Reviews 171 STAVROULA CONSTANTINOU, Female Corporeal Performances: Reading the Body in Byzan- tine Passions and Lives of Holy Women. (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Byzan- tina Upsaliensia, 9.) Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2005. Paper. Pp. 225. Stavroula Constantinou has given us a provocative and scholarly study of women saints and martyrs of the Byzantine Empire, Her theoretical framework is literary, dividing the lives she considers into carefully defined categories. She limits her study to women, defining, them by physical attributes and by social construction. Constantinou’s analysis is grounded in performance theory; she suggests that “in their literary representations, saints re-enact specific religious roles which they perform before God, the devil and/or a human audience.” AA saint’s cole is further reinforced through costumes and physical appearance. Constan- tinou traces the classical and Byzantine roots for the adoption of these theatrical forms into literary traditions, Chapter 1 is devoted to the role of the martyr, and specifically the female martyr, in Byzantine legends of martyrs. The author points to the use of theatrical spectacle in the scenes of public martyrdom and in the erotic pleasure provided to the audience, both imagined (the eyewitnesses) and real (the reader of the text) in the mutilation of the beau- tiful heroine. Chapter 2 explores a second genre of lives of women saints, the repentant prostitute or adulteress. The author notes the popularity of these texts and suggests that it may be due to their sexual content. Arguing that the text is closely tied to the body of the saint, Con- stantinou divides the bodily state of these saints into three phases, the sinful body, the repentant body, and the holy body. Saints’ lives of this type follow the saint's reform as it is inscribed on the body. First the body is devoted to sexuality and material display; then it is characterized by humility, self-knowledge, and penitence; and finally it is a sexless body, cut off from the material world and displayed, often in a theatrical way, as an ex- emplar for others. Chapter 3, “The Making, Remaking and Unmaking of the Gendered Body: The Case of the Holy Cross-Dresser,” studies the lives of saints who can be identified as cross-dressers. These are women who adopt the identity of men, usually posing as eunuchs or young boys, as a way to leave the constricted world of the feminine and achieve holiness. Constantinou quite rightly recognizes the theatricality of these lives. The heroines adopt male attire and must act out male roles within the monastery. Some of them are accused of fathering children and must suffer the penalty for this imagined act. At death there is always a revelatory scene in which the true sex of the saint is revealed to an audience, usually of monks. Here the author has neglected a serious issue. Monasteries for men were known to be far more rigorous than those designed for women. Thus a woman who wished to perfect herself in the holy life could achieve greater perfection by becoming a man and entering a monastery for men. Chapter 4 explores life in a nunnery and, more specifically, the roles of the abbess and the favored nun. The body of the nun begins as an obedient body, learning the discipline of the house. Then, tutored by the abbess, it becomes an exemplary body. The abbess must be a model for the women of her house, and as such she must lead an extremely ascetic life and teach her charges how to do the same. While this chapter is very interesting, it falls, into a narrative pattern and is not as closely linked to the author’s focus on performance theory as some of the earlier chapters. Each of the five chapters in this book is prefaced with an introduction that discusses the texts to be considered in the chapter. In every case this explanatory material is very well done. In the introduction to chapter 5, however, we finally discover the author’s debt to the French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray. Irigaray appears here because of her ideas, about the relationship between gender and space, which are important elements in this1172 Reviews chapter, In fact Irigaray’s ideas pervade the entire work, and it might have been useful to introduce her earlier. In any case, chapter 5 discusses the holy wife, her body, and its special pecformances. The author finds that the lives of married women who become saints are characterized by a literary trope in which they refuse to remain in the gendered space (in the Byzantine case the gynaikeion) allotted to them and, as a result, are punished by their husbands. The husbands, in turn, are presented as evil men, often tools of the devil. Three themes stand out in these lives. The heroine leaves her worldly family, which may be ex- pressed through the rejection of her father’s authority to force her to marry or through the loss of her own children. This happens in a public and sometimes theatrical way. Alter- natively the heroine continues to honor her husband’s legal control over her but pushes the boundaries of his authority, driving him to punish her in ways that can lead to violence and