Liberation through the Ecclesia

Woman in Christian Tradition
by George H.Tavard, University of Notre Dame Press, 1973, pp. 97-121.
Republished on our website with the necessary permissions

As on all matters of Christian faith and life, the Latin tradition on womanhood emerged from the older Greek tradition. During the third century, mainly with the appearance of Tertullian on the intellectual scene, Latin displaced Greek as the theological language of the West. Yet fruitful exchanges of thought continued to multiply between Greeks and Latins, who formed one world until well into the Middle Ages. Travel was fairly easy within the boundaries of the empire, especially for those who were allowed to use the official postal services, as, after Constantine, bishops commonly did when journeying to and from Councils. Melany the Younger herself frequently travelled with the post. After the Council of Nicaea, imperial policy wavered between the many interpretations of, and opposition to, the formula homo-ousios, thus occasioning discussions and exchanges that might not otherwise have taken place. In 343, Latin bishops attended the Council of Sardica (Sofia today) in strength. Athanasius (295-373), “pope” of Alexandria and the most ardent supporter of the Nicene formulation, sojourned in the West for years during his exiles. He lived at Treves from 336 to 337 and in 342, in Rome from 339 to 342, in Aquileia from 344 to 346. According to Jerome,(1) he became familiar with the ascetic circle that met on the Aventine hill in the house of Marcella, thereby exercising a direct influence on the Roman concept and practice of virginity. Conversely, Hilary of Poitiers (313-367) spent several years in Phrygia, exiled from Gaul because of his orthodox convictions. Jerome of course had travelled extensively in Gaul, Italy, Palestine and Egypt, had studied in Constantinople under Gregory Nazianzen, had known Gregory of Nyssa in the same city, and had acted as secretary to Pope Damasus in Rome before settling down as an ascete near Bethlehem around 386.

Above all, perhaps, the land of Jesus held a peculiar fascination for the Westerners. Melany’s and Etheria’s examples have been cited. Melany’s grandmother, called Melany the Elder (c. 345-410) had left an influential situation in Rome for the neighborhood of Jerusalem, followed later by the holy women of Jerome’s circle (Paula, her daughter Eustachium and their epigones) and by those who followed Rufinus of Aquileia on Mount Olivet. Rufinus himself (c. 345-410) had studied in Alexandria for six years under the great teacher Didymos the Blind.

In spite of this cross-fertilization of Greek and Latin thought in the great patristic period, the Western approach to womanhood developed some features of its own which distinguish it both from previous Greek writing of the West and also, by and large, from contemporary Greek emphases. Some cultural factors influenced this specific development.

The laws of Roman society were more generous to women than those of the Greek lands, although the language knew no such thing as a feminine name.(2) By the third century after Christ, Latin women normally could marry whom they wished or, in the decadent mores of the last decades of the Republic, live maritally with anyone and leave him when they had enough. True, the basic concept of the early Romans had given women the status of children, to be kept always under a man’s guardianship: a woman passed from her father’s potestas to her husband’s manus, falling back under her father’s potestas when her husband died. Thus, the law of the Twelve Tables (451449 B.C.) specified:

Women, even though they are of full age [that is, twenty-five years old], because of their levity of mind, shall be under guardianship . . . except vestal virgins, who ... shall be free from guardianship... .(3)

In case a woman had no natural guardian (father or husband), a male, not necessarily of her own kin, was appointed to be officially responsible for her. The initiation of this legislation is credited to Romulus himself.(4) On this legal status of women, there was no fundamental difference between the older, Roman and the Greek customs.

Roman life and religion were focused on the home and its gods (lares), whereas Greek life gave all importance to the city as the unit of religion and of politics. In politics man dominates, since public order rests on power, and power rests on wealth and on military might. Woman, however, rules the home, even when, as in Rome, all authority officially lies in the hands of the husband. Even under a guardian, the Roman woman can own property. Soon the evolution of Roman legal thinking, necessitated by the growth of the mother city into a potential world empire, led to the progressive disappearance of the right of life and death over his children hitherto accorded to the paterfamilias.(5) Likewise, the manus over his wife relaxed. The status of woman, who was thus gaining freedom little by little, remained affected by the laws which forbade legal union between persons of different castes, thus leading to widespread concubinage. A married woman could obtain a divorce. By the end of the Republic, licentiousness had become universal and marriage was held in little esteem, concubinage being much more common. The matri-

monial laws of Augustus at the start of the empire attempted to restore marriage. They exempted mothers of three legitimate children from the tutelage of their legal guardians, an exemption which Hadrian extended to all married women, thus ending the husband’s manus. They also imposed heavy taxes on all legal celibates, many of whom in fact lived with a concubine, Augustus, however, involved as he was in a scandalous divorce and remarriage with Livia, who had herself divorced her first husband to marry him, could hardly set a good example. The outcome of his reform was catastrophic: instead of settling down in one legal marriage, men and women commonly passed through a succession of marriages and divorces.

Roman religion went very far toward giving at least some women unique influence and honor. The institution of the vestal virgins, which goes back at least to Numa Pompilius (716-673 B.C.), placed a group of distinguished women at the very apex of sacred hierarchy.(6) Entrusted with the care of the holy fire symbolizing the continuity and divinity of Rome, the vestals belonged to the highest circles of public and social life. Selected from the most noble ranks of society at an early age (between six and ten), they lived a celibate life in their palace on the forum. The few who broke their vow of virginity were buried alive. After thirty years in the vestal order, they were released from their obligations. They then returned to the world and could marry if they so wished. Most of them apparently continued in a celibate life, covered with honors and wielding great influence.(7) To the considerable annoyance of Ambrose, bishop of Milan, their virginity took the edge off the doubtful apologetical argument which Christians borrowed from the beauty of consecrated celibacy. This may be surmised from the savage attack on the vestals contained in a letter of 384 to Emperor Valentinian.(8) The bishop of Milan supported a decision of the Roman senate removing a statue of the Goddess Victory from the senate hall and cancelling the immunities of the vestals and of all pagan priests. This naturally provoked much resistance from the pagan aristocracy, and Ambrose refuted the objections raised against the senatorial decree. The vestals, he pointed out, number only seven; they live in luxury in a palatial residence on the forum; they have enjoyed extravagant privileges; they are paid substantial stipends; they follow the most expensive and decadent fashions of society women. In other words, they are false virgins, for true virginity, which is of the heart and not only of the body, implies simplicity and poverty. Be that as it may, by the time the vestals lost their status, Christian virgins were numerous and influential. The vestals went down with the old religion which they incarnated. Their demise implied nothing about womanhood as such.

Moreover, a “feminist” movement agitated the empire, leading Latin women, pale imitations of the Spartans, to compete with men in many fields, including the national sport of palaestra. The satirist Juvenal (c. 55-135) took the emancipated women of his time as a choice and easy target for his irony.

The Latin Fathers had to take account of the temper of their society which, at least in Rome and the larger cities, allowed to women whatever licence they wished. Latin women had gained freedom at the very moment when the mores of society reached an all-time low. It is more than a coincidence that Tertullian, the first Latin author to write on women, strongly reacted against his times, considerably restricting the freedom and the activities of Christian women in contrast with the licence of the secular women of those days. His reaction may have been inspired by personal misogynism, but it was also prompted by disgust at the prevailing decadence of society.

A major influence on the Latin Fathers’ conception of womanhood is tied to the name of Tertullian. The African priest, who had created the very vocabulary of Latin theology, continued to wield a tremendous influence in spite of his later Montanism. Indeed, the bishop of Carthage, Cyprian, belonged in the tradition of Tertullian. Augustine, the greatest Latin Father, bishop of Hippo in Numidia, lived and worked at a time when the thinking of Tertullian and Cyprian on woman and virginity was still vivid. But Augustine cannot be explained only by Tertullian and Cyprian. He had been a Manichee before turning to neo-Platonism and, later, to Christianity. Certainly, his views were tainted by his own history, even when he refuted the dualism between spirit and flesh, good and evil, which the Manichees still taught. Furthermore, Ambrose of Milan had helped him to arrive at an understanding of Christianity when he was seeking for a better way to God than neo-Platonism. Ambrose was not only an enthusiastic promoter of the virginal life; he had also put forward what may well constitute the only profound theology of womanhood of the Latin world. It also happened that Augustine wrote about virginity and marriage in order to soften the tone of some of Jerome’s blasts against those who questioned the value of consecrated virginity. We will therefore read Cyprian, Ambrose, and Jerome before reaching Augustine, who fixed Latin thought on our topic for centuries.

Tertullian died some time after 213. Cyprian must have been born around 200. Converted and baptized around 245, he was soon ordained and became bishop of Carthage shortly before the Decian persecution (250-251), which he spent in voluntary exile. He died in September, 258, a victim of the persecution of Valerian.

