² Paulinus of Nola, ep. 23.42.

³ For a detailed study of Paulinus, see Dennis E. Trout, Paulinus of Nola: Life, Letters, and Poems, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 27 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

⁴ Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse, Sather Classical Lectures 55 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 58, cf. 155–156, 179, 181. Paradoxes and reversals: the divine becomes human, the weak become strong. Also see Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982 [1981]), 54–55.

⁵ The “erotics” of ancient Christian ascetic piety is well-explored by Virginia Burrus in The Sex Lives of the Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).

⁶ For some reflections on this theme, see Elizabeth Castelli, “Virginity and Its Meaning for Women's Sexuality in Early Christianity,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 2:1 (Spring 1986): esp. 86–88; and David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), chap. 1, esp. 52–54. The formal ceremony in which virgins were veiled/dedicated could itself be compared to ceremonies of betrothal or marriage. Examples of young women's resistance to marriage abound in the ascetic and hagiographical literature of the period, of which the Life of Melania the Younger may stand as one example.

⁷ For a recent discussion of the nuptial imagery of the Song of Songs, see J. Christopher King, Origen on the Song of Songs as the Spirit of Scripture: The Bridegroom's Perfect Marriage-Song (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), chap. 2.

⁸ Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.2.8–9 (1405a); 3.2.12 (1405a); 3.10.4 (1410b); Aristotle, Poetics 22.17 (1459a); Cicero, De oratore 3.38.155–156–39.157.

⁹ Quintilian, Instituto oratoria 8.6.4–6. Speakers and writers should, in any event, take care not to overdo metaphoric speech and writing (8.6.14). Quintilian also popularized the view that metaphor is a shorter form of simile (8.6.8), a view that is now questioned.

¹⁰ Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.4 (1406b).

¹¹ Aristotle, Poetics 22.4 (1458a).

¹² Cicero, De oratore 3.38.155–156; cf. Cicero, Orator 62.211. Cicero compares the use of metaphor to clothes, which were invented from necessity, as a protection for humans, but which became a form of adornment (De oratore 3.38.155). Metaphor originally sprang from “lack,” but once imported to fill a need, was kept on for entertainment (delectatio). Noting that metaphor is the most common figure in the speech of both country folk and sophisticated urbanites, Cicero implies that it is an easily understood trope (Orator 24.81–82).

¹³ Cicero, De oratore 3.41.163, 3.41.165; where there is no real resemblance, metaphor should be avoided (3.40.162).

¹⁴ Cicero, De oratore 3.39.157: “in alieno loco tanquam in suo positum.”

¹⁵ Patricia A. Parker, “The Metaphorical Plot,” in Metaphor: Problems and Perspectives, ed. David S. Miall (Brighton, U.K.: Harvester, 1982), 134.

¹⁶ Aristotle considers antithesis (seemingly pertinent to the metaphor of the “celibate Bridegroom”) a “smart” (asteios) form of metaphor, whose conciseness and pungency convey “rapid knowledge” (Rhetoric 3.11.9–10 [1412b]; cf. Cicero, De oratore 3.38.156). Our metaphor appears to be an oxymoron: “a closely tightened syntactic linking of contradictory terms into a unity which, as a result, acquires a strong contradictive tension” (Heinrich Lausberg, Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary Study, ed. David E. Orton and R. Dean Anderson, trans. Matthew T. Bliss, Annemiek Jansen, and David E. Orton [Leiden: Brill, 1998; trans. from 2nd German ed., 1973], 385).

¹⁷ Thus Janet Martin Soskice argues that the very vagueness of metaphor can be useful in apprehending states and relations we partially understand (Metaphor and Religious Language [Oxford: Clarendon, 1985], 133–134).

¹⁸ John R. Searle, Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 95. Note Aristotle's and Cicero's worry (as detailed above) that metaphor can become “laughable” if pressed inappropriately.

¹⁹ A similar problem besets the frequently cited example in philosophers' analyses of metaphor: “Man is a wolf.” In common parlance, “wolf” is supposed to convey the image of a dangerous, rapacious animal. But what if wolves turn out to be uncommonly sociable and often kindly to their own (as some students of animal behavior suggest)? Does the metaphor then lose its utility?

²⁰ For example, Monroe Beardsley, Aesthetics (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958), critiqued in Soskice, Metaphor, 32–38.

