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No Hymen Required: Reconstructing Origen's View on Mary's Virginity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 October 2020
Abstract
Origen of Alexandria's works contain a seeming contradiction concerning Mary's virginity. He affirms multiple times that Mary remained a virgin after Christ's birth and throughout life, yet one of his homilies on the Gospel of Luke declares that Christ “opened the womb” of his mother—an action many readers equate with destruction of virginity. How can Origen claim that Mary remained virginal if her hymen tissue was no longer intact? Scholars commonly solve the problem by characterizing his thought as self-contradictory or by concluding that he prioritizes Mary's lack of sexual experience over her loss of physical intactness. This essay resolves the contradiction more fully through attention to divergent models for female genital anatomy that circulated in antiquity. Origen, like most thinkers during and before his time, probably did not believe that female virgins have hymens. For him, the terminology of “closed” and “opened” wombs refers not to virginity but to fertility. Scholarly readers have been misled by certain other authors’ uses of this vocabulary and by Jerome's Latin translation of the homily, which draws on a different anatomical model. For Origen, Mary is a virginal mother not in spite of a broken hymen, but without possessing a hymen in the first place.
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References
1 Studies include Jouassard, Georges, “Marie à travers la patristique: Maternité divine, virginité, sainteté,” in Maria: Études sur la Sainte Vierge, ed. du Manoir, Hubert (Paris: Beauchesne, 1949), 1:69–157Google Scholar; Koch, Hugo, Virgo Eva - Virgo Maria: Neue Untersuchungen über die Lehre von der Jungfrauschaft und der Ehe Mariens in der ältesten Kirche (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1937)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; de Urbina, Ignacio Ortiz, “Lo sviluppo della Mariologia nella Patrologia Orientale,” Orientalia christiana periodica 6 (1940): 40–82Google Scholar; de Aldama, José Antonio, Virgo mater: Estudios de teología patrística (Granada: Facultad de Teología, 1963)Google Scholar; Hilda C. Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, 2 vols. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963–1965); von Campenhausen, Hans, The Virgin Birth in the Theology of the Ancient Church (London: SCM, 1964)Google Scholar; and pertinent essays by Walter Burghardt and Philip Donnelly in the three-volume Mariology, ed. Juniper B. Carol (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1955–1961), much of which has now been republished in a different sequence by Mediatrix Press in 2018–2019.
2 For example, Hunter, David G., Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinianist Controversy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Finn, Richard, Asceticism in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Boss, Sarah Jane, ed., Mary: The Complete Resource (London: Continuum, 2007)Google Scholar. Studies on the development of Marian cult supplement the slim patristic evidence of the third century with other sources that have been overlooked or understudied. See, for instance, Stephen J. Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2016).
3 What conflicts between the passages is Origen's answer to whether Mary's virginity (a given in both cases) allows her to remain ritually pure during the postpartum period, a time when other women are temporarily impure. In Homilies on Luke 14.3–8, he takes Luke's phrase “their purification” (Luke 2:22) as an indication that both Jesus and Mary required purification according to Mosaic law following Jesus's birth; in Homilies on Leviticus 8.2–4, on the other hand, he offers similar reflections on Jesus's inherently unclean human body but exempts Mary from the need for purification on the grounds that she both conceived and gave birth as a virgin. The issue is purification after childbirth; the Levitican homily, while it gives a new answer concerning this issue, does not contradict what Origen says in the Lucan homily about the nature of Christ's emergence from Mary's womb or her ongoing status as a virgin.
