“Set Me as a Seal upon Thy Heart.” Constructions of Female Sanctity in the Middle Ages, ed. Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky, Teodora Artimon (Trivent Publications), 2018
I dedicate this chapter to †Professor Marianne Sághy, who supervised my MA and my PhD theses in t... more I dedicate this chapter to †Professor Marianne Sághy, who supervised my MA and my PhD theses in the past six years with ceaseless support, heartiness, enthusiasm, patience, care, and generosity, to whom I owe my scholarly orientation and formation, who taught me both Late Antiquity and humanity. This modest tribute is a humble expression of my everlasting gratitude. May her memory be eternal! (21.09.2018)
Macrina the Younger and Melania the Elder, two outstanding monastic leaders of the fourth century, are presented in the sources not only as exemplary saints, but also as learned women. They received both a secular and a theological instruction. They were perceived both as ascetic leaders and as spiritual teachers. The male authors who wrote about them stress their involvement in controversies over theological trends and ascetic life-styles not only in order to give additional proofs for their holiness, but also in order to use these saintly figures as mouthpieces of their own theories.
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This article presents three cases of fourth-century double communities
that might make it possible to answer this question. The fi rst such community, founded at the beginning of the fourth century by Pachomius at Tabennesi (Upper Egypt), started as a male monastery and a female convent built for his sister, Maria. Around the 350s, a wealthy and pious Greek family, Macrina and her brothers, Naucratius and Basil the Great, transformed their family estate in Annisa (Cappadocia) into a double community. In 386, Jerome and his brother Paulinianus, together with the former’s faithful disciples, the Roman noblewoman Paula and her daughter, Eustochium, founded a double monastery in Bethlehem. Since these communities gave, in fact, an opportunity for members of the same family to live an ascetic life in proximity, one can start from the hypothesis that the family origin of these ascetic households must have been a significant factor in the making of double monasticism in this part of the Christian world.
vitae of their mothers, one is forced to reconstruct their mothers’ portraits from scattered references, as pieces of a puzzle, within writings focused on various topics. The sons’ mention of their mothers,
however, are just as rich in philosophical themes and biblical motifs as any Late Antique hagio-biography. What do these mothers stand for in the works of their sons? This paper analyses the representation of mothers as philosophers. The three theologians describe the spiritual ascension of their mothers to the peak of the Christian philosophical life: the vision of God5. At the same time, these mothers act as mouthpieces for the theological doctrines of their sons.
This article presents three cases of fourth-century double communities
that might make it possible to answer this question. The fi rst such community, founded at the beginning of the fourth century by Pachomius at Tabennesi (Upper Egypt), started as a male monastery and a female convent built for his sister, Maria. Around the 350s, a wealthy and pious Greek family, Macrina and her brothers, Naucratius and Basil the Great, transformed their family estate in Annisa (Cappadocia) into a double community. In 386, Jerome and his brother Paulinianus, together with the former’s faithful disciples, the Roman noblewoman Paula and her daughter, Eustochium, founded a double monastery in Bethlehem. Since these communities gave, in fact, an opportunity for members of the same family to live an ascetic life in proximity, one can start from the hypothesis that the family origin of these ascetic households must have been a significant factor in the making of double monasticism in this part of the Christian world.
vitae of their mothers, one is forced to reconstruct their mothers’ portraits from scattered references, as pieces of a puzzle, within writings focused on various topics. The sons’ mention of their mothers,
however, are just as rich in philosophical themes and biblical motifs as any Late Antique hagio-biography. What do these mothers stand for in the works of their sons? This paper analyses the representation of mothers as philosophers. The three theologians describe the spiritual ascension of their mothers to the peak of the Christian philosophical life: the vision of God5. At the same time, these mothers act as mouthpieces for the theological doctrines of their sons.
Macrina the Younger and Melania the Elder, two outstanding monastic leaders of the fourth century, are presented in the sources not only as exemplary saints, but also as learned women. They received both a secular and a theological instruction. They were perceived both as ascetic leaders and as spiritual teachers. The male authors who wrote about them stress their involvement in controversies over theological trends and ascetic life-styles not only in order to give additional proofs for their holiness, but also in order to use these saintly figures as mouthpieces of their own theories.
The impact of the philosophical theories of matter upon the dogmatic debates between Christians and non-Christians, as well as between the diverse Christian theological trends, are largely unexplored and even less clear are the practical spiritual and social consequences of the adoption of one or another theory. The twentieth century has seen a vast array of studies in theories of matter from metaphysical and cosmological perspectives. The dogmatic history of pre-Christian philosophies and metaphysics is now largely written. However, these bodies of literature have rarely intersected with methodologies from feminist theory and philosophy. In turn, feminist scholars often neglect important moments and aspects of the history of Christianity, to radicalize a positive evaluation of embodiment or a negative one of disembodiment. Also, an outstanding task remains to extend these investigations to the world beyond the Mediterranean and to involve into them parallel phenomena in other philosophies and renunciatory traditions, Jainism, Buddhism and in the new Hinduism born in the Middle Ages from a reaction against these reformatory trends.
