4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A New Christian Masculine Ideology, February 23, 2010
This review is from: The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society) (Hardcover)
This book represents an essential addition on the bookshelves for those interested in ancient Roman and Christian masculine ideologies. While some of its more sweeping generalizations are flawed and based on outdated or questionable assumptions, the book's intricate details, fluid prose and masterful amalgamation of the Later Roman sources make it a thought provoking and worthwhile read.
For Kuefler continuity as well as change helped to define Roman men's self-fashioning in the Later Roman world. He maintains correctly that even after the triumph of Christianity the Later Roman Empire preserved many of the basic tenets of Classical masculinity. Like its earlier incarnation, Late Antique Roman masculinity was tightly defined and achievable primarily by the upper-class freeborn citizen who knew how to behave properly, and dress in the prescribed manner. In contrast to scholars such as Myles McDonnell (Roman Manliness) and Maud Gleeson (Making Men), however, Kuefler convincingly argues that elite Roman men's declining role in the Roman military, from the first to the fourth centuries CE, did not immediately sever the connection between Roman masculinity and martial virtues. He shows that Roman men of the Early and Late Empire could maintain their martial manliness by living vicariously through the victories of the Roman armies over the barbarians. Roman men of the Early and Later Empire continued to esteem the manly virtues that protected Rome's masculine imperium.
According to K, it was only the military defeat and the barbarization of the Roman army in the fourth and fifth centuries that shook this self-confidence. K associates the collapse of the Classical masculine ideal and the establishment of a new Christian masculinity with the political and social upheavals of the fourth and fifth centuries. In K's view, these events created a "crisis of masculinity"; the military defeats of this era caused some Late Roman men to question their own manly right to dominion. These setbacks also caused many--particularly within the Western half of the Empire--to question their manly supremacy over the barbarians. Indeed, K supposes that the inability of the Romans to defend the Empire from these foreign incursions led many to believe that the barbarians had become "manlier than they were."
Yet Christian men of the Later Empire, like their pagan counterparts, continued to feel the need to be seen as manly men. He argues that the rapid Christianization of the Empire during this era resulted, in part, from the religion's ability to overcome the breach between ancient ideals of manliness and Late Antique realities:
"The men of late antiquity believed that their ancient counterparts had been martial conquerors, great statesmen, and commanding husbands and fathers. When compared with these ancient heroes they could only be dismal failures. Christian ideology offered them an opportunity to recover their sense of greatness. As Christians, they could see themselves as indefatigable conquerors against evil, honored statesmen of the Church and exacting spiritual fathers. The new masculine ideal presented itself to them both as a repudiation of the classical heritage and as its ultimate fulfillment."
In K's vision of Late Antiquity, Late Roman men no longer needed to equate their sense of manly supremacy over woman and foreigners with the military achievements of the Roman armies, but could create a superior masculine image founded on an internal struggle based upon "sin, suffering, and salvation."
Yet K also contends that the new Christian ideology of masculinity prevailed because it maintained many Classical concepts of heroism based on martial virtues. Although some Christians rejected violence, he avers that they managed to adopt the Greco-Roman warrior-male tradition without fighting in secular wars. In fact, some supporters claimed that because they were fighting a much more difficult spiritual battle these ideal Christians were even more heroic and brave than the Roman legionnaires. He thinks that part of the reason that Christianity ultimately triumphed over paganism resulted from the religion's ability to adopt Classical Greco-Roman notions of martial manliness and adapt to contemporary political and social realities. By co-opting these ideals, Christians not only began to challenge Classical notions of heroic and manly behavior but created heroes that became the archetype of Roman courage and manliness.
The success of this Christian masculine ideology did not lead to a less "masculine centric culture." Instead of the genderless ideal preached by Paul, the new Christian ideal continued a more traditional misogynistic ideology better suited for recent converts among the pagan elite. On this development K (239) writes, "An equal challenge was the willingness of some Christian men to acknowledge that the tradition of `no more male no more female' meant that in order to pursue holiness as Christians they would have to abandon their masculine identity. The patristic model of Christianity proved successful, I have argued, because it was conservative in the truest sense of the word, preserving the classical tradition of a hierarchy of men over women and a clear-cut distinction between the two, a tradition otherwise brought into questions by the many social changes of late antiquity."
