In The Mirror of the Self: Sexuality, Self-Knowledge, and the Gaze in the Early Roman Empire, Shadi Bartsch argues that precisely the interrelation of the three discourses of vision, sexuality, and self-knowledge provides a space for conceptualizing selfhood in the early Roman Empire.Footnote 1 Her approach modifies Michel Foucault's theories and avoids the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan as well as contemporary film theory.Footnote 2 Also, she steers away from discussing the Church fathers, but she lays significant groundwork that can be used to analyze early Christianity even in the late Roman Empire.Footnote 3 Her intersection of these three topics may, in fact, assist us as a guide to the world of early Christian asceticism, with its various continuations, transformations, and renunciations of sexuality, self-knowledge, and the gaze that we find studied in Bartsch's book.
Like Seneca's works and other texts that Bartsch marshals for her evidence, Augustine's brief Praeceptum, Regula 3, or simply Rule, invites analysis in these same areas of study.Footnote 4 Augustine's Rule has special significance not only for its antiquity, but also for its continued authority for many religious communities, including the Order of Preachers. The Rule's asceticism, once brought to sharper relief through an application of visual theories, can be more readily appreciated for its original setting in the late Roman Empire and applied to Christian life today. Influenced by Bartsch, I propose to take “mirror” as a master metaphor that allows us to see the intersection of chastity, self-knowledge, and the gaze in Augustine's Rule. Such a metaphor, as we will see, understands Augustine in his own terms—but in a new light. Moreover, while recent studies have shown how asceticism petitions the gaze,Footnote 5 this study explores one example of a wide philosophical and religious asceticism that disciplines the gaze in sexual renunciation.Footnote 6
I begin each section with a vantage point of Bartsch's work and then proceed to analyze Augustine's Rule with assistance from additional views, both ancient and modern. By this method of visual theory, I argue that the Rule serves as a mirror so that Augustine's brethren, striving to become true “lovers of spiritual beauty,” may grow in self-knowledge under the watch of God and the community, especially in the paradigmatic case of the sexual gaze.Footnote 7 Such self-knowledge, in seeing themselves in the Rule as to how they have been and not been faithful, spurs the brothers on to Christian love in their identity as those made free under grace.
The Mirror
Shadi Bartsch contrasts ancient notions of the mirror with those of our time. We take mirrors for granted; they are cheap and plentiful. In antiquity, mirrors were rather rare and expensive. Bartsch continues:
[The mirror] was the subject of optical theorizing, magic beliefs, and most of all, of moralizing discourses … [T]he ancient reception of the mirror provides a way to understand the interrelation of such seemingly disparate discourses in antiquity as the nature of self-knowledge, the visual emphasis of ancient culture, and the interaction of eros and philosophy; the mirror allows us entry into all three topics of this study at once.Footnote 8
Augustine fits well within the parameters of Bartsch's method as he loved the image of a mirror.Footnote 9 He certainly inherited within his worldview various philosophical attitudes toward mirrors as well as those distinctively Christian, such as the two places in the New Testament that mention a mirror, James 1:23 and 1 Cor 13:12. The Rule's conclusion alludes to the former passage, while the latter passage stands out as “the scriptural text to which [Augustine] referred more frequently than any other throughout his authorship.”Footnote 10 Paul says to the Corinthians, “We see now through a mirror in enigma; but then face to face.”Footnote 11 But how does Augustine speak of mirrors, and specifically readings as mirrors?Footnote 12 Augustine frequently applies the word “Speculum” to the Scriptures.Footnote 13 In fact, Augustine near his death compiled various verses from the Old and New Testaments and called this work “Speculum;” Augustine planned it “for a rule of life” (ad vitae regulam”) both for those who could read much and those who could not.Footnote 14 In his Enarrationes in psalmos Augustine repeatedly refers to the Scriptures as a mirror for his church.Footnote 15 For example, while preaching on Psalm 103, Augustine comments on the verse, “You have clothed yourself in confession and beauty.” He preaches:
[God] has placed his Scripture, a mirror, for you. It is read to you, “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.” A mirror has been given in this reading. See if you are what it said. If you’re not yet, lament so that you may be. The mirror will make your face known to you. Just as you will not perceive the mirror as a flatterer, so too you will not caress yourself. Its clarity shows you what you are. See what you are. If it displeases you, strive not to be that way.Footnote 16
This theme occurs at the final chapter of Augustine's Rule. Here also Augustine suggests vision, self-knowledge, and erōs while holding up a mirror. The Rule concludes:
May the Lord grant that you observe all these things with love, as lovers of spiritual beauty, burning with the good fragrance of Christ from your manner of living, not as slaves under the law, but as the free who are established under grace. And so that you may be able to examine yourselves in this little book as in a mirror (tamquam in speculo), it should be read to you once a week—lest you neglect anything through forgetfulness. And where you find yourselves doing these things that are written, give thanks to the Lord, the giver of all good things. But whoever among you sees that something is lacking in himself, let him grieve about the past and be on guard about the future, while praying that his debt be forgiven and that he not be led into temptation.Footnote 17
