Except when noted, translations are mine. Scripture is normally cited from the RSV.

It is in Shakespeare’s Othello III.3 that the Moor says of Desdemona, ‘Her name, that was as fresh as Dian’s visage, is now begrimed and black as my own face.’ Cicero explains Diana’s epithet ‘omnivaga’ in De natura deorum II.68. He adds, beautifully, ‘Diana dicta quia noctu quasi diem efficeret’: ‘She was called Diana because, in the night, she brought about a kind of day.’ Aristotle explains the meaning of ‘catharsis’ in the sixth part of his Poetics. To illustrate Cicero’s uses of ‘castus’ I cite from his De divinatione, I.53, and from the first Tusculan Disputation (De contemnenda morte), I.30. Gellius’s remark on Caesar’s style is taken from Nox Philologiae: Aulus Gellius and the Fantasy of the Roman Library ‘by Anonymous, edited and with an introduction by Erik Gunderson’ (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009), p. 88, citing the Noctes Atticae, 19.8.3. A potted biography of German ‘Keuschheit’ is available in that marvellous resource, Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. Roger Nichols gives the account of Poulenc’s night at the opera in Poulenc: A Biography (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2020), p. 254. That particular evening, Callas had sung Verdi, but her comportment was characteristic. Poulenc’s companion Hervé Dugardin said, ‘You should write an opera just for her… that way she wouldn’t be such a b— nuisance.’ This inspired Poulenc’s La Voix humaine for a single soprano. The sources of Norma are examined by Damien Colas in ‘Aux sources du personnage de Norma’, Bollettino di Studi Belliniani 1 (2015), 5–36. The exchange between Norma and Clotilde in Soumet’s play (Paris: Barba, 1831) takes place in Scene Four of Act One. Romani’s libretto to Bellini’s opera is readily available online. I have cited the Greek text of Cavafy’s Ithaca from Constantine A. Trypanis’s The Penguin Book of Greek Verse (London: Penguin, 1971), p. 585f. The translation is Peter Bien’s, taken from his Greek Today: A Course in the Modern Language and Culture (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 2004), p. xxxvii.

The substance of the offertory prayer, Deus qui humanitatis, is found in the sixth-century Sacramentarium Leonianum. The first part, ‘Deus qui humanae substantiae dignitatem mirabiliter condidisti et mirabilius reformasti’, has inexplicably dropped out of the present form of the Roman-rite Mass, but is maintained in the collect for Christmas Day. The intrinsic connection between Genesis 1.27 and Colossians 1.13-15 is drawn already in Origen’s first homily on Genesis. A critical edition of The Cave of Treasures is available in Syriac with an accompanying French translation in the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium: La Caverne des trésors: Les deux recensions syriaques, ed. Su-Min Ri, CSCO, 486–7, Scriptores syri, 207–8 (Louvain: Peeters, 1987). For the sake of clarity, I have sometimes abbreviated passages cited from this work. The article by Su-Min Ri referred to is ‘La Caverne des Trésors et Mar Éphrem’, in Orientalia Christiana Analecta 256 (1998), p. 82f. I have cited E.A. Wallis Budge from the preface to his translation of The Cave of Treasures, based on an edition now viewed as unreliable, published in London by the Religious Tracts Society in 1927. This can be found online at www.sacred-texts.com/chr/bct/. The Arabic version was edited and translated into Italian by Bellarmino Bagatti and Antonio Battista (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1979). The baptismal prayer is part of ‘Ordines baptismi & confirmationis Jacobi Edesseni’, in H. Denzinger, Ritus orientalium, I (Würzburg, 1863), p. 288. Precious resources for general background to this tradition of exegesis are Michael E. Stone’s A History of the Literature of Adam and Eve (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992) and Sebastian Brock’s The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of Saint Ephrem the Syrian (Kalamazoo: Liturgical Press (Cistercian Publications), 1992). The passage from the Lament of Adam is from Sophrony Sakharov, Saint Silouan the Athonite, trans. Rosemary Edmonds (Tolleshunt Knights: Monastery of St John the Baptist, 1991), p. 451. Thomas Merton’s statement about St Silouan – ‘the most authentic monk’ – is widely cited but difficult to track down. Dr Paul Pearson of the Thomas Merton Center finally traced it for me to the French edition of Monastic Peace, published as La Paix monastique in 1961 by Albin Michel. The phrase does not appear in the English version, so Merton must have added it to the materials he sent his French translator, Marie Tadié.

The title of Panayotis Nellas in the original is a splendid phrase borrowed from Gregory Nazianzen: Zōon theoumenon, meaning, ‘a living creature that is being deified’. Norman Russell’s fine translation compacts this into Deification in Christ (Crestwood, New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997).