death, Hagiographers had difficulty finding these women holy enough to justify saint- hood. As result many of them are given a saintly afterlife in which their bodies accomplish the healing miracles that prove their sanctity. Constantinou is to be congratulated on the skill with which she has utilized this body of hagiographical material, developing an overarching mode! that allows her to talk about these lives. Not every reader will agree with the author's larger model, but itis thought- provoking. A future project that ties these materials and performance theory to earlier secular and religious literature would be most intecesting. One thinks immediately of the ‘Miracles of St. Perpetua and Apuleius’s retelling of the tale of the golden ass. The book is very well written and carefully produced. It is to be recommended for its solid scholarship and because it offers a new and refreshing look at the lives of women saints and martyrs in Byzantium. Kartyn M, RinGrost, University of California, San Diego PaitutpPe Conramine, Pages d'histoire militaire médiévale (XIVe~XVe siécles). (Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 32.) Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 2005. Paper. Pp. xv, 342; color figures, 1 black-and-white figure, and maps. Distributed by De Boccard, 11, rue de Médicis, 75006 Paris, France. This is a collection of essays by a distinguished French historian of medieval warfare. He tells us that they are the result of “une quarantaine d’années d’investigations” (p. vii); the earliest, “L’artillerie royale francaise” (no. 7), a famous piece indeed, dates from 1964, but all the rest were written between 1979 and 2002, although two (nos. 3 and 11) have not been published before. Some of them have been updated to take into account writings that hhave come out since they first appeared. The value of such collections is, of course, that they conveniently bring together the scattered works of an author. There is now quite a vogue for them: Ashgate in Britain has made this a substantial industry, while Picard in France has a dedicated series, Les Médiévistes Francais. Howeves, what we have here is a celebratory compilation, published under the auspices of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and the general standard of production, in Ad with some color pictures, reflects this. The essays are divided into four sections: “Overview” (pp. 3-36); “Arms and Animals” (pp. 37-140); “Events, Institutions, and Society” (pp. 141-248); and “Writings” (pp. 249— 312). While these are perfectly reasonable divisions, it has to be said that this volume has a very high degree of unity, for three reasons: it has a very tight chronological focus and mostly deals with aspects of the Hundred Years War; it is centered on France and its experience of war; and in many pieces there is a focus on documents, which is perhaps the greatest value of the book because those interested in the military history of this period can mine it for source material for their own work.REVIEWS 309 purposes for which they were produced, before, secondly, surveying the evidence for the reception and transmission of that corpus to Anglo-Saxon England. He shows how this literature has little to do with the historical facts of the persecution of Christians in Rome, but that itis invaluable to our understanding of the spiritualities of early medieval Roman and Anglo-Saxon Christianity, Martyrdom of a different kind in early thirteenth-century France is the subject of Kate Greenspan’s interesting association of the Provengal Legend of St Eulalia with the Cathar cause. More than about miracles this is a book about early medieval vernacular interpreters of Latin hagiographical traditions. The Germanic literatures it encompasses are Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse and (a little incongruously) Provengal. Some of its contributors are more willing than others to go beyond the linguistic and literary techniques involved in these reinterpretations to questions of historical context. Unrversrry or BIRMINGHAM Simon YARROW Female corporeal performances. Reading the body in Byzantine passions and lives of holy women. By Stavroula Constantinou. (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia, 9.) Pp. 225. Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 2005, $59.50. 91.554 6292 8; 0283 1244 JEH (58) 2007; doi:10.1017/S0022046906009183 ‘This latest addition to the excellent series of Byzantine texts, translations and studies published in Uppsala is a pioneering analysis of the passiones and vilae of female saints from a literary point of view, as constructions presenting the roles and actions of holy women as corporeal performances. The author devotes one chapter to each of the following types of holy woman: martyrs, repentant prostitutes, cross-dressers, abbesses and nuns, and holy wives. Because of their inherently theatrical nature, the passions of martyrs lend themselves particularly well to this sort of analysis; they describe public trials with dialogue followed by punishments before a large audience. Descriptions of the tortures inflicted on the usually virginal body of the female martyr, which has been stripped