4 On the fallacy of treating ancient ideas about virginity as monolithic and predictable, see Lillis, Julia Kelto, “Paradox in Partu: Verifying Virginity in the Protevangelium of James,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 24, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 1–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 For example, Dom Ambrose Agius, “The Blessed Virgin in Origen and St Ambrose,” Downside Review 50, no. 1 (January 1932): 126–137; Joseph C. Plumpe, “Some Little-known Early Witnesses to Mary's Virginitas in Partu,” Theological Studies 9, no. 4 (December 1948): 569; Graef, Mary, 1:43–44; Igor Golden, “Origen and Mariology,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 36, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 147; Mark DelCogliano, “Tradition and Polemic in Basil of Caesarea's Homily on the Theophany,” Vigiliae Christianae 66, no. 1 (2012): 45–47; and Brian K. Reynolds, Gateway to Heaven: Marian Doctrine and Devotion, Image and Typology in the Patristic and Medieval Periods, vol. 1, Doctrine and Devotion (Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City, 2012), 78 (Reynolds erroneously cites Clement of Alexandria as the author of Origen's works in part of this discussion). In E. Dublanchy, “Marie,” Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 9, no. 2 (1927): 2372, Dublanchy observes Origen's seeming inconsistency, acknowledges the possibility that he is discussing Christ's emergence from the womb rather than Mary's virginal integrity, and concludes that surviving texts do not definitively resolve the matter. Several authors take the tensions as an indication that Origen subscribed to the doctrine of Mary's postpartum virginity but rejected the doctrine of her virginity in partu with its demand for physical integrity (or that he did not address the question of virginity in partu at all): these include Koch, Virgo Eva - Virgo Maria, 67–72; Jouassard, “Marie à travers la patristique,” 81–82; and Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy, 184–186.
6 In Commentary on John 1.4, Origen states that those who think rightly say Mary had no other children; a fragment of the same commentary and Commentary on Matthew 10.17 both claim that Jesus's siblings were children of Joseph and an earlier wife, not biological children of Mary (in the latter commentary he cites a book attributed to James, probably the Protevangelium of James, as a source for this tradition). The same explanation appears in Homilies on Luke 7.4.
7 Origen, Commentary on Matthew 10.17; and see Origen, Homilies on Luke 7.
8 Origen, Commentary on Matthew 10.17, in Origen, Commentaire sur l’évangile selon Matthieu, ed. and trans. Robert Girod, Sources Chrétiennes (hereafter cited as SC) 162 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1970), 216. English translations are my own unless noted otherwise.
9 This passage can be found in the critical text of Erich Klostermann, ed., Origenes Matthäuserklärung II: Die lateinische Übersetzung der Commentariorum Series, Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller (hereafter cited as GCS), vol. 38, Origenes Werke 11 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1933), 42–43; or in Cipriano Vagaggini, Maria nelle opere di Origene (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1942), 192–193. For this passage, Klostermann provides a Latin text with Greek fragments; Vagaggini has Latin only.
10 For a fuller discussion of the moral qualities and theological concepts Origen attaches to the virginal state, consult Henri Crouzel, Virginité et mariage selon Origène (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1963) and a forthcoming monograph by Amy K. Hughes based on her dissertation: Amy K. Hughes, “Chastely I Live for Thee: Virginity as Bondage and Freedom in Origen of Alexandria, Methodius of Olympus, and Gregory of Nyssa” (PhD diss., Wheaton College, 2013).
11 Many of Origen's works were written during his years as a presbyter in Palestinian Caesarea (230s–240s CE). For concise information on proposed dates of composition, see Joseph T. Lienhard, introduction to Origen, Homilies on Luke, Fragments on Luke, trans. Joseph T. Lienhard, Fathers of the Church 94 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), xxiv.
12 See François Fournier, “Les Homélies sur Luc et leur traduction par saint Jérôme,” in Origen, Homélies sur S. Luc; Texte latin et fragments grecs, ed. and trans. Henri Crouzel, François Fournier, and Pierre Périchon, 2nd ed., SC 87 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1998), 78–79; and Lienhard, introduction to Homilies on Luke, Fragments on Luke, xxxii–xxxvi. Many of Origen's works survive solely through the Latin translations produced by Jerome or by Rufinus of Aquileia.
13 Laws regarding male offspring that “open the womb” appear in Exodus 13:2, 13:12, 13:15, and 34:19 and in Numbers 3:12, 8:16, and 18:15; see also Ezekiel 20:26. The expression is clearly a reference to the birth of the offspring. While it is possible that the expression is a figure of speech describing fertility in a general way (see note 14), it may be that this verb for “open” or “open up/wide” is meant to describe the extreme cervical dilation and/or vaginal stretching that occur for the first time when firstborn offspring emerge from the uterus and birth canal.
