"Equipped for Victory": Ambrose and the Gendering

of Orthodoxy
Virginia Burrus

My reading here will have to be in some way double. On the one hand, a
utopistic attempt . . . to find and reflect on the zones in the text where
transgression is inscribed; on the other, a necessary recognition of the
substantial weight and incredible resiliency of the symbolic order's
phallocentric law.

(Jane Gallop, Reading Lacan) 1

Undoubtedly, it is as difficult to discuss the sex of a discourse as it is to

discuss the sex of an angel: these two apparatuses of circulation and/or drift
of meaning--one linguistic, the other cosmological--constantly avoid
determinations as to their place. . . .

(Michel de Certeau, Heterologies) 2

This reading of Ambrose represents an initial exercise in the arts of doubled

perception required for interpreting not only the fixed coordinates but also
the purposeful slippage and drift of an ancient discourse's ambiguous
inscription of its own sex. The framing of this interpretive task already
announces its peculiarly late twentieth-century preoccupations and
presuppositions. Indeed, such a reading may seem to risk merely confirming
the construction of a currently reigning scholarly orthodoxy, by wrenching
the ancient texts too violently into the interpretive categories of a school of
psychoanalysis that marks language itself as "phallic" while at the same
time [End Page 461] veiling the privileged maleness seemingly implicit in
such a representation. 3 If the danger of an entrapping circularity cannot be
altogether discounted, the historicist's hope nevertheless persists: might not
a reading of late ancient texts also prove subversive of a "phallic"
orthodoxy, serving the purposes of not only a genealogical unmasking but
also an unmasking of false genealogies, illumining points of disjunction in
the ancient discourse--"anti-phallic" moments, as it were--in such a way as
to hint at the possibilities of construing gender otherwise?

Scholars of religion have given considerable attention to the late ancient turn
toward the body and to the complex convergence of ascetic practice and
episcopal authority that provided the matrix for "new" articulations of
gender within fourth-century Christianity. 4 Not irrelevant to these concerns
with the historic constructions of gender and the body, I would argue, is the
somewhat more recently arising awareness of the distinctiveness and
significance of fourth-century conceptions and practices of "rhetoric." This
awareness has been given voice in two evocative sets of lectures that have
appeared in publication in the last few years: Peter Brown's Power and
Persuasion in Late Antiquity 5 and Averil Cameron's Christianity and the
Rhetoric of Empire. 6 In conversation with Brown, this present paper
explores the social context of persuasive speech in the late empire,
illumining the power relations enacted in the dramatic moment in which an
emperor is actually addressed and the "wild power" at the center of an
autocratic political structure is to some extent controlled by the rhetorical
exertions of classically educated men--in this case, by Ambrose, who in the
fourth century almost uniquely combined the experiences and authority of a
senatorial background, political office, and a major episcopacy. 7 In
conversation with Cameron, the paper also explores the nature of the late
ancient Christian discourse available to and in some sense crucially molded
by men like Ambrose--a "totalizing" discourse, as Cameron names it
(in [End Page 462] Foucaultian terms), a discourse of "orthodoxy" that
deploys the language of both empire and martyrdom, invokes the authority
of both paideia and a counter-cultural ascesis, and finally (as I will argue)
utilizes gender to articulate its own paradoxical character. 8 Two sets of texts
will provide the site for explorations of Ambrose's complex rhetoric of
gender, interpreted in its social and discursive contexts: first, the initial two
books ofDe fide, which present themselves in the form of a direct address to
the emperor Gratian, and second, the treatises De virginibus and De viduis,
ostensibly addressed to ascetic women. All of these well-known works were
written in the early years of Ambrose's tumultuous episcopacy, at a point of
significant political vulnerability for the bishop. The urgency of Ambrose's
need to strengthen his position provides an interpretive opportunity, making
more transparent the complex rhetorical strategies by which the bishop
constituted his authority and staked out the domain of his own discourse. 9

