The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy by Virginia Burrus (review)

752book reviews The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy . By Virginia Burrus. [Transformation of the Classical Heritage, Vol. XXIV] (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1995. Pp. xi, 252. $45.00.) Using the distinction between public Ufe and private Ufe as her point of departure ,Virginia Burrus proceeds to investigate the Priscillianist controversy in terms ofa paradigm which has grown out ofthe relationship betweenpotó and oikos in late antique culture. Since the city is dominated by males and the household by females, the stage is set for a gender study,which Burrus develops in three stages: the person of PriscilUan, the heresy of PrisciUianism, and the immediate reception of the entire controversy. First, PrisciUian's ascetical teaching and its concrete practice involved the migration of males into the female realm and, above all, offemales into the male realm,which was interpreted by the contemporary authoritarian structure as a dangerous deviation.A primary preoccupation of the CouncU of Saragossa in 380 was the practice of mixed-sex study groups which represented a violation ofa fundamental principle of social order in the pubUc sphere, namely, the separation and subordination ofwomen. Since the charismatic ascetics, namely, PriscilUan and his foUowers, had chaUenged the authoritarian bishops, the small episcopal gathering at Saragossa attempted to consolidate the bishops' public authority and define the social organization. For example, participation in the episcopally led public eucharistie celebration was required of aU.whUe women were prohibited from the private "meetings of strange men." Second, equaUy important to Burrus' thesis is the defining of the seUin terms of the other. By means of rhetorical"labeling strategies" on the part of PrisciUian's opponents, the figure of the historical PriscilUan is transformed into a symbol of deviance. PrisciUian's favorable regard for the apocrypha makes him vulnerable to the charge of Manichaeism. The author uses PriscUUan 's Apology to establish the errors of which he was accused and his Letter to Damasus to reconstruct the historical chain of events. As the controversy unfolds , PriscilUan and his friends argue their case in Bordeaux, MUan, Rome, and Trier. Ultimately charges of sorcery, sexual immorality, and Manichaeism made the affair more than a simple case of heresy. The emperor, Magnus Maximus, eager to court episcopal support, presents himseU as the champion of orthodoxy and orders the execution of Priscillian, the ¦widow Euchrotia, and three other companions. In their demise PrisciUianism is born to be condemned several years later at the Council ofToledo in 400.Third, Burrus considers the reception of the controversy in the writings ofSulpicius Severus and Jerome.The reinterpretation of the ascetic heretic PriscilUan by two ascetic orthodox writers is particularly interesting.Wishing to distance themselves from the accusation of sexual promiscuity and the subversion of gender roles, they reach back into an earlier stage in the history of Christianity and apply the label "gnostic" to Priscillian in order to characterize him as an insidious seducer of women. Although they are ascetics, both Severus and Jerome emerge as defenders of the boundaries of the pubUc male and private female spheres. FinaUy, it should be noted thatWürzburg, UniversitätsbibUothek Mp. th. q. 3 is the unique witness to eleven PrisciUianist tractates, which were edited by G. Schepss in 1889- Since book reviews753 the manuscript is anonymous, the authorship of the tractates is still debated. FoUowing Schepss and more recently H. Chadwick against G. Morin, A. D'Alès, and B.Vollmann,Burrus attributes both the Apology and the Letter to Damasus to PriscUlian himseU. Should this attribution be caUed into question, the central section of the author's argument would be jeopardized for lack of evidence. Kenneth B. Steinhauser Saint Louis University The Lives ofSimeon Stylites. Translated with an Introduction by Robert Doran. [Cistercian Studies Series, Number 112.] (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications. 1992.Pp.iv,24l. $36.95 cloth; $15.95 paperback.) Simeon Stylites was one of the most famous and exotic of the Syrian ascetics and at the same time one of the least characteristic. From such exotic examples has grown a picture of monastic IUe in Syria, now perhaps popularized beyond sober assessment, of ascetical extremists, which in turn has generated analyses that attempt to root...