247 Shenoute of Atripe on Christ the Physician And

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SHENOUTE OF ATRIPE ON CHRIST THE PHYSICIAN AND THE CURE OF SOULS

Christianity has long been characterized by both adherents and out- siders as a religion of healing, if not the emblematic religion of healing, and prominent among the enduring motifs of Christian theology is that of Christus medicus, Christ the physician1. Theologians as early as Ignatius of Antioch have drawn on familiar motifs of medical (i.e., physical or bodily) healing to characterize the saving power of Christ2. While the image of Christ the physician draws much of its power and immediacy from the Gospels’ familiar stories of Jesus as healer of physi-

1 Studies of healing in early Christianity approach both the theological and organiza- tional/medical aspects. Regarding theology, see the recent survey in M. DÖRNEMANN, Krankheit und Heilung in der Theologie der frühen Kirchenväter (Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum, 20), Tübingen, 2003, which has been instrumental for this article (= DÖRNEMANN, Krankheit und Heilung); as well as the classic study by A. VON HARNACK, Medizinisches aus der ältesten Kirchengeschichte, in Texte und Untersuch- ungen, 8.4 (1894), p. 125-47, revised and expanded in The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, trans. J. MOFFATT, New York, 1961 (1908), p. 101-124 (= HARNACK, Mission), which in my opinion has yet to be surpassed as a short survey of the early Christian theology of healing (including the Christus medicus theme). Other complementary studies have focused more on the institutions of health care in early Christianity, such as G.B. FERNGREN, Early Christianity as a Religion of Healing, in Bul- letin of the History of Medicine, 66 (1992), p. 1-15; IDEM, Organization of the Care of the Sick in Early Christianity, in Actes/Proceedings, XXX Congrès international d’histoire de la médecine, Düsseldorf 31-VIII – 5-IX-1986, Leverkusen, 1988, p. 192-97; R. STARK, The Rise of Christianity, San Francisco, 1997 (reprint of Princeton, 1996), p. 73-94; H. AVALOS, Health Care and the Rise of Christianity, Peabody, Mass., 1999; G.B. FERNGREN – D.W. AMUNDSEN, Medicine and Christianity in the Roman Empire: Compat- ibilities and Tensions, in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 37.3 (1996), p. 2957-80; and IDEM, The Early Christian Tradition, in R.L. NUMBERS – D.W. AMUNDSEN (ed.), Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious Traditions, New York, 1986, p. 40-64; and cursorily in A. PORTERFIELD, Healing in the History of Christianity, New York, 2005, p. 43-65. More specific studies of ecclesiastical healing in late antique Egypt include A.T. CRISLIP, From Monastery to Hospital: Christian Monasticism and the Transformation of Health Care in Late Antiquity, Ann Arbor, 2005 (= CRISLIP, From Monastery to Hospital); R. BARRETT-LENNARD, The Canons of Hippolytus and Christian Concern with Illness, Health, and Healing, in The Journal of Early Christian Studies, 13 (2005), p. 137-164; IDEM, Christian Healing after the New Testament: Some Approaches to Illness and Healing in the Second, Third, and Fourth Centuries, Lanham, Md., 1994. 2 Ignatius of Antioch, Eph. 7, 20, Trall. 6. R. Arbesmann’s assemblage of citations gives a fair impression of the widespread popularity of Christus medicus imagery in Greek and Latin Patristics, R. ARBESMANN, The Concept of ‘Christus Medicus’ in St. Augustine, in Traditio, 10 (1954), p. 1-28 (= ARBESMANN, Concept of ‘Christus Medicus’), supple- menting HARNACK, Mission.

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cal ailments, E.M. Cioran’s aphorism from his 1933 hagiographical meditation, Tears and Saints, is still apt: “Had Christ promised us hygiene instead of the heavenly kingdom, we would not have been seeking solace in saints ever since his death!”3 For all the emphasis on the cure of the lame, withered, bleeding, and possessed at the hands of Jesus and his apostles, ancient theological reflection on Christ the divine physician develops the Son’s role less as bearer of hygieia, and more as bearer of soteria: healer of the soul and bringer of eternal life in the kingdom to come, especially through the life-giving sacrament of his body and blood4. As a corollary, the priesthood, the episcopacy, and – in late antiquity – monks came to the fore as dispensers and administrators of this saving medicine on earth, the cure of souls. This cure was to be effected not only through the Eucharist, “the potion of immortality,” but also through various forms of public and private confession, homiletics and consolation, and the refutation of the “pestilential” teachings of heretics5. In the course of late antiquity many in the diverse theological cultures of the ancient Mediterranean world would put the image of Christ the physician to use in establishing and elaborating their theological and disciplinary programs. In the context of early Egyptian Christi- anity – the focus of the present essay – such authors include Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Evagrius of Pontus, to name but a few6.

