to sin.3 Already in the second century Justin Martyr mentioned a Christian at Alexandria who sought permission from the Roman authorities to castrate himself.4 In the early third century, the Traditio apostolica mentioned men who castrated themselves as an undesirable part of the community of Christians.5 And at the Council of Nicaea in 325, the first decree ordered the removal from clerical office of men who had castrated themselves, though not men castrated by barbarians or for medical reasons.6

 Jerome, Ep. 84.8, in Hieronymus, Epistulae 71-120, ed. Isidorus Hilberg, CSEL 55 (Vienna: Tempsky; Leipzig: Freitag, 1912), 130: … uoluptates in tantum fugiit, ut zelo dei, sed non secundum scientiam ferro truncaret genitalia … The reference is to Matt 19:12. The arguments against Origen’s self-castration mostly point to his allegorical interpretations of castration in the same passage in his Commentarium in Matthaeum 15.1-3, in PG 13, cols. 1523-1568. 3  Matt 5:30. 4  Justin Martyr Apologia 29.2-3; in Justin, Philosopher and Martyr: Apologies, ed. with an introd., trans. and comm. by Denis Minns and Paul Parvis, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 160. 5  Traditio apostolica 16, in The Treatise of the Apostolic Tradition of St Hippolytus of Rome, Bishop and Martyr, ed. Gregory Dix (London: SPCK, 1968), 27. The text of this treatise is uncertain, and this detail is not found in all ancient versions. 6  Council of Nicaea, canon 1, in Giuseppe Alberigo et al., eds., The Oecumenical Councils: From Nicaea I (325) to Nicaea II (787), Corpus Christianorum Conciliorum oecumenicorum generaliumque decreta 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 20. Ancient castration techniques were varied, and might involve (1) crushing the testicles but leaving them in place, (2) severing the vas deferens with a ligature but otherwise leaving the genitals in place, (3) removing the testicles from the scrotum, (4) amputating the penis, or (5) removing both the penis and the scrotum together with the testicles. The first, second, and third methods might still permit the castrated individuals to achieve erections – and thus to participate in sex as the penetrating partners. The best ancient description of these practices is provided by the seventh-century medical writer Paul of Aegina, in Paulus Aegineta, Libri V–VII, in Corpus medicorum Graecorum IX/2, ed. Johan Ludvig Heiberg (Leipzig: Teubner, 1924), 111-112. See also Shaun Tougher, The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society, Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies (London: Routledge, 2008), 29-32. 2



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It would not have been unusual for Christians to think about physical castration. The use of eunuchs in aristocratic households seems to have expanded in the first centuries of the Common Era, first in the eastern Mediterranean and then in the west. Eunuch attendants accompanied wealthy women in public, carrying them on litters and serving as their chaperones, including when they went to the baths or to church.7 In the imperial household eunuchs also acted as bureaucrats and scribes. The emperor Elagabalus, who ruled in the early third century, was said to have first introduced large numbers into the imperial administration, and they remained a significant presence there from then on.8 Nor would it have been unexpected for Christians to ponder the connection between castration and holiness. In addition to eunuch servants, made so by others, there were self-castrating priests of the fertility goddess most often called the Mother of the Gods (Mater Deum) in Late Antiquity, and her consort, the eunuch god – known through the Phrygian myth of Cybele and Attis, but in the syncretic atmosphere of Late Antiquity, also identified as Greek Aphrodite and Adonis or as Egyptian 7  Jerome, Ep. 22.16, in Hieronymus, Epistulae 1-70, ed. Isidorus Hilberg, CSEL 54 (Vienna: Tempsky; Leipzig: Freitag, 1910), 163-164, and Ep. 130.4, in Hieronymus, Epistulae 121-154, ed. Isidorus Hilberg, CSEL 56 (Vienna: Tempsky; Leipzig: Freitag, 1916), 178, complained of the large numbers of eunuchs who attended wealthy widows; in Ep. 107.11, in CSEL 55, ed. Hilberg, 302, he criticized Christian women who bathed with eunuchs. 8  On Elagabalus, see Aline Rousselle, Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity, trans. Felicia Pheasant (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 121-128. Numbers of eunuchs are difficult to determine: an Arab writer estimated that there were five thousand eunuchs in the imperial palace of Constantinople in the tenth century, though the numbers may have been smaller in earlier centuries. See Georges Sidéris, “Une société de ville capitale: Les eunuques dans la Constantinople byzantine (IVe-XIIe siècle),” in Les villes capitales au Moyen âge; XXXVIe Congrès de la SHMESP, Istanbul 1er-6 Juin 2005, ed. Société des historiens médiévistes de l’enseignement public (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2006), 243-274, at 258. On the political roles played by eunuchs in the later Roman Empire see Keith Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves, Sociological Studies in Roman History 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), chapter 4: “The Political Power of Eunuchs”; Peter Guyot, Eunuchen als Sklaven und Freigelassene in der griechisch-römischen Antike, Stuttgarter Beiträge zur Geschichte und Politik 14 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1980), esp. ch. 7; Dirk Schlinkert, “Der Hofeunuch in der Spätantike: Ein gefährlicher Aussenseiter?,” Hermes: Zeitschrift für klassische Philologie 122 (1994): 342-359; Susan Tuchel, Kastration im Mittelalter, Studia Humaniora 30 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1998), 35-44; and Tougher, The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society, chapter 4: “The Court Eunuchs of the Later Roman Empire.” On the dating of the use of eunuchs in the imperial administration to the third century ce, see Mathew Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity, The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History and Society (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 63-65.

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Isis and Osiris. The origins of the religion are obscure but ancient, and included public rituals where men castrated themselves. These were attended by large crowds – gatherings condemned by Christian writers like Augustine of Hippo, who nonetheless admitted he had watched them as a young man.9 Invariably, Christian writers condemned this pagan self-castration. At the turn of the fifth century, the poet Prudentius put these harsh words in the mouth of the martyr Romanus as he addressed his pagan persecutors: There are rites in which you mutilate yourselves and maim your bodies to make an offering and it is the barbarity of the wounds that earn heaven. Another makes the sacrifice of his genitals; appeasing the goddess by mutilating his loins, he unmans himself and offers her a shameful gift; the source of the man’s seed is torn away to give her food and increase through the flow of blood.

The result, Prudentius continued, was a “middle gender, … ceasing to be a man without becoming a woman.”10 A half-century earlier, Firmicus Maternus wrote with even greater hostility on the cult of the Mother of

9  Augustine, De ciuitate Dei 7.24-26, in Augustinus, De civitate dei (pars 1: lib. 1-13), ed. Emanuel Hoffmann, CSEL 40/1 (Prague and Vienna: Tempsky; Leipzig: Freytag, 1899), 335-340. The most detailed scholarly discussion of this cult in Late Antiquity remains Henri Graillot, Le culte de Cybèle, Mère des dieux, à Rome et dans l’Empire romain, Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 107 (Paris: Fontemoing, 1912), but see also Gabriel Sanders, “Kybele und Attis,” in Die orientalischen Religionen im Römerreich, ed. Maarten Vermaseren, Études préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l’empire romain 93 (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 267-297; J. L. Lightfoot, “Sacred Eunuchism in the Cult of the Syrian Goddess,” in Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond, ed. Shaun Tougher (London: Classical Press of Wales and Duckworth, 2002), 71-86; and Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch, 246-254. There is an extensive scholarly literature for these cults in earlier historical periods, but a good overview of the Roman evidence is by Jacob Latham, “‘Fabulous Clap-Trap’: Roman Masculinity, the Cult of Magna Mater, the Literary Constructions of the Galli at Rome from the Late Republic to Late Antiquity,” Journal of Religion 92 (2012): 84-122. 10  Prudentius, Peristephanon 10, lines 1059-1075, in Prudentius, Against Symmachus 2. Crowns of Martyrdom. Scenes from History. Epilogue, trans. H. J. Thomson, LCL 398 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), 298; ET: ibid., 299: sunt sacra quando vosmet ipsi exciditis,/ votivus et cum membra detruncat dolor./ … / caelum meretur vulnerum crudelitas./ ast hic metenda dedicat genitalia,/ numen reciso mitigans ab inguine/ offert pudendum semivir donum deae:/ illam revulsa masculini germinis/ vena effluenti pascit auctam sanguine./ uterque sexus sanctitati displicet,/ medium retentat inter alternum genus,/ mas esse cessat ille, nec fit femina. Arnobius of Sicca, Adversus nationes 1.41, in Arnobius, Adversus nationes, ed. August Reifferscheid, CSEL 4 (Vienna: Gerold, 1875), 27, also compared the crucifixion of Jesus to the castration of Attis, saying that what seems shameful can be deserving of respect.



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the Gods: “What sort of monstrous and unnatural thing is all this?”11 Most said of Cybele’s priests, as the early fourth-century Christian apologist Lactantius did, that “by this amputation of their genitals they make themselves neither men nor women.”12 Patristic writers also criticized Christian men who castrated themselves. In a treatise on Christian widowhood written in about 377, Ambrose was diverted from a discussion of chastity to self-castration: And there are eunuchs who have castrated themselves, and done it willingly and not by necessity. And there are eunuchs who were made so by men. And, consequently, great is the grace of continence in them who are continent by desire and not by infirmity. For it is more fitting to preserve complete the gift of divine workmanship … It is not the same for those who use a knife on themselves, which I turn to not without some imprudence; there are those who hold it a position of virtue to restrain guilt with a knife … Yet let them consider whether this leads to an admission of weakness and not to the glory of strength? … No one, therefore, as most believe, that he should mutilate himself, but rather triumph; the Church receives victors and not the vanquished … Why should that, then, be cause for a crown of victory, if the practice of virtue is taken from a man, who is born for excellence and equipped for victory – and who can castrate himself instead through the virtue of his soul?13

The tone is gentler than that used for pagan eunuchs, but Ambrose’s rhetoric repeats the same language of manliness and unmanliness: victory, excellence, and strength belong to uncastrated men, while weakness and defeat are the characteristics of eunuchs. At the start of the third century, 11  Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum 4, in Minucius Felix, Octavius. Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum, ed. K. Halm, CSEL 2 (Vienna: Gerold, 1867), 80: … quod hoc monstrum est quodue prodigium? ET: Firmicus Maternus, The Error of the Pagan Religions, trans. Clarence Forbes, ACW 37 (New York: Paulist, 1970), 51. 12  Lactantius, Divinae institutiones 1.21, in Lactantius, Divinae institutiones et Epitome divinarum institutionum, ed. Samuel Brandt and Georg Laubmann, CSEL 19 (Prague and Vienna: Tempsky; Leipzig: Freytag, 1890), 81: … amputato enim sexu nec uiros se nec feminas faciunt … 13  Ambrose, De viduis 13.75-77, in PL 16, cols. 258-259: Et sunt spadones qui se ipsos castraverunt; voluntate utique, non necessitate. Et sunt spadones qui facti sunt ab hominibus. Et ideo magna in iis continentiae gratia; quia voluntas facit, non infirmitas continentem. Nam decet integrum divini operis servare munus. … Non eadem causa eorum, qui in se ipsos ferro utuntur, quo non imprudenter defleximus; sunt enim qui virtutis loco ponant, ferro culpam compescere. … considerent tamen, ne quis id ad professionem infirmitatis trahat, non ad firmitatis gloriam. … Nemo igitur, ut plerique arbitrantur, se debet abscindere, sed magis vincere; victores enim recipit Ecclesia, non victos. … Cur enim coronae occasio, et virtutis usus eripitur homini, qui natus ad laudem est, ad victoriam preparatus, qui potius virtute animae castrare se possit?

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Tertullian questioned the usefulness of castration: “In sum, who can be called abstinent who has had removed what should make him abstinent? What bridling of lust is there in castration?”14 John Chrysostom went even further, writing at the turn of the fifth century, suggesting that physical castration intensified sexual desire because there was no longer an outlet for it.15 A few years earlier, Basil summed up the opinion of the Church Fathers on eunuchs: “They are chaste but without merit on account of the knife.”16 Nonetheless, Christian writers applauded the end if not the means: the chastity that castration enforced. In his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, also from the turn of the fifth century, Jerome called the eunuchs of Jesus’ words true soldiers of Christ – even while insisting that their castration was symbolic.17 “When, after leaving the army, you castrated yourself for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven,” Jerome asked another man, referring to the same passage, “what else were you pursuing than the perfect life?”18 Elsewhere, he wrote: “All the Devil’s strength against men is in the loins.”19 For some Christians, it may have been difficult to separate the rhetoric of castration from its practice. The repeated condemnations of castration also suggest an activity that would not go away. The fifth-century monastic writer John Cassian, for 14  Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem 1.29, in Tertullianus, De patientia, De carnis resurrectione, Adversus Hermogenem, Adversus Valentinianos, Adversus omnes haereses, Adversus Praxean, Adversus Marcionem, ed. Emil Kroymann, CSEL 47 (Vienna: Tempsky; Leipzig: Freytag, 1906), 332: Quis denique abstinens dicetur sublato eo a quo abstinendum est? … Quae libidinis infrenatio in castratione? 15  John Chrysostom, Homiliae in Matthaeum 63.3, in PG 58, col. 600: … οὐδὲ τὰ τῆς ἐπιθυμίας ἡμερώτερα ἐντεῦθεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ χαλεπότερα γίνεται. See also Basil the Great, De virginitate 63, in PG 30, cols. 797-800, where he suggests that, like a bull who has lost a horn but is still as violent as before, a man whose genitals have been excised will still have sexual desire. 16  Basil, Ep. 115, in PG 32, col. 532: Oὗτοι σωφρονοῦσι μὲν ἄμισθα διὰ σιδήρου. 17  Jerome, Commentariorum in Matheum 3 ad 19.12, in Hieronymus, Commentariorum in Matheum libri IV, ed. D. Hurst and M. Adriaen, CCSL 77 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969), 168-169. 18  Jerome, Ep. 14.6, in CSEL 54, ed. Hilberg, 53: Nam cum derelicta militia castrati te propter regnum caelorum, quid aliud quam perfectam sectatus es uitam? Again, the reference is to Matt 19:12. See also Jerome, Ep. 66.8, in CSEL 54, ed. Hilberg, 656, equating metaphorical castration and Christian perfection. 19  Jerome, Ep. 22.11, in CSEL 54, ed. Hilberg, 159: omnis igitur aduersus uiros diaboli uirtus in lumbis est. Cf. Jerome, Tractatus sive homiliae in psalmos, in Hieronymus, Tractatus sive homiliae in psalmos, ed. G. Morin, B. Capelle, and J. Fraipont, CCSL 78 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1958), 358: Virtus enim diaboli omnis in lumbo est. On the popularity of the exhortation to chastity among early Christian writers, see Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988; Twentieth-Anniversary Edition with New Introduction, Columbia Classics in Religion, 2008).



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example, even while expressing to his monks the hope that “our minds might be formed with such purity of chastity that after the death of the natural movement of the flesh we might utterly avoid enduring that obscene fluid,” also felt it necessary to make mention of self-castration in his remarks on Jesus’ words about cutting off the parts of the body that cause one to sin: “The blessed apostle is not compelling us by a cruel precept to cut off our hands or feet or genitals.”20 “No one should think,” Valerian added, in the mid-fifth century, “that God would want to deform a human body, which he has formed in his image and made in the likeness of his greatness.”21 Minucius Felix perhaps said it most forcefully already in the early third century: Who, making a libation of his blood and supplicating with his wounds, would not be better off godless rather than religious in such a way? And who, having had his obscene parts cut off with a shard, does not in this way rather offend God than please him, who could cause eunuchs to be born, if he wanted them, and not made?22

Many other patristic writers repeated ideas such as these. II.  Castration as Hermeneutical Practice The pronouncements of the Church Fathers provide us with the best clues when trying to reconstruct the opinions of advocates of Christian self-castration. These included especially commentaries on Jesus’ words 20  John Cassian, Conlationes 12.7, in Jean Cassien, Conférences, Tomes I-III, ed. and trans. Étienne Pichery, SC 42, 54, and 64 (Paris: Cerf, 1955-59), vol. 2, 133: … ut eo usque mens nostra castitatis ipsius puritate formetur, ut etiam ipso naturale motu carnis emortuo illum obscenum liquorem omnino non perferat; John Cassian, Conlationes 12.1, in SC 54, 121: Neque enim beatus apostolus ad abscisionem manuum aut pedum aut genitalium inmiti nos praeceptione conpellit … John Cassian also believed that eunuchs continued to have sexual thoughts: Conlationes 12.10, in SC 54, 137. 21  Valerian, Hom. 6.6, in PL 52, col. 712: Nemo, dilectissimi, in hoc credat hujus sententiae stare rationem, quasi Dominus humanum corpus deformare velit, quod ad similitudinem suam plasmavit et ad speciem suae dignationis instituit … See Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch, 267-268, for more examples; and Walter Stevenson, “Eunuchs and Early Christianity,” in Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond, ed. Tougher, 123-142; and especially Daniel Folger Caner, “The Practice and Prohibition of Self-Castration in Early Christianity,” VC 51 (1997): 396-415, for further discussion of the extent of self-castration among early Christians. 22  Minucius Felix, Octavius 24, CSEL 2, ed. Halm, 35: quid, qui sanguine suo libat et uulneribus suis supplicat, non profanus melius esset quam sic religiosus? aut cui testa sunt obscena demessa, quo modo deum non uiolat qui hoc modo placat, cum si eunuchos deus vellet, posset procreare, non facere?

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about making oneself a eunuch and cutting off the sinning parts of the body, as might be expected. Clement of Alexandria provides an early example from the beginning of the third century: in his Stromata, he contrasted his argument that sexual relations were permitted to Christians with the errors of the teacher Basilides, who relied on Jesus’ words about eunuchs to condemn marriage.23 There were also interesting remarks derived from the many biblical commands to gird one’s loins.24 Jerome’s defended the manliness of the apostles, of John the Baptist, and of the prophet Elijah, all men who were said to have girded their loins: “and Elijah, though he had nothing in him that was effeminate or womanly, but entirely virile and hard – he was even a rather hairy man.”25 Justifications for self-castration also likely relied on the genderless ideal held by other early Christians. “There is no longer male and female; for you are one in Christ Jesus,” Paul asserted.26 The many early Christian groups that attempted to erase gender distinctions and the separations in physical space as well as in social status between men and women is too well known to need much elaboration.27 What better means to embody the erasure of gender difference for men than in self-castration? It was an abdication of masculine privilege, to be sure, but one that some Christian men were apparently willing to accept. Augustine of Hippo ridiculed some monks of his day in a treatise written probably in 401 – not for castrating themselves, but for wearing their hair long in imitation of women and in violation of another Pauline command by arguing that they were no longer men because they had vowed celibacy, and in  Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 3.1, in PG 8, cols. 1097-1104.  2 Kgs 9:1; Job 38:3; Job 40:7; Isa 8:9; Jer 1:17; Ezek 23:15; Joel 1:13; Luke 12:37; John 21:18; Acts 12:8. 25  Jerome, De Exodo in vigilia Paschae, in Sancti Hieronymi presbyteri tractatus sive homi­ liae in Psalmos, ed. Germanus Morin, Anecdota Maredsolana 3/2 (Oxford: Parker, 1897), 409: Et apostolis dicitur: “Sint lumbi vestri adcincti, et lucernae ardentes in manibus vestris.” Et Iohannes zona pellicia cingitur; et Helias nihil in se habens molle atque muliebre, sed totum virile et rigidum (homo quippe hirsutus erat), cingulum habuisse describitur. Cf. Jerome, Ep. 22.11, in CSEL 54, ed. Hilberg, 158-159; Paulinus of Nola, Ep. 24.14, in Paulinus Nolanus, Epistulae, ed. Wilhelm von Hartel, CSEL 29 (Prague and Vienna: Tempsky; Leipzig: Freytag, 1894), 214, on binding of loins as meaning chastity. In contrast, see Tertullian, De monogamia 17, in Tertullianus, Opera II: Opera montanistica, ed. E. Dekkers, CCSL 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954), 1252: … Ioannes aliqui Christo spado … 26  Gal 3:28 (NRSV). 27  See, for example, Dennis R. MacDonald, There Is No Male and Female: The Fate of a Dominical Saying in Paul and Gnosticism, Harvard Dissertations in Religion 20 (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress 1987); Benjamin H. Dunning, Specters of Paul: Sexual Difference in Early Christian Thought, Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); or Brown, The Body and Society. 23

24



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renouncing their desire to be men they had become eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven. “What a singular madness!,” Augustine exclaimed.28 Nonetheless, these monks believed that their ascetical lifestyle removed them from the category of maleness. Castrated Christians may well have shared the same sentiments. In their self-understanding, Christian eunuchs undoubtedly looked to the Bible. They may have repeated to themselves the promise of God to Isaiah: To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose to do what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant – to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever.29

Clement of Alexandria specifically denounced a heretical teacher named Julius Cassianus for misinterpreting this passage in a no longer extant treatise on castration.30 Christian eunuchs probably borrowed from biblical models: foremost among them, the prophet Daniel, as well as the other Jewish servants of the Babylonian king mentioned with him, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, all of whom were assumed to have been eunuchs in late ancient commentaries.31 There was also the unnamed 28  Augustine, De opere monachorum 32, in Augustinus, De fide et symbolo, De fide et operibus, De agone christiano, De continentia, De bono coniugali, De sancta virginitate, De bono viduitatis, De adulterinis coniugiis, De mendacio, Contra mendacium, De opere monachorum, De divinatione daemonum, De cura pro mortuis gerenda, De patientia, ed. J. Zycha, CSEL 41 (Prague and Vienna: Tempsky; Leipzig: Freytag, 1900), 591-592: Iam illud, si dici potest, quam luctuose ridiculum est, quod rursus inuenerunt ad defensionem crinium suorum, uirum, inquiunt, prohibuit apostolus habere comam; qui autem se ipsos castrauerunt propter regnum caelorum, iam non sunt uiri, o dementiam singularem! The reference is to 1 Cor 11:14-15, where Paul describes men with long hair as disgraceful. See also Paulinus of Nola, Ep. 23, in CSEL 29, ed. Hartel, 157-201, for extended theological reflections on hair length and gender identity. 29  Isa 56:3-5 (NIV). For further discussion of this passage and other mentions of eunuchs in the Bible, see also Pascal Boulhol and Isabelle Cochelin, “La réhabilitation de l’eunuque dans l’hagiographie antique (IVe-VIe siècles),” in Memoriam sanctorum venerantes: Miscellanea in onore di Monsignor Victor Saxer, Studi di antichità cristiana 48 (Vatican City: Pontificio istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1992), 49-76. 30  Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 3.13, in PG 8, cols. 1192-1193; he called the treatise Περὶ ἐγκράτειας ἦ Περὶ εὐνουχίας. 31  The Bible does not specifically refer to any of these men as eunuchs, though it does refer to Ashpenaz, the courtier who trained them to serve at the court of Babylon, as the official in charge of eunuchs (Dan 1:3; Hebrew ‫רב סריסיו‬, Greek Septuagint ἀρχιευνούχος, Latin Vulgate praepositus eunuchorum). Jewish tradition in the Babylonian Talmud (Seder Nezikin, Sanhedrin 93b; ET: Isidore Epstein, The Babylonian Talmud, Seder Nezikin in Four Volumes (London: Soncino, 1935), vol. 3, 627-629) described Daniel as a eunuch, and Jerome is the first of the patristic writers to do the same, both in Adversus

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Ethiopian eunuch official of Acts, who specifically asks Philip to explain Isaiah to him, and who represents in himself the new Christian inclusiveness – indeed, may have been intended to personify all three aspects of the Pauline phrase “no more Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female.”32 It is even possible that there existed a now hidden exegetical tradition that referred to Jesus and Paul as eunuchs. Tertullian wrote of Jesus and Paul: “and that same Lord, opening the kingdom of Heaven to eunuchs, since He is Himself a eunuch, and looking to him, the apostle, himself a eunuch, therefore prefers chastity.”33 Further in this same treatise, Tertullian described Jesus as the “completed Adam” because of his “castration in the flesh.”34 This opinion was not taken up by later patristic writers. Nonetheless, in the early fifth century Peter Chrysologus still referred to Paul as a metaphorical eunuch in the service of the heavenly king.35 Christians who read the gnostic scriptures had access to other, even more elaborate imaginings of the erasure of human sexual difference. For these believers, the separation of male and female was a sad reminder of the lost unity of the universe before the foolish creation of the material realm. As written in the Gospel of Philip, “When Eve was still in Adam death did not exist. When she was separated from him death came into being. If he again becomes complete and attains his former self, death Jovinianum 1.25, in PL 23, cols. 244-245, and in Commentariorum in Danielem 1.1.3, in Hieronymus, Commentariorum in Danielem libri III, ed. F. Glorie, CCSL 75A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1964), 779. See also Kathryn Ringrose, The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 87-107, who reviews the praise of the eunuch Daniel in the early and middle Byzantine periods. 32  Acts 8:26-39. Patristic writers also praised this eunuch as a role model for Christian men. Petrus Chrysologus honored him as an example of faith, Sermo 61, in PL 52, col. 369; John Chrysostom congratulated him on his enthusiasm for reading the Bible, Homilia in Genesin, in PG 53, cols. 321-332; Jerome even defended his manliness in his Ep. 53.5, in CSEL 54, ed. Hilberg, 451: In Actibus apostolorum sanctus eunuchus, immo uir – sic enim eum scriptura cognominat – cum legeret Esaiam … 33  Tertullian, De monogamia 3, in CCSL 2, ed. Dekkers, 1230-1231: … ipso Domino spadonibus aperiente regna caelorum, ut et ipso spadone, ad quem spectans et apostolus propterea et ipse castratus continentiam mauult. 34  Tertullian, De monogamia 5, in CCSL 2, ed. Dekkers, 1235: … perfectior Adam, id est Christus, eo quoque nomine perfectior qua integrior, uolenti quidem tibi spado occurrit in carne. 35  Petrus Chrysologus, Collectio sermonum 56.2, in Petrus Chrysologus, Sermonum collectio a Felice episcopato parata, ed. A. Olivar, CCSL 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975), 315: Eunuchus etiam generatur in uia, ut quem castrauerat humana temeritas ad hominis seruitutem, et intra regis aulam inuita castitas conlocaret, uoluntaria castitas et uotiua ad caelestis aulae gloriam, ad aeterni regis promoueret et transferret obsequium.



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will be no more.”36 In some gnostic texts, even those without the intricate cosmologies of some, the erasure of sexual difference was the first step to the restoration of humanity. Variations on the Pauline saying about “no more male or female” were given as the words of Jesus in several of the gnostic scriptures, which only strengthened the authority behind it. According to the Tripartite Tractate, “the end will receive a unitary existence just as the beginning, where there is no male or female, nor slave and free, nor circumcision and uncircumcision, neither angel nor man, but Christ is all in all.”37 Note that this unity is exemplified here specifically in the male body as well as in broader social, sexual, and spiritual natures. The same emphasis on the body is found in the Gospel of Thomas, where Jesus says: “When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in place of any eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness, then will you enter the kingdom” of Heaven.38 Clement of Alexandria quoted from a version of the Gospel of the Egyptians that had Jesus say: “When you tread on the garment of shame, and when the two are become one, and the male with the female neither male nor female.”39 This metaphor of the body as a garment is found elsewhere in gnostic writings, mostly in negative ways. The Teachings of Silvanus includes this advice: “Strip off the old garment of fornication, and put on the garment which is clean and shining, that 36  The Gospel of Philip; ET: Wesley W. Isenberg, in James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1978), 141. See also “If the woman had not separated from the man, she would not die with the man. His separation became the beginning of death. Because of this Christ came to repair the separation which was from the beginning and again unite the two, and to give life to those who died as a result of the separation and unite them. But the woman is united to her husband in the bridal chamber. Indeed those who have united in the bridal chamber will no longer be separated. Thus Eve separated from Adam because she was never united with him in the bridal chamber” (ibid., 142). I am obliged to use English translations for Coptic texts, but the original language for this text and those that follow in this section may be found online at The Gnostic Library Online, brill.com/cglo (accessed 1 February 2018). 37  The Tripartite Tractate; ET: Harold W. Attridge and Dieter Mueller, in Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library, 95. 38  The Gospel of Thomas; ET Thomas O. Lambdin, in Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library, 121. 39  Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 3.13.92, in PG 8, col. 1193: Ὅταν τὸ τῆς αἰσχύνης ἔνδυμα πατήσητε, καὶ ὅταν γένηται τὰ δύο εν, καὶ τὸ ἄρρεν μετὰ τῆς θηλείας, οὔτε ἄρρεν οὔτε θῆλυ.

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you may be beautiful in it. … Cast out the desire whose devices are many, and … release yourself from the sins of lust.”40 Christian men who castrated themselves after hearing such passages might have interpreted their actions as the shedding of an unwanted garment as a first and necessary step in the restoration of an original humanity. III.  Castration as Mystagogical Practice Modern scholars have generally assumed that Christian self-castration was done only by a few individuals, misguided in their interpretations of Jesus’ command, spontaneously, and isolated in their practice. The words of Eusebius about Origen with which I began imply the same. Yet there is some indication that within at least a few Christian communities, selfcastration was more commonplace: the norm rather than the exception. In his list of heretical Christian sects from the late fourth century, Epiphanius of Salamis included the Valesians, condemning them for encouraging castration. He admitted that he knew little about them, but he mocked them at length for it, saying that “all but a few are castrated,” and adding that they even kidnapped and forcibly castrated others.41 Epiphanius mentioned that some considered the Valesians Gnostics, and though he did not agree, he did say that they held the same beliefs as the Sethians. For Sethians, the expulsion of humanity from the paradise created by the demiurge marked the first step in our return to the divine fullness.42 Not only materiality but also sexual difference were parts of the false creation that needed to be undone. Castration among the Valesians may have been intimately connected to this worldview. It removed both a key marker of sexual difference and the possibility of reproduction – and ended the vicious cycle of human entrapment within the material realm. 40  The Teachings of Silvanus; ET: Malcolm L. Peel and Jan Zandee, in Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library, 355. See also the Sentences of Sextus, ET: Frederik Wisse, in Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library, 457: “… the body is the garment of the soul.” On the gnostic ideal of the genderless self, see also MacDonald, There Is No Male or Female; Dunning, Specters of Paul; and Brown, The Body and Society, 103-121. 41  Epiphanius of Salamis, Adversus haereses 58, in Epiphanius, Ancoratus und Pana­ rion. II: Panarion Haer. 34–64, ed. Karl Holl, GCS 31 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1922), 358: … εἰσὶ δὲ πάντες ἀπόκοποι πλὴν ὀλίγον … 42  Tuomas Rasimus, “Ophite Gnosticism, Sethianism and the Nag Hammadi Library,” VC 59 (2005): 235-263, concludes that it is difficult to understand precisely how the Ophites and Sethians were related.



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This is more or less the only evidence we have for a more widespread practice of Christian self-castration. Augustine also briefly listed the Valesians among the Christian heretics, but we can presume he took his information from Epiphanius, whom he mentioned.43 Still, other patristic writers noted the presence of eunuchs among heretical sects. Tertullian made brief mention of eunuchs among the followers of Valentinian.44 Tertullian, of course, is remembered for having followed the Montanist sect, whose founder Montanus Jerome later referred to as a “mutilated half-man” – though I could find no other similar reference to Montanus as a eunuch among the Church Fathers.45 It is an interesting question: Was there a place for eunuchs in Montanus’ “new prophecy” movement, which gave leadership roles to men and women alike? It is now impossible to say, but elsewhere Jerome denounced eunuchs who had castrated themselves “through heretical persuasion, [and] pretended to chastity so that they might lay false claim to true religion.”46 The admiration for self-castration in some Christian communities may have taken other forms. In the early third century, Hippolytus of Rome described a heretical Christian sect he called the Naassenes. They took their name from the Hebrew word for “snake,” he said, since they believed in the serpent as humankind’s rescuer from the power of the demiurge. Hippolytus said that they venerated an androgynous primordial Adam, the original human being before his division into male and female. He said that the Naassenes even worshipped Attis and Adonis and Osiris as representatives of the same transcendence of the soul from the material realm as the Naassenes themselves espoused, and the same restoration of the original hermaphroditic self. Hippolytus claimed that the Naassenes attended the mysteries of the Great Mother, but added that they did not castrate themselves physically, though he said that they

 Augustine, De haeresibus 37, in Augustinus, De haeresibus, ed. M P. J. van den Hout et al., CCSL 46 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969), 306: Valesii et se ipsos castrant, et hospites suos, hoc modo existimantes Deo se debere servire. 44  Tertullian, Adversus Valentinianos 30.3, in CCSL 2, ed. A. Gerlo et al., 774: Et quid facient spadones, quos uidemus apud illos? 45  Jerome, Ep. 41.4, in CSEL 54, ed. Hilberg, 314: … abscisum et semiuirum habuisse Montanum. 46  Jerome, Commentariorum in Matheum 3 ad 19.12, in CCSL 77, ed. Hurst and Adriaen, 168: Eunuchi sunt … alii qui ab hominibus fiunt quos aut philosophi faciunt aut propter idolorum cultum emolliuntur in feminas uel persuasione heretica simulant castitatem ut mentiantur religionis ueritatem. See Christine Trevett, Montanism: Gender, Authority, and the New Prophecy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 43

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encouraged their followers to think of themselves as eunuchs and to live sexless lives.47 It is of course difficult to tie up the fragile threads of gnostic thought from the fragmentary sources that survive, let alone make connections across time and space. Still, it is tempting to see broad patterns of understanding in the repetition of certain elements, and one of the surest of them is the androgynous ideal that physical self-castration might have embodied, and the return to an original humanity before sin and death. We know little of most gnostic rituals, but it is not difficult to imagine something similar to the rituals that marked the self-castration of the eunuch priests of the Great Mother – and this may help to explain the virulence with which the Church Fathers denounced not only these rites but any similarities between them and Christian ones. Those Christians to be initiated into castration would doubtless have been encouraged in the interpretations of biblical and extrabiblical passages that celebrated eunuchs or discouraged concern for the body and its desires. Biblical passages implied that there were teachings of Jesus not found in the writings of Christianity but passed secretly from teachers to disciples, and these teachings might well have included his more demanding ones.48 Indeed, these Christians might have considered themselves as the few who understood and had the courage to fulfil the teachings of Jesus and the words he had used to conclude his discussion of castration: “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given,” and “The one who can accept this should accept it.”49 It might even have been understood as a corollary to Jewish circumcision, as a physical marker for men of the New Covenant comparable to but more demanding than that of the Old.50 In practical terms 47  Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium haeresium 5.1-6, in Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium haeresium, ed. Miroslav Marcovich, Patristische Texte und Studien 25 (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1986). For more on the theme of an original androgynous humanity, see Wayne Meeks, “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity,” History of Religions 13 (1974): 165-208. 48  There are references to these hidden teachings, for example, in John 16:12 and John 21:25. See Guy G. Stroumsa, Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions and the Roots of Christian Mysticism, Numen Book Series 70 (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 49  Matt 19:11-12 (NIV). 50  Might it have been possible to reconcile a notion of castration as a superior form of circumcision with Paul’s remarks (Phil 3:3, Col 2:11, and Rom 2:28) on Jewish circumcision of the flesh versus Christian circumcision of the spirit? Perhaps, but it is more difficult to reconcile castration with the remarks in Rom 2:28-29. Still, Tertullian connected the two in his De cultu feminarum 2.9, see Tertullianus, Opera I: Opera catholica. Adversus Marcionem, ed. E. Dekkers et al., CCSL 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954), 364:



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alone, given the medical risks associated with castration in the ancient world, it would have been necessary for the bodies of initiates to be prepared and cared for after the fact, and for the castrations themselves to have been done with an expertise that implies concerted effort.51 Christian eunuchs could also draw on the increasing number of legends about saintly eunuchs who were martyrs to imagine themselves as part of a respected corps in an honoured tradition. Most saintly eunuchs were remembered in pairs, such as Nereus and Achilleus, said to have been eunuch slaves in the household of the first-century emperor Domitian, or Protus and Hyacinthus, supposed to have belonged to the daughter of a third-century Roman governor of Egypt, or Calocerus and Parthenius, remembered as having served the wife of the third-century emperor Decius. There is little reliable evidence for these saints, but they stood as models of “perfect servants” both to their earthly masters and to God, rewarded for their loyalty with salvation.52 Their legends reinforced the transposition of opposites: that even the lowliest could reach the pinnacle of holiness, and that Christian men might find perfection even in gender renunciation, or manliness in unmanliness. Itaque castigando et castrando, ut ita dixerim, saeculo erudimur a deo. Nos sumus circumcisio omnium, spiritalis et carnalis. See also the related speculations on circumcision and gender identity by Shaye J. D. Cohen, Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised? Gender and Covenant in Judaism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005). 51  Jan Hogendorn, “The Hideous Trade: Economic Aspects of the ‘Manufacture’ and Sale of Eunuchs,” Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde 45 (1999): 137-160, describes the high mortality rate for newly made eunuchs in the Muslim Mediterranean. 52  The phrase is from Ringrose, The Perfect Servant. She quotes at length from the Passio of the eunuch martyr Eleutherius as an example of this praise of saintly eunuchs (The Perfect Servant, 208; she describes it as a text from the fourth century or later, set in the late third century, found in Acta Sanctorum [AASS] 1 Augusti). For the sources for the legend of Nereus and Achilleus, see AASS 12 Maii; for Protus and Hyacinthus, see AASS 11 Septembris; for Calocerus and Parthenius, see AASS 19 Maii. Other eunuch saints include Indes, Tigrius, the pair Boethazat and Azat, and the group of three Dorotheus, Gorgonius, and Peter. On eunuch saints, see also Baudouin de Gaiffier, “Palatins et eunuques dans quelques documents hagiographiques,” Analecta Bollandiana 75 (1957): 17-46; now updated by Boulhol and Cochelin, “La réhabilitation de l’eunuque,” esp. 62-63; and by Mathew Kuefler, “Physical and Symbolic Castration and the Holy Eunuch in Late Antiquity, Third to Sixth Centuries ce,” in Celibate and Childless Men in Power: Ruling Eunuchs and Bishops in the Pre-Modern World, ed. Almut Höfert, Matthew M. Mesley, and Serena Tolino (London: Routledge, 2017), 177-191. See also, mostly for later periods of Byzantine history, Shaun Tougher, “Holy Eunuchs! Masculinity and Eunuch Saints in Byzantium,” in Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. P. H. Cullum and ­Katherine J. Lewis, Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004), 93-108; and Georges Sidéris, “‘Eunuchs of Light’: Power, Imperial Ceremonial and Positive Representations of Eunuchs in Byzantium (4th–12th Centuries ad),” in Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond, ed. Tougher, 161-175.

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The transformative effects of self-castration can only be guessed at. Modern transgender individuals describe the need to abandon traditional meanings attached to gender identity in the search for authentic personhood and the need to align their physical bodies, which they often see as otherwise betraying their true selves, with their sense of who they really are.53 Early Christians may have felt the same things. We know from modern science the effects of testosterone loss in men, including through castration, and the physiological as well as psychological changes that accompany it, especially the decline of sexual appetite.54 Those who underwent castration may well have interpreted changes such as these as evidence of the merit to their action and of God’s favour. We see some of the tensions at work here in discussions of the necessity for genitals in the glorified bodies of the afterlife. Epiphanius mocked the Valesians for it, wondering facetiously whether their genitalia would be resurrected before the rest of their bodies and have to wait for them there, but the hostility in his words and the inflated rhetoric of the other Church Fathers only betrays their real concerns that other men might hope for the same transformation and to become, in the promise of Jesus, “like the angels in heaven.”55 Tertullian, writing about the resurrection of the flesh, wondered what purpose there would be in glorification of physical genitals, drawing no conclusions.56 Jerome challenged Rufinus to clarify whether he believed that our bodies would be perfected in heaven,

53  See, for example, Henry Rubin, Self-Made Men: Identity and Embodiment among Transsexual Men (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003), 15, 108-109. 54  Studies done on castrated sex offenders in the early twentieth century provide the best modern evidence: see Marie E. Kopp, “Surgical Treatment as Sex Crime Prevention Measure,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 28 (1938): 692-706, for American examples, and Louis Le Maire, “Danish Experiences regarding the Castration of Sex Offenders,” Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science 47 (1956): 294-310, for European examples. 55  Matt 22:30. Epiphanius of Salamis, Adversus haereses 58, in GCS 31, ed. Holl, 359: πῶς ἐνδέχεται ἔτι ἐν βασιλείᾳ οὐρανῶν ἐν σώματι λώβησις γίνεσθαι; ἢ πῶς οὐκ ἔσται ἀπρεπὴς ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν ἐπισινῆ σώματα ἔχουσα πρὸς δόξαν ὄντα τῶν ἐν αὐτῇ; εἰ δὲ ὅλως καὶ τμηθείη τὸ μέλος τὸ σκανδαλίζον, ἄρα τέτμηται καὶ οὐχ ἥμαρτεν τμηθὲν δὲ καὶ μὴ ἁμαρτῆσαν, αὐτὸ ἔδει πρῶτον πάντων ἀναστῆναι μὴ ἁμαρτῆσαν. 56  Tertullian, De resurrectione mortuorum 60, in CCSL 2, ed. A. Gerlo et al., 1008: Quo renes, conscii seminum, et reliqua genitalium utriusque sexus et conceptuum stabula et uberum fontes, decessuro concubitu et fetu et educatu? Comparisons might be drawn with modern studies on the transgender self, which often contrast the physiological body with the phenomenological self or psychological identity. See, for example, Gayle Salamon, Assuming a Body: Transgender and Rhetorics of Materiality (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), ch. 1.



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remaining sexually differentiated, or – he added flippantly – whether the celestial court would be populated by eunuchs.57 There is, it must be noted, an obviously male preoccupation in finding holiness in castration. As much as women were enjoined to prize their virginity, there is little that is comparable to the anatomical obsessions about male castration in early Christian admonitions to women: little discussion of the hymen, for example, in the Church Fathers.58 It might be said that this is the difference between keeping and getting rid of a part of the body: the latter being perhaps more plainly an ascetic act. But I suspect it has more to do with the fact that castration existed solely as a sign of male self-sacrifice. Whether condoned or condemned, and even for those who saw it as an abdication of masculine identity, castration served as an opportunity to discuss the progress toward spiritual perfection in men. Christian writings of all stripes identified the masculine with the spiritual and the feminine with bodily realities, a logic according to which even incapacitated men stood above all women.59 Regardless, it reinforced the assumptions of male privilege that were so much a part of the ancient world. As many scholars have reminded us, even the genderless ideal of the early Christians proved all too often to be a universe imagined without women. Let me return again to Origen’s self-castration. As much as he condemned the Gnostics, he shared the same desire for transcendence as  Jerome, Apologia contra Rufinum 2.5, in Hieronymus, Apologia contra Rufinum, ed. P. Lardet, CCSL 79 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1982), 37. For comparisons between eunuchs and angels in the middle Byzantine period, see also Ringrose, The Perfect Servant, 142-162. 58  See Gregor Emmenegger, Wie die Jungfrau zum Kind kam: Zum Einfluss antiker medizinischer und naturphilosophischer Theorien auf die Entwicklung des christlichen Dogmas, Paradosis 56 (Fribourg: Academic Press, 2014). Emmenegger’s analysis is primarily about the virginity of Mary, the mother of Jesus, but he concludes: “Ich habe gezeigt, dass ein körperliches Zeichen der Jungfräulichkeit erst spät und nur im lateinischen Westen nachweisbar ist” (261-262). His analysis is based in part on Giulia Sissa, Greek Virginity, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Revealing Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 105-123, 172-175, and asserts that the hymen, unmentioned even by ancient medical writers, also did not figure in the theological reflections of patristic authors. See also Julia Kelto Lillis, “Paradox in Partu: Verifying Virginity in the Prot­ evangelion of James,” JECS 24 (2016): 1-28. She agrees with Emmenegger and Sissa, but claims that the virginity of Mary provided a model for consecrated female Christian virgins. See also the contribution of Metha Hokke in this volume. 59  For examples from gnostic writings: “If you cast out of yourself the substance of the mind, which is thought, you have cut off the male part and turned yourself to the female part alone” (The Teachings of Silvanus 93, in Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library, 350-351). “Flee from the madness and the bondage of femininity, and choose for yourself the salvation of masculinity” (Zostrianos 131; ET: John H. Sieber, in Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library, 393). 57

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they did.60 And he shared their hope for a future humanity that eliminated gender differences: so he was among the first Christians to envision himself as feminine before a masculine God.61 He may have read, as Clement of Alexandria did, the work of a Gnostic teacher named Julius Cassianus on castration, written about the time that Origen was born. According to Clement, Cassianus justified self-castration with the biblical passage from Ephesians about taking off the “old self, corrupted by desires,” and putting on a new self.62 Origen also taught that the soul must escape its material body to be restored to its primordial condition, releasing its sexual difference along the way. So his self-castration was probably not the result of an “immature mind,” as Eusebius claimed, or an excessive literalism, but an embodiment of his beliefs about human existence, the nature of the universe, and his hope for the future of all things – like the actions of the other self-castrating Christians.

 See also the contribution of Ilaria Ramelli in this volume.  Origen, Homilia in Canticum canticorum, in Origène, Homélies sur le Cantique des cantiques, ed. and trans. Olivier Rousseau, SC 37 (Paris: Cerf, 1966), 2. For more on Origen’s ideas about gender and the self, see Brown, The Body and Society, 160-177. 62  Eph 4:22-24. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 3.13-14, in PG 8, cols. 1192-1196. 60 61

Part 2

The Post-Nicene Period: The Eastern Tradition

The Humanity of Christ and Embodiment in the Sacraments

Theodorean Christology and Experiential Mystagogy Hanna Lucas I. Introduction Theodore of Mopsuestia stands apart in both his Christology and his mystagogy, by reason of his emphasis upon the distinctness and agency of the humanity of Christ in the former and in his unique highlighting of embodiment and physicality in the latter. In this article, I will demonstrate how some of Theodore’s Christological concerns reveal a conceptual structure out of which arises also Theodore’s valuation of material creation. This conceptual structure consists in a concern for externality which lies at the core of both his metaphysics and his theology of creation. I will examine how this underlying theme of externality, or, in another sense, enactment, unites Theodore’s dyophysite Christology with his pedagogical characterization of material creation. It is in Theodore’s mystagogical writings, especially his explorations of the initiate’s embodied engagement with the physicality of the sacraments, that we can see in clear relief how the concept of externality serves as an anchoring concern that shapes Theodore’s theology. Theodore holds that Christ’s role as mediator between humanity and God depends as much on His con-substantiality with humanity as it does on His consubstantiality with the Father.1 A major concern for Theodore is the preservation of the integrity and completeness, and, even more  See Frederick G. McLeod’s most recent work on the question of the humanity of Christ, in which he utilizes elements of Karl Rahner’s Christology to highlight the functional and existential unity between Christ’s humanity and divinity. Frederick G. McLeod, “Two Major Attempts to Articulate an Authentic Role for Christ’s Humanity in Salvation,” Irish Theological Quarterly 79 (2014): 241-264. Also, Frederick G. McLeod, The Roles of Christ’s Humanity in Salvation: Insights from Theodore of Mopsuestia (­Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005). 1

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explicitly, the agency of Christ’s humanity. While his Christology includes many aspects and nuances, all of which are deserving of attention, I will limit myself to two points that will be particularly useful in helping us to consider the relation of Theodore’s Christology to his mystagogy: the first is Theodore’s affirmation that Christ’s human will makes a true contribution of agency within the synergy of the Christological union, and the second is his characterization of temporal and physical creation as a realm of training for the human person. After highlighting these two aspects of Theodore’s Christology, I will turn to his mystagogical catechesis and identify how the aforementioned conceptual structure, Theodore’s underlying concern for externality and maintaining a contributive role for creation and nature, is mirrored there as well. II.  Christology: Christ’s Humanity, Free Will, and Contribution In On the Incarnation, Theodore writes: Οὕτω καὶ ὁ Κύριος, εἰ καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα παντελῶς ἔσχεν ἐν αὐτῷ καθόλου τὸν Θεὸν ἐνεργοῦντα Λόγον, ἀχώριστον ἔχων πρὸς αὐτὸν πᾶσαν ἐνέργειαν, ἀλλ’ οὖν γε καὶ πρὸ τούτου πλεῖστον ὅσον εἶχεν ἐπιτελοῦντα ἐν αὐτῷ τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν δεόντων, συγχωρούμενος μὲν τέως πρὸ τοῦ σταυροῦ διὰ τὴν χρείαν οἰκείᾳ προθέσει τὴν ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἀρετὴν πληροῦν, παρορμώμενος δὲ ὑπ’αὐτοῦ κἀν τούτοις καὶ ῥωννύμενος πρὸς τὴν παντελῆ τῶν προσηκόντων ἐκπλήρωσιν. Ἔσχε μὲν γὰρ εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐν τῇ κατὰ τὴν μήτραν διαπλάσει τὴν πρὸς αὐτὸν ἕνωσιν.2 In the same way although it was in the end that the Lord had God the Word working in him so perfectly and completely that they were inseparably joined in every action, yet even before that he had the Word bringing to perfection in him to the highest possible degree all that he must do; in that period before the cross he was being given free room because of the necessity to achieve virtue on our behalf by his own will, though even then he was being stirred on by the Word and was being strengthened for the perfect fulfilment of what needed to be done. He had received union with him right from the start at the moment of his formation in the womb.3

 Theodore of Mopsuestia, De Incarnatione 7, in PG 66, col. 976.  Theodore of Mopsuestia, De Incarnatione 7, in Minor Epistles of St Paul, ed. Henry B. Swete (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1880-1982), vol. 2. ET: https://earlychurchtexts.com/public/theodore_of_mopsuestia_incarnation.html (accessed 23 January 2021). 2 3



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Theodore’s special focus on human free will is unique and can at times seem confused or contradictory.4 I suggest that a way to understand passages such as the above is to notice that Theodore tends to hold ideas of nature, dependence, and autonomy in tension or paradox. Theodore claims that Christ’s humanity was “given free room [συγχορέω],” as Swete translates it, and yet this space made for human willing and doing is also set within the context of the Word’s “stirring” and “strengthening” the purposes of his human will. Further in the same work Theodore speaks about Christ’s humanity with phrases such as the “set of his own mind” and “this purpose of his” – which ring of autonomy, and yet all of Theodore’s language about Christ’s human will remains couched in the language of union. The union is presented as a synergy between divine and human nature; and importantly, one that is both given and grows in intimacy. He writes: … ἀνάλογόν τε τῇ οἰκείᾳ προθέσει, καὶ τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ Λόγου συνέργειαν δεχόμενος, ἄτρεπτος λοιτὸν τῆς ἐπὶ τὸ χεῖρον μεταβολῆς διετηρεῖτο. Τοῦτο μὲν αὐτὸς ἔχων γνώμης, τοῦτο δὲ τῆς προθέσεως οὕτω διατηροθμένης αὐτῷ τῇ τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγου συνεργείᾳ … Οὕτω δὲ λοιπὸν μετὰ τὴν ἀνάστασιν καὶ τὴν εἰς οὐρανοὺς ἀνάληψιν ἐπιδείξας ἑαυτὸν, και ἐκ τῆς οἰκείας γνώμης τῆς ἑνώσεως ἄξιον, προσειληφὼς δὲ ταύτῃ καὶ πρὸ τούτου ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ διαπλάσει τῇ τοῦ Δεσπότου εὐδοκίᾳ, ἀκριβῆ λοιπὸν καὶ τῆς ἑνώσεως.5 In this [choosing the good and obedience to God’s will, HL] he received the cooperative help of God the Word proportionate to his own native will and so remained thereafter unaffected by any change to the worse. On the one hand this was the set of his own mind, but it was also a matter of this purpose of his being preserved by the cooperative help of God the Word … Then in the end after his resurrection and assumption into heaven, he showed himself worthy of the union even on the basis of his own will, though he had received the union even before this by the good pleasure of his Maker at the time of his very creation.6

Theodore characteristically closes such passages with a statement anchoring his assertions of distinction within the primacy of the union. As he says in both of the above quotations, Christ received this union “right  Or, indeed, heretical. Theodore’s condemnation at the Fifth Ecumenical Council was due, in large part, to his language of distinction regarding the two natures of Christ which put him at odds with the conciliar, and mainly Cyrillian, marks of orthodoxy. The problem for his adversaries ran right down to the fact that Theodore wanted to speak of Christ’s humanity in terms of a concrete subjectivity at all. 5  PG 66, col. 977. 6  Swete, Minor Epistles of St Paul. 4

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from the start at the moment of his formation in the womb” and “at the time of his very creation,” respectively. According to Theodore, Christ’s humanity, in the complete union with the Word given to him at the beginning of his being, nevertheless had to, speaking colloquially, “walk through” the actions of discerning and willing to complete the perfection that was there in potentiality. It is the paradox of a perfect union that is completely given as well as enacted and made perfect. And if we may give a moment to the latter – to the enactment, the “walking through,” we may notice a sense of progress: a dynamic of movement towards perfection. Nevertheless, we must note that Theodore at the same time affirms that this unique Christological movement does not imply imperfection or lack at any one point of the union as compared to a later point. Theodore affirms this when he speaks of the union being given at the time of His very (human and temporal) creation. For Theodore, the union was both complete and potential. It was at once given entirely and acquires its entirety through being enacted in the created realm, the very realm of enactment. 1.  Christology and Exteriority Rowan Greer and Frederick G. McLeod also interpret Theodore’s understanding of the Christological union in terms of perfection and enactment. This is seen especially in their considerations of Theodore’s use of metaphysical terminology.7 Both Greer and McLeod highlight how central the idea of exteriority is to Theodore’s metaphysics. By “exteriority” I mean the idea that an inner reality (hypostasis) is accompanied by, or rather expressed through, an exterior aspect (prosopon). Although Greer and McLeod explore this concern for externality in an attempt to give account for Theodore’s “Assumed Man” Christology, I believe that the principle emerges frequently enough that it can be thought of as a theme which colours his theology as a whole. Greer writes regarding Theodore’s understanding of Christ’s human nature: Theodore apparently believed that manhood involved in its very essence existence as a man. Putting this in more abstract language, Theodore is quite clear that no hupostasis can exist without a prosopon 7  Rowan Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia: Exegete and Theologian (Westminster: Faith Press, 1961); Frederick G. McLeod, “Theodore of Mopsuestia Revisited,” Theological Studies 61 (2000): 447-480, esp. 462-463.



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… In other words, something that is described as a reality (hupostasis) must express that reality outwardly, to us.8

If, for Theodore, Christ’s humanity cannot be an abstract humanity, but must be a concrete, expressed humanity, then, I suggest, the same could be said for the theandric union as well – that is, that the unity and cooperative synergy between Christ’s divine and human natures itself must also be externalized, expressing its reality. Put another way: perfection, in the sense of wholeness, includes enactment. The contribution of Christ’s humanity, then, is by means of his very belonging to this world. Consider that the whole arena of development and perfection is the purview of the created, the realm of the temporal and the physical, the media of change. In the created realm, we quite literally have the “space” to “give free room.” Creation is, in one sense, the space and time to give the space and time for the work of perfection. By means of his will, this affords Christ’s humanity a true contribution of agency within the arena of change. As Theodore understands it, creation is the realm of m ­ utability where both choice and enactment are possible. 2.  This Present Life: Training Ground for The Age to Come Why is the human free will operating in a created realm of choice so important to Theodore? The answer lies in the second point regarding his Christology which I want to highlight here: It lies in the pedagogical aspect of Theodore’s understanding of creation. Theodore, drawing on Pauline terminology, speaks often of “this present life” and its eternal and eschatological counterpart, “the life to come.” In his commentary on Galatians, he writes: Dedit autem nobis praesentem hanc vitam mortalem, ut dixi, ad exercitationem uirtutum et doctrinam illorum quae nos conueniunt facere. Indeed, [God] gave us this present mortal life, as I have said, for the training of virtues and the teaching of what is right for us to do.9  Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 53-54.  Theodore of Mopsuestia, The Commentaries on the Minor Epistles of Paul, trans. Rowan A. Greer, SBL Writings from the Greco-Roman World 26 (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010; Leiden: Brill, 2011), 40-41 (Gal 2:15-16.) Regarding Theodore’s comment about this present mortal life: this section of the commentary introduces the idea of the two katastases: the idea, to which Theodore and a minority of other patristic figures subscribed, that God ordained two phases for humanity/creation; the first of mortality and mutability and the second of immortality and immutability. The impact of the idea of humanity being created mortal from the beginning is its own 8

9

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He writes further: Sic quodam modo illa quae secundum nos sunt composuit, ut et aliqua uideatur inesse contrarietas apud nos, exercitationem rationabilitatis expedire sufficiens. The Lord composed the elements that make us up in such a way that there would plainly be a kind of opposition within us, sufficient for the training of our rationality.10

And, again, he says in the same discussion, Siue hoc quidem fiebat, quod secundum praesentem hanc vitam fieri in nobis exercitatio bonitatis erat futura. What happens to us in this life was to be a training [Swete’s paraphrase reads “practice-ground,” HL] for the good in the age to come.11

As we can see, for Theodore the project of the training of human rationality is conducted in a medium of space and time – and we must affirm that it is not disembodied – it is, in fact, most deeply embodied. This is because the very same principle of externality applies here as it does for Theodore’s theory of the Christological union. For Theodore, the training of rationality or the “choice of contraries” is not completed at the intention of choice but is enacted in concrete actions – choice and action are different parts of one and the same capacity of the will.12 In other words, the training ground is a “hands-on” endeavour. Though one could conceivably imagine that this training applied to some ephemeral, amorphous choosing mind, we find this option swiftly closed down if we look to Theodore’s understanding of prosopon, as explained by McLeod. McLeod, much like Greer, suggests that Theodore’s use of prosopon refers to an expression of the concrete, external way that an inner nature functions and may be known through its activity.13 I suggest that Theodore’s idea of the pedagogical value of “this present life” arises naturally out of his appreciation for externalization q­ uestion. We will, however, have to leave it unexplored in this article, for the sake of moving on to the exploration I wish to undertake regarding Theodore’s mystagogy. 10  Theodore of Mopsuestia, The Commentaries on the Minor Epistles of Paul, trans. Greer, 42-43. 11  Ibid., 45-47. Note on Swete’s paraphrase found in Greer’s n. 18, on p. 47. 12  See Greer’s discussion of the “choice of contraries” discretio contrariorum in Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 17. 13  “While it can signify the outward appearance of a ‘person’, Theodore understood it in its more specialized sense as being the way that a human being functions according to one’s unique nature and can be known as such from this activity” [emphasis mine]. McLeod, “Two Major Attempts,” 247. Also, McLeod, “Theodore of Mopsuestia



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and enactment. If we accept both Greer’s and McLeod’s theses regarding Theodore’s terminological definitions, then we see how Theodore’s optimistic concept of creation hinges on its role in affording a wholeness to that which is interior. For Theodore, rationality and will are complete in their being embodied. As Rowan Greer says, “[e]ducation in virtue, however, requires a ‘teacher’,”14 and in turning now to Theodore’s mystagogical text we will see how both the mystagogue and creation itself, are the teachers who guide the baptized in the sacramental life. I will highlight in this final section how the theme of externality that we have explored in T ­ heodore’s Christology and his pedagogical view of creation are mirrored in his mystagogical catechesis and expressed through his emphasis upon the physicality of the sacraments which serves the instruction of neophytes, bringing them towards the salvific union with Christ. III.  Theodore’s Mystagogical Catechesis: Bread and Body We find in Theodore’s mystagogical text, amongst his systematic treatment of the ritual phases of initiation, rich explorations of the function and meaning of the materiality of the sacraments. There is an analogy between the humanity of Christ and the physicality aspect of the sacraments (and by implication the entirety of the created cosmos): just as Christ’s created human nature contributes to the hypostatic union and the work of salvation its own measure of will and enactment, so the sensible and tangible aspects of the sacraments contribute their own differentiated particularities in the bestowal of grace and the mystical education that occur in the sacraments. The participant’s embodied encounter with the sacraments, by means of the senses, is the access point to the mystical instrumentality of creation. Though there are multiple instances in Theodore’s mystagogical exegesis where he highlights and celebrates the tangibility of the sacraments, especially, for instance, when he speaks about oil as having a “durable effect,” or about the communicative and effectual aspect of the ­baptizand’s

­ evisited,” 453: “Theodore considered every concrete existing nature to be real and able R to function in its own right.” 14  Theodore of Mopsuestia, The Commentaries on the Minor Epistles of Paul, trans. Greer, xxii.

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bodily posture,15 we will consider one sample of text which, I think, serves as a consummate example: Theodore’s discussion of the Eucharistic bread. ̈ ‫ܡܛܠ ܓܝܪ ܕܒܠܚ�ܡܐ ܘܒ�ܡܐܟܘܠܬܐ ܡܟܬܪܝܢܢ ܒܗܠܝܢ‬ ‫ܚܝܐ‬ ̈ ‫ܕܚܝܐ ܕܡܢ ܫܡܝܐ ܢܚܬ ܘܟܕ ܗܕܐ‬ ‫ܠܢܦܫܗ ܫܡܗ ܠܚ�ܡܐ‬ ݀ ̈ ‫ܐܡܪ ܕܫܪܝܪܐܝܬ ܠܚ�ܡܐ ܕܚܝܐ ܐܢܐ ܐܝܬܝ ܗܘ ܕ�ܠܐܝܠܝܢ‬ ‫ܕܡܗܝܡܢܝܢ ܒܝ �ܠܐ ܡܝܘܬܘܬܐ ܝܗܒ ܐܢܐ ܒܝܕ ܗܢܐ‬ ‫ܕܡܬܚܙܐ ܕܒܬܪܗ ܢܚܬܬ ܘܠܗ ܝܗܒܬ �ܠܐ ܡܝܘܬܘܬܐ܆‬ ‫ ܘܟܕ ܡܫܟܚ ܗܘܐ ܠ�ܡܐܡܪ‬.‫ܘܒܐܝܕܗ �ܠܐܝܠܝܢ ܕܡܗܝܡܢܝܢ ܒܝ‬ ݁ ̈ ‫ܕܝܗܒ ܐܢܐ‬ ‫ ܐܡܪ‬.‫ܚܝܐ܆ ܗܕܐ ܫܒܩ ܕܢܐܡܪ‬ ‫ܕܐܢܐ ܐܢܐ‬ ̈ ‫ ܡܛܠ ܓܝܪ ܕ�ܠܐ ܡܝܘܬܘܬܐ‬.‫ܕܚܝܐ‬ ‫ܕܝܢ ܕܐܢܐ ܐܢܐ ܠܚ�ܡܐ‬ ̈ ̈ ݁ ‫ܒܛܘܦܣܐ ܕܐܪܙܐ‬ ‫ܕܫܘܘܕܝܗ ܗܪܟܐ ܐܬܝܗܒ ܠܢ‬ ‫ܕܡܣܬܟܝܐ‬ ‫ܒܝܕ ܠܚ�ܡܐ ܘܟܣܐ ܥܬܝܕܝܢܢ ܠܡܣܒ܆ ܐܠܨܐܝܬ ܠܗ ܘܠܦܓܪܗ‬ ‫ܫܡܗ ܠܚ�ܡܐ ܐܝܟ ܕܐܦ ܡܢܗ ܕܛܘܦܣܐ ܢܬܟܚܕ ܕܠܗܢܐ‬ ̈ ‫ܕܡܬܝܗܒܢ܆ ܢܦܫܗ‬ ‫ ܕܡܛܠ ܕܢܘܕܥܥ ܗܠܝܢ‬.‫ܫܘܡܗܐ ܐܬܚܝܢ‬ ‫ ܨܒܐ ܕܝܢ ܕܡܢ ܗܠܝܢ ܕܗܪܟܐ ܢܥܒܕܢ ܕܐܦ‬.‫ܩܪܐ ܠܚ�ܡܐ‬ ̈ ̈ .‫ܛܒܬܐ ܗܠܝܢ ܕܪܡܢ ܡܢ ܡܠܬܐ ܕ�ܠܐ ܦܘܠܓܝ ܫܩܠܝܢܢ‬

Because we sustain ourselves in this life with bread and food He called himself the bread of life that came down from heaven, as if he were saying: I am truly the bread of life and give immortality to those who believe in Me through this visible (body). While he might have said: “It is I who give life,” He did not say it, but said “I am the bread of life,” because as we would be receiving the promise given us here of the immortality, which we expect in sacramental symbols, through bread and cup, we had to honour also the symbol which became worthy of this appellation. He called himself bread as an allusion to the things that were to be given, as He wished to convince us, from the things belonging to this world, that we shall receive also without doubt the benefits that are high above words.16

There are three things in the above text to which I would like to draw our attention. First, the tangibility of the sacraments and the embodied relationship of a participant with the elements are crucial. Theodore repeatedly comments upon the “fittingness” or the “suitability”

15  For Theodore’s discussions regarding the meaning communicated through the posture of a catechumen at enrolment, see Commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Lord’s Prayer and on the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, ed. and trans. Alphonse Mingana, Woodbrooke Studies 6 (Cambridge: Heffer and Sons, 1933; repr. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2009), 31-32, and regarding the posture of one receiving the Eucharist see ibid., 112. For Theodore’s discussion on the “durable effect” of oil and its signifying the persistence of the Holy Spirit with the anointed, see ibid., 68. This edition will be referred to as: WS 6. 16  WS 6, Syriac: 211-212, ET: 76. English translations given are Mingana’s.



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[‫ ܠܚ�ܡܐܝܬ‬and ‫ ]ܥܗܢ‬of the elements of the sacraments.17 He calls them fitting because of humanity’s intimate, embodied and existential need of the elements of the sacraments. Theodore appeals to our fundamental familiarity with our biological dependence on bread (food) for life: “Because we sustain ourselves in this life with bread and food,” as Theodore says. What the elements are to us even before their epicletic transformation is informative and pedagogic. As Theodore claims, God wished to convince us by “things belonging to this world” ‫ܕܡܢ ܗܠܝܢ‬ ‫( ܕܗܪܟܐ‬literally, “from these [things] here and now”).18 Theodore presents humanity’s knowledge of truth and salvation as mediated and imparted through realities of corporeal, mortal life. Secondly, we find a subtle acknowledgement that Christ’s visible humanity also plays a significant role in the mediating of salvation to humanity. We see this when he paraphrases Christ’s words as, “I am truly the bread of life and give immortality to those who believe in Me through this visible (body)” (“by this which is seen,” ‫ܒܝܕ ܗܢܐ‬ ‫)ܕܡܬܚܙܐ‬. Visibility and tangibility are clearly central for Theodore. If we turn to his commentary on Colossians, and the designation of Christ as the “image of the invisible God,” we find again an insistence upon, and appreciation for, sensibility and particularity – in this case it is the visibility of Christ as image. Theodore says, “every image, as long as it is seen, manifests what is not seen.”19 An “image” is effective precisely because and in the fact that it engages with the senses.

17  “(Our Lord) chose, therefore, very fittingly bread as food and the cup … as drink.” “Very fittingly,” ‫ܠܚ�ܡܐܝܬ‬, WS 6, Syriac: 212, ET: 77. Theodore also says of the elements of water, bread and wine, that they “eminently fit this life,” ‫ܝܬܝܪܐܝܬ ܥܗܢܝܢ‬ ̈ ‫ ܠܗܠܝܢ‬WS 6, Syriac: 209, ET: 74. ‫ܚܝܐ‬ 18  See J. Payne Smith’s A Compendious Syriac Dictionary entry for ‫ ܗܪܟܐ‬which includes the explanation “… like our here below, is often used to express in this world, in this life …” A Compendious Syriac Dictionary, Ancient Language Resources (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 106. 19  McLeod, “Two Major Attempts,” 250. See also Theodore of Mopsuestia, The Commentaries on the Minor Epistles of Paul, trans. Greer, 372: quoniam omnis imago, dum ipsa uidetur, illud ostendit quod non uidetur. We also find, earlier in the mystagogical text, Theodore highlighting the concrete accomplishing of salvation that Christ does by means of His body: “Indeed, He (our Lord) gave us the bread and the cup because it is with food and drink that we maintain ourselves in this world, and He called the bread ‘body’ and the cup ‘blood’, because, as it was His Passion that affected His body which it tormented and from which it caused blood to flow, He wished to reveal, by means of these two objects through which His Passion was accomplished, and also in the symbol of food and drink, the immortal life, in which we expect to participate when we perform this Sacrament.” WS 6, ET: 74.

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Thirdly, when Theodore speaks of the promise of immortality being received “here” (again the word ‫ܗܪܟܐ‬, “here and now”), let us recall the above discussion of the created world as the training ground for the life to come. The sacraments, Theodore says earlier in his mystagogy, “eminently fit this life.”20 Their “fittingness” is not merely by virtue of their sensibility alone, such that they “fit” with the communicants’ corporeal state. The elements are “fitting” for their pedagogical function, their role in the training for the life to come, as well. The “promise” borne in the sacraments is their declaration of the next life, union with Christ and immortality. It is the “present age” intersected by “the age to come.” Both the sacrament itself and the pedagogic interaction that a communicant receives through their embodied engagement with the elements play a contributive role in the transition between these two “ages,” or katastases.21 In this same discussion of God teaching humanity by the things belonging to this world, and the meaning of the Eucharistic bread, Theodore continues with the following: ̈ ‫ܡܛܠ ܓܝܪ ܕܠܡܟܬܪܘ ܒܗܠܝܢ‬ ]‫ܚܝܐ ܒ�ܡܐܟܘܠܬܐ [�ܡܐܟܘܠܬܐ‬ ‫ܕܠܚ�ܡܐ ܢܣܒܝܢܢ܆ ܟܕ ܗܐ ܠܚ�ܡܐ ܒܟܝܢܗ ܘ�ܠܐ ܚܕܐ ܡܢ ܗܠܝܢ‬ ̈ ‫ܚܝܝܢ܆ ܡܛܠ ܕܐܠܗܐ‬ ‫ܩܢܐ ܒܪܡ ܕܝܢ ܡܬܡܨܐ ܕܢܠܒܘܟ ܒܢ‬ ̈ ‫ܒܦܘܩܕܢܘܗܝ ܝܗܒ ܠܗ ܚܝ�ܠܐ ܕܐܝܟ ܗܢܐ܆ ܐܠܨܐܝܬ ܡܦܝܣ‬ ‫ܠܢ ܒܝܕ ܗܢܐ ܕܠܓܡܪ �ܠܐ ܢܬܦܠܓ ܕ�ܠܐ ܡܝܘܬܘܬܐ ܒܝܕ‬ ̈ ‫ܒܚܝܐ ܗܠܝܢ‬ ‫�ܡܐܟܘܠܬܐ ܕܠܚ�ܡܐ ܕܐܪܙܐ ܢܣܒܝܢܢ… ܐܢ ܓܝܪ‬ ‫݁ܣܦܩ ܕܢܠܒܟܢ ܐܝܟ ܦܘܣܩܢܐ ܐܠܗܝܐ ܟܕ ܠܗ ܠܝܬ ܠܗ ܒܟܝܢܐ‬ ]‫ܗܕܐ܆ ܣܓܝ ܝܬܝܪܐܝܬ ܐܡܬܝ ܕ�ܡܐܬܝܬܐ ܕܪܘܚܐ ܕܩܘܕ[ܫܐ‬ .‫ܢܩܒܠ ܢܣܦܩ ܕܢܫܟܚ ܢܕܪܥܢ ܐܝܟ ܕܢܣܒ �ܠܐ ܡܝܘܬܘܬܐ‬

The fact that in order to sustain ourselves in this life we eat bread, and the fact that bread cannot fulfil this function by its nature, but has been enabled to do so by order of God who imparted this power to it, should by necessity convince us not to doubt that we shall receive immortality by eating the sacramental bread … If it is capable of sustaining us in this life by a decree of God, although not possessing this power by nature, how much more will it not be capable, after it has received the descent of the Holy Spirit, of helping us to assume immortality.22

 WS 6, ET: 74: “Indeed, as in this world we take the spiritual food in signs and symbols, it is necessary that the nature of these signs and symbols should fit our present condition in which we take the symbolical food … so also we take our food in bread and in wine mixed with water, as they eminently fit this life and sustain us to live in it.” See n. 17 above. 21  See n. 9 on Theodore’s two katastases model. 22  WS 6, Syriac: 212, ET: 76-77. 20



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Theodore, persisting in this dwelling on the meaning of bread, offers the interesting assertion about bread actually being given its nourishing aspect; that God has “enabled” bread with a capacity that it did not have “naturally” to sustain human biological life. Theodore seems quite confident to say that bread being nourishing does not occur by happenstance – bread is given its very tangible particularity, with regard to its relationship to we who eat it, precisely with the Eucharist in mind. Theodore’s insistence on the intentionality of the created cosmos, and humanity’s embodied engagement with it, “by a decree of God” as he says, shows that he views this pedagogic cosmos as a preliminary grace that is oriented to, and orients humanity to, the sacraments. Thus, we see here quite manifestly the two themes of externality and of a pedagogical cosmos being explored through Theodore’s exegesis of the physical aspects of the eucharist and the human embodied encounter with them. IV. Conclusion I have attempted to establish here that the theme of externality emerges in both Theodore’s Christology and his mystagogical theology; and that through this a concern for the contributive role that created nature plays in salvation, a contributive role occasioned and enacted through tangibility and sensibility, is uniquely emphasized in Theodore’s thought. Through this discussion, I have offered a perspective that highlights a mystagogical optimism concerning creation and the body, one which is highly experiential and which embraces the pedagogical role of sensation. We have seen this reflected in the celebratory and materiality-affirming interpretation that Theodore, in his role as mystagogical catechist, gives of the embodied human encounter with the sacraments of initiation. For Theodore, then, the accessing of Christ’s Body with our bodies, is the entrance into the union that gives immortal life. Near the end of the mystagogy, Theodore gives the following instruction: ‫ܘܒܚܕܘܬܐ ܪܒܬܐ ܘܐܝܟ ܕܡܨܝܢܢ ܒܚܝ�ܠܐ ܡܥܦܩܝܢܢ ܗܢܝܐܝܬ‬ ̈ ‫ܡܝܬܐ ܕܐܦ ܠܫܘܬܦܘܬܐ ܕܩܝܡܬܐ‬ ‫ܕܚܙܝܢܢ ܕܩܡ ܡܢ ܒܝܬ‬ ‫ܡܣܒܪܝܢܢ ܠ�ܡܐܬܐ ܡܛܠ ܕܐܦ ܗܘ ܐܝܟ ܕܡܢ ܩܒܪܐ ܡܕܡ‬ ̈ ‫ܡܝܬܐ ܩܡ ܐܝܟ ܛܘܦܣܐ ܕܐܬܓܡܪ‬ ‫ܡܢ ܦܬܘܪܐ ܩܕܝܫܐ ܡܢ‬ ‫ܩܪܒ ܠܢ ܒܝܕ ܚܙܬܗ ܘܒܫܘܬܦܘܬܐ ܕܠܘܬܗ ܩܝܡܬܐ ܡܣܒܪ‬ ݁ ‫ܠܟܠܢ…ܘܝܗܒ ܢܦܫܗ ܠܟܠܚܕ ܚܕ ܡܢܢ ܕܢܠܒܟܗ ܘܢܢܫܩܗ ܡܢ ܟܠܗ‬ ‫ܚܝܠܢ ܘܚܘܒܐ ܕܠܘܬܗ ܢܚܘܐ ܐܝܟ �ܡܐ ܕܪܓܐ ܠܗ ܠܟܠܚܕ‬ .‫ܚܕ ܡܢܢ‬

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And we joyfully embrace Him with all our power as we see Him risen from the tomb, and we hope also to participate (with Him) in the Resurrection, because He also rose from the tomb of the Holy Communion-table as from the dead, according to the symbol that has been performed; and He draws nigh unto us by his apparition, and announces resurrection to us through our communion with Him … [He] gives Himself to each one of us, in order that we may hold Him and embrace Him with all our might, and make manifest our love to Him, according to the pleasure of each one of us.23

In this present life, “all our power,” of which Theodore speaks, is the interior power of will and the exterior power of embodiment for the tangible and intangible “holding” and “embracing” of the Lord. All of this, he says, leads to a “pleasure” that is both an embodied and supraembodied joy – the joy of embracing the supernatural by means of, and in, the natural. Theodore indeed joins his mystagogical contemporaries (for example, the other fourth-century mystagogues John Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Ambrose of Milan) in the exploration of embodiment and sacrament. His uniqueness presents itself as a matter of degree. I do not argue here that Theodore emphasizes the sensible and others do not. One cannot really help but engage with the “visible sign” of the “invisible grace” if one is embarking upon a mystagogical catechesis. It is, rather, a question of attention. Theodore, in his movement from visible to invisible, as with the humanity of Christ, wants to pause with the tangible and dwell just a moment longer than his contemporaries, to “honour the symbol” which became worthy of the appellation: the Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven.

 WS 6, Syriac: 253, ET: 112.

23

A Multi-Layered Garment of Immortality The Coverings of the Body in Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Baptismal Rite Nathan Witkamp I. Introduction Among the biblical passages most widely debated throughout history is the phrase “God created humankind in his image” (Gen 1:27; NRSV). The perennial question here is what it means that humankind is the imago Dei.1 Not a few fathers – more or less influenced by (Neo-)Platonic thinking – situated the image of God in the soul, especially its highest rational part or nous.2 In its mild form, this view considers the body as the instrument by means of which the soul can grow in virtue.3 But in its more extreme version, this instrumentalist approach fully 1  For the main positions, see for example Gordon Wenham, Genesis 1–15, Word Biblical Commentary 1 (Waco, TX: Thomas Nelson, 1987), 29-32. 2  Christopher John Gousmett, Shall the Body Strive and Not Be Crowned? Unitary and Instrumentalist Anthropological Models as Keys to Interpreting the Structure of Patristic Eschatology (diss. Dunedin, 1993), 143-146; John A. McGuckin, The SCM Press A-Z of Patristic Theology (London: SCM, 2005), 318b (cf. 179); Walter J. Burghardt, The Image of God in Man according to Cyril of Alexandria (Woodstock, MD: Woodstock College Press, 1957; repr. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009), 12-24; Anton Ziegenaus, Das Menschenbild des Theodor von Mopsuestia (diss. Munich, 1963), 61. Origen’s influence in particular is evident here. Other proponents of this view listed by Gousmett, Shall the Body Strive and Not Be Crowned?, 149-150 are Clement of Alexandria, Basil the Great, Ambrose, Augustine, Tertullian, Eusebius of Caesarea, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, Athanasius, and John of Damascus (cf. Frederick G. McLeod, The Roles of Christ’s Humanity in Salvation: Insights from Theodore of Mopsuestia [Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005], 125-126). It is doubtful, however, whether John Chrysostom belongs to this category, see Frederick G. McLeod, “The Antiochene Tradition regarding the Role of the Body within the ‘Image of God’,” in Broken and Whole: Essays on Religion and the Body, ed. Maureen A. Tilley and Susan A. Ross (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1995), 23-53. 3  Gousmett, Shall the Body Strive and Not Be Crowned?, 144-147; Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988; Twentieth-Anniversary Edition with New Introduction, Columbia Classics in Religion, 2008), 160-177.

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denigrates the body (the “cause of sin”) and considers the soul alone to be the real person.4 Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 350-428) stands out as a representative of an alternative approach, according to which the image is not limited to an invisible or rational aspect of the human being, but concerns both the soul and the body.5 Central to Theodore’s interpretation of humankind as imago Dei is the related notion of humanity as the “bond of creation.”6 According to this idea, the whole of creation as a macrocosm is summed up and held together in the human person as a microcosm. By their souls, human beings are related to the invisible creatures (angels), while their bodies connect them to the visible ones. As the bond of creation, humankind is fit to fulfil the responsibility of being God’s image in a twofold way: cultic and revelatory.7 The cultic role implies that all other creatures have access to God through human beings. More specifically, this means that both visible and invisible creatures honour God by providing for humanity’s material needs, while the invisible ones additionally minister on behalf of human salvation. The opposite movement is seen in humankind’s revelatory role: God reveals himself to his creation through humanity.8 So, basically, humankind mediates between God and creation as a two-way channel, by which creation worships 4  Gousmett, Shall the Body Strive and Not Be Crowned?, 150-155. That this was not necessarily the case is amply illustrated by Cyril of Jerusalem’s viewpoint (Catecheses Baptismales 4.18-26). Although Cyril does not seem to include the body in the imago Dei, his view of the body is positive, and he strongly denies that the body is the source of sin. Cf. the contribution by Hans van Loon in this volume. 5  McLeod, “Role of the Body,” 34-36; idem, Christ’s Humanity, 125-126; idem, Theodore of Mopsuestia, The Early Church Fathers (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2009), 29-33; Nabil El-Khoury, “Der Mensch als Gleichnis Gottes: Eine Untersuchung zur Anthropologie des Theodor von Mopsuestia,” Oriens Christianus 74 (1990): 63-65; Simon Gerber, Theodor von Mopsuestia und das Nicänum: Studien zu den katechetischen Homilien, VCS 51 (Leiden, Boston, MA and Cologne: Brill, 2000), 174; Richard A. Norris, Manhood and Christ: A Study in the Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), 140-144, 149-153. 6  E.g. Ad Ephesios 1:10; Theodore of Mopsuestia, The Commentaries on the Minor Epistles of Paul, trans. Rowan A. Greer, SBL Writings from the Greco-Roman World 26 (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010), 194, 196; ET: McLeod, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 121-122. See further McLeod, “Role of the Body,” 34-36; idem, Christ’s Humanity, 104-108, 128; idem, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 27-29; El-Khoury, “Der Mensch als Gleichnis Gottes,” 64; Norris, Manhood and Christ, 143-145. 7  McLeod, “Role of the Body,” 44 (cf. idem, Christ’s Humanity, 135). McLeod, Christ’s Humanity, 128 concludes the following in relation to Theodore’s connection of the notions of “image” and “bond”: “Theodore, therefore, combines the roles of ‘image’ and ‘bond’ of the universe together, not in the sense that they are identical but that they overlap and elide functionally within one being” (cf. Norris, Manhood and Christ, 143). 8  McLeod, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 30; idem, Christ’s Humanity, 105-106, 128.



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God (the cultic image) and is brought to know God (the revelatory image).These cultic and revelatory roles emphasize the importance of the visibility of the imago Dei,9 which Theodore likens to a statue of a king.10 It is clear that Theodore’s approach results in a (chiefly) functional understanding of the imago Dei.11 And because of the interrelatedness of humankind (microcosm) and creation (macrocosm), both the distortion and the restoration of the image (in Christ) inevitably concern the whole of creation.12 Therefore, as McLeod puts it, “the body not only is an essential part of what constitutes the human person as God’s image but actually plays a necessary and central role within God’s plan for salvation.”13 Since, however, Theodore’s teaching on the themes of humanity as image and bond is only found (explicitly) in his commentaries on Galatians, Colossians, and Genesis – all apparently written at the beginning of the fifth century – McLeod suggests that he developed his thought on this in his later years.14 But Theodore’s appreciation of the human body did not start with these later commentaries. This is amply shown by his (somewhat) earlier Catechetical Homilies15 9  Theodore emphasizes that “an image” is by definition a visible entity. See Ad Colossenses 1:15a; Theodore of Mopsuestia, The Commentaries on the Minor Epistles of Paul, trans. Greer, 372; ET: McLeod, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 123-124. Cf. McLeod, Christ’s Humanity, 126. 10  McLeod, “Role of the Body,” 35, 44. 11  McLeod, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 30; Norris, Manhood and Christ, 144-145. 12  Norris, Manhood and Christ, 144; McLeod, Christ’s Humanity, 106-115; idem, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 30. 13  McLeod, “Role of the Body,” 44. Cf. the contribution by Ilaria Ramelli in this volume. 14  McLeod, Christ’s Humanity, 102, 142. Cf. Richard Cumming, “The Theological Anthropology of Theodore of Mopsuestia,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 56 (2012) 171190, at 183. Nevertheless, some caution is in order here. Rowan Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia: Exegete and Theologian (Westminster: Faith Press, 1961), 73, remarks on Theodore’s doctrine of the Two Ages that it “finds its most consistent expression in Theodore’s comments on the texts from which the doctrine is taken in the first place.” One wonders whether the same principle could underlie Theodore’s view of the imago Dei. Further caution is needed since a considerable number of Theodore’s writing have been lost and we definitely do not have a full picture of his theological agenda (cf. Günter Koch, Die Heilsverwirklichung bei Theodor von Mopsuestia, Münchener Theologische Studien 31 [Munich: Hueber, 1965], 70-71). 15  The Homiliae catecheticae (Liber ad baptizandos). The text is extant only in one fourteenth-century Syriac manuscript (Birmingham, Selly Oak Colleges’ Library, Mingana Syr. 561, fols. 81r to 116r), which was discovered and published by Alphonse Mingana, together with an English translation: Commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia on the on the Nicene Creed, ed. and trans. Alphonse Mingana, Woodbrooke Studies 5 (Cambridge: Heffer and Sons, 1932) and Commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Lord’s Prayer and on the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, ed. and trans. Alphonse Mingana, Woodbrooke Studies 6 (Cambridge: Heffer and Sons, 1933). A French translation together with a facsimile of the Syriac manuscript can be found in Les homélies catéchétiques de Théodore de Mopsueste, ed. Raymond Tonneau and Robert Devreesse, Studi e Testi 145 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1949). A German edition,

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(­mid-380s to 392).16 Not only does Theodore already display his view there that the whole human person consists of soul and body, but he also shows much interest in (the salvation of) the body, especially with reference to the full-body anointing and baptism, and the post-baptismal tunica alba. Through these rituals, the baptizand receives three coverings: of oil, water, and linen. The present study aims to clarify the prominent place of the body in Theodore’s baptismal mystagogy,17 as portrayed in the Catechetical Homilies 12–14, also known as Baptismal Homilies.18 In order to elucidate the uniqueness of Theodore’s approach, we will compare his mystagogy to that of his lifelong friend John Chrysostom, whose rite is not only very similar to that of Theodore but also

­ ithout the Syriac text, can be found in Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien, w ed. and trans. Peter Bruns (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1995). In this paper I have used Mingana’s Syriac text and English translation (abbreviated: WS 5 and WS 6). Tonneau and Devreesse divided the text into sections. Although this system is helpful (and I have also used it in the present paper), it is not very precise. For practical reasons, therefore, the reference to Mingana’s edition (additionally) provides both page and line number (separated by a colon, for example 63:21). 16  For a discussion of date and provenance of the homilies, see Nathan Witkamp, Tradition and Innovation: Baptismal Rite and Mystagogy in Theodore of Mopsuestia and Narsai of Nisibis, VCS 149 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2018), 10-18. The dating and chronology of Theodore’s writings is far from certain (McLeod, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 72-73; cf. Ziegenaus, Menschenbild, 67; Cumming, “Theological Anthropology,” 190). For the present purpose, I have followed the general conjecture that the commentary on the Psalms was Theodore’s first major work and the Catechetical Homilies preceded the New Testament commentaries. 17  The term “mystagogy” is used here in the strict sense of the word, that is, the unfolding of the mysteries or sacraments. Not infrequently, only the post-baptismal explanation of the mysteries is characterized as “mystagogy.” This would disqualify Theodore’s Baptismal Homilies from being labelled “mystagogical,” since they were delivered preceding the baptismal rite. See, however, Witkamp, Tradition and Innovation, 6-7, n. 31 where it is argued that a limitation of the term “mystagogy” to the post-baptismal unfolding of the meaning of the mysteries is arbitrary and unhelpful. Cf. Nathan Witkamp, “Review of Paul van Geest, ed., Seeing through the Eyes of Faith: New Approaches to the Mystagogy of the Church Fathers,” Augustiniana 67 (2017): 394-397. 18  In my monograph Tradition and Innovation (see esp. 78, 134-135, 147-154) I indicated the importance of the different bodily postures taken by the baptismal candidate during the rite. In a separate paper, I further explored the orans position of the baptizands and showed that they were fully bodily engaged in the ceremony and, what is more, that the bodily posture they took sustains and fortifies the unseen spiritual reality of the ritual. See Nathan Witkamp, ‘“In the Posture of One Who Prays’: The Orans Position in Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Baptismal Rite,” in Prayer and the Transformation of the Self in Early Christian Mystagogy, ed. Hans van Loon, Giselle de Nie, Michiel Op de Coul, and Peter van Egmond, LAHR 18; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 5 (Louvain: Peeters, 2018), 191-208.



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­geographically close.19 Yet, in order to give due weight to Theodore’s concern for the body, it is of prime importance first to sharpen our focus by clarifying the underlying problem which Theodore deals with in his mystagogy, and the related terminology. II.  The Problem of Mortality In his Catechetical Homilies, Theodore maintains that body and soul essentially belong together. Human nature consists of body and soul20 and the soul only leaves the body “against its will”21 (at death). He further espouses the view that the locus of sin is not to be found only in the body – as is the case in Neo-Platonism – but in the soul as well, especially in the human free will.22 Nevertheless, he maintains that­ “[t]he soul … is much higher than the body,” since it is immortal, while “the body is mortal and acquires its life from the soul and dies and perishes whenever the soul happens to leave it.”23 Theodore is ambiguous, though, about whether the human being is mortal by creation or as a consequence of the fall. Concerning the disrobing that directly precedes the full-body anointing, he remarks that Adam became mortal (‫ܡܝܘܬܐ‬ ‫ )ܗܘܐ‬as a result of his disobedience.24 19  The comparison is facilitated by the fact that Chrysostom’s Baptismal Instructions are of the same genre as Theodore’s Baptismal Homilies; both concern (pre-baptismal) catechesis to baptismal candidates. The only marked difference between the two rites is that Chrysostom’s lacks a post-baptismal signing. 20  Concerning the incarnation, Theodore emphasizes that Christ had become “a complete man” and therefore “assumed not only the body but the whole man who is composed of a body and of an immortal and rational soul” (Hom. cat. 5.19; WS 5, 171:26–172:3; ET: 60:27-30). Cf. the exploration of this issue in the contribution by Hans van Loon in this volume. 21  Hom. cat. 5.9; WS 5, 165:17-18; ET: 55:27. As Norris puts it, “Theodore shares none of that attitude which would see the body as the soul’s ‘prison’” (Manhood and Christ, 151). 22  Hom. cat. 5.11-13; WS 5, 166:22–168:19; ET: 56:25–58:2. Theodore argues that Adam’s sin originated in his soul and that if the body alone had been responsible for sin, Christ would not have needed a human soul (Norris, Manhood and Christ, 154-159; 160172; cf. Peter Bruns, Den Menschen mit dem Himmel verbinden: Eine Studie zu den Katechetischen Homilien des Theodor von Mopsuestia, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 549; Subsidia 89 [Louvain: Peeters, 1995], 160). 23  Hom. cat. 5.15; WS 5, 169:24-26; ET: 59:1-4 (my italics). 24  Hom. cat. 14.8; WS 6, 186:2; ET: 54:6. Cf. Ad Romanos 8:19 and Ad Galatas 1:4-5. Theodore also mentions that Adam “truly possessed” the good things that God bestowed upon him before the fall (Hom. cat. 12.8; WS 6, 148:21; ET: 21:14). Cf. Bruns, Himmel, 162, n. 206.

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This suggests an original immortality and harmonizes with the common division of salvation history into three stages: a primeval state of innocence, the fallen state, and the state of restoration. The dominant feature in Theodore’s theology, however, is his theory of the Two Ages (katastases),25 according to which salvation history is divided into an original imperfect age characterized by mortality, corruptibility, passibility, and mutability, and a final perfect age of immortality, incorruptibility, impassibility, and immutability. This idea of the Two Ages,26 and humankind’s original mortality, becomes especially clear in a passage in which Theodore elaborates on the meaning of the Trinitarian baptismal formula. He explains to the catechumens that the bishop shows by these words that all the cause of the good things is in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, an eternal nature and cause of everything, by which we were created at the beginning, and expect now to be renewed. It is not possible that one should be the cause of our first creation and another the cause of this second, which is higher than the first. It is indeed known that the One who at the beginning willed and made us mortal, is the One who is now pleased to make us immortal, and the One who at the beginning made us corruptible is the One who now makes us incorruptible. He willed at the beginning and made us passible and changeable, and at the end He will make us impassible and unchangeable. He is the Lord, and has power to accomplish both. He rightly and justly leads us from low to high things, so that by this transference from small to great things we may perceptibly feel that our Maker and the cause of all our good things, who at the beginning made us as He wished and willed, and who at the end brought us to perfection, did do so in order to teach us to consider Him as the cause also of our first state,27 and thus to think that since we were in need to be transferred to perfection, we could not have existed at the beginning if He had not brought us into existence.28 25  Norris, Manhood and Christ, 160-172; Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 72-85; Koch, Heilsverwirklichung, 66-75; Ziegenaus, Menschenbild, 57-123; McLeod, Christ’s Humanity, 60-62. 26  Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 72 seems right to assert that it is “somewhat misleading” to consider this doctrine a specific invention of Theodore’s. The notion of Two Ages is already found in the Bible, Jewish apocalypticism, and Theophilus of Antioch (cf. McLeod, Christ’s Humanity, 60-61). 27 ̈  Lit. “these first things” (‫ܩܕܡܝܬܐ‬ ‫)ܗܠܝܢ‬. 28  Theodore of Mopsuestia, Hom. cat. 14.14; WS 6, 3,191:26–192:18; ET: 3,59:5-26. Although the notion of the Two Ages is not dominant in the Catechetical Homilies, this does not necessarily imply that the view was more recent. It is worth noting that the



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The tension between Theodore’s seemingly opposing views concerning the cause of humanity’s mortality – which is not limited to the Catechetical Homilies29 – has elicited several explanations.30 Devreesse proposed that the passages which suggest an original mortality are fabrications used to discredit Theodore in the later Nestorian controversy that resulted in his condemnation at the Council of Constantinople in 553.31 Others have suggested that Theodore’s thought developed and that his belief in Two Ages and an original mortality is not attested in his earlier writings.32 But since these proposals have turned out to be unconvincing,33 the most satisfying approach seems to be to accept that both conceptions of mortality constitute Theodore’s thinking at the same time.34 This view passage cited is among the clearest expressions of Theodore’s Two Ages theory (cf. Norris, Manhood and Christ, 176). Theodore presents it as a developed idea in a context which does not really ask for it. 29  Koch, Heilsverwirklichung, 60-75, esp. 67; Norris, Manhood and Christ, 173-189; Ziegenaus, Menschenbild, 65-79. 30  Ziegenaus, Menschenbild, 65-80 presents an overview of the main positions and adds his own. 31  Robert Devreesse, Essai sur Théodore de Mopsueste, Studi e Testi 141 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1948), esp. 98-103. 32  Cumming, “Theological Antropology,” 186, 190; Gerber, Theodor von Mopsuestia und das Nicänum, 179; Wilhelm De Vries, “Der ‘Nestorianismus’ Theodors von Mopsuestia in seiner Sakramentenlehre,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 7 (1941): 91-148, esp. 100. 33  For an evaluation of Devreesse, see Julius Gross, “Theodor von Mopsuestia, ein Gegner der Erbsündenlehre,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 65 (1953-54): 1-15; see also De Vries, “Nestorianismus,” 100 and Arthur Vööbus, “Regarding the Theological Anthropology of Theodore of Mopsuestia,” Church History 33 (1964): 115-124. The bottom line is that the notion of an original mortality is also present in those writings and passages which Devreesse accepts as authentic (note, however, that Vööbus’ approach is one-sided; although he rightly points to the importance of the Two Ages theory in Theodore’s thought, he ignores the passages which seem to indicate otherwise and so avoids the real problem; cf. Bruns, Himmel, 159, n. 194). The hypothesis of a development is falsified by the phenomenon that the notion of Two Ages and man as a mortal creation is not absent from the “earlier stage” represented by the Catechetical Homilies (as indicated above). Also problematic for this view is that both conceptions (created mortal/immortal) occur next to each other in later writings (compare Ad Galatas 1:4-5 with Ad Galatas 2:15; cf. Norris, Manhood and Christ, 174; Koch, Heilsverwirklichung, 67-68; Bruns, Himmel, 161, n. 204). Nor must it be forgotten that we have only (selective) fragments of those later writings in which Theodore adhered to a “mortality only” position (cf. Koch, Heilsverwirklichung, 71). 34  Norris, Manhood and Christ, 173-189; Koch, Heilsverwirklichung, 71-75; Ziegenaus, Menschenbild, 71-73; George Kalantzis, “Creatio ex Terrae: Immortality and the Fall in Theodore, Chrysostom, and Theodoret,” Studia Patristica 67 (2013): 403-413; Ulrich Wickert, Studien zu den Pauluskommentaren Theodors von Mopsuestia als Beitrag zum Verständnis der antiochenischen Theologie, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Neutestament­ liche Wissenschaft 27 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1962), 101-120; cf. McLeod, Christ’s Humanity, 61; Bruns, Himmel, 158-167.

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has been developed most thoroughly by R. A. Norris. As his starting point, he takes Theodore’s remark in the later writing directed “Against Those Who Say that People Fall by Nature, and Not by Sentence” (c. 418).35 In this text, of which only fragments have been preserved, Theodore maintains that God foreknew Adam’s sin (and death) and that it is “insanity to believe that (God) first made him immortal in six hours …, but after he had sinned, made him mortal.” Norris summarizes Theodore’s viewpoint thus: Since, however, death was the appropriate punishment of man’s sins, and God knew beforehand that Adam would yield to Satan’s wiles, God created man mortal from the start, in order that after man’s defection the due penalty – death – might properly and consistently supervene. Thus death turns out to be both a punishment for sin, and a part of the constitution of human nature.36

In this way, Theodore is understood to maintain at the same time that Adam “became mortal” and that God made him mortal “from the beginning.”37 As Norris puts it, “Mortality is chronologically prior to sin; but sin is logically prior to mortality.”38 This not only holds for Adam himself, but for his posterity as well. Humans’ present condition is determined by the mutual interaction between their wilful disobedience and their mortal nature. In Theodore’s own words: And from the above sin death entered, and this death weakened (human) nature and generated in it a great inclination towards sin. Both of these grew side by side, while the inexorable death strengthened and multiplied sin, as the condition of mortality by weakening (human nature) caused the perpetration of many sins. Even the commandments which God gave in order to check them tended to mul35  Title according to Photius (πρὸς τοὺς λέγοντας ϕύσει καὶ οὐ γνὼμῃ πταίειν τοὺς ܽ ܳ ‫ܣܝ‬ ܰ ܰ ܰ ‫ܩܒܠ‬ ܰ ‫ܠܘ‬ ܺ ܳ ‫ܕܒ‬ ἀνθρώπους). Ebedjesu has a shorter variant: ‫ܡܐ‬ ‫ܟܝ ܳܢܐ‬ ‫ܐܡܪ‬ ‫ܡܢ ܳܕ‬ ܺ ‫ =( ܚܛܝܬܐ‬πρὸς τοὺς λέγοντας ἐν ϕύσει κεῖσθαι τὴν ἁμαρτίαν). For more details about this as well as the Latin and Greek fragments, see Theodori Episcopi Mopsuesteni in Epistolas B. Pauli Commentarii, ed. Henry B. Swete, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1882), 332-333; ET: Norris, Manhood and Christ, 182. Cf. Kalantzis, “Creatio ex Terrae,” 404. 36  Norris, Manhood and Christ, 182 (cf. 186). Koch, Heilsverwirklichung, 70 mentions that Theodore’s rejection of an original immortal state is related to his understanding of immortality as non posse mori instead of posse non mori. 37  By disconnecting guilt and mortality – a mortal nature can be inherited, but not a disposition of the will – Theodore tries to maintain both the notion of “an inherited alienation from God” and the human person’s responsibility for wilful sins (Norris, Manhood and Christ, 180-181). 38  Norris, Manhood and Christ, 184.



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tiply them, and those who infringed the commandments strengthened the punishment by the frequency of the sins.39

Essentially, Norris maintains, “Theodore transforms this analysis [in the above quote, NW] into an historical form, when he attempts to use it in interpreting the biblical and ecclesiastical tradition of Adam’s fall.”40 Thus, Theodore’s view on the relation between Adam’s mortality and sin seems ultimately rooted in his evaluation of humanity’s present state. Although mortality is not the direct cause of people’s wilful disobedience, it strengthens their inclination to sin41 and is, therefore, a fundamental problem42 to be solved by salvation. III.  Essential Terminology According to Theodore, then, mortality qualifies humankind’s present (fallen) state. Yet, as we have already seen, salvation concerns more than just a transformation from mortality (‫ )ܡܝܘܬܘܬܐ‬to immortality (‫ܡܝܘܬܘܬܐ‬ ‫)�ܠܐ‬. Other important benefits bestowed upon the human person by baptism are incorruptibility (‫ܡܬܚܒܠܢܘܬܐ‬ ‫)�ܠܐ‬, impassibility (‫ܚܫܘܫܘܬܐ‬ ‫)�ܠܐ‬, and immutability (‫ܡܫܬܚܠܦܢܘܬܐ‬ ‫)�ܠܐ‬. To be able to interpret Theodore’s mystagogy fruitfully, it is important first to clarify whether these terms43 refer (primarily) to the body or to the soul. The following passage from the Catechetical Homilies is crucial in this respect and is worth quoting in full (italics mine): This one [i.e. who is born of baptism, NW] has indeed in him and possesses potentially all the faculties of an immortal and incorruptible nature, but is not now in a position to make use of them and put them into a complete and perfect act of incorruptibility, immortality, impassibility and immutability. He who receives through baptism the potential faculty of performing all these acts, will receive the power of performing them in reality at the time when he is no more a natural 39  Theodore of Mopsuestia, Hom. cat. 12.8; WS 6, 149:4-12; ET: 21:25-33. Cf. Hom. cat. 12.19; WS 6, 157:15-21; ET: 28:29-35. Norris, Manhood and Christ, 185 nicely summarizes: “Sin takes root in the mortality which is its punishment, so that deliberate disobedience and natural weakness, as correlative and reciprocal forces, combine to bind man to the visible life of the Present Age.” 40  Norris, Manhood and Christ, 186. 41  Cf. McLeod, Christ’s Humanity, 64. 42  Norris, Manhood and Chris, 164. 43  This concerns the nouns mentioned as well as the related adjectives “immortal” (‫)�ܠܐ ܡܝܘܬܐ‬, “incorruptible” (‫)�ܠܐ ܡܬܚܒܠܢܐ‬, “impassible” (‫)�ܠܐ ܚܫܘܫܐ‬, and “immutable” (‫)�ܠܐ ܡܫܬܚܠܦܢܐ‬.

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but a spiritual man, and when the working of the (Holy) Spirit renders the body incorruptible and the soul immutable, while sustaining and keeping both of them by His power, as the blessed Paul said: “It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” He shows here that incorruption, glory and power will come then to man through the working of the Holy Spirit, which affects both his soul ܿ and body, the one (‫)ܠܗܘ‬ with immortality [i.e. the body, NW] and ܿ the other (‫ )ܠܗܝ‬with immutability [i.e. the soul, NW];44 and that the body which will rise from the dead and which (man) will put on will be a spiritual and not a natural body.45

As this passage clearly indicates, the benefits of immortality and incorruptibility concern the body,46 while immutability qualifies the soul.47 This harmonizes well with Theodore’s general view that at the resurrection the “body will then remain for ever and will not perish, while your soul will be exempt from all inclination, however slight, towards evil.”48 The term “(im)passibility” is less clearly distinguished by Theodore, however. Essentially – and in line with Platonic understanding – the term seems to refer to the bodily passions, which may incite the soul to  The Syriac leaves no doubt that “immortality” refers to the body and “immutabilܿ ܿ ity” to the soul (‫ܠܗܘ‬ (m) corresponds with ‫( ܦܓܪܐ‬m) and ‫ܠܗܝ‬ (f) with ‫( ܢܦܫܐ‬f)). Cf. Bruns’ translation: “… der Leib und Seele umfaßt: Jenem wird Unsterblichkeit zuteil, dieser hingegen die Unwandelbarkeit.” However, Mingana wrongly translated this as: “… soul and body, the former with immortality and the latter with immutability.” I have adapted the translation to accord with the Syriac. 45  Theodore of Mopsuestia, Hom. cat. 14.10; WS 6, 188:7-24; ET: 55:36–56:19. Cf. Hom. cat. 1.4; WS 5, 119:24–120:1; ET: 20:15-20. 46  Cf. Norris, Manhood and Christ, 128. Although these terms have a (Neo-)Platonic connotation (Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 73), it seems that Theodore is primarily dependent on the New Testament here, since he explicitly refers to 1 Cor 15:53-54 as the source for “immortality” (ἀθανασία) and “incorruptibility” (ἀϕθαρσία) (Hom. cat. 5.20; WS 5, 172:15–173:3; ET: 61:12-25). The Syriac underlying “incorruptible” (‫�ܠܐ‬ ‫ )ܡܬܚܒܠܢܐ‬can also mean “immortal,” but since Theodore often uses this term side by side with “immortal” (‫)�ܠܐ ܡܝܘܬܐ‬, it seems likely that the two are not used as mere synonyms. The meaning of ‫ ܡܬܚܒܠܢܐ‬seems broader: “corruptible, destructible, subject to corruption or decay”; J. Payne Smith, ed., A Compendious Syriac Dictionary, Ancient Language Resources (Oxford, 1902; Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 314b. Cf. Eric Phillips, Man and Salvation in Theodore of Mopsuestia (diss. Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, 2006), 279. 47  Cf. Theodore of Mopsuestia, Hom. cat. 14.7; WS 6, 185:18-19; ET: 53:28-30, Hom. cat. 15.2; WS 6, 206:10-13; ET: 71:24-28, Hom. cat. 16.29; WS 6, 255:7-8; ET: 114:20-22. Norris, Manhood and Christ, 163, n. 4 maintains, with a reference to Theodore’s commentary on Gal 2:15-16, that “mutability” may also concern the body. Nevertheless, it seems clear that in the Catechetical Homilies the primary referent is the soul. 48  Hom. cat. 14.27; WS 6, 203:2-3; ET: 68:36–69:2 (italics mine). Cf. Hom. cat. 15.2; WS 6, 206:10-17; ET: 71:24–72:1. 44



A MULTI-LAYERED GARMENT OF IMMORTALITY

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wilful disobedience.49 Yet, there are sins (like pride) that are not reducible to the passions of the body but belong to the soul.50 Therefore, “(im) passibility” may refer either to the body or the soul or both, and in most cases the context does not provide sufficient indications (if any at all) to determine which meaning is correct.51 When we look at the use of the terms throughout Theodore’s Baptismal Homilies, we see that “immortal/ity” is clearly the most common one, regularly paired with “incorruptible/bility”52 or “immutable/bility.”53 Although the terms also occur in the first baptismal homily,54 they are most often used in the third,55 especially concerning the mystagogy of the full-body anointing and baptism. This demonstrates that (1) Theodore is concerned with the whole human person (body and soul), that (2) he is much concerned with (the redemption of) the body, even more so than with (that of) the soul, and, that (3) it is in the mystagogy of the ̈ mysteries (‫ )ܐܪܙܐ‬of the full-body anointing and baptism (including the vesting with the baptismal garment) that this concern finds its most prominent expression. Since we are particularly interested in the place of the body in Theodore’s mystagogy, let us now focus on the terms “immortal/ity” and “incorruptible/bility” when considering these rituals. IV.  The First Covering: The Full-Body Anointing Before the baptismal candidates undergo the full-body anointing, they have already experienced the registration (with baptismal examination), the exorcisms, the penitential prayer, the apotaxis/syntaxis, the anointing of the forehead, and have received the orarium (a linen cloth signifying

49  Hom. cat. 5.12-14; WS 5, 167:17–169:8; ET: 57:11–58:13, Hom. cat. 11.12; WS 6, 134:21–135:5; ET: 10:5-15, Hom. cat. 16.39; WS 6, 262:7-10; ET: 120:24-27. 50  Hom. cat. 5.12; WS 5, 167:17–168:5; ET: 57:11-25. 51  Cf. Norris, Manhood and Christ, 132-134. 52  Hom. cat. 14.7; WS 6, 185:17, 19; ET: 53:26-27, 29-30. 53  Hom. cat. 12.12; WS 6, 151:20; ET: 23:34 and Hom. cat. 14.10; WS 6, 188:21-22; ET: 56:16-17. 54  Twelve occurrences of which five concern Christ’s body. 55  I counted a total of twenty-nine instances with nineteen occurrences more directly relating to the mystagogy of the rituals itself. All instances concern humankind, except for one, which refers to Christ (Hom. cat. 14.25; WS 6, 201:23; ET: 67:33). The terms “impassible” and “immutable” are not used in the second baptismal homily, and the terms “immortal” and “immutable” occur only once (Hom. cat. 13.15; WS 6, 175:23; ET: 45:13).

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freedom) on their heads as a sign of spiritual freedom.56 The latter ceremony functions as a ritual caesura between the anointing of the forehead – the beginning of the mysteries – and the full-body anointing, which directly precedes baptism.57 The ritual proceeds as follows.58 First, the baptizand undresses completely. Then, that person is anointed all over their body with the “oil of anointing” (‫ܕܡܫܝܚܘܬܐ‬ ‫)ܡܫܚܐ‬.59 While others, probably deacons, anoint the candidate, “the one who has been found worthy of the honour of priesthood,”60 utters the sacramental formula, saying: “So-and-so is anointed in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” When the anointing has been completed, the baptizand enters the font. As for the mystagogy of the ritual, the undressing and the anointing are two sides of the same coin and together they symbolize the process of moving from mortality to immortality. When Adam broke God’s commandment, he lost his innocence, “became mortal,” and needed “an outer covering.” After this “sign of mortality” has been removed,61 it is replaced by the “sign of the garment of incorruptibility” (or “immortality”).62  For an elaborate discussion of Theodore of Mopsuestia’s baptismal rite and mystagogy, see Witkamp, Tradition and Innovation. 57  See Witkamp, Tradition and Innovation, 226; cf. Hugh M. Riley, Christian Initiation: A Comparative Study of the Interpretation of the Baptismal Liturgy in the Mystagogical Writings of Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Ambrose of Milan, Studies in Christian Antiquity 17 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1974), 111. 58  Both the ritual and its mystagogy are discussed in Hom. cat. 14.8; WS 6, 185:25– 186:23; ET: 54:3-32. 59  Mingana’s “holy chrism” is clearly a mistranslation, see Witkamp, Tradition and Innovation, 221. 60  Probably not the bishop but a presbyter (Witkamp, Tradition and Innovation, 55-58). 61  The undressing also symbolizes the return to the primordial state without shame. Cf. John Chrysostom, Catechesis ultima ad baptizandos 28 (CPG 4462; PapadopoulosKerameus 3), in Johannes Chrysostomus, Catecheses Baptismales. Taufkatechesen I/II, ed. and trans. Reinier Kaczynski, FC 6 (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1992), vol. 1, 248 (= 2/3,8); ET: St. John Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions, trans. Paul Harkins, ACW 31 (Westminster, MD, Mahwah, NJ, and London: Newman Press, 1963), 170; cf. Jean Daniélou, The Bible and the Liturgy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1956), 39-40. The process of restoring one’s relationship to God, from shame to openness and freedom (παρρησία), is an important thread throughout Theodore’s mystagogy (Witkamp, Tradition and Innovation, 235-241). See especially his mystagogy of the exorcisms (Hom. cat. 12.23-25; WS 6, 160:10–161:8; ET: 31:25–32:19) and the anointing of the forehead (Hom. cat. 13.18; WS 6, 177:17–178:6; ET: 46:28–47:7). 62  Mingana has “covering,” but “garment” is the more common translation of ‫ܠܒܘܫܐ‬. 56



A MULTI-LAYERED GARMENT OF IMMORTALITY

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So, the parallel between the stripping and the anointing lies in the aspect of covering: the garments are replaced by oil. Yet, as Theodore emphasizes, the difference is that the oil covers the body much better than a garment does, since it not only covers the whole body but also the internal parts.63 This complete covering is a sign that “all our nature [i.e. the external and internal limbs, NW] will put on incorruptibility at the time of the resurrection” through “the working of the Holy Spirit.”64 What matters for Theodore, then, is not so much the oil or its effects, but the covering aspect of the anointing as a whole.65 It is noteworthy, furthermore, that the anointing does not symbolize benefits associated ܳ of the garment of incorruptibilwith the ritual itself: it is a sign (‫)ܐܬܐ‬ ity, which one is about to receive through (‫ )ܒܝܕ‬baptism.66 John Chrysostom’s mystagogy is markedly different. He does not associate the full-body anointing with the disrobing (he does not even provide any mystagogy of that ritual), but with the preceding signing of the forehead. Although the seal (σϕραγίς) – the imprint made by the oil – is basically a mark of ownership, its protective aspect is the most 63  Probably referring to the penetrating nature of oil (cf. Riley, Christian Initiation, 204). 64  Theodore does not connect the Holy Spirit directly with the ritual of the anointing of the body (nor with that of the anointing of the forehead). The conferring of the Holy Spirit is related to the water bath. In this way, Theodore’s mystagogy reflects the fourth/fifth-century trend to no longer associate the Holy Spirit with the pre-baptismal anointings, but with baptism proper or the post-baptismal anointing (which is a later development in the Syrian tradition; even the fifth-century Narsai does not have any). Cf. Sebastian Brock, The Holy Spirit in the Syrian Baptismal Tradition, Gorgias Liturgical Studies 4 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2008), Appendix 1: “The Transition to a Postbaptismal Anointing in the Antiochene Rite” (169-170); cf. Witkamp, Tradition and Innovation, 242. 65  In light of this, Riley’s claim (Christian Initiation, 203) that Theodore’s mystagogy “reduces itself fundamentally to the exorcistic-healing motif” (as in the Jerusalem Mystagogical Catecheses) seems highly unlikely to me. In that case, one would have expected the oil to have some exorcistic effect like burning “away the traces of sin” or repelling “the hidden powers of the evil one” (MC 2.3, in Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogicae Catecheses/Mystagogische Katechesen, ed. and trans. Georg Röwekamp, FC  7 [Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1995], 112, 114; ET: Cyril of Jerusalem, trans. Edward Yarnold, The Early Church Fathers [Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2000], 173-174). But Theodore’s mystagogy of the full-body anointing does not reflect any exorcistic/healing aspect whatsoever; there is no mention of “exorcized oil” as in the Mystagogical Catecheses. It seems, therefore, that Riley read Theodore’s mystagogy too much through the lens of the rite of Jerusalem. 66  Although any ritual in the baptismal rite derives its meaning from baptism itself (the ritual centre, see Witkamp, Tradition and Innovation, 72), the impact of the anointing of the body is less direct than, say, the exorcisms, which really seem to effect something in anticipation of the water bath.