A consensus has emerged that the first two books of De fide were composed
by Ambrose for the emperor Gratian in order to counter claims of [End
Page 463] his own unorthodoxy. 10 Ambrose had come to the episcopacy in
374 with the assent of the emperor Valentinian, 11 following the death of the
Homoian bishop Auxentius, who had led the Milanese Christian community
for almost two decades; the emperor died suddenly in 375, soon after
Ambrose took office. Ambrose's strategic show of support for the Milanese
Nicene community while holding the office of consularis of Aemilia and
Liguria appears to have been directly implicated in his dramatic and
unanticipated election to the episcopacy; however, his complex
manipulation of the events that led to the election--recently provocatively
described as "an improvised response to a botched coup"--seems to have
deliberately obscured the terms of his partisanship, and it remains somewhat
unclear at what point and under what circumstances he aligned himself
publicly and uncompromisingly with the Nicene party of Milan. 12 At any
rate, by 380, when the first two books of De fide were most likely
penned, 13Ambrose's theological allegiance was unambiguous, and it
emerges to view in the context of an aggressive strategy both to undercut the
power of a vigorous Homoian faction in Milan and to secure the patronage
of Gratian, the new emperor in the west, who had adopted Valentinian's
policy of religious neutrality. From what we can tell, Ambrose's position in
the late 370s was precarious indeed: there was an active Homoian bishop in
Milan (one Julian Valens); 14 the pro-Homoian empress Justina (mother of
the boy emperor [End Page 464] Valentinian II) had perhaps already
arrived to take up residence in the city; and finally Gratian, stationed at
Sirmium near the battlefront with the Goths, had begun to take a heightened
interest in the religious disputes that burned more hotly in the eastern
provinces which had recently come under his control with the death of the
emperor Valens--and this in a context where he was exposed to the
influence of the Homoian bishops of Illyricum. Whether primarily due to
reports from Milan, or to the pressures placed on him by the Illyrican
bishops, 15 Gratian seems to have seen fit to require from Ambrose a defense
of his pro-Nicene position. Understandably, Ambrose was not initially in a
hurry to respond; indeed, he had to be prodded in a personal interview with
Gratian. 16

Entering the text-world of De fide I-II, the reader thus finds Ambrose poised
at that delicate moment evoked by Brown: the moment of address to a
somewhat skeptical and all-too-powerful emperor, a moment full of danger
but also of opportunity. The question here is not so much of what Ambrose
persuades as how Ambrose accomplishes his persuasive task, how his
discourse shapes and presents itself, how in the process the discourse of
orthodoxy accomodates itself to the limits and possibilities of the late
Roman rhetorical context. More particularly, I am interested in how
Ambrose uses gender to locate the authority of orthodox speech in relation
to imperial power, on the one hand, and the speech of his theological rivals,
on the other.

De fide I-II is framed by two illuminating passages in which the bishop

directly addresses Gratian, who is in both instances presented in the role of
military commander. In these passages, Ambrose balances a rhetoric of
subordination--presenting himself as obedient to the emperor's commands
that he submit a statement of faith--with a bold move to identify his own
episcopal role with that of the emperor and thereby to press for an alignment
of their goals and perspectives. "It is the Augustus, ruler of the whole world,
that has commanded the setting forth of the faith in a book, not for your
instruction, but for your approval," Ambrose begins, in a seemingly [End
Page 465] strong affirmation of imperial authority. 17 Subsequently,
however, he repeats the account of Gratian's command in terms that
significantly transform the relation between implied author and addressee,
while also bringing two time-hallowed masculine roles 18 into play with one
another: "Your sacred Majesty, being about to go forth to war, requires of
me a book, expounding the faith, since your Majesty knows that victories
are gained more by faith in the commander, than by valour in the
soldiers." 19 A parallelism here emerges between sword and word: Gratian is
about to go to war; Ambrose is about to write a book; both are "equipping"
themselves "for victory." 20 But there is more than a simple (and fairly
conventional) highlighting of similarities at work, for now Gratian's
command--seeming initially to represent the fullness of imperial authority--
has been found lacking, in need of completion by the written word through
which the faith may be expounded, a faith without which military victories
are not possible. Subsequently, the roles of Gratian and Ambrose seem to
merge more completely, their identification defined in terms of a
complementary reversal or communicatio idiomatum in which the emperor
setting out to battle the Goths is named "Christ's loyal servant and defender
of the Faith," 21 while the bishop embarking upon a purely theological
campaign identifies himself with the priests at Nicea who (in his terms)
"made a trophy raised to proclaim their victory over the infidel throughout
the world." 22 Yet embedded in this assertion of the identification of bishop
with emperor is a contrasting movement of ascetic withdrawal, in which the
bishop's claim of warrior status seems simultaneously to produce its own
anxious denial: [End Page 466] "Truly, I would rather take upon me the
duty of exhortation to keep the faith, than that of disputing thereon," notes
Ambrose, going on to suggest that the emperor nevertheless requires of him
something other than exhortation. "Whilst I may not pray to be excused
from the duty of loyalty, I will take in hand a bold enterprise," the bishop
concedes, at the same time redefining the "bold enterprise" as a "modest
opportunity," while masking the agonistic component of his task: "not so
much reasoning and disputing concerning the faith as gathering together a
multitude of witnesses." 23

