1. Brown, Peter, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 153, a concept he derives from Claude Lévi-Strauss (see his n. 57).Google Scholar

2. Perpetua's diary is embedded in the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis, text and translation in Musurillo, Herbert, ed., The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), 106–31Google Scholarand also Amat, Jacqueline, ed., Passion de Perpetué et de Félicité, SC 417 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1996); on the authenticity of the first-person account, see Amat, Passion de Perpetué, 67–78.Google ScholarThe centos, poems composed of recycled half-verses of Vergil and Homer, respectively, are found in Clark, Elizabeth A. and Hatch, Diane F., The Golden Bough, the Oaken Cross: The Virgilian Cento of Faltonia Betitia Proba, American Academy of Religion Texts and Translations 5 (Chico: Scholars, 1981)Google Scholarand Usher, Mark D., Homerocen-tones Eudociae Augustae (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1999),Google Scholarwith discussion in Usher, Mark, Homeric Stitchings: The Homeric Centos of the Empress Eudocia (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998).Google ScholarScholars have also tried to ascribe otherwise anonymous bodies of ancient Christian texts to women: see, for example, Davies, Stevan, The Revolt of the Widows: The Social World of the Apocryphal Acts (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

3. On male texts “to” and “about” women, see Shaw, Teresa M., “Askesis and the Appearance of Holiness,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998): 485–99;CrossRefGoogle Scholarand eadem, , The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 222: “Our sources do not permit us to see through the dark glass of male representation to women's own self-presentation or self-understanding.”Google Scholar

4. See Cooper, Kate, The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Ancient Christianity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

5. I borrow this felicitous phrase from Clark, Elizabeth A., “The Lady Vanishes: Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian After the ‘Linguistic Turn,’” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 67 (1998): 1–31 (which, of course, she has in turn borrowed from the 1938 Alfred Hitchcock film), an article that has spurred much of the thinking of my study of Demetrias.CrossRefGoogle ScholarSee also eadem, “Holy Women, Holy Words: Early Christian Women, Social History, and the ‘Linguistic Turn,’” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998): 413–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Acta Pauli et Theclae found in Lipsius, R. A. and Bonnet, M., eds., Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1959), 1: 253–72;Google ScholarVita Melaniae Iunioris found in Gorce, D., ed., Vie de Sainte Mélanie, SC 90 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1962).Google Scholar

7. On Roland Barthes's “reality effect” (l‘effet du réel) in relation to early Christian literature, see Clark, , “Lady Vanishes,” 19–20,Google Scholarand Chin, Catherine M., “Abgar, Constantine, and Unreality in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History,” paper delivered at the 1998 North American Patristics Society annual meeting.Google ScholarJones's, A. H. M. classic The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey, 2 vols. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964) relies not infrequently on the Vita Melaniae for economic details (see, for example, 2:767–823 on “land use”).Google Scholar

8. See Clark, , “Lady Vanishes,” 30–31.Google Scholar

9. Spiegel, Gabrielle M., “History, Historicism, and the Social Logic of the Text in the Middle Ages,” Speculum 65 (1990): 75. For reference to this article I am indebted to Clark, “Lady Vanishes,” 13–14 and 24–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Spiegel, , “History,” 77 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

11. Spiegel, , “History,” 77 (emphasis in original).Google Scholar

12. Spiegel, , “History,” 79.Google Scholar

13. See Shaw, , Burden of the Flesh, 253: “Some embodied women and men were intent on training, creating, and displaying the future body in the present flesh” (emphasis in original).Google Scholar

14. Brown, , Body and Society, 263.Google Scholar

15. The epistles (in roughly chronological order) are Augustine, ep. 150 (ad lulianam et Probam) (CSEL 44:380–82);Google ScholarPelagius, , Epistula ad Demetriadem (PL 30:15C–45A);Google ScholarJerome, , ep. 130 (CSEL 56:175–201);Google Scholarand Augustine, , ep. 188 (ad lulianam) (CSEL 57:119–30).Google ScholarThe social connections of Augustine and Jerome were institutionally well established by this point; on Pelagius's connections, see Brown, Peter, “The Patrons of Pelagius: The Roman Aristocracy Between East and West,” Journal of Theological Studies, 21 (1970): 56–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar(Also found in Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine [London: Faber, 1977], 208–26).Google Scholar

