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Journal of Early Christian Studies
The Sex Lives of Saints | Virginia Burrus
Access options available:. As the author herself notes, the startling title of this book is "lightly ironic" but not oxymoronic 1 ; when understood in conjunction with the subtitle, it alerts the reader to one of the book's major premises, namely, that narrow definitions of "sex" cannot account for the "exuberant eroticism" 1 that pervades ancient Christian asceticism, particularly in hagiographical writing. Rather than construing "sex" as genitally organized activity and thus interpreting ancient lives of saints as anti-erotic, Burrus argues that sanctity and eros form a pair. By showing how hagiography positions the saint as a subject of desire and as a desiring subject, Burrus challenges the stark distinctions that are often drawn between theology and sexuality, as well as between the holy and the erotic and also between male and female. Self-consciously reading "otherwise" by comparison with traditional readings of saints' lives, she has positioned the book as a [End Page ] response both to ancient texts and to the continuing "repressive morality of sexuality" so forcefully analyzed by Foucault in his History of Sexuality. This is a heady agenda, and Burrus's insistent exposure of the excessive and transgressive desire that she detects in hagiography will be unsettling for those who prefer a more positivist practice of historiography.



The Sex Lives of Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography
Has a repressive morality been the primary contribution of Christianity to the history of sexuality? The ascetic concerns that pervade ancient Christian texts would seem to support such a common assumption. Focusing on hagiographical literature, Virginia Burrus pursues a fresh path of interpretation, arguing that the early accounts of the lives of saints are not antierotic but rather convey a sublimely transgressive "countereroticism" that resists the marital, procreative ethic of sexuality found in other strands of Christian tradition.
According to Catholic doctrine this means, among other things, that these persons are worthy of being venerated as models of heroic sanctity. Also, they can intercede for you before God. You know, you can't just walk into God the Father's office to ask for something.
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