Spiritual Authority Research Articles

The Cross or the Double-Cross: Roman Catholicism, Anti-Communism, and the Political Theology of Venerable Fulton J. Sheen

The Venerable and Most Reverend Fulton J. Sheen was an advocate of American Catholic patriotism and opponent to the spread of totalitarianism, especially communism. He grounded the two positions in what I call the “ecclesial foundation” in which he defined American citizenship in terms of membership in religious institutions. In Sheen's view, religious institutions provided the ultimate, spiritual ends for humankind. Therefore, the American government had to protect, above all, religious liberties at home and abroad. Totalitarian regimes, which Sheen believed sought to replace spiritual with material ends of the state, violently deprived their subjects of religious liberty and, therefore, embodied the spirit of the anti-Christ. Only the Vatican had the spiritual and moral authority to identify this spirit, and—especially after the Second World War—only America had the military and economic power to confront it. Ironically, this argument was an appropriation of the old Nativist arguments against the Vatican itself. The Nativist argument was that religious liberty of Protestant churches was the source for political authority of the American state to use against the absolute, arbitrary, foreign dictator in Rome. Sheen's appropriation and redeployment of the old narrative persuaded millions of Americans to oppose totalitarian ideologies and view, after centuries of distrust, American Catholics as loyal citizens.

Power Literacy: Nineteenth-Century American Indians and the Uses of Class, Respectability, Spiritual Authority, and Media

Power Literacy: Nineteenth-Century American Indians and the Uses of Class, Respectability, Spiritual Authority, and Media

Victorianizing Guangxu: Arresting Flows, Minting Coins, and Exerting Authority in Early Twentieth-Century Kham

In the late Qing and early Republican eras, eastern Tibet (Kham) was a borderland on the cusp of political and economic change. Straddling Sichuan Province and central Tibet, it was coveted by both Chengdu and Lhasa. Informed by an absolutist conception of territorial sovereignty, Sichuan officials sought to exert exclusive authority in Kham by severing its inhabitants from regional and local influence. The resulting efforts to arrest the flow of rupees from British India and the flow of cultural identity entwined with Buddhism from Lhasa were grounded in two misperceptions: that Khampa opposition to Chinese rule was external, fostered solely by local monasteries as conduits of Lhasa’s spiritual authority, and that Sichuan could arrest such influence, the absence of which would legitimize both exclusive authority in Kham and regional assertions of sovereignty. The intersection of these misperceptions with the significance of Buddhism in Khampa identity determined the success of Sichuan’s policies and the focus of this article, the minting and circulation of the first and only Qing coin emblazoned with an image of the emperor. It was a flawed axiom of state and nation builders throughout the world that severing local cultural or spiritual influence was possible—or even necessary—to effect a borderland’s incorporation.

The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority by Tanya Stabler Miller

The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority by Tanya Stabler Miller