If Cyprian did not teach any original theology on the problem of woman in the Church, he shows himself to be, in this as in most other matters, a good witness of the African tradition. A short work, On the Dress of Virgins, probably written in 248 or 249, before the persecution, is largely dependent on Tertullian. Cyprian presents the voluntary virgins as forming the highest order in the Church: “That is the flower of church-seed, the beauty and ornament of spiritual grace, the joyful youth, the perfect and immaculate work of praise and honor, the image of God reflecting the Lord’s holiness, the better part of Christ’s flock. The glorious fecundity of Mother Ecclesia rejoices through them and flourishes abundantly in them.”(9) These lines refer to the charismatic order, at the apex of which are the virgins. According to the letters sent to Carthaginian Christians during his exile, and as the biography written by his deacon Pontius testifies, Cyprian himself had several visions which helped him determine his conduct in the difficult problem of the reconciliation of those who had lapsed from the faith during the persecution. In other words, although Cyprian was by no means a Montanist, he still lived in the eschatological, apocalyptic atmosphere that we have already illustrated with the Acts of Martyrs. This was a time when the Spirit showed himself, establishing an order of values which neither was that of the world nor entirely coincided with the hierarchy of government in the Church. The confessors who considerably annoyed Cyprian by claiming the right to demand the reconciliation of their lapsed friends were arguing on ground that was not unknown to Cyprian himself. The charismatic order has rights that the government of the Ecclesia should recognize. Cyprian, too, was a man of the Spirit. Yet it is significant that, previous to the persecution, Cyprian did not place martyrs and confessors, but virgins, at the summit of the charismatic order.

As he understood it, virginity included, besides a gift from the Spirit, recognition by the Ecclesia: “A virgin should not only be, but be known as, and believed to be, a virgin.”(10) Hence the virgin’s obligation to dress with recognizable simplicity. Should she be herself wealthy, still she ought to avoid ostentation, giving up the luxury of the pagan world, shunning the arts of makeup formerly taught by “the sinful and apostate angels,” keeping away from the licentiousness of wedding feasts, not going to the baths where, even though she herself would remain pure when showing herself nude, she would be lusted after by men.(11) In all things, she must remember that “continence follows Christ, and virginity is destined to the kingdom of God.”(12)

In his Letter LXII, also written before the Decian persecution, Cyprian answers questions asked by Pomponius, bishop of Dionysiana in Byzantium, concerning virgins who have been living with men, among them a deacon, even to the point of sharing their beds. According to Pomponius’s letter, no sexual intercourse took place. In other words, this was a case of ascetic cohabitation. Cyprian handles the matter with common sense, if not with theological profundity: the virgins and the men must be separated while they are still innocent. Pomponius acted properly when he excommunicated the men involved, “the deacon who often stayed with a virgin, and the others who used to sleep with virgins.”(13) The women may be received to communion after doing penance, but they should be examined by midwives and their penance must be greater in case they had lost their virginity after all. The letter ends with the remark that spiritual charisms and the institutional hierarchy ultimately must work together in unity: “Those who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven should please God in all things, should not offend the priests of God and the Church of the Lord with the scandal of their depravity.”(14)

Like Tertullian himself, Cyprian is able to speak of married love with delicacy. In 253, barbarian tribes raided some towns of the province of Numidia, kidnapping a number of Christians, among whom were married women and virgins. Cyprian organized a collection in Carthage to contribute to their ransom. He was considerably worried over the fate of the virgins, fearing that “members consecrated to God and devoted to the cult of perpetual continence in asceticism” be desecrated.(15) He also alludes to the married women who have been kidnapped: “Who, remembering his humanity and moved by mutual love ... does not, if he is married, imagine his wife held captive there, in the sorrow and the fear of her matrimonial estate?”(16) For the bishop of Carthage, Christian love shares the sorrows of all; and these in turn strengthen the joys of each, for those who thus empathize with the suffering members of the Church will better love their own wives.

Nearly one century separates the death of Cyprian (258) at Carthage from the birth of Augustine (354) in neighboring Numidia. During this period, some of the problems that Cyprian met in his episcopal career grew out of proportion. The strict moralism of the Novatianists, which Cyprian had fought, spread to Africa, where it found an unexpected ally in what remained of Cyprian’s own notion of the episcopal structure of the Ecclesia, thus giving birth to the Donatist schism. The Peace of Constantine finalized the Church’s compromise with a morality for the average man, already made possible by the overcoming of Novatianism. Meanwhile, the ascetic movement grew, in opposition to the increasing mediocrity of the majority of the faithful. Out of the ascetic circles of Rome there will eventually arise Pelagianism. Augustine’s stand on virginity and marriage, and by implication on womanhood, will depend on, and react against, the Pelagian interpretation of asceticism.

Ambrosius (333-397) was proclaimed bishop of Milan by the people in 374. Early the following year, he explained many of his ideas about women in a series of commentaries on Scripture. Throughout his episcopate he preached and wrote on the virginal life, of which he made himself an eloquent champion, leaving us several important treatises. And some of his letters contain material which illustrates his views.

Ambrose is the first of our authors who presents a real typology of womanhood. Although he is immediately concerned about all the women in his care as belonging to the people of his diocese and about those who have recourse to his advice and help (and such requests came from all over northern Italy), Ambrose sees also the feminine as a principle at work in mankind at large and extending beyond the social or physical boundaries of the female sex. The creation of woman shows her to have been adapted to procreation and the reproduction of the human race. Instead of reading this only in terms of biological necessity, Ambrose concludes that within mankind woman represents the principle of universality. Not before the creation of Eve did God proclaim the goodness of mankind. After making Adam, God even remarked: “Man alone is not good.”(17) It was better to make mankind twofold, with the possibility of sin but also of reproduction and therefore of universality, than single, sinless but sterile. If sin entered through her, Eve also carried the principle of Redemption, since the Savior would be born from the possibility of multiplication which she brought to mankind. Should woman be deemed to be no more than an inferior member, her gift to mankind was good, necessary to the human race, and made her an integral part of the body of mankind: “Not in vain ... was woman made from the rib of Adam himself, that we might know that there is only one nature of the body in man and woman, one source of the human race.”(18) Woman represents universality within the unity signified by the identical origin of man and woman. As Ambrosiaster says more succinctly, “The one Adam sinned,—that is Eve, for woman is also Adam.”(19) And the De institutione virginis (c. 392) states: “Without woman, man receives no congratulation, but he is praised in woman. For when he [God] says that it is not good for man to be alone, he implies indeed that mankind is good if the female sex is added to the male sex.”(20)

As the principle of completion and perfection for the very structure of mankind, woman is also the principle of life, in the twofold sense of the term: biological life will bring mankind to its full quantitative stature; spiritual life will lead mankind, through redemption by Christ, to eternity. “Through woman the heavenly mystery of the Church has been fulfilled; in her grace has been typified, for which Christ came down and completed the eternal work of human Redemption. For this reason Adam called his wife Life: the line and the descent of human succession pass through woman, and eternal life is given through the Ecclesia.”(21) On the basis of this typology, Ambrose does not hesitate to identify Eve with the holy women of the Old and the New Testament: Eve is Sara; she is Mary, sister of Aaron; she is Mary, the Mother of Emmanuel, the Mother of God.(22) What Scripture says in the story of the woman judge Deborah applies to a woman when it is read as “history,” and to the Church when it is understood as “mystery”: “In the history, and in order to enthuse the souls of women, a woman judged, a woman decided, a woman prophesied, a woman triumphed and, in the midst of the fighting troops, taught men the art of war under feminine command. In the mystery, however, the struggle of faith is the Church’s victory.”(23)

Ambrose is also familiar with another kind of feminine typology, which Tertullian had exploited with particular eloquence: woman is the type of evil. Under his pen however, this is considerably toned down and the accent has shifted. Ambrose does not see the typology of evil in relation to a supposed congenital inferiority which would make woman prone to sin, but rather in relation to what he considered a fact recorded in Genesis: sin came through Eve before it reached Adam and was then communicated to mankind. When he explains the historical meaning of the fall, Ambrose does not put the blame on Eve’s shoulders, but finds many excuses for her and judges Adam’s crime greater. The De paradiso notes that, for “several” interpreters, the sin responsible for the fall was Adam’s not the woman’s. “For we know that Adam, and not Eve, had received the commandment from God. Woman had not yet been made.”(24) With what words Adam communicated the rule to her we cannot know. Ambrose, however, admits that the sin started indeed with Eve. Confronted with her behavior, Adam found himself less free to decide than he would otherwise have been.(25)