This conference aims at contributing to an eventual closure of the gap between the aforementioned fields. It will focus on the continuity and change in the social perception and role of the body, gender and sexuality in Late Antiquity, on intersections of gender studies, history of sexuality, feminist philosophy, philosophies of late antiquity, patristic and Gnostic studies, the history of asceticism, the history of Indian philosophy. It aims to bring together scholars of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages to explore how novel theories on late antique Greco-Roman and Indian philosophy, early Christianity, Gnosticism, Buddhism and Jainism connect to gender and sexuality studies.
This conference thus has the ambition to attract specialists in the above fields and also to generate discussions on the relevance of feminist methodologies and their adequacy to the existing interpretative literature, and vice versa. We are inviting papers trying to give answers to the questions above.
In addition, the workshop discusses the legacy of certain theological doctrines first formulated by the Cappadocian Fathers in Byzantine exegetic literature. It is well known that topics like the essence/nature of God, the notion of divine infinity or the doctrine of the soul’s perpetual progress were refined and modified in subsequent theological debates (e.g. from the earliest refutations of Origenism up to the debates concerning Saint Gregory Palamas’s teaching on the vision of Divine Light). It is one of the aims of this workshop to map out new exegetic contexts that employed or reworked arguments ascribed to the Cappadocian Fathers.
Why were the Cappadocian Fathers presented as authors of writings which they did not author? Is it possible to identify the writers behind the unauthentic texts? What roles did the emerging hermeneutics and theological doctrines play in the later exegesis and controversies?
These are the questions which the proposed one-day workshop seeks to answer. The workshop is divided into three parts. In the first section, Professor Gyorgy Gereby will present “Types of Counter-Eunomian Arguments in the Cappadocians” and PhD student Dragoljub Garic will intervene with ““Πολυβλέποντες - a Pseudonym in Homily 8 on the Song of Songs of Gregory of Nyssa.” After a 15-minute discussion, the second section will proceed with the papers of Professor Istvan Perczel, “The Pseudo-Basilian Contra Eunomium, Books IV-V Revisited” and of Andra Juganaru, “The Early Cult of Saint Gregory of Nyssa in Byzantium” and will be followed by a 15-minute discussion. The third section of the workshop will include the interventions of Professor Symeon Paschalidis, “The Issue of the Authority of the Cappadocian Fathers and the Related Pseudonymity Problems During the Palaeologian Period,” and of Mircea Dulus, “The Doctrine of Perpetual Progress in the Byzantine Homiletic Tradition: The Case of Andrew of Crete, Jacob the Monk and Philagathos of Cerami” and a 15-minute discussion. A general 15-minute discussion will complete the workshop.
Therefore, what is hope? In the following, I will argue that hope is, in Gregory’s view, the virtue which prepares the soul for the last aion, when humans will only possess love. It is a way of acquiring salvation since its foundation lies in the incarnation of Christ, which abolished the past melancholy. It is the virtue cultivated freely, through which humans collaborate with God, Who sends them grace so that the soul is able to advance towards Him. It is the virtue due to which, in the earthly life, the soul is able to strive towards the good and desire it. It is the virtue through which humans know that each and every one will be saved in the afterlife, the divine matter will flood everything, the evil’s authority and dominion will be destroyed, and all, including Satan, will be subjected to God. In the eschaton, the final restauration will abolish death and every soul will participle eternally in God.
Why did late antique male spiritual guides have such an ambiguous attitude towards ascetic women seeking to travel to holy places? This is the main question that I would like to explore in the present paper. I would suggest that one explanation is related to the problem of authority. From the written sources which have survived, it seems that the Church Fathers were more favorable to pilgrimages for nuns whom they were directly supervising in their spiritual quest. On the other hand, the fervent promotion of the holy places and invitations to travel towards them answered critiques and polemics in which the Fathers were involved.
In spite of him not being especially venerated as a saint, his hagiographical works dedicated to Macrina, his elder sister, Basil of Caesarea, the forty martyrs of Sebasteia, and the protomartyr Stephen were widely spread, by the eighth century having reached as far as monasteries in the Middle-Egypt.
Why does Gregory seem to have remained in the shadow of his elder sister, Macrina, and brother, Basil, whom he promoted as saints himself? Why was his memory left in the background of the Greek-speaking Christianity in the first centuries after his death, while the legacy of his contemporary Cappadocian Fathers became more and more prominent? In this paper I will explore the evolution of Gregory of Nyssa’s cult in Byzantium in the first centuries after his death, by investigating the political and ecclesiastical context of the same period. Thus, I would argue that the condemnation of ideas labeled as “Origenist” in 553 played a key-role in the trajectory which Gregory of Nyssa’s cult took.
Bringing together gender studies, late antique philosophy, patristics, history of asceticism, and history of Indian philosophy, this interdisciplinary volume examines the notions of dis/embodiment and im/materiality in late antique and early Christian culture and thought. The book’s geographical scope extends beyond the ancient Mediterranean, providing comparative perspectives from Late Antiquity in the Near East and South Asia. It offers critical interpretations of late antique scholarly objects of inquiry, exploring close readings of soul, body, gender, and sexuality in their historical context. These fascinating studies engage scholars from different fields and research traditions with one another, and reveal both change and continuity in the perception and social role of gender, sexuality, body, and soul in this period.
Soul, Body, and Gender in Late Antiquity is a valuable resource for students and scholars of Classics, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, as well as those working on late antique and early Christian history, philosophy, and theology.