Body and Soul

The story of Olav’s proto-miracle is from the second chapter of the Passio Olavi. The account of how his hair and nails kept growing is told in Heimskringla, in the ‘Saga of St Olav’, par. 245. E. Allison Peers’s tribute to his Carthusian friend constitutes an appendix to Saint Teresa of Jesus and other Essays and Addresses (London: Faber and Faber, 1953). I have drawn my quotations from Hesse’s Siddhartha from the first two chapters of Part Two. The quotation from Tim Winton’s Breath (London: Picador, 2008) occurs on p. 23. Danseuse classique is cited from Emil Boyson, Utvalgte dikt (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1959). Virginia Woolf’s caustic remark about Lydia Lopokova, Mrs John Maynard Keynes, was cited in Judith Flanders’ review of Judith Mackrell’s Bloomsbury Ballerinas in the TLS on 20 June 2008.

Male and Female

Buber’s translation of the Hebrew Bible, a work he began in tandem with Franz Rosenzweig, then finished alone, is a marvel. It has done more than any other text to open up the Old Testament to me. It is available as Die Schrift in a remarkably cheap edition published by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft. For Rashi’s Commentary on Genesis I use Luigi Cattani’s Italian translation published by Marietti in 2011. Not many people read the exegetical work of Paul Claudel. A pity. It has been brought together in two large volumes entitled Le Poëte et la Bible, edited by M. Malicet, X. Tilliette and D. Millet-Gérard (Paris: Gallimard, 1998 and 2004). The passages cited in this chapter, though, are from chapter 4 of a work more general in scope: Seigneur, apprenez-nous à prier (Paris: Gallimard, 1942). It was translated by Ruth Bethell and published as Lord, Teach Us to Pray in New York by Longmans and Green in 1948. I have cited Jacques Lusseyran from the second edition of his Conversation amoureuse: De l’amour à l’Amour, published in Paris by Éditions Triades in 2005. I propose my reading of תְּשׁוּקָה notwithstanding the learned theses put forward by my teacher and friend A. A. Macintosh in ‘The Meaning of Hebrew תְּשׁוּקָה’, published in the Journal of Semitic Studies LXI/2 (2016), 365–87, a paper that argues for a less pugnacious definition. It is in the documentary Tystnad, Tagning, Trollflöjten from 1975 that Ingmar Bergman likens Mozart’s opera to a gospel.

Order and Disorder

Ephrem’s description of Adam’s priestly service comes from the Hymns on Paradise 3.16, translated by Sebastian Brock (Crestwood, New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990). The theme of the ordering of love is developed in St Bernard’s sermons 49–51 on the Song of Songs. The programme Yehudi Menuhin, The Violin of the Century was produced in 1994 by Ideale Audience/La Sept – Arte Imalyre. I have cited Etty Hillesum’s An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork in Arnold J. Pomerans’ translation first published in 1983 (New York: Holt, 1996). The quotation from Lusseyran’s Et la lumière fut (Paris: Le Félin, 2008) is taken from the end of chapter 10 of Part Two.

Eros and Death

I cite Athanasius’s text in R.C. Gregg’s version, contained in The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus (New York, Ramsey, Toronto: Paulist Press, 1980). The Davidization of the Psalter is treated in greater depth in my essay, ‘Cum Davide versari: The Psalter as Acquired Self-Expression’, in A Book of Psalms from Eleventh-Century Byzantium: The Complex of Texts and Images in Vat. Gr. 752, edited by Barbara Crostini and Glenn Peters (Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Studi e testi 504, 2016). St Benedict’s instruction regarding Psalm 50 is found in chapter 13 of the Holy Rule. Wyatt’s version of Psalm 50 is cited from Sir Thomas Wyatt, The Complete Poems, edited by R.A. Rebholz (London: Penguin, 2015). The passages defining ‘eros’ are, of course, from Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical, Deus caritas est, n. 4. Christoph Schlingensief writes of the music of Wagner in the entry marked 10 February in So schön wie hier kanns im Himmel gar nicht sein! Tagebuch einer Krebserkrankung (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2009). Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies spoke of Flagstad to Sue Lawley on Desert Island Discs on 19 June 1988. Harold Pinter’s Ashes to Ashes was published by Faber and Faber in London in 1996. Gitta Sereny speaks of the play in The German Trauma: Experiences and Reflections 1938–2000 (London: Allen Lane, 2000), p. 286f. Pinter’s remark about its background is cited in a book he sent Sereny for reference: Michael Billington’s The Life and Work of Harold Pinter (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), p. 374f. Vincent Canby’s review of The Night Porter was printed in the New York Times on 13 October 1974. Liliana Cavani explains the background of the film in the retrospective ‘Liliana Cavani on The Night Porter’ directed by David Gregory in 2006. The testimony of the former nun, a victim of abuse, is drawn from Dom Dysmas de Lassus’s important book, Risques et dérives de la vie religieuse (Paris: Cerf, 2020), p. 429ff. Somaly Mam’s memoir, first out in French, was published in Lisa Appignanesi’s translation as The Road of Lost Innocence (London: Virago, 2007.) Quotations are from pp. 35, 38, 51, 58, 62 and 101. Anyone tempted to think Mam’s extreme experience categorically distinct from that of glamorous, well-paid, developed-world pornographic actors might consider the story told in Tomer Heymann’s 2018 documentary, Jonathan Agassi Saved My Life. Jennifer Lash (alias Jini Fiennes) died in 1993, at 55. Blood Ties was published posthumously (London: Bloomsbury, 1997). Quotations are from pp. 239, 242, 244f., 276ff.

