The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity
First published in 1988, Peter Brown's The Body and Society was a groundbreaking study of the marriage and sexual practices of early Christians in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. Brown focuses on the practice of permanent sexual renunciation-continence, celibacy, and lifelong virginity-in Christian circles from the first to the fifth centuries A.D. and traces early Christians' preoccupations with sexuality and the body in the work of the period's great writers.
The Body and Society questions how theological views on sexuality and the human body both mirrored and shaped relationships between men and women, Roman aristocracy and slaves, and the married and the celibate. Brown discusses Tertullian, Valentinus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Constantine, the Desert Fathers, Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine, among others, and considers asceticism and society in the Eastern Empire, martyrdom and prophecy, gnostic spiritual guidance, promiscuity among the men and women of the church, monks and marriage in Egypt, the ascetic life of women in fourth-century Jerusalem, and the body and society in the early Middle Ages. In his new introduction, Brown reflects on his work's reception in the scholarly community.
Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
Become an affiliate
A work of rediscovery and re-evaluation, written in luminous, heart-stopping prose.--Nicolas Rothwell "The Australian "
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
A profound exploration of the meaning of embodiment, celibacy, and chastity for early Christians.--Christianity Today
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