16. This is especially clear in the only work comparing all three authors: Gonsette, M., “Les directeurs spirituels de Démétriade: Épisode de la lutte anti-pélagienne,” Nouvelle revue théologique 60 (1933): 783–801.Google ScholarGiven the paucity of (verifiable) sources from Pelagius, his epistle to Demetrias has been valuable in the reconstruction of “early Pelagianism”: see Soulignac, A., “Pélage et pélagianisme,” Dictionnaire de spiritualité, ascétique et mystique 12.1 (1986): 2889–942, esp. 2895–98.Google Scholar

17. See Jones, A. H. M. et al. , eds., The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire [PLRE], 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971–1980), 2:351–52.Google Scholar

18. I refer to the “letters to Demetrias,” although Augustine's letters are, in fact, addressed to Demetrias's mother Juliana. This particularity will be discussed below.Google Scholar

19. A debate that had swirled through Christian circles since the 380s, imported by Jerome into all the major conflicts of his colorful ecclesiastical career: see, for instance, Clark, Elizabeth A., The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 98–99, 129–32.Google Scholar

20. See the survey of de virginitate literature in Shaw, “Askesis,” (esp. 487–92): “The texts establish or perpetuate the contours of ideal behavior and offer up the everyday tastes and manners by which the virgin's identity and ήθος (character and demeanor) is asserted” (491).Google Scholar

21. On ancient epistolary theory and practice, see Stowers, Stanley K., Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity, Library of Early Christianity 5 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986), esp. 27–31;Google ScholarThraede, Klaus, Grundzüge griechisch-römischer Brieftopik, Zetemata 40 (Munich: C H. Beck, 1970).Google Scholar

22. Stowers, , Letter Writing, 41–i7;Google ScholarThraede, , Brieftopik, 109–24. This ecclesiological function of the Christian letter can be seen, of course, in the earliest extant “Christian” literature, the letters of Paul.Google Scholar

23. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 1,11,14, 22, 30 (PL 30:15A–16C, 26C–D, 28C–29B, 36C–D, 43D–44A);Google ScholarJerome, , ep. 130.1.1, 3–4, 7.1–2 (CSEL 56:75–76,177–79,182–83);Google ScholarAugustine, , ep. 188 does not make mention of the family's status (except very obliquely), but see ep. 150 (CSEL 44:380–81), written to Juliana and Proba in 413 on the occasion of Demetrias's consecration as a virgin.Google Scholar

24. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 21 (PL 30:35B–C), on the dangers of flattery (implicitly acquitting himselfof such conduct);Google ScholarJerome, , ep. 130.1.1, 7.10 (CSEL 56:176, 185), excusing his own rather grandiloquent praise and dissociating it from flattery; Augustine, ep. 188.2.6 (CSEL 57:124).Google Scholar

25. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 14 (PL 30:29B). On the date and provenance of Pelagius's letter (probably late 413 or 414, from Palestine),Google Scholarsee Soulignac, , “Pélage,” 2895–96 and G. Bardy, “Démétriade,” Dictionnaire de spiritualité, ascétique et mystique 3 (1957): 133–37.Google ScholarOn the “fame” of an aristocratic woman choosing the ascetic life, see Vita Melaniae lunioris 12–13 (SC 90:148–54), where the renunciation of Melania and her husband Pinian draws the swift (and approving) attention of the Empress Serena.Google Scholar

26. See Sivan, Hagith, “Anician Women, the Cento of Proba, and Aristocratic Conversion in the Fourth Century,”Vigiliae Christianae 47 (1993): 140–57. See PLRE 1:113 (stemma 7), for the various political accomplishments of the Anician men.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 1 (PL 30:15C), emphasis added.Google Scholar

28. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 1 (PL 30:16B). On the rhetorical trope of “command” in epistolary prefaces,Google Scholarsee Janson, Tore, Latin Prose Prefaces: Studies in Literary Conventions. Studia Latina Stockholmiensia 13 (Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell, 1964), 118,145.Google Scholar

29. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 22 (PL 30:36C): animi virtute nobilior.Google Scholar

30. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 11 (PL 30:26C–D).Google Scholar

31. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 14 (PL 30:29A–B). PLRE lists eight consular men on the Anician side from 260–431 (1:1133) and six on the Petronian side from 314–406 (1:1144, stemma 24),Google Scholarand see Matthews, John, Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court, A.D. 364–425 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), 15–16 and 196–97. Pelagius also contrasts the applause of the “common people” given to Demetrias's consular relatives and thejoy and rejoicing of angels that await Demetrias in heaven.Google Scholar

32. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 19,22,25 (PL 30:33A–B, 36D, 39B), using the terms dignitas and honor.Google Scholar

33. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 14 (PL 30:28C–D).Google ScholarBrown, Peter, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 340, 351, calls Proba Demetrias's “great-aunt,” but Jerome refers to herspecifically as Demetrias's avia: for example, ep. 130.20 (CSEL 56:201).Google Scholar

34. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 30 (PL 30:44A–B). None of the male authors seems aware of the rumor (perhaps circulated much later: it first appears in the sixth-century historian Procopius of Caesarea) that Anicia Faltonia Proba herself was responsible for opening the Roman gates to Alaric's Goths: see Matthews, Western Aristocracies,300 and n. 1.Google Scholar

35. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 30 (PL 30:44B–45A). Possibly the “shrill trumpets” of the Goths are also intended to invoke the “trumpet of God” in 1 Thess. 4:16.Google Scholar

36. Brown, Peter, “Pelagius and His Supporters: Aims and Environments,” Journal of Theological Studies 19 (1968): 93–114 (also found in Religion and Society, 183–207), draws attention to this “striving for an aristocratic élite” by Pelagius.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37. It is directly after acknowledging Juliana's “force” and “command” that Pelagius casually mentions his own “usual” routine in giving “moral instruction”: Ep. ad Demetriadem 2 (PL30:16B–C).Google Scholar

38. Jerome, , ep. 130.1.2 (CSEL 56:176). The same terms (iubere, petere, and flagitare) appear in Pelagius's letter, but their use and effect, I would argue, is quite different. On Jerome's ascetic resumé, the English translator of Pelagius's Epistle to Demetrius comments aptly: “Rhetoric apart, this letter of Jerome's is an unexceptionable but quite unremarkable piece of moral instruction, which an old hand like its writer would be able to turn out on demand every day of the week, and I would rate it no higher than a beta plus”Google Scholar(Rees, B. R.,The Letters of Pelagius and his Followers [Woodbridge: Boydell, 1991], 32).Google Scholar

39. By 414 (the date of the letter: see Cavallera, F., Saint Jérôme: Sa vie et son oeuvre [Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1922], 2:54) Jerome had established a reputation in eastern and western aristocratic circles.Google ScholarSee Rebenich, Stefan, Hieronymus und sein Kreis: Prosopographische und sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchungen. Historia Einzelschriften 72 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1992), 21–31,282–92. For prosopographical analysis of ep. 130,Google Scholarsee Kumreich, Christa, Hieronymus und die christlichen Feminae clarissimae, Habelts Dissertationsdrucke, Reihe alte Geschichte, 36 (Bonn: Dr. Rudolf Habelt, 1993), 176–88.Google ScholarDunphy, Walter, “Saint Jerome and the Gens Anicia (Ep. 130 to Demetrias),” Studia Patristica 18.4 (1990): 139–45, on the contrary, finds Jerome in this letter “very much ill-at-ease” in addressing the Anician aristocratic women (140). Ifind this to be a fairly insupportable observation.Google Scholar

40. Jerome, , ep. 130.1.1,3–4, 6.5–7, 7.2,14.1 (CSEL 56:175–76,181–83,193).Google Scholar

41. Jerome, , ep. 130.6.1–2 (CSEL 56:181).Google Scholar

42. Jerome, , ep. 130.7.7 (CSEL 56.184). Could this link between Proba and Aeneas, followed soon after by a citation of Vergil (CSEL 56:185, citing Aeneid 3.435), be a tacit apology for Jerome's sneering at the Vergilian cento produced by Proba's grandmother (see ep. 53.7.3–4 [CSEL 54:453–54])? See discussion of Jerome and Proba's cento in Clark and Hatch, Golden Bough, 104–6;Google ScholarSivan, , “Anician Women,” 142, 153.Google ScholarShanzer, D., “The Anonymous Carmen contra paganos and the Date and Identity of the Centonist Proba,” Revue des études augustiniennes 32 (1986): 232–48CrossRefGoogle Scholarand, more recently, “The Date and Identity of the Centonist Proba,” Recherches augustiniennes 27 (1994): 75–96, argue that it is Demetrias's grandmother, this Anicia Faltonia Proba, who authored the cento, making the Proba-as-Aeneas parallel even more noteworthy and the entire exchange between Jerome and the Anician women somewhat more delicate. Kumreich, Hieronymus, 76–82, discusses the cento as part of Demetrias's strong Anician Christian heritage, but does not mention the possible connection to Jerome.CrossRefGoogle ScholarSee also Dunphy, , “St. Jerome,” 142–44.Google Scholar