“Arion”: George Eliot’s Exploration of Art and Influence after Middlemarch

By the time George Eliot made her poetic debut with the publication of The Spanish Gypsy in 1868, she had already achieved wealth and fame with five successful novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1863), and Felix Holt, the Radical (1866). Widely recognized as one of the era's leading writers, Eliot had established her position as a prominent novelist. Why, then, did she turn to poetry at this point in her successful publishing career? In George Eliot, Poetess, I argue that Eliot relied on the gender-specific and religiously motivated poetess persona to write poetry that promoted a doctrine of sympathy rather than orthodox religion. As a poetess with spiritual authority, Eliot could take greater risks than she could as a popular novelist. (1) Eliot's own perception of poetry's aesthetic preeminence over fiction provides evidence of another poetic aim: in 1868, she wrote that poetry had a superiority over all the other arts. (2) The cultural prestige of poetry thus offered Eliot a chance to secure a literary legacy beyond that of a popular novelist. Indeed, throughout her poems, Eliot linked herself to a great poetic tradition by invoking Dante, Boccaccio, Homer, Erinna, Sappho, and Shakespeare. Despite seeking to rank among the great artists of the age, however, Eliot also feared the corrupting power of fame and egoistic ambition. She maintained an uneasy relationship with the fame that she consciously employed to promote her work, and her poems reveal this disquietude. Scholars have noted how a number of Eliot's poems reveal her struggle with fame and ambition but have largely overlooked Arion, a little-known poem from 1873 that constitutes a fascinating example of Eliot's literary effort to address this conflict in the aftermath of MidAlemarch's critical and financial success in 1871 to 1872. (3) In Arion, Eliot adapts Herodotus's Histories, book 1, chapter 24, which tells the story of (ancient Greek poet and inventor of the dithyramb), who won fame and wealth in Italy and was forced by sailors to jump into the sea upon returning to his native Corinth. (4) Eliot's thematic and formal changes to Herodotus's story reveal her own struggle as a famous, aging artist working to compose lasting and meaningful art while grappling with the potential trappings of celebrity. After providing background concerning Eliot's poetry-writing career, I offer an in-depth examination of Arion to show how this poem indicates a maturation in Eliot's conception of herself as an artist. In addition, I offer biographical evidence to date the composition of Arion to March 1873 and explain the significance of this period by reading the poem as an expression of Eliot's struggle with artistic creation, performance, mortality, and influence after writing Middlemarch, her most famous novel. Poetry, Prominence, and Prestige Despite the crucial role that Eliot's poetic work played in the later part of her writing career, few who read Eliot today know of it. During Eliot's lifetime, her poetry sold well and received mostly positive reviews. However, after her death critics largely dismissed her poetry as inferior verse, and over time it fell out of wide circulation. (5) Until recently, scholars neglected this important part of her work--written at the height of her career--but new studies focusing on her poetry and prominence as a public figure offer a more complete picture of the author and her work as a whole. (6) From 1864 to 1878, Eliot wrote poetry regularly and, from 1866 to 1870 and 1873 to 1874, intensively. She wrote numerous poetic epigraphs to preface chapters of her novels; a handful of poetic fragments; and over twenty-five poems, including lyric poems, a sonnet sequence, elegies, hymns and ballads, verse narratives, a closet drama, philosophical dialogues, narrative monologues, and an epic-length dramatic poem. In these works, she masterfully employed blank verse, free verse, heroic couplets, and irregular rhyme schemes. …

