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Essays about ruination, resilience, reading, and religion generated
by a reflection on a fourth-century hagiography. In Jerome's Life
of Saint Hilarion, a fourth-century saint briefly encounters the
ruins of an earthquake-toppled city and a haunted garden in Cyprus.
From these two fragmentary passages, Virginia Burrus delivers a
series of sweeping meditations on our experience of place and the
more-than-human worlds-the earth and its gods-that surround us.
Moving between the personal and geological, Earthquakes and Gardens
ruminates on destruction and resilience, ruination and resurgence,
grief and consolation in times of disaster and loss. Ultimately,
Burrus's close readings reimagine religion as a practice that
unsettles certainty and develops mutual flourishing.
This book examines the many ways Byzantines lived with their trees.
It takes seriously theological and hagiographic tree engagement as
expressions of that culture's deep involvement-and even
fascination-with the arboreal. These pages tap into the current
attention paid to plants in a wide range of scholarship, an
attention that involves the philosophy of plant life as well as
scientific discoveries of how communicative trees may be, and how
they defend themselves. Considering writings on and images of trees
from Late Antiquity and medieval Byzantium sympathetically, the
book argues for an arboreal imagination at the root of human
aspirations to know and draw close to the divine.
Virginia Burrus explores one of the strongest and most disturbing
aspects of the Christian tradition, its excessive preoccupation
with shame. While Christianity has frequently been implicated in
the conversion of ancient Mediterranean cultures from shame- to
guilt-based and, thus, in the emergence of the modern West's
emphasis on guilt, Burrus seeks to recuperate the importance of
shame for Christian culture. Focusing on late antiquity, she
explores a range of fascinating phenomena, from the flamboyant
performances of martyrs to the imagined abjection of Christ, from
the self-humiliating disciplines of ascetics to the intimate
disclosures of Augustine. Burrus argues that Christianity innovated
less by replacing shame with guilt than by embracing shame. Indeed,
the ancient Christians sacrificed honor but laid claim to their own
shame with great energy, at once intensifying and transforming it.
Public spectacles of martyrdom became the most visible means
through which vulnerability to shame was converted into a defiant
witness of identity; this was also where the sacrificial death of
the self exemplified by Christ's crucifixion was most explicitly
appropriated by his followers. Shame showed a more private face as
well, as Burrus demonstrates. The ambivalent lure of fleshly
corruptibility was explored in the theological imaginary of
incarnational Christology. It was further embodied in the
transgressive disciplines of saints who plumbed the depths of
humiliation. Eventually, with the advent of literary and monastic
confessional practices, the shame of sin's inexhaustibility made
itself heard in the revelations of testimonial discourse. In
conversation with an eclectic constellation of theorists, Burrus
interweaves her historical argument with theological,
psychological, and ethical reflections. She proposes, finally, that
early Christian texts may have much to teach us about the secrets
of shame that lie at the heart of our capacity for humility,
courage, and transformative love.
This book examines the many ways Byzantines lived with their trees.
It takes seriously theological and hagiographic tree engagement as
expressions of that culture's deep involvement-and even
fascination-with the arboreal. These pages tap into the current
attention paid to plants in a wide range of scholarship, an
attention that involves the philosophy of plant life as well as
scientific discoveries of how communicative trees may be, and how
they defend themselves. Considering writings on and images of trees
from Late Antiquity and medieval Byzantium sympathetically, the
book argues for an arboreal imagination at the root of human
aspirations to know and draw close to the divine.
This book interprets fourth-century theological discourse as an
incident in the history of masculine gender, arguing that Nicene
trinitarian doctrine is a crucial site not only for theological
innovation but also for reimagining and reproducing manhood in the
late Roman period. When the Trinity became for the first time the
"sine qua non" of doctrinal orthodoxy, masculinity was conceived
anew, in terms that heightened the claims of patriarchal authority
while cutting manhood loose from its traditional fleshly and
familial moorings.
In exploring the significance of this late antique movement for the
subsequent history of ideals of manhood in the West, this study
directly engages, combines, and thereby disrupts the divergent
disciplinary perspectives of historical theology, late Roman
cultural history, and French feminist theory. The author brings
contemporary theorist Luce Irigaray into dialogue with the
Patristic corpus to coax out a fresh interpretation of ancient
texts and themes.
