The Ambiguous Laughter of Saint Laurence 1
Catherine Conybeare
Abstract: This essay uses contemporary theories of masculinity to read Prudentius' narrative of the martyrdom of St. Laurence (Peristephanon 2). We find that, far from being the site of a conventional glorification of martyrdom and Rome, this narrative contains many subversive elements which derive from the presentation of Laurence as ambiguously-gendered. The subversion is epitomized in the famous jest of Laurence as he lies roasting on the gridiron; but we see here how Prudentius' poem, and other lesser accounts of the same martyrdom, place this jest in a wider context of shifting masculinities, social critique, and antihegemonic hilarity.
The intersection of gender analysis with accounts of martyrdom has proved an extraordinarily fruitful area of study. The tabula rasa from which most martyr narratives begin, in the face of the conspicuous lack of hard evidence about martyrs' lives, makes them fitting sites for revealing priorities in the construction of gendered personae. On reading the accounts of martyrdom from the late ancient and early medieval period, one sees a configuration of the martyrs' experience which bespeaks a profoundly complex response to the superimposition of conventional gender narratives. This seems, paradoxically, to be especially true of the accounts of male martyrdoms. Far from being triumphalist, these accounts often remain almost diffident about the personal agency and self-affirmation of the martyr, and turn the reader's attention swiftly away from his death, ostensibly the glorious "initiation rite." My project in this paper is to [End Page 175] interrogate a single account of male martyrdom in the light of current themes in the theory of masculinities, and to explore the implications for the inscription of gender in the text.
Contemporary theories of masculinity undertake two main projects which are of particular relevance to my enquiry. The first is to investigate and problematize the idealized, but extraordinarily enduring and pervasive, stereotypes of masculinity that have been developed and perpetuated through the ages. This task is, of course, no less applicable to historical stereotypes than to contemporary ones: for example, Maud Gleason has made a detailed study of masculine self-positioning in the Second Sophistic, of what was at stake for orators in their conformity with and subversion of stereotypes: manliness, she says, "had to be won," with an eye on an astonishingly comprehensive set of rules of behaviour. 2 Ulrika Wiethaus says of the Middle Ages, "figures such as the knight, the crusader, the alchemist, the feudal lord, or the wandering minstrel are still powerful enough to subtly shape gender norms and expectations." She goes on, interestingly, to say that the medieval religious stereotypes on offer are played out rather differently from the secular ones, describing them with the adjective "ambiguous." 3 Most recently, Virginia Burrus has shown, for three Fathers of the Church thinking and writing about the nature of the Trinity, how opposing gender stereotypes were appropriated and incorporated into an overarching matrix of masculine self-positioning. 4
The other principal project of the theory of masculinity is still more important: to question the (usually unarticulated) assumption that masculinity is a "fixed, coherent, and singular identity." 5 Where other identities are called into question, men just are: the eternal subjects of the essential existential verb, always, automatically, claiming primacy. 6 Taken [End Page 176] a step further, to question this is to problematize the ubiquitous, and yet invisible, pronoun that governs all verbs of implicit power, of privilege, of rational and authoritative discourse. 7 This project has been influenced by various feminist critiques, and by analogy with feminist emphasis on self-situation in race and class and sexual orientation; it is for men an emotional, humbling, but ultimately a recreative and expanding endeavor: to interrogate the assumption of what is normative, and to discover just how narrow a concept that is. Once the "normative"pronoun is revealed as merely expressing the opinion of a fairly small class of white, heterosexual males—and, on investigating more deeply, males who, even if they do not define themselves as Christian, certainly don't define themselves as belonging to a religious tradition other than Christianity—the effect is liberating: why should we—anyone—take this discourse as normative? as conveying authority without further justification? And once we have established that the purveyors of the dominant discourse need no longer be objectified, will we not find that accounts of that demonized hegemonic class of white heterosexual males will gain in nuance and complexity too? and prove, not to stand alone, springing fully-formed from the head of the rational male, but like all other discourses to be profoundly rooted in their originators?
What has all this to do with martyrs—especially male martyrs? A great deal, as accounts of martyrdom prove to be an excellent locus for the content of hegemonic masculinities to be called into question. 8
It is not with the martyrs' self-conception that I am concerned—apart from anything else, of course, we have very little evidence that could be brought to bear on such a question 9 —but with the reframing and reinterpretation of their narratives by those writing after the persecutions were past, appropriating their stories for a triumphant Christianity. Given this [End Page 177] framework, one might expect to find an aggressively masculine heroics of martyrdom. The militia Christi topos was, after all, long-established, a hortatory discourse of heroism among the leading men of the empire, sanctioned and epitomized by the labarum of Constantine. How easy it would have been to express the martyrdom of men as the ultimate in male initiation rites, in tests of manhood, passing unflinchingly through extraordinary suffering into a new and superior state of maleness. 10 The existing terminology of martyrdom was particularly sympathetic to this interpretation, since the day of martyrdom was interpreted as the dies natalis, the birth into a new life in (and with) Christ. The masculinity and authority of a martyr could be simultaneously affirmed. However, as we shall see, rather different strategies are employed.
The account of male martyrdom upon which I wish to focus is a poem from Prudentius' Peristephanon, his cycle of poems in praise of the Christian martyrs written in Spain before 405 C.E. This poem, the second in the conventional order of arrangement, 11 celebrates the martyrdom of Laurence, who sources concur was put to death in the great persecution of 258 under Valerian. 12 His cult was already extremely popular at Rome, 13 though we should perhaps be wary of assuming (as has often been done) that it was similarly popular elsewhere; note, for example, the first sentence of Augustine's Sermon 303, preached for Laurence's feast day: "Beati Laurentii illustre martyrium est, sed Romae, non hic: tantam enim video vestram paucitatem," "the martyrdom of the blessed Laurence is [End Page 178] famous—but at Rome, not here; that's why I'm looking at so few of you." 14 Prudentius himself, in publishing Peristephanon 2, seems to have been responsible for the popularization of Laurence's cult in Spain. 15 This account of Laurence's martyrdom is a particularly interesting object of enquiry, as for purposes of intertextual comparison there survive several other accounts of the martyrdom dating from more or less the same period—an unusual abundance. Of these, those of Ambrose in his De officiis and in a Hymn, and of the pope Damasus in one of his Epigrams, are of especial interest to read alongside the work of Prudentius. 16 There is a further incentive to focus on Laurence, in that the accounts of his martyrdom provide an excellent point of comparison with those of Agnes', closely studied in this journal by Virginia Burrus; indeed, my enquiry here stands closely in counterpoise with hers, endorsing and extending, as will be seen, her portrayal of an "ambiguously masculine Christian orthodoxy." 17 Finally, Peristephanon 2 is the only poem in Prudentius' corpus in which he names himself, during the personal plea of his prayer to Laurence at the end: 18 "Audi benignus supplicem / Christi reum Prudentium . . . ," "Give kindly ear to the sinful Prudentius, suppliant of Christ . . ." (581-82). As well as suggesting, within the conventions of the poem, a particular strength of association with Laurence for Prudentius, this brings into the foreground the issue of the poem's male authorship and gendered framing of its account—a point to which we shall return.
The prefatory stanzas of the poem seem to establish an image of Laurence as a military hero, male participant in the militia Christi and triumphal [End Page 179] agent for (female) Rome. 19 This is entirely coherent with Ambrose's account of Laurence's martyrdom in De officiis: it comes during a discussion of the cardinal virtue fortitudo, which, Ambrose explains in unapologetically military language, commissions his hearers "[ut] castra defendas tabernaculumque tuearis," "to defend the camp and to protect the tabernacle." 20 The opening stanza apostrophizes Rome, the "antiqua fanorum parens" ("ancient producer of temples") now dedicated to Christ: while she is "victrix," triumphing over the "ritum barbarum," Laurence himself is introduced as "Laurentio duce" ("dux" being, of course, especially common in military contexts), 21 with "victrix," qualifying "Roma" in the previous line, enclosed between—a subordinate position in startling contrast to her victorious role. This portrayal of Laurence as military hero is augmented in the fourth stanza: Rome gains the ultimate glory, the only one lacking to her,
non turbulentis viribus
Cossi Camilli aut Caesaris
sed martyris Laurentii
non incruento proelio.