Mysticism and Reform, 1400-1750 ed. by Sara S. Poor and Nigel Smith

Reviewed by: Mysticism and Reform, 1400-1750 ed. by Sara S. Poor and Nigel Smith Matthew Rivera Mysticism and Reform, 1400-1750, ed. Sara S. Poor and Nigel Smith (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 2015) 400 pp., ill. The authors of the volume Mysticism and Reform, 1400-1750 examine the place of mysticism within Reformation discourse. They seek to evoke themes within literature that paralleled the challenge to widely-held conceptions of power and authority that the Reformation posed. In the process, they identify several motifs, such as millenarianism, state intervention in the mystical tradition—either in its repression or propagation—and the gendering of spirituality. Euan Cameron’s piece provides a fine summary of how the Reformation was a watershed in European intellectual history. He argues that the Reformation was a moment when traditional epistemologies sustained forceful attack. As he explains, the ways of knowing were transformed by what he calls “the more objective sources of authority” encouraged by the Protestant Reformers (35, emphasis mine). The Protestants defined this objectivity as textual, and this at the expense of tradition that the Catholic Reformers argued was also a valid source of spiritual authority (36). But instead of making the well-worn—and erroneous—contrast between Protestant empirical rationality and Catholic “superstition,” Cameron casts the mystic impulse as a reaction to the stress created by rapidly shifting orthodoxies. As he astutely observes, “[m]ystical seeking will often, in one sense or another, arise as a reaction against dogmatic over-elaboration and over-definition” (45). Building upon Cameron’s notion of mysticism as a response to conflicting epistemologies, Alana King maintains that the shift would yield two spiritualities that were antithetical: intellectual spirituality and “supernatural cognition,” or the mystical impulse. Importantly, she finds a gendered component to the Reformers’ debates over mysticism, and associates it with feminine passivity in [End Page 314] contrast with intellectual spirituality understood as active and gendered masculine (64). The volume’s contributors transition from the theory underpinning mysticism to a discussion of the language used to describe it. Their analysis is instructive to understanding the mentalities that animated church reform and confessionalization. Two pieces, one by Kees Schepers and the other by Alison Shell, broach this topic. In both cases, language was critical to forming identity and praxis among Reformation-era mystics. For example, Schepers observes the use of spatial metaphors. At the Saint Agnes Convent, detachment (Gelassenheit) appears in the sisters’ writings in conjunction with the language of attachment to Christ through the practice of a “self-annihilation” characteristic of imitatio Christi. Schepers suggests that the use of the language of detachment-attachment was also politicized. The dual process of detachment from the world and fleshly desires and attachment to Christ was impossible barring a miracle. Although circular, church and lay grandees asserted that mystical union with Christ demonstrated the veracity of the Catholic faith, and thus mysticism became a puissant tool in confessionalization. On the theme of language, Shell perceives a link between the mystical tradition and the Psalms. Mystics found Scriptural warrant for their ecstasies in the soaring passion of the Psalmists’ verse. In addition, the gendered language of the mystical experience was often eroticized. For the mystic, to attach to Christ was to become one with him. As Franz Eybl notes, this understanding of attachment was particularly poignant for Catholics whose Eucharistic theology held erotic overtones of union with Christ’s body through communicating with the elements. Indeed, as Eybl observes, the passion evoked within the communicant was described as fire, a burning and consuming heat. For churchmen, however, the female communicant-mystic could be at odds with male authority, and by extension, Church hierarchy. Kristen Christensen, in her analysis of mystic Maria van Hout (d. 1547), finds such an example. If one with Christ, the female communicant was empowered to speak by virtue of his divine body coursing through her veins. And with transubstantiation the most tauted of theological distinctives during the Reformation, the weight of the conundrum that Catholic mystics posed was significant indeed. According to Arthur Marotti, Sarah Apetrei, and Genelle Gertz, mysticism was a popular outlet for many who perceived that its relative disadvantages with respect to...

Negotiating Respect: Pentecostalism, Masculinity, and the Politics of Spiritual Authority in the Dominican Republic by Brendan Jamal Thornton

Brendan Jamal Thornton, Negotiating Respect: Pentecostalism, Masculinity, and the Politics of Spiritual Authority in the Dominican Republic. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016. 288 pp.This work by Brendan Jamal Thornton is an ethnographic study of the phenomenal growth of fundamentalist Protestantism among those living in an urban barrio in the Dominican Republic. Thornton seeks to explain why Pentecostalism has made such inroads in a country where the citizens identify very strongly with the Catholic Church. He wants to understand why converts to Pentecostalism, a foreign religion that undermines Catholic authority, are welcomed as religious leaders and exemplars among the Dominican population. The author focuses attention on violent street gangs and provides insight into why gang members convert to a religion that undermines their macho identity and rejects everything they stand for. While the focus of this study is on the Dominican Republic, the author recognizes that people are converting to Pentecostalism by the millions in the Caribbean, Latin America, and many other places throughout the world (see Dow 2001). Thornton states that although Pentecostalism is a marginal religion in the US, it claims more then 500 million adherents worldwide (2), many of whom occupy the lowest levels of socioeconomic hierarchies. Pentecostalism overwhelmingly attracts the poor and dispossessed. The appeal of this Protestant sect in such a wide variety of cultures and nations calls out for social scientific explanation. Thornton's ethnographic approach provides many fascinating insights into the phenomenon as it plays out in the Dominican Republic. However, his reliance on an interpretive approach inspired by the work of Clifford Geertz (1973) robs the study of some of its analytical and explanatory power. The reader learns about the attraction of Pentecostalism to some people in the barrios, but understands little about its universal appeal to widely different people outside of that context. Furthermore, one learns only of the positive effects of conversion to Pentecostalism and not its negative consequences for individuals and social groups.In the Introduction, the author states that his study focuses on the intersection of religion, identity, and culture and aims to illuminate the social dynamics of Pentecostalism by offering a fresh perspective on religious pluralism and the ever-evolving contours of contemporary religious and culture change (1). Thornton goes on in Chapter 1 to provide a brief history of the Dominican Republic showing how the strong Catholic identity developed from the colonial period carries through to today. He reviews major religious traditions in the country and shows how the arrival of Protestantism fits into the larger Christian presence. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the barrio, detailing the local economy, street gangs, and community churches, as well as a description of the author's techniques for interviewing residents. In Chapter 3, the author provides a case study of a woman who converted to Pentecostalism, along with a discussion of beliefs found throughout the Dominican Republic regarding the causes of disease and misfortune. Chapter 4 is devoted to outlining the behavioral changes associated with conversion, followed by a chapter discussing the street gangs in greater depth. Thornton provides case studies showing how the gangs relate to conversion and demonstrates that members with the most ferocious reputations often make the most convincing converts. Chapter 7 elaborates the concepts of respect and trust as they relate to conversion to Pentecostalism. The author ends with a summary of his findings and briefly compares Pentecostalism to other religious traditions in the island nation.Anthropological studies of religion in the Caribbean have largely focused on the fascinating beliefs and practices of Vodu (Voodoo) to the neglect of more mainline, less exotic traditions (7-8). …

