Crisis of Empire. Phil Booth
is duly cured, Sophia gives to the church “as much as possible, and in accordance with the saint’s supervision she enrolled herself in the night vigil there.”208
The near-total absence from Sophronius’s narratives of liturgical context—or, at least, its sublimation into the realm of the saints—seems therefore quite remarkable. Where the Miracles of Artemius prescribes the performance of certain preparatory rituals (ta ethē) as an efficacious method of appeasing the saint, the Miracles of Cyrus and John demands only resolute faith and resistance to the passions. Furthermore, where the Miracles of Thecla, the Miracles of Cosmas and Damian, and (in particular) the Miracles of Artemius all emphasize the special healing power and spiritual benefit of liturgical contexts, in the Miracles of Cyrus and John such contexts are lacking (even if the presence of the patient at the shrine itself is an apparent necessity).209 Sophronius’s silence both on ritual acts and on ritual contexts should not, however, be interpreted as a comment on the absence of such things from the shrine itself, for the Miracles of Cyrus and John in fact hints at more ritualized regimes that conditioned the experiences of supplicants at the shrine.210 Rather, that absence points to the author’s own ambiguous attitude toward such acts as an efficacious method of improving the soul and thus appeasing the saints. Indeed, Sophronius’s silence is all the more remarkable when we consider that his miracle narratives are informed by, and integrated within, a far broader theological scheme. He presents his narratives not as simple tales for the straightforward edification of his audience but rather as analogies for the entire Christian existence. In order to be healed (and thus also to be saved), the text emphasizes, one must strive to improve the soul, but that improvement is achieved not through participation in ritual (beyond the initial illumination offered to converts in the eucharist) but rather through the adoption of the virtues, resistance to the passions, and willing obedience to God (in imitation of Christ and his saints). In comparison with ascetic self-transformation, engagement with the external realities of the Church, as a continuous mode of spiritual enlightenment, here seems insignificant.
According to Leontius of Neapolis’s Life of John the Almsgiver, the patriarch at Easter used to deliver sermons in which, under inspiration from Sophronius, he railed against the participation of heretics in the Chalcedonian eucharist:211
[We have shown] how much of an immovable zealot was the hieromyst for the orthodox faith, and a great despiser, in particular, of the leaders of heresies. And just as the divinely inspired disciples did for Paul, thus the celebrated [John] put forward Sophronius as a warrior of doctrine and pious dogmas. Often he commanded and bore witness, especially in his festal letters to the people, the point that they should never, at any time, share or approach communion with those of a different faith [hē tōn heteropistōn koinōnia], or rather defilement [koinōsis]. . . . “How, [he proclaimed], when we have been joined to God through the orthodox and catholic church and faith . . . will we not have a share in the punishment that awaits the crowds of heretics in the world to come, if we defile the orthodox and holy faith and pervert it through communion with heretics [dia tēs koinōnias tōn hairetikōn]? . . . And so I entreat you, my children, do not touch upon such oratories: no, I beg, not for communion, nor for prayer, nor for sleeping [eis parakoimēsin].”
The tone of the sermon—which, as Déroche has suggested, may have come from the pen of Moschus and Sophronius themselves—of course resonates with a central theme of the Miracles of Cyrus and John: that is, the importance of eucharistic participation in constructing the boundaries between orthodox and heretic.212 Where other cultic authors comment on the eucharist in passing, Sophronius affords it a central place within his collection (conceptually and literally), pointing to the necessity of eucharistic communion as the central expression of adherence to Chalcedonian doctrine.213 Therein he recapitulated, and perhaps responded to, the parallel emphasis developed within anti-Chalcedonian texts such as the Plerophoriae.
The importance of the eucharist to Sophronius’s vision must nevertheless be qualified. In constructing narratives that celebrated supernatural experiences of the saints, the authors of all miracle collections were aware of the centrifugal pull that unrestricted, unmediated supernatural access might exert.214 While the celebration of the saints of itself precluded a pervasive emphasis on terrestrial mediation—thought not, it should be noted, in equivalent Western collections215—those same authors nevertheless attempted to counteract that pull through the imposition of certain centralizing imperatives. In the Miracles of Thecla, the Miracles of Cosmas and Damian, and the Miracles of Artemius, as we have observed, that qualification is achieved through subtle emphases on clerical structures: in the Miracles of Thecla, continuous reference to the local clerical establishment and the special place accorded to the saint’s feast; and in the Miracles of Cosmas and Damian and Miracles of Artemius, intermittent references to ecclesial contexts and to the special favor that such contexts confer. Each of these authors thus constructed a particular model of proper cultic practice that contextualized the dream experience within the liturgical rhythms and hierarchical structures of the shrine itself.216
In Sophronius’s Miracles, however, those same emphases are conspicuous for their absence. Sophronius’s text, we must remember, is the longest and most complex of all miracle collections,217 imbued with an intricate soteriological metaphor through which the progression of its narratives parallels the movement of the Christian life through corruption to redemption. The remarkable absence of ecclesiastical structures from the Miracles of Cyrus and John, therefore, appears not as an accident of genre but rather as a deliberate exclusion, a comment on the ambiguous status of those structures within Sophronius’s comprehension of the spiritual life. Of all miracle authors, Sophronius is the most concerned to integrate the eucharist within his scheme: it provides an initial moment of spiritual enlightenment and is, furthermore, the quintessential expression of membership within the Chalcedonian Church. But despite its elevated status, the relevance of eucharistic communion as a permanent mode of spiritual progression is at best ambiguous. For Sophronius, the appeasement of Christ involves engagement not with the outward structures of the Church but rather with resistance to the passions and obedience to God in Christlike imitation. His theological vision in effect replicates the eucharistic minimalism that we have observed among the earliest ascetic generations.
In the end, therefore, Sophronius presents a Chalcedonian group defined less through mutual orientation around the orthodox eucharist and more through shared doctrine and ascetic endeavor. That endeavor nevertheless embraces all orthodox Christians, irrespective of social or geographical status, for Sophronius includes within his scheme Christians of all imaginable callings, from the highest to the lowest,218 from the nearest to the farthest.219 That inclusive emphasis is important, for it will appear again and again in the texts produced within his circle.220 Indeed, in subsequent decades it would come to complement a striking modification of that same circle’s attitudes to eucharistic participation, through which Moschus, Maximus, and indeed Sophronius would attempt further to close the conceptual gap between asceticism and eucharist, adding to Sophronius’s doctrinal emphasis an urgent imperative that all orthodox Chalcedonians, including monastics, partake of the unrivaled spiritual gifts conferred through regular communion.
In the course of time, Sophronius’s attitudes to heretics would also undergo a significant evolution. At the time of the text’s composition, we should recall, Sophronius is said to have been a prominent doctrinal disputant of the patriarch John, entrusted with engaging with local dissenters. (Thus we may read as somewhat autobiographical the striking scene in Miracles of Cyrus and John 12 in which the saints are said to “dispute over dogma” with the recalcitrant anti-Chalcedonian Julian.)221 In the Miracles of Cyrus and John, there can be little doubt as to the author’s adherence to Chalcedonian doctrine or to the errors of the Theodosians, Severans, Julianists, Apollinarians, and Gaianites whom he critiques.222 Nevertheless, it should also be noted that explicit reference to Chalcedon occurs in but one tale, and in comparison to some later texts—the Spiritual Meadow of his master John Moschus, for example, or his own sermons—his attitude to heretics appears as somewhat moderate.223 Indeed, at the end of that short but central sequence of vignettes that concerns the conversion of heretics, Sophronius even offers a remarkable defense of his failure to expand on the theme: “I want to recall even more miracles of those