The metaphor of the mirror, reminiscent of James 1:23, allows us to see the comparability in Augustine's thought between the Bible and his own writing for Christian living. With its numerous biblical references and especially its modeling on the community described in the Acts of the Apostles, the brief Rule encapsulates an abbreviated scriptural way of life.Footnote 18 Expanding upon Elizabeth Clark's recognition of the Bible as the text lying behind the ascetic texts of Vitae and Regulae, I suggest that Augustine's Rule serves—as do also the Rules of Basil and of Benedict—as a basic rendition of putting the Bible into practice.Footnote 19 Just as the Creed is a Rule of faith by which the Scriptures are believed, so too the Praeceptum is a Rule of love by which the Scriptures are lived for the ascetic community.Footnote 20 This suggestion of the Rule's comparability to Scripture in mirroring Christian practice is not without parallels elsewhere in Augustine's works. In writing to Boniface, a layman, husband, and prominent imperial official in North Africa, Augustine employs the word “mirror” for his text and compares his writing to the Bible. Augustine writes, “May this letter be for you a mirror where you see how you are rather than where you may learn how you ought to be. Nevertheless, whatever truth you still lack for the good life you will find it in this letter or in the sacred scriptures.”Footnote 21 Moreover, one can recall from Augustinian theology that not only Augustine's writings but even the Scriptures are just a mirror for this life, not heaven's light itself.Footnote 22
Holding on to this image of the Rule as mirror, we can now consider the three aspects of chastity, self-knowledge, and the gaze in the Rule. This triangulation in method may result in a deeper appreciation for the community's ascetic practices which are weekly checked by the Rule's hearing so that the brethren may see themselves—both their ideal selves in the constancy of the Rule's ideal and in their imperfect selves in weekly reality.
The Mirror and Chastity
Bartsch recalls that the mirror in antiquity was not esteemed as a morally neutral instrument. “When used by men … ,” Bartsch writes, “the mirror could point to—or result in—more than an increase in vanity or an exhibition of the erotic. A broad range of texts from as early as fifth-century Athens testify to the idea that only the ‘effeminate’ man—the passive homosexual, the eunuch, the hermaphrodite—would consult a mirror.”Footnote 23
In calling his Rule a mirror, Augustine does not suggest any effeminacy of the brethren. Rather, he wants his words to reflect to the brothers the ideal of their ascetic life in various respects—not simply the sexual. The first reason, he says, that the brothers are gathered together is to be “one soul and one heart in God.”Footnote 24 The details of the first chapter concerning possessions, with special attention to brothers coming from both rich and poor backgrounds, end in reprising this theme: “Therefore, all of you are to live in a unanimous and harmonious way. In one another among you honor God, whose temples you have become.”Footnote 25
Yet, the chapter with the longest treatment in the Rule is chapter 4, which deals especially with problems concerning sins of the eye against chastity. The Rule mirrors the sexual asceticism and lack thereof in the fraternal community. Chapter 4 states:
Do not let your eyes, even if they are cast toward some woman, be fixed on anyone. For when you go out, you are not forbidden to see women, but to desire them or to want to be desired by them is reproachful. In respect to concupiscence for women, one desires and is desired not only by touch and affection, but also by sight. Do not say that you have chaste souls if you have unchaste eyes, because an unchaste eye is the messenger of an unchaste heart. Even when the tongue is silent, unchaste hearts announce with a look toward one another, and by the concupiscence of the flesh they take pleasure in the burning for each other. Chastity itself flees from customs even if bodies remain intact from an impure violation.Footnote 26
Legislation on the sexual gaze is of course not a uniquely Christian phenomenon. Michel Foucault recalls Xenophon's record of Spartan formation that showed “the strictest modesty in demeanor (walking in the streets in silence, with downcast eyes and with hands hidden beneath their cloaks).”Footnote 27 In his volume 3 of the History of Sexuality, Foucault comments, “The gaze was thought to be the surest vehicle of passion; it was the path by which passion entered the heart and the means by which passion was maintained.”Footnote 28 However, Christianity did not simply continue previous ascetical practices of vision. It transformed them and injected into them distinctively Christian senses of sin and goodness. In explicit revision on past thinking, Matt 5:28 makes even looking with lust already adultery in the heart.Footnote 29 In Christian visual asceticism, Augustine's Rule is not as harsh as some eremitical practices that discourage even looking at a woman.Footnote 30 Augustine's brethren may, after all, see women. However, such vision is regulated. The Rule considers the eyes to be windows into the soul, which may be the source of sin. In the Rule's own expression “an unchaste eye is the messenger of an unchaste heart.” This interiority leads us into our next section.
