Gender has proved a powerful analytical framework for interpreting late antique and Byzantine hagiography. Historians have argued that male and female saints’ lives contained important differences, even perhaps forming different “subgenres” of hagiography. It has been suggested that, in contrast to male saints who fought external evil in cities or in the remote desert, female saints lived more cloistered lives and had to fight their own internal weaknesses. Some hagiographers emphasised that it was particularly impressive for women to achieve holiness given their innately weak and sinful nature. Female saints are often shown transcending their femininity, becoming “manly” as a necessary part of their journey to sanctity.
Yet this lecture will ask whether we have gone too far in drawing a clear distinction between the lives of female and male saints. It will explore some hagiographies of female saints (including the Life of Martha, mother of Symeon the Younger, the Life of Matrona of Perge, and the Life of Irene of Chrysobalanton) that do not fit neatly into the paradigms identified as characteristic of female lives. It will ask whether these unusual lives can be seen merely as exceptions to the general trend, or whether they force us to rethink our broader models, and to question how far a stark male-female gender binary determined understandings of holiness. Not all hagiographers were equally concerned with the differences between men and women, and not all female saints are presented as held back by, or needing to transcend, their femaleness. Rather than imposing a binary gender framework on hagiographic writing, we can instead explore variability in the use of gendered language and the gendering of holiness, and consider when and why gender and specific understandings thereof became particularly important in processes of sanctification.
This lecture will take place live on Zoom, followed by a question and answer period. Please register to receive the Zoom link.