(13-16)
not with the tempestuous force of Cossus, Camillus, or Caesar, but with the far from bloodless battle of the martyr Laurence.
The victorious martyrdom of Laurence surpasses the greatest victories of Republican Rome. This is apparently an easy rhetoric to establish and sustain; and yet Prudentius' attitude to these victories is not wholly without ambivalence, which complicates his narration of Laurence's achievement in surpassing them. Palmer remarks on the fact that turbulentus "is an adjective commonly used of civil disturbance," and expresses surprise that Prudentius should have chosen it. 22 Its negative connotations, as she points out, need no defense in the case of Caesar—presumably Julius Caesar, indelibly associated at Rome with civil war. But what of Cossus, who won the spolia opima in battle against the Etruscans, or of Camillus, [End Page 180] who argued patriotically and successfully that Rome should not be transplanted wholesale to conquered Veii? 23 Camillus, indeed, is exiled by his ungrateful patria, but still returns to save Rome from the besieging Gauls. 24 The application of the adjective turbulentus to these Republican heroes—coupled, perhaps, with the cacophonous alliteration of the chosen names—should give us pause. Prudentius seems to be signalling his discomfiture with even the most immaculate representatives of pre-Christian Rome. This reading is, as we shall see, borne out by later developments in the poem. 25 The pointed litotes of "non incruento proelio" (16) suggests that Prudentius' ambivalence may be linked to the issue of whose blood is spilt: Fontaine comments on the Christian code of military heroics which saw "l'effusion du sang des autres hommes remplacée par l'offrande de son propre sang versé pour les hommes." 26 The suggestion is supported by the next stanza, which describes fides as "proprii cruoris prodiga," "prodigal of her own blood," and the next two lines reinforce this self-reflexivity, "nam morte mortem diruit / ac semet inpendit sibi," "for [faith] destroyed death with death, and spent herself for herself" (19-20). This emphasis on redemptive self-immolation forms a striking contrast with the classical heroic tradition. 27 [End Page 181]
This is far from incongruous with the tone of the poem as it proceeds. The narrative proper begins at line 21:
Fore hoc sacerdos dixerat
iam Xystus adfixus cruci
Laurentium flentem videns
crucis sub ipso stipite . . .
(21-24)
When the pontiff Sixtus had already been nailed to the cross, he had said that this would be, as he saw Laurence weeping beneath the very trunk of the cross . . .
Sixtus (257-58 C.E.) 28 is the pope to whom Laurence acted as archdeacon. Our earliest record of the pope's death, a letter of Cyprian to Successus written in 258, says simply that Sixtus was beheaded, with four of his deacons; 29 the Liber Pontificalis echoes this account (while disagreeing over the number of deacons). 30 However, it seems that Prudentius invents a tradition which has Sixtus crucified: 31 Laurence "flentem" (23) then evokes, in a moving parallel, the women standing beneath the cross of Christ. 32 This aptly heralds, as we shall see, a very different configuration of the martyr from that of the "manly" hero.
The greater part of the account of Laurence's martyrdom is not, despite what one might expect, devoted to a description of the suffering or means of death themselves—with its opportunities for proven embodiment of the martyr experience. (We may contrast, for example, Peristephanon 14, of which more than half is devoted to a macabre description of Agnes' progression towards death.) In this, it is typical of the early prose tradition of martyrdom accounts, which tend to emphasize confrontation with—and preferably catechizing of—the authorities over the details of [End Page 182] martyrdom. 33 The account of Laurence's martyrdom in the Passio Polychronii is no exception to the rule. And in Prudentius, Laurence's actual death is in fact passed over only briefly; the bulk of the passion is given to the confrontation between Laurence and the praefectus urbi. Prudentius thus creates a scenario in which two richly developed voices oppose each other; the authorial voice forms an intermittent but significant third presence. Our enquiry, then, will interrogate the ways in which these voices are gendered during the course of the poem.
After the prefatory section, introducing Laurence, the death of Sixtus, and his prediction of Laurence's imminent death, it is the authorial voice which intervenes:
Qua voce, quantis laudibus
celebrabo mortis ordinem?
Quo passionem carmine
digne retexens concinam?
(33-36)
With what voice, with what great praises shall I celebrate the manner of his death? With what song shall I appropriately retell his passion and warble it forth?
This is partly, of course, the quest for material and treatment with which the poet conventionally launches a new theme; but only three stanzas later, the interrogative "qua voce" is echoed by "qua vi" (49), used declaratively of the prefect, and the effect is to imply a genuine tentativeness in the authorial voice ("how shall I set about this project?") as opposed to the brutal certainties of the prefect. (Meanwhile, in the intervening stanzas, Laurence is introduced in conventional terms of preeminence: "primus," "sublimis," "praestantior," "praeerat," "gubernans" [37-43].) This opposition is implicitly continued in the prefect's speech which follows his command that Laurence be brought before him, "Laurentium sisti 34 iubet" (53). His boastful acknowledgement that "we break Christian bodies more than bloodily," "christiana corpora / plus quam cruente scindimus" (59-60), recalls by sharp contrast the studied litotes of the authorial voice in the preface, referring to Laurence's victory in "the far from bloodless battle," "non incruento proelio" (16). [End Page 183]
As the prefect's speech continues, it is increasingly apparent that he is claiming the impersonality and the opacity—by which I mean the resistance to interrogation—of the authoritative voice. 35 Impersonal constructions predominate: "proditum est" (66), "libent ut" (68), "creditur" (83)—the last being part of a highly tendentious statement: "et summa pietas creditur / nudare dulces liberos," "and the highest piety is believed to steal from sweet children" (83-84). Is believed by whom? This epitomizes my point about the invisibility of the authoritative masculine pronoun. Moreover, it is not the prefect in propria persona who demands from Laurence the delivery of the church's wealth, but "usus publicus," "fiscus," "aerarium" (89-90)—the public treasury, which "needs" the money for military pay. The prefect exists through the authority of his office and the state. His rhetorical trump card is to invoke the dogmatic authority ("dogma," 93) to which he assumes his opponent will be subservient: "'Quod Caesaris scis, Caesari / da'," "'Give to Caesar what you know is Caesar's'" (97-98, echoing Matt 22.21).
But even within the prefect's speech there is a hint at a counter-reading. He promises at the beginning, "Abest . . . / censura fervens," "hot severity is laid aside" (61-62); but of course it is precisely by means of extreme heat, "fervor," that he will ultimately attempt to punish Laurence. This counter-reading is developed in Laurence's response, introduced by the ambiguous phrase "ut paratus obsequi" (111): in its immediate context, this seems to mean "like someone ready to obey"; but the result of Laurence's obedience reveals the phrase to have the ironic emphasis "as if he were prepared to obey." Irony is not a strategy associated with hegemonic masculinity as traditionally constructed; 36 moreover, its presence in the introduction to Laurence's response implies a certain complicity between the authorial voice and the figure of Laurence. We may note too that this type of ironic slippage of meaning is carried through into Laurence's response to the prefect. He acknowledges that "nostra ecclesia" is indeed rich, and goes on: [End Page 184]
Is ipse tantum non habet
argenteorum enigmatum
Augustus arcem possidens,
cui nummus omnis scribitur.
(117-20)
Augustus himself, who occupies the highest position, and to whom all money is ascribed, does not have so many silver images.
The primary allusion is to the images of the emperor on silver coins (again recalling Matt 22.20-21), and this is how Blaise glosses the usage here. 37 But aenigma is properly used of an puzzle or allegory, and the phrase therefore hints at Laurence's coming trick on the prefect. "So many silver (or "precious") allegories" turn out, of course, not to be money at all.
Furthermore, Prudentius may be using this slippage of meaning here to comment on his own poetic composition. "Nummus" means "money," but it may also refer to anything of trifling value: the phrase would then be rendered "Augustus, for whom everything unimportant is written." Prudentius, of course, is writing significant words for God, not unimportant ones for Caesar. This interpretation is actually supported by the exhortation which completes the prefect's first speech, "'nummos libenter reddite, / estote verbis divites!'" "'Give up the money (or "trifles") freely; be rich in words!'" (107-8). We shall have reason to recall this sense of "nummus" later on.
