Contested Bodies: Early Christian Asceticism and Nineteenth-Century Polemics

This essay explores how two nineteenth-century writers who opposed the asceticizing aspects of the Oxford Movement and Roman Catholicism appealed to patristic writings. Anglican Isaac Taylor and Episcopalian Arthur Cleveland Coxe employed different rhetorical strategies: Taylor attempted to shock unsuspecting Christians about the "true" nature of Tractarian devotion to patristic Christianity, while Coxe, conversely, sought to explain away the asceticism promoted by the Fathers and align early Christianity with nineteenth-century domesticity. Coxe, American editor of the Ante-Nicene Fathers series, advanced his cause by adding anti-Catholic footnotes and "elucidations" to the Fathers' writings.