43. Jerome, , ep. 130.1–7 (CSEL 56:176–86).Google Scholar

44. Jerome, , ep. 130.7.11 (CSEL 56:185).Google Scholar

45. Jerome, , ep. 130.7.12–14.8 (CSEL 56:185–95), cited at ep. 130.14.8 (CSEL 56:195).Google Scholar

46. Jerome, , ep. 130.15.1 (CSEL 56:195).Google Scholar

47. The same suggestion is made with slightly more finesse by Pelagius when he begins addressing Demetrias simply as virgo: Ep. ad Demetriadem 5,9,16 (PL 30:20D, 24D, 30A).Google Scholar

48. Vergil, , Aeneid 6.758.Google Scholar

49. This odd combination of Greek and Latin terms is no doubt meant to demonstrate Jerome's mastery of both languages and literatures, similar to his display of Hebrew knowledge as a form of ascribing Christian authority to himself: see below, at n. 106.Google Scholar

50. Jerome, , ep. 130.19.5–6 (CSEL 56:200). Jerome's own ascetic expertise is a favorite theme of his: heis the “learned sailor after many shipwrecks” (ep. 125.2.3 “CSEL 56:120”). He also mentions to Demetrias here his notorious letter to Eustochium (ep. 22) and notes with some smugness that his “book remains,” while its erstwhile critics have “passed away” (liber manet, homines praeterierunt).Google Scholar

51. Jerome, , ep. 130.17.3,1 (CSEL 56:198).Google Scholar

52. Jerome, , ep. 130.2.1 (CSEL 56:176).Google Scholar

53. Jerome, , ep. 130.2.4 (CSEL 56:177), referring to 1 Cor. 3:6.Google Scholar

54. Jerome, , ep. 130.12.1 (CSEL 56:192). The CSEL editor and NPNF translator suggest that this sentence refers to Luke 2:51, with the result that Demetrias, like the young Jesus, will also soon “increase in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor” (Luke 2:52).Google Scholar

55. Jerome, , ep. 130.14.6 (CSEL 56:194).Google Scholar

56. Jerome, , ep. 130.20 (CSEL 56:201).Google Scholar

57. In some ways, Jerome's taming of Demetrias's aristocratic merit follows more socially conservative lines.Google ScholarAccording to Steininger, Christine, Die ideate christliche Frau, virgovidua-nupta: Eine Studie zum Bild der idealen christlichen Frau bei Hieronymus und Pelagius (St. Otillien: EOS Verlag, 1997), 195–202, Jerome's “ideal Christian woman,” even a dedicated virgin, is modeled on the Roman matrona, while Pelagians tend to construct their female subjects in more universally elite terms.Google Scholar

58. Augustine, , epp. 130–131 (CSEL 44:40–79).Google Scholar

59. Augustine, , De bono viduatis, written ca. 414, between Demetrias's consecration and Augustine's reading of Pelagius's letter to her (between ep. 150 and ep. 188). Ep. 150 was clearly written soon after Demetrias's consecration, in 413; on the date of ep. 188 (417), see Rees, Letters of Pelagius, 31–33.Google Scholar

60. Augustine, , ep. 150 (CSEL 44:382). According to ep. 188.1.1, at some point in the midst of this correspondence, Augustine met the Anician women in person: vos per litteras primum, deinde etiam praesentia corporali (CSEL 57:119).Google Scholar

61. Dunphy, , “St. Jerome,” suggests that Augustine directed the Anician women to write to Jerome for ascetic advice, creating an anti-Pelagian bloc of ascetic advisors. There is no evidence for such an assertion, although by the 410s Jerome and Augustine had become somewhat amicable correspondents.Google Scholar

62. Augustine, , ep. 150 (CSEL 44:381). It is by now familiar language: Demetrias is “noble by birth, more noble by sanctity.”Google Scholar

63. It is also worth noting that ep. 188 is from both Augustine and Alypius, supporter of Augustine and bishop of Thagaste, emphasizing the institutional grounding of Augustine's rhetoric: this is an epistle of ecclesiastical import, not merely a letter of ascetic counsel. This coheres with Augustine's attempts to transform Demetrias's ascetic calling into one more chapter in his theological controversy with Pelagius and his followers.Google Scholar

