Remapping the Landscape: Early Christianity and the Graeco‐Roman World. A Review Article
2008; Wiley; Volume: 32; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.1467-9809.2008.00719.x
ISSN1467-9809
Autores Tópico(s)Classical Antiquity Studies
ResumoDavid Lopez: Separatist Christianity. Spirit and Matter in the Early Church Fathers (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). Jennifer Wright Knust: Abandoned to Lust. Sexual Slander and Ancient Christianity (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2006). Christopher Frilingos: Spectacles of Empire. Monsters, Martyrs, and the Book of Revelation (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004). Kevin Madigan and Carolyn Osiek, eds and trans.: Ordained Women in the Early Church. A Documented History (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). Maribel Dietz: Wandering Monks, Virgins, and Pilgrims. Ascetic Travel in the Mediterranean World, AD. 200–800 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005). Several years ago, I wrote “As Rome became more Christian, Christianity became more Roman.”11 G. Nathan, The Family in Late Antiquity. The Rise of Christianity and the Rise of Tradition (London: Routledge, 2000), 178. Like all comments that are more rhetorical than substantive, it nevertheless held some semblance of truth. Recent studies in early Christianity, however, suggest that I perhaps understated the point. Because the shadow of fourth-century Christianity falls heavily over the Christianities of earlier centuries, the religion's “triumph”— and the subsequent reinterpretation of the past by the “winners”— darkens modern perceptions of Christianity's earliest days. We only see it, as John Donne waxed poetically, through a glass darkly. In modern assessments, however, the continuing consensus has been to understand Christianity not as an aberration of the ancient world, divorced from social, cultural, and intellectual norms, but fully integrated into the age of pax Romana. And yet the underlying nature of some aspects of the religion and its practice seem to suggest that it had some distinctive components. A basic problem, then, is to understand how different the followers of Christ really were. This is hardly a unique question. Indeed, the question has been asked in different forms since at least de Tillemont's Memoires pour servir à l’histoire écclesiastique in the seventeenth century. It is not my intention to answer that question here. But the books considered below do suggest that those who wish to see the religion as a creature of the ancient Mediterranean are on indisputably solid footing. A similar trend is now beginning to emerge in Judaic studies, wherein scholars have begun to see how ancient Jews practiced — or were seen to practice — a religion monotheistic, but also one intelligible (if not entirely acceptable) to polytheists.22 See recently for a summary, D. Levinsky, “Between Rome and Jerusalem: Jewish Elite Women, Euergetism, and Nazirite Practice” paper given at the University of California First Annual Conference for Late Antiquity, 27 May 2006. Their discussions of course help us to understand how the religion could be understood and popular with those who lived around the mare nostrum, but raise another old problem: why did Christianity survive the ancient world while polytheism, for the most part, did not? To a certain extent, David Lopez — more than the others reviewed here — has tried to answer that question.33 David Lopez, Separatist Christianity. Spirit and Matter in the Early Church Fathers (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). More accurately, he uses the apocalyptic tradition as a partial explanation for Christianity's endurance through the earliest centuries of its existence. To be sure, Christianity's relations with the Empire in its first years were problematic at best, and even in the wake of Constantine's conversion, there remained an uneasy peace between Christ and Caesar for decades. We should not doubt that in at least the elite circles of Roman society and in the public sphere, the religion was excoriated (if not always prosecuted). One can imagine — if we are to believe early and authentic martyrs tales44 The best example is perhaps the Passio of Perpetua and Felicitas. — that that antagonism extended to almost all classes and peoples in the Empire. But as Lopez has argued, the problem was as big and as sustained within the Christian community itself as it was when Christians were at odds with unsympathetic officials and populaces. As a movement, the development of a literature of antagonism over the centuries was perhaps the most pronounced in the era after the death of Paul in 60 c.e.