The Garb of Being
Embodiment and the Pursuit of Holiness in Late Ancient Christianity
This book can be opened with
Note on our eBooks: you can read our eBooks (ePUB or PDF) on the free Fordham Books app on iOS, Android, and desktop. To purchase a digital book you will need to create an account if you don’t already have one. After purchasing you will receive instructions on how to get started.
This collection explores how the body became a touchstone for late antique religious practice and imagination. When we read the stories and testimonies of late ancient Christians, what different types of bodies stand before us? How do we understand the range of bodily experiences—solitary and social, private and public—that clothed ancient Christians? How can bodily experience help us explore matters of gender, religious identity, class, and ethnicity? The Garb of Being investigates these questions through stories from the Eastern Christian world of antiquity: monks and martyrs, families and congregations, and textual bodies.
Contributors include S. Abrams Rebillard, T. Arentzen, S. P. Brock, R. S. Falcasantos , C. M. Furey, S. H. Griffith, R. Krawiec, B. McNary-Zak, J.-N. Mellon Saint-Laurent, C. T. Schroeder, A. P. Urbano, F. M. Young
This welcome collection offers many well-articulated perspectives on the role of the body in late antique religious practice and imagination.---Charles Stang, Harvard Divinity School
Georgia Frank is Professor of Religion at Colgate University.
Andrew Jacobs (Edited By)
Andrew S. Jacobs is Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University.
Susan Holman (Edited By)
Susan R. Holman is the Eckrich Chair and Professor of Religion and the Healing Arts at Valparaiso University.
List of Abbreviations | xi
Introduction. Dangling Bodies, Robes of Glory: The Garb of Embodiment in Ancient Christianity
Georgia Frank, Susan R. Holman, and Andrew S. Jacobs | 1
Part I: Making Bodies
Body and Soul: Union in Creation, Reunion at Resurrection
Frances Young | 15
Jesus’s Dazzling Garments: Origen’s Exegesis of the Transfiguration
in the Commentary on Matthew
Arthur P. Urbano | 35
Conversing with Clothes: Germanos and Mary’s Belt
Thomas Arentzen | 57
Part II: Performing Bodies
“Denominationalism” in Fourth-Century Syria: Readings in
Saint Ephraem’s Hymns against Heresies, Madrāshê 22–24
Sidney H. Griffith | 79
A School for the Soul: John Chrysostom on Mimēsis and the Force of Ritual Habit
Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos | 101
A Question of Character: The “Labor of Composition” as
“Preventative Medicine” in Theodoret of Cyrrhus’s Religious History
Rebecca Krawiec | 124
“I Want to Be Alone”: Ascetic Celebrity and the Splendid
Isolation of Simeon Stylites
Andrew S. Jacobs | 145
Crowds and Collective Affect in Romanos’s Biblical Retellings
Georgia Frank | 169
Christian Legend in Medieval Iraq: Siblings, Sacrifice, and Sanctity in Behnam and Sarah
Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent | 191
Part III: Scripting Bodies
Five Women Martyrs: From Persia to Crete
Sebastian Brock | 221
Gregory of Nazianzus’s Poetic Ascetic Aesthetic
Suzanne Abrams Rebillard | 234
Eclipsed in Exile: In Defense of Athanasius and the Ethiopians
Bernadette McNary-Zak | 263
Sacred Bonds: Religion, Relationships, and the Art of Pedagogy
Constance M. Furey | 276
“And Yet the Books”: Patristics in the Footnotes
Susan R. Holman | 294
Cultural Heritage Preservation and Canon Formation:
What Syriac and Coptic Can Teach Usabout the Historiography of the Digital Humanities
Caroline T. Schroeder | 318
Bibliography | 347
List of Contributors | 391
Index | 397