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dominant;67 the anointing of the body completes the baptizand’s armour.68 So, both anointings are apotropaic69 and the whole idea of (a covering with) immortality is absent here.70 V.  The Second Covering: Baptism After the covering with oil, the candidate is covered with water in baptism. This ritual constitutes the centre of Theodore’s process of initiation and proceeds as follows. After the full-body anointing, the baptizand directly descends into the font and probably assumes a sitting or kneeling position.71 Then the bishop places his hand on the candidate’s head and immerses him or her three times, while uttering the Trinitarian formula. Having been baptized, the neophyte leaves the font. Theodore lists the spiritual benefits which have been bestowed upon the newly baptized as follows: In this same way the sentence: “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” reveals the giver of the benefits of baptism, which are: second birth, renewal, immortality, incorruptibility, impassibility, immutability, deliverance from death and servitude and all evils, happiness of freedom, and participation in the ineffable good things which we are expecting. The person who is baptised is baptised for these things. The call upon the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is, therefore, used for the purpose of knowing from whom the benefits of baptism are expected.72 67  Catecheses ad illuminandos, hom. 2 (Stavronikita 2), 22-23; Papadopoulos-Kerameus (PK) 3.27. Cf. Witkamp, Tradition and Innovation, 274-275. 68  “… he causes your whole body to be anointed with that olive oil of the spirit, so that all your limbs may be fortified and unconquered by the darts which the adversary aims at you” (Stav. 2.24; FC 6, ed. Kaczynski, 350 (= 3/2,24); ET: Harkins, 52). Cf. PK 3.27. 69  Rather than exorcistic. Cf. Juliette Day, The Baptismal Liturgy of Jerusalem: Fourth- and Fifth-Century Evidence from Palestine, Syria and Egypt, Liturgy, Worship, and Society (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 71-72 and Baby Varghese, Les onctions baptismales dans la tradition syrienne, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 512; Subsidia 82 (Louvain: Peeters, 1989), 86. 70  Cf. Witkamp, Tradition and Innovation, 272-275. Other contemporary sources also lack any relation to immortality and interpret the anointing of the body as either messianic and/or apotropaic/exorcistic. See for instance the Apostolic Constitutions (III.16:2–17:4, VII.22:1-3, and VII.42:1-3) and the rite of Jerusalem (MC 2). The same is true for the more ancient Didascalia (16), and the Acts of Thomas (120-121 [Syriac] and 157-128). The prebaptismal anointing in Ephrem and Aphrahat is messianic, although it is not clear whether it included a full-body anointing. Cf. Witkamp, Tradition and Innovation, 253-288. 71  Witkamp, Tradition and Innovation, 300 and 300-301, n. 37. 72  Hom. cat. 14.17; WS 6, 195:9-17; ET: 62:9-18. Cf. Hom. cat. 14.15; WS 6, 193:8-15; ET: 60:13-21.



A MULTI-LAYERED GARMENT OF IMMORTALITY

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It is clear that Theodore has the salvation of the whole human being in view here: soul and body. It is noteworthy that, besides immortality and incorruptibility, Theodore expressly mentions “deliverance from death.” This indicates that Theodore is very much concerned with solving the problem of humankind’s bodily mortality. A further look at his mystagogy of baptism confirms this. The predominant baptismal image used by Theodore is that of baptism as a birth (and the water as a womb).73 For ordinary water to become “a womb to the sacramental birth,” it first has to be consecrated by the bishop, which involves “the coming of the Holy Spirit (on it).” Referring to Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, Theodore depicts the water as a womb in which the grace of the Spirit fashions the baptizand and changes him or her into a new being. This change involves the transition from “a mortal into an immortal, from a corruptible into an incorruptible, and from a mutable into an immutable, nature.” In order to clarify how the neophyte “possesses” these benefits, Theodore employs the classic concept of potency and actuality and illustrates this with the example of an infant.74 As a newborn is not able to speak, walk etc., but will be able to perform these acts at the appointed time, the new-born Christian potentially possesses “all the faculties of an immortal and incorruptible nature,” but will only “receive the power of performing them in reality” at the resurrection.75 Then, the Holy Spirit will transform the human person from a natural into a spiritual being. Theodore underscores that this change involves both soul and body. After quoting 1 Cor 15:42-44, he explains (italics mine): He [Paul] shows here that incorruption, glory and power will come then to man through the working of the Holy Spirit, which affects ܿ both his soul and body, the one (‫)ܠܗܘ‬ with immortality (i.e. the body, ܿ NW) and the other (‫ )ܠܗܝ‬with immutability (i.e. the soul, NW) and that the body which will rise from the dead and which (man) will put on will be a spiritual and not a natural body.76  Hom. cat. 14.9-10; WS 6, 186:3–189:7; ET: 54:32–56:30. Cf. Witkamp, Tradition and Innovation, 306-308. 74  Cf. Witkamp, Tradition and Innovation, 307. 75  In this way, the Two Ages (see above) are bridged by the mystery of baptism and the baptized hovers, as Theodore himself puts it, “between both the present and the future life” (Ad Galatas 2:15-16; Theodore of Mopsuestia, The Commentaries on the Minor Epistles of Paul, trans. Greer, 46; ET: ibid., 47). Therefore, McLeod, Christ’s Humanity, 60, n. 4 is right when he states that “Theodore actually holds for a quasi-third stage, an intermediate one that the baptized now enjoy as being in some sense immortal during their mortal life” (cf. Koch, Heilsverwirklichung, 66). 76  Hom. cat. 14.10; WS 6, 188:19-24; ET: 56:13-19. For an explanation of the translation, see n. 44 above. 73

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It is of particular interest here that Theodore not only gives due attention to the body and to the soul, but even adds, following 1 Cor 15:44, the importance of the bodily resurrection and the change from a natural to a spiritual body. Another image Theodore uses is that of a potter. Inspired by Jer 18:110, Theodore likens the water of baptism to the water needed to remodel a damaged vessel on the potter’s wheel.77 But going beyond the biblical parallel of Jeremiah, Theodore also portrays the font as a furnace (‫)ܟܘܪܐ‬ in which the refashioned vessels are baked by the fire of the Holy Spirit.78 Only in this way does the transformation become permanent. The benefits of the process are explained to the baptizand thus: “you will be renewed and refashioned in order that you may move to a higher nature, after having cast away your old mortality and fully assumed an immortal and incorruptible nature.” Interestingly, the image of the potter only relates to humanity’s physicality: the change from mortal to immortal (and incorruptible);79 the soul is not in view here. We even get the impression that Theodore chose this very image to facilitate the parallel between the earthen vessel and the human body. Like the image of birth, the image of the vessel being remade and baked shows that something decisive happens to human nature in baptism: it becomes potentially immortal.80 Yet, the actuality of immortality is bestowed upon the human person at the resurrection.81 Only then will the human body become similar to its prototype, Christ’s resurrection body (after Phil 3:20-21): … He confirmed for us our participation in the resurrection from which we expect our body to be similar to His body. Indeed “our conversation is in heaven from whence also we look for our Saviour, 77  Hom. cat. 14.11-13; WS 6, 189:11–191:2; ET: WS 6, 56:34–58:11. In fact, this picture of re-creation is a variant on Theodore’s beloved image of rebirth. 78  Baptism(al font) as “furnace” is a common Syriac symbol. Cf. Sebastian P. Brock, Spirituality in the Syriac Tradition, Mōrān ʼEthʼō Series 2 (2nd ed., Kottayam: St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute, 2005), 63-64. 79  Cf. Hom. cat. 14.14; WS 6, 191:9-13; ET: 58:20-23. 80  Therefore, when Theodore states that baptism communicates immortality “in a symbolic way” (‫ ;ܒܛܘܦܣܐ‬Hom. cat. 14.12; WS 6, 190:18; ET: 58:2), this does not mean that baptism is “just a symbol” (in the modern sense). Baptism mediates a present participation in the coming life of the resurrection. Cf. Riley, Christian Initiation, 326; Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 79; Bruns, Himmel, 334-337, and, more elaborately, Frederick G. McLeod, “The Christological Ramifications of Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Understanding of Baptism and the Eucharist,” JECS 10 (2002): 37-75, esp. 65ff.; cf. ­Witkamp, Tradition and Innovation, 307. 81  See e.g. Hom. cat. 14.7; WS 6, 185:7-24; ET: 53:14–54:2.



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our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body.”82

Hallmark of this “glorious body” is its immortality.83 Theodore anchors people’s participation in this new bodily existence in the Pauline head/ body metaphor with Christ as the head of the mystical body of believers (cf. Col 1:18; 2:19; Eph 1:22).84 Through baptism, which is patterned after Christ’s baptism,85 the human person undergoes a change of headship, from Adam to Christ,86 and is henceforth to share in all benefits of Christ’s resurrected state. Theodore’s interest in bodily mortality becomes visible once more in his discussion of filial adoption, an important concept in his baptismal theology.87 Following Paul in Rom 8:23, Theodore draws a close connection between “the real adoption” at the resurrection and the “redemption of our bodies,” which he interprets as “the assumption of incorruptibility and immortality.”88 By this transformation, the human being will receive a “complete abolition of pains” from the body. The relation between adoption and immortality is also mentioned when Theodore discusses the Trinitarian character of baptism: Indeed anyone who receives this adoption of children will remain immortal, because he moves, through the symbols (of baptism), to that adoption of children which will take place at the resurrection, from which he will be transformed into an immortal and incorruptible nature.89

The above leaves no doubt that Theodore’s mystagogy of the water bath is very concerned with the restoration of the body. And although Theodore himself does not make the connection explicitly, it does not seem inappropriate to apply the clothing metaphor to baptism. As mentioned earlier, the anointing is portrayed as the sign of the garment of immortality which one is about to receive through baptism. To put it differently: a person receives the covering of immortality (at the resurrection) 82  Hom. cat. 14.21; WS 6, 198:20-26; ET: 65:3-8. Cf. Hom. cat. 14.13; WS 6, 191:3-9; ET: 58:12-19. 83  By his resurrection, Christ became “immortal and immutable” (Hom. cat. 12.20; WS 6, 158:15; ET: 29:27). 84  Hom. cat. 14.21-22; WS 6, 198:19–199:5; ET: 64:35–65:14. 85  Hom. cat. 14.22-25; WS 6, 199:5–201:14; ET: 65:14–67:20. 86  Hom. cat. 14.25; WS 6, 201:19-25; ET: 67:27-35. 87  Witkamp, Tradition and Innovation, 311, 314-316. Cf. Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 70-71. 88  Hom. cat. 14.7; WS 6, 185:7-20; ET: 53:14-31. 89  Hom. cat. 14.24; WS 6, 200:21-24; ET: 66:31-35.

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through the channel of baptism. Since Theodore views baptism as a ܳ of the resurrection,90 we may sursymbol (‫ )ܛܘܦܣܐ‬or sign (‫)ܐܬܐ‬ mise, by implication, that baptism may rightly be called a symbol of the garment of immortality. Let us turn now to John Chrysostom. To what extent is his mystagogy of baptism concerned with the body? In one passage he makes an effort to show how numerous the gifts of baptism are and succeeds in listing ten of them, including freedom, citizenship, justice, holiness, and sonship.91 However, no benefit explicitly refers to the body; deliverance from death or mortality are not mentioned or even hinted at. Like Theodore, Chrysostom uses the images of the potter and baptism as a furnace. This time, however, the furnace is not a kiln, but an oven for melting metals. In both cases, the imagery refers to sinful nature in general and to Christian behaviour, not to the body.92 VI.  The Third Covering: The Baptismal Garment After baptism, the neophyte ascends from the font and is vested with the tunica alba, the white93 baptismal garment.94 This “wholly radiant” (‫ܡܦܪܓ‬ ‫ )ܟܠܗ‬robe “denotes the next world which is shining (‫)ܡܒܪܩ‬ and radiant (‫)ܡܦܪܓ‬.” Since he adds, “When you have received this resurrection in reality …,” it is obvious that Theodore has the resurrection in view here. At this point in our discourse, it seems appropriate to devote some words to Theodore’s strong focus on the eschatological resurrection. For the modern Western reader, it may come somewhat as a surprise that Theodore nowhere even hints at a life after death. The concept of “heaven” as the place to which one is supposed to go directly 90  Hom. cat. 14.15; WS 6, 175:19-24; ET: 45:9-13, Hom. cat. 14.6; WS 6, 184:12-13; ET: 52:24. 91  Stav. 3.5-6, in FC 6, ed. Kaczynski, 258 (= 2/4,5); ET: Harkins, 57. Cf. PK 1.18, in FC 6, 168 (= 2/1,11); ET: Harkins, 137, and MF 2.6, in FC 6, 114 (= 1,3); ET: Harkins, 175. 92  PK 1.22-26, in FC 6, ed. Kaczynski, 170, 172, 174 (= 2/1,13-15); ET: Harkins, 138140. 93  Introducing the post-baptismal signing on the forehead, Theodore describes the vestment as “a white garment that shines” (‫( )ܢܚܬܐ ܚܘܪܐ ܕܡܦܪܓ‬Hom. cat. 14.27; WS 6, 202:11; ET: 68:12-13). 94  Hom. cat. 14.26-27; WS 6, 201:26–202:11; ET: 68:1-13. Although it seems obvious that this ritual is the counterpart of the disrobing preceding baptism, it is worth noting that Theodore himself does not make the connection. As stated above, the direct ritual counterpart of the stripping is the full-body anointing.



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after death is not part of Theodore’s conceptual framework. Instead, Theodore represents a particular Syrian view – probably of Jewish origin – which postulates a soul sleep between death and the resurrection.95 This idea discourages any form of speculation concerning the intermediate period between death and the resurrection, since the soul is considered to be unconscious during this period.96 It was Theodore’s contribution to have given due weight to this contention by developing a full-fledged eschatological mystagogy. Since the bodily resurrection is the ultimate point of reference for this approach, Theodore’s attention to the body is both understandable and consistent. This interest in the body becomes visible again in the mystagogy of the baptismal garment under discussion. Theodore informs the baptizands that when they have put on “immortality and incorruptibility” at the resurrection, “such a garment will be wholly unnecessary.” We may infer from this that Theodore considers the vestment (primarily) a symbol of the future benefits mentioned.97 This implies, as with the fullbody anointing, that the symbolism concerns the body and not the soul. Interestingly, although the radiant nature of the garment points to the next world, the garment itself at the same time demonstrates the imperfection of the present (intermediate) age: people are still in need of clothing. Therefore, the garb has a double message and communicates the “already but not yet” of Theodore’s sacramental eschatology. John Chrysostom’s Baptismal Instructions contain several references to the baptismal garment. The ritual vesting with this robe functions as the counterpart of the disrobing ceremony preceding the immersions – symbol of the removal of the garment of sin.98 The vestment mainly signifies the spiritual position of the neophytes; they have put on Christ (Gal 3:27) 95  Robert Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early Syriac Tradition (rev. ed., London and New York: T&T Clark International, 2006), 279. Theodore bases the idea on biblical references like 1 Cor 15:20 and 1 Thess. 4:15-17 (see Hom. cat. 14.5; WS 6, 183:18-22; ET: 51:31–52:2 and Hom. cat. 15.43; WS 6, 233:3-6; ET: 95:2-5). 96  It is telling, for example, that the East Syrian Narsai in his Funeral Songs is silent on the intermediate period, but bases the Christian hope fully on the future resurrection (text and German translation: Drei Begräbnisgesänge Narsais, ed. and trans. Maternus Wolff, Analecta Gorgiana 455 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2010). 97  Although Riley, Christian Initiation, 435, n. 221 is right that Theodore does not “develop the idea of the white robe as a covering of immortality” (my italics), the concept is implicitly present. 98  PK 3.28, in FC 6, ed. Kaczynski, 248 (= 2/3,2). Cf. Thomas M. Finn, The Liturgy of Baptism in the Baptismal Instructions of St. John Chrysostom, The Catholic University of America Studies in Christian Antiquity 15 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1967), 148; Riley, Christian Initiation, 262.

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and have become a new creation (2 Cor 5:17).99 Since this renovation is both contemporary and internal, it is clear that it concerns only the soul, not the body.100 This is even the case in a passage where Chrysostom, like Theodore, speaks of “the garment of immortality” (τὸ τῆς ἀϕθαρσίας ἔνδυμα).101 Although Chrysostom exhorts his pupils here to keep their spiritual robe unstained – an image not found in Theodore102 – by living a life of virtue in light of the coming Day of Judgement, the symbolism of the garment itself is, as always, not eschatological. VII. Conclusion In his Catechetical Homilies, Theodore displays great interest in the salvation of the body. His main concern is its transformation from mortality to immortality, which finds its most graphic expression in the mystagogy of the full-body anointing, baptism, and the post-baptismal tunica alba. Through the respective coverings of oil, water, and linen, the baptizand receives a multi-layered garment of immortality. A comparison with his close contemporary, John Chrysostom, highlights the uniqueness of Theodore’s approach. The reason for this difference may be found in Theodore’s remarkably eschatological orientation; whereas Chrysostom’s non-eschatological mystagogy stresses the present protection against evil and the importance of ethical behaviour, Theodore’s sacramental eschatology results in a highly mystagogical concern for the body. It is clear that Theodore of Mopsuestia stands out as an interesting example of a church father who did not fall into the temptation to 99  Stav. 2.19, in FC 6, ed. Kaczynski, 348 (= 3/2, 19); Stav. 4.3-4, 11-12, 18, 22-23, 27, in FC 6, 358, 360, 366, 368, 372, 374, 376, 380 (= 3/3,3-4, 11-12, 18, 22-23, 27); Stav. 5.18, 24, in FC 6, 402, 408 (= 3/4,18, 24); Stav. 6.24, in FC 6, 432 (= 3/5,24); Stav. 7.24-25, 27, 31, in FC 6, 452, 454, 456, 460 (= 3/6,24-25, 27, 31); PK 1.3, in FC 6, 154 (= 2/1,2); PK 3.6-10, in FC 6, 232, 234 (= 2/3,2). Cf. Finn, Liturgy of Baptism, 191-197; Riley, Christian Initiation, 421-433; Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), 54. 100  Typical phrases are: “The grace of God has entered these souls and molded them anew, reformed them, and made them different from what they were. It did not change their substance, but made over their will …” (Stav. 4.14; FC 6, ed. Kaczynski, 368, 370 (= 3/3,14); ET: Harkins, 71) and “… the radiance of your garments proves that your souls are free from every blemish” (Stav. 7.24; FC 6, 452 (= 3/6,24-25, 27, 31); ET: Harkins, 114). 101  Stav. 8.25, in FC 6, ed. Kaczynski, 486 (= 3/7,25); ET: Harkins, 130. 102  Cf. Riley, Christian Initiation, 435-437.



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­ isqualify the human body, but, instead, gave it its due weight and respect. d His baptismal mystagogy equipped those on the threshold of their Christian journey with the important life lesson that salvation concerns the whole human person and that the body is as valuable as the soul.

Training the Soul, Embracing the Body

John Chrysostom and Embodied Mystagogy* Wendy Mayer I. Introduction For John Chrysostom mystagogy is inherently embodied. In his view mystagogy is enfolded within a larger psychagogic process that leads the whole human person towards deification. It is embodied because, for John, psychagogy itself is an essential medicinal-philosophical therapeutic process that brings about health in the soul. Since sin is conceived of as a mental imbalance or illness, soul-health is about bringing about in the soul of the person being instructed an absence of sin. We should note here that, for John, the goal is not ἀπάθεια, eliminating the πάθη, but training the Christian to keep the πάθη in balance and to have the rational element of the soul in control, particularly the γνώμη or mindset. Since the soul itself is fine-material and embodied, and since, for John, there is a sympathetic relationship between the body and the soul, the body and its physical processes and senses are an essential part of the holistic psychagogic programme aimed at producing a healthy soul. Mystagogy, thus, might constitute only a brief moment in this long continuum, but for John it is a pivotal moment in the Christian life and his teachings on mystagogy and baptism centre around the moral (that is, soul) health of the Christian person before and after that pivotal moment. A decade ago, we would not have been able to compress John’s thought on this subject into such a neat paradigm. In the intervening years a significant shift has taken place within Chrysostom studies that enables us to view his so-called “moral theology” – previously viewed as * For the purposes of this article we define mystagogy in its narrow sense as the final stage of induction into the mysteries of the Christian religion, usually associated with the period immediately before, during and after baptism. The research on which this article is based was conducted while also a Research Fellow in the Department of Biblical and Ancient Studies, University of South Africa.

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light-weight1 – as something that is much richer, much deeper, and much more integrated.2 When we add in current research viewing John’s thought through the lens of other disciplines in the areas of medicine,3 cognition,4

1  See the overview of twentieth-century opinion of John’s theological contribution provided by David Rylaarsdam, John Chrysostom on Divine Pedagogy: The Coherence of His Theology and Preaching, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 2-3; and the discussion of the problematic of applying a theological lens to John’s work, Wendy Mayer, “Shaping the Sick Soul: Reshaping the Identity of John Chrysostom,” in Christians Shaping Identity from the Roman Empire to Byzantium: Studies Inspired by Pauline Allen, ed. Geoffrey D. Dunn and Wendy Mayer, VCS 132 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 140-164. 2  See, in addition to Rylaarsdam, Divine Pedagogy, Clare E. Salem, Sanity, Insanity, and Man’s Being as Understood by St. John Chrysostom (diss. Durham University, 2010); Pak-Wah Lai, John Chrysostom and the Hermeneutics of Exemplar Portraits (diss. Durham University, 2010); Raymond J. Laird, Mindset, Moral Choice and Sin in the Anthropology of John Chrysostom, Early Christian Studies 15 (Strathfield: St Pauls Publications, 2012); Chris L. de Wet, “Virtue and the (Un)making of Men in the Thought of John Chry­ sostom,” in Men and Women in the Early Christian Centuries, ed. Wendy Mayer and Ian J. Elmer, Early Christian Studies 18 (Strathfield: St Pauls Publications, 2014), 227-250; Demetrios E. Tonias, Abraham in the Works of John Chrysostom, Emerging Scholars Series (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2014) and “Models of Virtue: Patriarchs and Prophets in the Sermons of John Chrysostom,” Teologia 65 (2015): 49-66; Courtney Wilson VanVeller, Paul’s Therapy of the Soul: A New Approach to John Chrysostom and Anti-Judaism (diss. Boston University, Boston, MA, 2015); Maria Verhoeff, More Desirable Than Light Itself: Friendship Discourse in John Chrysostom’s Soteriology (diss. Evangelische Theologi­ sche Faculteit Leuven, 2016); and Wendy Mayer, “John Chrysostom: Moral Philosopher and Physician of the Soul,” in John Chrysostom: Past, Present, Future, ed. Doru Costache and Mario Baghos (Sydney: AIOCS Press, 2017), 193-215. 3  See Wendy Mayer, “The Persistence in Late Antiquity of Medico-Philosophical Psychic Therapy,” Journal of Late Antiquity 8 (2015): 337-351; Blake Leyerle, “The Etiology of Sorrow and Its Therapeutic Benefits in the Preaching of John Chrysostom,” ibid., 368-385; Jessica Wright, “Between Despondency and the Demon: Treating Spiritual Disorders in John Chrysostom’s Letter to Stageirios,” ibid., 352-367; eadem, Brain and Soul in Late Antiquity (diss. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 2016), and eadem, “John Chrysostom and the Rhetoric of Cerebral Vulnerability,” Studia Patristica 81 (2017): 109-125; Chris L. de Wet, “Medicine, Culture, and Self in Late Antiquity: A Gastronomic Reflection,” Ancient Jew Review (18 October 2017: Ancient Medicine Forum), http://www.ancientjewreview.com/articles/2017/9/25/ancient-medicine-forummedicine-culture-and-self-in-late-antiquity-a-gastronomic-reflection (accessed 21 April 2018); James Cook, “Therapeutic Preaching: The Use of Medical Imagery in the Sermons of John Chrysostom,” Studia Patristica 96 (2017): 127-132. 4  In addition to the pioneering work of Adam Serfass on embodied clothing, see the forthcoming articles on cognition and preaching by Isabella Sandwell (“Preaching and Christianisation: Communication, Cognition, and Audience Reception”), Jan R. Stenger (“Text Worlds and Imagination in Chrysostom’s Pedagogy”), and Wendy Mayer (“Preaching Hatred? John Chrysostom, Neuroscience, and the Jews”) in Revisioning John Chrysostom: New Approaches, New Perspectives, ed. Chris L. de Wet and Wendy Mayer, Critical Approaches to Early Christianity 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 137-174, 206-246, and 58-136.



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ritual,5 the emotions,6 and the senses,7 the avenues that open up for exploration on this topic expand significantly. In this article we explore the relationship between the body and mystagogy in John’s thought in three parts. First, we briefly define the instruction and rituals involved in mystagogy familiar to John as illustrated by his surviving writings. This is already well established,8 so there is nothing new here, but it helps to explain his interests and provides us with a framework. With this established, we can better understand both how the body was framed by John within his conceptualization of the experience and the literal physical experience of the initiates. Secondly, we will use two different theoretical approaches to delve deeper into just how the rituals in the days leading up to and immediately following baptism were conceptually and experientially embodied. In the first example, we will suggest how the application of sensory theory to his descriptions of the key rituals of initiation might help us explore the multi-sensory embodied nature of that experience. In the second, we will discuss how Graeco-Roman medical thought sits behind how he explains in Catechesis 3 baptism and the Eucharist. In the third part, we will broaden out our focus to show how mystagogy was part of a larger educational program focused on the whole body. Using his first homily on Acts as a jumping off point, we will discuss what this homily has to say 5  See the article by Jonathan P. Stanfill, “The Body of Christ’s Barbarian Limb: John Chrysostom’s Processions and the Embodied Performance of Nicene Christianity,” Revisioning John Chrysostom, ed. de Wet and Mayer, 670-697. 6  See, among a large number of articles on the topic published together in Studia Patristica 83 (2017): Blake Leyerle, “Animal Passions: John Chrysostom’s Use of Animal Imagery,” 185-202; Mark Roosien, “‘Emulate Their Mystical Order’: Awe and Liturgy in John Chrysostom’s Angelic πολιτεία,” 115-130; J. David Woodington, “Fear and Love: The Emotions of the Household in Chrysostom,” 19-36; also Jan R. Stenger, “Staging Laughter and Tears: Libanius, Chrysostom and the Riot of the Statues,” in Greek Laughter and Tears, ed. M. Alexiou and D. Cairns, Edinburgh Leventis Studies 8 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 166-186. 7  Jan Stenger has done some preliminary work on sensescapes in relation to John Chrysostom, as yet unpublished. 8  See Paul L. Gavrilyuk, Histoire du catéchuménat dans l’église ancienne, trans. Françoise Lhoest et al., Initiation aux Pères de l’Église (Paris: Cerf, 2007), 215-264; Maxwell E. Johnson, The Rites of Christian Initiation: Their Evolution and Interpretation, Alcuin Club Collections 76 (rev. and expanded ed., Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2007), 115-157, esp. 154, fig. 4.1; Hugh M. Riley, Christian Initiation: A Comparative Study of the Interpretation of the Baptismal Liturgy in the Mystagogical Writings of Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Ambrose of Milan, Studies in Christian Antiquity 17 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1974); and Jean Chrysostome, Huit catéchèses baptismales inédites, ed. and trans. Antoine Wenger, SC 50bis (Paris: Cerf, 1970), 66-104.

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about how he conceives of the larger context of induction into the sacraments. Of significance here is the intimate relationship between mystagogical instruction, initiation and psychagogy, including the bodily practice of fasting. Finally, we will discuss in brief the idea that, depending on how the mystagogue conceptualized the experience for the person undergoing these rituals, the embodied character of that experience may have been variable. II.  Ritual and Literal Physical Experience Without even exploring how John instructed the candidates to conceive of these rituals or applying any theoretical lens, it is immediately evident from the outline he gave the candidates that, for John, the focus in these rituals is very much on the passive and active body. In preparation for the exorcisms, the initiates will be obliged to take off their shoes or sandals and strip down to a short tunic.9 Barefoot, they will be escorted to the exorcists. The exorcists’ voices will do their work, after which the priest will direct the initiates to kneel and raise their hands towards heaven.10 Individually the priest will then go to each initiate and demand that he or she confess, break their contract with the devil and make a new contract with Christ.11 This each initiate will do verbally, uttering two set formulae.12 After that, the priest will make the sign of the cross on each initiate’s forehead, using olive oil mixed with myrrh.13 These rituals, John tells them, will commence on Good Friday in the afternoon, coinciding with the moments at which the thief on the cross turned to Christ and Christ uttered his last words.14 He then fast-forwards them to nightfall of the Saturday, when the initiates will be stripped naked,15 anointed all over with olive oil, and step down into the 9  Ad illuminandos catechesis 1.7, in Jean Chrysostome, Trois catéchèses baptismales, ed. and trans. Auguste Piédagnel and Louis Doutreleau, SC 366 (Paris: Cerf, 1990), 124. 10  Ad illum. cat. 1.7.5-7, in SC 366, ed. Piédagnel and Doutreleau, 124; Catechesis de iuramento 6.5-17, in SC 366, 188-190; Catechesis 2.12-14, 2.18, in SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 140-141, 143. 11  Cat. 2.18, in SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 144. 12  Cat. 2.20-21, in SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 144-145. 13  Catechesis ultima ad baptizandos 7, in SC 366, ed. Piédagnel and Doutreleau, 234236; Cat. 2.22, in SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 145-146. 14  Cat. ultima ad baptizandos 4.6-22, in SC 366, ed. Piédagnel and Doutreleau, 226-228. 15  Whether at this period in Antioch initiates were separated by gender at this point in the baptismal rites is uncertain. We should probably view baptismal practice in this regard as aligned with public bathing practices. During the course of the fourth century



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font.16 Their heads will be plunged under the water three times.17 On exiting from the font, the initiates will be embraced by everyone present, kissed on the mouth, and greeted with rejoicing and/or applause.18 After all of this they will be led to the altar and taste the eucharistic bread and wine.19 Multiple senses are engaged, with the initiate partially unclothed, fully unclothed, led, plunged, kneeling, standing, in partial natural light, in dark, in shadow, in lamplight, touched in various ways by priests’ hands. There is considerable noise. Priests utter commands at them, the exorcists perform their verbal rituals over them, there is rejoicing by bystanders, the initiates themselves are required to speak. They smell the myrrh mixed in with the olive oil in the first chrism, the olive oil of the second, and the smell of the burning olive oil in the lamps that light the different rooms of the baptistery. They feel the temperature differential between walking shod and unshod on mosaic floors, when clothed and public baths began to be segregated, but approaches to baths, bathing and nudity were inconsistent. See Edward N. Schoolman, “Luxury, Vice, and Health: Changing Perspectives on Baths and Bathing in Late Antique Antioch,” Studies in Late Antiquity 1 (2017): 225-253; Guillaume Bady and Laurence Foschia, “Chrétiens, rabbins, païens dans le même bain? Les bains dans l’Orient romain (IVe-VIIe s.) ou comment s’en accommoder,” in 25 siècles de bain collectif en Orient. Proche-Orient, Égypte et péninsule Arabique, ed. Marie-Françoise Boussac et al., Études urbaines 9; Publications de l’Institut Français de Damascus 282 (Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 2014), 985-1000. It is noteworthy that in the only baptistery excavated in Antioch (that of the Church at Qausīyeh, fig. 1) there is no provision for separate dressing rooms. Segregation, if it occurred, would thus have required that the disrobing, immersion, and dressing of men and women was conducted in a designated sequence. The Traditio apostolica 21.3-5 (referencing practice in the West) supplies the order: children, men, women. See Anders Ekenberg, “Initiation in the Apostolic Tradition,” in Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity /Waschungen, Initiatien und Taufe: Spätantike, frühes Judentum und frühes Christentum, ed. D. Hellholm et al., Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 176 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 10111050, at 1040. That men and women may, several decades later in Constantinople, have been segregated for the immersion is hinted at by John Chrysostom in his letter to Innocent 1, bishop of Rome, concerning the events of Easter 404. See Ep. 1 ad Innocentem, in Jean Chrysostome, Epistula 1 ad Innocentem, ed. and trans. Anne-Marie Malin­ grey, SC 342 (Paris: Cerf, 1988), 84 (lines 151-157). 16  Cat. 2.24-25, in SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 147; Cat. ultima ad baptizandos 8, in SC 366, ed. Piédagnel and Doutreleau, 236. As Auguste Piédagnel notes, Cat. 2 distinguishes between the two unctions (the first employs olive oil mixed with myrrh and is restricted to the forehead, in the second only olive oil is used and the entire body is anointed), whereas in Cat. ultima ad baptizandos the two unctions are conflated chronologically and only the unction of oil and myrrh is referenced (SC 366, ed. Piédagnel and Doutreleau, 237, n. 33). 17  Cat. 2.26, in SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 147. 18  Cat. ultima ad baptizandos 10, in SC 366, ed. Piédagnel and Doutreleau, 240; Cat. 2.27.3-6, in SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 148. 19  Cat. 2.27.8-12, in SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 149.

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unclothed, and, when naked, between the ambient air of the room and the waters of the font. Multiple senses – touch, sight, sound, smell – are altered as their head is plunged under. They step down into the font; they step up. They are hugged, kissed, and ultimately taste, chew, and swallow the mystery of the Eucharist in the bread and wine. This is a full-body experience, with the feet, knees, hands, forehead, crown of the head, lips, mouth, and skin all moving and touching or being touched. In late-antique Syria, there is a peculiarity in baptistery architecture that may well have reinforced the multi-sensory nature of the mystagogical experience. Unique to the Syro-Palestinian region are a number of mosaic inscriptions, dating from the early fifth to seventh centuries ce, which contain the Greek term φωτιστήριον. The earliest of these, located in the baptistery at Bsakla, is dated to 404 ce.20 Bsakla is a village in the region of Ğebel Zāwiye, to the south of Antioch. Another is found in the baptistery of Alexandros in the Syrian village of Hwarte, also south of Antioch.21 The others occur at Evron in Phoenicia,22 in El Koursi,23 on the eastern side of the Lake of Tiberias, at Madaba and at Mt Nebo, in Jordan,24 and a final example at Kourion in Cyprus.25 These last four examples are from the sixth century. Traditionally, this term has been interpreted as “the place of illumination,” referring to the entire baptistery.26 But, as Michael Peppard has recently pointed out, the room in 20  Rafah Jouejati, “Le Baptistère de Beseqla: Deux mosaïques inscrites à deux dates différentes: un même atelier?,” in Estudios sobre mosaicos antiguos y medievales, ed. Luz Neira Jiménez, Hispania Antigua. Serie Arqueológica 6 (Rome: L’“Erma” di Bretschneider, 2016), 172-182. 21  Reported in Denis Feissel, “L’épigraphie des mosaïques d’églises en Syrie et au Liban,” Antiquité Tardive 2 (1994): 285-291, at 289. For a full description of the baptistery, see Michał Gawlikowski, “Excavations in Hawarte 2008-2009,” Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean 21 (2011): 481-495, at 490-495. The baptistery is dated to 421 ce, the inscription to “slightly later.” 22  V. Tzaferis, “The Greek Inscriptions from the Early Christian Church at Evron,” Eretz-Israel 19 (1987): 36*-53*. 23  See Yves Blomme, “Inscriptions grecques à Kursi et Amwas,” Revue Biblique 87 (1980): 403-407. 24  Michele Piccirillo, Patricia Maynor Bikai, and Thomas A. Dailey, The Mosaics of Jordan, American Center of Oriental Research Publications 1 (Amman: American Center of Oriental Research, 1993), 318. 25  Ino Michaelidou-Nicolaou, “The Inscriptions,” in A. H. S. Megaw, Kourion: Excavations in the Episcopal Precinct, Dumbarton Oaks Studies 38 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2007), 367-392, at 386, n. 40. 26  So Jouejati, “Le Baptistère de Beseqla,” 173-174, who follows Glanville Downey in interpreting the phrase τὴν βασειλικὴν τοῦ ἁγείου φωτιστηρίου in the Beseqla inscription as referring to the entire baptistery complex. Cf. M. Avi Yonah, “Places of Worship in the Roman and Byzantine Periods,” Antiquity and Survival 3 (1957): 262-272, at 270.



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which these inscriptions are found tends to be distinct or separate from that in which the font is located.27 Furthermore, there is one further regional peculiarity that can be adduced in support of his suspicion that the φωτιστήριον is a specific room in the baptisteries of this region in which a particular ritual or set of rituals occurred. In the Church at Qausīyeh in the western suburbs of Antioch (fig. 1),28 we find within that baptistery complex a separately demarcated room labelled not as a φωτιστήριον but by the unique designation of πιστικόν (fig. 2). The name of the bishop in the inscription dates the laying of the mosaic floor to the 420s,29 some decades after John departed Antioch for Constantinople and it is thought that the baptistery complex itself was added after the church was built (the date of inscriptions in the wings of the nave is 387 ce).30 There is, however, given the use of the term φωτιστήριον elsewhere in the region for similarly located rooms reason to think that the two terms (φωτιστήριον and πιστικόν) describe the same or a very similar ritual moment. That this is ritual and not pedagogical – that is, that the term does not designate an antechamber simply used for mystagogical instruction – is suggested by the orientation of the inscription (fig. 3). It is to be read by the initiates standing in the room as they move from that room into the next chamber and from that second chamber into the room where they disrobe and descend into the font. A clue perhaps lies in John’s common use of the phrase οἱ πιστοί for the fully initiated.31 While in John’s writings the term can also often simply designate “believers” in Christ in the time of the New Testament,32 27  Michael Peppard, “What Is a Phōtistērion? Reconsidering Terminology for Sites and Rites of Initiation,” paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the North American Patristics Society, Chicago, 25-27 May 2017. I am indebted to him for collating the inscriptions. 28  For its identification as the Church of St Babylas, see Wendy Mayer and Pauline Allen, The Churches of Syrian Antioch (300-638 ce), LAHR 5 (Louvain: Peeters, 2012), 43-46. 29  See ibid., 149. The inscription reads: Ἐπὶ τοῦ ἁγιοτάτου καὶ ὁσιοτάτου ἐπισκόπου Θεοδότου, καὶ Ἀθανασίου, πρεσβυτέρου καὶ οἰκονόμου, ἡ ψηφεὶς τοῦ πειστικοῦ γέγονεν καὶ τὸ ἔργον / τοὺτο, ἐπεὶ Ἀκκιβα, διακόνου καὶ παραμοναρίου (Under the most holy and venerable bishop Theodotos, and under Athanasius, priest and administrator, the mosaic paving of the pistikon plus this work took place, under Akkiba, deacon and custodian). 30  On these points see ibid., 41-42, 149, 179-180. 31  See, e.g., De sancta pentecoste hom. 1, in PG 50, col. 458, 26-31; In ep. ad Galatas commentarius, in PG 61, col. 663, 23-28; In Eph. hom. 1, in PG 62, col. 14, 17-27: Τοιοῦτοί εἰσιν οἱ πιστοί … οἱ μεμυημένοι; In Col. hom. 9 (PG 62, col. 363, 63-64): Τίς ὁ ὕμνος τῶν ἄνω, τί λέγει τὰ Χερουβὶμ, ἴσασιν οἱ πιστοί; In 1 Tim. hom. 6, in PG 62, col. 533, 16-17. 32  E.g., Contra Anomoeos hom. 11, in Jean Chrysostome, Sur l’égalité du Père et du Fils; Contra les anoméens, Homélies VII-XII, ed. and trans. Anne-Marie Malingrey, SC 396 (Paris: Cerf, 1994), 312, 286-290; In dictum Pauli: Oportet haereses esse, in PG 51, col. 257; Expositio in psalmum 109, in PG 55, col. 270, 37-39.

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Fig. 1: Church at Qausīyeh. Antioch Expedition Archives, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University.

Jonathan Tallon’s recent dissertation on John’s use of the term πίστις is suggestive. As Tallon points out, the term has a quite layered set of meanings. In addition to what we might translate as “faith” or “belief,” which emphasizes cognition, in the late-ancient military, economic and domestic context πίστις denoted a ­relationship.33 It is the oath of obedience sworn to his general by the enlisted soldier,34 or by the newly purchased slave to her master,35 or the contract made between a borrower and a creditor, in 33  Jonathan R. R. Tallon, Faith in John Chrysostom’s Preaching: A Contextual Reading (diss. University of Manchester, 2015). 34  Ibid., 71-103. 35  Ibid., 180-207.



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Fig. 2: Pistikon inscription. Antioch Expedition Archives, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University.

Fig. 3: Baptistery complex viewed from South, showing pistikon. Antioch Expedition Archives, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University.

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which the borrower guarantees their capacity to repay.36 It is not about belief, which implies rational choice, but about obligation and loyalty. And in invoking the trust of the other party, the person making the oath is entrusted with something of value in return. It is in this respect that, as Tallon points out, John “can describe the verbal commitment to Christ at the heart of the baptism service by the initiate as the πίστις of a contract.”37 It is in two of these three senses (the oath of obedience sworn by the soldier and by the slave), we would suggest, that we should interpret the designation of the chamber as a πιστικόν – not as a place of faith or belief in the cognitive sense, but the room in which the initiates quite literally made their oath of obedience to Christ. Supportive of this interpretation is John’s own explanation to the initiates of this particular rite. It is demanded that the initiates rest on their knees with their hands stretched up because they are military captives and slaves who are reciting their oath of loyalty to their new master, Christ.38 Through their bodies they quite literally enact the role of a slave, producing the correct mindset and cognitive space in which to make their oath. III.  The Body, Sensation, and Conceptualization Much could be said here about the initiate as Christ’s slave, about the ἀποτάσσομαι and συντάσσομαι formulae, and indeed about the embodiment engaged in the exorcisms that precede the loyalty oath. In respect to those topics the recent books of Chris de Wet and Dayna Kalleres

 Tallon, Faith in John Chrysostom’s Preaching, 104-143.  Ibid., 210-211. In the military, economic and domestic contexts Tallon discusses, a contract has implications beyond simple obligation, with a failure to honour the oath resulting in legal judgment and penalty. These ideas have greater importance for what John expects of the initiate in their life after baptism, as articulated in his soteriology. See James D. Cook, Preaching and Christianization: Reading the Sermons of John Chry­ sostom (diss. Christ Church, University of Oxford, 2016), 143-170. 38  In Ad illuminandos catechesis 2, in PG 49, col. 239, John explicitly states that the formula of adherence to Christ is a contract (συνθήκη) just like when buying slaves we ask whether they will serve us. See also Cat. ultima ad baptizandos 4.34-36, in SC 366, ed. Piédagnel and Doutreleau, 230: to kneel is to confess one’s slavery; and Catechesis de iuramento 6, in SC 366, 188-190, esp. 188, line 9: “Such is the schema of captives.” That one lifts one’s hands up is symbolic of the slavery to God as master that one will confess after the exorcisms. Cf. Cat. 2.22, in SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 145-146, where John says that after the contract, when the initiate has confessed Christ’s status as master, they are anointed like a soldier enrolled in the spiritual arena. 36 37



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constitute a useful starting point.39 The chief point to be made here is that, if we accept that in Syria the φωτιστήριον or, in the case of Antioch, πιστικόν, is a room in the baptistery associated with a specific ritual or rituals within the mystagogic process, rather than a technical term or synonym for a baptistery as a whole, then we have one further dimension to add to the embodied nature of the mystagogic experience. If we look at the archaeological remains of the baptistery complex in the Church at Qausīyeh, we can see that there are four, possibly five, separate spaces, in which the font itself is not central or something that one passes through, but rather an end point in a sequence (fig. 1).40 If we consider John’s explanations of the moments of disrobing and baptismal immersion as a wrestling match with the devil (the rationale for being stripped naked and the entire body oiled)41 and as a literal rebirth,42 then each space in the baptistery complex demarcates a different kind of embodiment. The slave-initiate becomes an athlete who descends into the font and emerges as a pristine infant from the womb. The location of the font itself enforces a movement in the ritual process towards a terminal space from which the ritual movement is subsequently reversed. If we here turn to sensory and sensescape theory, the space, layout, and movement, in combination with the sensory input take on rich layers of meaning.43 Sensory theory argues that the senses are socially and culturally ordered and encoded. To quote David Howes, “sensual relations are social relations” often allied with the ranking of social groups on the basis of race,

39  See Chris L. de Wet, Preaching Bondage: John Chrysostom and the Discourse of Slavery in Early Christianity (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015), esp. 45-80 on the Christian metaphor of slavery to God; and Dayna S. Kalleres, City of Demons: Violence, Ritual, and Christian Power in Late Antiquity (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015), 51-112. 40  That is, even if in Antioch the initiates exited the baptistery through a different door than the one they entered (there is insufficient evidence to determine this), they would still have been required to to some extent reverse their steps from the room that contained the font. In the baptistery of the church in Seleucia Pieria, the port city of Antioch, dated c. 530 ce, the font is similarly situated in a room that has only a single entrance and exit. See Mayer and Allen, Churches, 60, and figs. 89-92. 41  Ad illum. cat. 1.16, in SC 366, ed. Piédagnel and Doutreleau, 144-145; Cat. 2.23, in SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 147. 42  Ad illum. cat. 1.12-14, in SC 366, ed. Piédagnel and Doutreleau, 136-140. Rebirth is not the only metaphoric concept associated with this phase of the ritual. It is also described as a drowning and a reforging. 43  I am indebted to Jan Stenger, who is in the process of applying this theory to John’s writings more broadly, for alerting me to this branch of scholarship.

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gender, class or age.44 This branch of theory seeks to make scholars aware of an inherent western bias towards vision (ocularcentrism) and points out “how isolating one sense for analysis may lead to a neglect of how the senses work together, hence exhibiting sensory bias and muting multi-sensory experiences.”45 Sensory theorists themselves take a variety of approaches, from social interactionist (in which, for example, the deafening of the senses in factories is seen to animalize workers, or particular senses are viewed in relation to the performativity of gendered corporealities) to phenomenological (where the lived experience of social actors is addressed by reflecting on the embodiment of perception). In Antioch, mystagogy, as we have already pointed out, was a richly multisensory experience. Viewed through this lens, the focus on sound and touch in the first mystagogic rituals,46 or the performance of the stripping, second anointing, and baptismal immersion at night,47 with its deadening of some senses and enhancement of others,48 along with the size, decoration, lighting, and ordering of the rooms in which the rituals 44  David Howes, Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2003), cited by him in “The Expanding Field of Sensory Studies. Part III: The Politics of Perception,” version 1.0, August 2013, http://www.sensorystudies.org/sensorial-investigations/the-expanding-field-of-sensorystudies/ (accessed 18 August 2017). See further David Howes and Constance Classen, Ways of Sensing: Understanding the Senses in Society (London: Routledge, 2014); and David Howes, “Multimodality and Anthropology: The Conjugation of the Senses,” in “Multimodality and Anthropology: The Conjugation of the Senses,” in The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis, ed. C. Jewitt (2nd ed., London: Routledge, 2014), 225-235. 45  Kelvin E. Y. Low, “The Social Life of the Senses: Charting Directions,” Sociology Compass 6 (2012): 271-282, at 273. 46  Cat. 2.14, in SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 141: … αἱ μὲν φωναὶ καὶ αἱ ἐπικλήσεις ἐκεῖναι … τὸ δὲ σχῆμα τῶν ποδῶν γυμνότητος καὶ τῆς τῶν χειρῶν ἐκτάσεως …; Cat. ultima ad baptizandos 4.31-40, in SC 366, ed. Piédagnel and Doutreleau, 230: Δεῖ τοίνυν εἰσαχθέντας ὑμᾶς τότε κοινῇ κλῖναι γόνυ πάντας, οὐκ ὀρθοὺς ἑστᾶναι, καὶ τὰς χεῖρας ἀνατείνατνας εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν εὐχαριστῆσαι … Κλίναντας οὖν τὰ γόνατα κελεύουσι λέγειν μυσταγωγοῦντες ταῦτα τὰ ῥήματα· Ἀποτάσσομαί σοι, Σατανᾶ. 47  Cat. 2.24, in SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 147. 48  Cat. ultima ad baptizandos 3.11-20, in SC 366, ed. Piédagnel and Doutreleau, 218220: … οἱ μὲν ὀφθαλμοὶ τῆς σαρκὸς τὸ ὕδωρ ὁρῶσιν, … τὸ σῶμα θεωροῦσι βαπτιζόμενον, … τὴν σάρκα λουομένην, … τὸ σῶμα ἀναβαῖνον ἀπὸ τῶν ὑδάτων, … τὸν ἱερέα βλέπουσιν ἄνωθεν τὴν χεῖρα τὴν δεξίαν καὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς ἁπτόμενον, …; 3.38-45, in SC 366, 224: … ὁ ἱερεὺς βαπτίζων … λέγει … Βαπτίζεται ὁ δεῖνα εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ Πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ Υἱοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἁγίου Πνεύματος … εἴπητε ὅτι Πιστεύω; 8.2-3, in SC 366, 236: … ἀποδύσας σε τὸ ἱμάτιον ὁ ἱερεύς, αὐτός σε κατάγει ἐπὶ τὰ νάματα. The sensation of touch continues to be stimulated post-immersion: Ἐπειδὰν μέλλωμεν τῆς ἱερᾶς ἅπτεσθαι τραπέζης, φιλεῖν ἀλλήλους κελευόμεθα καὶ ἀσπάζεσθαι ἀσπασμὸν ἅγιον … Φιλοῦντες οὖν ἀλλήλων τὰ στόματα … (Cat. ult. ad baptiz. 10.2-4 and 20, in SC 366, 240, 242).



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took place are all indicative that we should view the mystagogical experience as a sensescape that requires unpacking of its encoding. Psychology and cognitive theory add another layer, here touched upon only briefly. In an unpublished paper, delivered in 2014, Adam Serfass explored the significance of the baptismal robe in John Chrysostom – whether real or conceptual – using the work of Hajo Adam and Adam Galinsky on enclothed cognition.49 In their experiments Adam and Galinsky were able to show that clothing matters.50 The effect might be only temporary, but for that short period of time it can impact perception and behaviour. To put it in technical terms, “enclothed cognition involves the co-occurrence of two independent factors – the symbolic meaning of the clothes and the physical experience of wearing them.”51 That is, clothing that has symbolic meaning can affect both how observers perceive and behave towards the wearer as well as the behaviour and self-perception of the wearer. While Serfass was concerned with the application of this theory to the putative robe in which the initiate is clothed after ascending from the font, we would argue that the two ritual processes that occur before the baptismal immersion – in which the candidate is barefoot and wears the tunic of a slave, and strips naked and is oiled as a wrestler – have significant cognitive implications for both the initiate and the observer. The space, the senses, and the clothing (or unclothing) all combined to immerse the initiate experientially, fully engaging both mind and body. There is much more that could be said here, but we move on to a different arena in which mystagogy and the body were entwined, this time at the conceptual level and through the lens of Graeco-Roman medical theory. We have already indicated that one of the explanations of baptism that John gives his initiates is that the baptismal immersion is a rebirth from which the initiate emerges as a pristine – in the sense of sinless – infant.52 On the basis of this conceptualization, we on occasion find him referring in a homily to his audience as the children to whom he has given birth and to himself, as the agent who performed their baptism, 49  Adam Serfass, “Enclothed Cognition and the Sanctifying Power of the Baptismal Robe in John Chrysostom’s Catechetical Homilies,” paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the North American Patristics Society, Chicago, 22-24 May 2014. 50  Hajo Adam and Adam D. Galinsky, “Enclothed Cognition,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (2012): 918-925. 51  Ibid., 918 (abstract). 52  Cat. 3.6-7, in SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 154. See Rudolf Brändle, “Johannes Chrysostomus: Die zehn Gaben (τιμαί oder δωρεαί) der Taufe,” in Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism, ed. Hellholm et al., 1233-1252, at 1234-1235.

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as their parent.53 In his catecheses, delivered while still a presbyter, however, his concern is rather with the neutrality of the presbyter, who is simply the agent of Christ and servant of the indivisible Trinity.54 We should also point out that in his catecheses, baptism as regeneration or rebirth is not the sole or even a dominant image that winds through them, but it is one of the most embodied and physical. So at Catechesis 3.16-19, entwined with the concept of baptism as death transmuted into sleep and of the Church as bride we find John explaining to the initiates why the blood and water that flowed from Christ’s rib is a symbol of baptism and the mysteries. When Moses said of Adam that he was bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, he was signifying Christ’s rib in that, just as God took the rib and fashioned the woman, so he gave us the blood and water from his rib and fashioned the church. And so Christ, who gave birth to us through the water, nourishes his bride (that is, the initiates) with his own blood as a mother feeds her newborn with blood and milk.55 When we take into account how Greek medicine understood the mechanisms of parturition and nutrition, this seemingly casual metaphor takes on physical implications, suggesting that this conceptualization of the eucharistic wine as mother’s milk for the newborn initiate is meant to be understood quite literally. John Penniman, in his recent work on lactation metaphors in patristic writers, shows how these are informed by medical thinkers such as Aristotle and Hippocrates who argued that the woman’s body during pregnancy becomes a laboratory in which vital essences move from one region of the body to another and are transformed into sustenance for the infant. Both Aristotle and Hippocrates believed a mother’s milk was at its optimum around the time of birth.56

Of even greater significance for our purposes is his insight that in the Graeco-Roman thoughtworld our own distinction between nourishment and nurture is conceptually collapsed, with “the proper growth of the  In 2 Thess. hom. 4, in PG 62, col. 492.  Cat. 2.26, in SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 147. He makes the same point as bishop (that regardless of status the priest is merely an agent of Christ and the Holy Spirit) in De regressu 15, in Antoine Wenger, ed., “L’homélie de saint Jean Chrysostome ‘à son retour d’Asie’,” Revue des études byzantines 19 (1961): 110-123, at 120. 55  SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 160-162. 56  John David Penniman, Raised on Christian Milk: Food and the Formation of the Soul in Early Christianity, Synkrisis: Comparative Approaches to Early Christianity in Greco-Roman Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), 32. 53

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body implicating and impacting the proper growth of the soul.”57 And so, as Penniman explains, The power of the mother’s milk … is found in its unique ability to stabilize the infant, causing it to grow properly and enabling the likeness of the parent to be fashioned within the child. Breast milk carries a powerful and transformative essence through the nutritive soul of the mother into that of her child. … the infant, quite literally for Aristotle, ingests the stuff from which the mother’s own soul is made.58

And so when John tells the initiates in Catechesis 2.27 that after their immersion in the baptismal waters they will be led immediately to the table where they will taste their master’s body and blood and become a dwelling-place for the Spirit,59 the latter would have been understood by them to have occurred quite literally. Birthed by the Trinity, the initiates now imbibe Christ’s psychic essence, resulting in his Spirit becoming enmeshed with their own souls. This is more than a mystic union. Through baptism and the Eucharist the initiate quite literally becomes bone of Christ’s bone and flesh of his flesh. With respect to the indwelling of the Spirit, we could go on to talk about pneumatic theory and the fine materiality of both the soul and daemons in John’s thought,60 the relationship between psychic health, daemon-possession, and sin,61 and the implications of this for how the Holy Spirit works in the human being within John’s anthropology.62 In turn this would allow us to unpack further the embodied character of the exorcisms that were part of the mystagogic rituals. But to return to Christ’s blood as breast milk, there is a further dimension here. As Penniman points out in an article on breast milk, Roman family values and the soul in Gregory of Nyssa, in breast milk the mother passed on her own transmuted blood to the infant. This passing on of the familial blood complements the father’s transmission of physical and intellectual  Penniman, Raised on Christian Milk, 25.  Ibid., 32. 59  SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 148-149. 60  On pneumatic theory and daemons see Gregory A. Smith, Very Thin Things: Towards a Cultural History of the Soul in Roman Antiquity (diss. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2005), and “How Thin Is a Demon?,” JECS 16 (2008): 479-512. Pneumatic theory, the brain and the soul is discussed in depth also in Wright, Brain and Soul. 61  See Salem, Sanity, Insanity, and Man’s Being, 7-73; Mayer, “Persistence”; and Wright, “Between Despondency and the Demon.” 62  This topic has yet to be explored fully from the perspective of ancient GraecoRoman physiology and psychology. See in the meantime the discussion in Salem, Sanity, Insanity, and Man’s Being, 31-32, 90-135, 149-210. 57 58

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characteristics through his seed and cements the familial bonds of kinship.63 To be nourished from one’s “own familial and accustomed blood,”64 rather than that of a wet nurse, is to be not just nurtured within the family, but quite literally to become its product. When John goes on at Catechesis 2.29 to tell the initiates that they have become God’s children,65 and at Catechesis 3.6 explains that the gifts of baptism extend well beyond the expunging of sins and that is why we baptize infants, even though they have no sin,66 we should again expect that the initiates would have understood that being nourished by Christ’s blood would quite literally have made them members of his family and his children.67 Of the seven gifts conferred through baptism John lists at Catechesis 3.6 (sanctification, justification, adoption as sons, becoming heirs, being made brothers and sisters, becoming part of Christ’s body, and to have the indwelling of the Spirit),68 the majority draw on this pervasive medical concept. Unpacking this allows us to glimpse why in eastern Christianity the concept of deification,69 becoming more and more like God as one matures as a Christian, was so natural. IV.  Mystagogy, the Embodied Soul, and Whole-Person Therapy This brings us to part three, and the intimate relationship for John between mystagogy and psychagogy. That psychagogy is the key concept 63  John David Penniman, “Fed to Perfection: Mother’s Milk, Roman Family Values, and the Transformation of the Soul in Gregory of Nyssa,” Church History 84 (2015): 495-530, at 499-500. Although, it should be noted that the source he cites is indicative of elite Roman male anxiety and ideals rather than practice in that its author is reacting to the common use of wet nurses by Roman matrons. 64  Ibid., 500, citing the sophist Favorinus in Aulus Gellius, Noctes atticae 12.1.9. 65  SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 150, line 15. 66  SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 154. 67  This is not intended on John’s part to imply that there is an ontological difference in the Eucharist when it is received subsequently. The adduction of the lactation metaphor in the context of baptism does, however, introduce a physical dimension that creates for the initiate a richly layered understanding of their new relationship with Christ. See, in addition to the article and book by Penniman, Teresa Berger, Gender Differences and the Making of Liturgical History: Lifting a Veil on Liturgy’s Past (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 72-85. 68  SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 154, lines 5-7, discussed by Brändle, “Die zehn Gaben,” 1241-1242. 69  See, in general, Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ: Orthodox Perspectives on the Nature of the Human Person, trans. Norman Russell, Contemporary Greek Theologians 5 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987; orig. ed. 1979). Regarding deification in John’s thought in particular see Rylaarsdam, Divine Pedagogy; and Verhoeff, “More Desirable Than Light Itself.” Cf. also the contribution by de Nie in this volume.



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that unifies John’s preaching and theology has recently been argued persuasively by David Rylaarsdam and so we will not repeat his arguments.70 Similarly, the centrality of the embodied soul and the nexus between psychagogy and medicine in John’s thought have been discussed by us at length elsewhere.71 In the context of mystagogy, for John the health of the soul is naturally essential to the life of the initiate, both in preparation for initiation and for the maturation and deification of the Christian following baptism. It is no accident that his surviving catecheses have as much, if not more so, to say about moral formation, virtue and the avoidance of sin, as they do about the rituals of initiation and their meaning.72 It is no accident also that, while that moral formation is directed towards the health of the soul, his instruction also embraces the health of the body. How mystagogy is situated within this larger psychagogic programme is set out by John most clearly in his first homily on Acts, in which he explains that the soul must be sober, if grace is to be effective. If Paul was blind for three days and only then received grace when he had been prepared in advance and purged by fear, Lent acts in the same way, preparing the soul of the initiate through fasting, prayer and moderation.73 Baptism, he tells the audience, is a bridle for wicked desires and teaches that one should live moderately even in a time of excess. It is particularly important, given that baptism can expunge even the worst of sins, that one be sober and vigilant afterwards, and this cannot occur without adequate training and preparation. Sin is a sickness of the mind-soul; fasting produces an elevated mind or διάνοια; baptism is a powerful therapy for sin, and so the impact of sin committed after baptism and after the required preparation is magnified and the punishment all the worse for it.74 The only effective medicine after baptism is

 Rylaarsdam, Divine Pedagogy.  See Wendy Mayer, “Madness in the Works of John Chrysostom: A Snapshot from Late Antiquity,” in The Concept of Madness from Homer to Byzantium: Manifestations and Aspects of Mental Illness and Disorder, ed. Hélène Perdicoyianni-Paléologou, Byzantinische Forschungen 32 (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 2016), 349-373; eadem, “Persistence”; eadem, “Shaping the Sick Soul”; and eadem, “Moral Philosopher.” 72  Of the eight catecheses edited by Wenger (SC 50bis), whereas Cat. 2 and 3 focus on the rituals, Cat. 1 addresses both rituals and moral formation, while Cat. 4–8 are focused primarily on moral formation. In the case of the three catecheses edited by Piédagnel (SC 366), the emphasis in the first two is primarily on moral formation, whereas the third is focused on the rituals. Ad illum. cat. 2, in PG 49, cols. 231-240, is again focused primarily on virtue and sin. 73  In Acta apost. hom. 1, in PG 60, col. 22. 74  In Acta apost. hom. 1, in PG 60, col. 22. 70 71

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repentance (μετάνοια).75 The practice of delaying baptism until the moment of death is even worse, precisely because, as he explains, the mysteries require healthy cognition (ὑγεία φρενῶν) and moderation (σωφροσύνη) of the soul. You don’t initiate someone into the mysteries when their soul is on the point of quitting the body. Making your contract with Christ requires a sound mind, just as in the making of a will you have to declare that you are alive, of sound mind, and in good health. The fact that on your deathbed you are paralysed by illness and out of your mind is completely the wrong moment for mystagogy.76 These points are emphasized further in Ad illuminandos catechesis 2, where John says that baptism is a medicine that can become an ulcer, if one sins after it,77 and where there is considerable discussion of both repentance and moral formation and the initiate is reminded that they are the only person who can harm their own soul.78 In Ad illuminandos catechesis 1, he again talks about the importance of the thirty days of preparation and the problem of deathbed baptism.79 When one is about to be illuminated, lack of sensation is the opposite of what is required. The person about to be initiated into these holy and awesome mysteries should, instead, he says, be awake and alert, clean of all worldly thought, full of lots of moderation and zeal, and should root every thought alien to the mysteries from their mind and clean their entire house since it is about to receive the king.80 The use of “king” to refer to Christ here evokes a metaphor elsewhere employed by John, as Jessica Wright has recently indicated.81 The king, within John’s Galenic encephalocentric medical model is the brain, which controls the body, and so cleaning the house should be understood not just as cleaning the mind-soul, but also  In Acta apost. hom. 1, in PG 60, col. 23, lines 47-51.  In Acta apost. hom. 1, in PG 60, col. 24, lines 3-23. At Ad illum. cat. 1.5, in SC 366, ed. Piédagnel and Doutreleau, 122, John emphasizes in this context not just the lack of a sound mind, but the insensate state of the body. The initiate is not just incapable of cognition, but of physically verbalizing the contract with Christ. The body is unconscious, inert, incapable of recognizing or hearing the family and priest who are present. 77  PG 49, col. 234. 78  PG 49, col. 235. 79  Ad illum. cat. 1.3-5, in SC 366, ed. Piédagnel and Doutreleau, 118-122. 80  Ad illum. cat. 1.6.1-7, in SC 366, ed. Piédagnel and Doutreleau, 122-124: Τὸν γὰρ τοῖς ἱεροῖς τούτοις καὶ φρικτοῖς μέλλοντα προσιέναι μυστηρίοις ἐγρηγορέναι χρὴ καὶ διεγηγέρθαι, πάσης βιωτικῆς φροντίδος εἶναι καθαρόν, πολλῆς γέμειν σωφροσύνης, πολλῆς προθυμίας, πάντα τῶν μυστηρίων ἀλλότριον λογισμὸν ἐξορίζειν τῆς διανοίας, καὶ πάντοθεν καθαρὸν παρασκευάζειν τὸν οἶκον, ὥσπερ αὐτὸν ὑποδέχεσθαι μέλλοντα τὸν Βασιλέα. 81  Wright, Brain and Soul, 214-228. 75

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cleaning the entire body. Christ, the king, is, after all, the brain of his body, the church,82 which as John points out in Catechesis 3, is comprised of the initiates and initiated.83 This advice underwrites his conceptualization later in Ad illuminandos catechesis 1 of the thirty days of preparation as wrestling training, in which the initiate learns in advance how to wrestle with the devil when he attacks after baptism.84 Jared Secord argues that the conceptualization of asceticism as athletic training is in some second to third century circles predicated on the association between athletic training and increased performance through sexual abstinence.85 A more likely medical underpinning in John’s context, however, is the association between gymnastic training, performance, and diet.86 That fasting and a moderate and balanced (that is, ascetic) way of life would produce a robust athlete, ready to tackle the devil, we would argue, is precisely the association that John would have expected this imagery to have evoked. That this is the case is suggested both by the considerable knowledge of regimen that John displays, and by a homily on fasting by one of his contemporaries, Asterius of Amasea.87 Asterius’ training in Greek paideia and his understanding of regimen are significantly close to John’s own.88 In medical writings, regimen (what we might describe as way of life or lifestyle) encompassed exercise, sleep and diet,89 and as Galen indicates in his psychological writings, for those who viewed the relationship between the body and mind-soul as sympathetic – that is, as one of mutual influence – it was understood that there is an intimate connection between a person’s lifestyle and their moral condition, and thus  See Jessica Wright, “Brain, Nerves, and Ecclesial Membership in John Chrysostom,” in Revisioning John Chrysostom, ed. de Wet and Mayer, 361-409. 83  Cat. 3.20.3-4, in SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 162. 84  Ad illum. cat. 1.16.10-15, in SC 366, ed. Piédagnel and Doutreleau, 144. 85  Jared Secord, “The Celibate Athlete: Athletic Metaphors, Medical Thought, and Sexual Abstinence in the Second and Third Centuries ce,” Studies in Late Antiquity 2 (2018): 464-490. 86  See Chris L. de Wet, “The Preacher’s Diet: Gluttony, Regimen, and PsychoSomatic Health in the Thought of John Chrysostom,” in Revisioning John Chrysostom, ed. de Wet and Mayer, 410-463. 87  Asterius’ life is dated to 330/335–420/425. See Asterius of Amasea: Homilies I–XIV, ed. Cornelis Datema (Leiden: Brill, 1970), xxiv. 88  On Asterius’ interest in Hellenistic moral philosophy and in the moral formation of his audience, see Asterius, ed. Datema, xxvii-xxviii. 89  See Christopher Gill, “Philosophical Therapy as Preventive Psychological Medicine,” in Mental Disorders in the Classical World, ed. William V. Harris, Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 38 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 339-360, esp. 340-341, 346-347. 82

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character.90 Owning just two pairs of shoes, for instance, or practising moderation in other ways was thought to control the passions and to produce a particular mindset.91 In this view, fasting, vigils, and sleeping on the ground are more than just bodily practices; they are critical to the production of mental and psychic health. At the same time, mental and psychic health is firmly rooted in the body. In Homily 14 on the beginning of the Lenten fast, Asterius sets this out for us quite neatly. 2.1 Wherefore as many of you as are raised in philosophy and passionate about what is lofty and students of reason, love the moment that has arrived and welcome with gratitude the holy Lenten fast as a teacher of self-control (σωφροσύνη) and mother of virtue and nurse of the sons of God and tutor for the disordered and tranquility for souls … 2.2 For [the fast’s] harsh and solemn nature puts to sleep passions (πάθη), extinguishes angers (ὀργάς) and desires (θυμούς), chills92 and calms every splashing that bubbles up from overeating. And as happens in summer, when the sun shines its blazing [heat] on the earth, the north wind kindly supplies the heated parts with gentle breezes and drives away the stifling heat, this is the same kind of gift that the fast gives, chasing the inflammation (πύρωσιν) engendered by gluttony from our bodies. 2.3 While it confers such great benefits on the soul, it benefits the body no less, too. For it both thins the thick sediments of the raw materials and transports the mass out of the body and provides relief for the veins bursting with the abundance of blood and provides the restriction with a little space, so that [the 90  See, e.g., Galen, Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequuntur 9, in Claudii Galeni Pergameni Scripta minora, ed. Iwan von Müller, Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana (Leipzig: Teubner, 1884), II.67.2-16 = Claudio Galeni Opera Omnia, ed. Karl G. Kühn, Medicorum Graecorum opera quae exstant (Hildesheim: Olms ca. 1800; repr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), IV.807.17–808.12. ET: Peter Singer, Galen, Psychological Writings, Cambridge Galen Translations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 401-402: “So, then, let those who are unhappy with the notion that nourishment has the power to make some more self-controlled, some more undisciplined, some more restrained, some more unrestrained, as well as brave, timid, gentle, kind, quarrelsome and argumentative – let them now have some self-control, and come to me to learn what they should eat and drink.” Galen goes on to remind his audience that Plato had already written on this topic on numerous occasions. On the medical doctrine of sympathy see Brooke Holmes, “Disturbing Connections: Sympathetic Affections, Mental Disorder, and the Elusive Soul in Galen,” in Mental Disorders in the Classical World, ed. Harris, 147-176. Cf. the article by Nienke Vos in this volume, the section on fasting. 91  Galen, De propriorum animi cuiuslibet affectuum dignotione et curatione 1.9, in Corpus medicorum Graecorum V/4.1.1, ed. Wilko de Boer (Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner, 1937), 31-33 = Claudio Galeni Opera Omnia, ed. Kühn, V.45-48. 92  Gr. καταψύχει. In the context of humoral medicine and a Galenic understanding of digestion which involves cooking the verb can mean either “dries out” or “chills/cools down.” Since this part of the sentence addresses the splashings that occur in the process of digestion, which implies heat, the idea of cooling is here preferred.



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veins] don’t suffer the disease of the channels (τὸ τῶν σωλήνων πάθος). After all, when a lot of water and in excess of their capacity flushes through, the channels spring leaks, unable to contain the mass thrust into them by the force. 2.4 Rather, the head (κεφαλή) is in a gentle and tranquil condition, with neither the arteries palpating (τῶν ἀρτηρίων παλλομένων) nor the brain darkened as a result of the distribution of vapours (τοῦ ἐγκεφάλου διὰ τῆς ἀναδόσεως τῶν ἀτμῶν ζοφουμένου). Discipline (ἐγκράτεια) is freedom for the stomach. For at that time it is free from its compelled slavery and from boiling like a kettle, weary of coction. Eyes see what is clear and undarkened, with all mist that satiety usually pours down over the eyes removed (πάσης ἀχλυὸς ἀφαιρουμένης), and the gait of the feet is stable, while the activity of the hands is without tremor (ἀκλόνητος). 2.5 Breathing is orderly and measured, not made more rapid by any of the respirations that crowd it inside. The speech of the person fasting is clear and distinct, their mind clear and at that time truly possessing likeness to the divine, when it fulfils its proper activity untroubled (ἄλυπον) and undisturbed in the flesh, as if bodiless. Periods of sleep are untroubled and without disturbing visions (ἀφαντασίαστοι). And – to pass over lots more – let me say fasting is peace alike for body and soul …93

This intimate and thoroughly medically-grounded link between digestion, body, mind, and soul, helps us to make sense of one more intimate connection in John’s thought between mystagogy and the body. Clement of Alexandria, as Emily Cain argues, draws on a particular school of medical knowledge and ophthalmic surgery to explain how through baptism the eye of the soul can henceforth see divine truth.94 In Catechesis 4, John draws instead on a different school of thought and different eye complaint to explain how in baptism God’s grace removes the humour (gum) that darkens the eye of the mind, so that the initiate henceforth can clearly see the difference between wickedness and virtue.95 The eye disease he references is peculiarly suited to his psychagogic emphasis. Similar to Asterius’ “mist that satiety usually pours down over the eyes,”96 which fasting removes, leaving the eyes clear and undarkened, the gummy excretion (λήμη) that John adduces as darkening the mind’s eye prior to baptism has, according to the Hippocratic writings and  Asterius, hom. 14.2.1-5, in Asterius, ed. Datema, 206-207). My translation.  Emily Cain, “Medically Modified Eyes: A Baptismal Cataract Surgery in Clement of Alexandria,” Studies in Late Antiquity 2 (2018): 491-511. 95  Cat. 4.14, in SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 190. The link between noetic sight, virtue and the need for the eyes of the mind to be cleansed of gum is repeated by John at Cat. 4.20, in SC 50bis, 193. 96  Asterius, hom. 14.2.4, in Asterius, ed. Datema, 206, line 23. 93

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Galen, its origins in overeating and inadequate digestion.97 It is no accident, then, that, when talking about how in baptism the initiate has become a new creation, in the immediately preceding section of Catechesis 4, he asks: “How is it not new and paradoxical when the person who up until yesterday devoted their time to excess and gluttony suddenly embraces self-discipline (ἐγκράτεια) and a simple lifestyle (λιτότητα διαίτης)?”98 The line that John draws is clear. For an audience steeped in the same traditions, the connection between bodily practice and clarity of sight, both physical and spiritual, would have been self-evident. V. Conclusion This brings us to a final reflection on the relationship between mystagogy and the body, namely that, just as with all of John’s instruction aimed at guiding the soul what he chooses to emphasize or explain differs from occasion to occasion, so too we need to consider the idea that, depending on how John as mystagogue conceptualized the experience for the person undergoing those rituals, the embodied character of that experience may have been variable. On the one hand, this is because for the psychagogue the capacity to recognize the condition of the souls being guided is a requirement and the depth and/or nature of the instruction needs accordingly to be adjusted.99 On the other, even though in mystagogy we might expect that the condition of the souls of those undergoing initiation would be the same, from his surviving catecheses it is clear that John nonetheless has a range of images on which to draw when teaching initiates about the mysteries and their meaning. While the rituals themselves did not change, it is evident that how he asked the initiates to conceive of themselves in relation to those rites  See Galen, In Hippocratis librum de articulis et Galeni in eum commentarii iv, in Claudio Galeni Opera Omnia, ed. Kühn, XVIIIa.579.1-6), and In Hippocratis prognosticum commentaria iii, in Corpus Medicorum Graecorum V/9.2, ed. Joseph Heeg (Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner, 1915) = Kühn, XVIIIb.48.1-4, where he attributes the gum to an excess of moisture in the eye produced by partial digestion. Cf. De prisca medicina 19.1-8 (Hippocrates, De prisca medicina, ed. Émile Littré, Œuvres complètes d’Hippocrate 1 [Paris: Baillie, 1839]). 98  Cat. 4.13, in SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 190. The terminology John uses here (ἐγκράτεια, control of the πάθη, σωφροσύνη, δίαιτα) evokes the medicalized explanation of Asterius. 99  On the principle of adaptability and accommodation to individual souls, see Rylaarsdam, Divine Pedagogy, 55-99. 97



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could shift from one catechetical instruction to the next, from one year to another, or even within each instruction. This would have impacted the initiates’ experience, with cognitive entailments. Whether the initiates are asked to view themselves as Christ’s bride, or as soldiers, or wrestlers, or slaves will have affected how they read their clothing or lack thereof, their own stance, and the sensory input. At the same time, not all of these images tapped into a holistic medical-philosophical paradigm that was embodied. In this sense, the connections we have drawn are selective and somewhat biased. With regard to the mystagogical phase itself, thus, we should retain an open mind as to the degree to which the body was engaged. We also need to remember that the catecheses that survive represent only a fraction of those John must have delivered, just as he himself indicates that he is not the only mystagogue involved in instructing the initiates.100 Where he focuses on the physical, at Antioch other presbyters or Bishop Flavian may well have delivered instructions that were more intellectually or spiritually focused. Within the larger framework of psychagogy, on the other hand, for John mystagogy was profoundly embodied. Training the soul meant also training the body. Asceticism in the sense of self-restraint and moderation in diet, dress, and behaviour was an essential part of that training. The particular strands of medical theory and of Graeco-Roman moral philosophy on which John drew and which shaped his theology ensured that for him the soul was never far from the body, just as the ascetic practice he espoused was never far from the city. The mystagogic process itself at Antioch – at least in so far as John permits us to observe it – supported this. It was multi-sensory and experiential, with the stance, dress, and ritual formulae all directed towards instructing and inducting the initiate in the proper mindset and behaviour. What we have done in this article is barely scratch the surface. What we hope to have suggested, however, is that by continuing to observe mystagogy at Antioch through a variety of lenses – to sensory theory and history of medicine we should add ritual theory, performativity, neuroscientific and cognitive experimental studies and theory, and history of the emotions – it is likely that, rather than retreating from view, the body will become even more prominent. 100  At the opening of Cat. 8, in SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 247, he refers to other homilists who have preached in the preceding days. At Cat. ult. ad baptiz. 9, in SC 366, ed. Piédagnel and Doutreleau, 240, he asks the initiates to pray for the bishop whose hands and voice will convey the blessings received in baptism, and for his fellow presbyters, indicating that at Antioch the mystagogic process involves a large number of clergy.

St Basil of Caesarea on the Role of the Body in Life after Baptism Yulia Rozumna I. Introduction Although St Basil did not write catechetical sermons, he explains the meaning of baptism and the role of the body in this sacrament in his sermon encouraging catechumens to be baptized (Exhortation to Holy Baptism = Homilia exhortatoria ad sanctum baptisma, after 372) and in his treatise On Baptism (De baptismo, 376-378).1 Moreover, he regards ascetic life in a monastic community or in the world as a continuation of the baptismal promises.2 Even though it may seem that St Basil holds negative views on the body, his criticism is directed at the passions of both body and soul. In addition, according to St Basil, the body is not so much a “prison” of the soul but, when used in the right way, it can function as its co-worker in glorifying God and acquiring the likeness to God. The overarching idea about the relationship between the soul and the body is that in order to achieve salvation, one should learn to keep the body and soul in balance, always remembering that the spiritual goal is higher than transitory bodily matters. In this contribution I will first present St Basil’s views on the nature of the soul and the body when they were created, then give some examples of his rigorous attitude to the body, and finally consider some more positive ones. Before starting this exposition, it is necessary to mention the arguments of other scholars on whose work I expand. First, I support the argument of Stephen Hildebrand who has shown, commenting on Homilies on the Six Days of Creation (Homiliae in hexaemeron, 378) 10 and 11, that St Basil holds a much more positive view of the body compared to 1  ET of St Basil’s De baptismo: St Basil, Ascetical Works, trans. Monica Wagner, FOTC 9 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1962); French trans.: Basil de Césarée, Sur le baptême, ed. and trans. Jeanne Ducatillon, SC 357 (Paris: Cerf, 1989). 2  Philip Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 20 (Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, CA, and London: University of California Press, 1994), 200.

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Origen and Eusebius in that the body shares with the soul the dignity of being created by the very hands of God. It is not created as the result of or as a remedy for sin, but to assist the soul in attaining likeness to God through good works.3 I also rely on Peter Bouteneff, who argues that body and soul are interconnected to such a degree that the good of the one depends on the good of the other. Exhortations not to over-nurture the body reflect the fact that the soul cannot function properly in this case. As he writes, “Negative comments about the body reflect precisely this holistic approach – an ultimate concern for the well-being of the whole person.”4 We will build on this argument, taking into account not just St Basil’s Hexaemeron 10–11 and Homilies (hence Hom.), but also his works on baptism and on the ascetic life, and his letters. II.  The Nature of the Body and Soul First, we will start with an exposition of the relationship between the soul and the body. In the Homily on Detachment from Worldly Things (Homilia quod rebus mundanis adhaerendum non sit, et de incendio extra ecclesiam facto, 372), the theologian writes that human beings should avoid pleasures since they are alien and incapable of becoming anyone’s possession.5 On the contrary, one should take care of something which is “truly one’s own”: the soul, light and intelligent, by which we live, and which needs none of the things that weigh us down. The same is true of the body, which the Creator gives to the soul as a vehicle (σχήμα) for living this life. This, then, is a human being: a mind united to a suitable and fitting body (προσφόρῳ καὶ πρεπούσῃ σαρκί).6 “This being has been appointed to rule over the earth, and it was for this reason that creation was spread out as a place to practise virtue. The law was given for human beings, so that they could imitate the Maker in his power and to bring about upon the earth a reflection of the good order in heaven.”7 St Basil continues by stating 3  Stephen M. Hildebrand, Basil of Caesarea, Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2014), 31-35. 4  Peter C. Bouteneff, The Theological Value of Christ’s Human Soul in the Cappadocian Fathers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 48-49. 5  ET of St Basil’s Homilia quod rebus mundanis adhaerendum non sit, et de incendio extra ecclesiam facto: On Christian Doctrine and Practice, trans. Mark DelCogliano, ed. John Behr, Popular Patristic Series 47 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2013), 170 (PG 31, cols. 540-564, 166D, caput 4, at 548). 6  See PG 31, cols. 540-564, 167A, caput 5, at 549. Cf. n. 5. 7  ET: On Christian Doctrine and Practice, trans. DelCogliano, ed. Behr, 170.



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that the virtues can also become our possession. We observe here that the body and soul were created to complement each other, to be harmoniously united, and to rule over creation. We also note that both the body and soul are human possessions, and that virtues can become part of human nature; however, not so the pleasures. Virtues, even though they are not initially part of human s­ubstance, can through regular practice become common, habitual to human nature. We find a slightly different description of human nature in St Basil’s homily Give Heed to Yourself (Homilia in illud, attende tibi ipsi, 364), where he writes: For we ourselves are one thing, and what is ours is another, and the things around us are another. Thus, we are the soul and the mind, through which we have come into being according to the image of the Creator, but the body is ours and the sense perceptions through it, while around us are possessions (χρήματα), skills and the other equipment of life.8

Here we notice a stricter hierarchy of things. The soul is not ranked together with the body as a human possession; it is equated with the essence of the human being. We see that the body is not included in the “image”;9 it is only a human possession, even though different from external possessions. As Hildebrand remarks, St Basil sounds very much like Origen and Eusebius when he writes that the outer human, the body, is the possession or instrument of the inner human, that is, his rational soul.10 Nonetheless, the fact that the body is called a human possession and that it does not express a person’s essence does not mean that it lacks intrinsic value as a co-worker with the soul. In addition, in his other work St Basil writes, “What is lacking in the strength of body is encompassed by the employment of reason,”11 which demonstrates that the soul harmoniously complements the body. 8  ET of St Basil’s Homilia in illud, attende tibi ipsi: Basil the Great, On the Human Condition, trans. Nonna Verna Harrison, Popular Patristic Series 30 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2005), 96 (PG 31, cols. 197-217, 17A, caput 2, at 201); L’homélie de Basile de Césarée sur le mot “Observe-toi toi-même”: Édition critique du texte grec et étude sur la tradition manuscrite, ed. Stig Y. Rudberg, Studia Graeca Stockholmensia 2 (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1962). 9  Tertullian affirms that the flesh is made in God’s image (Hildebrand, Basil of Caesarea, 29). 10  Ibid., 30-32. 11  ET of St Basil’s Homilia in Hexaemeron 10: On the Human Condition, trans. Harrison, 35; edition: Basil de Césarée, Sur l’origine de l’homme: Homélies X et XI de L’Hexaéméron, ed. and trans. Alexis Smets and Michel Van Esbroeck, SC 160 (Paris: Cerf, 1970), 83-112.

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Moreover, St Basil follows the apostle Paul’s division of the human being into an inner and outer human (2 Cor 4:16). He states, “it is truly said that we are that which is within,” and a human being “is principally the soul in itself.”12 We can explain this exclusivity by saying that reason is a distinguishing feature of humanity in comparison with animals, which is why the human being is equated with a rational soul. St Basil also writes that “Where the power to rule is, there is the image of God.”13 In contrast to this, he writes in Hom. in Ps. 61 (Homiliae in psalmos) not only about human nature as a whole being made to rule, as we have noted in his Homily on Detachment from Worldly Things (Homilia quod rebus mundanis adhaerendum non sit, et de incendio extra ecclesiam facto), but also specifically about the soul ruling over the passions. As St Basil comments, the Psalmist opposes the person who enslaves the will of the spirit and subjects it to the flesh.14 The human soul was put into a fitting body and was meant to rule creation through the help of the body; the rational part of the soul was made to rule over the irrational parts of the soul and the passions of the body. To fulfil its purpose, a proper order in human nature should be maintained. In this regard, St Basil, as most patristic authors, strongly relied on Platonist concepts. Despite these seemingly subordinationist features of the body, we see that the human being was created to be a soul that is harmoniously united to the body, and that he or she is intended to rule over creation and to maintain proper use of the passions. III.  The Role of the Body in Baptism After these introductory notes on the nature of the soul and body as they were created, we will look at what effect baptism has on fallen human nature. St Basil writes in On Baptism that the one who is justified from sin is cleansed of all sin, not only in word and deed, but also “of all passionate movements of the mind.”15 We see here that the passions are associated not only with the body but also with the mind. As St Basil

 ET: On the Human Condition, trans. Harrison, 36.  Ibid., 36-37. 14  ET of St Basil’s Hom. in Ps. 61: Saint Basil, Exegetic Homilies, trans. Agnes Clare Way, FOTC  46 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963), 342; PG 29, cols. 307-494; 30, cols. 104-116. 15  ET: Ascetical Works, trans. Wagner, 369. 12 13



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explains elsewhere, there are natural motions and forbidden passions.16 Christ experienced the necessary natural passions of the flesh, such as weariness, and those which show virtue, such as compassion for the afflicted.17 Among the forbidden ones are the “desires of the flesh” and “the desires of the mind” (Eph 2:3): the former are the passions mentioned in Gal 5:19 and Rom 8:7, such as fornication, enmity, murder and other things, whereas the latter are thoughts not mentioned in Scripture but which “rise against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor 10:5); these might be understood as blasphemous thoughts.18 We note that St Basil associates the passions primarily with the body, but the soul is not necessarily pure in itself. It can also fall prey to passions. Furthermore, those who are baptized are born anew, receive spiritual regeneration, and “change [their, YR] abode and alter [their] ways by strengthening the inner man in spirit, so that [they] can say: ‘But our citizenship is in heaven’ (Phil 3:20).” As St Basil comments, “While we draw our body along upon the earth like a shadow, we keep our souls in the company of heavenly spirits.”19 This image of the body as a shadow is negative; however, it does not encourage anyone to neglect or even punish it. Subsequently, in his Exhortation to Holy Baptism (after 372), St Basil encourages catechumens to receive baptism, since many delay their baptism because they want to “use [their bodies] for shameful pleasure.”20 They even imagine justifications for the delay by saying, “I will let my body be ‘an instrument of unrighteousness for the sake of lawlessness’, and then I will present my members to God afterwards as ‘instruments of righteousness’ (Rom 6:13).”21 In this way they manipulate Scripture to justify sinning. St Basil states that one should serve God with one’s body and not just with the soul; it should not be used as an instrument of sin. In addition, St Basil urges his audience to learn the rules of the heavenly land which include “discipline of the eyes, government over the tongue, proper service of the body,”22 thus involving the use of the body. 16  Anna M. Silvas, The Asketikon of St Basil the Great, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 314; PG 31, cols. 600-652. 17  Ibid., 209. 18  Ibid., 421. 19  Ibid., 378. 20  ET of St Basil’s Homilia exhortatoria ad sanctum baptisma (Exhortation to Holy Baptism): Basil the Great, On Fasting and Feasts, trans. S. R. Holman and Mark DelCogliano, Popular Patristic Series 50 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2013), 48. 21  Ibid. 22  Ibid., 51.

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Moreover, the theologian mentions baptism in On the Holy Spirit (De Spiritu Sancto, 373-374). When explaining the typology of baptism in Moses found in 1 Cor 10:2 (“They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea”), referring to Exod 14:31, he writes: “The cloud is a shadow of the Spirit’s gifts, for he cools the flames of our passions through the mortification of our bodies (τῆς νεκρώσεως τῶν μελῶν).”23 We see here that the Spirit works together with humans in mortifying their bodies. This clearly implies a negative image of the body. However, as St Basil further explains, baptism is a “putting off of the works of the flesh” (Col 2:11-12),24 not a denying of the body as such. It means a fight with the passions through the disciplining of the body. Thus, we see that despite calling the body a “shadow” and mentioning the need to mortify it, St Basil believes that baptism purifies human nature as a whole. It enables one to use the body as an instrument for the glory of God, and not for sin. IV.  A Rigorous Attitude to the Body We will now look at the most negative descriptions of the body. One of the places where St Basil’s attitude to the body is the most severe is in the Hom. in Ps. 29 (uncertain dating) where he writes: Do not flatter (μὴ κολάκευε) your flesh with sleep and baths and soft covering, but say always these words: “What profit is there in my blood, whilst I go down to corruption?” Why do you treat with honour that which a little later shall perish? Why do you fatten and cover yourself with flesh (τί καταπιαίνεις σεαυτὸν καὶ περισαρκοῖς)? Or, do you not know that the more massive you make your flesh, the deeper is the prison you are preparing for your soul? … And how will he declare the truth, who has never given time to learning and has buried his mind in such a mass of flesh? For this reason, therefore, I waste away (ἐκτήκω) my flesh and I am unsparing of my blood which, indeed, is wont to be converted into flesh, that there may be no obstacle to me for confession or for the knowledge of truth.25

23  ET of St Basil’s De Spiritu Sancto: St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, trans. David Anderson, Popular Patristic Series 5 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 54; PG 32, cols. 67-218, 31B, caput 14, at 124. 24  ET: ibid., 58. 25  ET of St Basil’s, Hom. in Ps. 29: Exegetic Homilies, trans. Way, 223; PG 29, cols. 305-324, 130C, caput 6, at 320.



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There are Platonic images here. We see how St Basil vividly expresses that the flesh does not deserve a lot of care, because it is perishable and prevents the mind from working properly and from knowing the truth. St Basil recommends wasting away the flesh, because caring for it negatively affects the soul. This also means that soul and body are so closely interconnected that disciplining the body has a positive impact upon the soul.26 Conversely, we can interpret a fattening of the flesh and a mass of flesh as signs of over-care. Similar to this theme of indulging the body beyond necessity is the recurrent theme of an opposition between the soul and the body. St Basil states that excess in the soul inevitably causes defects in the body and vice versa.27 Moreover, we face the struggle between the spirit and the flesh, according to the First Homily on Fasting (Homilia de ieiunio 1; 371), which we can interpret as the struggle between two attitudes to life, one focused only on the body and the other focused exclusively on the spirit, both of which are wrong. St Basil also writes in the Second Homily on Fasting (Homilia de ieiunio 2; 371): Hence, the more you deny the flesh, the more you render the soul radiant with spiritual health. For it is not the body’s condition but rather the soul’s perseverance and steadfastness in affliction that result in strength against invisible enemies.28

Thus, it is necessary to care for the soul more than for the body not because of its superior status, but because this helps to resist evil spirits. In the homily Give Heed to Yourself (attende tibi ipsi), the theologian also states that the reason for this care is that the body is mortal while the soul is immortal.29 Still, the dangers of the body are once more addressed in Hexaemeron 6, one of his latest works, where St Basil writes that both body and soul constantly change, but the goal of both – eternal life – is unchangeable. According to St Basil, one should look to this goal and not focus on the unstable things. While the body is strictly speaking mortal, its destination may be eternal life through the resurrection (objective basis) and baptism (subjective participation). It is significant that when St Basil opposes the flesh and the spirit in this treatise, he uses the strong  Cf. the contributions by Nienke Vos and Daniel Lemeni in this volume.  We find this idea among other places also in St Basil’s, Hom. in Ps. 32; ET: Exegetic Homilies, trans. Way, 244. 28  ET of St Basil’s Homilia de ieiunio 2: Fasting and Feasts, trans. Holman and DelCogliano, 73-74. 29  ET: On the Human Condition, trans. Harrison, 435. 26 27

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l­anguage of “wasting away” and “despising” the flesh.30 This is so because when humans focus exclusively on the body, accommodating its interests, this is always at the expense of the good of the soul. Elizabeth Castelli has discussed a similar dynamic in the context of the life of St Syncletica, commenting how “bodily asceticism accompanies spiritual exercise, and physical trials are interpreted as spiritual tests.”31 St Syncletica saw fasting as the most important ascetic practice because it allowed her to bring her soul’s desires for bodily pleasures under control and to keep her body constantly under observation and regulation. As Castelli explains, “the discipline of asceticism is not simply opposed to the body, but rather is focused on the body. Fasting is further described as a cure of the body (νοσηλεύειν τὸ σῶμα), thereby bringing health to the soul.” As Castelli notes, “[a]scetic discipline is embodied, but not reduced to the body, and physical renunciation is but one crucial aspect of the ascetic practice of self-formation.”32 Careful attention to the body thus may have a salutary effect on the soul. By disciplining the body, one learns to control the desires of the soul. In relation to fasting and asceticism, it is important to note that in ancient Greco-Roman thought fasting was considered to deprive the body of “fuel,” thus preventing the passions from “heating up.” It was also believed that there was a connection between food, heat and passion. St Basil thought in line with this. Furthermore, according to St Basil and other monastic writers, fasting is important not only because eating too much is a vice in itself but also because overeating fires up other vices. The primary issue is not the body, but the effect of food on the soul, that is, on the interface between body and soul. There is a connection here between body and soul: the intake of food affects the state of the soul. Brown presents another explanation why it was considered important to afflict the body. He writes that the ascetics imposed severe restraints on their bodies because they believed in the eventual transformation of bodies on the day of resurrection, a transformation which had already occurred on earth in some ascetics. They were prepared to mourn and suffer in this life while awaiting a future glory for their bodies. In reducing the amount of food they consumed, ascetics were remaking their  ET Homilia in Hexaemeron 6: Exegetic Homilies, trans. Way, 100.  Elizabeth A. Castelli, “Mortifying the Body, Curing the Soul: Beyond Ascetic Dualism in The Life of Saint Syncletica,” Differences 4 (1992): 134-153, at 142. 32  Ibid., 143. 30 31



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bodies.33 In addition, the scholar notes that the problem lay primarily in the wilfulness of the heart and not in the body.34 St Basil’s conviction that the attainment of the spiritual ideal is always marked by struggle also comes to the fore in his Homily on Detachment from Worldly Things (Homilia quod rebus mundanis adhaerendum non sit, et de incendio extra ecclesiam facto), where he suggests: “If the flesh is either consumed by hunger, or struggling with cold and heat, or afflicted by illnesses, or suffering something violent from anyone, he [the person who wants to pursue what is best for him or her, YR] will consider it of little consequence …”35 The bishop supports this statement by referring to biblical texts, 2 Cor 4:16 and 2 Cor 5:1, about the outer and the inner human. Here we detect his rigorous attitude to the body, which seems extreme. It may remind us of apatheia and the perseverance of martyrs in the face of bodily afflictions. But while his words sound like an ideal, they are quickly followed by a concession: “Now if anyone wishes to have regard for his body too, as it is the soul’s only necessary possession and its co-worker (μόνου κτήματος ἀναγκαίου ψυχῇ καὶ συνεργοῦντος αὐτῇ) for living upon the earth, he will give his bodily needs minimal attention, moderate care (δὶα μετρίας ἐπιμελείας) so that [the body] can serve the soul.”36 Interestingly, the body is not described here as simply a vehicle, but also as a co-worker. St Basil shows the close interconnection between the two and also comments: “He [the human] will do all he can to avoid overindulgence lest the body become unruly.” So, it is not a matter of despising the body, but of not allowing it to give in to self-indulgence and unbridled desires, as in eating more than necessary. Brown remarks that to describe asceticism as dualist and as motivated by hatred of the body is to miss the most important aspect of it. Rather, it was seen as closely implicated in the transformation of the soul, which was rare in ancient thought.37 This more co-operative view meant that monks could speak of the body as “this body that God has afforded me, as a 33  Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988; Twentieth-Anniversary Edition with New Introduction, Columbia Classics in Religion, 2008), 222-223. For the transformation of the body of the monk in terms of radiance, cf. Daniel Lemeni’s contribution in this volume. 34  Brown, The Body and Society, 226. 35  ET: On Christian Doctrine and Practice, trans. DelCogliano, ed. Behr, 171. 36  Ibid., 171; PG 31, cols. 540-564, 167D, caput 6, at 549. 37  Ibid., 235.

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field to cultivate, were I might work and become rich.”38 By humbling one’s body, one could bring humility to one’s soul. Another important and related theme touched upon briefly above is that one should provide only what is necessary for the body, and not follow its desires. St Basil writes: “Accordingly, we ought not to serve the body any more than is absolutely necessary, but we ought to do our best for the soul, releasing it from the bondage of fellowship with the bodily appetites (τὰ τοῦ σώματος πάθη); at the same time we ought to make the body superior to passion.” Thus, the soul should be separated from attachment to bodily passions. St Basil continues: “Since, then, this exaggerated care of the body is harmful to the body itself, and a hindrance to the soul, it is sheer madness to be a slave to the body, and serve it.”39 He writes: “Of a truth, one who had learned to be independent of this sort of thing would be loath to attempt anything mean or low, either in word or deed … he would make the necessities of life, not its pleasures, the measure of need.”40 Here we read how St Basil compares the body to a “fierce animal” and views the body as being of “little worth.” However, there is also a positive note here. He states that human beings should pay as much attention to the body as is helpful to acquire wisdom. Moreover, he writes here about “exaggerated care of the body” and being “a slave to the body,” but this does not mean that it is wrong to take appropriate care of the body while subordinating its wishes. This is not the language of contempt for the body, as in previous works, but a warning against exaggerated care of it. Understanding everything’s right place helps Christians to lead a virtuous life. In relation to the idea of providing necessary care for the body, St Basil also writes about self-control, which is the condition for monastic asceticism and evangelical perfection.41 Surprisingly, we see a more positive approach to the body in St Basil’s Asketikon (written over several decades), which might be explained by the polemical context. It is worth 38  ET from Horsiesius’ Instructions: Armand Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia 3: Instructions, Letters, and Other Writings, Cistercian Studies 47 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1982), 138. Cf. also the reference to this passage in Nienke Vos’ contribution to this volume. 39  ET of St Basil’s tractate Ad adolescentes: Essays on the Study and Use of Poetry by Plutarch and Basil the Great, trans. Frederick Morgan Padelford, Yale Studies in English 15 (New York: Henry Holt, 1902), 99-120, at 114-117. A similar idea about slavery to the passions of the flesh can be found in Hom. in Ps. 48, ET: Exegetic Homilies, trans. Way, 325; δοῦλος γενόμενος τῶν παθῶν τῆς σαρκὸς; PG 29, cols. 563-590, 181D, caput 7, at 581. 40  ET: Essays, trans. Padelford, 117. 41  He bases his understanding on Pauline texts (Gal 5:16-18, Rom 7:14-15, 19, 22-23).



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noting that St Basil was a reformer of monastic movements in Pontus in Asia Minor. He corrected Encratite tendencies42 in the asceticism of Eustathius’s followers and followed a moderate path in ascetic practices by interspersing prayer, which was the exclusive occupation of the Messalian sect, with labour, and by banning extremities in fasting. In the Longer Responses 16 he explains that they who give themselves up to a life of piety should practise self-control because it is one of the gifts of the Spirit, and with its help, the ministry is blameless and the body is treated rigorously and brought under subjection (1 Cor 9:27). He cites numerous biblical texts that reprove luxury and the pleasures of the body (for example, Rom 13:14).43 By self-control St Basil means not complete abstinence from food, but “abstinence from pleasures practised in order to overthrow ‘the mind of the flesh’ (Rom 8:6) in view of the goal of piety: by that with which the necessary but not superfluous sustenance of life is consistent, when we avoid what is gratifying and fulfil solely what necessity requires of the body.”44 Probably humans are made in such a way that it is impossible to fight bodily passions without some kind of mortifying ascetic practices. However, it has a positive end effect on both body and soul. St Basil writes: “Concerning the vices and the passions of the soul, there is only one measure of self-control: entire estrangement from all that tends to destructive pleasure with no concessions, ever.”45 Thus, we see here that St Basil encourages treating the body with discernment, disciplining it with moderation. As Ladner notes, St Basil’s attitude to the imperfections and transitory nature of earthly human life is harsher and his anthropology is more severe than that of the two Gregorys. The practical side (praxis) of his anthropological thought is fundamentally ascetic: praxis for him is training in the virtues as a preparation for theoria, vision of God.46 The harsh treatment of the body is entirely directed at preparing it for the spiritual goal of union with and contemplation of God. 42  Encratites (lit., “abstainers” or “persons who practised continence”) were heretics who abstained from flesh, wine, and the marriage bed, believing these to be essentially impure. The name was given to an early Christian sect, or rather to a tendency common to several sects, chiefly Gnostic, whose asceticism was based on heretical views regarding the origin of matter (Daniel Patte, ed., The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010], 366). 43  Silvas, The Asketikon, 206. 44  Ibid., 207. 45  Ibid., 212-213. 46  Gerhart B. Ladner, “The Philosophical Anthropology of Saint Gregory of Nyssa,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 12 (1958): 59-94, at 77-78.

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V.  Positive Attitude to the Body Now we will explore the positive side of the question. According to St Basil, one of the proofs that human beings are made in the image of God lies in their bodily constitution. In Hexaemeron 9 St Basil writes: The herds are earthy and are bent toward the earth, but man is a heavenly creature who excels them as much by the excellence of his soul as by the character of his bodily structure … Your head stands erect toward the heavens; your eyes look upward, so that, if ever you dishonour yourself by the passions of the flesh, serving your belly and your lower parts, “you are compared to senseless beasts, and are become like to them” (Ps 48:13).47

Thus, human beings turn into animals when they serve their passions and pleasures. St Basil writes that human dignity lies also in the fact that God made humans, unlike animals, with his own hands. The body was created for no other reason than “to be an instrument fit for the glory of God.”48 Moreover, the theologian interprets the phrase “fill the earth” as “fill the flesh which has been given you for serving through good works … Let every usage of our limbs be filled with actions according to the commandments.”49 Therefore, the body shares in the dignity of the soul and participates in the dignity of divine deliberation.50 Furthermore, St Basil explains the wonderful interconnection between the soul and the body. He explains in the homily Give Heed to Yourself (attende tibi ipsi) that, according to God’s design, the mind, or the rational part of the soul, holds the authority, whereas the emotional/nonrational part is in submission and obedience to reason. He encourages us to marvel at how soul and body are joined and permeate each other: “Consider, also, what this power is which the soul imparts to the body and what sympathy the body renders the soul in return …” He continues: “Think of how the soul destroys the beauty properly belonging to it by yielding to carnal passion and how, on the contrary, it recovers the likeness to its Creator through the practice of virtue, after it has been 47  ET of Homilia in Hexaemeron 9: Exegetic Homilies, trans. Way, 138. Similar idea in the Homilia in illud, attende tibi ipsi, ET: On the Human Condition, trans. Harrison, 445. 48  St Basil, Hexaemeron 10, ET: On the Human Condition, trans. Harrison, 50-51. 49  Ibid., 52. 50  Hildebrand, Basil of Caesarea, 31.



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purified from the shame of iniquity.”51 We see that St Basil is ­suggesting a wonderful harmony and sympathy between the soul and the body. As Bouteneff notes: “Unlike that of Basil, Platonic anthropology was not particularly concerned to ascribe a particular role to the body or to address the soul’s interaction with it.”52 The Pauline idea of the body as a dwelling place of God (1 Cor 6:19) is of key importance in St Basil’s thought. Commenting on Ps 14:1, “Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? And who shall dwell on your holy mountain?,” he explains that God’s tent is human flesh, “given by God to the soul of a human being as a place of habitation” and that “we are entrusted with the care of our flesh under a contract, whereby we are obligated to care for it properly through a labour of love so that we may return it to the Giver fruitful.” This is a very positive and elevated view of the human body, since it is seen as a dwelling place of the soul that should be made fruitful to God, and should not be neglected. St Basil further writes, “And if the flesh is worthy of God, it truly becomes a tent of God insofar as it is his place of habitation in the saints.” Thus, the body becomes a dwelling place not just of the soul, but also of God! The bishop continues: So then, if someone transcends this flesh, sojourning undisturbed by the passions as if this flesh were foreign to him, and if he is not attached to it as if it were his very own, then on account of the mortification of his members upon the earth and his acquisition of holiness he is worthy of dwelling on the holy mountain [which is a heavenly country/paradise].53

However, the Cappadocian writes that “it is rare for someone to both sojourn in the body and dwell on the mountain.” We see here that the ideal, according to St Basil, is to be undisturbed by the passions and unattached to the body, while still caring for it and making it fruitful. In order to let God enter the human body, one has to prepare it by fighting the 51  ET of Homilia in Hexaemeron 9: On the Human Condition, trans. Harrison, 444. Harrison notes that the way in which the Fathers talked about human nature, the human person, and human energies was similar to the way they talked about the nature, person, and energies of God. The energies/activities in humans are virtues, which they are called to acquire and exercise; see Nonna Verna Harrison, “The Human Person as Image and Likeness of God,” in The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology, ed. Mary B. Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokritoff, Cambridge Companions to Religion (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 78-92, at 81. 52  Bouteneff, The Theological Value of Christ’s Human Soul, 48. 53  ET of St Basil’s Hom. in Ps. 14: On Christian Doctrine and Practice, trans. DelCogliano, ed. Behr, 93-94.

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passions. We find a similar idea in St Basil’s interpretation of Isa 1:8 where he explains that the “tent” is the body where the Holy Spirit dwells, and the “vineyard” is the soul charged with bringing forth fruits.54 Similarly, commenting on Isa 1:13, when referring to the immaterial and pure worship of God, St Basil writes that “we should not deem that God seeks after the pleasure of the smell of incense, but should realise that incense to the Lord is bodily sanctity made perfect by restraint in the soul when the aspects of the soul are balanced and not in conflict with each other.”55 Thus, one can acquire holiness in the body by keeping all aspects of the soul in the right order. Again, we see how closely the body and the soul are interconnected. In addition, St Basil writes about holy relics. He explains in Hom. in Ps. 115 (uncertain dating) that for the Jews corpses were abominable, but the relics of the Christian martyrs are precious. He writes: “… anyone who has touched the bones of a martyr receives some share of the holiness that comes from the grace inherent in the body.”56 So we see that because the body is so closely united with the soul, the soul can impart holiness after it has departed; this is completely opposite to the attitude of despising the body. As Castelli writes, “Just as bodily disciplines shape the soul’s path, so the soul’s practice manifests its success or failure in physical terms.”57 St Basil’s work also contains the idea that it is possible to serve God with the body. In Hom. in Ps. 32 (uncertain dating) the theologian describes how a person can praise God. God should first be praised “on the harp,” that is “to render harmoniously the actions of the body” and “since we sinned in the body … let us give praise with our own body, using the same instrument for the destruction of sin.”58 He explains that the body participates in glorifying God by performing virtues that are the opposites of vices: blessing, making restitution, fasting, being humble, consoling, and by correcting the actions of the body. By the same token, St Basil frequently gives examples of achieving likeness of God which involve the body, an idea which we encountered in the Give Heed 54  St Basil, Commentary on the Prophet Isaiah, trans. and ed. N. A. Lipatov, Texts and Studies in the History of Theology 7 (Mandelbachtal and Cambridge: Cicero, 2001), 27; PG 30, cols. 117-668. 55  St Basil, Isaiah; ET: Lipatov, 40. 56  ET of St Basil’s Hom. in Ps. 115: On Christian Doctrine and Practice, trans. DelCogliano, ed. Behr, 224. 57  Castelli, “Mortifying the Body,” 148. 58  ET of St Basil’s Hom. in Ps. 32: Fasting and Feasts, trans. Holman and DelCogliano, 229-230.



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to Yourself (attende tibi ipsi). He writes about “bodily service” which comprises fraternal love and compassion, good works, fasting, tears in prayer, dominating the passions of sin. Another affirmative stance towards the body is related to the incarnation, for the bishop argues against heresies that deny the doctrine of the incarnation of God. He emphasizes that St Paul wrote that Jesus was made in the “likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom 8:3) and not in the likeness of flesh. He explains: “He took our flesh with its natural feelings, but he ‘did not sin’ (1 Pet 2:22).” Death and sin were destroyed, and that is why “in the resurrection we resume our flesh, which is neither liable to death nor subject to sin.”59 Similarly, in Hom. in Ps. 32 St Basil writes about resurrection of the flesh: “All our hope is to return to eternal rest, in order that, after the body of our lowly condition has been changed, we may realize that this same body has been made like to the glorified Body of Christ.”60 Thus, the body will continue its existence in the life to come. VI. Conclusion To conclude, we have attempted to explain tensions between the body and the soul in the works of St Basil. We have seen that, on the one hand, the theologian calls the body a “shadow” and “prison,” and does not include it in the image of God (even encouraging his flock to waste it away). Human beings should not be distracted by bodily afflictions or care for the body when it is hungry, ill, or suffering, which seems extreme. He also frequently writes against the beauty of the body and its good health. However, on the other hand, both soul and body are truly human possessions; virtues can also become such, whereas pleasures cannot. The body deserves moderate care, because indulging in its passions is detrimental both to the body and to the soul. St Basil is not against care for the body, but only against exaggerated care for and slavery to it. The necessities should be provided for, but not pleasures. St Basil writes to his monks about different measures of self-control and advises moderation in everything. Besides these ideas which may suggest c­ ondescension, St Basil 59  ET of St Basil’s Ep. 261: Basil, Letters, vol. 2, trans. Agnes Clare Way, with notes by R. J. Deferrari, FOTC 28 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1955; new. ed. 2001), 235; Saint Basile, Lettres, ed. Yves Courtonne, Collection des Universités de France, 3 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1957-1966). 60  ET of St Basil’s Hom.in Ps. 32: Fasting and Feasts, trans. Holman and DelCogliano, 246.

