Virginia Burrus

THE MAKING OF A HERETIC GENDER, AUTHORITY,
AND THE PRISCILLIANTS CONTROVERSY

PREFACE

A text, "once issued, can never be recalled" Sulpicius Severus wisely
observed, and I am tempted, if not to abstain altogether from publishing this
monograph, at least to defer doing so. By holding on to these pages a bit
longer, I might not so much tell a different or better tale as give a better
account of why the tale is worth telling in the first place. With Jerome, I
have continued to ask, "Why speak of show more Priscillian, who was condemned by
the secular sword and by the whole world?" In the course of the long
gestation of this project, new answers have emerged for me, without entirely
displacing previous responses.

Despite my confessed hesitance, I am also unquestionably relieved to
be delivered of the burden of this work. The comparison of texts to
children, of writing to labor, is by no means novel-it was already a rhetorical
commonplace in late antiquity. The metaphor may, however, claim
particular suitability in this case. The account of the Priscillianist controversy
was conceived simultaneously with my first child, James, and written in
the form of a doctoral dissertation during his infancy. The dissertation
manuscript then travelled with me from West Coast to East, at which point
I was again pregnant; and the journey also led to my own birth as a
professional scholar, entering upon a first academic appointment. The revising
of the dissertation into something recognizable as a book took place
during the infancy of my second child, Mary, and, as it seems to me now
may represent not simply the maturing of an old work but also the over
laying of a second, new work upon the first.

For better or for worse, this text does not articulate a single, monologio show less