14 See Genesis 20:17–18, 29:31, 30:22; and 1 Samuel 1:1–6. For related expressions about opening or closed wombs, see Job 3:10–11 and Isaiah 66:9 (the latter has greater variation between Hebrew and other ancient versions). Here, too, it is clear that opened wombs are fertile ones while closed wombs do not conceive or bear—and it is possible, but unclear, that those using the expression envision a concrete change happening to internal organs. On references to “wombs” more generally, there are multiple ancient terms frequently translated as “womb” in English, some of which overlap with other parts of the body than the uterus (for instance, the vagina or the belly or the bosom and lap). In some ancient literature, such as medical texts, writers distinguish between different parts of the female reproductive system like the uterus, vagina, and vulva. Other texts are not so precise, and ancient biblical interpreters frequently treat diverse terms as flexible or interchangeable. I therefore treat differences between terms for “womb” as insignificant for our purposes here and allow each term to encompass more of the reproductive system than the organ we call the uterus.
15 The first quotation is of Luke 2:23, which paraphrases the verses from Exodus 13 listed above (see also the passages from Numbers). The second quotes Exodus 23:17 or 34:23 (and see Deuteronomy 16:16).
16 Luke 1:35.
17 Translated from the Latin text provided in Origen, Homélies sur S. Luc, ed. Crouzel, Fournier, and Périchon, SC 87:226: “Sicut scriptum est, inquit, in lege Moysi, quia omne masculinum, quod aperit vulvam, sanctum Domino vocabitur et: ter per annum apparebit omne masculinum in conspectu Domini Dei. Masculina, quae ex eo, quod vulvam matris aperuerunt, sancta erant, offerebantur ante altare Domini: omne, inquit masculinum, quod aperit vulvam, sacratum quippiam sonat. Quemcunque enim de utero effusum marem dixeris, non sic aperit vulvam matris suae ut Dominus Iesus, quia omnium mulierum non partus infantis, sed viri coitus vulvam reserat. Matris vero Domini eo tempore vulva reserata est, quo et partus editus, quia sanctum uterum et omni dignatione venerandum ante nativitatem Christi masculus omnino non tetigit. Audeo quid loqui, quia et in eo, quod scriptum est: Spiritus Dei veniet super te, et virtus Altissimi obumbrabit te, principium seminis et conceptus fuerit, et sine vulvae reseratione novus in utero foetus adoleverit.” The text is also available in Max Rauer, ed. Die Homilien zu Lukas in der Übersetzung des Hieronymus und die Griechischen Reste der Homilien und des Lukas-Kommentars, GCS 49, Origenes Werke 9, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1959), 89–90.
18 See analysis in Andrew S. Jacobs, “Sordid Bodies: Christ's Circumcision and Sacrifice in Origen's Fourteenth Homily on Luke,” in Asceticism and Exegesis in Early Christianity: The Reception of New Testament Texts in Ancient Ascetic Discourses, ed. Hans-Ulrich Weidemann (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2013), 219–234.
19 Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ 23 (discussed below); see also Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ 4 and Tertullian, Against Marcion 3.11, 4.21. For analysis, see Charlotte Radler, “The Dirty Physician: Necessary Dishonor and Fleshly Solidarity in Tertullian's Writings,” Vigiliae Christianae 63, no. 4 (2009): 345–368.
20 Examples are numerous. Several references are gathered in Julia Kelto Lillis, “Who Opens the Womb? Fertility and Virginity in Patristic Texts,” in “Papers Presented at the Seventeenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2015,” vol. 7, “Health, Medicine, and Christianity in Late Antiquity” ed. Markus Vinzent, Jared Secord, Heidi Marx-Wolf, and Christoph Markschies, special issue, Studia Patristica 81 (2017): 187–201.
21 Vagaggini, Maria nelle opere di Origene, 88–97; Henri Crouzel, “La théologie mariale d'Origène,” in Origen, Homélies sur S. Luc, ed. Crouzel, Fournier, and Périchon, SC 87:40–44.
22 Those who reiterate Vagaggini or Crouzel's interpretation or draw a similar conclusion include Walter J. Burghardt, “Mary in Eastern Patristic Thought,” in Carol, ed., Mariology, 2:105–107; Charles William Neumann, The Virgin Mary in the Works of Saint Ambrose (Fribourg: University Press, 1962), 131; Emmanuel Lanne, “Marian Doctrine and Piety up to the Council of Chalcedon: The Fathers and the Liturgy; Marian issues from an eastern perspective,” in Studying Mary: Reflections on the Virgin Mary in Anglican and Roman Catholic Theology and Devotion, ed. Adelbert Denaux and Nicholas Sagovsky (London: T & T Clark, 2007), 44; and cf. Jacobs, “Sordid Bodies,” 226.