The book centers on performative readings of major works by three
prominent fourth-century Fathers--Athanasius of Alexandria, Gregory
of Nyssa, and Ambrose of Milan. Each of these ascetic bishops
played a crucial role in defending Nicene trinitarian doctrine as
the touchstone of orthodox belief; each also modeled a distinctive
style of fourth-century masculine self-fashioning. The concluding
chapter considers the sum of these three figures from an explicitly
feminist theological and theoretical perspective.
Silenced for 1,600 years, the "heretics" speak for themselves in
this account of the Priscillianist controversy that began in
fourth-century Spain. In a close examination of rediscovered texts,
Virginia Burrus provides an unusual opportunity to explore heresy
from the point of view of the followers of Priscillian and to
reevaluate the reliability of the historical record. Her analysis
takes into account the concepts of gender, authority, and public
and private space that informed established religion's response to
this early Christian movement. Priscillian, who began his career as
a lay teacher with particular influence among women, faced charges
of heresy along with accusations of sorcery and sexual immorality
following his ordination to the episcopacy. He was executed along
with several of his followers circa 386. His purportedly "gnostic"
doctrines produced controversy and division within the churches of
Spain, dissension that continued into the early decades of the
fifth century. Burrus's thorough and wide-ranging study enlarges
upon previous scholarship, particularly in bringing a feminist
perspective to bear on the gendered constructions of religious
orthodoxies, making a valuable contribution to the recent
commentary that explores new ways of looking at early Christian
controversies. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived
program, which commemorates University of California Press's
mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them
voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893,
Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship
accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title
was originally published in 1996.
This book interprets fourth-century theological discourse as an
incident in the history of masculine gender, arguing that Nicene
trinitarian doctrine is a crucial site not only for theological
innovation but also for reimagining and reproducing manhood in the
late Roman period. When the Trinity became for the first time the
"sine qua non" of doctrinal orthodoxy, masculinity was conceived
anew, in terms that heightened the claims of patriarchal authority
while cutting manhood loose from its traditional fleshly and
familial moorings.
In exploring the significance of this late antique movement for the
subsequent history of ideals of manhood in the West, this study
directly engages, combines, and thereby disrupts the divergent
disciplinary perspectives of historical theology, late Roman
cultural history, and French feminist theory. The author brings
contemporary theorist Luce Irigaray into dialogue with the
Patristic corpus to coax out a fresh interpretation of ancient
texts and themes.
The book centers on performative readings of major works by three
prominent fourth-century Fathers--Athanasius of Alexandria, Gregory
of Nyssa, and Ambrose of Milan. Each of these ascetic bishops
played a crucial role in defending Nicene trinitarian doctrine as
the touchstone of orthodox belief; each also modeled a distinctive
style of fourth-century masculine self-fashioning. The concluding
chapter considers the sum of these three figures from an explicitly
feminist theological and theoretical perspective.
Augustine's Confessions is a text that seduces. But how often do
its readers respond in kind? Here three scholars who share a
longstanding fascination with sexuality and Christian discourse
attempt to do just that. Where prior interpreters have been
inclined either to defend or to criticize Augustine's views,
Virginia Burrus, Mark Jordan, and Karmen MacKendrick set out both
to seduce and to be seduced by his text. Often ambivalent but
always passionately engaged, their readings of the Confessions
center on four sets of intertwined themes-secrecy and confession,
asceticism and eroticism, constraint and freedom, and time and
eternity. Rather than expose Augustine's sexual history, they
explore how the Confessions conjoins the erotic with the hidden,
the imaginary, and the fictional. Rather than bemoan the
repressiveness of his text, they uncover the complex relationship
between seductive flesh and persuasive words that pervades all of
its books. Rather than struggle to escape the control of the
author, they embrace the painful pleasure of willed submission that
lies at the erotic heart not only of the Confessions but also of
Augustine's broader understanding of sin and salvation. Rather than
mourn the fateful otherworldliness of his theological vision, they
plumb the bottomless depths of beauty that Augustine discovers
within creation, thereby extending desire precisely by refusing
satisfaction. In unfolding their readings, the authors draw upon
other works in Augustine's corpus while building on prior
Augustinian scholarship in their own overlapping fields of history,
theology, and philosophy. They also press well beyond the
conventional boundaries of scholarly disciplines, conversing with
such wide-ranging theorists of eroticism as Barthes, Baudrillard,
Klossowski, Foucault, and Harpham. In the end, they offer not only
a fresh interpretation of Augustine's famous work but also a
multivocal literary-philosophical meditation on the seductive
elusiveness of desire, bodies, language, and God.
