Subversive Virtue by Francis James A

Author:Francis, James A.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press

Had Celsus encountered just one such figure, it would have supplied him with all the ammunition he needed for his polemic. Such was certainly the case for Lucian with Peregrinus. In fact, Davies’s description of the apostle’s rejection of social life and authority applies equally to the Cynic preachers. The appeal of both apostle and Cynic was based on personal, charismatic authority manifested and confirmed by an ascetical manner of life.

The central focus of the ministry of the apostle in the Apocryphal Acts is the conversion of a woman or women to a life of chastity. The most famous of many such figures is Thecla, the disciple of Paul who, upon hearing the apostle preach, abandons her betrothed and gives up all to follow the apostle in virginity. All the forces of authority are brought against Paul and Thecla as her betrothed, one of the first men of the city, hauls the apostle before the proconsul. Thecla is summoned and, upon displaying her utter devotion to Paul, her own mother demands she be burned! (A.Pl. 2.7–21). Here and throughout the other Acts, the apostle is repeatedly accused of goeteia, particularly for encouraging women to abandon their men and devote themselves to chastity (e.g., A.Th. 10.130, 11.134, passim). In this regard, the Apocryphal Acts reflect an accurate historical picture, as this same accusation was used regularly against pagan ascetics and social deviants. The theme of the seduction of women also recurs, as it had with the Montanist prophetesses, Celsus’s stories of Christian missionaries, various pagan women involved in cults of superstitio, and in the Cynics of Lucian’s Fugitives who “claim to turn women too into philosophers” (18f.).123

The Apocryphal Acts, perhaps more clearly than any other source, illustrate the paradox concerning women in antiquity. By renouncing marriage, women released themselves from a plethora of social bonds, roles, and expectations and opened for themselves new areas of independent achievement. Women in the Acts possess definite religious power: Drusiana raises Fortunatus from the dead (A.Jn. 81ff.), Thecla baptizes herself (A.Pl. 2.34) and her prayer translates the departed soul of a young girl to Paradise (A.Pl. 2.28). Both characters become confessors facing the threat of martyrdom for the sake of their chastity—Drusiana out of conscience (A.Jn. 64), Thecla out of refusal to play her expected social role (A.Pl. 3.26f.)—saving themselves from the desires of lustful men. Such “liberation,” especially when coupled with devotion to a superstitio prava et externa, was greeted by the men of this society with horror.124

It is evident, therefore, that Celsus would have found sufficient grounds for his contention that Christians posed a threat to the social fabric of the empire among the radical, ascetical factions of the new religion. The groups Celsus specifically mentions and contemporary apocryphal literature manifest a form of Christianity that emphasized personal charismatic authority, enthusiastic prophecy and / or secret and arcane knowledge, sexual renunciation, and the promotion of women to positions of responsibility. All these phenomena lay outside the nomos of the received culture and, therefore outside the control of its social norms.

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