²¹ So Soskice, Metaphor, 22, 36, 44, 136, 149, 151; likewise, Searle, Expression and Meaning, 77, 80. Elsewhere, Searle states a common way to detect metaphor: “Where the utterance is defective if taken literally, look for an utterance meaning that differs from the sentence meaning.” He adds that this approach is very common to “the interpretation of poetry. If I hear a figure on a Grecian urn being addressed as a ‘still unravish'd bride of quietness,’ I know I had better look for alternative meanings” (John Searle, “Metaphor,” in Metaphor and Thought, ed. Andrew Ortony [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979], 114). Here, the active “uptake” by the reader/hearer is often stressed as a necessary ingredient in discerning the metaphor's meaning; see Max Black, “More About Metaphor,” in Metaphor and Thought, ed. Ortony, 29, 34–35 (This essay originally appeared in Dialectica 31:3–4 [December 1977]: 431–457).

²² Black, “More About Metaphor,” 23, 39.

²³ Walker Percy, “Metaphor as Mistake,” in Percy, The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1975), 64–82 (stressing the “discovery” function of metaphor); Max Black, “Metaphor,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, n.s. 55 (1955): 273–294 (stressing the “interaction” [vs. “substitution”] theory of metaphor). For a critique of Black's assumption that each metaphor has two distinct subjects, see Soskice, Metaphor, 41–43.

²⁴ Donald Davidson, “What Metaphors Mean,” in On Metaphor, ed. Sheldon Sacks (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), esp. 31, 43–35; W. V. Quine, “A Postscript on Metaphor,” in On Metaphor, ed. Sacks, 160.

²⁵ Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. Robert Czerny, with Kathleen McLaughlin and John Costello [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977; French original, 1975], Study 1, 6–7, 22; sharp critiques of Ricoeur's notion of metaphor can be found in Dominick LaCapra, “Who Rules Metaphor? Paul Ricoeur's Theory of Discourse,” in LaCapra, Rethinking Intellectual History (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), 118–144 (this essay originally appeared in Diacritics 10:40 [Winter 1980] 15–28); and in Jacques Derrida, “The Retrait of Metaphor,” Enclitic 2:2 (1978): 5–33. For another approach stressing the “new reality” that metaphor opens, see David Tracy, “Metaphor and Religion: The Test Case of Christian Texts,” in On Metaphor, ed. Sacks, esp. 98–99, 104. Tracy goes so far as to claim that the language of parable is “normative” for all later Christianity and should stand at the center of theological studies (104). On metaphor's ability to create new understandings and thus also new realities, also see George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 156, 235. The phenomenological explanation is sometimes favored by New Testament scholars in their analyses of Jesus' parables that announce a reversal of existing conditions and human judgments. For discussion of the parables from this perspective, see, for example, Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, trans. S. H. Hooke (Rev. ed.; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963; trans. from 6th German edition of 1962), esp. 142, 147–148; Norman Perrin, The New Testament, An Introduction: Proclamation and Parenesis, Myth and History (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), esp. 293–295.

²⁶ I. A. Richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (New York: Oxford University Press, 1936); Soskice, Metaphor, 43–53.

²⁷ Soskice, Metaphor, 44. Metaphor as providing “two ideas for one” is attributed to Samuel Johnson by metaphor theorists. Peter S. Hawkins wittily comments, “The rate of exchange is actually a great deal more generous than that, but the definition nonetheless alerts us to one of the primary qualities of metaphoric speech: one lie yields a multiplicity of truths” (“The Truth of Metaphor: The Fine Art of Lying,” Massachusetts Studies in English 8 [1982]: 1).

²⁸ Soskice, Metaphor, 50–53, 62. Soskice argues that Max Black and others who subscribe to the notion that every metaphor has two subjects (for example, “Man is a wolf”) have no way to explain metaphors in which there is only one “subject,” for example, “tattered scruples,” “writhing scripts” (43, 50).

²⁹ David Hart, private communication, 20 April 2001.

³⁰ Jacques Derrida, “White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy,” in Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 209–271. Derrida so describes “white mythology”: “metaphysics has erased within itself the fabulous scene that has produced it, the scene that nevertheless remains active and stirring, inscribed in white ink, an invisible design covered over in the palimpsest” (213; cf. 215).

³¹ Derrida, “Retrait,” 5–33; see n. 25 above for bibliographical information.