23 See Jerome's Letter 57 and a recent discussion of his translation theory in Matthew A. Kraus, Jewish, Christian, and Classical Exegetical Traditions in Jerome's Translation of the Book of Exodus: Translation Technique and the Vulgate (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 45–49.
24 Translated from the Greek given in Rauer, Die Homilien zu Lukas, GCS 49:89–90: “Τὰ οὖν ἀρσενικὰ ἅγια ὄντα ἅτε μήτραν ἀνοίγοντα ἔδει ἀναφέρεσθαι κυρίῳ παρὰ τῷ θυσιαστηρίῳ, μόνος δὲ Χριστὸς διήνοιξεν μήτραν ἐκ παρθένου τεχθείς· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἄλλο πρὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ τῆς μήτρας ἐκείνης τῆς ἱερᾶς ἥψατο· πάντων δὲ τὰ πρωτότοκα, εἰ καὶ πρωτότοκά ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ οὐ διανοίγουσιν αὐτὰ πρῶτα τὴν μήτραν, ἀλλ’ ὁ σύμβιος.” A longer expansion on this fragment that was shown in the main text of Rauer's first edition appears inauthentic in its vocabulary and themes, and it was not included in the second edition.
25 A helpful description of the form and complexities of catenae is available in Françoise Petit, “La chaîne grecque sur la Genèse, miroir de l'exégèse ancienne,” in Stimuli: Exegese und ihre Hermeneutik in Antike und Christentum; Festschrift für Ernst Dassmann, ed. Georg Schöllgen and Clemens Scholten (Münster: Aschendorffsche, 1996), 243–244. Rauer notes in his critical edition that one of the manuscripts containing this passage reflects direct use of Origen's homilies as opposed to use of prior catenae only, but this does not solve the question of whether the catena writer copied or condensed Origen's ideas: Rauer, introduction to Die Homilien zu Lukas, GCS 49: liv, lviii.
26 Since Jerome's elaborations put the material in a different sequence than the Greek fragment does, it is unclear at what point he turns to subsequent homily content that is not reflected in the fragment.
27 This crass term is inappropriate for describing virginity loss today, but it aptly describes some ancient notions about virginity, including the ideas that men destroy and women passively lose virginity and that this act lessens women's value and desirability. Since modern usage of the term often denotes or connotes hymenal rupture, I reserve it for ancient conceptualizations that involve hymens or other concrete, anatomical notions about virginity.
28 Previous writings by Jerome indicate familiarity with a variety of Tertullian's works, including stances and themes regarding Mary's virginity and childbearing that appear in On the Flesh of Christ and Against Marcion (as shown in Jerome's Against Helvidius, written in the 380s); it is highly probable that he had encountered On the Flesh of Christ 23. On Jerome's knowledge and use of Tertullian's works more generally, see Pierre Petitmengin, “Saint Jérôme et Tertullien,” in Jérôme entre l'Occident et l'Orient: XVIe centenaire du départ de saint Jérôme de Rome et de son installation à Bethléem; Actes du colloque de Chantilly, septembre 1986, ed. Yves-Marie Duval (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1988), 43–59. One of Jerome's comments in the preface to Origen's Homilies on Luke is widely taken as a reference to Ambrose's Exposition of the Gospel According to Luke, which circulated by the late 380s or beginning of the 390s; Jerome's negative evaluation of Ambrose in this and some other works does not preclude the possibility that Ambrose's text influenced Jerome's reading of Origen. See Fournier, “Les Homélies sur Luc,” 65–92. For examples of Jerome borrowing from these authors in his compositions, see Neil Adkin, “Tertullian in Jerome (Epist. 22, 37, 1f.),” Symbolae Osloenses 68, no. 1 (1993): 129–143; Elizabeth A. Clark, “Dissuading from Marriage: Jerome and the Asceticization of Satire,” in Satiric Advice on Women and Marriage: From Plautus to Chaucer, ed. Warren S. Smith (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 154–181. On Ambrose's use of sources in his Exposition on Luke, see Ambrose, Traité sur l’Évangile de S. Luc: Livres I–VI, ed. and trans. Gabriel Tissot, 2nd ed., SC 45 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1971), 15–18.