64. Augustine, , ep. 188.1.3 (CSEL57:121).Google Scholar

65. Augustine, , ep. 188.1.1 (CSEL 57:120) does refer to Demetrias as fideli et nobili virgine, but here it is as the object of nostra … exhortatio.Google Scholar

66. Augustine, , ep. 188.1.1 (CSEL 57:120); like Jerome, he cites 1 Cor. 3:6 here.Google Scholar

67. Augustine, , ep. 188.2.4 (CSEL 57:122).Google Scholar

68. Augustine, , ep. 188.2.6 (CSEL 57:124).Google Scholar

69. Augustine, , ep. 188.2.6 (CSEL 57:124).Google Scholar

70. That theological danger predominates over ascetic merit is made clear in ep. 188.3.10 (CSEL 57:128): “May that book be altogether out of mind, we do not mean just yours or that of the holy virgin your daughter, but even in the last of your male or female servants.”Google Scholar

71. On various types of “letters of exhortation,” including “letters of advice” and “letters of admonition,” see Stowers, , Letter Writing, 91–152.Google Scholar

72. Augustine, , ep. 188.3.9 (CSEL 57:127).Google Scholar

73. All three writers apply various titles to Demetrias, perhaps reflecting the increasing institutionalization of femaleascetic offices in the Christian hierarchy. Pelagius addresses her simply as “virgin” (virgo) (Ep. ad Demetriadem 5,9,16 [PL 30:20D, 24D, 30A]; see also 1, 2, 9, 19 [PL 30:16B, 16D, 24A, 33D]) andalso as “virgin of Christ” (virgo Christi) (Ep. ad Demetriadem 1 [PL 30:15C]). To lerome she is a “virgin of Christ” (virgo Christi) (ep. 130.1.1, 6.5, 7.8 [CSEL 56:175,182,184]) and “virgin of God” (virgo Dei) (ep. 130.4.4, 5 [CSEL 56:179, 180]); he alsorefers to “holy virgins” (sanctae virgines) (ep. 130.19.3 [CSEL 56:199]). Augustine refers to her as “consecrated virgin” (sanctimonia virginalis) (ep. 150 [CSEL 44:380],ep. 188.1.1 [CSEL 57:120]), “virgin of Christ” (virgo Christi) (ep. 188.2.5, 3.14 [CSEL 57:128, 130”), “holy virgin” (sancta virgo) (ep. 188.3.9 [CSEL 57:127]), and “sacred virgin” (sacra virgo) (ep. 188.3.10 [CSEL 57:128]).Google ScholarOn titles and institutionalization, see Elm, Susanna, “Virgins of God”: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 137–51.Google Scholar

74. See for example Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 2 (PL 30:16C), de institutione morum;Google ScholarJerome, ep. 130.19.3 (CSEL 56:200), instructionem virginis.Google Scholar

75. The famous image of a “file” use to abrade evil “habit” is central to the behavioral imagery of the letter: Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 8,13 (PL 30:23A–24A, 27D–28C).Google ScholarThe critical reevaluation of this theology, focusing on its traditional roots, is Bohlin, Torgny, Die Theologie des Pelagius und ihre Genesis (Uppsala: A. B. Lundequistka Bökhandeln, 1957), esp. 15–45.Google ScholarSee also Evans, Robert F., Pelagius: Inquiries and Reappraisals (New York: Seabury, 1968), esp. 90–121.Google Scholar

76. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 2 (PL 30:17A).Google Scholar

77. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 4 (PL 30:19B): in animis nostris naturalis quaedem… sanctitas.Google Scholar

78. See, for example, Soulignac, , “Pélage,” 2926–27.Google Scholar

79. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 2 (PL 30:16D).Google Scholar

80. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 9 (PL 30:24A–B).Google Scholar

81. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 9 (PL 30:24B).Google Scholar

82. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 3–6 (PL 30:18A–22B). Again, perhaps too much emphasis has been placedon the inclusion of pre-Christian figures of righteousness, in the attempt to pin down Pelagius's over-inclusive “naturalism”: see the laments of Gonsette, “Directeurs sprituels,” 787, 790–791: “Toujours dame nature!” (791)Google Scholar

83. Due to his “renunciation” of wealth and station: Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 6 (PL 30:21B–D).Google Scholar

84. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 6 (PL 30:22A): non verbis tantum, sed ipsius quoque rebus probavit.Google Scholar

85. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 6 (PL 30:22A–B), emphasis added. On female asceticism as “display”Google Scholarsee Shaw, , “Askesis.”Google Scholar

