Ascetic Pantomime: John Chrysostom against Spiritual MarriageSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference PortalThe National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe International Balzan Prize FoundationDavid A. Michelsoncbsc_adminRecord added to Zotero bycbsc_adminSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portalhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/6HGSAH2V/tei
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CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.BlakeLeyerleAscetic Pantomime: John Chrysostom against Spiritual Marriagehttp://syriaca.org/cbss/6HGSAH2Vhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/6HGSAH2Vhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/6HGSAH2V1991Spiritual marriage was the name given to men and women who lived together under a vow of sexual continence. It was widespread in the early church. John Chrysostom, priest of Antioch and then bishop of Constantinople (d. 407), wrote two treatises against this practice. In these, this study discloses an insistent and polemical use of allusions and figures drawn from classical drama and from the popular theater of his day. The treatises are divided according to gender. To the men, Chrysostom writes a mocking treatise which casts them as stereotypically comic figures; as a whole, it proceeds through ridicule. But to the women he pens a tragedy; his text resonates with tragic diction and motifs. Chrysostom’s classical borrowing invites an examination of the nature of the late antique stage, and his relationship to it. The theater was a major preoccupation of his, and it was one driven by hatred. A keen sense of competition fueled this antipathy and caused him to cast the stage as a world turned upside down. Particularly irksome was the theater’s teaching of the old pagan values, especially that of philotimia, the pursuit of public honor. In John’s eyes this is vainglory. His use of theatrical language to reprove Christian ascetics, therefore, carries the unmistakable implication that their asceticism is a sham springing from an intense desire for notoriety. Chrysostom’s invective, however, also raises the question of the self-understanding and social context of these men and women. For behind his theatrical polemic, lurks indications that they were attempting to create the utopian vision of the New Testament: a new, non- hierarchical, and asexual coupling. Social data teased from these treatises builds a portrait that resembles that of an indigenous ascetic movement within the Syriac church known to us the benai qyama, the covenanters, whose life was also marked by a concern for charity, an involvement in church life, and an independence in finances and living arrangements. Chrysostom’s tirades against spiritual marriage can thus be linked to his other conflicts with rival centers of authority.
Leyerle, Blake. “Ascetic Pantomime: John Chrysostom against Spiritual Marriage.” Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1991.
Blake Leyerle, Ascetic Pantomime: John Chrysostom against Spiritual Marriage (Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1991).IV CEJohn ChrysostomSyriac influence [Byzantine church]asceticismbnai qyamamarriagepolemicsexuality