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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Tensions between public and private forms of religiosity have been endemic to Christianity since its institutionalization during the first four centuries AD. That process was in part characterized by the clerical curtailment of alternative routes of divine access which bypassed the structures of the Church and the controls which it operated: most notably, Scripture and sacrament. Acts had imagined the last Christian days as a spiritual age of prophecy, visions and dreams, but the rapid association of such phenomena with rigorist, schismatic or heretical groups – particularly the Gnostics, Montanists and Manichaeans – rendered them suspect if scripturally unassailable. Dreaming – ‘the paradigm of the open frontier’, ‘epiphany’s most open level’ – became strictly delineated by episcopally defined typologies which restricted access to the divine and necessitated arbitration, thus protecting the centrality and authority of the Church. Those typologies not only emphasized the relative rarity of divinely inspired dreams (as opposed to the physiological or demonic), they also stressed the special status of the recipient. They thus partook of a late antique professionalization of the holy by which an emergent spiritual elite attempted to exercise an unprecedented monopoly on the supernatural.
1 Acts 2: 17; cf. Joel 2: 28.
2 See 1. Moreira, , Dreams, Visions and Spiritual Authority in Merovingian Gaul (Ithaca, NY, 2000), 22–29.Google Scholar
3 Brown, P., The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA, 1978), 65.Google Scholar
4 Fox, R. Lane, Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth, 1986), 149.Google Scholar
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6 See Brown, The Making.
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8 Incubation is the ancient practice whereby a sick individual visits a healing shrine, experiences a dream of the relevant deity or saint, and is consequently healed.
9 For the Miracles of Cyrus and John, see Marcos, N. F., Los Thaumata de Sofronio: Contribucion al estudio de la incubatio Cristiana (Madrid, 1975)Google Scholar; Gascou, J., trans., Sophrone de Jérusalem: Miracles des Saints Cyr et Jean (Paris, 2006)Google Scholar. Here I have used Marcos’s critical edition with the textual emendations suggested by Gascou and by Duffy, J., ‘Observations on Sophronius’s Miracles of Cyrus and John’, JThS 35 (1984), 71–90 Google Scholar; idem, ‘The Miracles of Cyrus and John: New Old Readings from the Manuscript’, Illinois Classical Studies 12 (1987), 169–77 Google Scholar. For the prologue I have used Pauline Bringel’s critical text, Sophrone de Jérusalem, Préface et Panégyrique [online text] (15 June 2005), at <http://halshs.ccsd.cnrs.fr/halshs-00003975>, accessed June 2006. All translations are my own.
10 On Sophronius himself, see the fundamental account of Schönborn, C. von, Sophrone de Jérusalem: Vie monastique et confession dogmatique (Paris, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Miracles, see esp. Marcos, Los Thaumata, 1–239; Maraval, P., ‘Fonction pédagogique de la littérature hagiographique d’un lieu de pèlerinage: l’exemple des Miracles de Cyr et Jean’, in Patlagean, E. and Riche, P., eds, Hagiographie, cultures et sociétés: IVe-XIIe siècles (Paris, 1981), 383–97 Google Scholar; Montserrat, D., ‘Pilgrimage to the Shrine of SS Cyrus and John at Menouthis in Late Antiquity’, in Frankfurter, D., ed., Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt (Leiden, 1997) 257–79 Google Scholar; idem, ‘“Carrying on the Work of the Earlier Firm”: Doctors, Medicine and Christianity in the Thaumata of Sophronius of Jerusalem’, in H. King, ed., Health in Antiquity (London, 2005), 230–42; Déroche, V., Tensions et contradictions dans les recueils de miracles de la première époque byzantine’, in Aigle, D., ed., Miracle et karama: Hagiographies médiévales comparées (Turnhout, 2000), 145–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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13 The majority of miracles recall the performance of the ‘customary rites’, and frequently involve the Saturday nocturnal vigil performed by devotees of the saint. See, for example, Miracle 33, the context of which is entirely ritualized. For the text with accompanying English translation, see Crisafulli, V. S. and Nesbitt, J. W., eds, The Miracles of St. Artemios: A Collection of Miracle Stories by an Anonymous Author of Seventh-Century Byzantium (Leiden, 1997).Google Scholar
14 Miracles 16.1-2 (Marcos, Los Thaumata, 274–75).
15 Ibid. 21.1 (Marcos, Los Thaumata, 282).
16 The analogy is further reinforced by the consistent ambiguity of recurrent words in Greek, e.g. pathos, disease/passion; charis, favour/grace; soteria, bodily health/salvation; and lutrosis, release/redemption.
17 Miracles 38.9 (Marcos, Los Thaumata, 334).
18 Ibid. 30.8 (Marcos, Los Thaumata, 304).
19 Ibid. 9.3; 23.2; 62.1 (Marcos, Los Thaumata, 257, 285, 379).
20 Ibid., Prologue, 11.1-9 (Bringel, Sophrone, 26). Cf. Schönborn, Sophrone, 225–28, who applies the same analysis to Sophronius’s sermon On Peter and Paul.
21 Miracles 29.1 (Marcos, Los Thaumata, 298).
22 Ibid. 1.6 (Marcos, Los Thaumata, 244).
23 Frequently a patient must undergo an extraordinary test of faith before being cured. See, for example, ibid. 69, in which a Roman patient awaits the saints in the open air for eight years. Cf. ibid. 13, where a patient is overcome by the demon of accidie and abandons his supplications at the shrine; rebuked by the saints, he is subsequently healed.