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also sees positive value in the body as such. Starting from the account of creation, he writes that even the stature of the body reflects the fact that humans were created in the image of God. The body was created for the practice of virtues, and through good works accomplished in the body it is possible to praise God. He also writes about holiness of the body, the body as a place of habitation of God, and about holy relics. In addition, he defends the doctrine of the incarnation and resurrection of the flesh. As we have argued, these tensions can be explained by the fallen condition of the human nature. The body was created as a partner of the soul, and in the postlapsarian state it assists the soul in achieving the likeness of God. Very often, however, both body and soul become instruments of sin and passion. Because the body tends to become a slave of pleasure it is despised for this condition. However, it should be superior to passions. The soul also becomes a slave of passions when the body satisfies its pleasures, because they are so closely interrelated. Generally speaking, the pleasures, desires and passions of the flesh are destructive, damaging individual human nature; yet the body itself is not to be blamed for this. Through his harsh words St Basil encourages his audience not to be a slave to passions, but rather to care for the body so as to make it a dwelling place of God.

The Role of the Body in Gregory of Nyssa’s Mystagogical Exegesis of The Song of Songs Giulio Maspero I. Introduction The contribution of Gregory of Nyssa to mysticism has been studied in depth, as has his conception of spiritual progress.1 What does not yet seem to have been sufficiently emphasized in this context is the role of the body and, consequently, of liturgical-sacramental mystagogy in his thought. In particular, it seems important to highlight how the novelty of the spiritual perspective is linked to a deep, renewed understanding of Greek ontology by this Cappadocian Father, especially with regard to the concepts of relation and existence.2 He conceives of the inner life in a dynamic way: becoming a saint, that is, a true believer, means to constantly grow in participation in the divine life. Not only is the development of the inner life understood as the progress of the soul, but the goal itself is conceived as the achievement of stability in the movement: an eternal immersion in divine intimacy. Mysticism is understood in a continuous way with respect to eschatological glory, in what is perhaps Gregory’s most original c­onception: the

1  Cf. Walther Völker, Gregor von Nyssa als Mystiker (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1955); Jean Daniélou, Platonisme et théologie mystique: Doctrine spirituelle de saint Grégoire de Nysse, Théologie 2 (Paris: Aubier, 1944); Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St. John of the Cross (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1979; 2nd rev. ed. 1990); Martin Laird, Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith: Union, Knowledge, and Divine Presence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); J. Warren Smith, Passion and Paradise: Human and Divine Emotion in the Thought of Gregory of Nyssa (New York: Crossroad, 2004) and Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco, “Mysticism,” in The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa, ed. Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco and Giulio Maspero, VCS 99 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 519-530. 2  Cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Presence and Thought: An Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa, A Communio Book (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1988).

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ἐπέκτασις.3 Andreas Spira argues, moreover, that this doctrine was the source of inspiration for European mysticism, as opposed to Aristotle’s distaste for progress toward the infinite and his conception of the divine as a non-transcendent and limited entity. The new perspective as proposed by Gregory is made possible by overcoming the older Greek ontological conception that was characterized simultaneously by finitude and by a descending scale. These two elements are closely connected, because, in the absence of true transcendence, the sole way of introducing a real distinction between God and the world was to diminish the second with respect to the first. Thus, for Plato and Aristotle there is, in fact, a unique finite metaphysical structure, with the first principle at the vertex and then a descending succession of degrees. The Trinitarian reflection of the fourth century, on the other hand, felt obligated to transform the theology of the Logos, ushered in by the Apologist Fathers and led to its summit by Origen, into a new conception, consisting of two distinct ontologies: the first is infinite and eternal, identified with the one and triune God; and the second is created and finite, marked by the diastema.4 A true and proper ontological gap is introduced between God and the world, grounded in the theology of creation, which is translated into the possibility of overcoming the necessity of denigrating the world to affirm God. Humankind could be thought of as perfect even though it was not God. Moreover, the search for the meaning of Scripture as a whole required theology to gradually recognize the role of relation as a non-degenerate principle of distinction, but in fact capable of “transferring” being in its fullness. If the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one single entity, that is, a unique substance, and they cannot be distinguished except by their mutual relationships, which means that the relationships themselves are transparent to the fullness of being, it then becomes possible to reinterpret in relational terms the tendency toward likeness with God which is implanted in the heart of every created human being. 3  Cf. Andreas Spira, “Le temps d’un homme selon Aristote et Grégoire de Nysse: Stabilité et instabilité dans la pensée grecque,” in Le temps chrétien de la fin de l’Antiquité au Moyen Âge: IIIe-XIIIe siècle, ed. Jean-Marie Leroux, Colloques internationaux du Centre national de la recherche scientifique 604 (Paris: CNRS, 1984), 283-294, at 289. 4  Cf. Paul Verghese, “Διάστηµα and Διάστασις in Gregory of Nyssa: Introduction to a Concept and the Posing of a Problem,” in Gregor von Nyssa und die Philosophie, ed. Heinrich Dörrie (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 243-260 and Scot Douglass, Theology of the Gap: Cappadocian Language Theory and the Trinitarian Controversy, American University Studies 235 (New York: Peter Lang, 2005).

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This can be immediately translated into the body’s role in the progress of human beings towards union with the Creator. If in the preceding metaphysical framework matter and existence appeared as dialectically opposed to the universality of the intelligible (with which Being in its fullness is identified), now the first principle (insofar as it is the Trinity) is characterized by an existential and relational dimension, which modifies the theological and spiritual understanding of the body, as will be shown. It is significant to note that in the older model the body was determined and characterized by limits that caused the Greek thinkers to exclude it from the sphere of perfection, which was reserved for the world of ideas or for the nous. However, the Trinitarian revelation and the Incarnation led to a radical reinterpretation, in which God does not contradict Himself in becoming human, because his being three distinct persons in the perfect and absolute unity of the divine nature can be expressed precisely by the dimension of singularity and relationality carried over from the corporeal. Thus, in De hominis opificio, Gregory reinterprets the physiology of the human being in terms that mirror divine greatness: Man has an erect position, he stands toward the sky and looks up. These characteristics indicate lordship and his regal dignity. The fact that among beings only the human is this way, while the bodies of all others point down, clearly shows the difference of dignity between those who are subject to his dominion and the power that subjects them.5

The human body is formed in such a way as to be able to express the logos in itself, insofar as the erect position has freed the upper limbs, which have turned from paws into hands, taking over those functions that in animals are reserved for the mouth. Thus, it was possible that the human should develop the capacity for language: “Therefore, since man is an animal characterized by the logos (λογικόν), it was appropriate that the structure of his body would be conformed to the use of the logos.”6 Therefore, an extremely profound interpretation of the body as the place in which the spirit can be manifested is captured here. Without 5  Ὄρθιον δὲ τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ τὸ σχῆμα, καὶ πρὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν ἀνατείνεται, καὶ ἄνω βλέπει. Ἀρχικὰ καὶ ταῦτα, καὶ τὴν βασιλικὴν ἀξίαν ἐπισημαίνονται. Τὸ γὰρ μόνον ἐν τοῖς οὖσι τοιοῦτον εἶναι τὸν ἄνθρωπον, τοῖς δὲ ἄλλοις ἅπασι πρὸς τὸ κάτω νενευκέναι τὰ σώματα, σαφῶς δείκνυσι τὴν τῆς ἀξίας διαφορὰν, τῶν τε ὑποκυπτόντων τῇ δυναστείᾳ, καὶ τῆς ὑπερανεστώ σης αὐτῶν ἐξουσίας (Gregory of Nyssa, De hominis opificio, 8; PG 44, col. 144AB). All translations are by the author. 6  Ἐπειδὴ τοίνυν λογικόν τι ζῶόν ἐστιν ὁ ἄνθρωπος, κατάλληλον ἔδει τῇ χρείᾳ τοῦ λόγου κατασκευασθῆναι τὸ τοῦ σώματος ὄργανον (PG 44, col. 148B).

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short circuits, so to speak, between the supernatural and natural dimensions, Gregory reinterprets the created dimension in light of the Trinitarian identity of the Creator. As we shall see, this new perspective translates into a new mystagogical conception that recognizes the unprecedented value of the body and that, in the specific case of the exegesis of the Song of Songs, assigns a central role to the humanity of Christ in the knowledge of and union with God. The thesis that we aim to demonstrate is, therefore, twofold: (1) the exegetical key of Gregory in his commentary on the Song is that of sacramental mystagogy; (2) this mystagogy places the corporeal dimension at the centre as the only possible way toward the union of the soul with God. II.  Spiritual Progression and the Song When we start our analysis of Gregory’s Commentary on the Song of Songs,7 it becomes clear that he resumes the Origenian subdivision of spiritual progress in three stages,8 to each of which corresponds one of the books of Holy Scripture attributed to Solomon: the first stage corresponds to infancy, with which the book of Proverbs is associated; the second phase of the inner life is youth, connected to the book of Ecclesiastes; finally, the maturity of the soul is related to the Song of Songs, which is linked to the contemplative phase.9

7  On this work, see Giulio Maspero, Miguel Brugarolas, and Ilaria Vigorelli, eds., Gregory of Nyssa: In Canticum canticorum. Analytical and Supporting Studies. Proceedings of the 13th International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa (Rome, 17-20 September 2014), VCS 150 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), especially the contributions by Martin Laird (“Dew on the Locks of the Beloved: The In Canticum canticorum on Faith and Knowledge,” 170179), J. Warren Smith (“Becoming Men, Not Stones: Epektasis in Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on the Song of Songs,” 340-359) and Sarah Coakley (“Gregory of Nyssa on Spiritual Ascent and Trinitarian Orthodoxy: A Reconsideration of the Relation between Doctrine and Askesis,” 360-375). 8  On the relationship between continuity and discontinuity among the comments on the Song by Gregory and Origen, see F. Dünzl, “Die Canticum-Exegese des Gregors von Nyssa und des Origenes in Vergleich,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 36 (1993): 94-109, at 109. 9  Origen indicates these three stages as ethical, natural, and contemplative philosophy: cf. Origen, Commentarium in Canticum canticorum, Prol. 3,1; Origenes, Homilien zu Samuel 1, zum Hohelied und zu den Propheten; Kommentar zum Hohelied in Rufins und Hieronymus’ Übersetzungen, ed. Wilhelm Adolf Baehrens, GCS 33; Origenes Werke 8 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1925), 75.

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Gregory adopts this scheme, but subverts the content.10 In fact, he inserts this subdivision of Origen’s into the context of the mystery of darkness.11 Just as God had spoken to Moses in the light, in the cloud, and in the darkness, so spiritual life is characterized by three ways or phases. Only the first corresponds to a properly illuminating stage, in which purification leads to clarity, liberating humans from the darkness of sin and restoring the divine image to the soul. This first stage allows for divine knowledge in speculum, in the mirror of the soul, a knowledge that is characteristic of the second way. As if one is entering a cloud, all clarity is lost, and one approaches the contemplation of hidden realities: proper access to the mystical order. The purification of the first phase thus allows growth in knowledge, which takes place, paradoxically, in obscurity and is based on the Trinity’s indwelling in the soul by grace.12 This then leads to the darkness of the third stage: we grasp that God infinitely transcends everything that can be known about Him, we understand that the divine life is incomprehensible, and that finding God means to unceasingly seek Him. At every moment the capacity of the soul is filled and expanded, proceeding continuously, with each fulfilment becoming a new beginning, in participation and in union. Daniélou speaks of a Copernican revolution:13 when the logic of the possession of God is transcended, it is no longer simply a matter of God being present in the soul, but also of the soul itself being present in God. This contemplation is completed in the union and the intellectual spirituality of the Origenian kind gives way to an ecstatic spirituality of love which implies a highly original integration of possession and desire, of stability and movement. In fact, Gregory relates these three ways of spiritual growth to the sacraments of Christian initiation in an impressive synthesis characterized by attention to both the historical dimension and the spiritual dynamic. The first stage, primarily of an illuminating nature, corresponds to baptism, which liberates the human soul from the old human predicament and enables it to become like a new-born baby. The second phase is linked to the sacrament of confirmation, while the height of perfection is achieved by the Eucharist. As we have seen, the mystical  Cf. Daniélou, Platonisme et théologie mystique, 18.  Cf. Jean Daniélou, “Mystique de la ténèbre chez Grégoire de Nysse,” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité II/2 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1953), cols. 1872-1885. 12  Cf. Jean Daniélou, Le IVème siècle: Grégoire de Nysse et son milieu. Notes prises au cours par les élèves (Paris: Institut catholique de Paris, 1964), 186. 13  Cf. ibid., 187. 10 11

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apex consists in being united ever more closely to God in an infinite movement that is eternally extended in glory, which means that, consequently, the Eucharist, unlike baptism and confirmation, is the sacrament that is repeated, carrying out this union in an already eschatological dimension. The centrality of the epektasis is indicated by the very structure of Gregory’s commentary, for after having introduced the readers of the first five homilies to the process of growth as articulated in the steps just mentioned, he surprises them by showing how the meeting of the bride with the divine bridegroom is not a static destination, but rather refers to a further progression “from beginning to beginning” traced in the ten successive homilies.14 Precisely because the progress is infinite, a fixed scheme cannot be identified regarding the growth of the soul, but only a stable disposition toward the movement of the growing union. Thus, the reference to the Eucharist as the apex of the mystical union already supports the dual thesis proposed above, because it implies both the notion of epektasis, which – according to Mariette Canévet – constitutes the main difference between Gregory and Origen,15 and the centrality of the material and corporeal dimension, which remains in the shadows in the theology of Origen. This complex of ideas is especially important when we consider the readership of the work. Daniélou believed, in fact, that it was composed for a group of Christian ladies gathered at Constantinople in the house of the widow and noblewoman Olympias, who was an important figure at the time of Theodosius and to whom the fifteen homilies forming the Commentary are dedicated. This would imply that they were addressed to people who had achieved a higher spiritual level. John B. Cahill, however, has shown that the homilies were pronounced at Nyssa, Gregory’s episcopal see, during a period between the years 391 and 394, and later reworked and sent to Olympias, who had requested the composition.16 This detail is of great importance, because it again recalls the sacramental conception of Gregory’s mysticism. In order to explain the Song of 14  Cf. Ps 83:7 as quoted by Gregory of Nyssa in In inscriptiones Psalmorum, GNO V, 175,21 (Gregory of Nyssa, In inscriptiones Psalmorum, ed. Jakob McDonough and P. Alexander, GNO V [Leiden: Brill, 1986]. 15  Mariette Canévet, Grégoire de Nysse et l’herméneutique biblique: Étude des rapports entre le langage et la connaissance de dieu, Études augustiniennes. Série Antiquité 99 (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1983), 130. 16  John B. Cahill, “The Date and Setting of Gregory of Nyssa’s Commentary on the Song of Songs,” JTS 32 (1981): 447-460, at 450-452.

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Songs, he would have needed to speak to everyone about contemplation, because God’s message addresses to all the call to contemplation, which is no longer interpreted in an intellectual or purely spiritual sense but made accessible to each soul through participation in the sacramental dynamic. This universalizing dimension of a connection between contemplation and the sacraments is corroborated by the sacramental reading of the Song of Songs which was common to the Fathers of the Church.17 Indeed, this Old Testament book was especially relevant to the notion of Christian initiation, which implied a process of mystagogy par excellence, as a figure of the union of God with the soul and with all his people. At the time, baptism was administered during the paschal vigil at which the Song was read, which stemmed from the fact that the Song was also read during the paschal time in the Jewish liturgy.18 The strategy of reinterpreting Old Testament texts in a sacramental way is common in Gregory’s approach, as is evident in his reading of Psalm 22. III.  Psalm 22 In Homily 1, Gregory states that he wants to offer a mystical interpretation (μυστικῆς θεωρίας)19 of the Song, revealing the ascent to what is perfect in a systematic and orderly way (ὁδῷ καὶ τάξει τὴν πρὸς τὸ τέλειον ἄνοδον).20 This ascent is presented by Gregory in terms of a union with the Bridegroom, who wants to make the soul, initially blackened by sin, beautiful through communion with Himself (πρὸς ἑαυτὸν κοινωνίᾳ).21 Evil is, in fact, nothing other than the privation of the good and a moving away from what is best,22 which tarnishes the soul and makes it 17  Cf. Jean Daniélou, Bible et liturgie: La théologie biblique des sacrements et des fêtes d’après les Pères de l’Église (Paris: Cerf, 1951), 259-280. See also, Alessandro Cortesi, Le Omelie sul Cantico dei Cantici di Gregorio di Nissa: Proposta di un itinerario di vita battesimale, Studia ephemeridis “Augustinianum” 70 (Rome: Institutum patristicum Augustinianum, 2000), 34-39. 18  Cf. Daniélou, Bible et liturgie, 261. On the role of the Song in liturgies other than that of baptism, see: Anne-Marie Pelletier, Lectures du Cantique des cantiques: De l’énigme du sens aux figures du lecteur, Analecta Biblica 121 (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1989), 147-181. 19  Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum canticorum 1, in Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum canticorum, ed. Hermann Langerbeck et al., GNO VI (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 15,12. 20  In Canticum canticorum 1, GNO VI, 17,11. 21  In Canticum canticorum 2, GNO VI, 49,17. 22  Cf. In Canticum canticorum 2, GNO VI, 56,8-10.

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opaque, incapable of aspiring to ascendance and a slave to earthly desires. But Christ, the Good Shepherd, does not abandon humanity in sin, and gives Himself to redeem it. Therefore, from the beginning, the references to the rest of the flock in Song 1:7 are read from a sacramental perspective and connected to Psalm 22 (23), the Psalm that opens with the words “The Lord is my Shepherd.” It was especially important in the early Christian liturgy, because it was sung during the paschal vigil by those who had just received baptism, in the solemn procession that led them from the baptistery to the church where they were to receive their first communion. The Psalm was, in fact, also considered a prophecy of Christian initiation itself, as is testified by Cyril and Ambrose.23 Gregory of Nyssa, in his homilies on the Song of Songs, refers to it many times, presumably in order to prepare the believers of his church for the paschal night and, at the same time, to illustrate the ascent of the Christian from purification to mystical participation in the goods of divine life. I would suggest that the very procession from baptism to the Eucharistic table represents a synthesis of the whole spiritual route proposed by Gregory. Thus, the commentary on Song 1:7 in Homily 2 immediately reveals the foundation and sacramental intention of the mystagogical interpretation offered by the bishop of Nyssa. Next, he connects this passage to other scriptural texts relating to the Good Shepherd.24 The first reference is to Luke 15:5, through which he establishes an equivalence between the flock from the Song and the lost sheep of the Gospel, interpreted as a symbol of all humanity.25 Then, Gregory’s thought goes straight to the grassy pastures and tranquil waters of Ps 22:2. Finally, he makes reference to the voice of the Good Shepherd that brings everyone together in one flock in John 10:16. The theme of apophatism enters into play here, a theme that is also essential for the understanding of the mystical-sacramental conception of Gregory and that is intimately connected with ἐπέκτασις: the bride asks the bridegroom to address his word to her, giving the eternal life to her who is his sheep, and the very invocation “tell me, whom I love” of the Song comes to be interpreted, through Phil 2:9, as the name of God, a name that is above and beyond all names, ineffable and incomprehensible. The disposition of the soul toward God (περὶ σὲ σχέσις) acts as a name that  Cf. Daniélou, Bible et liturgie, 240-258.  Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum canticorum 2, GNO VI, 61,4-13. 25  On the social conception of human nature in Gregory, see Giulio Maspero, Trinity and Man: Gregory of Nyssa’s Ad Ablabium, VCS 86 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2007), 4-9. 23

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makes his goodness known, because the beloved cannot but return the love of the Good Shepherd, who sacrificed his life for her, when she was still blackened: “‘Tell me, you whom my heart loves’ (Song 1:7). In fact, I call you such, because your name is beyond every other name, and for every rational nature it is ineffable and incomprehensible. Therefore, the relation (σχέσις) of my soul with you is your name [God the Bridegroom] that gives knowledge of your goodness.”26 The bride recognizes, then, that it is impossible to conceive of a love greater than that of the Bridegroom, referring precisely to his leading the flocks to the celestial food: “I, running toward you who are the source, will sip from the divine drink with which you quench the thirst of the thirsty, with water flowing from your side because the wound has opened this source. And whoever drinks of this becomes a source of water that will flow forth for life eternal (John 4:14).”27 The passage, in its beauty, reveals the symphonic agreement of the different themes which, shaped by the Eucharistic reference to the heavenly food, mystagogically interpret the mystical life as a way toward Christ, at once the source and drink, thanks to the correspondence between the sacramental dimension and the moment of the Passion of the Lord. The contemplative dynamic culminates in the Eucharistic union, in the contemporaneity with the historical moment of the wound in the side, which shows the apophatic aspect of this very union, insofar as Christ is given as drink, but remains inexhaustible as the source of eternal life. Psalm 22 reappears in Homily 12, which is built entirely around the concept of ἐπέκτασις and is marked by continuous sacramental references, like that of being buried together with Christ through baptism in the context of Song 5:5,28 and an allusion to the necessity of the death of the grain in order to give rise to new plants in John 12:24.29 The passage is especially significant, because it is immediately preceded by the memory of Moses and his ascents (ἀναβάσεις): he is the model of 26  ἀπάγγειλόν μοι, ὃν ἠγάπησεν ἡ ψυχή μου. οὕτω γάρ σε κατονομάζω, ἐπειδὴ τὸ ὄνομά σου ὑπὲρ πᾶν ἐστιν ὄνομα καὶ πάσῃ φύσει λογικῇ ἄφραστόν τε καὶ ἀχώρητον. οὐκοῦν ὄνομά σοί ἐστι γνωριστικὸν τῆς σῆς ἀγαθότητος ἡ τῆς ψυχῆς μου περὶ σὲ σχέσις (Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum canticorum 2, GNO VI, 61,13-17) 27  καὶ δραμοῦσα πρὸς σὲ τὴν πηγὴν σπάσω τοῦ θείου πόματος, ὃ σὺ τοῖς διψῶσι πηγάζεις προχέων τὸ ὕδωρ ἐκ τῆς πλευρᾶς τοῦ σιδήρου τὴν φλέβα ταύτην ἀναστομώσαντος, οὗ ὁ γευσάμενος πηγὴ γίνεται ὕδατος ἁλλομένου εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον (In Canticum canticorum 2, GNO VI, 62,3-7) 28  Cf. In Canticum canticorum 12, GNO VI, 343,8-9. 29  Cf. In Canticum canticorum 12, GNO VI, 345,7-8.

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the Christian and of the mystic because he becomes ever greater and is never stopped in his growth in the good (ὁ ἀεὶ μέγας γινόμενος καὶ μηδέποτε ἱστάμενος τῆς ἐπὶ τὸ μεῖζον αὐξήσεως).30 He experienced that to see God means to always seek Him and that contemplation of his face consists in always meeting Him, following the footsteps of the Word.31 In fact, the greatness of the divine nature is not made known in comprehension, but in letting go of every image and every capacity of representation.32 This apophatic dimension is the key to the phrase “I called him but he did not answer me” in Song 5:6 and the same can be said for the following verse, which narrates the encounter with the guards, who remove the bride’s veil and beat her.33 Precisely the interpretation of the beatings reintroduces Psalm 22 through the mediation of the verse “beat them with the rod, and you will save them from Sheol” in Prov 23:13-14 and Deut 32:39 (“It is I who bring both death and life”). The safety symbolized in the Psalm by the rod and the staff of the Good Shepherd in Ps 22:4 then becomes the hermeneutic key to the beatings: “Thanks to these [the beatings], in fact, the divine table (τῆς θείας τραπέζης) is prepared for him [David] and this is described in the remainder of the Psalm: both the oil on his head and the pure wine of the chalice, which produces a sober intoxication (τὴν νηφάλιον μέθην) and the mercy that rightly follows along with long life in the house of the Father.”34 The text explicitly links the Eucharistic table, which plays a central role in texts on the sacraments of Christian initiation, to sober elation,35 the apex of mysticism and contemplation. The divine table is presented as the key to the whole Psalm, which accompanied the procession of the catechumen, the culmination of which was the inebriating reception of the Body and Blood of Christ after the anointing with the sacred chrism.  In Canticum canticorum 12, GNO VI, 354,12-13.  Cf. In Canticum canticorum 12, GNO VI, 356,12-16. 32  Cf. In Canticum canticorum 12, GNO VI, 357,4-6. 33  Cf. In Canticum canticorum 12, GNO VI, 359,5–361,15. 34  δι’ ὧν γίνεται ἡ τῆς θείας αὐτῷ τραπέζης ἑτοιμασία καὶ ὅσα κατὰ τὸ ἀκόλουθον περιέχει ἡ ψαλμῳδία· καὶ τὸ ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς ἔλαιον καὶ ὁ τοῦ ποτηρίου ἄκρατος, ὁ τὴν νηφάλιον μέθην ἀπεργαζόμενος, καὶ ὁ καλῶς αὐτὸν καταδιώκων ἔλεος καὶ ἡ ἐν τῷ οἴκῳ τοῦ θεοῦ μακροβίωσις (In Canticum canticorum 12, GNO VI, 362,9-14). 35  Cf. Hans Lewy, Sobria ebrietas: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der antiken Mystik (Giessen: Töpelmann, 1929), 115-118; Stuart Burns, “Divine Ecstasy in Gregory of Nyssa and Pseudo-Macarius: Flight and Intoxication,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 44 (1999): 309-327. 30 31

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It seems that perhaps we are dealing here with a synthesis of a longer passage that can be found in the In ascensionem Christi, a short work dedicated to a commentary on Psalms 22 and 23, intended for those who had received baptism. Daniélou attributes it to the period immediately following the redaction of the In Canticum canticorum (May 391).36 It is evident that the themes are the same and that baptism is presented as the first step of Christian initiation, which opens the way to the anointing with chrism and to the Eucharist, the true culmination of sacramental and spiritual life: It is necessary that you first become a sheep of the Good Shepherd, led through good catechesis to divine pastures and divine sources of doctrine to be buried along with Him through baptism in death and to not have fear of death. In fact, it is not a death, but [only] a shadow and figure (σκιὰ καὶ ἐκτύπωμα) of death. This is why it is said, “Even though I must walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”37 Therefore, after He comforts with the staff of the Spirit – the Spirit is in fact the Consoler – He prepares the mystical Table (τὴν μυστικὴν τράπεζαν), prepared in opposition to the table of demons. In fact, they were the ones who oppressed the life (ζωήν) of humankind with idolatry. And in opposition to them [is] the Table of the Spirit. Therefore, He anoints the head with oil of the Spirit and, thus offering the wine that delights the heart (cf. Ps 103:15), He infuses in the soul that sober elation (νήφουσαν μέθην), elevating thoughts from perishable things to the eternal realities. In fact, whoever enjoys such elation cuts short his brief life with immortality, only to continue the course of his life in the house of the Father (ἐν τῷ οἴκῳ τοῦ θεοῦ).38 36  Cf. Jean Daniélou, “Grégoire de Nysse et l’origine de la fête de l’Ascension,” in Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes Quasten, ed. Patrick Granfield and Josef A. Jungmann (Münster: Aschendorff, 1970), vol. 2, 663-666, at 666. 37  Cf. Ps 22(23):4. 38  χρή σε πρόβατον πρῶτον γενέσθαι τοῦ καλοῦ ποιμένος διὰ τῆς ἀγαθῆς κατηχή σεως πρὸς τὰς θείας τῶν διδαγμάτων νομάς τε καὶ πηγὰς ὁδηγούμενον εἰς τὸ συνταφῆναι αὐτῷ διὰ τοῦ βαπτισμοῦ εἰς τὸν θάνατον καὶ μὴ φοβηθῆναι τὸν τοιοῦτον θάνατον· οὐ γὰρ θάνατος οὗτός ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ θανάτου σκιὰ καὶ ἐκτύπωμα. Ἐὰν γὰρ πορευθῶ, φησίν, ἐν μέσῳ σκιᾶς θανάτου, οὐ φοβηθήσομαι ὡς κακὸν τὸ γινόμενον, ὅτι σὺ μετ’ ἐμοῦ εἶ. μετὰ ταῦτα παρακαλέσας τῇ βακτηρίᾳ τοῦ πνεύματος (ὁ γὰρ παράκλητος τὸ πνεῦμά ἐστι) τὴν μυστικὴν προτίθησι τράπεζαν τὴν ἐξ ἐναντίου τῆς τῶν δαιμόνων τραπέζης ἑτοιμασθεῖσαν· ἐκεῖνοι γὰρ ἦσαν οἱ διὰ τῆς εἰδωλολατρίας τὴν ζωὴν τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐκθλίβοντες· ὧν ἐξ ἐναντίου ἡ τοῦ πνεύματος τράπεζα. εἶτα μυρίζει τὴν κεφαλὴν τῷ ἐλαίῳ τοῦ πνεύματος καὶ προθεὶς αὐτῷ οἶνον τὸν τὴν καρδίαν εὐφραίνοντα τὴν νήφουσαν ἐκείνην μέθην ἐμποιεῖ τῇ ψυχῇ στήσας τοὺς λογισμοὺς ἀπὸ τῶν προσκαίρων πρὸς τὸ ἀίδιον· ὁ γὰρ τῆς τοιαύτης γευσάμενος μέθης διαμείβεται τοῦ ὠκυμόρου τὸ ἀτελεύτητον εἰς μακρότητα ἡμερῶν τὴν ἐν τῷ οἴκῳ τοῦ θεοῦ διαγωγὴν παρατείνων (Gregory of Nyssa, In Ascensionem Christi, ed. Ernst Gebhardt et al., GNO IX [Leiden: Brill, 1992], 324,3-22).

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The Cappadocian resumes the Philonian theme of sober elation,39 highlighting the unity of the sacramental life and the spiritual life. Daniélou comments: “It is for this reason that in the Commentary on the Song the social (and theological) standpoint of the union of the Word and the Church, and the individual (and mystical) standpoint of the union of the Word and the soul, relentlessly interfere. The bride is the individual soul and the Church at once.”40 Contemplation is not, therefore, a mere intellectual operation of the individual, but union with the Body of Christ in the shadow of sacramental mediation. The interior progression is actually interpreted by Gregory in terms of sacramental identification with Christ: the life of the Christian is the life of Jesus that grows in him or her, as we see at the end of Homily 3, which comments on the exclamation of the bride in Song 1:14: “My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of Engedi.” She is thus blessed by recognizing the lord of the vine in the fruit, because she has learned to recognize his perfume, and keeping it in her heart has made it fragrant.41 Thus, the bride becomes mother of the divine cluster of grapes, which was in bloom before the passion, and after the passion is poured out as wine: “In fact, the wine that delights our hearts (cf. Ps 103:15) becomes and is called blood of the grape after the economy of the passion (τὴν τοῦ πάθους οἰκονομίαν).”42 Gregory has a remarkable ability to interpret the text with absolute fidelity to the poetic inspiration that defines it, but with a great realistic sense, as is apparent from the reference to the blood and to the cross. The key to the passage is, for Gregory, its dynamism; because, in fact, the bride grasps the bunch of grapes while it is still in bloom. Thus she introduces herself into the dynamic of the growth of Christ’s life in the heart: the baby that was begotten (γεννηθέν) in us – Jesus, who during his earthly life grew in the different respects of wisdom, age, and grace (see Luke 2:11) – is not the same in everyone, but is manifested in proportion to the capacity of each one who receives him (χωρῶν), starting out as a baby, growing and becoming an adult and perfect, as it is with the nature of the bunch of grapes,43 “which is not always seen in the vine in the same  Cf., for example, Philo, De fuga et inventione 167.1 and Legum allegoriarum I.84.3; in Philonis Alexandrini opera quae supersunt, ed. Leopold Cohn and Paul Wendland, vols. I and III (Berlin: Reimer, 1896, repr. 1962). 40  Daniélou, Platonisme et théologie, 25. 41  Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum canticorum 3, GNO VI, 95,8-18. 42  In Canticum canticorum 3, GNO VI, 95,19–96,1. 43  In Canticum canticorum 3, GNO VI, 96,7-13. 39

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respect, but changes form, in time blossoming, flowering, reaching perfection, maturing, and becoming wine.”44 There is a remarkable parallelism between the life of Jesus and the life of each Christian, united by the sacramental dynamic that reaches its culmination in the Eucharist: every life is fulfilled in being Eucharistic. The citations of Psalm 22 contained in In Canticum canticorum therefore reveal that mysticism is, for Gregory, inseparable from the sacramental dimension, which has its apex precisely in the Eucharistic union, that is, in being intoxicated with the love of Christ which is communicated to us in the wine, in order to in turn become wine in identification with Christ. As Daniélou says: “Sacramental life is truly conceived as a ‘mystagogy’, as a progressive initiation that leads the soul to the heights of the mystical life, to the ‘sober elation’.”45 IV.  Ecstasy and Darkness The theme of sober elation indicates that we find ourselves here in a purely mystical environment that is naturally connected to ecstasy. In Homily 5, Gregory comments on the words “the fig tree has ripened its figs” in Song 2:13: In this way you have to, in my view, understand the vine in bloom, whose wine that makes the heart glad (cf. Ps 103:15) will on that day fill the goblet of wisdom and will be set before the guests so that they drink from the sublime announcement (ἐκ τοῦ ὑψηλοῦ κηρύγματος), according to [their] capacity, in order [to reach] the good and the sober intoxication (ἀγαθήν τε καὶ νηφάλιον μέθην); that intoxication – I mean – thanks to which human beings obtain ecstasy (ἔκστασις) [elevating themselves] from material realities to that which is more divine.46

The sacramental reference to wine presents participation in the Eucharistic table as the path that culminates in the mystical experience of elation, good insofar as it is sober, and that produces ecstasy, that is, the continuous movement toward renouncing that which is fallen, and  In Canticum canticorum 3, GNO VI, 96,13-16.  Daniélou, Platonisme et théologie, 26. 46  Οὕτω μοι νόησον καὶ τὴν κυπρίζουσαν ἄμπελον, ἧς ὁ μὲν οἶνος ὁ τὴν καρδίαν εὐφραίνων πληρώσει ποτὲ τὸν τῆς σοφίας κρατῆρα καὶ προκείσεται τοῖς συμπόταις ἐκ τοῦ ὑψηλοῦ κηρύγματος κατ’ ἐξουσίαν ἀρύεσθαι εἰς ἀγαθήν τε καὶ νηφάλιον μέθην. ἐκείνην λέγω τὴν μέθην, δι’ ἧς τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἐκ τῶν ὑλικῶν πρὸς τὸ θειότερον ἡ ἔκστασις γίνεται (Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum canticorum 5, GNO VI, 156,14-20). 44 45

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toward union with God.47 This is a dynamic of unending growth in participation with the divine nature, which always transcends human capacity, as it is not limited by any boundary (ὑπ᾿ οὐδενὸς περιέχεται ὅρου),48 but constantly increases the very human capacity to welcome it. The soul is then attracted and pulled toward participation (μετουσίαν) in that immutable good that is superior to everything, in such a way that its desire grows in proportion to its progression.49 Therefore, the ascent never ends, but proceeds from glory to glory (ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν)50 due to the attraction of that desire that becomes a guide for the soul toward the good (ὁδηγὸν πρὸς τὸ κρεῖττον τὴν ἰδίαν ἐπιθυμίαν ἔχειν), above and beyond all necessity or interest, but in the absolute freedom of virtue, which knows no masters, is voluntary, and not subject to any necessity (ἀδέσποτον γὰρ ἡ ἀρετὴ καὶ ἑκούσιον καὶ ἀνάγκης πάσης ἐλεύθερον).51 Gregory’s conception of ecstasy reveals that for him the spiritual life is a mystery of constant deaths and resurrections, a continuous abandonment of what one possesses in order to let oneself be attracted by full participation. In this sense, the sacramental dynamic of baptism and the Eucharist, as mysteries of death and resurrection, becomes the foundation of the progress of the soul, communicating the same movement that drives it upwards. In this way, asceticism is revealed as mysticism and mysticism as asceticism, insofar as the search for virtue becomes inseparably united to contemplation. Apophatism and ἐπέκτασις are proposed here as hermeneutic keys to Gregory’s spiritual doctrine, which reaches its apex in presenting the Incarnation of the Word as the object of the bride’s desire: a desire that God manifest Himself in the flesh, in such a way that the Word may overcome the infinite ontological gap in being made flesh. God is manifested, therefore, by the flesh.52 This role of the Eucharist is particularly evident in Homily 10, dedicated to the commentary of Song 4:16–5:2. In the first verse, the bride 47  We need to note that ecstasy was considered negatively by Greek thought. Origen, faithful to the Platonic tradition, shared this position. The same can be said for elation: interpreted in light of Gregory’s thought, Plato’s criticism is particularly suggestive (Respu­ blica, 363D) as regards the beatitude described by Museus, linked to the Orphic mysteries: those who take part in it, dedicating themselves to the wine, “consider the greatest reward of virtue eternal bliss” (ἡγησάμενοι κάλλιστον ἀρετῆς μισθὸν μέθην αἰώνιον). 48  Cf. In Canticum canticorum 5, GNO VI, 157,16. 49  Cf. In Canticum canticorum 5, GNO VI, 158,19–159,11. 50  Cf. In Canticum canticorum 5, GNO VI, 160,3. 51  Cf. In Canticum canticorum 5, GNO VI, 160,14–161,1. 52  Cf. In Canticum canticorum 5, GNO VI, 164,5-7.

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says: “Let my lover come to his garden and eat its fruits of choicest yield.” Gregory highlights the paradoxical dimension of the affirmation, since the bride prepares the table for him, thanks to whom and for whom all things are (see Rom 11:36 and Col 1:16), for the one who gives nourishment at the right time (see Ps 144:15-16), for the one who is the living bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world (see John 6:33).53 This last reference places the discussion in an immediately Eucharistic context, suggested by the very verses being commented on. The text is interwoven with liturgical references, such as when it says that the expression “May he come” (καταβήτω) has a sense of prayer, similar to “Hallowed be thy name and thy will be done” in the Our Father.54 However, it is with the commentary on “I have eaten my honeycomb and my honey; I have drunk my wine and my milk. Eat, friends; drink and imbibe deeply, O lovers” in Song 5:1, that Gregory begins the most explicitly Eucharistic treatment. The coming of the Bridegroom is, in his interpretation, a symbol of the Incarnation, thanks to which the nature of the fruit trees in the garden – symbol of the souls – is elevated and made greater,55 so that they produce bread mixed with honey, instead of fruits, and wine mixed with milk. The passage is presented both as fulfilment of the Law in the gospel revelation, and as the perfection of the soul, through the reference to Heb 5:14, where the progress of the inner life is presented as progress from milk to solid food, which is then explicitly connected to the bread that after the resurrection of the Lord was presented to the disciples (μετὰ τὴν ἀνάστασιν τοῦ κυρίου προφανεὶς τοῖς μαθηταῖς ἄρτος). In addition, the wine is the opposite of gall and the vinegar is the opposite of the passion.56 In commenting on “Eat, friends; drink and imbibe deeply, O lovers” (Song 5:1), Gregory moves even deeper into sacramental discourse, mystagogically tracing the moment back to the night of the Last Supper: After having said this to the bride, the Word offers to his friends the mysteries of the gospel (τὰ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου μυστήρια), saying “Eat, friends; drink and imbibe deeply, O lovers” (Song 5:1); in fact, to those who know the mystical words of the gospel there will not seem to be any difference between these expressions and the mystagogy (μυσταγωγίαν) that is imparted there to the disciples, because it is there that the Word says in the same way Eat and Drink (Matt 26:26-27).  Cf. In Canticum canticorum 10, GNO VI, 303,3-15.  Cf. In Canticum canticorum 10, GNO VI, 304,10-12. 55  Cf. In Canticum canticorum 10, GNO VI, 305,22-23. 56  Cf. In Canticum canticorum 10, GNO VI, 305,23–307,9. 53

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It could seem to many that the exhortation of elation (τὴν μέθην), addressed here by the Word to his brothers, contains something more than the gospel. However, if it is carefully examined, one would find that this is also in agreement with the gospel narrative. In fact, what the Word orders here to his friends, He Himself realizes here with actions (τῶν ἔργων), because each elation (μέθη) is used to produce ecstasy (ἔκστασιν) of the mind for those who have been overwhelmed by the wine. Therefore, the same reality is here exhorted which was carried out then by that divine eating and drinking and that is carried out in every time, because along with eating and drinking, the transformation and ecstasy is produced (μεταβολῆς καὶ ἐκστάσεως) [in the elevation] from worse realities to the better.57

The conception of the Eucharist as the mystical culmination of the mystic life is the exegetical key that allows Gregory to juxtapose the content of the Song with that of the gospel. The vocabulary here is evidently sacramental and the relation between Eucharist, elation, and ecstasy is presented through the parallel between the invitations voiced by the Bridegroom in the Song and the Lord Jesus Christ at the Last Supper. Precisely on that night, in fact, Christ disclosed to humanity the possibility of ἔκστασις from the fallen condition to the more divine life, abandoning one’s own life to the sleep of death, in order to rise again. The institution of the Eucharist then becomes both the foundation and the apex of spiritual life itself, insofar as the Lord offers Himself as food and drink to the disciples. And this offering is always there, providing ecstasy to those who participate in it. One may wonder whether Gregory’s conception of ecstasy is perhaps incongruent with his notion of contemplation, but the examples included in the text immediately dissolve such doubts. It says, in fact, that the ecstasy produced by the Eucharist is the same that accompanies the elated state of those who drink abundantly in the house of God and dine 57  Ταῦτα εἰπὼν πρὸς τὴν νύμφην ὁ λόγος παρατίθεται τοῖς πλησίον τὰ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου μυστήρια λέγων Φάγετε, οἱ πλησίον μου, καὶ πίετε καὶ μεθύσθητε, ἀδελφοί μου· τῷ γὰρ ἐπισταμένῳ τὰς μυστικὰς τοῦ εὐαγγελίου φωνὰς οὐδεμία φανήσεται διαφορὰ τῶν ἐνταῦθα ῥητῶν πρὸς τὴν ἐκεῖ τοῖς μαθηταῖς γινομένην μυσταγωγίαν· ὡσαύτως γὰρ ἐκεῖ τε καὶ ἐνταῦθά φησιν ὁ λόγος τὸ Φάγετε καὶ τὸ Πίετε. ἡ δὲ πρὸς τὴν μέθην προτροπή, ἣν ἐνταῦθα τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς ὁ λόγος πεποίηται, δόξειεν ἂν τοῖς πολλοῖς πλεῖόν τι παρὰ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον ἔχειν. εἰ δέ τις ἀκριβῶς ἐξετάσειεν, καὶ τοῦτο σύμφωνον τοῖς εὐαγγελικοῖς εὑρεθήσεται· ὅπερ γὰρ ἐνταῦθα τῷ λόγῳ τοῖς φίλοις παρεκελεύσατο, τοῦτο ἐκεῖ διὰ τῶν ἔργων ἐποίησεν, διότι πᾶσα μέθη ἔκστασιν εἴωθε ποιεῖν τῆς διανοίας τοῖς κεκρατημένοις ὑπὸ τοῦ οἴνου. οὐκοῦν ὅπερ ἐνταῦθα προτρέπεται, τοῦτο διὰ τῆς θείας ἐκείνης βρώσεώς τε καὶ πόσεως καὶ τότε ἐγένετο καὶ πάντοτε γίνεται συνεισιούσης τῇ βρώσει τε καὶ τῇ πόσει τῆς ἀπὸ τῶν χειρόνων πρὸς τὰ βελτίω μεταβολῆς καὶ ἐκστάσεως (In Canticum canticorum 10, GNO VI, 308,5–309,2).

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at the stream of delight (see Ps 35:9 lxx), like David, when he went outside of himself, went into ecstasy and saw the invisible beauty (ὅτε ἐκβὰς αὐτὸς ἑαυτοῦ καὶ ἐν ἐκστάσει γενόμενος εἶδε τὸ ἀθέατον κάλλος), bursting into the song of the Psalms. Paul became elated in 2 Cor 5:13 (“For if we are out of our minds, it is for God; if we are rational, it is for you”), without being crazy, as he declares at the feast (see Acts 26:25). And the vision of Peter in Acts 10:10-16 is interpreted as divine and sober elation (θεία τε καὶ νηφάλιος μέθη), thanks to which he goes outside of himself and contemplates (θεωρεῖ) in a vision, which is – significantly – interpreted by Gregory in a Trinitarian sense.58 Gregory also reiterates the relation with the moral life: after having re-affirmed the connection between elation, Eucharist, and ecstasy, insofar as the first is procured from the wine that the Lord offers to the guests and produces ecstasy in the soul toward the more divine realities, Gregory specifies that the Lord’s invitation to eat and drink is addressed to those who have become friends through virtue (διὰ τῶν ἀρετῶν), because, as it is said in 1 Cor 11:29 immediately after the narration of the institution of the Eucharist, whoever eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks his or her condemnation. The moral life is, therefore, inseparably associated with the contemplative and sacramental dimension, insofar as it is interpreted as life with Christ: for this reason, the words “my brothers,” which seal the invitation to eat and drink in Song 5:1 are interpreted in light of Mark 3:35, where it is affirmed that whoever does the will of God is brother, sister, and mother of Christ.59 V.  The Body and Life of Christ Gregory’s exegesis of the Song is thus able to unite the Eucharist and contemplation because it is radically based on the life of Christ. The final homilies especially highlight this aspect.60 For example, regarding the comment on Song 5:2 about the bride’s jolt of love at the approach the Bridegroom, who introduces his hand into the house through the opening of the door, the interpretation starts from the idea that the  Cf. In Canticum canticorum 10, GNO VI, 309,2–310,18.  Cf. In Canticum canticorum 10, GNO VI, 310,18–311,7. 60  Cf. Lucas F. Mateo-Seco, “La Cristología del In Canticum canticorum de Gregorio de Nisa,” in Studien zu Gregor von Nyssa und der christlichen Spätantike, ed. Hubertus Drobner and Christoph Klock, VCS 12 (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 173-190, 189. 58

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house of the bride represents the whole of human life (πᾶσαν τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην ζωήν): the hand that created everything is subject to the limits of the brevity and humility of human life (τοῦ ἀνθρωπίνου βίου) which makes itself present through participation (μετασχεῖν) to our nature, in every likeness except sin (see Heb 4:15). This results in wonder, because God appears in the flesh, through the virgin birth: how is it possible for light to be mixed (καταμίγνυται) with darkness, and for life (ζωή) to be mixed (κατακίρναται) with death? How can the brief portion of life (βίου) contain the hand that created all beings?61 Gregory’s apophatic conception, united to the doctrine of ἐπέκτασις, is the foundation of this awe. It does not consist, however, in a mere denial of the possibility of access to God, but should rather be interpreted in light of the hypostatic union. In fact, as it is said in Homily 13, there is both created and uncreated in Christ (τοῦ Χριστοῦ τὸ μὲν κτιστόν ἐστι τὸ δὲ ἄκτιστον): the eternal nature, which exists before time and which has created everything that exists, and human nature, in which God conforms Himself to us in the economy for our salvation. Gregory presents Christ as the point of contact and of union between θεολογία and οἰκονομία, through different citations of the Johannine prologue, the normative canon of Gregory’s thought. Therefore, it is true that the uncreated and eternal dimension of Christ remains entirely (καθ᾿ ὅλου) incomprehensible (ἄληπτον) and indescribable (ἀνεκφώνητον), while his created aspect, on the contrary, can to a certain extent (ποσῶς) be known by means of the flesh. In Homily 4, Gregory interprets the verdant couch in Song 1:16 as a reference to the incarnation (οἰκονομία): He therefore continues: “Our couch, too, is verdant” (Song 1:16). That is: human nature has known you [Lord] or certainly will know you insofar as you became shaded in the economy. This is why the text says: you came my beloved, graceful, and you have become shaded in our bed. If, in fact, you were not shaded, shielding from yourself the pure light of Divinity with the form of the servant, who could survive your appearance? Because no one who sees the Lord will continue to live (cf. Exod 33:20).62  Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum canticorum 11, GNO VI, 338,2-13.  Εἶτα ἐπήγαγε Πρὸς κλίνῃ ἡμῶν σύσκιος. τουτέστιν ἔγνω σε ἤτοι γνώσεται ἡ ἀνθρωπίνη φύσις σύσκιον τῇ οἰκονομίᾳ γενόμενον· ἦλθες γάρ φησι σὺ ὁ καλὸς ἀδελφιδός, ὁ ὡραῖος, πρὸς τῇ κλίνῃ ἡμῶν σύσκιος γενόμενος. εἰ γὰρ μὴ συνεσκίασας αὐτὸς σεαυτὸν τὴν ἄκρατον τῆς θεότητος ἀκτῖνα συγκαλύψας τῇ τοῦ δούλου μορφῇ, τίς ἂν ὑπέστη σου τὴν ἐμφάνειαν; οὐδεὶς γὰρ ὄψεται πρόσωπον κυρίου καὶ ζήσεται (In Canticum canticorum 4, GNO VI, 107,9–108,4). 61

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From Gregory’s ontological perspective, it would have been impossible for mortal and ephemeral human nature to be married (συζυγίᾳ συναρμοσθῆναι)63 to the pure and inaccessible nature of God, if the shadow of the body were not interposed before the light for those who live in the darkness.64 The exegesis follows from here: “And the bride uses the name of bed in the figurative sense, interpreting it as the union of human nature with the Divine.”65 The paradox of Gregory’s contemplation cannot be stronger: the shadow reveals that the flesh and history are the only path toward being united with God.66 This is why the bride, in the Song, speaking of his human nature and of the “great mystery of piety” (Τὸ μέγα τῆς εὐσεβείας μυστήριον),67 through which God manifests Himself in the flesh in order to live among human beings, describes Christ as68 “He who, after having reunited with Himself once and for all (ἅπαξ) in the first fruits (ἀπαρχῆς) the mortal nature of the flesh, which he took on through incorruptible virginity, always sanctifies, along with the first fruits, the common mass (φύραμα) of nature, through those who have been united to Him according to the communion of the mystery (τὴν κοινωνίαν τοῦ μυστηρίου), nurturing his body, the Church.”69 God Himself, ineffable and incomprehensible, draws closer to humankind and unites it to Himself: the human nature of Christ then becomes the obligatory way to approach contemplation and deification. Only in communion with the mystery, the food of the Church, does it in fact become possible to be one with the first fruits, that is, with Christ ­Himself. 63  The expression is very strong: it corresponds to the Latin copulatio and, perhaps, ventures a rather suggestive hypothesis concerning apophatism, that is, biblical knowing. 64  Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum canticorum 4, GNO VI, 108,7-10. 65  κλίνην δὲ ὀνομάζει ἡ νύμφη τῇ τροπικῇ σημασίᾳ τὴν πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ἀνάκρασιν τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης φύσεως ἑρμηνεύουσα (In Canticum canticorum 4, GNO VI, 108,10-12). 66  The paradox is even more apparent if Gregory’s conception is interpreted against the background of Origen’s legacy, in which every material reality has only a symbolic value. Visible worship and the sacraments seem to be mostly necessary for simpler people, while the truly spiritual person does not need them. Based on this conception, Origen’s anthropology implies that the body and material reality do not belong to human nature, insofar as the terms “angel” and “man” indicate the same reality (cf. Origen, Commentarii in evangelium Joannis 2.23.144.6-7 and 146.6-7; Origène, Commentaire sur Saint Jean, Tome I (Livres I-V), ed. and trans. Cécile Blanc, SC 120 [Paris: Cerf, 1966], 302 and 304). The Eucharist itself is presented in essentially symbolic terms; see Jean Daniélou, Origène (Paris: Éditions de la Table Ronde, 1948), 74-79. 67  Cf. 1 Tim 3:16. 68  Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum canticorum 13, GNO VI, 380,15–381,19. 69  ὃς ἐπειδὴ ἅπαξ πρὸς ἑαυτὸν διὰ τῆς ἀπαρχῆς ἐπεσπάσατο τὴν ἐπίκηρον τῆς σαρκὸς φύσιν, ἣν διὰ τῆς ἀφθόρου παρθενίας ἀνέλαβεν, ἀεὶ τῇ ἀπαρχῇ συναγιάζει τὸ κοινὸν τῆς φύσεως φύραμα διὰ τῶν ἑνουμένων αὐτῷ κατὰ τὴν κοινωνίαν τοῦ μυστηρίου τρέφων τὸ ἑαυτοῦ σῶμα, τὴν ἐκκλησίαν (In Canticum canticorum 13, GNO VI, 381,19–382,2).

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The lives of the saints respond to the unique and unrepeatable act accomplished by Him during his physical life on earth, as the possibility of the sacramental identification with Him extends throughout history.70 Thus, the mystagogical dimension of Gregory’s commentary on the Song could be summarized by the following phrase: “And ‘I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine’ (Song 6:3) constitutes the canon and the definition of perfection according to virtue.”71 Gregory interprets these words in the sense that in the perfect person, there must be nothing but God (τὸ μὴ δεῖν πλὴν τοῦ θεοῦ μηδὲν ἐν ἑαυτῷ ἔχειν) and that his or her gaze must be entirely on Him (μηδὲ πρὸς ἄλλο τι βλέπειν), so that it is a complete image of archetypal beauty thanks to the imitation of the model. In this way, “those who say ‘I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine’ (Song 6:3) speak of having been conformed to Christ, having received the beauty that belongs to Him,”72 that is, that primary beauty, true and unique, which characterized the original blessedness of human nature, in its creation according to image and likeness (κατ᾿ εἰκόνα καὶ ὁμοίωσιν).73 Seeing the holy means seeing the beauty of Christ, and Gregory’s Eucharistic contemplation is accomplished in a union of love, of mutual immanence, which could be defined as perichoretic, in the analogical sense, insofar as the soul is entirely immersed in God and God is present in the soul, transforming it into an icon of its own beauty, of the beauty of Christ. The centrality of the body in this contemplation is so radical that the angels themselves can know the one and triune God only through it. Gregory, in fact, commenting on Song 3:3, clearly attributes the apophatism to the purely spiritual creatures as well: Thus the soul went through the entire angelic order and since she did not see that which she sought among the goods that she found, she thought to herself: “Perhaps for them the one whom I love is comprehensible?” and says to them: “Have you seen him whom my heart loves?” (Song 3:3). However, because they were silent before the ­question and with their silence they demonstrated that even for them that which she seeks is incomprehensible, as soon as she had gone in mental pursuit throughout the entire spiritual city and did not get to know what she was looking for even among intelligible and ­incorporeal

70  Moses also reaches the height of contemplation, because he had prophetic access to the knowledge of the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ, represented by the tent that embraces the universe (cf. Gregory of Nyssa, De vita Moysis 2.174; Gregoire de Nysse, Vie de Moïse ou Traité de la perfection en matière de vertu, ed. and trans. Jean Daniélou, SC 1 [Paris: Cerf, 1955], 214). 71  Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum canticorum 15, GNO VI, 439,4-5. 72  In Canticum canticorum 15, GNO VI, 439,16-18. 73  Cf. In Canticum canticorum 15, GNO VI, 439,3-20.

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beings, then renouncing everything she had found, she knew whom she sought, whose existence is known only in the impossibility of comprehending that which He is. In fact, every element that makes it known is an obstacle for those who seek Him come to find Him.74

This doctrine characterizes the maturity of Gregory’s thought, as is demonstrated by its parallel in De vita Moysis.75 The unbridgeable ontological gap between the Creator and the creature implies that nobody can know God but through the incarnation of the Word and, therefore, through history and concrete existence. The conclusion is bold: And if it is not too bold to say, perhaps [the angelic powers] have marvelled seeing the beauty of the Bridegroom in the bride, invisible and incomprehensible to all. In fact, He whom “no one has ever seen” (John 1:18), as John says, and whom “no human being has seen or can see” (1 Tim 6:16), as Paul testifies, made the Church his Body and built it in love through the addition of the saved, “until we all attain … mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ” (Eph 4:13). Therefore, if the Church is the Body of Christ and the Head of the Body is Christ, who forms the face of the Church with his own image, perhaps the friends of the Bridegroom are heartened watching her because in her they see the invisible more distinctly. Like those who do not manage to see the disk of the sun, they see it in splendour reflected in the water, so also [the angelic powers] in the pure mirror that is the Church contemplate the Sun of Justice known through that which appears.76

74  ἡ μὲν οὖν περιῄει διερευνωμένη πᾶσαν ἀγγελικὴν διακόσμησιν καὶ ὡς οὐκ εἶδεν ἐν τοῖς εὑρεθεῖσιν ἀγαθοῖς τὸ ζητούμενον τοῦτο καθ’ ἑαυτὴν ἐλογίσατο· ἆρα κἂν ἐκείνοις ληπτόν ἐστι τὸ παρ’ ἐμοῦ ἀγαπώμενον; καί φησι πρὸς αὐτούς· μὴ κἂν ὑμεῖς ὃν ἠγάπησεν ἡ ψυχή μου εἴδετε; σιωπησάντων δὲ πρὸς τὴν τοιαύτην ἐρώτησιν καὶ διὰ τῆς σιωπῆς ἐνδειξαμένων τὸ κἀκείνοις ἄληπτον εἶναι τὸ παρ’ αὐτῆς ζητούμενον, ὡς διεξῆλθε τῇ πολυπραγμοσύνῃ τῆς διανοίας πᾶσαν ἐκείνην τὴν ὑπερκόσμιον πόλιν καὶ οὐδὲ ἐν τοῖς νοητοῖς τε καὶ ἀσωμάτοις εἶδεν οἷον ἐπόθησεν, τότε καταλιποῦσα πᾶν τὸ εὑρισκόμενον οὕτως ἐγνώρισε τὸ ζητούμενον, τὸ ἐν μόνῳ τῷ μὴ καταλαμβάνεσθαι τί ἐστιν ὅτι ἔστι γινωσκόμενον, οὗ πᾶν γνώρισμα καταληπτικὸν ἐμπόδιον τοῖς ἀναζητοῦσι πρὸς τὴν εὕρεσιν γίνεται (In Canticum canticorum 15, GNO VI, 182,10–183,5). 75  Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, De vita Moysis 2.163; Gregory of Nyssa, De vita Moysis, ed. Herbert Musurillo, GNO VII/1 (Leiden: Brill, 1964), 87. 76  εἰ δὲ μὴ τολμηρόν ἐστιν εἰπεῖν, τάχα κἀκεῖνοι διὰ τῆς νύμφης τὸ τοῦ νυμφίου κάλλος ἰδόντες ἐθαύμασαν τὸ πᾶσι τοῖς οὖσιν ἀόρατόν τε καὶ ἀκατάληπτον· ὃν γὰρ Οὐδεὶς ἑώρακε πώποτε, καθώς φησιν Ἰωάννης, Οὐδὲ ἰδεῖν τις δύναται, καθὼς ὁ Παῦλος μαρτύρεται, οὗτος σῶμα ἑαυτοῦ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἐποίησε καὶ διὰ τῆς προσθήκης τῶν σῳζομένων οἰκοδομεῖ ἑαυτὸν ἐν ἀγάπῃ, Μέχρις ἂν καταντήσωμεν οἱ πάντες εἰς ἄνδρα τέλειον, εἰς μέτρον ἡλικίας τοῦ πληρώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ. εἰ οὖν σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἡ ἐκκλησία, κεφαλὴ δὲ τοῦ σώματος ὁ Χριστὸς τῷ ἰδίῳ χαρακτῆρι μορφῶν τῆς ἐκκλησίας τὸ πρόσωπον, τάχα διὰ τοῦτο πρὸς ταύτην βλέποντες οἱ φίλοι τοῦ νυμφίου ἐκαρδιώθησαν, ὅτι τρανότερον ἐν αὐτῇ τὸν ἀόρατον βλέπουσιν· καθάπερ οἱ αὐτὸν τοῦ ἡλίου τὸν κύκλον ἰδεῖν ἀδυνατοῦντες, διὰ δὲ τῆς τοῦ ὕδατος αὐγῆς εἰς αὐτὸν ὁρῶντες, οὕτω κἀκεῖνοι ὡς ἐν κατόπτρῳ καθαρῷ τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ τὸν τῆς δικαιοσύνης ἥλιον βλέπουσι τὸν διὰ τοῦ φαινομένου κατανοούμενον (In Canticum canticorum 8, GNO VI, 256,9–257,5).

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The novelty with respect to Origen is apparent here: even the angels, beings that are purely spiritual and thus at the apex of creation, can access God only through the Body of Christ and, therefore, through the Church itself. Mystagogy and corporeality cannot be more intimately linked. VI. Conclusion Gregory presents Christian life as an infinite progression that is carried out via a sacramental journey, which, after baptismal beginnings, reaches its culmination in the Eucharist, source of contemplation and of ecstasy, that is, in the ever-renewed momentum of the union with God. Thus, in terms of both the historical Sitz in Leben, and the internal theological arguments, the exegesis of the Song can be considered a mystagogy that is deeply rooted in the corporeal dimension. The most profound elements of this divergence from the Origenian reading can be identified in the apophatic conception and in the ἐπέκτασις, imposed by the fundamentally ontological understanding of the divine nature. These concepts focus all attention on the Body of Christ and on communion with the mystery (μυστήριον) of his life, in which the closing of the mouth in silence, characteristic of the word μύω, becomes a definitive opening to each human being. Shadow, at once a Christological and pneumatological term, reveals the light. We can therefore conclude that the hermeneutical key to the exegesis of the Song as proposed by the bishop of Nyssa is a sacramental mystagogy centred on corporeality as the only possibility of union with God. Of the fifteen homilies in Gregory’s Commentary, eleven address explicitly sacramental themes, while ten clearly refer to Christological elements. Moreover, in seven cases the sacramental and the Christological elements co-exist in the same homily. The Eucharist itself, in its materiality, in its obscurity and in its ritualized repetition, becomes the way to reach contemplation, insofar as it perfectly exemplifies the uniting ideal of “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” in Song 6:3. This, then, appears as the foundation of the essentially sacramental dimension of Gregory’s mysticism, in which “knowledge becomes love (ἡ δὲ γνῶσις ἀγάπη γίνεται).”77

 Gregory of Nyssa, De anima et resurrectione, PG 46, col. 96C.

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Eternity and the Body in Gregory of Nyssa’s Theology of Virginity Ilaria Vigorelli I. Introduction Is it possible to write about a “Mariology” in Gregory of Nyssa’s t­ heology? Is there not the danger of anachronism? Would it perhaps be more prudent to speak of the beautiful thoughts on the Virgin Mary – as they appear in the Nyssean corpus – instead of perilously to suggest that the Cappadocian’s reasoning contains a systematic approach to the mystery of Mary? Of course the “scientific” notion of Mariology must be applied here in an analogical way. In the fourth century there was no Mariology as it exists today. Nonetheless, we can speak of a “radical Mariology” in ­Gregory of Nyssa’s theology in the context of his mystagogy. In this contribution we will deepen our understanding of this aspect of his theology precisely by considering Mary’s virginity and maternity, that is, by contemplating her body. But first two premises must be taken into account. A consideration of the Mariology of Gregory of Nyssa, in fact, allows us to clearly identify two components that are usually found alongside his theological reasoning: if on the one hand his link with the Greek philosophical tradition of his cultural milieu is evident (A), then on the other, we note a strong need to depart from the metaphysical schemes of his contemporaries (B) in order to preserve his own argument on the discipleship of Christ and, therefore, on the preaching of the apostles and Scripture.1 This need would lead him to modify the dualistic and opposing structure of soul and body so as to reformulate it into an opposition between 1  As Gregory learned from Basil, ἡ τοῦ Ἀποστόλου διάνοια is the epistemological premise for his reflection on Christ. See Basil of Caesarea, Adversus Eunomium 2.3.3, in Basile de Césarée, Contre Eunome, Tome II (Livres II-III), suivi de Eunome, Apologie, ed. and trans. Bernard Sesboüé, Georges-Matthieu de Durand, and Louis Doutreleau, SC 305 (Paris: Cerf, 1983), 16.

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life and death, between eternity and sin, between uncreated and created.2 In doing so, he does not argue from a new anthropological orientation that is fundamentally theoretical, but rather from the contemplation of the temporal and historical fact of the incarnation of the Logos. The speculative method, therefore, starts from the historical fact of the virginity of Mary and of the resurrection of the body of Christ – witnessed by the apostles and believed through faith in the Scriptures; and it is precisely from the consideration of these two facts, which denote the dominion of the incarnate Logos over nature, that important considerations emerge regarding the sacramental and liturgical structure of Christian initiation. As we will see, Gregory’s writings on Mary’s virginity are mystagogical, as they intend to produce a moral conversion of the readers or listeners, but they are also ontological, as they introduce a new ontology which is sacramental and comes to humanity through the body of Mary. The theology of the Son, which would find full development in Gregory’s debate with Eunomius (379-383), would thus give rise to a new metaphysics of the body that, as we shall see, chronologically precedes the development of Trinitarian theology, from the first considerations on the Virgin in the treatise De virginitate (371). But it also follows this development, in the mystagogical considerations offered in the homilies of the commentary In Canticum canticorum (391-394). We shall attempt, therefore, to illuminate how the reflection on the deification of the human being (1) and on the new mystagogy of the Church of Christ (2) is for Gregory the effect of faith in the flesh and blood of the body of our Lord, and therefore arises and is developed in a non-metaphorical way from the womb of Mary. II.  The Mariology of De virginitate 2 (GNO VIII/1, 254,24-26) In De virginitate, at the beginning of the second chapter, Gregory of Nyssa uses an image that was well known in the cultural milieu of the Greek language of the fourth century. He alludes to the Platonic ­metaphor of the philosopher-coryphaeus and the dance of the souls, an 2  See on this: Miguel Brugarolas, “Divine Simplicity and Creation of Man: Gregory of Nyssa on the Distinction between the Uncreated and the Created,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 91 (2017): 29-51. And also Xavier Batllo, Ontologie scalaire et polémique trinitaire: Le subordinationisme d’Eunome et la distinction κτιστόν/ἄκτιστον dans le Contre Eunome I de Grégoire de Nysse, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum. Ergänzungsband. Kleine Reihe 10 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2013).



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image that refers to the Platonic doctrine of the deification of human beings and of their aspiration to likeness with the divine (ὁμοίωσις θεῷ). In Gregory’s treatise on virginity, the Platonic allusion occurs in the context of a clearly dogmatic formulation and has the function of describing the ontology of the Cappadocian Father, which in itself is strikingly different from that of Plato. He writes: Seeing, then, that virginity means so much as this, that while it remains in Heaven with the Father of spirits, and moves in the dance of the celestial powers (παρὰ τῷ πατρὶ τῶν πνευμάτων μένειν καὶ μετὰ τῶν ὑπερκοσμίων χορεύειν) it nevertheless stretches out hands for man’s salvation; that while it is the channel which draws down the Deity to share man’s estate (τὴν τοῦ ἀνθρωπίνου βίου κοινωνίαν κατάγουσα), it keeps wings for man’s desires to rise to heavenly things, and is a bond of union (σύνδεσμός) between the Divine and human, by its mediation bringing into harmony (εἰς συμφωνίαν ἄγουσα), these existences so widely divided (τὰ τοσοῦτον ἀλλήλων ἀφεστῶτα) – what words could be discovered powerful enough to reach this wondrous height?3

This passage is preceded by explicit references to the economy of salvation (that is, the incarnation of the Logos-Son), that is, to what “was verified physically (σωματικῶς) in Mary Immaculate (ἐν τῇ ἀμιάντῳ Μαρίᾳ) when the fullness of divinity shone forth in Christ through the virginity (διὰ τῆς παρθενίας).”4 What we encounter here is a specific re-interpretation of the classical metaphor of assimilation to the divine and of the relation between God and the world: in Gregory’s text, we no longer see the unitary and ­gradual conception of being, which permitted the joining of the human 3  Ἐπεὶ οὖν τοσαύτη ἐστὶ τῆς παρθενίας ἡ δύναμις, ὡς καὶ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς παρὰ τῷ πατρὶ τῶν πνευμάτων μένειν καὶ μετὰ τῶν ὑπερκοσμίων χορεύειν δυνάμεων καὶ τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης σωτηρίας ἐφάπτεσθαι, τὸν μὲν θεὸν δι’ ἑαυτῆς πρὸς τὴν τοῦ ἀνθρωπίνου βίου κοινωνίαν κατάγουσα, τὸν δὲ ἄνθρωπον ἐν ἑαυτῇ πρὸς τὴν τῶν οὐρανίων ἐπιθυμίαν πτεροῦσα καὶ οἱονεὶ σύνδεσμός τις γινομένη τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης πρὸς τὸν θεὸν οἰκειώσεως, τὰ τοσοῦτον ἀλλήλων ἀφεστῶτα τῇ φύσει τῇ παρ’ ἑαυτῆς μεσιτείᾳ εἰς συμφωνίαν ἄγουσα, τίς ἂν εὑρεθείη δύναμις λόγων συνανιοῦσα τῷ θαύματι; Gregory of Nyssa, De virginitate, ed. Werner Jaeger et al., GNO VIII/1 (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 255,4-14. English translation in The Seven Ecumenical Councils, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, NPNF Series II 14 (repr. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999), 345. The meditation on the Son in the economy of the salvation of humankind is expressed anew and extensively in Contra Eunomium 3 (Eun 3.1.92.5–93.1); Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium 3, ed. Werner Jaeger, GNO II (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 35,12-19. 4  GNO VIII/1, 254,24-26. I have discussed the metaphor of the Coryphaeus more extensively in Ilaria Vigorelli, “Soul’s Dance in Clement, Plotinus and Gregory of Nyssa,” Studia Patristica 84 (2017): 59-76.

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with the divine through progressive dialectical asceticism and distancing from the body, but rather we find a new metaphysics that is based on the so-called theology of the two natures.5 Gregory distinguishes the Christian concept of God’s economy from divine immanence, emphasizing in this way that the relation between God and the world is not ruled by the classical notion of necessary connections among beings (logos ut ratio), that is, stating that the existence of all creation is an expression of a gift offered in freedom (logos ut relatio).6 Let us briefly recall the characteristics that Gregory provides regarding the economy of salvation in this early work. 1. In the passage quoted above, the central theme is that of virginity, which Gregory at the same time considers to be an attribute (1) of the Father and of the Son7, (2) of the Virgin Mary, (3) and of the soul of whoever “remains a virgin by following reason”8. He therefore envisages a virginity that is grounded in the order of divine nature (1), but that consequently also finds expression in the order of diastematic nature (2 and 3). Let me unpack this: (1) In divine nature, “virgin” means “incorruptible” and “source of eternal life.” (2) In created nature, “virginity” is above all a characteristic of the corporeal world, primarily understood as exemplified by the body of Mary. (3) In the intelligible world, “virginity” refers to purity as in being purified from a passionate attitude. In reference to our theme, the virgin soul, insofar as it “moves in the dance of the celestial powers,”9 is not  See Brugarolas, “Divine Simplicity and Creation of Man,” 31.  Giulio Maspero offers an excellent explanation of the metaphysics developed by Gregory of Nyssa: see Giulio Maspero, Essere e relazione: L’ontologia trinitaria di Gregorio di Nissa, Teologia (Rome: Città Nuova, 2013). 7  As regards the Son and the Holy Spirit, Gregory says: “when one speaks of purity and incorruptibility, with these terms one alludes precisely to virginity” (τὸ γὰρ καθαρὸν καὶ ἄφθαρτον ὀνομάσας ἄλλῳ ὀνόματι τὴν παρθενίαν ἐσήμανας) GNO VIII/1, 253,18-19. For both (the Son and the Holy Spirit) the reference is to the “incorruptible Father.” See GNO VIII/1, 253,11-12. 8  τοῦτο καὶ ἐπὶ πάσης ψυχῆς κατὰ λόγον παρθενευούσης γίνεται (GNO VIII/1, 254,27). κατὰ λόγον is translated by Schaff with “by rule,” I prefer to translate it “by reason.” See NPNF Series II 14, ed. Schaff and Wace, 344. 9  μετὰ τῶν ὑπερκοσμίων χορεύειν δυνάμεων (GNO VIII/1, 255,6). 5

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virginal in itself, but is made so by the help offered by God, who “like a helping hand, corrects the fallen nature from passional dispositions and guides it toward the contemplation of higher things.”10 Thus, we can observe that, in strong contrast with Plato and Plotinus, this text emphasizes that precisely the “flesh and blood” (τοῖς διὰ σαρκὸς καὶ αἵματος)11 of the Son incarnate (1 and 2) are what permits the deification of human beings (3): the helping hand of God gives the privilege of incorporeal nature (1), that is the participation in purity (τὴν τῆς καθαρότητος μετουσίαν),12 which, in Nyssean language, coincides with the divine life,13 through corporeal nature (2). 2. Secondly, it should be noted that in the text of De virginitate, it is to an individual, concrete, and virgin body, that of Mary, that God Himself descends for the economy of salvation: corporeal virginity is set as the family bond between God and humanity (σύνδεσμός τις γινομένη τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης πρὸς τὸν θεὸν οἰκειώσεως),14 which in the flesh and blood of Christ allows the reunification in harmony of the many with the eternal. So, where for Plato and Plotinus the assimilation to the divine took place through vision, because the soul had separated itself from the many and the material, and could then elevate itself to contemplation of the One/Good, having lost all identity and otherness (or all that is corruptible and material), in Gregory of Nyssa’s Christianity it is instead God generated in the flesh who is the source of incorruptibility (τὴν πηγὴν τῆς ἀφθαρσίας αὐτόν) for all people, and the virginity of the concrete body through which God came to the world defines the very form (τοῦ τρόπου) of the incarnation (τῆς ἐνανθρωπήσεως).15 We shall soon come back to this, but I wish to immediately point out that in Gregory’s theological metaphysics, the source of divine life for humankind – that is, the acquisition of eternal life or the victory over death – coincides 10  ὥσπερ τινὰ χεῖρα τὴν τῆς καθαρότητος μετουσίαν ὀρέξασα, πάλιν ὀρθώσῃ καὶ πρὸς τὰ ἄνω βλέπειν χειραγωγήσῃ (GNO VIII/1, 254,15-16). My translation. See NPNF Series II 14, ed. Schaff and Wace, 344. 11  GNO VIII/1, 254,12-13. 12  GNO VIII/1, 254,15. 13  See Lucas F. Mateo-Seco, “Apatheia,” in The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa, ed. Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco and Giulio Maspero, VCS 99 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 51-54. 14  GNO VIII/1, 255,10. 15  See GNO VIII/1, 254,17-20. As we can see, Gregory of Nyssa distinguishes begetting in the flesh from the carnal union that makes it possible according to human nature. See Cant. 13 and Or. cat. 28.

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with one single man, Jesus Christ,16 to whom we can be united through faith, sacramentally. The philosopher-coryphaeus metaphor of the Platonic Theaetetus therefore loses its characteristic of being a dialogical metaphor, in order to become an expression of a concrete and historical reality: the coryphaeus is in fact substituted by the Son of the Father who is incarnate, and the chorus is such in relation with His body. The chorus becomes, as such, an image of the Church. 3. Another shift in meaning with reference to the classical notion of deification, in which the relationship of the soul with the world is described as being without passions, lies in the fact that Gregory does not consider the pure soul in terms of a separation from the flesh and from the many, but rather from sin.17 If, therefore, the characteristics of the Platonic argument apparently remain unchanged – that is, the necessity of the soul to distance itself from that which separates it from the Good in order to acquire ὁμοίωσις θεῷ – evil here is no longer represented by the many or by the material, but rather by sinfulness, which separates the soul from harmony with God and with the other rational natures, namely, the angels. The ascent of the soul to God is therefore no longer a noetic type, but is moral, and it involves free personal asceticism.18 Thus, in Gregory of Nyssa’s De virginitate the notion seems already well established that union with God happens through divine initiative (oikonomia), occurring freely and in cooperation (synergia) with human nature, thanks to the consent of a woman, Mary, who unites the many to the eternal in the purity of her womb, bringing the Son into the world. This is the recognition of a truly human begetting, characterized by the absence of sexual union, on the basis of which Gregory of Nyssa would be the first to coin the expression theotokos for the Virgin Mary, slightly before the Council of Ephesus.19  He is a true man but not an ordinary man precisely by virtue of his lordship over the beginning and end of the human being, or over the begetting in passion and over the corruption of death (see Eph 3:22, at the end; Or. cat. 12 and 13). 17  In Oratio catechetica, probably a decade after De virginitate, dating back to a period in Gregory’s life immediately following his trip to Jerusalem (381), the bishop of Nyssa would again emphasize that what separates human beings from God is not the order of nature as such, but evil. Or. cat. 28.2; Gregory of Nyssa, Oratio catechetica, ed. Ekkehard Mühlenberg, GNO III/4 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 71-75. 18  See Ilaria Vigorelli, “Desiderio e beatitudine. Schesis nell’In Canticum canticorum di Gregory of Nyssa,” Annales Theologici 28 (2014): 277-300. 19  See Lucas F. Mateo-Seco, “Mariology,” in The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa, ed. Mateo-Seco and Maspero, 477-482. 16



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Incarnating himself within Mary, God Himself embodies the communal link (syndesmos) between things that are distinct from one another by nature,20 and consequently the deification of human beings is made possible at an ontological level in a way that is completely distinct from the Platonic metaphysics that is constantly recalled by the vocabulary employed: significantly, this is done through the concrete and material fact that is the begetting of the Son by a woman, achieving a new relationship between God and humanity. All of this happens through the body and in the body, and this is the point I wish to stress here, for it allows us to trace the Christian mystagogical path that is about delving into the “mystery of piety,” which means to become like God or to overcome death. III. From De virginitate 2 to In Canticum canticorum 13: Virginal Begetting and Victory over Death The mystagogy that overcomes death will be fully expressed by Gregory in the homily of the commentary on the Song of Songs (Cant). If the treatise of De virginitate is chronologically one of his first works that has been handed down to us and in all likelihood dates back to 371, it is particularly interesting to compare it to Homily 13 of the Commentary on the Song of Songs21 which is, by contrast, one of Gregory’s last works (391-394).22 The passages that Gregory dedicates to the begetting of the Word present a magnificent unity of thought on the centrality of the body, because from the first to the last of his catechesis he contemplates and explains the “mystery of virginity”23 in a coherent and innovative way. Therefore, I will focus on Cant. 13, which is the only homily where the reference to Mary explicitly appears, in a doctrinal passage that is central to Gregory’s Christology and is immediately linked to the explanation of Christian sacramental mystagogy.24  GNO VIII/1, 255,11-12.  Henceforth Cant. 13. 22  See Pierre Maraval, “Chronology of Works,” in The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa, ed. Mateo-Seco and Maspero, 153-169. 23  That means of the divine motherhood of Mary. 24  GNO VI, 386,18–390,8. The mystagogical reference is explained here in the sacrament of baptism, but is found in the area of the completely mystagogical intent of the entire comment, declared by Gregory from his first homily onwards. See Giulio Maspero, Miguel Brugarolas, and Ilaria Vigorelli, eds., Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum canticorum: Analytical and Supporting Studies. Proceedings of the 13th International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa (Rome, 17-20 September 2014), VCS 150 (Leiden: Brill, 2018). 20 21

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In terms of context, it is important to recall that between Virg. 2 and Cant.  13 Gregory fully developed his Trinitarian reflection, especially during the controversy with Eunomius,25 as well as his Christological doctrine, entering into debate with Apollinaris of Laodicea on account of his work On the Divine Incarnation (387). The Mariological path presented only in passing in these works allows us to see how the reflection on the indivisible polarity of the virginity and true generation in Mary marked Gregory’s theology from the beginning, and how the Mariological reflection made a fundamental contribution to the formulation of the Christian mystagogy involved, by fully involving the body in the penetration of the divine mystery. Let us therefore perform a close reading of the Mariology of Cant. 13. The homily comments on Song 5:8-12, and after explaining that the wound of love is the only true way to achieve understanding of the Bridegroom (GNO VI, 377-378), Gregory relies on the explanation of the two natures of the Logos incarnate: those who love Him enter into the divine nature because God is love (GNO VI, 378,17) but once the soul enters into communion with Him it knows that He is both uncreated, and as such “was in the beginning and is always with God” (GNO VI, 381,1), and created, as “we call the One who became flesh and tabernacled among us” (GNO VI, 381,4). A first mystagogical reflection immediately follows: As the starting point of her teaching, then, [the Church] takes what is close and native to us, for she begins her instruction with the body. And this is just what Matthew did. In a genealogy, he traced the beginnings of the mystery of the incarnation from Abraham and David (cf. Matt 1:2-17), and he left it to the great John to proclaim to those already instructed in these basics the eternal beginning and the Word that is thought together with the beginning.26

The body of Christ is therefore the ground zero of mystagogy: what faith sees is above all the flesh and blood of Jesus (GNO VI, 387,1), and Gregory introduces a magnificent explanation of the verses of the Song in which the bride says that He is “dazzling and ruddy, outstanding 25  “Being incarnate [the Word] in the holy virgin (σαρκωθεὶς ἐν τῇ ἀγίᾳ παρθένῳ), he redeems us from death” (GNO II, 329, my translation). 26  Ἀρχὴν οὖν ποιεῖται τῆς διδασκαλίας τὴν προσεχῆ καὶ οἰκείαν ἡμῖν· ἐκ γὰρ τοῦ σώματος τῆς κατηχήσεως ἄρχεται. ὥσπερ δὴ καὶ ὁ Ματθαῖος πεποίηκεν· ἐκ τοῦ Ἀβραάμ τε καὶ Δαβὶδ γενεαλογήσας τὸ κατὰ σάρκα μυστήριον τῷ μεγάλῳ Ἰωάννῃ ἐταμιεύσατο τοῖς ἤδη διὰ τούτων στοιχειωθεῖσι τὴν ἐξ ἀϊδίου νοουμένην ἀρχὴν καὶ τὸν τῇ ἀρχῇ συγκατανοούμενον λόγον εὐαγγελίσασθαι (GNO VI, 386,18–387,1). ET: Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Song of Songs, trans. Richard A. Norris, SBL Writings from the Greco-Roman World 13 (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), 407.



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among ten thousand (Song 5:10).” The colours “white and red” that distinguish him from others signify the amazing characteristics of the flesh of the Logos, through which human beings are introduced to the mystery of God. Gregory, however, warns his readers that Christ’s generation did not involve the passions of the body: Lest anyone who has accepted the fleshly generation that belongs to the mystery of godliness should descend mentally to the works and passions of nature by conceiving that this fleshly generation is of the same sort as all other – the Bride indeed confesses that the One who shared our flesh and blood is white and ruddy and by these two colors hints at the nature of the body, but she does not say that his birth came about in the same manner as ordinary childbirth.27

The specific difference of the generation of Christ is that “nature did not contribute to his generation but acted in the role of a helper” (GNO VI, 388,4-5): His mother’s pregnancy was unique, his birth was unstained, and its pangs, painless. The bridal chamber was the power of the Most High overshadowing virginity like some cloud, the torch for the wedding feast was the radiance of the Holy Spirit, the bed was impassibility, and the marriage, incorruptibility.28

These arguments are not new, since the specific characteristics of the initiation into the corporeal life of the creator Logos had already been the object of reflection on the part of the bishop of Nyssa who, both in Or. Cat. and in Ep. 3, had treated the virgin birth from an anti-­Apollinarist perspective.29 We can now highlight a particular theological argument in Gregory’s theology: the purity of the Virgin indicates to Gregory the immaculate state (that is, a state without a relationship with sin), but this state is not considered in a moral, but in an ontological sense. Gregory emphasizes 27  ὡς ἂν μή τις σαρκὸς γένεσιν περὶ τὸ μυστήριον τῆς εὐσεβείας παραδεξάμενος πρὸς τὰ τῆς φύσεως ἔργα καὶ πάθη τῇ διανοίᾳ κατολισθήσειεν ὁμοιογενῆ τοῖς πᾶσι κἀκείνης τῆς σαρκὸς ἐννοήσας τὴν γένεσιν, τούτου χάριν τὸν κοινωνήσαντα σαρκὸς καὶ αἵματος λευκὸν μὲν εἶναι καὶ πυρρὸν ὡμολόγησε διὰ τῶν δύο χρωμάτων τὴν τοῦ σώματος φύσιν αἰνισσομένη, οὐ μὴν ὁμοιότροπον αὐτοῦ τὴν λοχείαν τῷ κοινῷ τόκῳ γεγενῆσθαι λέγει (GNO VI, 387,15-22). ET: Homilies on the Song of Songs, trans. Norris, 409. 28  οὗ ἀσυνδύαστος μὲν ἡ κυοφορία, ἀμόλυντος δὲ ἡ λοχεία, ἀνώδυνος δὲ ἡ ὠδίς· οὗ θάλαμος ἡ τοῦ ὑψίστου δύναμις οἷόν τις νεφέλη τὴν παρθενίαν ἐπισκιάζουσα, πυρσὸς δὲ γαμήλιος ἡ τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος ἔλλαμψις, κλίνη δὲ ἡ ἀπάθεια καὶ γάμος ἡ ἀφθαρσία (GNO VI, 388,8-12). ET: Homilies on the Song of Songs, trans. Norris, 409. 29  See Or. cat. 12.2-3; 13.1-5 (GNO III/4, 40-41); Ep. 3.22-23 (SC 363, 140-143); Diem nat. (GNO X/2, 246-47) (Gregory of Nyssa, Epistulae, ed. Giorgio Pasquali, GNO X/2 [Leiden: Brill, 1997]).

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the fact that Mary had woven a relationship with the Creator in such a way that her own corporeality, in history, is involved in the very economy of the Logos. The fact that the Logos incarnate is both Creator and creature actually gives two proper and distinct characteristics to the life of Christ: (a) the beginning, which does not commence through the sexual union of man and woman, but by way of a singular virginal maternity; (b) the end, which does not conclude in the corruption of members, but with the absolute novelty of the resurrection of the body.

The maternal virginity of Mary, or her virginal maternity, therefore, indicates a relationship with the eternal life of God that brings to her a novelty at the ontological level. The virgin body of the Mother thus provides the sense of that spiritual generation of which the mystagogical Church has acquired the faculty: through material signs, such as water in baptism, or bread in the Eucharist, it participates in the eternal life of the very Son of God. We find this a little further in Cant. 13: You cannot be ignorant of how often he was born: the firstborn of the whole new creation (see Col 1:15), the “firstborn among many brothers” (Rom 8:29), the “firstborn from the dead” (Col 1:18), the first to have “loosed the pangs of death” (Acts 2:24) and to have pioneered for all, through his resurrection, the birth from death. For he was born in all these ways but did not come to birth through parturition. The birth out of water (John 3:5) did not involve the suffering of childbirth, nor did the rebirth from the dead, nor did his being firstborn of this new creation. In all these instances the birth was free of parturition, and that is why it says “set apart [in birth] from myriads.”30

As in the body of Mary, therefore, the virginal generation of the faithful is linked to the generation of the Son – since the Son is pre-existent to the economy of salvation and comes into history from the eternal life of the Father, thus the victory over death, introduced into history by the resurrected Christ, means that the Church can generate spiritual children. 30  οὐκ ἀγνοεῖς δὲ πάντως, ὁσάκις ἐγεννήθη ὁ τῆς καινῆς κτίσεως πάσης πρωτότοκος ὁ ἐν πολλοῖς ἀδελφοῖς πρωτότοκος, ὁ ἐκ νεκρῶν πρωτότοκος, ὁ πρῶτος λύσας τὰς ὠδῖνας τοῦ θανάτου καὶ πᾶσι τὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν τόκον ὁδοποιήσας διὰ τῆς ἀναστάσεως. ἐν πᾶσι μὲν γὰρ τούτοις ἐγεννήθη, οὐ μὴν διὰ λοχείας παρῆλθεν εἰς γέννησιν· ἥ τε γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ ὕδατος γέννησις τὸ τῆς λοχείας πάθος οὐ παρεδέξατο καὶ ἡ ἐκ νεκρῶν παλιγγενεσία καὶ ἡ τῆς θείας ταύτης κτίσεως πρωτοτοκία, ἀλλ’ ἐν πᾶσι τούτοις καθαρεύει τῆς λοχείας ὁ τόκος. διὰ τοῦτό φησιν Ἐκλελοχισμένος ἀπὸ μυριάδων (GNO VI, 389,19–390,8).



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IV.  Conclusion: Ontological (Relational) Purity and Generative Homoiosis Though brief, the theological journey we have undertaken allows us to assert that in Gregory of Nyssa’s theology, Mariology occupies a privileged place, one which the bishop of Nyssa ably uses to justify the mystagogy of the Church. This occurs through a doctrine of virginity and the purity of Mary, which we can summarize in the following points. 1) The virginal purity of Mary is not a state of the soul that lives apart from the body (according to the classical concept of purity) but is a relational condition, which values the body in its generative power for the effect of the life that comes from God and that generates the Son within her, overcoming the limitations imposed on nature by sin and death. This happens without sexual union, which is, in fact, for Gregory the reaction of nature that fights against death as introduced by sin;31 all this is bypassed by Him who comes from the immanence of divine life. Remarkably, “childbirth did not erase the virginity of the mother, nor did her virginity hinder this pregnancy” (Virg. 19, at the end, our translation). The virginity of Mary, as was already expressed in Virg. 2, depicts the virginity of the Father and the Son in history, understood as the fullness of life and eternity, or freedom from death. 2) The relational-ontological purity of Mary indicates the purity into which the Church enters through the baptismal mystagogy that is the only real possibility – precisely because it is relational – to continuously generate the Son. Therefore, the mystagogy of the body means going beyond the laws of nature that are the laws of death, but not against the body or against sexual characteristics. Gregory does not seem to delve into the relationship between Mary and the Church in these passages, but through them it is possible to intuit that the baptismal mystagogy can never be separated from the corporeal womb of Mary. 3) The economy of the Logos incarnate gives us the possibility of developing a new ὁμοίωσις θεῷ that consists in “being removed from all evil,” “purity,” and “weaving and growing together into eternal life” (GNO VI, 60,5.910). Gregory evaluates the aspiration to incorruptibility precisely from the Platonic perspective of assimilation to God,  See Or. cat. 28 (GNO III/4, 71-75).

31

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but transforms its ontological content, moving from an eidetic and imitative process to a relational and generative (maternal and filial) participation in eternal life. It thus seems that we can legitimately conclude that, for Gregory, Mary makes manifest the likeness with God to whom Christian mystagogy leads, for which faith, body, and eternity are mutually implied. Mary’s virginal maternity shows that the same image of the source that is God is configured through faith, the source of purity (that is, of eternal life), who does not cease to be Lord of creation when He becomes flesh and blood.32

32  A strong proof of this standpoint is Homily 9 of Cant., which refers to virginity (GNO VI, 262), to the communion of wills that makes the soul the sister of the Bridegroom (GNO VI, 263,1-8 and 273,1), and to the relation (σχέσις) with goodness (GNO VI, 277,11).

Early Christian Mystagogy and the Body Obstacle and Opportunity in the Ascetic Tradition Nienke Vos I. Introduction The theme of “Early Christian Mystagogy and the Body” offers food for thought because the body is not an easy subject in patristic thought. This makes our topic a challenging one. In this contribution, I will reflect on early Christian tradition in general, and on asceticism in particular. It is important to remember that the two are often closely linked: in the work of Athanasius, for instance, to be a Christian ultimately meant to be an ascetic.1 A similar concept is found in Syriac Christianity, where celibacy may have been a pre-requisite for baptism until the third century.2 Before I am embark on my reflections, however, a few definitional issues regarding the concepts of mystagogy and asceticism must be addressed. Firstly, in the ascetic context I relate mystagogy not primarily to the initiatory ritual of baptism, but rather to the process of initiation and spiritual growth that we encounter in sources about ascetic Christians, including both hagiographical narrative and sayings of wisdom.3 This is 1  Cf. David Brakke, Athanasius and Asceticism (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), e.g., 266, and also David M. Gwynn, Athanasius of Alexandria: Bishop, Theologian, Ascetic, Father, Christian Theology in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 111. 2  William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 427. Harmless refers here to the work of Robert Murray: “The Exhortation to Candidates for Ascetical Vows at Baptism in the Ancient Syrian Church,” New Testament Studies 21 (1974-75): 58-79. 3  Cf. Nienke Vos, “Gregory of Nyssa as a Mystagogue: Macrina’s Final Prayer in Context,” in Prayer and the Transformation of the Self in Early Christian Mystagogy, ed. Hans van Loon, Giselle de Nie, Michiel Op de Coul, and Peter van Egmond, LAHR 18; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 5 (Louvain: Peeters, 2018), 131-156, esp. 131-136. Cf. Hans van Loon, Living in the Light of Christ: Mystagogy in Cyril of Alexandria’s Festal Letters, LAHR 15; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 4 (Louvain: Peeters, 2017), 2 (n. 7) and 23. Cf. also Paul van Geest, “Studying the Mystagogy of the Fathers: An Introduction,” in Seeing through the Eyes of Faith: New Approaches to the Mystagogy

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not to deny that there is often a deep connection between baptism and asceticism, as Philip Rousseau has noted in his biography of Basil of Caesarea.4 He states that because baptism became more common after Constantine, it was no longer an adequate marker of conversion: “an extra gesture would be called for.”5 From the fourth century onwards, such an extra gesture often took the form of the ascetic life, the life that Basil opted for: it symbolized a “break with the past” and in his De ­Spiritu Sancto, the Cappadocian relates it to the imitation of Christ’s death, which is “an image traditionally related to baptism.”6 As Basil sees it, the Spirit is present to those who are sealed in baptism at one moment in time, but there is also a form of salvation that is not yet realized but that awaits them: it will happen through a gradual transformation of their lives.7 Thus, Rousseau explains that “in an open-ended way, … ‘the moment of baptism’ … extends throughout a person’s life.”8 In a similar sense, I interpret mystagogy as a process of initiation that “extends throughout a person’s life.” It is important to note in respect of these connections between baptism, mystagogy, and asceticism that in early Christianity baptism did not always mark the beginning of an ascetic lifestyle. Sometimes the chronology was reversed, and monks would embark on an ascetic life prior to baptism, and the ritual would follow later, as a seal on a life of conversion already practiced.9 The second definitional point relates specifically to the ascetic lifestyle, for asceticism is a multi-faceted concept. Firstly, and this is especially important in the context of a focus on the body, asceticism is defined by of the Church Fathers, ed. Paul van Geest, LAHR  11; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 2 (Louvain: Peeters, 2016), 3-22, esp. 13-15. For a discussion of hagiographical narrative, see Nienke Vos, “Individuality, Exemplarity and Community: Athanasius’ Use of Two Biblical Characters in the Life of Antony,” in Saints and Role Models in Judaism and Christianity, ed. Marcel Poorthuis and Joshua Schwartz, Jewish and Christian Perspectives 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 205-225. For an analysis of desert sayings from a mystagogical viewpoint, see Nienke Vos, “The Desert Sayings (Apophthegmata Patrum) as Mystagogical Path: Images of ‘Hesychia’ in the Systematic Collection, Chapter 2,” in Seeing through the Eyes of Faith, ed. van Geest, 511-532. 4  Philip Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 20 (Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, CA, and London: University of California Press, 1994). 5  Ibid., 16. 6  Ibid., 17. 7  Ibid. Cf. for reflections on the layered notion of salvation John Wortley, “What the Desert Fathers Meant by ‘Being Saved’,” ZAC 12 (2008): 286-307. 8  Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea, 130. 9  See Harmless, Desert Christians, 127. In this passage, Harmless discusses monastic life under Pachomius; unbaptized individuals would enter the monastic community and “the catechumenate and monastic formation became one and the same.”



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concrete practices that have a decidedly physical quality. Celibacy has already been mentioned; other important elements are fasting (an austere diet in combination with intervals of complete abstinence), keeping vigils, living in seclusion and poverty. In addition, these markers of asceticism are accompanied by more spiritual, but nonetheless bodily, practices of prayer and meditation. Crucial to the life of the monastic man or woman is the exploration of their inner world, including battles with demons, which may be described in more external or more internal terms.10 All practices and the ensuing struggles are intimately connected to the formation of virtue.11 Thus, the very physical practices of renunciation are aimed at the high objective of what has been called “purity of heart.”12 In his famous study The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, Peter Brown traced the history of early Christian asceticism, from Saint Paul to Saint Augustine.13 In doing so, he demonstrated the continuity of the ascetic enterprise in early Christian traditions. It was also clear, however, that ascetic living assumed different shapes and forms in different times and regions.14 When discussing asceticism in early Christianity, as I do here, it is important to allow for this double ­perspective of  Cf. for battle with the demons, Nienke Vos, “Demons Without and Within: The Representation of Demons, the Saint, and the Soul in Early Christian Lives, Letters and Sayings,” in Demons and the Devil in Ancient and Medieval Christianity, ed. Nienke Vos and Willemien Otten, VCS 108 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 159-182. 11  Regarding the issue of defining asceticism, see, for instance, Harmless, Desert Christians, 61-62 (and a wealth of other passages in the book), and Hanneke Reuling, “Pious Intrepidness: Egeria and the Ascetic Ideal,” in Saints and Role Models in Judaism and Christianity, ed. Poorthuis and Schwartz, 243-260, esp. 245. Cf. Harmless, Desert Christians for illuminating discussions of, for example, Athanasius’s Life of Antony (chapters 3 and 4), the Apophthegmata Patrum (chapters 6 to 8), and the work of Evagrius Ponticus (chapters 10 and 11). Cf. in addition Harmless, Desert Christians, 439: “Praying in deserts, fasting, celibacy, renunciation of family and wealth – these occupy a large place in the narratives and the ethical teaching of the New Testament.” 12  This notion is discussed, for instance, by Harmless, Desert Christians, 389-391 (part of chapter 12 addresses the work of John Cassian, who rendered Evagrius’ notion of apatheia as “purity of heart”). 13  See Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988; Twentieth-Anniversary Edition with New Introduction, Columbia Classics in Religion, 2008); page numbers refer to the 1988 edition. 14  Cf. Harmless, Desert Christians, 421, where he discusses the work of James Goehring, according to whom fourth-century asceticism was a matter of a “complex continuum from the fully solitary monk to the fully communal monk.” See James Goehring, “Through a Glass Darkly: Images of the ̓Αποτακτικοί(αί) in Early Egyptian Monasticism,” in idem, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert: Studies in Egyptian Monasticism (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 1999), 53-72, at 54. Cf. also Harmless’ reflections on women’s asceticism: Harmless, Desert Christians, 440-445. 10

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seeing asceticism as a practice that characterized Christian living from the beginning, while recognizing simultaneously that asceticism changed and developed over time.15 In this contribution, I will pay attention specifically to material from the fourth and fifth centuries while taking account of the fact that the ascetic notions described in these sources have earlier roots. Having considered these definitional issues concerning mystagogy and asceticism, I will now discuss the two perspectives on the body in the ascetic tradition that I have summarized as the “obstacle” view and the “opportunity” view. These two images, obstacle and opportunity, are dominant in discussions about early Christian perceptions of the body. On the one hand, the notion of obstacle is at the forefront of many evaluations of the body in Christian tradition, both ancient and modern. On the other hand, various interpretations of the body as opportunity have appeared over the last three decades, starting with Brown’s The Body and Society, representing a kind of countermovement.16 In what follows, I will first reflect on these two, seemingly diametrically opposed, evaluations of the body in early Christianity. Next, I will include some examples from the sources to illustrate how the body was envisaged in early ascetic literature: a number of imaginative stories from the Apophthegmata Patrum, the ­so-called “Sayings of the Fathers,” are combined with descriptions of ­Pachomian monastic practice.17 These illustrations represent a layered vision of the body with corporeity functioning as a marker of humanity as such, but also as an instrument towards spiritual transformation, even sanctification,18 a destination embedded in the hope of resurrection. In an attempt to evaluate our findings, I will then link back to modern scholarship and its diverging interpretations of patristic thought on the body. In doing so, I will reflect on the so-called body-mind dichotomy and the problem of death. Finally, when formulating the conclusions, I will consider whether a rehabilitation of the Desert Fathers, as proposed by Peter Brown, will hold or whether we need another model of perception. 15  Cf. also the important study by Elizabeth A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). 16  Examples are: Susanna Elm, “Virgins of God”: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), and Patricia Cox Miller, The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity, Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). 17  As discussed by Harmless, Desert Christians, 129 (on the synaxis in the Pachomian monastery and the reclining seats that prevent deep sleep). 18  The next contribution in this volume, by Daniel Lemeni, focusses on this topic: the (luminous) transformation and sanctification of the body in the wisdom literature of the desert.



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II.  The Body as Obstacle Let us continue, then, with the notion of the body as obstacle, which is one of the two opposing views. As has been seen, this qualification refers to Christian views of the body that are commonly evaluated as negative. In her book Christianity and Roman Society,19 Gillian Clark includes a chapter entitled “Body and Soul,”20 which deals with asceticism, and which mentions extreme examples of ascetic behaviour that do warrant negative evaluation. She recalls, for instance, the fate of Blesilla, the daughter of Paula, Jerome’s companion, who fasted so relentlessly that she died.21 In the Vita Macrinae, a hagiographical work about his sister, Gregory of Nyssa describes the saint as refusing to see a doctor when she has fallen seriously ill: apparently, it is better to die than to display one’s naked body to a stranger.22 Or what to think of Gregory the Great, the famous ascetic bishop of Rome around the year 600, whose rigorist fasting damaged his body for life.23 Gregory marks the beginning of the transition to the medieval period that produced such striking figures as the flagellantes: monks who hurt their bodies by whipping themselves.24 To sum up the modern verdict on such practices, Clark quotes E. R. Dodds, who exclaims in his famous work from the sixties entitled Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: “Where did all this madness come from?”25 In an attempt to answer this question, Clark discusses ascetic trends in certain schools of Greek philosophy.26 Without repeating that discussion here, I will consider for a moment several traditions that were 19  Gillian Clark, Christianity and Roman Society, Key Themes in Ancient History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 20  Ibid., 60-77. 21  Ibid., 62. The reference is to Jerome’s Epistula 39. 22  Vita Macrinae 31, lines 18-22, in Grégoire de Nysse, Vie de sainte Macrine, ed. and trans. Pierre Maraval, SC 178 (Paris: Cerf, 1971), 244. The English translation reads: “Her mother begged and entreated her many times to accept medical treatment, for she argued that this art too had been revealed by God for the saving protection of mankind. But Macrina had decided that to bare a part of her body to the eyes of strangers was worse than being sick”; ET: The Life of Saint Macrina by Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, trans. Kevin Corrigan (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001), 48. 23  Jeffrey Richards, Consul of God: The Life and Times of Gregory the Great (Abingdon: Routledge, 1980), 45. 24 Cf. Gillian R. Evans, The Roots of the Reformation: Tradition, Emergence and Rupture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 208-209. 25  Clark, Christianity and Roman Society, 66, citing E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 34. 26  Clark, Christianity and Roman Society, 74-77.

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i­nfluential in early Christian asceticism.27 A major force was Platonism, with its duality of body and soul (mirrored in the title Clark chose for her chapter on asceticism: “Body and Soul”).28 The body was a material entity, subject to change and decay; it was a vehicle for the passions to wreak havoc. It was associated with depravity over against the lofty aspirations of the mind – the nous.29 Therefore, it had to be controlled.30 The Platonism of Late Antiquity increasingly emphasized an ascetic lifestyle (including abstinence from sex and luxury) – a tendency that can also be observed in Christian ascetic practice.31 Origen of Alexandria was heavily influenced by Platonism and its disjunction of the physical and the spiritual:32 he, too, viewed our earthly body as something that we have to transcend, from which eventually, and thankfully, we will be liberated.33 He was the father of allegory,34 lifting the crude and all too physical stories of the Bible to a higher spiritual plane.35 It is fascinating to observe how his allegorizing allowed him to include sensuous descriptions of the body and experiences of bodily pleasure in his work.36 Noting such ambiguities, Clark raises a question  Cf. also the introduction to this volume.  See Clark, Christianity and Roman Society, 62. For the importance of Plato, see also, for instance, Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys (2nd ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 1-16 (the opening chapter on Plato). 29  Cf. Harmless, Desert Christians, 328, where the Platonic concept of the tripartite soul is discussed in the context of Evagrius Ponticus: the soul possesses a rational (logistikon), a concupiscible (epithymētikon), and an irascible (thymikon) part. Cf. also Brakke, Athanasius and Asceticism, 239-244 (section entitled “The Word, the soul, and the instrumental body”). 30  In Plato’s Phaedrus, this is expressed by the image of the charioteer controlling two horses (Phaedrus 246a-247c). See also n. 29. 31  See Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 48-54. 32  Cf. Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, 51-72 (the chapter on Origen). 33  For an elaborate and nuanced discussion of Origen’s thought on “the body,” including his ideas concerning different forms of embodiment, see Ilaria Ramelli’s contribution in this volume. 34  Cf. Mathew Kuefler’s contribution in this volume. 35  See, for instance, Origen’s exposition in De principiis 4.2.2-4. 36  Ronald Heine, “Reading the Bible with Origen,” in The Bible in Greek Christian Antiquity, ed. Paul Blowers (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 131-148; cf. also Origen, An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer, First Principles, trans. Rowan A. Greer, The Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1979), 1-37 (Introduction) and the study by Karen J. Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method in Origen’s Exegesis, Patristische Texte und Studien 28 (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1986). 27 28



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that is both humorous and serious: “If sex can sell anything, does that include abstinence?”37 If Plato’s legacy is one force to be reckoned with, the New Testament is another. Ascetics identified with Jesus, who, like them, had been tempted in the desert.38 Their Lord and Saviour lived a detached life and had nowhere to lay down his head.39 He preached about the flowers of the field and the birds of the air who do not reap and sow – and still God cares for them.40 This is not to say, however, that ascetics did not value manual labour, which they did very strongly, as we shall see in a moment. Saint Antony was touched by Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount to which I just referred: “Do not worry about tomorrow.”41 But perhaps the most iconic story from the New Testament that inspired ascetics was the Lord who commands a rich young man to sell everything, give the proceeds to the poor, and “follow me.” These words are pivotal to Antony’s conversion story and continued to ring in many a budding ascetic’s ears.42 Still, the New Testament also contains other emphases: Jesus, for instance, is often contrasted with John the Baptist, who is the real ascetic (and also a hero of the desert monks) – he survived on locusts and honey, while Jesus enjoyed wine and attended weddings. But on a more serious note: when we consider the gospels in their entirety, it is impossible to miss how down-to-earth they are. Jesus’ miracles are often physical healings: people regain the use of their bodies, and as a result they are healed in a social sense because they are allowed to re-enter society. Generally speaking, spiritual healing is a component, too, because the connection between the individual and God is re-established. Thus, physical, social, and spiritual healing are intertwined and fully acted out on the stage of the here and now. One miracle narrated in the New Testament that represents this holistic dimension is depicted captivatingly in the catacombs by the recurrent image of the haemorrhoissa: the woman with the issue of blood.43 On a contemporary note, we are  Clark, Christianity and Roman Society, 68.  Cf. n. 11. 39  Luke 9:58 and Matt 8:20. 40  Cf. Matt 6:25-34 and Luke 12:22-32. 41  Matt 6:34. 42  Vita Antonii 2.3; in Athanase d’Alexandrie, Vie d’Antoine, ed. and trans. Gerard J. M. Bartelink, SC 400 (Paris: Cerf, 1995), 132. The story about the rich young man is found in Matt 19:16-30. 43  The story is narrated in the synoptic gospels: Mark 5:24-34, Luke 8:42-48, and Matt 9:19-22. The image is found, for instance, in the catacomb of Marcellinus and Peter 37 38

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reminded of a slogan used years ago by the non-governmental organization “Christian Aid”: “We believe in life before death.” Significantly, this phrase is a world away from the desert Christians, as their focus was primarily on life after death: on the reward that would come after a life of ascetic suffering in imitation of the martyrs and of Christ himself. So, the critical voices do have a point: many ascetic texts are indeed saturated with the idea that the body is an obstacle. It stands in the way between humans and their God, which means that, eventually, it has to be transcended. III.  The Body as Opportunity In opposition to this emphasis on ascetic interpretations of the body in terms of obstacle, however, Peter Brown approached the subject from another angle. In describing his position, I take my cue from The Body and Society. In a chapter on the Desert Fathers, Brown also cites Dodds who interpreted the ascetic project in terms of “contempt for the human condition and hatred of the body.”44 Contra Dodds, Brown claims that the “mood prevalent among the Desert Fathers implicitly contradicts” this. His point is that rather than downplaying the importance of the body, the monastic writings of the period suggest the “huge weight that the myth of paradise regained placed on the frail bodies of the ascetics.” And he continues: “It is precisely the bleak and insistent physicality of ascetic anecdotes that shocks the modern reader.”45 In this view, the body becomes a crucial element in the process of salvation. Brown explains this as follows: In the desert tradition, vigilant attention to the body enjoyed an almost oppressive prominence. Yet to describe ascetic thought as “dualist” and as motivated by hatred of the body, is to miss its most novel and its most poignant aspect. Seldom, in ancient thought, had the body been seen as more deeply implicated in the transformation of the soul.46 in Rome (dated to around 200 ce). Cf. Christine E. Joynes, “Still at the Margins? Gospel Women and Their Afterlives,” in Radical Christian Voices and Practice: Essays in Honour of Christopher Rowland, ed. Zoë Bennet and David B. Gowler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 117-136, at 121. Cf. also Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 21-25; 315-316; 342-349. 44  Brown, The Body and Society, 222; the reference is to Dodds, Pagan and Christian, 35. 45  Brown, The Body and Society, 222. 46  Ibid., 235.



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Far from being “irrelevant” or “a transient and accidental adjunct to the self,” the body was of crucial importance. In the Instructions of Horsiesius, one of Pachomius’ successors,47 it is even referred to as “a field to cultivate, where I might work and become rich.” According to Brown: Theologians of ascetic background, throughout the fourth and the fifth centuries, would not have pursued with such ferocious intellectual energy the problem raised by the Incarnation of Christ, and the consequent joining of human and divine in one single human person, if this joining had not been sensed by them as a haunting emblem of the enigmatic joining of body and soul within themselves.48

Brown makes the important connection here between the ascetic tradition and the dogma of the incarnation. Significantly, it is precisely this passage to which Patricia Cox Miller refers in an article that appeared in a volume entitled Religion and the Self in Late Antiquity.49 She observes that “the body became more central to human identity,” or in the words of David Brakke, whom she cites as well: “the body took center stage.”50 In her conclusion, Miller interprets this shift as signifying “a material turn,” which she explores more fully in her later monograph The Corporeal Imagination.51 In that study, she discusses how the landscape of early Christianity changed in the fourth century with the Emperor Constantine supporting the new religion, embedding it in structures of power and transforming it into a public institution to be reckoned with. The 47  Horsiesius led the Koinōnia after Pachomius’ immediate successor Petronius had died. See Harmless, Desert Christians, 136. 48  Brown, The Body and Society, 236, with a reference of Lars Thunberg, “The Human Person as Image of God I: Eastern Christianity,” in Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth Century, ed. Bernard McGinn, John Meyendorff, and Jean Leclercq, World Spirituality 16 (New York: Herder & Herder, 1985), 291-312. Cf. Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336, Lectures on the History of Religions 15 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 92, n. 125: “To Jerome, the body is valuable because it is where salvation happens.” 49  Patricia Cox Miller, “Shifting Selves in Late Antiquity,” in Religion and the Self in Antiquity, ed. David Brakke, Michael L. Satlow, and Steven Weitzmann (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005), 15-39, at 38, n. 96. 50  Ibid., 27; the reference is to Brakke, Athanasius and Asceticism, 149 (Brakke discusses Athanasius). 51  The term (“material turn”), central to Miller’s later study The Corporeal Imagination, does not yet figure here. Rather, she speaks of “a shift in conceptions of the self with respect to materiality, broadly construed to include the physical world as well as the human body … Now the sensible world, including human sense-perception, the body, and objects in the material realm could be viewed not as distractions but as ­theophanic vehicles” (Miller, “Shifting Selves,” 31-32.) Cf., e.g., Miller, The Corporeal Imagination), 3-7.

