Acknowledgments ix

Introduction / Dale B. Martin 1

Gender

The Lady Appears: Materializations of "Woman" in Early Monastic Literature / David Brakke 25

No Friendly Letters: Augustine's Correspondence with Women / Maureen A. Tilley 40

On Mary's Voice: Gendered Words in Syriac Marian Tradition / Susan Ashbrook Harvey 63

Is There a Harlot in This Text?: Hagiography and the Grotesque / Patricia Cox Miller 87

Macrina's Tattoo / Virginia Burrus 103

Aestheticism

Rereading the Jovinianist Controversy: Aestheticism and Clerical Authority in Late Ancient Christianity / David G. Hunter 119

The Dark Side of Landscape: Ideology and Power in the Christian Myth of the Desert / James E. Goehring 136

Monks and Other Animals / Blake Leyerle 150

Historiography

Archives in the Fiction: Rabbinic Historiography and Church History / Daniel Boyarin 175

How to Read Heresiology / Averil Cameron 193

Ascetic Practice and the Genealogy of Heresy: Problems in Modern Scholarship and Ancient Textual Representation / Teresa M. Shaw 213

History, Fiction, and Figuralism in Book 8 of Augustine's Confessions / Mark Vessey 237

Hellenism and Historiography: Gregory of Nazianzus and Julian in Dialogue / Susanna Elm 258

Knowing Theodoret: Text and Self / Philip Rousseau 278

Damasus and the Invention of Early Christian Rome / Dennis E. Trout 298

Bibliography 317

Contributors 355

Index of Modern Authors 357

Index of Citations to Ancient Authors and Scriptures 360