Tanya Stabler Miller.The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority.

Tanya Stabler Miller.<i>The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority</i>.

Holy donors, mighty queens: imaging women in the Spanish cathedral cartularies of the long twelfth century

ABSTRACTIlluminated cartularies constitute a fascinating yet neglected area of art-historical scholarship. The surviving examples from Spain are especially remarkable for the conspicuous presence of women in their illustrative programmes. This article focuses on representations of royal and noble women in three illuminated cartularies produced by cathedrals in the kingdom of León – the Liber testamentorum of Oviedo, Tumbo A of Santiago de Compostela and the Libro de las Estampas of León. Each served to construct a mythologised history of royal largesse in the wake of jurisdictional disputes between Iberian sees, and each incorporates women into that history in a manner that is pointedly distinct from men. This article considers the ideological function of these manuscripts, which depict women as possessors of terrestrial as well as spiritual authority.

Paying for prayers: perspectives on giving in postsocialist Ulaanbaatar

Since the end of the socialist period in 1990, Buddhism in Mongolia has been undergoing a resurgence. Temples no longer oversee vast tracts of land and receive income from the activities of bonded nomadic herders as they did in the presocialist period. They must instead fund themselves from the freely given donations of lay Buddhists. Whilst the majority of the Mongolian population self-identify as Buddhist, regular donations to temples are not an assumed part of social and economic relationships. Unlike the case in most other Asian Buddhist societies, the concept of giving donations as a way to make merit was not present amongst my interlocutors. The urban Mongolians that I spoke to viewed their donations as payments for highly valued ritual services. The act of donating to temples was for some an ambivalent activity, bringing to the fore broader issues relating to spiritual authority, religious education and observance, and the necessary conditions for spiritual efficacy. In this article I investigate patterns of religious giving in Ulaanbaatar in relation to ideas about donation, the role of religious specialists and concerns about the intersections between capitalism and religion.

The “ornament of the law”: vestments and the translation of Judaism in the Geneva Bible

While the 1560 Geneva Bible has long been recognized as a landmark in the development of English Puritan culture, little has been said about its relation to the English vestiarian controversy. The Geneva translators were among a faction of radical Protestants who regarded the liturgical vestments as a form of idolatry that should be completely expunged from Christian worship. This paper argues that the translators’ hostility toward the physical garments of Roman Catholicism prompted their effort within the Geneva translation to appropriate a spiritualized version of the Judaic priestly dress described in Exodus. A consideration of this process will demonstrate that the Geneva translators did not simply repudiate Judaism as a form of fleshly idolatry, but, rather, aimed to appropriate its ritual forms to bring spiritual authority to the new biblical text.