29 Tertullian, La chair du Christ, ed. and trans. Jean-Pierre Mahé, SC 216 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1975), 302–304: “Virgo quantum a viro, non virgo quantum a partu. . . . In partu suo nupsit. Nam nupsit ipsa patefacti corporis lege. . . . Idem illud sexus resignavit. Haec denique vulva est propter quam et de aliis scriptum est: Omne masculinum adaperiens vulvam sanctum vocabitur domino. . . . Quis tam proprie vulvam adaperuit quam qui clausam patefecit? Ceterum omnibus nuptiae patefaciunt. . . . Magis non virgo dicenda est quam virgo, saltu quodam mater antequam nupta. . . . Cum hac ratione apostolus non ex virgine sed ex muliere editum dei filium pronuntiavit, agnovit adapertae vulvae nuptialem passionem.”
30 The observation that Ambrose's phrases about womb-opening in the Exposition on Luke refer to conception, not birth, is highlighted in Neumann, Virgin Mary, 113–138.
31 Ambrose, Traité sur l’Évangile de S. Luc, ed. Tissot, SC 45:97–98: “Omne masculum adaperiens vulvam sanctum domino vocabitur; verbis enim legis promittebatur virginis partus. Et vere sanctus, quia immaculatus. Denique ipsum esse qui lege signetur in eundem modum ab angelo repetita verba declarant: quia quod nascetur inquit sanctum vocabitur filius dei. Non enim virilis coitus vulvae virginalis secreta reseravit, sed inmaculatum semen inviolabili utero spiritus sanctus infudit; solus enim per omnia ex natis de femina sanctus dominus Iesus, qui terrenae contagia corruptelae inmaculati partus novitate non senserit et caelesti maiestate depulerit. . . . Hic ergo solus aperuit sibi vulvam . . . ut inmaculatus exiret.”
32 Tertullian utilizes multiple definitions for virginity in his works. In one treatise alone (On the Veiling of Virgins), he draws on more than one common ancient meaning of the category “virgin,” often using it to designate marital singleness but also using it to designate young age and innocence from sexual awareness or desire; see especially On the Veiling of Virgins 11–12. Many have rightly observed that his remarks on Mary qualifying as both a “virgin” and a “woman” in On the Veiling of Virgins conflicts with his comments about her virginity and womanhood in On the Flesh of Christ.
33 It is certain that Jerome had recently read Ambrose's commentary and likely that he also knew this exact passage of Tertullian's, though the similarities could be adequately explained through his familiarity with Ambrose's passage alone. Tertullian's passage spells out even more clearly and startlingly the anatomical conceptualizing of virginity that Ambrose and Jerome gradually came to utilize in their own works, regardless of whether they owed these ideas to Tertullian's expression of them in On the Flesh of Christ. An overview of the emergence of this reasoning in Ambrose's and Jerome's works appears in Lillis, “Who Opens the Womb?,” 197–198.
34 The Greek term in Luke 2:23 and in Exodus 13 (LXX) is διανοίγω (perhaps meaning “open up”), and in some related passages, ἀνοίγω (“open”) is used. Jerome's Latin quotation and the Vulgate read aperio (“open”), though one might expect adaperio (“open wide”), the verb Tertullian uses in his quotation of the same verses (as the passage above shows, Tertullian's comments use both adaperio and patefacio as well as the further verb resigno). Ambrose and Jerome's verb for “unlock” is resero, which does not come from the scripture passages.
35 See Jerome's claims and speculations about Joseph's sexual abstinence in Against Helvidius 8 and 19. Jerome may also be intensifying the sense of reverence here to counterbalance the subsequent mention of Mary's unclean innards. Ambrose's works emphasize the present imperative to revere Mary's womb.