At the conclusion of De fide I-II, Ambrose adds still another layer to the
parallelism of sword and word. Having spent long pages in verbose
exposition, he now feigns sudden recollection of Gratian's urgent military
task. "I must no further detain your Majesty, in this season of preparation for
war, and the achievement of victory over the Barbarians. Go forth sheltered,
indeed, under the shield of faith, and girt with the sword of the Spirit,"
Ambrose proclaims. 24 The point is not only that the power of the word
undergirds and completes the power of the sword; the analogy of sword and
word presses further for an identification of their objects, as the polemical
targets of emperor and bishop are still more closely conjoined. Here is the
real punch line for Ambrose: "Nor, furthermore, may we doubt, your sacred
Majesty, that we, who have undertaken the contest with alien unbelief, shall
enjoy the aid of the Catholic Faith that is strong in you." 25 If Gratian is to
assist Ambrose in the bishop's fight against the heretics, that is in part
because those heretics are identical with Gratian's military foes, in the terms
so audaciously proposed by the bishop: "This is no land of unbelievers, but
the land whose custom it is to send forth confessors--Italy; Italy, ofttimes
tempted, but never drawn away; Italy, which your Majesty hath long
defended, and now again rescued from the barbarian." Milan and Italy are
aligned with the mythic Nicea, the Illyrican Homoians with the "Arian"
heretics, and even as he seems to assure the emperor, Ambrose also warns
Gratian against any unmanly vacillation that might challenge the solidity of
such a symbolic alignment of commitments: "No wavering mind (mens
lubrica) in our emperor," he exclaims, "but faith firm fixed (fides
fixa)." 26 [End Page 467]

These framing passages of De fide I-II evoke a strikingly "sword- centered"

representation of Nicene orthodoxy. As noted, this representation is not,
however, without its own hesitancies and subversions. The body of the
treatise frequently takes a more ambiguous or paradoxical tack in its
deployment of imagery that is often more explicitly gendered, and the
significance of the resisting movements within the framing passages already
examined is thereby heightened. Two such subversive tacks will be
highlighted here. The first involves the negative representation of heresy as
grotesquely material, in terms frequently but not inevitably feminized,
indeed seemingly easily shifting into a masculinized representation of
heretical carnality that implies a feminized orthodox subject. The second
potentially subversive movement involves the continued problematizing of
the paradox of a word understood as both persuasive and coercive, healing
and destructive, and the corresponding ambivalence that gives rise to the
need always to justify the act of speech or the breaking of silence, construed
in the terms of a masculinized aggression that is simultaneously rejected and
embraced.

In an overtly classicizing passage, 27 Ambrose compares heresy to "some

hydra of fable," the two-headed serpent that ever survives its own
decapitation; for heresy--as Ambrose explains--"hath waxed great from its
wounds and, being ofttimes lopped short, hath grown afresh, being
appointed to find meet destruction in flames of fire." 28 Heterodoxy is also
likened to "some dread and monstrous Scylla," whose many-headed
form [End Page 468] seems to suggest to Ambrose the multiplicity, as well
as the fanged threat, of heresy's deceptive guise; her lower body is "girded
with beastly monsters," and her cavern, "thick laid with hidden lairs" and
resounding with the howling of her black dogs, is a place of danger that can
only barely be avoided by the prudent pilot who sails, with stopped ears,
close along "the coasts of the scriptures." 29 There is a subtle blurring of
genders in these hideous figures, in which femininity embraces the
serpentine, a monstrosity gathering all disavowed carnality into itself. It is a
small step from the monstrous to the more graphically grotesque, 30 a step
that Ambrose seems to take easily as he recounts the death of the arch-
heretic Arius: "For Arius' bowels gushed out . . . and so he burst asunder in
the midst, falling headlong and besmirching those foul lips wherewith he
had denied Christ." Ambrose invites contrast between the grotesque quality
of the figure of Arius and the sublimated eroticism of the following
representation of the evangelist John: "Whom, then, are we to believe?--St.
John, who lay on Christ's bosom, or Arius, wallowing amid the outgush of
his very bowels?" he asks. 31 In John, not heresy but the male body of
orthodoxy is feminized in an asceticizing rejection of grotesque masculinity.
Here what is striking is the flexibility of the gendering of Ambrose's
discourse, represented as both transcendently masculine in relation to a
monstrously carnal femininity and ascetically feminized in relation to a
grotesquely carnal masculinity. This gendered flexibility echoes the
ambiguities of the framing presentation of the bishop's word as swordlike,
on the one hand, and alternately superior and submissive in relation to the
sword, on the other. [End Page 469]