— or as Lopez argues, after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 — until the age of recognition in the early fourth century. That period of development meant not only Christian-polytheist relations were at issue, but also that it had impact on many other components of Christian literature and belief. Specifically, Lopez sees and catalogues a remarkably strong current of separation rhetoric in the writings of this key period. The different sects of Christianity notwithstanding, the notion of the Refusenik was an important and formative component to the experience of most early Christians — including notions of salvation and the threat/promise of martyrdom. As one might expect, early accounts of martyrs served to emphasize these differences: the Christian and Roman relationship was best characterized and understood as antagonistic in such writings. But Lopez goes further and notes that this tradition of separatism in fact can be found in a whole host of other texts: apologies, disciplinary texts and exegetics. It implies, among other things, a much broader theological interest in arguing that Christians and pagans’ differences were irreconcilable. But the author goes even further and argues, not always convincingly, that the notion of separatism became fully integrated into the early Christian experience. Martyrs are a case in point: his or her sacrifice — a rejection of the polytheist world — resulted in immediate salvation. An imitator of Christ, martyrs by dying for the religion, however, also helped to redeem their community. Apologists and martyrologists made this act of defiance a central and undeniable fact of Christian life and, significantly, were in essence anti-Roman. The implication of an underlying and pervasive opposition between Rome and Christian helped, among other things, to keep a strong apocalyptic tradition in Christianity until (at least?) the reign of Constantine. Perhaps most dramatically, the author ties the preservation of eschatological ideology to the success of the religion in the third century. This flies in the face of a considerable amount of scholarship, to say nothing of some fairly strong primary evidence from the third century that suggests otherwise. Moreover, Lopez does not really consider historical factors in this interpretation: what impact, for example, did the supposed persecution of Decius have upon apocalyptic literature (mentioned on p. 135, but left unconsidered)? Are we looking at a continuous tradition, or one that returned periodically, or was it part of a debate among Christians? Nevertheless, he perhaps unintentionally makes a much more valuable general caveat in accepting fourth- and fifth-century reconstructions of the religious “conflict.” One only need open the cover of Augustine's City of God to understand the pitfalls involved in accepting the “winner's” account of their own religion. Lopez also notes — and rightly so, I think — that both the ideology of renunciation and the apocalypse were powerful tools in preventing apostasy. In the particulars of his argument, however, he fails to take into account factors that transcended the religious sphere. His very thesis is predicated on the idea that early Christian ideology was dependent on rejection of the Roman world. It seems as if perhaps the author has inadvertently done the same. More successfully, Lopez suggests that the conceptual turning point came with the acceptance of Christianity in the fourth century, but more significantly with the writings of Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea. After a rather standard interpretation of Constantine's rise and conversion (leaving apart for the moment explaining what conversion meant — then or now), he notes that Eusebius separated physical renunciation of the world from martyrdom, and both concepts from the apocalypse. Christians (now) practised asceticism as a means of communing more perfectly with the divine, while martyrdom was recast as the heroic resistance to a polytheist Rome. Placed in that context, the End of Times could fade quietly into the background. Lopez of course notes that it was not quite that simple: certain non-orthodox traditions maintained apocalyptic ideas for some time to come. Unquestionably, then, Christians, in spite of their spirited self-representation as Refuseniks, cannot to be understood outside the society that they at times so effusively rejected. Even its earliest leaders and authors spoke to polytheists, and in the language that polytheists understood. That is a point made extraordinarily clear in Jennifer Wright Knust's examination of the rhetoric of early Christian polemics.55 Jennifer Wright Knust, Abandoned to Lust. Sexual Slander and Ancient Christianity (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2006). Starting with the writings of Paul and continuing through the second century, Wright suggests that Christian writers, particularly in the same apologetic traditions Lopez examines, used the topoi, motifs, and language of classical Greek and Latin invective to defend their religious beliefs and, more significantly, to attack those who criticized those beliefs. Specifically, Knust explores the rhetoric of sexual slander as a discursive tool in the attack on those who were outside the Christian community, but also significantly as a tool of control within that community. This is not a radical idea given our post-Foucault world, but no one has sought to examine this question in this way. In a somewhat moribund — albeit useful — introduction, the author discusses classical norms of invective. Unsurprisingly, she explains how it was governed by both gender and class conceptions found in ancient Mediterranean culture. Not only does she discuss the structure of criticism based on sexual slander, but also notes some of the more common constructions of sexual depravity (and conversely, those of high moral character/fibre). Control and lack of it were of course well known and