Augustine's Confessions is a text that seduces. But how often do
its readers respond in kind? Here three scholars who share a
longstanding fascination with sexuality and Christian discourse
attempt to do just that. Where prior interpreters have been
inclined either to defend or to criticize Augustine's views,
Virginia Burrus, Mark Jordan, and Karmen MacKendrick set out both
to seduce and to be seduced by his text. Often ambivalent but
always passionately engaged, their readings of the Confessions
center on four sets of intertwined themes-secrecy and confession,
asceticism and eroticism, constraint and freedom, and time and
eternity. Rather than expose Augustine's sexual history, they
explore how the Confessions conjoins the erotic with the hidden,
the imaginary, and the fictional. Rather than bemoan the
repressiveness of his text, they uncover the complex relationship
between seductive flesh and persuasive words that pervades all of
its books. Rather than struggle to escape the control of the
author, they embrace the painful pleasure of willed submission that
lies at the erotic heart not only of the Confessions but also of
Augustine's broader understanding of sin and salvation. Rather than
mourn the fateful otherworldliness of his theological vision, they
plumb the bottomless depths of beauty that Augustine discovers
within creation, thereby extending desire precisely by refusing
satisfaction. In unfolding their readings, the authors draw upon
other works in Augustine's corpus while building on prior
Augustinian scholarship in their own overlapping fields of history,
theology, and philosophy. They also press well beyond the
conventional boundaries of scholarly disciplines, conversing with
such wide-ranging theorists of eroticism as Barthes, Baudrillard,
Klossowski, Foucault, and Harpham. In the end, they offer not only
a fresh interpretation of Augustine's famous work but also a
multivocal literary-philosophical meditation on the seductive
elusiveness of desire, bodies, language, and God.
"Brilliant and important. . . . From page one she challenges
approaches to hagiography that dismiss ascetic desire as the
sublimation of sexuality and a pathological hatred of the
body."--"Theological Studies" "Countering the assumption that
ascetics repress, sublimate, or even eradicate sexual desire, this
fine book detects a vibrant eroticism in tales of fourth- and
fifth-century saints. Rather than read ancient saints' lives as
anti-erotic, or, worse, "an"-erotic, Burrus reveals a flourishing
"ars erotica." . . . A deft reading of the interplay between gender
and erotics in ancient saints' lives."--"Journal of Religion"
"Those familiar with Burrus's previous work will know that she is
expertly informed in feminist theory and theories of gender: here
she has expanded her purview to include a wide range of
contemporary philosophical writings on desire. . . . Burrus's
interweaving of ancient and modern voices is as meditative as it is
analytical, but the overall effect is to induce the reader into an
alternative view of what constitutes the allure of the saintly
life. . . . After "The Sex Lives of Saints" hagiography will never
be the same."--"Journal of Early Christian Studies" Has a
repressive morality been the primary contribution of Christianity
to the history of sexuality? The ascetic concerns that pervade
ancient Christian texts would seem to support such a common
assumption. Focusing on hagiographical literature, Virginia Burrus
pursues a fresh path of interpretation, arguing that the early
accounts of the lives of saints are not anti-erotic but rather
convey a sublimely transgressive "counter-eroticism" that resists
the marital, procreative ethic of sexuality found in other strands
of Christian tradition. Without reducing the erotics of ancient
hagiography to a single formula, "The Sex Lives of Saints" frames
the broad historical, theological, and theoretical issues at stake
in such a revisionist interpretation of ascetic eroticism, with
particular reference to the work of Michel Foucault and Georges
Bataille, David Halperin and Geoffrey Harpham, Leo Bersani and Jean
Baudrillard. Burrus subsequently proceeds through close,
performative readings of the earliest Lives of Saints, mostly
dating to the late fourth and early fifth centuries--Jerome's Lives
of Paul, Malchus, Hilarion, and Paula; Gregory of Nyssa's Life of
Macrina; Augustine's portrait of Monica; Sulpicius Severus's Life
of Martin; and the slightly later Lives of so-called harlot saints.
