An Aid to Memory/ Summary of Chapters of the book 'Soul, Body and Gender in Late Antiquity" *Routledge 2024

Soul, Body and Gender in Late Antiquity: Essays on Embodiment and Disembodiment . Edited by Stanimir Panayotov, Andra Juganaru, Anastasia Theologou and Istvan Perczel. Routledge London and New York 2024 An Aid to Memory or Summary of Chapters for purpose of Book Launch in hybrid mode in CEU Vienna on12th February 2024 Uma Chakravarti’s essay is about the exclusion of women from the monastery. The reasons given are their characteristic vulnerability from a male point of view, that is, menstruation and pregnancy. The petitions, mediators and problem solving is described in some detail. The Buddha has rules about order and livelihood in the Sangha. As her earlier work showed, women have to ask for entry, and their persistence, with the help of a compassionate mediator who translates on their behalf, allows them partial participation. Emese Mogyordi discusses Parmenides's sole poem. The seeker must find Wisdom. Here women are identified with light and wisdom, men with darkness and weight. There is difference and hierarchy in egalitarianism. Parmenides, by valorizing women, gives them an active role in discernment. Light is hot and women represent that, so wisdom goes to them. It is the Goddess with soft speech who initiates the youth. Anastasia Theologou looks at Plotinus and the triad of Body / Soul/Intelligence. Seeing is a central term for Plotinus as it actualized the relation between the exterior and interior worlds. Sense perceptions are based on impressions which are in turn intelligible. The world soul and the individual soul become connected. Sight and the self become connected, the mutuality of conversation and translations, allows for the understanding of similitude and difference. For Socrates the eye which sees carries forward the act of seeing with its achievement or completion. The one and many are encapsulated in the act of seeing. It is in dialogue with otherness that sameness evolves. Sight and colors fuse, and unity evolves into the action of the eye which sees (on ti ophis all). Theologou follows Perczel in arguing that reception (paradoxi) and touch ( epiboli) are the two aspects which allow the informed intellect to evolve from the inchoate impression. In Plotinus view, seeing allows us to integrate self and other. By the integration with the lower selves, the beauty of the cosmos is recognized and ascendancy to the One, the World Soul is realized. Stanimir Panayotov takes the argument forward, to ask if the soul is male or female? He analyses the work of Plotinus, who suggests that there is the body, which is activated by the soul, and through this activation the human is formed. There is, according to Plotinus, a hierarchy of male and female, where the creation principle depends on the seed generated by both male and female, but women are reincarnated beings punished for injustice and cowardice in previous lives. However, the World Soul is gender neutral, taking active identity in one/other/ third form in a specific body. Panayatov goes on to say that for Plotinus, the One is gender neutral but capable of generating the Dyad. The Dyad has male and female elements, the male being Intelligence the Female being the Soul. Though women are reincarnated as women because of lapses in their previous incarnation, they are not less than men. The questions of sex and biology together constitute their identity as women, but philosophy allows them to transcend, and therefore they are allowed entry into philosophical circles (as in Raphael's painting, of the circle of Philosophers at work in the Forum). This entry into abstraction allows them entry and absorption into the neutral One. Chiara Militello discusses the two Aphroditai. The first engages with the intellect, is pure abstraction and is married to Hephaestus, son of Zeus. She is born from the torn testicle of Uranus, the great connector of the world and things. Not being born of a woman, she has the unlimited power of her father, is pure and associated with the intellect. The other Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. She is associated with materiality and sensuality. She is identified with Eros who is born with her/of her and acts with her at the corporeal level. The two Aphroditai, in Plotinus' interpretation, are dynamic principles contrasted with the higher principles of male intellect. The lower Aphrodyte is married to her lover Ares, by the act of the higher Aphrodyte's husband Hephaestus throwing a golden net over the adulterers Aphrodyte and Ares. He imprison them but also consequently, frees them. The higher Aphrodyte is born of Cronos castrating Uranus and so she arises from the foam of the sea which mystics see as abstraction and beauty. But the higher Aphrodite cannot engage with the corporal, so the lower Aphrodyte is often linked with prostitution, and carnal love is born. The male principle of intellect as opposed to intangible soul and corporal body remains hierarchically superior for Plotinus. Sex and war divide as do activities of the lower Aphrodite and Ares. Feminists seek to translate