The grotesque heretic's lips, sullied with the outpourings of his own burst
bowels, are contrasted with the pure lips of the orthodox bishop, cleansed
with the burning coal of the divine word and the purifying wine of the
eucharistic cup. 32 Ambrose remains nevertheless ambivalent about the
purity of his own speech, an ambivalence that on the one hand measures the
distance between earthly words and divine Word (in relation to which
human beings are not so much lips as ears, as Ambrose elaborates), but on
the other hand captures a paradox of the divine Word itself, which expresses
itself both through the sword and through the voluntary renunciation of the
sword. "For we would not overthrow, but rather heal; we lay no ambush for
them, but warn them as in duty bound. Kindliness often bends those whom
neither force nor argument will avail to overcome," remarks Ambrose of his
own discourse. 33 "However, if our adversaries cannot be turned by
kindness, let us summon them before the Judge," the former provincial
governor adds significantly. 34 The "kindliness" of a persuasive and healing
word is contrasted with the uncompromising authority of a word that carries
with it judgment and the threat of violence. In a later addition to the books
of De fide Ambrose aptly captures the dilemma of orthodox speech: "If we
are silent, we shall seem to be giving way; and if we contend against them,
there is the fear that we too shall be held to be carnal." 35 Ambrose's written
discourse locates itself in this tension between a silent and implicitly
feminized modesty and the contentious clamor of masculine competition:
"For this reason it was our intention to write somewhat, in order that our
writings might without any din answer the impiety of the heretics on our
behalf." 36 Competitively masculine, from one perspective, Ambrose's
orthodox writing nevertheless also represents itself in strategically
feminized terms that serve to veil aggression--thereby deviously
maneuvering the bishop into a position of superiority in relation to the
emperor, who is potentially marked with the grotesque literalism of the
sword. At the same time, Ambrose's representation of orthodox discourse
also disrupts the construction of even a sublimated "phallus" by conjoining
it paradoxically with the sources of its own critique.

Turning from De fide to two slightly earlier texts, De virginibus and De

viduis, the reader encounters the complex gendering of Ambrose's orthodox
discourse from a somewhat different angle. These ascetic treatises, [End
Page 470] forged in the heat of debate about the ascetic life advocated by
the theologically controversial bishop, 37 complement our reading of De
fide by providing a more direct window onto the textual "body" of
Ambrosian orthodoxy. This is a body that both speaks the word and is
spoken by it, wields the sword and is pierced by it, directs the eye and is
made the object of its own gaze--a textual body that (as we shall see) is
frequently represented as female, yet also reinscribed with the heavy
markings of masculinity.

De virginibus, which constitutes Ambrose's bold debut into the field of

theological writing, anticipates De fide's problematization of the word: in an
ascetic context, masculinized speech can be represented as an affront to
modesty and silence interpreted as a sign of virtue rather than lack of
rhetorical skill. Ambrose strategically presents his decision finally to take up
the pen after more than two years in the episcopacy as a solution to the
dilemma presented by the spoken word: "since too my words are listened to
with greater risk to modesty than when they are written, for a book has no
feeling of modesty." 38 Despite this claimed dissociation of the written word
from any lingering authorial presence, Ambrose is nevertheless inclined to
interpret writing as an act of still greater audacity than speech, noting
subsequently that "some one may wonder why I, who cannot speak, venture
to write." 39 Having thus not so much argued as asserted the paradoxical
humility of his own voice as writer, Ambrose almost immediately shifts his
strategy, offering a textual body that more successfully represents the
audacious modesty of his discourse in the figure of the virgin martyr Agnes,
whom he describes as triumphing over the power of the state by paradoxical
means, through her voluntary submission to an explicitly sexualized sword.
"She was fearless under the cruel hands of the executioners, she was
unmoved by the heavy weight of the creaking chains, offering her whole
body to the sword of the raging soldier, as yet ignorant of death [End Page
471] but ready for it." 40 As Ambrose's Agnes demands that her executioner
not delay a death which consummates her marriage to the bridegroom
Christ, she seems ready to take up the sword herself. Another virgin martyr,
with whose tale Ambrose ends his treatise, accomplishes this merging of the
roles of martyr and executioner more literally. Ambrose's young Pelagia
muses, "In truth, if we think of the real meaning of the word, how can what
is voluntary be violence?" She goes on to plan her own death: "I fear not
that a sword will be wanting. I can die by my own weapons, I can die
without the help of an executioner. . . ." 41 Agnes and Pelagia are strangely
masculine girls, in the same act asserting their wills triumphantly and
offering their bodies submissively, simultaneously welcoming the sword's
violence and refusing to partake in the agonistic exchange in which
masculinity is tested and defined: from the perspective of the complex
gendering of Ambrosian orthodoxy, the ambiguous virgin martyrs are
productive figures indeed.

A figure from a tale which forms the centerpiece of the literary pastiche
of De virginibus may draw still closer to orthodoxy's body, seeming partly
to break through the discourse's resistance to a direct representation of
maleness--namely, the figure of the lion in Ambrose's version of Thecla's
story. According to Ambrose, the male lion initially faces the virginal
martyr Thecla in the arena threateningly, explicitly mirroring the sexual
violence signalled by both the "rage" of Thecla's would-be husband and the
"immodest eyes" of the male onlookers who gaze upon the spectacle of her
nakedness; yet, subsequently, "by some transfusion of nature" the beast
achieves a restrained attitude of reverence for the self-sacrificing virgin
who, we are told, freely offers to the lion her "vital parts." By the end of the
episode, the single, tamed lion has been pluralized, facilitating his merging
with the male spectators, similarly transformed from a state of transgressive
immodesty to one of respectful modesty: "The lions taught a lesson in
chastity when they did nothing but kiss the virgin's feet, with their eyes
turned to the ground, as though bashful, lest any male, even a beast, should
see the virgin naked." 42 Here modesty serves in part as a veil, or rather a
strategy of further sublimation, in a context in which the lion's averted,
feminized gaze continues paradoxically to restrain the virgin, his very
gesture of honoring her--indeed of freely mirroring her feminine
subjugation--becoming itself the vehicle of her constraint. 43 [End Page
472]

