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Insinuations of Womanly Influence: An Aspect of the Christianization of the Roman Aristocracy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Kate Cooper
Kate Cooper
Affiliation:
Barnard College, Columbia University
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Extract

Here is one of the laws of history: every event begins with a woman. It is the woman who confers life or death. It is in conformity with the nature of things that Helena should have converted Constantine. It is contrary to the nature of things that Constantine should have converted Helena.

While we may smile at the ruminations of a nineteenth-century bourgeois on the sexual politics of Constantine's conversion to Christianity, if we turn our attention for a moment from the Emperor to the Empire itself we will perceive that our own more scientific studies reflect a similar vision of Helena, refracted in the persons of pious matrons across the Empire. For we generally imagine the religious changes which swept the later Roman Empire as resulting from a fateful collaboration, that of a few unusually persuasive clerics with a multitude of devout Christian women, who enforced the views of their clerical friends at home, and shepherded their prominent husbands towards the once-only cleansing of baptism. The view has much to recommend it, and it has sparked some of the most interesting writing on late antiquity in recent decades, beginning with a celebrated contribution by Peter Brown to this journal.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 82 , November 1992 , pp. 150 - 164
Copyright
Copyright ©Kate Cooper 1992. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Hello, Ernst, Physionomies de saints (1875)Google Scholar, English trans. Crawford, Virginia, Studies in Saintship (1903), 54Google Scholar, cited by Lifshitz, Felice, ‘Des Femmes missionaires: l'exemple de la Gaule franque’, RHE 83 (1988), 5–33Google Scholar. Hello's reference is to the account by Eusebius (VC III.47), according to which Constantine converted Helena, rejected in favour of the presumably later tradition preserved in Theodoret, HE 1.18, according to which it was Helena who converted Constantine.

2 Brown, Peter, ‘Aspects of the Christianization of the Roman aristocracy’, JRS 51 (1961), 1–11Google Scholar, reprinted in idem, Religion and Society in the Age of St. Augustine (1972).

3 Salzman, Michelle Renée, ‘Aristocratic women: conductors of Christianity in the fourth century’, Helios 16 (1989), 207–20Google Scholar, providing in addition a summary of the recent secondary literature.

4 e.g. Von Haehling, R., Die Religionszugehörigkeit der hohen Amtsträger des römischen Retches seit Constantins I. Alleinherrschaft bis zum Ende der theodosianische Dynastie (324–450 bzw. 455 n. Chr.), Antiquitas Reihe III, 23 (1978)Google Scholar, whose evidence undermines the triumphalist accounts of Eusebius and Theodoret.

5 Jerome, Ep. 107.1, cited in Salzman,op. cit. (n. 3), 212.

6 See recently Cameron, Averil, ‘Virginity as metaphor: women and the rhetoric of early Christianity’, in Cameron, Averil (ed.), History as Text (1989), 184–205Google Scholar, on themes involving women as ‘an ideal vehicle for rhetorical display’ (p. 191).

7 In this essay, the terms ‘man’ and ‘men’ should be understood in their specifically masculine sense, i.e. in opposition to ‘woman’ and ‘women’.

8 Veyne, Paul, ‘La famille et l'amour sous le Haut-Empire romain’, Annales: Economies Sociétés Civilisations 33 (1978), 35–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 ibid., 37.

10 Foucault, Michel, Histoire de la sexualité. 3Google Scholar. Le souci de soi (1984).

11 Shelton, Jo-Ann, ‘Pliny the Younger and the ideal wife’, Classica et Medievalia 41 (1990), 163–86Google Scholar, cautions against Foucault's neglect of the problem of the experience and self-representation of the women involved. On the substantial secondary literature responding to both writers, see Bremmer, Jan, ‘Why did early Christianity attract upper-class women?’, in Bastiaensen, A. A. R., Hilhorst, A., and Kneepkens, C. H. (eds), Fructus Centesimus: Mélanges offerts à Gerard J. M. Bartelink à l'occasion de son soixante-cinquieme anniversaire (1989), 45Google Scholar, nn. 20–1, and Cameron, Averil, ‘Redrawing the map: early Christian territory after Foucault’, JRS 76 (1986), 266–71Google Scholar.

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16 See North, Helen, Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Restraint in Classical Antiquity (1966)Google Scholar, on sôphrosynê as a guiding virtue of civic life in classical philosophy.

17 Civ. Dei V.15 (CSEL 40, 242).

18 Winkler, John J., The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (1990), 50Google Scholar.

19 On implicit meanings, there is much to be learned from the cross-fertilization of scholarship on Christian origins with cultural and social anthropology in the past decade, e.g. Gager, John G., ‘Body-symbols and social reality: resurrection, incarnation, and asceticism in early Christianity’, Religion 12 (1982), 345–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Life of Antony 66. 7.

21 Life of Antony 31. 4.

22 Plutarch's irony takes some of the sting out of two important first-century questions, whether the wise man should marry and whether within marriage sex for pleasure (as opposed to procreation) is licit, discussed by Van Geytenbeek, A. C., Musonius Rufus and Greek Diatribe (1962), 67ff. and 71ff.Google Scholar, respectively.