The voices of Prudentius and Laurence seem again to blend on the issue of poetic interpretation after Laurence has asked for a delay, "indutiae" (a technical legal term again: he too, it is implied, can speak the language of the dominant culture), "dum tota digestim mihi / Christi supellex scribitur," "while I systematically record the entire store of Christ" (129-30). I have translated "digestim" as "systematically"; but its root is of course from "digero," prominent among whose meanings is to "explain" or "interpret." Laurence/Prudentius is then requesting a pause "while my 38 whole Christian apparatus is written down in interpretable form." This implicit appropriation of the right to interpret is particularly significant in a text which turns, as we have seen already, round enigmata: round allegories, tricks, and jokes. It is Laurence, then, who can see the true meaning of things, while the prefect looks only at the surface. 39 [End Page 185]
We may recall that the church has already been accused by the prefect of gaining her wealth "praestigiis," "by tricks" (86): and it is precisely round a "trick" that the central section of the poem revolves. After Laurence has gained his "indutiae," he rounds up all the poor and sick of the city and presents them at the appointed time to the prefect. He does not lose the opportunity to chastise the prefect on the theme of the misery and faithlessness caused by lust for gold, in comparison with the purifying effects of the "true gold" of the poor. (Delehaye remarks on the "réponse un peu malicieuse, qui exaspère le persécuteur.") 40 Versions of this episode are ubiquitous in the accounts of Laurence's martyrdom, which tend to dwell as much on the nature of the "true gold" of the church as on the burning which has lent him his latterday fame. 41 It is, of course, the prefect's outrage at this "trick" that impels him to send Laurence to his death.
The way in which the perpetration of this "trick" is reported invites particular attention. The role of mockery and laughter in the passion of Laurence is startling—as startling in its context, I contend, as the voyeuristic sexualization of Agnes' encounter with her executioner in her own Passion. 42 We have already begun to see the importance of slippage of meaning and double meanings in this text, and their relationship to authority both claimed (that of the prefect) and real (that of Laurence/the author). The gendered connotations of this become clearer as the poem continues.
The prefect responds greedily to Laurence's promise of gold: he "spem devorat," "gulps down hope" (134), a vivid choice of verb which resonates against later events; so does the description of the prefect on the appointed day: "furebat fervido / iudex avarus spiritu," "the greedy judge was raving in his fiery spirit" (166-67). 43 Again, Laurence's invitation to [End Page 186] the prefect to enter the temple contains a crucial ambiguity: Laurence exhorts him to admire the riches "which our outstandingly wealthy god possesses in sanctis" (171-72): "in the sanctuaries"? or "among the saints"? In his greed, the prefect follows Laurence without hesitation into the trap set for him: "it ille nec pudet sequi," "he goes, and is not ashamed to follow" (177). This may well have snide gendered connotations; certainly, the prefect's authority and social preeminence are undermined by his willingness to "follow": this is in many ways the turning point in the poem, at which the prefect's interpretation of events is shown as false and Laurence's as authoritative. And the "trap" is not just the trick of equating the poor of the church with the gold the prefect desires; it is also the situation set up by Laurence here, in which he tricks the prefect into a false adventus. 44 The prefect arrives at the temple—to be ceremoniously received by a vast crowd of the poor: when they see him, "fragor rogantum tollitur," "an uproar of begging is raised" (181), which only serves to emphasize that he ought to have been feeding the poor himself. The prefect is stupefied:
Praefectus horrescit stupens,
conversus in Laurentium
oculisque turbatis minax.
(182-84)
The prefect is stunned and outraged, and turns on Laurence threateningly, with agitated eyes.
Note the cognate, in "turbatis," with "turbulentis" in the preface to the poem (13); note also the way in which this stanza in literal, textual form represents a turning point with "conversus in Laurentium." All narrative conventions would lead one to expect a furious response; but instead the prefect is actually deprived of his anticipated narrative exchange, for the next paragraph brusquely heralds Laurence's reply to the unspoken accusation with "Contra ille . . ." (185). It is the poor, the "fragor rogantum," who have appropriated the prefect's voice, his turn in the exchange.
Laurence's speech to the prefect on the nature of the church's gold is marked by a didactic tone and by insistent references to fire, light, and heat: it creates a prelude to his own martyrdom, and a negation of its [End Page 187] means. 45 He thereby deprives the prefect of the power to exact torture and death. Gold—the sort that "criminal labour has forged" (192)—needs to be purified in the flames; the result is that pudor, integritas, pax, fides, even leges collapse (197-200). "Aurum verius," the truer gold, "lux est et humanum genus," "is light and the human race" (204). 46 The children of light are weak, but their "animus viget robustior," "soul thrives the more strongly" (210); in those whose limbs are healthy, "mens insolescat turgida," "the bloated mind may swell out of proportion" (208). 47 The message is, of course, that the body and the different types of heat which may threaten it simply don't matter (though this is perversely contradicted by dwelling on the unpleasant physical characteristics of the holy poor): it is designed as a comprehensive answer to the prefect's initial speech (57-108). 48 Laurence concludes: "En ergo nummos aureos . . . Eccum talenta: suscipe," "Here then is the gold money . . . Here are the talents: take them" (293, 309). The "argentea enigmata" (118) have been upgraded to gold; the true "nummus" (120) is the poor. The choice of the verb is particularly interesting: far stronger than the metrically equivalent "accipe," 49 "suscipe" means not simply "take" but "take on" or "take to heart." The prefect, therefore, is being invited to receive, in the fullest possible sense, both the poor and Laurence's sermon.
The prefect's response has been dramatically delayed for the 130-odd lines of this "sermon," and then, presented without introduction, he bursts out "Ridemur," "I am being laughed at," and goes on:
. . . ac miris modis
per tot figuras ludimur
et vivit insanum caput!
(314-16) [End Page 188]
. . . and in extraordinary ways I am being mocked through so many allegories—and the madman lives!
The prefect, ironically enough, seems to be using figura in its fullest and most apt Christian sense—glossed by Blaise as "symbole comportant la réalité signifiée." He is beginning to recognize the significance of the enigmata (118), and of the praestigia (86) which he himself accused the church of using to amass her treasure. In an astonishing accretion of images from comico-satirical performance, he demonstrates that he knows exactly how, and how extensively, he is being mocked:
Inpune tantas, furcifer,
strofas cavillo mimico
te nexuisse existimas,
dum scurra saltas fabulam?
Concinna visa urbanitas
tractare nosmet ludicris,
egon cachinnis venditus
acroma festivum fui?
(317-24)
You rascal, do you think you have woven together such a great trick with thespian mockery and will get away with it, while you act out your fable like a clown? Did it seem consonant with urbanity to deal with me in lampoons? Have I been sold to jeering as a festival entertainer?
The theatrical context is immediately emphasized with the use of
"furcifer"—common in Plautus and Terence—and with the
double entendre of "tan-
tas . . . strofas," which could equally well be rendered "such highfalutin
strophes," thereby casting Laurence's speech in the role of a play's
chorus. The prefect repeatedly chooses images of satire and buffoonery;
and he goes on to spell out the subversive power of laughter and trickery:
Adeone nulla austeritas,
censura nulla est fascibus,
adeon securem publicam
mollis retudit lenitas?
(325-28)
Is there then no rigor or reproof at all in the fasces? Has effeminate softness so completely blunted the public axe?
Once again, the prefect is claiming to represent not just himself, as an individual man, but the accumulated symbolic power of the patres, summed up in the ancient fasces and securis. He, in some way, is the inheritance of male power—we might say, the personification of the patriarchy—and he [End Page 189] rightly perceives that insulting mockery directed at him is subversive to the dominant world order. 50 Indeed, he is so eager not to be tricked again that he tries to anticipate the next joke, with "Dicis . . ." (329).
