Among the preponderance of studies on late ancient Christian asceticism, anti-ascetic tendencies have received relatively little attention. Rather, figures such as Jovinian are frequently cast as not only unpopular, but unmistakably heretical. David Hunter hopes to address this misrepresentation of the complicated development of ascetic orthodoxy by detailing the range of ascetic positions held in the first four centuries c.e. In so doing, Hunter demonstrates that “Jovinian stood much closer to the centre of the Christian tradition than previous critics have recognized” (285). By contrast, figures such as Tertullian, Origen, Ambrose, Jerome, and even Augustine are “de-centered,” as each is shown to preserve various aspects of earlier encratite “heresy.” The question remains: why was Jovinian roundly opposed if he stood in continuity with Christian tradition? Hunter argues that while Jovinian initially enjoyed a modicum of success, ultimately his chief opponents' concerns about clerical authority led to his censure. Nonetheless, Hunter concludes, the Jovinianist controversy was a pivotal moment in shaping newly defined boundaries of ascetic orthodoxy in the late fourth and early fifth centuries c.e.
After detailing the representation of Jovinian found in contemporary scholarship—which largely frames Jovinian as a proto-Protestant who privileged “faith” above “works”—Hunter's first chapter reconstructs Jovinian's main arguments through the eyes of his chief opponents, Pope Siricius, Ambrose, and Jerome. Hunter contends that Christian leaders, however, were not alone in determining Jovinian's success or failure. In Chapter 2, Hunter discusses Jovinian's reception among the Christian Roman aristocracy, detailing why and how the Roman upper class might either reject or wield rigorous asceticism. The concern to guard traditional values of wealth and marriage, coupled with disdain for ascetic prestige that rivaled aristocratic honores, prejudiced some against Christian asceticism that took too vigorous a form. Other aristocrats found the degrees of sexual hierarchy commensurate with aristocratic competition and housed ascetics as a way to advance their families' reputations. Hunter concludes that, while Jovinian's tenets were initially well-received by the aristocrats already predisposed against ascetic extremism, his theology of “egalitarianism” did not resonate with those who found asceticism to be useful in enhancing aristocratic competition and hierarchy.
Chapters 3 and 4 survey the ascetic debates that predated Jovinian in order to demonstrate the extent to which Jovinian's resistance to ascetic elitism had precedence in earlier heresiological literature. These chapters parse the types of ascetic positions represented in the first three centuries: “Some emphasized the complete rejection of sexual activity (radical encratism); others allowed marriage and sexual union and yet strongly devalued both (moderate encratism); still others stressed the original goodness and enduring value of marriage and procreation” (128). While those representing “moderate encratism” (Tertullian, Cyprian, and Origen in the third century) argued that marriage was acceptable, they preserved aspects of encratism, namely the association of sexuality with sin and a Fall. Although such associations failed to draw much critique in the third century, by the end of the fourth century chief heresiologists charged radicals and moderates alike with “Manichaeism” whenever they perceived these groups to be denigrating the created world, marriage, and sexuality (though the charge was remarkably durable and, as Hunter shows, it was regularly directed against any ascetic group perceived to be troublesome or deviant). Given this terrain of ascetic opinions, the logic of and precedent behind Jovinian's opposition to ascetic elitism, and specifically his accusations of “Manichaeanism,” were quite in line with his predecessors.
In chapter 5, Hunter traces how Jovinian's views on Mary's virginity likewise stood in continuity with earlier writers who adamantly opposed the idea that such tenets could provide support for a docetic Christology. By the later fourth century, when Mary was fast becoming the principal model of Christian virginity, notions of Marian virginity were reinvigorated for new ascetic purposes. But since views of Mary's virginal conception that aimed to protect Mary from the taint of sin and corruption attending to sexual intercourse relied on a continuation of the “encratite” tradition that linked sin to sexuality and salvation to sexual purity, Jovinian stood on firm “orthodox” ground when he attacked Ambrose's Mariology.
Hunter achieves the most success in the final two chapters, in which he analyzes Pope Siricius, Ambrose, and Jerome's motivations for opposing Jovinian's ascetic teachings. In his section on Siricius, Hunter details the pope's concerns to impose (post-marital) clerical celibacy to ensure clerics' uninterrupted ritual purity (which would enable them to administer Christian sacraments at any time) and to curb the seemingly frequent occurrence of rapidly promoting ascetics through clerical ranks. Both agendas aimed to enhance the dignity and status of the clergy by distinguishing clerical celibacy from lay monastic celibacy. Jovinian's “egalitarian” stance, Hunter argues, undermined Siricius's aim to consolidate clerical authority through ascetic elitism and made his enforcement of clerical sexual continence even more difficult than it already was. While Ambrose, like Siricius, sought to use asceticism to enhance the authority of the bishop, Ambrose argued for equal spiritual authority among all ascetics. Continually aware of (and anxious about) his own promotion through the clerical ranks, Ambrose rather attempted to broker ecclesial power by positioning clergy as the primary supporters and mediators of ascetic communities. Thus, Ambrose relied on ascetic prestige as a means to garnering clerical prestige. Jerome's opposition to Jovinian, Hunter argues, was as much about Jerome's desire to rehabilitate his reputation in Rome as it was about Jerome's enthusiasm for the ascetic life. In addition to maintaining the ascetic hierarchy, Jerome used the occasion to engage in a “subtle battle to subvert the authority of … Ambrose and Siricius” by insisting that post-marital celibacy was inferior to the monastic life, implicitly challenging the clerical conventions of the Roman and Milanese churches (234). In the end, Hunter persuasively positions the arguments of Jovinian's chief opponents within a constellation of issues surrounding clerical, ascetic, and personal authority.
Finally, Hunter turns to the second phase of the Jovinianist controversy: the reception of Jerome's Adversus Jovinianum and the sustained debates over how to characterize the superiority of asceticism to marriage without depreciating marriage. Hunter concludes that, in addition to debates over Pelagianism, Jovinian's and Jerome's views became the extremes against which definitions of sexual “orthodoxy” in the West were shaped. The resultant position maintained the superiority of celibacy over marriage that would result in greater heavenly rewards (with Jerome) while ultimately acknowledging the goodness of marriage, as well as locating salvation solely in faith and baptism (with Jovinian).