36 The second-century physician Soranus of Ephesus described and then disproved the theory that virginal women have a membrane (hymen) that grows across the vagina and breaks during first coitus (Gynecology 1.17). Soranus's location in Rome suggests that someone in Rome—whether fellow doctors, midwives, or members of the population at large—had begun to think of hymen tissue as a virginal barricade. Aside from the two Christian sources mentioned in note 37, this is the only surviving evidence for belief in hymens prior to the late fourth century. Scholars mistakenly conflate the notion of a hymen with other notions about virginity that occasionally appear in ancient sources, such as the observation that beginning to have sex may cause light bleeding, and have wrongly assumed that we can use later periods’ practices to explain early sources. Examples of ancient sources which have been misinterpreted in this way include passages in the Dead Sea Scrolls and a scene in the Protevangelium of James, both of which seem at first glance to describe gynecological tests for sexual virginity.
37 The only definite exception is the bishop Cyprian of Carthage, who wrote a letter in the mid-third century that recommends enlisting midwives to verify particular women's virginity through gynecological examination. This is the first clear evidence for gynecological virginity testing in antiquity. The next comes from Christian sources written in the final decades of the fourth century. It appears that this testing practice and the accompanying beliefs about virgins’ perceptibly closed genitals arose in Carthage before it arose in other parts of the Mediterranean world, perhaps with writers drawing on notions emerging in some circles in Rome (see previous note) and perhaps motivated by the special status accorded to female virgins in the Christian community at Carthage (a status that Tertullian seeks to regulate in his treatise On the Veiling of Virgins).
38 Many scholars have discussed whether Origen was familiar with Tertullian's comments on Mary's opened womb. He most likely was not; if he was, he proceeded in a different direction with his own reasoning. Both were engaging with content from the Gospel of Luke and earlier biblical material about womb-opening, and the seeming similarities in the surviving Latin reflect Jerome's knowledge, not Origen's knowledge, of Tertullian's works.
39 The awkward fit between longstanding medical models for female anatomy and the emerging notion of the hymen is especially evident with a passage from a seventh-century Alexandrian medical commentary: here Stephanus of Athens makes the first extant attempt to reconcile hymenal and traditional medical models for virgins’ anatomy (Hippocratic Aphorisms 5.63). See Caroline Musgrove, “Debating Virginity in the Late Alexandrian School of Medicine,” in ed. Vinzent, Secord, Marx-Wolf, special issue, and Markschies, Studia Patristica 81 (2017): 203–216.
40 Helpful studies on ancient gynecological knowledge and on doctors’ and midwives’ tasks, tools, and access to women's and girls’ bodies include Helen King, Hippocrates’ Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece (London: Routledge, 1998); Rebecca Flemming, Medicine and the Making of Roman Women: Gender, Nature, and Authority from Celsus to Galen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); G. E. R. Lloyd, Science, Folklore and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 62–86; Lesley Ann Dean-Jones, Women's Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994); Ann Ellis Hanson, “A Division of Labor: Roles for Men in Greek and Roman Births,” Thamyris 1 no. 2 (Autumn 1994): 157–202; Ralph Jackson, “Roman Doctors and Their Instruments: Recent Research into Ancient Practice,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 3 (1990): 5–27; and Valerie French, “Midwives and Maternity Care in the Ancient World,” Helios 13, no. 2 (1986): 69–84.
41 On the absence of the hymen in Greek medical reasoning, see Giulia Sissa, Greek Virginity, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), esp. 105–123; Giulia Sissa, “Maidenhood without Maidenhead: the Female Body in Ancient Greece,” in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, ed. David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), 339–364; Dean-Jones, Women's Bodies in Classical Greek Science, 47–55; and Kathleen Coyne Kelly, Performing Virginity and Testing Chastity in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 2000), 22–28.
42 Problematic genital membranes are discussed in various ancient biological and medical works spanning multiple periods. These include Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals 4.4.773a, Celsus, On Medicine 7.28, and Aetius of Amida, Gynecology 51 and 96 (with different numbering in some editions, also known as Tetrabiblion 16.51 and 96). Ann Ellis Hanson argued in a past work that the uterus was considered “sealed” before sexual initiation in popular Greek thought of earlier antiquity, but this sealing barricade would be at the mouth of the uterus not the vagina: Ann Ellis Hanson, “The Medical Writers’ Woman,” in Before Sexuality, ed. Halperin, Winkler, and Zeitlin, 309–337.