The De paradiso was written in 375. In the Commentary on Luke, composed over the years between 377 and 389, Ambrose briefly says: “As sin began with women, so the good also begins with women, so that women too, leaving aside female doings, abandon their weakness, and the soul, which has no sex, like Mary who makes no mistake, devotes itself to the religious care of chastity.”(26) In the De institutione virginis, however, written about 392, Ambrose has shifted his position. “Woman,” he now writes, “may find an excuse in sin; man cannot.”(27) For the serpent was “the wisest of all,” a “superior creature,” whereas she was “inferior.” Deceived by “an angel,” even though an evil one, how could she have resisted his superior intelligence, when man did not resist even her? Besides, the curse of woman is milder than the one on man: Eve will simply fulfill her function of motherhood and be dominated by man, but man will revert to the earth. This difference in punishment is just. For Adam had personally received God’s command not to eat of the tree, whereas Eve, having heard it only second-hand, could not truly assess its gravity. How could she endorse a human word, when Adam did not even endorse the word of God?(28) Again, after his sin, Adam throws the blame on Eve, whereas Eve states the fact that she had been tempted, confessing her sin without looking for excuses or seeking even to blame the serpent. She thus becomes the model of Christian penance.(29) Finally, the woman’s punishment implies also her liberation, for she will devote herself to those she will bring into the world in sorrow: “Woman struggles for you in her pains, and finds reward in her punishment; she will be saved through the sons who afflict her.”(30)

At another level of interpretation, the three protagonists of the tragedy of Eden rank in ascending sequence. The serpent symbolizes lust (delectatio corporalis); woman represents sense perception (sensus); man is intelligence (mens)(31) That is, temptation proceeds from the body through the psyche to the mind. This implies that Eve, transmitting temptation, cannot be held responsible for falling: it is the mind that sins—in this case, Adam, man—by assenting to what perception has handed over to it. If man and woman act as co-principles of the soul, both have their share of temptation and both together bring sin about, but the endorsement of sin comes only from the higher principle, the mens. The appropriation of evil actions to the feminine aspect of the soul and of good actions to the masculine is far from accurate. Although Ambrose does it, this is in a context where the female function of parturition has been attributed to the masculine part of man: “As the soul has no sex, it represents the attributes of both sexes; it receives, conceives and gives birth.” Thus the soul has in itself a spiritual womb from which thoughts and intentions proceed. Some of these products are female: all the bad thoughts “by which the virility of our soul is weakened.” Others are male: the holy thoughts which “strengthen our mind and our body.”(32) Thus Ambrose cannot consistently espouse the identification of the female with the evil principle. In his typology of the soul, the male principle itself (mens) fulfills the procreative function of the female. There is actually in his works a double typology of womanhood. Most Church Fathers, borrowing from neo-Platonist, Pythagorean, and Stoic models, equate the female with various degrees of evil, imperfection, or congenital weakness. Ambrose discovers in the Bible that the female represents both biological and spiritual fruitfulness. On this basis, the Eeclesia is female. So is the soul, which, through the practice of the Christian life, learns to seek God like a bride in search of her husband.

Not inappropriately, this is the theme on which the De institutione virginis ends: Ambrose prays to God, “the Father of love and glory,”(33) to come to the virgin as to his bride. The Exhortatio virginitatis (c. 393) applies the image to the soul, which is asexual: “When the Bridegroom finds [the Christian virtues] , he passes by. And the soul must follow him, rise from its bed, leave its house . . . that is, start on a pilgrimage out of the body in order to be united to God, for in the body we are on pilgrimage away from Christ.”(34) Those who thus follow the Bridegroom receive the wounds of love from him. Ambrose cites some of those who have received these wounds: Job. Jeremias, Stephen, the Apostles, all masculine instances of a feminine pursuit and adventure.(35) The De virginitate describes at length the search of the soul after her bridegroom.(36)

This interchange of feminine qualities and masculine identity is grounded on Ambrose’s belief that the soul itself, mens, escaping the polarity of the sexes, may be seen as either male or female. It is male in relation to the lower activities of man, female in connection with the superior activities of God, though in itself it is beyond the male and the female. In his In hexaëmeron (375), Ambrose equates the image of God in man with the soul’s fundamental freedom from time and space. The soul is not bound to the limitations of the body and can, being physically in Italy, think of what is in the East or the West, in Persia or Africa: “We follow those who go, we are with travelers, we join the absent, we speak with those who are far away, we raise up the dead to converse with them, we see and hold them as though they were alive. . . ,”(37) The image of God resides in this freedom and power. Such a description, of the image makes it, in our terms, “natural” rather than “supernatural.” The natural image, which comes from creation, already implies the presence of God in the soul, who could not be his image without him.(38) There is continuity between this and the image that is built up through grace, as Paul suggests: “All of us, reflecting the glory of God face to face, are reformed into his image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18). “What is richer than to be in the image and likeness of God?” Ambrose wonders in the De institutione virginis. His answer insists on the interiority of the image, which dwells in the soul and not in the body: “The inner man, not this exterior one, is in the image; the one who is guessed at through perception but not comprehended by the eyes.”(39)

At this interior level, men and women are equal in grace; both are in the image, sharing the same spiritual structure. In his De virginibus, Ambrose tells the story of a soldier who freed a Christian girl from her captivity in a brothel by giving her his clothes and wearing hers. Eventually, however, both were condemned to death. Exteriorly they were as different as a soldier can be from a consecrated virgin. Yet inside they were alike: “Add the persons, the soldier and the virgin, different by nature, but similar by the mercy of God; and the oracle is fulfilled: At that time wolves and lambs will graze together. There you have the female lamb and the wolf, who not only graze together, but are immolated together.”(40) At this level of the interior man, the curse has already been lifted. “Come, Eve,” Ambrose calls, “not as excluded from paradise, but already as raised to heaven.” In Sara, Eve has overcome her condemnation: “Come, Eve, already Sara, who begets sons not in pain but in joy, not in sorrow but in laughter.”(41) At that interior level, Eve is also Mary “who brought us not only the example of virginity, but God.”(42)

Man and woman are equally able to lead the angelic life by choosing the state of virginity. The reward has been promised: “A kingdom is obtained and the kingdom of heaven shows the life of angels. Let me persuade you that nothing is more beautiful than to be angels among men, unfettered by nuptial ties. For those who neither marry nor are taken in marriage are like angels on earth: they do not feel the trials of the flesh, they do not know slavery, they are freed from the contagion of worldly thought, they are turned to divine realities. As though liberated from the weakness of the body, they think thoughts of God and not of man.”(43) At this point Ambrose willingly dwells on the inconveniences of matrimony, although he does so more freely when he addresses his discourse to widows who have experienced what he now talks about, than when he speaks to virgins.(44) For him also, the virginal life manifests the fundamental Christian freedom by gaining now what others will obtain only in heaven. The theme of virginity as anticipation of heaven recurs with him as often as with the other authors, although Ambrose treats it with infinitely more tact.(45)

By freeing the faithful from the limitations of being tied to another person for life, virginity manifests the equality of male and female as souls rather than bodies and their identity as images of God. It is curious that Ambrose’s In hexaëmeron should end with descriptions of the soul and of the body where hardly any distinction appears between man and woman.(46) For Ambrose the soul is nonsexual. And the body as made on the sixth day, that is, before the fall, appears to have no sexual characteristics. Ambrose barely mentions that men wear short hair and women long hair;(47) but this is of course a social, not a natural, characteristic. Had Ambrose described Adam and Eve on the eighth day, after the fall, he would have described sex. Augustine will react strongly against the view which excludes sex from Paradise, fearing that this ties in with some form of Manichean dualism.

Nonetheless, for Ambrose the choice of marriage remains good and holy. For it is grounded in the state in which mankind finds itself, whatever one may think of the absence of sex in Paradise. Marriage is founded on the complementarity of man and woman. “Grace is not only for men, while woman would be alien to sanctification; and the nature of the two sexes is distinct so that bodies are not confused in procreation. Men have their tasks, and women have the precise functions of their sex. The generation of human succession belongs to woman; it is impossible to man.”(48)

The differences of bodily functions entail a series of psychological consequences which Ambrose explains in a letter to a certain Irenaeus, apparently a young man who had asked for advice concerning clothes: May men dress like women, or women wear men’s garments? Ambrose notes that the law of Deuteronomy condemns it severely. It is also against nature, for it implies a lie: why should a man want to be seen as what he is not? Why should a woman want to he about herself? “Nature has clothed each sex with its own dress. The male and the female differ by their customs, their color, their motions, their poise, their strength, their voice.”(49) Granted, the Greek fashion makes women wear short skirts like men. But if Greek women wish to imitate the “nature of the nobler sex,” why should men do the opposite? Granted, in pagan Temples “it is considered holy for men to wear feminine vestments and to make feminine gestures.” Yet why be surprised at that? After all, it is normal that “where one lies to faith, one should also lie to nature.”(50) The most important point, however, regards behavior rather than dress. If men “curl their hair like women, let them conceive and bear children.” It may be excusable to follow the customs of one’s country, but all such customs derive from the barbarians, Persians, Goths, or Armenians, and “nature counts for more than fatherland.”(51) Little need be said of those who exploit these fashions for their own mercantile purposes. The conclusion is clear: “Chastity is not kept when the distinction of the sexes is not observed.”(52)

As a result of the difference of sex, marriage is not only in keeping with nature, but also good. Ambrose wants the adepts of both states of life to respect the other.