discussed concepts, as are the physical (physiological?) flaws and, by extension, the moral shortcomings of women. In most cases, accusations of degeneracy helped to construct the moral out-of-bounds markers for the elite of the Graeco-Roman world. It of course was also a useful political weapon: accusations of sexual licentiousness could and did undermine the status of the elite. One only need look to the legal speeches of Demosthenes or Cicero to see how true this is. After this necessary and extended proem, the author moves on to more fruitful and interesting pastures. She looks first at the work of Paul; logical since not only was he the first true Christian theologian and polemicist, but also because he proved so influential upon future religious writers. Knust fulsomely demonstrates the manner in which the self-proclaimed apostle was able to take the vice/virtue schema of classical rhetoric and its functions in blame/praise, and apply to the Christian worldview. Taking the metaphor of slavery, Paul redeploys this system to delineate between the slaves of God, who will be saved through their belief and sexual moderation, and the slaves of sin, who are damned in large part through their own lack of self-control. God the Father governing the Christian community is contrasted against the Emperor (and Empire) as a father acting as steward over an immoral and immutably corrupt state. Knust then explains how Justin Martyr's work elaborated upon these rhetorical-moral binaries, extending in his work an apologetic exegesis that drew heavily upon gender typologies. Christians — men and women both — were portrayed as men, able to control their bodies and passions, and representing the “stronger” sex, while Rome's aristocrats were painted as slavish and womanish, unable to control themselves or those around them. In engaging in this “sexual slander,” Justin not only defined the differences between Christian and polytheist, but also was dramatically inverting the charges laid against Christians in the early centuries of the Common Era. The apologist takes up and develops Paul's ideas of sexual (read moral) superiority compared to polytheists and eventually hit upon the model for comparing Christian moderation to pagan deviance and idolatry. Knust eventually argues that these ideas manifested in the rhetoric of Paul and Justin became widely adopted by other early Christian authors. Not only did it shape the debate with outsiders, but it also helped to control those on the inside as well. False prophets — and other proponents of less common beliefs within the community — could and did become targets of this rhetoric. She concludes that this tradition of praise/vilification eventually became the means by which the Christian could separate himself not only from the broader polytheist community, but also from Jews (who rejected Christ) and heretics. Justin and Irenaeus, the author maintains, defined and constructed through this polemical tradition a clear notion of Christian authority. Sexual slander and rhetoric served as a key component in the formation of a distinct group (at least in their own minds) of believers. Knust's thesis is an attractive one that helps to explain how gender, power, ancient society, and religion interlinked within the rhetoric of early Christian thinkers. The question of “real” behaviour, deviant or otherwise, is of course largely unknowable: how the rhetoric of morality and immorality functioned to define and separate Christians from the rest of Graeco-Roman society is of greater significance here. But Knust's model of insider-outsider must be looked at with some degree of scepticism and raises the question of audience. If we can speak of authorial intention, we must seriously consider to whom these early Christian writers were speaking. One must naturally expect that Paul, Justin, and others were primarily (if not exclusively) writing for their own communities. Why? To shore up support for those who might be apostate or unsure of their choices? Because loyalty to religion was not as strong as it might have otherwise been? To limit and control the differences between different groups of Christians? All seem likely possibilities; all call into question the rather strict model of insider-outsider Knust constructs. Tertullian, the orthodox defender turned prophetic Montanist, underscores this point. Nevertheless, Knust argues eloquently for the importance of cultural context. This cannot be too heavily stressed. The lives of those living in the ancient Mediterranean, Christian or polytheist, were shaped not just by the ideology of the age, but also everyday experience. Christopher Frilingos's work on the arena and its relationship to the book of Revelations is an excellent case in point.66 Christopher Frilingos, Spectacles of Empire. Monsters, Martyrs, and the Book of Revelation (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004). Frilingos takes the radical notion that the normative values, which characterised Roman society's penchant for spectacle — particularly the spectacle of pain and death — were modulated and adapted to Christian eschatological ecclesiology. Indeed, that may be understating Frilingos's case. He maintains in point of fact that Revelations is a direct manifestation of Roman culture in general and particularly a creation of the