3 E.M. CIORAN, Tears and Saints, trans. I. ZARIFOPOL-JOHNSTON, Chicago, 1995 (1933), p. 67. 4 HARNACK, Mission, p. 103-104. 5 “Potion of immortality” is one among several widespread formulations, HARNACK, Mission, p. 109. On the expansion of Christus medicus theology to incorporate his apostles and prophets, and then his clergy, saints, and monks, see the recent study by L. DYSINGER, OSB, Prayer and Psalmody in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus (Oxford Theological Monographs), Oxford, 2005, p. 107-113 (= DYSINGER, Psalmody and Prayer). Confession and penitence is at the core of the Christian “cure of souls” traditions. For a standard survey of the cure of souls, ubiquitous throughout Christian history, see J.T. MACNEILL, A History of the Cure of Souls, New York, 1951, especially p. 88-111 for late antiquity. Characterization of heretical teachings as pestilential is a widespread topos from Ignatius of Antioch on. See DYSINGER, Psalmody and Prayer, p. 104-105. 6 Studies abound concerning the theological appropriation of medical imagery (including the cure of souls) in individual patristic authors that have appeared since Harnack’s early survey (see n.1 above), so Origen (S. FERNANDEZ, Cristo medico según Orígenes: La actividad médica como metáfora de la acción divina [Studia ephemeridis “Augustinianum”, 64], Rome, 1999), Evagrius (DYSINGER, Prayer and Psalmody; A. GUILLAUMONT and C. GUILLAUMONT, Évagre le Pontique: Le gnostique, ou À celui qui est devenu digne de la science [Sources chrétiennes, 356], Paris, 1989, p. 151), Augustine (ARBESMANN, Concept of ‘Christus Medicus’), Ambrose (D.M. FOLEY, Ambrose’s Adaption of Medical Knowledge, in Studia patristica, 38, Leuven, 2001, p. 400-404), Ephraem the Syrian (A. SHEMUNKASHO, Healing in the Theology of St. Ephrem [Gorgias Dissertations, Near East Series, 1], Piscataway, N.J., 2002 [= SHEMUNKASHO, Healing in the Theology of Saint Ephrem]), Ps.-Macarius the Egyptian (Cure of Souls, p. 106),

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The present essay explores Christus medicus imagery in several theological works by the Coptic monk Shenoute of Atripe (fl. ca. AD 385- 465), archimandrite (abbot) of a federation of three monasteries near the modern Egyptian city of Sohag, a writer whose homiletic appropriation of the theme has been neglected7. The principal texts under investigation here, “I Am Amazed,” “The Spirit of God,” and “A Priest Will Never Cease,” are connected bibliographically by their sequential arrangement in a volume of Shenoute’s Discourses8. In these works, variously deliv- ered as public sermons or treatises intended for a mixed nonmonastic and monastic audience, Shenoute reveals himself to be actively engaged in theological issues and theological discourses shared among the Greek, Syriac, and Latin Christian cultures of the greater Mediterranean world. Furthermore, while Shenoute draws from the wellspring of late antique Christian theological discourse, it would be unfair to characterize Shenoute as entirely derivative of the dominant Greek theology of the fourth and fifth centuries. Rather, Shenoute adds his own unique, perhaps both personal and distinctively upper Egyptian, perspectives on the Christus medicus and cure of souls motifs. Thus, Shenoute’s adaptation and deployment of Christus medicus theology is important for contextualizing Shenoute within the theological cultures of late antiquity. But the Christus medicus theology of Shenoute’s Discourses is not of interest merely as a supplement to the intellectual history of late