86. Soulignac, , “Pélage,” 2932, asserts that chapters 10–27 “énoncent successivementle programme de perfection qui convient á la vierge consacrée," but this is perhaps too rigid a division of the letter's contents.Google Scholar

87. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 18 and 21 (PL 30:32A–33A, 35D–36B).Google Scholar

88. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 22 (PL 30:36B–D); but note that it is specifically Demetrias's fasting that will lead to her misericordiae opera, since it will allow her mother and grandmother to give her food and money to the poor. The merit accrues to Demetrias (and her entire family), but it is no longer her place to practice public munificence.Google Scholar

89. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 23 (PL 30:37A–C).Google Scholar

90. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 24 (PL 30:38B).Google Scholar

91. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 9 (PL 30:24B).Google Scholar

92. Pelagius, Ep. ad Demetriadem 16 (PL 30:30C).Google Scholar

93. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 23 (PL 30:37C–D).Google Scholar

94. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 28 (PL 30:42D): Dicas fortisan: grandis labor est.Google Scholar

95. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 30 (PL 30:45A).Google Scholar

96. Jerome, , ep. 130.20 (CSEL 56:201), citing Prov. 4:6,8.Google Scholar

97. Jerome, , ep. 130.15.4–5 (CSEL 56:196).Google Scholar

98. Jerome, , ep. 130.4.2–3,7.4–6 (CSEL 56:178–79,183–84);Google Scholarcompare Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 4–6 (PL 30:19A–22B). Gonsette, “Directeurs spirituels,” 794–95, feels that Pelagius is “cribbing” Jerome's letter due to the similarities between them, but this is due more to Gonsette's mistrust and loathing of Pelagius.Google ScholarOn the contrary, Plinval, Georges de, Pélage: Ses écrits, sa vie, et sa réforme (Lausanne: Libraire Payot, 1943), 246, produces more plausible arguments that Jerome has already read Pelagius's letter. In any case, I find their similarities evidence for a commonly held basic “asceticlogic” applicable to Demetrias.Google Scholar

99. Jerome, , ep. 130.10–11 (CSEL 56:189–91);Google Scholarcompare Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 18,21 (PL 30:32A–33A, 35D–36B).Google Scholar

100. Jerome, , ep. 130.13.2 (CSEL 56:193);Google Scholarcompare Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 20 (PL 30:35B).Google Scholar

101. Jerome, , ep. 130.15.1 (CSEL 56:195);Google Scholarcompare Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 23 (PL 30:37A–Q.Google Scholar

102. Likewise, it is unclear that a male ascetic would “look” particularly different from a female ascetic inthis regard, as several readers of this essay have pointed out to me. Nonetheless, the significance of such treatises de virginitate for women's history in early Christianity lies precisely in the fact that female asceticism seemsespecially designed for public “display”: see above, nn. 13,14, and 20.Google Scholar

103. Unlike Jerome, , Pelagius indicates that in a short time Demetrias will become mistress of her own conduct: Ep. ad Demetriadem 13 (PL 30:27D–28C).Google Scholar

104. Jerome, , ep. 130.7.12 (CSEL 56:185).Google Scholar

105. Jerome, , ep. 130.9.1 (CSEL 56:188).Google Scholar

106. Jerome, , ep. 130.7.4 (CSEL 56:183), on a “better Hebrew” rendering of a passage from Job. Steininger, Ideale christliche Frau, 195, remarks that scriptural expertise provided Jerome his first entréeinto aristocratic ascetic circles in Rome in the 380s.Google Scholar

107. On the Bible as the virgin's “treaty” (foedus), see Jerome, ep. 130.7.14 (CSEL 56:186).Google Scholar

108. Jerome, , ep. 130.10.1,4 (CSEL 56:189,90).Google Scholar

109. Jerome, , ep. 130.13.2,14.5 (CSEL 56:193,194).Google Scholar

110. It is also possible that Jerome's more protective attitude towards the ascetic uses of scripture responds directly to Pelagius. One particular section of Pelagius's letter to Demetrias suggests the use of scriptural passages against “evil thoughts” (cogitationes) (Ep. ad Demetriadem 19 [PL 30:40C–41C]). If Jerome knew of this ascetic practice, he may have (perhaps correctly) associated it with the theory of logismoi of Evagrius Ponticus, very recently revealed to Jerome as the archfiend of Egyptian OrigenismGoogle Scholar(see Clark, , Origenist Controversy, 79–81,222–23).Google ScholarOn Origenist influence on Pelagius (via Rufinus's translation of Origen's Commentary on Romans), see Bohlin, , Theologie, 77–103 and Evans, Pelagius, 6–25.Google Scholar

