Rarely does an introduction to an edited volume include such important context to a body of work. The historical account by the editors Panayotov, Jugănaru, Theologou and Perczel for this volume provides a weighty and even solemn backdrop to the collection of essays that emerged from a 2019 conference at Central European University (Budapest): ‘Dis/embodiment and Im/materiality: Uncovering the Body, Gender and Sexuality in Late Antiquity. In Memoriam Marianne Sághy (1961–2018)’. It is a testament to the conference presenters, authors and editors that their work continued despite the challenging circumstances in which the Central European University found itself vis-à-vis the Hungarian government’s problematic relationship with higher education with respect to gender studies (https://gender.ceu.edu/statement-annulment-gender-studies-ma-degree-accredited-hungary), the move of the University from Budapest to Vienna and the untimely death of one of the key conference organisers (founding member of CEU’s medieval studies, renowned scholar and professor, M. Sághy, p. 1). This review will provide an analysis of the book and its organisation and conclude with a few comments on Panayotov et. al.’s contributions to the academic conversation.
In addition to the introduction and a valuable bibliography of Sághy’s scholarly contributions, the volume is organised and focused on late antiquity ‘in a wider sense’ (p. 4) – a welcome turn in late antique studies – in such a way that the four asymmetrical sub-sections are bookended by two, one-essay sections that expand the customary ‘late antique’ analysis beyond the long-established Mediterranean to India. This coverage highlights several factors: recognition of the importance of widening the perspective; the need for additional work that will push these boundaries; and the influence of the vast scholarship of the twentieth century on our understanding of the time period and geography.
Section 1, ‘From India’, contains a chapter that introduces readers to the first challenges faced by the earliest forms of monastic, ascetic life. Identified by U. Chakravarti as tensions between ‘householders’ and ‘renouncers’, it quickly becomes apparent that it is a pressure beset by the ways in which gender roles influence Indian society. In brief, biological beings are complex; and whilst rules might be established for ordered society, the nature of our existence dictates that the rules must be as fluid as our bodies.
Section 2, ‘Through the Late Antique Mediterranean’, forms the largest of the three sections in the volume, and is divided into five sub-sections that include (2.1) sex, gender and the self across centuries of ancient and late antique philosophies; (2.2) theological considerations on a variety of early Christian texts, including the ever-popular and widely known Protoevangelium of James and the lesser-known, underappreciated Arabic Christian theologies of Melkite, Nestorian and Chalcedonian authors in conversation with Muslims – and each other – on various theological topics of concern; (2.3) an exclusive consideration of the theology of Augustine of Hippo, an understandable nod to the figure whose writings on sexuality did more to shape theological anthropology in western history than perhaps any other. The inclusion of Didymus the Blind’s allegorical reading of Genesis 3 in P.D. Steiger and M. Sato’s ‘Man, Woman, and Serpent as the Inner State of One Person’ complements the analysis of Augustine’s exegetical influences in light of the challenge that Manicheanism presented to Christian views of the body. The fourth sub-section (2.4) presents various incarnations of shamed, post-menstrual, enslaved and gendered bodies in the popular literatures and material cultures of Christianity and Roman society, including hagiography and the employment of magical, medical instruments. Of particular note in this section is J. Poole’s ‘Menopause and Agency in Late Antiquity’, which offers a meaningful analysis of the role of medical amulets and female agency to the grossly understudied and often ignored topic of menopause. The fifth and final sub-section (2.5) takes the analysis of the body into another direction, with a focus on transformative, variable virility of Roman imperial figures and educational virility provided by a liberal arts education for young men in cathedral schools.
The third section, ‘To the Ancient Mediterranean and India’, brings this interdisciplinary volume to a close with an interreligious, comparative study of the Hebrew Song of Songs and the Sanskrit Soundarya Lahiri. Focusing on the role of ‘female energy’ (p. 381) as the source of these two multifaceted texts, S. Visvanathan’s analysis reveals how the greater divide or separation between the divine and the human realms may not be biological, but spiritual.
To conclude, it is only just and fair to assume that editors do the best they can to organise sections cohesively, in light of challenges often presented when publishing volumes that emerge from conference proceedings. Yet any imbalance in the volume overall takes nothing away from the quality of the scholarship contained within each individual chapter. And while this author would have enjoyed a concluding chapter to provide a summative statement on the work as a whole, nevertheless the lack of such a chapter enables readers to draw such conclusions for themselves. Taken together, this multi-disciplinary study of the multiplicities of embodiment and disembodiment across the vast spectrum of late antique culture and society offers a valuable contribution to the study of late antiquity, for students, scholars and educated interested readers.
