Crisis of Empire. Phil Booth
see Déroche (1993) 105f.; Haldon (1992) 137–39.
71. Schönborn (1972) 225.
72. See, e.g., the incurable diseases at Miracles of Thecla 11, 24, 25, 38; Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 21, 22. In these collections the doctors and the saints can be seen even to collaborate; see Miracles of Thecla 11, 24; and esp. Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 19a, a wonderful description of a surgeon in action (under impulsion from the saints). Cf., however, the references to the simple remedies supplied by the saint (or saints), perhaps implying that doctors provide the opposite, at Miracles of Thecla 8, 18, 23; also Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 23. On the status of medicine within these texts see Dagron (1978) 107f.; Johnson (2006) 147ff.; Csepregi (2002) 107–12.
73. See Sophronius, Prologue to the Miracles 9 and Miracles 70.7.
74. Ibid. 1.11 [Marcos 246].
75. Sophronius, Miracles 32.4 [Marcos 309].
76. Sophronius, Miracles 69.5 [Marcos 392]. For similar statements see also Sophronius, Miracles 6.2, 24.3, 28.6, 29.10, 40.4.
77. An epithet primarily associated with Cosmas and Damian but used at Sophronius, Miracles 21.5 [Marcos 283].
78. Sophronius, Miracles 19.2 [Marcos 279].
79. Sophronius, Miracles 23.1 [Marcos 285]. Cf. Sophronius, Miracles 5.1, 12.5, 30.5.
80. Sophronius, Miracles 13.2 [Marcos 270].
81. Sophronius, Miracles 19.2 [Marcos 279].
82. See Sophronius, Miracles 17.3; 22.2; 30.6; 54.6.
83. Ibid. 15.1 [Marcos 272f.].
84. Sophronius, Miracles 58.1 [Marcos 373].
85. Sophronius, Miracles 64.3 [Marcos 383]. Cf. also Sophronius, Miracles 21.1, 23.1, 65.2.
86. Sophronius, Miracles 20.2 [Marcos 281].
87. Sophronius, Miracles 55.1 [Marcos 370]. Sophronius often acknowledges a hierarchy of medical ability; see Sophronius, Miracles 8.9, 9.2, 11.1, 21.3, 25.3, 28.6, 30.2, 32.12, 48.2, 54.5, 60.2, 70.4.
88. For instances of magic see Sophronius, Miracles 12, 21, 27, 35, 55, 63, 68. For demonic diseases, both through possession and assault, see ibid. 3, 9, 14, 26, 34, 35, 36, 40, 41, 44, 49, 54, 56, 57, 63, 65, 67. In certain cases magic and the demonic are equated; see ibid. 35.12, 63.1.
89. Ibid. 16.1–2 [Marcos 274f.]. On this passage see also Maraval (1981) 391.
90. For an informative contrast to this position see the words of Sophronius’s disciple Maximus Confessor in the Dispute at Bizya 3 [Allen and Neil 78]; also Maximus Confessor, Centuries on Love 1.64.
91. Sophronius, Miracles 1.6 [Marcos 244]. For a similar tale of a dissolute youth cf. Sophronius, Miracles 12.2–3 (drawing on the metaphor of the chariot in Plato’s Phaedrus 246a–254e).
92. See Sophronius, Miracles 1.7–8.
93. Thus in the same miracle, ibid. 1.10 [Marcos 245], Sophronius tells us that Ammonius “forgot his previous correction [paideia] and was corrected [paideuetai] again with an illness of the body.” For the punishment of skeptics, pagans, and astrologers with illness cf. Sophronius, Miracles 28.6, 29.9–10, 30.5, 32.4; with Maraval (1981) 384–86, Dagron (1992) 60f. In most instances heresy seems not to produce disease but rather to prevent cure; see, e.g., Sophronius, Miracles 12.6 [Marcos 266], in which a patient’s dogma “stands in the way of the provision of a complete health.” Where heretics prove intransigent, however, or revert back to their previous dogma, the martyrs either intensify their disease or inflict a new one. For the former see Sophronius, Miracles 12.8; 39.5; for the latter see ibid. 37.7, 38.7–9, 39.10.
94. Sophronius, Miracles 63.3 [Marcos 381].
95. Sophronius, Miracles 43.3 [Marcos 347]. Cf. Sophronius, Miracles 22.3 [Marcos 284]: “If the blessed martyrs heal from God, then terrestrial doctors heal from man and from the earth.” For the saints as healers of both bodies and souls cf. Miracles of Thecla 18; Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 2, 6, 9, 11, 23, 25; Miracles of Artemius 7.
