Asceticism and Autonomy?

Virginity and asceticism were part of Christian life from early on. Paul’s exhortation “let even those who have wives be as though they had none” (1 Cor 7:29) gave an important scriptural support for ascetic practices.

This freedom, however, was relative and should not be overestimated. First of all, we need to be wary not to uncritically credit rising Christianity for liberating women oppressed by Roman society and culture. Upper class women had a certain amount of freedom in the Roman Empire - but they had it even without Christianity and stories like that of Thecla.^[1078] Less priv­ileged women had much less freedom - regardless of the rise of Christiani­ty and stories like that of Thecla. Secondly, being able to step outside of the male control should not be seen as the only reason for choosing celiba­cy. Asceticism was also popular among men in late antiquity; in their case, the argument of “celibacy as autonomy” does not hold. Thirdly, asceticism was not always the result of an individual choice. On the contrary, it was usually the parents who made the choice of celibacy for their children, in much the same way as they were responsible for choosing a suitable spouse for them.^[1079] Choosing celibacy seldom incurred conflict between the children and their parents.

Rejecting marriage or choosing continence within marriage was not an option for every woman; most of the lower class women and all slave women would have had no say in the matter.^[1081] Thecla and practically all other protagonists in the Acts of Paul and Thecla belong to the top elite of their cities. Many of the decisions of such a high class woman would have been unattainable in the social reality of less privileged women. A female slave was under double submission, both to her husband (usually a fellow slave) and to her (male) master.^[1082] Her submission included being sexually available to both of them. Would a slave woman have had any realistic possibility of staying celibate and rejecting access to her body? Had she refused the approaches of the men who had a lawful right to her body, the outcome would probably not have been a noble martyr’s death but rather recurrent rape.

The unequal options of a female slave and a noble woman become evi­dent in the Acts of Andrew. The heroine of the story, Maximilla, is the wife of the proconsul of Patras. She converts to Andrew’s ascetic Christianity that denounces all sexual relationships as pollution. To preserve her purity from the advances of her husband, she uses her female slave Euclia as a surrogate body and sends her to sleep with him.^[1083] What would have hap­pened if the slave girl had heard Andrew and wanted to follow his teach­ing? How could she have guarded her bodily integrity? According to the teaching of the Acts of Paul and Thecla, the consequences would have been severe, for “there is no resurrection for you, if you do not remain chaste, and do not defile the flesh, but keep it pure” (ch. 12). If virginity and continence are preconditions for salvation, Maximilla clearly sacrifices her slave girl and denies her salvation. Yet the author of the Acts of An­drew takes no notice of this; for him, Euclia is just an insignificant pagan slave, a useful instrument for Maximilla in her pursuit of a virtuous and pure life. Admittedly, in the story, Euclia takes delight in her special posi­tion and tries to benefit from it - with disastrous consequences.

It is intriguing to wonder how a female slave would have reacted to this story or the story of Thecla. In the latter case, Thecla runs into situations that were probably familiar to slaves, such as public humiliation or the blatant advances on a street by the rich and prominent Alexander. Thecla is saved from all her trials and troubles through divine interventions. Would this be empowering or depressing to the ears of a slave woman? Susan Calef states that Thecla does not really challenge the predominant social order - she retreats from it to another world, attainable only by an elite few.^[1084] Her example does not help those women who cannot make the same choice as she did and remain untouched. On the other hand, even though Thecla’s example depicts an unobtainable ideal for most women, such ide­als can be potentially empowering since “figures of fantasy... can also inspire,” to use Amy-Jill Levine’s phrasing.^[1085]

All in all, choosing celibacy did not eliminate other aspects of the patri­archal structures. As several scholars have pointed out, celibate women were considered autonomous persons as little as any women in a culture where to be a person was to be a man.^[1086] Virgins were similarly defined through and perceived in association with a man as were married women. A woman did not exist without a connection to a man - if not to a husband of flesh and blood then to the heavenly Christ.^[1087] In practical terms, they were closely connected to (male) bishops who acted as their spiritual guides but also bore responsibility for their material and physical wel- fare.^[1088] It is noteworthy that the several male authors who praise virginity and (female) virgins show no anxiety about the “danger” that asceticism might result in emancipated women.^[1089] This indicates that they did not con­ceive of virginity as allowing women to be out of the reach of male con­trol.

Tertullian offers a revealing example. In his treatise On the Veiling of Virgins, he argues that unmarried women should veil themselves in the same way as married women in Christian gatherings. He justifies his claim by citing Paul and concludes: “If ‘the man is head of the woman,’ [as Paul says in 1 Cor 11:3] of course (he is) of the virgin too, from whom comes the woman who has married; unless the virgin is a third generic class, some monstrosity with a head of its own.”^[1090] No woman could escape being under a “head,” not even a virgin. Nor could she escape the dominant sex­ual ideology that “constructed women’s sexuality as an object of value to be traded,” as Elizabeth Castelli puts it.^[1091]

The same Pauline argument was readily used by those who wanted to restrict women’s role in Christian communities. In the fourth century church order the Apostolic Constitutions, baptizing by women is called “dangerous,” “wicked,” and “impious” (Apos. Con. 3.9).^[1092] It is contrary to the order of creation and nature for a woman to perform priestly duties because the “man is the head of the woman” (1 Cor 11:3). The man is the head, and the woman is “the body of the man, taken from his side, and sub­ject to him.” The writer refers to the creation story and claims that the woman was separated from the man for the procreation of children. But the man remains the principal part and shall rule over the woman (Gen 3:16). The metaphor that extends the headship of the man to the woman and equates her with the body is already in use in the pseudo-Pauline letters (Eph 5:23, 28)^[1093] and became influential in several early Christian discours­es about women.

F.