naked, are often sexually charged, and may have provided voyeuristic pleasure both to the actual spectators and to the reader of the passion. A corporeal focus also works well for the chapter on holy harlots, divided into three phases of development: the beautiful sinful body, the repentant body and the holy body, often emaciated through fasting so as to lose its female characteristics (Mary of Egypt, Pelagia). The androgynous figure of the repentant harlot finds its parallel in the woman who disguises herself in male monastic habit, usually to escape marriage (Euphrosyne the Younger) or an abusive husband (Matrona). The abbess seeks to obtain an ‘exemplary body’ through self-discipline, mortification and rendering the flesh impassible (Irene of Chrysobalanton); she may also take on masculine qualities by delivering sermons, normally reserved to the male sphere. Holy nuns, such as Theodora of Thessalonike, are often singled out by the abbess for special attention and discipline to mould their saintly character. The final chapter, on married women saints (Thomais, Mary the Younger), adds a new dimension of interpretation, that of gendered space; pious wives transgress social norms by leaving the domestic space of the house and going out into the street to perform charitable activities. The volume includes texts ranging from late antiquity to the fourteenth-century vita of Euphrosyne the Younger, although the latter actually deals310 JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY with a saint of the early tenth century. The bulk of the passiones and vitae are, however, carly and middle Byzantine, and the author does not address the perplexing problem of the causes for the precipitous decline in hagiographic texts dealing with holy women afier the eleventh century. Constantinou’s insightful readings of selected passions and saints’ Lives, informed by contemporary literary theory, provide new and stimulating ways of approaching these vilae. The author includes substantial chunks of both the Greck text and English translation of the passions and vilae under discussion, thus making it possible for the reader to follow the argument closely without having to consult other books. WasiincTon, ‘Auice-Mary Tatnor bc ‘Missale gothicum e codice Vaticano Reginensi latino 317 editum. Edited by Els Rose. (Corpus Ghristianorum. Ser. Latina, 19D.) Pp. Gor. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. €26: 2 503 01599 93 2 503 00000 2 JEH (58) 2007; doi:10.1017/S0022046906000492 The so-called Gothic Missal (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. lat. 317) is one of the most important representatives of the pre-Carolingian liturgical wadition of Merovingian Gaul, commonly known as the Gallican liturgy. Copied around the year 700 by at least three different scribes, and colourfully decorated by three different artists, this de laxe Merovingian sacramentary originated from a centre where the script of Luxeuil was used, and was copied for a church in Burgundy, possibly Autun or Besancon. In its present form, the Gothic Missal contains 543 formulae, arranged in seventy-seven mass formularies, of which thirty-two are for the temporal cycle, thirty-six for the sanctoral cycle, two for baptism, six Sunday masses and one daily mass. At least one formulary, at the beginning of the sacramentary, and an unknown number of formularies at the end are missing. Although incomplete, this outstanding liturgical manuscript has been the subject of numerous editions since the end of the seventeenth century: the most notable by H. M. Bannister for the Henry Bradshaw Society (1919) and by L. C. Mohlberg for the series Rerum Ecclesiasticarum Documenta (1961). Els Rose’s edition, under review here, is the latest and most erudite attempt to edit and study this fascinating ‘acramentary. Based on her 2001 Utrecht PhD thesis (Communitas in commemoratione liturgisch Latin en liturgische gedachtenis in het Missale Gothicum [Vat. reg, lat. 317]), Rose provides a meticulous and flawless edition of the Latin text, to which she added a lengthy and most informative introduction, The core of her introduction is a careful analysis of the Latin of the Gothic Missal (pp. 23-187). As Rose clearly demonstrates, the Gothic Missal is remarkable evidence for the vitality and creativity of Merovingian Latin, which, in the past, was unjustly and anachronistically dismissed as dull, vulgar or corrupt. The rest of Rose’s introduction (pp. 189-328) is a detailed study of the liturgical commemoration of the saints in the Gothic Missal, in an attempt to trace the various traditions that influenced the Gallican liturgy, to which the Gothic Missal belongs. No doubt Rose’s text will shortly become the standard cited version of the Gothic Missal; her exemplary introduction should be compulsory reading for anyone interested in Merovingian as well as liturgical Latin. Ben-Gurion Unversity or THs NecEV YirzHak Hen414 ‘COMPTES-RENDUS Insgesamt: Wie immer es mit der nicht endkorrigicten” Druckvoriage stand: Die gedruckten Miingel sind erheblich, Das Buch hitte in jedem Fall vor ‘dem Druck umnfassend Uberarbeitet werden mussen, Karin Merz. (Berlin) ‘Stavroula ConsTaNTINOU, Female Corporeal Performances. Reading the Body in Byzantine Passions and Lives of Holy Women (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia, 9), Uppsala, 2005. 