The stance of the prefect points up the ambiguity of Laurence's position. On the one hand, his feats have been characterized as surpassing the heroes of Rome, and one might therefore expect him to evince a super-masculinity. Moreover, his martyrdom itself is an obvious site for the construction of that specialized aspect of masculinity, "manhood." 51 But on the other, he is depicted as setting the scene for his martyrdom, not with a conspicuous act of "manly" heroic opposition or defiance, but with a trick; and in making a laughingstock of the prefect, he tacitly subverts the masculine world-order for which the prefect stands. 52 The rendering above of mollis as "effeminate" is far from accidental: well-attested in this sense, 53 it represents here the prefect's awareness of an insidious, "feminine" threat to the patres. It is immediately apparent that the two men represent constructions of masculinity which are at odds with each other; and at the same time, these masculinities cannot be accurately described as opposed, since one of the distinguishing features of Laurence's self-construction is his avoidance of an aggressive, oppositional stance. Remember particularly the "ut paratus obsequi" stanza:
Nil asperum Laurentius
refert ad ista aut turbidum,
sed ut paratus obsequi
obtemperanter adnuit.
(109-12)
To these words Laurence returned nothing harsh or violent, but, like someone prepared to obey, he mildly 54 assented. [End Page 190]
In general, Laurence's method of dealing with the prefect is studiedly nonviolent: his resistance takes the form of mild words and symbolic gestures, not of threats or aggressive actions. The very mode of the martyrdom ordered by the prefect may be designed as an ironic reflection on the mildness which hints at Laurence's ambiguous sexual status. He is not to be burnt over raging flames; the prefect commands:
Prunas tepentes sternite . . .
Vapor senescens langueat,
qui fusus adflatu levi
tormenta sensim temperet
semustulati corporis.
(341; 345-48)
Lay out lukewarm coals . . . Let the languid warmth falter; draw it out with a gentle puff, and let it slowly mete out the torments of the half-burned body.
This tradition is also in Maximus of Turin, who speaks specifically of a slow flame, a "lenta flamma," used for the torture of Laurence. 55 By contrast, the Damasan epigram commemorating the death of Laurence, which Prudentius had probably seen when he wrote the Peristephanon, 56 bears witness to a far more complex and violent martyrdom:
Verbera carnifices flammas tormenta catenas
vincere Laurenti sola fides potuit. 57
Only the faith of Laurence could overcome the blows, murderers, 58 flames, tortures, chains.
Prudentius' rejection of this extravagant tradition (which is revived in the prose account of Laurence's martyrdom) 59 in favor of the "prunas tepentes" [End Page 191] must surely be intentional: the emphasis on mildness seems to bring out Laurence's sexual ambiguity.
In another way, too, the prefect—as portrayed by Prudentius—is unwittingly complicit in the feminization of Laurence. The speech which enjoins Laurence's slow roasting ends:
Conscende constratum rogum,
decumbe digno lectulo,
tunc si libebit disputa
nil esse Vulcanum meum.
(353-56)
Climb onto the pyre laid out, recline on an appropriate bed, then, if you please, argue that my Vulcan is nothing.
Laurence, climbing into his "bed" and preparing to recline upon it, is cast in the seductive pose of Venus about to be overpowered by Vulcan; the subsequent lines dwell upon his unclothing and on his glowing countenance as he prepares for this lovers' meeting, which, though the explicit similes liken him to Stephen and Moses, 60 hardly allows the Venusian resonances to lapse. 61 Beyond being merely ambiguous, as he prepares for his martyrdom Laurence is gendered female.
The role of laughter and trickery in Prudentius' account adds to the gendered resonances. Subversive laughter is the weapon of the disempowered, of the countercultural. (The dominant culture, of course, has its own mode of collegial, consensus-building laughter.) 62 Laughter as subversion is more often appropriated by women—or at least, by those configured as in some way deprived of gender—than by men. 63 (Note, for [End Page 192] example, the derisive, resistant laughter of Sarah, wife of Abraham, when it is announced to her husband that she will conceive; and her laugh of triumph when Isaac is born.) 64 That Laurence bases his resistance around laughter places him in a countercultural mode that contradicts the imperatives of aggressive, hegemonic masculinity. Carlin Barton has portrayed laughter in Roman culture as existing in necessary collusion with Roman "aggressive, hegemonic masculinity," but she only considers the savage mockery directed by the Romans at the distorted or disfigured, by the powerful at the disempowered. 65 What is astonishing about the mise-en-scène here is the way in which this mockery is directed against the very class of person who would normally perpetrate it (and, of course, the distorted and disfigured have already been praised as the "aurum verius" [203] of the church); and that person, the prefect, is portrayed as bitterly aware of himself as a butt of satire. 66
Resistance through mockery is naturally not unique to Laurence in the tradition of martyr accounts; 67 however, it is clearly an important part of his tradition. The Ambrosian hymn says of Laurence's promise to the prefect, "Spondet pie nec abnuit, / Addens dolum victoriae," "He promises dutifully, he doesn't refuse, and adds a trick to his victory" (19-20); and of its outcome, "Avarus illusus dolet, flammas et ultrices parat," "The covetous man is stung at having been ridiculed, and prepares the avenging flames" (27-28). In De officiis, the sequence from trick to martyrdom is similarly swift:
Laurentius qui aurum Ecclesiae maluit erogare pauperibus quam persecutori reservare, pro singulari suae interpretationis vivacitate sacram martyrii accepit coronam. (Off. 1.28.141)
Laurence preferred to disburse the gold of the Church to the poor rather than to save it up for the persecutor, and received the holy crown of martyrdom for the peculiar liveliness of his interpretation.
"Pro singulari . . . vivacitate": in the midst of the rather plain language and unadorned style of De officiis, this phrase seems in itself peculiarly [End Page 193] lively, and draws attention to the delightful effrontery of Laurence in living out his interpretation of the Word. 68 Ultimately, Laurence is put to death for his vivid laughter.
Laurence laughs even from the midst of the torture of his slow burning. He is naked and bound, stretched out on the catasta 69 (359-60), and yet he laughs. His challenge to the prefect to turn him over is, along with the trick of the thesaurus of paupers, the most persistent element in his tradition. In Prudentius, he points out calmly that one side of his body is "satis crematam iugiter," "completely and sufficiently burnt" (402), and suggests, "fac periclum quid tuus / Vulcanus ardens egerit," "test what your burning Vulcan has done" (403-4). Especially with the lover's epithet "ardens," the sexual Vulcan shimmers behind the taunt; so does the more literal meaning of "fac periclum," "take a risk." Carlin Barton is eloquent on the risks in such stand-offs: both martyr and gladiator position themselves to redeem their honor, but the strategy is fraught with danger, and they may end as mere laughingstocks, ludibria. 70 Laurence seals his victorious self-presentation here by making the prefect and his methods of control into ludibria—simply, paradoxically, by laughing at them. "Tuus Vulcanus" mockingly echoes the prefect's earlier "Vulcanum meum" (356): Laurence gladly, laughingly, accepts his casting as Venus. And once again, the effect of the mockery is that the prefect is denied his response: we simply have "prefectus inverti iubet," "the prefect orders that he be turned" (405), which ironically echoes the earlier "Laurentium sisti iubet," "he orders Laurence to be brought in" (53), when the prefect still, as it were, thought that he was in control.
Laurence's derisive challenge to the prefect after he is turned is also ubiquitous in the tradition, which finally crystallizes in the Passio Polychronii as "'Ecce, miser, assasti tibi partem unam; regira aliam et [End Page 194] manduca'," "'Look, wretch, you have cooked one side for yourself; turn it round to the other side, and eat'." 71 But Prudentius' version lends particular vividness to the scene:
. . . Coctum est devora
et experimentum cape
sit crudum an assum suavius!
(406-8)
It is cooked: swallow it, and test whether it's rare or toothsome and well done!
In every possible way, from his humiliating deathbed, Laurence preempts the authority of the prefect and lampoons him as a caricature of the Roman state. The prefect is, once again, silent throughout this mockery, except for his order in oratio obliqua that Laurence be turned. Further, Laurence challenges him ironically with an invitation to cannibalism—a standard element, one should remember, of anti-Christian polemic. Yet again, the prefect's matrix of authority is turned on its head. The horror of the invitation is underlined by the choice of the graphic verb vorare, to swallow; 72 but it also recalls the verb used when the prefect falls for Laurence's trick, when he "spem devorat," "gulps down hope" (134). And in case we should be in doubt, Prudentius specifically flags the mockery, "Haec ludibundus dixerat," "he had said these things in jest" (409), and then offsets it with Laurence's great final prayer of sorrow for Rome (413-84).
