Saving Shame: Martyrs, Saints, and Other Abject Subjects

Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion

by Virginia Burrus

Virginia Burrus explores one of the strongest and most disturbing aspects of the Christian tradition, its excessive preoccupation with shame. While Christianity has frequently been implicated in the conversion of ancient Mediterranean cultures from shame- to guilt-based, and thus in the emergence of the modern West's emphasis on guilt, Burrus seeks to recuperate the importance of shame for Christian culture. Focusing on late antiquity, she explores a range of fascinating phenomena, from the flamboyant performances of martyrs to the imagined abjection of Christ, from the self-humiliating disciplines of ascetics to the intimate disclosures of Augustine.Burrus argues that Christianity innovated less by replacing shame with guilt than by embracing shame. Indeed, the ancient Christians sacrificed honor but laid claim to their own shame with great energy, at once intensifying and transforming it. Public spectacles of martyrdom became the most visible means through which vulnerability to shame was converted into a defiant witness of identity; this was also where the sacrificial death of the self exemplified by Christ's crucifixion was most explicitly appropriated by his followers. Shame showed a more private face as well, as Burrus demonstrates. The ambivalent lure of fleshly corruptibility was explored in the theological imaginary of incarnational Christology. It was further embodied in the transgressive disciplines of saints who plumbed the depths of humiliation. Eventually, with the advent of literary and monastic confessional practices, the shame of sin's inexhaustibility made itself heard in the revelations of testimonial discourse.In conversation with an eclectic constellation of theorists, Burrus interweaves her historical argument with theological, psychological, and ethical reflections. She proposes, finally, that early Christian texts may have much to teach us about the secrets of shame that lie at the heart of our capacity for humility, courage, and transformative love.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2007

About the author

A native of Texas, Virginia Burrus received her B.A. (1981) in Classical Civilization from Yale College, and her M.A. (1984) and Ph.D. (1991) in History of Christianity from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Currently the the Bishop W. Earl Ledden Professor of Religion at Syracuse University, she had previously taught in Drew University's Theological School and Graduate Division of Religion.

Dr. Burrus's teaching and research interests in the field of ancient Christianity include: gender, sexuality, and the body; martyrdom and asceticism; ancient novels and hagiography; constructions of orthodoxy and heresy; histories of theology and historical theologies. She is past President of the North American Patristics Society, Associate Editor of the Journal of Early Christian Studies, and co-editor of the University of Pennsylvania Press series "Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion."

Reviews

[Eve Tushnet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed and learned from this survey of the ways early Christians, rather than rejecting the category of shame, overturned it--making what their societies considered shameful a badge of honor or a path to humility. This characteristic of Christian witness was part of what allowed enslaved Christians to be such obvious icons of Jesus to the communities which honored their martyrdom. Enslaved martyrs confessed Christ, wresting the power of testimony away from their slaveholders, and then enacted His lowliness and passion in their own persons.

Many insights here: "Shame does indeed fuel vengeful anger but it also breeds compassion" wouldn't be out of place in a study of restorative justice, and this passage could converse fruitfully with both John Paul II's idea of "original loneliness" and Benedict XVI's understanding of eros: "As Silvan Tomkins remarks, we frequently feel shame when our physical needs are not satisfied. I would add that we also frequently feel shame when they are: what is perhaps crucial to shame is the very exposure of our fleshly wanting, of the immensity of human need." Some gorgeous, lurid theology; some challenging, sublime, and/or disturbing hagiographic stories.

Burrus is attentive to the places where women were judged or placed in double binds in early Christian communities and yet she notes that even this inequality could be, for the women themselves, a site of their triumph not only within but through humiliation. The challenge for the Christian is to triumph without ever attributing one's exaltation to one's own efforts; and to accept humiliation eagerly without encouraging the unjust actions of others.

[Andrew Marr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shame is an aspect of human experience that is inextricably tied up with other people. We only feel shame before another person and we make others feel shame before us, or at least try to. There is a lot of mimetic rivalry in shame, to use René Girard's term, because of the way we place ourselves above other people by shaming them and when we are shamed, we tend to play to shame game in a retaliatory way: other people should be ashamed of the way they try to shame us! In her highly interesting book, Saving Shame: Martyrs, Saint, and other abject Subjects," Virginia Burrus explores shame as it played out in the early Christian centuries. The main topics are martyrs, the theology of Incarnation, desert asceticism, and confessional works, most particularly the "Confession" of Saint Augustine. The rivalrous battles of shame and the the play of inversions of shaming and counter-shaming are evident in various ways in this book. For example, the Romans tried to shame the Christians by stripping them and throwing them to the beasts but their endurance turned shame against their persecutors. The shame that many Hellenistic thinkers cast on the human body was turned around to glorify the body that God had assumed in living a human life. Both the desert monastics and confessional writers such as Saint Augustine laid bare shameful aspects of their lives that most people hide or try to hide. Their shame become their glory as they share all before God who redeems their shame. A thoughtful book worth reading and pondering.

[Petja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kirja kertoo häpeän tunteen merkityksestä alkukristittyjen ja marttyyrien parissa. Tutkimus on mielenkiintoinen, vaikkei aihepiiri kiinnostaisi: keskeinen tavoite on haastaa väite, että kristinusko olisi alun alkaen erityisesti syyllisyyden uskonto. Burruksen mukaan varsinkin alkukristityt pyrkivät nimenomaan häpäisemään itseään olakseen lähempänä kristusta.