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meaning of “matter” changed as churches were built and sites of ­pilgrimage developed. This materializing and exteriorizing development coincided with an increased focus on the meaning of Christ’s body in the Christological disputes of the fourth and fifth centuries. In the context of ascetic discipline and its emphasis on the body, Susanna Elm provides us with perhaps the most abiding characterization in her study “Virgins of God”: As the dramatic symbol of the sole saving force, the incarnate, embodied Son, the physical body itself became the locus of transformation and thus of salvation.52

Thus, the body can be interpreted as the “locus of salvation” based on the central tenet of the Christian faith, Christ’s incarnation, and this explains why the body can be viewed as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. The question remains, however, as to whether Brown’s focus on the body as a locus of salvation invalidates Dodds’s point about contempt for the body. I will return to this question in due course, but first let us consider a number of sources including a few iconic anecdotes. IV.  Anecdotes and Images The material in this section derives from the fourth and fifth centuries and illustrates some of the ways in which the body was implicated in asceticism, demonstrating that the body is an essential part of human existence and therefore integrated into ascetic discipline. Because ascetic practice aims at spiritual transformation, there is also a disjunctive side to the process: as the body is regulated, it may become the site of supernatural metamorphosis. The final saying discussed below witnesses to this radical change.

 Elm, “Virgins of God”, 380, n. 16. The description of the body as “locus of transformation” echoes phraseology from Rebecca Lyman’s study Christology and Cosmology: Models of Divine Activity in Origen, Eusebius and Athanasius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 105 (“The locus of salvation for Eusebius is the restoration of the soul, which may then train the body”) and 146 (“the transformation of the physical”). Cf. also Patricia Cox Miller, “Jerome’s Centaur: A Hyper-Icon of the Desert,” JECS 4 (1996): 209-233, esp. 230 and 233. 52



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The first story from the desert that relates to our topic concerns Abba John, also known as John the Little, kolobos in Greek.53 The translation is by John Wortley:54 They used to say of Abba John Colobos that he once said to his elder brother: “I wanted to be free of concern just as the angels are free from concern, not working at all, but unceasingly worshipping God” [cf. Matt 6:25-29, Luke 12:22-28]. He took off his garment and went out into the desert. After he had spent a week there, he came back to his brother. When he knocked at the gate, before opening up, [his brother] gave heed to him, saying: “Who are you?” “I am your brother John,” he said, and in reply [the other] said to him: “John has become an angel and is no longer among humans.” But he begged him saying: “It is I” – but he did not open up for him; he left him to be afflicted until dawn. When he finally did open, he said to him: “You are human,55 so you have to get back to work again in order to be fed.” He prostrated himself saying: “Forgive me.”56

A second anecdote is an anonymous saying found in Book 13 of the Systematic Collection of the Apophthegmata Patrum on “Hospitality.” Saying 10, again in Wortley’s translation, with the Greek added in a few instances, is as follows:57 They used to say of an elder in Syria that he was living on the road to the desert and this was his activity [ἐργασία]: no matter at what 53  For a portrait of Abba John the Little, see Harmless, Desert Christians, 196-202; the story is included on pp. 197-198. 54  See John Kolobos 2, PG 65, 204-205; ET: Give Me a Word: The Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers, trans. John Wortley, Popular Patristic Series 52 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2014), 131-132. The story is also found in Systematic Collection 10.36. See for an English translation The Book of the Elders: Sayings of the Desert Fathers, the Systematic Collection, trans. John Wortley, Cistercian Studies 240 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 151. The Greek text can be found in Les Apophtegmes des Pères, Tome II, Collection Systématique (Chapitres X-XVI), ed. and trans. Jean-Claude Guy, SC 474 (Paris: Cerf, 2003), 34, 36. 55  The Greek term is ἄνθρωπος. 56  Ἔλεγον περὶ τοῦ ἀββᾶ Ἰωάννου τοῦ κολοβοῦ, ὅτι εἶπέ ποτε τῷ ἀδελφῷ αὐτοῦ τῷ μειζοτέρῳ· Ἤθελον ἀμέριμνος εἶναι, ὡς οἱ ἄγγελοι ἀμέριμνοί εἰσι, μηδὲν ἐργαζόμενοι, ἀλλ’ ἀδιαλείπτως λατρεύοντες τῷ Θεῷ. Καὶ ἀποδυσάμενος τὸ ἱμάτιον, ἐξῆλθεν εἰς τὴν ἔρημον· καὶ ποιήσας ἑβδομάδα μίαν, ἀνέκαμψε πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ. Καὶ ὡς ἔκρουσε τὴν θύραν, ὑπήκουσεν αὐτῷ πρὶν ἀνοίξει, λέγων· Σὺ τίς εἶ; Ὁ δὲ εἶπεν· Ἐγώ εἰμι Ἰωάννης ὁ ἀδελφός σου. Καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπεν αὐτῷ· Ἰωάννης γέγονεν ἄγγελος, καὶ οὐκ ἔτι ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἐστίν. Ὁ δὲ παρεκάλει, λέγων· Ἐγώ εἰμι. Καὶ οὐκ ἤνοιξεν αὐτῷ, ἀλλ’ ἀφῆκεν αὐτὸν ἕως πρωῒ θλίβεσθαι· ὕστερον δὲ ἀνοίξας αὐτῷ, λέγει· Ἄνθρωπος εἶ, χρείαν ἔχεις πάλιν ἐργάζεσθαι ἵνα τραφῇς. Καὶ ἔβαλε μετάνοιαν, λέγων· Συγχώρησόν μοι. 57  The Book of the Elders, trans. Wortley, 227. The Greek can be found in SC 474, ed. Guy, 236; Ἔλεγον περί τινος γέροντος ἐν τῇ Συρίᾳ ὅτι παρὰ τὴν ὁδὸν τῆς ἐρήμου ἔμενεν. Καὶ αὕτη ἦν ἡ ἐργασία αὐτοῦ· οἵαν ὥραν ἤρχετο μοναχὸς ἐκ τῆς ἐρήμου ἀγαθῇ

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time a monk came out of the desert, he would refresh him [ἐποίει αὐτῶ ἀνάπαυσιν] in full confidence. Once there came an anchorite, and he offered him refreshment, but he did not want to eat, saying, “For my part, I am fasting.” In sorrow, the elder said to him, “I beg of you, do not disregard your servant [τὸν παῖδά σου]; do not despise me.58 Come, let us pray. Look, there is a tree here; let us follow the one to whom it inclines when he is kneeling down and praying.” The anchorite knelt in prayer and nothing happened. The hospitable one [ὁ ξενοδόχος] knelt too, and straightaway the tree was bending over with him. Reassured [πληροφορηθέντες], they gave thanks to God who performs wonders.

In both stories we encounter core practices of the monastic life, such as manual labour and fasting, but we are also made aware of how these can easily lead to conflict: John’s desire for a spiritual life has to be balanced by manual labour (implying his recognition that he is only human), while the fasting brother has to learn that he must not refuse his brother’s hospitality. Both cases attest to a tendency towards rigorism, and many desert sayings address this issue and try to curb extreme practices. Thus, while we do find plenty of harsh anecdotes, moderation and mildness are stressed just as often.59 Monks are warned regularly that a­ sceticism is not πεποιθήσει ἐποίει αὐτῷ ἀνάπαυσιν. Ἦλθεν οὖν ποτε εἷς ἀναχωρητὴς καὶ ἐποίησεν αὐτῷ ἀνάπαυσιν. Ὁ δὲ οὐκ ἠθέλησε γεύσασθαι εἰπὼν ὅτι· Ἐγὼ νηστεύω. Λυπηθεὶς οὖν ὁ γέρων εἶπεν αὐτῷ· Μὴ παρέλθῃς τὸν παῖδά σου, δέομαί σου, μὴ ὑπερίδῃς με. Δεῦρο, εὐξώμεθα, καὶ ἰδοὺ δένδρον ἐστὶν ἐνταῦθα ᾥτινι συγκαμφθῇ γονυπετοῦντι καὶ εὐχομένῳ τούτῳ ἐξακολουθήσωμεν. Ἔκλινεν οὖν γονὺ ὁ ἀναχωρητὴς εἰς προσευχήν, καὶ οὐδὲν γέγονεν. Ἔκλινε δὲ καὶ ὁ ξενοδόχος, καὶ εὐθέως ἔκλινε μετ’ αὐτοῦ τὸ δένδρον. Καὶ πληροφορηθέντες ηὐχαρίστησαν τῷ Θεῷ τῷ θαυμαστὰ ποιοῦντι. 58  A more literal translation would be: do not look down on me (the Greek has the verb ὑπεροράω). 59  An example would be the story about Abba Poemen narrated in Harmless, Desert Christians, 238. A brother has committed a serious sin and has imposed a three-year-long penance on himself. Poemen responds: “That is a long time.” The monk then modifies the sentence and asks: “One year?” The abba replies again: “That’s a long time.” Another modification of the period is then proposed: “Forty days?” “That’s a long time, I think that if a man repents with his whole heart and resolves not to sin that way again, God accepts a three-day penance.” Cf. The Book of the Elders, trans. Wortley, 157 (Systematic Collection 10.57); the equivalent is found in the alphabetical collection: Give Me A Word, trans. Wortley, 229 (Poemen 12). The Greek is found in SC  474, ed. Guy, 50, 52. In another saying recounted by Harmless (Desert Christians, 234) which reflects a similar notion of mildness, the body is explicitly mentioned: “The human body is like a coat. If you treat it carefully, it will last a long time. If you neglect it, it will fall into tatters.” Harmless comments: “Such common sense was the desert tradition at its best.” This story is found in the ancient Latin translation of the sayings, the Verba Seniorum 5.40. No critical edition of this text exists; it can be found in PL 73, col. 886. The English translation is by Owen Chadwick, ed., Western Asceticism: Selected Translations with Introduction and Notes, Library of Christian Classics 12 (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster



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a competition; that they must be careful because ascetic accomplishments can lead to pride.60 In the story about John, the emphasis on “being human” is striking: never forget that you are human – not an angel. The apophthegm teaches: you have a body that needs food and you have to provide for that food yourself – by working with your hands; however lofty your aim might be (and John’s intent was lofty indeed as he desired to praise God without ceasing), never deny your own humanity. Such are the messages conveyed by this compact narrative. While the anecdote suggests a loss of identity in the sense that John wants to become an angel, the sources also include another variant – one that sits at the other end of the spectrum – where we read about monks who lose their capacity to behave like human beings and start acting like the beasts of the field.61 Both tendencies are criticized and humanness is emphasized: we are body and soul, composed of two diverse but interrelated elements – neither pure body, nor pure soul.62 A third example that highlights the significance of corporeity comes from the world of Pachomian monasticism and regards the description of liturgical celebration in the monastery.63 The monks would gather at dawn every day for morning prayer, the synaxis, a term that refers both to the service itself and to the building in which it takes place. During

John Knox, 1958), 74–75. Cf. Harmless, Desert Christians, 170, 184. Cf. also Daniel Lemeni’s contribution in this volume, which addresses the extremism that sometimes occurred in the ascetic tradition: see the story from the Historia Lausiaca referred to in n. 23 of that chapter; there, too, it is juxtaposed with Poemen’s mildness. 60  A section entitled “Tales of Virtue Gone Awry” addresses this problem: see Harmless, Desert Christians, 288-289. References are included to stories from Palladius’ Historia Lausiaca (e.g., 25.1-6). Palladius cautions: “Often, indeed, even a virtue, whenever it is not perfected with right intention, may be responsible for a fall.” A critical edition of the Historia Lausiaca is found in The Lausiac History of Palladius: A Critical Discussion, together with Notes on Early Egyptian Monachism, ed. Cuthbert Butler, Text and Studies 6/1-2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898-1904; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1967). The passages from Historia Lausiaca 25 mentioned above are found on pp. 79-80 of this edition; ET: Palladius, The Lausiac History, trans. Robert T. Meyer, ACW 34 (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1965; repr. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1991), 84-86. 61  This problematic phenomenon is addressed by Miller, “Jerome’s Centaur,” 232. 62  Cf. Hans van Loon’s contribution in this volume (on the anthropology of Cyril of Alexandria). 63  See Harmless, Desert Christians, 128-129 (the descriptions are based on the Regulations of Horsiesius and the Praecepta: see for bibliographical references Harmless, Desert Christians, 144, n. 55). Harmless builds on the work of Robert Taft who has written about these and other practices: Robert Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West: The Origin of the Divine Office and Its Meaning for Today (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1986), esp. 57-73.

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prayer, they would be plaiting reeds to make ropes – it was forbidden to sit idle. Harmless paints a compelling picture:64 During the weekday synaxis, a monk-lector stood at the ambo and recited, apparently from memory, passages of scripture. At the end of each passage, he clapped his hand and invited those plaiting reeds to stand. The monks rose, signed themselves with the sign of the cross on the forehead, and then recited the Lord’s Prayer with arms extended in the form of a cross. Another clap signaled that they were to sign themselves again, to kneel and then prostrate themselves on the ground, and to weep inwardly for their sins. They then rose, signed themselves a third time, and prayed in silence. At a third clap, they returned to their seats and resumed their reed-plaiting, and the lector began his recitation again.

As Harmless points out, the rite is “striking in the way it modulates between scripture, gesture, and silent prayer.”65 In my opinion, it is even more striking that the rite includes the practice of manual labour. The whole shape of the ritual displays a strong and creative integration of body and soul, with the performance of plaiting and an elaborate sequence of physical gestures carried out while the monks are listening to Scripture and praying – both silently and out loud. Another intriguing physical practice relates to sleeping and keeping vigil, as the Pachomian “monks did not lie down to sleep; … if they slept, they did so sitting up in ‘reclining seats’ (kathismatia). In these seats, they could doze, but probably not sleep deeply,” as Harmless remarks.66 This is one more example of an attempt to integrate the body into monastic practice (in this case, keeping vigil), but while we could argue that the design of the reclining seats makes certain concessions to the body, it can also be interpreted as a form of body-hating practice.67 This tension is indicative of the ambiguities involved, to which I will return below. As we have seen, the sayings emphasize the fact that as humans we have to remain – literally – “down-to-earth.” This is why the significance of manual labour and hospitality, for instance, is stressed. In addition, the examples of Pachomian practice showed the active integration of the  Harmless, Desert Christians, 128.  Ibid., 128. 66  Ibid., 129. 67  In Scetis we encounter a related practice: “The monks might sit on mats during the day and sleep on them at night. They also had small stools, known as embrimia, woven from papyrus stalks. The monks sat on these when they prayed the office and, at night, used them as a kind of pillow or headrest” (Harmless, Desert Christians, 175.) 64 65



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body in ascetic practice, highlighting its instrumental value, but also reminding us of tensions vis-à-vis our corporeity. Eventually, Christianity in general and asceticism in particular view the body as a reality that cannot remain as it is: somehow, it must be transcended, most importantly in life after death. I will close this section with an example that illustrates this sentiment:68 Abba Lot visited Abba Joseph and said to him: “Abba, to the best of my ability I do my little synaxis, my little fasting; praying, meditating, and maintaining hesychia; and I purge my logismoi to the best of my ability. What else can I do?” The elder stood up and stretched out his hands to heaven; his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said to him: “If you are willing, become altogether like fire.”69

V.  Modern Discussions, the Body-Mind Dichotomy, and the Problem of Death At this point we must return to the positions of Dodds and Brown which I have cited as representative of “obstacle” and “opportunity.” Although Brown presents his analyses as a “contradiction” of what Dodds argued, this argument does not seem to hold. Even if we accept Brown’s point that the body is omnipresent in ascetic writings and is crucial to their arguments, this does not invalidate Dodds’ observations regarding contempt for the body. Indeed, we definitely encounter many negative evaluations of the body in early Christian sources, and especially in ascetic ones. But why is this such an issue in modern scholarship? Clark contextualizes contemporary accounts of early Christian evaluations of the body by referring to the sexual revolution of the 1960s. She wittily suggests that “some late twentieth-century writing was just as earnest about working to enjoy sex as some ascetic texts were about working to renounce

68  For a more elaborate treatment of this aspect, see Daniel Lemeni’s contribution in this volume. 69  Joseph of Panepho 7 (Systematic Collection 12.9); PG 65, 230-231. Παρέβαλεν ὁ ἀββᾶς Λὼτ τῷ ἀββᾷ Ἰωσὴφ, καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ· Ἀββᾶ κατὰ δύναμίν μου ποιῶ τὴν μικράν μου σύναξιν, καὶ τὴν μικρὰν νηστείαν μου, καὶ τὴν εὐχὴν, καὶ τὴν μελέτην, καὶ τὴν ἡσυχίαν, καὶ τὸ κατὰ δύναμίν μου καθαρεύω τοῖς λογισμοῖς. Τί οὖν ἔχω ποιῆσαι λοιπόν; Ἀναστὰς οὖν ὁ γέρων, ἥπλωσε τὰς χεῖρας εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν· καὶ γεγόνασιν οἱ δάκτυλοι αὐτοῦ, ὡς δέκα λαμπάδες πυρός· καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ· Εἰ θέλεις, γενοῦ ὅλος ὡς πῦρ. ET: The Book of the Elders, trans. Wortley, 152.

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sex.”70 While it may be true that in some cases “pleasure” did become mandatory in modern or postmodern publications (including the paradoxical message that one must enjoy sex), it seems unnecessary – both from a physical and a cultural point of view – to downplay the importance of sexual liberation and the capacity to experience sexual pleasure. Indeed, sexual liberation inaugurates a whole new set of problems, for example in the realm of boundary setting (a topic that has been in the spotlight recently because of the “Me Too” movement), but problems also exist at the other end of the spectrum, in respect of conservative positions that foster – to mention only two issues – repression (of physical desire) and claims to ownership, for instance when the fate of women is determined by male family members. Contrary to what is sometimes suggested, “the body,” that is, our physical being in the world,71 does not appear to be much less of a minefield today than it was in Late Antiquity. How can such shared ambiguities regarding the human body be explained? An important aspect seems to lie in the fact that, as humans, we can relate to our bodies in at least two ways, which can be summed up by two similar but fundamentally different sentences: firstly, “I have a body,” and secondly, “I am a body,” or rather, “I am my body.”72 This dichotomy between them is evident in a passage from the book Autumn by Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgård,73 where he writes: What makes life worth living? No child asks itself that question. To children life is self-evident. Life goes without saying: whether it is good or bad makes no difference. This is because children don’t see the world, don’t contemplate the world, don’t observe the world, but are so deeply immersed in the world that they don’t distinguish between it and their own selves. Not until that happens, until a distance appears between what they are and what the world is, does the question arise: what makes life worth living?

The unity between self and the world that we experience as children, the deep immersion in the world as described by Knausgård, relates to the  Clark, Christianity and Roman Society, 67.  Cf. for more theory on this topic Peter-Ben Smit’s contribution in this volume. 72  For the tension between body-affirming and body-negating stances, cf. the Introduction to this volume. 73  Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn (London: Penguin, 2017; original title Om Høsten, Oslo: Forlaget Oktober, 2015). Autumn is the first part of a four-part series devoted to the seasons and the author addresses the work to his daughter, who was as yet unborn at the time of the inception of the project. The entry from which the quotation is taken, is from the opening section of the book and is dated 28 August (2013). 70 71



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fundamental experience that “I am my body.” As children, we do not seem to possess a sharp awareness of separation between body and soul, self, or mind – whichever term one prefers. As cognitive capacities develop, however, including the ability to reflect on the external world and one’s own internal world, matters become more complicated. It becomes possible to abstract from the body, while – biologically speaking – reflection is never even possible outside the body.74 Still, as we become increasingly involved in the workings of the mind, we often forget our bodies, becoming unaware of them, even neglecting them. People sometimes complain: “I live in my head.” They may lose a sense of physical awareness, which then leads to all sorts of psychosomatic symptoms such as burnout. It is beneficial to strike a balance between body and mind, but as it turns out, this is quite a challenge in contemporary culture. Clark has noted that similar modern concerns have been applied to the field of early Christian studies, such as anorexia and masochism, which relate specifically to our theme. She has employed the term “presentism” to refer to the tendency in modern scholarship to judge past periods by modern standards.75 Such judgment is generally made to condemn early Christian approaches to the body, but the fact alone that modern terms are mentioned confirms that the ways we deal with the body today are expressive of significant problems of our own. Indeed, topics can be easily added to the list, such as addiction, sexual abuse, pornography, obesity, and female genital mutilation – to name only a few. Writing off monastic practice as madness, then, does not seem helpful, as contemporary culture struggles with “the body” as much as early Christians did. The monks were at least aware of the problem, recognizing that the body is a minefield, full of ambiguities. Perhaps their solution to the problem was not always wise and was often even harmful, but one dimension of their approach still speaks to us today. They believed that what humans need is discipline, askēsis, including a battle with demons, which is to say we need to discern our inner motives as a way to chart our “interior geography.”76 Maybe they were not so crazy 74  For a fascinating account of this see Oliver Sacks, A River of Consciousness (London: Picador, 2017), for instance, in the chapter entitled “The Other Road: Freud as Neurologist.” 75  Clark, Christianity and Roman Society, 68. See also n. 10 (for more on demonic struggle). 76  Cf. Patricia Cox Miller, Biography in Late Antiquity: A Quest for the Holy Man, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 5 (Berkeley CA, Los Angeles, CA, and London: University of California Press, 1983), xi.

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to shed many tears in contrition on the hard floors of their cells while also enjoying each other’s company when meals were served – however sober these meals were. What they call for time and again seems to be a combination of selfknowledge, humility (in the sense of a sensitivity to one’s limitations),77 compassion (including self-compassion), and freedom or openness, that is, the capacity to embrace what is – here and now.78 Perhaps the key lies in the realization that the body can figure as both obstacle and opportunity. I will explore this viewpoint further below as part of my concluding remarks, but first let us briefly consider the problem of death. In addition to the dichotomy between body and mind that is implied by our ability to abstract from our bodies or to observe them almost as if from the outside, another major aspect is death. Our bodies will die and we know it. Christianity’s answer to this painful knowledge is belief in the resurrection of the body,79 a topic debated by members of the Centre for Patristic Research (CPO in its Dutch abbreviation) as they reflected on the theme of early Christian mystagogy and the body during one of the preparatory sessions for the conference of 2017.80 First, the observation was made that the patristic period seems to exhibit two diverging approaches to the body: one more positive and the other more negative. Secondly, belief in the resurrection of the body was, quite interestingly, interpreted in two, seemingly opposing, ways: both as an example of a negative approach to the body and as the sign par excellence of a positive evaluation of our corporeity.81 A case can be made for both, it seems, as the concept of bodily resurrection is actually quite paradoxical. On the one hand, corporeity is affirmed as it will continue in the eschaton. On the other hand, the body as we know it will not continue, for it will be recreated and receive a new and different, everlasting form. The famous noli me tangere scene in the Gospel of John springs to mind here, where Jesus says to Mary ­Magdalene, 77  Cf. the anecdote about Abba John Kolobos above and the article by Wortley, “What the Fathers Meant by ‘Being Saved’,” 294-300, which focuses on “humility.” 78  See for a more elaborate description of this kind of self-examination, for instance, Harmless, Desert Christians, 171-173, 177-178, 195-201, 204, 206-208, 228-244 (passages on the abbas of Scetis), and 315-329 (about Evagrius). 79  An important study on this topic is Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body. 80  As of February 2019, the Centre is continuing its activities under a new name: Centre for the Study of Early Christianity (CSEC). 81  Cf. Daniel Lemeni’s contribution in this volume.



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“Do not hold on to me.”82 To all intents and purposes, this prohibition signals a gap between this world, which is ever so earthly, and the more spiritual dimension of the world to come, of which Christ is the first fruits. VI.  Concluding Remarks: The Importance of Paradox It seems that when we contemplate the theme of early Christian mystagogy and the body, we are always confronted with paradox. Patricia Cox Miller has analysed this paradox in her important study The Corporeal Imagination.83 In this book, she explores the paradoxical manner in which bodies are imagined as entities that bear both a “touch of transcendence” and a “touch of the real.”84 Representations or parts of the body have the capacity to point heavenward while they are also deeply implicated in the realm of earthly and human existence. Miller defines this ability to hold together these seemingly contradictory aspects as a sign of what she calls a “remarkably paratactic imagination.”85 It is precisely this ability to combine and to balance divergent perspectives that we encounter in the Apophthegmata Patrum, which does not present one single, coherent discourse, but rather a multitude of voices that are sometimes in harmony but that also, at times, dissent from each other.86 When considering the legacy of ascetic literature, we encounter bodynegating as well as body-affirming stances. To illustrate the body-negating approach, I will report once more from the CPO research sessions, where a challenging question was asked: “Do we know of one patristic author who is positive about sexuality?” I would interpret this question as a rhetorical one. To highlight the body-affirming approach, let us consider an example from popular culture, a modest book called Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life.87 The title mirrors the two modern obsessions of happiness and health: how to feel good and how to extend one’s lifespan. The authors had noticed that many inhabitants of the 82  John 20:17 (NRSV). Cf. regarding the paradox of the (dis-)continuity inherent in the resurrection body Hans van Loon’s contribution in this volume. 83  See n. 16. 84  Miller, Corporeal Imagination, 30. 85  Ibid., 47. 86  Cf. my article “The Desert Sayings (Apophthegmata Patrum) as Mystagogical Path.” 87  Héctor García and Francesc Miralles, Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life (New York: Penguin, 2016). The original title is: Ikigai: Los secretos de Japón para una vida larga y feliz; references are to the Dutch version: Ikigai: Het Japanse geheim voor een lang en gelukkig leven (Amsterdam: Boekerij, 2016).

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Japanese island of Okinawa lived to a very old age. Okinawa came to be known as “the island of the centenarians.” One of their practices turned out to be a limited intake of food: they would never fill their stomachs at mealtimes.88 This may remind us of the Desert Fathers; perhaps their moderate diet extended their lives. At least, according to his hagiographer Athanasius, Antony lived to be over a hundred and when he died he had not lost a tooth.89 In a way, it is quite ironic: the fasting habits for which the Desert Fathers have often been criticized in modern times, are nowadays embraced in the context of life-enhancing strategies originating from Japan. Other life-extending practices are also reminiscent of desert monasticism, such as manual labour (the Japanese centenarians tend their vegetable gardens faithfully and some even weave reeds, just like the Desert Fathers did), communal living, and meditation. Other beneficial behaviours discussed in Ikigai include drinking large quantities of green tea, the daily performance of mild exercise, and having fun.90 To what extent the Desert Fathers participated in these, we can only guess. My point is that desert asceticism will be evaluated diversely, depending on one’s own perspective. Moreover, the literature that describes the spiritual life of the desert is complex and multi-faceted. Thus, it seems that what we need in our reflections on the role of the body in the mystagogical process – as envisaged by the ancient Christians of the desert – is a flexible outlook. Rather than aiming to arrive at monolithic truths, we would do well to develop a versatile mind that has room for ambivalence and paradox,91 for the ability to think in terms of both/and; to train – in short – that “remarkably paratactic imagination” that Miller mentions. This will assist us in discerning both the limitations and the opportunities offered by ascetic practice. It will prevent us from either idolizing or demonizing monastic life. Postscript I would like to close by juxtaposing two descriptions of intensely physical experience; we can consider them as two parts of a diptych that we can contemplate. Both scenes include the archetypal image of the apple,  This is known as the “80% rule,” see García and Miralles, Ikigai, 21-22, 134-136.  Cf. Paul van Geest’s contribution in this volume. 90  García and Miralles, Ikigai, 114-115, 117, 121-127, 139-140, 146-177, 189-190. 91  Cf. Laela Zwollo’s contribution in this volume. 88

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while the first is contemporary and the second antique. The first comes, again, from the work of Knausgård, who writes about an apple tree that he has pruned. It seemed to be dying, but after a process of heavy pruning it is now full of apples; apples that the author admires for their “easy access.” He writes: All one has to do is reach up a hand, grab the apple and sink one’s teeth into it. No work, no secret, just straight into pleasure, the almost explosive release of the apple’s sharp, fresh and tart yet always sweet taste into the mouth, which may cause the nerves to twinge and maybe also the fascial muscles to contract, as if the distance between man and fruit is just big enough for this shock on a miniature scale to never quite disappear, regardless of how many apples one has eaten in one’s life. … We followed a path in between the trees, and there, in the middle of the wood, stood an apple tree laden with apples. The children were as astonished as I was, apple trees are supposed to grow in gardens, not wild out in the forest. Can we eat them, they asked. I said, yes, go ahead, take as many as you want. In a sudden glimpse, as full of joy as it was out of sorrow, I understood what freedom is.92

If we take Brown’s interpretations of the fundamentally physical nature of salvation seriously, we can safely conclude that the Desert Fathers would have loved this appreciation of the apple. I will give the venerable father of the Late Antique studies the last word, as he calls to mind the imagination of the Desert Fathers: Angels once arrived at the cell of Apa Apollonius [Apollo, NV] and his companions, to bring them giant apples, great clusters of grapes, exotic fruits, and loaves of warm white bread. It was a foretaste of the sensual delights of Paradise, granted to men who, by fasting, had chosen of their own free will to starve. This Paradise was a land without the burning heat of day or the icy cold of the desert nights. Its gentle slopes were covered with rustling fruit trees, through which wafted nourishing, perfumed breezes. It lay just beyond the horizon of the cruel desert.93

 Knausgård, Autumn; from the first entry of the September section entitled “Apples.” 93  Brown, The Body and Society, 221; the passages referred to are: Historia Monachorum 7 (NB the Latin version in PL 21, col. 416BC); Macarius 2 from the Alphabetical Collection [PG 65, 206C-261A], the Bohairic Life of Pachomius 114 (in Armand Veillieux, Pachomian Koinonia 1: The Life of Saint Pachomius, Cistercian Studies 45 [Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1980], 167-168). 92

“It Is Enough for Me to See You” The Saintly Body in Late Antique Monasticism1 Daniel Lemeni I. Introduction This contribution explores the close relationship between the body and holiness in desert asceticism. We will make two general arguments. First, the body played a key role in defining the holiness of the monk, because it was viewed as a vehicle for spiritual progress. We stress that the body assumes a positive role in the ascetic life because the deification of the desert monks is seen as a transformation of their flesh. From this perspective, there is a strong connection between askēsis and theōsis in the Egyptian desert. Secondly, the ascetic body, and particularly the face, was an external manifestation of the spiritual life of the monk, a visible proof of his holiness. In other words, the true sign of the ascetic accomplishment was written on the face of the elder. Desert Fathers were often described as being bathed in radiant light. It is no coincidence, as we will see, that the face of the monk appears as “full of light” in the Apophthegmata Patrum. Therefore, radiance and shining were typically thought to be features of deified bodies in the desert. From this perspective, the spirituality of the desert can be understood as a “mystagogical path” (Nienke Vos) through which the luminous body becomes an “icon” of deification. In view of this, our conclusion is that desert asceticism represents a lived territory of holiness in which the Desert Fathers were epiphanies of deified bodies.

1  “It is enough to see you” is a quotation from “Abba Antony 27” in Benedicta Ward’s translation of the Apophthegmata Patrum: The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, trans. Benedicta Ward, Cistercian Studies 59 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1975; rev. ed. 1984), 7 (PG 65, col. 84).

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II. From Askēsis to Theōsis: The Holy Body in the Desert The need for ascetic discipline of the body is a fundamental theme throughout the literature of the desert (Apophthegmata Patrum or Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Life of Antony, Historia monachorum in Aegypto and so on). The body played a central role in the ascetic tradition because the monk could acquire a deified body through a strict and severe ascetic practice. If the goal of ascetic discipline is a deified body, then the role of the bodily regime in monastic life is vital. The body, including the senses, could be disciplined, refined and deified.2 Indeed, Late Antique monasticism “witnessed the extreme valuation of attitudes and practices centered on the bodily regimen of the individual,” so that “the role of askesis, the self-imposed discipline and control of the physical condition and spiritual constitution of the person, becomes a central feature of fourth-century Christian expression ….”3 Thus, our primary concern here is the close relationship between askēsis and theōsis, because, as we will see below, the body of the monk is a central locus of holiness. This monastic assumption is exemplified by a saying of Abba Alonios: “If a person wish it from dawn to dusk, he becomes of divine stature.”4 While the ultimate goal of asceticism is the deification of the monk, it is important to stress that this holiness is acquired in and through the body. Therefore, the discourse of the ascetic life was – as stated – centred largely on the discipline of the body. In this section, then, we will discuss the positive role of the body in desert asceticism, and its alignment with the spiritual development of the monk. 2  Cf. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and Margaret Mullett, eds., Knowing Bodies, Passionate Souls: Sense Perceptions in Byzantium (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2017). The best discussion of the relationship between holiness and bodily ascetic discipline as portrayed in late monasticism, one to which I am much indebted, is Patricia Cox Miller’s The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity, Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). 3  David Satran, In the Image of Origen: Eros, Virtue, and Constraint in the Early Christian Academy, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 58 (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018), 170. 4  Abba Alonius 3; ET: Give Me a Word: The Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers, trans. John Wortley, Popular Patristic Series 52 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2014), 72. All quotations from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apophthegmata Patrum) are from this translation. As to date there is no critical edition of the Alphabetical Collection; the Greek is found in PG 65, cols. 71-440. A critical edition of the Systematic Collection is found in Les Apophtegmes des Pères, Collection Systématique, ed. and trans. Jean-Claude Guy, SC 387, 474 and 498 (Paris: Cerf, 1993, 2003 and 2005).



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First, it must be noted that the body was implicated in the transformation of the soul in the tradition of desert asceticism. Peter Brown, in his The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, has provided a touchstone for understanding bodily askesis in monasticism. He writes: “for the Desert Fathers, the body was not an irrelevant part of the human person, that could, as it were, be ‘put in brackets’ … in the desert tradition, the body was allowed to become the discreet mentor of the proud soul.”5 Brown also draws attention to a related and crucial issue: the goal of the monk was not deliverance from the body, but rather its transformation.6 Thus, the Desert Fathers believed that the body was implicated in the transformation of the soul because the body qua body can acquire a state of holiness. This significance of the body is powerfully expressed by Susanna Elm: [A]scetic practice no longer sought to transcend the body, but to transform it; a rigorously disciplined body was a direct sign of divine stability and therefore of sanctity. Becoming a true ascetic, an exemplar of sanctity, included both body and soul; it no longer signified the escape of the soul from the body as it progressed towards God. Thus, in sharply separating the entire created human, body and soul, from the divine, the body acquired a new significance. … [T]he physical body itself became the locus of transformation and thus of salvation.7

Thus, it is important to see that asceticism, understood as a discipline of both body and soul, functions as an aid – even as the most effective tool – towards spiritual transformation. In the Apophthegmata Patrum, this close connection between renunciation and salvation is expressed by such  Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988; Twentieth-Anniversary Edition with New Introduction, Columbia Classics in Religion, 2008), 235 and 237. 6  Cf. Samuel Rubenson, “‘As Already Translated to the Kingdom While Still in the Body’: The Transformation of the Ascetic in Early Egyptian Monasticism,” in Metamorphoses: Resurrection, Body and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity, ed. Turid K. Seim and Jorunn Økland, Ekstasis: Religious Experience from Antiquity to the Middle Ages 1 (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2009), 271-289. For more details on this subject, see David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 146-147, 149, 157-158, 239-241. 7  Susanna Elm, “Virgins of God”: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 379-380. Desert asceticism should not be understood as hatred of the body. Rather, for the Desert Fathers the body is a necessary vehicle for acquiring holiness. Cf. also Vos’s contribution in this volume. For a new emphasis on the importance of the body in Christian asceticism, see Kyle A. Schenkewitz, Dorotheos of Gaza and the Discourse of Healing in Gazan Monasticism, American University Studies 357 (New York and Bern: Peter Lang, 2016), 111-132 (chapter 6: “The Ascetic Body”). 5

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sayings as: “Renounce this life so you may live for God … Despise the flesh in order to save your souls.”8 As the disciplining of the body was key to the transformation of the monk into a holy man, the first task of the ascetic was to fight his bodily desires. Indeed, the paradigm of deification included a bodily discipline that led to the elimination of the passions. The monks thus agreed on “the need for the body to be refined and purified by neglecting and refusing its ‘fleshly’ demands.”9 This was hard work, and the related motifs of hard labour and simplicity are found, for instance, in a saying by Arsenius: Somebody said to the blessed Arsenius: “How is it that we have gained nothing from so much education and wisdom, while these rustic Egyptian peasants have acquired such virtues?” Abba Arsenius said to him: “For our part we have gained nothing from the world’s education, but these rustic Egyptian peasants have acquired the virtues by their own labors.”10

This point is reiterated in another apophthegm of the same elder: Abba Arsenius was once asking an Egyptian elder about his own logismoi. Another person, when he saw him, said: “Abba Arsenius, how is it that you, who have such a command of Greek and Roman learning, are asking this rustic about your logismoi?” But he said to him: “A command of Greek and Roman learning I have, but I have not yet learned the alphabet of this rustic.”11

Also, Abba Poemen said: To teach one’s neighbor is the work of a healthy person, free of passions; for what is the point of building a house for somebody else and destroying one’s own?12  Abba Antony 33; ET: Wortley, 38-39.  Hannah Hunt, Clothed in the Body: Asceticism, the Body and the Spiritual in the Late Antique Era (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012; London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 54. 10  Abba Arsenius 5; ET: Wortley, 41. 11  Abba Arsenius 6; ET: Wortley, 41. 12  Abba Poemen 126; ET: Wortley, 249. Abba Poemen identifies ascetic virtue with health here because, as Schenkewitz has noted, “the monastic life was a reconstitution of humanity’s health through asceticism and cultivation of virtue” (Schenkewitz, Dorotheos of Gaza, 1-2). If the passions are a result of the primordial Fall, then ascetic life is viewed as a healthy condition. For the theme of the natural state of the monk as a state of health, see further Schenkewitz, Dorotheos of Gaza, and for asceticism as an ideology of monastic health, see Andrew Crislip, Thorns in the Flesh: Illness and Sanctity in Late Ancient Christianity, Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013) and idem, From Monastery to Hospital: Christian Monasticism and the Transformation of Health Care in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005). 8

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Like other sayings, these apophthegms stress ascetic disciplining of the body. Throughout the Apophthegmata Patrum the desert is presented as a realm of asceticism in which monastic bodies were transformed and sanctified. Generally, the desert was considered the place for ascetic training where the monk practiced his spiritual exercises to become a holy person.13 As Zachary B. Smith has remarked, the spiritual exercises “serve to destroy the old self in order to rebuild a new, passionless, virtuous self.”14 Therefore, transformation of the soul depends on the prior transformation of the body, so that for Desert Fathers spiritual growth starts with the body. From this perspective, the body was perceived as a battlefield.15 The body and its passions must be dominated and controlled in order to achieve purity of the soul. Consequently, askesis is valued in desert literature as a testing ground for spiritual progress; the Desert Fathers “regard the desert as the training ground for their spiritual disciplines … The desert became an essential part of the spiritual topography of monastic life ….”16 13  Spiritual exercise has always been regarded as indispensable to ascetic training, so that it served as a promoter of spiritual progress in monastic culture. Moreover, spiritual exercise was the most radical method for cultivating self-transformation in the desert. In this sense, several spiritual exercises were listed by the Fathers of the Desert: self-mastery/ continence (enkrateia), a complete elimination of passions (apatheia), fasting, prayer, manual work, self-denial, and so on. For pertinent reflections on the meaning and function of spiritual exercises in desert asceticism, see Zachary B. Smith, Philosopher-Monks, Episcopal Authority, and the Care of the Self: The Apophthegmata Patrum in Fifth-Century Palestine, Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia 80 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017) and Paul C. Dilley, Monasteries and the Care of Souls in Late Antique Christianity: Cognition and Discipline (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 14  Smith, Philosopher-Monks, 220. Also, Caroline T. Schroeder has suggested that “the cultivation of the body was part of a larger care of the self, in which discipline of the body was intimately connected to the cultivation of virtue in the soul”; see C.T. Schroeder, Monastic Bodies: Discipline and Salvation in Shenoute of Atripe, Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 12. 15  The spiritual combat against the demons and passions was a central theme in ascetic culture. The Life of Antony is among the earliest examples of the tendency to employ spiritual exercises in this battle. For a discussion of this subject, see David Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Nienke Vos, “Demons Without and Within: The Representation of Demons, the Saint, and the Soul in Early Christian Lives, Letters and Sayings,” in Demons and the Devil in Ancient and Medieval Christianity, ed. Nienke Vos and Willemien Otten, VCS 108 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 159-182; Sophie Sawicka-Sykes, “Demonic Anti-Music and Spiritual Disorder in the Life of Antony,” in Demons and Illness from Antiquity to the Early-Modern Period, ed. Siam Bhayro and Catherine Rider, Magical and Religious Literature of Late Antiquity 5 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2017), 192-214; R. Valantasis, “Daemons and Perfecting of the Monk’s Body: Monastic Anthropology, Demonology, and Asceticism,” Semeia 58 (1992): 47-79. 16  Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom, The Monastic Landscape of Late Antique Egypt: An Archaeological Reconstruction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 141. For

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As stated above, the first stage in this ascetic training is control of the passions, so that the monk was required to practice self-control (ἐγκράτεια)17 over the body. The flesh contains passions that are to be purified through the monk’s spiritual struggle. The essence of this ascetic teaching is encapsulated in the words of Abba Arsenius addressed to a brother: “As much as you are able, strive so that what goes on inside you be godly and you conquer your external passions.”18 Without ascetic discipline there is no spiritual progress because only through monastic daily routine can the monk become liberated from the inner motions and desires of the body and soul. In this context of Late Antique asceticism, Patricia Cox Miller observes that “the body was seen to be problematic, not because it was a body, but because it was not a body of plenitude.”19 Referring to a distinction made by the apostle Paul, Hannah Hunt has similarly observed that “the monastic emphasis on the need to mortify the body was ‘not a struggle with the body per se but rather with the sin that dwelt within it’, a battle not with soma (σωμα) but with sarx (σαρξ).”20 Thus, the monk does not reject the body – because the human body is not an object of disdain the desert as a metaphor for ascetic spirituality, see Veronica della Dora, Landscape, Nature, and the Sacred in Byzantium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 118-144 (chapter 4: “Wilderness”). 17  This practice of self-control (ἐγκράτεια) played a central role in desert asceticism. To acquire a high spiritual life, the monk practiced self-mastery over the inner desires. From this perspective, bodily discipline was viewed as a sine qua non for spiritual progress in the late ascetic tradition. The scholarship on asceticism is immense. For a brief encapsulation of how ascetic training was understood in the late ascetic tradition, see Raphael A. Cadenhead, The Body and Desire: Gregory of Nyssa’s Ascetical Theology, Christianity in Late Antiquity 4 (Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2018); the section, “Mind and Body in Early Christian Thought,” in A History of Mind and Body in Late Antiquity, ed. Anna Marmodoro and Sophie Cartwright (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 172-380; Hunt, Clothed in the Body; Alexis C. Torrance, Repentance in Late Antiquity: Eastern Asceticism and the Framing of the Christian Life, Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Schroeder, Monastic Bodies; Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Daniel Folger Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks. Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 33 (Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2002); Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis, eds., Asceticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) and Teresa M. Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1998), 161-219. 18  Abba Arsenius 9; ET: Wortley, 41. 19  Patricia Cox Miller, “Dreaming the Body: An Aesthetics of Asceticism,” in Asceticism, ed. Wimbush and Valantasis, 281-300, at 281-282. 20  Hannah Hunt, Joy-Bearing Grief: Tears of Contrition in the Writings of the Early Syrian and Byzantine Fathers, Medieval Mediterranean 57 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 105 (citing S. Abou Zayd, ed., ARAM 5 (1993): Festschrift for Dr. Sebastian P. Brock, 236).



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but of spiritual transformation. As Kyle A. Schenkewitz comments: “[t]he training of the body was to ensure that it was prepared for the resurrection. Preparation of the body was not for the sake of the body, but from concern for the soul.”21 In short, the disciplining of the body was key to the transformation of the inner soul. One aspect must be emphasized: the body is an essential vehicle for spiritual transformation, because through their bodily practices monks gain a new self characterized by a great state of holiness. Abba Daniel reinforces this point in the following sentence: “Insofar as the body flourishes, so the soul declines; and insofar as the body declines, so the soul flourishes.”22 In many ways, then, the spirituality of the desert exemplifies the practical, ascetic application of Abba Daniel’s words. Moreover, this apophthegm illustrates the important notion mentioned above that rigorous ascetic discipline may function as a positive aid for the soul of the ascetic. The disciplining of the body, however, must not lead to extreme ascetism or Encratism. In the Lausiac History, for instance, we find an example of such extremism: when Palladius asked an elder why he hated his body so excessively, the old man answered: “It kills me, so I kill it.”23 But this severe ascetic regime is corrected by Abba Poemen, who says: “We are not taught to slay the body but to slay the passions.”24 Abba Poemen, like most of the desert monks, advocates moderate asceticism, because “all excesses are of the demons.”25 Strictly speaking, the monk trained the body to obtain holiness, so that the end of ascetic discipline was not repression of the body, but its sanctification. The most notable example of this is Antony the Great (c. 251-356), who obtained a remarkable inner tranquillity through ascetism. A famous description of this regards the robust physique that Antony proved to have when he emerged from the desert fortress: After this … Antony came forth as though from some shrine, having been led into divine mysteries and inspired by God. This was the first  Schenkewitz, Dorotheos of Gaza, 119.  Daniel 4; ET: Wortley, 90. 23  Palladius, Historia Lausiaca 2.2; ET: Palladius, The Lausiac History, trans. Robert T. Meyer, ACW 34 (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1965; repr. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1991), 33. The critical edition is: The Lausiac History of Palladius: A Critical Discussion, together with Notes on Early Egyptian Monachism, ed. Cuthbert Butler, Text and Studies 6/1-2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898-1904; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1967). Cf. William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 287. 24  Poemen 183; ET: Wortley, 258. 25  Poemen 129; ET: Wortley, 249. 21

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time he appeared from the fortress for those who came out to him. And when they beheld him, they were amazed to see that his body had maintained its former condition, neither fat from lack of exercise, nor emaciated from fasting and combat with demons, but was just as they had known him prior to his withdrawal.26

Miraculously, despite twenty years of asceticism, “his body had maintained his former condition.” But equally striking was the renewal of Antony’s soul, for when he emerged, “the state of his soul was one of purity, not constricted by grief, nor relaxed by pleasure, nor affected by either laugher or dejection.”27 In this passage, therefore, Athanasius combines the external signs of his hero, which are the result of bodily discipline, with a “control of the passions,”28 describing an equilibrium that is both physical and spiritual. Consequently, Antony the Great exemplifies a markedly positive attitude to the body. There is no dualistic hatred of the body here; asceticism has not subverted Antony’s physicality but restored it to its “natural state,” that is to say, to its true and proper condition as intended by God.29 In the vita, Antony’s ascetic life is portrayed as a daily routine of cultivating the natural state of the body and soul.30 In this regard, The Life of Antony became paradigmatic for the tradition of desert spirituality. 26  Life of Antony (Vita Antonii) 14. ET: Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus, trans. Robert C. Gregg, The Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1980), 42. The critical edition of the Greek text is by G. J. M. Bartelink: Athanase d’Alexandrie, Vie d’Antoine, ed. and trans. Gerard J. M. Bartelink, SC  400 (Paris: Cerf, 1995). Antony’s bodily holiness is a fundamental element of Athanasius’s ascetic theology. For a basic overview of this topic, see David M. Gwynn, Athanasius of Alexandria: Bishop, Theologian, Ascetic, Father, Christian Theology in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 27  Life of Antony 14. As Miller has remarked in his Life of St. Antony, Athanasius describes “the body of Antony, still vigorous and youthful after decades of ascetic practice and combat with demons, as a prefiguration of the incorruption that humans would enjoy in the resurrection” (Miller, The Corporeal Imagination, 111). Another aspect that must be taken into account when discussing this problem is that Antony’s holiness was understood as health. In this sense, Crislip has remarked that “[t]he Life of Antony interprets his health as a sure signifier of his sanctity; his health is a necessary component of the Life of Antony’s vision of the ascetic reclamation of humanity’s long-lost equilibrium of soul, body, and divine logos” (Crislip, Thorns in the Flesh, 136). 28  Crislip, Thorns in the Flesh, 65. 29  Cf. Kallistos Ware, “The Way of the Ascetics: Negative or Affirmative?,” in Asceticism, ed. Wimbush and Valantasis, 3-15, at 11. 30  Cf. Yonatan Moss, Incorruptible Bodies: Christology, Society, and Austerity in Late Antiquity, Christianity in Late Antiquity 1 (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016), 41. Also, William Harmless has suggested that Abba Antony attempted to internalize the profound experience of the incarnation in his life. Thus, Harmless pointed out that, “not only does Antony articulate Athanasius’s theology of deification; he becomes



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This natural state of the body continues up to the end of Antony’s long life. Although he lived to be more than a hundred, he possessed eyes undimmed and sound, and he saw clearly. He lost none of his teeth – they simply had been worn to the gums because of the old man’s great age. He also retained health in his feet and hands, and generally he seemed brighter and of more energetic strength than those who make use of baths and a variety of foods and clothing.31

We see that in this case, a strict ascetic regime enhanced rather than impaired Antony’s body. Instead of a body broken by ascetic practice, we find “the reversal of the body’s decay and its transformation into the glorified body of the resurrection.”32 Therefore, the Life of Antony, one of the best-known texts of Late Antique monasticism, reveals a distinctive spirituality in which the body is seen as an important agent of spiritual progress. As Claudia Rapp has stated: “The control of the body through ascetic practices was intended to create the conditions for mental and spiritual growth. Striving for perfection was a continuous process.”33 In the scene at the desert fortress, then, Antony’s deified body and his mystical wisdom clearly have been achieved through ascetic discipline.34 As Nienke Vos has remarked: Antony appears as a figure who has been initiated into the divine mysteries, and his body and soul demonstrate his new state of being. His body is perfect and shows no signs of change: it is as vital as it an icon for it. Antony is Athanasius’s portrait of what a human being renewed in the image and likeness of God should look like”; see Harmless, Desert Christians, 90. On Athanasius’s ascetic anthropology, which stresses the monk’s capacity to regain the primordial experience of incorruptibility, see Dag Øistein Endsjø, Primordial Landscapes, Incorruptible Bodies, American University Studies 272 (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 133-135; 143-146; Stephen J. Davis, Coptic Christology in Practice: Incarnation and Divine Participation in Late Antique and Medieval Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 26-27. 31  Life of Antony 93; ET: Gregg, 98. Cf. Paul van Geest’s contribution in this volume. 32  Georgia Frank, The Memory of Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 30 (Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 161. 33  Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transformation, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 37 (Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2005), 76. 34  For an excellent discussion of the understanding of the ascetic body in Late Antiquity, see Schenkewitz, Dorotheos of Gaza; Crislip, Thorns in the Flesh; Hunt, Clothed in the Body; Miller, The Corporeal Imagination; Brown, The Body and Society; Schroeder, Monastic Bodies; Endsjø, Primordial Landscapes, Incorruptible Bodies; Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh, 27-78 and 161-219.

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was in his younger years. It is neither too fat, nor too thin, but perfectly balanced. His soul is pure and his mood is unaffected by pleasure, laughter or sadness.35

Thus, we see that monastic discipline is closely connected with the theme of inner and outer silence (apatheia). This tranquil or passionless body is a characteristic of desert monks because the goal of ascetic culture (paideia)36 is a spiritual state of “freedom from passions.” From this perspective, the monk is a passionless man, an hesychast, par excellence.37 According to Vos, such stillness or silence is “the beginning and end of virtue, the hallmark of the divine life.”38 In other words: hesychia is the hallmark of the envisaged end of ascetic living: it represents the peace for which the ascetic longs. Hesychia is the door that leads to contemplation, to the vision of God, to the end of the mystagogical process, so that it encapsulates both the beginning and the end of the spiritual path.39

One of the sayings in the Apophthegmata Patrum which demonstrates the special significance of the hesychia is the following: when Theophilus, Archbishop of Alexandria, came to the desert fathers for a word of salvation the monks said to Abba Pambo, “Tell the pope one saying so he might reap benefit in this place.” Said the elder to them: “If he reaps no benefit from my silence, nor can he benefit from my speaking.”40

When we consider the issues implicated in the bodily practices discussed above, askesis functions as a springboard for profound theological reflections regarding the aim of ascetic practice in terms of the hesychia and apatheia that imply a return to paradise, to the natural state as it was meant by the Creator. Theologically speaking, the ultimate goal of  Vos, “Demons Without and Within,” 162.  For a recent discussion of ascetic education in its philosophical and monastic contexts, see Lillian L. Larsen and Samuel Rubenson, eds., Monastic Education in Late Antiquity: The Transformation of Classical Paideia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Smith, Philosopher-Monks. 37  For the theme of “dispassion” understood as hesychia in desert asceticism, see Nienke Vos, “The Desert Sayings (Apophthegmata Patrum) as Mystagogical Path: Images of ‘Hesychia’ in the Systematic Collection, Chapter 2,” in Seeing through the Eyes of Faith: New Approaches to the Mystagogy of the Church Fathers, ed. Paul van Geest, LAHR 11; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 2 (Louvain: Peeters, 2016), 511-532. This study is an expanded and refined version of her article entitled “Seeing Hesychia: Appeals to the Imagination in the Apophthegmata Patrum,” Studia Patristica 64 (2013): 33-45. 38  Vos, “The Desert Sayings (Apophthegmata Patrum) as Mystagogical Path,” 526. 39  Vos, “Seeing Hesychia,” 35 40  Theophilus 2; ET: Wortley, 126. 35

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monastic perfection was understood as a reconstitution of the state as it was before the Fall. In other words, through the spiritual exercises of desert asceticism, the body returns to its prelapsarian condition. As Abba Isaiah stated: “take control of all our (bodily) members until they are established in the natural state.”41 Thus, Desert Fathers saw the ascetic life as an opportunity to reclaim “the primordial health of Adam and Eve” because “by proper ascetic practice monks were expected to achieve preternatural health in body and soul, manifested in a healthy longevity.”42 Fundamentally, the telos of ascetic life was a reconstitution of humanity’s natural state through bodily practice. The passions are viewed as a result of the Fall, so that, “through the range of self-fashioning spiritual exercises that characterized early Christian monastic askesis, the monk may regain the state of prelapsarian health, purifying the movements of the bodily members from head to toe and purifying the thoughts and passions from the envious attacks of the demons.”43 It is no less significant that this prelapsarian condition is a result of Christ’s work because “the monastic life was a life of return to the natural state through the work of Christ.”44 Monastic paideia thus is viewed as a return to the monk’s prelapsarian nature through “the repression of one’s carnal desires in imitation of Christ’s perfect nature.”45 Accordingly, the desert monks were preoccupied with internalizing a “picture” of the holiness of Christ through their ascetic regime, so that the deified body of the monk would reflect Christ’s holy body. In other words, the ascetic body was a body remodelled in the likeness of Christ. As Schenkewitz states: These new bodies would be like the “God-bearers.” … These spiritual bodies would receive glory. These glorified bodies would be rendered light-like according to Christ’s own body, they will be “the sons of light …” (Eph 5:8). God would resurrect the body prepared through asceticism in this life to a new glory commensurate with Christ’s body.46

All this brings us back to the point with which this contribution began. Strictly speaking, there is a deep connection between the body and spiritual corruption, because “a corrupt body is the indication of a corrupt 41  Abba Isaiah, Asceticon 2, in Abba Isaiah of Scetis, Ascetic Discourses, ed. John Chryssavgis and Pachomios Penkett, Cistercian Studies 150 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2002), 45. 42  Crislip, Thorns in the Flesh, 167 and 168. 43  Ibid., 57. 44  Schenkewitz, Dorotheos of Gaza, 131. 45  Moss, Incorruptible Bodies, 41. 46  Schenkewitz, Dorotheos of Gaza, 125.

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soul,”47 which is why ascetic discipline always focused on disciplining the bodily passions first. As we have seen, ascetic paideia48 involved an elaborate process of training characterized by a set of spiritual exercises by which the monk was able to control his body.49 The interface between body and soul implied the necessity to combat the body through continual spiritual exercises, because “[b]oth the body and soul have passions from which the ascetic must seek deliverance.”50 All these considerations lead us to the following conclusion. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, one of the most influential pieces of early Christian ascetic literature, articulate a subtle relationship between monastic discipline (askēsis) and holiness (theōsis). Central to understanding this interdependent relationship is that the body of the monk has the capacity to become an icon of deification.51 In this context, the body of the monk must be seen as a fundamental vehicle toward spiritual progress. This notion lies at the heart of early Christian asceticism because the way of the desert provides the ambiance in which the body of the monk becomes the locus for holiness. In the following section, I will further explore Vos’s comment that desert wisdom is a “mystagogical path” par excellence, focusing more specifically on the fact that it is through this path that the monk acquires a deified body, defined by  Moss, Incorruptible Bodies, 38.  According to Pierre Hadot, spiritual exercises were an increasingly important part of Antique paideia. More precisely, Hadot, in his book Exercises spirituels et philosophie antique, has argued that Antique philosophy was primarily a way of life characterized by a set of spiritual exercises. For Hadot’s category of spiritual exercises, see Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, ed. Arnold I. Davidson, trans. Michael Chase (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995); Michael Chase, Stephen R. L. Clark, Michael McGhee, eds., Philosophy as a Way of Life: Ancients and Moderns. Essays in Honor of Pierre Hadot (Chichester and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013). Also, spiritual exercises were an essential facet of ascetic life because the monk was engaged in a continuing practice of ascetic exercises. For Christian self-care as spiritual exercise in the Apophthegmata Patrum, see Smith, Philosopher-Monks, 203-250 (chapter 5: “Self-Care in the Apophthegmata Patrum”). Christian monasticism was deeply indebted to Antique philosophy. For the best discussion of this subject, Larsen and Rubenson, eds., Monastic Education in Late Antiquity. 49  Cf. Patricia Cox Miller, “Visceral Seeing: The Holy Body in Late Ancient Christianity,” JECS 12 (2004): 391-411. Also, the role of the spiritual guide was central to the understanding of monastic training. Several important recent books have considerably revised older perspectives on spiritual guidance in the late ascetic tradition. See for this Dilley, Monasteries and the Care of Souls and Smith, Philosopher-Monks. 50  Hunt, Clothed in the Body, 50. 51  For a valuable book on the visual expressions of the body in Late Antiquity and Byzantium, see Jelena Bogdanovic, ed., Perceptions of the Body and Sacred Space in Late Antiquity and Byzantium (London and New York: Routledge, 2018). 47 48



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radiance and light. As we shall see, the Desert Fathers are portrayed in the Apophthegmata Patrum as angelic in their bodily appearance,52 because the radiant body of the monk is interpreted in terms of an angelic state.53 III.  Mystagogy of the Desert: The Elder’s Radiant Face The purpose of this section is to show how ascetic holiness was reflected by the body of the monk, especially his face. Thus, we focus on the sensory implications of the holiness of the monk. Our starting point is that the deification of the elders was highly visible because “their status as holy men was advertised by their physical appearance.”54 For example, ­Athanasius describes how the face of Antony was so radiant that those who visited him recognized him immediately “as though drawn by his eyes.”55 Also, when Abba Hilarion, a Palestinian monk, visited Antony, he called him a “pillar of light,”56 and when Abba Sisoes was asked if he attained the stature of Abba Antony, he replied, “If I had one of the logismoi of Abba Antony I would have become all on fire.”57 Thus, the body is not just a vehicle of the soul, but it reflects the power of its transformation, so that the luminous body is a physical reflection of the inner soul. As Caroline T. Schroeder writes: “physical holiness is reflected in the cultivation of spiritual holiness.”58 Undoubtedly, in ascetic t­radition 52  Cf. Kristi Upson-Saia, “Hairiness and Holiness in the Early Christian Desert,” in Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity, ed. Kristi Upson-Saia, Carly Daniel-Hughes, and Alicia J. Batten (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 155-174. 53  The angelic motif can be connected to the eschatological significance of asceticism in the monastic tradition. See for this, for instance, Jason Scully, Isaac of Nineveh’s Ascetical Eschatology, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), esp. 27 ff. (chapter 2: “Felix Culpa: The Infantile Adam and Asceticism as an Inherent Part of Creation”); Jonathan L. Zecher, The Role of Death in the Ladder of Divine Ascent and the Greek Ascetic Tradition, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 103-142 (chapter 4: “The Desert Fathers: ‘Like a body whose soul has departed’”). 54  Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity, 269. For this topos in ascetic literature, see The Spiritual Meadow of John Moschos (Pratum spirituale), trans. John Wortley, Cistercian Studies 139 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1992), 123 on pp. 100-101; Life of Antony 92; ET: Gregg, 97-98; Apophthegmata Patrum: Abba Sisoes (14), Abba Pambo (12), and others. 55  Life of Antony 67; ET: Gregg, 81. 56  Abba Hilarion; ET: Wortley, 162. 57  Abba Sisoes 9; ET: Wortley, 283. 58  Schroeder, Monastic Bodies, 110.

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the clearest sign of deification was the radiant face of the monk because, as Georgia Frank has observed, “the face remained the locus of lifelong virtues, a visual metonym for a brilliant ascetic career.”59 This visual expression of holiness is found, for instance, in the Apophthegmata Patrum where we read about monks who radiate the divine light. For example, Abba Pambo shone “like lightning,”60 and of Abba Sisoes it says: “when he was at the point of death … his face shone like the sun.”61 Also, Abba Arsenius is described as an “elder as though he were all fire,”62 Abba Joseph’s fingers “became like ten lamps of fire,”63 and Abba Silvanus is seen reflecting the glory of God.64 These apophthegms illustrate the interdependent relationship between ascetic discipline and the radiant face as a result of this regime, as the message is clear: the radiant face of the monk is a physical sign of his remarkable holiness. This seems to be the most vivid feature by which desert asceticism revitalized and redefined holiness in Late Antiquity: the luminous face of the monk. As Rapp explains: “The true sign of spiritual perfection was written on the face of the holy man. Those who were in complete union with God were often described as wearing a luminous expression.”65 We can connect this transformative quality to the notion of mystagogy, seeing the Desert Fathers as mystagogical teachers. The body of the monk becomes a deified body, and his radiant face indicates a kind of mystagogical theology.66 This can be illustrated by the following anecdote: “There was [an elder] called Abba Pambo and of him it was said that for three years he interceded with God saying: ‘Do not glorify me on earth’ – and God so glorified him that nobody could stare him in the face on account of the glory his face possessed.”67 The presence of the refracted divine light on the face of Pambo indicates a kind of mystagogical experience in the desert by which the monk achieved a  Frank, The Memory of Eyes, 143-144.  Pambo 12; ET: Wortley, 263. 61  Sisoes 14; ET: Wortley, 284. 62  Abba Arsenius 27; ET: Wortley, 45. 63  Joseph of Panephysis 7; ET: Wortley, 152. 64  Silvanus 3; ET: Wortley, 292-293. 65  Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity, 270. 66  For a valuable analysis of this theme, see Vos, “The Desert Sayings (Apophthegmata Patrum) as Mystagogical Path,” 511-532. See also Hans van Loon, Giselle de Nie, Michiel Op de Coul, and Peter van Egmond, eds., Prayer and the Transformation of the Self in Early Christian Mystagogy, LAHR 18; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 5 (Louvain: Peeters, 2018). 67  Abba Pambo 1; ET: Wortley, 261. 59

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bright body. We also find references to joy, for instance, in the Life of Antony: His soul being free of confusion, he held his outer senses also undisturbed, so that from the soul’s joy his face was cheerful as well, and from the movements of the body it was possible to sense and perceive the stable condition of the soul … He was never troubled, his soul being calm, and he never looked gloomy, his mind being joyous.68

In this passage, Antony’s face has an imperturbability that radiates a visible calm and joy. The essence of this paragraph seems to imply that “not only did he emerge physically unchanged; he now possessed a mysterious inner tranquility, visible in his face.”69 Miller interprets this special appearance as follows: “ascetic practices are viewed as performative ritual acts that induce the perceptual construction of ascetic bodies as bodies of plenitude.”70 She also points out that desert literature “used metaphors of light to describe these exemplars of the saintly self … These metaphors of light were useful for evoking the subtle bodies of the desert saints because they allowed hagiographers to materialize the holiness of the saint without reifying it.”71 In addition, this interdependence between spiritual elevation and the radiant face of the monk leads to the qualification of the monk’s appearance as “angelic.”72 Again, the Apophthegmata Patrum provide ample testimony, for example: “A monk ought to be all eyes, like the cherubim and seraphim,”73 and “Abba Arsenius’ appearance was angelic, like Jacob’s, the hair completely white, the body noble but slender, the beard large, down to his belly.”74 Similarly, Frank has remarked that “angelic faces became a shorthand for any monk who lived in perfect imitation of angels: they transcended the frail human body. Radiance and light  Life of Antony 67; ET: Gregg, 81.  Harmless, Desert Christians, 64. 70  Patricia Cox Miller, “Desert Asceticism and ‘The Body from Nowhere’,” JECS 2 (1994): 137-153, at 137. 71  Miller, The Corporeal Imagination, 122. 72  To some extent, this idea is based on the work of Miller who argues that Desert Fathers disciplined and transformed their bodies through askesis. In short, the radiant body is seen as a measure of holiness. Or in Miller’s words, a deified body is characterized by a process of transformation into an “angelic super-body.” From this perspective, the monk is like an angel on earth (cf. Miller, “Desert Asceticism and ‘The Body from Nowhere’,” 140-141, 143). 73  Abba Besarion 11; ET: Wortley, 80. 74  Abba Arsenius 42; ET: Wortley, 52. For a debate on the “angelic’ bodies of monks in Late Antiquity, see Miller, “Desert Asceticism and ‘The Body from Nowhere’.” 68

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were typically thought to be features of divinized bodies for ascetics.”75 In fact, one of the striking features of this asceticism is the presentation of the monks’ emaciated bodies as angelic bodies full of light. Thus we read about Abba Silvanus: “One of the fathers said that somebody once met Abba Silvanus and, having seen his face and body shining like an angel’s, he fell face down.”76 This important notion of the angelic condition of the monk is also described in Historia monachorum in Aegypto. The author of this anonymous work observed the following: many fathers living the angelic life as they went forward in the imitation of our divine savior, and … other new prophets who have attained a divine state by their inspired and wonderful and virtuous way of life. As true servants of God, they do not worry about any earthly matter or consider anything temporal, but while dwelling on earth in this manner they have their citizenship in heaven.77

Also, it was said of Abba Or that he was “just like an angel” and that “his face was so radiant that the sight of him alone filled one with awe.”78 Another elder, Theon, had “the face of an angel giving joy to his visitors by his gaze and abounding with much grace.”79 Thus, the ascetic life was seen as “an angelic existence lived within the confines of human flesh,”80 because as Smith has remarked, “those who seek the goal of salvation,

 Frank, The Memory of Eyes, 161.  Abba Silvanus 12; ET: Wortley, 295. For another example, see Macarios of Alexandria 3. On this topic, see Miller, “Desert Asceticism and ‘The Body from Nowhere’,” 141-142. 77  The Lives of the Desert Fathers, The Historia Monachorum in Aegypto, trans. Norman Russell, Cistercian Studies 34 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1981), 49-50 (Prologue 5). For more details on this subject, see Ellen Muehlberger, Angels in Late Ancient Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), especially 148-175 (“Defining Others: Asceticism and the Discourse of the Angelic Life”) and eadem, “Ambivalence about the Angelic Life: The Promise and Perils of an Early Christian Discourse of Asceticism,” JECS 16 (2008): 447-478. 78  Historia monachorum in Aegypto 2.1; ET: Russell, 63. Angelic images are frequent in the Historia Monachorum. Also, the luminous face is a common topos in Theodoret (Historia Religiosa 3.6; 7.4; 21.9). For additional examples see Graham Gould, The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 181-182. 79  Historia monachorum in Aegypto 6.2; ET: Russell, 68; cf. Historia monachorum in Aegypto 7.1; ET: Russell, 69. 80  Andrew Crislip, The Greek Historia Monachorum in Aegypto: Monastic Hagiography in the Late Fourth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 152. For more details on this subject, see Muehlberger, Angels in Late Ancient Christianity and “Ambivalence about the Angelic Life”; Jonathan L. Zecher, “The Angelic Life in Desert and Ladder: John Climacus’s Re-Formulation of Ascetic Spirituality,” JECS 21 (2013): 111-136. 75

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those who receive knowledge of wisdom and truth, are angelic in action and appearance, and they even fraternize with the angels.”81 In this vein, it is important to note that that the angelic body or luminous body of the holy man is a prefiguration of the future bodily resurrection from death. As the angelic face of the monk had become the fundamental indicator of his sanctification, we find a strong emphasis on the visible experience of deification, understood as “lightning” refracted in the purified body of the monk. This cluster of elements indicates that “the ideal ascetic body is a visible sign or representation of both the original, pure human body of paradise and the incorruptible condition of the paradise to come.”82 Quintessentially, we find this in the Life of Antony, as Antony is characterized by brilliant beauty. It is also expressed in the description of his calm soul and radiant face: Antony’s soul is “calm”; his character is “stable”; his senses are “undisturbed”; his face has an imperturbability that radiates joy. This is divine apatheia rendered visible. It is the way Athanasius imagines the deification made possible by Christ: “from Athanasius’ perspective, it is correct to call Antony’s body ‘holy’, but only in the sense that it has been restored to its original (pre-fall) condition through the divinizing work of the incarnate Word.”83 Athanasius repeatedly stresses that Antony’s “face had a great and marvelous grace,”84 to such a degree that Antony’s body becomes a perfect instrument of his soul. As Schenkewitz has remarked: Ascetic labor enabled the transformation envisioned, one in which the soul and body were both regenerated and restored to the natural state. Through monastic obedience to Christ’s commandments, one could rediscover and renew the divine light.85

Indeed, “the individual ascetic subject is empowered – even compelled – to participate in the bodily resurrection promised by the orthodox theology of the body.”86 In this sense, the Fathers of the Desert are not exceptional, for they share with all ascetic tradition a kind of “visible”  Smith, Philosopher-Monks, 216.  Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh, 163. 83  David Brakke, “Outside the Places, Within the Truth: Athanasius of Alexandria and the Localization of the Holy,” in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, ed. David Frankfurter, Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 134 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 445-481, at 459. 84  Cf. Life of Antony 67; ET: Gregg, 81. 85  Schenkewitz, Dorotheos of Gaza, 131. 86  Schroeder, Monastic Bodies, 161. For more details on ascetic bodies, see Endsjø, Primordial Landscapes, Incorruptible Bodies. 81

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mystagogical experience of holiness: “For Christianity, asceticism does not negate the body and the goods associated with it, but changes the body from its fallen state to one that anticipates the heavenly state, either of the resurrected body or of the angelic body.”87 From this perspective, the monk represents the “transfigured human being of the age to come.”88 In short, the monk becomes a heavenly being. In monastic culture, this holy status was also associated with a mystagogical experience by which “the desert fathers sought to recover the ‘glory of Adam’.”89 This spiritual prelapsarian state is referred to by Poemen when he says that “as Moses received the likeness of the glory of Adam when his face was glorified, so too did the face of Abba Pambo shine like lightning, and he was like an emperor sitting on his throne. Abba Silvanus and Abba Sisoes were similarly distinguished.”90 The Desert Fathers developed a rhetoric of the holy flesh because the human body is destined to be transformed into a dazzling body.91 In this ascetic discourse we can find, as Miller has observed, “a glimpse of the dazzling plenitude of Adam, exemplar of an original humanity once lost but retrieved by Christ as the sign of human destiny.”92 Thus, the presence of the refracted glory of Adam on the face of Pambo, Silvanus, and Sisoes indicated their heavenly condition. We may conclude that a radiant face was asceticism’s highest achievement for the elder: it set him apart as an as exemplar of holiness. As Rapp has observed: “the physical appearance of ascetics was an incontrovertible evidence of their elevated spiritual status. The ascetic ‘look’ was both outward manifestation and advertisement of personal holiness.”93 Indeed, the luminous body of the monk suggested his deification, and especially the radiance of his face was an important sign of his spiritual status.

 Rebecca Krawiec, “Asceticism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 764-785, at 774-775. 88  Alexander Golitzin, Et introibo altare Dei: The Mystagogy of Dionysius Areopagita, with Special Reference to Its Predecessors in the Eastern Christian Tradition, Analekta ­Blatadôn 59 (Thessalonikê: Patriarchikon Hidryma Paterikôn Meletôn, 1994), 322. 89  Harmless, Desert Christians, 243. 90  Abba Pambo 12; ET: Wortley, 263. 91  For the theme of the dazzling body in desert asceticism, see Miller, The Corporeal Imagination, 62-81. 92  Miller, “Dreaming the Body,” 282. 93  Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity, 102. 87



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To be sure, a deified body is the beginning and end of monastic life, the hallmark of the holy flesh. The Desert Fathers communicated this new understanding of the body in the form of a story: Abba Paul the Simple, the disciple of Abba Antony, was reputed to have the special charism to be able to “see the state of each person’s soul as we see one another’s faces.” One day, while observing the brothers going into the church, Paul saw one “whose body was all shady and black” dominated by demons. Paul was sitting before the church, weeping and beating his breast many times with his hand, greatly lamenting the one who had appeared to him in this way. … Not long afterwards the synaxis was accomplished, and as they were all coming out, again Paul examined each one, for he wanted to know in what state they were coming out. He saw that man who formerly had a body all shady and black coming out of the church with a shining face and a white body.94

The outcome of this story reveals the new significance of the body in desert asceticism. The message of this reference to “a shining face and a white body” is simple: the vivid sign of holy flesh is the radiant appearance of the monk. Thus, the deified body describes “in material and corporeal terms the hermit who has already begun to exceed his materiality and corporeality.”95 Consequently, desert asceticism can be understood as a spirituality of the brilliant body: the wisdom of the desert produced deified bodies characterized by light, a light that was mirrored on the face of the monk. One last anecdote about Abba Antony sums up this point: three monks visited Antony every year. Two of them would discuss their inner thoughts with him, but the third always remained silent. Once, Antony asked the silent monk: “Look, you have been coming here for such a long time and you ask me nothing.” The monk replied: “It is enough for me to just see you, father.”96  Abba Paul the Simple; ET: Wortley, 272-273. According to Andrew Louth, the Abba Paul’s sentence contains a concise Christocentric theology, one that leads to the experience of Christ’s Transfiguration: Christ’s face shone like the sun, and his clothings became radiantly white (cf. Andrew Louth, “Light, Vision, and Religious Experience in Byzantium,” in The Presence of Light: Divine Radiance and Religious Experience, ed. Matthew T. Kapstein (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 85-103, at 94. Christ played a fundamental role in desert monasticism. As Peter Brown has remarked, the spiritual implications of the incarnation were put into practice in the desert: “Through the Incarnation of Christ, the Highest God had reached down to make even the body capable of transformation” (Brown, The Body and Society, 31). 95  Upson-Saia, “Hairiness and Holiness,” 158. 96  Antony 27; ET: Wortley, 37. 94

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IV. Conclusion This contibution has presented a new conceptualization of the body in late Egyptian monasticism. First, each monk considers his askēsis as central to deification because spiritual practices produce a deified body. For the Fathers of the Desert, askēsis was an essential vehicle for their spiritual transformation, so that the body could serve as a physical sign of deification. In short, monastic discipline and holiness went hand in hand in desert asceticism. In this case, ascetic practice does not imply the rejection of the body, but it is an investing of the body with new and profound significance. More precisely, the positive role of the body defines deification in early Christian monasticism. In other words, if ascetic discipline represents the somatic practices that lead to mystagogical experience, deification (theōsis) is the term for what that mystagogical experience entails. Therefore, holiness is not separable from askēsis, or vice versa, for the one is the goal of the other: theōsis is conditioned by bodily askēsis. Second, if ascetic discipline transforms the body of the monk into a deified body, then it becomes the primary vehicle for the restoration of the monk’s natural state. The body is a locus par excellence for spiritual transformation, and this transformation represents an elevated spiritual status. In sum, this spiritual state of the body was understood as a restoration of the prelapsarian human condition; the monk does not denigrate the body because it assumes a redemptive significance. Third, this significance may be understood in terms of a “mystagogical path” (Vos) by which the monk acquires an angelic state. In this context, we pointed out that the radiant face of the monk was the physical sign of his holiness. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Egyptian hermits were viewed as radiant and luminous in their appearance. But, perhaps most significantly, the shining face of the monk was the key to understanding this close relationship between askēsis and theōsis. In our opinion, it can be no coincidence that radiance and the luminous face of the monks in desert asceticism appear as a physical consequence of their holiness. In essence, the spirituality of the desert is best understood as a theology of the brilliant body. In view of these insights, our conclusion is simple: the Desert Fathers developed a subtle theology of the luminous body as a visible marker of holiness.

The Role of the Human Body in Cyril of Alexandria’s Mystagogy Hans van Loon I. Introduction When I started to investigate the role of the body in Cyril of Alexandria’s (c. 378-444) mystagogy, my impression, based on what I had come across in Cyril’s writings so far, was that there is a tension in the archbishop’s view of the body. On the one hand, Cyril is quite positive about the body, which he regards as belonging to God’s good creation, but on the other hand, he sees the soul as better than the body, and he believes the body must be subdued in order to live a virtuous life. Thus, a positive and a more negative approach to the body appear to occur side by side. But now that I have delved more deeply into the subject and have focussed on what Cyril has to say about the human body, it seems to me that he is in fact quite consistent. Yes, there are two sides to this issue, or rather, as I now see it, three sides, but I think that they can be reconciled with each other within the overall framework of creation–Fall–salvation. It is this framework, therefore, that provides the structure for my article. I will start with Cyril’s understanding of how the human being was originally created, as a composite of body and soul, and what the place of the body was in that totality. The notion of the image of God will play an important role in this. Secondly, I will look at the consequences of the Fall for the human body, and for the way human beings should relate to their own bodies. Thirdly, and finally, I will see how Cyril speaks of the body in relation to salvation, including the body in its glorified state. His view of the human body has not yet received much attention in publications on Cyril of Alexandria.1 The most important work in this 1  One aspect which is discussed in the literature is the influence of participation in the Eucharist on the human body. In this article, I will briefly touch on this issue. See Hans van Loon, “Eucharist and Fellowship in Cyril of Alexandria,” in Die Sakramentsgemeinschaft in der Alten Kirche: Publikation der Tagung der Patristischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft in Soesterberg und Amsterdam (02.-05.01.2017), ed. Liuwe H. Westra and Laela Zwollo, Patristic Studies 15 (Louvain: Peeters, 2019), 91-111, for further references.

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regard is Walter J. Burghardt’s monograph, The Image of God in Man according to Cyril of Alexandria.2 As we will see further on, this author explicitly poses the question whether the human body is included in the idea that humans are made in God’s image. Articles by Gilles Langevin and Marie-Odile Boulnois must be mentioned as well.3 II. Creation Within the framework creation–Fall–salvation, then, let us first look at creation: what is Cyril’s view of the body before the Fall? In his Commentary on John, he devotes several pages to refuting an Origenist view of creation.4 He does not actually mention Origen, but merely speaks of “some people” (τινες) whose theology of creation he describes in the following way: Some people … say that before the formation of bodies, human souls pre-existed in heaven, spending a long time in incorporeal blessedness and enjoying more purely the true good. But when they had enough of the better, they turned downward to the worse and descended into alien thoughts and desires. The creator understandably became angry with them and sent them into the world. He wove them into bodies made from the earth and forced them to bear those bodies as burdens. He shut them up in some cave of strange pleasures, as it were, and decided to teach them by the trial itself how bitter it is to be carried away to the worse and to place no value on the better.5 2  Walter J. Burghardt, The Image of God in Man according to Cyril of Alexandria (Woodstock, MD: Woodstock College Press, 1957; repr. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009). 3  Gilles Langevin, “Le thème de l’incorruptibilité dans le commentaire de saint Cyrille d’Alexandrie sur l’Évangile selon saint Jean,” Sciences ecclésiastiques 8 (1956): 295-316. MarieOdile Boulnois, “La résurrection des corps selon Cyrille d’Alexandrie: Une critique de la doctrine origénienne?,” Adamantius 8 (2002): 83-113. See also the shorter (and probably earlier) version: eadem, “Cyrille d’Alexandrie est-il un témoin de la controverse origéniste sur l’identité du corps mortel et du corps ressuscité?,” in Origeniana octava: Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition. Papers of the 8th International Origen Congress, Pisa 27-31 August 2001, ed. Lorenzo Perrone, BETL 164 (Louvain: Peeters, 2003), vol. 2, 843-859. Cf. on this question also Nathan Witkamp’s contribution in this volume. 4  Boulnois, “La résurrection des corps,” focusses on Cyril’s view of the resurrection of bodies and investigates to what extent his argument is directed against Origen and/or the Origenists. Cyril’s commentary on John 1:9 is discussed on pp. 85-87. See also Norman Russell, “Theophilus and Cyril of Alexandria on the Divine Image: A Consistent Episcopal Policy towards the Origenism of the Desert?,” in Origeniana octava, ed. Perrone, 939-946, esp. 944-946. Cf. Ilaria Ramelli’s contribution on Origen in this volume. 5  In Johannem 1:9, in Cyrillus Alexandrinus, In D. Joannis Evangelium: Accedunt fragmenta varia necnon tractatus ad Tiberium diaconum duo, ed. Philippus Eduardus Pusey, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1872; repr. Brussels: Culture et civilisation, 1965), vol. 1, 115; ET:



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Cyril responds to this view with twenty-four syllogisms, which especially oppose the idea that life in the body is a punishment for sins committed by pre-existing bodiless souls.6 The whole passage is part of his commentary on John 1:9, which says that the true light enlightens everyone coming into the world.7 His opponents argue that since they come into the world, they must have been somewhere else first, which they interpret as a bodiless existence of souls before they entered the body. According to Cyril, a human soul is created at the moment of conception, it then comes into being from non-existence, and he reasons that the phrase “coming into the world” should be understood as a metaphor of place: non-existence is pictured as a place from where a soul comes into another place, that of existence.8 In another work the archbishop adds that human beings receive their body from their mother, while God introduces the soul.9 As mentioned, Cyril wants to demonstrate in the syllogisms that the body is not a punishment for pre-existing souls. And he gives a whole range of arguments for his view. One of these is that the Old Testament law prescribes that the more serious crimes are worthy of death, while someone who has committed no sin should live.10 Cyril understands death as the soul leaving the body, which results in the decomposing of the body, while the soul is immortal and lives on.11 If the body were a punishment, death, which is the soul’s release from the body, would mean salvation. And the law would condemn sinners, not to death, but to a longer life in the body. Conversely, why would the promise made Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, ed. J. C. Elowsky, trans. D. R. Maxwell, 2 vols., Ancient Christian Texts (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2013/2015), vol. 1, 52. 6  In Jo. 1:9, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 1, 117-126; ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 1, 52-57. 7  Another possible translation, “the true light, …, was coming into the world,” is refuted by Cyril, In Jo. 1:9, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 1, 112; ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 1, 50. 8  In Jo. 1:9, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 1, 112-113; ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 1, 50, and in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 1, 118; ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 1, 53 (the third syllogism). 9  Ep. 1 (Ad monachos Aegypti), in Concilium universale Ephesenum anno 431, ed. Eduard Schwartz, Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum I.1.1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1927), 15; see Hans van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria, VCS 96 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 161, n. 213. 10  In Jo. 1:9, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 1, 119; ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 1, 53 (sixth syllogism). 11  Burghardt, The Image of God in Man, 85, n. 4, who gives various references to Cyril’s writings.

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to Abraham that his seed would be like the innumerable multitude of stars, be a blessing? Would not every descendant on earth imply a preexisting soul being punished by having to dwell in a body?12 And similarly, why would God answer Hezekiah’s prayer for a longer life on earth, if the sojourn in the body were a punishment?13 Cyril adds several other such examples.14 A second important argument is the bodily resurrection:15 if the human body were a punishment, we would have to greet death with joy, since it sets us free from our bodies. But instead we rejoice in the resurrection, which returns us to our bodies.16 Finally, Cyril also points to what the apostle Paul says in Rom 12:1: “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.” This means that bodies can be pleasing to God.17 Although it is not stated explicitly in Cyril’s commentary on John 1:9, the implication of all this clearly is that human bodies belong to God’s good creation. But although both bodies and souls are part of the creation of which God said that it is very good (Gen 1:31), Cyril makes a distinction between the goodness of the two, for several times he refers to the soul as better or more honourable than the body, and he does so often enough to conclude that this is part of Cyril’s anthropology. In De adoratione, one of his earliest works, he refers twice to a spiritual enemy who draws the soul away from God, whom he compares to a murderer who kills the body. He argues that if a murderer must suffer death according to the law, the life of this spiritual enemy will be in danger, too, since he threatens the soul, which is “better than the body.”18 And in Festal Letter 14, he writes: “For the degree to which souls are superior to bodies is,  In Jo. 1:9, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 1, 120; ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 1, 54 (tenth syllogism). 13  In Jo. 1:9, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 1, 121-122; ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 1, 55 (thirteenth syllogism). 14  Moses, who said to the Israelites, “May the Lord increase you”; Hannah, who asked God for a male child; the eunuch who pulled up Jeremiah from the pit, and was rewarded with life on earth; the three young men who were saved from the fire in the oven; Daniel, who was rescued from the lions; the righteous Noah, who was saved from the flood; Lazarus, who was raised from the dead (syllogisms 11, 12, 14, 21, and 22). 15  See for Cyril’s argument of the resurrection also Boulnois, “La résurrection des corps,” 85-87. 16  In Jo. 1:9, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 1, 119-120; ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 1, 53-54, 57 (syllogisms 5, 7, 8, 9, and 24). 17  In Jo. 1:9, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 1, 123; ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 1, 55 (sixteenth syllogism). 18  De adoratione, Book 6, in PG 68, col. 420D: τὴν ἀμείνω σώματος. See also De adoratione, Book 8, in PG 68, col. 536D: ψυχὴν γὰρ ἀπέκτεινε, τὴν ἀμείνω σώματος. 12



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I think, the degree to which we should bestow upon them a fuller concern.”19 Similarly, in Festal Letter 18 Cyril argues that when our body is sick we restrict our diet if that is conducive to the healing process, and therefore, “if what is incomparably better is seen to be ill, the soul that is,” we should welcome fasting.20 In none of these passages does Cyril elaborate on this distinction; he does not explain why the soul is superior to the body. But I concur with Burghardt that it has to do with Cyril’s understanding of how human beings are an image of God.21 We must, therefore, now turn to Cyril’s view of God’s image in humans. III.  Human Beings as Images of God In his The Image of God in Man According to Cyril of Alexandria, Burghardt explicitly raises the question whether God’s image resides in the human soul or the human body, or in both.22 And he concludes: “As Cyril and his Alexandrian ancestors see it, Scripture and theology agree Cf. In Zachariam 9:14-16, in Sancti patris nostri Cyrilli archiepiscopi Alexandrini in xii prophetas, ed. Philippus Eduardus Pusey, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1868), vol. 2, 426. 19  Epistula festalis 14.2; in Cyrille d’Alexandrie, Lettres Festales (XII-XVII), Tome III, ed. and trans. William H. Burns, Marie-Odile Boulnois, and Bernard Meunier, SC 434 (Paris: Cerf, 1998), 716: Ὅσῳ γὰρ ἀμείνους σωμάτων ψυχαί. ET: St. Cyril of Alexandria, Festal Letters 1–12 and 13–30, trans. Philip R. Amidon and John J. O’Keefe, FOTC 118 and 127 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009 and 2013), FOTC 127, 19. 20  Epistula festalis 18.1, in PG 77, col. 804C: Εἰ δὲ δὴ τὸ ἀσυγκρίτως ἄμεινον ὁρῷτο νοσοῦν, τουτέστι ψυχή. ET: FOTC 127, trans. Amidon and O’Keefe, 76. See also In Jo. 6:27, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 1, 439-440: ὅπως ἂν ἔχοι καλῶς τὰ τιμιώτερα μᾶλλον τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν ἐνθυμώμεθα, and: καίτοι τοσοῦτον οἶμαι προσήκειν ἐπείγεσθαι μᾶλλον ἡμᾶς προσκεκλίσθαι τοῖς ἐπὶ ψυχῇ φροντίσμασιν, ὅσον καὶ ἐν ἀμείνοσιν ἢ κατὰ σάρκα ἐστίν. 21  Burghardt, The Image of God in Man, 21, writes: “It is in consequence of this prerogative [having been made in God’s image] that the soul is the more precious facet of the human composite.” Although I concur with his conclusion, I cannot accept the first argument that immediately follows this statement. Burghardt there adduces In Matthaeum 6:23, in PG 72, col. 384B: Ἡ ψυχὴ τῆς τοῦ σώματος οὐσίας τιμιωτέρα ἐστὶν ὡς εἰκὼν θεοῦ καὶ ἐμφύσημα, τὸ δὲ σῶμα ὄργανόν ἐστιν αὐτῆς καὶ συνεργὸν πρὸς τὰ κάλλιστα. Burghardt’s translation (21): “The soul is more honorable than the substance of the body, seeing that it is God’s image and inspiration (ἐμφύσημα). Still, the body is its instrument and its colleague in all that is best.” Matthäus-Kommentare aus der griechischen Kirche, aus Katenenhandschriften gesammelt und herausgegeben, ed. Joseph Reuss, TU 61 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1957), fr. 81, 177, includes this text under In Matthaeum 6:25. I regard this passage as inauthentic, since Cyril teaches explicitly and repeatedly that God’s inbreathing (ἐμφύσημα; Gen 2:7) is not the human soul, but the Holy Spirit. See for this the next section of my article, “The Fall.” 22  Burghardt, The Image of God in Man, chapter 2: “Body or Soul?” (12-24).

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in locating the image and likeness of God in man’s soul, not in his body.”23 For Cyril, this issue is bound up with his condemnation of anthropomorphism, the view that attributes human traits to God. Already in his Dialogues on the Trinity, written in the early 420s, he insists that God is incorporeal (ἀσώματος), when he argues that when we speak of Father and Son within the Trinity, God’s begetting should be understood differently than human begetting, since we have bodies, but God does not.24 He elaborated on this in the 430s when he received explicit questions on anthropomorphism from monks. Possibly his most explicit statement on the body in relation to the image of God can be found in his Letter to Calosirius, where he writes: “Man is unquestionably in God’s image, but the likeness is not a bodily one for God is incorporeal.”25 In the same letter, Cyril also states positively what he regards as constituting God’s image in humans: a human being “is said to have been made in God’s image, by virtue of his being a rational animal and of his having a love of virtue and a sovereignty over earth’s inhabitants.”26 Based on an investigation of Cyril’s entire oeuvre, Burghardt lists six features of the image: besides the three referred to in the quotation – namely, reason (or rationality), sanctification (or a love of virtue), and dominion (or sovereignty) – he mentions freedom (that is, the capacity to choose), sonship (being sons of God by grace), and incorruptibility.27 The body is involved in the latter feature, incorruptibility, and we will return to it later on. At this moment, I would like to highlight that Cyril regards God as bodiless, and that, therefore, the image of God in humans can be found in characteristics related to the soul, not in the body. And in my view, this is the reason that the archbishop calls the soul “better” or “more honourable” than the body. But this “better” implies that by nature the body itself is good as well, even if it is less honourable than the soul.  Burghardt, The Image of God in Man, 24.  De sancta trinitate dialogi vii 2, Aubert 446c-449e; in Cyrille d’Alexandrie, Dialogues sur la Trinité, Tomes I-III, ed. and trans. Georges Matthieu de Durand, SC 231, 237, 246 (Paris: Cerf, 1976-78), vol. 1, 310-318. 25  Ad Calosirium, in Cyril of Alexandria, Select Letters, ed. Lionel R. Wickham, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 214: ἔστι μὲν γὰρ ὁμολογουμένως κατ’ εἰκόνα Θεοῦ ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ἡ δὲ ὁμοιότης οὐ σωματική· ὁ γὰρ Θεός ἐστιν ἀσώματος (ET 215). 26  Ad Calosirium, in Select Letters, ed. Wickham, 216 (ET 217). 27  Burghardt, The Image of God in Man, ix. To each of these six features Burghardt devotes one of the chapters 3-8 of his book. Cf. for these related themes in a different context Nathan Witkamp’s contribution in this volume. 23

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IV.  The Fall We now come to the second part, after creation, the Fall. A number of times Cyril summarizes the results of the Fall for human beings in two key words, “corruption” (φθορά) and “sin” (ἁμαρτία). For example, in his Commentary on John he writes: “And so he [man] ultimately becomes not only subject to corruption but also prone to every sin.”28 Similarly, salvation is summed up in the key terms “incorruptibility” (ἀφθαρσία) and “sanctification” (ἁγιασμός),29 to which Cyril sometimes adds other words like “blessedness” (μακαριότης),30 “life” (ζωή),31 and “righteousness” (δικαιοσύνη).32 This implies that both body and soul are affected by the Fall, although it cannot be said that there is a one-on-one relationship between corruption and the body on the one hand, and sin and the soul on the other, as we will soon see. It should first be added that in Cyril’s view of creation and the Fall, the Holy Spirit plays an important role. Cyril interprets Gen 2:7 – where it says that “he [God] breathed into his [man’s] nostrils the breath of life” – as the reception of the Holy Spirit. This inbreathing is not the human soul, he argues repeatedly, but the Spirit.33 And after the Fall, the Spirit left humankind, as a result of which humans no longer had the power to resist both corruption and sin. According to Cyril’s anthropology, the human body is mortal by nature, that is, capable of dying. A definition of a human being which 28  In Jo. 7:39, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 1, 691; ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 1, 309. See also In Joelem 2:28-29, in In xii prophetas, ed. Pusey, vol. 1, 338. In Zachariam 6:19-15, in In xii prophetas, ed. Pusey, vol. 2, 365. In Jo. 8:20, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 2, 3. Epistula festalis 15.4, in SC 434, ed. Burns et al., 198. 29  De adoratione, Book 17, in PG 68, col. 1093C. Glaphyra, Book 5, in PG 69, col. 260B. Quod unus sit Christus, Aubert 773a; in Cyrille d’Alexandrie, Deux dialogues christologiques, ed. and trans. Georges Matthieu de Durand, SC 97 (Paris: Cerf, 1994), 496. 30  In Jo. 14:5-6, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 2, 409. In Jo. 17:3, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 2, 667. 31  Glaphyra, Book 3, in PG 69, col. 172B. In Jo. 17:20-21, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 2, 730. 32  In Isaiam 42:8-9, in PG 70, col. 856D. In Jo. 17:18-19, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 2, 724. 33  In Jo. 14:20, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 2, 484-485; ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 2, 187. De dogmatum solutione 2, in Select Letters, ed. Wickham, 186-192 (ET 187-193). Thesaurus 34, in PG 75, col. 584D. See also Langevin, “Le thème de l’incorruptibilité,” 298-301, and Marie-Odile Boulnois, “Le souffle et l’Esprit: Exégèses patristiques de l’insufflation originelle de Gn 2, 7 en lien avec celle de Jn 20, 22,” Recherches augustiniennes 24 (1989): 3-37, esp. 30-32.

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the archbishop adopted from Porphyrian philosophy reads as follows: a human is “a rational, mortal living being, receptive of intelligence and knowledge” – a mortal living being.34 Left to themselves, humans die; it is only the presence of the Spirit that protects humans from decay and gives them incorruptibility.35 Therefore, when humans were filled with the Spirit before the Fall, they did not actually die, although they were mortal by nature, but when the Spirit left humankind after the Fall (as Cyril teaches), they were left to their own mortal nature, and corruption and death were the consequences for the body.36 Although corruption first of all has to do with the physical decay of the body, in Cyril’s theology the concept also has an aspect that is related to virtue and holiness,37 so much so that the archbishop can write that “the element of similarity to God the creator that is most manifest of all is incorruptibility and indestructibility.”38 Thus, incorruptibility is a clear indication of the image of God in humans. However, the corruption of the body, which is the result of the Fall, leads to sinful passions and, therefore, to a loss of the divine image in humanity. A passage in Contra Julianum describes the human being before the Fall: Now, while it [the body] was beyond corruption, it had indeed innate appetites for food and procreation, but the amazing thing was that his mind was not tyrannized by these tendencies; for he did freely what he wanted to do, seeing that the flesh was not yet subject to the passions consequent upon corruption.39

The body thus also had certain appetites before the Fall: humans needed to eat and also to have sex in order to have children. But when the Holy Spirit was still active in them, they used their free will to act in a way  Van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology, 103, nn. 194-196.  In Jo. 14:20, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 2, 484; ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 2, 187. Epistula festalis 15.4, in SC 434, ed. Burns et al., 196-198; ET: FOTC 127, trans. Amidon and O’Keefe, 39. 36  In Jo. 7:39, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 1, 691; ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 1, 309. 37  Burghardt, The Image of God in Man, 90-101. 38  In Jo. 14:20, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 2, 484; ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 2, 187. 39  Contra Julianum 3.25; in Cyrille d’Alexandrie, Contre Julien, Tome II (Livres III-V), ed. and trans. Jean Bouffartigue, Marie-Odile Boulnois, and Pierre Castan, SC 582 (Paris: Cerf, 2016), 216: Ἐπειδὴ δὲ ἦν τοῦ φθείρεσθαι πέρα, ἐμφύτους μὲν τὰς ἐφέσεις διεκληρώσατο, τὰς ἐπί γέ φημι τοῖς ἐδωδίμοις καὶ παιδογονίαις· ἀτυράννευτον δὲ ταῖς εἰς τοῦτο ῥοπαῖς τὸν νοῦν ἔχων ἐθαυμάζετο. Ἔδρα γὰρ ἐλευθέρως τὸ δοκοῦν, οὔπω τῆς σαρκὸς τοῖς ἐκ τῆς φθορᾶς πάθεσιν ὑπενηνεγμένης. ET: Burghardt, The Image of God in Man, 98. 34 35



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that was pleasing to God. Their mind or intellect (νοῦς) was not tyrannized by these desires, they did not sin. But this changed after the Fall. When the Holy Spirit left humankind, they were no longer able to control the desires of the flesh, which led to sinful behaviour.40 In his analysis of Cyril’s commentary on 1 Cor 15:44-45, Konrad F. Zawadzki argues that the physiological needs of humans do not belong to the nature of their body, but are part of an improper development, and that Christ did not need to eat, but voluntarily ate to show that he was human.41 I think that a close reading of the archbishop’s commentary shows a different picture, which is in line with that in the quoted passage from Contra Julianum. Commenting on the sentence “The first man, Adam, became a living soul,” Cyril says that “he turned into a living soul” means that Adam became “psychical” (ψυχικόν), that is, his thinking became carnal (σαρκικόν), sinful.42 He goes on to explain that being a living soul with natural bodily desires in itself is not sinful, but that in actual life these desires may become carnal, that is, sinful. He does so by giving the example of sexual desire and says that the Creator implanted the appetitive drive into the nature of the body with a view to procreation, of which he states that it was blameless (ἀκαταιτίατος).43 40  See also Hans van Loon, Living in the Light of Christ: Mystagogy in Cyril of Alexandria’s Festal Letters, LAHR  15; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 4 (Louvain: Peeters, 2017), 88-91, 116-118. 41  Der Kommentar Cyrills von Alexandrien zum 1. Korintherbrief: Einleitung, kritischer Text, Übersetzung, Einzelanalyse, ed. Konrad F. Zawadzki, Traditio Exegetica Graeca 16 (Louvain: Peeters, 2015), 508-513: “Demgegenüber geht Cyrill offensichtlich davon aus, dass die physiologischen Bedürfnisse keineswegs die Natur des menschlichen Leibes ausmachen, sondern dass sie gewissermassen eine Fehlentwicklung darstellen, die aus der Misachtung des göttlichen Gebots durch Adam resultiert” (511), and: “Christus, der in sich das volkommene Bild des pneumatischen Menschen trug, war demnach von σαρκικαὶ ἐπιθυμίαι dermassen befreit, dass er nicht einmal essen musste. … die Speisen­ einnahme durch Christus war demzufolge ein Akt der Freiwilligkeit und nicht ein Akt der lebenserhaltenden Notwendigkeit” (510-511). 42  In 1 Cor. 15:44-45, in Der Kommentar, ed. Zawadzki, 246: ψυχικὸν μὲν οὖν ὠνόμασε τὸν Ἀδάμ· τοῦτο γὰρ οἶμαί ἐστι τὸ εἰς ψυχὴν πεποιῆσθαι ζῶσαν, ὡς οὐκ εἰς ἅπαν ἀπηλλαγμένον σαρκικῶν ἐπιθυμιῶν (ET: my own), and 244: ὥσπερ γὰρ εἴπερ ἕλοιτό τις τὸ ἀπὸ γῆς ἡμῶν σῶμα ψυχικὸν ἀποκαλεῖν, περιθείη ἄν τις εἰκότως οὐ τὸ ψυχῆς εἶδος αὐτῷ, περιτρέψει δὲ μᾶλλον τοῦ λόγου τὴν δύναμιν εἰς τὸ φρόνημα τὸ ψυχικὸν ἤγουν τὸ σαρκικόν. By interpreting “he turned into a living soul” as “he became psychical,” with “psychical” having the negative connotation that Paul gives the word in 1 Cor 2:14-15 (not “spiritual,” and therefore, sinful), Cyril gives the impression that the human soul was sinful immediately upon its creation. But this is not what he means. The soul (ψυχή) as created by God was good, but later turned psychical (ψυχικός), sinful. 43  In 1 Cor. 15:44-45, in Der Kommentar, ed. Zawadzki, 248: ἐγκαταβέβληται γὰρ τῇ τοῦ σώματος φύσει παρὰ τοῦ πάντων δημιουργοῦ κίνησις ὀρεκτική, διανιστᾶσα τὸ ζῷον εἰς παιδοποιΐας ἔφεσιν.

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Then he adds: “But as for the nature of what actually happens, the passion could be carnal or psychical. This applies also to the other irreproachable passions.”44 Thus, the bodily desires, which in themselves are irreproachable, may in actuality become carnal, psychical, that is, sinful. Before he mentions the example of sexuality, Cyril says more generally that the desires that are turned into the passions of the flesh (that is, of the body, in this instance), while acceptable to the law, could in reality be guilty of carnal weakness, “if one looks at the nature of what is actually done.”45 Thus, when humans are in control (by the power of the Holy Spirit), the bodily passions remain blameless, but if in actual life they permit themselves to be controlled by these passions, then they become carnal, that is, sinful. Christ, however, was sinless, he was untouched by the irregular pleasures, and not easily conquered by desires for food. For even if he is seen to share in food and drink, so that one will believe that he is really a human being like us, this sharing was voluntary. For on the one hand, he was economically in the flesh on behalf of us, but, on the other hand, he transcends the flesh. For he is a life-giving spirit as God.46

According to Zawadzki, Cyril stresses human freedom to such a degree that he teaches that the true human nature, which the Word assumed, does not need food and drink for its body. When Adam sinned, humankind lost this freedom, and sustenance became a necessity. Christ is the 44  In 1 Cor. 15:44-45, in Der Kommentar, ed. Zawadzki, 248: πλὴν ὅσον ἧκεν εἰς τὴν τοῦ δρωμένου φύσιν, εἴη ἂν σαρκικὸν τὸ πάθος ἤτοι ψυχικόν· οὕτω δὴ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀδιαβλήτων παθῶν (ET: my own). Zawadzki translates the first sentence as: “Aber wenn man die Natur der Sache genauer unter die Lupe nimmt, dann ist dieser Trieb eigentlich fleischlich, d.h. psychisch” (249; “But when one looks at the nature of the thing more accurately, then this drive is really carnal, that is, psychical”). This suggests that the natural drive itself is carnal. But in my opinion this is not what Cyril wants to say. After having stated that the natural drive itself is blameless (if turned towards procreation), he now adds that when one looks at what people actually do, then this drive may become carnal, psychical, and, thus, sinful. Cyril uses “carnal” and “psychical” more or less synonymously here. See also n. 49. 45  In 1 Cor. 15:44-45, in Der Kommentar, ed. Zawadzki, 246: αἵ τε γὰρ ὀρέξεις αἱ πρὸς τὰ τῆς σαρκὸς ὁρῶσαί τε καὶ τετραμμέναι πάθη, κἂν εἰ νόμον ἔχοιεν τὸν συνήγορον, ἀλλ’ οὖν εἶεν ἂν κατά γε τὸ ἀληθὲς σαρκικῆς ἀσθενείας ἐγκλήματα, εἰ πρός γε τὴν τῶν δρωμένων ὁρῶν τις φύσιν. ET: my own. 46  In 1 Cor. 15:44-45, in Der Kommentar, ed. Zawadzki, 248: οὐ γὰρ ἐποίησεν ἁμαρτίαν, ἀνέπαφον μὲν ἡδοναῖς ἐκτόποις ἔχων τὸν νοῦν, ἐπιθυμίαις δὲ ταῖς τῶν ἐδωδίμων οὐχ ἁλώσιμον· εἰ γὰρ καὶ ὁρᾶται μετεσχηκὼς τροφῆς καὶ ποτοῦ, διά τοι τὸ πιστεύεσθαι κατὰ ἀλήθειαν εἶναι ἄνθρωπος καθ’ ἡμᾶς, ἀλλ’ οὖν ἐλευθέραν ἐποιεῖτο τὴν μέθεξιν· ἦν μὲν γὰρ ἐν σαρκὶ δι’ ἡμᾶς οἰκονομικῶς, ὑπὲρ σάρκα δὲ πάλιν· πνεῦμα γὰρ ἦν ζωοποιὸν ὡς Θεός. ET: my own.



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true spiritual human, whose spiritual body, although material, does not limit his freedom, so he did not have to eat.47 I do not think that Cyril’s conception of human freedom goes so far as to view even the necessity of food and drink as a sinful limitation of that freedom. It is not eating and drinking as such that he condemns, nor the natural desire for food, but being dominated and tyrannized by these appetites,48 which turns them into evil passions. This is confirmed by his view of fasting. This does not need to be strict, but a person who fasts should be satisfied with a simple diet so that his or her spiritual eye can see clearly (see below). In my view of Cyril’s anthropology, it is not the natural bodily desires that limit human freedom, and the ordinary satisfaction of these appetites is not sinful, but when they start to tyrannize the mind, then freedom is impaired. The distinction that Cyril makes in these passages is that between the nature of the body as God created and intended it – including its natural appetites and the sinless satisfaction of these appetites – and the things people actually do, 49 which may result in sinful indulgence. This is in line with his interpretation of the expression “psychical body” (ψυχικὸν σῶμα): this does not say anything about the nature of the body, he argues, but it denotes psychical or carnal, that is, sinful thinking.50 The natural desires, then, 47  Der Kommentar, ed. Zawadzki, 512: Christ could “die zutiefst wahre, ursprüngliche und von jeglichen Zwängen befreite menschliche Natur annehmen. Die Hervorhebung dieser absoluten Freiheit Christi, der sogar freiwillig essen und trinken konnte, bringt demzufolge in der theologischen Konzeption Cyrills keine Negierung, keine Anzweiflung der wahre Menschheit des Erlösers zum Ausdruck, sondern unterstreicht gerade die absolute Wahrhaftigkeit der menschlichen Natur Christi” (italics by Zawadzki). 48  Cyril uses the verb τυραννεῖν a number of times to express the dominion of passions or pleasures over human beings or their mind. For example, Epistula festalis 9.2; in Cyrille d’Alexandrie, Lettres Festales (VII-IX), Tome II, ed. and trans. Pierre Évieux, Louis Arragon, Robert Monier, and William Burns, SC 392 (Paris: Cerf, 1993), 136; In Jo. 14:18, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 2, 469; In Rom. 7:25–8:1, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 3, 209. More often still, he writes that Satan or sin tyrannizes human beings. 49  Der Kommentar, ed. Zawadzki, 247 and 249, translates the expressions τὴν τῶν δρωμένων φύσιν (see n. 45) and τὴν τοῦ δρωμένου φύσιν (see n. 44) as “the nature of the thing” (“die Natur der Sache”), but I think that Cyril intends τὸ δρώμενον and τὰ δρώμενα to mean “that which is [actually] done,” in order to distinguish the factual sinful human behaviour (the psychical body) from the sinless satisfaction of the bodily appetites (the spiritual body). 50  In 1 Cor. 15:44-45, in Der Kommentar, ed. Zawadzki, 244 (see n. 42), and 250: Ὅτι τοίνυν ὁ ψυχικὸς οὐ φύσεως ἡμῖν διαφορᾶς ὑπεμφήνειεν ἂν, ζωῆς δὲ μᾶλλον ἠθῶν τε καὶ τρόπων ποιότητα, καθ’ ἣν ὁ μέν τις ἐστὶ τῷ γεωδεστέρῳ καὶ σαρκικῷ φρονήματι κάτοχος, ὁ δὲ τῇ τοῦ πνεύματος ἐλευθερίᾳ περιφανὴς, ἀποδείκνυσι σαφῶς ἀπό τε Ἀδὰμ τοῦ πρώτου καὶ τοῦ δευτέρου.

