Kate Wilkinson - Gender Roles and Mental Reproduction Among Virgins

      A number of early Christian ascetic writers, including Methodius of Olympus, Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome use the language of sexual play, conception, and the birth of spiritual offspring to describe the intimate contact between virgin and Word in prayer, psalmody, and meditation on Scripture.  Many of these passages rely on an analogy between mouth and vagina and heart/mind and womb.  The continuity in female sexual and procreative roles, despite the anatomical displacements, might suggest a program of ‘domestication’ wherein clerical writers attempted to align the life of the virgin with the life of the matron (Brakke 1995).  I argue, however, that the procreative imagery in treatises addressed to virgins is not unambiguously ‘feminine.’  

     The generation of rational offspring was a longstanding metaphor in Greek and Latin tradition for philosophical and literary composition.  Both philosophy and literature were largely, if not exclusively, masculine realms of activity.  Plato’s ‘Symposium’ provides the earliest and most famous example.  Socrates’ putative instructor in love, Diotima, describes in some detail the generation of mental offspring in the context of homoerotic, philosophical conversation.  The offspring of the pregnant mind—virtues, poetry, political writing—are superior to the merely mortal progeny of the man who procreates physically, that is, with a woman.  Quotation and imitation of this passage recurs regularly in Greek and Roman literature (Leitao 1997).  The Greek and Roman tradition maintains the equivalence of literary activity, especially, with sexual and procreative activity (Hallett 1988, Vanderspoel 2001,Walsh 1988). Ovid, for example, compares himself with Zeus who brings forth Athena from his head.

     Early Christian authors frequently assimilate the virginal life with the philosophical life for both men and women.  The recitation of Scripture and outpouring of spontaneous, scripturally inspired prayer in the inner room were literary activities.  When Christian virgins take up philosophy and literature, two intensely masculine endeavours from the ancient Greek and Roman point of view, and metaphorically conceive as a result, this is not so much a matter of continuity with their feminine reproductive destiny as continuity with a masculine adoption of procreative language.  Counterintuitive as it may seem, attributing mental reproduction to virgins is at least as masculinising as it is feminizing.  

Vladimir Baranov - Amphilochia 231 of Patriarch Photius as a Possible Source on the Christology of the Byzantine Iconoclasts

Due to the objective lack of sources on the theology of the Byzantine Iconoclasts, any new source that we can find becomes very valuable. The paper explores Amphilochia 231 of Patriarch Photius in relation to the Iconoclastic Christology. In this chapter, Patriarch Photius presents two “wrong” Christological positions: in the Incarnation Christ assumed either a general human being or a particular human being. If the second position can be identified with Nestorianism, the first can be identified with the Christology of the Iconoclasts. The passage from the Definition of the Iconoclastic Council of Hiereia states that Christ assimilated from mankind “mere matter of human substance” which is not characterized as a hypostasis of its own. Following the concept of Christ’s general humanity, the Iconoclasts do not use the concept of the enhypostasized human nature of Christ who possesses his own depictable features according to the Iconodules. The corollary of the Iconoclastic Christology is that since Christ assumed general humanity, any portrait of Christ with particular features will be an arbitrary choice of an artist and an ultimate epistemological fault. This connection between Christology and epistemology is confirmed by the fragments of Photius’ contemporary, the Iconoclastic Patriarch John the Grammarian, who considers precisely the two positions presented by Photius from an epistemological viewpoint. 

Glen Thompson - The Pax Constantiniana and the Episcopate in Rome

Some recent scholarship has depicted a fourth-century Rome in which the Roman bishops sat unhappily in the shadows as the church in Rome was beautified by monumental Constantinian benefactions, and then aggressively sought to rein in a Christian aristocracy which wished to maintain its independence and status as the chief benefactors of the Christian community. Such depictions call into question the strength and function of the monepiscopate during this crucial period of the church’s development. However, this picture does not totally agree with recent archaeological findings or with reconsiderations of the documentary record (especially the Liber Pontificalis), both of which have added substantially to our knowledge of the period.  My paper will attempt a more nuanced and balanced picture of the Roman episcopate during this key transitional stage in the first two-thrids of the fourth-century.

Bernard Pouderon - Sur la pertinence de la notion de « genre littéraire » pour la première apologétique chrétienne

La recherche récente s'est beaucoup intéressée à la notion de « genre littéraire » appliquée aux écrits du christianisme primitif. 

Et, de fait, la plupart des Apologies du IIe siècle ont été rangées sous une dénomination générique : supplique, discours d'ambassade, discours protreptique, lettre, etc.

Cette démarche a fortement contribué à améliorer notre compréhension du fait littéraire chrétien.

Elle a néanmoins ses limites. Notre propos sera précisément de montrer les limites d'une classification trop stricte des différentes apologies.

Chacune des Apologies sera passée en revue, et la pertinence des démoninations générique qui leur sont appliquées sera soumis à un examen critique.