Let no one who has chosen marriage despise virginity, or one who has chosen virginity condemn marriage.... A field has many fruits, but the best is filled with both fruits and flowers. The field of the Church is fecund with diverse riches. Here you see germs of virginity blossoming; there, in the woods, venerable widowhood; yonder, the harvest of the Church filling the barns of the world with the fruit of the womb, and, so to say, the presses of the Lord Jesus in which the fruit of faithful marriage abounds, overflowing with the products of the marital vine.”(53)

Chastity is not univocal and reserved to virgins, but each calling—of marriage, of widowhood, of virginity—has a chastity of its own.(54)

In keeping with the human generosity which underlies all his treatment of our theme, Ambrose does not associate marriage with procreation only. He speaks frequently of the “grace of mutual love,”(55) which is good, though it does not do away with the servitude of marriage; of “the good chains of marriage,” which are yet chains; of “the good wounds of love,” which are, however, to be distinguished from, and preferred to, kisses, for Peter, after wounding the Lord, bound the wound with his tears, but Judas condemned himself with the kiss of betrayal.(56) “Divine law joins together married persons by heavenly authority, and mutual love remains difficult. He took a rib from man, and formed woman in order to couple them together for himself: And they will be two in one flesh.”(57)

When he writes for the benefit of those who are not married, Ambrose mentions and even dwells, however slightly, on the subservience of woman to man, the difficulties of living together and of bearing one another’s burdens, the pains of pregnancy, the worries of education. Yet, writing to Eusebius, bishop of Verceil, he recommends dignity and spiritual freedom within marriage. “Woman must respect her husband, not be a slave to him; she consents to be ruled, not to be forced. The one whom a yoke would fit is not fit for the yoke of marriage. As to man, he should guide his wife like a pilot, honor her as his partner in life, share with her as a co-heir of grace.”(58) In other words, married persons should also participate in Christian freedom. They are not destined to live like pagans in the bonds of matrimony, the male dominating the female by strength and she in turn capturing him through lust. In Christian marriage the partners are tied together by mutual love, which entails “a greater service.” Marriage is not only sex, but service. “How great is the power of marriage, that the stronger is also at the service of the other!”(59) Admittedly, Ambrose writes this to widows, at the same time suggesting that one such experience ought to be enough and that they should not marry again. Still, it shows his appreciation of the bonds of love which in Christian marriage become bonds of mutual obedience and service.

As for man, he should not complain that temptation originates in woman. Ambrose is prepared to grant this as regards Adam and Eve, since, whatever excuses one may find in Eve’s favor, Adam was still tempted through her. He then adds, with a touch of irony: “Indeed, if she is beautiful, this is another temptation.” But, he asks, “Why should you seek beauty of face in a wife, rather than of conduct?” In other words, if a woman’s beauty is for man temptation, this is the man’s fault: “A wife should please by her honesty more than by her beauty. ... It is no crime for a woman to be what birth has made her; but it is a crime for a man to seek in a wife that which is likely to tempt him. ... We may not blame the work of the divine Artist; but the one who delights in corporal beauty should rather delight in the charm of the image of God inside, not in that which appears outside.”(60)

Ambrose’s doctrine is fairly complete and very balanced. Men and women do not differ in their souls but only in their bodies, destined to diverse biological functions which in turn specify them socially and psychologically. The Christian order, however, allows them to recover their ontologically pristine oneness, since the practice of the virginal life, made possible through asceticism, lifts them up to the angelic level, which will characterize the next world. Even those who choose marriage should live, not like pagans abandoned to wanton lust, but with the freedom of those who have been redeemed, finding in mutual love the strength to give themselves to each other in mutual service. Furthermore, the female sex, which has been given the harder place in society, is raised through symbolism to a position of universal superiority in the Christian order: it becomes the very image of the Ecclesia and of all mankind in relation to the eternal Bridegroom.

Even when presented with the unequalled delicacy and balance of Ambrose, the problems of this approach are patent. By stressing man’s efforts, asceticism will soon lead, with the career of Pelagius, to the heresy that bears his name, Pelagianism. The emphasis on virginity, considered to be of heaven while marriage remains of the earth, radically separates an elite, which is no longer defined by knowledge (gnosis) but by ethical standards, from the majority entangled in the bonds of matrimony.

Is it by accident that the first protest historically registered against this theological interpretation of man’s condition originated in a layman? Helvidius, by birth a Milanese, lived in Rome. He was in some ways a follower of Ambrose’s predecessor in Milan, Bishop Auxentius, whose leanings toward Arianism were notorious. He published a pamphlet against a certain Carterius, a priest who had argued in favor of the monastic life and virginity on the basis of the perpetual virginity of Mary. This Marian doctrine was not yet universally held, although it was widely accepted. Helvidius claimed that Mary bore children to Joseph after the birth of Jesus, and he denied the moral superiority of virginity over marriage. Jerome’s refutation of Helvidius was written in Rome in 383.(61) Helvidius was obviously not alone in his thinking. In 389 or 390, Pope Siricius condemned the ideas of a Roman monk, Jovinian, who also downgraded virginity.(62) Ambrose and a Council of Northern Italy took a similar stand shortly after.(63) And Jerome, then living in Palestine, published a long and fierce refutation of Jovinian in 393.(64)

Jovinian’s writing has not survived unfortunately. From the refutation of it, it seems that, like Helvidius, Jovinian denied the perpetual virginity of Mary. This point in particular drew the attention of Ambrose, although neither Siricius nor Jerome mentioned it. Jovinian tried to establish four propositions which Jerome quotes or summarizes as follows:

He says that virgins, widows and married women, once they have been washed in Christ, are of equal merit if they do not differ in their other works. He wants to prove that those who have been baptized with full faith cannot be changed by the devil. Thirdly, he teaches that there is no difference between abstaining from food and receiving it with thanksgiving. Fourthly and finally, that for those who have been faithful to their baptism there is only one reward in the kingdom of heaven.(65)

In other words, baptism alone defines Christianity. The status of a Christian in relation to marriage entails no spiritual value. The other points pursue the same principle in other fields of “works.” Baptism makes all the faithful equal in the eyes of God, all being redeemed through the blood of Christ: accordingly, distinctions among Christians are meaningless. Neither continence nor fasting has any special values. Differences between marriage and celibacy, asceticism and ordinary human weaknesses become matters of indifference. Jovinian can therefore write: “I do you no wrong, virgin. You have chosen a life of chastity on account of the present distress. You determined on the course in order to be holy in body and spirit. Do not be proud: you and your married sisters are members of the same Ecclesia.”(66) Jovinian’s volume was successful enough in Rome to convince a number of virgins that they should leave their way of life to embrace matrimony. At least this is reported by the Retractions of Augustine.(67) For this reason the authorities tried to protect the virgins by obtaining a powerful refutation of Jovinian. The book was sent to Jerome by his friend Pammachius, in the hope that his powerful pen would silence Jovinian and bring back peace to the Roman virgins.

A little later, Vigilantius, a priest from southern Gaul who had spent some time with Jerome in Bethlehem, published an attack against monks, whom he accused of laziness. At the same time, he denounced the cult of relics, prayer to the saints, and the commoration of the martyrs. He objected to clerical celibacy, which was then spreading in the West and in some parts of the East. He denounced asceticism as a heresey. The tract seemed to have been aimed mainly at Palestinian monks, but it also condemned many well-received practices and doctrines. Jerome refuted it in 406 with a biting pamphlet against Vigilantius.(68)

The importance of these writings should not be stressed; only Jovinian’s essay seems to have had theological value. All certainly reflected some of the conflicts that occasionally arose between priests and monks and some of the rumors that could start about persons who had given up wealth and situation to seek holiness in the desert. The important effect of these writings was that they triggered Jerome’s responses. For the unchastened language of Jerome’s long refutation of Jovinian brought him into immediate disrepute, especially in Roman circles. One of the reasons why Augustine eventually entered the fray was precisely that Jerome’s excesses had caused scandal and needed to be corrected.