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are not sinful if human beings eat and drink normally, and have sex for procreation; they only become so if they tyrannize the mind. The phrase that Christ’s sharing in food and drink was “voluntary” is part of Cyril’s argument about the contrast between psychical and spiritual people. Spiritual people are led by the Spirit and use their human freedom to satisfy their bodily passions in a blameless way, while psychical people are not full of the Spirit, as a result of which their freedom is impaired, they are controlled by the passions and, thus, they are sinful. Christ is the paradigm of the spiritual human, he used his free human will to control the passions.51 The passage does not imply that Christ’s body did not need food and drink, and that the only reason he ate and drank was to show that he was really human, as Zawadzki concludes. I suggest that it can be better interpreted in line with Cyril’s teaching in Contra Julianum: the Word of God became a human being with a body and a rational soul, and as such he had the natural bodily desires for food and drink, which it was not sinful to satisfy. But while other human beings let themselves be tyrannized by these desires that turn into carnal passions, Christ’s human will was strengthened by the union of his humanity with his divinity,52 and was free to resist the carnal passions: he only ate and drank to sustain his body and was “not easily conquered by the desires for food” (in him they did not turn into evil passions), as he also “transcends the flesh.” Through Christ we, human beings, may receive the Holy Spirit, so that we, too, may live in freedom, as spiritual people, not controlled by the bodily passions. Let us now return to the notion of corruption. We can conclude that when Cyril speaks of corruption and incorruptibility, he is thinking not only of the decay of the body, but also of the desires of the body, which after the Fall may turn into carnal passions. Using a biblical notion, he speaks of the weakness of the flesh,53 and once he explicitly calls it “the  See for Christ’s human will: van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology, 562-563.  See De Incarnatione, Aubert 691d, in SC 97, ed. de Durand, 230, in which Cyril declares that Christ’s human soul was strengthened by its union with the divine Word, so that it could resist sin: ψυχὴν δὲ ἰδίαν τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην ποιούμενος, ἁμαρτίας αὐτὴν ἀποφήνῃ κρείττονα τῆς ἰδίας φύσεως τὸ πεπηγός τε καὶ ἄτρεπτον, καθάπερ τινὰ βαφήν, ἐγκαταχρώσας αὐτῇ. See also n. 64. 53  Matt 26:41; Mark 14:38. Cyril teaches that when the Word of God became a human being, he also appropriated the weakness(es) of the flesh, but Christ did not succumb to the evil desires, instead overcoming them on our behalf. See, for example, Thesaurus 22, in PG 75, col. 376D; Epistula festalis 7.2, in SC 392, ed. Évieux, 50; In Jo. 1:14, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 1, 142; In Jo. 11:33-34, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 2, 280; Quod unus sit Christus, Aubert 758bc, in SC 97, ed. de Durand, 448. 51

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weakness that comes from corruption.”54 But, as we saw in the quotation from Contra Julianum, it is the mind (the νοῦς) that is tyrannized by these bodily passions. So, the corporeal corruption has an effect on the mind, and through the choices of the rational soul it leads to sin. This interaction of body and soul plays an important role in Cyril’s mystagogy. In a broader sense, mystagogy is not just related to initiation, but is understood as a process in which, under the guidance of another person, believers become more receptive to God’s being and operation and are transformed, inwardly and outwardly.55 As a mystagogue, Cyril is much concerned with the transformation of the faithful, which includes both their relationship with the triune God and their growth in a life of virtue and in love towards their fellow human beings. The interconnection of soul and body is especially apparent in his teaching that the body must be subdued in order to live a virtuous life. Because the body is, as it were, the substrate on which the sins of the mind that are the result of carnal passions feed, the body has to play a role in combatting them. The passions of the body are checked by asceticism so that they cannot corrupt the soul. Thus, in his commentary on John 6:27 the archbishop writes: “But when the body is bridled by reason that is fitting and has been yoked under the laws of the Spirit, both [soul and body] must surely be saved together.”56 For Cyril, then, asceticism is not the result of a dualistic, Platonic anthropology according to which the body is evil and the soul good, but it fits within his understanding of how to combat carnal passions, in which body and soul co-operate. When commenting on John 12:25, where Jesus says that “the person who hates his life [or soul: τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ] in this world will keep it for eternal life,” Cyril writes: “And those who live in asceticism hate their own souls in that they are not overcome by the pleasure of the love of the flesh.”57 It is not just the body that must be subdued by asceticism, but the soul as well, even if the soul is “more honourable” than the body. 54  In Jo. 4:33-34, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 1, 294: τὴν ἀπὸ φθορᾶς ἀσθένειαν. ET: my own. 55  See van Loon, Living in the Light of Christ, 23, and Paul van Geest, “Studying the Mystagogy of the Fathers: An Introduction,” in Seeing through the Eyes of Faith: New Approaches to the Mystagogy of the Church Fathers, ed. Paul van Geest, LAHR  11; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 2 (Louvain: Peeters, 2016), 3-22, esp. 6, 13-15, 20. 56  In Jo. 6:27, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 1, 439; ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 1, 196. For a similar notion of co-operation, cf. Vos’s contribution in this volume. 57  In Jo. 12:25, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 2, 314; ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 2, 104.

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Elsewhere, Cyril refers to Romans 7:24-25, which reads: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” which provokes the following exposition: The excitement of the flesh fights against the mind bent on continence because of its fear of God, and it puts up a terrible battle against the impulses towards chastity. Those who make use of a fasting appropriate to God-fearing people check the excitement of the flesh, and by employing discipline [ἀσκήσει], exercise and other suitable aids take the sharpness off sin’s spur. The upshot is that it is impossible to eliminate from the flesh its innate desire [τὴν ἔμφυτον αὐτῆς ἐπιθυμίαν], but, as I said, it is possible by vigilance to prevent it from dominating over the mind [τοῦ νοῦ], especially in view of the fact that God’s only-begotten Word was made man and no longer allows the law of sin to run riot in our members.58

Thus, disciplining the body helps to check the bodily passions that lead the mind (νοῦς) to sin. With God’s help, based on the incarnation of the Word of God, humans are able to overcome sin, but, as Cyril teaches further on in the same passage, the final victory will only come in the eschaton. In the passage just quoted, the archbishop speaks of “fasting appropriate to God-fearing people.” What is appropriate fasting?59 We get an idea of this when we read Cyril’s festal letters, which are addressed to the faithful in general. It appears that he does not have a very strict fast in mind, as he maintains that it is good “to abstain from superfluous food in due season, and to withdraw from the over-laden table, lest our selfindulgence in eating more than we need awaken the sin dormant in us.”60 It is gluttony and luxury that we should refrain from, and that “in due season.” This is not an isolated case, for in another festal letter Cyril declares that during the Lenten fast “we are satisfied with a light diet, and we keep our table free from fancily dressed dishes, in order that we may refine the eye of our understanding.”61 This confirms that in Cyril’s view it is not the body itself, nor its natural desires, that are evil, but  Responsiones ad Tiberium diaconum 12, in Select Letters, ed. Wickham 170 (ET 171).  For Cyril’s view of fasting see also: van Loon, Living in the Light of Christ, 71-77. 60  Epistula festalis 1.3; in Cyrille d’Alexandrie, Lettres Festales (I-VI), Tome I, ed. and trans. Louis Arragon, Marie-Odile Boulnois, Pierre Évieux, Marguerite Forrat, and Bernard Meunier, SC 372 (Paris: Cerf, 1991), 160; ET: FOTC 118, trans. Amidon and O’Keefe, 42. 61  Epistula festalis 10.1, in SC 392, ed. Évieux, 196; ET: FOTC 118, trans. Amidon and O’Keefe, 179. 58

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these desires may become wicked passions when we let our minds be dominated by them. And the archbishop does not get tired of repeating that it is not abstinence from food by itself that is profitable, but that this should support a life of virtue and love.62 V. Salvation Having discussed creation and the Fall, we now turn to salvation, the remedy for the consequences of the Fall (one aspect of which, asceticism, has already been discussed under the heading “The Fall”), and the new life it inaugurates. Of course, in Cyril’s teaching, the incarnation of the Word of God is central to salvation. In On the Incarnation, written before the Nestorian controversy,63 the archbishop argues that it was not enough for the Word of God to become visible, neither in a docetic way nor by merely clothing himself with a human body, without a soul. No, the Word of God had to become a human being with a body as well as a soul in order to save us. He had a body in order to set our earthly bodies free from decay, and he had a human soul in order to make our souls stable enough to resist sin.64 So, both the notions that Cyril uses to summarize the result of the Fall, namely, sin and corruption,65 are overcome in the incarnate Word of God, and for this the Word had to have both a human soul and a human body. In the same passage in On the Incarnation, the archbishop adds that the incarnate Word suffered the infirmities of the body insofar as they are not sinful, such as hunger and fatigue, and also death on the cross.66 As early as the Thesaurus, one of Cyril’s first works, he writes: By his own death the Saviour destroyed death. Just, then, as death would not have been destroyed if he had not died, so it is with each of the passions of the flesh. For if he had not been afraid, our nature would not have been free from fear. If he had not grieved, it would never have been liberated from grief. If he had not been troubled, it 62  Cyril ends most of his festal letters with a call to let the fast be accompanied by deeds of compassion, as only then will it be a genuine fast. See, for example, Epistula festalis 2.9, in SC 372, ed. Évieux et al., 232; Epistula festalis 8.6, in SC 392, ed. Évieux, 112; Epistula festalis 13.4, in SC 434, ed. Burns et al., 118. 63  SC 97, ed. de Durand, 42-57. Van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology, 259-261, 419425. 64  De Incarnatione, Aubert 690c-692b, in SC 97, ed. de Durand, 228-232. 65  See n. 28. 66  De Incarnatione, Aubert 692bc, in SC 97, ed. de Durand, 232.

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would never be without these things. And if you apply the same reasoning to every human experience, you will find that in Christ the passions of the flesh were stirred up, not in order to rule, as they do in us, but, having been stirred up, to be abolished by the power of the Word who dwells in the flesh, so that our nature is transformed into something better.67

This looks like an elaboration of the adage, “what has not been assumed, has not been healed.”68 Christ underwent all the “passions of the flesh” (τὰ τῆς σαρκὸς πάθη) – without sinning, as Cyril often states – in order to liberate us from their domination. In Cyril’s writings, including those before the Nestorian controversy, the word “flesh” (σάρξ) may refer to the body, but also to the whole humanity, both body and soul. Seeing that the examples Cyril mentions – fear, grief, being troubled – concern the soul, while he starts with death, which concerns the body, and then summarizes by speaking of “every human experience” (ἐφ’ ἑκάστῳ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνως γεγονότων), the archbishop will have had in mind passions of both body and soul.69 According to Cyril, then, the Word of God appropriated the sinless infirmities of the human body, like hunger, thirst, fatigue, and even  Thesaurus 24, in PG 75, col. 397C; ET: my own. A slightly different version of this text can also be found in Pusey’s edition of Cyril’s Commentary on John: In Jo. 12:2728, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 2, 320. However, since it is part of the fragments from the catenae, Liébaert may well be right in concluding that the (somewhat altered) text from the Thesaurus is wrongly ascribed to the Commentary on John: Jacques Liébaert, La doctrine christologique de saint Cyrille d’Alexandrie avant la querelle nestorienne, Mémoires et travaux publiés par les Professeurs des Facultés catholiques de Lile 58 (Lille: Facultés catholiques, 1951), 76, n. 9. See also Joseph M. Hallman, “The Seed of Fire: Divine Suffering in the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius of Constantinople,” JECS 5 (1997): 369-391, at 377, n. 30. 68  The adage is first mentioned by Gregory of Nazianzus, Ad Cledonium (ep. 101), in Grégoire de Nazianze, Lettres théologiques, ed. and trans. Paul Gallay and Maurice Jourjon, SC 208 (Paris: Cerf, 1974), 50: Τὸ γὰρ ἀπρόσληπτον, ἀθεράπευτον· ὃ δὲ ἥνωται τῷ Θεῷ, τοῦτο καὶ σῴζεται. Εἰ ἥμισυς ἔπταισεν ὁ Ἀδάμ, ἥμισυ καὶ τὸ προσειλημμένον καὶ τὸ σῳζόμενον. Εἰ δὲ ὅλος, ὅλῳ τῷ γεννηθέντι ἥνωται καὶ ὅλως σῴζεται. Pusey’s edition of Cyril’s Commentary on John, In Jo. 12:27-28, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 2, 318, contains a similar phrase: ὃ γὰρ μὴ προσείληπται, οὐδὲ σέσωσται, a few paragraphs before the text mentioned in n. 67. Liébaert, La doctrine christologique, 131137, argues that the passage in which this phrase is found is inauthentic. Whether Liébaert is right or not, the substance of the adage can be found in the Thesaurus. 69  Liébaert, La doctrine christologique, minimizes the role of Christ’s soul in Cyril’s writings before the Nestorian controversy, and he often incorrectly understands the word σάρξ to mean the body instead of the whole humanity. I have refuted his view in van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology, 157-171. Liébaert interprets σάρξ as “body” also in his exposition of Thesaurus 24: “La crainte du Christ … n’affecte que [!] la chair; c’est une des τῆς σαρκὸς πάθη, comme la tristesse et la trouble” (La doctrine christologique, 119), and: “Si Cyrille semble éviter le mot σῶμα, il emploie sans scrupule son equivalent [!] σάρξ’ (124). 67



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death, in order to overcome them on our behalf.70 And this is part of the incorruptibility to which human nature is called in Christ. But what about the sinful passions, aroused by the body? As for Christ himself, Cyril teaches that immediately at the incarnation, that is, from the moment of his conception, the sinful passions were overcome by the divine Word, so that Christ was sinless throughout his life: “For he at once [εὐθύς] freed the body, which had become the Word’s own, from the passions that afflict us, removed the goad of the movements toward wickedness, and transformed it, as it were, unto a purity ineffable and befitting God, once sin was put to death in it.”71 Through Christ’s work, those who believe in him possess this victory over sin in principle, but it will only become fully theirs in the eschaton. As we saw earlier, during our life on earth we have to combat these passions, and part of that struggle is the disciplining of the body. Cyril emphasizes that we do not have to fight this spiritual battle alone, for the Spirit of God is working in us. He states, for example: “But now it is necessary to add what is of chief importance in this topic, and that is that the all-conquering God comes to the aid of those who are disposed in this way, and his supreme strength and power become a staff and bowstring.”72 One way in which God’s assistance is given to us is through the Eucharist. The “Eulogy” (εὐλογία), as Cyril calls it, is “life-giving” (ζωοποιός) to both body and soul, but since matter is involved, and the bread and the wine become the body and blood of Christ to us, the archbishop especially stresses the effect communion has on the human body, which is freed from corruption and death.73 So he can write: “It was necessary – necessary – not only that the soul be recreated in newness of life by the Holy Spirit but also that this coarse earthly body be sanctified and called to incorruption by a coarser participation that is of the same kind as the body.”74  See also van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology, 556-561 (“The Passions of Christ”).  Epistula festalis 19.2, in PG 77, col. 829A; ET: FOTC 127, trans. Amidon and O’Keefe, 93. 72  Epistula festalis 6.2, in SC 372, ed. Évieux et al., 342-344; ET: FOTC 118, trans. Amidon and O’Keefe, 104. 73  Van Loon, “Eucharist and Fellowship in Cyril of Alexandria,” section 2, “The Life-Giving Blessing,” 95-97. 74  In Jo. 6:53, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 1, 531: ἔδει γὰρ ἔδει, μὴ μόνον διὰ τοῦ Ἁγίου Πνεύματος εἰς ζωῆς καινότητα τὴν ψυχὴν ἀνακτίζεσθαι, ἀλλὰ γὰρ καὶ τὸ παχὺ τοῦτο καὶ γεῶδες σῶμα διὰ παχυτέρας καὶ συγγενοῦς ἁγιάζεσθαι μεταλήψεως καὶ καλεῖσθαι πρὸς ἀφθαρσίαν. ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 1, 237. 70 71

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In his commentary on Malachi, Cyril contrasts our condition in the present age with that in the age to come: In this age there is dire rebellion of the flesh, prompting the mind [τὸν νοῦν] to improper pleasures, while the law of sin rages in our limbs, even if it is overcome by the continence of the saints with Christ’s assistance. … Since we have been enriched with the pledge of the Spirit through Christ, however, we are accustomed to dominating the passions, though not without effort. But in the age to come, with the full light of the knowledge of God, enriched with the completeness of the gift of the Holy Spirit, and relieved of the corruption and passions of the flesh, we shall serve God in every way, not halfhearted because of sin nor distracted by the passions of a former time, but living a pure and innocent life on a level with the holy angels.75

Thus, in this life the carnal passions entice us to sin, and we learn to dominate them with the help of the Spirit, but in the life to come we will be relieved of the evil passions, the struggle will be over. The word that has been translated by “relieved” is ἀποδυσάμενοι, “unclothed,” a metaphor of clothing, which is reminiscent of 2 Corinthians 5, where Paul uses the same metaphor. The apostle writes that “we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked,” and “we do not wish to be unclothed, but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling.”76 In his exposition of these verses, Cyril interprets the heavenly dwelling with which we will be clothed as incorruptibility. He quotes Wis 9:15, which says: “The corruptible body presses down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weighs down the mind that muses on many things.”77 And he stresses that we groan, not to be relieved of the body itself, but of its corruption.78 In his commentary on Rom 8:23, he also quotes the verse from Wisdom (9:15) and adds here that with corruption comes an inclination to wicked pleasures and sin. With another expression of the apostle Paul, Cyril calls the redeemed body a “spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:44), which he 75  In Malachiam 4:2-3, in In xii prophetas, ed. Pusey, vol. 2, 622-623; ET: St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Twelve Prophets, 3 vols., trans. Robert C. Hill, FOTC 115, 116, 124 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008-2012), vol. 3, 341, slightly modified. 76  2 Cor 5:2-4: καὶ γὰρ ἐν τούτῳ στενάζομεν, τὸ οἰκητήριον ἡμῶν τὸ ἐξ οὐρανοῦ ἐπενδύσασθαι ἐπιποθοῦντες, εἴ γε καὶ ἐνδυσάμενοι οὐ γυμνοὶ εὑρεθησόμεθα. καὶ γὰρ οἱ ὄντες ἐν τῷ σκήνει στενάζομεν βαρούμενοι, ἐφ’ ᾧ οὐ θέλομεν ἐκδύσασθαι ἀλλ’ ἐπενδύσασθαι, ἵνα καταποθῇ τὸ θνητὸν ὑπὸ τῆς ζωῆς. 77  φθαρτὸν γὰρ σῶμα βαρύνει ψυχήν, καὶ βρίθει τὸ γεῶδες σκῆνος νοῦν πολυφρόντιδα. 78  In 2 Cor. 5:2-3, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 3, 350-351.



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interprets as a body “that has completely discarded carnal and earthly thought.”79 He expressly states that the present body will not be annihilated and replaced by a subtle and airy body, as some others think.80 In Cyril’s view the spiritual body is no different in nature than our present body, but it is made incorruptible by the Holy Spirit and purified from the carnal passions which come with corruption: For thus it is, thus indeed, that after shaking off the corruption dwelling in our bodies like some intolerable burden, we will put on instead the glory of incorruptibility, not by denying the nature of the flesh, but by being refashioned unto the honor of incorruptibility, radiant together with our flesh with an ineffable glory coming from Christ. For “he will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body,” as is written [Phil 3:21].81

“Not by denying the nature of the flesh,” Cyril writes in this relatively early festal letter (for the year 422), “but by being refashioned [or: ‘transelemented’: ἀναστοιχειούμενοι] unto the honor of incorruptibility.”82 My studies of Cyril’s Christological writings have convinced me that he means to say that the human nature – both soul and body – will not be altered in the eschaton, but that several human properties will be replaced by divine ones.83 These properties relate to the two key concepts that for Cyril summarize the result of the Fall: corruption and sin; they will be replaced by incorruptibility and holiness. And the verb that he uses for this replacement is “to transelement” (ἀναστοιχειοῦν or μεταστοιχειοῦν). The archbishop often uses the phrase from 2 Peter 1:4: we become partakers of the divine nature, to describe the change that takes place in human beings. But he emphasizes that this does not mean that the human nature is changed into the divine nature (he rather rarely uses 79  In Rom. 8.23, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 3, 218; ET: my own. Cf. In Jo. 14:20, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 2, 483. 80  See also In Jo. 20:24-25, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 3, 143. Boulnois, “La résurrection des corps,” discusses the “spiritual body” on pp. 90-95. See also the discussion of Cyril’s commentary on 1 Cor 15:44-45 above. 81  Epistula festalis 10.4, in SC 392, ed. Évieux, 224-226; ET: FOTC 118, trans. Amidon and O’Keefe, 188-189. 82  οὐ τὴν τῆς σαρκὸς ἀρνούμενοι φύσιν, ἀλλ’ εἰς τὸ τῆς ἀφθαρσίας ἀναστοιχειούμενοι καύχημα. 83  Van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology, 413-414, 417, 571. In his metaphysics, Cyril distinguishes between the substance or nature of an entity, which only includes the differentiae that are part of the definition of that substance on the one hand, and all the other properties, which are said to “lie round” or to “be attached to” the substance or nature on the other. See van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology, 136-137, 178, 507, 512.

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the language of “deification” or “divinization”). So, in Contra Nestorium, he writes: The Word from God the Father raises us, too, to these [qualities, namely, holiness and righteousness], making us partakers of his own divine nature through the Spirit. He has brothers [and sisters], then, who are like himself and who bear the image of his divine nature, because of their sanctification. For in this way is Christ formed in us, when the Holy Spirit transelements [μεταστοιχειοῦντος] us, as it were, from human [properties] to [properties] that are his [ἐκ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων εἰς τὰ αὐτοῦ]. … Therefore, the Son changes absolutely none of the things made [τῶν  πεποιημένων] into the nature of his own divinity (for that is impossible).84

The human nature is not changed into the divine nature, but some “human [properties] – I would say – are “transelemented” into “[properties] that are his,” that is, divine properties. This not only takes place in us, but also in Christ’s own humanity. In the quotation from Festal Letter 19 above, where Cyril writes that immediately upon conception Christ’s body was freed from evil passions, he also uses the verb “to transelement” (translated above as “transformed”): “it is, as it were, transelemented into a purity ineffable and befitting God.”85 Christ’s human nature was not changed by this transelementing, but its sinfulness was changed into sinlessness before sin could manifest itself. Cyril explicitly teaches that Christ’s human nature is consubstantial with ours.86 Although part of the transelementing had already taken place at his conception, his human nature was nevertheless no different from ours. Regarding Christ’s body after the resurrection, Cyril stresses that it is the same body as before his death on the cross. Commenting on John 20:19-20, where the resurrected Jesus enters the room where the disciples are gathered while the doors are closed, the archbishop states: “Let no one say, ‘How did the Lord enter unhindered with his solid physical body [ἐν σώματι τῷ παχεῖ] when the doors were locked?’”87 Cyril’s response is not that his raised body is different, but that he is the Son of 84  Contra Nestorium, Book 3.2, in Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum I.1.6, ed. Schwartz, 60; ET: my own. 85  Epistula festalis 19.2, in PG 77, col. 829A: μετεστοιχειοῦτο δὲ ὥσπερ πρὸς θεοπρεπῆ καὶ ἀπόῤῥητον καθαρότητα. ET: my own; cf. FOTC 127, trans. Amidon and O’Keefe, 93. See n. 71. 86  Contra Nestorium, Book 3.2, in Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum I.1.6, ed. Schwartz, 65. 87  In Jo. 20:19-20, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 3, 125; ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 2, 364.



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God, and his entering through locked doors should be regarded as a miracle similar to his walking on water before the resurrection. Somewhat further on he adds with respect to the scars that Jesus showed to the disciples: “And by baring his side and showing them the nail prints he clearly confirms that he has raised the temple that hung upon the cross and the very body that he bore came to life again.”88 The resurrected body is the same as the body that suffered. In his commentary on John 20:26-27, where Jesus shows himself to Thomas, Cyril states his belief that human beings will be raised without wounds, infirmities or disabilities. This, again, is not a change in nature, but some bodily properties will be altered. Christ, however, still had the scars when he appeared to Thomas and the other disciples. He “appeared contrary to expectation for the benefit of all, so that we might believe without a doubt that the mystery of the resurrection has been accomplished, since the body that was raised was none other than the one that suffered death [οὐχ ἑτέρου τινὸς ἐγηγερμένου σώματος, ἀλλὰ τοῦ παθόντος τὸν θάνατον].”89 The scars confirm that it is the same body as before the resurrection, its nature has not changed. In his commentary on 1 Cor 15:51-52, where Paul writes “We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed,” Cyril unambiguously declares that the human nature will remain the same at the resurrection: “The change will not turn us into some other nature, for we will be what we are, that is, human beings, but incomparably better, for we will be incorruptible and indestructible and, in addition, glorified.”90 VI. Conclusion Before concluding, let me first summarize my findings. In Cyril’s view, the human body belongs to God’s good creation. Because God is incorporeal, the image of God in human beings lies in the soul, not in the 88  In Jo. 20:19-20, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 3, 127: πεπληροφόρηκεν ἐμφανῶς ὅτι τὸν ἐπ’ αὐτοῦ τοῦ σταυροῦ κεκρεμασμένον ἤγειρε ναὸν, καὶ ὅπερ πεφόρεκε σῶμα, τοῦτο πάλιν ἀνέστησε. ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 2, 365. 89  In Jo. 20:26-27, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 3, 148; ET: Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, vol. 2, 375-376. 90  In 1 Cor. 15:51-52, in Der Kommentar, ed. Zawadzki,: ἔσται δὲ ὁ μετασχηματισμὸς οὐκ εἰς ἑτέραν τινὰ φύσιν ἀποκομίζων ἡμᾶς, ἐσόμεθα γὰρ ὅπερ ἐσμὲν, τουτέστιν ἄνθρωποι, πλὴν ἀμείνους ἀσυγκρίτως· ἄφθαρτοι γὰρ καὶ ἀνώλεθροι καὶ πρός γε τούτῳ δεδοξασμένοι.

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body. Therefore, the soul can be called the more honourable part of human beings, but that does not deny the goodness of the body. According to Cyril’s anthropology, humans are mortal by nature, that is, capable of dying, but immortality is given as an additional gift by the Holy Spirit, whom humanity received immediately upon its creation. However, when after the Fall the Spirit left humankind, humans were no longer protected against corruption and death. Furthermore, before the Fall, human beings had bodily desires, for example, for food and for procreation, which were not sinful. But after the Fall, without the help of the Holy Spirit, these desires turned into evil passions and started to dominate the human mind, which resulted in sin. It was only at the incarnation of the Word of God that the Spirit was returned to humankind in his fullness, so that bodies could be freed from corruption and death, and the bodily desires could be checked again, so that they no longer needed to lead to sin. In this age, we have to struggle against the passions by an asceticism which involves both body and soul. But in the age to come, we will have the Spirit in his fullness, and the evil passions will be laid to rest, so that struggle will no longer be necessary. Cyril interprets Paul’s expression “spiritual body” as a body in which the natural desires no longer tyrannize the mind. The human body in the eschaton will not be a subtle or airy body, but it will have the same nature as our body here and now, yet glorified and without the carnal passions. What, then, can we conclude in respect of Cyril’s mystagogy of the body? To begin with, in his view the human body with its natural desires is not only part of God’s good creation, it is also destined to participate in the glory of the eschatological human being. In the words of Phil 3:21, a verse that Cyril likes to cite:91 our lowly bodies will be transformed so that they will be like Christ’s glorious body. Cyril is not quite clear on whether the natural bodily desires will all have disappeared, but they will certainly no longer turn into evil passions.92 Instead, we will have a 91  For example, In Amos 9:6, in In xii prophetas, ed. Pusey, vol. 1, 535; Epistula festalis 10.4, in SC 392, ed. Évieux, 226; In Jo. 14:20, in In D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Pusey, vol. 2, 480. 92  In De dogmatum solutione 5, Wickham translates: “we shall obviously jettison corruption along with its consequent passions, which are bodily desire in its entirety,” but the Greek reads ἐπιθυμία πᾶσα σαρκική, which is “all carnal desire,” that is, all sinful desire, which is something else than “all bodily desire” (Select Letters, ed. Wickham, 199). I have not come across any text in Cyril’s writings that deals with the eschatological consequences of his view that natural bodily desires existed before the Fall. Christ’s statement that people will no longer marry or be given in marriage in the age to come will have led Cyril to conclude that there will be no procreation in the eschaton, and since



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spiritual body, of which Cyril says somewhere that it means “that we look solely at what belongs to the Spirit.”93 In line with this, the archbishop does not teach the faithful to degrade the body. In one place where he calls the soul “better” than the body, he uses an argument a fortiori, stating that if we accept a diet when our body is ill so as to restore it to health, how much more should we welcome fasting to cure our sick soul. In this context he declares: “For I do not think that anyone at all would deny that bodily fitness is highly desirable.”94 Asceticism, in Cyril’s view, should not result in a bad condition of the body, but it is aimed at turning our desires away from wicked pleasures towards the spiritual life, in which not just the soul but also the body fully participates.

he reserves the proper satisfaction of sexual desire for procreation, the outcome is that, if this desire is not abolished, it will no longer be satisfied. In his commentary on Luke 20:34-36, in Lukas-Kommentare aus der griechischen Kirche: aus Katenenhandschriften gesammelt und herausgegeben, ed. Joseph Reuss, TU 130 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1984), 202 (fr. 312), he does not make the distinction between natural desires and sinful passions. And his commentaries on Matt 22:30 and 1 Cor 6:13 are not extant. 93  De dogmatum solutione 5, in Select Letters, ed. Wickham 200 (ET 201). 94  Epistula festalis 18.1, in PG 77, col. 804C: Τὴν μὲν γὰρ τοῦ σώματος εὐρωστίαν, ὡς ἔστι τριπόθητος ἀντερεῖν οἶμαι παντελῶς οὐδένα. ET: FOTC 127, trans. Amidon and O’Keefe, 76.

Part 3

The Post-Nicene Period: The Western Tradition

Physical Virginity against the Background of Creation and Christology A Comparison of the Virginity Treatises by Ambrose and Gregory of Nyssa Metha Hokke I. Introduction Mystagogy has been described as the process of spiritual transformation brought about in the mystes by the mystagogue.1 In this paper, the mystagogues are the Church Fathers Gregory of Nyssa and Ambrose of Milan, their virginity treatises are the mystagogical vehicle by which they disseminate their idea that a virginal way of life initiates a spiritual transformation, and the mystes are their audiences. The topic of this paper is the great importance Ambrose attaches to the physicality of virginity in his later virginity treatises. This will be explained from the contemporary doctrinal thinking on creation and Christology and compared with Gregory of Nyssa’s view on these subjects in his virginity treatise. Gregory of Nyssa’s older and only virginity treatise provides an intellectually challenging reflection on the connection between virginity and paradise. While Ambrose essentially would have agreed with Gregory’s reconstruction of the Fall and its resolution, Gregory’s attachment of virginity to the Trinity represents a different line of thinking, which diverges from the importance of Mary’s physical virginity that is so characteristic of Ambrose’s later virginity treatises. In this paper, the following treatises will be studied: Gregory of Nyssa’s De virginitate (Vrgt.) (372), and Ambrose’s De virgi­ nibus (Virg.) (377), De virginitate (Vrgt.) (somewhere between 379 and 391), De institutione virginis (Inst.) (392) and Exhortatio virginitatis (Exh.) (393).2 1  Paul van Geest, “Studying the Mystagogy of the Fathers: An Introduction,” in Seeing through the Eyes of Faith: New Approaches to the Mystagogy of the Church Fathers, ed. Paul van Geest, LAHR 11; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 2 (Louvain: Peeters, 2016), 3-22. 2  Gregory of Nyssa, De virginitate; see Grégoire de Nysse, Traité de la Virginité, ed. and trans. Michel Aubineau, SC 119 (Paris: Cerf, 1966). Ambrose’s virginity treatises, see

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The starting point for our discussion of the dogmatic background of the importance of physical virginity in the second half of the fourth century will be Exh. 6.35-36, discussed in section 1. This text is remarkable for its explicitly physical description of why Ambrose abhors the loss of female virginity, and it is thus indicative of a doctrinal development in Ambrose’s virginity treatises. It also raises the important question as to what the true self of human being is and introduces the topic of virginity as a return to paradise. In section 2, the link between virginity and the biblical narrative of creation and Fall will be analysed. Gregory expounds on virginity as the redemptive return to paradise in Vrgt. 12–14. The ambiguity in his interpretation of the Genesis narrative of creation and the Fall will be elucidated by a comparison with Philo’s De opificio mundi (Opif.).3 Ambrose discusses paradise and the Fall only in his later virginity treatises, which concentrate on the role of woman in the Fall and in redemption. Eve benefits from Ambrose’s fierce defence of Mary’s virginity in Inst., from which his view on gender and the distinction between body and soul can be distilled. The third section explains how in their treatment of virginity and Christ, Gregory focusses on the Trinity, while for Ambrose Christ is the centre of interest. They share a high Christology. In his late virginity treatises, Ambrose’s opposition to those who deny Mary’s physical virginity is meant to guarantee the divinity of the incarnate Christ, leading to a more physical perception of female virginity. Finally (4), the conclusion will discuss the similarities and differences between Gregory’s and Ambrose’s views on virginity and the body within the context of the main theological topics of creation–Fall–redemption and Christology. My argument reinforces and further develops the observations made by the following four scholars. J. N. D. Kelly posited that in the period that these virginity treatises were written, theologians became interested Sant’Ambrogio, Opere morali 2: Verginità e Vedovanza, ed. Franco Gori, 2 vols., SAEMO 14 (Milan: Biblioteca Ambrogiana; Rome: Città Nuova, 1989). The two volumes of this edition will hereinafter be abbreviated as SAEMO 14.1 and SAEMO 14.2. SAEMO 14.1 contains the works De virginibus and De viduis, SAEMO 14.2 contains De virginitate, De institutione virginis, and Exhortatio virginitatis. French translation: Saint Ambroise, Écrits sur la virginité, trans. Marie-Gabriel Tissot (Solesmes: Abbaye Saint Pierre, 1980). 3  David T. Runia, Philo of Alexandria: On the Creation of the Cosmos according to Moses, Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series 1 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2001). Greek text: Philo, On the Creation. Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis 2 and 3, trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker, LCL 226 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929).



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in Genesis 1–3 in order to explain human nature, the present state of humanity and its redemption.4 This clearly is the rationale behind Gregory of Nyssa’s discussion of creation, the Fall and the way out of the fallen state in Vrgt. 12–14. Ambrose’s focus on Christology confirms Brian Daley’s observation that the period following the Council of Constantinople (381) was characterized by “the controversy about the relationship of divinity and humanity in Jesus.”5 Raymond D’Izarny observed in a note as early as 1952 that the Jovinianist controversy gave rise to a more physical perception of virginity in Ambrose’s virginity treatises. In his polemic against Jovinian, Ambrose would not have dared to explicitly connect the importance of Mary’s in partu virginity with the guarantee that Christ’s divinity remained unpolluted, for fear of being accused of Manichaeism.6 Julia Kelto Lillis contrasts Gregory’s “nonhymenal configurations of the virginal life …, where virginity male or female is marked above all by likeness to God” with Ambrose’s “hymenal configurations …, in which female virgins are depicted as sealed brides reserved for God.”7 She does not point out here the development from spiritual to physical virginity that is evident in Ambrose’s virginity treatises following the controversy around Mary’s post-partum and in partu virginity. II.  Exhortatio virginitatis 6.35: Ambrose’s Argument for Physical Virginity Ambrose’s argument about the problematic nature of the loss of virginity as the breaking of the hymen is the culmination of a development within his virginity treatises and a digestion of the Platonic idea of “one’s true self” and its “fall” by addition or admixture.8 Exh. 6.35 is the  John Norman Davidson Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (London: A&C Black, 1977), 344. 5  Brian Daley, Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 105. 6  Raymond d’Izarny, La virginité selon Saint Ambroise (diss. University of Lyon, 1952), 63, n. 30 (physical virginity; pollution: Exp. Luc.; Apol. David); 55 (Manichaeism). On Jovinian: David G. Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinianist Controversy, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 7  Julia Kelto Lillis, “Paradox in Partu: Verifying Virginity in the Protevangelion of James,” JECS 24 (2016): 1-28, at 27. 8  Unfortunately, I cannot elaborate on the Platonic background in this paper. 4

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t­ erminus of a development from a spiritual to an explicitly physical interpretation of virginity: What is more genuine than undefiled virginity, which preserves the seal of shame (signaculum pudoris) and the genital barrier of virginity (claustrum genitale)? On the contrary, however, when a young girl is deflowered by marriage, she throws away what is hers, when something from outside is mixed with her. Because the genuine is that which we are by birth, not that into which we are changed … such as He has created us, not such as the custom of this world has brought about, in order that He recognize his work in us and that He recognize the genital seal (genitale signaculum) undamaged and complete.9

In the following pericope both male and female virgins are exhorted to offer themselves to God as prelapsarian Adams and Eves, giving Ambrose the opportunity to speak about the Fall and its main consequence of shameful sexual intercourse and procreation.10 It is interesting to contrast Exh. 6.35 with a similar text from Ambrose’s first treatise, where his spiritual interpretation of virginity has physical associations: Virg. 1.8.45. Here, the virgin is compared to an enclosed garden and a sealed fountain (S. of S. 4:12), i.e. her shame (pudor) is confined by a spiritual wall, is shut off, so that it is not open to pillage (rapina). It can be deduced from the description of the intruders that rapina must not be translated here as rape, and that the wall does not refer primarily to the hymen: the intruding “thieves” are the “spiritual animals.” These animals will disturb the virgin’s ability to be a reflecting image of God. The seals in this passage are explained as the virgin’s appropriation by Christ in thought and action.11 The importance of perpetual physical virginity is assumed in Ambrose’s stories about female martyrs in Virg., but never explained as it is in Exh. 6.35. While in Virg. Mary’s role is mainly confined to her exemplary virginal way of life, the  Ambrose, Exh. 6.35: Quid tam uerum quam intemerata uirginitas, quae signaculum pudoris et claustrum integritatis genitale custodit? At uero cum usu coniugii iuuencula deflo­ ratur; amittit quod suum est, quando ei miscetur alienum. Illud enim uerum quod nascimur; non in quod mutamur; quod a creatore accepimus, non quod de contubernio assumpsimus … Date ergo uero Leui, … quales ipse condidit, non quales saeculi huius usus efficit, ut opus suum in uobis et illud genitale signaculum inuiolatum atque integrum recognoscat. Cf. Inst. 6.41: defloratio uirginitatis = cum uirili admixtione, in SAEMO 14.2, 226, 142. ET: my own. 10  Ambrose, Exh. 6.36. 11  Ambrose, Virg. 1.8.45. Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 21.1.1-13 (spiritual wall). Seals: 1.8.45, 46, 48. In this text, seals refer ambiguously to baptism and the physical state of virginity. 9



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supreme chastity of “the mother of God” in giving birth to “a body without the contact that contaminates the body” is a foretaste of developments some fifteen years later.12 In Inst. sexuality is already described as a mingling that was absent in Mary’s conception of Christ.13 In Exh., the characterization “enclosed garden, sealed fountain” refers to the virginity of the body, which must protect the vine (i.e. bodily virginity) of the soul from being fertilized by the seeds of common vegetables (i.e. transient marriage). This virginity is described as: “enclosed by the partition of shame, in which the seals of virginity remain undefiled.”14 Our text, Exh. 6.35, adds an explanation for the importance of physical virginity in terms of the Platonic divine criteria of immutability and purity, being unmixed. According to Exh. 6.35, a person’s true self is virginal, which is contrasted with the loss of oneself, a change brought about by sex: the mixture with “the other.” Ambrose describes the female virginal body as closed and sealed, just as God intended it. Just before our text, Ambrose mentions the impact of virginity on the physical postlapsarian body: it quenches the fires of its bodily heat by the Spirit, cancels the burdens of marriage and illuminates the darkness of this clay flesh.15 The burdens of marriage return in our text Exh. 6.35 as “the custom of this world” which causes the unwanted change in the virginal state. Ambrose uses “the way God has created us” and “our condition at birth” as synonyms, which would suggest either the idea of a creatio continua or an eschewing of the concept of original sin. Thus, we have seen that in Ambrose’s virginity treatises the interpretation of the female virginal body as closed and sealed gradually became more physical. Ambrose so strongly focusses on the importance of maintaining the status quo of the female body that he suggests that the perpetuation of the virginal state at birth is equivalent to the prelapsarian paradisiacal state as intended by God. Sexual intercourse debases the true self in its mixture with the other.  Ambrose, Virg. 2.2.7: quae corpus sine corporis contagione generauit, in SAEMO 14.1,

12

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13  Ambrose, Inst. 14.88: commixtione corporeae consuetudinis; 16.98: uirilis seminis admixtione, in SAEMO 14.2, 172, 178. 14  Ambrose, Exh. 5.29: claustro pudoris septa uirginitas, in qua intemerata permaneant castitatis signacula. … hunc nemo designet, quem genitalis in uobis origo signauit (that nobody takes away the seal of the fountain, which the genital origin has sealed in you), in SAEMO 14.2, 220; ET: my own. 15  Ambrose, Exh. 5.30: (virginity) … liquore gratiae spiritalis corporei uaporis incendia temperentur; 6.34: … ableuet uirginitas onera conditionis et tenebras huius limosae carnis illuminet, SAEMO 14.2, 222, 224, 226.

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III.  Creation, Paradise, and Fall 1.  Gregory of Nyssa’s De virginitate 12–14 The context of Gregory’s treatment of creation and the Fall is an attempt to explain and solve the present misery of humanity16 by looking back at what had gone wrong in paradise. The soul returns to the natural and appropriate state in which it had been created in the beginning, by taking off everything that is alien to it (the “corruptible and muddy image”).17 Thus, the image of God, now in the sordidness of the flesh, is restored to its original, glorious state of the prelapsarian human being.18 Gregory wants more than simply to provide an aetiological or “historical” explanation of the initial alienation of human beings from God: he wants to demonstrate that the way to the spiritual ascent, with the visio dei he described so enchantingly in Vrgt. 10–11 as its highest goal, passes through virginity. While the Fall is described as a sequence of “literal” events, the “mirror image” of the reditus allegorizes the phases of the Fall in humanity’s return to God.19 In his interpretation of the Fall, Gregory attempts to answer questions deriving from the text of Genesis 1–3, such as the harmonization of Gen 1:26a, 27a with Gen 2:7; the gendering (Gen 2:18, 20a-25); the cause of the Fall, garments of skin (Gen 3:21) and the occasion of the first sexual intercourse. Gregory’s explicit statements on these topics are not always in line with the allusions I suggest were derived from Philo’s De opificio mundi.20 16  τὸ ἀνθρώπινον (humankind): hapax in Gregory’s virginity treatise (12.2). According to Liddle & Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, only the plural of ἄνθρωπος refers to humankind. While ἄνθρωπος might refer to the human being (man as generic term), Gregory addresses male virgins and initially has a male human being in mind as the one created. Gregory is only marginally interested in women in Vrgt. 17  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 12.2.59-66. In 12.2.10 Gregory announces his explanation of the postlapsarian human condition: Ἐπεισήχθη δὲ οὕτως. 18  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 12.4.2-4 (ἐν τῷ τῆς σαρκὸς ῥύπῳ κεκαλυμμένης); 12.3.24 (image hidden beneath the dirt). 12.2: human being: Τὸ λογικὸν τοῦτο καὶ διανοητικὸν ζῷον ὁ ἄνθρωπος. J. Warren Smith, Passion and Paradise: Human and Divine Emotion in the Thought of Gregory of Nyssa (New York: Crossroad, 2004), 22-27 distinguishes the structural from the moral likeness of God. 19  Cf. Hans Boersma, Embodiment and Virtue in Gregory of Nyssa: An Anagogical Approach, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 124125 about the stages in Vrgt. 12.4–13.1: “The sequence of the reditus is a perfect mirror image of that of the exitus, with marriage functioning as the hinge in the centre.” 20  Aubineau (SC  119, ed. Aubineau, 108-109) acknowledges that Gregory had read Philo’s De opificio mundi when he wrote Vrgt. He denies Gregory’s dependence on Philo in Vrgt.12–13, but continues with examples illustrating Philo’s influence in Vrgt.



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We turn now to a closer look at Gregory’s reconstruction. Gregory presents the prelapsarian human being in terms of Gen 1:26-27 as an image of God. This image is based on a similarity in rationality, beauty, and immortality.21 Gregory calls this the first creation.22 However, in an attempt to explain the arrival of evil, the main common ground between the human being and God shifts to freedom of choice. By using this quality, the human being becomes the creator of evil, willingly so, and despite the fact that it is against his nature and interest.23 In this way Gregory exculpates God from the Fall.24 The mention of deceit foreshadows the continuation of the Fall, in its connection with pleasure and the senses.25 It is at this point, when discussing the arrival of evil, that Gregory refers to the human being as being made from earth and he thus switches from Gen 1:26-27 to Gen 2:7: “the first human being from earth, or rather he who generated evil in humankind.”26 Sin obscures the godlike beauty of the human soul by concealing it in mortality and muddiness.27 The derogatory terms indicating pollution that Gregory uses to describe the human condition definitely refers to the present human condition, but some allusion to the creation according to Gen 2:7 cannot be denied. When Gregory exhorts his readers to work for the restoration (ἀποκατάστασις) of the relationship that human beings, as image of God, initially had with God, the necessity of a physical body is dubious. The protoplast was without “the garments of dead skins,” and delighted in God without the mediation of the senses.28 21  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 12.2.1-10. 12.2.1: (human being as rational being); 12.2.6-7 (immortality); 12.2.8-9 (beauty); 12.2.11: εἰκὼν ἦν καὶ ὁμοίωμα with the power who reigns over all beings; 12.2.14: in his freedom of choice, man resembles (ὁμοιότης) the master of the universe; 12.2.67: human goal of resemblance to God (ἡ πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ὁμοίωσις); 12.2.70: jointly with our first creation, God has given our nature resemblance (ὁμοιότης) to Him. Note μίμημα (Vrgt.12.2.2) for resemblance as hapax in Vrgt., but Philo Opif. 16; 25; 139 (2); 141 (2). 22  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 12.2.6: πρώτη γένεσις; 12.2.10: πρώτη κατασκευή cf. 13.3.: σωμάτων θνητῶν κατασκευή (sexual reproduction). 23  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 12.2.11-22, 36-41. Philo, Opif. 149: God had fashioned a rational nature in mortal beings with the freedom of choice not to participate in evil. 24  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 12.2.17-22, 41-45. Philo, Opif. 75 exculpates God by putting the blame on His collaborators in creation (plural Gen 1:26). Cf. 149. 25  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 12.2.18: ἀπάτῃ παρενεχθείς (led astray by deceit). 26  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 12.2.35-41. 12.2.35-37: «ὁ πρῶτος ἐκ γῆς ἄνθρωπος», μᾶλλον δὲ ὁ τὴν κακίαν ἐν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ γεννήσας. ET: my own. 27  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 12.2.48: τὸ θεοειδὲς ἐκεῖνο τῆς ψυχῆς κάλλος => 12.2.59: τὴν δὲ φθαρτὴν καὶ πηλίνην εἰκόνα διὰ τῆς ἁμαρτίας μετημφιάσατο. 28  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 12.4.5-8. 12.4.6: ἐν παρρησίᾳ δὲ τὸ τοῦ θεοῦ πρόσωπον βλέπων surpasses Moses’ experience of God in Ex 18:23. For God’s creating activity in Gen 1:26 Philo uses ποιεῖν (Opif. 74), for that in Gen 2:7 πλασσεῖν (Opif. 134–135).

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The gift of a helpmate, whose femininity can be concluded from the grammatical construction, is said to have been intended so that she can share the first human being’s delight in God.29 In fact, however, her arrival is associated with a turn for the worse: images related to the Fall follow each other in rapid succession. Gregory explicitly states that the protoplast did not have sex with her “before they had been expelled from paradise and before she was condemned to the punishment of giving birth because of her sin of being deceived.”30 Gregory locates the first sexual intercourse after the protoplasts’ expulsion from paradise, associating our present human condition with that of our banished ancestors and advising our return to the former paradisiacal happiness.31 But when he focusses on the Fall itself, Philo’s interpretation of Genesis 2–3 in Opif. is close at hand. Philo distinguishes a first creation of an incorporeal, intellectual, immortal human being (Gen 1:27) from a second creation. In this second creation the human being is a composite of the earthly substance and an immortal divine spirit, that is “on the borderline between mortal and immortal nature.”32 Woman’s arrival on the scene initiates the fall of humanity, because of the pleasure (ἡδονή) of sexual intercourse. The serpent stands for pleasure and both serpent and pleasure are connected to deception.33 For Gregory, the Fall starts with pleasure (ἡδονή) which had been brought about by deception (ἀπάτη). Because of their consequent shame and fear, the protoplasts did not dare to face God any longer, trying to hide from Him under leaves. God then provided them with “dead skins,” preparing them for their exile in “this deadly and toilsome place (τὸ νοσῶδες τοῦτο καὶ ἐπίπονον χωρίον),” the location of marriage and death.34  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 12.4.8-9: (the protoplast) τῇ δοθείσῃ βοηθῷ πρὸς τοῦτο συγχρώμενος. Philo does not ignore the gendering of the human being in Gen 1:27b (Opif. 76), Gregory clearly links gendering to the creation account of Genesis 2. 30  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 12.4.10-13: οὐ πρότερον αὐτὴν ἔγνω, πρὶν ἐξορισθῆναι τοῦ παραδείσου καὶ πρὶν ἐκείνην ἀντὶ τῆς ἁμαρτίας, ἣν ἀπατηθεῖσα ἐξήμαρτε, τῇ τῶν ὠδίνων τιμωρίᾳ κατακριθῆναι. ET: my own. 31  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 12.4.13-16. 32  Philo, Opif. 135: τὸν ἄνθρωπον θνητῆς καὶ ἀθανάτου φύσεως εἶναι μεθόριον. Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 14.1.8: virgins as borderline between death and life (τι μεθόριον θανάτου καὶ ζωῆς ἑαυτοὺς στήσαντες). 33  Philo, Opif. 134–135 (first and second creation compared); 151–152 (woman); 157 (serpent); 155; 165 (deceit < Gen 3:13b). 151: the desire for sexual intercourse “gave rise to bodily pleasure, which is the starting-point of wicked and law-breaking deeds, and on its account they exchange the life of immortality for the life of mortality and misfortune.” 161: “Certainly the first intercourse of the male with the female has pleasure as its guide.” ET: Runia, Philo, 87, 90. 34  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 12.4.16-23. 29



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I do not have any clear-cut answers to the following problems raised by Gregory’s text. A point of discussion is whether Gregory is alluding to a dual creation: a first creation of the soul as the image of God, followed by a second postlapsarian, clay body, which coincides with the garments of skin.35 My arguments in favour of the human being as embodied soul in paradise, at least in a later stage, are twofold. The female gender of the helper is hard to imagine without corporeality. Also, the association of ἡδονή with sexual intercourse is important throughout Vrgt. and a physical body is presumed for sexual intercourse.36 However, the notion that sexual pleasure caused the Fall, as a Philonic remnant, is inconsistent both with Gregory’s explicit statement that the first sexual intercourse took place outside paradise and that 35  SC  119, ed. Aubineau, 154: In Vrgt. Gregory presumes that prelapsarian human beings were of an angelic nature and became embodied only after the Fall. Gregory did not yet reflect on dual creation or the origin of sexuality. Jean Daniélou, “Les tuniques de peau chez Grégoire de Nysse,” in Glaube, Geist, Geschichte: Festschrift E. Benz, ed. Ernst Wilhelm Benz, Gerhard Müller, and Winfried Zeller (Leiden: Brill, 1967), 355-367: in Vrgt. Gregory still thought that tunics of the flesh were added to human nature, which is meant to be the image of God, an exilic incarnation caused by the Fall (p.359). Johannes Zachhuber, Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa: Philosophical Back­ ground and Theological Significance, VCS 46 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 180, 182: Origen’s equation of the fallen state with corporeality forms the background to the tunics of skin in Greg. Vrgt. 12. Teresa M. Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1998), 188-189: dual creation in Vrgt. in accordance with that of Gregory. Hom. opif.: first creation as image of God, second as “man of the earth” Adam, who differed from the first creation in being gendered and mortal, with passion, taste, and sight. Cf. 189, n. 103: “Although one could understand him (Gregory, MH) to be arguing for a bodiless first creation, without taste or sight or biological corruption, he does not go that far.” See also Boersma, Embodiment, 7, 13, 15, 48-49, 87, 102, 105, 108, 133-134: tunics of skin: the sexual, gendered, postlapsarian body. Kees identifies the dead skins in Gregory’s Vrgt. 12.4 as sexual intercourse. Reinhard Jakob Kees, Die Lehre von der Oikonomia Gottes in der Oratio Catechetica Gregors von Nyssa, VCS  30 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 232-233 about Greg., Vrgt.12.4.2-4, 16-23. Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco, “Tunics of Hide,” in The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa, ed. Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco and Giulio Maspero, VCS 99 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 768-770 explains 12.4.2-3 “we now see the image of God hidden in the obscurity of the flesh” in the context of baptism. “Tunics of hide” in 12.4–13.1 would refer to mortality, the carnality of the body, not to the body itself. 36  Pleasure (ἡδονή) as sex: Vrgt. 5.2-10, 19-20; 7.1.10; 8.31; 9.1-2; 20.3; 23.6. Shame (αἰσχύνη) in connection to sex: Vrgt. 3.7.3; 12.4.18; 13.1.14; cf. Gen 2:25 lxx: (Adam and Eve were naked, yet not ashamed). The pleasure sought by Adam has opened the way to all other passions (4.5). I disagree with Abineau’s commentary that this does not imply a sexual notion (SC 119, ed. Aubineau, 321, n. 5; 420-421, n. 1). While the human being might experience pleasure in his contemplation of God, to Whose light the mind is akin (hapax συγγενές) (5.17), God’s incompatibility with pleasure (17.2) classifies pleasure as vice. Is the taste of evil in paradise (τοῦ πονηροῦ γεῦσις [13.1.20]) the experience of sexual intercourse (πείρα τῆς ἡδονῆς [8.30])?

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sexual propagation was contrived to compensate for death.37 My view is that the paradisiacal body must have lacked the covering of dead hides, being immortal. According to Gregory, sexual intercourse or marriage persists as a punishment for both man and woman.38 Procreation is not so much about transmitting life as about the continuation of death.39 As marriage is considered to be the stage farthest removed from paradise, virginity initiates the return to paradise.40 We must now turn to the allegorical reversal (13.1) of the aetiology of the descent from paradise (12.4).41 On the one hand, this spiritual ascent refutes Philo’s observation about the finality of the expulsion of human beings from paradise: He did not offer any hope of future return to a soul which was going incurably and irremediably astray, since the reason for the deception too was in no small measure blameworthy.42

On the other hand, Gregory’s phases of the spiritual ascent closely follow Philo’s allegorically interpreted phases of descent from paradise in reverse order. Gregory’s description of the phase following the choice for virginity is ambivalent: the earthly misery from which human beings have to withdraw is reminiscent of how Philo interpreted the punishment of man in Gen 3:17-18: the backbreaking tilling of the earth.43 Next, human beings have to undo themselves of the coverings of the flesh (τὰ τῆς σαρκὸς προκαλύμματα) or the tunics of skin (δερματίνοι χιτῶνες). While the parallel in 12.4 associated the garments of skin with the present physical body as a result of the Fall, in 13.1 Gregory interprets these garments as an orientation of the mind. The undressing now refers to the mind’s turning away from the flesh, giving the qualification of  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 12.4.10-13; 12.4.23.  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 12.4.10-11 (sex); 14.3.8-9: (about the dissolution of marriage by the spouse’s death) “the condemnation ordained from the beginning against the offenders has been undone.” 39  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 13.3.1-2; 14.1.2-6. 40  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 13.1.2-3, 6-9. 41  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 12.4.15, παλινδρομήσασιν ἐπανελθεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν ἀρχαίαν μακαριότητα. The first word expresses the running back, the second can mean both return and ascent to the former bliss. 42  Philo, Opif. 155: μηδ’ ἐλπίδα τῆς εἰσαῦθις ἐπανόδου δυσίατα καὶ ἀθεράπευτα πλημμελούσῃ ψυχῇ παρασχών, ἐπεὶ καὶ ἡ τῆς ἀπάτης πρόφασις ἐπίληπτος ἦν οὐ μετρίως. ET: Runia, Philo, 88. 43  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 13.1.9-10: τῆς περὶ τὴν γῆν ταλαιπωρίας ἀναχωρῆσαι, ᾗ ἐνιδρύνθη μετὰ τὴν ἁμαρτίαν ὁ ἄνθρωπος· Philo, Opif. 167 following the description of woman’s punishment: ὁ δ’ ἀνὴρ ἐν μέρει πόνους καὶ ταλαιπωρίας καὶ συνεχεῖς ἱδρῶτας … ἡ γῆ. 37 38



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­ idden and shameful a sexual connotation. The male virgin is no longer h overshadowed by the fig-tree of bitter44 life, no longer covered by life’s temporary leaves and thus able to fully concentrate on the pure good, unspoiled even by the wish to know of evil. While the nature of the deception that caused the Fall remains unclear in Gregory’s description of the descent, it takes shape at the ascent. The enlightened human being would not again be deceived into following the serpent’s advice based on the body’s senses instead of following God’s commandment of completely ignoring evil.45 Philo makes the connection between the sensory attraction of the forbidden fruit and its function of providing the ability to distinguish good from evil in Gen 3:5-6 more explicit and invests it with causality.46 For Gregory, judgements based on the senses are obstacles that prevent spiritual descent.47 The experience of the ultimate goal of being eternally with God passes far beyond the senses.48 This bliss is not visualized in terms of the paradise of Genesis, but as the paradise of Paul’s ascent into heaven mentioned in 2 Cor 12:4.49 The perception is visible here that in their abstinence from marriage, virgins already partake of the angelic life and imitate the purity of the bodiless beings in this life.50 Virginity, the utmost good for the soul, is an image of the future bliss which refers to the former paradisiacal happiness.51 Gregory’s mentions of the importance of bodily virginity are rare. Bodily virginity assists human beings in pursuing the goal for which they  Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 11.4.13-15: Bitterness is linked to foul-smelling carnal-

44

ity.

45  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 13.1.11-19. 12.2.18 (humankind deceived); 12.4.12 (woman sins by being deceived); 12.4.17 (pleasure); 13.1.17 (deceptive power of serpent, i.e. bodily senses disappeared). Cf. Philo who also qualifies the serpent as ἰοβόλος (Opif. 156). 46  Philo, Opif. 156: fruit: “highly attractive to behold and most pleasant to taste, and moreover … extremely advantageous for enabling one to discern what is good and what is evil.” ET Runia, Philo, 88. Opif. 165–166: pleasure deceives the ruling intellect via the senses. 47  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 13.1.17 (senses); 18.4.19-21. The forbidden fruit is not mentioned but alluded to in the positive sense of the fruit of Mary’s virginity (Vrgt. 14.1.26) that terminates death’s power or the virginal human being who, already in this life, picks the unmixed good (13.1.26) or the goods of the resurrection (14.4.14). 48  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 13.1.27-30: μετὰ τοῦ θεοῦ εἶναι μόνου καὶ ταύτην ἄπαυστον ἔχειν καὶ διηνεκῆ τὴν τρυφήν without a mixture of beauty with its opposite. Cf. paradise: 12.4.7-8: not yet judging beauty by taste or sight, ἀλλὰ μόνον «τοῦ κυρίου κατατρυφῶν». Metaphoric visio dei e.g. 11.6.9; 12.4.6. 49  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 13.1.1-34. Shaw, Burden of the Flesh, 193-195. 50  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 14.4.13-20. 51  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 14.4.22-24 (supreme good); 14.4.3-6 (future bliss); 12.4.16 (paradisiacal bliss).

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have been created, their approach to God.52 Gregory acknowledges that the soul’s impassibility is more important than bodily purity and that virginity is not limited to the body.53 Yet, bodily virginity is crucial in order to distance oneself from contact with passionate, fleshly existence, especially from affinity with one’s own body.54 Bodily virginity enables persons to maintain the resemblance to themselves by erecting a wall between themselves and the senses or passions, thus avoiding pollution.55 Virginity is the foundation for a virtuous life and is capable of divinizing human beings.56 The loss of virginity is irreversible, a sad event that Gregory illustrates with his own example. This loss places the human being in another existential order, as it were.57 2. Ambrose’s De institutione virginis The veiling prayer that concludes Inst. succinctly describes the rationale behind Inst. The Fall can be considered to have been advantageous for us, as it evoked the divine gift that was necessary for our redemption. God born of the Virgin Mary on the one hand was the means of redemption, on the other was the best way to make virginity attractive to humanity. By God’s grace we see the holy virgins living the angelic life now on earth that we once lost in paradise.58 Ambrose starts the passage that interests us most, Inst. 3.16–4.29, with the question whether it is justified to blame woman for the Fall, considering how much grace she

52  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. Prol.1.22-24; 4.9.1-3: virginity as co-operator and helpmate; 20.1.9-10: virginity as co-operator and protector of the interior, spiritual marriage with Christ; 14.4.19-21: protection of the imitation of the purity of incorporeal beings. 53  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 5.1-31 (impassibility); 15.1.3-12; 18.5.1-4 (virginity not limited to body). 54  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 4.8.5-15; 20.3.5-7. 55  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 18.5.10-11; 21.1.1-13 (wall). 56  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 18.1.27-35 (foundation); 1.20-24 (deification “in a way”). 57  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 3.1.1-35. I disagree with Mark Hart’s view that Gregory’s regret at the loss of his virginity or his exposition on the burdens of marriage are ironic. Mark D. Hart, “Reconciliation of Body and Soul: Gregory of Nyssa’s Deeper Theology of Marriage,” Theological Studies 51 (1990): 450-478. Gregory seems to have found a way to resolve his regret at the loss of his virginity as he finishes his treatise (Vrgt. 23.7.10-44) with words like: “Don’t conclude that once you have sinned, you can no longer pursue the purest life,” meaning crucifixion to world, mortification of flesh and the gift of the inner man. 58  Ambrose, Inst. 17.104. Christ already initiates virginity as a redemptive way of life: Virg. 1.1.4; 1.5.21; 2.4.24.



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has found in “the miserable weakness of the human condition.”59 Ambrose uses the delay of God’s approval of the creation of human beings compared to the rest of creation in Genesis to raise the crucial issue of human ontology. The criterion on which God bases his approval of the irrational animals is their outer appearance (species, natiuitas). Human’s outer appearance, the body, is inferior to what really makes up the human essence: the invisible soul. Two paradigms are fused: the Platonic hierarchy of soul and body (Inst. 3.17) and that of Gen 3:21: the soul covered and hidden as it were by the wrap of the body (Inst. 3.18). The soul or mind (mens, sensus, affectus) is identified as “the image and resemblance of God” (Gen 1:26). Ambrose’s interpretation of Gen 1:26 here is dynamic: human beings have to live up to the fact that they were created according to God’s image and likeness by living virtuously, and so God has to adjourn his approval of men or women until the moment of their death. While in this argument man at the moment of creation is merged with the postlapsarian present human being, Ambrose returns to Genesis for his last argument on God’s delayed approval. Humankind (homi­ num genus) is not deserving of God’s praise until the “female gender is added to the male one.”60 This argument is the first benefit mentioned which woman yields to man. Before we continue to discuss this argument, we must reflect on the choices Ambrose made in his interpretation of the narrative of creation. Human beings have been created as soul and body, but, though Ambrose advocates esteem for the body, only the soul can qualify as “image of God.” In passing, Ambrose mentions in Vrgt. that the soul is ungendered.61 The dual character of creation in this passage is the addition of female to the human being who was created male, in order to complete humankind according to God’s purpose (sententia). Just as with soul–body, man–woman is a hierarchical relationship: woman is created as man’s helpmate (Gen 2:18).62 Initially, Eve is not named, but is referred to as “woman” (mulier). Later, Ambrose uses the argument that the fact that Eve is called a woman is an indication of her  Ambrose, Inst. 3.16: … in misera conditionis humanae fragilitate, in SAEMO 14.2,

59

122.

 Ambrose, Inst. 3.17-22. 3.22: confirmat utique bonum esse hominum genus, si uirili sexui femineus sexus accedat, in SAEMO 14.2, 126. Cf. the start of this passage 3.16: Accusamus … femineum sexum quod erroris causam inuexerit, in SAEMO 14.2, 122. 61  Ambrose, Inst. 3.17: ex animo constet et corpore; 3.19: nemo … se despiciat quasi uilem, nec contuitu corporis sese aestimet; Vrgt. 15.93: anima sexum non habet, in SAEMO 14.2, 124, 74. 62  Ambrose, Inst. 3.22. 60

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gender, not of her loss of virginity in paradise. Thus he tries to defend Mary’s post-partum virginity against Bishop Bonosus’ argument that Mary lost her virginity after giving birth, because she was called a woman at the wedding at Cana (John 2:4). Adam and Eve, who was formed out of Adam’s rib, only had sex after they had been expelled from paradise.63 Now we return to the various arguments Ambrose adduces to rehabilitate Eve. While the bodies of man and woman are both made of clay, their coming into existence differs. Man was made out of unformed clay, while woman was formed out of man’s formed, and thus superior, clay.64 While the creation of woman is described in terms of Genesis 2, Ambrose explicitly says that woman is the image of God when he discusses her innate physical attractiveness. Man is exhorted to focus more on woman’s inner beauty than on the attraction of her body.65 Ambrose acknowledges woman’s responsibility for the Fall, but then excuses her at the expense of man with regard to nature, disobedience, admission of guilt and punishment. Woman is by nature the weakest link in the chain that links serpent (a cunning evil angel) – man – woman. Ambrose’s a fortiori argument is that if man could not resist temptation by his inferior, woman, how could woman have resisted temptation by the serpent, who was far superior to her in cunning? Man’s guilt acquits woman.66 If man could not keep a commandment given by God, how could woman obey an order received from man? While man blames woman for the Fall, woman pleads guilty to being seduced by the serpent and thus protects man instead of getting even with him. Man is exonerated in woman’s confession of guilt and in woman’s submission to her sentence.67 Man’s punishment for his participation in the Fall is mortality: “You are earth (terra) and to earth you shall go” (Gen 3:19). Woman’s punishment, “You will give birth to children in sadness, you will desire your husband and he will rule over you” (Gen 3:16) is interpreted as a positive, lifebringing thing.68 In Genesis 3, between the passing of the sentence by God and the provision of the garments of skin, Adam named woman Life, as she was the mother of all future generations of human beings.  Ambrose, Inst. 5.35-36. The first time Eve is named: Inst. 5.32.  Ambrose, Inst. 3.23. 65  Ambrose, Inst. 4.30. Again, the image of God is connected to virtuous behaviour. 66  Ambrose, Inst. 4.25. 67  Ambrose, Inst. 4.26-29. 4.29: man is addressed: Habes … et culpae absolutionem in confessione et sententiae in exsecutione, in SAEMO 14.2, 130. 68  Ambrose, Inst .4.26. 63

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Ambrose deepens and broadens this perspective through the interpretation of Gen 2:24 in Eph 5:31-32: the natural desire for sexual union between man and woman refers to the union of Christ and the Church. Not only mortal life, but also eternal life is in a way rooted in Eve, because her propagation led to Mary and the Church.69 Man profits from woman’s willingness to endure her punishment of painful delivery.70 Also, man must follow the example of woman: she daily observes fasting to atone for having once eaten from what was forbidden.71 Then Ambrose transforms the imagery of Eve who fasts and is reformed into the virgin Eve. Once, she lacked self-control, now she is in control and abstains from having offspring. She surpasses Sarah in bringing forth (spiritual) children. Both the new Eve and Sarah give birth with joy and are heard by their husbands. Still, the submission of woman to man remains, not as part of the sentence, but as a natural phenomenon. The description of the position of the virgin as “not excluded from paradise, but carried off to heaven” is very similar to Gregory of Nyssa’s views.72 The whole rehabilitation of Eve is only a prelude to the crux of the matter: Mary’s virginity and its incentive to attract virgins. Eve lost her virginity outside paradise, then conceived, and gave birth.73 Mary who gave birth to God without losing her virginity is the absolute acme any gender could hope to reach. Christ chose Mary’s virginal womb into which to descend, thus calling many to virginity.74 The prelude comes to a kind of closure in Miriam, whose name refers to the “bitterness of

 Ambrose, Inst. 4.24. Gen 3:20 lxx reads Life (ζωή), Vulg. Heua.  Ambrose, Inst. 4:29. Woman is the first benefactor: she is saved through childbearing (1 Tim 2:15). 71  Ambrose, Inst. 4.31. 72  Ambrose, Inst. 5.32: Ueni, Eua, iam sobria; ueni Eua, etsi in te aliquando intemper­ ans, sed iam in prole ieiuna. Ueni, Eua, iam talis, ut non de paradiso excludaris, sed rapia­ ris ad caelum. Ueni, Eua, iam Sara, …Sis te licet uiro subdita, quia esse te decet, cito tamen soluisti sententiam, ut uir te audire iubeatur, in SAEMO 14.2, 132, 134. Cf. Exh. 7.49: heaven and paradise (Luke 23:43) are the locations where Christ presently resides. Gori, SAEMO 14.2, 133, n. 55: Ambrose uses rapere ad caelum always in connection to the heavenly ascent of a virgin. 73  Ambrose, Inst. 5.36; Exh. 6.36. 74  Ambrose, Inst. 5.33: … quantum proficit sexus qui Christum, salua tamen uirginitate, generauit! Ueni ergo, Eua, iam Maria, quae nobis non solum uirginitatis incentiuum attu­ lit, sed etiam deum intulit. … de caelo uas sibi hoc per quod descenderet Christus elegit … Per unam descendit, sed multas uocauit, in SAEMO 14.2, 134; 5.35: Egregia igitur Maria, by her virginity and an example for all to become virgin. 5.39: The dead have been resurrected before, aided by Elijah and Elisha, but never before and never in the future will a virgin give birth. 69

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the human weakness” which Christ’s arrival has sweetened.75 Then Ambrose’s real objective starts: the refutation of Bonosus’ rejection of Mary’s post-partum virginity.76 In the pericope following the initial text (Exh. 6. 36), written a year after Inst., Ambrose, through the widow Juliana, exhorts men and women to become virgins and thus to return to prelapsarian paradise. Men should become Adam before his sin, women should become Eve before she swallowed the deceitful poison of the serpent. Before they stumbled by treachery, they had no reason to be ashamed. Marriage after the expulsion from paradise brought about shame and two contradictory sons.77 Also in Inst. 3.16, virginity is said to free both sexes from blame. In general, however, Ambrose writes his virginity treatises predominantly with female virginity in mind, while Gregory alludes to male virginity.78 3. Conclusion In accordance with Kelly’s observation, Gregory in his virginity treatise from 372 interprets the Genesis narrative of creation and the Fall to explain our present fallen situation and to find a way out of this vale of tears. He describes the “descent” out of paradise as an aetiology of our present condition, and spiritual ascent in terms of an allegorization of the stages of the descent in reverse, with the choice for virginity as the turning point. Although the goal of the ascent is no longer called paradise but heaven, the content of the experience is the same: to be with God. Virginity is visualized as semi-realized eschatology. Ambrose claims the same status for the virgin in his virginity treatise Inst., twenty years after Gregory’s: not excluded from paradise, but carried off to heaven. Ambrose’s interest in the Genesis narrative differs from Kelly’s observation: he wants to rehabilitate Eve in order to defend Mary’s virginity. 75  Ambrose, Inst. 5.34: Uenit .. dominus in amaritudinem fragilitatis humanae, ut conditionis amaritudo dulcesceret, in SAEMO 14.2, 136. The bitterness is caused by sin and is related to the flesh. Cf. Inst. 3.16, n. 60. Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 11.4.13-15. 76  Ambrose, Inst. 5,35–8.51; 8.57–9.62: refutation of Bonosus. 77  Ambrose, Exh. 6.36: … illum Adam qui fuit ante peccatum, illam Euam quae fuit antequam lubricum serpentis hauriret uenenum, priusquam eius supplantarentur insidiis, quando non habebant quo confunderentur. Nam utique nunc, licet bona coniugia, tamen habent quod inter se ipsi coniuges erubescant. Tales ergo estote, filii, quales Adam et Eua in paradiso fuerunt, de quibus scriptum est, quod posteaquam de paradiso est eiectus Adam, cognouit Euam uxorem suam, et illa concepit, in SAEMO 14.2, 226, 228. Gen 2:24b Vulg.: they will be one flesh. (25) Adam and Eve were naked et non erubescebant. 78  Notwithstanding Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 20.4.36-42: the souls of men and women can equally participate in a spiritual marriage with Christ.



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Neither Gregory, nor Ambrose manages to solve the problem of the relationship between the soul as image of God (Gen 1:26-27) and the body of clay (Gen 2:7). Gregory is ambivalent with regard to the prelapsarian physicality of the human being in paradise. His prelapsarian protoplast seems to have been a soul, but the femininity of the helpmate he received indicates that a body must have been part of the first creation too. The references to Gen 2:7 are close to the “garments of skin” in relation to the Fall, and woman is introduced as necessary for the Fall to occur. Eve is never named, demonstrating Gregory’s lack of interest in women in this treatise. Freedom of choice as the main criterion of similarity between God and His image, the human being, identifies the human being, not God as the creator of evil. The inconsistencies in Gregory’s interpretation of Genesis 1–3 are explained as a result of his reliance on Philo’s De opificio mundi. Especially the ambiguity with regard to the meaning of the pleasure and deception that caused the Fall benefits from Philo’s interpretation. The strong suggestion here that this refers to sexual intercourse would be another argument in favour of the existence of the human body in paradise, but clashes with Gregory’s statement that the first sexual intercourse took place outside paradise. According to Ambrose in Inst., God intended human ontology to be a composite of an ungendered soul and a gendered body. The true essence to which the human being returns in virginity is the soul as the image of God, which raises the question what the initial use of this bleak appendage, the body, could have been. Ambrose does not address this question, however, but defends woman to the best of his ability, even using the natural inferiority with which she is created to her advantage. Man’s punishment for the Fall is mortality, woman’s is procreation. While Gregory considered procreation as the passing on of death to be a real punishment that could be ended by virginity, Ambrose saw not only its benefit, but also its necessity within salvation history. Woman’s mortal procreation (from which man benefits) resulted in Mary and the Church as providers of eternal life. Playing off Adam’s mortality against Eve’s fertility, Ambrose anticipates Mary’s conception. In Inst. 3.16–4.29, the woman who is cleansed from sin in a virginal life and who thus imitates Mary is called Eve. Both Ambrose and Gregory visualize life in paradise as gendered, virginal and immortal. Ambrose locates sexual intercourse outside paradise, as does Gregory as far as his explicit statement is concerned. But Gregory also seems to suggest that the first sexual intercourse caused the Fall. Ambrose did not explicitly agree with Gregory that marriage is the f­arthest

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form of alienation from God. For both, virginity corrects the Fall. The refence to a return to paradise alludes to virginal life as the life of the angels or incorporeal beings. IV.  Virginity and Christology 1.  Gregory of Nyssa’s De virginitate 2.1–3 For Gregory in his Vrgt., virginity is a distinguishing characteristic of the three persons of the Trinity. Virginity is in the Father, because He begets his Son without passion. Gregory calls the interconnection between fatherhood and virginity “contrary to expectation” (παράδοξος). His use of this same term for the Son’s virginity possibly indicates the double meaning of “γέννησις αὐτοῦ” as referring to the Son (“the only begotten God,” ὁ μονογενὴς Θεὸς) either being generated pure and without passion, or as himself generating purely and without passion. Christ would then generate immortality, i.e. virginity in human beings. The Holy Spirit is qualified as virginal because of his inherent and incorruptible purity.79 More so, by its apathy, virginity as an independent entity belongs by nature and choice to the heavenly realm.80 Virginity mediates between God and the human being.81 Virginity is God’s hand stretched out to humankind to raise it up from its postlapsarian condition to purity.82 In his love for humankind, God has given virginity to “those of flesh and blood,” subject to passions, in order to enable it to participate in purity. In his virginal incarnation (ἐνανθρώπησις) Christ demonstrates that people can only receive God by becoming estranged from fleshly passion. Just as “the fullness of God” (Col 2:9) entered Mary physically, thus God lives spiritually in the virginal soul.83 In a certain sense, virginity divinizes.84

79  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 2.1.1-11. 2.1.5-8: Τῷ δὲ μονογενεῖ θεῷ τῷ τῆς ἀφθαρσίας χορηγῷ συγκαταλαμβάνεται, ὁμοῦ τῷ καθαρῷ καὶ ἀπαθεῖ τῆς γεννήσεως αὐτοῦ … συνεκλάμψασα· καὶ πάλιν τὸ ἴσον παράδοξον υἱὸς διὰ παρθενίας νοούμενος; in SC 119, ed. Aubineau, 262, 264. 80  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 2.1.11-24; 2.3.1-3 (virginity dancing in heaven). 81  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 2.3.4-10. 82  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 2.2.9. 83  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 2.2.5-25. 84  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 1.20-24.



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2.  Ambrose’s Christology in His Virginity Treatises For both Gregory and Ambrose, Mary is the mother of God, because Christ is God.85 When arguing that Christ is the initiator of virginity, Ambrose describes Christ as the one whose flesh did not decompose, whose divinity did not experience pollution. His nature is divine and eternal, his birth from a virgin is for our benefit.86 Ambrose’s argument in Virg. 1.3.11 is very similar to Gregory’s reasoning as it was just described. The supernatural virtue of virginity moved down from the Father to earth, “after God had descended in these limbs of the terrestrial body. Then the virgin conceived in her womb and the Word became flesh in order that the flesh could become God.”87 Ambrose refers here to the divinization of the human body in virginity.88 In his incarnation, Christ brought about the contubernium of his divinity and his stainless body and thus enables the virgins to be a future kind of being (futurum genus) because they offer an immaculate body. In our first text Exh. 6.35, Ambrose uses contuber­ nium for marriage, where it has the character of mixture in sexual intercourse. It could refer here to the divinization of Christ’s flesh, followed by that of virginal flesh. Contubernium can also be translated as cohabitation, which would accord with Ambrose’s view that Christ’s human and divine nature are separate.89 In Virg. 1.8.46, Ambrose clarifies the identity of the virgin’s lover, Christ, as an interpretation of S. of S. 5:10: “My brother is  Gregory of Nyssa, Vrgt. 14.1.24; 19.6. Ambrose, Virg. 2.2.7.  Ambrose, Virg. 1.5.21: … auctorem … immaculatum dei filium, cuius caro non uidit corruptionem, diuinitas non est experta contagionem … Christus … a patre quidem natus ante saecula, sed ex uirgine natus ob saecula. Illud naturae suae, hoc nostrae utilitatis, in SAEMO 14.1, 122, 124. Divinization of Christ’s flesh: Vrgt. 11.62: Christ’s buried flesh neither decayed nor did it smell of death, but it rose with the scent of an eternal, vigorous flower; 19.129: Christ’s flesh did not know (uidit) corruption, … being incorruptible he remained immune to corruption (corruptionem incorruptus exclusit); 20.134: the body assumed by God during the incarnation is divinized (ut assumptio corporis ad ius diuini­ tatis assumentis ascita, in nomen transiret auctoris). 87  Ambrose, Virg. 1.3.11: postquam deus in haec terreni corporis membra descendit? Tunc in utero uirgo concepit et uerbum caro factum est, ut caro fieret deus, in SAEMO 14.1, 112. 88  Brian Dunkle, “Beyond Carnal Cogitations: Deification in Ambrose of Milan,” in Deification in the Latin West, ed. Jared Ortiz (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2019), 132-152, at 141. Vs. Gori, SAEMO 14.1, 113, n. 50, who believes that the flesh is restricted to Christ’s humanity. 89  Ambrose, Virg. 1.3.13 … after Christ’s coming into this body, he brought together the cohabitation/mixture of divinity and body without any stain of earthly confusion (contubernium diuinitatis et corporis sine ulla concretae confusionis labe), then developed in human bodies a way of heavenly life, which spread all over the world. This, the angels … declared to be the future generation (futurum genus) characterized by its offering of its service to the Lord in the obsequiousness of an immaculate body, in SAEMO 14.1, 116, 118, ET: my own. Ambrose’s use of contubernium diuinitatis is unique, as four out 85

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white and red.” The colours supposedly refer to the mystery of Christ’s innate divinity (white) and of his adopted embodiment (red).90 In Virg., Ambrose made up somewhat for his underestimation of Christ’s humanity by acknowledging that Christ had taken up a body of pain, had felt human emotions and had suffered.91 In Inst., Ambrose contributes to the contemporary theological debate about Mary’s perpetual virginity, desirous as he is to guarantee Christ’s unsoiled humanity in which God resides. The monk Jovinian had defended the view that Mary’s hymen was broken at the moment she gave birth to Christ. Ambrose’s defence of Mary’s in partu virginity led to a more physical visualization of virginity. When Christ left Mary’s body, he did not break Mary’s genital barrier of virginity (genitalia uirginitatis claustra non soluit), he left her partition of shame undefiled (intemeratum septum pudo­ ris), her seals of virginity intact (inuiolata integritatis signacula).92 In Ambrose’s prayer for the consecration of virgins, he refers to physical virginity in terms resembling those he used for Mary: apart from mastery over her own womb (uas), the preservation of the barriers of chastity (claustria pudicitiae), the seals and later the wall of truth (signacula uerita­ tis, ueritatis murum), the partition of shame (septum pudoris).93 Ambrose’s explanation, a year later, in our initial text Exh. 6.35 of the disaster that is the virgin’s loss of virginity does not apply to Mary. The virgins would damage their own true selves, their identity as the image of God or soul (though Ambrose does not formulate it thus). Mary’s position is of a different order: the interest of her “own true self” is insignificant compared to the fruit of her womb and the salvation of humankind. In this respect, Eve is equally unique: her sin set salvation history in motion, a sin which only could be repaired in Mary. 3. Conclusion Gregory extols virginity by elevating it into the Trinity. Thus, virginity restores the relation between God and humanity. This is brought about of six occurrences for contubernium corporis are Ambrose’s and the other two are postAmbrosian (a query in Library of Latin Texts http://clt.brepolis.net.access.authkb.kb.nl). 90  Ambrose, Virg. 1.8.46: Decet … ut plene noueris, uirgo, quem diligis atque omne in eo et ingenitae diuinitatis et adsumptae mysterium incorporationis agnoscas. Candidus …, quia patris splendor, rubeus, quia partus est uirginis. Color in eo fulget et rutilat utriusque naturae, in SAEMO 14.1, 146. 91  Ambrose, Virg. 1.8.47; 3.5.21-22. 92  Ambrose, Inst. 8.52. 93  Ambrose, Inst. 17.111-112.



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by God physically entering Mary, thus enabling the virgins to be appropriated by God spiritually. Gregory here uses the rare word divinization. By and large, Ambrose follows Gregory’s reasoning in Virg., but even here he shows more interest in Christ and the embodiment of his divine nature, though he is still ambivalent about whether the divine and human natures were mixed or separated in Christ. Ambrose thus confirms the contemporary interest in Christology that Brian Daley detected, as was pointed out in the introduction. While Gregory had mentioned Mary as the mother of God and virginal prototype, she became pivotal in Ambrose’s later virginity treatises. For Ambrose, Mary’s permanent virginity guaranteed that God only had contact with an unsoiled body during Christ’s incarnation. Ambrose’s reaction to the contemporary topic of Mary’s in partu virginity evoked a more physical expression of female virginity. The terminology was generalized to deter virgins from losing their virginity. The virgins follow Mary in a spiritual sense in pregnancy and in giving birth,94 but Mary’s role in salvation history is necessary and one-of-a-kind, a transformation of Eve. V.  General Conclusion In a passage from his last virginity treatise, Exh. 6.35, Ambrose is boldly specific about the physicality of virginity, when he explains what is at stake for female virgins when they lose their virginity. This passage led to a discussion of the idea that virginity is a means of preserving a person’s true self, and of how this is related to the body. In Exh. 6.36 Ambrose points to prelapsarian man and woman as the ideal to which the virgin must aspire. Twenty years earlier, Gregory had already discussed these same topics. In his Vrgt. 12–14, Gregory of Nyssa argues that the choice to lead a virginal life reverses the estrangement of the human being from God that is caused by the Fall. However, the aetiological retracing of the stages of the Fall is not an exact mirror image of the metaphorically interpreted phases of spiritual ascent that follow virginity. The virgin’s goal is Paul’s heaven and not the prelapsarian Adam’s paradise, but both have in common that the human being delights in God’s presence. Gregory seems to struggle with the body and its gendering while describing the creation of the human being. He cannot wholeheartedly declare that he believes  Ambrose, Inst. 17.109.

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that the image of God is restricted to the soul (Genesis 1), but leaves the matter unresolved. Inconsistencies in Gregory’s discourse, such as on dual creation, and sexual intercourse as cause of the Fall, perhaps betray subliminal influences from Philo’s Opif. The human body is associated with clay (Genesis 2) and is, just like gendering (Genesis 2), somehow connected to the Fall. Emphasis on freedom of choice as the main similarity between God and the human being (God’s image) makes the human being responsible for the Fall, but implicitly also for his recovery in virginity. While man’s Fall is described in terms that have a sexual connotation, Gregory assures his readers when he introduces woman that sex occurred only outside paradise. Woman’s guilt is related to her punishment of painful labour. Procreation, qualified as transmitting death, punishes both genders. To remain oneself in virginity is to distance oneself from the bodily senses and passions. While Gregory is not interested in Eve, who remains anonymous in his virginity treatise, Ambrose gives a central position to the rehabilitation of woman in his defence of the perpetual virginity of Mary. In Inst. 3.16–4.29 Ambrose describes the human being created according to God’s intention as consisting of the ungendered soul, the image of God (Genesis 1), and a gendered body, with the body subjected to the soul and woman to man. Thus, woman’s inferiority to man is natural, and is not part of woman’s punishment. The body is made from clay, woman’s body is made out of man’s formed clay (Genesis 2). Man and woman did not have sex in paradise. Though woman is responsible for the Fall, she is partly exculpated by mitigating factors that are unfavourable to man with regard to nature, disobedience, admission of guilt. Man’s punishment of mortality as a return to earthliness is contrasted with woman’s life-giving punishment of procreation. Woman’s generation of mortal life results in Mary and the Church, who provide eternal life. Man benefits from the fact that woman bears her punishment, and he should follow her example. Eve developed into Mary, who gave virginity its supreme appeal. Ambrose’s contention that the virgin is not excluded from paradise, but elevated to heaven, is reminiscent of Gregory’s Vrgt. 12–14. Ambrose’s Virg. (377) resembles Gregory’s Vrgt. (372) a lot in his description of virginity as an entity in heaven, given by God to raise humankind from its present condition after God’s incarnation in Mary as the prototype for Christ’s spiritual appropriation of the virgin. Both emphasize Christ’s divinity and call Mary “mother of God.” Ambrose differs from Gregory in his focus on Christ. Gregory demonstrates the superior status of virginity by placing it in the heart of the Trinity as a



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relational attribute of each of its persons. Although Christ plays a more prominent role than the Trinity in Ambrose’s Virg., Ambrose’s thinking about how Christ’s divine nature relates to his human nature or body has not come to a resolution yet, affirming Daley’s observation about the popularity of Christology at the time. Christ’s divinization of the flesh is not limited to his own flesh, but also encompasses virginal flesh. The term contubernium seems to refer to mixture, but Ambrose also argues that both natures are separate. In order to guarantee that the flesh that God assumed was undefiled, Ambrose in Inst. defended Mary’s in partu virginity in terms that indicate that Christ did not break her hymen during his birth. Ambrose uses a similar physical terminology in his prayer for the consecration of virgins, a preeminent mystagogical instrument, but referring there to the virgin’s virginity which must be kept intact. Inst. was an important means of transition to the very physical description of virginity in Exh. 6.35, both in its rehabilitation of Eve and in the physical terms used to defend Mary’s permanent virginity to ensure Christ’s corporeal purity. If the goal of mystagogy is to open up the mystes to the presence of the divine by transcending this-worldly, fallen reality and the corresponding perception of oneself, the exhortation to virginity as the start of inner transformation that appears in the virginity treatises by Gregory of Nyssa and Ambrose of Milan complies with this definition. Neither Gregory in his exploration of 372 nor Ambrose in the development of his ideas in his virginity treatises written between 377 and 393, is communicating a “static and monolithic block” of dogma to their “mystes” when they argue that the pre-eminence of virginity is connected with creation and the Fall and with Christology.95

 The term is used with another connotation by van Geest, “Studying the Mystagogy of the Fathers,” 16. 95

The Concept of the Human Body in Ambrose of Milan’s Mystagogical Works and Parallels with John Chrysostom’s Baptismal Homilies Manuel Mira I. Introduction Although Ambrose, as an author, was greatly influenced by Neoplatonic thinking,1 his mystagogical catecheses express a positive view of the human body.2 Ambrose’s mystagogical thought can primarily be found in De mysteriis, which tradition has unanimously attributed to the bishop of Milan; De sacramentis, burdened with many formal imperfections showing its oral transmission, shares many ideas with De mysteriis. It seems clear that Ambrose’s detailed treatise, De mysteriis, was the result of notes taken down during the preaching of his homily, De sacramentis.3 If so, De sacramentis, whose formal imperfections should not be ascribed to Ambrose, can also be regarded as a justified object of research since the ideas necessary to outline a coherent image of Ambrose’s mystagogical thinking can be drawn from it. 1  The influence of the various philosophical schools on Ambrose was studied by Goulven Madec, Saint Ambrose et la philosophie (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1974). 2  Regarding the thought of the Fathers on the body, see Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988; Twentieth-Anniversary Edition with New Introduction, Columbia Classics in Religion, 2008), and more recently Pascal-Grégoire Delage, Les Pères de l’Église et la chair: Entre incarnation et diabolisation, les premiers chrétiens au risque du corps. Actes du cinquième colloque de La Rochelle, Sept. 9-11, 2011 (Royan: Caritas Patrum, 2012). This volume includes two articles on Ambrose: A. Canellis, “Jeûne et éloge de la gourmandise dans le De Helia et ieiunio d’Ambroise de Milan,” 217-245, which demonstrates the dependence of Ambrose’s work on the homilies De ieiunio by Basil of Caesarea; D. Lhuillier-Martinetti, “Le mariage et l’inflexion chretienne: L’âge de la nubilité dans les écrits d’Ambroise de Milan,” 337-350. 3  See Craig Alan Satterlee, Ambrose of Milan’s Method of Mystagogical Preaching (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002), 20-29, which contains many references to modern studies on the topic.

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Both writings are dated around 387-391,4 at the beginning of Ambrose’s mature period, marked by the discovery of the spiritual value of the biblical book The Song of Songs.5 Their structure follows the development of the rite of Christian initiation, whose stages in Milan were as follows: the effetha rite, the renunciation of Satan and the profession of faith in Jesus, the entry into the baptistery, the preaching of the cross, the anointing of the neophytes’ body, their immersion into the baptismal font, the postbaptismal anointing, the coming forth from the font, the clothing with white robes, the washing of the feet to remove original sin, the confirmation or spiritual seal, the entrance into the church, and – finally – participation in the Eucharist. In De mysteriis a huge effort is made to arrange the biblical quotations, which are presented in chronological order. The aforementioned works contain frequent references to carnal and material realities. Some references are based on a distinction between the sensible and the invisible world, according to the Platonic vision of the world, which is congruent with Christian doctrine. Others, most of them, refer to the central themes of the patristic reflection on Christian initiation, such as the redeeming work of Christ, the baptismal rites as transmitters of redemption, and the participation of the faithful in his salvation. We will deal with the Ambrosian texts in this order, at the same time paying attention to the parallels with the mystagogical practices at Antioch and, more concretely, with the homilies of John Chrysostom.6 II.  The Gap between the Spiritual World and the Material World Ambrose often declares that what we see in the administration of the sacraments of Christian initiation is simple and habitual, but what is actually accomplished through them is heavenly and divine. The bishop 4  Cf. Spiegazione del Credo, I sacramenti, I misteri, La penitenza, ed. Gabriele Banterle, SAEMO 17 (Milan: Biblioteca Ambrogiana; Rome: Città Nuova, 1982), 18. 5  The thesis was supported by Ernst Dassmann, La sobria ebbrezza dello Spirito: La spiritualità di S. Ambrogio, vescovo di Milano, Studi di spiritualità ambrosiana (Sacro Monte: Romite Ambrosiane, 1975), 178-189. 6  On the relationship between Ambrose of Milan and John Chrysostom see Jean Daniélou, Bible et liturgie: La théologie biblique des sacrements et des fêtes d’après les Pères de l’Église (Paris: Cerf, 1951). Nevertheless, Daniélou does not take into account Chry­ sostom’s homilies discovered by Wenger, which were later published. See also Hugh M. Riley, Christian Initiation: A Comparative Study of the Interpretation of the Baptismal Liturgy in the Mystagogical Writings of Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Ambrose of Milan, Studies in Christian Antiquity 17 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1974).



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of Milan, drawing from Sacred Scripture, urges his listeners to cast off doubts and strengthen their faith; he reminds them that the invisible reality is superior to the visible one. 1.  The Priests, Angels of God Describing the renunciation of Satan and the conversion to Christ, Ambrose points out that the promise made by the neophytes is written in the book of the living that is kept in heaven, and the priests, who have heard the oath, are the angels of God who will remember it forever. The bishop reminds his listeners that they saw “the Levite, the priest, and the high priest”; however, he instructs them not to consider the ministers’ bodies but their grace.7 2.  The Water Is a Source of Salvation In the first description of the baptismal font, depicted by Ambrose in the third chapter of De mysteriis, the bishop explains the presence of God acting through the water by referring to five biblical stories: creation, the deluge, the passage through the Red Sea, the waters of Marah and the healing of Naaman, the Syrian.8 This list is preceded by a programmatic statement: What did you see? Water, certainly, but not water alone; you saw the deacons ministering there, and the bishop asking questions and hallowing. First of all, the Apostle taught you that those things are not to be considered “which we see, but the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” For you read elsewhere: “That the invisible things of God, since the creation of the world, are understood through those things which have been made; His eternal power also and Godhead are estimated by His works.” Wherefore also the Lord Himself 7  See De mysteriis 2.5-7, see SAEMO 17, ed. Banterle, 138. Ambrose takes the identification of the priest with the angel from Mal 2:7: Quia labia sacerdotis custodiunt scientiam, et legem exquirunt ex ore ipsius, quoniam angelus est domini omnipotentis. 8  Tertullian in De baptismo refers to the first four stories: creation (4), deluge (8), the Red Sea and the waters of Marah (9). He also underlines the difference between the external acts accomplished by the ministers and the internal effects of grace produced by these acts (De baptismo 5.5 and 7.2), but he does not stress that what the neophyte sees is different from the effects that are produced. Nevertheless, Tertullian is probably also a source for Ambrose’s mystagogical ideas (Tertullianus, De baptismo, ed. J. G. P. Bor­ leffs in Tertullianus, Opera I: Opera catholica. Adversus Marcionem, ed. E. Dekkers et al., CCSL 1 [Turnhout: Brepols, 1954]).

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says: “If ye believe not Me, believe at least the works.” Believe, then, that the presence of the Godhead is there. Do you believe the working, and not believe the presence? Whence should the working proceed unless the presence went before?9

Firstly, Ambrose recalls the experiences shared by the neophytes, their visual perception of the ministers and water; this is the first step in the mystagogical method described by Satterlee.10 Then, he invites the new faithful to perceive a hidden reality behind the appearances. He reminds them of the existence of superior, invisible realities, adding that the invisible God can be known through the reality, which He himself created. In the rites of initiation, His presence is perceived through the effects produced, that is, through spiritual rebirth. Van Willigen shows that the bishop employs biblical texts to explain to the faithful that the rites are carriers of grace.11 Ambrose will later emphasize the extraordinary nature of the fruit of baptism by equating it with the prodigious results of biblical events regarded as figures of baptism, such as the healing of Naaman from leprosy. In the fourth chapter, Ambrose explains in detail the transforming force of the water by commenting on two further Bible scenes, the healing of the paralytic in the waters of the pool of Siloe and the baptism of the Lord. Moreover, Ambrose asserts that it is not necessary to dwell on the physical nature of the water as perceived through the eyes, nor to doubt its effectiveness, as Naaman did. Rather, he encourages his audience to remember the veracity of the statement in Scripture about the joint witness of water, blood and spirit (John 5:8) as well as to accept the supernatural efficacy of baptism, given that these three witnesses are at work  Quid uidisti? Aquas utique, sed non solas: leuitas illic ministrantes, summum sacerdotem interrogantem et consecrantem. Primum omnium, docuit te apostolus “non ea” contemplanda “nobis, quae uidentur, sed quae non uidentur, quoniam, quae uidentur, temporalia sunt, quae autem non uidentur, aeterna” (2 Cor 4:18). Nam et alibi habes, quia “inuisibilia Dei a creatura mundi per ea, quae facta sunt, conprehenduntur, sempiterna quoque uirtus eius et diuinitas” (Rom 1:20) operibus aestimatur. Vnde et ipse dominus ait: “Si mihi non creditis, uel operibus credite” (John 10:38). Crede ergo diuinitatis illic adesse praesentiam. Operationem credis, non credis praesentiam? Unde sequeretur operatio, nisi praecederet ante praesentiam? (De mysteriis 3.8, see SAEMO 17, ed. Banterle, 138-140; ET: Ambrose, Selected Works and Letters, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, NPNF Series II 10 (Buffalo, NY: The Christian Literature Company, 1896, repr. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989 and 2007), 318. 10  Cf. Satterlee, Ambrose of Milan’s Method, 137. 11  Cf. Marten van Willigen, “St. Ambrose’s Mystagogy: A Learning Process to ‘See with the Eyes of Faith’,” in Seeing through the Eyes of Faith: New Approaches to the Mystagogy of the Church Fathers, ed. Paul van Geest, LAHR 11; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 2 (Louvain: Peeters, 2016), 501-509, at 506-507. 9



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in it. This affirmation is a reproach to an unbelieving neophyte, who expresses doubt as to the salvific efficacy of the baptismal water, after having seen that it is still the same water (De mysteriis 4.9). Secondly, Ambrose presents the healing at Siloe. He acknowledges that, unlike the moving waters of the Siloe pool, the waters of the baptismal font do not move. However, he repeats that faith is sufficient for a Christian whereas unbelievers demand evidence (De mysteriis 4.22). When describing the baptism of the Lord, the bishop refers to the sacrifice offered by Elijah, in which fire was sent down from heaven (1 Kgs 18:36-38).12 He adds that attention should not be paid to the individual merits of the priests who celebrate baptism, but rather to their office, the counsel already offered in De mysteriis 2, which recalls that they celebrate a mystery first received from the Lord by Peter and Paul. Lastly, he concludes that the fire was sent from heaven so that the Jewish people of Elijah’s days might believe, while for Christians, who already believe, it is the Invisible One who is at work (De mysteriis 5.27). Ambrose seems to have been pressed by people who, disagreed with him after listening to his explanation of the extraordinary effects of baptism in De mysteriis 3, where he compares baptism to Naaman’s healing. They claimed that the miracles of the Old Testament were truly miraculous phenomena, whereas such phenomena do not occur in the Christian sacraments. Ambrose replies by emphasizing the need for faith, and he makes this argument on the basis both of biblical narrations and the priestly action during the sacramental rites. 3.  Supremacy of the Eucharist over Manna In De mysteriis 8, Ambrose explains that the Eucharist, which the neophytes will see and take for the first time, is more ancient and more valuable than the manna God gave to the Israelites on their journey through the desert. The bishop goes back to a hypothetical critic who tries to diminish the value of the Eucharist on the grounds that the miracle was more evident in the manna event. He replies that, not only is the Eucharist older because one of its types, the offering of Melchizedek, predates the miracle of manna,13 it is also of greater value than the 12  Daniélou, Bible et Liturgie, 145-147, lists the authors who use the scene of the sacrifice of Elijah as a type of baptism, and mentions, besides Ambrose, Origen and Gregory of Nyssa. 13  Ambrose does not believe that all the content of the Eucharistic mystery is present in the sacrifice of Melchizedek. The bishop of Milan distinguishes between two ways in

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manna, the bread of angels, because it is the body of the Lord of the Angels. The answer to those who despise the Eucharist is again based on the superiority of the spiritual and invisible reality over the material and visible one: We must now pay attention, lest perchance anyone seeing that what is visible (for things which are invisible cannot be seen nor comprehended by human eyes), should say, “God rained down manna and rained down quails upon the Jews,” but for the Church beloved of Him the things which He has prepared are those of which it is said: “That eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him.”14

This theme was already mentioned in De mysteriis 2, 3, 4 and 5. Ambrose aims to explain the sacraments: despite appearing as ordinary, the sacraments contain a transforming reality. He tries to highlight the interior and invisible grace of the sacraments, referring to their Old Testament types, but this approach proved fruitless. In fact, the Old Testament types reveal miraculous manifestations of God’s intervention, while the sacraments do not. Therefore, he emphasizes the biblical texts that confirm the existence of this transforming reality as well as the fact that the celebrants of the sacrament are priests. He demands faith in the mediations of divine grace, finding support for this demand in the existence of an intelligible world, accepted in his cultural environment. This appeal seems to be a tacit approval of Platonic philosophy, as McLynn has suggested; this scholar has pointed to the perfect fusion of this philosophical setting and the Christian spirit of Ambrose.15 In fact, the bishop refers to the spiritual world using only words from Scripture, as which the mystery is present: in types or prefigurations, in which the presence of the mystery is veiled and the content of grace is inferior; and in fulfilment, where the presence of the mystery is complete and supernatural grace is offered. In this regard, see S. Soto Martorell, Inserción del cristiano en la historia de la salvación por medio de los sacramentos de la iniciación cristiana (diss. Rome, 1990), 149-154. 14  Nunc illud consideremus, ne quis forte uisibilia uidens – quoniam quae sunt inuisibilia, non uidentur nec possunt humanis oculis comprehendi – dicat forte: “Iudaeis deus manna pluit, pluit coturnices, ecclesiae autem suae illi dilectae haec sunt, quae praeparauit, de quibus dictum est: Quod oculus non uidit nec auris audiuit nec in cor hominis ascendit, quae praeparauit deus diligentibus eum?” (1 Cor 2:9) (De mysteriis 8.44; see SAEMO 17, ed. Banterle, 158-159); ET: NPNF Series II 10, ed. Schaff and Wace, 323. 15  Cf. Neil B. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 22 (Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1994), 240-243. The author reminds us that, according to Madec, Saint Ambrose et la philosophie, 69-71, the bishop quotes Plato, Symposion 203b, in De bono mortis 21.



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van Willigen has clearly indicated.16 According to Madec, Ambrose is very critical of philosophy because of its attempt to understand the world without the help of God’s revelation, and sometimes even in opposition to it.17 The bishop had an ambivalent attitude towards philosophy, similar to other Fathers of the Church. Chrysostom also mentions the distinction between the invisible and visible worlds, in the third homily of the Papadopoulos-Kerameus series: Why do we wear this name (“faithful,” MM)? We, the faithful, have received in deposit certain realities that our bodily eyes cannot see, realities so great and awesome that they exceed our very nature. Human reason cannot discover them. Nor can human words explain them. It is only the teaching of the faith that understands them well. For this reason God has given us two types of eyes, those of the body and those of faith. When you enter to be initiated into the holy mysteries, the eyes of the body see water whereas those of the spirit discern the Spirit. The first contemplate the immersed body; the second see the tomb of the old self. The former see flesh being washed; the latter see the soul being purified. The former see the body coming up out of the water; the latter see the new self all resplendent coming forth from this holy purification. The former see the priest raise and then impose his right hand, touching the head; the latter see the High Priest who invisibly extends his right hand from the heavens on high and who touches the head. As to the person who baptizes, he is not a man but the only Son of God in persona.18

According to Piédagnel, this homily was pronounced in Antioch in the year 388.19 However, Mayer believes that Piédagnel’s hypothesis is not supported by sound arguments; she hopes that a new date can be determined based on stricter criteria;20 until the completion of this  Cf. van Willigen, “St. Ambrose Mystagogy,” 506-507.  Cf. Madec, Saint’Ambrose et la philosophie. 18  Catechesis 3.3, in Jean Chrysostome, Trois catéchèses baptismales, ed. and trans. Auguste Piédagnel and Louis Doutreleau, SC 366 (Paris: Cerf, 1990), 220; ET: L. J. Johnson, Worship in the Early Church: An Anthology of Historical Sources, vol. 2 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009), 205-206. 19  Cf. SC 366, ed. Piédagnel and Doutreleau, 38-39; it is stated that it was pronounced on the Wednesday in Holy Week (212, n. 1). 20  See Wendy Mayer, The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom. Provenance: Reshaping the Foundations, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 273 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 2005). The author presents the “status quaestionis” in the first chapter, and then offers a list of methods for fixing the date. In the third chapter, she criticizes these ways of reasoning, and in the fourth and last chapter proposes a more reliable dating method, which can be applied to some homilies. Mayer deals with the dating of Chrysostom’s homilies published by Piédagnel on pages 236-237; she does not include these among the homilies dated on the basis of incontestable arguments. 16 17

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study, Ambrose’s dependence on Chrysostom can only be a temporary hypothesis. Although it is difficult to identify any passage in the writings of Ambrose that is similar to the previous quotation, we find many ideas here that can also be found in Ambrose’s works. More specifically, the bishop explains the reason behind the name “faithful” in De sacramentis 1.1.1; he mentions the water and the priest seen by the neophyte in De mysteriis 2.6 and 3.8; he mentions the eyes of the body in De mysteriis 3.15; he appeals to faith in De mysteriis 2.6, 3.8, and in 8.44, although he does not refer to the eyes of faith. On the other hand, there are some differences between the two bishops: Ambrose often quotes 2 Cor 4:18, and Rom 1:20, texts that do not explicitly compel humans to believe, but that, rather, awaken awareness of an invisible reality, whereas Chrysostom does not use these biblical quotations in his mystagogical works. III.  Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the Flesh 1.  The Eucharist and the Virginal Birth of Jesus Ambrose clarifies in De mysteriis 9 that one must believe that the Eucharist is not merely bread but the Body of Christ. To prove this, he reminds us that in the Old and the New Testament the words of both the prophets and the Lord transform the nature of things. He underlines that the Lord was born not according to the laws of nature but in a different way. He then recalls the words with which Jesus instituted the sacrament of the Eucharist.21 He exalts the beauty of this nourishment and urges everyone to receive it. The reasoning, which starts from the virgin birth of Christ, is as follows: But why make use of arguments? Let us use the examples He gives, and by the example of the Incarnation prove the truth of the mystery. Did the course of nature proceed as usual when the Lord Jesus was born of Mary? If we look to the usual course, a woman ordinarily conceives after connection with a man. And this body which we make is that which was born of the Virgin. Why do you seek the order of nature in the Body of Christ, seeing that the Lord Jesus Himself was born of a Virgin, not according to nature? It is the true Flesh of Christ 21  Satterlee, Ambrose of Milan’s Method, 180-185, affirms that Ambrose is the first Latin author who explains the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist with this degree of clarity.



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which was crucified and buried, this is then truly the Sacrament of His Body.22

The mystery of the incarnation of the Lord is the best proof of the mystery of the Eucharist, where bread actually changes into the body of Christ.23 Just as the Lord was not born naturally, because he was born of a virgin,24 so the Eucharist presents itself in a way that is not natural, because under the appearance of bread the body of Christ is truly present. Ambrose demonstrates the truth of Christ’s body, remembering that he died and was truly buried.25 Ambrose wrote De incarnationis dominicae sacramento in 381 to correct the mistakes of the followers of Apollinaris of Laodicea.26 In this work, he explains that the Lord assumed a real human body, which, moreover, must be distinguished from his divinity. The truth of the body of Jesus is proved in two passages where Ambrose recalls the earthly existence of the Lord, explaining that every event Jesus lived on earth was experienced in his flesh, not in his divinity.27 The bishop shows that, in his passion, the Lord assumed our characteristics, including mortality, to give us his particularity, his resurrection, that is, his everlasting life, that defeated death.28 In De mysteriis, Ambrose emphasizes that Jesus allows 22  Sed quid argumentis utimur? Suis utamur exemplis incarnationisque mysteriis adstruamus mysterii ueritatem. Numquid naturae usus praecessit, cum Iesus dominus ex Maria nasceretur? Si ordinem quaerimus, uiro mixta femina generare consueuit. Liquet igitur, quod praeter naturae ordinem uirgo generauit. Et hoc quod conficimus corpus ex uirgine est. Quid hic quaeris naturae ordinem in Christi corpore, cum praeter naturam sit ipse dominus Iesus partus ex uirgine? Vera utique caro Christi, quae crucifixa est, quae sepulta est: uero ergo carnis illius sacramentum est (De mysteriis 9.53; see SAEMO 17, ed. Banterle, 164-165); NPNF Series II 14, ed. Schaff and Wace, 324. 23  “Problèmes de texte et d’interprétation dans les traités De sacramentis et De mysteriis d’Ambroise de Milan,” in Nec timeo mori: Atti del Congresso internazionale di studi ambrosiani nel XVI centenario della morte di Sant’Ambrogio: Milano, 4-1& aprile 1997, ed. Luigi F. Pizzolato and Marco Rizzi (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1998), 537-547, at 546547, thinks that suis must be translated in a way that is “appropriate to the nature of the argument”: the logic of the mystery, which is at the basis of the Eucharist, can only be understood by starting from another mystery. 24  The same reasoning can be found in De sacramentis 4.4.17. 25  De sacramentis 1.5.17 deals with the truth of the flesh of Jesus, distinguishing the real way in which Jesus took on flesh from the apparitional way in which the Holy Spirit took the form of a dove. 26  See Lo Spirito Santo, Il mistero dell’incarnazione del Signore, ed. E. Bellini, SAEMO 16 (Milan: Biblioteca Ambrogiana; Rome: Città Nuova, 1979), 359-361. 27  Cf. De incarnationis dominicae sacramento 5.35-40, a passage that describes the passion of the Lord in detail, and 6.54-55, where there are some thoughts on the birth of Jesus from the Virgin. 28  Cf. De incarnationis dominicae sacramento 5.44-45.

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us to participate in his death and resurrection through the sacraments, applying the same vision of the flesh we find in the Christological treatise mentioned above. 2.  The Purification of the Flesh, the Purpose of Jesus’ Baptism in the Jordan De mysteriis contains only a brief reference to the baptism of the Lord, but De sacramentis includes an explanation as to why Jesus submitted himself to baptism. He had no need to be baptized but submitted to it in order to purify humankind: Therefore, why did Christ descend, except that that flesh of yours might be cleansed, the flesh which he took over from our condition? For no washing away of His sins was necessary for Christ, “who did no sin,” but it was necessary for us who remain subject to sin. Therefore, if baptism is for our sakes, the form has been established for us, the form of our faith has been set forth.29

The passage has a clear parallel with the Expositio in Lucam, where Ambrose also states that the flesh of the Lord is immaculate and did not need purification. Jesus, Ambrose continues, wanted to take human nature upon himself in order to purify it; he adds that the Lord accomplished the salvation of humanity on the cross, when water and blood flowed from his side, thus forming his bride, that is, saved humanity.30 According to Brown, Ambrose believes that the flesh of humankind is unclean because it was conceived through a sexual act.31 Maschio, however, thinks this analysis is unsatisfactory. He recalls that Ambrose does not relate the virginal birth of Jesus to purity, but to his origin in the Father, who alone generates him in the womb of the Trinity. Moreover, the flesh of Christ is the goal to which every human being is called in order to enjoy the union with God in heaven.32 Instead, Neumann explains that Ambrose proves the virginal birth of the Lord by providing biblical affirmations and convincing 29  Ergo quare Christus descendit, nisi ut caro ista mundaretur, caro, quam suscepit de nostra condicione? Non enim ablutio peccatorum suorum Christo necessaria erat, qui peccatum non fecit, sed nobis erat necessaria, qui peccato manemus obnoxii. Ergo si propter nos baptismum, nobis forma est constituta, fidei nostrae forma proposita est (De sacramentis 1.5.16; see SAEMO 17, ed. Banterle, 52-53). ET: Saint Ambrose, Theological and Dogmatic Works, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, FOTC 44 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963), 274-275. 30  Cf. Expositio in Lucam 2.86-87. 31  Cf. Brown, The Body and Society, 351-353. 32  Cf. G. Maschio, “Uomo, donna e matrimonio nel pensiero di Ambrogio di Milano,” Communio 230 (2011): 48-59, at 58.