96. For statements of the saints’ superiority see, e.g., Sophronius, Miracles 18.3, 41.6.
97. For the various diseases within the text, with equivalent references in Dioscorides, Galen, Aetius of Amida, Alexander of Tralles, Paul of Aegina, and other medical authors, see Marcos (1975) 108–11. For such phrases as “the Asclepiadae call this . . .” see, e.g., Sophronius, Miracles 1.3, 15.2, 20.2, 22.1–2, 32.4, 36.4. For the use of Hippocratic terminology and theory (esp. with reference to the humors) see, e.g., ibid. 4.2, 5.1, 8.6, 9.9–10. Sophronius often presents both doctors and patients employing humoral theory; see ibid. 18.3, 35.4, 54.5, 70.5.
98. John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 77 [PG 87:3, 2929D]. For the translation of hina praxōmen as “in order to study” see Schönborn (1972) 58f. For the textual variation see Maisano (1982) 243; and below p. 91 n. 5.
99. Wolska-Conus (1989) 47–59. For Stephanus see also PLRE vol. 3; Temkin (1991) 228–30.
100. Wolska-Conus (1989) 59. It is of interest to note the appearance of a Sophronius among Stephanus’s intellectual circle in another text, the astrological Apotelesmatikē pragmateia attributed to Stephanus himself; see Papathanassiou (2006) esp. 196–98, identifying the text’s Sophronius with Sophronius of Jerusalem (and thus placing him with Stephanus in Constantinople in September 621).
101. See, e.g., Horden (1982) 9f.; Duffy (1984a) 24f.; Miller (1985) 64; Haldon (1997) 44.
102. For the critique of astrological predestination see Sophronius, Miracles 28.2–5; see also Maraval (1981) 389f.
103. See esp. Sophronius, Miracles 67.10–11 [Marcos 389], in which the saints round upon a janitor who has admitted a “quack” (iatriskos) to their shrine in an attempt to save a suicide.
104. For the saints’ shrine as iatreion: Miracles of Thecla 25; Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 9, 10, 12, 22. For Cosmas and Damian acting as doctors on their rounds, or performing surgeries, see ibid. 1, 17, 23. For the principle of superiority through assimilation see the discussion of Davis (2001) 76–77. Cf. Déroche (1993) 103 n. 22.
105. “Doctors”: Sophronius, Miracles 1.5, 4.3, 7.1, 8.5, 10.6, 23.1, 50.6, 52.2; iatreion: ibid. 10.6, 17.3, 42.4, 67.10. See also ibid. 33.8 (“in the form of doctors,” as master and apprentice), 62.4 (like doctors on their rounds). On assimilation to doctors cf. also Montserrat (2005) 238–40; Déroche (2000) 155–60. The latter argues that the authors of miracle collections, even though in competition with secular medicine, were forced to assimilate it to some degree, not only for the reassurance of patients and persuasion of the medically minded but also because such authors could not stretch the limits of what the public would accept.
106. Oil: Sophronius, Miracles 1, 3, 7, 22, 50, 65; direct intervention in a dream: ibid. 11, 12, 14, 16, 19, 21, 33, 53.
107. See ibid. 4.4 (citron fruit), 5.4 (dried fig), 8.14 (cooked peas), 10.7 (honey), 13.6 (camel dung mixed with water), 17.4 (salted cumin), 51.8 (Bithynian cheese), 53.2 (roasted pepper), 59.4 (raw leeks). The same is true of more exotic products: powdered crocodile meat (24.5), for example, or an unguent of salted quail (43.4). Such remedies (powders, unguents) are furthermore prescribed in technical language that reeks of the lexicon of secular medicine; see the cure ibid. 6.3 [Marcos 252], said to be a “compound [sunthēma] made from parsnip and honey and mixed through rubbing [dia tripseōs] with a bread to become from both a single plaster [kataplasma].” On the closeness of Sophronius’s cures to both contemporary technical and popular medicine cf. Marcos (1975) 136–52; Wolska-Conus (1989) 47–59; Montserrat (2005) 235f. For Byzantine materia medica see Scarborough (1984); Stannard (1984).
108. See, e.g., Sophronius, Miracles 20.4, 25.6, 36.8–10.
109. Ibid. 30.4 [Marcos 303].
110. Sophronius, Miracles 30.5 [Marcos 303]. Cf. Sophronius, Miracles 52.1 [Marcos 365] on the chief doctor (archiētros) Zosimus: “And he who had promised a cure to others was not able to help himself.”
111.