Virgin Territory - (Christianity in Late Antiquity) by Julia Kelto Lillis (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Women's virginity held tremendous significance in early Christianity and the Mediterranean world. Julia Kelto Lillis demonstrates that early Christian thinkers developed diverse definitions of virginity and understood its bodily aspects in surprising, often nonanatomical ways. Eventually Christians took part in a cross-cultural shift toward viewing virginity as something that could be perceived in women's sex organs. Treating virginity as anatomical brought both benefits and costs. By charting this shift and situating it in the larger landscape of ancient thought, Virgin Territory illuminates unrecognized differences among early Christian sources and historicizes problematic ideas about women's bodies that still persist today"--

Book Synopsis

Women's virginity held tremendous significance in early Christianity and the Mediterranean world. Early Christian thinkers developed diverse definitions of virginity and understood its bodily aspects in surprising, often nonanatomical ways. Eventually Christians took part in a cross-cultural shift toward viewing virginity as something that could be perceived in women's sex organs. Treating virginity as anatomical brought both benefits and costs. By charting this change and situating it in the larger landscape of ancient thought, Virgin Territory illuminates unrecognized differences among early Christian sources and historicizes problematic ideas about women's bodies that still persist today.

From the Back Cover

"Taking her cue from modern conceptions of virginity, Julia Kelto Lillis offers welcome correctives designed to stimulate discussion among scholars and a wider public. Lillis lays out the territory of meanings associated with female virginity in the late ancient world to demonstrate that it meant many different things."--Susanna Elm, Sidney H. Ehrman Professor of European History, University of California, Berkeley

"Virgin Territory provides detailed analyses of a wide variety of Christian and ancient Mediterranean texts across different discourses, each centered on bodily, sexual, or anatomical virginity. By covering such a large territory, Lillis teases out numerous local maps, revealing how early Christian authors conveyed very different ideas about what virginity of the body and virginity of the soul are and how these individual conceptualizations changed over time."--Sissel Undheim, Professor of Religion, University of Bergen

"Metaphorical, discursive, diagnostic, and ultimately impossible to define, women's virginity was a major fixation in late antiquity. Lillis captures the full complexity of this deeply imagined condition. It is undoubtedly the most refined and sophisticated understanding of this important topic to date."--Maia Kotrosits, author of The Lives of Objects: Material Culture, Experience, and the Real in the History of Early Christianity

Review Quotes

"Lillis's sophisticated treatment of this important subject will no doubt be useful to scholars exploring topics of sex, gender, the body, and late antique piety."
-- "Catholic Historical Review"

"This book is consummately well conceived, researched, written and produced."
-- "THE CLASSICAL REVIEW"

"Lillis offers a sophisticated study that enhances historians' sensitivity to an intellectual history of virginity."-- "Plekos"

"An exciting and essential addition to the ever-growing body of scholarship on the body in antiquity."-- "Bryn Mawr Classical Review"

About the Author

Julia Kelto Lillis is Assistant Professor of Early Church History at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York.