³² Philosophers of various stripes often wish to bracket off their field's discourse from any taint of “metaphor,” imagining that by doing so they arrive at “truth” (Derrida, “Retrait,” 16). One purpose of White Mythology, he claims, was to question philosophers' interpretation of metaphor as “a transfer from the sensible to the intelligible” realm (13).

³³ Derrida, “White Mythology,” 229. Derrida familiarly concludes that metaphor is itself a metaphorization, a “bottomless overdeterminability” (243). Metaphor is both inescapable and always “carries its death within itself” (271). For a somewhat more accessible deconstructive analysis of metaphor (with special attention to Locke and Kant), see Paul de Man, “The Epistemology of Metaphor,” in On Metaphor, ed. Sacks, 11–28.

³⁴ Derrida, “Retrait,” 13.

³⁵ Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976 [1967]), 200, and part 2, chaps. 2, 3.2, and 4, passim.

³⁶ Derrida, “Retrait,” 8. Lakoff and Johnson also sound this theme, referring to metaphor as both “highlighting” and “hiding” (Metaphors, 10, 139).

³⁷ Derrida, “Retrait,” 22. Gayatri Spivak in the “Translator's Preface” to Of Grammatology (lxxv) explains what the dismantling process of deconstruction would mean for metaphor: “If a metaphor seems to suppress its implications, we shall catch at that metaphor. We shall follow its adventures through the text and see the text coming undone as a structure of concealment, revealing its self-transgression, its undecidability.”

³⁸ Derrida, “White Mythology,” 220. These “habitats” or places of origin he labels “lending” discourses, while the “recipient” realms are categorized as “borrowing”—though Derrida concludes that the classification of “borrowing” and “lending” is itself governed by metaphor. See Judith H. Anderson's discussion of Derrida and “etymological traces” in her essay, “Translating Investments: The Metaphoricity of Language, 2 Henry IV, and Hamlet,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 40:3 (Fall 1998): esp. 238–239, 243. I thank Professor Anderson for providing me with some helpful references regarding metaphor theory.

³⁹ Derrida, “White Mythology,” 261–262, citing from Canguilhem's La connaissance de la vie (2nd ed.; Paris: Vrin, 1969), 48–49. For other interesting comments on the implication of metaphors in the development of science, see Quine, “Postscript,” in On Metaphor, ed. Sacks, 159.

⁴⁰ Canguilhem states (Connaissance, 48) that here he borrows examples from Marc Klein's Histoire des origines de la théorie cellulaire (Paris, 1936).

⁴¹ Soskice, Metaphor, 116; also see John Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate: Christology in a Pluralistic Age (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), chap. 10 (“Divine Incarnation as Metaphor”).

⁴² For an artful exploration of the intersection of theological language and changing notions of masculinity in late antiquity, see Virginia Burrus, “Begotten, Not Made”: Conceiving Manhood in Late Antiquity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000).

⁴³ Given the rather negative assessment of marriage expressed by some ascetically minded Church Fathers and their constant rehearsals of the “woes of marriage,” it is good to remember that they were doubtless in a minority, even among the Christian population. For some accounts of those Christians less than enthusiastic about ascetic propaganda, see Kate Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996) and David G. Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinianist Controversy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). For some standard works concerning “pagan” practice and ideology of marriage, see essays in Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome, ed. Beryl Rawson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992); The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives, ed. Beryl Rawson (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986); and Susan Treggiari, Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges From the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991).

⁴⁴ On this theme, Richard Rambuss's Closet Devotions (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998), faults modern scholars' attempts to circumscribe and “normalize” the erotic in Christian texts. (Rambuss's book studies the metaphysical poets.) For a counter-example pertinent to our theme, Rambuss analyzes Francis Rous's poem “Mysticall Marriage,” in which, Rambuss argues, the reader is not just invited to “love Christ”; rather, the poem is “a provocation to concupiscence—a ‘spirituall concupiscence,’ but concupiscence nonetheless. … He invokes a form of sexual appetite—lust—that is no other than a sin, the very transgressivity of this carnal desire serving as the expressive mechanism by which religious affect is to be stimulated and enhanced. Nothing heats the passions, it has been said, like the taboo” (5).

⁴⁵ Lakoff and Johnson strongly press this point (Metaphors, 3, 153, 156, 235).

⁴⁶ David Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 2.

⁴⁷ Dawson, Allegorical Readers, 1.