23 Erôtikos 769B–C.

24 Erôtikos 769B.

25 R. A. Markus has taken care to underline the coincidence of privacy and spiritual deprivation in Augustine's thought. On the result of this insight for Augustine's view of human community, especially in defining the particular calling of monastic communities, see now Markus, , The End of Ancient Christianity (1990), 78ff.Google Scholar

26 The clergy's progress through minor orders to priestly service paralleled a progression of life stages: from youth to marriage and the production of offspring, and ultimately to a continent married life once the passion of youth had been spent. On the tensions surrounding the promotion of the ascetic ideal among the western clergy, see Pietri, Charles, Roma Christiana, Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d'Athènes et de Rome 224 (1976), 1, 684–721Google Scholar, and Callam, Daniel, ‘Clerical continence in the fourth century: three papal decretals’, Theological Studies 41 (1980), 3–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Rufus, Musonius, Reliquiae 14Google Scholar.

28 The most outstanding case-studies for this problem are the letters written by Pelagius to Celanthia (CSEL 56, 329–56) and by Augustine to Ecdicia (Ep. 262, CSEL 57, 621–31), two women whose attempts to impose continent marriage on their husbands had led to conjugal discord. On the authorship of the Epistula ad Celanthiam, see Evans, Robert F., Four Letters of Pelagius (1968), esp. 52–9Google Scholar.

29 Works and Days 702–3.

30 Proverbs 30.23.

31 Adversus jovinianum 1.28 (PL 53, 250).

32 On Jerome's use of Plutarch, see Bickel, Ernst, Diatribe in Senecae Philosophi Fragmenta 1. Fragmenta de Matrimonio (1915), ch. 3Google Scholar. (I am grateful to Robert Lamberton for calling Bickel's discussion to my attention.)

33 Codex Theodosianus XVI.2.44, Honorius and Theodosius to Palladius, Praetorian Prefect, 8 May 420.

34 Augustine, Ep. 27 (CSEL 34, 97–8).

35 Jerome, Ep. 58.6 (CSEL 54, 535–6); the letter is dated to 395 or 396: on dating, see Lienhard, Joseph T., S. J., , Paulinus of Nola and Early Western Monasticism, Theophaneia 28 (1977), 99Google Scholar, and literature cited there.

36 Paulinus, Ep. 44.3 (CSEL 29, 372).

37 ibid.

38 For a ramifying explication of Augustine's use of the sexual urge as a symbol of the dislocation of the will, see Brown, Peter, ‘Sexuality and society in the fifth century A.D.: Augustine and Julian of Eclanum’, in Gabba, E. (ed.), Tria Corda: scritti in onore di Arnaldo Momigliano (1983), 1, 49–70Google Scholar.

39 Quales ducendae sint uxores (PG 51, 232).

40 Hom in Ep.ad Romanos 7:14 (PG 60, 508–9).

41 Hom in Eph. 5:22 (PG 62, 145).

42 Hom in Eph. 5:22 (PG 62, 147).

43 See Orestano, Riccardo, La struttura giuridica del matrimonio romano dal diritto classico al diritto giustinianeo (1951), 1, 261ff.Google Scholar, on the concern of patristic writers to emphasize that a cessation of sexual union did not absolve the duty of spouses to preserve the consensus which bound them in marriage. Here, Augustine is quite explicit: ‘non enim, quia pariter temperabatis a conmixtione carnali, ideo tuus maritus esse destitcrat’, Ep. 262. 4 (CSEL 57, 624).

44 Ep. 262. 5 (CSEL 57, 624).

45 Ep. 262. 5 (CSEL 57, 625).

46 Life of Plotinus 9 (trans. Armstrong).

47 Ep. 262. 5 (CSEL 57, 625): ‘Tunc ille detestans eostecum et non dei servos sed domus alienae penetratores ettuos captivatores et depraedatores putans tam sanctam sarcinam, quam tecum subierat, indignatus abiecit. Infirmus enim erat et ideo tibi, quae in communi proposito fortior videbaris, non erat praesumptione turbandus sed dilectione portandus…’

48 Ep. 262. 5 (CSEL 57, 625): ‘et laudaretur deus in operibus vestris, quorum esset tam fida societas, ut a vobis communiter teneretur non solum summa castitas verum etiam gloriosa paupertas’ (italics my own).

49 Ep. 2*, 4 (CSEL 88, 11).

50 ibid.

51 Libanius, Oratio XXX (Pro Templis), 46.

52 The incident is recorded of Marius Victorinus and the presbyter Simplicianus by Augustine, Confessions VIII. 2.3–5; for illuminating discussion, see Markus, op. cit. (n. 25), 27–9.

53 Augustine's attempt at Confessions VIII.4.9 to apologize for the excitement caused by Marius Victorinus' eventual public conversion to Christianity illustrates this point.

54 On the genre, see Fontaine, Jacques, ‘Un sobriquet perfide de Damase: matronarum auriscalpius’, in Porte, D. and Néraudau, J.-P. (eds), Hommages à Henri Le Bonniec: Res Sacrae (1988), 177–92Google Scholar.