The Mirror and Self-knowledge
Bartsch contrasts modern notions of self-knowledge with ancient forms of knowing oneself. Bartsch writes, “The ancient mirror is not a metaphor for the turning of the mind, pure nous, upon itself; what is mirrored is either the community or God.”Footnote 31 For example, Seneca writes about examining his days in a letter on drunkenness. He says, “Thus we must certainly live, as we live in plain sight; thus we must think, as if someone is able to look deep inside the heart, and someone can. For what use is it that something is secret from a human? Nothing is closed from God.”Footnote 32 This Stoic teaching prepares us to consider Augustine, whom Marcia Colish has called “the single most important figure in the history of the Stoic tradition in the Latin west between the third and the sixth centuries.”Footnote 33
The note of introspection at the end of the Rule, as we have already seen is inextricably bound to both community and God. This is no solipsistic mirroring. Returning to chapter 4, we find that community and God give the brother an opportunity for self-knowledge. The Rule says, “He who fixes his eye upon a woman and loves her fixed eye upon himself should not doubt that he is seen by others, when he does this. He is certainly seen, even by those whom he does not think see him. But if this lies hidden and no human being sees him, what will he do about that Observer on high from whom nothing can hide?”Footnote 34 Augustine safeguarded himself and his community against transgressions of the eye by this communal watch. In fact, according to Possidius, Augustine as bishop never spoke with women alone, but always had clergy present as witnesses.Footnote 35
How can contemporary visual theory aid in understanding Augustine's practice? In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault contrasts the ancient spectacular culture (where many can see one, such as in a theater) with the modern surveillance culture (where one can gaze upon many, as represented by Bentham's penitentiary Panopticon.)Footnote 36 Foucault argues that only in modernity can we speak of this kind of surveillance. Foucault's periodization has not been without criticism.Footnote 37 In Augustine's Rule, we may be taking a step from spectacle to surveillance in a communal watch on all the brethren and a divine omnipresent vision upon all. This similarity to Foucault's focus of study, instructive of the regulatory aspect, need not have the rather sinister implications of early modern penal institutions. Indeed, Augustine means the Rule precisely to safeguard freedom under grace.Footnote 38
With Mary Douglas we can use anthropological theory to see self-knowledge as stemming from the constant exchange of meanings between the group and the individual. Douglas writes, “The social body constrains the way the physical body is perceived. The physical experience of the body, always modified by the social categories through which it is known, sustains a particular view of society.”Footnote 39 Applying these perceptions of the two bodies, we find that Augustine realizes that the brother can be misled in his own thoughts. But when the Rule mirrors for the brother what the community and God perceive, then the brother can grow in this self-knowledge within the communal body formed in God. The Rule pairs the community and God again not only in their watching, but also in their preserving of the brother's chastity. The Rule states: “When therefore as soon as you are in church and wherever there are also women, guard the purity of one another. For God who dwells in you also will guard you in this way from among yourselves.”Footnote 40 At this point, Augustine applies the communal correction of Matt 18:15–17 to the sin of an unchaste eye. He writes, “And what I have said about not fixing the eye should also be diligently and faithfully observed in other sins discovered, prohibited, revealed, proved, and punished—with love for the people and hatred for the sins.”Footnote 41 Moreover, the opposite reactions to person and sin, love and hatred by the community, carries an astonishing power for one's self-knowledge. A penitent brother can know that he is always loved by his community and God—despite his hated failings. Therefore, one's actions do not completely determine how one is perceived in the gaze of another— our last topic before concluding.