Romanos the Melodist (R.J. SCHORK, The Medical Motif in the Kontakia of Romanos the Melodist, in Traditio, 16 [1960], p. 353-63). And medical imagery more broadly construed figures prominently in a number of Patristic authors, e.g., the Cappadocian Gregorys (M.E. KEENAN, St. Gregory of Nyssa and the Medical Profession, in Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 15 [1944], p. 150-61; and IDEM, St. Gregory of Nazianzus and Early Byzantine Medicine, in Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 9 [1941], p. 8-30); Origen (DYSINGER, Prayer and Psalmody, p. 106-110) and Jerome (A.S. PEASE, Medical Allusions in the Works of St. Jerome, in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 25 [1914], p. 73-86 [= PEASE, Medical Allusions]). For the Christus medicus motif in fourth- century Christian art (focusing narrowly on the representations of three Gospel healing pericopes) see D. KNIPP, ‘Christus Medicus’ in der frühchristlichen Sarkophagskultpur: Ikonographische Studien der Sepulkarlkunst des späten vierten Jahrhunderts (Supple- ments to Vigiliae Christianae, 37), Leiden, 1998 (= KNIPP, ‘Christus Medicus’). 7 Shenoute led the White Monastery federation for most of his alleged 118 years of life, most likely dying in 464/5 (traditionally on July 1 [7 Epep in the Egyptian calendar]). On the likely dates of Shenoute’s birth and death (as incredible as they may be) see the foundational study of Shenoute’s literary works by S. EMMEL, Shenoute’s Literary Corpus (CSCO, 599-600; Subsidia, 111-112), Louvain, 2004, p. 7-12 (= EMMEL, Shenoute’s Literary Corpus). 8 Works of Shenoute are cited in accordance with the titles assigned by EMMEL, Shenoute’s Literary Corpus. Works in Shenoute’s Discourses are cited according to incipits, such as preserved in the “Vienna incipit list,” ibidem, p. 235-43. The works from Shenoute’s Discourses discussed here present something of a different case because the beginning of the Vienna incipit list is not extant. See further discussion below.

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ancient theology. Rather, Christus medicus theology – as a discursive element – runs throughout Shenoute’s varied works and reflects both the complex and multifaceted roles that Shenoute played in Upper Egypt and the significant place that illness and its meaning held in Shenoute’s long and still poorly understood career, as well as in the history of Egyp- tian monasticism more generally. The bibliographical structure of the works of Shenoute has been reconstructed only recently, as presented in Stephen Emmel’s 2004 Shenoute’s Literary Corpus. As reconstructed by Emmel, using codico- logical data from the manuscripts of Shenoute’s works, the Vienna incipit list (representing the works of the Discourses) and the Flori- legium Sinuthianum (including selections from the Canons), Shenoute’s literary works are organized in a primarily bipartite bibliographical structure: the Canons and the Discourses9. The nine books of Canons (Nkanwn) include disciplinary and homiletic works, primarily intramonastic, while the eight books of Discourses (Nlogos) include a variety of more public works, treatises, homilies, and letters, directed toward an audience that also included nonmonastics. It appears that the ordering of works into the nine books of Canons was undertaken by Shenoute himself, perhaps near the end of his long career, while the ordering of the eight books of Discourses was probably undertaken after Shenoute’s death as a liturgical collection; according to what logic or precedent it is not yet determined. In addition to the primary binary bibliographical structure of the Canons and Discourses, a collection of Letters (Nepistoly) is also preserved, and was variously transmitted along with works in the Discourses and Canons. In addition, copious unplaced, acephalous works are preserved10. As Emmel’s reconstruction attests, Shenoute’s literary corpus is bibliographically complex, as well as literarily rich. A critical edition of the voluminous literary corpus of Shenoute, which – even in its current fragmentary and “dismembered” state – dwarfs that of any other Coptic author, has long been recognized as a primary desideratum in late ancient church history, and an international project to produce the critical edition is now underway under Emmel’s general editorship11.

9 On the Florilegium Sinuthianum and the Vienna incipit list see EMMEL, Shenoute’s Literary Corpus, p. 71-75, 87-88, 111-25, 235-43. 10 Emmel provides the fullest account of the contents of Shenoute’s works and the origin of their bibliographical structure. For the Canons, see ibidem, p. 553-58, for the Discourses and Letters, p. 606-609, and unplaced or acephalous works, p. 684-94. 11 On the dismembered state of Shenoute’s literary corpus see ibidem, p. 14-28. A number of recent studies (primarily Anglophone) have demonstrated the significant potential that Shenoute’s works hold for the intellectual and social histories of late antiq-

