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Book Review: "Virgins of God": The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity

1996; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 4; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/earl.1996.0048

1086-3184

Blake Leyerle,

Medieval Literature and History

Reviewed by: “Virgins of God”: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity Blake Leyerle Susanna Elm. “Virgins of God”: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity. Oxford Classical Monographs. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Pp. xvii + 385. $70.00. The agenda of this extraordinary study is the dismantling of the historiographic tradition which has enshrined Benedictine monasticism as normative. By focusing instead on the kinds of ascetic life chosen by women rather than men, and in the east (Asia Minor and Egypt) rather than the west, Elm achieves “an ideal point of leverage” (viii) for disclosing the immense diversity of ascetic styles against which the magisterial figures of Basil, Pachomius, Shenoute, and Athanasius, appear as reformers rather than innovators. Certainly the work of Bauer and Weber has influenced this task of historiographical realignment, but its driving concern differs from theirs. Instead of desiring to discredit later institutional entities in favor of earlier charismatic forms, Elm pursues the question posed by Mary Douglas of how institutions think, or in her own words, how they, like people, “remember and forget” (vii). In such a context, the discovery of institutional accommodation testifies not to declension in fidelity but to success in adaptation, an adaptability facilitated by the “constant creation of subsystems,” among the most agile of which were the emerging monastic orders (vii). Elm observes first the great diversity of early ascetic practice in Asia Minor. For example, by the time of Basil of Caesarea’s conversion to asceticism, his [End Page 576] brother Naucratius had been living for five years in a remote community (mone\) with several brothers; his sister Macrina had been following an ascetic regime within her mother’s house for ten years (82–102). The ascetic styles of Basil’s siblings testify, moreover, to the structural importance of the family in late antique asceticism: in Macrina’s choice of social rather physical withdrawal we see, Elm argues, not a repudiation of her family but a commitment to its gradual transformation into an ascetic community. The further unifying influence on Asian asceticism was the impact of Eustathius of Sebaste whose teachings dominated the mid-fourth century “ascetic landscape,” affecting among others Macrina and Naucratius. Strongly committed to charitable work, he established his foundations in cities. He rejected of marriage, ownership of property, and all distinctions in status, proclaiming that the gift of asceticism was equality. In his communities, both men and women proclaimed their radical likeness by wearing a “philosopher’s” coat (124–25). It appears therefore that the earliest communal monasticism in Asia Minor was Homoiousian in doctrine, urban in location, and mixed in gender (206). In this context, Basil’s achievement was that of a reformer (211). In order to foster contemplation and discourage participation in disputes over doctrine or clerical appointments, he moved monastic foundations to the countryside. He separated men from women into the new structure of the double monastery (207–10). He owed the success of these reforms, at least in part, to his many friends and relatives in high-ranking clerical positions (213). As the positive aspects of Homoiousian asceticism were occluded in the wake of doctrinal condemnation, Basil was proclaimed as the true founder of asceticism in Asia Minor (221). In Egypt, as in Asia Minor, diversity was the mark of female asceticism. While most women continued to live independently within their village together with their mothers, sisters, or brothers, others lived as anchorites in the desert, in communities with men, or with members of the clergy (241–53). Some even embraced an asceticism of wandering (273–75, 321 ff). By establishing large communities in which the main monastery occupied a position much like that of a paterfamilias at the center of his dependents, Pachomius and Shenoute were attempting to reform these earlier ascetic styles (295 ff.). Their foundations for women subordinated them in traditional familial ways: they had their own work, but otherwise had to follow orders (308). In contrast to Asia Minor, tensions in Egypt developed not a clash between radical ascetics and the clerical hierarchy, but from the ideological rift that divided town from country, koine\ from desertum (310). Anchorites in Alexandria, many of whom were female, played a...