How and why did virginity come to play such a crucial part in the Christian Church in the formative and defining period of Late Antiquity? Sissel Undheim analyzes the negotiations over what constituted virginity and assesses its socio-religious value in fourth-century Rome by looking at those at the very margins of virginity and non-virginity. The Church Fathers’ efforts to demarcate an exclusively Christian virginity, in contrast to the 'false virgins' of their pagan adversaries, displays a tension that, it is argued, played a larger role in the construction of a specifically Christian sacred virginity than previous studies have acknowledged.
Late fourth-century Christian theologians’ persistent appraisals of sacred virgins paved the way for a wide variety of virgins that often challenged the stereotype of the unmarried female virgin. The sources abound with seemingly paradoxical virgins, such as widow virgins, married virgins, virgin mothers, infant virgins, old virgins, heretical virgins, pagan virgins, male virgins, false virgins and fallen virgins. Through examining these kinds of 'borderline virgins' as they appear in a range of textual sources from varied genres, Undheim demonstrates how physical, cultural and cognitive boundaries of virginity were contested, drawn and redrawn in the fourth and early fifth centuries in the Latin West.
Author(s): Sissel Undheim
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 224
Preface
Abbreviations
1. Introduction. 'Sancta virginitate': limits and border zones
Defining virginity
The Roman virgo
Virgo, virginitas and variations of chastity
Sacred virgins
Comparative virginiology: the echo of the Church Fathers
Fixity, flexity, and fluidity
Borderline virginities
2. Roman virginities. Between rhetorics, ideals, and 'reality'
Virginity at the cultural turn
The Social Value of Virginity
Felices nuptae: virgin and bride
The social status of virgins
The social status of Vestal virgins
Christian virgins and the Roman aristocracy
Slave virgins?
Libertae
Redefining noble virginity?
The virgin effect
Roman virgins and religious rituals
Virginal protection 1
Virginal protection 2
Sacrificial imagery
Chosen by the gods?
A family affair? The problem of free will
Age of virgins
The age of virgins at consecration
Those who belong to the kingdom of heaven
Epigraphic evidence and the age of virgins
The age of Vestals at captio: virgins and children
A due date for virginity?
Agency, age and the consecration of virgins
Virginal insignia
The official dress of the Vestal virgins
'The garments of Christ'
De habitu virginum – or 'how to recognize a virgin' 1
Virginal appearance
The young and noble virgins of Rome
3. Ungendering virginity? Virginal paradoxes and paradoxical virginities
Becoming male? Gender-bending 'female' virgins
Male virgins and genderless virginity
Male virgins in non-Christian sources?
Like angels on earth
Eunuchs and male virginity
Virginity, humility and male authority
Virginity and clerical celibacy
Virgin Fathers of the Church?
Male virgins in funerary inscriptions
Just like a virgin?
4. De lapsu virginum consecratarum. Crime and punishment of fallen virgins
The pontifex and the pope
Crime and punishment
The name and nature of the crime: adultery and pollution
Crimen incesti
A context for the case of Primigenia?
Primigenia’s crime
Susanna’s fall
The spiritual sword and the living dead: punishment of unchaste Christian virgins
Whether willing or raped
Consequences of the crime
Negotiating death: death as metaphor and death as reality
Cirginitatem approbare
Fake virgins and feigned virginity
Locating virginity
Tangible evidence
Virginity tests – or 'how to recognize a virgin' 2
Acting the part: performativity and display
Losing what cannot ever be regained
A bodiless virginity? On flexity, fixity, and the identification of true virgins
Negotiating the value of virginity in Late Antiquity: borderline virgins and sacred virginity
Bibliography
Primary sources: translations and editions
Secondary sources
