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Salvage: Macrina and the Christian Project of Cultural Reclamation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2012

Ellen Muehlberger
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Abstract

While many have seen the equation between Macrina and Socrates drawn in the Treatise on the Soul and the Resurrection as Gregory of Nyssa's attempt to honor his sister, a closer look at Gregory's attitude about the relative power of Christianity at the end of the fourth century suggests the opposite: that the character of Macrina lends validity to Socrates and, by extension, to non-Christian intellectual traditions. In this article, I argue that the Treatise is part of a larger project of cultural reclamation enacted by some Christians near the end of the fourth century. The educational reforms of the emperor Julian had instituted a public discourse of evaluation by which one's reading material indicated one's religious identity; after Julian, some Christians adopted this idea, yet in reverse, arguing that reading traditional literature was out of the question for Christians, as it would signal a non-Christian religious commitment. Gregory's Treatise on the Soul and the Resurrection was an effort to walk back the effects of that discourse and to return Christian pedagogy, philosophy, and cultural evaluation to a stance of ambivalence regarding Greek literature.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 81 , Issue 2 , June 2012 , pp. 273 - 297
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2012

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References

1 Gregory of Nyssa, ep. 19.15 in Grégoire de Nysse: Lettres, Sources chrétiennes 363, Maraval, Pierre, ed. (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1990), 252–54Google Scholar.

2 These are only those allusions identified by Silvas, Anna M., trans., Macrina the Younger, Philosopher of God, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; there may be more.

3 Gregory of Nyssa, ep. 19.1 (SC 363:242).

4 Gregory of Nyssa, ep. 19.9 (SC 363:250).

5 Gregory of Nyssa, ep. 19.10 (SC 363:250).

6 Maraval, Pierre, Grégoire de Nysse: Vie de Sainte Macrine, Sources chrétiennes 178 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1971), 67Google Scholar.

7 On the use and purpose of Gregory's classical allusions, see Momigliano, Arnaldo, “The Life of St. Macrina by Gregory of Nyssa” in On Pagans, Jews, and Christians (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), 206–21Google Scholar; Roth, Catharine P., “Platonic and Pauline Elements in the Ascent of the Soul in Gregory of Nyssa's Dialogue on the Soul and Resurrection,” Vigiliae Christianae 46 (1992): 20–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frank, Georgia, “Macrina's Scar: Homeric Allusion and Heroic Identity in Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Macrina,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 8 (2000): 511–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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9 Clark, Elizabeth A., “The Lady Vanishes: Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian after the ‘Linguistic Turn,’” Church History 67 (1998): 27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. “Holy Women, Holy Words: Early Christian Women, Social History, and the ‘Linguistic Turn,’” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998): 427Google Scholar. Clark finds other “Macrina-functions,” including Macrina being a bodily representative of a human being living in the image of God and Macrina, as a particularly composed female philosopher, acting as a shaming device to less-high-minded men.

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11 For example, see Apostolopoulos, Charalambos, Phaedo Christianus: Studien zur Verbindung und Abwägung des Verhältnisses zwischen dem platonischen “Phaidon” und dem Dialog Gregors von Nyssa “Über die Seele und die Auferstehung” (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1986)Google Scholar. Speaking of Gregory, he writes, “the nature of this lonely man was not to become a bishop. Gregory of Nyssa was, above all else, a thinker and a philosopher. Despite his frequent and emphatic assurances and concessions about the Bible as the sole ‘law and power,’ he is in reality quite far from the biblicism of someone like Basil” (110). Here, bishops read the Bible; thinkers read other literature.

12 Roth (“Platonic and Pauline Elements,” 20–21) offers a list of previous interpretations of Gregory's identity, including that of Apostolopoulos, Daniélou, and others, before she also adds her own: Gregory begins with a classical foundation, yet surpasses it in his presentation of scripture.

