Breaking Boundaries: Male/Female Friendship in Early Christian Communities

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[Brown](https://isidore.co/calibre/#panel=book_details&book_id=5308) n. 38 (ref:4.367) cites ch. 5 "[Syneisaktism](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/syneisaktism): Spiritual Marriage," pp. 62-71 (PDF pp. 72-81), cited a few footnotes after discussing the φιλοπάρθενος.cf. [**Male-Female Friendships**](https://isidore.co/forum/index.php?topic=188.msg471#msg471)the last chapter, Celibacy & the Friendship Ideal, has some excellent quotes from St. Jerome regarding his close, chaste relationship with Paul and her daughter Eustochiump. 112 (PDF p. 122): "canon [81] of the Council of Elvira […] mandated that married women use their husbands’ names to write to lay Christians, but were not to receive letters of friendship addressed only to themselves." [Hefele vol. 1](hefelehttps://isidore.co/calibre/#panel=book_details&book_id=7542) ref:4.113:> Ne fœminæ suo potius absque maritorum nominibus laicis scribere audeant, quæ (qui) fideles sunt vel literas alicujus pacificas ad suum solum nomen scriptas accipiant. > [[Eng. transl.](https://web.archive.org/web/20120716202800/http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/Canon%20Law/ElviraCanons.htm#c.33%20celicacy)] A woman may not write to other lay Christians without her husband's consent. A woman may not receive letters of friendship addressed to her only and not to her husband as well.@7:10 of [this sermon on the power of women, St. Anne, and 'male & female He created them'](https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/mhtseminary/Fr_Arnold_Trauner__8th_Sunday_after_Pentecost_Feast_of_St_Anne._Powerful_women_in_the_the_Church.mp3):Other cultures (non-Christian) segregate men and women, even in undue ways. The Church does not at the fundamental level.*Breaking Boundaries* begins with a pre-Christian history of male-female friendships, and it was obvious that before Christ, male and female were segregated more.p. 100 (PDF p. 110) quotes St. Jerome's [Ep. 45](https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001045.htm) to Asella:> It often happened that I found myself surrounded by virgins. To some of them I interpreted the sacred books as well as I was able. Our studies effected continuous communication which soon ripened into intimacy and then produced mutual confidence. If they [critics] have ever seen anything in my conduct unbecoming a Christian, let them say it! ... No, my sex was my only crime, and even on this score I am not attacked except when there is talk of Paula coming to Jerusalem.... Of all the ladies in Rome, only one had the power to subdue me, and that one was Paula. She mourned, fasted, was squalid with dirt, had eyes dim from weeping ... the only woman who stole my fancy [ *Nulla me potuit alia delectare, nisi illa* ] was one whom I had not even seen at table. But as I began to revere, respect, and venerate her as her outstanding chastity deserved, all my former virtues forsook me on the spot.Christianity made friendship, "the foundation of every created society" ([ *Integralism*](https://isidore.co/calibre/#panel=book_details&book_id=7822) ref:8.94), possible between men and women; [*Integralism*](https://isidore.co/calibre/#panel=book_details&book_id=7822) ref:8.62:> Aristotle, [*Nicomachean Ethics* , VIII.9 ["Friendships and Civic Association"]](https://isidore.co/aquinas/Ethics8.htm#9): “In every society there seems to be some sort of justice, and some sort of friendship.”