Jerome’s oppositions to Jovinian illustrates a period of transition. There were still churchmen who lived within an eschatological perspective. With the expectation of the Kingdom, marriage, though good when seen in the abstract, becomes a frivolity which draws a man and a woman away from thinking about the End. Others however, like Helvidius, Jovinian or Vigilantius, no longer sensitive to the parousiac expectation, could see no difference of spiritual quality between married and unmarried persons.

In his nonpolemical writings, as in his admirable letter to Eustochium, Jerome speaks highly of virginity without despising marriage. He shares the position that has by now become traditional in both Greek and Latin Christianity. Marriage is good, as instituted by God for the management of this world; voluntary virginity is better as anticipatory of the Kingdom. Between them, accepted widowhood partakes of both. Yet for those who have entered marriage, a holy life remains entirely possible. These points are carefully explained to Eustochium, the second daughter of Paula, who has, under Jerome’s guidance, embraced the life of virginity. Already her mother has consecrated her widowhood to God; her sister Bresilla, married for only a short time when her husband died, had also chosen widowhood but passed away a little while later, to the great embarrassment of Jerome, accused by malicious tongues of killing her though fast and penance.

Now Jerome writes to the younger girl, whom he calls “my Eustochium, daughter, lady, fellow servant, sister,” for, as he explains, “one name suits your age, another your rank, another your religion, another your love.”(69) He advises her on how to live as a virgin, abstaining from wine and taking only simple food, renouncing the luxuries to which her wealth and social rank entitle her, staying away from men and married women, whose worries and concerns she cannot share. Jerome moans about the modern fashions, warns against false virgins, expresses disgust at the lingering unofficial institution of agapetae: “How has this pest of agapetae come into the Church? Whence this other name of ‘wives’ for the unmarried? Worse, whence this new kind of concubine? I will go further: whence these one-man prostitutes? They use one house, one bedroom, often even one bed—and they call us suspicious if we infer anything!”(70) Certainly the great project of virginity is not easy. The devil often attacks men through sex: “All the strength of the devil against men is in the loins, all his force against women is in the navel,” loins and navel being, as he has explained, metaphors for the sexual organs.(71) The ascetic life cannot be understood indeed by those who do not know Christ. “Let her turn to her husband, she who is not married to Christ. And at the end, ‘you shall die the death’, that is, the end of marriage.” Virginity aims higher: “My goal lies outside of sex. Let married women have their time and title. To me, virginity is given in Mary and in Christ.”(72)

Although difficult in the present condition, the continent life is not only possible, but also natural. On this point, Jerome alludes to the theology of Gregory of Nyssa whom he had known in Constantinople: “Eve was a virgin in Paradise. After the garments of skin her marriage began. . .. Virginity, belongs to nature; marriage comes after the offense.”(73) Creation originally made human beings virgin and destined them to a virginal life. The “garments of skin”—that is, sex—were made later after the first sin, in what Gregory depicts as the second moment of creation. But the Christian, who is aware of his origin and looks toward his destiny, still belongs in Paradise. As an illustration of this, Jerome points out that all children are born with “virgin flesh”: in the proper order of nature, “what was lost in the root is restored in the fruit.”(74) Thus the faithful one who has chosen the continent life exemplifies in himself both the original order of creation and the restored order of the Kingdom.

There is nothing in the letter to Eustochium that even suggests a contempt for woman. But if his doctrine remains traditional, Jerome cannot always control his pen or his amazingly bad temper. The letter to Eustochium, prompted by love, rings more neatly than the three writings against Helvidius, Jovinian, and Vigilantius, in which Jerome’s indignation leads him to unedifying excesses of language.

As soon as the Adversus Jovinianum was out, Jerome found himself deep in hot water. He had scandalized a good part of the public, especially in Rome, by his disparaging references to marriage and to women. He had so much emphasized the beauty of virginity that readers understood marriage to be ugly. His careful interpretation of Saint Paul’s treatment of marriage had led him to conclusions that made virginity excellent and marriage imperfect: “Between the good and the better, the reward is not the same; and where the reward is not the same, the gifts are different. The difference between marriage and virginity is as great as between not sinning and doing good; rather, to speak more gently, as between the good and the better.”(75) The trouble is that “not sinning and doing good” do not amount to “good and better,” but to “mediocre and good.” As now presented, marriage corresponds to the goodness of the Old Testament, and asceticism to that of the New. “Let us, who served marriage under the Law, serve virginity under the Gospel.”(76) Virgins understand mysteries that others cannot fathom:

Peter is an apostle, and John is an apostle. The married man and the virgin. But Peter is only apostle; John is apostle, evangelist, and prophet.... Virginity explained what marriage could not know.... (77)

This is extravagant enough, but Jerome oversteps all bounds of taste and decency when he musters help from pagan authors, not only to show that the heathens appreciated the beauty of virginal life, but furthermore to describe married life as a hopeless entanglement with a shrew, into which no man would ever enter if he had any common sense.(78)

Jerome was puzzled by the outburst in Roman society. Never had he meant to disparage marriage! Yet he had written: “All love for another man’s wife is shameful, and so is excessive love for one’s own,” thus practically equating marriage with adultery.(79) Those who did not know Jerome well could be pardoned for concluding that he was a foe of marriage; even his friends could be worried about his doctrine and annoyed at his language.

One gathers from the Retractationes that Augustine’s main writings on marriage and virginity were occasioned by the continuing influence of Jovinian’s ideas and, partly at least, by the ineptitude of Jerome’s answer.(80) Augustine recoiled from excesses. In one passage at least he even contradicted Tertullian by name.(81) For he was appalled at defenses of the virginal life which directly or indirectly discouraged the faithful from marrying. With the bishop of Hippo, the promotion of virginity need not entail a lesser esteem for marriage. There is no question any longer of dwelling on the practical inconveniences of matrimony, still less of describing awkward or disgusting marital situations. The virginal life must not be entered into as an escape from the duties and concerns of marriage: “Those who decide to remain unmarried should not flee from marriage as from a snare of sin. They should rise above the hill of smaller good to rest on the mountain of greater continence.”(82) Augustine therefore fights the neoencratic orientation of Tertullian and Jerome, as well as the trend represented by Jovinian, who finds no spiritual differences among the various forms of life recognized by the Church and sanctified by the experience of three centuries.

This second concern is clear from the dates of Augustine’s chief writings on the question: De continentia in 395 or 396, some five years after Jovinian’s treatise and two after Jerome’s refutation; De opere monachorum in 400, prompted by a request from Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, worried over monks who refuse to do menial work; De bono conjugali, followed by De sancta Virginitate, in 401: both of these openly refute Jovinian and implicitly rebuke Jerome (though Jerome is not named). Much later, in 414, Augustine writes De bono viduitatis as a long letter to a widow named Juliana.

Augustine’s approach is also dominated by another perhaps more important fact, relating to the history of Christian doctrine. Tertullian’s eschatology is still “imminentist,” tainted by the experience that the Spirit is now manifesting himself and inaugurating the last age of the world, and Jerome, with his enthusiastic endorsement of asceticism, still presents the angelic life as a genuine alternative for the cares and troubles of this world. Augustine, however, has accepted a compromise with the realities of the human condition. Even the sack of Rome by Alaric, which inspired the most somber pages of The City of God, did not suggest to him that the end was around the corner. The motivation for the virginal life cannot derive from a belief that the angelic life is truly possible here below. Augustine knows too much about human libido and is too pessimistic about the present state of human nature to accept this. A virgin should not think she can live on earth better than a married person; she only aims at a higher reward in heaven.(83) Virginity will allow her (or him) to “follow the Lamb wheresoever he goes.”(84) It relates to life in the world to come, not to the sublimation of the present condition. Eschatology has become individual: the eternal life is life with Christ after death.

If Augustine is pessimistic about mankind’s condition, his understanding of creation, Paradise, and the proposed place of woman in it is quite generous. Unlike Gregory of Nyssa, he does not believe in two creations and he denies that sex was created only in view of, or after, the fall.(85) The first creation story of Genesis refers to informatio, the formation of man and woman as human beings related to God and equal to each other in this relationship; the second, to conformatio, the formation of man and woman as beings related to each other for the purpose of procreation and unequal at that level, the one being active and dominating, the other passive and subordinate. In the first, Adam is made “male and female.” That is he contains in himself the “seminal reasons” which, being later activated, will give rise to woman and to the whole race. In the second takes place the actual elaboration of Eve out of the humus already inserted in Adam.

