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Saints and Doctors in the Early Byzantine Empire: The Case of Theodore of Sykeon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Peregrine Horden
Peregrine Horden*
Affiliation:
All Souls College, Oxford
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Extract

‘Have done with doctors. Don’t fall into their clutches: you will get no help from them. Be satisfied with this prayer and blessing and you will be completely restored to health.’ Theodore of Sykeon’s obloquy and exhortation find numerous parallels in the social history of early Byzantine medicine. The hostility of holy men to doctors is a familiar theme. Less familiar may be that delegation of responsibility and spirit of cooperation suggested by another passage in the Life of Theodore:

Again, if any required medical treatment for certain illnesses, or surgery or a purging draught or hot springs, this God-inspired man would prescribe the appropriate remedy to each like an experienced doctor trained in the art. He might recommend one to have recourse to surgery and would always state clearly which doctor he should employ. In other cases he would dissuade those who wished to have an operation or to undergo some other medical treatment, and would recommend rather that they should visit hot springs, and would name the springs to which they should go.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 19: The Church and Healing , 1982 , pp. 1 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1982

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References

1 [Festugière, A-J.] Vie Théodore [de Sykéon], Greek text with French translation and commentary, Société des Bollandistes, sub hag 48, 2 vols (Brussels 1970) cap 156.Google Scholar

2 Ibid caps 145-6.

3 [‘The Rise and Function of the] Holy Man [in Late Antiquity’], JRS 61 (1971) pp 80–101 at p 98.Google Scholar

4 See [Julia] Seiber, [The Urban Saint in Early Byzantine Social History], British Archaeological Reports, Supplementary Series 37 (Oxford 1977) for the analysis of a limited number of texts. Compare [Robert, ] Browning, [The ‘Low Level’ Saint’s Life in the Early Byzantine World’] in The Byzantine Saint, University of Birmingham Fourteenth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Studies supplementary to Sobornost 5 (Birmingham 1981) pp 117–27 Google Scholar, a valuable composite image of the rural holy man.

5 Han J. W. Drijvers, ‘Hellenistic and Oriental Origins’ in The Byzantine Saint pp 25-33.

6 As noted by Browning p 122 and Patlagean, [Evelyne], Pauvreté [économique et pauvreté sociale à Byzance] (Paris 1977) p 103 Google Scholar.

7 Hypatii[Callinicus,] Vita (Teubner 1895) translated by Festugière, Les moines d’Orient vol 2 (Paris 1961) cap 40. Hypatios died in 446Google Scholar. His pupil Callinicus wrote the Life ‘wohl kaum vor dem 6. Jahrhundert’. See Beck p 404.

8 Vita Hypatii, cap 40.

9 Compare ibid cap 44 where doctors appear even more corrupt and mercenary.

10 Ibid cap 22.

11 Compare Brown, ‘Holy Man’, p 98, adducing Vita Hypatii, cap 40, and commenting that ‘the holy man appears far more often than we might at first sight suppose in a merely supporting rôle’.

12 On him, and for additional references in much of what follows see [Derek] Baker, , [‘Theodore of Sykeon and the Historians’], SCH 13, The Orthodox Churches and the West (1976) pp 83–96 Google Scholar. The encomium was edited by Kirch, C. from a twelfth-century manuscript in An Boi 20 (1901) pp 249–72.Google Scholar

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14 Full textual details and further references in Théodore, I pp xxiv-ix and Baker. Fresh examination of all the manuscripts is clearly called for.

15 By Baker.

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19 See below p 9-10.

20 Baker p 94.

21 Théodore cap 165.

22 See Kaegi, W.E. Jr, ‘New Evidence on the Early Reign of Heraclius’, BZ 66 (1973) pp 308–30 Google Scholar; ‘Notes on Hagiographic Sources for some Institutional Changes and Continuities in the Early Seventh Century’, Bizantina 7 (Thessalonika 1975) pp 59–70 Google Scholar; ‘Two Notes on Heraclius’, REB 37 (1979) pp 221–7 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Compare Baker p 95. I am grateful to Michael Whitby for references and advice on this point.