De viduis parallels De virginibus in pursuing dual strategies for representing

the gendered body of orthodoxy. Here, too, Ambrose recalls the stories of
masculine women who take up the sword, and in this case he is quite
explicit about how these figures serve as models or types of the male bishop.
At the same time, the bishop continues his pursuit of the elusive male body,
again with only limited success. Ambrose marvels at the bravery of the
widow Judith: "When the men were intoxicated with wine and buried in
sleep, the widow took the sword, put forth her hand, cut off the warrior's
head, and passed unharmed through the ranks of the enemy." 44 The widow's
bravery is for Ambrose paradoxically conjoined with her modesty: "She
stirred up her own friends by her modesty, and struck terror into the enemy
so that they were put to flight and slain." 45 In Deborah he celebrates a
similar paradox of gendered roles and virtues: "A widow, she governs the
people; a widow, she leads armies; a widow, she chooses generals; a widow,
she determines wars and orders triumphs." He concludes, "It is not sex, but
valour which makes strong." 46 The ascetic Ambrose goes on to compare the
figure of the bishop quite explicitly with the figure of the widow, finding
especially in Peter's mother-in-law a type of the priest. "Peter's mother-in-
law, it is written, rose up and ministered to them. Well is it said, rose up, for
the grace of the apostleship was already furnishing a type of the sacrament.
It is proper to the ministers of Christ to rise, according to that which is
written: 'Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead.'" 47 The parallel
between the bishop and the widow, as Ambrose draws it, is precisely in their
aroused responsiveness to a Healer Christ who comes "quenching desire
with desire" (to invoke Jerome's language). 48 Ambrose urges the widow,
"And do you then, who burn with many desires . . . call in the Physician,
stretch forth your right hand to Him, let the hand of God touch your inmost
being, and the grace of the heavenly Word enter the veins of your inward
desires, let God's right hand strike the secrets of your heart." 49 Likewise he
enjoins the priest, who "must be free from the enticements of various
pleasures . . . from the inward languor of body and soul": "First be healed
that thou mayest be able to minister." 50 As with the virgin martyr, the
sexual metaphor for desire works to feminize the widow and priest in
respect to a masculine Christ, configuring them as erotically passive [End
Page 473] in a relationship that paradoxically also cures them of their
feminine carnality and passivity--placing the sword in their hands, as it
were.

Following this tentative and indirect approach toward imagining the male
body of the priest, Ambrose returns his attention to the female figure of the
widow; however, the male body, although elusive, cannot be altogether
suppressed and subsequently reemerges in an intriguing discussion of
eunuchs. Able to find some place for involuntary eunuchs, who are (in his
view) denied the virtue of continence while still escaping the sin of sexual
incontinence, Ambrose has more difficulty with "those who use the sword
against themselves (in se ipsos ferro utuntur)." 51 The problem, for
Ambrose, is that self-castration seems to represent "a declaration of
weakness rather than a reputation of strength." He notes with dismay that
"on this principle no one should fight lest he be overcome, nor make use of
his feet, fearing the danger of stumbling, nor let his eyes do their office
because he fears a fall through lust," concluding that "it becomes us to be
chaste, not weak, to have our eyes modest, not feeble." 52 Having reached
this point of clarity, the bishop's rhetoric gains momentum: "No one then
ought . . . to multilate himself (se abscindere), but rather gain the victory;
for the Church gathers in those who conquer, not those who are
defeated." 53 From Ambrose's perspective, the troubling energies of a
masculine sexuality cannot be confined to the male genitalia and then
simply pared away: "what does it profit to cut the flesh (carnem abscindere),
when there may be guilt even in a look?" he asks tellingly. 54 Yet, on the
other hand, when the body of the true Christian is approached more closely,
it would seem that its virile strength cannot be altogether dissociated from
the male organ either--the examples of Judith and Deborah notwithstanding.
"For why should the means of gaining a crown and of the practice of virtue
be lost (eripitur) to a man who is born to honour, equipped for victory (ad
victoriam praeparatus)?" queries the bishop, in language that anticipates his
address to Gratian in De fide. "How can he through courage of soul mutilate
(castrare) himself?" 55

One final image from the text of De viduis may be mentioned briefly. In the
closing passages of this work, Ambrose compares the widow to a soldier
who "when his time is ended, lays aside his arms" or a laborer who [End
Page 474] "as he grows too old, entrusts the guiding of the plough to
others." 56 Here the sword and plough--both traditional metaphors for the
penis 57--signify the sexual relations that the widow "lays aside" in her
decision not to remarry. This is obviously a partial reversal of the previous
image of the widow-with-sword, and significantly it is one with which
Ambrose is not quite content. In an odd mixing of metaphors, he finishes by
noting that the elderly laborer is "still ready to prune the vine," "to cut off
with his pruning knife the wantonness of youth." 58 Through a not-so-subtle
sleight of hand, the discarded plough is replaced by the knife.