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a­ rguments, such as the fact that if the birth of Jesus had not been virginal, he would have been born with original sin.33 Neumann and Brown seem to have a better understanding of Ambrose’s thought on original sin as it is transmitted by sexual procreation. 3.  “And from His Side Came Blood and Water” In De sacramentis, Ambrose explains that as Eve was formed from the side of Adam, the sacraments come forth from the wounded side of Jesus Christ: Have you learned this, then? Accept another example. At the time of the Lord’s passion, when the great Sabbath was approaching, because our Lord and the thieves were living, men were sent to beat them. They came and found our Lord Jesus Christ dead. Then one of the soldiers touched His side with a lance, and from His side flowed water and blood. Why water, why blood? Water, that He might cleanse; blood, that He might redeem. Why from the side? Because from where fault comes, from there also comes grace: fault through a woman, grace through our Lord Jesus Christ.34

In De paradiso, Ambrose mentions the creation of Eve from Adam’s side as well as their sin. In the previous passage from De sacramentis, the bishop of Milan refers to the role that Eve played in the event: she ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil first, and then convinced Adam to eat from it as well. Therefore, Eve is guilty of the fault. Ambrose provides an allegorical exegesis of this story in the same treatise De paradiso. Adam is the mind or the “nous,” and Eve is the sensibility or the “aisthēsis”; sensibility was attracted to sin first, and then it pushed the mind to sin; in fact, Adam does not receive the 33  Cf. Charles William Neumann, The Virgin Mary in the Works of Saint Ambrose, Paradosis 17 (Fribourg: University Press, 1962), 77-78, who quotes Ambrosius Mediola­ nensis, Expositio psalmi 37.5 (Ambrosius, Explanatio psalmorum XII, ed. M. Petschenig, CSEL 64 [Vienna: Tempsky; Leipzig: Freytag, 1919], 140, lines 7-9). 34  Didicisti ergo hoc? Accipe et aliud. In tempore dominicae passionis cum sabbatum magnum instaret, quia uiuebat dominus noster Iesus Christus uel latrones, missi sunt, qui percuterent eos. Venientes inuenerunt defunctum dominum nostrum Iesum Christum. Tunc unus de militibus lancea tetigit latus eius, et de latere eius aqua fluxit et sanguis. Quare aqua, quare sanguis? Aqua, ut mundaret, sanguis ut redimeret. Quare de latere! Quia unde culpa, inde et gratia: culpa per feminam, gratia per dominum nostrum Iesum Christum (De sacramentis 5.1.4; see SAEMO 17, ed. Banterle, 104-105; ET: FOTC 44, trans. Deferrari, 310. Ambrose explains in greater depth that the wound in Jesus’ side refers to the creation of Eve in Expositio in Lucam 2.87, where he affirms that God continually forms woman from the side of Christ, that is, his Church with humankind through the sacraments.

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c­ ommand not to eat from the tree of knowledge before the creation of Eve.35 The comment, reflecting the influence of Philo’s Platonism, is based on a negative view of corporeity, which is seen as a source of instability for the spirit.36 Ambrose, however, adopts a balanced approach with the doctrine of free will, according to which the source of sin lies in the free will of humans.37 The body is blamed for impelling human beings to sin in De sacramentis 1.5.16, De mysteriis 3.11-12 and De mysteriis 3.13; but in the mystagogical works, this attitude is counterbalanced by the recognition of the purity of the flesh of Christ, communicated to humans through the sacraments. This is in line with what Ambrose had stated in De incarnationis dominicae sacramento, namely, that Jesus gave his spirit to the flesh to transform it.38 Chrysostom provides much the same exegesis as Ambrose, in the third homily of the Wegner series, as highlighted below: When Christ was dead, but still on the cross, the soldier came and pierced His side with a lance and straightway there came out water and blood. The one was a symbol of baptism, the other of the mysteries. Therefore, he did not say: “There came out blood and water,” but first water came forth and then blood, since first comes baptism and then the mysteries. It was the soldier, then, who opened Christ’s side and dug through the rampart of the holy temple, but I am the one who has found the treasure and gotten the wealth. So it was with the lamb. The Jews sacrificed the victim, but I reaped the reward of salvation which came from their sacrifice. “There came out from His side water and blood.” Beloved, do not pass this mystery by without a thought. For I have still another mystical explanation to give. I said that there was a symbol of baptism and the mysteries in that blood and water. It is from both of these that the Church is sprang “through the bath of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit,” through baptism and the mysteries. But the symbols of baptism and the mysteries come from the side of Christ. It is from His side, therefore, that Christ formed His Church, just as He formed Eve from the side of Adam.39  Cf. Ambrose of Milan, De paradiso 2.11 (Ambrosius, Exameron, De paradiso, De Cain et Abel, De Noe, De Abraham, De Isaac, De bono mortis, ed. K. Schenkl, CSEL 32/1 [Prague and Vienna: Tempsky; Leipzig: Freytag, 1896]). 36  Cf. Philo, De opificio mundi 165.252; Legum allegoriae 3, 56.200; Quaestiones in Genesim 1, 47.112 (see e.g. Philonis Alexandrini opera quae supersunt, ed. Leopold Cohn and Paul Wendland, vols. I and III [Berlin: Reimer, 1896, repr. 1962]). 37  Cf. Dassmann, La sobria ebbrezza dello Spirito, 64-71. 38  Cf. De incarnationis dominicae sacramento 6, 57.59. 39  Catechesis 3.16-17, in Jean Chrysostome, Huit catéchèses baptismales inédites, ed. and trans. Antoine Wenger, SC 50bis (Paris: Cerf, 1970), 160-161; ET: St. John Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions, trans. Paul Harkins, ACW 31 (Westminster, MD, Mahwah, NJ and London: Newman Press, 1963), 61-62. 35



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According to Wenger, this homily was delivered at Easter in 390.40 However, Mayer does not consider his arguments convincing and includes the homily among those whose dating should be re-examined.41 Although it was translated into Latin by Anianus of Celeda at the beginning of the fourth century,42 it is possible that Ambrose read it in the original Greek. Chrysostom, more verbose than Ambrose, states that other people opened the sources of grace, but he himself took advantage of it. On the other hand, Ambrose adds that the salvation given by water and blood proceeds from the side of Christ because sin proceeded from the side of Adam, from where Eve, who caused Adam to sin, was created.43 Both authors organize their ideas by referring to the passage in the Gospel of John that describes how Jesus’s dead body was wounded in the side. They explain the symbolic meaning of water and blood as reversing the order of the elements and the event of the cross is linked with the creation of Eve from Adam’s side. Moreover, Chrysostom continues his interpretation of the passage, adding a quotation from Genesis and the corresponding commentary where he stresses that Adam’s sleep is parallel to Jesus’ death, thus confirming the hypothesis that the Antiochene priest may have inspired the bishop of Milan. 4.  The Resurrection of the Lord’s Flesh Ambrose deals with the white garment the neophytes wear after having been submerged in the baptismal font and having received the postbaptismal anointing in De mysteriis 7.34-42. The bishop states that the whiteness represents both the effect of purification from sins and the radiance of glory, relying on the texts of the Old and New Testaments. He conveys the beauty of the soul rising from the baptismal font with the words of the bridesmaids of the Song of Songs, who are amazed by the beauty of the bride. Ambrose underlines this amazement and compares it to the surprise experienced by the angels when they saw the risen Lord ascending into heaven. Later, the Lord praises the beauty of the  Cf. SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 63-65.  Cf. Mayer, The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom, 232-233. 42  Cf. SC 50bis, ed. Wenger, 32. 43  The topic can be found also in Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 13.21. Similarly, Tertullian, De baptismo 9, and Origen, In Leviticum 8.10 (see Origenes, Homilien zum Hexateuch in Rufins Übersetzung. I: Die Homilien zu Genesis, Exodus und Leviticus, ed. Wilhelm Adolf Baehrens, GCS 29; Origenes Werke 6 [Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1920], 410), explain that the water and the blood are symbols, but they offer another interpretation of the blood, referring not to the sacrament of the Eucharist but to martyrdom. 40 41

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soul who receives baptism. Finally, the Lord invites the bride to put Him as a sign on her heart and as a seal on her arm. Ambrose explains that this invitation refers to the confirmation which the neophytes receive after they emerge from the baptismal font. Ambrose describes the astonishment of the angels when they see the Lord ascending with his body into heaven as follows: The angels, too, were in doubt when Christ arose; the powers of heaven were in doubt when they saw that flesh was ascending into heaven. Then they said: “Who is this King of glory?” And whilst some said “Lift up your gates, O princes, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in.” In Isaiah, too, we find that the powers of heaven doubted and said: “Who is this that cometh up from Edom, the redness of His garments is from Bosor, He who is glorious in white apparel?”44

The choice of the biblical texts referring to Christ underlines the astonishment at Jesus’ ascension into heaven after his resurrection, comparable to the astonishment expressed by the bridesmaids of Jerusalem at the beauty of the bride: they both contain references to ascent and astonishment. In this passage, Ambrose emphasizes that some angels recognize Christ and accept his ascension with body and soul into heaven, whereas others do not. Isaiah’s text contains a reference to the red colour of Jesus’ garments that recall his bloody passion. The ascent of the flesh into heaven was a surprise to the angels. The exaltation of matter clashes here with the limitations of the body that characterize Platonic philosophy. Although the bishop of Milan experiences the attraction of Platonic thought, in this instance he accepts faith in the ascension of Christ in body and soul and, by emphasizing the amazement of the angels, he expresses his own astonishment. De sacramentis recalls that the angels were struck by the bride ascending into heaven, without the reference to the ascension of the Lord’s flesh into heaven.45 Neither does De incarnationis dominicae sacramento contain a reference to Jesus’ ascension into heaven.46 Ambrose added this 44  Dubitauerunt enim etiam angeli, cum resurgeret Christus, dubitauerunt potestates caelorum uidentes, quod caro in caelum ascenderet. Denique dicebant: Quis est iste rex gloriae? (Ps 23:8). Et cum alii dicerent: Tollite portas, principes uestri, et eleuamini, portae aeternales, et introibit rex gloriae (Ps 23:7), alii dubitabant dicentes: Quis est iste rex gloriae? In Esaia quoque habes dubitantes uirtutes caelorum dixisse: Quis est iste, qui ascendit ex Edom, rubor uestimentorum eius ex Bosor, speciosus in stola candida? (Isa 63:1) (De mysteriis 7.36; see SAEMO 17, ed. Banterle, 154-155); NPNF Series II 14, ed. Schaff and Wace, 322. 45  Cf. De sacramentis 4.2.5; see SAEMO 17, ed. Banterle, 88. 46  However, this is not the first mention of the ascension of the Lord in Ambrose’s work, because he spoke on this topic during his yearly sermon on the mystery of the Lord’s ascension. In fact, B. Studer, “Ambrogio di Milano, teologo mistagogo,” in V ­ escovi



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positive assessment of the body in the reworking of his sermons that produced De mysteriis: his first and more spontaneous comment in De sacramentis is more Platonic than the second one. IV.  Body Language in the Service of the Revelation of the Mystery 1.  The Ritual of the Effetha Ambrose explains the rite of effetha in De mysteriis 1. During this ceremony, the contact of the priest with the body of the neophyte is very important.47 The priest touches the ear and the nose of the catechumen in order to enable him or her to hear the words of the priest, to respond to him in the following ritual, and to smell the fragrance of eternal life. The symbolism of the rite does not seem complete: the nose can smell the fragrance of eternal life, the ears can hear, but there is no reference to the mouth. The rite is a sort of exorcism, by which the sensory organs are liberated and the faculties connected with them can be used so that the catechumen can participate in the celebration of baptism. Moreover, Ambrose recalls that the Lord healed a deaf and mute man by making the same gesture. He explains that Jesus celebrates the same mystery in this miracle and clarifies that the Lord touches the ear and the mouth of the deaf and mute man because he is a man; unlike the mouth of a woman, that of a man may be touched without violating the rules of modesty. Further, in De sacramentis 1.2.3, Ambrose explores this topic explaining that the bishop should perform the rite for men and avoid it for women, because their lips could induce him to damage his purity; this reasoning justifies the liturgical gesture, which is different from Christ’s action. The reference to good odour may suggest that the bishop anointed the catechumen with fragrant oil, but according to Soto Martorell the reference, based on 2 Cor 2:15, has a metaphorical meaning.48 Ambrose, e pastori in epoca teodosiana, Studia ephemeridis “Augustinianum” 58 (Rome: Institutum patristicum Augustinianum, 1997), 569-586, 571, proposes that De fide 6.1-2, where Ambrose comments on Psalm 23, proceeds from a homily given on Ascension Day. 47  De mysteriis 1.3-4; see SAEMO 17, ed. Banterle, 136: Aperite igitur aures et bonum odorem uitae aeternae inhalatum uobis munere sacramentorum carpite! Quod uobis significauimus, cum aperitionis celebrantes mysterium diceremus effetha, quod est adaperire, ut uenturus unusquisque ad gratiam, quid interrogaretur, cognosceret, quid responderet, meminisse deberet. Hoc mysterium celebrauit Christus in euangelio, sicut legimus, cum mutum curaret et surdum. Sed ille os tetigit, quia et mutum curabat et uirum, in altero, ut os eius infusae sono uocis aperiret, in altero, quia tactus iste uirum decebat, feminam non deceret. 48  Cf. Soto Martorell, Inserción del cristiano, 91.

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summarizing Origen’s teaching on the spiritual senses of the soul, refers to the three senses of hearing, smell, and touch; the list of senses is even longer, because the last statement of the previous sequence is about the light infused during the “mysteria,” thus referring to spiritual eyes. The danger of impurity that Ambrose sees in dealing with women can signify a close union between the body and personal feelings, which might be incited by a caress. It is also a sign of how Ambrose takes care of his own Christian life; he does not want to denigrate the female body; rather, he wants to highlight the bishop’s response to contact with it. 2.  The Washing of the Feet The washing of the feet represents the healing of original sin, which is removed in baptism. Ambrose’s comment about this rite aims to defend its validity in the first place. He underlines that he continued performing the ritual even though the Church of Rome did not perform it. Ambrose assures his audience that he was not drifting away from Rome, to which he felt very close, but was remaining faithful to an ancient practice of the Church of Milan. Peter was clean, but he must wash his feet, for he had sin by succession from the first man, when the serpent overthrew him and persuaded him to sin. His feet were therefore washed, that hereditary sins might be done away, for our own sins are remitted through baptism.49

The sense of this rite is clear. Ambrose explains original sin by recalling the narration in the Book of Genesis, where the snake induces Eve and Adam to sin. He reminds us that the serpent wounds the foot with its bite; it seems logical then that the wound inflicted by the snake should be healed by applying the medication to the foot. Soto Martorell wonders what the sense of “hereditaria peccata” is and believes that it is not a fault but a tendency to sin; she refers to Ambrose’s Explanatio in psalmum 48.8–9, where he affirms that the wound to the foot of human beings or the “wickedness of the heel” (iniquitatem calcanei) means “more the inclination to sin than some crime we committed” (magis lubricum delinquendi quam reatum aliquem nostri esse delicti).50 49  Mundus erat Petrus, sed plantam lauare debebat; habebat enim primi hominis de sucessione peccatum, quando eum subplantauit serpens et persuasit errorem. Ideo planta eius abluitur, ut hereditaria peccata tollantur; nostra enim propria per baptismum relaxantur (De mysteriis 6.32; see SAEMO 17, ed. Banterle, 152-153); NPNF Series II 14, ed. Schaff and Wace, 321. 50  Cf. Soto Martorell, Inserción del cristiano, 121-123, who quotes Explanatio in psalmum 48.8-9 (see CSEL 64, ed. Petschenig, VI.365-366). My translation.



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In De carnis resurrectione 8, Tertullian explained that in the liturgy, the minister acts on the body in order to give salvation to the soul. Following the path chosen by his predecessor, Ambrose develops his ideas in his mystagogical works, underlining that the acts performed on the body manifest what happens in the soul. V.  Redeemed Flesh 1.  Carnal Sin, Purified by the Flood When Ambrose recalls that the Flood is a type of baptism, he mentions Gen 6.3, where God affirms that he will withdraw his Spirit from human beings because they are flesh. Moreover, Ambrose explains that God, angry at the impurity of the sinner, sends the waters to purify the bodies from carnal sin: Take another testimony. All flesh was corrupt by its iniquities. “My Spirit,” says God, “shall not remain among men, because they are flesh” (Gen 6, 3). Whereby God shows that the grace of the Spirit is turned away by carnal impurity and the pollution of grave sin. Upon which, God, willing to restore what was lacking, sent the flood and bade just Noah go up into the ark. The water, then, is that in which the flesh is dipped, that all carnal sin may be washed away. All wickedness is there buried.51

Ambrose does not demonize corporal reality, but he is aware that sin can proceed from unreasonable demands of the body; demands that are reasonable and acceptable when they ask for something good. Nevertheless, if a sinful request is accepted and accomplished, the grace of the Spirit is removed. God’s purpose is to repair what he has given; He does not want to destroy his work and then recreate it in a different way. Because of that, water washes the sting of sin, and makes the return of the Spirit possible. What is more, Ambrose points out that the return of the Spirit “inspires peace of mind and tranquillity of the soul (tibi pacem animi, tranquillitatem mentis inspirat)” in a person (De mysteriis 3.11), thus emphasizing the  Accipe aliud testimonium. Corrupta erat caro omnis ab iniquitatibus suis. Non permanebit, inquit, spiritus meus in hominibus quia carnes sunt. Quo ostendit Deus quia carnali inmunditia et gravioris labe peccati gratia spiritalis auertitur. Vnde, uolens deus reparare, quod dederat, diluuvium fecit, et iustum Noe in arcam iussit ascendere … Aqua est, qua caro mergitur, ut omne abluatur carnale peccatum. Sepelitur illic omne flagitium (De mysteriis 3.10-11; see SAEMO 17, ed. Banterle, 140-141); NPNF Series II 14, ed. Schaff and Wace, 318. 51

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inner dimension of spiritual healing achieved by baptism. In De sacramentis 2.1.1, Ambrose also refers to the deluge amongst the types of baptism, and emphasizes that sin died in it and righteousness was spared. In the treatise De Isaac vel anima, Ambrose reflects on human nature.52 He affirms that soul and body, of which humans are composed, are in a continuous struggle. Moreover, Ambrose points out that in Scripture the human being is sometimes referred to as a soul, meaning that the Jew seeks God, and sometimes as a body when the reference is to the sinful human, and he adds that St Paul expresses the desire to support the soul in the struggle against the body. He then tries to define the soul. Finally, he explains that the soul becomes carnal and detrimental if it turns either towards matter or towards pride under the influence of its irrational side; otherwise, it is perfect, when it dominates carnal desires and vices, and practices virtues.53 De mysteriis deals with the same teaching, but here Ambrose does not explain that the origin of wickedness lies not only in carnal feelings but also in pride, “petulantia.” 2.  The Extinction of Passions under the Shadow of the Holy Spirit The Red Sea passage is, as mentioned, one of the biblical episodes in which Ambrose sees a type of God’s saving presence in the water of the baptismal font (De mysteriis 3.12-13). Referring to 1 Cor 10:1-2, the bishop recalls that the Israelites were baptized “in the cloud and in the sea.” Ambrose points out that the passage of the Red Sea, in which the Egyptians died while the Israelites went through the sea and attained salvation, is similar to baptism, in which the Holy Spirit acts through the water. Likewise, guilt and error are abolished while piety and innocence arise from the water. He then insists on the manifestation of the Spirit as a shadow that extinguishes the fire of carnal passions. Lastly, he says that the Holy Spirit was present in the Red Sea passage only as a figure, while in baptism He is actually present, thus strengthening the faith of his listeners. Commenting on the cloud as a figure of the Spirit, Ambrose states: You hear that our fathers were under the cloud, and that a kindly cloud, which cooled the heat of carnal passions. That kindly cloud overshadows those whom the Holy Spirit visits. At last it came upon 52  C. Moreschini, in Sant’Ambrogio, Opere esegetiche. III: Isacco o l’anima, Il bene della morte, ed. C. Moreschini, SAEMO 3 (Milan: Biblioteca Ambrogiana; Rome: Città Nuova, 1982, 1982), 9, dates both works to 386. 53  Cf. De Isaac vel anima 2.3–3.6, see SAEMO 3, ed. Moreschini, 38-45. Ambrose’s thought is based on Gen 6:3, where the human being is called “flesh.”



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the Virgin Mary, and the Power of the Highest overshadowed her, when she conceived Redemption for the race of men.54

The umbra, that is, the cloud, is taken as a type of the Spirit, because of its freshness that extinguishes the carnal passions.55 The reference to the scene of the annunciation is inspired by the revelation of the Spirit as a cloud, “obumbravit,” even in the annunciation. The advent of the Spirit is seen not as a consequence of purification, but as the cause of it. In the Virgin Mary the fruit of this advent is the generation of Jesus, who is not only pure but is also the redeemer of humankind. 3.  The Body, a Living Cup Purified by Baptism Baptism is more effective than the Jewish ritual purifications are. In fact, the Jews cleaned their glasses and jugs because they believed that these objects were sanctified. On the contrary, in baptism, old life truly dies in the water and through it, human beings are raised in Christ (cf. Romans 6). Thus, Christians feel responsible both for making God’s grace present in the chalice that they themselves are and for making it shine with good works: The Jew washes pots and cups, as though things without sense were capable of guilt or grace. But do you wash this living cup of yours, that in it your good works may shine and the glory of your grace be bright.56

There is no opposition between body and soul; not only do humans bear the grace of God in their sensory reality but the splendour of grace also manifests itself in their good works.57 These last words could be a 54  Audis, quia sub nube fuerunt patres nostri, et bona nube, quae carnalium refrigerauit incendia passionum, bona nube: obumbrat, quos reuisit spiritus sanctus. Denique superuenit in Mariam uirginem et uirtus altissimi obumbrauit ei, quando redemptionem genti generauit humanae (De mysteriis 3.13; see SAEMO 17, ed. Banterle, 142-143; NPNF Series II 14, ed. Schaff and Wace, 318. 55  De sacramentis 1.6.20-22 (SAEMO 17, ed. Banterle, 54) does not refer to this effect of the arrival of the cloud which indicates the presence of the Holy Spirit, but emphasizes that the presence of the sea and the cloud, symbols of the baptismal water and of the Holy Spirit, show that the crossing of the Red Sea was a type of baptism. 56  Iudaeus urceos baptizat et calices, quasi insensibilia vel culpam possint recipere vel gratiam, tu baptiza hunc calicem tuum sensibilem, in quo bona opera tua luceant, in quo gratiae tuae splendor effulgeat (De mysteriis 4. 23; see SAEMO 17, ed. Banterle, 146-147). 57  According to Ambrose, Christ exhorts the soul that has received confirmation to manifest with its own works that she was created in the image of God: Decora es, proxima mea, tota formosa es, nihil tibi deest. Pone me ut signaculum in cor tuum, quo fides tua pleno fulgeat sacramento. Opera quoque tua luceant et imaginem dei praeferant, ad cuius imaginem facta es. Caritas tua nulla persecutione minuatur, quam multa aqua excludere et f­lumina inundare non possint (De mysteriis 7.41; ET: NPNF Series II 14, ed. Schaff and Wace, 320).

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r­eference to Matt 5:16.58 Grace here is not limited to taking advantage of the body to enter the soul and heal it. Grace heals the whole person and manifests itself in their new life. There is no reference to the ritual purifications of the Jews in the parallel passage in De sacramentis. 59 Again, as in the meditation on the ascension of Christ in De mysteriis 3.8, the tractate expresses a more positive view of the body than De sacramentis; inspired by Christian dogmatic teachings, Ambrose seems to have corrected his inclination to blame the body. 4.  Baptism as Regeneration In the final paragraph, Ambrose states that a rebirth happens in baptism. In response to someone who refused to accept this interpretation of baptism because of his carnal understanding of things, Ambrose recalls that generation sometimes happens in an extraordinary way, such as in the case of the birth of Jesus, conceived in the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit and not by a human being. And again, it is not always the course of nature which brings about conception, for we confess that Christ the Lord was conceived of a Virgin, and reject the order of nature. For Mary conceived not of man, but was with child of the Holy Spirit, as Matthew says: “She was found with child of the Holy Spirit.” If, then, the Holy Spirit coming down upon the Virgin wrought the conception, and effected the work of generation, surely we must not doubt but that, coming down upon the Font, or upon those who receive Baptism, He effects the reality of the new birth.60

Neumann explains that Ambrose believes that the virginal birth of Jesus is a mystery beyond human reason; in fact, however, he tries to better understand its content by relating it to other mysteries such as the resurrection, the Eucharist, and baptism.61  Sic luceat lux vestra coram hominibus, ut videant vestra bona opera et glorificent Patrem vestrum, qui in coelis est. 59  Cf. De sacramentis 2.1.2. 60  Denique non semper usus naturae generationem facit: generatum ex uirgine Christum Dominum confitemur et naturae ordinem denegamus. Non enim ex uiro Maria concepit, sed de spiritu sancto in utero accepit, ut dicit Matthaeus, quia “inuenta est in utero habens de spiritu sancto.” Si ergo superueniens spiritus sanctus in uirginem conceptionem operatus est et generationis munus impleuit, non est utique dubitandum, quod superueniens in fontem spiritus, uel super eos, qui baptismum consequuntur, ueritatem regenerationis operatur (De mysteriis 9.59; see SAEMO 17, ed. Banterle, 168-169); NPNF Series II 14, ed. Schaff and Wace, 325. 61  Cf. Neumann, The Virgin Mary in the Works of Saint Ambrose, 78-79. 58



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This comparison is also present in John Chrysostom’s baptismal homilies. The bishop states that what happened to Jesus in the River Jordan is equivalent to what happens to neophytes, that is to say, the Trinity itself baptizes the neophyte. He then adds that we should not try to understand baptism, but accept it with faith, and he affirms: Let me pass over that mysterious birth which has no human witnesses. Let me bring before you that birth which took place here below and was witnessed by many. Through this very explanation I shall secure your faith in things, because without faith you would never be able to accept it. He who cannot be contained, He who contains all and rules all, came into a virgin’s womb. How, tell me, and in what way? You cannot explain it. But if you come to believe, your faith will be able to satisfy you to the full. In matters that surpass the weakness of our reasoning, we must turn to the teaching of the faith. Matthew, who wrote of it, did not understand the manner of that begetting, for he said: “She was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit,” but he did not teach us how this came to pass. Nor did Gabriel understand, for he had only this to say, “The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee.” But he did not understand how and in what way.62

If we compare the two authors, Ambrose is more explicit about the idea of the action of the Holy Spirit in the water of the baptismal font.63 The bishop of Milan built a basilica with a cross-shaped plan in Milan. According to McLynn, this basilica was modelled on St Babila’s church in Antioch, which means that innovations in the Christian East were consciously introduced in the Church of Milan.64 The possible influence of John Chrysostom’s baptismal catechesis on the mystagogical works of the bishop of Milan would reflect a similar dynamic. Nevertheless, the mystagogical teachings of Milan conserved their own peculiarities: the biblical foundation of the explanation of the rites; the traditional setting of the catechesis, as can be seen in the aspect of the disciplina arcani or in the succession of the rites, all of them a­ dministered 62  Catechesis 3.3, in SC 366, ed. Piédagnel and Doutreleau, 224-226; Baptismal Instructions, trans. Harkins, 165-166. 63  Origen, In Lucam 7, see Origenes, Homiliae in Lucam, ed. Max Rauer, GCS 49; Origenes Werke 9 (2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1959), 43, asserts that there is a parallelism between the virginal conception of the Lord and the way in which catechumens approach the Church, because in both cases the Holy Spirit is at work. The idea differs slightly from that in Ambrose and Chrysostom, who do not seem to depend on Origen. 64  Cf. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan, 229.

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during the night of the Easter Vigil. The ideas that Ambrose may have borrowed from John Chrysostom only consist of an invitation to deeper faith and to more tender devotion to the Lord and the Mother of God. 5.  The Eucharist, Flesh That Takes Away Corruption Ambrose describes the Eucharist as the flesh of Christ that sanctifies Christians: But yet all those who ate that food died in the wilderness, but that food which you receive, that living Bread which came down from heaven, furnishes the substance of eternal life; and whosoever shall eat of this Bread shall never die, and it is the Body of Christ. Now consider whether the bread of angels be more excellent or the Flesh of Christ, which is indeed the body of life. That manna came from heaven, this is above the heavens; that was of heaven, this is of the Lord of the heavens; that was liable to corruption, if kept a second day, this is far from all corruption, for whosoever shall taste it holly shall not be able to feel corruption.65

Firstly, Ambrose explains that the Israelites who ate the manna died; Christians who take the Eucharist will never die as they receive eternal life. He then asks the listeners to give their judgment about what food must be regarded as being of greater value. Comparing the characteristics of both foods, he underlines the superiority of the Eucharist. Manna is from heaven, it belongs to heaven and it is corruptible; the Eucharist, instead, comes from above the heavens, it contains the Lord of the heavens; moreover, it is not only far from being corruptible, but it also takes away the corruption from those who eat it. The bishop of Milan proposes the traditional teaching of the Church, according to which communion with the Body of Christ strengthens Christ’s life in Christians and enhances their moral strength.

65  Sed tamen panem illum qui manducauerunt, omnes in deserto mortui sunt, ista autem esca, quam accipis, iste panis uiuus, qui descendit de caelo, uitae aeternae substantiam subministrat et quicumque hunc manducauerit non morietur in aeternum (Io 6:49-58); est enim corpus Christi. Considera nunc, utrum praestantior sit panis angelorum an caro Christi, quae utique corpus est uitae. Manna illud de caelo, hoc supra caelum, illud caeli, hoc domini caelorum, illud corruptioni obnoxium, si in diem alterum seruaretur, hoc ab omni alienum corruptione, quod, quicumque religiose gustauerit, corruptionem sentire non poterit (De mysteriis 8.47-48; SAEMO 17, ed. Banterle, 160-161); NPNF Series II 10, ed. Schaff and Wace, 323.



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VI. Conclusion Ambrose’s attitude towards the body contains two opposing elements. On the one hand, the flesh is the origin of temptations that can stain it; as a matter of fact, Adam, led astray by the senses, disobeys God’s command, and his sin is transmitted to his descendants by way of sexual propagation. On the other hand, the body can contain the grace of the Spirit and demonstrate this through good works, because it is cleansed and sanctified in baptism, nourished by the Eucharist, which is the flesh that gives it incorruptibility; the body is also called to participate in the triumph of Christ and ascend into heaven. Ambrose knows that sins can also come from a proud or absent-minded spirit. The approach of the Milanese bishop is realistic, because he takes into account the history of humankind’s sinfulness and its redemption, as recounted by Holy Scripture. Ambrose may have taken some ideas from the baptismal homilies of John Chrysostom. However, this conclusion can only be drawn on the basis of a successful dating of Chrysostom’s homilies, which is still pending.

The Care of the Body in Augustine’s Mystagogy as a Criterion for Orthodoxy? His Praeceptum and De haeresibus Reread Paul van Geest I. Introduction Much has been written about Augustine’s view of the human body. His indebtedness to the tradition of Platonic dualism between body and soul, his vision of the Divine Word’s assumption of human nature or his interpretation of the dogma of the resurrection of the body have been exhaustively studied to ascertain his assessment of the body both within and beyond time. Even more has perhaps been written about Augustine’s view of the connection between the body and desire, such as the concupiscentia carnis and the concupiscentia oculorum. It has also been observed that not the body but the soul and the spirit are the sources of wrong choices in Augustine’s estimation – it is not the corruptible flesh that made the soul sinful, but the sinful soul that made the flesh corruptible (Ciu. 14.3.2).1 It is a particularly plausible and important insight that Augustine’s faith in the incarnation of the Son and in the beauty of the body after the resurrection, inspired him in one of his major differences with the monistically oriented Platonists or Neoplatonists and the 1  Cf. the abundant bibliography in Margaret R. Miles, “Corpus,” in AugustinusLexikon, ed. Cornelius Mayer, Karl-Heinz Chelius, and Andreas Grote (Basel: Schwabe, 1986-), vol. 2, fasc. 1-2 (1996), cols. 6-20; Jörg Trelenberg, Das Prinzip “Einheit” beim frühen Augustinus, Beiträge zur historischen Theologie 125 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 58-62. For “concupiscentia” as a technical term for human desire, to which Christian writers afforded a pejorative denotation, cf. for example: Gerald Bonner, “Concupiscentia,” in Augustinus-Lexikon 1, fasc. 7-8 (1994), cols. 1113-1122, esp. 1116-1120, Margaret R. Miles, Augustine on the Body, American Academy of Religion Dissertation Series 31 (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1979), 67-76; Mathijs Lamberigts, “A Critical Evaluation of Critiques of Augustine’s View of Sexuality,” in Augustine and His Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner, ed. Robert Dodaro and George Lawless (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 176-197; Anthony Dupont, Paul van Geest, Mathijs Lamberigts, and Wim François, “Sex,” in The Oxford Historical Guide of the Reception of Augustine, ed. Karla Pollmann and Willemien Otten (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), vol. 3, cols. 1726-1737.

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­ ualistically predisposed Manichaeans.2 It led him to formulate an ever d more precise view on the relationship between the body and the soul, and it made him increasingly appreciative of the value and beauty of the human body as it exists in time and space.3 This latter point notwithstanding, Augustine’s sermons sometimes speak about the pleasures of the body in icy tones. He continued to view the body as “a source of unrelieved disquiet,” as Peter Brown concluded in his masterly Body and Society. The body still needed to be disciplined.4 Augustine has left us a number of mystagogical catecheses. “Mystagogy,” literally: “leading into the mysteries,” usually refers to lectures on the sacraments that were delivered to the newly baptized. As it turns out, these catecheses defend the idea that the body is a hindrance. In Sermo 216 he describes the preparation that catechumens undergo for the baptismal liturgy, a mystagogical moment if ever there was one. In this text he associates the goatskin with physicality, mortality, and sinfulness. This skin must therefore be discarded. But as a symbol of humility, it is also meant to clothe the human body, all the more so because Christ wore this garment when he became man.5 Yet a different dynamic is at play in his Confessions – which have nonetheless been interpreted protreptically. This work contains a clearly positive estimation of the human senses and therefore of the  Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336, Lectures on the History of Religions 15 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 94-114, esp. 101: “There is in Augustine a real stress on body as necessary and beautiful in the resurrection ….” See also Carol Harrison, Beauty and Revelation in the Thought of Saint Augustine, Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 158-162. See also Tarsicius J. van Bavel, “‘No One Ever Hated His Own Flesh’: Eph. 5: 29 in Augustine,” Augustiniana 45 (1995): 45-93. 3  Miles, Augustine on the Body, 95-97. See also Harrison, Beauty and Revelation, 159162; Miles, “Corpus,” cols. 10-11. However, Marianne Djuth recently pointed out that even in his early work Augustine shows some signs of a positive assessment of the body. Cf. M. Djuth, “The Body, Sensation, and the Art of Medicine in Augustine’s Early Writings (386-395),” Augustiana 66 (2016): 63-83. 4  Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988; Twentieth-Anniversary Edition with New Introduction, Columbia Classics in Religion, 2008), 386-427, quotation at 426. 5  Alexandra Pârvan, “Genesis 1–3: Augustine and Origen on the ‘Coats of Skins’,” VC 66 (2012): 56-92, esp. 60-66, 74-76. We are unable to discuss the metaphor of the Church as the Body of Christ either, although this does involve a positive assessment of the body as a concept. In this metaphor, the body stands for the harmonious and purposeful coherence of the various parts in a process of constant integration. 2



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human body. Although he certainly does not equate the experience of God with sense perception, he does presuppose that a human being must have tasted, felt or smelled in order to be able to have some kind of image of God.6 It must be said that the dividing line between Augustine the protreptic writer and Augustine the mystagogue is not as sharply drawn as the above may suggest. If “mystagogy” is understood in its broad sense, as any activity that makes human beings receptive to the mysteries of God as Mystery, then Augustine is as much a mystagogue as anything else in this passage. It is also clear in this case that – as a mystagogue in the broad sense – he not only takes account of the corporeal nature of human beings, but even values the body in his mystagogical strategy. In the current contribution, I will provide evidence for this contention that Augustine values the body, by showing how, in his spiritual-mystagogical injunctions, he develops the Stoic principle of ne quid nimis when reflecting on the place of the body. Miles has argued that Augustine displays a different and more comprehensive understanding of the interaction between the body and the soul in his practical works than in his philosophical works.7 The study of a limited objectum materiale undertaken here will produce arguments that support this claim, but will also give rise to a number of minor criticisms. Moreover, I will attempt to prove that Augustine later in life, when describing a series of heresies, returned to this principle which he cherished in his mystagogy. His debt in De haeresibus to Epiphanius’ Panarion and Philastrius’ De haeresibus is clear. And yet his summary of these sources contains an echo of his preference for the ne quid nimis principle, as he assesses these heresies in the light of orthodoxy.

6  Cf. Annemaré Kotzé, “Protreptic, Paraenetic and Augustine’s Confessions,” in In Search of Truth: Augustine, Manichaeism and Other Gnosticism. Studies for Johannes van Oort at Sixty, ed. Jacob Albert van den Berg, Annemaré Kotzé, Tobias Nicklas, and Madeleine Scopello, NHMS 74 (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2011), 3-23; Paul van Geest, “Protreptic and Mystagogy: Augustine’s Early Works,” in When Wisdom Calls: Philosophical Protreptic in Antiquity, ed. Olga Alieva, Annemaré Kotzé, and Sophie Van der Meeren, Monothéismes et Philosophie 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 349-364; for appreciation of the senses in the Confessions see for instance Paul van Geest, “Sensory Perceptions as a Mandatory Requirement for the Via Negativa towards God: The Skilful Paradox of Augustine as Mystagogue,” Studia Patristica 49 (2010): 200-208. 7  See Miles, Augustine and the Body, 53, 60-67; 65: “Why does Augustine fail to incorporate in his philosophical works that which he needed to assume in his practical works? We are in touch with a real discrepancy in Augustine’s thought, a failure to integrate all that he really knew.” See also: Miles, “Corpus,” cols. 6-20.

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II.  Care for the Body in Augustine’s Early Work In 386, Augustine wrote both De ordine and De beata vita. Neither work contains any formalization of the process of initiation.8 Yet, even in De ordine he includes guidelines that show that doctrine, which is the law of God, also involves a good order of life. This law is inscribed in the souls of the wise, so that they would be able to lead a better and higher life. In the guidelines that he gives for this inner order, Augustine says that: Young people zealous for this discipline should therefore live in such a way that they abstain from the things of Venus; from the allurements of the belly and throat; from the immodest care and adornment of the body; from the pointless efforts of games; from the torpor of sleep and sloth; from emulation, disparagement, and envy; from the ambitions of honor and power; and even from the immoderate desire for praise itself.9

Even though abstaining from erotic affairs is not strictly speaking a matter of care for the body, Augustine is very subtle in what he says about food: it is a fact that excessive fixation on bodily activities gives rise to the opposite of the disposition that causes people to “lead a fitting and proper life,” in which they “must honour God, think of him and seek him, supported by faith, hope, and charity” (Apte congruenterque vivant. Deum colant, cogitent, quaerant, fide, spe, caritate subnixi).10 Historians of philosophy will immediately interject at this point that Augustine follows Plato here in presuming that the ἐπιθυμίαι, the appetites, desires, and passions that are intrinsic to the body, prevent human beings from effecting the contemplation (θεωρία) of Being that transcends them. Following Plotinus, moreover, Augustine assumes here that the bondage of the body, a bondage to the lowest degree of being, the material and changeable (αἰσθητά), prevents humans, who are primarily souls, from returning to the immutability of eternity (νοητά) and to the One (ἕν) that stands at its summit. The bodily existence appears to be the source of moral evil, because the desires and passions are conceived as threats to morally correct action with a view to contemplation of the 8  Cf. Otto Wermelinger‚ “Vorwort,” in Aurelius Augustinus, Vom ersten katechetischen Unterricht, trans. Werner Steinmann, ed. Otto Wermelinger, Schriften der Kirchen­väter 7 (Munich: Kösel, 1985), 5-6. 9  De ordine 2.8.25; Augustinus, De ordine / De beata vita, ed. W. M. Green and K. D. Daur, CCSL 29 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1970), 121. ET: On Order, trans. Michael P. Foley, St. Augustine’s Cassiciacum Dialogues 3 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 72. 10  De ordine 2.8.25, in CCSL 29, ed. Green and Daur, 121.



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One. It turns out that, one year before his baptism, Augustine was not yet sufficiently well-versed in Scripture to realize that the mystery of the incarnation of the Son compels him to stop viewing transience and the body as a “fall” or an “incident.” Historians of theology could interject here that Augustine was at least listing the whole range of sinful desires that he would later derive from concupiscentia, a technical term that had a pejorative connotation for Augustine, and which means the desire of things that ultimately alienate the soul from itself.11 But neither Augustine’s debt to the classical sources, nor his own later views on disordered desires must obscure the fact it is possible to deduce from this passage that he does not reject physical culture or care for the body as such, but only exaggerated and excessive forms (immodesto corporis cultu et ornatu), just as he condemns unrestrained forms (laudis immodica cupiditate) of the pursuit of appreciation and fame. However implicitly and casually he speaks about the body in De ordine, Augustine was not guided by deprecation of the body. His counsels on the right order of life are reflective instead of the Stoic principle of ne quid nimis (“nothing in excess, everything in moderation”),12 which he discusses explicitly in De beata vita in the same year. At the end of this work, he describes an “excess” of poverty or wealth as a want, because it disturbs proper measure, and because either form of excess produces fear: fear of not being able to support oneself, or fear of losing one’s many possessions.13 In De beata vita, just as in De ordine, Augustine again makes certain comments, casually but decidedly, which show that he thinks care for the body is a good thing. In 1.2.7–1.2.9, he draws a comparison between physical and spiritual nourishment. He contends that it is unwise to exceed the proper measure of nourishment that nature has determined for all bodies. On the other hand, bodies must not be deprived of this measure either through undernourishment; this causes emaciation and scabies: bad things that indicate hunger. Even though Augustine then  Bonner, “Concupiscentia,” cols. 1113-1122.  Terentius, Andria 61. 13  For Augustine’s development of the ne quid nimis principle primarily in discussions of greed, see for instance Sermo 50.4-7, Sermo 177.2 and Sermo 86. As bishop, he still drew a connection in this late sermon (Sermo 86) between excessive fixation on money and loss of inner equilibrium. Augustine had meanwhile given a definition of greed in In epistolam Ioannis ad Parthos 8.7. Greed is “wanting more than is necessary.” In this definition, too, there are echoes of the ne quid nimis principle. 11

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goes on to draw a comparison between physical and spiritual diseases in the cases of good or bad food, he nonetheless explains at length in this comparison that the body must be properly cared for by taking the right measure of good food. Now it must be acknowledged that passages in which Augustine argues that the soul can only “see” once it has transcended the stage of sensory perception are legion in his early work, certainly in De vera religione. Thus in this work he has Plato say the following words: … truth is not to be seen by the eyes in our heads but by uncluttered minds and that any soul that has clung to it is thereby made blessed and perfect. Nothing hinders a soul from grasping it, this teaching would have continued, more than a life given over to greed and lust and the deceitful images of material things, which are stamped on our minds from this material world through the body and give rise to a whole variety of false opinions and errors.14

And it is true that from his Soliloquia up to the Retractationes, Augustine retained the opinion that the soul gains in purity and force to the extent to which it is detached from what is capable of determining it through the mediation of the senses. The soul turns towards the things it desires, and becomes impoverished if it upsets the right order within itself through excessive desire for food.15 In the light of De vera religione, the guidelines mentioned above do indeed show, as Miles has suggested, that Augustine’s practical works are premised on a more comprehensive understanding of the interaction between the body and the soul than his philosophical works are. If we read the few guidelines in De ordine, for instance, we notice immediately that Augustine is far from deprecating the body there, precisely with a view to developing a life of the soul that is oriented towards the spiritual. 14  De vera religione 3.3; Augustinus, De doctrina christiana / De vera religione, ed. K. D. Daur and J. Martin, CCSL 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962), 188-189. ET: Saint Augustine, True Religion, trans. Edmund Hill, in On Christian Belief, ed. Boniface Ramsey, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/8 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2005), 30. 15  Cf. A.-I. Bouton-Touboulic, L’ordre caché: La notion de l’ordre chez saint Augustin, Collection des Études augustiniennes. Série Antiquité 174 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 530. Cf. Plotinus, Enneads 1.6.7. Incidentally, Augustine still interprets the love of one’s neighbour in the Plotininian perspective of the spirit and eternity in De vera religione (46.89). But his thoughts about the incarnation later caused him to understand love of neighbour as love of a physical and spiritual being, which had to be ordered in such a way that God is loved more than the soul and the soul more than the body. Cf. De doctrina christiana 1.26.27; 1.27.28.



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And yet this view also requires a minor correction. Even the “theoretical” passages do not contain simply a negative assessment of the body: the “theoretical Augustine” counsels detachment from finite corporeal goods as a propaedeutic to the ascent of the soul. I will offer just one example. Although Augustine does show in De vera religione 16.30 that he has reflected on the value of the mystery of the incarnation, he says in the same section that carnal human beings, who have fallen victim to the physical senses, cannot see the truth on account of these.16 But this does not negate the fact that in his early, more theoretical works Augustine sometimes displays glimpses of an awareness that the body must receive proper care. In a more theoretical discourse in De vera religione, for instance, he values the body when he says that the body in itself does not tend towards worthlessness (nequitia); that it has a certain harmony of parts (aliquam concordiam partium suarum, sine qua omnino esse non posset), a certain inner calm and fixity as far as its form is concerned, and a beauty that points to him from whom all beauty comes.17 Similarly, on occasion there are theoretical passages in sermons in which Augustine points to the value and beauty of the body. Thus he refutes the philosopher Porphyry’s hostility to the body in two sermons by pointing to the harmonious form of the limbs, the variety of the senses, and the erect posture that command all admiration.18 The human body is beautiful and will be even more beautiful after the resurrection.19 As in De ordine at a more practical level, De vera religione and certain sermons thus contain echoes of the insight that Augustine would later develop further in his reflections on the concept of ordo. Ordo implies a coherence in which everything has its own place and significance. The ordo therefore is visible for instance in the unity and harmony of all parts of the human body. These parts of the body derive their beauty and perfection from being ordered in the whole.20 It must be concluded, therefore, that Augustine counsels detachment from finite corporeal goods as a propaedeutic to the ascent of the soul both 16  De vera religione 16.30: … demonstravit carnalibus, et non valentibus intueri mente veritatem, corporeisque sensibus deditis, quam excelsum locum inter creaturas habeat humana natura; cf. Plotinus, Enneads 1.4.1-4; 1.5.55f.; 1.8.21-23; 3.9.3.10-15. Cf. De vera religione 3.3: … non corporeis oculis, sed pura mente veritatem videri …; see also De vera religione 10.18; 11.22; 11.24; 12.23; 15.29; 21.41; 32.60; 40.74; 45.83. Cf. Plotinus, Enneads 1.6.5 and Bouton-Touboulic, L’ordre caché, 111-116. 17  De vera religione 11.21, in CCSL 32, ed. Daur and Martin, 200-201. 18  Augustine, Sermo 241.7.7. 19  Augustine, Sermo 243. 8(7). 20  Paul van Geest, “Ordo,” in Augustinus-Lexikon 4, fasc. 3-4 (2014), cols. 374-379.

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in the practical guidelines and in his more theoretical explanations. But both genres equally contain flashes of appreciation for the body: even in a short theoretical passage which contains his vision on the ordo in embryonic form. III.  Appreciation for the Body in Augustine’s Rules Augustine’s care for the body is even more clearly perceptible in the practical treatises that contain guidelines for the personal transformation required for good community life. When devising an order of life for his community of friends at Thagaste in 388, he used the Ordo monasterii. Once ordained a priest, he founded a monastery for laypeople in Hippo; as a bishop he would establish a monastic community in 397 and himself write the Praeceptum for this community: it is the first model of coenobitic community life and the oldest extant monastic rule in the West. The influence of this document was immense. The Praeceptum was spread widely, under this title, but also as part of the Praeceptum longius, a combination of the Ordo monasterii and the Praeceptum, and of the Regula recepta, where it is preceded by the first phrase of the Ordo monasterii. In addition, the Praeceptum found widespread dissemination through its inclusion in the Regularis informatio, the female version of the Praeceptum which is almost identical to the version for men; the Epistula longior, a combination of Obiurgatio (Epistula 211) and the Regularis informatio; and the Epistula longissima, a combination of a passage from the Obiurgatio and the Ordo Monasterii feminis datus and a series of passages from the Regularis informatio. It is very clear from the Praeceptum that Augustine thinks that good communal life can be achieved if the members of the community respect each person’s individuality; if they permit every participant in this formation process to keep his or her own measure. In a number of cases in his guidelines, he applies the ne quid nimis principle which he explained particularly in De beata vita: precisely and primarily when he discusses issues concerning the body.21 In his guideline on fasting, for instance, he writes: Discipline your flesh by fasting and abstinence from food and drink as far as your health allows it (3.1; italics added, pvg) … the sick need to eat little so that they do not become worse … (3.5)22  Praeceptum 1.3. see also 3.3-4.  See Praeceptum 1.2-8; 2.1-4; 3.1-5; 5.1-11; Luc Verheijen, La règle de saint Augustin (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1967), 2 vols. The critical edition of the Praeceptum can be found in volume 1, 417-437. ET: Saint Augustine, The Monastic Rules, trans. Sister Agatha Mary and Gerald Bonner, ed. Boniface Ramsey, The Augustine Series: Selected 21

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Thus, fasting to control physical desire must never be detrimental to the health of the person who fasts. As has been seen, Augustine already observed in De beata vita that humans must respect the measure that nature has set for the body. Not eating causes emaciation; eating leads to growth and strength.23 In the Praeceptum, he turns this principle into the stipulation that his fellow members of the community must listen to their bodies. This shows that care for the body is of great importance in Augustine’s idea of the monastic life. The Praeceptum also distinguishes itself from the Ordo monasterii by its attention to personal hygiene, to care of the sick, and to the great authority that it affords to the doctor. Augustine writes: Likewise, if someone’s illness makes it necessary, bathing is not te be refused but on medical advice is to be done without murmuring. Even if he does not want it he must, at the command of the superior, do what has to be done for his health’s sake. … Finally, if one of the servants of God has a hidden pain and reports it, he is to be believed without hesitation; but if it is uncertain whether what he asks for can cure his pain, the doctor should be consulted. … The care of the sick … should be entrusted to a particular person so that he may obtain from the storeroom what he sees each one needs.24

The Ordo monasterii does not have anything to say on sickness or health. In the Praeceptum, by contrast, considerable room is taken up by Augustine’s guidelines on personal hygiene. It is true that in this work serenity of mind takes priority over physical health, even though both are inextricably linked. In the second chapter, Augustine speaks about the place where the community convenes for prayer, the church; he does not mention the physical issue of fasting until the third chapter; and this order is deliberate. Even though the more theoretical treatises on the relationship between the body and the soul in De ordine, Soliloquia and De vera religione sometimes exude a different atmosphere, it is clear that the practical guidelines that appear as asides in these works already contain the Praeceptum’s practical guidelines on care for the body in rudimentary form. In fact, Augustine writes in 8.1 of the Praeceptum that the objective of this document is to create a form of communal life that will encourage every member to become a “lover of spiritual Beauty” (rather than, for instance, to incite concupiscentia in one another). But even Writings from “The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century” (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2004), 112-113. 23  De beata vita 2.7-9, in CCSL 29, ed. Green and Daur, 68-70. 24  Praeceptum 5.5-6; 5.8. ET: The Monastic Rules, trans. Agatha Mary and Bonner, 118-119.

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though he formulates this objective using a phrase derived from Neoplatonism, pulchritudo spiritalis, there is no doubt that the emphasis in his influential Praeceptum is not on an order of life in which the spirit must be liberated from the bondage of the body. On the contrary. A healthy body is of prime importance for creating a form of communal life that stimulates receptiveness to spiritual beauty. The more practical in nature his work is, the more unequivocally Augustine recommends care for the body, no matter at what stage of his intellectual development on the relationship between body and soul he was at the time. He is much more negative in his judgement on the body in his reflections on the body’s relationship to the soul than can be deduced from his guidelines in works that are intended to help achieve the right order of life. It is almost as if he was employing a twin-track strategy. It is also evident from his De opere monachorum, a work written in 400, that Augustine was convinced that corporeity should not be ignored in daily life, with a view also to establishing a balanced spiritual life. He criticizes the Euchites in this work: they were members of a monastic movement who refused, on the basis of Matt 6:25-34, to do any physical labour, devoting themselves exclusively to spiritual work, in which they expected to be supported by the faithful.25 Augustine’s vehemence and sarcasm in this work are due to his anger at their betrayal of the ne quid nimis principle. In the second part of De opere monachorum, Augustine reconstructs the industrious life that Paul led in Troas, Athens, and Corinth, to show that no one can be so busy preparing sermons as to have no time left for physical work.26 He reminds his audience that Paul exercised a profession that required manual labour, and hypothesizes that 25  Georges Folliet, “Des moines euchites à Carthage en 400-401,” Studia Patristica 2 (1957): 386-399. See also Adalbert de Vogüé, Histoire littéraire du mouvement monastique dans l’antiquité, 3 vols., Patrimoines. Christianisme (Paris: Cerf, 1996), vol. 3, 149-245; Adolar Zumkeller, Das Mönchtum des Heiligen Augustinus, Cassiciacum 11 (Würzburg: Augustinus-Verlag, 1968), 116-121; Kenneth Steinhauser, “The Cynic Monks of Carthage: Some Observations on ‘De opere monachorum’,” in Augustinus, Presbyter factus sum, ed. Joseph T. Lienhard, Earl C. Muller, and Roland J. Teske, Collectanea Augustiniana (New York: Lang, 1993), 455-462; Andreas E. J. Grote, Anachorese und Zönobium: Der Rekurs des frühen westlichen Mönchtums auf monastische Konzepte des Ostens, Historische Forschungen 23 (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2001), passim; idem, “Opere Monachorum, (De-),” in Augustinus-Lexikon 4, fasc. 1-2 (2012), cols. 310-317. 26  De opere monachorum 18.21; Augustinus, De fide et symbolo, De fide et operibus, De agone christiano, De continentia, De bono coniugali, De sancta virginitate, De bono viduitatis, De adulterinis coniugiis, De mendacio, Contra mendacium, De opere monachorum, De divinatione daemonum, De cura pro mortuis gerenda, De patientia, ed. Joseph Zycha, CSEL 41 (Prague and Vienna: Tempsky; Leipzig: Freytag, 1900), 567.



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Paul may have worked by night due to his high ethic and physical force. Augustine is adamant that his audience should realize that Paul did not shirk either physical or spiritual labour: However, since he preached daily whenever he intended to delay in any place, who doubts that he had definite time allotted for this duty? [= physical labour, pvg].27

And when it is clear on account of his many sermons that the Apostle did not work in Athens and was supported by others in Macedonia, Augustine nonetheless argues that: he might have done so at other hours and during the night, since he was so strong in mind and body.28

Time and again he explains that manual labour and preaching should be alternated. In this way, Augustine prepares the ground for the following conclusion: Ista optima gubernatio est, ut omnia suis temporibus distributa gerantur ex ordine, ne animum humanum turbulentis implicationibus involuta perturbent. This is the best guide, namely, that the Apostle managed all his affairs in orderly fashion, assigning to each its own time, lest, mixed up with confusing complications, they should disturb the human mind.29

Augustine then distils the insight from Paul’s life that human beings’ inner harmony derives from a balanced daily schedule. Just as De beata vita and the Praeceptum, his polemical De opere monachorum departs from the notion that body and soul must be kept in equilibrium by observing the right measure between manual labour and spiritual activities in everyday life. The being of human beings who seek God here on earth is physical in nature, and manual labour is therefore relevant to relax the mind. Augustine would much later also explicitly thematize the necessity of care for the body in his more theoretical discourses. In book 19.13 of De ciuitate Dei, he discusses the dimensions of human existence that are crucial to establishing peace on earth. The basis of all peace is peace 27  De opere monachorum 18.21. ET: Saint Augustine, Treatises on Various Subjects, trans. Sister Mary Sarah Muldowney, ed. Roy J. Deferrari, FOTC 27 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1981), 364. 28  De opere monachorum 18.21; ET: FOTC 27, trans. Muldowney, ed. Deferrari, 365. 29  De opere monachorum 18.21, in CSEL 41, ed. Zycha, 567. ET: FOTC 27, trans. Muldowney, ed. Deferrari, 365.

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in the body, which can be achieved through the “ordered harmony of the parts,” as he had written more than twenty years before in De vera religione. This “peace of the body” referenced in De ciuitate Dei is a corporeal peace that is at the service of spiritual good. That is to say, the quieting or pacification of concupiscence by physical harmony is a requirement for the peace of the vital, non-rational part of the soul: this peace depends on the “ordered calm of its strivings.” Once all organs and body parts function in the way that the order of creation has determined, and once a human, partly because of this, is free from disordered strivings, then there is peace in the rational soul, which is the fruit of the ordered harmony of thought and action as well as of peace within the body. The ordered harmony of thought and action consequently presupposes peace in the physical dimension of being human: this is extremely relevant for the peace and order in human beings’ higher dimensions of being. It is true that Augustine, in the evaluation of his Soliloquia in the Retractationes, declines to distance himself totally from the contention that man must flee the world of the senses. He certainly did not view the body as he regarded it in his early theoretical principles as the ideal means for a life oriented to God, although in De ciuitate Dei he does mention peace in the body as the basis for all other forms of peace as a way towards God. But it must also be remembered that he vehemently recommends care for the body in his guidelines in his Praeceptum and De opere monachorum as a means to live a life oriented to God. IV.  Ne quid nimis and Orthodoxy; Augustine’s De bono coniugali The history of theology teaches that orthodoxy presupposes not just assent to a doctrine that is recognized as orthodox. Valuing the body and an order of life which expresses this are also inherent in orthodoxy. This was clear as early as the second century in the heated polemic between Encratites, Gnostics and Montanists on the one hand, and a number of (proto-)orthodox Church Fathers on the other. What was at stake was the moral value of matrimony. More so than the orthodox, the Encratites associated corporeity and sexuality with a logic of cruelty and aggression. That is why they strove for complete self-control (ἐγκράτεια) and abstinence. Gnostics such as Marcion condemned marriage as the work of the flesh. Although their own work was not entirely free of Encratite tendencies, the Church Fathers Tertullian, Irenaeus, and later also



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Jerome denounced Tatian, a convert to Encratism, because he regarded any sexual act as debauchery.30 In the fourth century, Jovinian’s idea that everyone received salvation through baptism, irrespective of their state of life or their ascetic degree of perfection, led to a similar and equally bitter polemic between this former monk and Jerome in particular.31 In his apology of asceticism and his critique of Jovinian’s appreciation of marriage, Jerome almost lapsed into Encratism himself, for instance calling marriage the vomit to which no widow would return.32 In a carefully crafted response to Jerome, Augustine, much more inclined to acknowledge the value of marriage and its intrinsically physical aspects, took a more moderate line. In De bono coniugali (401) he calls marriage a “friendly and agreeable bond” (amicalis et germana coniunctio; bon coniug. 1.1), and honorabilis (bon coniug. 8.8). Steering a middle course between Jovinian and Jerome, he also describes it as “good,” although admittedly he does call the spiritual state and abstinence a “higher good.”33 Augustine’s heart may not have been in it, but he nevertheless included human corporeity in his view of marriage as a way to God. Conjugal relations as a way of begetting children were not sinful; relations for the purposes of sexual gratification were sinful but forgivable – at least if the partner concerned was one’s spouse – on account of fidelity to the marital bed.34 Moreover, Augustine, to a much greater degree than Jerome did, included the process of aging in his thought on the good of marriage. He also took account of the fact that spouses grow older, that the ardour of their desires cools over the years, their limbs grow weaker, and a true union of hearts is forged through proven fidelity,35 as he articulated it once towards the end of his life in Contra Iulianum: “Concupiscence is diminished in ever-increasing ardor of 30  Irenaeus, Contra haereses 1.28.1; Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem 1.1.29; 1.4.11; Hie­ ronymus, Adversus Jovinianum 1.3. 31  For an indispensable and very enlightening study of this polemic see David G. Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinianist Controversy, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 32  Siricius, Epistula 7 (PL 13/Damasi Papae, 1845); Ambrose, Epistula 42; Hieronymus, Adversus Jovinianum 1.4; 1.16 and 1.47. 33  Augustine, De bono coniugali (e.g. FOTC 27, trans. Muldowney, ed. Deferrari), 8.8; 9.9; cf. De virginitate 12.12. Paul van Geest, “Nuptiae,” in Augustinus-Lexikon, vol. 4, fasc. 1-2 (2013), cols. 243-261. 34  Augustine, De bono coniugali 6.6; cf. 10.11; 11.12. 35  Augustine, De bono coniugali 3.3.

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charity.”36 Whereas Jerome wished to achieve this spiritualization almost instantaneously through mortifying asceticism, Augustine was more moderate, and took into account the various stages of human life in a human being’s journey towards God. In a certain sense, this was again a way of applying the ne quid nimis principle, by respecting and to a certain extent valuing human corporeity rather than deprecating it as Jerome did. Admittedly this acceptance never came entirely wholeheartedly to Augustine. V.  Ne quid nimis and Orthodoxy. Augustine’s De haeresibus At the request of the deacon – and later bishop of Carthage – Quodvultdeus, Augustine wrote his unfinished work De haeresibus in 428.37 In his Speculum, which was also written around this time, he extracted concrete commandments, prohibitions and practical guidelines from Scripture so as to confront his readers – and himself – as bluntly as possible with moral imperfections. The need he felt towards the end of his life to obtain insight into what he had done wrong in his personal life went hand in hand with the need to have insight into erroneous religious views. This is why De haeresibus, which is both a mnemonic and a monitio, contains a list of the errors and abuses of a total of 88 heresies.38 The errors listed pertain to God as the Triune, to the Holy Spirit, Christ’s humanity and divinity, the genesis of creation or of eschatology; the teaching of the apostles or Mary’s virginity. Thirty-three heresies hold a multiplicity of views that are c­ ontrary 36  Augustine, Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum 6.16(50) (e.g. Augustinus, Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum (libri 4-6), ed. M. Zelzer, CSEL 85/2 [Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2004]). ET: Saint Augustine, Against Julian, trans. Matthew A. Schumacher, FOTC 35 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1957/2004), 359-360. 37  De haeresibus has been consulted mainly for the purpose of research into Manicheism, Donatism and Priscillianism. See for the work as such: Madeleine Scopello, “Haeresibus ad Quoduultdeum (De -),” in Augustinus-Lexikon 3, fasc. 1-2 (2004), cols. 278290; Francesca Tasca, “Ecce panis haereticorum: Diversità alimentari ed identità religiose nel De haeresibus di Agostino,” Augustinianum 50 (2010): 233-253; Sydney ­Sadowski, “A Critical Look and Evaluation of Augustine’s De haeresibus,” Augustinianum 55 (2015): 461-478. See also: Liguori G. Müller, The De Haeresibus of Saint Augustine: A Translation with an Introduction and Commentary, Patristic Studies 90 (Washington, DC: The C ­ atholic University of America Press, 1956); Silvia Jannacone, La dottrina eresiologia di S. Agostino, Raccolta di studi di letteratura Cristiana antica 20 (Catania: G. Reina, 1952). See for an explanation of the occasion, title, date, structure, genre determination and sources Scopello, “Haeresibus ad Quoduultdeum (De -).” 38  Cf. Scopello, “Haeresibus ad Quoduultdeum (De -),” col. 286.



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to the Catholic faith.39 Unimpeded by any concern for originality, his De haeresibus drew largely on passages from Epiphanius’ Panarion and, to a lesser degree, from Philastrius’ De haeresibus.40 Thus he omitted the twenty “heresies,” including Hellenism and Judaism, that Epiphanius had described in Anakephalaiosis I and that were already in existence before the birth of Christ.41 In his discussion of the first 57 heresies, he simply followed – sometimes verbatim – the overview that Epiphanius gave before his Anakephalaiosis II and III in book 1 of the Panarion. He omitted several persons and heresies in doing so. Epiphanius discusses Menander, Saturnilus, Basilides and the Phibionites, but Augustine does not, and he similarly leaves out subgroups of the Gnostics. Epiphanius’ overview in particular must have been Augustine’s main source. His acquaintance with the content of the voluminous work Panarion is likely to have been cursory. Augustine treats the Gnostics in De haeresibus 6 in 18 lines, whereas his source does so in no fewer than 20 pages.42 Augustine deals with the Secundians in 1 line, whereas they received seven pages in his source.43 In his discussion of the Archontici (20) it is clear that he almost literally copied “only” Epiphanius’ description in the table of contents of Anakephalaeosis 3.40.1, omitting the comment that they read the Old and New Testaments too much according to their own interpretation.44 De haeresibus 58–80 is based on the work of Philastrius. Augustine probably intended this first part of his De haeresibus to be a preliminary study for his second – unfinished – part, which was to be thematic: a kind of index on and compendium of his sources. His summaries of his sources are reduced to an absolute minimum; he limited himself to explaining the names of the heresies discussed, a description of the content, and sometimes of their practices. Most studies of De haeresibus have focused on the doctrinal views of the groups that Augustine counts among the haereses.45 But it is at least as interesting to see that the right ordo vitae is inherent in orthodoxy for Augustine in this work. This had already become clear in De bono ­coniugali.  Cf. Sadowski, “A Critical Look,” 476, n. 69-77; 477, n. 78.  Philastrius, De haeresibus 29 (PL 12, cols. 1138-1141). 41  See book 1 of the Panarion; cf. Philastrius, De haeresibus 1-28(PL 12, cols. 1114-1138). 42  Augustine, De haeresibus 6. Cf. The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis. Book I (Sects 1-6), ed. Frank Williams, NHMS 63 (2nd ed.; Leiden: Brill 2009), 90-109. 43  Augustine, De haeresibus 12. Cf. The Panarion of Epiphanius, ed. Williams, 208-214. 44  Augustine, De haeresibus 6. Cf. The Panarion of Epiphanius, ed. Williams, 227 (Anacephalaeosis 3.40). 45  Tasca, “Ecce panis haereticorum,” passim. 39

40

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He described the groups that pointed to the polygamy of the patriarchs as justification for their profligacy rather than as a fulfilment of the charge to multiply God’s people as “heretical.”46 However contrived this argument may appear to us now, it does prove that for Augustine, doctrinal orthodoxy and a life of Christian moderation and morality were two sides of the same coin. Even a superficial reading of De haeresibus shows that whenever Augustine discusses a certain Christian movement, he condemns its sexual wrongdoings before he assails its erroneous doctrines. Thus, in his discussion of the simoniani (1), a name derived from Simon Magus (Acts 8:9–25) he fulminates first against their shameful use of women as communal property (Docebat autem detestandam turpitudinem indifferenter utendi feminis). Only subsequently does he criticize Simon’s denial that God created the world and that the body would be resurrected.47 The same sequence can be found in his discussion of the Saturnians (3). First he classes them among the haeretici because they propagated the shameful practices of Simon (turpitudinem Simonianam) in Syria, and only thereafter does he refute their abject creation myth. This pattern is also discernible in his discussion of the Nicolaitae (5; sectam turpissimam), the Borborites, a subsect of the Gnostics (6), the Carpocratians (7), the Origeniani (42–43), and the Archontici (20).48 Augustine does not specify what the opera turpitudinis of the Secundians (12), the Valesii (37) or the Paternians (Venustians, 85) are.49 But as we have seen in all of the previous cases, the inflection of the substantive turpitudo points to some improper sexual practice. It is likely, therefore, that Augustine was also referring to this in these cases, as he does in fact in respect of the Priscillianists (70).50 In his discussion of this Spanish sect, his criticism of the contaminationes et turpitudines again precedes his denunciation of their  Augustine, De bono coniugali 25.33.  Augustine, De haeresibus 1. 48  See for the origeniani: V. Grossi, “La presenza di Origene nell’ultimo Agostino (426–430),” in Origeniana quinta: Historica – Text and Method – Biblica – Philosophica – Theologica – Origenism and Later Developments. Papers of the 5th International Origen Congress, Boston College, 14-18 August 1989, ed. Robert J. Daly, BETL 105 (Louvain: Leuven University Press and Peeters, 1992), 558-564. 49  See for the paterniani: Mathijs Lamberigts, “A Short Note on the Paterniani,” Revue des études augustiniennes 31 (1985): 270-274. 50  An exception is a passage in the discussion of the Manichaeans (De haeresibus 46, esp. 46.9-10). Here, too, Augustine mentions turpitudo. But Augustine here means the abuse of a young girl in the ritual extraction of semen from a man. This was then mixed with flour to prepare a kind of Eucharistic food. This part follows the doctrinal part. 46 47



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abject doctrines. The vehemence with which Augustine attacks the turpitudines, even before he discusses the doctrinal errors, is almost fugal. But he is also critical of the other extreme: the kind of abstinence that originates in hostility to the body which some sects demanded of their followers. Again, he does this before discussing their doctrinal errors. Thus he condemns the practices and convictions of the Tatians (Encratitae, 25) who regarded matrimony as fornication and refused to accept anyone who was married; of the Cataphrygians (26) and Tertullianists (86), who regarded a second marriage as adultery; of the Adamites (31) who, imitating Adam’s nakedness, rejected marriage; of the Purists (Novatians, 37) who did not allow second marriages, and of the Apostolici (Apotactitae, 38), who admitted no one to their society who had had intercourse with a woman.51 Again he denounces the Priscillianistae (70.2), who separated the spouses because the genesis of any kind of flesh must be ascribed to the evil angels. He also condemns the Alesians (37) who were in the habit of castrating themselves and their guests. Thankfully the Alesians did not become the norm for a good Christian. It is clear from this that for Augustine, orthodoxy was connected with an order of life that excludes, on the one hand, an exaggerated cult of the body that leads to a life in which sexual pleasure, sexual attraction, and the pushing or transgressing of boundaries are the highest norms. On the other hand, however, he also refused to countenance a hostility to the body that arises from the elevation of the spiritual life as the sole and highest norm. And, as he does in De opere monachorum, he strongly criticizes the Euchites (Messalians) because they refuse to do anything other than pray. According to Augustine, they prayed too much, thus ignoring the ne quid nimis principle: Nimis hoc faciunt, he writes. This comment is striking in the light of Epiphanius’ discussion of the Messalians. Epiphanius in his lengthy discourse attacked the Messalians for eating and drinking too much and for permitting women and men to sleep in the same quarters; his idea of Christian moderation was to abjure all property and help the poor. He criticized the Messalians for failing to do this. He also repudiated the Messalian exegesis of John 6:27 to the effect that the corruptible flesh is manual labour: Elijah’s widow worked, Job worked, Jacob pretended to work to Laban, and many monks worked 51  Cf. G. Ackermans, “Einige rechtliche und theologische Fragen zu den Abeloitae in Augustins De haeresibus,” in In Search of Truth, ed. van den Berg, Kotzé, Nicklas, Scopello, 123-138.

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with their hands, as did the apostles.52 Augustine did not adopt any of these arguments and Epiphanius makes no mention of the ne quid nimis principle. His debt to his source did not stop Augustine from introducing his preference for this principle in his discussion of the Messalians. It must be added immediately, however, that there was nothing novel or unique about Augustine’s rejection of radical asceticism on the one hand and radical exaltation of the body on the other. With regard to the latter, he stood in a long tradition in the history of theology. When he rejected heresies such as Tatian’s, Marcion’s, et al. for their repudiation of sex and physical life, Augustine was simply following the longstanding conventions of early Christian heresiology. Irenaeus had rejected Tatian on the same grounds; Clement of Alexandria did the same.53 Moreover, it has become evident from the above that he was indebted – at times verbatim – to the table of contents with which Philastrius preceded each Anakephalaiosis. It would stretch plausibility to ascribe Augustine’s omission of the excesses in the practices of certain heretical groups to his love for the principle of ne quid nimis. Having said that, it is striking that Augustine in his discussion of the Borborites limits himself, after criticizing their doctrine of the soul, to mentioning the excessive shamelessness of their rites,54 whereas Epiphanius continues by giving a detailed description of their promiscuity, their consumption of semen, and their habit of drinking menstrual blood and regarding it as the blood of Christ.55 Augustine also spares Quodvultdeus similar details in his discussion of the Carpocratians56 and the Secundians, for instance.57 It is similarly striking in his treatment of the Nicolaitae that he fails to reproduce Epiphanius’ strong condemnation of their founder’s Nicolaus’ return to copulation as the return of a dog to its vomit.58 If we remind ourselves of the tenor of his De bono coniugali, it should be instantly clear why Augustine failed to do so.  The Panarion of Epiphanius, ed. Williams, 646-654, esp. 448-465.  See Denys Gorce, “Corps (spiritualité et hygiène),” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité 2 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1953), 2338-2353, esp. cols. 2345-2353; Hannah Hunt, Clothed in the Body: Asceticism, the Body and the Spiritual in the Late Antique Era (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012; London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 47-62; 114-115; 125-136; 159-183. 54  Augustine, De haeresibus 6. 55  The Panarion of Epiphanius, ed. Williams, 93. 56  Ibid., 59-60. 57  Ibid., 60, 208, 211-212. 58  Augustine, De haeresibus 5; The Panarion of Epiphanius, ed. Williams, 59-60. Cf. 2 Pet 2:22; cf. Hieronymus, Aduersus Iovinianum 1.47 (PL 23, cols. 288-291), who describes marriage as such. 52 53



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It becomes evident also and principally in De haeresibus that Augustine remained faithful to the way in which his practical guidelines in De  ordine, his Praeceptum and De bono coniugali reflect his appreciation of the body. And precisely in the light of his sources it is clear to a certain extent that Augustine used the ne quid nimis principle in various ways as a benchmark for the orthodoxy of certain heresies in De haeresibus. VI. Epilogue Research of the neurophysiological, biological, and chemical functioning of the human brain and nerve system demands a reconsideration of the relationship between the body and the mind, as well as an assessment of ethical a nd moral theological reflections that take the results of chemical research into account. Does this mean that Augustine’s thoughts on this relationship are now outdated? Embedded as he was in most ancient monastic and ascetical practices of both Christian and non-Christian provenance, Augustine appears to foreshadow modern anthropology in the sense that in his practical guidelines he acknowledged the great importance for the spiritual life of the body and of bodily processes. On the one hand, he believed that the dispositions of the spirit were more relevant to theory formation and to practical guidelines than those of the body. In De vera religione, for instance, he advised his readers to flee the sensory world, and he only partially retracted this view in his Retractationes. On the other, in the scarce guidelines contained for instance in De ordine, it is obvious immediately that he was far from deprecating the body. Moreover, he displayed a different and more comprehensive understanding of the interaction between the body and the soul, not only in his practical works, but also in his philosophical works. In both the practical guidelines and the more theoretical explanations, Augustine counselled detachment from finite corporeal goods as a propaedeutic to the ascent of the soul. But both also contain signs of appreciation of the body, especially in the (theoretical) passage in his early work De vera religione, for instance, which already contains his vision of the ordo in rudimentary form. And in his late De ciuitate Dei, where he does mention the “peace of the body,” the quieting or pacification of concupiscence through physical harmony is a requirement for peace of the vital, non-rational part of the soul; peace in the body as the basis for all other forms of peace as a way towards God. Irrespective of the stage at which he found himself at any

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given time in the development of his theories on body and soul, in his practical guidelines – no matter how casually formulated – or in his reflections on these, his assessment of the body was positive, and this was true even for his Neoplatonic phase. Augustine’s care for the body can be observed mainly in the practical treatises that contain guidelines for the personal transformation required for good communal life. The guidelines for a good order of life in De ordine and De beata vita contain the rudiments of the guidelines for care for the body that would later appear in the Praeceptum. In his more practical work, Augustine more unequivocally and explicitly recommends care for the body. In his spiritual-mystagogical injunctions he develops the Stoic principle of ne quid nimis when reflecting on the place of the body. Finally, in De haeresibus Augustine also shows that for him, orthodoxy is associated with an order of life which excludes excesses regarding physical pain or pleasure. Nor does he tolerate a hostility to the body originating in the elevation of the spiritual life to the status of sole highest norm. Augustine was heir to a long tradition in this respect and he cannot count as original in the sense that De haeresibus is strongly indebted to ­Epiphanius of Salamis and Philastrius of Brescia. But from time to time it seems as if he elevated the ne quid nimis principle, which he had used with regard to care for the body in the practical sections of his early work and in his Praeceptum, to the status of norm and criterion of judgement to assess orthopraxis or even orthodoxy. It turns out that esteem for the body is intrinsic to both: as far as doctrine is concerned, on the basis of the dogmas of the incarnation of the Son and the resurrection of the body; as far as the order of life is concerned, on the basis of Augustine’s experience of life and ultimately his pursuit of moderation. During his life Augustine must have experienced the soundness of his own guidelines. His biographer Possidius writes in his Vita Augustini that all his limbs were still intact when he died (Vita Augustini 31). Perhaps the order of life observed by the strict desert ascetic Antony was more akin to Augustine’s than his biographer Athanasius was keen to admit. But Athanasius gives the show away somewhat when he writes that Antony still had all his teeth, even though they were eroded.59

 Athanasius, Vita Antonii 93; cf. 14.3, in Athanase d’Alexandrie, Vie d’Antoine, ed. and trans. Gerard J. M. Bartelink, SC 400 (Paris: Cerf, 1995). 59

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Sensory and Corporeal Aspects of Mystagogy in the Context of the Earlier Commentaries on Genesis Martin Claes I.  Introduction: Why Revisit the Human Body in Augustine’s Written Work? Augustinian scholarship has contributed prolifically to patristics by producing editions and scholarly reflections on a variety of aspects from Augustine’s huge oeuvre. However, it is becoming more and more apparent that Augustinian studies have in turn been inspired by developments and recent discussions in twentieth-century patristics.1 These reflect for instance changes in the relationship between the major world religions, and have stimulated research on topics such as orthodoxy, intolerance, violence,2 and gender.3 This trend has also had its effects on the continuation of a long-term discourse on the relationship between patristics and theology.4 While many changes concerning the function of institutional religions have been studied,5 the multi-layered question as to what it means to be a human creature, demands new answers. Current problems concerning  Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, Theodore de Bruyn, and Carol Harrison, eds., Patristic Studies in the Twenty-First Century: Proceedings of an International Conference to Mark the 50th Anniversary of the International Association of Patristic Studies (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015). 2  Averil Cameron, “Enforcing Orthodoxy in Byzantium,” Studies in Church History 43 (2007): 1-24. 3  Robin Margareth Jensen, “Integrating Material and Visual Evidence into Early Christian Studies: Approaches, Benefits and Potential Problems,” in Patristic Studies in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Bitton-Ashkelony et al., 529-550. 4  Christoph Markschies, “Patristics and Theology: From Concordance and Conflict to Competition and Collaboration?,” in Patristic Studies in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Bitton-Ashkelony et al., 367-388. 5  Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). 1

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global ecology not only call for technological knowledge to respond to these issues, but also for a contribution from theology.6 Traditional religions have offered an abundance of narrative reflections on the implications of being human, in books such as sacred scriptures, philosophical works, and products of literary imagination. Within this broad field, patristics specifically studies the testimonies of people who have sought theological answers to the questions which were posed within the complex nexus of Late Antique society. Their considerations were often expressed in terms of an individual and collective relationship with God and each other. Consequently, these testimonies and reflections have initiated a rich scholarly discussion, especially of initiation and mystagogy. The prolific results demonstrate the subtleties of early Christian thought on the topic of anthropology and the human vocation to increasingly reflect the image of God.7 Obviously, for theologians such as Augustine, Christ in his human and corporeal existence offered the best starting point for reflections on human nature and its destiny over time. Over the last decades, research on Augustine has developed along different trajectories which have presented their own specific views on Augustine. First, the perspective of literary analysis and postmodern philosophical reflections on time and creation has led to a relatively new and productive strand in Augustinian research (see for instance the work of JeanFrançois Lyotard and Marinus Burcht Pranger).8 Furthermore, a tradition of textual commentary and historical reflection on texts has evolved (especially on the basis of James J. O’Donnell’s contributions).9 Lastly, samples of theological reflection can be found, both historical and systematic (for instance, in the publications of Johannes Brachtendorf, Michael Cameron, Lewis Ayres, Anthony Dupont, and Matthew 6  Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ of the Holy Father Francis on Care for Our Common Home, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papafrancesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html (accessed 1 February 2018); David Vincent Meconi, ed., On Earth as It Is in Heaven: Cultivating a Contemporary Theology of Creation, Catholic Theological Formation Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016). 7  Paul van Geest, ed., Seeing through the Eyes of Faith: New Approaches to the Mystagogy of the Church Fathers, LAHR 11; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 2 (Louvain: Peeters, 2016). 8  Marinus Burcht Pranger, Eternity’s Ennui: Temporality, Perseverance and Voice in Augustine and Western Literature, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 190 (Leiden: Brill, 2010). 9  Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (London: Faber, 1967; repr. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000); James J. O’Donnell, ed., Augustine, Confessions, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

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W. Knotts).10 Particularly the second and the third trends have demonstrated the relevance of the history of Christology to theological anthropology, especially of attempts to understand Augustine’s views on creation and the cosmos. In the context of the question mentioned above, “What does it mean to be human?,” these scholarly contributions highlight important theological themes, such as human authority over creation and consequential responsibility. As an experienced pedagogue, also in this matter, Augustine never loses sight of the human viewpoint. Similarly to many other early Christian theologians, he formulates his reflections in terms of a process of growth. This enables the newly baptized and the more experienced Christians to be initiated in the daily spiritual life of the Church. Sensorial signs, such as the sacraments and words from Scripture, provide assistance. They manifest themselves in the life of the Church as instruments in the process of initiation. Thus, within the context of patristic research on mystagogy and the human body, it seems crucial to study the role and purpose of these corporeal and sensorial aspects. As such, a rereading of Augustine’s commentaries on Genesis will help us to address a characteristically Augustinian phenomenon: a relative scarcity in his explicit comments on the relevance of the corporeal existence of the human body of Christ stands in contrast to relatively great textual attention to direct or indirect corporeal manifestations of Christ in the Bible and in the sacraments. Hopefully, the study of this incongruence will shed light on the way in which Augustine evaluates the salvific role of Christ in his sensorial and corporeal manifestations for the process of mystagogy. The fundamental position of Christ in the process of salvation is characteristic for Augustine. Christ is principle and telos, incarnate merciful Word and Saviour. Despite his reputation of having a dualistic  Johannes Brachtendorf, Augustins “Confessiones” (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005); idem, “The Goodness of Creation and the Reality of Evil: Suffering as a Problem in Augustine’s Theodicy,” Augustinian Studies 31 (2000): 79-92; Michael Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere: Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); idem, “Into the Poem of the Universe: Exempla, Conversion, and Church in Augustine’s Confessiones,” ZAC 13 (2009): 263-281; Anthony Dupont and Matthew W. Knotts, “In Dialogue with Augustine’s Soliloquia: Interpreting and Recovering a Theory of Illumination,” International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 74 (2013): 432-465; Matthew W. Knotts, A Sapiential Hermeneutical Theology: Reading the Universe with Augustine and Gadamer (diss. KU Leuven, 2017). 10

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anthropology, Augustine in his Christology frequently refers to the preciousness of the human body and to sensorial aspects of creation in general. In order to demonstrate this positive evaluation of the created world, this contribution offers a reading of Confessiones 13 in the context of his earliest commentaries: De Genesi adversus Manichaeos and De ­Genesi ad litteram opus inperfectum. As we shall see, the chronological development of Augustine’s Christology is closely connected to the idea that it is Christ who reveals himself in time both as principle of creation and as the incarnate Saviour. In order to acquire more detailed insight into the perspectives of these Genesis commentaries on this specific question, I will first focus on the content and Sitz im Leben of these texts. This functions as a preparation for the text reading in the middle section of this contribution. II.  Early Anti-manichaean Polemics, and Confessiones 13: What Can These Texts Contribute to Our Insight in Augustine’s Anthropology? 1.  Sensorial and Corporeal Aspects of Creation Augustine’s special interest in the Book of Genesis is reflected in a variety of works, composed between 393 and 421. These writings were partially or completely dedicated to this book, whose author Augustine considered to be Moses.11 The works I concentrate on were to a greater or lesser degree coloured by Augustine’s apologetic agenda in his discussion with Manichaean groups and their ideas. These works share their object of study: the Book of Genesis. Its authority, consistency, and interpretation were in many ways disputed by Manichaean groups. Augustine began his written discussion of Manichaean ideas some years before the composition of Gn. adu. Man. in a small treatise on the Christian and the Manichaean ways of life (De moribus ecclesiae et de moribus Manichaeorum, Rome 387 – Thagaste 389). The presence of Manichaean propaganda among Christians in Thagaste and Madauro urged him to spend more time and energy to produce a consistent

11  De Genesi adversus Manichaeos (389); De Genesi ad litteram liber inperfectus (393); Confessiones 13 (397-401); De Genesi ad litteram (399-415); De ciuitate Dei 11–13(413-427; esp. 418-419); Contra adversarium legis et prophetarum (419-421), see Augustinus, Contra adversarium legis et prophetarum, ed. K. D. Daur, CCSL 49 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985).



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c­ ommentary on the literary sense of Genesis.12 Christian commentaries on Genesis had often been the target of Manichaean criticism because of the concept of the creation and the presence of evil in it, and the notion of God’s anthropomorphism. However, Augustine did not exclusively argue against Manichaean interpretations and ideas. He also aimed to provide his readers with a scriptural and positive view of creation, largely based on the prologue of St John’s Gospel.13 Especially his developing Christology, in combination with an extended exegesis of the first chapter of John, affirms the deep connection between Christ as principle of creation and his manifestation on the temporal plane. The first is beyond the epistemological capacity of the human mind. The latter manifests itself not only exclusively within the lifetime of Jesus’ corporeal existence, but also in the life of the Church. This especially concerns the Bible as the carrier of signs and language. Its interpretation mediates God’s eternal speech to the human domain of temporality. Gn. adu. Man. (389) comments on various questions concerning the Manichaean doctrine of creation.14 In the second book of this work, Augustine discusses Genesis not merely from a historical point of view. He also considers the book in terms of prophecy and figural interpretation.15 In the second book of Gn. adu. Man., his concern for a human perspective appears from the way in which he links the seven days of creation to the stages in both cosmological history and the spiritual life of the faithful. The coming of Christ in the dimension of time on the sixth day of creation is related to the creation of light. Augustine’s theory of illumination finds its initial formulation in this context.16 Next, Gn. litt. inp. (393) was composed during Augustine’s period in Hippo. This work also found its principal cause in Manichaean criticisms of interpretations of Genesis.17 Despite the inclusion of a closing 12  For a description of and evidence for Manichaean propaganda in relation to Augustine’s pastoral activity, see Jacob Albert van den Berg, Biblical Argument in Manichaean Missionary Practice: The Case of Adimantus and Augustine, NHMS 70 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 49-54. 13  For an impression of Augustine’s style of exegetical discussion and refutation of Manichaean arguments, see ibid., 55-70. 14  See ibid., 60: “After all, it is reasonable to suppose that Augustine mentions a contradiction between the Old and the New Testament in De Genesi adversus Manichaeos because he remembered it from his Manichaean years; perhaps even from the very beginning.” 15  Gn. adu. Man. 2.2.3. 16  Gn. adu. Man. 1.3.6. 17  Naoki Kamimura, “Augustine’s Scriptural Exegesis in De Genesi ad litteram liber unus inperfectus,” Studia Patristica 49 (2010): 229-234; Naoki Kamimura, “The Exegesis

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section in which he interprets creation as a Trinitarian process, Augustine left the work unfinished and he considered it one of his minor works.18 He does acknowledge the fact, however, that it represents his initial efforts to come to grips with the Book of Genesis.19 The last book of his Confessiones (397-401), book 13, comments in allegorical style on the days of creation. It exhibits a strong eschatological focus which culminates in reflections on the seventh day of creation as an eternal Sabbath.20 The text itself elaborates on the creation of humanity on the sixth day. Although it is apparent that this book must be read within the wider context of books 11 to 13 as a whole, this closing book has received less scholarly attention than the preceding books. In scholarly literature various attempts have been made to characterize this concluding book in relation to the overall structure of the work. In his commentary, O’Donnell points out that in Confessiones 13 the salvific activity of the Holy Spirit in the Church is explained in terms of renovation and eschatological hope.21 Christoph Müller has explained in his commentary on this final book of Confessiones how Augustine in his allegoresis of the first day of creation draws a complex typological parallel. This relates on the one hand to the process of creation, and on the other hand to the renovation of the spiritual human within the Church, both in and through Christ.22 As yet, however, no study has appeared which concentrates on Augustine’s Christology and its relevance for the study of mystagogy in this final book of Confessiones.23 Therefore, after an excursus on the aspect of divine incorporeality, three case studies will be presented here. They cover the subjects of, first, the incarnation as a source of unity for the Church (Gn. adu. Man.). of Genesis in the Early Works of Augustine,” in The Theory and Practice of the Scriptural Exegesis in Augustine: Research Report Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research, ed. Naoki Kamimura (Tokyo: Naoki Kamimura and Makiko Sato, 2014), 13-24. 18  retr. 1.18. 19  Saint Augustine, On Genesis. Two Books on Genesis: Against the Manichees and On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis, an Unfinished Book, trans. Roland Teske, FOTC 4 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991), 3-35. 20  Christof Müller, “Der ewige Sabbat: Die eschatologische Ruhe als Zielpunkt der Heimkehr zu Gott,” in Die Confessiones des Augustinus von Hippo: Einführung und Interpretation zu den dreizehn Büchern, ed. Norbert Fischer and Cornelius Mayer (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1998), 603-652. 21  O’Donnell, Augustine, Confessions, 251-252. 22  Confessiones 13.13-15. 23  A recent Villanova publication by John Doody, Kim Paffenroth, Mark Smillie, eds., Augustine and the Environment (London: Lexington Books, 2016) on ecology and environment offers valuable scholarly insights from a variety of perspectives, but lacks a Christological perspective.



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The second concentrates on the human body as a sign of God (Gn. litt. inp.), and the third discusses the middle position of human beings in creation. This includes the themes of their limited authority and of the sacraments as divine help (Confessiones 13). In the section that follows these studies, entitled Observations and Discussion, the texts will be discussed in their interrelatedness. This will assist us, in the final section of the contribution, in drawing some preliminary conclusions regarding the significance of the corporeal and sensory aspects of Christ’s soteriological activity for the process of mystagogy and initiation. 2.  Divine Incorporeality: How Creation Reveals Christ as a Saviour Augustine’s unfolding reflections on creation and time are closely related to the topic of God’s incorporeality. This captured Augustine’s attention since his reading of the libri platonicorum.24 In North Africa the belief in some version of a corporeal God was widespread at Augustine’s time. Nevertheless, it was in Milan, while hearing Ambrose’s sermons, that Augustine became gradually convinced that it was possible to argue for an incorporeal notion of God. This concept was based on allegorical or figurative scriptural exegesis. Later in his career, Augustine discussed this topic more extensively in response to questions from Paulina (413, ep. 147, De videndo Deo). Some years earlier he had dealt with this topic in his letter to Italica (407) in the context of the vision of God at the resurrection.25 Augustine’s developing concept of an incorporeal God in Gn. adu. Man. and Gn. litt. inp. was partly presented in reaction to Manichaean criticism of the account of creation in Genesis. In the Manichaean view, the story of creation in the first book of the Bible implied that God as a Creator could not remain the absolute good principle. In the act of creation, he became involved in time and matter, and therefore in evil.26 This criticism also led them to conclude that God as a Creator must possess an anthropomorphic shape including material and sensorial features such as nails and hair. Augustine’s reply to these anthropomorphic elements 24  For an excellent discussion of Augustine’s reception of the Plotinian concept of unity, see Bernard Bruning, Unity and Its Limits in the Thought of Augustine (diss. KU Leuven, 2017). 25  Paul van Geest, The Incomprehensibility of God: Augustine as a Negative Theologian, LAHR 4; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 1 (Louvain: Peeters, 2011), 111-121. Knotts, A Sapiential Hermeneutical Theology, 150-169. 26  On this topic see Ronny J. Rombs, Saint Augustine and the Fall of the Soul: Beyond O’Connell and His Critics (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 117-130.

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originates partly in the immaterial concept of God. This was found in the libri platonicorum, but also in the gradual development of his own reflections on Christology, which grew out of his emerging exegetical expertise. These earliest Genesis commentaries date from the period shortly after his initiation into Christianity by baptism. It is consequently not surprising that compared to Confessiones, these early commentaries make a primitive impression when it comes to their explanation of scriptural statements on Christology. Although neither of these early works by Augustine elaborates on Christology in terms of time and creation, it is clear from the outset that Augustine has a tendency to evaluate sensorial and corporeal aspects of the faith quite positively. This was also the case for his view of Christ in his human and sensorial manifestation. A ­relevant article by Marianne Djuth (2016) on Augustine’s view of the body in his earlier writings confirms this.27 This stands in a sharp contrast to the critical Manichaean assessment of corporeality. In his discourse Augustine comments affirmatively on the appearance of Christ in a human body and on the unfolding of his salvific action over time in the concrete signs of the Sacred Scriptures and the sacraments. The final book of Confessiones displays a strongly eschatological atmosphere. In this book Augustine reflects extensively on the insights which transformed the story of his own life into a manifestation of God’s salvific action in praise, confession and conversion. Obviously, it is Augustine’s hope that the reading of his Confessiones will stimulate a similar mystagogical process in the reader’s life.28 III.  A Presentation of Selected Texts: Three Case Studies This section will present texts from Augustine’s early commentaries on Genesis (Gn. adu. Man. and Gn. litt. inp.) and Confessiones 13. They highlight aspects of Christ in his extended corporeal presence and salvific activity within the temporal and material realm of ecclesiastical life, ­especially Scripture. In his early years as a priest, Augustine searched  Marianne Djuth, “The Body, Sensation, and the Art of Medicine in Augustine’s Early Writings (386-395),” Augustiana 66 (2016): 63-83. On Confessiones 13 and the creation of the human body see Andrea Nightingale, Once Out of Nature: Augustine on Time and the Body (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011). 28  Annemaré Kotzé, Augustine’s Confessions: Communicative Purpose and Audience, VCS 71 (Leiden: Brill, 2004); Math Osseforth, Friendship in Saint Augustine’s Confessions: Between Social Convention and Christian Morals (diss. VU Amsterdam 2017). 27

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urgently for an explanation that could counter the Manichaean critique of the combination of creatio ex nihilo, humankind’s fallen state, and the goodness of both creation and the Creator. At a later stage, Augustine commented extensively on creation and the place of humans within creation in the closing, thirteenth, book of Confessiones. In the following subsection we will concentrate on texts that deal with the incarnation as a source of unity for the Church. These texts have been selected from Gn. adu. Man. A second selection was taken from Gn. litt. inp. and focuses on the human body as a sign of God. A last group of texts from Confessiones 13 discusses the theme of the mediating position of humans in creation. They possess a limited degree of authority over creation and receive the sacraments as divine help. First, the texts will be briefly introduced and presented as quotations in tables with italicized passages referring to relevant corporeal or sensorial aspects of Augustine’s reflections on Christ’s salvific activity in the context of mystagogy. This is then followed by a discussion of the material in the section Observations and Discussion. Before arriving at the conclusions, the section Evaluations and Perspectives: Towards an Anthropocentric Christology contain some remarks regarding the evaluation of and perspective on Augustine’s Christology. These comments focus on Augustine’s anthropology. 1. Incarnation as a Source of Unity for the Church: Texts from Gn. adu. Man. In Gn. adu. Man.,29 Augustine discusses Christological topics in a secondary but significant way as he refutes Manichaean ideas. This happens especially when he addresses the fundamental connection between the mission of the Church and the birth of Christ. His treatment comes to a head in Augustine’s allegory on the historical phases of creation and the stages of human life: Gn. adu. Man. 1.23.40-43. In the second book, Augustine elaborates on Christ as the new Adam who recreates what remained imperfect in human life. Gn. adu. Man. 1.23.40 Morning though is made from the Mane autem fit ex praedicatione evanpreaching of the gospel by our Lord Jesus gelii per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christ, and thus the fifth day is brought Christum et finitur dies quintus, incipit  See for example Gn. adu. Man. 1.3.6., Gn. adu. Man. 2.2.3.

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to an end. […] Next the man is made to the image and likeness of God, just as in the sixth age our Lord is born in the flesh, of whom it is said through the prophet: “And he is the man, and who will acknowledge him?” And just as on that day male and female, so also in this age Christ and the Church. And the man is put in charge on that day of cattle and snakes and the flying things of heaven, just as in this age Christ rules the souls that defer to him, which have come to his Church, partly from the Gentiles, partly from the people of the Jews. They have come so that people may be tamed and domesticated by him, whether they had been given over to the fleshly concupiscence like cattle, or had been groping in the darkness and murk over curiosity as if they were snakes, or soaring up on the wings of pride as if they were birds.30 Gn. adu. Man. 1.23.40 … so too in this age any spiritual man who is a good minister of Christ and imitates him to the best of his ability feeds spiritually together with the people on the nourishment provided by the holy scriptures and the divine law. This is partly to make them fertile with ideas and fluent speech […] partly to provide moral guidance for human life together, as by feeding on the fruit of fruit trees; partly to lend vigor to their faith, hope and charity right up to eternal life, as by feeding on green plants […] while those who are of the flesh, that is, little ones in Christ, like God’s sheep, do so in such a way that they take may things on faith which they are unable as yet to understand; nonetheless all have the same food.32

sextus, in quo senectus veteris hominis apparet. […] Tunc fit homo ad imaginem et similitudinem dei, sicut in ista sexta aetate nascitur in carne dominus noster, de quo dictum est per prophetam: et homo est, et quis agnoscet eum? Et quemadmodum in illo die masculus et femina, sic et in ista aetate Christus et ecclesia. Et praeponitur homo in illa die pecoribus et serpentibus et volatilibus caeli, sicut in ista aetate Christus regit animas obtemperantes sibi, quae ad ecclesiam eius partim de Gentibus, partim de populo Iudaeorum venerunt, ut ab eo domarentur atque mansuescerent homines vel carnali concupiscentiae dediti sicut pecora, vel tenebrosa curiositate obscurati quasi serpentes vel elati superbia quasi aves.31

sic ista aetate spiritalis homo, quicumque bonus minister est Christi et eum bene quantum potest imitatur, cum ipso populo spiritaliter pascitur sanctarum scripturarum alimentis et lege divina partim ad concipiendam fecunditatem rationum atque sermonum, […] partim ad utilitatem morum conversationis humanae tamquam lignis fructiferis, partim ad vigo­ rem fidei, spei, caritatis in vitam ­aeternam tamquam herbis viridibus, […] carnalis autem, id est parvulus in Christo, tamquam pecus dei, ut multa credat quae intellegere nondum potest: tamen eosdem cibos omnes habent.33

 ET: Saint Augustine, On Genesis, trans. Edmund Hill, ed. John E. Rotelle, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/13 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002), 64-65. 31  Texts quoted from Augustinus, De Genesi contra Manichaeos, ed. Dorothea Weber, CSEL 91 (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1998), 108-109. 32  On Genesis, trans. Hill, 65-66. 33  CSEL 91, ed. Weber, 109-110. 30

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Gn. adu. Man. 1.25.43 We also, one and all, have those six days in our personal lives, distinguished from each other in good works and an upright way of life […] On the first day we have the light of faith, when we begin by believing visible things.34 Gn. adu. Man. 1.25.43 On the sixth day, however, we produce “live soul from the earth” […] so that it may be “a live soul,” one at the service, that is, of reason and justice, not of foolhardiness and sin. In this way too may the man be made to the image and likeness of God, male and female. Which here means understanding and activity; and may these be mated to fill the earth with spiritual offspring, that is to subdue the flesh and do all the other things which have been mentioned above as belonging to human perfection.36 Gn. adu. Man. 2.8.10 The point, you see, at which he was “enspirited,” or made spiritual was when he was placed in Paradise, that is, in the life of bliss and blessedness, and also received the command of perfection, so that he might be brought to finished completion by the word of God. […] And that is why all of us who have been born of him after that sin first act out the “soulish” man, until we gain the spiritual “enspirited” Adam, that is, our Lord Jesus Christ who did not commit any sin, and why on being created anew …38

 On Genesis, trans. Hill, 66.  CSEL 91, ed. Weber, 112. 36  On Genesis, trans. Hill, 67. 37  CSEL 91, ed. Weber, 113. 38  On Genesis, trans. Hill, 78. 39  CSEL 91, ed. Weber, 129-130. 34 35

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Habet etiam unusquisque nostrum in bonis operibus et recta vita tamquam distinctos istos sex dies […] primo die lucem fidei, quando prius visibilibus credit, propter quam fidem dominus visibiliter apparere dignatus est35 Sexto autem die producat de terra animam vivam, […] ut sit in illo anima viva, id est rationi et iustitiae serviens, non temeritati atque peccato. Ita fiat etiam homo ad imaginem et similitudinem dei, masculus et femina, id est intellectus et actio, quorum copulatione spiritalis fetus terram impleat, id est carnem subiciat, et cetera quae iam in hominis perfectione superius dicta sunt.37

Tunc enim spiritalis effectus est, cum in paradiso, hoc est in beata vita constitutus praeceptum etiam perfectionis accepit, ut verbo dei consummaretur. […] Et ideo animalem hominem prius agimus omnes, qui de illo post peccatum nati sumus, donec assequamur spiritalem Adam, id est dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, qui peccatum non fecit, et ab illo recreati et vivificate …39

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2.  The Human Body as a Sign of God: Texts from Gn. litt. inp. In Gn. litt. inp. Augustine shows how the human body is in and of itself capable, because of its erect posture, to function as a sign of its likeness to God. Next, although Augustine recognizes human’s imperfect similitudo, he explains this likeness not only in negative terms with reference to the perfect likeness which manifests itself in Christ, the Son. He also connects the human in a positive way to God from a Trinitarian perspective in a section that was added later. Gn. litt. inp. 16.60 Unless perhaps the fact that the human body is constructed to stand erect, for looking up at the sky avails to support the belief that the body itself was also made to the likeness of God, so that just as that likeness is not turned away from the Father, so the human body is not turned away from the sky […] Our bodies, after all, are very different from the sky, whereas in that likeness, which is the Son, there cannot be anything unlike the one he is like.40 Gn. litt. inp. 16.61 However, there is a preferable choice of meaning in these divine words, of why we should understand that it was said in the plural and not in the singular, Let us make man to our image and likeness; it is that man was made to the image, not of the Father alone or of the Son alone or of the Holy Spirit alone, but of the Trinity itself.42

nisi forte quod ad intuendum caelum figura humani corporis erecta est, valet etiam aliquid ut corpus ipsum ad simili­ tudinem dei factum credatur; ut quemadmodum a Patre illa similitudo non auertitur, ita corpus humanum a caelo non sit auersum, […] nam corpus nostrum a caelo plurimum differt; in illa uero similitudine, quae filius est, non potest quidquam esse dissimile illi cui similis est.41 Ille autem sensus est potius in his diuinis uerbis eligendus, ut ideo dictum intellegamus non singulariter sed pluraliter: faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram, quia non ad solius patris, aut solius filii uel solius spiritus sancti, sed ad ipsius trinitatis imaginem factus est homo.43

 On Genesis, trans. Hill, 149.  Texts quoted from Augustinus, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim, ed. Joseph Zycha, CSEL 28/1 (Prague and Vienna: Tempsky, 1894; repr. 1970), 501. 42  On Genesis, trans. Hill, 150. 43  CSEL 28/1, ed. Zycha, 502. 40 41

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3. The Middle Position of Man in Creation: Limited Authority and Sacraments as Divine Help The texts from the final book of Confessiones reflect Augustine’s mastery of rhetorical and exegetical skills. They deal with the topic of Christology in the context of eschatology, especially in a complex figurative commentary on the seven days of creation.44 Fundamentally, cosmological eschatology is closely linked to the process of humanity’s re-creation. When this renovation is worked out, mystagogy and initiation in the faith and Christian life are principle components. The selected texts on Christology are mainly taken from Augustine’s commentary on the sixth day of creation (creation of humankind: Conf. 13.21.29–31.46), but also from the first day (Christ and the Church: Conf. 13.12.13). It becomes clear that the limitation of human authority to fish, birds, cattle, all the earth and the wild beasts finds its completion in the gospels’ revelation of Christ as a model for imitation and self-control (Conf. 13.21.31). Conf. 13.12.13 Proceed with your confession, my faith […] in your name we are baptized, Father, son and Holy Spirit; in your name we baptize Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Among us also in his Christ God has made a heaven and an earth, meaning the carnal and spiritual; members of his Church.45 Conf. 13.21.29 This now has no need of baptism which the heathen need, in the way it did when it was covered by waters […] Nor does it refuse to believe unless it sees signs and wonders. For now the earth is believing and baptized, separated out

Procede in confessione, fides mea […] in nomine tuo baptizati sumus, pater et fili et spiritus sancte, in nomine tuo baptizamus pater et fili et spiritus sancte quia et apud nos in Christo suo fecit deus caelum et terram, spiritales et carnales ecclesiae suae …46 Neque enim iam opus habet baptismo, quo gentibus opus est, sicut opus habebat, cum aquis tegeretur: […] neque enim nisi signa et prodigia uiderit, non credit, cum iam distincta sit terra fidelis ab aquis maris infidelitate

 Confessiones 13.12.13–31.46.  Translations from The Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 46  Texts quoted from Augustinus, Confessionum Libri XIII, ed. Luc Verheijen, CCSL 27 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981), 248. 44 45

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from the sea-water bitter with faithlessness. Moreover tongues are a sign not to believers but to unbelievers.47 Conf. 13.21.31 But the Word, O God, is fount of eternal life and does not pass away. A departure from God is checked by your Word, when it said to us “Be not conformed to this world” so that “the earth may produce a living soul” through the fount of life. By your word through your evangelists the soul achieves selfcontrol by modelling itself on the imitators of your Christ. That is the meaning of “after its kind.” For a man is aroused to rivalry if a friend says “Be as I am, since I also am as you are.” So in the “living soul” there will be beasts that have become good by the gentleness of their behaviour.49 Conf. 13.23.33 The saying “he judges all things is the meaning of the text that man has power over the fish of the sea and the birds of heaven an all cattle and wild beasts over all the earth, and all creeping things which creep upon the earth. He judges by an act of intelligence, by which he perceives “what things are of the Spirit of God.”51 Conf. 13.23.34 That is why man, though made by you in your image, has not received authority over the lights of heaven nor over the heaven beyond our sight nor over day and night, which you called into being before establishing the heaven,

 The Confessions, trans. Chadwick.  CCSL 27, ed. Verheijen, 257-258. 49  The Confessions, trans. Chadwick. 50  CCSL 27, ed. Verheijen, 259. 51  The Confessions, trans. Chadwick. 52  CCSL 27, ed. Verheijen, 261. 47 48

amaris, et linguae in signo sunt non fidelibus, sed infidelibus.48 Verbum autem tuum, deus, fons uitae aeternae est et non praeterit; ideoque in uerbo tuo cohibetur ille discessus, dum dicitur nobis: nolite conformari huic saeculo, ut producat terra in fonte uitae animam uiuentem, in uerbo tuo per euangelistas tuos animam continentem imitando imitatores Christi tui. Hoc est enim secundum genus, quoniam aemulatio uiri ab amico est. Estote, inquit, sicut ego, quia et ego sicut uos. ita erunt in anima uiua bestiae bonae in mansuetudine actionis.50

Quod autem iudicat omnia, hoc est, quod habet potestatem piscium maris et uolatilium caeli et omnium pecorum et ferarum et omnis terrae et omnium repentium, quae repunt super terram. hoc enim agit per mentis intellectum, per quem percipit quae sunt spiritus dei.52 Ideoque homo, quem fecisti ad imaginem tuam, non accepit potestatem luminarium caeli neque ipsius occulti caeli, neque diei et noctis, quae ante caeli constitutionem uocasti, neque congregationis aquarum, quod est mare, sed

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not over the gathering of the waters which is the sea. But he received power over the fish of the sea and the birds of heaven and all cattle and all the earth and all creeping things which creep on the earth. He judges and approves what is right and disapproves what is wrong, whether in the solemn rite of the sacraments at the initiation of those whom your mercy searches out in “many waters,” Or that in that rite celebrated when there is offered the Fish, which was raised from the deep to be the food of the devout “earth,” or when considering the verbal signs and expressions which are the subject to the authority of your book, like birds flying beneath the firmament. He must assess interpretations, expositions, discourses, controversies, the forms of blessing and prayer to you. These signs come from the mouth and sound forth so that the people may respond Amen.53

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accepit potestatem piscium maris et uolatilium caeli et omnium pecorum et omnis terrae et omnium repentium, quae repunt super terram. Iudicat enim et approbat, quod recte, improbat autem, quod perperam inuenerit; siue in ea solemnitate sacramentorum, quibus initiantur quos per­ uestigat in aquis multis misericordia tua, siue in ea, qua ille piscis exhibetur, quem leuatum de profundo terra pia comedit, siue in uerborum signis uocibusque subiectis auctoritati libri tui tamquam sub firmamento uolitantibus, interpretando, exponendo, disserendo, disputando, benedicendo atque inuocando te, ore erumpentibus atque sonantibus signis, ut respondeat populus: Amen.54

IV.  Observations and Discussion Despite major differences in literary genre between these works, it is apparent that Augustine’s exegesis of Genesis was Christocentric from the earliest years onward. Not only the Johannine logic of the Word in the context of the creation of humankind (Gn. litt. inp. 16.61), but also the notion of Christ in unity with the Church (Gn. adu. Man. 1.23.40) form the foundation of Augustine’s Christology. Distinctive for his theological anthropology is a close connection between the sensory and corporeal aspects of Christology. This is evident in the first place in the Church in time and space: “And just as on that day male and female, so also in this age Christ and the Church.55 Secondly in Scripture: “ … together with the people on the nourishment provided by  The Confessions, trans. Chadwick.  CCSL 27, ed. Verheijen, 262. 55  Gn. adu. Man. 1.23.40: in illo die masculus et femina, sic et in ista aetate Christus et ecclesia. 53

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the holy scriptures and the divine law.”56 As a third aspect it regards humanity’s wounded condition: “whether they had been given over to the fleshly concupiscence like cattle.”57 Lastly, congruency and re-creation in Christ are discussed in the first and second book of Gn. adu. Man.: “while those who are of the flesh, that is, little ones in Christ, like God’s sheep, do so in such a way that they take may things on faith which they are unable as yet to understand.”58 Augustine’s cosmological analysis of individual or communal effects of initiation within the process of re-creation in the era of Christ59 form the basis for his reflections on human creation in the context of antiManichaean polemics. His contribution implies a largely positive view of the human body, as a sign that points towards God, imago Dei. Although wounded, it is the object of grace and re-creation. This offers a pastoral perspective on sensorial and corporal manifestations of God’s salvific initiative. In Gn. adu. Man. and Gn. litt. inp. this concerns biblical exegesis in particular, as well as many hermeneutical consequences for language and life. The earlier commentaries lack an extended reflection on the sacraments. The thirteenth book of Confessiones refers to Christ as the Fish, which was raised from the deep.60 It comments on God’s graceful initiative in the sacraments at the initiation of those whom your mercy searches out in “many waters.”61 This shift in focus probably relates to Augustine’s growing pastoral experience as a bishop with the mystagogical practice of initiation. From an anthropological perspective, Augustine’s prolonged commentary on the sixth day of creation is significant. It points the reader to the parallel between Augustine’s exegesis of the account of creation in Genesis and the individual process of renovation. In temporal terms, the latter is related to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit connects the individual process of re-creation to its foundation and goal in the eschatological Christ. 56  Gn. adu. Man. 1.23.40: cum ipso populo spiritaliter pascitur sanctarum scripturarum alimentis et lege divina … 57  Gn. adu. Man. 1.23.40: vel carnali concupiscentiae dediti sicut pecora … 58  Gn. adu. Man 1.23.40: carnalis autem, id est parvulus in Christo, tamquam pecus dei ut multa credat quae intellegere nondum potest. 59  Gn. adu. Man. 1.23.40: Mane autem fit ex praedicatione evangelii per dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, et finitur dies quintus, incipit sextus, in quo senectus veteris hominis apparet. 60  Conf. 12.23.34: piscem leuatum de profundo. 61  Conf. 12.23.34: in ea solemnitate sacramentorum, quibus initiantur quos peruestigat in aquis multis misericordia tua.