⁴⁸ Anthropologist Sherry Ortner's term, “key symbol,” also expresses the work that metaphor can do. A “key symbol” (to list Ortner's criteria) is “culturally important,” arouses strong positive or negative feelings, emerges in many different contexts, enjoys abundant cultural elaboration, and is surrounded by great “cultural restrictions.” A key symbol that “summarizes” (in contrast to those that “elaborate”), she argues, achieves its end by “its focusing power, its drawing-together, intensifying, catalyzing impact” on the observer/listener: these means, I posit, are precisely those evoked by the metaphor of the “celibate Bridegroom.” See Sherry B. Ortner, “On Key Symbols,” American Anthropologist new series 75:5 (October 1973): 1339, 1342.

⁴⁹ David Hart, private communication, 20 April 2001.

⁵⁰ Elizabeth A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), 3–4.

⁵¹ Jeremias, Parables, 52; 52 n. 13 provides further references for this claim.

⁵² For some recent discussions of rabbinic exegesis of the Song of Songs, see Daniel Boyarin, “The Song of Songs: Lock or Key? Intertextuality, Allegory and Midrash,” in The Book and the Text: The Bible and Literary Theory, ed. Regina M. Schwartz (Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 214–230; Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, God's Phallus and Other Problems for Men and Monotheism (Boston: Beacon, 1994), 163–168, 184–186. Of particular interest here is Eilberg-Schwartz's claim that ancient Jewish men learned to read themselves as “women” in relation to the lover of the Song of Songs; cf. the citation from Paulinus of Nola with which the present essay begins.

⁵³ On Ephesians 5 and other Household Codes' adaptation to current social norms, see Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983), esp. chap. 7.

⁵⁴ Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, 181. Also see Frye, The Great Code, 54–55.

⁵⁵ Jesus' response to the Sadducees can itself be read as an injunction to celibacy here and now.

⁵⁶ Jerome, Adversus Iovinianum 1.16.

⁵⁷ Athanasius reports Alexander's sermon to the virgins in ep. 1 virg. 37, 40, 43.

⁵⁸ For example, John Chrysostom, Quod regulares feminae viris cohabitare non debeant 4 (Patrologia Graeca [PG] version: 3); Eusebius of Emesa, Hom. 7.26; Cyprian, ep. 61(=4).4. For this practice (syneisaktism) and its popularity in early Christianity, see Hans Achelis, Virgines Subintroductae: Ein Beitrag zum VII Kapitel des I. Korintherbriefe (Leipzig, 1902), and Elizabeth A. Clark, “John Chrysostom and the Subintroductae,” Church History 46:2 (June 1977): 171–185.

⁵⁹ John Chrysostom, Quod regulares 12 (PG version: 9).

⁶⁰ John Chrysostom, De virginitate 72, 73.4; Hom. 43 Gen. 1.

⁶¹ Anonymous, De castitate 10.11.

⁶² So Melania the Younger: Vita Melaniae Iunioris 64.

⁶³ Jerome, ep. 22.25. That the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins and the depiction of the Last Judgment are found in the same chapter (Matt. 25) doubtless encouraged this elision.

⁶⁴ Anonymous (“Pseudo-Basil”), De virginitate 9.132–140: the author warns virgins that the penalty is so dire that he cannot bear to repeat the words; nonetheless, they must “put to silence the appetites of the flesh.” The melding of the bridal chamber motif in the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins in Matt. 25 with the Last Judgment theme of Matt. 22 is also found in Aphrahat, Demonstration 6.1.

⁶⁵ Aphrahat in Demonstration 6.6 expresses this theme when he writes that the marriage cry is at hand; the tombs shall be opened, the dead shall rise, and those still living shall fly away to meet the heavenly King.

