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Chapter 4 Secrets of Seduction: The Lives of Holy Harlots The strength of the feminine is that of seduction. —Jean Baudrillard, Seduction Women are seduced by more than the promise of sexual pleasure or escape from poverty, or even eternal devotion. They are seduced as well by the stories men have told about those seductions and by the vision of women which may be derived from such stories. . . . Women can no more escape being adulterated than they can escape beingadulteresses. —Jane Miller,Seductions The peculiarlypromiscuous Lives of loose women are not easy to tie down to a particular time, place, or even textual version, in large part because their immense popularity led quickly to multiple translations and uncertain attributions of authorship. Thus, although the Syriac tale of Mary, part of a longer Life of Abraham also transmitted in Greek and Latin versions, was traditionally assigned to the fourth-century poet-theologian Ephrem, it is almost certainly a fifth-century text, and its author must remain anonymous .1 The Life ofPelagia claims to be authored by one Jacob, the deacon of the bishop Nonnos, yet neither the place nor the date of Nonnos's episcopacy can be identified with any confidence,and the earliest witness to the (possibly fifth-century?) Greek original, transmitted in several linguistic versions, including Latin, is a Syriac translation.2 The Greek Life of Mary of Egypt, seemingly reflecting fourth- and fifth-century desert traditions and texts, is attributed (somewhat uncertainly) to Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem from 634 to 638.3 Like the other two hagiographies, it was translated into several languages,and a Latin rendition seems to have been available in the west as early as the seventh century.4 Eluding both authorial and linguistic propriety, these seductive Lives circulated both swiftly and widely. To the extent that the Lives of Pelagia and the two Marys represent a distinct subgenre of ancient hagiography—namely, the "Lives of Harlots"— this is less the product of their initial composition than of their subsequent reception, for the three texts betray no awareness of each other and indeed, as we shall see, are narratively and stylistically quite distinct. Furthermore, none of them is particularly well described literally as the biography of a harlot the Syrian Mary is a seduced nun who takes up prostitution as penance, Pelagia an actress who becomes a monk, and the Egyptian Mary a woman who enjoys sex too much to reduce it to an economic transaction.5 Nonetheless, their stories have continued to be read collectively,together with other briefer, protohagiographicalnarratives of desert fathers and repentant prostitutes.6 As a collectivity,the Lives of sexually transgressivewomen have colluded to produce the harlot as a paradigmatic figure of conversion who offers hope not only for the few but for "Everyman." In two essays introducing her English translations of ancient harlot Lives, Benedicta Ward, for example, locates these texts squarely within the "literature of conversion" most famously represented by Augustine's Confessions, on the one hand, and the accruing legends attaching to the figure of Mary Magdalene as a repentant prostitute, on the other.7 Lynda Coon repeats the emphasis on conversion and repentance: "Only the conversion of sexually depraved women, such as Mary of Egypt and Pelagia of Antioch, could teach Christian audiences that redemption is possible even for the most loathsome sinners."8 Coon's particular reading of the Harlot Lives as narratives of conversion and repentance rests its case heavily on the hagiographical penchant for biblical typology, first, by rendering self-evident "the double-edged biblical topos of impenitent woman as sinful humanity and repentant woman as harbinger of universal salvation" and, second, by imbuing the topos with extraordinary explanatory power.9 Yet, how is one to "explain" (if not by a suspiciously circular logic) the fact that the biblical figures are themselves thereby forced to repent of their "depravity," whether through the interpretive efforts of the ancient hagiographers or through more recent readings of the hagiographical texts? The famously seductive Queen of Sheba, who "came to Jerusalem to test [Solomon] with hard questions, having a very great retinue and camels bearing spices and very much gold and precious stones" (2 Chron. 9.1),metamorphoses, in Coon's own text, into a "contrite woman." The Shulamite,whose irrepressibledesire for her male lover rings out lustily in the Song of Songs, is made over not only as a "bride" but still further as a sublimely disembodied "soul" reveling in "the intimate experience of divine love...

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