The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy (Transformation of the Classical Heritage)

296 Pages·1995·1.29 MB·English

by  Virginia Burrus

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Page i
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE
PETER BROWN, GENERAL EDITOR
I Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity, by Sabine G. MacCormack
II Synesius of Cyrene: Philosopher-Bishop, by Jay Alan Bregman
III Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity, by Kenneth G. Holum
IV John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late Fourth Century, by Robert L. Wilken
V Biography in Late Antiquity: The Quest for the Holy Man, by Patricia Cox
VI Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt, by Philip Rousseau
VII Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, by A.P. Kazhdan and Ann Wharton Epstein
VIII Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul, by Raymond Van Dam
IX Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition, by Robert
Lamberton
X Procopius and the Sixth Century, by Averil Cameron
XI Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity, by Robert A. Kaster
XII Civic Coins and Civic Politics in the Roman East, A.D. 180275, by Kenneth Harl
XIII Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, introduced and translated by Sebastian P. Brock and Susan Ashbrook Harvey
XIV Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection, by Carole Straw
XV Apex Omnium: Religion in the Res gestae of Ammianus, by R. L. Rike
XVI Dioscorus of Aphrodito: His Work and His World, by Leslie S. B. MacCoull
XVII On Roman Time: The Codex-Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity, by Michele
Renee Salzman
XVIII Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and The Lives of the Eastern Saints, by Susan Ashbrook
Harvey
XIX Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius, by Alan Cameron and Jacqueline Long, with a contribution
by Lee Sherry
XX Basil of Caesarea, by Philip Rousseau

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Page ii
XXI In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini, introduction, translation, and historical commentary
by C. E. V. Nixon and Barbara Saylor Rodgers
XXII Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital, by Neil B. McLynn
XXIII Public Disputation, Power, and Social Order in Late Antiquity, by Richard Lim
XXIV The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy, by Virginia Burrus
XXV Symeon the Holy Fool: Leontius's Life and the Late Antique City, by Derek Krueger

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The Making of a Heretic
Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy
Virginia Burrus
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley · Los Angeles · London

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Page iv
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 1995 by
The Regents of the University of California
Burrus, Virginia.
The making of a heretic: gender, authority, and the
Priscillianist controversy bVirginia Burrus
p. cm.(Transformation of the classical heritage; 24)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-520-08997-9 (alk. paper)
1. Priscillianism. 2. Priscillian, Bishop of Avila, ca. 350385. 3. Women
in ChristianitySpainHistoryEarly church, ca. 30600.
I. Title. II. Series.
BT1465.B87 1995
273'.4dc20 94-33270
CIP
Printed in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information
SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

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Page v
Τ δε µαθον εγωγε π τ νσοϕ αςµετεχ ντων,
αστε ων, θεοδιδ κτων, κατ π ντασοϕ ντε.
Τουτων κατ' χνος λθον γ Βα νων µοδ ξως.
These things I learned from those partaking in wisdom,
refined, divinely taught, wise in all things.
I came in their footsteps, walking in like opinion.
Arius, Thalia
For my teacher Rebecca

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Page vii
Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
1. "A Strange Man": Opposition Emerges at the Council of Saragossa 25
2. "Manichaean": Charge and Countercharge in Priscillian's Tractates 47
3. "Sorcerer": Alliances, Enmities, and the Death of Priscillian 79
4. "Priscillianist": Heresy Inquistions at Toledo and Tarragona 102
5. "Gnostic": Priscillian Reinterpreted by Sulpicius Severus and Jerome 126
Conclusions 160
Notes 165
Selected Bibliography 233
Index 243

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Page ix
Preface
A text, "once issued, can never be recalled," Sulpicius Severus wisely observed, and I am tempted, if not to abstain
altogether from publishing this monograph, at least to defer doing so. By holding on to these pages a bit longer, I
might not so much tell a different or better tale as give a better account of why the tale is worth telling in the first
place. With Jerome, I have continued to ask, "Why speak of Priscillian, who was condemned by the secular sword
and by the whole world?" In the course of the long gestation of this project, new answers have emerged for me,
without entirely displacing previous responses.
Despite my confessed hesitance, I am also unquestionably relieved to be delivered of the burden of this work. The
comparison of texts to children, of writing to labor, is by no means novelit was already a rhetorical commonplace in
late antiquity. The metaphor may, however, claim particular suitability in this case. The account of the Priscillianist
controversy was conceived simultaneously with my first child, James, and written in the form of a doctoral
dissertation during his infancy. The dissertation manuscript then travelled with me from West Coast to East, at which
point I was again pregnant; and the journey also led to my own birth as a professional scholar, entering upon a first
academic appointment. The revising of the dissertation into something recognizable as a book took place during the
infancy of my second child, Mary, and, as it seems to me now, may represent not simply the maturing of an old work
but also the overlaying of a second, new work upon the first.
For better or for worse, this text does not articulate a single, monologic