As souls, both man and woman are equally the image of God. As bodies, however, only the man is made in the image, for only he expresses in his body the power and superiority of God, the female body expressing, on the contrary, passivity and inferiority. Thus, man experiences no conflict between his soul and his body from the point of view of being God’s image, whereas woman is caught in a {permanent squeeze between her soul—image of God—and her body, which cannot image God. For this reason, woman was, in Paradise itself, nearer to Satan than Adam could be. In the Augustinian logic, this makes her somehow loathesome to a Christian: “In her the good Christian ... likes what is human [quod homo est], loathes what is feminine [quod uxor est] .”(86)

As thus made by informatio and conformatio, man and woman are sexed. Sex was destined to function in Paradise for the multiplication of the human race.(87) It would not then be prompted by passion; the flesh would not draw man and woman to one another; no sexual motion would anticipate the utterly spiritual and free decision to procreate. Sexual intercourse would entail no feeling of shame or embarassment,(88) or cause any deterioration or loss of virginity. There would be a virginal intercourse.(89) As a point of fact, however, Augustine does not think that Adam and Eve had sexual intercourse in Paradise. He “does not find” the meaning of “Man will leave his father and his mother and will cling to his wife,” in its literal sense or historia: it must be a prophecy for the time after the fall.(90)

This at least is the version of the matter proposed in the De Genesi ad litteram and in De civitate Dei. It is his mature position. In earlier works Augustine wavered. In De Genesi contra Manichaeos he had explained away the union of man and woman in Paradise as being purely spiritual, ending in immaterial fruits of an intellectual and moral order. This allegorical interpretation was not unusual among the Greek Fathers. In De bono conjugali,(91) he proposed another view: procreation could take place in Paradise, though in a mysterious non-sexual, way. The beginning of this book lists several possibilities about paradisiac procreation, among which Augustine finds himself unable to decide. At that time he had discovered no way to separate sexual union from the unlawful libido which, because it followed upon sin, could not be experienced in Paradise. The later position could be adopted only after Augustine concluded that sexual desire, being a disorder engendered by sin, does not belong to the essential structure of procreation.

However this may be, woman’s role and only purpose is to help man in this work of procreation. She is compared to the earth, which receives the seed that will grow into trees. Augustine repeats this often, adding that in all other matters a male friend is a more efficient helper than a woman.(92) Sex is to the survival of the race what food is to that of the individual.(93) On this basis, Augustine makes the surprising statement that polygamy is not against nature, for it serves the purpose of marriage and respects the procreative function of man and woman.(94) Since marriage is good, Augustine does not share Tertullian’s distaste for remarriage; he will not even condemn subsequent remarriages. In themselves these are good, as long as they serve the purpose and intention for which marriage was made, whatever reservation one may have concerning the subjective motivations of the marriage partners.(95) The New Testament admittedly outlawed polygamy, but this is law rather than nature. It is in this context that Augustine ascribes three goods (bona) to Christian marriage: procreation (proles), mutual bond (fides), sacrament (sacramentum).(96) The first fulfills the purpose of marriage; the second excludes adultery; the third condemns divorce and polygamy.(97) Procreation is the basic natural purpose; loyalty corresponds to the experience of marriage as good; monogamy is required by Christian ethics.

In the present order of the world, however, marriage and sex have been vitiated by original sin. As soon as they disobeyed, Adam and Eve discovered that they were nude. Not that they did not know it before, but whereas they had known it without feelings of shame, they now are ashamed of their nakedness. In the Augustinian analysis of emotions, shame arises from the experience by the mind of not mastering its body. In Paradise, grace had hidden the possibility for the body to revolt against the mind. All of a sudden, grace being removed, “the motions of their body released the shocking news of their indecent nakedness, made them notice it, and gave them shame.”(98) The continuing experience of sexual emotions is the outcome and the sign of original sin. The experience of sex, even in marriage, is inseparable from this sense of shame.(99) The wise man therefore wishes that he could obtain children without it.(100) And true Christians try to mitigate this shame by using marriage solely for its original purpose of procreation and by being as moderate as they can in this experience of sex.(101)

The pessimism of Augustine’s concerning man’s lot dictates his analysis of the feminine condition. At the symbolic level, Augustine speaks of three unions that are revealed in Scripture: between Christ and the Ecclesia, between man and woman, between spirit and flesh.(102) In each of them the second term is both inferior and feminine. The fight in man between spirit and flesh is therefore symbolized in mankind by the man-woman polarity. Writing against the Manichees, Augustine even interprets the biblical statement, “Man and woman he created them,” allegorically: in Paradise the male and the female are principles within man, expressing the domination of the body by the mind.(103) Only after sin was this also expressed in the carnal unity of man and woman. While this is contradicted in the De Genesi ad litteram and retracted in the Retractationes,(104) nonetheless it shows that the spiritualizing tendency which Augustine had learned from neo-Platonism occasionally surfaced in his writings. Thus, the analogy Christ-Ecclesia, man-woman, spirit-flesh, has become, in the De opere monachorum, man-woman, mind-concupiscence.(105) Concupiscence or libido, as Augustine also calls it, includes for him more than sexual desire. It is the conglomeration of all the bent tendencies awakened in man by the fall, in which the revolt of the flesh against the spirit vents itself. But the union of man and woman in sex is directly connected with this libidinal revolt in the recesses of human nature. Woman herself and her status in the Church and society are affected by it.

In Paradise, as depicted by the bishop of Hippo, man and woman were to cooperate (primarily for the purpose of procreation), but without any inferiority of the female, or any submission of woman to man. They were called to oneness (conjunctio), not to domination and obedience. They were going to walk side by side. Of course, the feminine body was the same as now. In a sense. Eve was to be below her husband and she would serve him. But this would be a service of love (dilectio), not of slavery. The subservience imposed on woman by the curse “corresponds to necessity rather than to love; what originated in punishment is the sort of service by which men later became slaves of other men.” The present condition of woman does not come “from nature, but from sin.” The historical woman is not in the same situation as the natural woman. Admittedly, the order of Redemption has changed this slightly, for the Christian woman is not a slave. “Saint Paul says: Serve each other in love. He would never say: Dominate each other.” In Christian marriage, the partners can serve each other with love. Yet woman is never allowed to give orders to a man. The man carries power. And Augustine sees no escape from this law of the curse: “Unless this is followed, nature will be more completely distorted and sin will increase.”(106)

In this context, Augustine recommends the virginal life as best ensuring the growth and the spiritual liberation of Christian women. In the hierarchy of values that may be embodied in a feminine life, the unmarried girl ranks lowest. Destined to marry, she already suffers from all the problems of marriage, wondering how to please her husband and to raise her children, without even knowing who this husband will be and without yet having any children. The married woman comes next. She is divided between God and her secular responsibilities, for she must please her husband, bear and raise her children. The married woman belongs to her husband as his own property. On this point, the bishop of Hippo goes much further than the texts of Roman law of his time. The official references to marriage contracts (tabulae matrimoniales) no longer mention any subordination of wife to husband. Augustine reacts against the progressive emancipation of women in society. He also takes his mother’s principles and practice as the absolute standard of feminine behavior in marriage. According to the Confessions, Monica considered herself to have freely chosen to become her husband’s slave.(107)

Be that as it may, as seen by Augustine, the Christian wife has at least the satisfaction of being a slave out of Christian love. For her, marriage and sex are not goods to be enjoyed for their own value; but they become good by virtue of their purpose. At his best moments Augustine equates this purpose with “friendship” (amicitia):(108) it makes friendship possible through the creation and development of a society. In his sterner moods, friendship is not mentioned and only procreation remains, a purpose that has now lost much of its goodness from the fact that the world is already populated.(109) Finally, the consecrated virgin ranks highest. She prepares the glories of the next life exclusively, not being divided between God and the cares of this world.

