Women Marriage Virginity Christianity Notes

Gender, Marriage, Household and Christianity

Kate Cooper, ‘Insinuations of Womanly Influence: an aspect of the Christianisation of the Roman Aristocracy’, The Journal Of Roman Studies, Vol 82 (1992), pp. 150-164.

• (I)

• In literature, women are presented as key agents.

  • In reality, these were rhetorical presentations for the benefit of men.

    • Uses

      • To attack of defend notion of “common good” in Christianisation process

      • Assign value, positive or negative, to the decisions and character of men.

• Public life

  • Romans were conscious of conflict between private life and public duty.

    • A man, was not infallibly committed to common good.

      • He needs to show moral righteousness

        • Conjugal unity can broadcast temperance.

• (II)

• Classical rhetoric of womanly influence

• Positive

  • Women exercising a soothing influence on man, persuading him to hear the voice of reason.

    • Plutarch

      • Finding a wife could yoke pleasure to chaste, virtuous purpose, which would otherwise be uncontrollable.

• Negative

  • Women acting as temptresses, distracting man from public duty.

• (III)

• Christianity, Asceticism and Conflicting Ideas of Moderation

• Appeals to the above topoi are made in late 4^th C

• Shaken up

  • Should Christians marry?

    • Jerome

      • In Adversus Jovinianum

        • Implies any serious Christian would avoid marriage + priests should know better than to engage in such business.

      • Why does he say this?

        • Clear a place for clergy and celibates in the Christian clergy to challenge the consensus that leadership of a married clergy whose probity as householders indexed their fitness for Christian authority.

    • Uses negative topos of womanly influence to discourage marriage

      • The uncertainty

        • Of whether you are marrying an odious wife or one worthy of love

        • Thus,

          • The man who runs the risk of marrying, is a man who can’t be trusted.

    • He is bent on extirpating the sexual urge altogether!

• Challenges to Jerome

  • Theodosian Code XVI.2.44 Honorius and Theodosius to Palladius (420)

    • Men to be ordained cannot be separated from husbands

      • Wives made husbands worthy for the priesthood.

  • Paulinus of Nola

    • Jerome warned him

      • Therasia (his wife) was a stumbling-block to his ascetic progress.

    • Letter 44

      • Instructs Aper that Amanda’s chaste influence upon him made him well suited for his career.

• Civically minded bishops

  • Avarice equally worrying a betrayal of the civic entity

    • Chrysostom

      • Marriage could become a school for virtue, cultivating temperance and shunning greed.

• IV. Imputations of Womanly Influence: A Strategy of Christian Rhetoric

• Augustine + Chrysostom

  • Sexual immoderation

    • Something to be feared, but less pernicious than failing in the community (that sexual immoderation would record).

• Augustine

  • Letter 262

    • Ecdicia complains that her husband was adulterous

    • Augustine

      • It is Ecdicia’s fault

        • Ecdicia abandoned her (rhetorical topos of the woman) feminine modesty and bullied her husband, leading to his moral downfall.

    • The ideal wife should be a persuader to temperance.

      • Ecdicia however,

        • Became chaste and no longer looked after their children, she gave her wealth to passing monks.

      • The problem:

        • She didn’t (a) allow husband to share good deeds (b) coax him to accepting asceticism and her through her wifely charm, a woman’s most vital expedient for her husband’s edification.

        • She didn’t have tact.

          • She should have been compassionate, gently ironic and substantially misleading a bit like Augustine’s rhetoric!

• Firmus

• Put off baptism because of career ambitions

  • Augustine wants to persuade him to a mid-career baptism.

    • He says ‘You men who balk at taking up such a great burden do not consider how easily you are bested by those women who have assumed it, who constitute the pious multitude of the chaste and faithful’

  • Positive womanly influence:

    • Using women as humble, pious to shame husband into conforming with norms of a clerical mentor

      • A good wife would put him on the right track.

• Challengers to Christianity using trope

• Libanius

  • Oration 13

    • Exhorts Theodosius to retreat from a policy which left destruction to polytheist temples, unpunished.

      • A product of Christian prefect, Cynegius’ wife, Acanthia.

        • Monks and Christian women conspired, through Acanthia’s influence over her husband (the rhetoric) to make Cynegius, an otherwise, virtuous man, err.

• V: Christianisation and the Rhetoric of Womanly Influence

• Why do women keep cropping up, if indeed, their influence was not actually that great?

  • The writing of history as a means of moral instruction

  • Eruption in balance of power among Roman men.

• Competition

  • Between two types of Romans:

    • Married men in civic positions

    • Celibate, lower ranked men.

  • What actually is Christianisation by the way?

    • Eclectic

      • People are trying to work it out

        • Augustine, Confessions

          • Marius Victorinus and presybter Simplicanus could still banter over whether Christianity was compatible with polytheism.

      • Ascetic

        • Just one brand of Christianity emergent.

• Bishops

  • Realise they have to cater to the civic man.

• Ascetics

  • Use rhetoric of womanly influence to destabilise current male authority and forge a new one.

    • By saying a woman influenced a man’s private life negatively could removed him from rational discourse.

Peter Brown, The Body and Society (Columbia, 1998)

• Chapter Twelve: ‘Make to yourselves separate booths; Monks, Women and Marriage in Egypt’

• In 320s, Christianity increasingly meant continence.

  • Theodore

    • Driven into the desert through fear of his own susceptibility to women.

• Women

  • Presented as a source of perpetual temptation

• Such presentation would have seemed banal.

  • But soon,

    • Even monks, male and female were charged with sexual feeling.

    • Virginity

      • Of monks is extremely valued

• Chapter 18: ‘Learn of Me a Holy Arrogance’, Jerome

• Jerome

  • Learned Greek at Antioch

    • 375-377

      • Went to Chalcis (a Syrian desert) where he lived as a hermit.

    • Returned to...

Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Augustine and the Last Days of Rome: 370-450 Notes.