This prayer of sorrow and prophecy is intimately connected with the struggle between Laurence and the prefect for the authoritative interpretation of Roman tradition. At last, Laurence explicitly claims that authority for himself and for Christ: the great prophetic passages of the Aeneid shimmer behind his choice of language, but with Christ replacing the old power of Jove. Christ is dubbed "auctor horum moenium," "the founder of these walls," and to him is attributed Rome's place "in vertice/rerum," [End Page 195] "at the peak of things" (416-18); it is Christ, not Jove, who now sanctions that "mundum Quirinali togae / servire et armis cedere," "the world serves the Roman toga and yields in might" (419-20). There are few literal quotations from Virgil, but the collocation of subject matter and expression is so close to Virgil's—for example, echoing the description of the Romans as "rerum dominos gentemque togatam"—that Prudentius must be intentionally invoking, and revising, the most Roman epic of all. 73 Given the evocation of the near-sacred Virgil, Laurence's "fiat fidelis Romulus / et ipse iam credat Numa," "May Romulus become faithful, and may Numa himself believe" (443-44), is more delightful effrontery. His concluding vision of the "futurum principem" Valentinian closing the temples satirically recalls the vision the Virgilian Jove offers of Augustus 74 closing the gates of War. 75 And, in case we should be in any doubt about the status of Laurence's prayer, it ends with the words "Hic finis orandi," "here was the end of his prayer," which gains suitably oracular resonance from "Hic finis fandi," the close of the great speech of Jove in Aeneid 10 76 —though substituting a verb with immediately Christian connotations for the uncompromisingly pagan "fandi." It is, then, of immense significance that at Laurence's death "quidam patres," "certain senators," bear his body away "subditis / cervicibus," "with their neck bowed" in the standard attitude of submission; they convert to Christ because they have been so impressed by Laurence's "mira libertas" (489-91). The astonishing libertas of Laurence recognizes both the revisionary nature of his account of Rome and his status as a Roman citizen, a free man: these are precisely the grounds of his contest with the prefect over the right to authoritative interpretation. In the death of Laurence, that contest is decisively won. To be precise:
Sic dimicans Laurentius
non ense praecinxit latus, [End Page 196]
hostile sed ferrum retro
torquens in auctorem tulit.
(501-4)
Fighting like this, Laurence did not gird his side with a sword, but twisted the enemy's weapon round and drove it back against its author.
Laurence has indeed used the prefect's claim to authority against him; and, through his irony and mockery, has prevailed.
In a mischievous coda to the conversion of the patres, their sudden infatuation with Christ is reported in the terms of Roman love elegy: "Repens medullas indoles / adflarat . . . ," "a creeping inspiration had breathed into their bones"; 77 they are finally compelled to despise their "nugas pristinas," their former trifles—which both recalls the earlier "nummus" (120) and the "nugae" of poetry, 78 while remaining suggestively imprecise: does it refer to their religious practices? their social position? The implication, however, is that Laurence has also appropriated his earlier association with Venus, goddess of love—and has, in a delightfully improbable juxtaposition, drawn the senators along with him. 79
There is a final, significant, instance of laughter in the poem. This is not the laughter of Laurence himself, but of those who come to his shrine:
Quod quisque supplex postulat
fert impetratum prospere;
poscunt iocantur indicant
et tristis haud ullus redit.
(565-68)
He brings to a favorable outcome what each suppliant desires; they make requests, jokes, representations—and no one ever returns disappointed.
"Poscunt iocantur indicant . . .": an incredibly expressive combination; yet Cunningham's apparatus shows, beneath "iocantur," a riot of editorial speculation and emendation, despite the fact that the verb is attested [End Page 197] in all the manuscripts in which the poem is found, bar one which bears the closely related "laetantur." Lavarenne, who edited and translated the text for the Budé edition, suggested what in paleographical terms is the most drastic emendation, "poscunt, rogant et vindicant," and objects in his commentary that the sense of the attested version is absurd: "la plaisanterie n'est pas à sa place dans une prière!" 80 This textual confusion around "iocantur" reveals the inability, or unwillingness, of traditionally-minded commentators to engage with its sense, and with its subversive significance in the context of the poem. It seems, to judge by Laverenne's comment, that it is at odds with their own construction of appropriate masculinities. Cunningham, however, says firmly, "Stet textus," and warns, "Cave ne iocos ei abstuleris!" "Take care not to deprive it of its jokes!" 81 His interpretation is that the intended sense here is that Laurence doesn't care how the supplication is made. And yet, in the light of our study here, the case can surely be made even more strongly: Laurence has particularly appropriated the subversive force of jokes and laughter in his treatment of martyrdom, so joking, despite its unexpectedness, becomes a peculiarly apt form of supplication.
There is a final twist, too, to Laurence's studied sexual ambiguity in the poem. Almost at its close, Prudentius spells out this ambiguity in an extraordinary juxtaposition of gender attributes. The stanza immediately follows the "iocantur" passage. I quote the whole sequence:
poscunt iocantur indicant
et tristis haud ullus redit,
ceu praesto semper adsies
tuosque alumnos urbicos
lactante conplexus sinu
paterno amore nutrias.
(567-72)
They make requests, jokes, representations, and no one ever returns disappointed—as if you were always present, and fostered your city nurslings with paternal love, embraced in your milk-giving breast.
Astonishingly, there seems to be no manuscript which substitutes "materno" for "paterno": the reading should indubitably stand. Lavarenne, however, is so embarrassed by these last three lines that, though this time he proposes no textual emendation, he translates them as follows: "On dirait . . . que dans ton amour de père tu embrasses sur ton sein caressant [End Page 198] tes enfants de la Ville, et tu les combles de tes bienfaits." 82 While the "sein" remains, the dashing juxtaposition of mother's milk and father's love is elided, the awkwardness of lactation being presumably replaced by the cumbersome phrase "tu les combles de tes bienfaits." The giving of milk is ascribed to Christ from early in patristic commentary; 83 and we may recall Paul's "I have given you milk to drink, not food" (1 Cor 3.2). However, this was not yet a commonplace image for Christ himself, 84 never mind for his saints, 85 and its ascription to Laurence here is startling, especially in the light of the other ambiguously gendered resonances in the poem.
It is clear, then, that in Peristephanon 2 something far more complex is being attempted than the portrayal of Laurence as a "full replacement" for the traditional heroes of Rome; 86 similarly, the conversion of Rome is something rather different from the "climax of Rome's imperial history." 87 Laurence does not simply "replace" Rome's heroes: he calls into question the validity of an entire set of traditional ideas about heroism, to become, not an antihero, but an ambiguous counterhero, a hero constructed on different terms altogether. This is effected not least by his implicit resistance to the closure of meaning in the temporal sphere.After all, if meaning were only temporally significant, his ioci and those of his suppliants would be meaningless and ineffectual. They are, Prudentius claims, quite the opposite. It is Laurence's extension of meaning into the [End Page 199] eternal sphere, his valorization of the spiritual, that allows him to set different rules. The mode of reading such a text as the Peristephanon would have been particularly responsive to such an extension of meaning, the denial of closure; for Fontaine is surely right to insist that this work would have been read both in a liturgical context and as a focus for private meditation. 88 This bespeaks a heightened level of intensity in the appropriation and internalization of the works, and a context which insists on a spiritualization of interpretation. Thus, Prudentius is not merely trying to express Roman history as a continuity culminating in the heroic martyrs, though there is no doubt that he sees the triumph of Christianity as a far superior state to all that has gone before. The Christianization of Rome constitutes a move onto different terms, and entails a re-apprehension of her history, not just a rewriting. This is, I think, borne out by such sentiments in Laurence's great prophetic prayer as "mansuescit orbis subditus, / mansuescat et summum caput," "the conquered world is softening; let its highest head grow milder too" (439-40); and we have already seen the way in which this prayer is in a sense reworking the prophecies of the Aeneid.