The adoption of Christian notions of manliness, according to K, also served a more practical political purpose. He concludes that upper-class Roman men were able to counteract the increasing autocracy of the emperor by taking on increasingly powerful positions of authority within the Church (K's view of an increasingly enfeebled Roman upper-class is a strange rejection and ultimately unconvincing rejection of Mathew's finding of an increasingly power senatorial elite in the later part of the fourth and early fifth centuries argued in his masterful Western Aristocracies, 1975) . In particular, it was in their role as bishops that the Christian nobility was able to achieve a new type of manliness based on their intimate relationship with God and their moral superiority. This alternative authority, as K puts it, allowed bishops, "to take on a masculine posture even towards the emperor." What made the new Christian heroic ideal revolutionary for Kuefler was its abandonment of the Classical Roman notion that an ideal man established his dominance through succeeding on the battlefield and asserting his cultural supremacy over foreigners. Although the Roman acceptance of Christianity did not immediately transform Roman attitudes towards foreigners, gradually the Christian notion that mankind could be united through religion, regardless of nationality, threatened the Romans' sense of a shared identity based on their uniquely "Roman" sense of heroism and manliness. While K's research centers on the Western half of the Empire, he surmises that during the same period "many of the same conclusions" might be drawn for the Eastern half of the Empire.
As a recent critique has suggested, by making such sweeping generalizations, Kuefler like Burrus (Begotten Not Made) either consciously or unconsciously adopt Gibbon's "notorious" view that the Christianization of the Empire--and in particular the rise of monasticism--weakened the Roman's military, broke down the Roman family and led to the "fall of the West." Despite's K's belief, unlike Martin of Tours, most Christian men had few qualms serving as soldiers. K also seems to overstate the average Roman citizens lack of enthusiasm towards military service, which as A.H.M. Jones famously pointed out probably had more to do with a dislike for distant postings than any turning away from martial virtues as an essential part of Roman manliness. K when speaking of a hegemonic masculine ideology also tends to focus on the small number of men who made up the upper-crust of Senates in Rome and Constantinople. For the majority of Roman citizens from the lower classes military service remained the best path to a good life as well as well as entry into the aristocracy. Indeed in the sixth century one sees a return to an army made up predominantly of Eastern Roman citizens. In fact, Roman civilians had been cut off from positions of command as early as the second century, which as Jones argues led to a more effective fighting force. Also it is important for us to remember that men from the upper-classes like the Eastern provincial noble, Syneseus, in times of military crisis did take on military roles, and--even if only rhetorically--certainly continued to believe in the intimate link between martial virtues and "true" Roman manliness. Certainly the historians we read from the period like Ammianus, Malchus, Priscus, Procopius, and Agathias--men who largely hailed from the provincial aristocracies--continued to promote the traditional mode of masculine ideology which preached that the ideal soldier's life was the same as the ideal manly life. K also says nothing of the growth in the fourth century of what some scholars see as a distinct inner aristocratic circle made of men like Theodosius and Stilicho, based not upon ethnic identity, but on loyalty to the ruling clique and the promotion by these men of their own martial virtues (see Goffart's Barbarian tides, 196). We can also question whether the Romans saw the barbarians as manlier than them...even when Kuefler is using the term in a more limited way to describe the Barbarians' "superior" martial courage. K's depiction of the later Empire brings to mind the image of cowed unmanly Roman aristocrats handing over their lands to "magnificently armored barbarians" that so angers scholars like Goffart. Modern consensus (see for example, Goffart, Heather) has abandoned the notion that this period witnessed a notable decline in the Romans' military advantage over barbarian peoples like the Goths, Vandals, and Huns...
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Seriously flawed, January 7, 2011
This review is from: The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society) (Hardcover)
This book is shockingly irresponsible scholarship. It's full of assumptions, speculation, rationalization, and, frankly, undergraduate level analysis. It could be shorter by half, because it makes the same questionable points over and over. The only use this book might have is in the presentation of primary sources and the summary of historical events. Once Kuefler starts to analyze or make theoretical connections, he's on very shaky ground. He has very obviously shoehorned the historical material to fit his pre-existing assumptions.
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