43 Hippocratic authors describe pent-up menstrual blood causing problems within the body, as seen in the text Diseases of Young Girls, discussed below, a Greek text and English translation of which are available in Rebecca Flemming and Ann Ellis Hanson, “Hippocrates’ Peri Partheniôn (‘Diseases of Young Girls’): Text and Translation,” Early Science and Medicine 3, no. 3 (August 1998): 241–252. Soranus reasons that the vagina is lined with small blood vessels that rupture when vaginal tissue is stretched out by sexual intercourse for the first time (Gynecology 1.16–17); he assumes that virgins or their healthcare providers can already see or reach the uterus to assess its position and condition (1.34–35).
44 For example, see the description given in Henry Gray, Gray's Anatomy: The Anatomical Basis of Clinical Practice, 40th ed., ed. Susan Standring (Edinburgh: Elsevier, 2008), 1281. Medical experts have questioned the possibility of verifying occurrences of sexual activity, trauma, or abuse through professional examination of hymen tissue; see, for instance, Diane F. Merritt, “Vulvar and Genital Trauma in Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology,” Current Opinion in Obstetrics and Gynecology 16, no. 5 (October 2004): 371–381; Jim Anderst, Nancy Kellogg, and Inkyung Jung, “Reports of Repetitive Penile-Genital Penetration Often Have No Definitive Evidence of Penetration,” Pediatrics 124, no. 3 (September 2009): 403–409; and A. A. Hegazy and M. O. Al-Rukban, “Hymen: Facts and Conceptions,” theHealth 3, no. 4 (December 2012): 109–115. The World Health Organization has called for an end to virginity testing: “Eliminating Virginity Testing: An Interagency Statement,” (Geneva: World Health Organization, 2018), https://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/publications/eliminating-virginity-testing-interagency-statement/en/.
45 On the processes described in this paragraph, consult King, Hippocrates’ Woman, chap. 1 (esp. 27–35) and 70–72 (and see 140–141); Ann Ellis Hanson, “Conception, Gestation and the Origin of Female Nature in the Corpus Hippocraticum,” Helios 19, no. 1 (1992): 31–71; Ann Ellis Hanson, “The Hippocratic Parthenos in Sickness and Health,” in Virginity Revisited: Configurations of the Unpossessed Body, ed. Bonnie MacLachlan and Judith Fletcher (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 40–65; and Dean-Jones, Women's Bodies in Classical Greek Science, 47–109, 125–129. See also the assumptions about fertility, open wombs, and bodily pathways that can be inferred from Hippocratic pharmacology: Laurence M. V. Totelin, Hippocratic Recipes: Oral and Written Transmission of Pharmacological Knowledge in Fifth- and Fourth-Century Greece (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 197–219.
46 Flemming and Hanson, “Hippocrates’ Peri Partheniôn (‘Diseases of Young Girls’),” 241, 252. The title is often translated as Diseases of Virgins.
47 As translated by Flemming and Hanson, “Hippocrates’ Peri Partheniôn (‘Diseases of Young Girls’),” 252.
48 Pertinent passages from the Hippocratic work Diseases of Women 1 and a two-part text known as Generating Seed/Nature of the Child are given in English in Ann Ellis Hanson, “Hippocrates: Diseases of Women 1,” Signs 1, no. 2 (Winter 1975): 567–584.
49 For an example, see Diseases of Women 1.1.
50 Soranus, Gynecology 1.43–44; Galen, On the Natural Faculties 3.3; and Galen, On the Use of Parts 14.3.
51 For instance, the idea that the womb opens and closes is seen throughout Aetius of Amida's Gynecology (also known as Tetrabiblion 16), and the notion of a hymen is absent in this work.
52 Clement of Alexandria, The Pedagogue 2.10.92–93.
53 Jean-Jacques Aubert, “Threatened Wombs: Aspects of Ancient Uterine Magic,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 30, no. 3 (Autumn 1989): 421–449, esp. 425–443, 446; Ann Ellis Hanson, “Uterine Amulets and Greek Uterine Medicine,” Medicina nei secoli 7, no. 2 (April 1995): 281–299. For one of the late ancient examples, see Ralph Jackson, Doctors and Diseases in the Roman Empire (London: British Museum Publications, 1988), 106. On Byzantine amulets, see Gary Vikan, “Art, Medicine, and Magic in Early Byzantium,” in “Symposium on Byzantine Medicine,” ed. John Scarborough, special issue, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 38 (1984): 65–86; and Jeffrey Spier, “Medieval Byzantine Magical Amulets and Their Tradition,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 56 (1993): 25–62. The association of (in)fertility with the idea of wombs closing and opening appears in ancient non-Hellenistic sources as well, such as in early Mesopotamian medicine.