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The frequency of Pauline quotes in his exegesis of this part of the account of creation is characteristic for Augustine’s style. His relatively positive attitude towards the human body is grounded in an imperfect similitude between the imago Dei in the human mind and God. This godly gift of rationality qualifies humankind to receive limited authority over creation.62 Importantly, this power of human judgement does not extend to the firmament, which reflects Augustine’s allegorical interpretation of intellectual and spiritual creation beyond time. V.  Evaluations and Perspectives: Towards an Anthropocentric Christology The case studies presented here have shown that in Gn. adu. Man. the advent of Christ is closely related to the fallen condition of humans. Before drawing my conclusions, I now will concentrate on the various elements of this reading that help to evaluate Augustine’s perspective on Christology in these texts. A further demonstration of Augustine’s eagerness to focus on the actual fallen condition of humanity is his concern with the era of Christ in unity with the Church. In these early commentaries on Genesis, human authority is limited to fish, birds, cattle, all the earth and the creeping animals. Christ is presented to human persons as an example to imitate and as a help to find self-control.63 Despite their fallen condition, humans in their embodied existence always remain worthy of salvation in Christ. Thus, Augustine directly relates incarnation to the bodily creation of humankind and he stimulates identification of the reader with Christ’s suffering. His emphasis on the integration of a temporal human condition (Church) with Christ, offers him the theological concepts for an account of Christ’s salvific action in time and space. Augustine’s Christological reflections in Gn. litt. inp. are more limited but similarly point towards a largely positive evaluation of the human body.64 62  Conf. 13.23.33: Quod autem iudicat omnia, hoc est, quod habet potestatem piscium maris et uolatilium caeli et omnium pecorum et ferarum et omnis terrae et omnium repentium, quae repunt super terram. 63  Conf. 13.21.31: in uerbo tuo per euangelistas tuos animam continentem imitando imitatores Christi tui. … 64  For an overview of Manichaean evaluations of the role and function of the human body, see Jason David Beduhn, The Manichean Body in Discipline and Ritual (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).

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Because the human body is worthy to be a sign of God’s presence, Augustine here, too, refers to the mediating position of the human. This is based on human beings’ likeness and the erect posture of their bodies. Despite these positive evaluations of the position of humanity in creation, Augustine never loses sight of the fallen human condition. He comments on this ambiguity by making a distinction between the perfect likeness in Christ and the human imperfect likeness. Subsequently, Confessiones 13 offers a more detailed window onto the development of Augustine’s Christology. In his allegorical comment on the creation of humankind, similitudo again forms the bond between human beings and God in an affirmative stance. Nevertheless, Augustine also stresses the correlation with human responsibility for a limited part of creation and the cosmological order, and this represents a negative perspective. His prolific reflections on the sacraments at the service of Christ’s soteriological activity within time and space constitute a relatively new contribution in this context. The texts confirm that, even in the early stages of his career, Augustine aimed to present a synthesis which views Christ as a manifestation of both the incorporeal disembodied Word and an incarnate being, that is corporeal and sensorial. This incarnate being appears in the shape of a human body and in the signs of the Sacred Scriptures. In contrast to Manichaean ascetic initiation, Augustine in Gn. adu. Man. prefers the priority of sensorial manifestations of the faith in his view on mystagogy and initiation in the faith.65 Both Augustine’s positive attitude to the human body, and his special eye for the unity between Christ and his sensorial manifestations in the life of the Church serve his anti-Manichaean agenda. They are closely related to his efforts to grasp the notion of an incorporeal God. This shows how closely his mystagogical perspective is connected to his scriptural exegesis. Despite differences between the works in terms of literary genre and rhetoric, we can note that the early commentaries on Genesis serve Augustine’s pastoral and apologetic aims. In contrast, his reflections on creation in Confessiones 13 reveal a richly developed allegorical exegesis and a correspondingly complex rhetorical style. The latter is most likely one of the components of Augustine’s mystagogical strategy as a skilled author and writer. The rhetorical appeal not merely facilitates the communication of information, but also aims to operate as a form of  Gn. adu. Man. 1.25.43: primo die lucem fidei, quando prius visibilibus credit, propter quam fidem dominus visibiliter apparere dignatus est. 65

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­psychagogy.66 The predicate anthropocentric therefore seems highly appropriate to Augustine’s allegorical exegesis. Frequent references to metaphors and scriptural phrases are distinctive for Augustine’s Christology. They emphasize the human and bodily aspects of life in the Church: the sacraments,67 God who speaks through miracles,68 and Scripture as milk for the parvulus in Christo.69 VI. Conclusions The text readings and their subsequent discussion and evaluation in the last section have shown that both Gn. adu. Man. and Gn. litt. inp. pay ample attention to the visible aspects of the faith and also to the sensorial aspects of Augustine’s theology of incarnation. This focus can be explained by the apologetical and anti-Manichaean character of these works. Although it is obvious that Augustine’s Confessiones were not exclusively devoted to this anti-Manichaean agenda, it is unlikely that this apologetical perspective disappeared completely during the time it was written. In his comments on the sixth day of creation, the prominent connection between Christology and eschatological hope is indicative of Augustine’s pastoral concern for the life of the faithful. Indeed, it enables him to offer the faithful a perspective of hope, which is grounded in the incarnation of Christ, helping them to grasp manifestations of faith that are within their sensorial and corporeal domain. The central and positive position that Augustine affords to the human body, as object and sign of Christ’s salvific action, warrants calling Augustine’s Christology as expressed in Confessiones 13 anthropocentric. His view on the act of creation is suggested in nuce in the earliest commentaries on Genesis. It is recaptured in Confessiones 11–13 and serves as an ontological basis for Augustine’s anthropology. The fact that Augustine pays much attention to corporeal and sensorial manifestations of Christ within the life of the Church in this closing book appears to have  Paul Kolbet, Augustine and the Cure of the Souls: Revising a Classical Ideal (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010). 67  Conf. 13.23.34: in ea solemnitate sacramentorum, quibus initiantur quos peruestigat in aquis multis misericordia tua … 68  Conf. 13.21.29: neque enim nisi signa et prodigia uiderit, non credit… 69  Gn. adu. Man. 1.23.40: carnalis autem, id est parvulus in Christo, tamquam pecus dei, ut multa credat quae intellegere nondum potest … 66

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been an intentional part of his mystagogical strategy. It stimulates the readers to view sensorial manifestations of faith in their own lives as signs. It leads to the discovery of Christ and his salvific actions within one’s personal life, which is the aim of the mystagogical process. While Augustine used a highly allegorical style of exegesis in Confessiones 13, a more thorough literal exegesis of the first chapters of Genesis had to wait until the completion of Gn. litt. (>399-415).70 We will return now to the initial question regarding the relevance of these observations on Augustine’s Christology for the role of the human body in early Christian mystagogy. In this context, it should be noted that a strict integration of Johannine sapientially-oriented Christology of the Word and an extended exposé on the sensorial and corporeal manifestations of the presence of Christ within the life of the Church is distinctive of Augustine’s style. It obviously serves the pedagogical programme for the mystagogical process of the faithful. This strictly “connected” Christology, which correlates the Word and the physical life of the Church, is already present in the polemical context of the earlier commentaries on Genesis. Our close reading of the passages at hand has revealed that Augustine remained loyal to this integrated method of theological reflection on Christ. He never allows his readers to separate aspects of the corporeal and sensorial salvific actions of Christ from their sapiential origin beyond time and space. This anthropocentric Christology contributes to the interpretation of Augustine’s identity as a mystagogue.71 It summarizes his contribution to urgent contemporary questions such as “what it means to be a human creature.” As each individual human being is created to express likeness after the image of God, Augustine provides his audience with a concept of hope. Simultaneously he envisions and explores the consequences of human participation in a wounded condition of sin. However, this is never without the hope that life in an embodied and sensorial condition is predestined to be a sign of God’s merciful initiative. For Christ is the way and the image of the divine vocation for each embodied creature, as humans are called to follow Him.

70  For analysis and interpretation of the latter texts, see Matthew Knotts’ investigations in his Leuven dissertation, A Sapiential Hermeneutical Theology. 71  Cf. Giulio Maspero’s article on Gregory of Nyssa elsewhere in this volume.

Awful/Awesome St Augustine

Is the Body the Cornerstone of His Theology? Laela Zwollo I. Introduction There is surely no other church father who, having been a church authority for over a millennium and a half, has had the reputation for some for being a most damaging element to Western society. He has been accused of not only having “inspired” sexual repression, but also ‌1 misogyny and a pessimistic assessment of mankind, just to name a few. How Augustine’s reputation has come to be this negative or who the Augustine interpreters were who perpetuated this reputation is not of interest here. Modern Christians certainly have the right to question authority and prevailing attitudes, while historians do us a service by tracing back where and how the negative view on the body and sexuality in our society originated and took root. Both such activities relate to one of the aims of this volume: to re-assess the claim that our ancient Christian predecessors were the instigators of corporeal and sexual repression of the subsequent centuries. In this contribution, I will offer such a reassessment based upon my interpretation of Augustine’s view of the body. 1  E.g., Elaine Pagels, author of Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), lays the blame for Christian sexual repression and misogyny squarely on Augustine. For Pagels, it is not what Augustine really intended, but what he left as legacy which counts. Cited from Ann Matter, “Women,” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Alan D. Fitzgerald et al. (Cambridge and Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 887-892, at 891. The accusations of Augustine as a negative influence is discussed and put into perspective by e.g. Tarsicius J. van Bavel, Over Augustinus: Liefde en vriendschap (Kampen: Kok, 1989), 49-66 [English edition: Christians in the World: Introduction to the Spirituality of St. Augustine (New York: Catholic Book Publishing, 1980)]; Matter, “Women”; John Rist, “De spiritualiteit van Augustinus in het begin van de 21ste eeuw,”, in Sint Augustinus, ed. Tarsicius J. van Bavel and Bernard Bruning (Brussels: Mercatorfonds; Heverlee: Augustijns Instituut, 2007), 287-299 (English edition: “Augustine’s Spirituality in the Twenty-First Century”).

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Excellent studies from the past have shown that Augustine did not in fact regard the human body in a negative way. Margaret Miles (1979), Carol Harrison (1992) and T. J. van Bavel (1995) have illustrated that Augustine genuinely validated the human body as well as the wholeness of‌2 the human being, as body and soul. Yet, as Miles argues, there is one ‌3 major exception to this: Augustine’s view on sexuality. However, his view could be justified as an outflow of prevailing biblical, Judeo-Christian values or ascetic practices of the time, or of the classical tradition in general. Van Bavel, Augustinian scholar and monk, criticized Augustine more ‌4 harshly for his views on sexuality and marriage than Miles and Harrison. This researcher also located passages which indicate that Augustine was ‌5 also well aware of the detrimental effects of repressing one’s sexuality. My study is not primarily geared to thoroughly debunking the opinion of Augustine as the evil propagator of sexual repression or bodily disdain. Instead, it aims to do basically three things. First, it will show that we should not turn the tables around, as Miles has done in her otherwise profound study, to claim something as farfetched as: “the ‌6 body was the cornerstone of Augustine’s theology.” Secondly, it will defend my claim that we must deem Augustine’s view of the body as a 2  Margaret R. Miles, Augustine on the Body, American Academy of Religion Dissertation Series 31 (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1979); Carol Harrison, Beauty and Revelation in the Thought of Saint Augustine, Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 152-162, 140-191; van Bavel, Vriendschap, 49-66; idem, Tarsicius J. van Bavel, “‘No One Ever Hated His Own Flesh’: Eph. 5: 29 in Augustine,” Augustiniana 45 (1995): 45-93. 3  Augustine on sexuality: e.g., De ciuitate Dei (ciu.) 14.16-17, 23-24, in Augustinus, De civitate dei (pars 1: lib. 1-13), ed. Emanuel Hoffmann, CSEL 40/1 (Prague and Vienna: Tempsky; Leipzig: Freytag, 1899), 275-280; De Genesi ad litteram libri XII (Gn. litt.) 9.7.12, 9.14, 10.16, in Augustinus, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim, ed. Joseph Zycha, CSEL 28/1 (Prague and Vienna: Tempsky, 1894; repr. 1970), 37-40, 47-52. See also Miles, Augustine on the Body, 128-130; van Bavel, Vriendschap, 53-66. 4  Van Bavel, Vriendschap, 61. 5  Augustine: e.g.: De bono viduitatis (b. vid.) 21, 26; van Bavel, Vriendschap, 62, n. 42. 6  Miles, Augustine on the Body, 131: “Nowhere in the late classical philosophical attempts to describe the relationship of soul and body do we find the body unambiguously scorned and disparaged. Among both pagans and Christians the clearest thinkers agreed that the body was not of itself evil, that a metaphysical dualism was an inadequate foundation for thought. Yet an irreducible existential dualism remained, and less rigorous thinkers opted for a cosmology and anthropology which explained and supported it. The young Augustine felt the attraction of such a system; the old Augustine still felt the attraction poignantly, but he also realized the inadequacy of resolving an experiential tension by metaphysical descriptions which destroy the unity of the human being. Despite his own unconscious resistance and that of his culture to the revaluing of the body, Augustine has done a Herculean task of integrating the ‘stone which the builders rejected’. The body became the cornerstone of his theology.”



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positive example of his deeply paradoxical thinking; and thirdly, it will show that the most positive estimation of his view on the body is rooted in his mystagogy, which is directly related to his view of the state of the body in the afterlife. In carrying out these three goals, I will convey as well why Augustine’s view of the body is both awful and awesome. II.  Why Is Augustine’s View on the Body “Awful”? As already mentioned, Augustine did not regard the human body in itself as negative. Generally, he viewed the human body and the material world as God’s creations. Because God is absolute Good, Love and Beauty, it only makes sense that his products are essentially good, beau‌7 tiful and created out of love. Augustine even ardently refuted the anti‌8 corporeal attitude of the Christian-Gnostic sect of the Manichaeans. Moreover Augustine elaborated on the statements of Paul that “no one ‌9 ever hated their own body.” He even encouraged to love one’s body and to‌10 care for and respect the body of one’s neighbour. ‌11 However his doctrine of original sin can make a different impression. It would be difficult to summarize his doctrine here in a few paragraphs, so I will merely highlight the main points in a global way. His thesis is: the‌12 cause of evil or sin is not the human body but the human will. He exemplifies this with the original sin which Adam and Eve committed. The two primeval parents were fully aware of what God prohibited them to do, yet were persuaded by the serpent that when they disobeyed God’s instructions, they would become equal to him in his knowledge of good and evil. On this basis, Augustine argued superbia or

7  Augustine: De continentia (cont.) 10.24; trin. 8.3.4; 15.2.3, 4.6, 5.7; ciu. 22.24; Miles, Augustine on the Body, 62; van Bavel, “No One Ever Hated His Own Flesh,” 55-56. In all of creation there are traces of the Holy Trinity: trin. 6.10.12. 8  Augustine: Confessiones (conf.) 3.6.10; De Genesi aduersus Manicheos (Gn. adu. Man.) 1.4.7; ciu. 14.5. 9  See van Bavel, “No One Ever Hated His Own Flesh,” for references to Augustine’s works where he quotes Eph 5:29. 10  Augustine, e.g.: De doctrina christiana (doct. chr.) 1.24.19, 24; De moribus Mani­ chaeorum 27.52-53; van Bavel, “‘No One Ever Hated His Own Flesh,” 55, 62, 71 and 87. 11  Augustine on sin: Carol Harrison gives an excellent rendition of Augustine’s conception of sin and original sin in the context of imago Dei, see Harrison, Beauty and Revelation, 162-173. 12  Augustine on the will: e.g., conf. 7.9.13; 8.8.19, 20, 21; Gn. litt. 11.13.17.

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‌13 pride as the root of all evil. The result of this, in a nutshell, was that Adam and Eve would have to contend with a condition in which their bodies or bodily impulses no longer obeyed their rational wills, which essentially involved a deep-seated conflict between the physical body and ‌14 the non-physical soul. This condition was God’s punishment for Adam ‌15 and Eve’s defiance of his authority which carried over to progeny. By banning the first human beings from Eden, he allowed them to truly experience the difference between good and evil, which, until their fall, ‌16 they had never confronted in Paradise. Augustine explains at length the soul’s struggle to bring the body under its dominion. He also conveys how it manifested in himself, espe‌17 cially in his youth. Essentially the condition has to do with concupiscentiae, purely physical desires, in particular sex drives, fogging up the conscious mind. The body rebels against the spirit, temporarily usurping ‌18 its dominion. The human will is responsible for sin when it gives into these bodily impulses which involve turning away from the Creator or neglecting one’s relationship with Him. So technically speaking, the body is not the culprit; the culprit is the will, too weak to manage bodily drives. Additionally, the human sex drive is neither the culprit, because Augustine believed that this was something natural which God ‌19 created for the purpose of procreation and unifying humans. Like the Neo-Platonist Plotinus, Augustine posited that the will is bidirectional, it can be focused on God, whereby it functions properly, can do good and acquire divine wisdom. Or it will be turned to the body

13  Augustine on superbia: Gn. adu. Man. 2.9.12; Gn. litt. 4.27.38; trin. 4.10.13– 12.15. 14  Inspired by Rom 7:24, 23; Gn. litt. 9.10.16, 10.11.18-19, 12.20-21, 11.1.3, 31.40; ciu. 14.10, 16-17, 23-24, 22.23; van Bavel, “No One Ever Hated His Own Flesh,” 47-51. 15  Augustine: e.g., ciu. 14.12, 16-17; Gn. litt. 11.11.14–12.16, 31.40-41, 35-47. 16  Augustine writes that the act committed by Adam and Eve was foreseen by God and allowed to happen so that humans in the future would become aware of the evil of pride and disobedience to God (Gn. litt. 11.11.14, 18.23; 8.14.31-32, 15.33, 16.34-35); Augustine speculates that in the pre-lapsarian situation, Adam and Eve could have had sexual intercourse and children without the problem of libido dominating the will, e.g., Gn. litt. 9.3.5, 4.8, 6.11, 10.16; See also n. 3. 17  Augustine: conf. 2.2, 2.4, 3.6; 3.1.1–3.6. 18  Augustine: ciu. 14.16, Soliloquiorum libri duo (sol.) 1.17. 19  Augustine: e.g., Gn. litt. 9.8.13, 9.15; De bono coniugali liber unus (b. coniug.), De sancta virginitate (virg.); David G. Hunter, “Marriage,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Fitzgerald et al., 535-537; Paul van Geest, “Matrimonium,” in Augustinus-Lexikon, ed. Cornelius Mayer, Karl-Heinz Chelius, and Andreas Grote, vol. 3, fasc. 7-8 (Basel: Schwabe, 2011), 1206-1209; idem, “Nuptiae,” ibid., vol. 4, fasc. 1-2 (2013) 243-261.



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and live according to the values of the world, which generally dictate living according to the flesh or ego, in other words, perpetuating original ‌20 sin. The human being in Augustine’s view is trapped in a vicious circle, attempting to fulfil empty physical longings which require continuous ‌21 replenishing and never lead to true gratification. Admittedly, in Augustine’s doctrine of original sin, the dividing line between the body, its drives and sin itself is hair fine. In addition to the examples just enumerated, Augustine defended the superiority of the celibate life. Yet, it should be noted that he defended it without devalu‌22 ing marriage, as others in antiquity did, such as Jerome. It is of interest to briefly review some of his views on marriage, as they too reveal an ambiguous attitude towards the human body. Sex and the procreation, Augustine posits, pertain to the human state as‌23 it was originally intended. Moreover, sexuality plays an important role ‌24 in the married couple’s growth in fidelity and mutual respect. Thus the church father does not present erotic pleasure in marriage as ‌25 something evil or objectionable. Instead, he sees marriage as a remedy ‌26 for concupiscentiae or original sin. Sex between married persons ideally strengthens their spiritual relationship, which in his view is more inti‌27 mate than the physical relationship. On that vein, it is the affection of the soul, he writes, and not the union of bodies which make a marriage ‌28 good. He recommends that married couples strive to limit sexual intercourse to having children. But because of the difficulty involved in this, he did not advocate strict adherence. He was aware that being married and enforcing abstinence on one’s partner can lead to selfishness or adul‌29 Augustine’s defence of celibacy, however, Hunter reminds, was tery. also based upon the assumption that there was no longer the need for

20  Plotinus: Enneads 1.2.4, 5.1.1; compare to Augustine: e.g., Gn. litt. 3.20.30, 8.23.44, 24.45; trin. 11.6.10. 21  Augustine: e.g., trin. 12.9.14. 22  Augustine: e.g., b. coniug., virg., Gn. litt. 9.7.12; See van Geest for the development of Augustine’s doctrine of marriage, which includes his ideas on sexuality in “Nuptiae,” 249-255. 23  Van Geest, “Nuptiae,” 252; b. coniug. 2. 24  Van Geest, “Nuptiae,” 252; b. coniug. 3. 25  Van Geest, “Nuptiae,” 250; see also sol. 1.19, De ordine libri duo 2.25, conf. 6.21. 26  Augustine, b. coniug. 10.19. 27  Augustine, b. coniug. 9, virg. 12–15, b. vid. 25. 28  Augustine, Contra Faustum 23.8; b. coniug. 1. 29  Augustine, b. vid. 15A, 21, 26; virg. 33, b. coniug. 15; van Bavel, Vriendschap, 62, n. 42.

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Christians to propagate. If Christians chose to marry, it was because they ‌30 lack the self-control for celibacy. Hence, Augustine’s doctrines of original sin, marriage and sexuality, are highly analytical and complex. It is hardly surprising that theologians who have attempted to systematize his thought simplified the main points, whereby the beauty and subtlety of Augustine’s paradoxical thinking became lost, resulting in a harsh perspective of physical reality. Moreover, modern readers of Augustine tend to analyse Augustine’s statements on the physical body through the lenses of Dr Freud, hastily judging them as glorifications of sexual repression. These are likely some of the main reasons why Augustine has acquired an unfavourable reputation. The problem with these standpoints is that his view on the human body is rarely put into perspective with the rest of his thinking. This is what we will now set out to do: examine Augustine’s view on the body further in its relation to the soul and especially the experience of the vision of God in his mystagogy. Yet the deeper we tread into this material, his paradoxical and ambiguous articulations do not become less frequent. III.  Augustine’s Theory of the Three Visions Throughout his works, Augustine maintains a certain Plotinian hierarchy of reality, in which the physical body occupies the lowest rung of existence. This is best exemplified by his theory of three visions from ‌31 book twelve of his work The Literal Meaning of Genesis (Gn. litt). Corporeal vision or sense perception, the lowest, is superseded by spiritual vision. The latter encompasses the visions occurring in one’s imagination or recollections of corporeal reality. These are lower than intellectual ‌32 vision, which is the highest and most commendable. The intellect  Hunter, “Marriage,” 536; b. coniug. 9.9., 10.10. See also Gn. litt. 9.7.12.  Augustine: on corporeal vision: Gn. litt. 12.2.3. Spiritual vision: 12.4.9, 5.13, 7-9. Intellectual vision: 12.11.22, 24.51, 26.54; 3.20.30. Saint Augustine, On Genesis / A Refutation of the Manichees / Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis / The Literal Meaning of Genesis, trans. M. Fiedrowicz and E. Hill, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/13 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2006); see also Laela Zwollo, St. Augustine and Plotinus: The Human Mind as Image of the Divine, VCS 151 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 183-191. On sense perception in Augustine: Paul van Geest, The Incomprehensibility of God: Augustine as a Negative Theologian, LAHR 4; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 1 (Louvain: Peeters, 2011), 80-98. 32  Laela Zwollo, “St. Augustine on the Soul’s Divine Experience: Imago Dei and Visio Intellectualis from Book 12 of De Genesi ad litteram libri XII,” Studia Patristica 70 (2013): 85-91. 30 31



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occupies the most unphysical region of the soul where one contemplates God and the divine Ideas. His doctrine of the visio intellectualis, which lies at the heart of his mystagogy, describes how one’s experiences of God intensify with time, throughout one’s life and even after death. Intellectual vision is instigated by God himself and involves being snatched away from the physical senses. It is fleeting in duration due to the soul being weighed down by the perishable body and sin. As such it cannot hold its undivided ‌33 attention onto God. Although Augustine characterizes this vision as an experience of immaterial divine light, he often describes human knowl‌34 edge of God as derived from peering through dark glass and enigmas. Augustine is convinced that in the afterlife, saintly souls will obtain a more complete vision of God “face-to-face,” as well as a more complete understanding of how He truly is. Souls must earn this beatific vision in the present life by keeping faith, living a good life of searching for goodness and truth, purifying the soul with virtue and attempting to avoid sin. In view of this, Augustine would interject that no one in this present ‌35 life is wholly free from sin. The fullness of this vision will take place only after the Last Judgment and after the soul is returned its resurrected, transformed body, with which it ‌36 will enter eternal life. At this time, one’s vision will be somewhat similar to physical sight in this life; the difference being that invisible things – such as God, the angels, the content of one’s soul or that of oth‌37 ers – will become visible. One’s faith, which one has held onto in the ‌38 present life, will then transform and blossom to a fuller understanding. In the next section, we will return to Augustine’s doctrine of intellectual vision when we focus on Augustine’s ideas on the resurrected body. Thus, to conclude, in his theory of the three visions, Augustine did not degrade corporeal vision, sense perception or the body. He endowed them a rightful place in the order of things in this existence (ciu. 15.22). Although his theory is an excellent example of Augustine’s  Augustine, Gn. litt. 4.32.49; 12.35.68.  Augustine, Gn. litt. 12.26.53; trin. 15.20.39; quoting 1 Cor 13:12 per speculum et in aenigmate. 35  Augustine’s exegesis of Rom 5:12: “Through one man sin entered the world and through sin death, and thus it passed into all men, in whom all sinned” (Gn. litt. 10.11.18–end), ET: Literal Meaning, trans. Hill, 408; See also trin. 14.16.22; Enchiridion 64. 36  Augustine, trin. 1.8.17–end. 37  Augustine, ciu. 22.29; Gn. litt. 12.35.68, 36.69; trin. 14.19.25, Ep. 148.16. 38  Augustine on faith: e.g., trin. 9.1.1, 4.18.24. 33 34

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Neo-Platonist epistemology, it is also deeply biblical, as in the exhortation to avoid becoming of this world, which is illustrated in the ‌40 following passage.

‌39

But when the Son of God was manifested in the flesh he was sent into this world (Jn 16:28) … [LZ: Augustine quotes Gal 4:4, Jn 1:5, 1 Cor 1:21 and Jn 1:14]. When however he is perceived by the mind in the course of someone’s spiritual progress in time, he is indeed said to be sent, but not into this world, for he does not show himself perceptibly, that is he is not available to the physical senses. Of us too it can be said that when we grasp some eternal truth with the mind as far as we are capable of it, we are not in this world; and the spirits of all just men, even while still living in the flesh, are not in this world ‌41 insofar as they have a sense of divine things.

As Augustine sees it, our lives and the bulk of our obtainable knowledge are dominated by corporeal sense perception. He often expresses haste to get beyond the bombardment of the banal and the obvious in order to attain the much more sought-after visio Dei, which affords ‌42 deeper insights into one self, our present reality and God. Augustine regarded physical reality as teeming with opportunities for mishaps, misunderstandings, illusion and sin, which were predominantly the result of a broken relationship with God. This situation, he affirms, is as God foresaw it. Yet physical reality was not ultimately the place to find inner stability, truth, peace or a direct contact with God Himself. What he aims to teach here is not the suppression of physical drives or the devaluation of the body, but the intensification of one’s relationship with God. The goal in our present life is to perceive the divine and to do that, we must put aside our corporeal way of conceiving things. The question now is, judging from Augustine’s hierarchy of reality, as exemplified by his theory of three visions, can we agree with Miles that  Zwollo, St. Augustine and Plotinus, 311-357: “Augustine and Plotinus on the Image-Intellect and Epistemology.” Cf. the contribution by Martin Claes in this volume. 40  As in Rom 12:2 and 1 John 2:15; Augustine’s spirituality is often claimed to be “otherworldly” in the positive and negative sense. Harrison, Beauty and Revelation, 159, n. 114. 41  Augustine: trin. 4.20.28, in Augustinus, De Trinitate libri I-XII, ed. W. J. Mountain, CCSL 50 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1968), 198-199; ET: Saint Augustine, The Trinity / De Trinitate, trans. Edmund Hill, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/5 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1991; 2002), 181. 42  This impatience is expressed in e.g., Gn. litt. 4.32.49 and throughout the lengthy books trin. 14-15, in which his interest is the afterlife; see especially in his prayer: trin. 15.28.51. 39



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the body – or corporeal vision – is Augustine’s “theological cornerstone’? In the sense that a cornerstone is the foundation upon which we rest and shall always return to in order to remain – no, Miles’ contention is untenable. The present body and bodily existence can be more aptly described as stepping stones towards something grander and more fulfilling. Furthermore, the physical body as “cornerstone” is contradictory to Augustine’s eschatologically oriented thinking, which entails the following: humans lose their bodies at death and at the resurrection, their physical bodies will be returned to them, transformed. These may resemble our physical bodies in this present life, yet they will be immortal, without sin and of a spiritual, that is, non-physical nature. They will not return to the physical world. All things considered, Augustine did not even have a “doctrine of the body.” In his theology, the body is merely a sub-division of his doctrine of the soul and original sin. Furthermore, it is worthy to note that the above scheme of reality is not just Plotinian or biblical but also charac‌44 teristic of the classical literary tradition. Augustine is perhaps one of the most paradoxical and exceptional thinkers in this regard. While readily pointing out the sinful and illusory elements of the corporeal world – the flagship of the anti-corporal tradition – he simultaneously main‌45 tains that the physical world is also full of meaning and significance. As a Christian philosopher, Augustine took on the difficult task of defending the significance of the human body. This positive assessment was anchored in the notion of the truly physical and human incarnation of‌46 the Son of God. This contrasted with those steeped in Greek philosophy, for whom a bodily manifestation of an essentially immaterial god was an illogical notion. Augustine saw the greatest potential of the human body in its capacity to follow the death and resurrection of Christ, to become a “limb” of Christ’s Body through membership in his Church. Let us now proceed to Augustine’s most positive assessment of the human body.

‌43

 See n. 6.  E.g., Miles, Augustine on the Body, 131; see n. 6. 45  E.g., Augustine on vestiges, trin. 6.10.12, 12.5.5; Augustine says as well that we tend to first look to the physical in order to understand the divine (trin. 11.1.1). See also Harrison, who underlines this aspect in Augustine, yet her emphasis tends to make the church father resemble a modern psychologist (Harrison, Beauty and Revelation, 180, n. 231). 46  Miles, Augustine on the Body, 95-99; Harrison, Beauty and Revelation, 158-159, n. 118. Cf. the contributions by Giulio Maspero and Martin Claes in this volume. 43 44

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IV. Mystagogy of the Resurrected Human Body and the Body of Christ 1. The Resurrection of the Human Body in Trin., Ciu., and Letters 147–148 Miles asserts that with Augustine’s increased understanding of the incarnation in the course of his life, he integrated the body more and more into his later doctrine of the soul, elaborating on the whole experience ‌47 of the body as the basis of redemption. Miles on Augustine: “The assumption of human nature by the divine Word means that human nature is infinitely valuable; incarnation is then truly the basis for the redemption of the whole human being, not just the “highest part.” It is no longer only the Godlike and the beautiful in human beings that is salvaged out of the clutter and inertia of the body, but the whole experi‌48 ence of the human being.” This statement elicits commentary. If Miles’ assumption is correct – that Augustine’s mystagogy increasingly elevated the experience of the physical body – then we should be able to detect a greater appreciation for the body in Augustine’s major dogmatic works, such as De Trinitate (trin.) ‌49 and especially ciu. 22, which were completed in the last decade of his life. These are key works in which he deals with the human body at resurrection. In trin. 4, he is concerned with portraying the human body in its relationship to the human Body of Christ, especially his death and resurrection, in a profoundly mystagogical and sacramental context. In ciu., Augustine strives to give the human body as we know it in this life, its full justice in his exposition of the resurrected body in the heavenly City of God. The passages in trin. and ciu. now merit more attention. In trin., Augustine devotes a whole book (11) to sense perception in the framework of his epistemology. Here his statements closely follow the same hierarchical structure of his theory of the three visions. Yet his ‌50 statements on the body itself are scanty throughout the work. His exposition on the resurrection of the human body in trin. 4.3.5–6, 47  Miles, Augustine on the Body, 79; on the flesh to signify the whole person, 95. See Augustine: trin. 2.6.7. 48  Miles, Augustine on the Body, 95. 49  Trin. 4 was written in ca. 414-415 (basically around the same time as the treatises below); Trin. 14, quoted in the section below, from 420 to ca. 426-427; ciu. 22 in 426. The dating of the other treatises which are referred to earlier in this paper on marriage and sexuality are: b. coniug, between 397-401; virg. in 401; b. vid. in 414; cont. in 418419 (disputed). 50  E.g., mentioned most often in the context of the resurrection, Augustine: e.g., trin. 2.13.23; the body as temple: 2.17.28-30, 4.1.3, 5.9, 7.11, 14.16.22–19.25.



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embedded in the context of the death and resurrection of Christ, is of ‌51 importance here because he deemed the latter as a sacramentum for the inner human – the soul and an exemplum for the outer human – the ‌52 physical body. Augustine expounds here two kinds of human death: of the body and the soul, picturing them in the following way. Because of original sin, the human body became mortal. It will eventually degenerate by nature and die, after which it is abandoned by the soul. This is the first kind of death which is fundamentally physical. The second type of death concerns the soul; although the soul does not die at the death of the physical body, it can be dead or die while still in the physical body. This condition prevails when the soul is godless, permeated with sin or without wisdom and faith. It is a spiritual death involving being turned away from God (trin. 4.3.5). Yet the soul can “resurrect” or come to life by converting to Christ, who is Wisdom, Truth and Justice, and by receiving his grace and the gift of faith. Accordingly, this would mean that the soul is essentially spiritually dead at birth, or before baptism or a conversion, yet able to resurrect by ‌53 entering into spiritual life in Christ’s Light. In doing so, the soul will experience something of the mysterium made possible by Christ’s physi‌54 cal death and subsequent resurrection. In this way, Augustine asserts, the double resurrection of humans establishes a harmony with the one corporeal resurrection of Christ (4.2.4). Augustine does not claim in trin. 4 that the human physical body will undergo renewal in this life, because his point here is that the body is mortal and irrevocably destined to‌55 die. Nor does he dwell on the nature of Christ’s Body here. 51  Augustine’s conception of sacrament extends much further than the administering of ritual sacraments. See Laela Zwollo, “Augustine’s Conception of Sacrament: The Death and Resurrection of Christ as Sacrament in De Trinitate: Mystic Union between Christ and His Church,” in Die Sakramentsgemeinschaft in der Alten Kirche: Publikation der Tagung der Patristischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft in Soesterberg und Amsterdam (02.05.01.2017), ed. Liuwe H. Westra and Laela Zwollo, Patristic Studies 15 (Louvain: Peeters, 2019), 113-138. 52  Augustine on the sacrament of Christ’s body, on his physical body as well as on the ascended body, see Sermones 261-265 in PL 38, cols. 1202-1207, 1209-1212, 12181224; PL 39, cols. 2083-2084. 53  Augustine: trin. 4.1.4; according to Augustine, the sacramental ritual of baptism absolved the punishment of original sin but not the guilt of death. For this reason, he defended infant baptism (Gn. litt. 10.14.24-25). In trin. 14.17.23, he emphasized that after baptism gradual renewal of the soul is necessary for salvation. 54  Augustine: trin. 2.17.28-29; He adds that Christ’s soul did not require resurrection because it was already perfectly sinless and immortal. 55  On the two natures of Christ, physical and divine, see Augustine: e.g., trin. 1.7.1417, 2.1.2, 6.11, 4.21.31.

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Hence Augustine’s main interest in trin. 4 is Christ’s incarnation, death, resurrection and their profound significance for human spiritual growth. In Augustine’s broad definition, a sacrament can be – among other things – a sacred object of contemplation, as in Christ’s death and resurrection, serving as models for Christians. A sacrament brings humans back into a relationship with the divine, diminishing the effects of original sin and injustice. It enables one to assimilate something of the eternal, unchangeable and immaterial life of the Holy Trinity, an experience which is likened to intellectual vision (trin. 4.1.4). Elsewhere in trin., he does make some fleeting remarks on Christ’s Body, but more in a spiritual context, in relationship to his followers, his Church (4.7.11 and 9.12). We will return to these topics in section 4.2. Thus if Augustine meant that “not only the godlike and the beautiful” but the whole human being, including the fleshly body, was to be redeemed, as Miles put it, then trin. 4. would have been a perfect opportunity for him to say so. In fact, his thoughts do appear to flow in this vein a few chapters further: In this last (LZ: epoch) we receive the sacrament of our renewal which is such that at the end of time we shall be renewed all through by the resurrection of the flesh and healed of every infirmity, both of body and soul (4.4.7). … and that being dead in soul through many sins and destined to die in the flesh because of sin (LZ: because of Adam’s original sin), we should love the one who died in the flesh for us without sin, and that believing in him raised from the dead, and rising ourselves with him in spirit through faith, we should be made one in the one just one; and that we should not despair of ourselves rising in the flesh when we observed that we, the many members, had been preceded by the one head, in which we have been purified by faith and will then be made completely whole by sight, and that thus fully reconciled to God by him the mediator, we may be able to cling to ‌56 the one, enjoy the one and remain forever one (4.7.11).

It appears here as if Miles is indeed right: Augustine attributes importance to the physical body so that the whole human being, including the body, is involved in redemption. Yet we should analyse this further. Who is to be saved in the first place? Are these not the persons whose souls are resurrected in this life, who have held onto faith, turn‌57 ing to Christ on a daily basis for renewal and the healing of the will? Yet those whose souls do not resurrect in this life, remaining godless, 56  Augustine: trin. 4.4.7, in CCSL 50, ed. Mountain, 169-171; ET: The Trinity, trans. Hill, 159-160; 4.7.11, in CCSL 50, 175-176; ET: 164-165. See also trin. 14.17.24. 57  Enchiridion 111-113.



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faithless and without the proper wisdom, would they not be in the same boat with those who pursue the gratification of corporeal concupiscence and live only for themselves? We see how Augustine resolves this hiatus by reading further to 4.13.16, where we discover him clearly establishing the primacy of the resurrection of the soul as condition for the resurrection of the body: “So then – spirit is of more value than body, the death of the spirit is being forsaken by God, and the death of‌58 the body is being forsaken by the spirit …” It would be unthinkable for Augustine to claim that the resurrection of the body could take place without the mind and heart first being made pure and worthy of ‌59 God’s abode. Hence Augustine is not exactly making a strong case here for the redemption of the whole human being, as Miles claims. Moreover, Augustine emphasizes near the end of the whole work that the bodies which will be resurrected in the afterlife may resemble our physical bod‌60 ies, but now their “flesh” will be spiritual, imperishable and immortal. This assertion makes perfect sense in Augustine’s interpretation of the city of God, the eternal, heavenly Jerusalem. This celestial destination for saintly souls after the Judgment is clearly not a physical place or confined to time and place (ciu. 11.1.1). His thoughts on the resurrected body in trin. 14 extend over three chapters, as if he realized that the claim of the spiritual body, resembling the present one we are living in – yet completely renewed, healed and immortal, required adequate substantiation. Let us now turn to ciu. 22, where he goes to great lengths to describe the future spiritual human body, and much more vividly than in trin. He speculates whether the resurrected body will have hair or fingernails or the same impairments it had in this life (22.12). Nothing will be lost, he seems to exclaim with confidence. He argues that the soul’s natural love for its body causes a 58  Augustine: trin. 4.13.16, in CCSL 50, ed. Mountain, 181-184; ET: The Trinity, trans. Hill, 168; see also ciu. 20.6 and 7. 59  Augustine, e.g., ciu. 13.1: those who have not maintained obedience to God will die forever. The full vision of God is not intended for unjustified or evil persons: trin. 1.13.30. Augustine did not believe that all souls would be saved, he was not a universalist. God’s grace plays an important role here in Augustine’s thought. 60  Augustine: trin. 14.17.23-25, 14.19.25; ciu. 22, e.g., chapters 19 and 30; ciu. 13.10; trin. 14.17.23-25: based upon 1 Cor 15:12-55; Sermones 243.8; 362.13-14, 21; Enchiridion 89, 91; Harrison, Beauty and Revelation, 158-159, n. 118: “… the body and the soul of man are raised together in the Resurrection. He does not lose his body, character, individuality or the experiences he has had on earth.” However, Augustine surmises in ciu. 22.30 that saintly souls at the end will be so liberated from evil that they will forget all the traumas they experienced in their life on earth.

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bitter “tearing” at the separation of the body and soul at death (22.26). After the resurrected body is re-united with the soul, then the immortal body and soul will finally function in unity, which will facilitate the ‌62 more complete vision of God. Included in Augustine’s vivid portrayal of the body after resurrection in ciu. 22.29, is his enigmatic speculation that the eschatological divine vision will be perceived with the eyes of the resurrected body. These spiritual eyes, which resemble the physical ones we had in this life, will now likely be able to see the invisible divine in a way which was not possible in intellectual vision in this life. Striking here is his adaptation of his theory of the three visions in Gn. litt. 12, in which visio corporalis is elevated to a powerful visio intellectualis. Noteworthy, however, are his expressions of doubt as to the validity of these speculations, which are scattered throughout ciu. 22. His uncertainty as to the human condition after death is conveyed more boldly and to a ‌63 much greater degree in his letters, Epistles (Epp.) 147-148. For example, in Epp. 147.51 and 148, Augustine admits that he did not really know if the earthly body would become spiritual or if the risen body would become doubly spiritual. He claims himself ignorant as to whether the physical body at its transformation would cease to exist. Furthermore, in Ep. 148.3, he suggests that the body after death would differ so much from its earthly counterpart that the word “body” was in fact entirely unsuitable. Nonetheless, Augustine by no means lets up on his conviction that corporality, as well as the physical and spiritual earthly lives of humans, will determine the way in which they will encounter God after death. At this point we can say that Augustine’s view on the physical body, even in the context of its resurrected state, is more paradoxical and ambiguous than ever. Additionally, there is no sign in these letters or in trin. or ciu. that Augustine maximized the importance of the human body to the point that it held the same importance as the soul. In consideration of all the material treated here, it is obvious that in the church father’s thought, it is not the present physical body, but its transformed, spiritual future state which is of highest priority.

‌61

 See also ciu. 13.6.  Augustine: ciu. 20.16. Note other nuanced statements of Augustine in ciu.: the use of temporal things in the earthly city should be intended to enjoy earthly peace; peace of the body – an ideal in this life – is necessary for the peace of the soul (19.12-17, esp. 14). Yet: spiritual justice is superior to physical justice (19.13). 63  Ep. 147 was written in 413; Ep. 148 in 410; van Geest, The Incomprehensibility of God, 120, 122-124. 61 62



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Thus Miles’ conclusion above that in Augustine “redemption will come to the whole human being, not just the ‘highest part’” is misleading. Yet there is one more aspect to investigate against which we can evaluate Miles’ contentions. It concerns one of Augustine’s positive expressions of the human body and the physical life, which is expressed in one of his sermons, again, in a strongly mystagogical context. 2.  Christ’s Body in the Sacrament of Eucharist Nothing would seem to topple Augustine’s Plotinian hierarchy of existence – in which the body or physical perception is at the lowest rung and the intellect at the highest – , than his conception of the sacrament of Eucha‌64 rist. In his sermons and letters on the Eucharistic sacrament, he discusses a number of material and physical elements which function as signs pointing to Christ’s Body or life on earth. Some examples are: the ritual bread and wine symbolizing the Body and Blood of Christ; the once spoken words of Christ quoted from the New Testament repeated by a priest; the ‌65 chalice; liturgical garments and many more. The material objects and the physical setting are indispensable for the entire sacramental experience. A mass or service at an earthly location is designated as a “church” – not because of the building, but because of the people physically gathered ‌66 together for spiritual purposes – to seek truth, worship God and pray. Augustine underlines the importance of the external signs as triggers to experience God’s Light in the here and now. The sacramental bread after consecration holds special importance here for him. Upon partaking of the bread, Christ becomes present in the communicant. Sacramental union with God takes place on both an individual and a collective level. It is highlighted in Augustine’s articulation of the totus ‌67 Christus, which makes up a part of his expositions on Christ’s Body.  Zwollo, “Augustine’s Conception of the Sacrament,” 135-138.  Augustine, e.g., Ep. 55; E. Cutrone, “Sacraments,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Fitzgerald et al., 741-747; P. F. Beatrice, “Christian Worship,” ibid., 156-164; P. Jackson, “Eucharist,” ibid., 330-334; F. Van der Meer, Augustine the Bishop: The Life and Work of a Father of the Church, trans. B. Battershaw and G. R. Lamb (London: Sheed and Ward, 1983). 66  E. L. Fortrin, “De Civitate Dei,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Fitzgerald et al., 196-202, at 199. 67  See: Tarsicius J. van Bavel, “The Christus Totus Idea: A Forgotten Aspect of Augustine’s Spirituality,” in Studies in Patristic Christology, ed. Thomas Finan and Vincent Twomey (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998), 84-94; idem, Vriendschap, 93-113; On Corpus Christi, see Harrison, Beauty and Revelation, 224-230. 64 65

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‌68 Of the totus Christus, Christ himself represents the Head who resides in‌69 Heaven. His followers on earth, his Church, make up his limbs. It is the totality of Christ’s Body which unites all of mankind. He writes: “So we are He, in that we are his members, in that we are his body, in ‌70 that He is our Head, in that the whole Christ is both Head and Body.” Hence, the collective experience of the mystery of Christ’s Body builds ‌71 fellowship and community. Augustine speaks of “one human, one man, one person, one Christ, the whole human, the universal Christ, the ‌72 total Christ.” Van Bavel designates Augustine’s thinking here as “corporate,” as in the figurative sense of “incorporating.” Contrary to what we might expect, Augustine’s hierarchy of existence is held firmly in place here. The physical or material signs are not sacred in themselves. The crux of Augustine’s conception of sacramenta is its existential orientation: only those who consciously allow themselves to be lifted up in Christ are able to recognize this process of identification with ‌73 Christ’s Body. There may be an accent on Christ’s Body at the time of his incarnation – yet it is his invisible presence in the physically gathered congregation which is depicted. Furthermore, Augustine’s mystagogical instruction here addresses the renewal of the soul and the consciousness of the faithful. He does not claim that it was the physical body to be renewed from the experience of Christ’s Body. It is only the soul that is transformed ‌74 to goodness, justice and virtue, continuously progressing towards purity.

3.  Synthesis: Augustine’s Mystagogy and Eschatology of the Body As we have seen in Augustine’s view on original sin, sexuality, marriage, and sacrament, there was no definite disdain and certainly no glorification of the human body. His statements were often positive and negative, distinctly realistic, as well as idealistic. Sometimes his statements on the body  Van Bavel notes three kinds of existence of Christ in Augustine: 1. the pre-existent Son, God with God, 2. the historical Jesus, and 3. the total Christ, i.e., Christ inclusive of all his followers. In the latter existence, Christ is regarded as a “Living Community” (Vriendschap, 96). 69  From Paul: 1 Cor 12:12-27, 2 Cor 4:10, Rom 6:4, Col 2:12; Augustine: Enarrationes in Psalmos (en. Ps.) 142.3, 30.14; Sermo 341; In Johannis euangelium tractatus 21.8. 70  Augustine, Sermo 83.8 (written in 408-409) in PL 38, cols. 514-519; ET: http:// www.newadvent.org/fathers/160383.htm. 71  Augustine, e.g., doct. chr. 1.16.15, trin. 4.9. 72  Van Bavel, Vriendschap, 94-95. 73  Ibid., 96. 74  Ibid., 97. 68



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or the world in general appeared harsh, yet these were usually neutralized in another context, so that Augustine’s thoughts on the body were deemed ‌75 On the other hand, his doctrines of the resurrected human paradoxical. body and the sacrament of the Body of Christ experienced in this life were mostly unambiguously positive, if not triumphant. In Augustine’s vision, the resurrected body will be liberated from the ailments characteristic of the post-lapsarian condition. It will be an incorruptible, perfect, spiritual body which harmonizes with the soul, reflecting the harmony of body and soul of Christ, who in turn harmonizes with humans and enables humans to imitate his resurrected life. The restored body, possibly resembling the physical body from the present life, will finally enjoy complete intellectual vision with its once physical but now spiritual eyes, which see and fathom absolute truths. Saintly souls who have merited resurrected spiritual bodies are destined to live in the eternal, immaterial City of God, the heavenly Jerusalem. For Augustine, this “place” is not a transformation of the physical world in which we live now – as in “a new earth.” It exists already, yet humans are not fit for it. But they will be fit for it on the condition that they have been resurrected twice: first in the soul and then the body. In doing so, they imitate Christ’s resurrection, which is his guarantee for blessed, eternal existence. It would be difficult to maintain that in Augustine’s mystagogy the present human body holds a prominent position. Accordingly, it remains impossible to substantiate Miles’ claim that the present body is the cornerstone of Augustine’s theology. It would be more accurate to state that the cornerstone of Augustine’s thought is the future body, the spiritual and resurrected one, united with God or Christ’s Body. A justified question is whether Augustine’s idealistic assessment of the body’s resurrection is not just the other side of the coin of a devaluation of the human body or its physical existence? V.  Why Augustine’s View on the Body Is Awesome In regard to the question above, should we then deem Augustine’s mystagogy as objectionably “otherworldly”? Below, I will argue the contrary: that his otherworldliness can be regarded as an asset. 75  A most interesting example of this is Augustine’s vivid testimony of how hellish and sinful the present world is in ciu. 22.22, whereas a few chapters further, in ciu. 22.24, he dedicates an extensive ode to the creation and the beauty of nature and the human body.

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The deep psychological analyses, the paradoxical and aporetic quality of Augustine’s thought on the body could be regarded as positive in the sense of a liberation from excessive worldliness or materialism. This however would depend on one’s expectation from an influential church authority. For those who demand absolute theological clarity, his thought on the body could be regarded as overly ambiguous or even a curse. Yet by no means did he shun the struggles of one’s inner life while coping with the body and the exterior world. He explored the existential in himself, in his relation to others, to the community, to politics and the world at large. In doing so, he confronted the challenge of articulating the inexpressible, the eternal, the invisible, and the immaterial. His questioning, pondering and a method of searching and finding, was optimistic, not sceptical. His dialectic resolution was always Christocentric. Augustine sometimes overemphasized the negative effects of original sin and the dysfunctional relationship between the present body and soul. Yet these served as a testimony for the need for Christ, and most particularly, for his incarnation. He taught that turning to Christ will liberate us from the suffering, the vicious circles and false hopes resulting from exclusively materialistic pursuits. Augustine did not fail to portray the sufferings of the human body and soul, as well as those of the Body of the divine Word in his incarnation, as loaded with recognition, realism and profound, universal meaning. In his doctrine of Christ’s sacramental death in trin. 4, he showed that even though fearing the death of our physical bodies was normal, this fear could be alleviated by this sacrament as well as faith: faith in Christ, his Body, the promise of resurrection and in a more gratifying and intense union with God in the afterlife. Death can be overcome, he assured, by imitating the incarnated Son of God: first in the soul, and secondly, with the body, which must be buried with the Body of Christ in order to rise again. Augustine places Christ’s Body at the centre of his conception of the sacrament of Eucharist; yet the efficacy of this sacrament is correlated to an inner experience – as in spiritual and intellectual vision – and exercise of the imagination, for example, with biblical imagery and poetic sym‌76 In this way, his conception of sacrament is characterized by a bols. liberating fluidity: it is much broader than the formalized rituals of the seven sacraments of the Catholic church, especially with its accent on daily renewal by contact with God. Augmenting his mystagogy is his  E.g., Harrison, Beauty and Revelation, 95.

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utilization of Paul’s imagery of Christ’s Body: Christ himself as the ‌77 Head, and his followers, his Church, as the limbs. Here Augustine draws his students into imagining the far-reaching unity between Christ and his venerators, as head and limbs, intimately united in one corpus, stressing that Christians are the physical hands and feet of Christ on earth. Sacramental union in this way brings about numerous benefits in this life: solace, peace, enlightenment, fellowship, and community. Thus, Augustine provides a myriad of tangible imagery representing uplifting milestones, intended to minimalize the adversities of this life, or the bitter anticipation of one’s own death, enabling Christians to look forward to a peaceful, post-resurrected existence. As a final comment on Augustine’s idealistic view of the resurrected body, we should not lose sight of the historical setting in which Augustine lived. Two aspects are of importance here. The first is that life expectancy was much lower in antiquity than it is today. Death was a poignant element of daily reality. Secondly, his later adult life was dominated by the threat of the invasions of Germanic tribes who, after decimating the city of Rome in 410, travelled southward to North Africa, plundering, murdering and raping the local population. By the end of Augustine’s life in 430, the Vandals had already arrived to his bishopric in Hippo. The destruction of his city also meant the annihilation of everything which he had endeavoured to build up in his ecclesiastical ‌78 career. In this context, it is easier to place Augustine’s “otherworldly” mystagogy of the body and his forecasting of another kind of existence: a life in which divine justice will hold dominion, and fear, pain and suffering will no longer be known. This likely inspired many and helped the survivors to keep their heads above the turbulent waters. To conclude, Augustine may have missed a few things in his mystagogy, such as the mystery of the physical human body or of sexual union, but in light of these considerations, we could “forgive” him for the fact that he did not live through the Renaissance, the Age of Romanticism and most important of all … the latter half of the twentieth century when these matters became of increasing importance.

77  Van Bavel comments on Augustine’s re-working of Paul’s notion of Corpus Christi, that “No one stretched this line of thought so far as Augustine … after him, this line was broken off or at least, not further developed.” Vriendschap, 94. My translation from Dutch. 78  Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (London: Faber, 1967; repr. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 285-297.

Writing the Self as a Route to God ‌

Catherine Conybeare This contribution takes up the project of tracing mystagogic practice in late antiquity by broadening the arena in which we seek it. It builds on a paper by Karla Pollmann, while implicitly enlarging her definition of spiritual or transcendental mystagogy.1 Here, I situate mystagogy not just in the narration of moments of ascent to God, but in the project of selfnarration as such. Writing the self in early Christianity is intimately bound to the writer’s relationship with an incarnate God; and it provides a model for how others are to forge such relationships. In 393 and 394 ce, a wealthy aristocrat and littérateur exchanged a set of painful letters with his former mentor. The longest of these is an exceptionally elegant production in three successive Latin verse metres: elegiacs, iambics, and dactylic hexameters. The polished presentation, however, does not obscure the urgency of the content. If anything, the urgency is enhanced, as the complexities of self-presentation press against the formal constraints of the metre. nam mea si reputes quae pristina, quae tibi nota, sponte fatebor eum modo me non esse sub illo tempore qui fuerim, quo non perversus habebar et perversus eram, falsi caligine cernens … mens nova mi, fateor, mens non mea, non mea quondam, sed mea nunc auctore deo … If you consider my former self, which was known to you, I shall readily confess that I am not now the person that I was then, when I was not considered deviant and was deviant, seeing in the darkness of falsehood … I have a new mind, I confess, a mind not mine, not mine formerly, but mine now with God as its counsellor …2 1  Karla Pollmann, “Mystagogy in St. Augustine: Rhetoric, Exegesis, and Liminality,” in Seeing through the Eyes of Faith: New Approaches to the Mystagogy of the Church Fathers, ed. Paul van Geest, LAHR 11; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 2 (Louvain: Peeters, 2016), 137-161; most useful remarks on the definition of the term, including the notion of transcendental mystagogy, on pages 137-142. 2  Paulinus c. 10.131-134 and 142-143. All translations from the Latin and Greek are my own.

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The poet, of course, is Paulinus of Bordeaux, who was soon to move to Nola and earn the name by which he is more commonly known. His interlocutor is Ausonius. And this poem is one of the greatest instances of self-narration in the entire literary production of late antiquity.3 Yet this “remarkable” poem goes almost wholly unrecognized amid the proliferation of late antique autobiographical writing.4 Georg Misch, who composed in the early twentieth century what remains the fundamental survey of autobiography in antiquity, ignores it altogether.5 Paulinus of Nola only earns a mention from Misch for having written a letter to Augustine’s childhood friend and subsequent episcopal colleague, Alypius, in which Paulinus asked Alypius to recount “the whole history of your holiness.”6 Augustine eagerly took up the epistolary conversation on behalf of his friend; some scholars think that this exchange also helped to sow the seeds of the Confessions.7 The reasons for Misch’s omission are, I think, readily discovered; and they reveal much about scholars’ expectations of autobiographical writing. First, there is the problem of the term “autobiography” itself, which I have avoided in my title. The term was not coined until the late eighteenth century.8 While “autobiography” usefully groups together disparate examples of a type of writing in which the pronoun “I” of the 3  The standard text of Paulinus’ poems has long been that of Wilhelm von Hartel: S. Pontii Meropii Paulini Nolani Opera, ed. Wilhelm von Hartel, CSEL 30 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1894). They have recently been re-edited by F. Dolveck: Paulini Nolani Car­ mina, ed. F. Dolveck, CCSL 21 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015). Also of note is the text printed by R. P. H. Green in Appendix B of The Works of Ausonius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 708-717. 4  “Remarkable”: Green, Works of Ausonius, 708. 5  Georg Misch, A History of Autobiography in Antiquity, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951); note that Part III is devoted to “The Flowering of Autobiography in Late Antiquity.” A History of Autobiography was first published in German in 1907, but was substantially revised and “enlarged” (Misch’s word) on the occasion of its translation into English in the late 1940s. 6  Misch, History of Autobiography, vol. 2, 575-576. 7  “Some scholars”: notably Pierre Courcelle, whose ideas are nicely summarized and discussed by James J. O’Donnell in his commentary on the Confessions. See “Alypius, Paulinus and the Genesis of Conf.; Excursus to commentary on conf. 6.7.11,” in James J. O’Donnell, ed., Augustine, Confessions, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); online at https://www.stoa.org/hippo/comm6.html#CB6C7EXC (please scroll down to the subhead “Excursus: Alypius, Paulinus, and the genesis of conf.,” eds.) O’Donnell concludes that Courcelle’s basic assumption is reductive, but that Paulinus’ rich prose style may well have had some influence on Augustine’s style in the Confessions. 8  In 1797, to be precise; see the broad discussion of Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives (2nd ed.; Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), who observe that the politics of the term have been seen as exclusionary (3).



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narrator within the text and the “I” of the authorial agent outside the text may reasonably be taken as continuous with each other, the term “autobiography” elicits generic expectations which often prove anachronistic when applied to late antique texts.9 To establish how this may be, we have simply to consider the three Greek terms at the basis of the word “autobiography”: Autos, bios, graphein: self, life, writing. From that mere list, we can begin to see the ways in which the notion of “autobiography” might be culturally and chronologically contingent. Take “writing,” apparently the simplest term of the three. But what – at a given historical moment – are the prevailing styles, mores, languages of writing? What sort of prestige attaches to it? What sort of education is required to embark upon it? Is the use of scribes or amanuenses an accepted mode of writing – and does that include writing in the first person? Who is allowed to write? Who will copy or print what is written? And who will be able to read it? “Life” is far from self-explanatory, too. What is, in fact, a narratable life? What counts as its episodes of significance? Again, we can vividly see how this will vary at different historical moments. How is a relation to be established between the episodes of a life; what significance is attached to whether or not they may be read as a connected whole? But above all, autobiography will be hostage to notions of the self, the autos part of the composite whole. What is the vocabulary of the self? Indeed, is there an available vocabulary of the self? What are the contours of the self? For example, is more of a premium put on individuation, or on the self in relation to others? Is the self somehow knitted together, in some way guaranteed, by narration; or does it seem to pre-exist narration? If we return to the excerpt from Paulinus with which I began, you will see that I have twice supplemented the Latin text with an English word from the vocabulary of selfhood: nam mea si reputes quae pristina, quae tibi nota, sponte fatebor eum modo me non esse sub illo tempore qui fuerim … If you consider my former [self], which was known to you, I shall readily confess that I am not now [the person] that I was then …10 9  See Gur Zak, “Modes of Self-Writing from Antiquity to the Later Middle Ages,” in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature, ed. Ralph J. Hexter and D. Townsend (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 485-507. 10  Paulinus, c. 10.131-133.

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In the first instance, I supplement a neuter plural adjectival phrase (mea quae pristina); in the second, a personal pronoun (eum). Paulinus has no dedicated vocabulary of the self. Nor does anyone writing in late antiquity – in Latin or in Greek. Yet the 331 lines of this magnificent poem are deeply, indeed primarily concerned with self-definition, self-justification, and – quite simply – self-narration. So the first part of my title, “writing the self,” attempts to avoid the cultural and generic baggage of the term “autobiography” while still recognizing the selves that were composed in an outpouring of selfwriting in late antiquity. The second reason for the omission of Paulinus in the apparently exhaustive study of Misch speaks to the second part of my title, “as a route to God.” We may excerpt another small, complex passage from the same poem of Paulinus to illustrate that route. In the second section of the poem, composed in the relatively informal, almost conversational metre of iambics, Paulinus is striving to explain to Ausonius how Apollo and the Muses, the traditional sources of poetic inspiration, have come to be replaced by Christ. Part of this explanation lays out the relationship of Christ to humankind. It is a vexed passage in the text, but the reading that makes the best theological sense – which has, I think, been emended because it looks like dittography – is as follows: deusque nobis atque pro nobis homo nos induendus induit, aeterna iungens homines inter et deum in utrumque se commercia. God to us and man for us, when he needed us to be clothed in him, he clothed himself in us,11 conjoining eternal, reciprocal exchange between humankind and God.12

This clearly demands prolonged exegesis, which I am not going to bestow at present; a couple of points, however, are important for my purposes. First, it is clear that, for Paulinus, this dense expression of Christology belongs in his poetry and moreover, that it belongs in this epistolary poetry, this communication of the self to a beloved other. Second, there is something about this communication of the self that lends itself particularly to the exploration of the human relationship with Christ.  A more literal rendering, but clunky: “when he needed us to put him on, he put us on.”  Paulinus, c. 10.53-56. At l. 54, I follow the reading of Green at Works of Ausonius, 709, also preferred by Dolveck, CCSL 21. Von Hartel’s reading of the line (unfortunately not recorded in Green’s apparatus) is nos induendo se exuit. 11

12



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These observations may seem all too obvious. But one of the paradoxes of autobiographical writing – or self-narration, as we may now call it – is that the more successful it is, the less susceptible it is to analysis as writing. The techniques of literary construction, the theoretical preoccupations, the selections, omissions, and absences: all these the reader willingly allows to be occluded in his or her commitment to the narrated self. Turn to the scholarly writing – as opposed to commentary – on any of the texts I discuss in this contribution, and you will see that almost always it slips from criticism into paraphrase. Somehow, these extended products of self-narration choke off the bigger questions about the relationship of author to text. Yet writing the self is intimately concerned with embodied existence, always and inevitably – even when its concern is expressed only in silence about the body. It is an illusion to think that writing can be somehow the product of a disembodied self, the spontaneous effusion of the mind or spirit onto parchment or papyrus. And the language that represents the authorial presence both constitutes and is exceeded by the self. It constitutes the self because, in the moment of reading or listening, this is all we know of the writing self. But it is always exceeded by the self because, in our encounter with the text, we are confronted with the absence of the body that composed it; and in our encounter with the insufficiency of language to express the fullness of the self, we are left wanting more.13 So too, we may infer, are our fourth-century narrators of the self left wanting more. Look at Paulinus’ repeated revisions and self-corrections: “… I have a new mind, I confess, a mind not mine, not mine formerly, but mine now with God as its counsellor ….”14 The word I have translated as “counsellor,” auctor, could of course equally well be translated “author.” Only God’s writing is complete – or rather, only God’s word. The failure of human logoi to capture the fullness of the self gestures towards the Logos who is Christ. At the same time, Christ “clothed himself in us” through the incarnation – so the failure of human logoi gestures also towards the flesh, the body that will be redeemed through relationship with Christ. This excess beyond language, this relation of the writing body to Christ, explains above all why a post-enlightenment term such as “autobiography” will not do for our purposes; and why it occludes the vital characteristics 13  Erika Kidd, influenced by the work of James Wetzel (especially Parting Knowledge: Essays after Augustine [Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2013]), suggestively explores this theme in Augustine’s work: see most notably E. Kidd, “Parting Words: Augustine on Language and Loss,” Ramify 6 (2016): 59-83. 14  Paulinus, c. 10.142-143.

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of late antique writing the self. For once the relation of the self to Christ is no longer at the heart of the endeavour of writing – and indeed of living – very different contours of a life will of necessity be privileged. Here, I shall use these observations to defamiliarize the all too familiar Confessions of St Augustine, and to remind us why this great narrative of interiority is also a narrative of the body; and then to connect it to its predecessor, Gregory of Nazianzus’ De vita sua, which is at first appearance a very different literary product.15 Book 7 of the Confessions is, of all the books in the work, the one most preoccupied with the possibilities and failures of a philosophical approach to God. The context is Augustine’s catechumenate in Milan, though these circumstances are not alluded to in the course of the book. It is here that Augustine tells us how he grappled with the non-materiality of God (he gives us his memorable simile of the universe as a sponge set within, and wholly permeated by, a sea of infinite God-ness16) and with the non-materiality of evil. It is here that Augustine shows us how he finally threw off the superstition of astrology. And it is here that he gives us a most unusual reading of Neoplatonic texts: procurasti mihi … quosdam platonicorum libros ex graeca lingua in lati­ nam versos, et ibi legi, non quidem his verbis sed hoc idem omnino mul­ tis et multiplicibus suaderi rationibus, quod in principio erat verbum et verbum erat apud deum et deus erat verbum. you obtained for me … some books of the Platonists translated from Greek into Latin, and there I read – not exactly in these words, but exactly the same thing, supported by many and multifarious arguments – that in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.17

Augustine embarks upon an expository reading of the ideas of these “Platonists.” He tells us that these libri platonicorum released his spiritual imagination from its material constraints – but the whole reading is  For the Confessions, I use the text printed by O’Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, vol. 1, which is based on Augustinus, Confessionum Libri XIII, ed. Luc Verheijen, CCSL 27 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981), which in its turn is dependent on S. Aurelii Augustini Confessionum Libri XIII, ed. Martinus Skutella, Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana (Leipzig: Teubner, 1934). Gregory of Nazianzus’ De vita sua has a modern edition and commentary by Christoph Jungck: Gregor von Nazianz, De vita sua, ed. Christoph Jungck (Heidelberg: Winter, 1974); the text is more readily available in PG 37, which also contains Gregory’s other autobiographical poems. 16  Augustine, conf. 7.5.7: he used to envisage God tamquam si mare esset ubique et undique per immensa infinitum solum mare et haberet intra se spongiam quamlibet mag­ nam, sed finitam tamen … 17  Augustine, conf. 7.9.13. 15



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performed through the words of the gospel of John, behind which the Platonists are concealed. Moreover, Augustine also uses the gospel of John to show his readers what the Platonists did not say: item legi ibi quia verbum, deus, non ex carne, non ex sanguine non ex voluntate viri neque ex voluntate carnis, sed ex deo natus est; sed quia verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis, non ibi legi. Likewise, I read there that God the word was born not from the flesh, not from blood or the will of man or the will of the flesh, but from God; but that the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, I did not read there.18

This is how Augustine demonstrates the impoverishment of the philosophical tradition that he inherited and by which, as we know from the Cassiciacum dialogues, he had been much impressed: it brilliantly encompasses the metaphysical; but it can do nothing with the corporeal. And it is with the complex integration of the two that Augustine is concerned. As he describes his search for God, in the space of a few paragraphs he both shows his readers the limitations of materiality and reinserts the spiritual into the material world. That the reading is focalized through John demonstrates succinctly how far the libri platonicorum lag behind true Christian faith. It is towards the end of Book 7 that Augustine spells out more fully the connections that he is making. et quaerebam viam comparandi roboris quod esset idoneum ad fruendum te, nec inveniebam donec amplecterer mediatorem dei et hominum, homi­ nem Christum Iesum, qui est super omnia deus benedictus in saecula, vocantem et dicentem, “ego sum via et veritas et vita,” et cibum, cui capiendo invalidus eram, miscentem carni, quoniam verbum caro factum est ut infantiae nostrae lactesceret sapientia tua, per quam creasti omnia. And I sought a way of gaining the strength which would be sufficient for enjoying you, and I did not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and humankind, the human being Christ Jesus, who is God above everything, blessed for ever, calling and saying, “I am the way and the truth and the life,” and mingling the food, which I was too weak to take, with the flesh, since your word was made flesh so that your wisdom, through which you created everything, might feed milk to our infancy.19

This long sentence, sustained through four relative clauses, through participial verbs and nouns in apposition, reenacts again and again the mediation between God and humans that Augustine discovers – or, in  Augustine, conf. 7.9.14.  Augustine, conf. 7.18.24. Cf. Mayer’s discussion in this volume regarding the Eucharist, nutrition, and nurture. 18

19

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the timeframe of the book itself, has not yet discovered, but is anticipating. The phrase hominem Christum Iesum encapsulates that mediation; the juxtaposition of hominum and hominem emphasizes the humanity of Christ. Indeed, that the encounter with the divine comes in a very human embrace (amplecterer) presses home the point. In the next clause, the juxtaposition of omnia and deus places the God who is Christ directly adjacent to his creation – as again at the end of the sentence, with the sapientia per quam creasti omnia. Christ’s words at John 14:6 are quoted, ego sum via et veritas et vita; but these abstract properties are supplemented by the food that Christ mingles with his flesh for the believer. In another striking juxtaposition of the metaphysical and the fleshly, it is wisdom, sapientia – Christ in his divine aspect – that suckles those who are infants in Christ. In a sentence, then, Augustine displays the mystery of the eucharistic moment, that meeting point between humanity and divinity. The passage looks ahead to his other sustained reflection on Christ as mediator, which occurs at the end of Book 10, and which finishes with a fleeting image of Augustine himself celebrating the Eucharist: “I ponder the price paid for me, and I eat and drink, and I share it, and as a poor man I yearn to be filled by it amidst those who eat and are filled. And they praise the lord who seek him” (cogito pretium meum, et manduco et bibo et erogo et pauper cupio saturari ex eo inter illos qui edunt et saturantur. et laudant dominum qui requirunt eum).20 The passage in Book 7 is little discussed; and when it is, the emphasis is – understandably – on the eucharistic content.21 But Augustine isn’t only talking about the Eucharist, as we see from my next passage: quid autem sacramenti haberet verbum caro factum, ne suspicari quidem poteram. tantum cognoveram ex his quae de illo scripta traderentur quia manducavit et bibit, dormivit, ambulavit, exhilaratus est, contristatus est, sermocinatus est, non haesisse carnem illam verbo tuo nisi cum anima et mente humana. novit hoc omnis qui novit incommutabilitatem verbi tui … etenim nunc movere membra corporis per voluntatem, nunc non movere, nunc aliquo affectu affici, nunc non affici, nunc proferre per signa sapientes sententias, nunc esse in silentio, propria sunt mutabilitatis ani­ mae et mentis. But what a mystery the word made flesh might hold, I could not even guess. I only knew from the writings about him that were handed down that because he ate and drank, slept, walked, felt joy and  Augustine, conf. 10.43.70.  O’Donnell’s commentary, however, is excellent here.

20 21



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s­orrow, held conversations, that flesh certainly fused to your word with a human soul and mind. Everyone knows this who knows the unchanging nature of your word … But in fact, now moving the limbs through the action of the will, now not moving them; now being affected by some emotion, now not; now uttering wise opinions through signs, now being silent: these are properties of the changeability of soul and mind.22

O’Donnell’s commentary traces each of the functions of Christ to a passage in the gospels, and then observes of the last sentence here, “The distribution of functions in this sentence suggests that A[ugustine] is employing three categories: action, passion, and (as a separate function!) signification.”23 But this is far from exhausting the significance of the passage. The first section, to be sure, marvels at the humanity of Christ. Then we are reminded of the incommutabilitas verbi tui – which means that some sort of fusion with the human (the verb is haereo) must have taken place. But then Augustine doubles back to reflect on human mutability. And the functions on which he reflects are particularly appropriate to the work from which this is excerpted – that is, to the effort of selfwriting, self-examination, and self-improvement that he named as his Confessions. The reflection on Christ’s humanity grows directly out of Augustine’s reflection on his own life and becomes part of it. We have seen him mystified by the power and the limitations of the human will (most crucially, when he asks: how can the will will something, and yet not obey itself?24), by the power and the fluctuations of human desire, by the power and inadequacy of the signs of human discourse. The Confessions are testimony to “the changeability of soul and mind” (muta­ bilitas animae et mentis). The work famously ends with a verb in the future tense: the changeability is not yet resolved in rest. But Augustine makes of the fluctuations of his own human life a path to envisage the humanity of God. At the end of Book 10 – in the passage I have already quoted – Augustine gives us a unique glimpse of himself in the present tense, celebrating the eucharist. Manduco et bibo: the verbs link his own action to Christ, not just in the eucharistic practice of the moment but in the depiction of the humanity of Christ in Book 7. The last sentence of the book epitomizes the Confessions as a whole by connecting seeking and praise. To seek God is to praise him; to narrate that search is to praise him. The search is  Augustine, conf. 7.19.25.  O’Donnell, Augustine, Confessions, on conf. 7.19.25, at etenim nunc movere. 24  Augustine, conf. 8.9.21: imperat animus ut velit animus, nec alter est nec facit tamen. 22 23

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written by the body as well as in the heart: narrating the body and that search is an act of praise. The latter part of book 10 details the temptations of the senses that continue to press upon Augustine; coming directly after this section, as it does, the narration of the eucharistic moment is not an afterthought, but a consummation. Augustine brings himself as fully human, temptations and all, to his recognition of Christ’s humanity. He eats, drinks, searches, praises. And in between, crucially, he shares. The Eucharist is not a solitary practice: it is performed in communion with others – just as Augustine, as he tells us, composes his Confessions for the edification of others as well as for himself.25 Just as the offering of the Eucharist represents a moment of fusion of the human and divine, so the offering of the Confessions touches the divinity of Christ through reflecting on the nature of humanity. Of course Augustine singles out signification as a separate function when he sketches the mutability of human mind and soul. The very process of writing, of the production of words, is to him a compulsion as well as a source of anxiety: “… but woe to those who are silent about you; for the chatterers are dumb.”26 In our encounter with the insufficiency of language to express the fullness of the self, we are left wanting more. The words on the page, the words heard in reading, suggest the body of the writer; in the gap between words and writer is found the body of the incarnate Christ. In words, Augustine sketches his own humanity the better to realize Christ’s humanity, and somehow to catch a glimpse of what it might be to move from words to Word. I turn now to Gregory of Nazianzus. He does not generally form a part of discussions of late antique mystagogy, which tend rather to focus on the explicit mystagogies of John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, or Maximus the Confessor. Gregory is, however, an accomplished and prolific writer of the self; and it is in this capacity, as I shall argue, that he too finds his route to God. The tenor of Gregory of Nazianzus’ self-writing, and not least of the long poem known as De vita sua, is very different from that of Augustine. Ninety-nine poems by Gregory, greatly various in length, contents,  This is implicit in the work as a whole, but confirmed by the beginning of conf. 11 (affectum meum excito in te, et eorum qui haec legunt, ut dicamus omnes, “magnus dominus et laudabilis valde”) and by his description of conf. in the Retractationes: confes­ sionum mearum libri tredecim et de malis et de bonis meis deum laudant iustum et bonum, atque in eum excitant humanum intellectum et affectum (retr. 2.6). 26  This paradoxical phrase comes at the end of the great prayer that opens the Con­ fessions: et vae tacentibus de te, quoniam loquaces muti sunt (conf. 1.4.4). 25



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and metre, are grouped by the Maurists under the title De seipso.27 This volume of production bespeaks an obsessive writing and re-writing of the self – the collection even ends with a succession of possible epitaphs – and the tone is often plaintive or defensive. Gregory’s self-writing is not lacking in the details of his life – its politics, disputes, confrontations; his family, friends, and enemies. And yet, I shall argue, the fundamental principle is similar to that in Augustine’s Confessions: the two authors have more in common than at first appears.28 This is not to vitiate Susanna Elm’s recent argument about the apologetic functions of autobiography (which in any case focuses on Gregory’s second oration), but to expose the deeper structures of Gregory’s motivation.29 To be sure, Gregory was educated and for many years thrived in a highly agonistic rhetorical culture of personal competition and display, and it could be argued that he never put that entirely behind him. But the tenor of Gregory’s self-writing is not triumphant: on the contrary, it is searching, anguished, self-lacerating. The “I” of the poems more often than not portrays vacillation and weakness. 30 The question becomes, once again: why this effusion of writing in the first person? With Gregory, we have no convenient review of his works equivalent 27  Poemata de seipso: PG 37, cols. 969-1452. The most comprehensive study of Gregory’s autobiographical poems of which I am aware is Suzanne Abrams Rebillard, Speak­ ing for Salvation: Gregory of Nazianzus as Poet and Priest in his Autobiographical Poems (diss. Brown University, Providence, RI, 2003). 28  Scholars frequently suggest that Augustine might have known the work of Gregory, but the notion is insufficiently substantiated. See, for example, Annemaré Kotzé, “Augustine’s Confessions: the Social and Literary Context,” Acta Classica 49 (2006): 145-166; Jean Bernardi, “Trois autobiographies de Saint Grégoire de Nazianze,” in L’invention de l’autobiographie d’Hésiode à saint Augustin, ed. Marie-Françoise Baslez et al., Études de Littérature Ancienne 5 (Paris: ENS, 1993), 155-165; Misch, History of Auto­ biography, vol. 2, 624 (in footnote), the influence “not improbable” – (mis)citing Alphonse Benoit, Saint Grégoire de Nazianze (Marseille, 1876; reprinted Hildesheim: Olms, 1973), who claims of Gregory’s autobiographical poems that “Cet ouvrage a eu la gloire d’en inspirer un autre qui n’est pas moins célèbre; car … il est impossible de méconnaître dans les Confessions de saint Augustin la trace de saint Grégoire” (734-735). The whole tradition of influence may go back to this claim, and I do not wish to emulate it here. 29  Susanna Elm, “Apology as Autobiography – an Episcopal Genre? Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine of Hippo,” in Spätantike Konzeptionen von Literatur, ed. Jan R. Stenger, Bibliothek der klassischen Altertumswissenschaften, II/149 (Heidelberg: Winter, 2015), 33-48. Abrams Rebillard poses the question, “If Gregory as autobiographer retreats, whose voice do we hear?” See Suzanne Abrams Rebillard, “The Speech Act of Swearing: Gregory of Nazianzus’s Oath in Poema 2.1.2 in Context,” JECS 21 (2013): 177-207, quote at 178. 30  Misch, History of Autobiography, vol. 2, 600, appeals to “the subjective nature of a poet” and Gregory’s “passionate impressionability,” which seems to me insufficient.

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to Augustine’s Retractationes to guide us. But a tiny poem in the collection De seipso – just three lines of iambic trimeter – begins to give us a clue: τριὰς λαλοῖτο, καὶ καταρτίζοι λόγον ἄλλος τις, ὅσπερ ἄξιος. θρόνων δ’ἐγὼ εἴξω. Θεῷ γάρ προσλαλῶν οὐ παύσομαι. Let the Trinity be spoken, and let someone else, whoever is worthy, supply the speech. But I shall yield (eixo) to the thrones/chairs [of rhetoric]. For I shall not stop speaking to God.31

The tone recalls the subtlety of Greek epigram from the classical period: its deflection, its evocation of another conversation going on elsewhere, its allusive aposiopesis. But there is also a certain irony here. Gregory was renowned for his preaching on the Trinity – indeed, for his exposition of orthodox trinitarian belief in the face of the Arian majority in Constantinople. Yet in this instance the “I” of the poem declares its primary intention: theōi proslalōn, speaking to God. The scope of this little epigram reaches out beyond the words of the poem and into a future of urgent communication. We could see a joke in ou pausomai and the abrupt silence of the end of the poem. Or we could see an opening out of possibilities – like the verb in the future tense at the end of the Confessions. I think we should see the latter. Again and again, Gregory shows us his own words fraught with possibilities – their earthbound use for rhetorical achievement and dogmatic dispute, to be sure, but also the ways in which they open out towards Christ as Word. In the poem that the Maurists choose to open the collection, entitled Peri tōn kath’heauton – or, “about the things related to himself” – Gregory narrates the temptations to which other men are subject, and declares that his one temptation is striving for the kleos logōn, the glory of words: τοῖς ἔπι πόλλ’ἐμόγησα πολὺν χρόνον, ἀλλα καὶ αὐτοὺς πρηνέας ἐν δαπέδῳ Χριστοῦ προπάροιθεν ἔθηκα εἴξαντας μεγάλοιο Θεοῦ λόγῳ, ὅς ῥα καλύπτει πάντα φρενὸς βροτέης στρεπτὸν πολυειδέα μῦθον. With these (words) I struggled in many ways for a long time, but them too I have laid prone on the ground before Christ, giving way to the Word of great God, which covers every twisted multiform story of the human mind.32  Greg. Naz., c. 2.1.4.  Greg. Naz., c. 2.1.1.98-101.

31

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We notice the way in which Gregory personifies his words: the words that represent his previous accomplishments in the schools of Athens are made to prostrate themselves in worship before Christ, to recognize the superiority of God’s Word. The nature of God’s word is not made explicit, but implied as a silent antithesis to the “twisted multiform story” (strepton polyeidea mython) of humanity – with logos, previously used of human words, conspicuously replaced by mythos. Christ as word is not twisted, but simple, honest, transparent; he is not multiform, but unified. Here it is not Christ who is made flesh, but the baulky human words themselves. I offer a third example of the ways in which Gregory’s words reach beyond his poems, in a twelve-line poem of despair – reminiscent of Gerard Manley Hopkins33 – entitled “Desire for death” (pothos tou tha­ natou). The poem ends with two poignant questions: εἰ μηδέν εἰμι, Χριστέ μου, τίς ἡ πλάσις; εἰ τίμιός σοι, πῶς τόσοις ἐλαύνομαι; If I am nothing, my Christ, what is this creation? If I am worthy of you, how am I hounded so badly?34

Here it is the despair that reaches beyond the end of the poem and seems to wait for an answer from Christ. “If I am nothing” appeals to Christ as Creator with a bitter pun on creatio ex nihilo – how can Gregory be created if he is so worthless as to be non-existent? Equally, what is the point of his creation? The reciprocity of the aeterna commercia celebrated by Paulinus has broken down: Gregory must be unworthy, or he would not be so hounded. But these questions are immediately preceded by a revealing line: “The end of my speech; but I am daring: receive the speech” (πέρας λόγου· τολμῶ δὲ, καὶ δέχου λόγον·).35 Gregory actually declares the peras logou, the limit of his word – and then declares that he will dare to exceed it. He presses beyond words into what he has marked as the unspeakable.36 The excess here functions to mark the transition into a realm of extreme emotion, and to invoke a void beyond words which only Christ as Word can fill. 33  I am recalling the poem that begins, “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief/ More pangs will, schooled at fore-pangs, wilder wring.” 34  Greg. Naz., c. 2.1.31.11-12 35  Greg. Naz., c. 2.1.31.10. 36  This forms another parallel with Augustine (though again I do not wish to suggest direct influence): see Paul van Geest, The Incomprehensibility of God: Augustine as a Negative Theologian, LAHR 4; The Mystagogy of the Church Fathers 1 (Louvain: Peeters, 2011), esp. 145-174.

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Examples of the dense and subtle ways that Gregory plays with the tension between logoi and Logos, words and Word, could be supplemented almost indefinitely. But my project here is to bring back the body: to consider not just the disembodied Word but the way in which words, uttered or written explicitly by an author using the first person, point to the absence of the body and hence to the need for completion, for the corporeal as well as the metaphysical. And it was a passage from Gregory’s long poem De vita sua that first alerted me to the inevitable incompleteness of first-person statement – and the way in which a desire to move towards a fuller appreciation of Christ might express itself, nonetheless, through writing the self. As Gregory begins to describe his work at Constantinople, he breaks off to explain to his audience the heresy of Apollinarianism: … ἄνουν τιν’ εἰσάγει Θεὸν, ὥσπερ δεδοικὼς μὴ Θεῷ μάχηθ’ ὁ νοῦς (οὕτω γάρ ἄν δείσαιμι καὶ σαρκὸς φύσιν, μἄλλον γάρ αὔτη καὶ Θεοῦ πορρωτάτω)· ἤ τῶν μὲν ἄλλων δεομένων σωτηρίας, τὸν νοῦν δ’ολέσθαι παντελῶς δεδογμένου, ὃς δὴ μάλιστα τῷ θεῷ μου σωστέος, ὃς καὶ μάλιστ’ ὤλισθεν ἐν πρώτου πλάσει … μὴ τοίνυν ἥμισύν με σωζέτω Λόγος, ὅλον παθόντα … It posits a God without a mind (nous), as if it feared the mind would fight with God – though here I would fear the nature of the flesh, for it is more itself and farther from God – or it thought that, while the rest needed to be saved, the mind was wholly lost. To me, the mind above all should be saved by God, it fell most badly in the creation of the first man … May the Word not save half of me when the whole is afflicted …37

The Apollinarian notion was that in Christ, the human mind was replaced with the divine Logos. In representing the opposite case, Gregory repeatedly inserts himself into the argument. The flesh he fears – “more itself and farther from God” – is insisted on. Yet the mind “to me” is what was vitiated at the fall, more than the flesh. Neither can be saved unless Christ in his humanity takes on both. And the reality of salvation is again personalized: “May the Word not save half of me when the whole is afflicted ….” Once again, the insistence on the first person points to the human agent of writing who is not there, but is nonetheless  Greg. Naz., c. 2.1.11.616-624; 626-627.

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to be surmised in his completeness. To repeat my earlier formulation: here too, the language that represents the authorial presence both constitutes and is exceeded by the self. It constitutes the self because, in the moment of reading or listening, this is all we know of the writing self. But it is always exceeded by the self because, in our encounter with the text, we are confronted with the absence of the body that composed it; and in our encounter with the insufficiency of language to express the fullness of the self, we are left wanting more. The fact that there was an extraordinary efflorescence of self-narration in late antiquity is beyond a doubt. This contribution has begun to propose an answer for why that should be. As authors reflected on what it meant for Christ to be fully human as well as fully divine, they claimed a new sense of relevance for their own embodied experience. Reflecting on the relationship between Christ as Word and the words in which they expressed themselves furthered the endeavour. Both Gregory and Augustine dwell on their imperfections, their struggles, their internal weakness and vacillation. They offer them up as a tribute to the humanity of Christ as well as to his divinity. More than twenty years ago, in my book on Paulinus of Nola, I suggested that the Christian epistolary exchanges of late antiquity performed a sacramental function.38 The letters themselves were spiritual offerings, not just bearers of information to the addressee. I would like to suggest that we extend this formulation to these further instances of writing the self. The purpose is not so much an accounting of the self in the world as of the self in relation to God. The embodied humanity of the self is an offering – necessarily imperfect – to the humanity of Christ. The incarnational theology of Christian late antiquity gave a new sense of value to writing the self. We may, perhaps, take the words of Paulinus as a motto: deusque nobis atque pro nobis homo nos induendus induit, aeterna iungens homines inter et deum in utrumque se commercia. God to us and man for us, when he needed us to be clothed in him, he clothed himself in us, conjoining eternal, reciprocal exchange between humankind and God.  Catherine Conybeare, Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbols in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 41-59. 38

Part 4

Towards the Medieval Period: Window and Bridge

Victricius of Rouen on Relics as Divinized Bodies

Analyzing His Mystagogy with Modern Models of Perception1 Giselle de Nie I. Introduction After the persecutions had ended, the Church began to experience and express its faith in more sensory ways. In the first decades of the fourth century, imposingly decorated basilicas were built to encourage and instruct communal devotion, and the body played an increasing role in personal piety.2 Thus while the Desert Fathers inspired an ascetic movement that cultivated the purified living body as a preparation for the future heavenly state, popular belief turned to the dead bodies of apostles and martyrs as a visible and palpable locus of healing holy power. As will be seen, these two phenomena were often combined. Beginning in the East and spreading to the West, even around fragments of dead martyrs’ bodies physical ailments disappeared and demons were heard to come noisily out of the possessed. Ambrose of Milan’s well-known finding of his city’s martyrs’ bodies in 386 and his gifts of relics to his episcopal colleagues gave a powerful impetus to the cult there.3 Nevertheless there were others for whom the new veneration around dead body parts was still decidedly bizarre. The considerable amount of literature about the cult of saints and their relics has up to now been written mostly by historians.4 For although the 1  I am grateful to Karl Morrison and Hans van Loon for their generous advice on theological points in earlier versions of this paper. 2  Patricia Cox Miller The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity, Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 2-4, speaks of a “material turn.” 3  See on this Neil B. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 22 (Berkeley, CA and Los ­Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1994), 209-219. 4  The seminal study on this is Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity, The Haskell Lectures on History of Religion NS 2 (Chicago,

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Church Fathers praised the apostles and martyrs themselves as models for Christian living, and now also as mediators of God’s grace, they did not venture to develop a fully articulated theology about the new phenomenon and its visible mystery: how miracles could happen around their remains.5 As far as we know, only one author in the late fourth century did attempt to fit the new beliefs and practices around the martyrs’ relics extensively into traditional Christian theology. Bishop Victricius of Rouen’s long sermon, known as De laude sanctorum,6 has been described as a “radically incarnational theology.”7 It has been studied for its theology,8 its philosophical apparatus,9 and its historical and ecclesiastical context.10 Most recently, Patricia Cox Miller has exquisitely analysed its literary strategies in the context of what she calls the contemporary phenomenon of “corporeal imagination” – in Victricius’ case, that of using light imagery to almost erase the difference between the spiritual and the material.11 IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981); a comprehensive recent overview is: Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, NJ: University of Princeton Press, 2013). 5  An older but very full treatment of the relic cult is that of P. Séjourné, “Reliques,” in Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique [DTC] 13.2 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1937), cols. 2312-2376. More recent is: Arnold Angenendt, Heilige und Reliquien: Die Geschichte ihres Kultes vom frühen Christentum bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: Beck, 1994), 15-54. On the return of miracles: Giselle de Nie, Poetics of Wonder: Testimonies of the New Christian Miracles in the Late Antique Latin World, Studies in the Early Middle Ages 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 225-275, 339-365. 6  Victricius of Rouen (Victricius Rotomagensis), De laude sanctorum [CPL 0481], ed. Iacobus Mulders and Roland Demeulenaere, CCSL 64 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985), 55-93. There is an edition plus French translation in René Herval, Origines chrétiennes de la IIe Lyonnaise gallo-romaine à la Normandie ducale (IVe-XIe siècles) (Paris: Picard, 1966), 108-153; an English translation and introduction by Gillian Clark in “Victricius and Vigilantius: Victricius of Rouen, ‘Praising the Saints’,” JECS 7 (1999): 365-399, translation at 376-399; and another English translation by Philippe Buc in Thomas Head, ed., Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology (New York and London: Routledge, 2001), 31-51. 7  David G. Hunter, “Vigilantius of Calagurris and Victricius of Rouen: Ascetics, Relics, and Clerics in Late Roman Gaul,” JECS 7 (1999): 401-430, here 428. 8  On Victricius’ life and his theology, see Jacques Mulders, Victricius van Rouaan: Leven en leer (Nijmegen: Excerpta ex dissertatione Pontificae Universitatis Gregorianae, 1956), and as a serial “Victricius van Rouaan: Leven en leer,” Bijdragen 17 (1956): 1-25, and 18 (1957): 19-40, 270-289. His doctoral dissertation (Saint Victrice de Rouen, son De laude sanctorum, diss. Rome, 1953) was not available to me. More recently on Victricius’ life and activity: Herval, Origines chrétiennes, 25-61. 9  Aline Rousselle, Croire et guérir: La foi en Gaule dans l’Antiquité tardive (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 236-245. 10  On the historical context see Herval, Origines chrétiennes, and Hunter, “Vigilantius,” 423; and on the ecclesiastical context, with special attention to asceticism: Pierre Andrieu-Guitrancourt, “Essai sur saint Victrice: L’Église et la province ecclésiastique de Rouen aux derniers temps gallo-romains,” L’année canonique 14 (1970): 1-23; on his view of the martyrs’ miracles: De Nie, Poetics of Wonder, 79-94. 11  See on this Miller, The Corporeal Imagination, 37-39, 95-101, 110-111.



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Taking all this into consideration, my objective in this article is to analyse the sermon as an example of mystagogical persuasion through the framework of certain modern anthropological and psychological hermeneutical models. Thus, I shall trace how Victricius, by pointing to one well-known “body,” leads his audience to imaginatively perceive the dead martyrs’ physical bodies as in more than one way that same body. That inclusive multidimensional body, moreover, is presented as intimately relevant to the living bodies and souls of everyone present. To put all this into perspective, a brief consideration will first be given of the specific western context in which the sermon was preached. II.  “A Bit of Dust”? Around 400, a priest in southern Gaul named Vigilantius – a former letter-carrier for, among others, Paulinus of Nola (354-431) to Jerome (347-420), who had at first shared their ascetic ideals – began circulating critical treatises about the practices associated with the new cult of relics. David Hunter has shown that his view will have represented that of the traditional Christians, and that the priest appears to have had widespread support among the regional clergy.12 Vigilantius’ objections to the relic cult included not only the traditional Roman view that dead bodies polluted their environment.13 He also pointed to the martyrs’ having been told to rest under their altar in heaven (Rev 6:10-11) as a reason that they could not simultaneously be there and in their earthly remains.14 Alerted by a friend, Jerome answered these objections vindictively in 406 in his treatise Adversus Vigilantium. As quoted there, Vigilantius’ questions and tone too are belligerent and sarcastic, asking: “Why is it necessary for you with such reverence not only to honour (honorare) but even to worship (adorare) that, whatever it is (illud, nescio quid), which you are accustomed to carry around in a small vessel?”15 Significantly, Jerome defends the honour shown to relics not with theological arguments but by pointing to it as the accepted custom of authorities such as the emperor and the pope. And he hotly contests the alleged “worship,” asking “Who,  See Hunter, “Vigilantius,” 417-429, and Clark, “Victricius and Vigilantius.”  Mentioned in Hieronymus, Epistula 109.1.2 [CPL 0620], in Hieronymus, Epistulae 71-120, ed. Isidorus Hilberg, CSEL 55 (Vienna: Tempsky; Leipzig: Freitag, 1912), 351-356, here 352, line 8. 14  Hieronymus, Adversus Vigilantium 6 [CPL 0611], PL 23, cols. 353-368, here col. 359A. I have discussed this treatise more fully in my Poetics, 107-114. 15  Hieronymus, Adversus Vigilantium 4, PL 23, col. 357B. 12 13

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o addled pate, worships a martyr anywhere? Who thinks a man is God (Quis hominem putavit deum)?” Hadn’t Paul and Barnabas refused divine honours in Athens (Acts 14:11-18)?16 In an earlier letter he had formulated his position more calmly as: “We honour (honoramus) the martyrs’ relics so that we may worship (adoremus) him whose martyrs they are.”17 As for Paulinus of Nola, his “birthday poems” for his patron saint make very clear that he regarded the latter’s miracles as done by God.18 III.  Bishop Victricius of Rouen Victricius’ name is not one familiar to theologians. As indicated, his sermon, delivered in 396 in the far north of Gaul, is by far the most elaborate contemporary attempt in East and West to explain the new beneficent events around relics in terms of the accepted Christian faith. Although the priest Vigilantius was based in southern Gaul, David Hunter has shown that bishop Victricius’ travels and personal connections – demonstrably with Martin of Tours, and presumably also with Ambrose of Milan, who had sent him the relics – are likely to have made his ideas known further south.19 In Hunter’s view, the wider influence of bishop Victricius’ enthusiastic preaching about relics may well have been the occasion for the priest’s hostile treatises.20 The De laude, the only one of bishop Victricius’ sermons to survive, was sent back to the relics’ donor, Ambrose, probably arriving just before his death in 397, and it appears to have lain unrecognized for centuries among Ambrose’s writings.21 That Paulinus of Nola saw a copy in 398 when Victricius’ deacon Paschasius visited him in Nola seems to be evident in the ­wording of his letter to Victricius at that time. It provides us with the only information we have about the latter’s origin as a pagan in what is now western Belgium, his service as a soldier, his conversion, and his subsequent missionary work in north-western France before his ultimate 16  Adversus Vigilantium 5, PL 23, cols. 357C-358A. The verb adorare is generally associated with worship, of God or of the pagan gods in this period (Albert Blaise, Dictionnaire latin-français des auteurs chrétiens, rev. by Henri Chirat (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954), 57. 17  Jerome, Ep. 109.3, in CSEL 55, ed. Hilberg, 352, lines 15-16. 18  As Paulinus, Carmina 19.76-77 [CPL 0203]; S. Pontii Meropii Paulini Nolani Opera, ed. Wilhelm von Hartel, editio altera supplementis aucta curante Margit K ­ amptner, CSEL 30 (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1999), 121. 19  Hunter, “Vigilantius,” 423. 20  Ibid., 421-429. 21  As Clark, “Victricius and Vigilantius,” 366; Mulders, “Victricius,” Bijdragen 18, 20.



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p­osition as bishop of Rouen.22 His birth is estimated to have been between 335 and 340, and his death before 409.23 Where or from whom he received his ecclesiastical training is not mentioned. The late Jesuit scholar Jacques Mulders analysed and commented upon Victricius’ theological defence of the relic cult. Considering the similarities of their views, Mulders suggests that after his conversion Victricius may have received his education at Martin’s monastery at Ligugé and there undergone the influence of bishop Hilary of Poitiers (310-368). And he also points to resemblances of his views to those of the eastern Fathers, especially Gregory of Nyssa, and western ones such as Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose, and Paulinus of Nola.24 Although these authors do not attempt to explain it, all share the basic assumption found in Victricius’ sermon that the spirits of the now heavenly martyrs, participating in the cosmic Christ through their gifted infusion with the indivisible and omnipresent Holy Spirit, are thereby also fully present and powerful in each of their relics wherever they are.25 Victricius’ theological argument has been characterized as “compressed and underdeveloped” and “difficult.”26 And indeed, the sermon’s often apparently impulsive rhetoric, abrupt transitions, dense yet rambling composition, and especially its at first sight inconsistent formulations, all tend to obscure its message.27 Scholars have speculated that its lack of overall discursive unity may, in part, be the result of the author’s later extensions of his argument inserted into the final written text, which was intended for a more educated readership in Milan.28 In its present form it is therefore a lengthy sermon-treatise that would almost certainly have been difficult for a large provincial congregation to follow.29 22  Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 18 [CPL 0202], in Paulinus Nolanus, Epistulae, ed. Wilhelm von Hartel, editio altera supplementis aucta curante Margit Kamptner, CSEL 29 (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1999), 128-137. See on this and Victricius’ life: Mulders, “Victricius,” Bijdragen 17, 4-25. 23  Mulders, “Victricius,” Bijdragen 18, 7, 24. 24  Mulders, “Victricius,” Bijdragen 17, 10, and Bijdragen 18, 30-31, 272-273, 273-279. On the Fathers’ views: Séjourné, “Reliques,” DTC 13.2, cols. 2338-2344. 25  Mulders, “Victricius,” Bijdragen 18, 271. 26  Gillian Clark, “Translating Relics: Victricius of Rouen and Fourth-Century Debate,” Early Medieval Europe 10 (2001): 161-176, here 174; Clark, “Victricius and Vigilantius,” 366. 27  Mulders, “Victricius,” Bijdragen 18, 26-28, gives a useful brief summary of Victricius’ theological argument; similarly Clark, “Translating Relics,” 175. 28  As Mulders, “Victricius,” Bijdragen 18, 19-21; Clark, “Victricius and Vigilantius,” 366. 29  In Mulders’ and Demeulenaere’s edition it has 605 lines, corresponding to approximately 4700 words.

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IV.  Do Victricius’ Strategies of Persuasion Resemble Those in an Anthropological Model of “Religion”? The sermon, as it will be designated in this contribution, welcomes the martyrs, portrayed as having arrived as full personal presences in their relics, before formally receiving these from the envoys to be installed in a new church. Moving back and forth between addressing the martyrs and the audience, it attempts to show how the new arrivals have very real power and authority over worshippers’ souls and bodies, and holds their sufferings up to the congregation as metaphorical models of piety to be imitated. Exercising his episcopal authority throughout, Victricius’ mystagogy will be seen to present an imbrication of various strategies of persuasion. First and throughout, the presentation of the martyrs as divine powers as fully present in their relics. Further, frequent exclamations of the speaker’s own exuberant joy, biblical imagery that induces the visualisation of a luminous greater reality, rational and philosophical arguments, fear of divine punishment for disrespect, its opposite: a trusting faith, the cumulative sensory evidence of healings, and last but not least the vision of a similarly luminous destination for the faithful believers’ body-selves. A comparison with a modern model of the creation of a perceived “belief reality” may clarify what Victricius thought he was doing. Clifford Geertz (1906-1996) described “religion” from an anthropological viewpoint as: (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.30 (emphasis added)

Geertz argues that such statements by an “authority” are “models of” a “belief reality” that are simultaneously “models for” reproducing that reality in the listeners.31 In what follows I shall examine Victricius’ strategies through the framework of this model, complemented by others. To make the material manageable, I shall construe a simplified ductus of the sermon’s rather convoluted discourse by quoting and/or paraphrasing the determining nodes and turns in the order of their appearance.32 30  Clifford Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System,” in idem, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 87-125, here 90-91. 31  Ibid., 93. 32  The selections include at least one quote from or reference to each of the twelve sections of the sermon.



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V.  “Altars of Divine Powers” To set the scene and hear the tone, here are Victricius’ first words to what may have been a sizable assembly: It behooves us, dearest brothers, to be instructed about God’s mercy and the Saviour’s omnipotence, [now that we are] in the presence of the multitude of his spiritual benefits. We have not seen an executioner, … yet we are adding altars of divine powers (altaria divinarum addimus potestatum). Now no torturer has oppressed anyone, yet we carry the trophies (tropaea) of the martyrs. … and we are filled with the joy of triumph. Therefore we must immerse ourselves in tears and release our great joy in overflowing weeping (Inmergendum est igitur lacrimis, et grandia sunt in uberem fletum gaudia resolvenda). Look! the greatest part of the heavenly army (caelestis militiae) has deigned to visit our city, so that we will now be living among throngs of saints and renowned heavenly powers (inclitas caelitum potestates)! It is no slight mitigation of your sins to have with you those whom you may incline to mercy. … I beg you, forgive my impatience (inpatientiae): my immeasurable joy does not know how to weigh words (inmodica laetitia verba pensare non novit).33

As everyone would have known, the newly arrived relics would be added to a collection of relics that had arrived in the past, mentioned later in the sermon.34 “Altars of divine powers” appears to be a metaphor when we consider that Victricius somewhat later refers to the relics as “the temples of the saints (sanctorum … templa)” (cf. 1 Cor 3:16);35 both terms suggest a distinction between the relics’ material and spiritual components that, as will be seen, is not always evident in the sermon. The designation “divine powers” itself, however, could have made a less finely-tuned audience believe that these tiny bits themselves were to be worshipped, something which the priest Vigilantius thought he had seen happening. As the bishop continues his sermon, we watch him struggle to show an essential unity between the dead human flesh and the presence of the glorified martyrs themselves. His self-confessed “impatience” with words will later turn out to be the marker of crucial perceptual shift. If the saints were indeed thought to be invisibly present everywhere with and in the spiritual Christ, however, one might ask why the local presence of their material remains would be the occasion for so much 33  De laude sanctorum 1.1-8, 9-14, 16-17, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 69-70. All the translations in this article are my own. 34  De laude sanctorum 2.16, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 72. 35  De laude sanctorum 2.11, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 72.

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joy. Of course it would mean special veneration and feasts in their honour, and this could fuel a hope for their special favour. But at least equally important, I suggest, is that prayers for divine mercy or healing could now be experientially reinforced by direct or indirect visual and physical contact with the actual body parts of the glorified saints addressed, thought to be still infused with their spirits.36 Augustine’s later short notices about the miracles in northern Africa in book 22 of his City of God show precisely the pivotal role of direct or indirect contact as it were “triggering” healing.37 Victricius’ overwhelming enthusiasm can thus be understood as elicited by this new sensory possibility. VI.  “In This Unity” His sermon differs from all contemporary ones about relics in that a large part of its strategy is to create in the audience a kind of imaginative perception of them that will manifest their hidden power. Victricius does this through two well-known central images which are both associatively expanded to include ones that apply to the audience. The first appears after his opening words, when he addresses the martyrs saying: “you are the body of Christ and it is the Spirit of God who lives in you (vos estis corpus Christi et spiritus Deus est qui habitat in vobis)” (a collation of 1 Cor 3:16, Rom 8:9, 11, and 2 Tim 2:14).38 Subsequent formulations of this image will be seen to raise questions. Here, it has two components: being the body of Christ and, as such, filled with the Holy Spirit. In what follows, however, he often seems to assert emphatically that there is no difference whatsoever between Christ and the saints. One can therefore imagine that some of his listeners may unwittingly have slipped into a misplaced “worship” of relics which the southern priest decried. Thereafter Victricius describes the various groups of ascetics present in the welcoming crowd as the spiritual equivalent of the crowds at the ceremonial reception or adventus of an emperor.39 Giving special praise to the group of consecrated virgins present, he describes them as  As also Miller, The Corporeal Imagination, 110, mentioning Basil of Caesarea.  Augustine, De ciuitate Dei 22.8 [CPL 0313], Augustinus, De civitate Dei, ed. Bernhard Dombart and Alphonsus Kalb, 2 vols., CCSL 48 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), vol. 2, 815-827; his view of miracles is discussed in my Poetics, 339-365. 38  De laude sanctorum 1.35-36, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 70. Mulders, “Victricius,” Bijdragen 18, 34, points to a similar view in Hilary and Paulinus of Nola. 39  De laude sanctorum 3, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 73-74. 36 37



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“advanc[ing] resplendent, radiant with the inebriation of chastity (cra­ pula castitatis). They advance decked with divine gifts as ornaments. … There is no night of vigils in which so distinguished a jewel does not gleam (Nulla nox vigiliarum est, in qua talis gemma non micet).”40 Everyone will have recognized the then well-known literary metaphors of light for spiritual excellence.41 But with his metaphor of “inebriation” Victricius, significantly, also seems to be pointing to the desirability of a concomitant altered, uplifted, state of mind. Then seeming to interrupt this train of thought by suddenly proclaiming a long and seemingly unconnected confession of the absolute oneness of Christ, God, and the Holy Spirit in the Trinity, he in fact lays the foundation of his later emphatic statements about divine unity, including that of Christ with the martyrs. The following excerpted concepts recur in his later arguments: We confess … one godhead, one substance (substantia), … light from light, and light in light. … three in one perfection, three in one godhead (deitate), three in one light (lumine), three in one power (virtute), three in one working (operatione), three in one substance (substantia) … .42

Aline Rousselle has suggested that Victricius’ terms here resemble those in the writings on the Trinity of the Christian Platonist Marius Victorinus (290-364), to which Ambrose could have alerted him.43 Addressing the martyrs again later, he then envisions them as a constellation united in light: “In this unity (In hac unitate) we confess the lights of your venerable passions (venerabilium passionum vestrarum lumina). For we read in the Gospel: ‘you are the lights of the world (vos estis lumina mundi)’” (Matt 5:14).44 Light and its many transformations will be seen to be the complementary central image: the manifestation of Christ’s presence. It makes visible what Victricius later calls the relics’  De laude sanctorum 3.33-34, 35-36, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 74.  Miller, The Corporeal Imagination, 97, also points to Victricius’ use of jewel imagery. 42  De laude sanctorum 4.2, 6, 9, 11-13, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 74-75. 43  Rousselle, Croire et guérir, 241-242. Mulders, “Victricius,” Bijdragen 17, 285-287, sees resemblances to Hilary of Poitiers’ writings on the Trinity. 44  De laude sanctorum 4.32-33, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 75; the Vulgate has lux. An allusion to deified pagans who had been envisioned as stars and constellations, as John R. Lenz, “Deification of the Philosopher in Classical Greece,” in Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions, ed. Michael J. Christensen and Jeffery A. Wittung (Madison, WI and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), 47-67, here 49. 40 41

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“gifted divinity (indempta divinitas)”45 through their oneness with Christ. And in the course of the sermon he will seem to assume that the unity of the persons of the Trinity must be identical to that of the godhead with the saints as Christ’s “body.” The divine light is reflected in what Victricius, then addressing the audience again, says to the virgins: he invites them to sing psalms and dance their way up to heaven (choreis tramites quibus ad caelum ascenditur pede pulsate), to the perpetual light of paradise.46 This image clusters with the earlier one of them as gleaming jewels to create a composite, mobile image of light as divinity that can be sensed to hover around and shine through47 the sermon’s later metaphorical images of the martyrs’ radiant, and eventually even jewelled, bodies. Through these associated images Victricius is creating a transformed visual perception of the relics. VII.  “One Mass of Corporeality” When he thereafter begins to explain how the martyrs collectively can be united in and with the divinized human body of the resurrected Christ, Victricius first points to their unity among themselves with a rational argument: “From Scripture we learn that there is one mass of corporeality (unam corporulentiae massam). For who can be found so brutish by nature or lacking reason as to deny that woman originated from the side of man?” (Gen 2:21, 24).48 Then introducing Aristotelian categories, Victricius says that Adam became as it were the “genus” of human flesh to which we all belong; for humans differ from each other not in nature (natura) but only in particulars, such as time, place, works, and thoughts.49 Next, Victricius assimilates the “horizontal” unity he has just posited to a “vertical” dimension: … diversity is extraneous to unity. Unity does not suffer in diffusion. If the eyes of reason see clearly that all men constitute a single body (unum corpus esse), it follows that, by a similar argument (pari ­argumento), we should believe that those who live in Christ and in the

 De laude sanctorum 8.4, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 81.  De laude sanctorum 5.8-12, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 76. 47  Compare Gaston Bachelard, L’air et les songes: Essai sur l’imagination du mouvement (Paris: José Corti, 1943), 11: “On comprend les figures par leur transfiguration.” 48  De laude sanctorum 7.1-4, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 79. Mulders, “Victricius,” Bijdragen 18, 30-33, points to similar viewpoints in Gregory of Nyssa, Hilary of Poitiers, and Ambrose. 49  De laude sanctorum 7.4-11, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 79. 45

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Church by the gift of adoption are one substance of flesh, blood, and spirit (unam beneficio adoptionis et carnis et sanguinis et spiritus credamus esse substantiam).50

“Substance” and its indivisibility are conceptual, logical categories that are related through verbal syntax.51 A “body,” however, is an image, and images are related to each other through multiple leaps of similarity and analogy.52 Moreover, the body image suggests a concrete physical object consisting of flesh and blood; and “the body of Christ” is a central and extremely powerful image in Christian theology. Did it push Victricius’ own thinking into an associative, imagistic mode? And did this cause him to slip – more or less unwittingly – from logic into ontology53 in order to justify what he believed must be the physical as well as spiritual unity of Christ’s divinized human body with the martyrs’ mortal bodies?54 Or does his self-confessed “impatience” with “weighing words” mean that he more or less knowingly chose to meld logic and ontology because the visible facts of the cures had convinced him of their pointing to a higher truth – one that did not necessarily conform to the verbal distinctions of human language? Let us examine the course of his argument. VIII.  “By the Use of Their Limbs, Concorporeal” Whereas the eastern Fathers had already argued that Christ’s incarnation had made possible the incremental or ultimate divinization of human flesh (about which more below), Victricius asserts that the martyrs’ bodies must already be part of Christ’s divinized human body because they have a more special oneness of heart (concordia) with Christ:55 … the apostles and saints ascended to the throne of the Redeemer, both through the ordinance of the spiritual mystery (spiritalis mysterii ­sanctionem) and by their sacrifice of the body as a victim (per corporis  De laude sanctorum 7.11-16, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 79.  On Victricius’ use of philosophy, see Rousselle, Croire et guérir, 236-242; on pp. 241-242 she notes that Victricius may here be following the logical procedures in Marius Victorinus’ translation of Porphyry’s Isagogê. 52  As especially Bachelard has shown; see n. 47. 53  As Mulders, “Victricius,” Bijdragen 18, 29. 54  Mulders, “Victricius,” Bijdragen 18, 31-32, notes a similarity to Hilary of Poitiers’ position on the Church as the body of Christ here. Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, trans. William Montgomery (1931; 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 101-140, attributes views to Paul that are very similar to what Victricius is saying. 55  De laude sanctorum 7.26-27, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 80. 50 51

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victimam), by their payment of blood (per sanguinis censum), and by the sacrifice of their suffering (sacrificium passionis). … The consequence is that they are entirely with the Saviour in his entirety (toti cum toto sint Salvatore). And those who do not differ in their profession of faith have everything in common in the truth of the Godhead (totum est in deitatis veritate commune). By righteousness they are made companions of the Saviour (comites Salvatoris), … by their use of limbs concorporeal (per usum artuum concorporei) [cf. Eph 3:6], by their blood consanguineous (per sanguinem consanguinei), and by their sacrifice as a victim partakers in the eternity of the Cross (crucis aeternitate consortes).56

The vocabulary as well as the sense of this passage is very similar to the one in John’s gospel in which Jesus prays for his disciples “that they may all be one, even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they may also be in us … The glory (claritatem) which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may become one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me …” (17:21-22). Here, the relation within the Trinity also seems to be said to be identical to that of Christ with the disciples. Is Victricius taking this literally and assuming that it includes the physical dimension of Christ’s glorified flesh? This passage appears to be the hinge upon which his whole argument depends. The apostle Paul had indeed written that conformation to Christ’s suffering and death is the way to acquiring an immortal spiritual body (1 Cor 15:44), which, however, remains undefined.57 Victricius appears to be speculating about this new spiritual body when he combines the verbal logic of the indivisible material mass of genus and species of humankind with the image of the resurrected Christ’s material-spiritual body, to arrive at what he describes as the martyrs’ “total” unity with Christ. By doing so, he silently seems to assimilate – presumably through the same logic of shared corporeality – the state of the martyrs’ earthly remains to that of their new heavenly human bodies. (Later in the sermon he indeed refers to them as already risen, as “the first fruits of the first resurrection (primae resurrectionis exordiae),” the latter being that of Christ (cf. Rev 20:4-5.)58 A speculative explanation of how their earthly bodies too could become divinized follows: After their martyrdom their blood ignited with the reward of divinity (praemio divinitatis ignescit). So let the injury of the distinction cease  De laude sanctorum 7.31-33, 37-42, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 80.  As Stephen Finlan, “Can We Speak of Theosis in Paul?,” in Partakers of the Divine Nature, ed. Christensen and Wittung, 68-80. 58  De laude sanctorum 12.15, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 92; ­similarly, Paulinus, Carmen 19.225-228, in CSEL 30, ed. von Hartel, 126. 56 57



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(Facessat ergo distinctionis iniuria), because the bond of glory is the same (cum sit eadem copula claritatis). … God is diffused far and wide (longe lateque diffunditur) and lends out his light without loss to himself (et suum lumen sine sui fenerat detrimento). Everywhere he is wholly intelligence (totus est sensus), wholly sight (totus visus), whole in spirit (totus animi), whole in himself (totus sui). It cannot be, then, that he who is perfect in the whole is not perfect in the apostles (non esse perfectus in apostolis).59

I have not been able to find a mention of this image of a martyr’s blood on fire with, presumably, the Holy Spirit, in other contemporary authors. Blood, however, was then considered to be the essence – or “substance”? – of life.60 When Victricius insists that there is no distinction between the martyrs and God, is he speaking about their whole spiritual-physical selves or only about the divinity inhering in them? This issue will be discussed in the following section. In the late fourth century the here implied term “deification” was used loosely, and still not theologically defined.61 One wonders what the bishop’s less-educated hearers understood Victricius’ statement to mean. Also, if perhaps he had previously encountered protest from his clergy about such statements. For in his next statement he uses sophisticated terms to shock the audience, saying: “But at this point perhaps there is someone who shouts out, saying: ‘Therefore this martyr [is] what the highest power and the absolute and ineffable substance of the Deity [is] (Ergo hoc martyr quod prima virtus absoluta inenarrabilisque substantia Deitatis)’?”62 And he answers the question almost defiantly: “I say [that he, the martyr] is the same [power and substance] (Dico idem esse), by gift, not as a [natural] property; by adoption, not by nature (per beneficium, non per proprietatem, per adoptionem, non per naturam) ….”63 By here insisting so emphatically on the essential identity of the martyrs’ power and substance to that of the Deity itself, while reminding of its gifted nature, Victricius may be taking for granted the audience’s understanding that the relics are nevertheless a divine-human, spiritual as well as material, reality.64 But here he does not make this clear.  De laude sanctorum 8.4-5, 10-12, 15-18, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 81.  Mulders, “Victricius,” Bijdragen 18, 270. 61  On this see Vladimir Kharlamov, “Rhetorical Application of Deification in the Cappadocians,” in Partakers of the Divine Nature, ed. Christensen and Wittung, 115-131. 62  De laude sanctorum 8.1-22, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 82. 63  De laude sanctorum 8.21-22, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 82. 64  Mulders, “Victricius,” Bijdragen 18, 33-34, explores a number of possible interpretations of this use of substantia. 59

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IX.  “Partakers of the Divine Nature”? At this point it will be useful to insert a brief note about the contemporary Church’s view of human deification or divinization. Pagans had traditionally deified their heroes and emperors, the latter eventually also during their lifetime. But the Christian Church too sometimes used the concept. Scholars report that especially eastern authors regarded the promised future state of believers as “partakers of the divine nature (divinae consortes naturae)” (2 Peter 1:4) to be that of a derivative, unequal spiritual participation of the creature in the divine attributes and the immortal nature of the Creator.65 In different nuances, they agreed that Christ’s incarnation had potentially divinized human flesh as a whole, so that all Christians, when they had become limbs of Christ through the Holy Spirit transmitted in baptism and the Eucharist, would through holy living become, either incrementally or at the end-time general resurrection, divinized in immortal flesh.66 Although Victricius’ contemporaries remain imprecise as well as divided about the exact nature of deification, they always explicitly distinguish between the creature and the Creator. Thus Augustine, significantly using Victricius’ term “substance,” but not his “unity,” speaks of the ultimate blessed state of the creature as inferior to God and as possible “only through [their] participation in that ever living Life, unchanging, of the eternal substance that is God (nisi participatione illius vitae semper vivae, incommutabilis, aeternaeque substantiae, quae Deus est).”67 Elsewhere, however, he points to the Holy Spirit’s divinely infused love as being the deifying agent, but cautiously “never ventures a m ­ etaphysical analysis of how the divine can inhabit a created soul.”68 Victricius, as we 65  See on this James Starr, “Does 2 Peter 1:4 Speak of Deification?,” in Partakers of the Divine Nature, ed. Christensen and Wittung, 81-92. 66  See on the spiritual body: Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336, Lectures on the History of Religions 15 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 4, 6, 8, 64-68; on Victricius: pages 93, 107; Gustave Bardy, “Divinisation,” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité 3 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1967), cols. 1370-1398, on the Church in this period, cols. 1393-1397; Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); and J. A. McGuckin, “The Strategic ­Adaptation of Deification in the Cappadocians,” in Partakers of the Divine Nature, ed. Christensen and Wittung, 95-114. 67  In Iohannis evangelium tractatus 23.5 [CPL 0278], Augustinus, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus, ed. Radbodus Willems, CCSL 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954), 235; cited partially in David Vincent Meconi, The One Christ: St. Augustine’s Theology of Deification (Washington DC, The Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 154. 68  As Meconi, One Christ, 165-172, here 158 and 168.