111. See Jerome, , ep. 130.18.1 (CSEL 56:198).Google Scholar

112. Jerome, , ep. 130.16.5–6 (CSEL 56:197), emphasis added.Google Scholar

113. Although Jerome soon after sneers at “presumptuous women” of whom “the apostle says that they ‘are carried about with every wind of doctrine’ [Eph. 4:14], ‘ever learning and never able to come to knowledge of the truth’ [2 Tim. 3:7]” (ep. 130.17.3 [CSEL 56:198]). Note alsothat he represents Paula, when confronted by a dastardly Origenist, immediately rushing for Jerome's aid: “Necessity fell upon me to stand up against the most evil viper and deadly beast” (ep. 108.23.4 [CSEL 55:340”).Google Scholar

114. We might even imagine that Augustine's somewhat hollow praises in ep. 150 encouraged Juliana to look elsewhere (to Pelagius and Jerome) for specific ascetic counsel. A letter similar to Augustine, ep. 150, came to Juliana from Pope Innocent (ep. 15 [PL 20:518]); it may not have escaped Juliana's notice that bishops, in this case, did not seem to offer the most useful ascetic advice for her daughter.Google Scholar

115. See Brown, , Augustine, 345: “For Augustine, Pelagianism was always a body of ideas, of disputationes, ‘arguments.’”Google ScholarSee also Bohlin, , Theologie, 5: “Seit dem Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts ist eine dogmengeschichtliche Pelagius-Untersuchung nach der anderen erscheinen.”Google Scholar

116. Augustine, , ep. 188.1.3 (CSEL 57:121).Google Scholar

117. Augustine, , ep. 188.1.3 (CSEL 57:121).Google Scholar

118. Augustine, , ep. 188.3.11 (CSEL 57:128), suggests that denying God credit for doing good, despite what Juliana may have thought, constitutes blasphemy against God (and therefore the Trinity).Google Scholar

119. Augustine, , ep. 188.2.7 (CSEL 57:125): in ilia non etiam ex ilia.Google ScholarSee Brown, , Augustine, 345–64.Google Scholar

120. Augustine, , ep. 188.2.7 (CSEL 57:125).Google Scholar

121. Augustine, , ep. 188.2.8 (CSEL 57:126).Google Scholar

122. Augustine, , ep. 188.2.8 (CSEL 57:126), artfully rearranging Wisd. of Sol. 8:21.Google Scholar

123. Augustine, , ep. 188.3.11 (CSEL 57:128), an interesting “theologicization” of the integritasthat usually denotes physical virginity.Google Scholar

124. Augustine, , ep. 188.3.11 (CSEL 57:128).Google Scholar

125. Despite the plaintive cry of Gonsette, “Directeurs spirituels,” at the end of his study: “une question se pose narurellement sur nos l`vres: qu'advint-il de la jeune Démétriade?” (800)Google Scholar

126. Clark, , “Lady Vanishes,” 31.Google Scholar

127. Pelagius, , Ep. ad Demetriadem 14 (PL 30:29B), tells Demetrias: “Think of it: on you are turned the facesand eyes of everyone, and the whole world has taken seats for the spectacle of your life.”Google Scholar

128. The English translator argues for ascription to Prosper, based primarily on linguistic parallels: Krabbe, M. K. C., Epistula ad Demetriadem de vera humilitate: A Critical Text and Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Catholic University of America, Patristic Studies 97 (Washington: Catholic University Press, 1965), 47–52. Whether by Leo or Prosper, we can safely say the letter dates to the 440s and is the work of an pro-Augustinian Catholic male of some authority. For the sake of convenience I shall refer to the author as [Prosper].Google Scholar

129. [Prosper], De vera humilitate 1.49–51 (Krabbe, , Epistula, 142), pushing the image of 1 Cor. 3:6–7. References are to chapter and line numbers of Krabbe's critical text. Translations modified from Krabbe.Google Scholar