The Mirror and the Gaze
Bartsch counsels her reader to distance the ancient world from our own concerning vision. Following Hans Jonas, she says:
Sight … seems to us the most neutral and the most detached of all the senses: innocent of causality, boundless in its scope, synchronous rather than diachronous in its workings. And yet this perspective has little do with the understanding of the visual process in antiquity. Almost all the ancient schools of thought about optics, from the atomists to Plato, Euclid, and Ptolemy, put an emphasis on the tactile nature of sight, and several of them talk specifically in terms of penetration and touching in language that is literal, not metaphorical.Footnote 42
We find a similar emphasis in a recent study on Augustine by Margaret Miles. Miles says, “Augustine adopted Plato's theory of the visual ray that touches its object as a perfect model for his description of both the potential danger of desire and for his account of positive desire resulting in the vision of God.”Footnote 43 Miles sketches these two epistemologies of dangerous desire and positive desire in her consideration of the Confessions and the De trinitate. She thinks that scholars have lost sight of the role of physical vision in the Platonic tradition and she accentuates the positive role of physical beauty for Augustine. However, we find more in the Rule the epistemology of danger when it comes to discourse of vision. Here Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger can assist our analysis. But first, we can review Augustine's Rule on the gaze and how it has a tactile quality.
The Rule as an adjustable mirror prohibits the gaze of desire through a series of visual changes of focus.Footnote 44 The Rule zooms in on gazes exchanged between a brother and a woman, it pans to include the community's vision of a brother's transgression, and it offers the unremitting vision of the Lord. From this perspective of the Lord's sight upon unchaste vision, the Rule quotes Prov 27:20 (LXX), “An abomination to the Lord is a fixed eye.”Footnote 45 Moreover, the brother looks at himself metaphorically when the Rule is read to him. These aspects of ascetic vision come into view because the transgression against chastity is “not only by touch and affection, but also by sight.”Footnote 46 The most vivid representation of the sense of vision comparable to touch comes in the communal correction of an offending brother.
The Rule compares the impure eye to a bodily wound. It says, “For if your brother has a wound in the body, which he wants to hide since he fears to be cut surgically, would it not be cruel for you to be silent and merciful for you to reveal it? Therefore how much more rather ought you to manifest it so that it may not putrefy more perniciously in the heart?”Footnote 47 Indeed, sin corrupts the inmost being with putrefaction, a state in marked contrast to the intended goal of the Rule: to form brethren as lovers of spiritual beauty, giving off the good fragrance of Christ.Footnote 48 The brother with an unchaste eye, if he refuses to submit to punishment should be expelled from the society. The Rule states, “For this occurs not cruelly, but mercifully, lest by his pestiferous contagion he should kill many.”Footnote 49 Those familiar with Mary Douglas's work on purity can now readily apply her understanding of pollutions as “analogies for expressing a general view of the social order.”Footnote 50 Precisely because the transgressor's danger continues to harm the innocent, according to Douglas's theory, the community brands the delinquent.Footnote 51 Applying this theory to our case of a strong group, the unrepentant brother with an unchaste eye is expelled to protect the social order with its innocent and vulnerable members. In a community guided by Augustinian thought, such an action must proceed from the demands of love.
Before leaving this section on the gaze, we briefly contrast Augustine with his older contemporary John Chrysostom. In her article, “John Chrysostom on the Gaze,” Blake Leyerle applies feminist film criticism to her early Christian study.Footnote 52 That criticism of the gendered gaze exposes how woman is the spectacle for desire and man the bearer of the look. In Leyerle's analysis, even those men seen and vividly described by Chrysostom, such as monks living with virgins in “spiritual marriages,” are themselves feminized in his theatrical rhetoric.Footnote 53 But Augustine's Rule differs markedly from Chrysostom's preaching. Augustine, as we have seen, focuses on mutuality in sins of vision not comparable to Chrysostom's own look. Moreover, the Rule was easily disseminated in a feminine version with the appropriate changes of gender and references to the opposite sex.Footnote 54 The Rule as a mirror equally reflects communities of men and communities of women. Its accessibility to both male and female ascetics distances it from those who exclusively depict women as dangerous or pleasurable objects for male viewing.Footnote 55 Augustine's Rule stands up rather well to that feminist concern today.
Conclusion
Through the master metaphor of the mirror, we see reflected in Augustine's Rule an intersection of chastity, self-knowledge, and the gaze comparable to what Shadi Bartsch studied in the texts of the Roman Empire. However, Augustine has not only adopted these discourses, he has adapted them to meet the needs of his Christian asceticism. As I have shown with the help of ancient and modern views, this kind of community life features a professedly scriptural asceticism of vision for a close-knit social body that renounces the sexual gaze and does so without falling into a decidedly sexist account of the gaze. In this visual asceticism, the brothers are to hear the Rule again and again, seeing themselves (both in ideal and present forms) in the Rule, giving thanks to God for what they have kept. Where they have failed, they pray in sorrow for the past and to be on guard for the future lest they be led into temptation. This visual asceticism makes explicit a way how the brothers are to be of one soul and one heart in God. By seeing their identity in this light, those who today profess obedience according to the Rule of St. Augustine can apply its ancient wisdom to matters of growth in authentic Christian love.