What, finally, are we to make of the masculinity of Laurence—this masculinity that is counter-authoritarian, that lampoons traditional masculinities and appropriates both male and female character traits? The male martyr, it seems, earns his Christian "manhood" in a curious way. 89 What space is left for the female martyr, when male and female have already been appropriated?
Within the limited scope of this study, I only wish, for the time being, to attempt a brief answer, and it returns us to the sphere of Burrus's discussion of gender in the martyrdom of Agnes. Part of the key must lie in the gender of the narrative voice. The passions of both Laurence and Agnes are, obviously, written by a man. Claims about his audience are hard to substantiate, but we may safely assume that they were predominantly male. The female characteristics upon which Prudentius draws for Laurence are those of idealized Woman—in the traditional, brutal binary, woman as mother, not as whore, woman as gentle, mild, nurturing, patient. It is these characteristics which are appropriated for masculine exhortation and self-identification; it is these which are absorbed into the discourse of Christianity, as it becomes authoritative yet strives to dissimulate its [End Page 200] power. 90 By contrast, the gaze on Agnes remains savagely male: astonishingly, given her youth and virginity, it is frequently upon the image of "woman as whore" that Prudentius draws in his sexualization of her martyrdom. Her physical presence is objectified in a way in which Laurence's is not; and the slippage into symbolism which Burrus documents is thereby the more easily effected. Burrus points out that she becomes not only the bride of Christ but also a symbol for eucharistic practice: there is no parallel symbolic move in the account of Laurence's martyrdom—indeed, at the very moment of martyrdom, the authorial gaze swivels away from his body, with the summary statement:
Hic finis orandi fuit
et finis idem vinculi
carnalis; erupit volens
vocem secutus spiritus.
(485-88)
Here was the end of his prayer—and likewise, the end of his fleshly bond; his spirit willingly burst forth, following his voice.
This determined dismissal of the body—only spirit and voice survive; there is no description of his suffering—is particularly remarkable in the light of Laurence's identification with Venus as he approaches his martyrdom. And it is echoed in the terms of the sphragis, the self-identifying stanza with which Prudentius completes this tour de force of a poem:
Audi benignus supplicem
Christi reum Prudentium
et servientem corpori
absolve vinclis saeculi!
(581-84)
[O Christ,] hear kindly the guilty Prudentius, Christ's suppliant, and free him—for he is enslaved to the body—from the chains of this world!
Prudentius too appropriates Laurence's feminized gender: his suppliant posture recalls Laurence "flentem" as one of the women at the base of Christ's/Sixtus' cross (21-24). But the result is a prayer for absolution from corporeal ties—always construed as female—to emulate Laurence's [End Page 201] spiritual status. The authorial voice, here given most unusual prominence, echoes Laurence's transgendered claim to (as it were) the best of all worlds. By complete contrast, Agnes gets, within her poetic framework, the worst of all worlds: she is depersonalized, while retaining her sexuality, obliged to go to immense and painful lengths to try (and fail) to divest herself of it. 91
One of the excitements of Prudentius' account of the martyrdom of Laurence
lies precisely in its construction of a counterhegemonic masculinity,
and particularly in its emphasis on the subversive power of laughter. Such
laughter challenges, in a spirit of ironic nonviolence, the masculinized
rigidity of the Roman system. But the comparison with the Agnes account
shows how the feminization of male subjectivity leads, paradoxically,
to the brutal erasure of female subjectivity; it reveals poignantly
the danger of constructing masculinities, however revolutionary, with
reference only to males.
92
Catherine Conybeare is British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow in the School of History and Classics, University of Manchester
Notes
1. This paper has been far too long in the transition from speech to print, and has incurred a correspondingly long list of debts en route. It was originally presented at a colloquium on "Cultures of Masculinity in Late Antiquity" at the University of Manchester in May 1997. Then and thereafter, it has profited immensely from the comments of Daniel Boyarin, Virginia Burrus, Gillian Clark, Karla Pollmann, Hugh Pyper and Mark Vessey, and of the readers for JECS: my warm thanks to all of these.
2. Maud W. Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); quote from 159.
3. Ulrike Wiethaus, "Christian Piety and the Legacy of Medieval Masculinity," in Redeeming Men: Religion and Masculinities, ed. Stephen B. Boyd, W. Merle Long-wood, and Mark W. Muesse (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 48-61: both quotes from 48.
4. Virginia Burrus, "Begotten, Not Made": Conceiving Manhood in Late Antiquity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).
5. From Jonathan Rutherford, "Who's That Man?" in Male Order: Unwrapping Masculinity, ed. Rowena Chapman and Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988), 21-67: quote from 22.
6. Note, for example, Gillian Clark's observation: "male authors take masculinity for granted, except when they are attacking an enemy who lacks it." "The Old Adam: The Fathers and the Unmaking of Masculinity," in Thinking Men: Masculinity and its Self-Representation in the Classical Tradition, ed. Lin Foxhall and John Salmon (London: Routledge, 1998), 170-82: quote from 170.
7. Clark again: "both the assumption that males are normative humans, and the assumption that there is no spiritually important difference between males and females, produce silence about men." "The Old Adam," 176.
8. The bibliography on this subject is rich, and growing fast: see, for example, Stephen D. Moore and Janice Capel Anderson, "Taking It Like a Man: Masculinity in 4 Maccabees," JBL 117 (1998): 249-73; Brent D. Shaw, "Body / Power / Identity: Passions of the Martyrs," JECS 4 (1996): 269-312; Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999). I make reference to further important studies in the course of my discussion here.
9. Though Carlin Barton has a fascinating, and ingenious, approach to this issue: see her article, "Savage Miracles: The Redemption of Lost Honor in Roman Society and the Sacrament of the Gladiator and the Martyr," Representations 45 (1994): 41-71.
10. On this theme in theory of masculinities, see David D. Gilmore, Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), which explores the idea that across cultures ". . . there is a constantly recurring notion that real manhood is different from simple anatomical maleness, . . . [it] is a precarious or artificial state that boys must win against powerful odds" (11).
11. Though we know nothing of Prudentius' intentions for the sequence of the poems: see M. P. Cunningham's introduction to his edition: "ordo communis. . . nihil omnino auctoritatis habet" (xxvi). Unless indicated otherwise, I use throughout this paper his edition of Prudentius, CCL 126 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1966), corrected against the edition of J. Bergman in CSEL 61 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1926); all translations are my own.
12. The clearest evidence is the report of the death of Pope Sixtus in Cyprian Letter 80.4 (see note 29 below): Cyprian himself was put to death later in 258.
13. Of this, the best evidence is the number of important churches at Rome dedicated to him. Richard Krautheimer e.a., Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum Romae, vol. 2 (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archiologia Cristiana, 1959) lists San Lorenzo Fuori le Mure, a Constantinian foundation, and San Lorenzo in Damaso, also dating from the fourth century; San Lorenzo in Lucina was built by Sixtus III between 432 and 440. Also of relevance is San Lorenzo in Panisperna, believed to have its origins in an early Christian oratory.
14. That is, the feast-day service was conspicuously ill-attended! PL 38:1393.
15. See Anne-Marie Palmer, Prudentius on the Martyrs, Oxford Classical Monographs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 258.
16. Ambrose Off. 1.41.205-7 and 2.28.140-41, ed. Testard (Paris: Société d'édition "Les Belles Lettres," 1984-1992); Hymn 73, "Apostolorum supparem," PL 17:1254-55 (on its authenticity, see Gérard Nauroy, "Le martyre de Laurent dans l'hymnodie et la prédication des IVe et Ve siècles et l'authenticité ambrosienne de l'hymne 'Apostolorum supparem'," REAug 35 (1989): 44-82); Epigrammata Damasiana, ed. Antonius Ferrua (Rome: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1942), no. 33 (see also no. 58). See also Augustine, Sermons 302-5 (PL 38:1385-1400); Maximus of Turin, Sermons 4 and 24 (ed. Almut Mutzenbecher, CCL 23, Turnhout: Brepols, 1962); and the prose account of Laurence's martyrdom, dated by Delehaye to the late fifth or early sixth century, and edited by him as part of the Passio Polychronii in AB 51 (1933): 34-98. References below to his extensive introduction to this edition are made simply with "Delehaye" and page number.