225 pages. ISBN 0283-1244. In this lively and engaging study, Stavroula Constantinou provides a revised version of her doctoral dissertation (Berlin 2003), offering one of the most inter- esting studies of Byzantine hagiography of women saints to appear in some years, Prompted by the cultural insights of sociologist Erving Goffiman, Constantinou uses performance theory as a vehicle through which to consider hagiography as a gendered form of religious discourse, presenting types of sainthood, both male and female, as religious roles, litearly enacted through appearance, gesture, and speech (or silence). With her focus on women saint, hher concem with gender is not directed towards the hagiographer (whom she presumes to be male), but rather that ofthe saintly subjects. Using gender rather than biological sex as a foundational interpretive category, she is free to con- sider how the hagiographer's craft can allow gender to be literarily (as well as culturally and socially) constructed, and therefore a changeable dimension ofthe hhagiographical text. Constantinou posits that familiar, set “types” of sanctity evolved for men and women in Byzantine society, not only as acceptable variations of the religious, life, bt further as models for sainthood reinforced through clearly demarcated literary patterns. The patterns for men and women were sometimes similar — the abbot/abbess, the monk/nun — and other times solidly contrasting: the sol- tary desert herofthe penitent harlot, the saintly bishop/the holy wife. Hagio- graphically, each had its standardized script, and these scripts were markedly gendered: the Life of the holy monk would stress the saint's actions outside the ‘monastery, while the Life of the holy nun would rarely show her outside her convent walls. For the present study, Constantinou looks at six types of holy ‘women: the virgin martyr, the repentant prostituc, the holy erost-dresser, the saintly abbess, the holy nun, the holy wife. To explore these types and their hagiographical scripts, she draws upon thirty-three texts (both Passions and Lives), in Greek, dating from the fourth through the fourteenth centuries. She includes only formal Passions and Lives; and thus excludes not only other hagiographical genres (encomia, eters, hagiographical collections such as those by Palladius or Theodoret of Cyrshus), but also the epitomizing accounts of ‘Simeon Metaphrastes. For each of her types, Constantinou analyzes the presentation of the saint through the body: its descriptions, positions, movements, behavior, actions; its clothing and adornment, its speech or silence. Thus the martyr will wear her na- edness, while the penitent will be adomed with sackcloth or the solitary with an old tunic. The naked body of the martyr edifies, while the (barely) clothed body of the harlot tempts and defies. The penitent is silent, while the holy re pentant — the penitent who has achieved the state of sanctity — speaks di- a @ ser, 1252psor20% muse. 10 COMPTES-RENDUS 475 vinely edifying words. Equally important is te literary counterpart to the saint's ‘body, the body ofthe text itself, since, as Constantinou points out, each of these texts underwent repeated revision and re-presentation. These texts were re-read, ‘e-copied, revised, reworked, expanded and translated, most of them numerous times. Textually, they were no less malleable than the bodies of their holy sub- jects Constantinou argues that the different types of sainthood represent (and to some extent, define) different religious roles. Sanctity is an identity performed before an intended audience of external readers, and before a created literary audience internal to the story. It is performed to please God, to foil Satan's wiles, to edify the Christian community, to provide models for emulation. AS a literature of imitation, for imitation, hagiography could be a primary device for social control, and often was. Although women saints were often figures whose actions were powerful in overtuming the authorities of human order, yet the message of the texts invariably served to uphold social norms, inherited roles, ‘and culturally conservative behavior for real women within the Christian com- ‘munities to whom they were addressed. One of the strengths of this book is Constantinou’s deconstruction of this very paradox, and the clarity with which she demonstrates how this was the case. This is especially true for chapter five, oon the holy wife. These hagiographies, as Constantinou shows, express an anti- familial, anti-matrimonial ideology exceeding even that of the virgin martyr texts, The contrast to the depiction of saintly mothers that occurs in numerous Lives of holy men is startling. Constantinou argues that in the case of holy wives, depicted as abused in private and venerated in public, we see a strategy to establish holiness despite lay status, ‘There is much to commend this work. The discussions are rigorous in their cere with the texts, the insights illuminating and fruitful. Despite copious use of critical social