Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Preaching Bondage: John Chrysostom and the Discourse of Slavery in Early Christianity by Chris L. de Wet
This outstanding monograph fills a need for studies on slavery in individual ancient authors. It approaches the topic of slavery in the homilies of John Chrysostom from the novel perspective of the rhetoric of the body. De Wet convincingly shows how the discourse of slavery directly shaped early Christian subjectivities. In the process, we also learn how Chrysostom’s various discursive formations of theology, virtue ethics, and biblical interpretation sustained the discourse of slavery in late Roman society.
For example, the most famous passage by John Chrysostom on early Christian slaveholding preaches against slave ownership while also acknowledging the impracticality of this ideal: “One master only needs to employ one slave; or rather two or three masters one slave. … We will allow you to keep a second slave. But if you collect too many, you no longer do it for the sake of benevolence, but to indulge yourself” (Hom. 1 Cor. 40.6 [F2.515–16]; trans. 83). Chrysostom [End Page 456] negotiates with his audience to get by with one or two household slaves at the most. Yet, as de Wet convincingly argues, Chrysostom here as elsewhere in his homilies neither calls for abolition nor ameliorates the institution. Rather, the advice objectifies the slave body within the broader category of wealth renunciation and so enables the slaveholder to make his or her power more visible and effective. Ironically, Chrysostom’s exhortation does not erode but sustains the institution of slavery in late Roman society. This irony is just one of the many about Chrysostom’s discursive productions of slavery as an institution and a metaphor explored in Preaching Bondage.
The book is divided into seven chapters and provides a new analytical vocabulary for the academic study of slavery. The full set of neologisms—doulology (the discourse of slavery), doulogenia (the etiology of slavery), carcerality (a state of confinement), doulomorphism (act of taking on or being given the subjectivity and identity of a slave)—appears in a Glossary at the back, a useful tool for the reader. Chapter One (“Introducing Doulology”) presents the discourse of slavery in early Christianity and surveys its context of Roman slaveholding in late antiquity. Chapter Two (“Divine Bondage: Slavery between Metaphor and Theology”) shows the complex dynamic between the metaphors and the actualities of slavery and pays particular attention to the paradox of freedom as divine bondage. The rest of the book develops these ideas in a close reading of Chrysostom’s homilies, with the author’s own translations of the texts (the translation of genos as “race” [i.e., “the race of slaves”] appears frequently and may surprise some readers, but it does capture Chrysostom’s use of stereotyping to influence his congregations).
Chrysostom’s program of remaking the household into a “little church,” one of the most important discursive operations of pastoral power in his homilies, is the subject of Chapter Three (“Little Churches: The Pastoralization of the Household and Its Slaves”). There are several key findings. Chrysostom’s discourse of a holistic household management (oikonomia) carried Christian pastoral power over into the household, where domestic rituals were to duplicate ecclesiastical liturgy. Understanding a crucial difference between strategic and tactical slaveholding makes the old hypothesis that Christianity “ameliorated” slavery no longer tenable (110–12). Chapter Four (“The Didactics of Kyriarchy: Slavery, Education, and the Formation of Masculinity”) studies the discourse about the jobs of two specific household slaves in the Roman house, the wet-nurse and the pedagogue. The illuminating analysis demonstrates how the slave body functioned as a site for the formation of masculinity and the development of mastery in Christian male youth. Chapter Five (“Whips and Scriptures: On the Discipline and Punishment of Slaves”) examines Chrysostom’s explicit program to teach slaves virtue as a mechanism of encouraging self-control, which functioned to reduce resistance or revolts. Chapter Six (“Exploitation, Regulation, and Restructuring: Managing Slave Sexuality”) then addresses the sexual exploitation of...