How is the discursive body of late ancient orthodoxy gendered, in texts that
play with the paradoxical images of warrior widows and violent virgins,
recumbent disciples and docile lions, eunuchs and swordless soldiers?
Gendered ambiguity creates flexibility without decisively decentering
maleness, in a rhetorical context powerfully shaped not only by the
economies of masculine competition but also by a dispute about the cultural
status of masculinity itself. However elusive the figures that remain at the
edges of our field of vision, however indirect the trajectories of images that
so frequently bounce off the reflective surfaces of female flesh, it seems
clear enough that the body woven through these late ancient texts is "finally"
male. Does the Christian discourse of Ambrose then present itself as a
"phallic" word, in the terms of contemporary psychoanalytic or linguistic
theory? The answer to this question is (of course), yes and no. This reading
of Ambrose's apologetic address to Gratian and his early treatises on female
asceticism suggests that the paradoxically feminized stance of the ascetic
male could allow for the emergence of both "anti-phallic" subversions of
masculine discourse--expressed through rhetorical renunciations of the
violence of sword, intrusiveness of gaze, contentiousness of word--and
strategies of sublimation that contributed crucially not to the deconstruction
but rather to the powerful idealization of the "phallus." Denying and
therefore successfully transcending its bodily anchorings without the loss
implied by "mutilation," the sky's the limit for an orthodoxy that can rise
even above emperors, "equipped for victory," in Ambrose's memorable
phrase.

Virginia Burrus is an Associate Professor at The Theological School, Drew

University.

Notes
1. Reading Lacan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 140.

2. Heterologies: Discourse on the Other (Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 1993), 166.

3. The classic psychoanalytic text is Jacques Lacan, "La signification du

phallus," in Lacan, Ecrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966).

4. Let me simply acknowledge the influence of two scholars in this "high-

growth" segment of the field: Peter Brown (The Body and Society [New
York: Columbia University Press, 1988]) and Elizabeth Clark (Ascetic Piety
and Women's Faith [(Lewiston/Queenston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1986]
and The Origenist Controversy [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1992]).

5. Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian

Empire (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992).

6. Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian

Discourse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

7. Frank D. Gilliard, "Senatorial Bishops in the Fourth Century," HTR 77

(1984): 153-75.

8. My own emphasis on the centrality of gendered figurations for the

cultural positioning of Christian discourse of course owes much to the
insights of other recent "feminist" analyses of ancient Christian discourse.
Cameron herself is sensitive to the significance of the rhetorical deployment
of gendered images for the formation of ancient Christian discourse, as I
discuss in an earlier essay, "Reading Agnes: The Rhetoric of Gender in
Ambrose and Prudentius," JECS 3 (1995): 25-46, esp. 26-29. More recently,
Judith Perkins has likewise attempted a sustained "Foucaultian" analysis of
ancient Christian discursive practices that highlights--without, however,
explicitly thematizing--the prominance of gendered figurations (The
Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian
Era [New York: Routledge, 1995]). Still on the horizon is Kate
Cooper's The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late
Antiquity (Harvard University Press, forthcoming, 1996); see also her earlier
essay, "Insinuations of Womanly Influence: An Aspect of the
Christianization of the Roman Aristocracy," JRS 82 (1992): 150-164. The
impact of Michel Foucault on the conversation among feminist historians
may be felt not only in his contributions to "discourse analysis" but also in
his historicizing thematization of "sexuality," which (not least in its silences)
may be seen not merely to threaten to displace "gender" as a category of
analysis but also thereby to call attention to the gendered "maleness" of the
subjectivity produced within ancient ethical discourse from Aristotle on into
the Christian era.

9. I recognize that there is a certain ambiguity in this identification of an

"interpretive opportunity," reflecting unresolved issues regarding the place
of gender in the longer trajectory of Ambrose's work. As Neil McLynn has
so aptly framed the question to me: do the less tense circumstances of
Ambrose's later episcopacy cause such preoccupations with gendered
imagery to fade, or is it not rather the case that a particular rhetoric of
gender continues to serve Ambrosian orthodoxy all too well, as the bishop
strains to maintain a rhetorical "state of emergency" in the face of a
perceived threat of cultural assimilation or complacency? See also Peter
Brown's discussion of the "siege mentality" maintained by Ambrose, and the
evocativeness of the virginal body in that context (Body and Society, 341-
365).