Marriage and Virginity

Shlomo Alkabets’s hymn לְכָה דוֹדִי and Rabbi Sacks’s notes can be found in The Authorised Daily Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, 4th edition, with new translation and commentary by Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks (London: Collins, 2007), pp. 255, 266-69. R.A. Markus cites Paphnutius and has many other interesting things to say about marriage and sexuality in the early Church in The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 38. The quotation from Ida Görres occurs on p. 20 of her essay, Von Ehe und von Einsamkeit (Stuttgart-Degerloch: Auer, 1949). The quotations from Marilynne Robinson’s Jack (London: Virago, 2020), are on pp. 208 and 163. I have cited the Rite of Consecration of Virgins according to the Monastic Ritual approved for the use of the Abbey of Sainte Cécile de Solesmes in 1975, kindly placed at my disposal by the nuns of St Cecilia’s Abbey, Ryde. On Thursday of the 2nd week of Lent, the Church recites the prayer beginning, ‘Deus, innocentiae restitutor et amator’. The passages cited from George Mackay Brown’s Magnus (London: The Hogarth Press, 1973), are taken from the first few pages of Part 4, ‘The Temptations’. The account of how the book was written is recorded in chapter 15 of Maggie Fergusson’s George Mackay Brown: The Life (London: John Murray, 2006). Pope Francis’s Apostolic Letter Patris Corde, on St Joseph, was published on 8 December 2020. I have cited from chapter 7, ‘A Father in the Shadows’. In this same sense St Benedict tells the abbot, in chapter 64 of the Holy Rule, to be chaste. He is to pour out his life for the sons whom providence entrusts to his care, but not for a moment is he to think that they belong to him.

Freedom and Ascesis

The passage from Nicholas Kavasilas’s The Life in Christ (PG 150, 680A) is cited in Nellas’s Deification in Christ, p.223. The saying, ‘Look up, not down’ features in an apophthegm (XVIII.13) attributed to Abba Macarius. John XXIII’s encyclical Mater et Magistra on Christianity and social progress was published on 15 May 1961. Irenaeus’s text about Adam’s childishness is from chapter 12 of The Apostolic Preaching. The phrase from the Epistle to Diognetus occurs in that text’s chapter 9. Jean Cardinal Daniélou died on 20 May 1974. Gunnel Vallquist published Följeslagare some months later (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1975). The statement to which I refer occurs towards the end of her chapter on Daniélou. Athanasius speaks of believers’ commitment to virginity in chapter 51 of De incarnatione. Urett – et essay om overgrep, en opera og teoriene fra Paris (Oslo: Humanist Forlag, 2022) by Martin Wåhlberg, Professor of Literature at Trondheim, and examines attitudes tending to justify paedophilia in Foucault, Matzneff and other luminaries of the French literary pantheon. Of course, we find similar tendencies in other contexts and countries, too, astonished that they were ever propagated. I have cited Yourcenar’s remarks on sublimation in Dori Katz’s translation, prepared in collaboration with the author. The passage occurs at the end of the introduction to Fires (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981). The Norwegian primary school manual Solaris 3–4, written by Astrid Munkebye, Eli Munkebye and Kristin Skage, was published in Oslo by Aschehough in 2022. The twin counsels about loving chastity and fasting are given in chapter 4 of St Benedict’s Rule. I have cited John Climacus from the fifth chapter, ‘On Penitence’, of The Ladder of Divine Ascent in the superb translation of Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), p. 129. Rainer Maria Rilke’s Briefe an einen jungen Dichter were published in Leipzig by Insel-Verlag in 1929. The translation is Reginald Snell’s (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1945) – what a marvellous text to divulge right after the war. Athanasius describes Antony as being ‘ὡς ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου κυβερνώμενος’, ‘like someone governed by the Logos’, when he emerged from the fortress in the desert after many years’ seclusion, surprising everyone by being ‘fully equal to himself’, i.e. in perfect balance (Vita Antonii, 14).