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The principal works under examination in the present essay belong to what is provisionally called Discourses 1, 2, or 3 (?), or Discourses X. Uncertainty as to the placement of the volume within Shenoute’s literary corpus (hence the [?] or X) arises because the beginning of the list of incipits of Shenoute’s works (the portion corresponding to Discourses X) is lost, as are the pages in the attesting manuscripts on which the volume number would normally be inscribed. But since the works that constitute this volume are attested in the same order in more than one manuscript, and their incipits do not correspond to those preserved in the extant remains of the Vienna incipit list or the Florilegium Sinuthianum, the volume has been hypothetically identified as Discourses 1, 2, or 3 (?), or Discourses X12. Although not preserved as completely as some other volumes of Shenoute’s writings, Discourses X is preserved in at least eight manuscripts, including the parallel preservation of “I Am Amazed” in Codex XE, which is the sole manuscript witness to Discourses 713. The manuscript witnesses overlap frequently, so the text critical issues are at times problematic. In the following discussion, however, I will not focus on the text critical issues, although the one passage where the manuscript tradition diverges is duly noted. This volume includes five works (in bibliographical order): “I Am Amazed,” “The Spirit of God,” “A Priest Will Never Cease,” “When the Word Says,” and “As I Sat on a Mountain.” Thematically the five works included in this volume of the Discourses are prominently linked by their interests in theology and ecclesiology (Shenoute’s many other interests are explored elsewhere in the Discourses). “I Am Amazed” comprises a lengthy and multifaceted attack against various heresies (#airesis), including Nestorians, Melitians, adherents of Origen, and others claiming special “knowledge.” This is perhaps the most familiar of Shenoute’s works, certainly outside the confines of Coptic Studies, due to a preliminary edition and Italian translation by Tito Orlandi (un-

uity, e.g., R. KRAWIEC, Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery, New York, 2002; B. LAYTON, Social Structure and Food Consumption in an Early Christian Monas- tery: The Evidence of Shenoute’s Canons and the White Monastery Federation A.D. 385- 465, in Le Muséon, 115 (2002), p. 25-55; IDEM, Rules, Patterns, and the Exercise of Power in Shenoute’s Monastery: The Problem of World Replacement and Identity Main- tenance, in Journal of Early Christian Studies 15 (2007), p. 45-73; C.T. SCHROEDER, Monastic Bodies: Discipline and Salvation in Shenoute of Atripe (Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religions), Philadelphia, 2007 (= SCHROEDER, Monastic Bodies); and CRISLIP, From Monastery to Hospital. On the Shenoute editorial project in general see EMMEL, Shenoute’s Literary Corpus, p. VII-VIII. 12 EMMEL, Shenoute’s Literary Corpus, p. 293-308. 13 See ibidem, p. 794-805, for a synoptic table of manuscript witnesses to Discourses 1, 2, or 3 (?), and p. 609-613 for a description of its contents.

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der the title Contra Origenistas), and Elizabeth Clark’s use of it in her studies of the Origenist controversy14. “The Spirit of God,” of which only some five pages are extant, including neither beginning nor end, focuses on the evils of drunkenness and all the ills that proceed from it, drawing on Shenoute’s exegesis of Proverbs and other Old Testament wisdom texts. “A Priest Will Never Cease” comprises a lengthy excur- sus on Christus medicus and cure of souls theology, which will provide the basis for most of the discussion that follows. In “When the Word Says” Shenoute offers a detailed exposition of the suffering servant imagery of Isaiah 53:2-3. And “As I Sat on a Mountain” includes Shenoute’s elaboration of the familiar physiologus tradition, as well as a commentary on the Song of Songs15. The composition of this and other volumes of Shenoute’s Discourses will be a fruitful topic of investigation as the critical edition of the works of Shenoute becomes available. For the time being I wish to focus on thematic elements of illness and healing, particular those that are subsumed under the theological motifs of Christ the physician and the cure of souls. These elements are limited to the first three tractates in this volume of the Discourses. Shenoute finds in the themes of illness and healing a powerful constellation of metaphors for his homiletic and theological projects, particularly their salvific connotations through the psychic healing (i.e., cure of souls) of Christ the physician and the pastoral care of his church and clergy. Shenoute’s interest in healing and medicine in his rule mate- rial in the Canons has been explored elsewhere, an interest that is nota- bly less theological than administrative, i.e., overseeing treatment for ill monastics, establishing behavioral expectations for sick and healthy monks, and so on16. Since the nature and contents of the Discourses dif-