Selecting a Spiritual Authority: The Maraji͑ al-Taqlid among First- and Second-Wave Iraqi Shi͑a Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan

This paper seeks to determine which maraji͑ al-taqlid , or sources of emulation, are followed by Iraqi Shi͑a Muslims living in Dearborn, Michigan and the reasons why they have selected these spiritual authorities. The results of the study reveal that the majority of participants have decided to follow the quietist clerics of the school of Najaf, particularly the late Ayatollah Abu al-Qasim Khu͗i and Ayatollah ͑Ali Sistani. The selection of these two prominent clerics is based on the participants’ intention to emulate the religious lifestyle described by ‘the most knowledgeable clerics’ in the Shi͑a hierarchy. However, while most participants selected these two prominent clerics, there were other expected and unexpected selections. The study is useful as it provides a glimpse into the religiosity of the community by considering their choice of spiritual authority.

Material Development and Spiritual Empowerment?

This article seeks to shed light on the relationship between material development and spiritual empowerment among Pentecostal churches in Northern Cameroon. Field studies show that several Pentecostal churches recently have been established in the area, and that they are “negotiating space” in order to find places and areas where they can influence the local community. Due to the strong Muslim control over the economy in the region, the new churches have little focus on prosperity, but the material and developmental discourse focus on entrepreneurship through education and hard work. The article concludes that the relative success achieved by the churches is connected to their focus on global mobility, local flexibility, spiritual authority and human dignity.

The “Nawrūz King”: the rebellion of Amir Nawrūz in Khurasan (688–694/1289–94) and its implications for the Ilkhan polity at the end of the thirteenth century

AbstractIn 688/1289 Nawrūz Aqa, a leading Mongol magnate, began a rebellion in Khurasan to resist the Ilkhan Arghun's attempts to centralize power and loosen the Mongol aristocracy's grip on provincial government. The rebellion of Nawrūz was significantly different from any Mongol uprising that had occurred in the Ilkhanate to that date: it was distinguished by the successful fusion of Chinggisid and Islamic traditions of political and spiritual authority to support Nawrūz's challenge against the Hülegüid monarchy. This new hybrid political philosophy allowed Nawrūz to mobilize both the sedentary and nomadic populations of Khurasan to overhaul the power structure of the Ilkhanate. The present study of the early career and rebellion of Amīr Nawrūz will reveal how his movement forced the Turco-Mongolian leadership to reconfigure its political, social and religious relationships, among themselves and with the sedentary Muslim population they ruled.

“Flying from the depravities of Europe , to the American Strand ”: Chaucer and the Chaucer Tradition in Early America

This essay considers the largely ignored presence of Chaucer and texts in the Chaucerian tradition in seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century New England. It focuses on Cotton Mather, Anne Bradstreet, and Nathaniel Ward, writers who had connections to each other. Mather, Bradstreet, and Ward engage with Chaucer and the Chaucerian tradition to forge relationships between past and present, between old and new, as they establish positions of textual, political, and spiritual authority . Chaucer and texts associated with him play key roles in their processes of shaping distinctively colonial religio-political visions and developing modes of New English identity vis-à-vis Old England.