Arthur Urbano - "Dressing the Christian": The Philosopher's Mantle as Signifier of Pedagogical and Moral Authority in Late Antiquity

In early Christian iconography, Jesus and the saints are often depicted dressed in the mantle of the Greek philosophers, called the "pallium" in Latin, and the "tribon" in Greek.  Art historians, such as Thomas Mathews and Robin Jensen, have interpreted these images in light of the iconography of Greek and Roman deities, while others, such as Paul Zanker, have given ample attention to them in the context of philosopher portraiture.  Literary evidence demonstrates that this style of dress was not limited to portraiture, but that some early Christian teachers wore this costume as a public, visual expression of their status, communicating their intellectual expertise and moral authority to other Christians, as well as to those outside the Christian flock.  In this short communication, I will examine the literary evidence of Christians adopting the "philosopher's look" from the second through fourth centuries, including Justin Martyr, Tertullian, the martyrs of Palestine (Eusebius), and Maximus the Cynic, bishop of Constantinople (380), whom Pope Damasus criticized for his long hair and style of dress.  My analysis of the material will employ questions of costume theory (e.g., Judith Lynn Sebesta, Jonathan Edmondson) as it applies to the significations of clothing in the Roman world, and cultural competition (e.g., Pierre Boudieu) as it applies to the participation of Christians within the shifting contours of the philosophical culture of Late Antiquity.  Consideration will be given to both positive and negative valuations of the "philosopher's look," the latter evident in Athanasius' Life of Antony and the letters of Pope Damasus.

Ann Usacheva - The concept of Hypostasis in Platonic philosophy and Christian theology of the 4th - 6th cent. AD

   1) Prehistory: Hypostasis in platonic tradition of the 1^st – 3^d centuries AD. From Hypostasis as a single sensible thing to Hypostasis as immaterial intelligible substance by Alcinonous, Atticus, Plutarch and Philo. Hypostases as different levels of reality, related to each other as causes and effects. Subsequent expanding of the term on everything, that somehow participates in an idea. Identity of “hypostasis” and “substance” (ousia). Meaning of the terms “anypostaton” and “parhupostaton”. 

   2) The system of immaterial hypostases in Plotinus. Has the One a hypostasis? Discussion of the corresponding fragments of the treatise VI 8 “On the will of the One”. Hypostasis as a manifestation and realization of the First Principle outside itself. Intellect, Soul and Cosmos as external activities of the One, coming into a separate existence. The One as transcending hypostasis. Intelligible being (idea) as hypostasis in the strict sense of the word.

   3) Differentiation between substance and hypostasis in Christian theology of the 4^th cent. AD. First traces of similar differentiation in Neoplatonism. Porphyry’s distinction between universal and divisible hypostases and the following approximation of them to Aristotle’s “second” and “first” essences respectively. 

   4) The term “Hypostasis” by Proclus. Definitive abandonment of the earlier identification of hypostasis and substance and ascribing ontological priority to hypostasis as compared with substance and essence. Henads and matter as having hypostases but exceeding the bounds of being. The possibility of ascribing hypostasis to the supraessential One. 

   5) Dionysius the Areopagite about the relationship between the divine Hypostases within the Holy Trinity. The Hypostases as ontologically prior to the common divine substance. God-Father as a source of divine essence in the Divine Names 645B. Discussion of the possible influence of the Christian theology on the change of the Hypostasis-concept in the late platonic tradition.

John Voelker - "Marius Victorinus' Remembrance of the Nicene Council"

As a Neo-Nicene who takes up the cause of the homoousios and tries to defend the cause of Nicaea in the late 350s against coalescing parties of Anti-Nicene theology, we would expect Marius Victorinus to know the details of the 325 council, and to clearly reproduce the 325 creed of Nicaea somewhere within the lengthy four books of Against Arius. But we do not find it anywhere within Against Arius or his other trinitarian treatises, making us wonder whether or not he actually knows it and has it at hand, even though he speaks at length twice in Against Arius about the significance of the 325 council.

   In Against Arius Victorinus quotes the 381-sounding formula of ‘one ousia in three hypostases,’ showing that he has an amazing grasp of currents in Eastern theology circa 362, but it is not clear whether or not Victorinus actually knows very much about the Nicene council or if Victorinus just has the ideal of Nicaea in his historical memory. He possibly possessed the text of the 325 creed, if he could quote the condemnations of Arius mentioned in the creed that had become commonplaces. But to quote a creed that had an embarassing modalist element would certainly serve against his interest, especially when among his stated opponents in arguing for the Neo-Nicene cause in the 350s are old Nicene figures such as Marcellus and Photinus. It was better to recreate a certain memory of Nicaea as a rallying standard of orthodoxy in the trinitarian definition finally emerging after the high-handed Anti-Nicene efforts that culminated in the brief Homoian supremacy of the last years of the 350s decade.

   This paper could be placed within the Arian-Nicene Trinitarian Controversy category that deals with other Latin Nicenes such as Phoebadius of Agen, Gregory of Elvira, Hilary of Poitiers and others.