54 Refer to section one above for the biblical passages that use these expressions.
55 See the sources collected in Lillis, “Who Opens the Womb?” As discussed briefly in section one, when applied to God, the expression refers to divine control over women's abilities to conceive and bear children; when applied to offspring, the expression refers to emergence from the reproductive system at birth.
56 The biblical passages refer variously to animal or human offspring or both, and Origen's reference to a “mate” leaves more room for human-animal similarity than do references to men/husbands in the Latin texts cited above.
57 Regarding Philo's influence on Origen, see especially David T. Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature: A Survey (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 157–183.
58 Philo, On the Cherubim 13.46, in Philo: Volume II, trans. F. H. Colson, G. H. Whitaker, Loeb Classical Library 227 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1929), 36; and Philo, Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis 2.13.46–48, in Philo: Volume I, Loeb Classical Library 226 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1929), 254, see also 3.63.180–181, pp. 422–424.
59 For other examples of Philo's understanding of the biblical expression, see On the Birth of Abel and the Sacrifices Offered by Him and Cain 27.89, 31.102–32.106, 36.118; and On the Change of Names 23.130–25.144, 44.255.
60 Origen, Homilies on Numbers 3.2.1, 3.4.1; and Origen, Homilies on Genesis 6.3.
61 On how Tertullian may have come to make this leap, see note 37 above. On the term “defloration,” see note 27.
62 On recent cautions against using hymen tissue to verify sexual activity or abuse, see note 44. On debates over the hymen's existence or significance during or across past periods, see Kelly, Performing Virginity; Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, “Virginity Now and Then: A Response to Medieval Virginities,” in Medieval Virginities, ed. Anke Bernau, Ruth Evans, and Sarah Salih (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 234–253; Marie H. Loughlin, Hymeneutics: Interpreting Virginity on the Early Modern Stage (London: Associated University Presses, 1997), 27–52; Corinne Harol, “The Hymen and Its Discontents: Medical Discourses on Virginity,” in Enlightened Virginity in Eighteenth-Century Literature (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006), 59–84; a fascinating nineteenth-century notice titled “The Physical Signs of Virginity,” in British Medical Journal, 5 January 1895, 27; and Giulia Sissa's consideration of the impact of legal systems upon medical knowledge in “The Hymen Is a Problem, Still: Virginity, Imperforation, and Contraception, from Greece to Rome,” Eugesta 3 (2013): 67–123, esp. 96–103. Hanne Blank gathers a wide range of sources for debates about hymens in a book for general audiences (with a few questionable interpretations of ancient and medieval sources): Hanne Blank, Virgin: The Untouched History (New York: Bloomsbury, 2007), chaps. 4–6. See also Anke Bernau, Virgins: A Cultural History (London: Granta, 2007). For a recent assessment of the complexity of discourse on hymen tissue, see Cinthio, Hanna, “‘You Go Home and Tell That to My Dad!’ Conflicting Claims and Understandings on Hymen and Virginity,” Sexuality and Culture 19 (2015): 172–189CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
63 Vagaggini, Maria nelle opere di Origene, 46; Fournier, “Les Homélies sur Luc,” 85–87; and Lienhard, introduction to Homilies on Luke, Fragments on Luke, xxxvi.
64 Studies that discuss these controversies include Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy; Neumann, The Virgin Mary; Benoît Jeanjean, “La virginité de Marie selon saint Jérôme: polémiste et exégète,” in La virginité de Marie: Communications présentées à la 53e session de la Société française d’études mariales, Issoudun, septembre 1997, réunies par Jen Longère (Paris: Médiaspaul, 1998), 85–103; Ariel Bybee Laughton, “Virginity Discourse and Ascetic Politics in the Writings of Ambrose of Milan,” (PhD diss., Duke University, 2010); and Shuve, Karl, The Song of Songs and the Fashioning of Identity in Early Latin Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
65 See the introductory section above.