The impact of child abuse: neuroscience perspective

The world acknowledges the vulnerability of children and the crucial necessity for their oversight, nurturing, and love, but how we form the hearts and minds of children remains a worldwide challenge. A child’s mind begins with their brain, and their brain begins with a structure morphologically similar to an adult, yet to reach the functional integrity of an adult, a child’s brain must undergo approximately thirty years of evolution (1). Neurodevelopmental research has taught us about specific windows of neural development that exist for the optimal wiring of children’s sensory systems. During these windows, a child’s sensory systems learn to appropriately process perceptions and, ultimately, integrate them into fully developed human cognition (2). During brain development, how children play their environmental instruments and respond to their life’s music will depend on the score of their individual genetic vulnerabilities. Eventually, this mental evolution begins to shape who they are, how they view the world, how they interact with others, and their attitudes toward self. Therefore, developmental disruptions can cause significant consequences and the literature clearly shows that early neglect, nutrition, socialization, and stress define who we are as children and become as adults. Children’s significant dependence upon caregivers clearly can leave them at risk for deficient cognitive development. In addition, their very active limbic systems teach them about what is or is not safe, so with early threats and adversity, they begin to develop survival strategies that may endure for a lifetime. Child abuse, whether physical, psychological, or sexual, presents a threat that is universally recognized as having a significant negative impact on the life of a child (3). Nevertheless, overwhelming data exist suggesting that child abuse, particularly sexual abuse, currently occurs throughout the world. The ramifications of this fact are enormous (4). Many neuroscientific studies of structural and functional brain networks that compare abused and non-abused children demonstrate the significant results of childhood sexual abuse. These studies have uncovered electrophysiological brain changes such as abnormal neurophysiological interactions (5,6), altered brain structure, and deregulated brain activation to stimuli (7). In addition to the anatomical and electrophysiological consequences, abused children show significant cognitive impairments that can impact their future life trajectories as they emerge into adulthood (8). Psychiatric disorders also are more common in abused children (9). Often children who have been sexually abused develop behaviors that lead to disruptive relationships within their families. They may also engage in self-harm or other aberrant behaviors and sometimes become perpetrators of abuse as a result of their early experiences of helplessness and fear (10,11). When these adults gain power and authority, they can extend their aggression to unsuspecting innocent victims. Other data suggest that the individuals most vulnerable to abuse are those who are mentally or physically compromised (12). Sexual abuse often occurs when the vulnerable have no resources, particularly when they are entrusted to unsuspected abusers. Such cases have come to light in the recent reports of clerical sexual abuse where clergy use their spiritual authority to gain a person’s trust and confidence (13). Clergy naturally command authority and foster the trust that gives a potential abuser free access to power over another. Stories of clerical abuse and its tremendously damaging impact are surfacing throughout the world. For the abused, the abuse often lingers for many years, silently hijacking the choices and trajectories of their lives: in many cases, abuse dominates the lives of its victims because they feel helpless and shamed into silence (14). Often, victims will deny their trauma until investigations expose the abuse which, unfortunately, forces the victim to relive their painful memories and trauma. Clearly, childhood sexual abuse significantly changes its victim’s brain and alters its function, cognition, and emotion. Admittedly, abuse has differing effects that depend on an individual’s genetic vulnerabilities and familial support. Nevertheless, the abused often confront the additional challenges of shame and society’s belief that partial guilt rests with the victim. Therefore, to help victims heal, we must vigorously challenge the humiliation that still exists in the public narrative. They deserve the chance to strive for independence and a trauma-free future by regaining their integrity through familial and societal reconciliation.

The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage and Spiritual Authority. By Tanya Stabler Miller (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) 293 pp. $55.00

<i>The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage and Spiritual Authority</i>. By Tanya Stabler Miller (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) 293 pp. $55.00

Studying Dream Interpretation from Early Christianity to the Rise of Islam

Early Christian and early Islamic texts on dreams and dream interpretation have come under increased scrutiny in recent decades. Dream literature from pagan and Jewish antiquity to the early medieval period demonstrates that dreams, especially prophetic dreams, were used to establish spiritual authority, enforce compliance, and justify violence in a religious context. The common cultural roots of Christianity and Islam emerge when we recognise the crucial role played by dreams and prophecy in the two traditions. The various methodologies used in recent scholarship on dreams and their interpretation are surveyed with a view to identifying those most relevant to the analysis of first‐millennium CE literary sources in Latin, Greek, Syriac, and Arabic. The key texts from the three major religious traditions in this period (Western Christian, Eastern Christian, and Islamic) are then analysed with a view to assessing whether early Christians and Muslims understood and taxonomised dreams differently. Literary genre and audience (lay, clerical, or monastic) are revealed as the key determinants of difference, rather than religious origins.

No Other Name?