bloody arena. Grounded in postcolonial theory — particularly the late Edward Said's work on Orientalism — Frilingos is interested in the creation and reception of knowledge, and the way in which empire negotiated political control within an ambivalent population. Nevertheless, this is not a postcolonial study. He sees the way in which Roman spectacle, particularly in the arena was perceived and constructed by different groups. Frilingos suggests here that the centrality of public show and theatrical display were key components in the articulation of Roman power and authority. The Ara Pacis, for example, like the arena shows in the eastern Mediterranean, was part of a larger attempt not only Romanise, but to create a visual dialogue between ruler and ruled. Inexplicably, the author does not draw upon Alison Futrell's work on the arena and its role in Romanization into his discussion.77 A. Futrell, Blood in the Arena: The Specacle of Roman Power (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1997). In spite of this omission and that his familiarity with the historical context is not what it ought to be, however, this is a valuable dissection of the relationship between culture and language. For the author, the visual component of the spectacle lay in its ability to draw in the audience as participant — an observation made by K. M. Coleman as well.88 Coleman, K. M., “Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological Enactments,” Journal of Roman Studies 80 (1990): 44– 73. The arena developed as an expression of Roman dominance and control, which helped to elide the differences between what was real and what was show. This is his background for analyzing and contextualizing the last book of the Bible. Frilingos argues that Revelation is best understood as a work only made possible because of Roman spectacle — what he sees as a tableau of “imperial viewing” (p. 42). Taking as analogous pieces of Phlegon's Book of Marvels and the genre of Greek romances generally, Frilingos notes structural parallels in plotline development, “narrative spectacle,” and knowledge classification and presentation. But Rome itself also becomes an object of spectacle — and punishment — in Revelation, where the city becomes the “other” or the foreign. The use of Babylon as a representation of Rome underscores the Empire's power, and of course its immorality. The Empire's destruction — like those sentenced in the arena — becomes a source for applause for many and regrets for others. Having established these cultural and heuristic parameters, Frilingos then adds the dimension of sexuality to his discussion. Here, he is on common (and now perhaps too heavily trodden) ground of the nature concerning the construction of gender and notions of active and passive sexuality in the Graeco-Roman experience. But he notes that the inversions seen in Roman power and domination extended to gender. Revelation shows instances where male — notably those who follow the Beast — become feminized. Masculinity is preserved in some figures, such as the Son of Man, whereas others, such as the Slain Lamb, are considerably more ambiguous. When Frilingos turns to the text of Revelation in greater depth, he focuses on the cultural “viewing” and consequent debate between polytheist and Christian. Art and mythology are compared to and contrasted against Revelation's discussion of sexuality. The author argues that womanhood, femininity, and sexuality are used in both traditions to undercut traditional Mediterranean ideas concerning masculinity, but Christianity turned that into a political dynamic. The city of Babylon, a symbol of power and strength, becomes weak — more feminized. As a symbol of Rome, the whore of Babylon is “penetrated” and unable to control herself. The political implications of such knowledge sharing resonate in a way that Knust would undoubtedly argue was obvious. Rome is feminized, yes, but also made into something foreign. It is here that Said's work on constructing the other become valuable. This integration into the Pax Romana and its de facto participation in the dialogue between ruler and ruled (or rather, ruled and ruler) represents an interesting and unique view of the Revelatory work, to say nothing of its implications for consequent theological musings by early Christians. Like Lopez, however, Frilingos perhaps lacks some of the historical breadth to make his thesis completely acceptable. That much is perhaps forgivable as this is not in essence a historical work, but given the subject, the author certainly should have delved more deeply into the text of Revelation. The Beast, the End of Days, the Seal, and other iconic elements of the final book of the canon are barely mentioned, and none of course are really considered. As a result the work becomes more of an esquisse impliqué than something comprehensive. But that said, the book is certainly unique in its topic and approach, and from a theoretical perspective, shows the value in applying post-colonial thought to the ancient world. A less theoretical, but an equally engaging take on textuality is Kevin Madigan and Carolyn Osiek's documentary examination of Christian texts dealing with ordained women in the early Church.99 Kevin Madigan and Carolyn Osiek, eds and trans., Ordained Women in the Early Church. A Documented History (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). Unlike the works above, the authors draw upon a host of texts that extend as late as the fourteenth century, although they are centred on the early centuries of the religion's life. The authors try to prove, through the translation and examination of these texts, that women played not only an integral part in the early Church, but an institutionalised one as well. As a collection of primary source material on the subject (as well as the translations), the work is valuable. They draw not only upon literary evidence, but the much under-utilized epigraphic material as well. Beginning with the canonical sources (Romans and Timothy) and those who commented on Scripture, the authors seek to discuss both the existence and nature of women deacons, presbyters, and even episcopa. In general, the data from the East are more extensive than the West. The evidence all suggests that deaconesses were an integral part of the early church, and that they survived well into late antiquity. Moreover, many were not only recognized within the Church hierarchy, but could in fact be powerful enough to act independently of it. Over time, however, there is an undeniable shift: women wishing to serve were increasingly circumscribed by legal and canonical controls. Particularly in the case of the latter, women's spiritual weakness and menstrual cycles were cited as reasons why women ought to be excluded from the altar service. The material for those women who served in sacramental offices is far more poorly attested. As the authors note, “the sources do not tell us what we would like most to know” (p. 198). Most of the evidence comes unsurprisingly in prohibitions of women serving in priestly offices, although there are tantalizing morsels that suggest such women did serve at the altar. The degree of this stock misogyny is perhaps seen in the case of unorthodox movements such as the Montanists, whose special place for women as prophets and charismatic leaders underscored their heretical beliefs. Only occasionally, such as in the case of the funerary inscription of episcopa Q (p. 193) do we get a sense that something more was going on in the early Church. More significantly, it underscores the point that Christianity was still defining itself fully in the context of a polytheistic society that was completely comfortable with women priests. There are occasional insights into usages for women and perhaps something of their implications. Diakonos, for example, was not supplanted by diakonissa, although they were used interchangeably from the fourth century on. That suggests at the very least that at its inception, the office was seen as one sexually neutral. But for the most part, the analysis is limited to short commentaries of the surviving texts and tends to empirical rather than theoretically based. There are no novel conclusions or even observations. But the work does suggest two things: first, that prior to Constantine's conversion, women's roles in the Church were considerably more involved than in after and second, that authors particularly of the late fourth and fifth centuries engaged in a concerted effort to minimize and end women's roles in the Church. Again, these are not startling finds, but they do confirm what has been long suspected. Of course, this fourth-century shift went well beyond the issue of women in the Church. Even with Christianity's eventual legal and cultural acceptance into the world of late antiquity, the religion's form and substance remained malleable for many decades. Quite apart from the tumultuous Christological debates of the age and struggles for hierarchical authority, many Christians saw their relationship with the divine one that did not always follow the strictures set by an increasingly strictured and male-dominant clergy. The final work discussed here brings these changes into focus. Almost as a metaphor, Maribel Dietz discusses Christian travel in late antiquity, not only as a phenomenon of the religion's nature, but also as a means by which Christians helped define the nature of their religion in a post-Constantinian age.1010 Maribel Dietz, Wandering Monks, Virgins, and Pilgrims. Ascetic Travel in the Mediterranean World, A.D. 200–800 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005). As was the case with the myriad of Christian sects prior to the fourth century, pilgrims, gyrovagues (wandering monks), and other religious travellers undercut the unity and solidarity that many Christians sought, and sought to present themselves. Her study is in many ways comprehensive, trying to almost classify the different kinds of religious travel that was found in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Travel itself, as Dietz points out, was always a problematic activity — even for those who had need to do so. The world of the late Roman Empire was one that conversely made travel both more difficult and more necessary. She notes, of course, the large displacements of people as the result of Germanic migrations out of Central and Eastern Europe. Religious travel, while hardly comparable to population displacement, nevertheless represented another form of the phenomenon. But the author ties the movement to more significant changes within Christianity itself. With the Edict of Milan (313), issues of