17. Virginia Burrus, "Reading Agnes: The Rhetoric of Gender in Ambrose and Prudentius," JECS 3 (1995): 25-46; quote from 46.
18. This is pointed out by Palmer, Prudentius, 259, who comments on the "intense tone."
19. Indeed, commentators often unthinkingly equate hero and martyr: so Palmer, Prudentius, speaks of "the new heroes of the empire, the martyrs" (122).
20. Off. 1.50.251. The pun on the meaning for tabernaculum of "tent" is pre-sumably intended. For the introduction of fortitudo, see Off. 1.34.173; for Laurence as an exemplum (interestingly, immediately preceded by Agnes), see Off. 1.41.205-7.
21. For a multitude of instances, see TLL 5.1, cols. 2320-24.
22. Palmer, Prudentius, 131-32. For turbulentus in this sense, see Lewis and Short, turbulentus II.
23. Cossus: Livy 4.20; Verg. Aen. 6.841. Camillus' speech, dissuading the Romans from repatriation: Livy 5.51-54 (his heroism at Veii is described earlier in the book); see also Verg. Aen. 6.825, "referentem signa Camillum."
24. This was the aspect of the story which Augustine, interpreting it less than a decade later, found most important: see, for example, the allusions in civ. 2.17, 4.7, and 5.18. I discuss this in more depth in "'terrarum orbi documentum': Augustine, Camillus, and Learning from History," Augustinian Studies 30 (1999): 59-74; also History, Apocalypse, and the Secular Imagination: New Essays on Augustine's City of God, ed. Mark Vessey and others (Bowling Green: Philosophy Documentation Center, 1999), 59-74.
25. The emperor Augustus intervened in Livy's choice of material for the Cossus episode: in view of Prudentius' attitude to traditional Roman authority in Pe. 2 (adumbrated below), this may have contributed to Prudentius' choice of Cossus for his ambiguous privilege of inclusion here. See the discussion of R. M. Ogilvie in A Commentary on Livy, Books 1-5 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 563-64.
26. Jacques Fontaine, "Le culte des martyrs militaires et son expression poétique au IVe siècle: l'idéal évangélique de la non-violence dans le christianisme théodosien," in Études sur la poésie latine tardive d'Ausone à Prudence (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1980), 331-61; quote from 345. Through an exquisite reading of "military martyr" accounts, which includes Pe. 1 and 8, Fontaine brings out several of the aspects of behavior which I want to emphasize in Laurence.
27. In the light of Barton, "Savage Miracles," we should emphasize the "heroic" in this sentence, referring to a quasi-mythological roster of idealized maiores: Barton demonstrates convincingly the similarities between the "redemptive self-immolation" of the criminal gladiator and the Christian martyr.
28. Dates as in The Book of Pontiffs, Raymond Davis, tr., Translated Texts for Historians 5 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1989), 10.
29. "Xistum autem in cimiterio animadversum sciatis . . . et cum eo diacones quattuor," Cyprian Letter 80.4 (ed. G. F. Diercks, CCL 3B, Turnhout: Brepols, 1996).
30. "Truncati sunt capiti cum beato Xysto VI diaconi . . . ," Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1955), 1.68.
31. This has been attributed to Prudentius' misreading of a Damasan epigram which refers to Sixtus' deacons as "crucis invictae comites." For discussion, see Palmer, Prudentius, 244-45 and Delehaye, 48-49. However, it seems scarcely plausible that so adept a Latinist (and allegorist) as Prudentius should have so misread the epigram, even if it were available to him, and far more likely that he invented this account for the resonances of death by crucifixion.
32. John 19.25.
33. Burrus, "Reading Agnes," remarks, "Death itself is paradoxically anticlimactic in most tales of martyrdom, which focus instead on the dialogical foreplay between martyr and tyrant" (38).
34. sisti: a technical juridical usage for being brought into court: see Lewis and Short, sisto I.C.1.
35. Or, in the words of my introduction, he is laying claim to being "the eternal subject . . . of the essential existential verb."
36. See the excellent study of Linda Hutcheon, Irony's Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony (London: Routledge, 1995), which gives a multifaceted reading of irony; we should however note that, in chapter 7, she contradicts the assumption that irony is necessarily subversive, and points out that it may also be used in an exclusionary fashion which ends up endorsing the status quo. An extremely good example of this phenomenon in Pe. 2 is the prefect's ironic interjection "ni fallor" (99).
37. Blaise, under aenigma 5, gives "type, forme (sur une monnaie). . . var. emblematum."
38. "mihi" being best construed as a dative of possession.
39. In support of these detailed expositions of linguistic ambiguity, Martha Mala-mud has documented, using other examples, Prudentius' taste for complex linguistic jokes and wordplay in "Making a Virtue of Perversity: The Poetry of Prudentius," in The Imperial Muse: Flavian Epicist to Claudian, ed. A. J. Boyle (Bendigo: Aureal Publications, 1990), 274-98, esp. 276-80.
40. Delehaye, 49.
41. Ambrose's account at Off. 2.28.140 dwells entirely on the "true gold" aspect: "Tale aurum sanctus martyr Laurentius Domino reservavit. . . ."
42. See Burrus, "Reading Agnes," 35-39; she speaks of an "eroticized rhetoric of gender." In his Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs: The Liber Peristephanon of Prudentius (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), Michael Roberts states that in Pe. 14 "we see an assault on chastity from the perspective of the female victim" (120, my emphasis); however, especially in the light of Burrus' "Begotten, Not Made," this seems to me untenable—there is no available "female perspective."
43. Bergman reads "furebat fervidus / iudex avaro spiritu": my point about the metaphorical resonance of this choice of words remains valid, however.
44. I am indebted to Gillian Clark for suggesting this resonance to me. For adventus in late antiquity, see Pierre Dufraigne, Adventus Augusti, Adventus Christi, Collection des études augustiniennes, série antiquité 141 (Paris: Institut d'études augustiniennes, 1994).
45. On martyrs seizing the initiative and inverting the expected power structures through willing submission, see Shaw, "Body/Power/Identity": this is a particularly subtle instance, enforced by the literary appropriation of the prefect's "fervor."
46. Surely a hendiadys: "is the light of the human race."
47. I have rendered "insolescat" here as "swell out of proportion"; but in fact, the predominant sense of insolescere in the fourth century seems to be "to be pregnant," with an emphasis on the grossness of pregnancy: Prudentius is probably here inviting a hideous parallel with wombs, an image of the mind giving birth to vice. For this use of insolescere, see my "Jerome and the Miseries of Marriage," forthcoming.
48. Other examples of bad heat in Laurence's speech here: "sanguis. . . calens" (213); "fervor effetus" (215); ambitus is linked with fire and fever (249-52).
49. The use of "accipe" here would, of course, have necessitated hiatus after "talenta"; nonetheless, I think we should assume that "suscipe" was for Prudentius a positive choice.
50. We may compare the depiction at Pe. 11.49-50 of the "insanus rector" who has left Rome to persecute the faithful, and who judges Hippolytus: "Inter carnifices et constipata sedebat / officia extructo celsior in solio."
51. Term used as in Gilmore, Manhood in the Making, 11; see also Gleason, Making Men, passim.
52. Daniel Boyarin has traced precisely the same pattern in Jewish techniques of resistance to Roman power, and reaches the same conclusions concerning the gendered implications of this strategy. "Identification with the female virgin was a mode for both Rabbis and Fathers of disidentification with a 'Rome' whose power was stereotyped as a highly sexualized male": Boyarin, Dying for God, 79. On Jacob as the rabbinic "type" of the feminized trickster, see 48-49.
53. TLL 8, col. 1378: mollis "in deteriorem vel etiam condemnendam partem i.q. parum . . . effeminatus" (includes this reference).
