An early version of this paper was delivered as the Antoinette Brown Lecture at Vanderbilt Divinity School on March 21, 1996; I thank the audience for its comments. I also wish to thank members of the North Carolina Research Group on Women in the Middle Ages and Early Modernity, colleagues and former Duke graduate students (especially Dale Martin, Gail Hamner, and Randall Styers), and the two readers for Church History, for their valuable criticisms of earlier versions.

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2. The famous phrase of German historian Leopold von Ranke.Google Scholar

3. An example is provided by Toews, John E., “Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn: The Autonomy of Meaning and the Irreducibility of Experience,” American Historical Review 92 (1987): 906CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “… a new form of intellectual hubris has emerged, the hubris of wordmakers who claim to be makers of reality.”

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37. Ibid., p. 797. Scott has now attempted to write a feminist history via deconstructive readings: see Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

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56. Ibid.

57. Caplan, , “Postmodernism,” 272.Google Scholar

58. See discussion in Palmer, Bryan D., Descent Into Discourse: The Reification of Language andthe Writing of Social History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

59. Sewell, William H. Jr, review of Scott's Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), in History and Theory 29 (1990): 81–82.Google Scholar

60. Caplan, , “Postmodernism,” pp. 266, 272.Google Scholar

61. Miller, , “The Text's Heroine,” pp. 117–18;Google ScholarClark, Elizabeth A., “Foucault, the Fathers, and Sex,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 56 (1989): 634–36;Google ScholarRichlin, , “Zeus Meets Metis,” 165–70;Google Scholar and several essays in Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance, ed. Diamond, Irene and Quinby, Lee (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

62. The phrase “symptomatic reading” is associated especially with Louis Althusser. For a helpful discussion of the term for feminists, see Hennessy, Rosemary, Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. xvii, 93;Google Scholar and see Clark, Elizabeth A., “Ideology, History, and the Construction of ‘Woman’ in Late Ancient Christianity,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 2 (1994): 165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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66. Speculum 65 (1990): 59–86.Google Scholar

67. Spiegel, , “History,” 72, 82, 83. Isabel Hull (“Feminist and Gender History,” 286) also notes how “mid-level theory” often proves most helpful for the historian.Google Scholar

68. Spiegel, “History,” 84, citing Carroll Smith-Rosenberg.Google Scholar

69. Ibid., 77–78; cf. 78 on the “social environment of the text.”

70. Ibid., 85.

71. Ibid.

72. Ibid., 78, 79“83. The two texts Spiegel discusses are the Anonymous of Bethune's Historie des dues de Normandie et des rois d'Angleterre and the vernacular Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle.

73. Ibid., 78–81.

74. Ibid., 78–79.

75. Ibid., 80, 82.

76. Ibid., 83.

77. Ibid.The allusion is to Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

78. Spiegel, “History,” 77.Google Scholar

79. Ibid., 60.

80. Ibid., 62.

81. Ibid., 77.

82. Ibid., 64. For a different view see Dominic LaCapra, Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 30–34; discussed in Toews, “Intellectual History,” 885–86.Google Scholar

83. Hull, , “Feminist and Gender History,” 293.Google ScholarScott, Joan, however, in “A Statistical Representation of Work: La Statistique de l'industrie á Paris, 1847–1848” (in Gender and the Politics of History, pp. 113–38), argues against separating statistical reports from other kinds of historical texts;Google Scholarimagining that “numbers are purer” “denies the inherently political aspects of representation …” (pp. 114–15).Google Scholar

84. See the critique of Scott by Valverde, “Poststructuralist Gender Historians,” 233;Google Scholaridem, “As If Subjects Existed: Analyzing Social Discourses,” The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 28 (1991): 177.Google Scholar

85. Patlagean, Evelyne, “Ancienne hagiographie byzantine et histoire sociale,” Annales: e, s, c 23 (1968): 114, borrowing from Lévi-Strauss.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

86. See Clark, Elizabeth A., “Ascetic Renunciation and Feminine Advancement: A Paradox of Late Ancient Christianity,” Anglican Theological Review 63 (1981): 240–57,Google Scholarreprinted in Clark, Ascetic Piety and Women'sFaith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity (Lewiston, Maine: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986), pp. 175–208, esp. pp. 182–85;Google ScholaralsoElm, Susanna, “Virgins of God”: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), esp. chap. 1.Google Scholar