and literary theory, the presentation is lucid, even to the point of starkness: reading the Table of Contents can tell you a great deal about this study. At the same time, the limits Constantinou sets on her data restrict the richness of the possibilities she raises. Focusing only on the strictly formal genre of Pas- sions and Lives means that these holy women are shown at their greatest discon- rection from the historical women they sometimes represent. This sets the ques tion of representation at its most extreme, and therefore misses the ambiguities that attend the accounts of women like the two Melanias, or Macrina or Gorgonia (the sister of Gregory of Nazaignzus). Treatment of historical context is abbreviated, although helpful as far as it goes: why the holy cross-dresser should be a type that flourished in early Byzantiurn, and the holy wife only in the later period, for example; or, why the image of holy abbess and saintly nun represent such late forms of these roles, are matters that deserve more complex. consideration than is granted here. There are also occasional missteps: the Byzantines certainly thought the apostle Paul was the author of the words in Eph. 5:23 and 1 Tim 2:15, but modem scholars know these to be deutero- Pauline. More curious is the citing (at length) of the Brock and Harvey transla tion of the Life of Febronia, made from the Syriac, presented instead with the Greek text (without explanation). remains to be done, not least because of the possibilities opened by Constantinou’s discussion, It would be interesting to compare the different 5 be ans, 12825erroce ot 10 416 ‘COMPTES-RENDUS emphases and nuances of other hagiographical traditions — e.g.,Latin or Syrise — which are not unrelated, but certainly distinct in how the same themes are ‘worked through. One wonders, oo, about liturgical developments that may be related to structural changes in hagiographical forms. Nonetheless, this study has a freshness and energy that are a welcomed addition to hagiographical scholarship. Hopefully, we will hear more from its author in due course. Susan ASHBROOK HaRveY (Brown University) ‘Thomas Paatsci, Der hagiographische Topos: Griechische Heiligenvten in miteloyeantinischer Zeit (Millennium Studien, 6), Berlin, 2005, 475 pages. Literary studies of motifs and commonplaces were undertaken by a number of literary erties ofthe twentieth century, one of the most important and influential ‘being the German humanist Emst Robert Curtus (1886-1956). Curtius’s work ‘has had a great impact on the recent book by Thomas Pratsch (a revised version of his Habilitationsschrift, Freie Universitit Berlin, 2004) dealing with Byzan- tine hagiographical opoi. Pratsch embarks on assembling and analysing a large ‘number of rhetorical and thematic commonplaces that he has found in a corpus of one hundred Byzantine saints’ Lives, written in Greek and dating from the seventh to the eleventh centuries. Pratsch has chosen to see all these various el- ‘ements as belonging to one category which he calls topos, following Curtius’s understanding of the term, identified with a number of quite different literary devices, such as clichés, established schemes of thought, standardised passages of description, formulas, examples, motifs, symbols and allegories. Pratsch’s book is divided into two part, the first considerably larger than the second. Included are also an introduction, a bibliography, and four useful and full indexes: a name index, an index of place and subject, an index of quoted texts and an index of quoted biblical passages. ‘The first part, entitled “Die Topoi-Materialsammlung’, isa large catalogue of what Pratsch calls ‘hagiographical topoi’, for the most part presented according to the order in which they usually appear in the texts, The following topoi are included: (Chapter 1) prologue and rhetorical devices and motifs appearing in a prologue, such as maxims, formulas, examples, the topos of modesty and the reason for writing; (Chapter 2) origin, family, childless parents, bith; (Chapter 3) childhood, baptism, early signs of sainthood, education, presentation of the Saint's personality, youth; (Chapter 4) vocation to renunciation of the world, vocation to seclusion, vocation to wandering; (Chapter 5) renunciation of the ‘world, distribution of property, change of name, hyporage, ordination; (Chapter 6) eatly seclusion, late seclusion, rejection of offices, places of seclusion; (Chapter 7) wandering from place to place, travelling toa certain place, visiting other saints, pilgrimage to holy places; (Chapter 8) temptation by the devil, temptation by demons, temptation by a person; (Chapter 9) direct opponent, evil disciples, hostile powerful men; (Chapter 10) shepherd and teacher; (Chapter 11) general virtues, theological virtues; (Chapter 12) various signs: light, dove, voice from above, pleasant odour, relics, holy oil; (Chapter 13) miracles, Por studies on commonplaces, see M, L. BAEUMER (ed), Toposforschune Wege der Forschung, 395), Darmstadt, 1973 and P. Jet (ed), Teposforschung: eine Dokumentai- ‘on Respublica Literaria, 10), Frankfut, 1972 BR, Contos, Ewropdsche Literatur und lavinisches Minelater, Bern, 1948, 0 vS atv 12329