13 MacDonald, Dennis Ronald, Christianizing Homer: The Odyssey, Plato, and The Acts of Andrew (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 249Google Scholar. For a discussion of Socrates as a figure in some early Christian martyr acts and in Justin's Apology, see Döring, Klaus, Exemplum Socratis: Studien zur Sokratesnachwirkung in der kynisch-stoischen Popularphilosophie der frühen Kaiserzeit und im frühen Christentum, Hermes 42 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1979)Google Scholar, esp. chapter 7, “Das Beispiel des Sokrates bei den frühchristlichen Märtyrern,” 143–61; cf. Roksam, Geert, “The Figure of Socrates in the Early Christian Acta Martyrum” in Martyrdom and Persecution in Late Ancient Christianity (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 241–56Google Scholar, which treats the three early Christian acta mentioned by Döring: the Acts of Apollonius, Acts of Pionius, and the Acts of Phileas. While all three of these texts mention Socrates, I have found it difficult to put them in confrontation with Gregory's depiction of Macrina because of the difficulty of dating the texts: the dates of their narrative settings are clear, but less clear are their dates of composition. Socrates has long played a role in martyrology; see also Rajak, Tessa, “Dying for the Law: The Martyr's Portrait in Jewish-Greek Literature,” in Portraits: Biographical Representation in the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire, eds. Edwards, M. J. and Swain, Simon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 39–67Google Scholar, esp. 58–60.

14 See in particular MacDonald's discussion of Origen in Christianizing Homer, 251.

15 Roth, “Platonic and Pauline Elements,” 20, references the previous studies of the parallels between this piece and the Phaedo.

16 Roth, “Platonic and Pauline Elements,” 21.

17 For a more detailed rendering of the future that was to come, see Millar, Fergus's discussion of “the Empire, the Church, and Paganism,” in A Greek Roman Empire: Power and Belief under Theodosius II (408–450), Sather Classical Lectures 64 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 116–23Google Scholar. Readers will recognize in my caution about the historian's vantage point the concern expressed by, among others, Bernstein, Michael André in Foregone Conclusions: Against Apocalyptic History, Contraversions: Critical Studies in Jewish Literature, Culture, and Society 4 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

18 Several of these have been collected in “Let Us Die That We May Live”: Greek Homilies on Christian Martyrs from Asia Minor, Palestine and Syria (c. AD 350–AD 450), ed. Leemans, Johan, Mayer, Wendy, Allen, Pauline, and Dehandschutter, Boudewijn (London: Routledge, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Gregory of Nyssa, Homily on Theodore the Recruit, trans. Leemans, “Let Us Die,” 85: “Somebody coming to a place like this one, where we are gathering today, where the memory of the just is kept alive and his holy remains preserved, is in the first place attracted by the magnificence of what they see. They see a house that, like a temple of God, is splendidly adorned by the size of the building and the beauty of its ornamentation” (emphasis added). Leemans has linked the themes in this sermon to Gregory's response to Julian's reign; see “A Preacher-Audience Analysis of Gregory of Nyssa's Homily on Theodore the Recruit,” Studia Patristica 37 (2001): 140–47Google Scholar.

20 Gregory of Nyssa, Homily on Theodore the Recruit, trans. Leemans, “Let Us Die,” 83. The sermon was given between 379 and 381; cf. “Let Us Die,” 82; and Daniélou, Jean, “La chronologie des sermons de Grégoire de Nysse,” Revue des sciences religieuses 29 (1955): 346–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Elsewhere, Gregory had begun other martyr homilies by observing the impressive numbers of Christians present in metaphors of overflowing streams and rushing rivers, natural figures that imply irresistible forces. See, for example, the interrupted sermon on the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste in “Let Us Die,” 97–98.

21 See, for example, Life of Macrina 20 (SC 178:206), where Gregory wrote that his sister proudly recounted their ancestors' ability to withstand pressure and remain faithful as a family trait, implicitly making past persecution an ongoing experience.

22 Gaddis, Michael, “There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ”: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 39 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), x–xiGoogle Scholar.

23 Sizgorich, Thomas, Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam, Divinations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Another example of this redefinition is Athanasius's casting of Antony as a martyr in the Life of Antony and the effect that text had on subsequent depictions of asceticism as “living martyrdom.”

25 Gregory of Nazianzus and Egeria the pilgrim both write of having visited the center. Underground frescoes at Thessaloniki demonstrate the regard in which she was held: the character of Thecla stands among a number of biblical figures, “implicitly elevating the importance of her story by association.” Castelli, Elizabeth, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making, Gender, Theory, and Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 160Google Scholar; for the resources for viewing the frescoes see, 266–67n115. Evidence of the site's popularity survives even now in the dozens of pilgrimage souvenirs, generally ampullae, which survive. See Davis, Stephen, The Cult of St. Thecla: A Tradition of Women's Piety in Late Antiquity, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar, Appendix A.