This article investigates the role that celebrity plays in a Christian culture industry where authenticity and identity are always understood in relation to spiritual authority. In evangelical Christian (sub)culture, discourses of intention frame musical practice and arise from a historical Protestant emphasis on individual authority that is expressed in a highly-mediated consumer culture in which celebrity is a resource for identity and lifestyle. These discourses are reflexively activated through the evangelical concept of anointing, which fuses individual and institutional authority with spiritual authority. Exploring the ways in which this unfolds offers interesting ways for scholars of popular music to think about the relationship of popular music, celebrity and the culture industries in a variety of other contexts.

Questions of Gender in Byzantine Society ed. by Bronwen Neil and Lynda Garland (review)

Reviewed by: Questions of Gender in Byzantine Society ed. by Bronwen Neil and Lynda Garland Charis Messis Questions of Gender in Byzantine Society. Edited by Bronwen Neil and Lynda Garland. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2013. Pp. xiv, 218. $119.95. ISBN 978-1-4094-4779-5.) Just because a book has “gender” in the title does not mean that it actually does deal with it. Other than a specific topic, “gender” is a theoretical methodology, a way of looking at things and posing questions. Simply writing about women, men, or eunuchs does not necessarily entail that one is doing “gender studies.” Those topics can equally be approached through traditional scholarly methods that may be brought to bear on any aspect of Byzantine history. If gender scholarship is limited to the repetition of certain commonplace formulas or to banal observations about sexual inequality and does not truly bring “the lens of gender to the study of history,” the results may be interesting, to be sure, but do not deepen our understanding of gender in a society. Two basic observations may be made regarding the book under review. First, in spite of the quality of most of the contributions, the volume takes an approach that, with few exceptions, is far from belonging to gender history and that ultimately leads to the conclusion that there was no gendered discourse in Byzantium, not because it truly did not exist but because the contributors are not looking for it where it did. Second, this type of collection of papers is shaped primarily by the [End Page 148] choice of contributors and their prior interests, and not by an editorial logic that would prioritize theoretical relevance and thematic coherence. Two contributions (Paul Brown and Bronwyn Neil) deal with Western views of Byzantine men and women. The first relates to the military presence of Byzantium in Italy (eighth to eleventh centuries) and the second relates to the image of the empress Eirene (797–802) in various literary texts, primarily Western. In both cases the authors conclude that gender plays a secondary role in the political and cultural confrontation between the Byzantines and the Latins and that the main issue at hand was, in the first case, a denunciation of the “treachery and cunning” of the Byzantines and, in the second case, Eirene’s Iconophile policies (whether viewed positively or negatively). The chapter by Diana Gilliland Wright takes the inverse approach by looking at Byzantine views of Western women, namely Sophia of Montferrat and Cleofe Malatesta who came to Byzantium to marry the sons of Manuel II Palaiologos and tries to understand why they were treated so differently. A series of chapters on aspects of the lives of women in Byzantium constitutes the core of the book. Lynda Garland presents family strategies of investment in monasticism, by examining, through the Typika, the transformation of monasteries into alternative family households, especially on the initiative of aristocratic women. Amelia R. Brown presents the “highlights” of the education of women throughout the whole of Byzantine history. Sarah Gador-Whyte studies the masculine and feminine qualities that hymnographers attribute to the Virgin during the sixth and seventh centuries. Liz James presents the genealogical tree of many women of the family of Constantine the Great, their role in the creation and cultivation of political alliances, and the way in which their representation changed with every fluctuation in political circumstances. For his part, Shaun Tougher discusses men and eunuchs in Byzantium and underlines the importance of beards in defining manhood after the seventh century. Tougher regards the general preference for beards as “a sign of the increasing Hellenisation and Christianisation of the empire and also a sign of a desire to enhance masculinity, perhaps in response to a sense of political and military crisis” (p. 161). The volume closes with the contribution of Damian Casey that is also the most interesting when it comes to the actual issue of gender. In this very stimulating paper, Casey examines various Christian readings of gender, the body, and sexuality, underlining the ambivalence of those terms and the complex relationship that they had with spiritual authority. In conclusion, with the exception of some contributions that pose the issue...