⁶⁶ For example, Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 3.6.49 (as an explanation for why Jesus did not marry on earth) and 3.11.74; Origen, Hom. Cant. 1.1, 1.5, 1.9; Tertullian, De corona 14; Cyprian, Ad Quirinum 2.19; Cyprian, ep. 75(=69).3; Jerome, ep. 123.12; Methodius, Symposium 3.8; Ambrose, Comm. Luc. 6.38; Ambrose, De virginibus 1.5.22; Ambrose, De fide 3.10.71–72; John Chrysostom, Hom. 20 Eph. (on 5:26–27); (Anonymous), De castitate 15.2; Augustine, De nuptiis et concupiscentia 1.10.11, 1.17.19; Augustine, Ennar. Ps. 45.3; Augustine, Contra Faustum 22.87; Augustine, De Gen. contra Man. 2.14.20; 2.24.37; Augustine, De civitate Dei 17.16, 17.20, and throughout his anti-Donatist writings. An especially nice example can be found in Origen's Commentary on I Corinthians (on I Cor. 7:28b): while (human) marriage begins in the dark on account of sexual intercourse and licentiousness (Rom. 13:13 serves here as an intertext), the marriage of Christ to the Church begins in the light, as with the Wise Virgins who waited with their oil and lamps and were brought into the wedding.

⁶⁷ Jerome, epp. 22.17, 24, 25; 107.7; 130.7, 8; Pelagius, Ad Demetriadem 24.2, 30.3; Ambrose, De virginibus 1.3.11 and throughout; and citing Bishop Liberius's words at Marcellina's consecration, 3.1.1. For anonymous virgins, see John Chrysostom, De virginitate 59; Augustine, De sancta virginitate 54.54; Athanasius, ep. 1 virg. 1, 21, 31, 34; Athanasius, De virginitate 1, 17; Ambrose, Exhortatio virginitatis 10.62; Ambrose De virginibus 1.9.52; Basil of Ancyra, De virginitate 26, 27.

⁶⁸ Jerome, epp. 22.17, 24, 25; 107.7; 130.7, 8; Pelagius, Ad Demetriadem 24.2, 30.3.

⁶⁹ Ambrose, De virginibus 1.3.11 and throughout; and citing Pope Liberius's words at Marcellina's consecration, 3.1.1.

⁷⁰ For example, Aphrahat, Demonstration 6 (“Of Monks”); Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on Virginity 2.11, 3.15, 14.11, 16.2, 33.1, 3. For discussion, see Robert Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early Syriac Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), chaps. 4 and 5; Sidney H. Griffith, “Asceticism in the Church of Syria: The Hermeneutics of Early Syrian Monasticism,” in Asceticism, ed. Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 220–245.

⁷¹ John Chrysostom, De virginitate 59.

⁷² Augustine, De sancta virginitate 54.54.

⁷³ Athanasius, ep. 1 virg. 1, 21, 31, 34; Athanasius, De virginitate 1, 17.

⁷⁴ Ambrose, Exhortatio virginitatis 10.62; Ambrose, De virginibus 1.9.52.

⁷⁵ Basil of Ancyra, De virginitate 26, 27.

⁷⁶ For example, Gregory of Nyssa, De virginitate 20; (Anonymous), Ad Claudiam = De virginitate 11.

⁷⁷ For example, Basil of Ancyra, De virginitate 42.

⁷⁸ For example, John Chrysostom, Quod regulares 4 (PG version: 3); Eusebius of Emesa, Hom. 7.26; Cyprian, ep. 61(=4).4.

⁷⁹ Cyprian, ep. 61(=4).3.

⁸⁰ John Chrysostom, Quod regulares 9 (PG version: 6). The Latin word for the woman involved in the practice (subintroducta) suggests that the woman had been “brought in surreptitiously” to the man's quarters.

⁸¹ Athanasius, ep. 2 virg. 30.

⁸² See especially the arguments of David M. Halperin, in “Why Is Diotima a Woman?” in Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on Greek Love (New York: Routledge, 1990), 113–151, 190–211.

⁸³ Methodius, Symposium 8.5–8 (the Church); 3.9 (Paul); 1.1 (God).

⁸⁴ For example, Methodius, Symposium prologue 6, 6.2, 6.3, 6.5, 10.6 and the repeated refrain of the hymn of Thecla at the narration's end (Sources Chrétiennes [SC] 95, 48, 166, 170, 176, 302, 310–320); cf. Discourse 7, which exploits the language of the Song of Songs to describe Christ's coming to gather the “flowers” blooming in the virginal garden.

⁸⁵ Methodius, Symposium, Thecla's hymn (SC 95, 312, 314). Nonetheless, given the erotic language, we may wonder if the Platonic erotics of desire does not still “hover over” Methodius's treatise.

⁸⁶ Methodius, Symposium 1.4, 1.5, 10.3, 10.5 (SC 95, 62, 64, 292, 296); see comments of J. Montserrat-Torrents, “Methodius of Olympus, Symposium III, 4–8: An Interpretation,” Studia Patristica 13.2 (=TU 116), ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1975), 242.