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Page x
perspective: one voice, for example, situates itself in the trajectory of social history; another explores the history of
theology; still another drifts toward the analysis of discursive practices sometimes associated with the "cultural
poetics" of the "new historicism." Aware that I have not succeeded altogether in harmonizing the multiple voices, I
nevertheless hope to have struck a few resonant chords. I hope, too, that I have managed to tell a good story, without
producing a deceptively tidy account.
This book is the offspring of a feminist scholar, but to what extent is it a feminist text? Tracing the threads from
which late-ancient constructions of gender were woven, I quickly found myself entangled in altogether unexpected
issues: finally, this study is "about," not women or gender, but rather the controversy over Priscillian. If gender and
authority are prominent among the issues at stake in the disputes surrounding Priscillian and his followers, the
documented preoccupation with these two issues points, I suggest, to three factors that crucially shaped the late-
fourth-century Priscillianist controversy: the late-ancient construction of orthodoxy and heresy; the divergence
between public and private perspectives on Christian community; and the conflict between accommodating and
alienated stances toward the world. I not only attempt to address certain gaps and weaknesses in current Priscillianist
scholarship by suggesting new interpretive frameworks; I also modify the dominant source theory first proposed by
E.-Ch. Babut in 1909. Finally, too, I offer different or more detailed interpretations of recently discovered or
previously neglected texts, such as the Acts of the Council of Saragossa, Priscillian's Apology, the Acts of the Council
of Toledo, and a recently discovered letter from Consentius to Augustine.
It has not been my intention to examine all the texts dealing with Priscillianism or to offer an exhaustive account of
the movement and its detractors; here the works of Benedikt Vollman and Henry Chadwick will probably remain
standard for some time. Nor, obviously, does this study investigate similar controversies in the late-ancient Christian
world, although it may be of relevance to them to the extent that the phenomena I describe, including both the
strategies of labeling and the conflicts over gender, authority, and understandings of Christian community, were
broadly characteristic of late-ancient Christianity. Elizabeth Clark's The Origenist Controversy, a study of the
"cultural construction" of another late-fourth-century Christian debate, which appeared as I revised this manuscript
for publication, illumines many areas of overlap among the contemporary disputes about Priscillianism, Origenism,
and Pelagianism, while also persuading us to attend more closely to the nuances of these anthropological,
ecclesiological, and cosmological controversies, so often

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Page xi
overshadowed as a result of the privileged status traditionally granted the "high" trinitarian and christological debates
of the fourth and fifth centuries.
First and foremost among the various midwiving communities that have sustained my work is my Bay Area
dissertation committee, made up of Rebecca Lyman, Marty Stortz, Susanna Elm, and Robert Gregg; I am particularly
grateful to Rebecca, who has been a faithful friend, an infinitely tactful and tolerant mentor, and an unsurpassed
partner in scholarly conversation for a decade now, as we have shared our passion for lateancient Christianity and
sought to unravel the tangled constructions of orthodoxy and heresy. Special thanks are also owed to Ray Van Dam
of the University of Michigan, who very generously agreed to long-distance mentorship of a feminist church history
student from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley; his critical, thorough, and frequently skeptical responses
to the dissertation saved me from various errors of mistranslation and interpretive misjudgment. Finally, I must
acknowledge my daily companions in the San Francisco flat where I wrote the initial drafts of this text, including
Soraya Merlos and two very little boys, one of them my son. Soraya not only made it possible for me to work on the
dissertation without the constant distraction of childcare; she also taught me much about the disciplined, prayerful,
Bible-centered spirituality of the small Christian communities that gather in the private space of somebody's living
room or garageand occasionally (in the densely packed living conditions of San Francisco's Mission District)
provoke the neighbor's hostility with overimpassioned hymn singing or other disturbing displays of religious zeal.
On the East Coast, new study circles emerged to provide the context for revisions. I am grateful to colleagues and
graduate students at Drew University who read parts of the manuscript, to the Theological School there for its
financial support of my research, and to Peter Brown, a most welcoming neighbor at nearby Princeton. Extralocal
networks have likewise continued to enrich my work: Harry Maier, Patricia Cox Miller, Mark Vessey, and Dan
Williams all offered extremely helpful readings of portions of the manuscript; and I have also received
extraordinarily respectful and provocative critiques from the University of California Press and its readers, including
not only the series editor, Peter Brown, but also Liz Clark and Philip Rousseau. Finally, my husband, Bob Kelly, has
accompanied me on this journey from dissertation to book, from studenthood to professorship, from West to East
Coast; for this least "Priscillianist" of my sustaining relationships, I give thanks.

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