26 Davis, Cult of St. Thecla, 5. Castelli notes how the Vita outstrips the facts of the Acts of Paul and Thecla, saying “this occlusion of the figure of Paul may contribute to the process by which Thecla's figuration as a ‘martyr’ intensifies in textual and artistic representations and evocations of her.” Martyrdom and Memory, 144.

27 Castelli makes a parallel point about the images of Thecla at Thessaloniki. Martyrdom and Memory, 160–61.

28 “Representations of this sort may be understood to function as a kind of visual or material quotation, a condensed snapshot that refers back to another text and that sparks the viewer's memory of a familiar story.” Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 162.

29 Life of Macrina 15 (SC 178:192): λείψανα μαρτύρων.

30 Life of Macrina 19 (SC 178:202).

31 Life of Macrina 32 (SC 178:246).

32 Life of Macrina 33 (SC 178:248).

33 Life of Macrina 2 (SC 178:148).

34 Ruth Albrecht offers a more detailed discussion of Gregory of Nazianzus's use of Thecla as an exemplum in Das Leben der heiligen Makrina auf dem Hintergrund der Thekla-Traditionen: Studien zu den Ursprüngen des weiblichen Mönchtums im 4. Jahrhundert in Kleinasien, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 38 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), 240–43Google Scholar.

35 Potter, David S., The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180–395 (New York: Routledge, 2004), 486Google Scholar. For an argument that Constantine was interested in the broadest of monotheisms, see Digeser, Elizabeth DePalma, The Making of a Christian Empire: Lactantius and Rome (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

36 The literature on Julian and the character of his reign is immense. As a start, see still Bowersock, Glenn, Julian the Apostate (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978)Google Scholar, but also the update of Potter, The Roman Empire at Bay, 485–513, esp. 508 and following.

37 Thomas Banchich dates the letter, which survives in a slightly jumbled form, to 362, the second year of Julian's reign. See “Julian's School Laws: Cod. Theod. 13.3.5 and Ep. 42,” The Ancient World 24 (1993): 5–14Google Scholar.

38 C. Th. 13.3.5. See Bidez, Joseph, ed. and trans., L'empereur Julien: Oeuvres completes I.2 (Paris: “Belles Lettres,” 2003), 72Google Scholar.

39 Edward J. Watts places this in the context of a larger move toward administrative oversight and Julian's attempt to control the informal networks of power afforded to those with intellectual positions. See City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria, Transformations of the Classical Heritage 41 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 68–69Google Scholar.

40 Those who teach the texts of Homer or Hesiod but say these authors are wrong about the honor to be given to the gods “confess themselves to be entirely shameless, and that for a few coins, they are willing to do just about anything.” Ep. 42; 423b, ed. Bidez, 74.

41 It is possible to see here the reflection of a growing Christian insistence on the truth value of texts, too.

42 Ep. 42; 423d, ed. Bidez, 75.

43 This is how both Bidez and Watts read it. See City and School, 71; Bidez's note links this to Julian's Against the Galileans.

44 See, for example, Ammianus Marcellinus's characterization of the law (22.10.7; 25.4.20).

45 Gregory of Nazianzus, Letter 11.2. I am grateful to Bradley Storin for sharing his translation of this letter and for discussing with me its implications; his translations of Gregory of Nazianzus's letters and a study about the Gregory's self-representation appear in “Late Antique Epistolary Culture and the Letters of Gregory of Nazianzus,” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 2012). The Greek of Letter 11 is available in Gallay, Paul, ed. and trans., Grégoire de Nazianze: Lettres, tome I (Paris: “Belles Lettres,” 1964), 16–18Google Scholar.

46 Letter 11.4, Lettres, ed. Gallay, trans. Storin, 17. Interestingly, Gregory also asks: “have you placed [the old books] over the smoke, like oars and shovels in winter?” (trans. Storin). As Storin identifies, this refers to Hesiod's Works and Days, but it also conjures the image of books over smoke—a veiled reference to Julian's demand for public sacrifices?

47 Letter 11.6–7, Lettres, ed. Gallay, trans. Storin, 17–18.

48 These are identified by Bradley Storin.

49 Even those authors who resign themselves to using “pagan” to describe their subjects note its emergence primarily as a Christian term of disparagement and containment. See Athanassiadi, Polymnia and Frede, Michael, Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 4–7Google Scholar. The fact that “paganus” became a legal reality in the C. Th. only demonstrates the power of categorization by the powerful. For a treatment of both Christian and non-Christian intellectuals in a way that surpasses these debates, see Watts, City and School.

