Virgin Territory: Configuring Female Virginity in Early Christianity by Julia Kelto Lillis (review)

Reviewed by: Virgin Territory: Configuring Female Virginity in Early Christianity by Julia Kelto Lillis Tara Baldrick-Morrone Julia Kelto Lillis Virgin Territory: Configuring Female Virginity in Early Christianity Oakland: University of California Press, 2023 Pp. 290. 95. 00. Julia Kelto Lillis's Virgin Territory: Configuring Female Virginity in Early Christianity focuses on the many ways that female virginity was conceived, assessed, and (later) perceived by early Christian authors. The book provides an analysis of virginity discourse. While other projects on the subject have used similar methods, Lillis presents a clearly written and nuanced argument about the variations of virginity that existed, both with and without the female body in view. By "mapping" the territory of early Christian virginity discourse, Lillis importantly underscores "the complex interests at stake" (18) in these texts. After the acknowledgments, the book opens with "Notes to the Reader, " a short yet informative section addressing Lillis's authorial choices, such as her use of terms and translation decisions. Comments like these are often found in other books' prefaces and forewords, but including them in a section addressed to the reader reveals her care for guiding the audience through her work. In this way, she gives readers the tools to join the conversation. The Introduction sets the terms for this conversation, highlighting the significance and ambiguity of the term "virginity" in both ancient and modern contexts. Virginity is a "humanmade" End Page 301 and "socially constructed concept" (4, 13), Lillis argues, and as such its meanings are varied and contingent. Part One (Chapters One and Two) surveys a wide array of "pagan, " Jewish, and Christian material as a means of showing that the "perceptibility turn" (the idea that female virginity could be perceived in inspections of women's vaginas) was not commonplace before the fourth century. Especially important for this anatomized virginity (as Lillis calls it) is the marked absence of the hymen or, rather, the absence of its description in much of the medical literature and other sources before this period. Here, she builds on the scholarship of Giulia Sissa, whose work on "the earlier invention of the hymen" (167) serves as a starting point for Lillis's exploration of the emergence of anatomical virginity in early Christian configurations of virginity. Chapter Two's discussion of the virginal state of Mary, Jesus's mother, proves to be a perfect example of this development, as authors from the second century c. e. onward described her virginity in sometimes vastly diverse ways (including attention to her reproductive state, sexual inexperience, and anatomical intactness). Lillis further proves her argument in Part Two (Chapters Three and Four) by delving into the similarities and differences of virginity discourse in the writings of Basil of Ancyra, Gregory of Nyssa, Ephrem of Nisibis, and Ambrose of Milan. Each configured virginity according to his own context and interest—whether to outline the relationship of the soul and the body or to establish episcopal authority. Lillis's close reading of the material emphasizes the nuances present in each configuration, making for a much richer map that avoids previous mis-steps in prior discussions of early Christian virginity discourse. While a length-ier discussion of each figure's socio-political context would have added to the analysis, this section will be useful for those interested in mining specific data on virginity discourse, asceticism, gender, and other issues at play in the shaping of fourth-century Christian communities. In Part Three (Chapters Five and Six), Lillis provides examples of how late fourth-century Christian authors widely accepted the idea that virginity could be seen on women's bodies. In the most exciting and refreshing aspect of her work, she then takes a speculative turn by imagining the costs associated with such vaginal inspections. This turn is a response to the nature of our male- authored sources, which prevent us from accessing how women experienced what it meant for their bodies to be subjected to these examinations. Though Lillis treads lightly in these speculative moments, it is a useful exercise for gaining new insights into the repercussions of this discourse. While reading Chapter Five, I was reminded of Blossom Stefaniw's article "Feminist Historiography and Uses of the Past. . .