Knut Hamsun wrote Victoria in 1898. It is available in several English translations. On the interplay between Athanasius’s Life of Antony and his De incarnatione, see Louis Bouyer’s La Vie de S. Antoine: Essai sur la spiritualité du monachisme primitif, 2nd edition (Bellefontaine: Éditions de Bellefontaine, 1977). His statement on the eschatological significance of celibacy is from De incarnatione 51.1. The story of Antony’s vocation is told in chapter 2 of the Vita Antonii; his deathbed confession is related in chapter 91. Quotations from the Apophthegmata are referenced in the text on the basis of the three-volume ‘systematic’ edition published in Sources Chrétiennes. Nellas speaks of the monk retracing Adam’s path in reverse in Deification, p. 90. A seminal study of monastic repentance remains Irénée Hausherr’s Penthos: The Doctrine of Compunction in the Christian East, translated into English by Anselm Hufstader (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1982). Nikolai Leskov develops the topos of monks’ encountering worldly examples of virtue in his charming story Pamfalon the Clown.

The passage cited from St Bruno’s letter to his friend Raoul, written in the 90s of the eleventh century, is from par. 6. The text can be found in many languages on the Carthusians’ website, www.chartreux.org. Gregory’s description of St Benedict’s solitude is from the Second Book of the Dialogues, chapter 5. Richard of St Victor’s Ubi amor, ibi oculus features in his treatise On Preparing the Soul for Contemplation, or Benjamin Minor, par. 13. It is still most conveniently found in Migne’s Patrologia Latina 196, c. 10. A nice edition of Pico della Mirandola’s De hominis dignitate is published by the Scuola superiore normale di Pisa (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2012). A. Robert Caponigri’s English version (Chicago: Gateway, 1956) is available on the internet. In the pagination of reference, the passage cited can be found at 131r. I have cited Richard Lattimore’s translation of The Odyssey, II., 146–57 (London: HarperCollins, 2007). Heisenberg’s remark to Einstein is found in The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, edited by Richard Dawkins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 350. Keats’s line on truth and beauty concludes his Ode on a Grecian Urn. The quotations from Dom Jean-Baptiste Porion, Lettres et écrits spirituels (Paris: Beauchesne, 2012), edited by Nathalie Nabert, can be found on pp. 123, 38, 26. This book is a treasure. In the fourth chapter of the Holy Rule, St Benedict counsels, ‘Honorare omnes homines’. A look at a concordance of the Rule will reveal the importance of this term in his vocabulary. The theme of Jesus’s transformative way of seeing others is developed in a valuable essay by Luigi d’Ayala Valva, Lo sguardo di Gesù (Bose: Qiqajon, 2016). Bethge’s text and Webern’s letter to Berg are cited in Eberhard G. Bethge’s Hans Bethge: Leben und Werk (Kelkheim: YinYang, 2002), pp. 31 and 37. Jean François Billeter’s Une autre Aurélia was published in Paris by Allia in 2017. The quotation is from p. 27. A powerful testimony! Pavel Florensky’s The Pillar and Ground of the Truth: An Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters has been translated into English by Boris Jakim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). The passage on chastity is found in the seventh letter. Actaeon’s encounter with Diana is retold in Ted Hughes’s Tales from Ovid (London: Faber and Faber, 1997), ever a source of delight, from which I have drawn my quotations. Thérèse of Lisieux reappraises St Cecilia on page A 61 verso of Histoire d’une âme. Again, I have drawn Yehudi Menuhin’s wisdom from the interview with Bruno Monsaingeon, referenced above. The anecdote about St Dominic carrying Matthew’s Gospel is from the Acta canonizationis cited in the breviary for Vigils on his feast day, 8 August. James of Voragine recounts the legend of Matthew’s blinding and healing in his chapter on St Andrew. The Church calls on Christ as ‘Desideratus gentium’ in the O Antiphon for vespers three days before Christmas, on 22 December. On that day the collect reads as follows: ‘God and Father, you looked in pity on fallen man and redeemed us by the coming of your Son. Grant that we who profess our firm and humble faith in the incarnation of our Redeemer may have a share in his divine life.’

As Chastity was going to press I was alerted to the controversy surrounding the memoirs of Somaly Mam, accused of making up parts of her story. I cannot answer for its integrity in every detail; but have chosen to keep the passages cited, which give voice to generic experience. Whether Mam has drawn on her or others’ history, the account is corroborated by like testimonies. It goes to show how careful one must be with regard to one’s sources, even prize-winning ones.

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