orthodoxy, clerical organization, and of course hierarchy came into far sharper focus. The culture of movement, as Dietz terms it, both represented opportunities and dangers to newfound status of the Church. Travelling to Jerusalem and “the idea of Jerusalem” (p. 41) — places of spiritual import — was significant, although Dietz argues that pilgrimage was but one purpose of religious travel. Travel might have political implications, it might have ascetic reasons. And the desire to travel was also a component of a new kind of Christian, the monk. As part of their practices of self-denial and spiritual fulfilment, travel helped to define the outlines of their religious odysseys. The issue of movement, however, was often at odds with the increasingly rigid institutionalization of the Church. The powers of bishops became central to the fourth century as well, a power that looked askance at the religiously unsupervised. The idea of “spiritual journey” became a way in which those who saw unbridled religious travel as threatening could reorient the late antique desire to travel. The history of religious movement thus was as much about power negotiation and knowledge formation as it was about peregrination (in fact, more so, since Dietz rejects the synonymous usage of religious travel and pilgrimage). Christians had the unenviable task of making their religion into something more mainstream, more Roman. Monasticism as a movement was a potential threat to Pax Christiana. A central part of her book, then, unsurprisingly focuses on monastic travel and the reaction to it within the monastic community and the Church in general. Gyrovagues, or wandering monks, were ubiquitous enough to generate antipathy for those who sought to have controlled, regulated lives of ascetic within closed (non-travelling) communities. Indeed, Dietz suggests that creation of the regulated life was one that was in no small part created as a reaction to these moving “false” monks. The Rule of the Master, for example, devoted considerable attention in mitigating the effects of such men and women. These fears continued well beyond the fourth and even fifth centuries. The existence and popularity of Irish monasticism, for example, helped to continue these concerns into the eighth and ninth centuries. Indeed, the attempts of the Master, Benedict, and others served to show how “wildly varied” (p. 105) monasticism in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages really was. Another important component of Dietz's study looks at the religious movement of women in this same era. Particularly with notable travellers like the mysterious Egeria, Melania the Younger and the Empress Eudocia, one can easily see why. Nor were these three in any way unique: Jerome, for example, mockingly lambasted the large numbers of aristocratic women jet-setting on religious tours of the East.1111 Jer., Ep. 108. That said, however, there seems to be an unanswered question here: did women represent a special category of religious traveller and, if so, ought there to be a section on male peregrines? (I suppose one might make the improbable claim that monastic travel was predominantly, if not exclusively, male.) Perhaps more significantly, the author's own conclusions argue against a typology of women travellers. This in no small degree argues against the practice of female peregrination as something distinct. Nevertheless, it was important to women since monasticism — and travel as a monastic adept — was one of the “forms of deep religious expression allowed” (p. 220). Moreover, Dietz argues that the place of women can be best seen in the creation of the Holy Land as a destination, and in particular Jerusalem as a holy city. The emphasis placed on the Mount of Olives in the city by female travellers was especially significant: it became a centre for monasticism and helped shape the city's Christian identity. Movement and monasticism shown to have a sharp connection in yet a third area of exploration for Dietz: the Iberian peninsula. Spain, which had produced some famous travellers including Prudentius, Egeria, and Orosius, offered a microcosm for understanding travel and monks in the Mediterranean world broadly. For Dietz, travel there was a complex negotiation of knowledge competition. The creation of centres like Santiago de Compestella helped to focus religious travel into something understood as pilgrimage, and an activity carried out primarily by lay men and women rather than monks. Furthermore, with the political upheavals in medieval Spain, it also served to spread Benedictine monasticism — something quite different from the fourth and fifth centuries. That is, religious travel in the region became something to further orthodoxy. Islam, the author argues, in no small part increased these changes. Dietz's book, then, serves more than just as a discussion on travel per se. It is also a discussion of the transformation from the ancient to the medieval world. These books cumulatively suggest that Christianity's existence as a religious movement served as an important cultural marker. Henry Ward Beecher, the American Congregationalist minister and social reformer, once said, “If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere.” Too true. In the end, Christianity Romanized itself.
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