⁸⁷ For numerous examples, see Clark, Reading Renunciation, 212–215.

⁸⁸ See the discussion of how the hierarchical language that ranks purity above impurity is especially vulnerable to degradation, in Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 56.

⁸⁹ For example, Eusebius of Emesa, Hom. 7, 5, 10, 24, 27; Basil of Caesarea, epp. 46; 199.18; Pseudo-Basil, Peri Parthenia 2.29; Basil of Ancyra, De virginitate 41–42, 43, 61, 62; John Chrysostom, De virginitate 26; Pelagius (?), Ad virginem devotam 2.4; Pelagius (?), Ad Claudiam = De virginitate 12; Jerome, epp. 22.6, 14; 117.3.

⁹⁰ Gregory of Nyssa, De virginitate 23; Cyprian, ep. 61(=4).2; John Chrysostom, Adversus eos qui apud se habent subintroductas virgines; Eusebius of Caesarea, Historia ecclesiastica 7.30 (on accusations against Paul of Samosata). For examples regarding “fallen virgins,” see Jerome, Adversus Helvidium 23; Jerome, ep. 22.13; John Chrysostom, Hom. 19 I Cor. 7; John Chrysostom, Hom. 13 I Tim. (5:3); Augustine, ep.3*.3; Council of Elvira, canons 13–14; Council of Ancyra, canon 19; Council of Chalcedon canon 16; Tertullian, De virginibus velandis 14. Some argued that forcing dedicated virgins to submit to gynecological examinations by midwives in order to prove their “purity” disgraced the church, whether or not the young women were subsequently declared “innocent”: see Ambrose, ep. 5(=Maur. 4); Cyprian, however, assumes that such examinations are necessary to discover who is guilty and who innocent: ep. 61(=4).4.

⁹¹ Augustine, De bono viduitatis 6.8.

⁹² John Chrysostom, Hom. 23 II Cor. 1; John Chrysostom, Hom. 28 Hebr. 16; John Chrysostom, Hom. 2 In Eutropium 14; John Chrysostom, Hom. 24 Rom.; Augustine, Tr. Joannem 13.124; cf. 9.2.2.

⁹³ Tertullian, Ad uxorem 1.4.

⁹⁴ Jerome, epp. 54.3; 108.29.

⁹⁵ John Chrysostom, De non iterando coniugio 5–6.

⁹⁶ John Chrysostom, Hom. 15 I Tim.

⁹⁷ Augustine, De bono viduitatis 10.13.

⁹⁸ Origen, Hom. 6 Iesus Nave 4. The story of Rahab is told in Joshua, chapters 2 and 6.

⁹⁹ John Chrysostom, Hom. 2 In Eutropium 6; cf. 11: human nature is a “harlot” that God desired, that he might convert “her” into a virgin.

¹⁰⁰ Origen employs the image to characterize the Gentile Church: Comm. in Cant. 2.1; 3(4).14.

¹⁰¹ Origen, Comm. in Cant. 2.1: when the “dark” beloved is aligned with the “black” Ethiopian woman whom Moses, a type of Christ, marries, her “soiled,” that is, “sinful,” quality is underscored. Jerome (ep. 22.1) appropriates Origen's exposition of these verses to argue that repentant virgins who have not yet scaled the heights of virtue will nonetheless find that “the King desires their beauty” (Ps. 45:11), despite their residual “darkness” stemming from their “black” parentage at birth.

¹⁰² Appealing to the same verse (Song of Songs 3:2,3) in ep. 22.25, Jerome counsels Eustochium not to seek her Bridegroom in the streets; rather, she should remember that “strait and narrow is the way which leads to life” (Matt. 7:14).

¹⁰³ Jerome, ep. 66.10.

¹⁰⁴ John Chrysostom, Ad Theodorum lapsum 13.4.

¹⁰⁵ Acta Thomae 146.

¹⁰⁶ Gregory of Nyssa, De virginitate 20.

¹⁰⁷ See, for example, Stephen D. Moore, “The Song of Songs in the History of Sexuality,” Church History 69:2 (June 2000): 328–349.

¹⁰⁸ Anonymous (Pseudo-Tertullian?), Adversus omnes haereses 4, arguing against Valentinians; Tertullian, De carne Christi 16. Likewise, the phrase in the Apostles' Creed, “I believe in the resurrection of the flesh,” encouraged such a view.

