Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, vol. 2,

Genres and Contexts. (Ashgate Research Companions) by Stephanos Efthymiadis
Review by: Richard P. H. Greenfield
Source: Speculum , JULY 2015, Vol. 90, No. 3 (JULY 2015), pp. 799-801
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Medieval Academy of
America

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43577458

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 Reviews 799

on the Christian virtues of

or writing, much less acade
"ragazini" and "picioli"; the a
the priesthood, who normall
or the Florentine cathedra
school was an infant school f
for instruction in proper
the premises, and to open t
servants, suggesting they w
Dressen's transcription of t
of what were the contents o
sophical and theological wor
have been identified with mo
is a fantasy.

Robert Black, University of Leeds

Stephanos Efthymiadis, ed., The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Ha-

giography, vol. 2, Genres and Contexts. (Ashgate Research Companions.) Farnham,
Surrey, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014. Pp. xxiv, 512; 4 maps. $149.95. ISBN:
978-1-4094-0951-9.
Table of contents available online at http://www.ashgate.com/pdf/SamplePages/Ashgat
Research-Companion-to-Byzantine-Hagiography- V ol-II- % 20Cont.pdf; accessed
April 2015; doi:10.1017/S0038713415001268
While the first volume of this admirable and important work, published in 2011, looked
aspects of Byzantine hagiography from chronological and regional perspectives, the seco
volume adopts a thematic approach. Sixteen chapters, divided between three sections
unequal length, cover "Genres, Varieties and Forms," "Hagiography as Literature," an
"Hagiography and Society." Once again the editor, Stephanos Efthymiadis, has assembl
set of high-caliber international contributors. Each chapter comes with a valuable prima
and secondary bibliography, averaging ten pages in length. The reader is also assis
by four helpful and clear maps showing key places referred to in the work, and by thr
indices. The volume is almost perfectly copyedited and pleasantly presented in a large, c
font with bold and frequent subheadings within the chapters. The second volume of
Companion unquestionably provides a further significant and long-overdue contribut
in this field which will be of particular and lasting value to specialist students of Byzant
but will also be of use to those interested in the broader study of (medieval) hagiograph
religion, and literature. Given the constraints of space, commentary on individual chapt
must necessarily be limited and selective.
As Efthymiadis's slightly recursive introduction indicates, the primary focus here is
exploration of the remarkably developed and popular genre of hagiography in the Byzant
period through the lens of literary scholarship; although its value to social historian
not ignored, that aspect is clearly of secondary importance in conceptualization of t
volume. Issues of "genre" and the critiques, both general and specific to hagiograp
that stem from generic agnostics are thus a concern for Efthymiadis. Ultimately he arg
for an approach, evident in the volume's content, that seeks to find in "hagiography
umbrella term allowing all the possible elements in the diverse Byzantine hagiograph
discourse to be looked at in their original contexts and as the Byzantines themselves
them.

Speculum 90/3 (July 2015)

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800 Reviews

The first section, on "Gen

chapter "Byzantine Hagiogr
subsections, he provides a c
a thematic and morphologic
so forth - as well as categor
and particular combinations
follows in Marina Detoraki
rules of the genre are explo
of its trajectory througho
explores collections of mira
in verse and permits discuss
traditional boundaries of l
this section examine collect
(Christian Hogel), and syna
Having a separate section
ficial, given the heavy emp
tributions in the first secti
revisited, although from im
contribution on the Byzan
situation in which much ear
hagiography; that of Efthy
ences and patrons. In both c
describing, with analysis c
language, and delivery. It se
the authorial or patronal ro
subject is missed. The same
where his erudite and fascin
Stavroula Constantinou's int
notion of the mask or costu
dedicated to holy fools and
the accounts of other saints
a tantalizing hint in her co
ical "creativity" may mean
protagonists. Hagiography
The concluding chapter in
the different principal type
angle, perhaps illustrates th
the volume; only her conclu
allowed to move beyond lite
covered by the third and f
segment consists of three c
Michel Kaplan and Eleonora
and society to be derived
organized account by Helen
most groundbreaking cont
"The Hagiography of Doub
credulity towards the saints
brought in line with recen
clear argument Kaldellis de
a context of permanent su
the "frauds" "were often on

Speculum 90/3 (July 2015)

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 Reviews 801

that it was "only a matter

allows this extremely valuab
refreshing flourish.

Richard P. H. Greenf

Dyan Elliott, The Bride o

Lives of Pious Women , 20
Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
doi:10.1017/S0038713415001311

This may well be Dyan Elliott's best book - and that is saying a great deal. Disturbing
heartbreaking, and even - at points - hilarious, The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell offe
both an homage to, and a sharp critique of, the intricate choreography that kept ma
authority figures and consecrated women waltzing with the imagined persona of the brid
of Christ over the course of some thirteen hundred years. What did it mean for a bish
or hagiographer to identify a real woman - individually and imperfectly embodied an
ensouled - with this mystical figure? What did it mean for a woman to claim such
persona for herself? The answer, of course, is that it meant different things at differen
times and in different places.
Elliott's story begins in the earliest centuries of Christianity, "when the bride was just
metaphor unattached to any particular body - before she tumbled from the symbolic orde
became entangled in text, and finally came to land with a thump upon the body of t
virgin who has dedicated her life to God" (1). It was Tertullian, writing around the ye
200, who first attempted to "squelch" some consecrated virgins' "misguided pretension
to androgyny, by demanding that they assume the veils that would clearly identify them
wives, firmly united to sexed bodies, rather than angels or honorary men (as some virgin
had apparently been wont to claim).
Over the next few centuries, Tertullian's successors made the title sponsa Christi one o
"supreme honor," by applying it to the female figure in the Song of Songs (Origen) a
to the Virgin Mary (Athanasius and Ambrose), as well as to consecrated women. For t
women, however, the title implied strict control as well as honor. The Christ of the la
church fathers was a jealous husband, and the clergy who represented Christ on earth we
zealous on his behalf. The earthly Brides of Christ were bidden to wear veils, but forbidd
to wear makeup; they were advised to stay inside their homes and urged to obey the
clerical advisors. The possibility of a relatively free, ungendered lifestyle retreated, as th
role of bride became the "core identity" for pious women. Even the ceremony in wh
virgins assumed their veils echoed that of earthly marriage (46-49). By the fourth and fif
centuries, women themselves had begun to imagine themselves as brides, abandoning t
androgynous identities of earlier centuries.
At the heart of the bridal persona was the physically virginal body - the body tha
patrician families demanded from their brides, and that (in the view of someone l
Ambrose or Augustine) Christ expected from his Bride as well. In Cyprian's time, it w
already agreed that the consecrated virgin who willingly lost her physical virginity was
adulteress. But among the later fathers, the status of holy virgins who had been raped al
became a matter of great concern. Some concluded that a truly pious virgin would comm
suicide rather than allow herself to be defiled; others suggested that God would only allo
one of his Brides to lose her virginity if she were already sinful in some way. By the beginni
of the Middle Ages, then, the spiritual status of consecrated women had become powerfu
linked to a particularly limited and fragile element of human physicality. According
Elliott, virgins alone bore the honor - and potential danger - of being Christ's Brides.

Speculum 90/3 (July 2015)

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