Queer, s/m, and postcolonial theories are among the contemporary
discourses that prove intriguingly resonant with an ancient art of
"saintly" loving that remains, in Burrus's reading, promisingly
mobile, diverse, and open-ended. "The Sex Lives of Saints" not only
offers new readings of both sex and sanctity but also provides
innovative insights for ongoing feminist discussions of gender,
moving beyond questions about women's social roles to consideration
of the gendered subjectivities constructed and deconstructed within
the erotic economies of ancient hagiographical literature. Virginia
Burrus is Professor of Early Church History at Drew University and
the author of "Saving Shame: Martyrs, Saints, and Other Abject
Subjects," also available from the University of Pennsylvania
Press.
What does theology have to say about the place of eroticism in the
salvific transformation of men and women, even of the cosmos
itself? How, in turn, does eros infuse theological practice and
transfigure doctrinal tropes? Avoiding the well-worn path of sexual
moralizing while also departing decisively from Anders Nygren’s
influential insistence that Christian agape must have nothing to do
with worldly eros, this book explores what is still largely
uncharted territory in the realm of theological erotics. The
ascetic, the mystical, the seductive, the ecstatic—these are the
places where the divine and the erotic may be seen to converge and
love and desire to commingle. Inviting and performing a mutual
seduction of disciplines, the volume brings philosophers,
historians, biblical scholars, and theologians into a spirited
conversation that traverses the limits of conventional orthodoxies,
whether doctrinal or disciplinary. It seeks new openings for the
emergence of desire, love, and pleasure, while challenging common
understandings of these terms. It engages risk at the point where
the hope for salvation paradoxically endangers the safety of
subjects—in particular, of theological subjects—by opening them
to those transgressions of eros in which boundaries, once exceeded,
become places of emerging possibility. The eighteen chapters,
arranged in thematic clusters, move fluidly among and between
premodern and postmodern textual traditions—from Plato to
Emerson, Augustine to Kristeva, Mechthild to Mattoso, the
Shulammite to Molly Bloom, the Zohar to the Da Vinci Code. In so
doing, they link the sublime reaches of theory with the gritty
realities of politics, the boundless transcendence of God with the
poignant transience of materiality.
Essays about ruination, resilience, reading, and religion generated
by a reflection on a fourth-century hagiography. Â In
Jerome’s Life of Saint Hilarion, a fourth-century saint briefly
encounters the ruins of an earthquake-toppled city and a haunted
garden in Cyprus. From these two fragmentary passages, Virginia
Burrus delivers a series of sweeping meditations on our experience
of place and the more-than-human worlds—the earth and its
gods—that surround us. Moving between the personal and
geological, Earthquakes and Gardens ruminates on destruction and
resilience, ruination and resurgence, grief and consolation in
times of disaster and loss. Ultimately, Burrus’s close readings
reimagine religion as a practice that unsettles certainty and
develops mutual flourishing.
In our age of ecological crisis, what insights-if any-can we expect
to find by looking to our past? Perhaps, suggests Virginia Burrus,
early Christianity might yield usable insights. Turning aside from
the familiar specter of Christianity's human-centered theology of
dominion, Burrus directs our attention to aspects of ancient
Christian thought and practice that remain strange and alien. Drawn
to excess and transgression, in search of transformation, early
Christians creatively reimagined the universe and the human,
cultivating relationships with a wide range of other beings-animal,
vegetable, and mineral; angelic and demonic; divine and earthly;
large and small. In Ancient Christian Ecopoetics, Burrus
facilitates a provocative encounter between early Christian
theology and contemporary ecological thought. In the first section,
she explores how the mysterious figure of khora, drawn from Plato's
Timaeus, haunts Christian and Jewish accounts of a creation
envisioned as varyingly monstrous, unstable, and unknowable. In the
second section, she explores how hagiographical literature queers
notions of nature and places the very category of the human into
question, in part by foregrounding the saint's animality, in part
by writing the saint into the landscape. The third section
considers material objects, as small as portable relics and icons,
as large as church and monastery complexes. Ancient Christians
considered all of these animate beings, simultaneously powerful and
vulnerable, protective and in need of protection, lovable and
loving. Viewed through the shifting lenses of an ancient
ecopoetics, Burrus demonstrates how humans both loomed large and
shrank to invisibility, absorbed in the rapture of a strange and
animate ecology.