¹⁰⁹ Origen, commenting on I Cor. 12:12–26 in Hom. 9 Lev. 2; Origen, Hom. 14 Luc. 4–5; Jerome, Adversus Iovinianum 1.36.

¹¹⁰ Tertullian, De monogamia 5 (although he was a “monogamist in spirit” through his single marriage to the Church), appropriated by Jerome in ep. 48.9.

¹¹¹ See Augustine's debate with Julian of Eclanum on this issue in Opus imperfectum 4.47–49, 52, 122, 134; 6.33, 35.

¹¹² Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus 2.10.100: when strong desire is educated through self-control, producing chastity; Augustine, Serm. 151.8.8, 128.8.10: a heavenly state without lust.

¹¹³ Augustine answers “yes”: De civitate Dei 22.17; Augustine, De sermone Domini in monte 1.15.41. Cyprian (Tract. 2.4) and Anonymous (Sulpicius Severus?) (De virginitate 11.2–3) both include women among the 144,000 virgins in heaven (Rev. 14:1–4). John Chrysostom answers “no”: Hom. 6 Col. (on 2:12), citing Gal. 3:28, “no male and female.”

¹¹⁴ Commented on by, for example, Tertullian, De monogamia 3; Jerome, ep. 48.14; Jerome, Adversus Iovinianum 1.7. As Jerome puts it in Adversus Iovinianum 2.8, the sense of touch pictures to itself past pleasures and “forces the soul to participate in them and in a way to practice what it does not actually commit.”

¹¹⁵ An exception: Augustine in Serm. 244–246 baldly states that it was because she was a woman, although he rejects this interpretation in Tract. Ioan. 121.3 and Hom. I Ioan. 32.

¹¹⁶ For example, presumably the women around Jesus who minister to him (Luke 8: 1–3), a story used by an anonymous patristic author to convince a widow that she will “touch” Jesus (De vidua servanda 5); Mary anoints Jesus and wipes his feet with her hair (John 11:2; 12:3); cf. the anonymous woman of Mark 14:3–9/Matt. 26:6–13 who anoints Jesus; in Luke 7:36–39, she is transformed into “a sinner.” Jerome, ep. 38.2, imagines his ascetic women friends even now clasping the feet of Jesus in heaven. Jerome pictures Jesus calling forth the ascetic (now widowed) Blesilla from the “tomb” of her sickness in the words he addresses to Lazarus in John 11:43; Blesilla “rises” and eats with the Lord (cf. John 12:2); she now, according to Jerome, can clasp the feet of the Savior whom she formerly feared as Judge (cf. Luke 7:38).

¹¹⁷ For example, Augustine, Tract. Ioan. 121.3; Augustine, Hom. I Ioan. 32; Ambrose, Comm. Luc. 10.161–166; Jerome, ep. 39.5. Thus Ambrose (perhaps borrowing from Origen) claims that Jesus addresses Mary Magdalene as “woman” precisely because she does not yet believe that the fullness of divinity resides in Christ's body (Comm. Luc. 10. 161, 163. Elsewhere (De virginitate 14–16), Ambrose notes that Mary's doubt left her weeping outside the tomb, citing John 19:41 and Matt. 27:60 for his claim. In Origen's allegorical exegesis, “female” customarily stands for “the flesh” as opposed to (male) “reason,” as sloth or moral weakness: see, for example, Origen, Hom. 4 Gen. 4, Hom. 11 Num. 7, Hom. 1 Num. 1.

¹¹⁸ Ps.-Clement, De virginitate 2.15; Ps.-Titus Ep.: here, of the subintroductae and their companions.

¹¹⁹ For example, Cyprian, De habitu virginis 22; Ambrose, Exhortatio virginitatis 4.19; Ambrose, De virginibus 1.3.11; Ambrose, De virginitate 27; Jerome, Comm. Zach. 1.3.6f.; Basil of Ancyra, De virginitate 51; Athanasius, De virginitate 16; Eusebius of Emesa, Hom. 6.3; 7.5; John Chrysostom, De virginitate 10.3; Ps.-Titus Ep.

¹²⁰ John Chrysostom, De virginitate 11.1–2.