When he reflects on Eve herself, Augustine abandons the lenient position taken by Ambrose and returns to the tradition of Tertullian and to what Augustine thought was the position of Saint Paul as illustrated in 1 Timothy 2: 14. Sin really began with Eve; she is therefore chiefly responsible for the fall. Furthermore, Eve and Adam become truly hardened sinners through their refusal, not only to repent, but even to acknowledge their fault. Each makes a mere statement, putting all the blame on the tempter. Eve accuses the serpent while Adam accuses her.(110)

Yet Augustine continues to waver between his prefall optimism and his postfall pessimism. Where does the Christian woman stand? She is not, as with Tertullian, Eve the eternal temptress. Yet she cannot profit from Eve’s example of immediate repentance since there was no such contrition. She should seek her model in the symbolic woman which is the Ecclesia. Through the flourishing of their virtues, consecrated virgins become “mothers of Christ,” like the Ecclesia. And as virtues are not reserved to virgins, all faithful women, even married, can also become “mothers of Christ.”(111) But virtues are not even the privilege of women: all Christians, men and women, married or virgins, may be “mothers of Christ”:

He who does the will of my Father in heaven, is to me brother, sister and mother. He brings to light these relationships in the people he has redeemed: his brothers and sisters are the holy men and holy women, for these inherit the heavenly legacy. The entire Church is his mother, by the grace of God, for she gives birth to his members, that is, to the faithful. Likewise, every religious soul is a mother to him when she does the will of his Father with most fruitful charity in the actions she gives birth to, until Christ is himself formed in them. Mary, doing the will of God, is the mother of Christ only corporally; spiritually she is his sister and his mother.(112)

As developed by its greatest representatives, the Western patristic tradition on woman did not only, like the Eastern one, promote the life of consecrated virginity; it also tended to separate, much more than was ever the case in the East, the liturgical service of the Lord from contact with women. As early as the beginning of the fourth century, the Council of Elvira, which grouped nineteen bishops and twenty-four priests from all over Spain, unequivocally forbade married bishops, priests, and deacons, ever to have intercourse with their wives. The penalty was expulsion from the clerical order (canon 33). Canon 27, which permitted the consecrated sister or daughter of a bishop or of any cleric to live in the same house, implicitly forbade his wife to live there.(113) The legislation passed in Spain was harsher than anywhere else. Italy started in the same direction a little later. Pope Siricius and the Council of Rome in 386 outlawed the cohabitation of priests and deacons with their wives (canon 7);(114) and Siricius, supported by Ambrose of Milan, endeavored to have this decision implemented, not only in Italy, but also in Spain and Africa. Similar decrees were passed by several African Councils (Carthage, 390 and 401).(115) The Council of Toledo in 400 reiterated the Elviran legislation. A Council of Tours in 460 endorsed a similar decision for Gaul. Ordination did not become an impediment which nullified marriage before 1123, when the First Council of the Lateran (canons 3 and 21)(116) marked the crowning point of the papacy’s efforts since Leo IX in 1050 to abolish completely the marriage of priests—a practice which, instead of dying out, spread considerably during the tenth century. An unexpected result of this legislation was the spread of clerical concubinage in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the desire of priests to marry reappeared. The Council of Trent reinforced the prohibition of clerical marriage with a great deal of success.(117)

My topic is not clerical celibacy, but womanhood. Yet it is unavoidable that the theology of womanhood which is accepted by the larger part of the Church should depend partly on the type of relationship which obtains between women and those who build theological systems. In the West at least, theology has always been a specialty of the clergy or, one had rather say, of a section of the clergy. This means that it has reached fruition in the cogitations of celibate persons. For this reason, a brief glance at the history of clerical celibacy belongs in our study. The separation between priests and women is bound to entail a one-sided theology of womanhood, to which woman remains alien and from which she is likely to find herself alienated.

The universal patristic tradition endorsed the ascetic ideal of virginity, on the Pauline ground that “the time is short”: marriage impedes Christians from seeking the advent of the Kingdom wholeheartedly because it divides their heart between God and their partner in marriage and their work between the contemplation of the divine realities and the responsibility of their family. Woman, who was created primarily to be man’s partner in procreation, need no longer consecrate herself to this task, for the world is already populated. The life of virginal consecration presents her with an alternative: through it she can free herself from her subjection to man by becoming spiritually his equal. In the course of the first few centuries, however, the accent shifted from the Pauline concept of liberation through baptism, by which “there is neither male nor female,” to liberation through asceticism and consecrated virginity. Estimates of woman herself varied. For some, she could never be man’s equal partner in anything, for the curse that subjects Eve to Adam had not been lifted. For others, the curse was lifted in principle through baptism and in fact through asceticism. For others still, every faithful woman, virgin or married, would accede to this Christian freedom. Some assimilated woman to Eve, the first human being who sinned, whereas others thought that Adam’s sin was greater. All considered the ideal womanhood to be achieved symbolically in the Ecclesia, and found types of her in the soul and in Mary.

This does not constitute a systematic theology of womanhood. Yet it enables us to see the focal point of any attempt at such a synthesis: In what way is Christian freedom, clearly affirmed in Scripture and maintained—though considerably toned down—by the Fathers, attainable to woman? As long as the sense of the imminent return of the Lord was vivid, the ideal of virginity constituted a perfectly valid answer to the question. And this answer had the additional advantage of not distinguishing between men and women: both were called to virginity in anticipation of the Kingdom. However, the problem arises when the sense of the nearness of the End is waning. Although he could pay lip service to the older concept, Augustine justified the superiority of the virginal life on other grounds, namely the desire for a greater reward in heaven. This carried no Pelagian implications with it, but the danger of Pelagianism was patent: the Pelagian movement itself grew in ascetic circles. With the loss of an imminent eschatology, marriage was bound to become the normal way of life for most Christians, and the bishops had to speak of it with more understanding than before. This is clear in the career of John Chrysostom and in the contrast between the tone of Augustine’s writings with those of his African predecessors. Ambrose himself, whose own orientation was profoundly eschatological, spoke of marriage with much delicacy as a community of love. Although the Greek and the Latin traditions are at one on most points, we can distinguish two distinct orientations. The main bulk of Greek thought is primarily dogmatic and only secondarily ethical. That is, the chief considerations remain always of the order of Revelation, even with a man like John Chrysostom, who has to deal with the practical problems of the people of Constantinople. The Latin approach, however, was set by Tertullian on a definitely ethical course, which has persisted through all his successors with the notable exception of Ambrose of Milan. Although Ambrose, like all bishops, is also concerned with practical and ethical questions, the focus of his thought remains theological: it is centered on the revelation of, and participation in, the angelic life. As for Augustine, his world is now too far removed from the expectation of the proximate return of the Lord for him to be deeply interested in the angelic life. The problem is how to live in this world and determine the tasks that need to be done by Christians. Most will enter marriage, trying, if they are spiritually sensitive, to avoid the pitfalls of the human libido; others, aiming at a higher reward in heaven, will give up thoughts of marriage and consecrate themselves to the service of the Church in the priesthood and to the contemplation of God in male and female monasteries.

This then would seem to be the state of the question toward the middle of the fifth century. The older view that feminine freedom is achieved through a spiritual ascent to the angelic life in preparation for the imminent parousia is being abandoned. There are no signs any longer that the world is coming to an end. The time of the Ecclesia has been prolonged beyond all expectation. The Church now defines her function, as in Augustine’s De civitate Dei, in relation to this world.

Notes

1.Epistola CXXVII, no. 5 (P.L., 22, 1088).

2. Roman girls were commonly called by the feminine form of their father’s name (Flavius, Flavia); often they were simply designated by numbers (Quinta, Sexta).

3. A. C. Johnson, P. L. Coleman-Norton, F. C. Bourne, Ancient Roman Statutes (University of Texas, 1961), p. 10. On Roman women, see Gonzague Truc, Histoire illustrée de la femme , 2 vols. (Paris, 1940-1941), I, 117-151; Theodor Birt, Frauen der Antike (Leipzig, 1932); Johannes Leipoldt, Die Frau in der antiken Welt und im Urchristentum, 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1955), pp. 16-24; Gulielmo Ferrero, Le Donne dei Cesari (Milan, 1925); Jerome Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1940); J. Assa, Les Grandes Dames Romaines (Paris, 1958); James Donaldson, Woman: Her Position and Influence in Ancient Greece and Rome, and among the Early Christians (London, 1907), pp. 77-147.

4. Johnson, Coleman-Norton, Bourne, p. 3.

5. Ibid., p. 10.

6. “On the Vestal Virgins he [Numa Pompilius] conferred high honors, among which was the right of making a will while their father lived, and of doing all other juristic acts without a guardian” (ibid., p. 4).

7. On the vestals see R. Schilling, “Vestales et vierges chrétiennes dans la Rome antique,” Revue des Sciences Religieuses, XXXV (1961), 113-129. Gonzague Truc mentions some of the mishaps in vestal history: in 114 B.C., three of the vestals were accused of fornication and buried alive; Emperor Caracalla, who was half insane, raped one of them, Claudia Laeta, and had her buried alive for it; Emperor Heliogabalus married and divorced three vestals successively, then remarried the first. On the whole, however, the vestals seem to have led a dignified life and to have been respected.

8. Ambrose, Epistola XVIII, nos. 11-12 (P.L., 16, 975).

9. Cyprian, On the Dress of Virgins, chap. 3 (P.L., 4, 455); see Fathers of the Church, XXXVI (New York, 1958), 31-51. Cyprian’s treatise is largely dependent on Tertullian.

10. Ibid., chap. 5 (457).

11. Ibid., chap. 14 (466); chap. 18 (470-471); chap. 19 (471-472).

12. Ibid., chap. 5 (456).

13. Epistola LXII, no. 4 (P.L., 4, 380).

14. Ibid., no. 5(382).

15. Epistola LX, no. 2 (P.L., 4, 371).

16. Ibid.

17. Ambrose, De paradiso, chap. 10, no. 47 (P.L., 14, 314).

18. Ibid., no. 48(315).

19. Ambrosiaster, On the Epistle to the Romans, 5, 12 (C.S.E.L., vol. 81, part 1 [Vienna, 1966], p. 163). Although the authorship of the commentaries ascribed to “Ambrosiaster” is debated, Ambrosian authorship does not seem to me to be ruled out.