10. As argued by Pierre Nautin, "Les premières relations d'Ambroise avec

l'empereur Gratien: Le De fide (livres I et II)," in Ambroise de Milan: XVIe
Centenaire de son élection épiscopale, ed. Yves-Marie Duval (Paris: Études
Augustiniennes, 1974), 229-244.

11. Neil McLynn offers a detailed reading of Valentinian's ambiguous role

in Ambrose's election (Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian
Capital [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994], 47-52). See also
the more cautious, yet potentially harmonious, assessment of Daniel
Williams (Ambrose of Milan and the End of the Nicene-Arian
Conflicts [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995], 112-116).

12. I here follow McLynn's reinterpretation of the events leading to

Ambrose's episcopacy (Ambrose of Milan, 42-52; citation at 52). Note that
Daniel Williams, arguing for Ambrose's initial neutrality in the Nicene-
Homoian conflict, offers a rather different reading of Ambrose's election and
early episcopacy (Ambrose of Milan, 116-127). The recent accounts of
McLynn and Williams nevertheless agree in resisting the tug of a
hagiographic tradition that has depicted Ambrose as immediately, openly,
and successfully championing Nicene orthodoxy in Milan.
13. Gunther Gottlieb argues that De fide I-II should be dated to the late
spring or summer of 380 (Ambrosius von Mailand und Kaiser
Gratian [Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1973], 50). Nautin attempts
to reinstate a "traditional" date of late 378 or early 379 ("Premières
relations," 231-235). More recently, McLynn follows a date of 380, but
unlike Gottlieb places the text before Gratian's March visit to Milan
(Ambrose of Milan, 102 n. 90); Williams, on the other hand, upholds the
earlier date of autumn of 378 (Ambrose of Milan, 109 n. 24).

14. See Ambrose, Epp. 10 and 11.

15. Nautin emphasizes the significance of the opposition of the Illyrican

bishops ("Premières relations"), and McLynn suggests more specifically that
Ambrose's aggressive intervention in the ecclesiastical politics of Illyricum
motivated Gratian's request (Ambrose of Milan, 91-100). Daniel Williams,
on the other hand, takes a more sceptical view of Paulinus' account of
Ambrose's intervention in Illyricum (Ambrose of Milan, 122-127) and
argues that the local opposition of the Homoian party was the more pressing
factor (141-144); see also Harry Maier's suggestion that the Arian or
Homoian community of Milan persisted for over a decade after Ambrose
became bishop, meeting in private space and supported by networks of
patronage and friendship ("Private Space as the Social Context of Arianism
in Ambrose's Milan," JTS, n.s. 45 [1994]: 72-93).

16. See De fide I.1 and III.1.

17. De fide I.1. In this essay, I have generally followed the English
translation of Ambrose's treatises in NPNF, ser. 2, vol. 10. Latin texts can be
located conveniently in Migne, PL 16, the critical edition of De
fide in CSEL 78.

18. That the figure of the warrior reflects a distinctly masculine social role is
clear enough, I think. The commonplace comparison of the penis to a sword
merely underlines the crucial gendering of the soldier figure, while also
pointing to the importance of this figure for discursive constructions of
gender; thus Ovid can berate his phallus for an unwanted "modesty" that
"cheats" him and leaves him "weaponless" (inermis), (see Am. 3.7.69-72,
cited by Amy Richlin, The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in
Roman Humor [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983], 118, along with
a number of significantly bawdier references from the Priapic poetic
corpus). Male dominance in the sphere of writing is also well established,
and here too social and discursive practices are mutually implicated; see
Page DuBois' discussion of the early stages of the Greek development of the
gendered metaphors of "pen" and "tablet" (Sowing the Body: Psychoanalysis
and Ancient Representations of Women [Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1988], 130-166).

19. De fide I.3.

20. De fide I.3.

21. De fide I.3.

22. De fide I.5.

23. De fide I.4.

24. De fide II.136.

25. De fide II.139.

26. De fide II.142. Brown comments (in relation to other Ambrosian texts)
that the word lubricum "carried an exceptionally heavy charge of negative
meaning for [Ambrose]: it signified moments of utter helplessness, of
frustration, of fatal loss of inner balance and of surrender to the instincts
brought about by the tragic frailty of the physical body." This remark comes
close on the heels of Brown's observation that the saeculum was for
Ambrose "a voracious sea, whipped by demonic gusts, across which there
now drifted, in times of peace, the Siren songs of sensuality, of concern for
worldly advantage, and of readiness to compromise with the great--
beguiling, female figures who threatened always to 'effeminate' the male
resolve of the mind" (Body and Society, 349, 348).