54. More commonly rendered "willingly," but I wish to emphasize the irenic nature of Laurence's response.
55. He also explains the significance of this "flamma," which ensures "ut non tam inflammando cito interimeret hominem quam diu exurendo torqueret": Maximus of Turin, Sermon 4.2.
56. It is clear from the opening lines of Pe. 11, "Innumeros cineres sanctorum Romula in urbe / vidimus . . . ," and from references later in that poem and in Pe. 9 and 12, that Prudentius had at some stage been to Rome, where he would have had the opportunity of reading the Damasan inscriptions. See Palmer, Prudentius, 49; Roberts, Poetry, 3.
57. Ep. Dam. 33.1-2.
58. On carnifices objectified as instruments of torture, see the interesting observations of Roberts, Poetry, 65.
59. See Passio Polychronii, 23 and 27, where "omne genus tormentorum" is laid out before Laurence (who is tortured with fustes, scorpiones, and red-hot metal plates before being consigned to the catasta). This tradition of multiple torture is retained in the epitome from Ado's Martyrology (see AASS, Aug. 2.518-20), though in both accounts Laurence's final death is still accomplished by roasting.
60. Roberts, Poetry, points out that the parallel with Moses, returning from receiving the Law on Sinai only to find his followers worshipping the golden calf, is a particularly appropriate resonance against the prefect's lust for gold (106).
61. Compare "Illi os decore splenduit / fulgorque circumfusus est" (361-62) with Venus revealing herself to her son Aeneas at Aen. 1. 402: "Dixit et avertens rosea cervice refulsit. . . ." Is Prudentius remembering that fulgor is associated with this goddess?
62. Stephen Halliwell begins to sketch a typology of laughter, and the power relations around it, in "The Uses of Laughter in Greek Culture," Classical Quarterly 41 (1991): 279-96. He distinguishes between "playful" and "consequential" laughter (approximately equivalent to my "collegial" and "subversive," respectively), but surely "playful" laughter has its consequences too, in the reinforcement of the status quo.
63. See, in brief, Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), 102-3, in the context of the discussion of the hermaphrodite Herculine, with further references there; see also Halliwell, "Uses of Laughter," 289, on aischrología.
64. See the excellent commentary of Alicia Suskin Oistriker, in Feminist Revision and the Bible (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 38-43.
65. See Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), ch. 5, esp. 164-73. Her model cannot countenance the subtle inversions of power in Laurence's humor.
66. Especially in lines 317-24, cited above.
67. Delehaye, 55-56, gives three other macabre examples associated specifically with martyrdom by burning. See also, more generically, Victricius, De laude sanctorum 6: "tortor horruit, risit subditus quaestioni. . . ."
68. We should note that another aspect of this passage seems to be that Ambrose, like Prudentius, is claiming a certain identification with Laurence, and implicitly defending his own "delightful effrontery" in showering gold on the poor. For this as a theme of Ambrose's detractors, see Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 97; Burrus reads the gendered aspects of the Ambrosian appropriation of Laurence in "Begotten, Not Made," 176-77.
69. A technical term: see TLL 3.597: "tabulatum vel podium," either the raised area on which martyrs were punished or the actual instrument of torture (but with no further details supplied). This frame is described, less ambiguously, in other accounts as a craticula, a gridiron. The mosaic of Laurence in a fifth-century lunette at the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna shows the fire burning beneath a low, free-standing grill (very like the lectus of several accounts) with a wide lattice.
70. "Savage Miracles," esp. 50 and 56-57.
71. Passio Polychronii, 28. See also Ambrose Off. 1.41.205, "Assum est, versa et manduca"; Ambrose, Hymn 73.31-32, "Versate me, martyr vocat, / Vorate, si coctum est, iubet"; Augustine, Sermon 303.1, "Iam, inquit, coctum est; quod superest, versate me, et manducate." Maximus of Turin preserves the incident, though not the oratio directa; he also takes the initiative away from Laurence, who is burnt "ut cum unum latus exustum persecutor cerneret, aliud latus, ignibus obiceret exurendum" (Sermon 4.2).
72. Nauroy, "Martyre de Laurent," 58, describes vorare as "surexpressif," and observes that it "retourne avec plus de force contre les païens l'accusation d'anthropophagie que ceux-ci avaient répandue à l'encontre des chrétiens." It is also used in the Ambrosian hymn (see preceding note).
73. "rerum dominos gentemque togatam": Aen. 1.282. See also, for example, "Romulus . . . Mavortia condet / moenia," Aen. 1.276-77; the "altae moenia Romae," Aen. 1.7; and note the way in which the sequence of thought in Pe. 2.418-24 is exactly the same as that in the advice of Anchises: "tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento /. . . pacique imponere morem" (Aen. 6.851-52).
74. The identification is debated—see the commentary of R. G. Austin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971) ad loc.—but it seems to me undoubtedly Augustus who is meant. Certainly, Augustus boasts of this achievement at Res Gestae 13: "Ianum Quirinum . . . ter me principe senatus claudendum esse censuit."
75. Compare "qui templa claudat vectibus" (477) with "compagibus artis / claudentur Belli portae" (Aen. 1.293-94).
76. Aen. 10.116; the parallel is noted by Palmer, Prudentius, 135.
77. medullae is a particularly elegaic word; note also, for example, Tibullus 2.4.57, "Venus adflat amores. . . ."
78. Catullus, for example, describes his own poetry as "nugae," Poem 1.4. On the significance of this choice, and the connotations of nugae, see J. K. Newman, Roman Catullus and the Modification of the Alexandrian Sensibility (Hildesheim: Weidman, 1990), esp. 36-42; note "nugae were tomfooleries," 40.
79. Especially "delightfully improbable" because senators, of course, were not meant to be run away with by their feelings: see Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (London: Faber and Faber, 1988), ch. 1 (5-32).
80. M. Lavarenne, Prudence, vol. 4 (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1955), 49.
81. See Cunningham ad loc.
82. Lavarenne, Prudence, vol. 4, 49.
83. There is a list of patristic references to Christ as mother in Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berke-ley: University of California Press, 1982), 126.
84. Though note the image in the contemporaneous poem of Paulinus of Nola to Jovius: "mox inhianti / proflua lacte sacro largus dabit ubera Christus. . ." (Paulinus Poem 22.81-82); and Burrus briefly discusses the "well-endowed" Christ of Ambrose Virg. 1.5.22, "Begotten, Not Made," 144.
85. Gail Paterson Corrington thoroughly discusses this image in "The Milk of Salvation: Redemption by the Mother in Late Antiquity and Early Christianity," HTR 82 (1989): 393-420. The metaphor of divine nursing was appropriated, especially from the image of Isis lactans, to describe the salvific activity of male deities. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Cyprian use the image, but always of the Father, Christ, or the (female) Church, never of the saints.
86. The quote is from Palmer, Prudentius, 133; but she is far from atypical in her ascription to martyrs of status as "replacement" hero.
87. Palmer, Prudentius, 126; but again, a conventional view of Prudentius' reading of Rome's conversion. See also, for example, Valerie Edden's "Prudentius," in J. W. Binns, ed., Latin Literature of the Fourth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), 160-82, esp. 175: "[Prudentius] transforms pride in the achievements of Imperial Rome into pride in Rome as the Imperial city of Christ's new spiritual kingdom."
88. Fontaine, "Culte des martyrs militaires," 147 and n. 13.
89. Recalling the terms of Gilmore's discussion (Manhood in the Making, 11).
90. On which, see Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), esp. chapter 4. Cameron comments on "the capacity of the great Christian preachers and writers to accommodate themselves to the models of discourse that already prevailed, and thereby almost to take their audience by stealth" (121, my emphasis).
91. Compare the conclusion of Burrus' most recent work: "By denying sexual difference, the Fathers affirm the difference of divinity; by making maternity invisible, they privilege fatherhood on the very basis of its invisibility; by eliminating the difference between mother and child, they assert the sameness of father and son; by suppressing materiality, they push the spirit to new heights." "Begotten, Not Made," 190.
92. This echoes a concern which is voiced by many theorists of contemporary masculinities: see, for example, Harry Brod, "Some Thoughts on Some Histories of Some Masculinities: Jews and Other Others," in Theorizing Masculinities, ed. Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1994), 82-96.
