Christian bodies: the senses and early Byzantine Christianity

Abstract

In looking at studies on the body in Late Antiquity, it is clear that one theme dominates: the recurrent topic of the virginal life in patristic literature. Many studies dealing with the body in Late Antiquity have insisted on sexual attitudes. Their focus has been mostly on the meaning and consequences of the refusal of sex and sexual desires.1 A distrust of the other sex and different means to reduce one's sexual drives, such as deprivation of food,2 of sleep, of physical comfort and the control of the senses seem to dominate the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, the Lives of many of the monastic saints and the discourse of patristic writers such as Jerome and John Chrysostom.3 Yet to study the body through these texts makes one dependent on a specific trend in Late Antique Christianity, one well represented among church writers inclined towards monasticism, but not necessarily adopted by all Christians. The risk is 'to assume without analysis that discourse has general social effect',4 to believe without discussion that the norms of the ascetic lifestyle were adopted by large numbers when, in fact, the question of the impact of monasticism on Late Roman society remains open.

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