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5 "Through the Eye of a Needle" Wealth and Poverty in the Lives of Helena, Paula, and Melania the Younger IN THE HEBREWAND CHRISTIANBIBLES,wealthy widows house, nourish , and finance the prophetic and apostolic missions of God's most holy men. In Hebrew scripture, a wealthy woman from Shunern provides a sanctuary for Elisha: "50 whenever he passed that way, he would turn in there to eat food. And she said to her husband, 'Behold now, I perceive that this is a holy man of God, who is continually passing our way. Let us make a small roof chamber with walls, and put there for him a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp, so that whenever he comes to us, he can go in there'" (2 Kings 4-.8-10). God commands a widow of Zarephath to feed Elijah, and she brings the holy man water in a vessel and a morsel of bread (1Kings 17.8-13). In response to the piety of both these ministering women, Elisha and Elijah resurrect their sons (2 Kings 4-.34-;1 Kings 17.22). In the gospels and Acts, prosperous women support Jesus' ministry and the apostolic missionary movement by supplying their own households as neophyte ecclesiae and by offering food and drink to God's votaries. Jesus himself commends a poor widow who donated two copper coins to God: "Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living" (Mark 12.4-14 -4-;Luke 21.1- 4-). Late antique hagiographers blend the sacred lives of Roman patrician women with biblical depictions of female patrons of the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles. The fourth-and fifth -century corpus of texts that comprise the Helena legend, Paula's epitaphium, and Melania the Younger's vita, contain dramatic accounts of philanthropy, pious projects, and patronage of the cult of martyrs and saints. These lives advertise the mobility, independence, and empowerment of imperial women who convert to the Chapter 5 life of radical self-abnegation. Helena, Paula, and Melania possessed vast properties and incomes. The Augusta Helena even earned the right to distribute the imperial fisc, and her image was reproduced on gold coins.' In their sacred biographies, each of these three wealthy women literally becomes the "poor widow" praised by Jesus for having impoverished herself to support God's missionaries. The hagiographers detail the patricians' heroic almsgiving, self-imposed poverty, and their exchange of fine silks for coarse goat hair. All three lives embody Jesus' commandment to "sell your possessions, and give alms; provide yourself with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in heaven that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys" (Luke 12.33). In addition to engaging in sensational acts of charity, Melania the Younger preaches and proselytizes; her life in particular usurps many of the sacred topoiof the male priesthood.' The same hagiographers, however, temper these provocative images of women's philanthropic, ascetic, and pastoral power by introducing the biblical motif of the chaste, abstemious, charitable woman who combats female depravity and apostasy by remaking her body into a vessel of rep entance . Helena, Paula, and Melania all exorcize the demons offeminine selfindulgence through their philanthropy, ministry to the poor, and ascetic attire. They thereby reverse the patristic theology of the cosmetic. Their male hagiographers use these more traditional topoioffemale piety to emphasize that, although Helena, Paula, and Melania were saintly women, their holiness remains distinct from and subordinate to that of men. Together these three vitae serve as spiritual medicine (remedia) for other aristocratic women who cling to the feminine vices of lust and vanity. The three vitae are also part of a larger discourse on the postConstantinian conversion of the late Roman aristocracy. Scholars of late antiquity have focused on how fourth- and fifth-century texts present the ascetic transformation of the imperial elite. Feminist scholars have emphasized the revolutionary prominence of women among this illustrious group of abstemious saints." In fact, the late antique church did rely heavily on the benevolent patronage of great patrician matrons." Nonetheless, aristocratic women appear in hagiographical discourse not merely on account of their historical role in endowing the neophyte church, but because their conversion to the life of apostolic poverty enabled Christian rhetoricians to insert the evangelical leitmotif...

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