23 And hence would not have been noticed in the encomium. Compare Baker p 94.

24 Théodore cap 13. See further Patlagean, [Evelyne] [‘Ancienne] hagiographie byzantine [et histoire sociale‘], Annales 23 (1968) pp 106–23 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp 109-10.

25 Théodore cap 10.

26 Ibid cap80b.

27 Ibid cap 77 with commentary II p 221. Compare cap 121, where the effects of a purgative are also achieved miraculously, and cap 124.

28 Some references collected by Seiber pp 87-93. See also Magoulias, [H.J.], [‘The Lives of the Saints as Sources of Data for the History of Byzantine Medicine in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries’], BZ 57 (1954) pp 127–50 Google Scholar, which is often very unreliable.

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30 Vita Hypatii cap 44.

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32 See the statistics compiled, from a rather limited number of sources, by Moorhead, John, ‘Thoughts on Some Early Medieval Miracles’, Byzantine Papers Byzantina Australiensia 1 (Canberra 1981) pp 1–11 Google Scholar. On the larger question raised, Brown, [Peter], ‘Eastern and Western Christendom [in Late Antiquity: A Parting of the Ways’], SCH 13 (1976) pp 1–24 Google Scholar is fundamental.

33 Selber pp 97-100. See further Patlagean, Pauvreté, pp 105-12 for many additional references.

34 Brown, ‘Holy Man’, p 96.

35 Théodore cap 145.

36 Ibid capsl21,122.

37 Ibid cap26a.

38 Ibid cap 32.

39 Ibid caps 60, 117, 143.

40 See for example Artemii, Miracula S., ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Varia graeca sacra (St. Petersburg 1909), nos. 25, 44.Google Scholar

41 Brown, ‘Eastern and Western Christendom’, p 15; ‘Holy Man’, p 95.

42 See above n 36.

43 Compare Théodore cap 143, where the visit of an official prevents his going to a disaster-stricken village.

44 Ibid caps 97, 121,156.

45 See for example La Vie ancienne de S. Syméon Stylite le Jeune, ed Ven, Paul van den, Societé des Bollandistes, sub hag 32, 2 vols (Brussels 1962 Google Scholar, 1970) cap 102 and editor’s note.

46 See for example Miracula S. Artemii no 23 on the ‘braggarts’ Hippocrates and Galen, and the miracles of Cyrus and John passim, in the new edition of Marcos, Natalio Fernandez. Los ‘thaumata’ de Sofronio. Contribución al estudio de la ‘incubano’ Cristiana (Madrid 1975)Google Scholar.

47 Compare Magoulias, justly criticized by Patlagean, Pauvreté, p 103.

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49 See for example the useful collection of references in Frings, Hermann Josef, Medizin und Arzt bei den Griechischen Kirchenvätern bis Chrysoslomos (Bonn 1959)Google Scholar. Basil and Sampson were not the only saints to whom medical knowledge was ascribed.

50 PO 18 pp 643-4.

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52 Some references, not always adequately interpreted, in Evert-Kappesowa, Halina, ‘The Social Rank of a Physician in the Early Byzantine Empire’, Byzance et les Slaues Mélanges Iuan Dujčeu (Paris? 1980) pp 139–64 Google Scholar.

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57 (London and Chicago 1981) pp 11 seq.

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59 De medicamentis, praef, 2, 2.

60 Compare Brown, ‘Holy Man’, p 100: ‘the holy man was thought of as having taken into his person, skills that had previously been preserved by society at large’.

61 See Schwartz, Lola R., ‘The Hierarchy of Resort in Curative Practice: The Admiralty Islands Melanesia’ Journal of Health and Social Behaviour 10 (New York 1969) pp 201–9 Google Scholar. See further Foster, George M. and Anderson, Barbara Gallatin, Medical Anthropology (New York 1978) pp 248-9.Google ScholarPubMed

62 Sec Crapanzo, Vincent, The Hamadsha. A Study in Moroccan Etlmopsychiatry (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1973) pp 178–83 Google Scholar, for a striking case study.

63 ‘Holy Man’, pp 91-3.

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