the patriarchal codes given in myth that appear to exist with the sole intention of cowing women. Plotinus suggests that men and women cannot do without one another, and women, though inferior, are associated with happiness and beauty. In fn 71 Chiara writes that sea foam is a generative power, and the generative power of a male God. The Sea stands for life according to her, as the waters have no limits and engage with the earth in its deepest parts. The aspect of life,desire and procreation, are given to the lower aspect. The return to the One and the superiority of the male principle is therefore reasserted. Natalie Schuler examines a novel Aethiopica by Heliodorus from the 4th century B.C. The novel is about the love between CharIkleia and Theagenes. The two fall in love on first sight, it is the meeting of souls who recognize one another. Faced with terrible calamities, (including human sacrifice) their surviving of these against all odds, becomes the cornerstone of the story. Their bodies are the site of attention for the novelist, they are beautiful, pure and chaste. For this reason the golden grid on which they are individually placed doesn't burn them. They become more burnished and beautiful as they stand the test of fire. Because their beauty instead burns the audience, their holiness saves them, and according to the novel they are the reason that human sacrifice is given up. Schuler looks at the fusion of body and soul and the theory of recognition across time as the leitmotif of the story. The ‘self’ appears in this pleasing fusion in the centre of the narrative providing hope to the reader that true love will prevail. Gyorgy Gereby, in a complex analysis of apocrypha shows the extent of polyphony and contradiction in narrative analyses. It therefore expands Schuler's understanding of fiction as prose, legend as history and the sacred and cultural contexts of these. The Protevangelium Jacobi is a second century text which confronts a circulating Jewish pamphlet popularly in circulation at that time, that Mary was a working class woman seduced by a Roman soldier, which resulted in the birth of Jesus. The Protovangelium therefore presents Mary as the daughter of wealthy parents who gift her to the synagogue. Mary herself is born of elderly parents (similar to Zachariah and Elisaeth) and her birth is announced by angels. The sacralisation of Mary continues with the appearance of Joseph as protector to the divinely chosen Mary. Their virtue is endorsed by birth of Jesus in a cave, and the preordained coming of the three kings. Gereby goes on to analyse the ethos of the superiority of men over women, in gnostic apocrypha, where women are seen to be the torchbearers of desire, risking the penance of men by marriage and children. The culmination of this theme is not just hierarchy but that women can enter heaven only by becoming men, by Jesus injunction to be as eunuchs. Istvan Pasztori Kupan analyses the phraseology of Amphilochius who lived around the time of the Nicean/ Constantinople debates of 381, perhaps in 340 c.e. The two bodies of Christ being at the centre, the contribution that Amphilochius makes is that the living body of the Christ is made available to the ‘doubting’ Apostle Thomas as the same but yet not the same: the resurrected body has the marks of the crucifixion but has not ascended. Therefore participation in the body of Christ allows us the same Anchorage in heaven. The faithful will have the opportunity to rise not as flesh corporeal but as the Spirit. This essay concludes with the idea that what is of the body is material but that which is of the imagination never dies. Orsolya Varsanya analyses the translation and use of a Greek work authored by a student of Aristotle’s, namely, Theophrastos. She also engage as well as Aristotle's work De Plantis which was preserved as a commentary. The Christian Arabs used these extracts in order to understand the genesis of Christ in asexual terms. Just as fruit and seeds were of the tree and of the plant but not the tree or plant, so also the son was of the father. There is a linguistic use of "emerging from" which does not need to engage with sexuality. Varsanya’s argument is that the use of texts in circulation in the 9th century allowed Christian Arabs like Ammar al -Basri’s's the "Book of the Proof" to draw from Botanical sources to provide metaphors for virgin birth. Are there male plants, female plants and how does fruit generate? If Eve was born from the shoulder of Adam how was Able born? So the acceptance of myths as sacrd histories which may not be questioned, allows for parallel explanations to provide answers, when they are sought in the circle of the faithful. Peter D Steiger and Makiko Sato analyse the texts of Didymus the Blind and St Augustine of Hippo, to show that the serpent is an abstraction, it is the devil that seduces Eve. Didymus believes that Genesis is an allegory and Paradise like Heaven is an allegorical phase. However, both Didymus the Blind and St Augustine generate the animus as soul, woman and desire in one breath where good and evil coincide, and choice is what leans action to one or the other. Each