¹²¹ Tertullian, Ad uxorem 1.1, cf. 1.4. The rationale for “no marriage in heaven” usually rested, tout court, on an appeal to the innate superiority of virginity. There are, however, significant exceptions. Tertullian, for example, argues (De resurrectione carnis 36) that no marriage is needed in heaven because there will be no death that requires “replacements.” For Gregory of Nyssa (De opificio hominis 17.2), the “end state” of angelic life in heaven is “celibate” because it replicates the original state of creation in which there was no marriage. More frequently, however, the unmarried condition is simply deemed superior to that of marriage, with strong hints of marital “uncleanness” haunting the writings of ascetic enthusiasts such as Jerome (Adversus Iovinianum 1.7).

¹²² Tertullian, De virginibus velandis 7. For a variety of views, see (Anonymous), De castitate 3.3; Augustine, De civitate Dei 15.22; John Cassian, Conlationes 8.21.

¹²³ (Anonymous), De castitate 3.3.

¹²⁴ For a helpful exposition of Origen's view of the resurrection body, see Henri Crouzel, “La Doctrine origénienne du corps ressuscité,” Bulletin de Littérature Ecclésiastique 81:3–4 (1980): 175–200, 241–266.

¹²⁵ Jerome, Comm. Eph. 3 (on Eph. 5:25–29).

¹²⁶ Jerome, Adversus Iovinianum 1.37.

¹²⁷ Rufinus, Apologia contra Hieronymum 1.7, citing Jerome's mockery of these women in his ep. 84.6.

¹²⁸ Jerome, Apologia contra Rufinum 1.28–29 contains a lengthy “explanation” of his earlier exegesis of Ephesians 5.

¹²⁹ Jerome, Contra Ioannem Hierosolymitanum 27, 25, 31, cf. Jerome, ep. 75.2; Jerome, Apologia contra Rufinum 2.5.

¹³⁰ Jerome, Contra Ioannem 31, cf. Jerome, ep. 108.23.

¹³¹ Jerome, Apologia contra Rufinum 1.29; cf. Jerome, ep. 75.2.

¹³² Jerome, Contra Ioannem 31.

¹³³ Jerome, Comm. Matt. 3 (on Matt. 22:30), cf. Jerome, ep. 108.23; Jerome, Contra Ioannem 31.

¹³⁴ Christian teaching that bodies and personality would be preserved in the afterlife doubtless encouraged a different “consolation philosophy” from that present in the classical “pagan” treatises and letters in which bodies find no place. For an overview of “pagan” advice on death and bereavement, see Robert C. Gregg, Consolation Philosophy: Greek and Christian Paideia in Basil and the Two Gregories, Patristic Monograph Series 3 (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1975), esp. chap. 1.

¹³⁵ John Chrysostom, Mulier alligata est 1.

¹³⁶ John Chrysostom, Ad viduam iuniorem 1–2. The Church Fathers believed that Paul had written the Pastoral Epistles, despite some difficulties occasioned by reconciling these texts with what are now considered Paul's genuine letters.

¹³⁷ John Chrysostom, Ad viduam iuniorem 3.

¹³⁸ John Chrysostom, Ad viduam iuniorem 7. In the last sentence of his letter, however, Chrysostom speaks of a union of their two souls.

¹³⁹ Jerome, ep. 71.3.

¹⁴⁰ Jerome, ep. 1–2; Lucinius is represented as fighting against Gnosticizing heresy in Spain (3).

¹⁴¹ Tertullian, Ad uxorem 1.1.

¹⁴² See the reaction to Jerome's treatise and letter: Jerome, ep. 48(49).2; Rufinus, Apologia contra Hieronymum 2.5, 42, 43.

¹⁴³ See Rambuss's Closet Devotions for some startling examples of the linkage of devotion and eroticism in the metaphysical poets; and Georges Bataille, Erotism: Death and Sensuality, trans. Mary Dalwood (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986; French original, 1957), esp. part I, chap. 11, and part II, chaps. 5 and 6.

¹⁴⁴ Patricia Cox Miller, “The Blazing Body: Ascetic Desire in Jerome's Letter to Eustochium,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 1:1 (Spring 1993): 21.

¹⁴⁵ Miller, “Blazing Body,” 26.

¹⁴⁶ R. P. C. Hanson, Allegory and Event: A Study of the Sources and Significance of Origen's Interpretation of Scripture (Richmond: John Knox, 1959), 246.