130. For the text of the inscription, see Krabbe, , Epistula, 103 n. 54 (including variants). Demetrias is referred to as “Amnia,” another nomen of the Anicii and Probi (for example, Amnius Anicius Iulianus, consul in 322).Google ScholarLiber pontificalis 47.1 refers to her as Demetria ancilla Dei. Text in Forchielli, J. and Strickler, A.M., eds., Liber pontificalis, 3 vols., Studia Gratiana 21–23 (Rome: Libreria Atheneo, 1978), 2:107.Google ScholarTranslation in Davis, R., The Book of Pontiffs, Translated Texts for Historians, Latin Series, 5 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1989), 37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

131. Jerome, , ep. 130.14.7–8 (CSEL 56:194–95). On female Christian patronage in this period, the increasing commonality of which adds a more urgent tone to Jerome's “advice,”Google Scholarsee Clark, Elizabeth A., “Patrons, Not Priests: Gender and Power in Late Ancient Christianity,” Gender and History 2 (1990): 253–73.CrossRefGoogle ScholarBrubaker, Leslie, “Memories of Helena: Patterns in Female Imperial Matronage in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries,” in James, Liz, ed., Women, Men and Eunuch: Gender in Byzantium (London: Routledge, 1997), 52–75, even suggests that such public munificence became a particularly female expression of Christian imperium/ basileia.Google Scholar

132. See Matthews, , Western Aristocracies, 21–23 and 363–69;Google ScholarClark, , “Patrons, Not Priests,”258–61,263–64.Google Scholar

133. [Prosper], De vera humilitate 1.4–6 (Krabbe, , Epistula, 138).Google Scholar

134. [Prosper], De vera humilitate 1.53–61 (Krabbe, , Epistula, 142).Google Scholar

135. [Prosper], De vera humilitate 8–9 (Krabbe, , Epistula, 164–68).Google Scholar

136. [Prosper], De vera humilitate 10.31–33 (Krabbe, , Epistula, 170).Google Scholar

137. These include: denial of original sin, the assertion that Adam sinned alone, denigration of infant baptism, and the possibility of being without sin ([Prosper], De vera humilitate 10.47–70 [Krabbe, , Epistula, 172–74]).Google Scholar

138. [Prosper], De vera humilitate 22.1–7 (Krabbe, , Epistula, 204). A reader for this journal commented on the many commonplaces of a treatise “On humility” such as this, questioning my ability to derive any “Demetrias-specific” information from it apart from incidentals. While I do not deny that much of thistreatise reads like common platitudes, these platitudes are now embedded in a “particularized and local social environment” and must thus be read in light of Demetrias's “ascetic logic.” See Shaw, “Askesis,” 486–87.Google Scholar

139. Despite the quite confident statement of Gonsette, “Directeurs spiriruels,” 801: “Mais il suffit à nous faire croire que l'autorite de Jérôme, d'Innocent, de l'anonyme [that is, [Prosper]], et surtout d'Augustin l'empêchèent de suivre la pédagogie naturaliste et anti-chrétienne du stoïcisme pélagien et que, parmi les fideles de Rome, sa mémoire est a bon droit restée longtemps en vénération.”Google Scholar

140. [Prosper], De vera humilitate 18.1–8 (Krabbe, , Epistula, 196), emphasis added.Google Scholar

141. As outlined by Burrus, Virginia, “Reading Agnes: The Rhetoric of Gender in Ambrose and Prudentius,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995): 25–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

142. Of course, all three authors attend to Demetrias's gender. Apart from Pelagius's rather optimistic statement that “an equal trophy (palma) for virginity is promised to both sexes” and that “it is possible even for women to triumph in this war” (Ep. ad Demetriadem 9, 25 [PL 30:25A, 40A]), the men aremuch more concerned to treat Demetrias's membership in the gens Anicia.Google Scholar

143. On the problem of male social control and female resistance in early Christianity, see Burrus, Virginia, “Word and Flesh: The Bodies and Sexuality of Ascetic Women in Christian Antiquity,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 10 (1994): 27–51. These letters to Demetrias do not give the sort of textual evidence that Burrus would find useful in this respect: for her “resistant” texts, Burrus relies on documents she feels can be traced more directly to a woman's own “voice,” the “gynocentric” folk-tale of Thecla and the anonymous Spanish letter to Marcella (Burrus, “Word and Flesh,” 45–50).Google Scholar

144. The author remarks that Demetrias's soul is “ripe and learned” (maturo et erudito ammo) (De vera humilitate 1.8 [Krabbe, , Epistula, 138]).Google Scholar

145. Clark, , “Lady Vanishes,” 31: “[S]he leaves her traces, through whose exploration, as theyare imbedded in a larger social-linguistic framework, she lives on.”Google Scholar