87. As in Jerome's Vita Pauli 7; 16 (PL 23, 22–23, 28).Google Scholar

88. Bynum, Caroline Walker, “Women's Stories, Women's Symbols: A Critique of Victor Turner's Theory of Liminality,” in Anthropology and the Study of Religion, ed. Reynolds, Frank and Moore, Robert (Chicago: Center for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1984), pp. 105–25.Google Scholar

89. Perry, Ben Edwin, The Ancient Romances: A Literary-Historical Account of Their Origins, Sather Classical Lectures 37 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 5–6, 96, 153;Google ScholarWeinreich, Otto, “Nachwort,” in Heliodorus, Aithiopika. Die Abenteur der schönen Chariklea. Ein griechischer Liebesroman, ed. Reymer, Rudolf (Zürich: Artemis-Verlag, 1950), pp. 327–36.Google Scholar

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91. Text in Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, ed. Lipsius, R. A. and Bonnet, M. (Leipzig: Hermann Mendelssohn, 1891–1903) I: 235–72;Google ScholarEnglish translation in New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Hennecke, Edgar and Schneemelcher, Wilhelm; English trans. Wilson, R. McL. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1965), II: 353–64.Google Scholar

92. For the “liberal” and “conservative” trajectories that were elaborated from Paul's teaching on women, see MacDonald, Dennis R., The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983). For later appeals to Thecla, see, for example, Tertullian, De baptismo 17; Jerome, ep. 22.41.Google Scholar

93. Often itself a literary fiction: see Hippolyte Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction to Hagiography, trans. Crawford, V. M. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961; French and original English publication, 1907), p. 71.Google Scholar For more traditional scholars, a sign of the work's authenticity; see Luck, Georg, “Notes on the Vita Macrinae of Gregory of Nyssa,” in The Biographical Works of Gregory of Nyssa, ed. Spira, Andreas, Patristic Monograph Series 12 (Cambridge, Mass.: The Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1984), pp. 21–22.Google Scholar

94. So Albrecht, Ruth, Das Leben der heiligen Makrina auf dem Hintergrund der Thekla-Traditionen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1986), pp. 42–43 (the Vita Macrinae is “ein sehr authentisches Bild”).Google ScholarCastelli, Elizabeth A., on the other hand, notes that since the name “Syncletica” is a pun, some have thought thatthe Vita Syncleticae did not refer “to an actual woman,” but was a fictitious invention.Google Scholar See Castelli, , “Translation” (of the Vita Syncleticae) in Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook, ed. Wimbush, Vincent L. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), p. 267 n. 7.Google Scholar

95. [Gerontius], Vie de Sainte Mélanie, prologus (SC 90, 124, 126);Google ScholarLatin text in Santa Melania Giuniore, senatrice romana: documenti contemporanei e note, ed. Rampolla, Mariano del Tindaro (Roma: Tipografia Vaticana, 1905).Google Scholar

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100. Vita Melaniae Junioris 15 (SC 90, 156); in the Greek version, the income is attributed to Melania's husband Pinian; in the Latin version, to Melania herself. I thank Keith Hopkins for assistance with these calculations.Google Scholar

101. The trip to Constantinople is described in Vita Melaniae Junioris 51–56 (SC 90, 224–40);Google Scholarthe Latin version adds the precise figure of “40 days.” She leaves Constantinople at the end of February and arrives home just before Holy Week (Vita 56–57).Google Scholar

102. Vita Olympiadis 5 (SC 13bis, 416, 418).Google Scholar

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112. Barthes, Roland, “The Discourse of History,” trans. Bann, Stephen, in Comparative Criticism: A Yearbook, vol. 3, ed. Shaffer, E. S. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 7.Google Scholar For a similar point, see White, Hayden, “‘Figuring the nature of the times deceased’: Literary Theory and Historical Writing,” in The Future of Literary Theory, ed. Cohen, Ralph (New York: Routledge, 1989), pp. 23–24.Google Scholar

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114. White, Hayden, “The Question of Narrative in Contemporary Historical Theory,” History and Theory 23, 1 (1984);CrossRefGoogle Scholarreprinted in White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p. 57;Google Scholar also see White's essay, “The Discourse of History,” Humanities in Society 2 (1979): 1–15, for an illuminating discussion of the “history of historiography.”Google Scholar

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125. Palladius, , Historia Lausiaca 54 (Butler, 147).Google Scholar

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130. Ibid. 29 (PG 28,1504–05).