Saving Shame Martyrs, Saints, and Other Abject Subjects Virginia
Burrus "An intellectually rich exploration of the theological
dimensions of shame in early Christian literature."--David Brakke,
Indiana University " Burrus's] findings . . . will give scholars
pause to rethink some of the fundamental assumptions that we often
bring to the study of this topic and period. Her work shows that
there is still plenty of intellectual room to roam in the landscape
of Greco-Roman and late antique Christian scholarship."--"Medieval
Review" Virginia Burrus explores one of the strongest and most
disturbing aspects of the Christian tradition, its excessive
preoccupation with shame. While Christianity has frequently been
implicated in the conversion of ancient Mediterranean cultures from
shame- to guilt-based, and thus in the emergence of the modern
West's emphasis on guilt, Burrus seeks to recuperate the importance
of shame for Christian culture. Focusing on late antiquity, she
explores a range of fascinating phenomena, from the flamboyant
performances of martyrs to the imagined abjection of Christ, from
the self-humiliating disciplines of ascetics to the intimate
disclosures of Augustine. Burrus argues that Christianity innovated
less by replacing shame with guilt than by embracing shame. Indeed,
the ancient Christians sacrificed honor but laid claim to their own
shame with great energy, at once intensifying and transforming it.
Public spectacles of martyrdom became the most visible means
through which vulnerability to shame was converted into a defiant
witness of identity; this was also where the sacrificial death of
the self exemplified by Christ's crucifixion was most explicitly
appropriated by his followers. Shame showed a more private face as
well, as Burrus demonstrates. The ambivalent lure of fleshly
corruptibility was explored in the theological imaginary of
incarnational Christology. It was further embodied in the
transgressive disciplines of saints who plumbed the depths of
humiliation. Eventually, with the advent of literary and monastic
confessional practices, the shame of sin's inexhaustibility made
itself heard in the revelations of testimonial discourse. In
conversation with an eclectic constellation of theorists, Burrus
interweaves her historical argument with theological,
psychological, and ethical reflections. She proposes, finally, that
early Christian texts may have much to teach us about the secrets
of shame that lie at the heart of our capacity for humility,
courage, and transformative love. Virginia Burrus is Professor of
Early Church History at Drew University and the author of "The Sex
Lives of Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography," also available
from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Divinations: Rereading
Late Ancient Religion 2007 208 pages 6 x 9 ISBN 978-0-8122-4044-3
Cloth $47.50s 31.00 ISBN 978-0-8122-0151-2 Ebook $47.50s 31.00
World Rights Cultural Studies, Religion
What does theology have to say about the place of eroticism in the
salvific transformation of men and women, even of the cosmos
itself? How, in turn, does eros infuse theological practice and
transfigure doctrinal tropes? Avoiding the well-worn path of sexual
moralizing while also departing decisively from Anders Nygren’s
influential insistence that Christian agape must have nothing to do
with worldly eros, this book explores what is still largely
uncharted territory in the realm of theological erotics. The
ascetic, the mystical, the seductive, the ecstatic—these are the
places where the divine and the erotic may be seen to converge and
love and desire to commingle. Inviting and performing a mutual
seduction of disciplines, the volume brings philosophers,
historians, biblical scholars, and theologians into a spirited
conversation that traverses the limits of conventional orthodoxies,
whether doctrinal or disciplinary. It seeks new openings for the
emergence of desire, love, and pleasure, while challenging common
understandings of these terms. It engages risk at the point where
the hope for salvation paradoxically endangers the safety of
subjects—in particular, of theological subjects—by opening them
to those transgressions of eros in which boundaries, once exceeded,
become places of emerging possibility. The eighteen chapters,
arranged in thematic clusters, move fluidly among and between
premodern and postmodern textual traditions—from Plato to
Emerson, Augustine to Kristeva, Mechthild to Mattoso, the
Shulammite to Molly Bloom, the Zohar to the Da Vinci Code. In so
doing, they link the sublime reaches of theory with the gritty
realities of politics, the boundless transcendence of God with the
poignant transience of materiality.
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