Focuses on the practice of permanent sexual renunciation-continence, celibacy, and life-long virginity - in Christian circles from the first to the fifth centuries AD. This book questions how theological views on sexuality and the human body both mirrored and shaped the uneven relationships between men and women.

Preface Introduction Part I. From Paul to anthony 1. Body and City 2. From Apostle to Apologist: Sexual Order and Sexual Renunciation in the Early Church 3. Martyrdom, Prophecy and Continence: Hermas to Tertullian 4. "To Undo the Works of Women": Marcion, Tatian and the Encratites 5. "When You Make the Two One": Valentinus and Gnostic Spiritual Guidance 6. "A Faint Image of Divine Providence": Clement of Alexandria 7. "A Promiscuous Brotherhood and Sisterhood": Men and Women in the Christian Churches 8. "I Beseech You: Be Transformed": Origen 9. "Walking on Earth, Touching High Heaven's Vault": Porphyry and Methodius 10. Church and Body: Cyprian, Mani and Eusebius of Caesarea Part II. asceticism and Society in the Eastern Empire 11. The Desert Fathers: Anthony to John Climacus 12. "Make to Yourselves Separate Booths": Monks, Women and Marriage in Egypt 13. "Daughters of Jerusalem": The Ascetic Life of Women in the Fourth Century 14. Marriage and Mortality: Gregory of Nyssa 15. Sexuality and the City: John Chrysostom 16. "These Are Our Angels": Syria Part III. Ambrose to Augustine: The Making of the Latin Tradition 17. Aula Pudoris: Ambrose 18. "Learn of Me a Holy Arrogance": Jerome 19. Sexuality and Society: Augustine Epilogue. Body and Society: The Early Middle Ages Bibliography Index

The reader of Peter Brown's work is always uncertain which to admire most, the grace and clarity, the scope and erudition, or the ability to bring diverse and complex units into a meaningful whole. These merits are all fully on display in The Body and Society. New York Times Book Review Peter Brown's book is a great achievement. It will long be read, its insights studied and discussed, and its prose admired and enjoyed... His work is a tour de force, showing a mastery of text and subject through six centuries of history. -- W. H. C. Frend New York Review of Books A profound exploration of the meaning of embodiment, celibacy, and chastity for early Christians. Christianity Today A work of rediscovery and re-evaluation, written in luminous, heart-stopping prose. -- Nicolas Rothwell The Australian A seminal work. Bryn Mawr Classical Review A truly magisterial work of historical scholarship by the greatest living authority on late antique Mediterranean civilization. It will be the definitive work on this subject for the foreseeable future. Choice [A] compelling and human study of the depths and heights of sexual renunciation... Brown's detached yet compassionate sympathy recreates the subtle and complex world of late-antique sexuality and renunciation with a skill which is uniquely his. This is not a history of the idea of virginity, but a sharpyly-focused series of pictures of its practice. London Review of Books Only Peter Brown could have written The Body and Society. The book... is the work of an acute and immensely learned mind soaked in the sources, with an enviable power to bring together widely scattered and recondite texts. Religion