Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity by Lynda L. Coon (review)

BOOK REVIEWS277 Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in LateAntiquity. By Lynda L. Coon. [The Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1997. Pp. xxiii, 228. $39.95.) The study of the saints has undergone a renaissance in the past twenty years, and a considerable amount of this effort has focused on the vitae of female saints. For example, this ambitious study,Sacred Fictions: Holy Women andHagiography in LateAntiquity, might be profitably read alongsideJohn Kitchen's, Saint's Lives and the Rhetoric ofGender (Oxford, 1998), both of which examine identical subjects. Dr. Coon's chief focus is on selected biographies of Christian women composed both in the east and in the west from 400 to 700. She reads these sacred biographies as theological texts that "exploited biblical rhetoric to empower and bridle sacred portraits of women."While her readings are often iUuminating, exegetical might better reflect her actual method since there is little actual theological study in these pages. Her book has six chapters: the first three chapters treat broad thematic issues (e.g., a review of the genre of sacred biography; gender and the Bible; rhetoric and the use of cloüüng in hagiographies) and three chapters discuss eight female vitae,viz., Saints Pelagia of Antioch, Mary of Egypt, Helena Augusta; Jerome's Life of Paula; the anonymous life of Melania the Younger; and finally Saints Monegund, Radegund, and Balthild. The subjects are well known, and the scope of the study is broad. The bibliography is extensive, the notes judicious and a useful resource. Her study is a close reading of these texts illustrating their dependence on biblical models, and how those models were transformed by their historical situations , e.g., Baudonivia's depiction of St. Radegund's duty to her household is read as a motif designed to limit the saint's authority and thus satisfy the expectations of her seventh-century audience. Coon identifies three paradigms prominent in female sacred biographies: the repentant hermit, the philanthropist , and the cloistered nun. She suggests that the vitae contain the universalist message that if these holy women (all daughters of Eve, who brought death into the world) can so transform themselves, then there is hope for all. Coon makes much of the Old Eve/New Eve Virgin Mary as a typological foundation in female saints' lives. Her traditional reading of these vitae would have been more nuanced if she had not applied this binary model so rigorously. Coon argues that these texts represent women as alienated from God because of gender, and holiness consists of combating this alienating female self. She derives this negative paradigm of the alienated female from the Bible.While generalizations are powerful epistemological tools, they may obscure the complexity of historical circumstance. It is worth underlining (Coon does recognize other depictions) that there are a number of autonomous, virtuous, heroic female rulers depicted in the Old Testament (e.g., the political leader Deborah, the Macabbean mother,the charismatic and loyal Ruth, the heroic and daringJudith , Susanna, and there is even a hint of messianism surrounding the figure of 278BOOK REVIEWS Queen Esther) who were well known and celebrated by medieval hagiographers (see for example, The Martyrdom, of Pionius, Polycarp, Marian and fames, and The Life ofSt. Eustachius etc.). It would have helped this reader, if, in Dr. Coon's discussions of hagiographie reconstructions of biblical texts—for example, in the correspondences with King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba in the Life ofPelagia the Harlot—she explained in more detail precisely what she means by "reconstruction." Is a reconstructed passage obvious by virtue of a verbal parallel, direct quotation, echo, allusion, a non-verbal typology, etc.? Further, while these reconstructions might have been apparent to a learned contemporary, would they have been recognized by less learned contemporary listeners, and if so how did the texts' authors manage that? I would recommend this volume to those interested in the study of female sacred biography. It is a solid study of broad and heterogeneous textual traditions; it proposes interesting readings of female vitae, and illustrates the richness of these documents. Thomas J. Heffernan University ofTennessee, Knoxville Medieval Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages. Edited by...