human therefore carries the essence of these values and therefore Adam, Eve and the Serpent are to be found in one Person. Thought is innocent but can lead to evil actions. The serpent created by God, according to this theory, is not inherently evil, nor are humans. Concupiscence activates evil, and as for monastics they liberate themselves from marriage and family, by using the tropes for the integration of animus. Isabelle Koch engages with a comparison of Augustine and Julian's view on sexuality and marriage, using 4th century Manichaenism as the theological leitmotif connecting them. Augustine was influenced by Manichaenism which promoted celibacy. Julian argued for the naturalness of carnal love and God's blessing in Genesis to ‘go forth and multiply’. Augustine, in his later theology, created a double stranded theology of marriage. Firstly, sexuality for procreation as good; secondly, sexuality to curb or absorb the excess sexuality of the other, in marriage, is acceptable. The former blesses the Union with children who will become new converts to Christianity through baptism. The second sets up a wall against adultery through mutual consent, so that even the choice to continence is by togetherness and consnt, if not acceptance. Julian sees sexuality and fecundity as natural processes sanctioned by the Church. As Christ is husband to the Church, the superiority of men over women is once more asserted. Gabor Kendeffy continues the interrogation of Augustine by asking the readers the simple question, “Did Adam and Eve have sexual intercourse before the Fall?” This problem is then matrixed within the oppositional problem of good and evil. The eating of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil transforms the natural state of humans in Paradise who become disobedient and self conscious of their nakedness. Thrust out of Paradise they give birth to Cain, who murders his brother Able. So what was the condition of Adam and Eve before they became humans doomed to death and suffering? Kendeffy dwells on the control of the sexual act brought about by the continuous reflection of an automatic biology, which generates sexuality and reproduction by instinct. After the Fall there is desire and will. It is this consciousness of expulsion which makes sexuality hidden, and lost involuntarally. Celibacy demands the controlling of lust by excluding it, and/or by legitimizing procreation by marriage. These questions continue to inform the church as rules of abstinence and interdiction against homosexuality and abortion. Ana-Maria Raducan looks at fragments on the lives of female martyrs who were thrown to wild animals in cages by Roman emperors. This terrible event of murder for public amusement, is read in terms of how the martyrs faced death. In each case rather than being shamed by their enforced nakedness they met the gaze of their viewers boldly. Their love for Christ and the purity of their soul shamed their captors, but from death there was no escape. Both maternity and sexuality are transcended by female martyrs looking towards heaven for sanctuary. looking towards heaven for sanctuary. Mariana Bodnaruk discusses the issue of St Pelagia. She was a successful actress and prostitute who caught the eye of a Bishop in Antioch in the 4th century. The attraction was mutual, for she begged to be converted and left all her wealth to the Church. According to legend, she found her woman's status to be limiting, and her penance too constrained by her femininity. Desiring freedom, she wore monk's cassocks, went to Palestine, dressed as a Bishop. She found lodging in penitents’ caves, went through extreme asceticism, dying in her own filth. She who was wealthy, had slaves, property and jewels and treasures, spent three years in a cave, covered in stench. The priests who discovered her remains, saw she was a woman. They tried to hush it up, but her fame as a mystic had spread. Bodnaruk looks at all the literature around Pelagia’s transvestism, intersexuality, eunuch status and then addresses the problem of female persona who utilizes male disguise, only to extend her own feminity. To be like a man, to repudiate femaleness, to rise... . All these were given in the cultural codes of that time. The paradox is in the saint's view, that in relation to God all souls are feminine. Jonathan Cahana-Blum analyses the tragic case of a slave boy named Dostitheus, who enters a hospice/ monastery. He is one of those pretty slave boys who is used to luxury and intimate coddling but after a well known Roman military general finishes using him, he sends the adolescent youth to the monastery. Here, the boy enters a life of piety, theological curiosity and immense hunger. It is this hunger that becomes the subtext of the paper. Dositheus knows that his hunger and lassitude are intimately connected to his past life: he sleeps a lot and given his adolescence craves food. He contracts tuberculosis, from his close contact with the sick. When dying, he tells his mentor that he has heard soft boiled eggs can cure him, yet he prays that the monk not give it to him, for he wishes to die. So what was the reason for the young