Wear the Armor of Your Shame

Debating Veiling and the Salvation of the Flesh in Tertullian of Carthage

Bibliographic Data

ID3943200
AuthorsCarly Daniel-Hughes (0000-0001-8458-7731, Concordia University, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume39
Issue2
Pages179-201
Publication date2010-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueStudies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0008-4298 • E-ISSN: 2042-0587
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0008429810362315
OpenAlexW2003608845
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited27

In the early third century, Tertullian (approx. 150-220 C.E.) penned On the Veiling of Virgins to cajole unveiled virgin women to cover their heads. While scholars have read the treatise primarily as evidence of his misogyny or his attempt to establish a male ecclesiology, this article examines it as evidence of a debate between Tertullian and virgin women in Carthage over the nature of a woman's flesh and the possibility of its transformation. Employing Judith Butler's conception of performativity, I consider how Tertullian connects veiling to his conception of the salvation of the flesh, and why he perceives the virgins' unveiling a visible contestation (or, in Butler's terms, a performative undoing) of that vision. For Tertullian, the flesh is both corruptible and shameful and only transformed through Christ's death and resurrection. Across his writings, women's flesh serves as evidence of the degradation of the human condition. The notion that women's flesh indicates sordidness also underlies his complaint against the virgins who ''expose'' their heads. In On the Veiling of Virgins, Tertullian employs a host of cultural discourses-most especially the notion that a woman's head indicates her genitalia, and materialistic conceptions of vision that cast the gaze as erotic and intrusive-in order to establish veiling as the outward sign of a Christian woman's shame. Ultimately, however, connecting his vision of salvation to the performance of veiling, he reveals why unveiling threatens this link. When virgins refuse to veil, they suggest that their flesh does not signal shame, but instead reveals their exalted spiritual status

Aesthetics · Art · Flesh · Literature · Performative utterance · Psychoanalysis · Shame · Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · Philosophy · Psychology

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