Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

conclusion 979
monks living in part of the imperial palace, while St Symeon Stylites the
Younger would engage astrologers in discussion from the top of his pillar.
Endless talking went on. Set answers were produced for the standard questions,
but that did not stop it. Letters poured out whenever a dispute arose,
and one has the distinct impression that a good deal of enjoyment was to
be had from the excitement of the battle. We should not underestimate,
either, the sheer joy of problem-solving, the pleasure of interpreting the
texts, the fascination of the intellectual puzzle. A pleasure in dialectic or hermeneutics
for their own sake is palpable in some of the later theological literature.
For some of the intellectual heavyweights, considerable satisfaction
must have lain in the activity itself. But no wonder lesser people were confused,
and needed whatever help they could get by way of instruction.
The moral and spiritual as well as the social landscape of the period is
laid open to view in the copious surviving written material. After centuries
of silence or at best of rhetorical displays exploiting misogynistic traditions,
the difference between male and female became a topic of attention
in learned discourses. Were women to be regarded as having been made in
the image of God, or, as the apostle had said, only in that of man? Was the
union with God that was seen as the goal of women’s asceticism, too, to be
defined as a type of gnosis, or in a specifically female sense, in terms of
mystic marriage? Could real women escape implication in the sin of Eve? 21
Whatever the injunctions in some of the texts, public figures in the world
of Christianity did not avoid, but rather sought out, certain – even if selfconsciously
limited – kinds of association with women. In the early fifth
century, Palladius went out of his way to include a section in praise of
women in his Lausiac History; Evagrius Ponticus and others concerned
themselves with women religious, 22 and in the sixth century the empress
Theodora transformed herself from a theatre performer of dubious reputation
to a virtual saint of the eastern church. In the surviving, and especially
in the eastern, literature – monastic tales as well as academic treatises
– a central place is taken by issues of the moral and practical relations
between the sexes, and the moral tone of family life. The proper exercise
of emotion, and of affection, was much discussed, as was the proper behaviour
of married people and the remarriage of widows, the best education
for little girls and the correct behaviour of those women who elected to look
after male religious in supposedly innocent relationships. Peter Brown has
pointed to proper deportment as a major concern among contemporaries
– how to present oneself in a world of change; 23 such preoccupations
ranked only second to worries about the future and the desire to control
the environment by resort to soothsayers, astrologers or holy men. 24
21 Clark (1993); Mattioli (1992). 22 Elm (1994).
23 Brown (1992); also Wimbush and Valantasis (1995). 24 Dagron (1981).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008