20. De institutione virginis, chap. 3, no. 22 (P.L., 16, 325). The De lapsu virginis consecratae (P.L., 16, 367-384), formerly ascribed to Ambrose, is now attributed to Nicetas of Remesiana.

21. De institutione virginis, chap. 3, no. 24 (325).

22. Ibid., chap. 5, nos. 32-36 (P.L., 16, 327-329).

23. De viduis, chap. 8, nos. 49-50 (P.L., 16, 362-363).

24. De paradiso, chap. 12, no. 56 (P.L., 14, 320).

25. Ibid.; also chap. 10, no. 47 (314-315).

26. In Lucam, II, 28 (S.Chr., 45, p. 83).

27. De institutione virginis, chap. 4, no. 25 (P.L., 16, 325-326).

28. Ibid., no. 26(326).

29. Ibid., no. 27 (326); also De paradiso, chap. 14, nos. 71-72 (P.L., 14, 327-328).

30. De institutione virginis, chap. 4, no. 29 (P.L., 16, 326).

31. De paradiso, chap. 15, no. 73 (P.L., 14, 329).

32. De Cäin et Abel, I, chap. 10, no. 47 (P.L., 14, 358).

33. De institutione virginis, chap. 17, no. III (P.L., 16, 347).

34. Exhortatio virginitatis, chap. 9, no. 58 (P.L., 16, 369).

35. Ibid., chap. 10, no. 61 (370).

36. De virginitate, chaps. 8-16 (P.L., 16,191-307).

37. In hexaëmeron, VI, chap. 8, no. 45 (P.L., 14, 275).

38. The soul is described in De virginitate, chaps. 17-18 (P.L., 16, 307-311)In hexaëmeron, VI, chap. 8 (P.L., 14, 274-280).

39. De institutione virginis, chap. 3, no. 20 (P.L., 16, 324).

40. De virginibus libri tres, bk. II, chap. 4, no. 30 (P.L., 16, 226).

41. De institutione virginis, chap. 5, no. 32 (P.L., 16, 327).

42. Ibid., no. 33 (328).

43. Exhortatio virginitatis, chap. 4, no. 19 (P.L., 16, 357).

44. De viduis, chap. 13, nos. 79-81 (P.L., 16, 272-273); chap. 15, nos. 86-90 (274-276).

45. Exhortatio virginitatis, chap. 4, nos. 20-27 (P.L., 16, 357-359).

46. In hexaëmeron, VI, chap. 9, nos. 54-74 (P.L., 14 , 280-288).

47. Ibid., no. 56(281).

48. De Caïn et Abel, I, chap. 10, no. 46 (P.L., 34, 357-358).

49. Epistola LXIX, no. 2 (P.L., 16, 1285-1286).

50. Ibid., no. 4(1286).

51. Ibid., no. 6(1286).

52. Ibid., no. 7(1287).

53. De virginitate, chap. 6, no. 34 (P.L., 16, 288).

54. De viduis, chap. 4, no. 23 (P.L., 16, 254-255).

55. Ibid., chap. 13, no. 79 (272).

56. De virginitate, chap. 6, no. 33 (P.L., 16, 288).

57. De viduis, chap. 15, no. 89 (P.L., 16, 276).

58. Epistola LXIII, no. 79 (P.L. 16, 1270).

59. De viduis, chap. 13, no. 79 (P.L., 16, 272).

60. De institutione virginis, chap. 4, no. 30 (P.L., 16, 327).

61. Jerome, Adversus Helvidium (P.L., 23, 183-226).

62. P.L., 16, 1169-1171.

63. Ambrose, Epistola XLII (P.L., 1172-1177).

64. Jerome, Adversus Jovinianum (P.L., 23, 211-338).

65. Ibid., I, no. 3 (224).

66. Ibid., I, no. 5 (228).

67. Retractationes, I, chap. 22 (Oeuvres de saint Augustin, 12 [Paris, 1950],488).

68. Jerome, Contra Vigilantium (P.L., 23, 339-352).

69. Epistola XXII, no. 26 (P.L., 22, 411).

70. Ibid., no. 14 (402-403).

71. Ibid., no. 11 (401).

72. Ibid., no. 18(405).

73. Ibid., no. 19 (406). See Adversus Jovinianum, I, no. 29 (P.L., 23, 262-263), where Jerome admits he does not know God’s designs over Paradise. On this question see Michael Müller, Die Lehre des hl. Augustinus von derPara-diesehe, und ihre Auswirkung in der Sexualethik des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts bis Thomas von Aquin (Regensburg, 1954).

74. Epistola XXII, no. 19 (P.L., 22, 406).

75. Adversus Jovinianum, I, no. 13 (P.L., 23, 243).

76. Ibid., no. 29 (263).

77. Ibid., no. 26 (259).

78. Ibid., nos. 47-49 (288-296).

79. Ibid., no. 49 (293).

80. Retractationes, bk. II, chaps. 22-23 (Oeuvres, 12, 488-492). See Kari Elisabeth Børresen, Subordination et Equivalence. Nature et rêle de la femme d’après Augustin et Thomas d’Aquin (Oslo-Paris, 1968).

81. De bono viduitatis. III, chap. 4, no. 6 (Oeuvres, 3, 242).

82. De sancta virginitate, XVIII (Oeuvres, 3, 140).

83. Ibid., XXII (pp. 148-150).

84. Ibid., XXVII, no. 27 (p. 160).

85. De Genesi ad litteram, VI, chap. 5 (P.L., 34, 342).

86. De sermons Domini in monte, I, chap. 15 (P.L., 34, 1250).

87. De Genesi ad litteram, IX,chap. 5 (P.L., 34, 396).

88. De civitate Dei, XIV, chaps. 21-24 (Oeuvres, 35, 438-545).

89. Ibid., chap. 26 (pp. 458-460).

90. De Genesi contra Manichaeos, II, chap. 13, no. 19 (P.L., 34, 206).

91. De bono conjugali (Oeuvres, 2).

92. De Genesi ad litteram, IX, chap. 5 (P.L., 34, 396).

93. De bono conjugali, XVI (Oeuvres, 2, 65).

94. De bono viduitatis, VII (Oeuvres, 3, 253).

95. Ibid., XII (p. 265).

96. De bono conjugali, XXIV (Oeuvres, 2, 93); see De Genesi ad litteram, IX, chap. 7, no. 12 (P.L., 34, 397).

97. De bono conjugali, XVIII (p. 70).

98. De civitate Dei, XIV, chap. 17 (Oeuvres, 35, 428).

99. Ibid., chap. 18 (pp. 430-432).

100. Ibid., chap. 16 (pp. 424-426).

101. De continentia, chap. 12 (Oeuvres, 3, 89-91).

102. Ibid., chap. 9 (pp. 75-77).

103. De Genesi contra Manichaeos, I, chap. 19, no. 30 (P.L., 34, 187).

104. De Genesi ad litteram, IX, chap. 3 (P.L., 34, 395); Retractationes, I, chap. 15, no. 2 (Oeuvres, 12, 329).

105. De opere monachorum, XXXII (Oeuvres, 3, 427).

106. De Genesi ad litteram, IX, chap. 37, no. 50 (P.L., 34, 450).

107. Confessions, IX, chap. 9, no. 19 (Oeuvres, 14, 108).

108. De bono conjugali, IX (Oeuvres, 2, 65).

109. De bono viduitatis, VIII, no. 2 (Oeuvres, 3, 254); De Genesi ad litteram, IX, chap. 7, no. 12 (P.L., 34, 397).

110. De Genesi ad litteram, XI, chap. 35 (p. 449).

111. De sancta virginitate, VI (Oeuvres, 3, 123).

112. Ibid., V (pp. 117-119).

113. Hefele-Leclercq, vol. I/1, p. 236 (canon 27); pp. 238-239 (canon 33).

114. Ibid., vol. II/l, pp. 71-75.

115. Ibid., p. 77 (canon 2 of the Council of 390); p. 401 (canon 3 of the Council of 401).

116. C.O.D., pp. 166 and 170.

117. C.O.D., p. 371; D.-S., no. 1889. For further illustration of the theme of the last three chapters, see A.-M. de la Bonnardière, Chrétiennes des premiers siècles (Paris, 1957); France Quéré-Jaulmes, La Femme. Les grands textes des Pères de l’Eglise (Paris, 1968); Georgia Harkness, Women in Church and Society (New York, 1972).

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