50 Salzman, Michele, “Ambrose and the Usurpation of Arbogastes and Eugenius: Reflections on Pagan-Christian Conflict Narratives,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 18 (2010): 191–223CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 191–92 and 206.

51 As Salzman points out, the most salient example of this approach is Ambrose, and even his view is difficult to grasp; there is not a figure in the Greek-speaking portions of Christianity who matches Ambrose's explicit resolution. Young Kim has indicated to me that Epiphanius may represent a Greek intellectual who embraces the stark divide (see, for example, his discussion of Origen's educational background in Panarion 64). There is also evidence of this attitude among Greek writers, but in relief, in the form of a significant project on the part of several writers to defeat it.

52 This despite recent attempts to make the tractate coincide with Basil's early career in the 350s. See Winn, Robert E., “Revisiting the Date of Authorship of Basil of Caesarea's Ad Adolescentes,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 44 (1999): 291–307Google Scholar. I agree with Winn that it belongs to the period of the 370s, in part because of Basil's own reference to his advanced age, but also for the ways it responds to the discourse established by Julian's reform. See also Philip Rousseau's more ambivalent discussion of the context of the work in Basil of Caesarea, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 20 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 49Google Scholar.

53 Basil, To Young Men 4, ed. Boulenger, Fernand, Saint Basile: Aux jeunes gens sur la manière de tirer profit des lettres helléniques (Paris: “Belles Lettres,” 2002), 46Google Scholar. On the wider topic of utility, see Gnilka, Christian, Der Begriff des “rechten Gebrauchs,” Chrēsis: Die Methode der Kirchenväter im Umgang mit der antiken Kultur 1 (Basel: Schwabe, 1984), esp. 67–76Google Scholar.

54 Basil, To Young Men 5, ed. Boulenger, Aux jeunes gens, 47.

55 This means there is less distance between Basil and Gregory's approach to “culture” than is traditionally rendered. I see the two in continuity. Cf. Meredith, Anthony, Gregory of Nyssa (London: Routledge, 1999) 5Google Scholar, in which he writes of Basil's hostility toward “culture”—that is “contemporary science and philosophy”—and compares it to Gregory's sympathy.

56 Susanna Elm has detailed the way that Julian's “thoughts and actions significantly influenced Gregory's response,” not just immediately, but in his entire career of skillfully weaving both Christian and Hellenic literary culture: “Gregory's oeuvre and the central themes he addressed and developed in all the literary genres of the time was a direct response to Julian and the characteristics of his reign.” See “Hellenism and Historiography: Gregory of Nazianzus and Julian in Dialogue,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33 (2003): 493–515, at 494CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 4.103-5, cited by Elm, 506.

58 “Whoever equated Greekness and Greek learning—that is, philosophy—exclusively with belief in the Greek gods denied the universality of Greekness, itself the perfect mixture of the best of all peoples within the Roman oikumene . . . In short, for Gregory, Greekness and Greek learning, once properly guided toward the correct divinity, were integral to being Christian, and the demonstration of that fact became his life-long pursuit.” Elm, 506.

59 Gregory of Nyssa, Treatise on the Soul and the Resurrection, 17, ed. Ramelli, Ilaria, Gregorio di Nissa: Sull'anima e la resurrezione (Milan: Bompiani, 2007), 350–52Google Scholar.

60 Gregory of Nyssa, Treatise on the Soul and the Resurrection, 108, 129, ed. Ramelli, Sull'anima e la resurrezione, 456, 482.

61 Gregory of Nyssa, Treatise on the Soul and the Resurrection, 49, ed. Ramelli, Sull'anima e la resurrezione, 390.

62 Gregory of Nyssa, Treatise on the Soul and the Resurrection, 80, ed. Ramelli, Sull'anima e la resurrezione, 424.

63 Gregory of Nyssa, Treatise on the Soul and the Resurrection, 64, ed. Ramelli, Sull'anima e la resurrezione, 404.

64 Gregory of Nyssa, Treatise on the Soul and the Resurrection, 129, ed. Ramelli, Sull'anima e la resurrezione, 484.

65 Steedman, Carolyn Kay, Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 143Google Scholar.