It was not enough for the early theologians to say in the passive voice that God was born into the world; the theology of the early councils required a woman's body. During these first councils, the miraculous nature of the virgin birth was indispensable for the incarnated mediation between the created and uncreated. It was only later that the virginity of Mary went beyond its Christological significance to mean moral and spiritual purity, becoming a role model for ascetics. This development can be seen as influenced by a Platonic-Christian anthropology that can still be traced today. The Platonic tripartite division of the soul promoted the discipline of reason over the body. According to Michel Foucault in his History of Sexuality, this relationship to one's own body (especially one's sexuality) is inevitably a strategy of politics with and over oneself. For the early theologians, sexual appetite was the most difficult to control, so sexual discipline was seen to go together with moral and spiritual purity. The irony at the heart of Mary's body is that she is considered Virgin Mother. To say that she is endowed with the grace of perpetual virginity suggests that her body (its sexuality, sickness, hunger) is obscured from her at the same time as it is her whole identity as Theotokos. What begs intrigue is an analysis of how and in what ways the body of Mary was politicised in her virginity in order to inspire the spiritual life.