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saw, focuses upon the transformation of the physical body, ostensibly including the soul. From what he says about the virgins dancing toward Paradise, his view of divinization could be either incremental or end-time. And his thinking could have been based on what Hilary of Poitiers termed the ultimate “sanctification” of the “universal genus of the human body” through Christ’s incarnation (ut … sanctificatum in eo universi generis humani corporis existeret).”69 Paulinus of Nola, on the contrary, appears to have interpreted Victricius’ words in the De laude about “the body of Christ” as about a purely spiritual unity.70 As is evident here, theological terms then generally did not yet have a fixed meaning.71 X.  “Fiery Rays of Light” Instead of going on to explain in more detail how the identity of “substance” between God and the martyrs can coexist with the latter’s ­different “nature,” however, Victricius now turns to what he considers to be the irrefutable because visible proof of the martyrs’ unity with the highest divinity – their exorcisms: Behold (Ecce) how the righteous [i.e. the saints] show us, as it were, the path of truth by the light coming forth from their relics (velut praelato reliquiarum suarum lumine). They teach reverence, faith, prudence, righteousness, fortitude, concord, continence, and chastity when they punish contrary spirits and remove the ruin of vices in the bodies of the possessed (in obsessis corporibus).72

And when the martyrs begin to weigh our sins, Victricius says, they will have in them mercy and concern for teaching, as well as “those fiery rays of light (hos ignitos luminis radios)” – an image of Roman judicial torture by fire, then imagined as the saints’ invisible means of expelling the equally invisible demons.73 The martyrs’ operational unity with Christ, like that of the apostles, can here be recognized by everyone. 69  Hilarius Pictaviensis, De Trinitate 2.24.6-9 [CPL 0433], in Hilaire de Poitiers, La Tri­ nité, Tome I (Livres I-III), ed. and trans. P. Smulders, Jean Doignon, Georges-Matthieu de Durand, Michael Figura, Charles Morel, and Gilles Pelland, SC 443 (Paris: Cerf, 1999), 314. 70  Paulinus, Epistula 18.1, CSEL 29, ed. alt., 129, lines 13-17. 71  As Mulders, “Victricius,” Bijdragen 17, 22. 72  De laude sanctorum 8.25-29, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 82. 73  De laude sanctorum 8.29-32, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 82. On the contemporary experience of exorcisms at shrines as similar to Roman judicial torture see Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 108-112.

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A bit later, however, Victricius likens the divine light shining out from the relics more benignly to that of the sun – as he later says, a model of divinity74 – that, in all its dispersal of light, never diminishes (luminat et tamen a se sui copia non recedit).75 This comparison, I suggest, translates his conceptual statements about the saints being or participating in the “substance” of God into a luminous dynamic image. The identification of light with the substance of divinity derives from the beginning of John’s gospel; is it highlighted elsewhere in Victricius’ time? Rousselle has pointed to the fact that Marius Victorinus’ earlier treatise on the Trinity equates the notion of “substance (substantia)” with the divine Spirit and Light.76 He writes, for instance: “ … the Scriptures say that God is ‘light’, and that He is ‘spirit’. These, however, mean ‘being’. [And] … being, according to what it is to be, is light and spirit (… dicunt scripturae lumen esse deum, spiritum esse. Haec autem substantiam significant. … substantia, iuxta quod est esse, lumen et spiritus).”77 Whether or not bishop Victricius saw this text, his wording seems to indicate that he held this view. This view is concretized when Victricius conjectures how the divine light could have transformed the martyrs’ earthly remains: If the Creator God put together this spiritual vessel (vas hoc spiritale) and its members out of nothing, why would he not be able to bring an animate body (animatum corpus), cohering as it were by the leaven of blood (velut sanguinis fermento globatum), into the substance of his light (ad sui luminis transferre substantiam)?78 (emphasis added)

As though surprised by his own boldness, Victricius then suddenly stops short and interjects: “But amid so much joy we have produced a book with a tumult of investigations (tumultu … questionum)!”79 Thereafter continuing his previous strand of thought after this, however, he compares the martyr’s divinized body to that of the angels: Through the heavenly utterance we know that angels have the spirit of fiery majesty. Thus, we read: “He who has made his angels spirits,

 De laude sanctorum 9.10-11, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 83: Docuit ergo nos divinitatem solis exemplum. 75  De laude sanctorum 8.40-43, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 82. This image of divinity is one of those figuring in contemporary discussions about Christ: Richard P. C. Hanson, Studies in Christian Antiquity (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1985), 253-278, especially pages 254, 257, 261, 267-268, 275. 76  Rousselle, Croire et guérir, 242. 77  Marius Victorinus, Adversus Arium 1.31 [CPL 0095], in Marius Victorinus, Traités théologiques sur la Trinité, Tomes I-II, ed. and trans. Paul Henry and Pierre Hadot, SC 68-69 (Paris: Cerf, 1960), vol. 1, 188-603, here 278. 78  De laude sanctorum 9.14-16, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 83. 79  De laude sanctorum 9.16-18, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 83. 74



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and his servants burning fire” (Ps 103:4). Therefore, if there is blood in the body, that blood is suffused with supernal fire (cruor autem ipse superno miscetur ardori).80

For Victricius, then, a glorified martyr’s “substance,” meaning the essence of his being, his blood, is now turned into the substance of divine light – divinity – through the inherence of the Holy Spirit or Christ.81 The martyrs’ mortal remains appear to be included here. His theological argument, then, leaps from image to image, through association and analogy to assimilation. XI.  “The Eyes of the Heart” The relics having earlier been formally handed over by the envoys,82 Victricius then turns as it were to look at them and brings up what must have been a major puzzle for the ordinary believer: how can these m ­ inute ­fragments of dead flesh contain the limitless Deity? In what he now tells his audience he makes his “impatience” with words effect a perceptual shift: Before our eyes are blood and clay. We impress on them the name “relics” because we cannot do otherwise in living language. But by now speaking of the whole in the fragment, we open not the barriers (obices) of the corporeal eyes but the eyes of the heart (cordis oculos) [cf. Eph 1:18].83

What do these “eyes of the heart” see? They see an image: If we said that the fragmented relics were separate from the Spirit we would rightly look for all the connection and solidity of the body parts. But when we realize that their substance is united [with Christ and the Spirit], it follows that we should look for the whole in the whole. Looking for a greater power [there] is an injury to [their] unity. [Seeing] these [relics as fragments] is a deception for the eyes (Oculorum est ista deceptio). The eyes of reason (lumina rationum) are clearer. We see small relics, a bit of blood. But Truth sees (veritas intuetur) that these minute bits are brighter than the sun – as the Lord said in the Gospel: “My saints shall shine as the sun in my Father’s kingdom” [Matt 13:43].84

The “eyes of the heart,” then, discard divisive words and conceptual thinking to see the Truth: the image of the radiant fullness of Christ’s  De laude sanctorum 9.21-24, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 83.  De laude sanctorum 10.19-20, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 85. 82  De laude sanctorum 2.11-12, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 72. 83  De laude sanctorum 10.2-5, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 84. 84  De laude sanctorum 10.32-40, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 86. 80 81

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empowering presence in the tiny relics.85 These eyes, however, are said to be at the same time those of “reason,” the highest human faculty, ostensibly referring here not to conceptual logic but to “noetic vision.”86 For Victricius, Truth – the “really real”87 invisible reality of the divine dynamic in the relics as opposed to their inert material appearance (a valid platonic distinction) – can only be experientially understood in and through envisioning a living image of Christ’s luminous presence suffusing the martyrs’ material remains. What kind of perception is this? XII.  “Seeing as”: Modern Models of Perception Perception as such is the subject of extensive modern research that includes psychology, physiology, and neurology.88 Although there are various theories about the modalities and elements in the process of “seeing as,” our focus here, its essence is still as it was described by the art historian Rudolf Arnheim (1904-2007): Visual knowledge acquired in the past … assigns the present object a place in the system of things constituting our total view of the world. Thus every act of perception involves subsuming a given particular phenomenon under some visual concept. … perception and recognition are inseparably intertwined … [as in the] interaction between the structure suggested by the stimulus configuration and the components brought into play by the knowledge, expectation, wishes and fears of the observer. … a powerful need can impose an image of the observer’s making on the scantiest objective condition.89 (emphasis added)

This does not mean, however, that in seeing such a visual concept – in Victricius’ case, a specific image presented by an authority – a person is necessarily being fooled. As the anthropologist Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) has convincingly argued, certain images are symbols of complicated deeper structures of reality that do not have an affinity for words, and 85  Mulders, “Victricius,” Bijdragen 18, 272, notes that Gregory of Nazianzen and his namesake of Nyssa held the same view. 86  Lenz, “Deification,” 53. 87  Cf. Geertz, “Religion,” 112, speaking about non-sensory “belief reality” being regarded as the “really real.” 88  I found parts of the following volume useful: Vicki Bruce, Patrick R. Green and Mark A. Georgeson, Visual Perception: Physiology, Psychology an Ecology, 4th ed. (Hove and New York: Psychology Press, 2003); an overview of the theories on pages 77-83, 405-417. 89  Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969), 90-91. Modern opinions about “seeing as”: Bruce, Green and Georgeson, Visual Perception, 408-413.



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bring these patterns into awareness.90 Similarly, the phenomenologist philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) has persuasively argued that an image makes visible the psychic dynamism (psychisme dynamique) or pattern of feeling that brought it forth in its author; thus: a visualization of this image involuntarily recreates that dynamism in the subject.91 Visualizing Victricius’ symbol of divine light, then, would make it at that moment a psychic reality. Thus his images are what Geertz called “models of” a religious reality that simultaneously are “models for” reproducing this reality in the believer’s mind; eventually, these models would tend to overlay or even replace the perception of sensory data and influence discursive thinking about the relics.92 If Victricius’ audience would thenceforth (eventually, almost without noticing) “choose” this “visual concept” to add to their – now layered – perception of the relics, that would happen because it addressed their “powerful need” of forgiveness of sins and assurance of a future place in heaven. Victricius’ use of powerful light symbols to create an imagistic perception of the relics, however, might also expand the individual listeners’ awareness of their own deeper spiritual stirrings manifesting themselves as mental images – according to modern scholars and researchers a different but valid kind of perception.93 I would suggest that Victricius’ earlier praise of the “inebriation” or altered state of consciousness of the holy virgins as they ascend to heaven points to the desirability of an imagistic – suprarational – state of mind as the proper one in religion. XIII.  “Faith Spurns Justifications” Returning to Victricius: after creating what he hoped was a perceptual shift, he turns more mundanely to defend the relic cult as authorized by Church practice, giving the martyrs’ names and listing the other places in which they effect miracles.94 And here he explicitly qualifies their 90  As in his Symbolism, the Sacred, and the Arts, ed. Diane Apostolos-Cappadona (New York: Continuum, 1985), 5. 91  Bachelard, L’air, 10-12. 92  Geertz, “Religion,” 93, 119. 93  Eugen Drewermann, Tiefenpsychologie und Exegese, 2 vols. (Olten: Walter, 1984), vol. 2, 71-140, speaks of images as divine messages. Gerald Epstein, Waking Dream Therapy: Unlocking the Secrets of Self through Dreams and Imagination (New York and London: Human Sciences Press, 1981), sees mental images as revelations of inner processes. 94  De laude sanctorum 11.4-12, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 86-87. Mulders, “Victricius,” Bijdragen 18, 22-24, comments upon these.

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healing as taking place “in the fullness of Christ (in … plenitudinis Christi) [Eph 4:13], in one and the same spirit (uno atque eodem spiritu) [1 Cor 12:11], who does all in all (qui omnia in omnis operatur).”95 Almost immediately after these words, however, Victricius again suddenly stops. Now, with a surprising hint of mental distance, he suggests a very different kind of emotion – fear – and simply imposes the Scriptural authority that underpins his own here continuously exercised episcopal one: We should offer [the martyrs] reverence, not reject their majesty (Adi­ ciendus cultus est, non discutienda maiestas). Even if the full weight of power were not in relics (Quod si in reliquiis non esset plenum pondus virtutis), it would still not have made sense to take anything away from so elevated a status (tamen non erat bonae mentis derogare tali aliquid dignitati). For it is not knowing (scire) which helps us, but fearing (­timere); for we are warned: “the fear of God expels sin; for he who is without fear will never be justified” [[Jesus] Sirach 1:27–28].96

After this astonishing introduction of the sceptic view of the possible absence of divine power in the relics, as well as the common-sense practicality of worshipping a divine power that will punish disrespect, ­Victricius dismisses the need for rational inquiry altogether. He asserts that “inane philosophical sophisms (inania philosophorum sophismata)” do not entangle or deceive him,97 for there is another kind of proof that is completely convincing: Truth (veritas) itself will reveal her face, faith spurns justifications (fides despuit argumenta). … So I point with my hand to what is sought; I touch the remains; I affirm that in these relics is perfect grace and perfect power. … When I consider the whole matter in faith, I think superfluous questions should be dismissed for now (interim): we should look [at the visible miracles], not seek [theoretical justifications] (videnda, non quaerenda)!98 (emphasis added)

Touching the remains and seeing the miracles happening around them, then, should confirm for everyone the utter reality of divine power acting through the martyrs’ remains.99 The martyrs’ miracles, then, are the  De laude sanctorum 11.13-14, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 87.  De laude sanctorum 11.17-21, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 87. 97  De laude sanctorum 11.23-24, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 87. 98  De laude sanctorum 11.25, 26-28, 31-33, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 87. 99  A modern anthropologist observes that an enacted ritual symbol – here: such as praying to and touching a relic believed to radiate a healing divine light – “unconceals both images and inner energy woven into the texture of the body” (as René Devisch, Weaving the Threads of Life: The Khita Gyn-Eco-Logical Healing Cult among the Yaka 95

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definitive answer that should silence all doubt, questions, and criticism about the nature and efficacy of the relics: [h]e who cures, lives; he who lives, is in the relics (Qui curat, et vivit; qui vivit, in reliquiis est). Now the apostles and martyrs heal and purify. In the relics, therefore, they are wholly held by the bond of eternity. … It remains for us to understand that it is a mercy, not a problem to investigate, that the righteous give themselves to all believers.100

Therefore, his audience should not examine the bishop’s speculative defence but instead look at the martyrs’ remains with unquestioning love:101 He who loves, believes (Qui amat, credit). He who believes examines the faith of the disputant and the priest, does not analyse his words (non verba rimatur). So if anyone finds my speech distasteful (si cui nostra sordebit oratio), at least my zeal (studium) will not displease. For he will see that I have written a book by simple faith, not by words (librum simplici fide exarasse non verbis); by showing honour, not proofs (cultu non argumentis); out of reverence, not curiosity (veneratione non curiositate).102 (emphasis added)

From our modern perspective, it is possible to read Victricius’ defence of his sermon here as either an oblique or an unintentional admission to his educated clergy of having tilted his theological arguments in a too speculative and intellectually inadmissible way by assimilating logic to ontology. But, in this period of diffuse Platonism, was he actually aware of doing this? And could he not simply have taken literally what he read in the seventeenth chapter of the gospel of John, verses 21–22 literally [Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993], 280). Modern clinical psychological and bio-medical research and practice, too, has conclusively shown that the visualisation of mental images can autonomously “trigger” the creation of mental and physical constellations that are structurally analogous to them; see on this: Roberto Assagioli, Psychosynthesis (New York: The Viking Press, 1965); Jeanne Achterberg, Imagery and Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1985), especially 113-141, and Candace Pert, Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine (New York: Scribner, 1997). A well-documented recent presentation of the latter is: Joe Dispenza, You Are the Placebo: Making your Mind Matter (London: Hay House, 2014). This phenomenon, however, can also be regarded as the biological aspect of one of God’s ways of working upon human beings, as does Morton T. Kelsey, Psychology, Medicine and Christian Healing (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1973). 100  De laude sanctorum 11.48-50, 52-54, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 88. 101  Gerardus van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, trans. J. E. Turner (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1938), 684, posits the attitude of love as the essential one in religion. 102  De laude sanctorum 11.55-59, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 88. A longer section on faith in 12.70-96.

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and assumed the physical dimension to be part of it? For, as indicated, others too had spoken of divinized human flesh, be it without including that of the martyrs’ mortal bodies. However this may be, Victricius is saying that instead of worrying about words, the evident, acting presence of divinity in the martyrs’ remains which he has earlier designated as “the ordinance of the spiritual mystery (spiritalis mysterii sanctio),”103 should be regarded as simply that: a “mystery” that needs to be respected and accepted in humble, unquestioning reverence. XIV.  “Let Us Set Our Sails” Towards the end of the sermon, after Victricius has envisioned a splendid procession of the newly arrived saints wearing mantles of eternal light and coruscating crowns of spiritual jewels, he exclaims “why are we not dissolving in joy (cur non solvamur in gaudia)?”104 And he urges his audience: “Let us set our sails toward these jewels of souls (Ad has gemmas animarum vela tendamus).”105 Visualizing the dazzling images of the glorified saints’ divinized bodies, then – silently recalling the earlier body-selves of the ascending virgins as “jewels” and those of fiery angels – should inspire and shape everyone’s striving for an incremental or ultimate achieving of a similar destination. It was to be a life of faith that prominently included reverential physical acts around the relics, such as praying in prostration for forgiveness, immersing oneself in tears of gratitude, “dissolving in” joy, and (indirectly) touching the secretly incandescent, immaterially material,106 tokens of heavenly life. Victricius is the only one in this period to argue explicitly that the miracles taking place around relics prove that the martyrs’ mortal remains are already divinized, as though assimilated to their new heavenly bodies. Possibly, scepticism and confusion about this view among his flock, and perhaps especially among his clergy, led him to attempt a specifically theological explanation. To make his point, his sermon used words – perhaps more or less knowingly – to transcend everyday words and transform his audience’s perception of sensory data so that they might experience what he presented as the transcendent, real reality: the vibrant  De laude sanctorum 7.31-32, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 80.  De laude sanctorum 12.24, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 89. 105  De laude sanctorum 12.33, in CCSL 64, ed. Mulders and Demeulenaere, 89. 106  As Miller, The Corporeal Imagination, 100. 103

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healing light of Christ’s human-divine body in the palpable material particles in front of them. Almost two centuries later, the bishop-­historian Gregory of Tours reports that he and his contemporaries would sometimes experience sudden spontaneous glows, beams, and flashes of light around relics as awe-inspiring epiphanies.107 These unexpected intense experiences appear to be more than a habit of ongoing traditionally induced religious perception; they could well be manifestations of a by then increased perception of spiritual processes and patterns that emerge into visibility as transparent images.108 But there is more. As we saw, the light image is a symbol of a deeper pattern of human experience that, when visualized, becomes a psychic reality. As such, it is a “model of,” as well as a “model for” producing, an illumination that transforms the beholder’s body-self into its own image. For hadn’t the apostle Paul described the Christians’ new recognition of the Old Testament’s announcement of Christ’s coming as: “beholdingand-reflecting the glory of the Lord (gloriam Domini speculantes), we are being transformed into his likeness (in eandem imaginem transformamur)” (2 Cor 3:18)?109 Whether or not Victricius was aware of it, the spontaneous inner enlightenment through envisioning the image of this pattern of spiritual empowerment is a hidden dynamic in his mystagogy.

107  Described in my Views from a Many-Windowed Tower: Studies of Imagination in the Works of Gregory of Tours, Studies in Classical Antiquity 7 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987), 176-192. 108  See on this kind of perception as a fully valid one: Jean Dierkens, “Apparitions et théories psychologiques contemporaines,” in Apparitions et miracles, ed. Alain Dier­ kens, Problèmes d’histoire des religions 2 (Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1991), 7-68. 109  Finlan, “Can We Speak of Theosis in Paul?,” 75-77, reflects on this passage; as we saw, modern research confirms it.

Food of Judgment

Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages Danuta Shanzer I. Overview Everyday: Food for and with People Nothing is more intimately linked to the body than the food that constitutes it, that is transformed into the eater in digestion. Sometimes food is no more than calories to keep body and soul together. This is the lowest level: food as fuel, nourishment. But it can be far more than that. Food and drink in meals bind people. They promote table-fellowship, commensality, the unity of human beings who are habitually together. And food and drink also join those who are normally apart in rituals of xenia (“guest-friendship”). Food and the self and food shared with other human beings in social intercourse are familiar matters. Altered States: Food and the Self, Elsewhere by Different Means Food has social, community-defining, and commemorative functions in all religions. But also ones that are transformative. Inhaled or ingested it can send the eater into an altered state. Drink can intoxicate; drugs can render one high or inert,1 a drunk, a bacchant, a drug-addict, a Lotus-eater. These states provide release from care, entertainment, and recreation. At a higher level, substance intake, such as that of the Delphic Pythia, could channel prophecy.2 All are transformations, permanent or not. Access to Places Food consumed could also control permissions for places. It could confine one in the realm of the dead (Persephone’s pomegranate  The Lotos-eaters in Od. 9.82 ff.  For bay-leaves and prophets, see Joseph Eddy Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations, with a Catalogue of Responses (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978), 225, n. 39. 1

2

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seeds)3 or in fairyland.4 Fasting or starvation could be conditions of ritual purity, or a key to heavenly raptures (Jerome’s dream).5 Food eaten in another realm left its miraculous taste when one returned to earth.6 Food and drink, thus, have important roles both in regular religious practice and in popular religion and personal superstition. Ordeals The topic of this paper is how certain recondite practices involving food caused the body to reveal the truth: in a word – tasting-ordeals. I’ll concentrate on the iudicium offae (bread and cheese ordeal) and on the Eucharistic ordeal. This research straddles religion, folklore and superstition, history, exegesis, and legal history. The sources can be of virtually any type and – worse yet – are few and widely separated. II.  The Tables of the Gods The gods were hungry too: for not all were regaled with nectar and ambrosia as epicures in the intermundia. In many religions, they required sacrifices, inanimate and animate: vegetable, animal, even human. So let us consider two historical and autobiographical accounts of misadventures at their tables. 1.  Worried in North Africa At some point after 395 ce,7 a North African called Publicola wrote to Augustine with eighteen questions concerning the religious practices of pagan barbari. He was a landowner whose underlings regularly hired 3  Homeric Hymn to Demeter 371-374: αὐτὰρ ὅ γ᾿αὐτῆι ῥοιῆς κόκκον ἔδωκε φαγεῖν μελιηδέα λάθρηι, ἀμφὶ ἓ νωμήσας, ἵνα μὴ μένοι ἤματα πάντααὖθι παρ᾿ αἰδοίηι Δημήτερι κυανοπέπλωι and 411-412 ἔμβαλέ μοι ῥοιῆς κόκκον, μελιηδέ᾿ ἐδωδήν, ἅκουσαν δὲ βίηι με προσηνάγκασσε πάσασθαι. 4  Jane Garry and Hasan El-Shamy, eds., Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature: A Handbook (New York: Routledge, 2017), 104-105. 5  Ep. 22.30 ieiunabam; ossibus vix haererem. 6  Danuta R. Shanzer, “Food and the Senses: One Very Special Taste of Paradise,” in The Cosmography of Paradise: The Other World from Ancient Mesopotamia to Medieval Europe, ed. Alessandro Scafi, Warburg Institute Colloquia 27 (London: The Warburg Institute, 2016), 163-181, at 166-167. 7  For the dating of this text, see Danuta R. Shanzer, “Who Was Augustine’s Publicola?,” Revue des études Juives 171 (2012): 27-60, at 28, n. 2.



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migrant pagan Berbers to transport shipments (bastagae) destined for the garrisons. The pagans swore oaths in the name of their gods to protect people and goods in their custody. Publicola was worried lest his employees, his crops, or the travellers be polluted by the pagan’s oaths that they swore by their own “demons.” (Ep. 46.2). Would someone who sold the crops for profit be polluted?8 Publicola was particularly concerned about sacrificial meats: Could one drink from a fountain or well where some part of a sacrifice had been immersed?9 When one went to the market to buy meat, did one sin by wondering whether the purchased meat was or wasn’t sacrificial, but eating it anyway?10 Was one allowed to eat something put out for an idol if one were starving in the wilderness?11 Did one sin if one had refused meat when told that it was sacrificial, but been fed it subsequently without one’s knowledge?12 2.  Anxious in Southern Ireland Later, somewhere on the southern coast of Ireland in the fifth century, a young Christian runaway captive, experienced similar difficulties with the pagan seamen he had asked to take him home to Britain.13 At first their captain was angry and said “No way.”14 The young man started to pray, and before he had finished, found the seamen were willing to trust him (ex fide) and take him.15 They merely required that he make friendship with them in whatever way he wanted.16 They asked him to suck their nipples to confirm his oath.17 The youth, whom we know as Saint 8  Ep. 46.2 si inde manducaverit Christianus sciens vel de pretio ipsarum rerum usus fuerit, coniquinetur. 9  Ep. 46. 14. Augustine in Ep. 47.4 draws an analogy to the air. We breathe it without pollution, even though the smoke of sacrifices has been dispersed in it. He then continues with an analogy to the light of the sun (which all enjoy, even though pagans worship it) as a pre-emptive strike against the objection that sacrifices are made to the fountain or water, not just in it. 10  Ep. 46.8. 11  Ep. 46.11. In Ep. 47.6 Augustine concludes that if one is sure it is a sacrifice, one should reject it, but if one does not know, one can give it the benefit of the doubt. 12  Augustine, Ep. 46.17, see Augustinus, Epistulae (31-123), ed. A. Goldbacher, CSEL 34/2 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1898), 128. 13  Patrick, Confessio 18. 14  Patrick, Confessio 18: Nequaquam tu nobis adpetes ire. 15  See Cicero, Off. 3.17.70 on judgments that included the phrase ex fide bona. 16  Patrick, Confessio 18: Fac nobiscum amicitiam quo modo volueris. 17  For the practice, see Saint Patrick, Confession et Lettre à Coroticus, ed. and trans. Richard P. C. Hanson and Cécile Blanc, SC 249 (Paris: Cerf, 1978), 34-35.

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Patrick, refused for fear of the Lord, for they were pagans. He hoped that they would come to Christianity and clearly made efforts to proselytize. A month later, the captain triumphantly jeered at him, “Quid est, Christiane?” and taxed him with his omnipotent God’s apparent inability to provide food for them as they wandered starving in the wilderness. Patrick prayed again, and the band almost miraculously found a herd of wild pigs, which they duly ate. Then they found wild honey, which they offered Patrick. But someone disclosed, “It has been offered in sacrifice” (“Immolaticium est”). Fortunately Patrick had not tasted it! Nevertheless, that night he suffered a fearsome nightmare in which Satan fell upon him like a boulder, paralyzing him. Nightmares, unsurprisingly, are connected with over-indulgence.18 3.  Corinthian Background To understand Publicola’s worries19 and Patrick’s close shave, we must travel back four centuries to Greece. For the words, immolaticium est, quote 1 Cor 10:28: “If someone says to you, ‘This is sacrificial meat’, (idolothyton) for the sake of the one who informed you and for the sake of conscience do not eat it.”20 Animal sacrifices were part of civic religion in the Greco-Roman world.21 Christians were forbidden to participate in them, for to do so would be to worship other gods. In 1 Cor 10:19 Paul had urged the Corinthians not to become companions of demons through participating in pagan sacrifice: one could not at once drink from the cup and table of the Lord and those of demons.22 But sacrificial meats were routinely sold in the marketplaces,23 and, as regards s­ hopping,  Danuta R. Shanzer, “Iuvenes Vestri Visiones Videbunt: Visions and the Literary Sources of Patrick’s Confessio,” Journal of Mediaeval Latin 3 (1993): 169-201, at 180-182. Also Greg. Mag. Dial. 4.48: aliquando somnia ventris plenitudine vel inanitate. 19  For my personal solution, see Shanzer, “Who was Augustine’s Publicola?” 20  Si quis autem dixerit hoc immolaticium est idolis nolite manducare propter illum qui indicavit et propter conscientiam. The conscience is most probably that of a Christian onlooker. See Joseph A. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Yale Bible 32 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2008). 21  For a fine description of some of the realia of pagan sacrifice, see Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York: Knopf, 1987), 69-72. The sacrificial banquet is also discussed by Dennis Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2003), 67-85. 22  The demons’ cup and table must be libation bowls and altars. 23  Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist, 70-71, notes that some cults did not permit sacrificial food out of the temple-precinct. At pp. 74 and 75 he discusses the resale of sacrificial meats to vendors at market-places. Pliny attests the trade in sacrificial meats at 18



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Paul in this case said that they could eat everything that was for sale in the macellum and ask no questions. Then came dinner-parties with pagans, where one was expressly told, “This has been sacrificed to idols.” Here Paul advised Christians not to eat of it, for others might think one recidivist, if one were seen to eat what was, or seemed to be, the food of idols. Weaker brethren might be led astray by one’s example and fall. “All things may be permitted, but not all are useful.”24 Even without a concept of intrinsic pollution appearances mattered. Sacrificial food connoted worship of Other Gods and was a potential threat in commensality with Others. Paul was emphatically not saying that it was intrinsically harmful. But as we see from the longue durée, from these twin episodes in Africa and in the British Isles, concerns about sacrificial food persisted for many centuries, regardless of who the idols were. III. Persecution 1.  Sacrifice Tests Immolaticia (or idolothyta) were burned still deeper into to the Christian conscience during the first to third centuries when sacrifice to pagan gods became a loyalty test applied to Roman citizens.25 Pliny had required a “light” form: incense and wine and abjuring Christ.26 But some suspected Christians were also required to taste sacrificial meats.27 Ep. 10.96.1: Certe satis constat prope iam desolata templa coepisse celebrari, et sacra solemnia diu intermissa repeti passimque venire victimarum, cuius adhuc rarissimus emptor inveniebatur. Ex quo facile est opinari, quae turba hominum emendari possit, si sit paenitentiae locus. This early testimonium shows recidivism to idolothyta. 24  1 Cor 10:22: Omnia mihi licent, sed non omnia expediunt. 25  See Pliny, Ep. 10.96 for his application of the sacrifice test. 26  In Ep. 10.96.5 Pliny required a sacrifice of incense and wine to the gods and the emperor and required them to curse Christ (male dicerent Christo). 27  W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965), 407 of the Decian Persecution of 250: “The requirement was for all free inhabitants of the empire, men, women, and children, to sacrifice to the gods of the Empire, pour a libation, and taste sacrificial meat.” N. 120 mentions Egyptian libelli that cite phrases such as γενέσθαι τῶν ἱερῶν; cf. also p. 408. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 421 and 426 seems to be working from the same evidence. The implication is present in Cyprian, De lapsis 15: mortiferos idolorum cibos adhuc paene ructantes; see e.g. Cyprianus, Opera omnia (pars 1), ed. Wilhelm von Hartel, CSEL 3/1 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1868), 394-434. For earlier evidence see Mart. Pionii 18.13; see e.g. Märtyrerliteratur, ed. Hans Seeliger (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015). There is a nice précis of the trauma of blood sacrifice at Scott Bradbury, “Constantine

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2.  Carthage 251 We now move to Carthage during the Decian persecution to hear Cyprian preaching in 251 ce. Many of his congregation had lapsed and eaten the food of idols, thereby creating a disciplinary problem. Some had then dared to take the Eucharist without performing the necessary penance. In his sermon, De lapsis, Cyprian discussed six cases: four adults who consumed sacrificial food, a girl, and one infant. A man and a woman were struck down after eating sacrificial meats;28 the girl tried stealthily to take the Eucharist but collapsed.29 In two cases the Host bit adults back by flaming or turning to ashes.30 The sixth case is the most interesting:31 A girl, too young to speak, was taken by her nurse to the magistrates and fed bread dunked in pagan sacrificial wine. Subsequently, when offered the wine of the Eucharist, she wept, shook, and refused it. When the priest insisted, she hiccupped and vomited. The Eucharist could not tolerate a body and mouth that had been violated by sacrificial food.32 Four of the six punishments involve pathologies of the mouth: being struck dumb, chewing one’s own tongue to pieces, and, twice, choking and vomiting.33 In all six cases the following consequences are preached: an innocent minor can no longer keep the Eucharist down; an irresponsible adult may be killed by the Eucharist.34 3.  Judicial Imagery in Cautionary Tales The language of this remarkable fearmongering is worthy of attention. Cyprian was, to be sure, preaching against the defilement of the Eucharist by the lapsed, and the necessity of penance.35 But throughout his and the Problem of Anti-Pagan Legislation in the Fourth Century,” Classical Philology 89 (1994): 120-139, at 129. 28  De lapsis 24. 29  The young girl of De lapsis 26. 30  De lapsis 26. In both cases it must be bread. It forms the centerpiece of the hexad. 31  De lapsis 25, which is also narrated at the greatest length. A. Jacoby, “Der Ursprung des Judicium offae,” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft 13 (1910): 525-566, mentions it alone (562). 32  De lapsis 25: In corpore atque ore violato eucharistia permanere non potuit. 33  De lapsis 24 and 25. 34  De lapsis 24: a man struck dumb and a woman who has a stroke and dies dolore ventris et viscerum. De lapsis 26: an older woman who dies of choking; a woman who is frightened by fire emerging from a box containing the Host; a man for whom the Host turns into ashes. 35  De lapsis 15-16 describes improper communion as host-violation.



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sermon a secondary motif emerges and takes over, namely that of ­detection. Cyprian compared the Eucharist’s action on the infant to that of a torturer compelling confession: “But the girl, still a simple child young in spirit, as if under compulsion from a torturer, admitted her awareness of the deed with what signs she could.”36 The murky secrets of the girl who sneaked into Communion were revealed by God to the bishop and punished: Secreta tenebrarum sub eius luce detecta sunt, sacerdotem Dei nec occulta fefellerunt.37 The judicial imagery goes further: one woman became her own torturer and executioner: ipsa sui carnifex exstitit.38 The girl consumed not food but a sword.39 The sacrifice test smoked out Christians. The Eucharist functions here as a counter-diagnostic – for apostates! It could both torture and kill them. We are thus very close to being able to see its ingestion as an ordeal. 4.  Drinking Ordeals I have unscientifically lumped the wine and bread of the Eucharist together in my discussion, because Cyprian is unconcerned with the solid vs. liquid distinction.40 But since drinking ordeals function differently from chewing ordeals, some preliminary technicalities are in order. The liquid form, the Trankordal, is normally split into at least two subcategories, the first being ordeal-by-poison, where the substance administered is poisonous from a scientific point of view. One anthropologist classifies such ordeals as “autonomic”: the proband having no control over his physical responses to the test.41 Such ordeals-by-poison have been categorized as Gottesgerichte rather than a Gottesurteilen because

36  Look at the language of De lapsis 25: Sed puella … velut tortore cogente quibus poterat indiciis conscientiam facti in simplicibus adhuc annis rudis anima fatebatur. 37  De lapsis 26: latenter obrepsit … inpunitum diu non fuit nec occultum dissimulatae conscientiae crimen. 38  De lapsis 24. 39  De lapsis 26: non cibum sed gladium sibi sumens. 40  He doesn’t invariably make clear whether the wine or the bread is involved. 41  John M. Roberts, “Oaths, Autonomic Ordeals, and Power,” American Anthropologist 67 (1965): 186-212, at 187. “This paper is concerned only with the class of autonomic ordeals, ordeals in which the judgment of success or failure, guilt or innocence, is dependent upon involuntary responses such as scalding or blistering of the person or persons tested in the course of ‘trials’ or ‘decision-making processes’. Ordeals depending on chance outcomes, the action of animals, or upon physical skill are excluded from consideration, as are religious and other non-legal tests.”

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they entail an immediate judgment.42 The second category is what has been called a “sacred libation,”43 where the drink is not actually poisonous by scientific standards. The effects would have been either magical44 or psychological45 rather than purely physical. The Ordeal of the Bitter Waters in Num. 5:11–31 is the most famous of the latter. 5.  Cyprian’s Eucharist The situation in Cyprian is a crossover. The Eucharist is obviously not poisonous but seems to act as an autonomic ordeal that includes the condign punishment by killing furtive apostates. Cyprian described one of his girl-apostates as “taking in not so much food as a sword and admitting as it were deadly poison to her throat and breast.”46 This passage describes a metamorphosis of the Eucharist in the unworthy communicant. It becomes a metaphorical executioner’s sword and also poison. This metamorphosis into poison legitimates the comparison to drinking and food ordeals. 6.  Whence This Function for the Eucharist? Already at the beginning of the twentieth century scholars had assumed that the Vulgate’s version of Paul’s words in 1 Cor 11:29 had laid the groundwork47 by threatening those who took the Eucharist when they shouldn’t have: “He who eats and drinks unworthily48 eats and drinks 42  Hermann Nottarp, Gottesurteile: Eine Phase im Rechtslegen der Völker, Kleine allgemeine Schriften zur Philosophie, Theologie und Geschichte (Bamberg: Meisenbach, 1949), at 10. 43  I take the term from Federico Patetta, Le Ordalie: Studio di storia del diritto e scienza del diritto comparato (Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1890), 98, who used it in the context of Indian ordeals. 44  Judith Hauptman, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice (Boulder, CO and Oxford: Westview Press, 1998), 16: divine intervention would be required for the “benign poison” to do its damage. 45  Rachel Biale, Women and Jewish law: an Exploration of Women’s Issues in Halakhic Sources (New York: Schocken Books, 1984), 187. 46  De lapsis 26: non cibum sed gladium sibi sumens et velut quaedam venena letalia intra fauces et pectus admittens. 47  Jacoby, “Der Ursprung des Judicium offae,” 561 says that this development is known (“bekanntlich”) to begin with Paul but doesn’t list any literature. This passage is mentioned as a conjecture by Rudolf Köstler, “Der Anteil des Christentums an den Ordalien,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, kan. Abt. 33.2 (1912): 238239, but without any supporting evidence. He notes that the passage was misunderstood as referring to this world, not the next. 48  Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 446, sees anaxios (some manuscripts) as a secondary addition dependent on 1 Cor 11:27.



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judgment for himself.”49 Many, he said, were, weak, ill, and prone to sleep.50 Cyprian was already using the passage as a proof-text, complete with indigne.51 And he used the words inmerentibus and mereatur too.52 He claimed, however, to be describing phenomena he had observed, things that had happened, not a procedure that had been or was to be implemented. That would come centuries later. 7. Body and Mind: Actions (Quod intrat in os …) versus Thoughts and Intentions Prevaricators weasel about “what counts.” Cyprian faced a situation where some apostates sacrificed and repented,53 some sacrificed, but pretended not to have done, and the libellatici got others to sacrifice for them or bribed officials for a certificate. The last two categories were the problem. Cyprian wants to have it both ways: he has stories about autonomic reactions between sacrificial food and sinner and sacrificial food and Eucharist: automatic pollution ex opere operato. But in De lapsis 27 he also fulminates about the libellus being tantamount to the act. The conscientia is polluted. God will get you either through your body (regardless of mens rea) or through your intent and consent, even if you ingested no forbidden substances. 8.  Written versus Eaten There could of course be a conventional “wet” signature, but sacrificial food was not just food, but an “eating act.” The food consumed  Qui enim manducat et bibit indigne iudicium sibi manducat et bibit. Hence no doubt the miracle ascribed to him in Actus Petri cum Simone 2, in Acta apostolorum apocrypha 1.46, ed. Richard Adelbert Lipsius and Maximilian Bonnet (Leipzig: Mendelssohn, 1891-1903) for which see Jacoby, “Der Ursprung des Judicium offae,” 562. Rufina wanted to receive the Eucharist from Paul. He told her that she was not worthy, because she had just got up from the bed of her lover, not her husband. He threatens her with hell fire unless she repents. She has a stroke (falls contorminata, a hapax) and loses her speech. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 427-428. surveys scholarly views about what exactly the unworthiness consisted of. At issue may have been the fusion of a sacred and a secular meal. Ibid., 445-447: comment on 1 Cor 11:27-29. 50  1 Cor 11:30: ideo inter vos multi infirmes et inbecilles et dormiunt multi. 51  Cyprian, De lapsis 15: idem contumacibus et peruicacibus comminetur et denuntiet dicens: “quicumque ederit panem aut biberit calicem domini indigne, reus erit corporis et sanguinis domini”. 52  De lapsis 26. 53  See the Council of Elvira, can. 40 for five-year ban on communion after the consumption of idolothyta. 49

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c­ onstituted a certificate of compliance.54 From the time of Pliny sacrifice had been cleverly used as a non-supernatural judicial discrimen by pagans to detect Christians.55 Its deployment hinged on the assumption that no real Christian would sacrifice and tested those who claimed not to be Christians. Christians could now deploy a counter-diagnostic against errant members of their own community. For the Eucharist behaved like a secret weapon that could reveal whether an individual was tainted by sacrifice and knew what to do. Thus, a special nexus of factors, Jewish halakhic regulations against idolatrous contamination, Greco-Roman pagan sacrifice, concepts of pollution, and nascent Christianity, created a special and intellectually productive series of anxieties. Power and danger thus lurked around the tables of the gods. Their gods were demons that polluted and changed one’s body: one could even swallow them inadvertently.56 Your god’s food could diagnose and punish. In mystagogy the goal is Reality, what really is, exists, as opposed to what merely seems.57 The goal of the ordeal is to reveal the Truth, what really did or didn’t happen. The body can be used in both cases. One might call this cluster “the sacrifice complex,” as it emerges from times of persecution. This is thus still a set-up stage, where the ingredients that will eventually constitute the Eucharistic ordeal are essentially in place. The Eucharist could, it would appear, work as a tasting-ordeal, and would eventually be used as such in the sixth century.58

54  Compare 2 Maccabees 6:18 where the Jew Eleazar was forced by Antiochus Epiphanes to eat sacrificial pork or suffer death. For Antiochus’ decree, see 1 Macc 1:4748; 1:62-63 for the Jews’ refusal to eat. 2 Macc 6:18: Igitur Eleazarus, unus de primoribus scribarum, vir aetate provectus, et vultu decorus, aperto ore hians, compellebatur carnem porcinam manducare; the meat was sacrificial: 2 Macc 6:21: ut simularetur manducasse, sicut rex imperaverat de sacrificii carnibus. For commentary on the passage, see Jonathan Goldstein, II Maccabees: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Bible 41A (New York: Doubleday, 1983), 282-288. 55  In Ep. 10.96.5 Pliny required a sacrifice of incense and wine to the gods and the emperor and required them to curse Christ (male dicerent Christo). 56  Cyprian described it as possession by unclean spirits, De lapsis 26: Quam multi cottidie inmundis spiritibus adinplentur. 57  E.g. Augustine, Conf. 9.24. 58  First as a means of purgation (especially for clerics). In these cases, nothing was meant to happen. See Gregory of Tours’ Decem Libri Historiarum 10.8 for an early example.



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IV. The Iudicium Offae in the West I am now going to move forward to a different and quite official tastingordeal known in the Latin West under many names, including the iudicium offae, the panis coniuratus, the iudicium panis et casei, the casibrodium, the corsnaed, the corbita, the Probebissen, or the geweihter Bißen.59 It is the least-studied medieval ordeal and only sporadically attested. It was parodied as late as the Decameron,60 but is best known from the few transmitted ritual ordines for it that can be found in Zeumer’s Formulae61 and in Liebermann’s Laws of the Anglo-Saxons.62 1.  Ritual Composite Here’s a composite of these ritual procedures.63 The iudicium panis detected thieves.64 The ordines vary in specifying “bread or cheese” or “bread and cheese.” The weight of both was specified:65 Barley bread is standard (“pain bis” = brown bread), and likewise sheep or goat cheese, even “made in May.”66 The ritual was administered by a priest, who prayed that, if the proband were guilty, the bread and cheese not go down his throat, but that it be constricted and tightened. These were not however exclusively “swallowing ordeals,” but “chewing ordeals,”67 witness the regular use of manducans.68 The symptoms of failure were vomiting (evomere), trembling (tremere), tottering (nutare), foaming at the mouth (cum spuma), puffed out 59  Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer (2nd ed.; Göttingen: Dieterich, 1854), 936-937, Walther Müller-Bergstrom, “Gottesurteil,” in Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, ed. Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer and Hans Bächthold-Stäubli (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1930), 1034-1039, and Franz Eckstein, “Käse,” ibid. (1931/32), 1034-1037. 60  Of 1351. See Pietro Dazzi, Novelle di Giovanni Boccaccio (3rd ed.; Florence: Barbèra, 1869), 147; Day 8, Novella 6 (21) about Calandrino and a stolen pig: “I know how to carry out the bread and cheese ordeal” (“io so fare la esperienza del pane e del formaggio”) with fine ginger balls and white wine (“belle galle di gengiovo e con bella vernaccia”) substituted for bread and cheese. 61  Karl Zeumer, Formulae Merowingici et Karolini Aevi (Hannover: Hahn, 1886). 62  F. Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, vol. 1 (Halle: Niemeyer, 1903). 63  I am deliberately excluding the turning bread ordeal that appears in Zeumer, Formulae: Z26, at p. 630; Z27, at p. 630; and Z28, at p. 632. 64  The one exception seems to be Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, which mentions homicidium aut adulterium seu maleficium (408-409). 65  2 solidi quot sunt 9 denarii in Zeumer, Formulae, 629, 634, and 636. 66  Ibid., 629: factus in Madio, and 631: formaticus Maiensis de ovibus. Also Z31, 635: Panis ordeaceus esse debet siccus et caseus caprinus aridus. 67  Pace Köstler, “Der Anteil des Christentums an den Ordalien,” 223. 68  Zeumer, Formulae, 631.

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cheeks (inflatis buccis), weeping (lacrimis). The ordeal could be administered to multiple probands.69 And factual confession seems sometimes to have been expected, not just a guilty or not guilty verdict.70 2. Theology These ordeals take place as part of a mass, where the priest took communion before the ordeal was administered.71 There is an assimilation with the Eucharist, because the words communicare panem vel caseum are used of the proband’s ingestion.72 In addition, many ordines contain an exorcism of the demon that caused the thief to steal or are called exorcisms.73 V.  Dots … and … Back to Antiquity 1. Pseudo-Acro This type of scholarly problem involves finding the dots, worrying about whether they really are dots, and tying to connect them. We’ve looked at the Middle Ages. But scholars have argued a direct (but lost) connection between the ninth- and tenth-century Probebissen-ordines and Late Antique practices involving the use of bread and or cheese for detecting thieves.74 For a long time Pseudo-Acro’s scholion on Horace, Ep. 1.10.10 was the only evidence anchoring this practice in Antiquity. Utque sacerdotis fugitivus liba recuso; Pane egeo, iam mellitis potiore placentis. Like the runaway slave of a priest, I refuse cakes. I need bread, now preferable to honeyed buns. Cum in servis suspicio furti habetur, ducuntur ad sacerdotem, qui crustum panis carmine infectum dat singulis. Quod cum haeserit, manifestum furti reum adserit.75 69  Zeumer, Formulae, 631-632: sint ante altare qui de furto accusantur et unus homo iuxta illos aut plures, qui eos praevideant, ne aliquem dolum invicem loquantur. 70  Z26, 629: quaecumque in isto furto fuerit alligatus aut sapit aut conscius est, aut consentiens fuit, sit hoc declaratum atque demonstratum. 71  Z27, 631, Z30, 632-633: primus communicet se sacerdos corpore Christi et postea bene­ dicat panem et caseum. 72  Zeumer, Formulae, 629 and 632. Or does communicare mean “to pollute” or “to foul?” 73  Ibid., 629, 631, 632 exorcizo te, and 635: exorcismum. 74  Eckstein, “Käse,” is a good example. 75  Otto Keller, Pseudoacronis Scholia in Horatium Vestustiora 2. Scholia in Sermones Epistulas Artemque Poeticam (Leipzig: Teubner, 1904), 242.



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When there is some suspicion of theft among slaves, they are led to the priest who administers to each a crust of bread that has been tainted by a charm. And when it sticks, it clearly shows the one guilty of the theft.76

This comment has no bearing on Horace’s charming letter to Fuscus,77 where the poet flees the city for the country, as a priest’s runaway slave flees fancy buns for basic bread. Furthermore, the date of Ps.-Acro is unclear: his earliest MSS date from the late ninth century.78 Was there an ancient priestly practice employing sacrificial liba as the medium of testing? Or is this a medieval anachronism based on the iudicium offae of (at earliest attestation) the ninth century?79 It could be seen as some sort of novelistic riff reconstructing a context for the text: a runaway slave refuses cakes but needs bread. Why? Because bread was used to test theft! 2.  A Magic Papyrus By the late nineteenth century, a fourth-century ce Egyptian papyrus in London (British Library Pap. 46),80 had come to the rescue. It contains several magical procedures against theft,81 including a spell called “the spell of bread and cheese” (λόγος τοῦ ἀρτοτυροῦ).82 In this translation I distinguish between headings and titles (underlined); instructions (italic) and formulae to be uttered (“Roman with quotation-marks”). To lay hold of a thief. In another way. “Hermes, You I call upon, immortal god, who cut a furrow down from Olympus and a sacred boat, Light-bringing Iao, the great one who lives forever, terrifying to see, terrifying to hear, hand over the thief whom I seek [Nonsense  All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own.  Rightly K. M. Funkhänel, “Ordeals among the Greeks and Romans,” The Classical Museum: A Journal of Philology, Ancient History and Literature 6 (1849): 375-387, at 383. 78  I have not been able to consult Gottfried Noske, Quaestiones Pseudoacroneae (Munich: privately printed, 1969), but used M. McGann, “Review of Noske, G. Quaestiones Pseudoacroneae,” Classical Review 22.1 (1972): 110, which says that Noske’s datings are (depending on section) fifth century or Ostrogothic. 79  Patetta, Le Ordalie, 140. 80  Trismegistos 64368 = Papyri Graecae Magicae 5. 81  Edited in F. G. Kenyon, Greek Papyri in the British Museum. Catalogue with Texts (London: British Museum, 1893), 46-81. At lines 70-95 (pages 67-68) is a charm to detect a thief. At lines 172-201 (pages 70-71) and at lines 293-300 (page 74) are invocations to Hermes to secure the capture of thief. 82  Charles Wycliffe Goodwin, Fragment of a Graeco-Egyptian Work upon Magic from a Papyrus in the British Museum (Cambridge: Deighton, 1852), 8: κλέπτην πίασαι. 76 77

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syllables].” This charm (logos) is said twice for purification. The charm of bread and cheese. “Come to me [Nonsense syllables] bring back to me what was lost and reveal the thief on this very day, I call upon Hermes the finder of thieves and Helios and the two light-bringing pupils (girls) of Helios and Themis and Erinys and Ammon and Panammon to take control of the thief’s ability to gulp it down and make him manifest today, in this very hour.” How to proceed. The same charm for purification. Taking a blue-green pottery vessel pour water and myrrh and dog’s head herb and wet a branch of laurel, purifying each in turn, place a tripod on an earth altar. Sacrifice myrrh and frankincense, the tongue of a frog, and, taking winter wheat without salt and goat cheese, give to each 8 drachmae of wheat and 8 of cheese, adding this word to each in turn. Inscribe this name and glue it to the tripod: “Lord Iao, light-bringer, hand over the thief I seek.” If one of them does not drink down what is given to him, he is the one who stole.

This procedure was rightly interpreted as an ordeal by Goodwin, its first editor.83 Look at the words, “to take control of the thief’s ability to gulp it down,” (ἐπικρατῆσαι τὴν τοῦ φωρὸς κατάποσιν) and “If one of them does not drink down what is given to him,” (ἐὰν δέ τις αὐτῶν μὴ καταπίῃ τὸ δοθὲν αὐτῷ), both of which refer to the proband’s ability to down drink/food. These sloppily transmitted instructions for two food ordeals to detect thieves cannot postdate the fourth century, so they anchor this bread-and-cheese ordeal in Late Antiquity.84 The gloss of Pseudo-Acro now seems part of this complex too,85 for the papyrus bolsters its attestation as a Late Antique practice, not an early medieval backformation.86 The key linked elements are theft, bread and/or cheese, and choking. We could call this cluster the “Theft-Complex.” Thus far we have seen: 1. Trauma caused by pollution from the food of idols generating stories about how the Eucharist functioned as a detection device, and 2. What seems to be a mysterious continuity between fourth-century bread and cheese ordeals to detect theft (which look firmly pagan) and their ninth- to tenth-century Christian counterparts. But is there any relationship between these two clusters of phenomena?  Goodwin, Fragment of a Graeco-Egyptian Work, 42.  See Karl Preisendanz et al., PGM: die griechischen Zauberpapyri, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1928), 180, for the fourth century date of the uncial. 85  Already in its editio princeps, Goodwin, Fragment, 42-43 cited the Pseudo-Acro scholion: “The species of ordeal described in this section is alluded to by Horace.” 86  As suggested by Patetta, Le Ordalie, 140-141. 83

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3.  Connecting: Artotyrites and Iudicium Offae plus Magic Papyrus “Only connect[ing]” is a scholarly passion. And in the early twentieth century two scholars independently made a new connection. In 1912 Rudolf Köstler argued a purely Christian origin for the iudicium offae from its use of bread and cheese: this pairing suggested a connection to the Artotyrites, a Montanist sect that took communion in bread and cheese rather than bread and wine.87 He didn’t, however, know of the London papyrus.88 He was also unaware of the work of a German contemporary. Adolf Jacoby, an astonishingly learned New Testament scholar who was unafraid of folklore, with experience of the magic papyri, had already drawn a connection between this “ascetic Eucharist”89 and the iudicium offae in 1910.90 He saw that this was not a question internal to Christianity, but one that needed to take paganism into account too. He clearly went backwards and forwards about whether the traffic was from Greco-Egyptian magic to Montanism or the other way around.91 But in the end, he saw in the iudicium offae a practice that started as a regular Eucharistic ordeal, then jumped sideways into its Montanist form in (bread and cheese) in the late second century, to then materialize in a magic papyrus in the fourth century,92 and subsequently re-Christianize by the ninth–tenth century. For me there are two tricky steps here. First, that pagans supposedly adopted the practice from Christians.93 And second, the really crucial question, namely how does a top-down method of proof develop from individual miracles attested in narrative form?94 And how early was the Eucharist used as an ordeal? 4. Transition There is a dearth of evidence. I have already mentioned the difficulty of knowing whether a dot is indeed a dot to be connected. This is a serious 87  Jacoby, “Der Ursprung des Judicium offae,” 561 and (independently though later), Köstler, “Der Anteil des Christentums an den Ordalien,” 230-235. 88  Köstler, “Der Anteil des Christentums an den Ordalien,” 230-235 89  The term is taken from Andrew Brian McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) who discusses the Artotyrites at pp. 95-107. He does not, however, mention Köstler or Jacoby. 90  Jacoby, “Der Ursprung des Judicium offae,” 561. 91  Ibid., 545 goes backwards and forwards. 92  For the reasons stated by ibid., e.g. that the magic papyri show little influence from Christianity. 93  Ibid., 563. 94  Ibid.

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problem since standards of proof in myth, folklore, and superstition are notoriously unclear. One becomes semiotically sensitized and see one’s favourite obsessions everywhere. That said, better “to give it a whirl,” so it’s at least “out there” for others to consider, criticize, and, with luck, even connect with some find of their own. VI.  New Texts and New Problems In this section of my paper, accordingly, I’d like throw several new texts into the pot. The first two and fourth may complement the iudicium offae. The third the food of idols. 1.  Death at the Dinner-tables of Men Heimlich manoeuvre needed: Is there a doctor in the house? Swallowing Tall Tales At the very beginning of Apuleius’ second-century ce novel, the Metamorphoses, the hero Lucius has just met two strangers, one of whom has expressed disbelief at the other’s tale and called it absurd lies.95 Lucius then intervenes and tells off the sceptic by citing two stories that are meant to push the borders of belief and truth in different directions.96 One must imagine, “You won’t believe it but … “ before the first, which goes like this: ego denique vespera, dum polentae caseatae modico secus offulam grandiorem in convivas aemulus contruncare gestio, mollitie cibi glutinosi faucibus inhaerentis et meacula spiritus distinentis minimo minus interii.97 I, for example, last evening, when trying greedily to gobble down in competition with my dinner-companions a somewhat too large lump of barley and cheese pudding, almost died, because the softness of the sticky food adhering to my gullet occupied the pathways of my breath.

Lucius’ misadventure shows how one can – unbelievably – almost die at the dinner table.98 But various features catch the attention: 1. the mention of barley and cheese pudding (polenta caseata); 2. Lucius’ competition  Met. 1.2: tam absurda tamque immania mentiendo.  W. H. Keulen, Apuleius Madaurensis, Metamorphoses. Book 1: Text, Introduction and Commentary, Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius (Groningen: Bouma, 2007), 129 notes the equation of swallowing and belief. 97  Apuleius, Met. 1.4; Apuleius, Metamorphosen, oder, Der goldene Esel, ed. Rudolf Helm, Schriften und Quellen der Alten Welt 1 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1956), 3.22-24. 98  Even if others can swallow swords! 95

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with other guests to down the dish (in convívas aemulus); 3. the word offula; 4. the choking (meacula spiritus distinentis); and 5. the possibility of death (interii). The barley and cheese, the word offula, and the choking all parallel the iudicium offae by barley bread and cheese. The context, however, is clearly not an ordeal, but a dinner party, where guests are competing for food.99 Lucius then continues … and yet in Athens he had seen a mountebank swallow a cavalryman’s sword and a hunter’s lance point-downwards both and bury them deep in his vitals: et tamen Athenis proxime et ante Poecilen porticum isto gemino obtutu circulatorem aspexi equestrem spatham praeacutam mucrone infesto deuorasse ac mox eundem inuitamento exiguae stipis uenatoriam lanceam, qua parte minatur exitium, in ima uiscera condidisse. et ecce pone lanceae ferrum, qua baccillum inuersi teli ad occipitium per ingluuiem subit, puer in mollitiem decorus insurgit inque flexibus tortuosis eneruam et exossam saltationem explicat cum omnium qui aderamus admiratione: diceres dei medici baculo, quod ramulis semiamputatis nodosum gerit, serpentem generosum lubricis amplexibus inhaerere. sed iam cedo tu sodes, qui coeperas, fabulam remetire. ego tibi solus haec pro isto credam et, quod ingressui primum fuerit stabulum, prandio participabo.100 And yet very recently at Athens before the Stoa Poikile itself with these twin eyes of mine I saw a mountebank swallow a sharp cavalry sword point downwards. The same man in return for a minute amount of money buried a hunter’s lance, deadly business end first, deep in his innards. And, look! At the back of the blade of the lance, where the shaft of the inverted weapon rises to the skull from the maw, a boy, pretty to the point of effeminacy, puts on a dance sinewless and boneless to the admiration of all of us bystanders. You might have said that a noble serpent was clinging with sinuous embrace to the staff of the god of medicine, the knotted one he carries, with its small branches, partially lopped off. But, please, if you will be so kind, you who had started – go over your tale. I alone will believe it instead of that fellow and will treat you to supper at the first inn we enter.

The combination of (and contrast between) almost choking to death on something soft and sticky vs. swallowing a sword unharmed reminds one of the dangers of the Eucharist swallowed by Cyprian’s apostate and the metaphor he used for her fate: De lapsis 26: non cibum sed gladium sibi sumens et velut quaedam venena letalia intra fauces et pectus admittens. And in the centre of both narratives is the question of Truth revealed by 99  See Keulen, Apuleius Madaurensis, Metamorphoses, Book 1, 30, n. 100, for some parallels from Greek Comedy. 100  Metamorphosen, ed. Helm, 4.1-15.

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ingestion. Apuleius recounts the comic version: “Unbelievable – I almost died from a dumpling yet he didn’t die from a sword!”101 Cyprian tells the tragedy. This is not, however, the end of the matter, for later after Socrates has been murdered by the witches, his status as a vivified corpse, whose throat has been cut by sword (Met. 1.13 and 18) is revealed at the moment at which he eats. Here at Met. 1.18–19 the bread and cheese (caseum cum pane) combination occurs again and this time occasions tragedy: Socrates’ death and Aristomenes’ terror that chokes him on a frustulum panis that is stuck in his throat.102 The snack of bread and cheese triggers the discovery of Socrates’ true condition as a zombie. Bread, cheese, gobbling, choking, and magical revelation of the truth are all mixed in Apuleius. 2.  Dining with Heretics I would like now to risk another connection, namely between Lucius’ prandial mishap and the finest and funniest tale of deadly commensality that I know: Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs 79,103 the farcecum-cautionary tale of the two-faith couple, entertaining a Catholic and an Arian priest. This masterpiece dates to the later sixth century. The Arian husband sets out to discomfit the Catholic priest by asking his priest to bless every dish before the Catholic has a chance to taste it. This happens three times. The fourth time the dish is served in a frying-pan, and the Arian in his gluttonous haste burns his mouth, chokes on the eggs, flour, dates, and olives, and dies with an ignominious emission of wind. The story is about a dinner-party (namely commensality between Others), but its typology is actually that of a tale of competitive thaumaturgy. The food itself is neutral, but once blessed by a heretic, is charged by commensality with demonic Others. Thus, even ordinary convivial food, once blessed, behaves like the food of idols.104 The Catholic wisely abstained, and the providential judgment of God intervened in the ­Arian’s abusive 101  In Met. 1.18-19 the bread and cheese (caseum cum pane) combination occurs again and this time results in tragedy: Socrates’ death and Aristomenes’ terror that caused him to choke on a frustulum panis. 102  Met. 1.19 frustulum panis quod primum sumpseram, quamvis admodum modicum mediis faucibus inhaereret, ac neque deorsum demeare neque rursum remeare posset. 103  B. Krusch and W. Levison, eds., Liber in Gloria Martyrum 79, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1.2 (Hannover: Hahn, 1910), 91-92. 104  It is no doubt relevant that in these Christian-on-Christian situations, the protosacrifice of both sects, the Eucharist, had occurred at a dinner.



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blessing. The latter’s death shows how in good Pauline fashion the blessed food recoiled against him and he ate his own judgment. 3.  Out with a Fart or Out with a Belch? The Arian may have ingested spiritual poison that acted as an enema, causing him to die rather like his heresiarch Arius, who expired from rectal prolapse in a privy.105 If we compare anal exorcisms of more noxious demons,106 we might see here another swallowed demon expelled through the South Pole. But the choking and the sticky mass of egg-flour-dateolive pudding points in yet another direction – North. And that’s where we are headed. Gregory’s Arian could alternatively be seen as a man tested by the iudicium offae, who failed the test by choking to death. 4.  Classical Roots? Both Apuleius and Gregory show convivial competition in greed and death-by-choking. Apuleius’ ingredients are identical to those of the iudicium offae and may place the combination with the Montanist Eucharists and in the pagan world.107 Was there a competitive Roman table-game (in convivas aemulus) involving gobbling gooey gobbets that was eventually used as a model for domestic multi-lateral108 theft ordeals?109 Or was Apuleius making fun of a known Christian truth-ordeal? Or was he spoofing a known pagan praxis? One could also consider a Latin proverb: Inter os atque offam multa intervenire posse or “There’s many a slip “twixt cup and lip.”110 Or is something else going on?  Socrates Scholasticus, Historia Ecclesiastica 1.38, see The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus, ed. Andrew C. Zenos, NPNF Series II 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1957), 1-178. 106  See Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Confessors (In Gloria Confessorum) 9, where fluxus ventris is the means of expelling an atrocior demon. The model was Martinian. Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini 17.7, where a devil is exorcized through the anus: foeda relinquens vestigia fluxu ventris egestus est; cf. Vita Martini 24.8: ut fumus evanuit et cellulam tanto foetore complevit, ut indubia indicia relinqueret. 107  According to the ordo cited by Wilhelm Eduard Wilda, “Ordalien,” in Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, ed. M. H. E. Meier and L. F. Kämtz (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1833), 453-490, at 459 the bread used was barley bread without yeast. 108  The bi- or multi-lateral nature is important because comparison can aid in evaluate success in a non-autonomic ordeal: Who does it better? 109  Was the point that food was stolen by slaves, initially, in a domestic setting? See Köstler, “Der Anteil des Christentums an den Ordalien,” 242. 110  “Many things can intervene between the lump and the mouth.”; Gellius, Noctes Atticae 13.18; Marcus Cato, De aedilibus vitio creatis: Nunc aiunt in segetibus, in herbis 105

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5.  The Bread of Strangulation The third possible new dot comes from Joseph and Asenath (JA), an Old Testament Apocryphal romance recounting Joseph’s conversion of, and marriage to, the beautiful Egyptian Asenath. Here, early on, Joseph rejects her for her idolatry: οὐκ ἔστι προσῆκον ἀνδρὶ θεοσεβεῖ, ὃς εὐλογεῖ τῷ στόματι αὐτοῦ τὸν θεὸν τὸν ζῶντα καὶ ἐσθίει ἄρτον εὐλογημένον ζωῆς καὶ πίνει ποτήριον εὐλογημένον ἀθανασίας καὶ χρίεται χρίσματι εὐλογημένῳ ἀφθαρσίας, φιλῆσαι γυναῖκα ἀλλοτρίαν, ἥτις εὐλογεῖ τῷ στόματι αὐτῆς εἴδωλα νεκρὰ καὶ κωφὰ καὶ ἐσθίει ἐκ τῆς τραπέζης αὐτῶν ἄρτον ἀγχόνης καὶ πίνει ἐκ τῆς σπονδῆς αὐτῶν ποτήριον ἐνέδρας καὶ χρίεται χρίσματι ἀπωλείας· (Joseph and Aseneth 8.5)111 It is not fitting for a devout man who blesses the living god with his mouth and eats the blessed bread of life and drinks the blessed drink of immortality and is anointed with the blessed unction of incorruptibility to kiss an alien woman who kisses with her lips dead and dumb idols and eats from their table the bread of suffocation/strangulation and drinks from their libations the drink of treachery/ambush and is anointed with the unction of destruction.

The phrase ἄρτος ἀγχόνης has been compared to Isaiah 30:20, whose Hebrew original is normally translated “bread of adversity and water of affliction” (NRSV) and refers to tight rations or prison-fare: “And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers.”112 The clause is concessive and contrasts with the good things God promises for the future. The lxx produced “bread of tribulation and meagre water” (ἄρτον θλίψεως καὶ ὕδωρ στενόν)113 and was bona frumenta esse. Nolite ibi nimiam spem habere. Saepe audivi inter os atque offam multa intervenire posse; verumvero inter offam atque herbam ibi vero longum intervallum est. The Greek version Πολλὰ μεταξὺ πέλει κύλικος καὶ χείλεος ἄκρου is much closer to the English. 111  Joseph is addressing Asenath and contrasting the bread of life with “the bread of strangulation.” Marc Philonenko, Joseph et Aséneth, Studia Post-Biblica 13 (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 156. 112  Cf. the Vulgate, 3 Kgs 22:27: et dicite eis haec dicit rex mittite virum istum in carcerem et sustentate eum pane tribulationis et aqua angustiae donec revertar in pace; Ez. 4.16 et dixit ad me fili hominis ecce ego conteram baculum panis in Hierusalem et comedent panem in pondere et in sollicitudine et aquam in mensura et in angustia bibent. 113  Isa 30:19 Διότι λαὸς ἅγιος ἐν Σιων οἰκήσει, καὶ Ιερουσαλημ κλαυθμῷ ἔκλαυσεν Ἐλέησόν με· ἐλεήσει σε τὴν φωνὴν τῆς κραυγῆς σου ἡνίκα εἶδεν, ἐπήκουσέν σου. (20) καὶ δώσει κύριος ὑμῖν ἄρτον θλίψεως καὶ ὕδωρ στενόν, καὶ οὐκέτι μὴ ἐγγίσωσίν σοι οἱ πλανῶντές σε· ὅτι οἱ ὀφθαλμοί σου ὄψονται τοὺς πλανῶντάς σε, (21) καὶ τὰ ὦτά σου



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followed by both the Vetus Latina114 and the Vulgate with panem artum et aquam brevem.115 But tight rations seem quite different from the “bread of strangling” associated with the impurity of idol-worship.116 Burchard, the editor of JA, rightly queried the phrase with “Parallelen?”117 wondering whether this means not that the bread kills, but that the power of its dedication to the idols goes for the consumer’s throat.118 He didn’t mention parallels, but a later passage in another version of JA helps explain.119 There Asenath confesses, “I ate bread from their sacrifices (ἤσθιον ἄρτους ἐκ τῶν θυσιῶν αὐτῶν)”120 and immediately thereafter mentions eating the “bread of strangulation,”121 which must be bread of pagan sacrifice.122 This would fit nicely with the autonomic symptoms produced by ingesting idolothyta. If I am right about this, it raises questions about the dating of JA, which has ranged from the third century bce to the later

ἀκούσονται τοὺς λόγους τῶν ὀπίσω σε πλανησάντων, οἱ λέγοντες Αὕτη ἡ ὁδός, πορευθῶμεν ἐν αὐτῇ εἴτε δεξιὰ εἴτε ἀριστερά. 114  Roger Gryson, Esaias. Introductio Generalis. Capita 1–39, Vetus Latina: die Reste der altlateinischen Bibel (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1987-1993), 644 shows no Itala variants from Jerome’s Vulgate. 115  Isa 30:19: populus enim Sion habitabit in Hierusalem plorans nequaquam plorabis miserans miserebitur tui ad vocem clamoris tui statim ut audierit respondebit tibi et dabit vobis Dominus panem artum et aquam brevem et non faciet avolare a te ultra doctorem tuum et erunt oculi tui videntes praeceptorem tuum. et aures tuae audient verbum post tergum monentis haec via ambulate in ea neque ad dexteram neque ad sinistram. 116  The first (much later) Latin version (twelfth century) did not attempt to translate the phrase and reads: Non decet uiro colenti Deum benedicere in ore suo Deum uiuentem et manducare panem benedictum uite et bibere calicem benedictum incorruptionis, osculari mulierem alienigenam que benedicit ore suo idola surda et mortua, et manducat a mensa eorum panem anchonis, et bibit de spondis eorum calicem anedras, calicem occultum, et unguitur oleo inscrutabili. See Antoni Biosca I Bas, Historia de José y Asenet, Edición crítica y traducción de la primera versión latina (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2012), 118. The second Latin version has: et edit de mensa eorum panem laquei et bibit de prophanis eorum calicem insidiarum et ungitur unctione perditionis. See Uta Barbara Fink, Joseph und Aseneth Revision des griechischen Textes und Edition der zweiten lateinischen Übersetzung (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), 274. 117  Christoph Burchard, Joseph und Aseneth, Jüdische Schriften aus hellenistischrömischer Zeit 2 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1983), 650. 118  Ibid. 119  Philonenko, Joseph et Aséneth, 198 in the apparatus. 120  Text from Fink, Joseph und Aseneth Revision, 189; same at Burchard, Joseph und Aseneth, 264. 121  Burchard, Joseph und Aseneth, 699. 122  And not, as suggested by A. Cheung, Idol Food in Corinth: Jewish Background and Pauline Legacy, Library of New Testament Studies 176 (London: Bloomsbury, 1999), 181 n. 96, anything having to do with non-Kosher (strangled) meat.

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fourth century ce.123 It would also provide a connection between sacrificial meat of the third century and the Late Antique bread-ordeals. But there are perennial problems in determining whether an expression denotes something specific (“Ist es Dir ein Begriff?”) or whether it is just some sort of religious rant that achieves its rhetorical effect from rhetorical style and connotation.124 There is an outlier passage in Jerome’s commentary on Hosea 10:13: arastis impietatem, iniquitatem messuistis: comedistis frugem mendacii quia confisus es in viis tuis in multitudine fortium tuorum: quomodo enim radix omnium malorum est auaritia, sic peccatorum scelerumque cunctorum radix est impietas, quam qui arauerit, siue semi­ nauerit, metet iniquitates. Qui igitur arauerunt impietatem, et messuerunt iniquitates, comederunt fructum mendacii, omnia quae falsa sunt deceptis populis praedicantes, ut non quaerant panem uerum, qui de caelo descendit; sed panem mendacii, qui suffocat et interficit deuorantes (Jerome, In Hoseam 3.10.471). Just as avarice is the root of all evils, so is impiety the root of all sins and wicked deeds. He who ploughed it or sowed it, will reap iniquity. Those therefore who have cultivated impiety and harvested iniquity have eaten the fruit of lying, preaching all manner of falsehood to the deceived people, that they should not seek the true bread that came down from heaven, but the bread of falsehood that suffocates and slays those who devour it.

Comedistis frugem mendacii is associated with “the sweet bread of lies” of Proverbs 20:17 and 23:3 and contrasted with the heavenly bread and described as “the bread of lies that suffocates and kills those who devour it.” Is this bread gained by deceit,125 figurative bread consisting of lies, or 123  Dates have varied from the third century bce to the later fourth century ce. See Clemens Leonhard and Benedikt Eckhardt, “Mahl V (Kultmahl),” in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, ed. Georg Schöllgen et al., 23 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 2010), 1012-1105, at 1062 for a narrower range, but tending to a later dating. Matters are complicated by the possibility of Christian colouring added to a Jewish core. For my purposes, I would say (pace Philonenko, Joseph et Aséneth, 91) that there are passages that are susceptible of a Eucharistic reading and associations with consecration and initiation. E.g., the cup of life at 8.11 and 15.4. Also, the heavenly honeycomb at JA 16. Asenath’s confession in the longer version seems trickier in a purely Jewish context. For a recent survey of scholarship on the date, see Angela Standhartinger, “Recent Scholarship on Joseph and Aseneth (1988-2013),” Currents in Biblical Research 12 (2014): 353-406, at 371-374. 124  One thinks in particular of believers who learn how to rant biblically. Consider Ruth Rendell, A Judgement in Stone (London: Arrow, 1978), 169: “Joan didn’t necessarily quote from the Bible. Just as often she ranted in biblical language what she thought ought to have been in the Bible.” 125  The modern interpretation.



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is it the bread that detects lies by choking the eater? Does Jerome have anything specific in mind? Then finally Frechulf of Lisieux in the ninth century, mentioning “little children ask for bread, but that it be broken for them and that it pass into their inwards without the test/danger of choking.”126 Frechulf is clearly alluding to the iudicium offae. But Jerome? Such passages must remain “floaters” that may perhaps be deployable in the jig-saw puzzle – if rightly combined and analysed. 6.  The Table of the Lord and Men The final passage, perhaps the most obvious one of all, has never to my knowledge been brought into the discussion of the iudicium offae: Jesus revealing Judas as his betrayer at the Last Supper in the version in Jn 13:21-30. (21) Ταῦτα εἰπὼν ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐταράχθη τῷ πνεύματι καὶ ἐμαρτύρησεν καὶ εἶπεν, Ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι εἷς ἐξ ὑμῶν παραδώσει με. (22) ἔβλεπον εἰς ἀλλήλους οἱ μαθηταὶ ἀπορούμενοι περὶ τίνος λέγει. (23) ἦν ἀνακείμενος εἷς ἐκ τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ ἐν τῷ κόλπῳ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ, ὃν ἠγάπα ὁ Ἰησοῦς· (24) νεύει οὖν τούτῳ Σίμων Πέτρος πυθέσθαι τίς ἂν εἴη περὶ οὗ λέγει. (25) ἀναπεσὼν οὖν ἐκεῖνος οὕτως ἐπὶ τὸ στῆθος τοῦ Ἰησοῦ λέγει αὐτῷ, Κύριε, τίς ἐστιν; (26) ἀποκρίνεται Ἰησοῦς, Ἐκεῖνός ἐστιν ᾧ ἐγὼ βάψω τὸ ψωμίον καὶ δώσω αὐτῷ. βάψας οὖν τὸ ψωμίον [λαμβάνει καὶ] δίδωσιν Ἰούδᾳ Σίμωνος Ἰσκαριώτου. (27) καὶ μετὰ τὸ ψωμίον τότε εἰσῆλθεν εἰς ἐκεῖνον ὁ Σατανᾶς. λέγει οὖν αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Ὃ ποιεῖς ποίησον τάχιον. (28) τοῦτο [δὲ] οὐδεὶς ἔγνω τῶν ἀνακειμένων πρὸς τί εἶπεν αὐτῷ· (29) τινὲς γὰρ ἐδόκουν, ἐπεὶ τὸ γλωσσόκομον εἶχεν Ἰούδας, ὅτι λέγει αὐτῷ [ὁ] Ἰησοῦς, Ἀγόρασον ὧν χρείαν ἔχομεν εἰς τὴν ἑορτήν, ἢ τοῖς πτωχοῖς ἵνα τι δῷ. (30) λαβὼν οὖν τὸ ψωμίον ἐκεῖνος ἐξῆλθεν εὐθύς· ἦν δὲ νύξ. Cum haec dixisset Iesus turbatus est spiritu et protestatus est et dixit, “Amen amen dico vobis quia unus ex vobis tradet me.” Aspiciebant ergo ad invicem discipuli haesitantes de quo diceret. Erat ergo recumbens unus ex discipulis eius in sinu Iesu quem diligebat Iesus. Innuit ergo huic Simon Petrus et dicit ei, “Quis est de quo dicit?” Itaque cum recubuisset ille supra pectus Iesu dicit ei, “Domine, quis est?” Respondit Iesus, “Ille est cui ego intinctum panem porrexero.” Et cum intinxisset panem dedit  Frechulf of Lisieux, Ep. ad Hrabanum Maurum (= Hrabanus, Ep. 5.7): Non enim spiritales esuriendo desiderabat dapes, quarum suauitatis gustum necdum expertus erat, quem primum lacte alendum, non solido censui cibo. Igitur annuente Domino escas iam ambiunt contingere et quamuis adhuc paruuli panem sibi dare deposcunt, sed ut eis frangatur et in uiscera eorum salubriter traiciatur absque discrimine strangulationis, uestro indigemus solatio, maxime autem in Pentateuco. See Frechulfus Lexoviensis, Opera Omnia, ed. M. I. Allen, CCSL 169A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002). 126

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Iudae Simonis Scariotis et post buccellam127 tunc introivit in illum Satanas. Dicit ei Iesus “quod facis, fac citius.” Hoc autem nemo scivit discumbentium ad quid dixerit ei. Quidam enim putabant quia loculos habebat Iudas quia dicit ei Iesus, “eme ea quae opus sunt nobis ad diem festum,” aut egenis ut aliquid daret. Cum ergo accepisset ille buccellam exivit continuo. Erat autem nox.

No one knows what was originally intended at the Last Supper. My concern is with how it is narrated in John and how it was interpreted. Through looking at ancient exegesis and especially at Origen, who had noted most of the main problems by the end of the third century, we can see the productive sticking-points and uncertainties. 7.  The Script The Synoptics describe a significantly different gesture from John. Matt 26:23 and Mark 14:20 speak of “dipping his hand in the dish with,” while Luke 22:21 mentions the hand of the traitor.128 So in them all disciples simply shared the communal dish. In John, however, Jesus takes the ψωμίον, dips it, and offers it to Judas.129 The significance of this gesture was unclear from the outset.130 Origen on John questioned many of the most important obscurities. For example, whether Judas consumed the morsel is not entirely clear from John’s narrative. The point bothered Origen.131 But tasting could be understood from μετὰ τὸ ψωμίον, and in 13.30 Judas is said to have “taken” it, which most probably refers to eating, not transport. 13.28–29 are clearly an exegetic parenthesis, where the action halts.  The Vetus Latina has variants of panem.  Kurt Aland, Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum (Stuttgart: Württembergische Bibelanstalt, 1996; 15th rev. ed.). Noted by Origen, In Ioh. 32.22.290. 129  Read by Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to John. Vol. 2 (xiii–xxi), The Anchor Bible 29a (New York: Doubleday, 1970), 578 as a “basic gesture of oriental hospitality.” He compares Ruth 2:14. But the comparison is not quite apposite, for Ruth is invited to dip in herself. 130  It appears that the significance of the table manners (who dips into the dish in what order or with whom simultaneously, or in what circumstances one person dips a morsel to offer it to another and what it means) has not been explored, though the issues are adumbrated in Origen, In Ioh. 32.22.290-294. I am grateful to my colleague Günter Stemberger for pointing me to Mishnah Shabbath 14.2 (H. Danby, The Mishnah [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933], 113), which refers to regular dipping into salt water or cooked food and Mishnah Shabbath 14.4 which refers to the “usual fashion” of dipping into vinegar. 131  Origen, In Ioh. 32.24.303-307 for an aporetic discussion ending in the possibility of Judas not having eaten it. 127 128



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8.  Non bonus cibus? One might be forgiven for thinking that the morsel caused Satan to enter into Judas.132 Maximus of Turin (early fifth century) naively exclaimed: Non bonus cibus post quem ingreditur inimicus! Like the food of idols, it could be seen as causing Satan to enter into him (post hoc propter hoc).133 But exegetes were understandably eager to avoid any suggestion that the morsel tendered by Jesus was itself evil or made Judas evil. There were various ways around the problem. Jerome said that Judas had sinned of his own accord previously, but at that point was handed over to Satan for torture.134 Augustine in De baptismo 5.8.9 mobilized 1 Cor 10:28. sicut enim Iudas, cui buccellam tradidit dominus, non malum accipiendo sed male accipiendo locum in se diabolo praebuit, sic indigne quisque sumens dominicum sacramentum non efficit, ut quia ipse malus est malum sit aut quia non ad salutem accipit nil acceperit. corpus enim domini et sanguis domini nihilominus erat etiam illis quibus dicebat apostolus: qui manducat et bibit indigne, iudicium sibi manducat et bibit.135 Just as Judas to whom the Lord gave the morsel offered a place for the devil within him not by accepting something evil, but by accepting it in an evil way, so whoever takes the sacrament of the Lord unworthily, does not bring it about that, because he is evil, it (sc. the sacrament) becomes evil or that because he did not receive it for 132  Otto Böcher, Das Neue Testament und die dämonischen Mächte, Stuttgarter Bibelstudien 58 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1972), 15 saw Judas as possessed. 133  Max. Tur., Serm. 51.63, see Sermons of St. Maximus of Turin, trans. Boniface Ramsey, ACW 50 (New York: Paulist, 1989); Origen, In Ex. hom. 6.2 saw Satan as becoming Judas’ rider after the buccella. Other patristic exegetes fight hard against this reading. See Jerome, Apologia adv. libros Rufini 2.7 (Hieronymus, Apologia contra Rufinum, ed. P. Lardet, CCSL 79 [Turnhout: Brepols, 1982], 38-40); Jerome, Commentaria In Isaiam. 9.28 (PL 24, cols. 325-336). 134  Apologia adv. libros Rufini 2.7: et uideris mihi in hoc loco calumniam diabolo facere et criminatorem omnium falsis criminibus accusare. dicis enim: “qui omnibus extitit causa peccati” et, dum in illum refers crimina, homines culpa liberas tollisque arbitrii potestatem, saluatore dicente quod de corde nostro exeant cogitationes malae, homicidia, adulteria, fornicationes, furta, falsa testimonia, blasphemiae; et rursum de Iuda in euangelio legimus: post buccellam intrauit in illum Satanas, quia ante buccellam sponte peccauerat et nec humilitate nec clementia saluatoris flexus est ad paenitentiam. unde et apostolus: quos tradidi, inquit, Satanae, ut discant non blasphemare; et in alio loco: tradidi huiuscemodi Satanae in interitum carnis, ut spiritus saluus fiat. Tradidit eos Satanae quasi tortori ad puniendum, qui, antequam traderentur, uoluntate propria blasphemauerant. See CCSL 79, ed. Lardet, 38. ET: Apology against Rufinus, trans. W. H. Fremantle, NPNF Series II 3 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing, 1892). 135  De baptismo libri VII, in Augustinus, Psalmus contra partem Donati, Contra epistulam Parmeniani, De baptismo, ed. M. Petschenig, CSEL 51 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1908), 171-375, at 270.

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s­alvation that he received nothing. It was the body and blood of the Lord nonetheless, even for those to whom the apostle said, “Who eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks a judgment for himself.”

It was not what he took, but how he took it. This implicit interpretation that invokes Paul on the taking of the Eucharist unworthily goes back to Origen, who used it to solve his dilemma in his Commentary on John 32.24.308-12: “λαβὼν τὸ ὁ Ἰούδας ἐξῆλθεν εὐθύς”. καὶ οὕτως δ’ ἂν οὐκ ἀπιθάνως εἰς τὸν τόπον λέγοιτο· ὥσπερ ὁ ἀναξίως ἐσθίων τὸν ἄρτον τοῦ κυρίου ἢ πίνων αὐτοῦ τὸ ποτήριον εἰς κρῖμα ἐσθίει καὶ πίνει, τῆς μιᾶς ἐν τῷ ἄρτῳ κρείττονος δυνάμεως καὶ ἐν τῷ ποτηρίῳ ὑποκειμένῃ μὲν διαθέσει κρείττονι ἐνεργαζομένης τὸ βέλτιον, χείρονι δὲ ἐμποιούσης τὸ κρῖμα· οὕτω τὸ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ψωμίον ὁμογενὲς ἦν τῷ δοθέντι καὶ τοῖς λοιποῖς ἀποστόλοις ἐν τῷ “Λάβετε, φάγετε,” ἀλλ’ ἐκείνοις μὲν εἰς σωτηρίαν, τῷ δὲ Ἰούδᾳ εἰς κρῖμα, ὡς μετὰ τὸ ψωμίον εἰσεληλυθέναι εἰς αὐτὸν τὸν Σατανᾶν (Commentary on John 32.24.308-9).136 After taking it (sc. the morsel) Judas “immediately went out.” And thus it might quite reasonably be said about the passage: just as the one who eats the bread of the Lord or drinks his drink unworthily drinks a judgment for himself, with the stronger power, one though it was, in the bread and in the drink according to the underlying disposition effecting what was better for him who is good, but causing a judgment for the one who is worse, so too, the morsel from Jesus was akin to its giver and to the rest of the apostles as in “Take and eat,” but for them for salvation, while for Judas as a judgment, since, after the morsel, Satan entered him.

Origen had been balancing two opposite views of what the morsel was. One had it as a bad, or at least a lesser thing that Jesus somehow had to convey to Judas to empty him of the better, of which he was no longer worthy.137 It thus functions as a substitute. The other interpretation is 136  Origène, Commentaire sur Saint Jean, Tome V (Livres XXVIII et XXXII), ed. and trans. Cécile Blanc, SC 385 (Paris: Cerf, 1992), 318, 320. 137  Origen, In Ioh. 32.22.282-284: ἐχρῆν γάρ, οἶμαι, διὰ τῆς δόσεως τοῦ ψωμίου ἀντιλαβεῖν αὐτὸ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀναξίου ἔχειν τὸ κρεῖττον ὃ ἐδόκει ἔχειν· ἀπὸ γὰρ τοῦ μὴ ἔχοντος καὶ ὃ δοκεῖ ἔχειν ἀρθήσεται ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ. ἀφαιρεθεὶς οὖν ὁ Ἰούδας ὡς ἀνάξιος τοῦ κρείττονος τοῦ εἰπόντος, κεχώρηκε τὴν εἰς αὐτὸν τοῦ Σατανᾶ εἴσοδον (SC 385, ed. Blanc, 306); ET: “For I think it was necessary, by the gift of the morsel to take back from the unworthy man the very possession of the better thing, which he seemed to have, for even what he seems to have will be taken from him who does not have. Judas therefore, as unworthy of the greater thing [offered by] the one addressing him, made room for the entry of Satan into himself.” ET: Origen, Commentary on the Gospel according to John. Books 13–32, trans. Ronald E. Heine, FOTC 89 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press,1993; repr. 2006), 394.



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that the morsel was a good thing and that Satan needed to forestall Judas’ consumption by entering into Judas before he could eat. Origen resolved the dilemma by treating the morsel as a prop in an ordeal, a magical substance whose effect varied according to the moral state of the partaker. He had pointed the way to his eventual solution when discussing the Supper at Bethany: ἀπὸ τούτων τοίνυν τῶν βελῶν, ἃ τοῖς καιομένοις ἐξειργάσατο ὁ διάβολος, ἐνέβαλεν εἰς τὴν καρδίαν Ἰούδα Σίμωνος Ἰσκαριώτου, ἤδη βεβλημένου τῷ δείπνῳ οὐχ ὥστε δὲ ἀρέσεσθαι αὐτῷ, ἐπείπερ ἡ τοῦ δείπνου τούτου τροφὴ καὶ ὁ οἶνος ὁ ἐν αὐτῷ οὐκ ἐδύνατο γενέσθαι (5) ἐν καρδίᾳ ὑπὸ τοῦ διαβόλου βεβλημένῃ βέλει (Commentary on John 32.2.23).138 From these darts, therefore, which the devil has prepared for those who burn, he put it in the heart of Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, who had already been struck at the supper, but not with the result that it was pleasing to him, since the food and wine of this supper could not exist in a heart that had been struck by the devil with a missile …139

Origen mentions contagion from Satan’s darts that made it impossible for Judas to profit from wine and nourishment or even for it to exist in him. In his interpretation Jesus’ revelation of Judas is indeed treated as akin to a Eucharistic ordeal.140 This offering of the ψωμίον can be seen as similar to the administration of the bread at a tasting-ordeal. The question is: who will be guilty of the betrayal? The disciples are at a loss who is intended. Peter gestured to John to ask Jesus, who says that it will be he for whom he dips the morsel and to whom he gives it. Furthermore, in light of the ingredients and circumstances of tasting-ordeals involving bread John 13 emerges as a passage of interest for the following additional structural reasons: 1. A morsel of bread dipped (intinctum) in the dish identified Judas as the traitor.141 2. Eating of bread and betrayal are mentioned in the fulfilment citation of Psalm 40:10 at John 13.18.142 3. Judas had been identified as a  SC 385, ed. Blanc, 196.  ET: Commentary, trans. Heine, 346. 140  Brown, The Gospel according to John (xiii–xxi), 575, is sceptical. But his concern is with John, not with reception, which is another matter. 141  Brown, ibid., 578, notes that ψωμίον generally refers to bread, but not invariably. 142  Note however Origen’s puzzling comments at In Ioh. 32.22.289: ὡς ἐν τοιούτοις δὴ τόποις πρόσχες εἰ δύνασαι τὸν εἰλικρινῆ ἄρτον ἀβαφῆ φάσκειν εἶναι καὶ καθ’ αὑτὸν τρόφιμον· τὸ δὲ τῷ Ἰούδᾳ ἐπιδιδόμενον καὶ οὐκ ἄρτος ἦν τὸ ψωμίον, καὶ οὐ ψωμίον ἀβαφές, ἀλλὰ βεβαμμένον τῷ δυναμένῳ ἀποσπάσαι τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτοῦ τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ λόγου ἐπὶ ποσὸν ἐγγινομένην βαφήν, ἵνα μετὰ τὸ ψωμίον εἰσέλθῃ εἰς ἐκεῖνον ὁ Σατανᾶς. ET: Commentary, trans. Heine, 396: “As in such passages, note if you can say that the pure 138

139

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thief in John 12:4. 4. What Jesus is doing may be proto-Eucharistic.143 5. Truth is revealed at the dinner-table. 6. The entry of Satan into Judas is mentioned. At the end who will do it has been revealed. Truth has emerged. VII. Conclusions 1.  How to Pin a Speaker Down? We live in a written culture. We want written agreements. We are struggling with new media and forms of electronic validation. But other cultures were verbal: “my word is my bond.” Yet “special speech,” namely the assertory or promissory oath, was still felt to be necessary for reinforcement. Hence god(s), Bibles, etc. … But what about lying and perjury? What about the problem of mouth vs. heart? “My tongue swore, but my heart was not pledged.”144 How to make it stick, to make witnesses accountable? This is where the advantages of the body come in. The body can act as a sort of hostage, witness, pledge, or theatre of truth in the ordeal. One was asked, as it were, to “put one’s body where one’s mouth was.”145 2. Weaselling When one needed to stand up for something, there was a constant toand-fro about what “counted,” what was best, or what didn’t count. Deniability! One could dispute the form of words, but one could also bread is undipped and is nourishing in itself, but the morsel that was given to Judas was neither bread nor an undipped morsel, but one that had been dipped by him who could withdraw from his soul the tincture of the Word that was in it for a while, so that after the morsel Satan might enter him.” It seems strange in light of Origen’s interpretation for him to say that the ψωμίον was not bread. I wonder whether the clause shouldn’t read: τὸ δὲ τῷ Ἰούδᾳ ἐπιδιδόμενον < ψωμίον> [καὶ] οὐκ ἄρτος ἦν , καὶ οὐ ψωμίον ἀβαφές. The passage would then be translated thus: “In such passages pay attention to whether you can claim that pure bread is undipped and nourishing on its own. The morsel given to Judas was neither pure bread nor an undipped morsel, but one dipped for the One (sc. the Devil) who could temporarily separate from his soul the tincture of reason that was dwelling in it, so that ‘after the morsel Satan entered into him …’.” 143  More clearly in the Synoptics, for which see Brown, The Gospel according to John (xiii–xxi), 557, who notes the lack of Eucharistic words in John. 144  Euripides, Hippolytus 612. 145  As opposed to “putting one’s money where one’s mouth is.”



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consider and negotiate alternative methods. An oath? On what? A consenting action? Eating something? A tiny pinch of incense? Submission to an ordeal? 3. Counter-voices There were a few voices raised against the ordeal.146 Ordeals could be violent. They could be unfair. They could be seen as testing God. Some seemed to instrumentalize the sacraments. Some seemed to have pagan origins. Were they magic? They were unevenly deployed. Should the church be involved? One could assemble a scriptural dossier against them.147 Innocent III forbade priestly participation at Lateran IV in 1215, and they gradually died out.148 4.  Go with What They Do to You and Make Something of It! This contribution is part of a larger project on the genesis and evolution of Late Antique and Early Medieval judicial ordeals, including the more familiar fire and water ordeals, ordeal-by-oath,149 and ordeal-by-execution.150 In it I argue that within Christianity they can be analysed as tortures embraced. “Do it to me! Bring on the hot plates!” says the defiant martyr in literary texts from after the Great Persecution.151 But sometimes the torture was survived, and the martyr emerged as a confessor, whose wounds witnessed the truth of his cause. Attested it. And by Late Antiquity hot ordeals are attested as offered in theological disputes.152 146  For Augustine’s eventual abandonment of the oath, see Danuta Shanzer, “Sex, Lies, and Ordeal-by-Oath: A Case Study of Augustine, Epp. 78 and 80,” Reading Medieval Studies 40 (2014): 11-33. 147  As did Agobard of Lyons in the ninth century in his Contra Iudicium Dei (PL 104, cols. 249- 287). 148  On the decline of the high medieval ordeal see Peter Brown, “Society and the Supernatural: A Medieval Change,” Daedalus 104 (1975): 133-151, at 135-140. 149  Shanzer, “Sex, Lies, and Ordeal-by-Oath.” 150  D. Shanzer, “Beheading at Vercellae: What Is Jerome, Ep. 1, and Why Does It Matter?,” in Zwischen Alltagskommunikation und literarischer Identitätsbildung: Studien zur lateinischen Epistolographie in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter, ed. Gernot Michael Müller, Roma aeterna: Beiträge zu Spätantike und Frühmittelalter 7 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2018), 145-167. 151  E.g. in Prudentius, Peristephanon 1.51 and 3.91. ET: Prudentius’ Crown of Martyrs: Liber peristephanon, trans. Len Krisak, ed. Joseph Michael Pucci (London: Routledge, 2020). 152  E.g. Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs 80 and Glory of the Confessors 14 (see nn. 101 and 104.)

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The hand in the fire or cauldron, or the burning iron. This reversal or hi-jacking of punishment by the victim is parallel to what I think is demonstrably going on with the sacrificial meats and the Eucharist. Its genesis seems to converge on times of persecution. 5.  Advantages and Emergence For an ordeal to catch on it must make the transition from something that happened/was done to something that was available or imposed, a legal recourse. This institutionalized phase is normally attested late. To help bridge the gap one must assume that practices emerged “bottom-up.” And worked. A sacred libation is a “light” ordeal, weighted for the proband. What teeth it had, came from belief, not from science. The sacerdotal scaremongers naturally tried to make it seem autonomic. The Eucharistic ordeal was a “gentle” one, reserved for nobles and clergy. The iudicium offae is a bit different. What made it difficult was physical and could (one suspects) be overcome by calm and skill. Both were decent options for the accused. 6. Sources It seems possible to find ordeal-like uses of the Eucharist in the midthird century in Cyprian countering sacrificial meats. Paul was already under contribution for the theology. Origen is new and, I think, important because his interpretation uses Paul in 1 Corinthians, but links the Eucharist with the episode of Judas’ morsel. The Last Supper emerges as a sort of food ordeal (Eucharistic and morsel) writ large that all but one passed. There may be a continuity in evidence for theft-ordeals involving bread that were carried out on Maundy Thursday in Byzantium and in Novgorod.153 Apuleius remains a poser, because we cannot tell what he is talking about, but he may put the barley-bread and cheese ordeal much earlier than the fourth century And Joseph and Asenath is likewise 153  The evidence is somewhat buried in Afanasii Vassiliev, Anecdota Graeco-Byzantina, vol. 1 (Moscow: Universitats Caesarea, 1893), lxiii-lxvii. For Maundy Thursday’s Constantinopolitan theft ordeal, see p. lxiii. See also J. Darrouzès, Les Regestes des actes du patriarcat de Constantinople. Vol. 1: Les Actes des Patriarches. Fasc. 5: Les regestes de 1310 à 1376 (Paris: Institut français d’études byzantines, 1977), 543 no. 2648. The hearing took place on 22 April 1372. I am very grateful to Otto Kresten for coming to my aid with timely scans. In Novgorod in 1410 on the 21 December inscribed bread was administered. If eaten, the proband was purged; if he couldn’t (non comedit), he was guilty. Those who avoided the ordeal were likewise considered guilty.



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not firmly dated but refers to an effect of sacrificial bread that chokes. One consequence of Judas’ betrayal was his suicide by hanging, narrated in Matt 27:3-5:154 tunc videns Iudas qui eum tradidit quod damnatus esset, paenitentia ductus rettulit triginta argenteos principibus sacerdotum et senioribus dicens, “peccavi tradens sanguinem iustum.” at illi dixerunt, “quid ad nos tu videris?” et proiectis argenteis in templo recessit et abiens laqueo se suspendit. Then Judas who had betrayed him seeing that he had been condemned, driven by remorse, brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the high priests and the elders, saying, “I have sinned by betraying just blood.” But they said, “What matters that to us? It’s your responsibility.” After throwing the pieces of silver down in the temple, he withdrew and went away and hanged himself with a noose.

Could Judas’ fate have been quasi-interpolated into the second Latin version of Joseph and Asenath that speaks of the “bread of the noose” (panis laquei)? Jerome certainly read John and Matthew together (In Ecclesiasten 4.9): ‘et si invaluerit super eum unus. duo stabunt adversus eum et funiculus triplex non facile rumpetur”: quod si etiam pater et filius et spiritus sanctus aduenerint, non cito rumpitur ista sodalitas. quod autem non cito rumpitur, tamen aliquando rumpetur. et in Iuda enim apostolo fuit triplex iste funiculus; sed quia post buccellam introiuit in eum Satanas, funiculus iste diruptus est.155 Even if one should gain the advantage over him, two will still stand against the former and a three-ply rope will not be easily broken. For if also the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost will some, that fellowship is not swiftly broken. But what is not broken swiftly will nonetheless eventually be broken. That three-ply rope applied to Judas the Apostle, but because after the morsel Satan entered into him, that rope of his burst asunder.

The Latin translators of Joseph and Asenath seem to import Judas’ morsel as the agent in a iudicium offae. 154  Acts 1:18 has: et hic quidem possedit agrum de mercede iniquitatis et suspensus crepuit medius et diffusa sunt omnia viscera eius. For fascinating material on the interpretation and reception of Judas’ death, see Martha Bayless, Sin and Filth in Medieval Culture: the Devil in the Latrine, Routledge Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture 2 (New York: Routledge, 2012), 124-127. 155  Hieronymus, Hebraicae quaestiones in libro Geneseos. Liber interpretationis hebraicorum nominum. Commentarioli in psalmos. Commentarius in Ecclesiasten, ed. M. Adriaen, CCSL 72 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1959).

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Sacred foods are dangerous. Polluted ones pollute the clean. Clean ones punish those who are polluted. Neutral substances can be magicked to discriminate and choke the polluted. Christian, heretic, and pagan priests all intervene in Others’ food, be it with the sign of the cross or with blessings. Over Late Antiquity venues change from the Temple to the Table, from displays of loyalty where Christians and Jews were tested, to displays of power pitting Christians against Northern European pagans.156 All these ordeals or ordeal-like practices deployed the body as prop and as scene and as far more – a hostage in the event of death. The issue was Truth. Not the timeless Reality (to on) aimed for by mystagogy, but a potent goal nonetheless.

156  E.g. Vita Columbani 1.27, the Suebi and their beer at Bregenz. See e.g. Anonymous, Vita Columbani, ed. Michael Newton (Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History; http://exploringcelticciv.web.unc.edu/prsp-record/ text-vita-columbani/, accessed 20 February 2021). Or: Vita Vedastis 7, with wine at Chlothar’s court. See Centrum Traditio Litterarum Occidentalium, ed., Alcuinus, Vita Vedastis, episcopi Atrebatensis II (BHL-8506) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010).

Abbreviations ACW BETL CCSL CSEL FC FOTC GCS

Ancient Christian Writers Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium Corpus Christianorum Series Latina Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Fontes Christiani Fathers of the Church Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte GNO Gregorii Nysseni Opera HTR Harvard Theological Review JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies JTS Journal of Theological Studies LAHR Late Antique History and Religion LCL Loeb Classical Library NHMS Nag Hammadi and Manichaen Studies NPNF Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers PG J.-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Graeca PL J.-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina SAEMO Sancti Ambrosii Episcopi Mediolanensis Opera SC Sources chrétiennes TU Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur VC Vigiliae Christianae VCS Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae ZAC Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum / Journal of Ancient Christianity

List of Contributors Henk Bakker Professor of Baptist and Evangelical Theologies, Faculty of Religion and Theology, VU Amsterdam. Martin Claes Post-doctoral Researcher, Tilburg School of Catholic Theology, Tilburg University. Catherine Conybeare Leslie Clark Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics, Bryn Mawr College. Paul van Geest Professor of Church History and History of Theology, Tilburg University; Professor of Economics and Theology, Erasmus University Rotterdam; Visiting Professor Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven.  Metha Hokke Research Fellow, the Centre for the Study of Early Christianity, VU Amsterdam and Tilburg University Vincent Hunink Assistant Professor of Early Christian Greek and Latin, Radboud University Nijmegen; www.vincenthunink.nl. Mathew Kuefler Professor Emeritus of History, San Diego State University. Daniel Lemeni Lecturer in Eastern Spirituality, Department of Theology, West University of Timișoara. Hans van Loon Senior Research Associate of the Centre for the Study of Early Christianity, VU Amsterdam and Tilburg University.

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Hanna Lucas PhD student, Durham University. Giulio Maspero Full Professor of Systematic Theology, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome. Wendy Mayer Professor of Church History, University of Divinity (Australian Lutheran College). Manuel Mira Professor of Patrology, University of Navarra. Giselle de Nie Associate Professor of Medieval history, University of Utrecht (retired). Ilaria Ramelli Professor of Theology; of Patristics; Senior Fellow/Member (Durham; KUL; Sacred Heart University; Erfurt MWK; Cambridge). Yulia Rozumna Lecturer at the Institute of St Thomas Aquinas and Seminary of Sts Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom in Kyiv/Kiev. Danuta Shanzer Emeritus Professor of Late Antique and Medieval Philology, University of Vienna. Peter-Ben Smit Professor of Ancient Catholic Church Structures, Utrecht University; Professor of Systematic Theology and Ecumenism, University of Bern; Professor of Contextual Biblical Interpretation, VU Amsterdam; Research Associate, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria. Don Springer Kairos Affiliate Professor, Sioux Falls Seminary. Ilaria Vigorelli Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome.



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Nienke Vos Assistant Professor of Patristics and the Literature of Early Christianity (tenured), VU Amsterdam; Senior Research Fellow, the Centre for the Study of Early Christianity, VU Amsterdam and Tilburg University. Nathan Witkamp Affiliated Researcher, Evangelical Theological Faculty, Leuven; Research Fellow, the Centre for the Study of Early Christianity, VU Amsterdam and Tilburg University. Laela Zwollo Research Fellow, Tilburg School of Catholic Theology, Tilburg University.

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