slave boy to do this? Cahana-Blum suggests that it was to exercise over his overseer/monk his dominant will over him. Set as a riddle, where the monk must obey the changeling Dostitheus, the boy dies knowing he has power over his gatekeeper. Jordan Poole's essay discussed the silence over the question of menopause in the Greek medical literature. This was probably because there was no known cure for the ailments that accompanied life cycle change and women resorted to popular and local remedies. Galen and others were agreed that women sometimes did menstruate till 60 years of age but the average was 45 to 50 years, and corpulent women menopauses at 35. So Poole looks at the theory of suitable gems, talisman inscriptions, including amulets as personal property. These were kept for longer than needed for its specific purpose and the possibility of it being passed on to others. The chant to magic inscribed in the fragment has the specific case attributed to the God Tantulus who could be persuaded to stop "flooding" the subject, or its reverse as in the case of desired abortion. Ares, God of War, who healed wounds was also pertinent in these odes to pray for cessation or increase of bleeding, which ever the case. Andra Juganaru tells the story of Mary the Egyptian and Zosimos the monk in the 5th century. Zosimow encounters her as he walks in the desert, during Lent. He was looking for a male ascetic who will guide him in superior mysteries. He encounters a naked woman who tells him her story. She was a harlot who experienced intense pleasure in sexuality, food and alcohol and obscene songs. Then when a higher force repudiated her entry into a church she wanted to visit, she repents and spends 17 years in Jordan, fasting and wandering. She receives her food as other Old Testament prophets did (multiplication of loaves, herbs and roots). She baptized herself in the river Jordan and then shows herself to Zosimas, who is her witness and carries her story forward to listeners and readers across the centuries. It is a story of self denial and female ascetic power. She is the vacuum in which the narrative creates immense supernatural power and ability in the body of a woman, setting up the allegory with Christ in the desert. Susanna Elm's essay looks at 4th century c.e when war breaks out as civil war between segments of the Roman empire . The mercenary hordes of soldiers are implicated in the actions of local warlords. The latter have to confront self claimed warriors who are rivals to Rome's centre's of patriotic authority. The defeated become slaves and are derided for their lack of virtue or courage. The feminification of these who lose the battle, is the subject of Pacatus’ rhetoric analysed by Elm. In the meeting of Theodosius and Magnum Maximus, Theodosius carries forward the virtues of austerity, courage and manliness while Maximus is beheaded as a ‘negligent slave’ wearing ornaments and jewels. Since the mercenaries have fluid identities they can be forgiven if they join the victorious side and their identities as Roman's returned to them. If not, they remain pleasure loving Egyptian slaves in the eyes of "Vir" Romans. David Rollo looks at a text called " De Nuptio". It tells of the marriage of Philology (associated with mortal desire for divine intercourse) and Mercury who is the keeper of knowledge and wisdom. The marriage is attended by the Liberal Arts to which Architecture and Music may be added. However, the subtext of this 5th century text from Carthage are those elements of mockery, laughter, drunkenness, interrogation that accompany learning and its response from a sceptical audience. The wedding guests intervene but Philology and Mercury do marry, and are led to secret themselves in the wedding chamber. The marriage is the very stuff of a dialogic inferiority for, “If the girl is smarter, what are the conquerors?” When the text re reappears in the Arthurian age, there is a hierarchisation of the Liberal Arts so that Geomety,Arithmetic and their consequences for mapping the universe are prioritized. Enide, the female principle is left to enjoy the remaining Arts. Susan Visvanathan's essay on King Solomon’s "Song of Songs" and Adi Shankara's "Saundariya Lahiri" compares two literary works, which may be separated by centuries, but have common and shared themes. She tries to understand how love for the mother transcends the erotic, and moves to spatialisation and map making of the country as subjugated, owned, conquered or united. The very terms by which political ambitions are divinised are historically located for both poets. Whether within the terms of polygamy, as in the case of Solomon, and his consequent conversion to many religions; or celibacy and adoration of the Goddess in Adi Sankara’s work; the central concept remains the appropriation of the divine without possibility of equal status between devotee and God. The poets surrender to the beauty of the loved one in the form of the Goddess/ the Mother/Wife/Lover in the bliss of the Garden while remaining adoring and chaste. Susan Visvanathan (Former Professor of Sociology, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, JNU)