The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity – Professor Peter Brown Favoriet

In his monumental book Peter Brown addresses the practice of permanent sexual renunciation–continence, celibacy, and life-long virginity–that developed in Christian circles from the first to the fifth centuries A.D.
Brown vividly describes the early Christians and their strange, disturbing preoccupations. He follows in detail the reflection and controversy these notions generated among Christian writers. Among the topics covered are marriage and sexuality in the Roman world, Judaism and the early church, O…