131. Ibid. 29; 40; 49 (PG 28,1505,1512,1516–17).

132. Ibid. 53 (PG 58,1520).

133. Ibid. 81; 88 (PG 58,1536,1541).

134. Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Macrinae 3 (SC 178, 148, 150). Georg Luck observes that there is not a single certain quotation from a pagan author in the entire Vita (“Notes,” p. 29).Google Scholar Anthony Meredith comments that the whole notion of the “philosophic life” is here transformed into “the life of virtue” (“A Comparison Between the Vita S. Macrinae of Gregory of Nyssa, the Vita Plotini of Porphyry and the De Vita Pythagorica of Iamblichus,” in The Biographical Works of Gregory of Nyssa, ed. Spira, , pp. 191–92).Google Scholar

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137. Ibid. (PG 46,28).

138. Ibid. (PG 46, 76–79).

139. Ibid. (PG 46, 93, 96–97).

140. Ibid. (PG 46, 53).

141. Ibid. (PG 46,32–33,36–37).

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148. Ibid., p. 137,138–139, 144. See also Irigaray's, Luce emphasis on the fecundity of love in Diotima's speech: “Sorcerer Love: A Reading of Plato's Symposium, Diotima's Speech,” in Revaluing French Feminism, ed. Fraser, and Bartky, , pp. 64–76, esp. pp. 69–70.Google Scholar

149. Halperin, “Why Is Diotima a Woman?” 150,137.Google Scholar

150. Ibid., pp. 144,145 citing Helene Foley.

151. Ibid., pp. 151,149.

152. Ibid., p. 150.

153. Ibid., p. 145.

154. Ibid., p. 149.

155. Ibid., p. 151. Virginia Burrus has astutely noted in a recent paper that the speeches given by the male symposiasts in Plato' dialogue are also “made up”; the male figures are no more “solid” and have no moreclaim to a male subjectivity than does the representation of Diotima (“Is There a Woman in the Text? Reflections on Doing ‘Women's History’ in the Field of Late Antiquity,” conference on “Religion and Gender in the Ancient Mediterranean,” Ohio State University, 05 22, 1997, typescript, pp. 4–5).Google Scholar

156. In Off With Her Head! The Denial of Women's Identity in Myth, Religion, and Culture, ed. Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard and Doniger, Wendy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 165–184; discussion at p. 180, citing Claudia Camp and Raphael Patai. Gregory of Nyssa, on the other hand, in commenting on Proverbs 4:6–8 does not flinch from stating that both men and women can be married to Wisdom, citing Galatians 3:28 for support: De virginitate 20 (SC 199, 500, 502).Google Scholar

157. Ibid., pp. 173–74,177.

158. Ibid., p. 180.

159. See Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, “Displacement and the Discourse of Women,” in Displacement: Derrida and After, ed. Krupnick, Mark (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), p. 190, for a critique of Derrida on this point, after a sympathetic (and useful) review of Derrida's advancement of feminine figurations.Google ScholarArnaldo Momigliano accepts the role of Macrina in the Vita and De anima et resurrectione at face value: “Macrina is hereSocrates to her brother Gregory” (“The Life of St. Macrina by Gregory of Nyssa,” in Momigliano, On Pagans, Jews, and Christians [Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1987], p. 208;Google Scholar the essay was originally printed in The Craft of the Ancient Historian: Essays in Honor of Chester G. Starr [New York, 1985], pp. 443–58).Google Scholar

160. Brown, Peter, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 153, borrowing a phrase from Claude Lévi-Strauss.Google Scholar

161. Gregory of Nyssa, De anima et de resurrectione (PG 46, 25).Google Scholar

162. Hennessey, Lawrence R. notes that Gregory had “tamed” his Origenism before he wrote De opificio hominis and De anima et resurrectione (“Gregory of Nyssa's Doctrine of the Resurrected Body,” Studia Patristica 22 [Leuven: Peeters Press, 1989], pp. 31–32).Google Scholar