24 Ibid. 64.6 (Marcos, Los Thaumata, 383).
25 On the concept of illness as asceticism in the patristic tradition, see Larchet, J.-C., The Theology of Illness (New York, 2002), 64–68.Google Scholar
26 It should also be noted that enigmatic dreams are exceptional, and only once does one glimpse a possible ecclesiastical arbitration of divine power through dream interpretation; see Miracles 11.8.
27 On the place of the eucharist in the genre, see Csepgregi, I., ‘Mysteries for the Uninitiated: The Role and Symbolism of the Eucharist in Miraculous Dream Healing’, in Perczel, I., Forrai, R. and Geréby, G., eds, The Eucharist in Theology and Philosophy: Issues of Doctrinal History in East and Westfrom the Patristic Age to the Reformation (Leuven, 2006), 97–130.Google Scholar
28 Miracles 38.10-11 (Marcos, Los Thaumata, 335).
29 Thus the eucharist is only mentioned at Miracles 12, 31, 32, 36, 37, 38 and 39, all of which involve conversion to Christianity or to Chalcedonian orthodoxy. In all such instances the rituals are performed entirely by the saints, and clerics themselves are absent. See also the memorable quasi-baptism performed by the saints in the shrine’s bath complex: ibid. 52.3-4.
30 Compare Sophronius’s defence of eucharistie efficacy (ibid. 36.16), which demonstrates an awareness of the problematic relationship between sacrament and asceticism in his scheme.
31 Ibid. 16.4 (Marcos, Los Thaumata, 275). See also Schonborn, , Sophrone, 144–47, 179–89.Google Scholar
32 For the critical edition of Eustratius’s text, see now Eustratii Presbiteri Constantinopolitani De statu animarum post mortem (CPG 7522), ed. Peter Van Deun, CChr.SG 60 (Turnhout and Louvain, 2006). For discussion, see esp. D. Krausmüller, ‘Gods or Angels as Impersonators of Saints: A Belief and its Contexts in the “Refutation” of Eustratius of Constantinople and in the Writings of Anastasius of Sinai’, Golden Horn 6/2 (1998–9) [online journal], <http://isidore-of-seville.com/goudenhoorn/62dirk.html>, accessed September 2005; N. Constas, ‘An Apology for the Cult of the Saints in Late Antiquity: Eustratius Presbyter of Constantinople, On the State of Souk after Death (CPG 7522)’, JECS 10 (2002), 267–85.
33 Miracles 51.10-11 (Marcos, Los Thaumata, 364). A similar discrimination between angel and saint is made in the Miracles of Artemius 34.
34 Monenergist Christology acknowledged the two natures of Christ but proposed a single operation, the disputed ‘theandric activity’ of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Conversely, dyenergist Christology conceived both divine and human energies operating simultaneously in synergy, and argued that Pseudo-Dionysius had actually proposed a ‘new theandric activity’. On both, see now Hovorun, S., Will, Action and Freedom: Christological Controversies in the Seventh Century (Leiden, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
35 Constas, ‘An Apology’, 275.
36 While the dispute over monotheletism crystallized in the period immediately following Sophronius’s death, the differentiation of divine and human wills in the incarnation is nevertheless fundamental to his theology. For that theology, see Schönborn, , Sophrone, 157–238.Google Scholar
37 Ibid. 179–99.
38 Ibid. 228–38.
39 Miracles 70.18 (Marcos, Los Thaumata, 398). For similar references see ibid. 8.11; 52.3; 70.12 (Marcos, Los Thaumata, 256, 365, 397).
40 See Krausmüller, D., ‘The Real and the Individual: Byzantine Concepts of the Resurrection, Part 1’, Golden Horn 5/1 (Summer 1997) [online journal], <http://isidore-of-seville.com/goudenhoorn/5idirk.html>Google Scholar, accessed 1 September 2005; idem, Timothy of Antioch: Byzantine Concepts of the Resurrection, Part 2’, Golden Horn 5/2 (Winter 1997–98) [online journal], <http://isidore-of-seville.com/goudenhoorn/52dirk.html>, accessed 1 September 2005.
41 See esp. Miracles of Artemius 34; Miracles of Cosmos and Damian 13. For the text of the latter, see Deubner, L., Kosmas und Damian: Text uni Einleitung (Leipzig, 1907)Google Scholar; trans. Festugière, A.-J., Sainte Thècle, Saints Còme et Damien, Saints Cyr et Jean (extraits), Saint George (Paris, 1971), 83–213.Google Scholar
42 In Sophronius’s text, see Miracle 36. It is possible that such instances are later iconophile interpolations, although references within the Miracles of Cyrus and John are few, tangential and certainly not inconsistent with the broader theological scheme. On the issue of interpolation, see Brubaker, L., ‘Icons before Iconoclasm?’, in Cavallo, G. et al., eds, Morfologie sociali e culturali in Europa fra tarda antichità e alto medioevo: XLV Settimana intemazionale di studio (Spoleto, 1998), 1215–54.Google Scholar
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45 See Haldon, , ‘Ideology and Social Change’.Google Scholar
46 On the sacramental minimalism of early Byzantine ascetic theory, and the attempted reconciliation of ascetic and sacramental theologies in the wake of the Persian and Arab invasions (not least by Sophronius himself), see Booth, P., ‘John Moschus, Sophronius Sophista and Maximus Confessor between East and West’ (unpublished Ph. D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 2008).Google Scholar