27. Ambrose was vigoriously attacked by Palladius of Rataria for his use of
classical poetry in this passage: "Cease, I beg you, this useless and
superfluous recitation of clever trickery, but rather attend to the words of
holiness which are necessary; desist from your monstrous comparisons, with
which you have fitted out your long-winded address to show off your
knowledge of literature; abandon the prodigies, the highly polished but vain
recitation of which has caused the shipwreck of your faith, and recover at
last an understanding of the truth from which a treacherous and unholy
heresy has lured you" (Apol. 87; as cited and translated by
McLynn, Ambrose of Milan, 114). Already in the later books of De fide,
Ambrose defends himself by citing scriptural parallels: "Isaiah spake of
sirens and the daughters of ostriches. Jeremiah also hath prophesied
concerning Babylon, that the daughters of sirens shall dwell therein . . ." (De
fide III.4). By 385, Ambrose's feminine representation of heresy is even
more thoroughly biblical, as he associates the empress Justina with less
mythical (if equally monstrous) figures from the scriptures: Eve, Jezebel,
and Herodias (Ep. 20.17-18).

28. De fide I.46.

29. De fide I.46-47; cf. Virgil, Aen. III.424ff.

30. Grotesque realism, as defined by Mikhail Bakhtin via his readings of

Renaissance literature, is characterized by the principle of "degradation":
"To degrade . . . means to concern oneself with the lower stratum of the
body, the life of the belly and the reproductive organs; it therefore relates to
acts of defecation and copulation, conception, pregnancy and birth." The
grotesque body is "not a closed, completed unit; it is unfinished, outgrows
itself, transgresses its own limits." Bakhtin notes that the term "grotesque"
arose in the wake of fifteenth-century excavations of Titus' baths, as a
designation for certain ornaments marked by "the extremely fanciful, free,
and playful treatment of plant, animal, and human forms" that "seemed to be
interwoven as if giving birth to each other." Paralleling this Renaissance
recovery of the grotesque in the classical, he finds in Paul Scarron's
seventeenth-century parody of Virgil an "uncrowning of the Aeneid's images
by transferring them to the material boldily level," noting that the Aeneid's
images, made grotesque, are thereby "not only uncrowned," but also
"renewed," (Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky [Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1968], 21, 26, 31-32, 309). Bakhtin's language is
evocative in relation not only to the hybridity and excessiveness inherent in
the cited Virgilian images of Hydra and Scylla, but also to the explicitly
transgressive and degraded image of Arius' burst bowels in Ambrose's text.

31. De fide I.123.

32. De fide I.132-137.

33. De fide II.89.

34. De fide II.100. See McLynn's pertinent discussion of the harsh role of
magistrate as judge and keeper of the peace (Ambrose of Milan, 5-9).

35. De fide V.5.

36. De fide V.5.

37. As discussed briefly by Yves-Marie Duval, "L'Originalité du De

virginibus dans le mouvement ascétique occidentale: Ambroise, Cyprien,
Athanase," in Ambroise de Milan, 9-66, 60-64. See also Brown's more
expansive treatment of the significance of female asceticism for the
articulation and consolidation of Ambrose's episcopal authority (Body and
Society, 259-284), as well as the perceptive comments of McLynn, who
notes not only the vulnerability of Ambrose's stance as champion of female
asceticism but also the payoff of a strategy that deflected attention from the
Nicene controversy while positioning Ambrose "almost by accident" as "one
of the principal spokesmen for a movement that was changing the western
church" (Ambrose of Milan, 60).

38. De virg. I.1.

39. De virg. I.4. Such an emphasis on his own audacity may have been
appropriate enough; see McLynn's assessment of the strong bid for
theological authority that the text represents (Ambrose of Milan, 56-57).

40. De virg. I.7.

41. De virg. III. 33.

42. De virg. II.7.

43. See my "Reading Agnes" for a closely parallel and slightly more
expansive discussion of the figures of virgin martyrs in Ambrose's De
virginibus.

44. De vid. 40.

45. De vid. 41.

46. De vid. 44.

47. De vid. 66.

48. See Jerome, Ep. 22.17.

49. De vid. 62.

50. De vid. 65.

51. De vid. 76.

52. De vid. 76.

53. De vid. 77.

54. De vid. 76.

55. De vid. 77; cf. De fide I.3, where Ambrose assures Gratian: ergo et tu
vin- cere paras, qui Christum adoras: vincere paras, qui fidem vindicas,
cuius a me libellum petisti.

56. De vid. 84.

57. On the commonplace comparison of penis to plough, see, e.g., Plutarch:

"The Athenians observe three sacred ploughings. . . . But most sacred of all
such sowings is the marital sowing and ploughing for the procreation of
children," Coniugalia praecepta 144ab, as cited by Page DuBois, Sowing
the Body, 39.

58. De vid. 85.