163. Gregory of Nyssa, De anima et de resurrectione (PG 46,112–13).Google Scholar

164. Ibid. (PG 46, 85).

165. Ibid. (PG 46,148–49).

166. Gregory of Nyssa, De opificio hominis 1 (PG 44,128,129,131).Google Scholar

167. Ibid., 28 (PG 44, 229,232–33).

168. Ibid., 16 (PG 44, 177, 180); Gregory faults the notion as too “lowly” for the Christian affirmation of human creation.Google Scholar

169. Gregory of Nyssa, Oratio catechetica magna 8 (Jaeger 3.4, 30); De virginitate 13 (SC 119, 422).Google Scholar

170. Gregory of Nyssa, Oratio catechetica magna 31 (Jaeger 3.4, 76–77); De opificio hominis 16 (PG 44, 185); cf. the arguments of Gregory's Contra fatum (PG 34, 145–74). Gregory's critique of determinism is explored in David Amand (de Mendieta), Fatalisme et liberté dans I'antiquité grecque (Louvain: Bibliothèque de l'Université, 1945), Book II, chap. 9.Google Scholar

171. Gregory of Nyssa, Oratio catechetica magna 8 (Jaeger 3.4,32).Google Scholar

172. Gregory of Nyssa, De virginitate 23 (SC 119, 524–28); De perfectione (Jaeger 8.1, 195–96).Google Scholar

173. Gregory of Nyssa, De opificio hominis 16 (PG 44, 181, 185). Note Verna Harrison's summation: “Gregory argues that there is no gender in the eternal Godhead since even within the human condition gender is something temporary” (“Male and Female in Cappadocian Theology,” Journal of Theological Studies 41 [1990]: 441).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

174. Ibid., 22 (PG 44, 204).

175. Ibid., 16 (PG 44,185).

176. As do virgins, according to Gregory of Nyssa, De virginitate 13 (SC 119,422–26); cf. Hom, in Canticum Canticorum 15 (Jaeger 6, 439–40), on Song of Songs 6:2; according to Gregory's teaching here, we recover the image when we model ourselves on Christ.Google Scholar See Miller, Patricia Cox, “Dreaming the Body: An Aesthetics of Asceticism,” in Asceticism, ed. Wimbush, Vincent L. and Valantasis, Richard (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 288 (writing of Gregory of Nyssa's dream of Macrina's glowing bones in Vita Macrinae 15) that “[t]he glowing body of his virginal sister was so important to Gregory because it was a sign that a momentous shift in the constitution of the human person with respect to time was possible.”Google Scholar

177. Gregory of Nyssa, De opificio hominis 18 (PG 44,196).Google Scholar

178. Gregory of Nyssa, Hom, in Canticum Canticorum 4 (Jaeger 6,115).Google Scholar

179. Ibid., 9 (Jaeger 6,275–76).

180. Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Macrinae 1 (SC 178,140).Google Scholar

181. Harrison, Verna E. F. notes how Gregory also can allow “Wisdom” to change genders in his First Homily on the Song of Songs (“Gender Reversal in Gregory of Nyssa's First Homily on the Song of Songs,” Studia Patristica 27 [Leuven: Peeters, 1993], pp. 35–36).Google Scholar

182. Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Macrinae 6 (SC 178,162).Google Scholar

183. Ibid., 1 (SC 178,140,142).

184. See Clark, Elizabeth A., “Sex, Shame, and Rhetoric: Engendering Early Christian Ethics,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 59 (1992): 221–45, esp. 230–35, for examples.Google Scholar

185. See various essays in Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism, ed. King, Karen L. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), especially Anne Pasquier's “Prouneikos: A Colorful Expression to Designate Wisdom in Gnostic Texts,” pp. 47–66.Google Scholar

186. See note 65 above.Google Scholar

187. Burrus, , “Is There a Woman in the Text?” typescript, p. 7. For a different construal of the problem, see Bernadette Brooten, “Early Christian Women and Their Cultural Context: Issues of Method in Historical Reflection,” in Feminist Perspectives on Biblical Scholarship, ed. Collins, Adela Yarbro (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985), p. 66: “The lack of sources on women is part of the history of women.”Google Scholar