14 T. ORLANDI, Shenute contra Origenistas, Rome, 1985 (= ORLANDI, Shenute contra Origenistas); E. CLARK, The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate, Princeton, 1992, p. 151-58. The tractate’s contents, including Shenoute’s quotation in toto of a Festal Letter of Theophilus of Antioch, are briefly discussed by EMMEL, Shenoute’s Literary Corpus, p. 646-48; and IDEM, Theophilus’s Festal Letter of 401 as Quoted by Shenute, in C. FLUCK et al. (ed.), Divitiae Aegypti: Koptologische und verwandte Studien zu Ehren von Martin Krause, Wiesbaden, 1995, p. 93-98; and in greater detail in T. ORLANDI, A Catechesis against Apocryphal Texts by Shenute and the Gnostic Texts of Nag Hammadi, in Harvard Theological Review, 75 (1982), p. 85-95. 15 Shenoute’s use of the physiologus tradition may also provide a useful case study for the intellectual context in which Shenoute developed his theology; for background see A. SCOTT, The Date of the Physiologus, in Vigiliae Christianae, 52 (1998), p. 430-441. 16 E.g., A. CRISLIP, Sickness and Health in the Monasteries of Pachomius and Shenoute, in M. IMMERZEEL – J. VAN DER VLIET (ed.), Coptic Studies on the Threshold of a New Millennium: Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Coptic Studies, Leiden, 27 August – 2 September 2000 (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 133), Leuven, 2004, p. 867-76; and IDEM, From Monastery to Hospital, p. 9-38, 68-99.

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fer considerably from the rule materials in the Canons, Books 3, 5, and 9, it is not unexpected that the employment of illness and healing terminology differs, here predominantly theological and metaphorical. Shenoute’s sustained interest in illness, medicine, and healing in a variety of discursive contexts is significant, and I will return briefly to this observation later. For now, I will describe Shenoute’s specific employment of illness and healing imagery in this volume of Dis- courses, especially prominent in the first three works, “I Am Amazed,” “The Spirit of God,” and “A Priest Will Never Cease.” Specifically, Shenoute draws on three interrelated aspects of Christus medicus and cure of souls theology that historians have noted in other late ancient theological authors. First, Christ the physician heals or counteracts the disease or poison of heresy, primarily through his scriptural word and the sacraments. Second, Christ heals the souls of Christian followers through disciplinary remediation. And third, Christ’s role as healer of the soul extends to incorporate his earthly representatives (prophets, apostles, clergy, saints, and monks) through his earthly institution (the church) as psychic physicians of the theological and disciplinary wounds that plague the Christian community. It will be clear in the following discussion that these three aspects or modes are interconnected and complementary in Shenoute’s theology, as they are in patristic Christus medicus and cure of souls theology more broadly.

Christ the Physician and the disease of heresy

To inveigh against the manifold threats of heresy is the earlist applica- tion of the metaphor of Christ as physician in Christian literature. So, Ignatius of Antioch, likely progenitor of this theological tradition, famously described heresy as a “deadly drug” (qanásimon fármakon): “And so I entreat you (not I, though, but the love of Jesus Christ) not to nourish yourselves on anything but Christian fare, and have no truck with the alien herb of heresy. There are men who in the very act of assuring you of their good faith will mingle poison with Jesus Christ; which is like offering a lethal drug in a cup of honeyed wine, so that the unwitting victim blissfully accepts his own destruction with a fatal relish17.” Alternatively, the slurs of heretics resemble the bites of wilds animals, which “are by no means easy to heal.” For those on guard against heresy “there is but one Physician, Very Flesh, yet Spirit too, Uncreated,

17 Ign., Trall. 6, trans. M. STANIFORTH, Early Christian Writings, London, 1968 (= trans. STANIFORTH). Further discussion in DÖRNEMANN, Krankheit und Heilung, p. 80-85.

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and yet born;… Jesus Christ”18, who by his suffering – and the Chris- tian’s liturgical participation in it – heals the wounded soul. So Ignatius urges the church in Ephesus “to obey your bishop and clergy with undi- vided minds and to share in the one common breaking of bread – the medicine of immortality (fármakon âqanasíav) –, and the sovereign remedy by which we escape death and live in Jesus Christ for ever- more”19. Ignatius’s use of pharmacological imagery – especially drawing on the dual meaning of fármakon as both poison and remedy – to convey the healing power of Christ the physician would influence gen- erations of theologians, especially heresiologists. In the fourth century other motifs will be employed alongside the more ancient pharmacological imagery, including the broader categories of illness (nósov) and madness (manía)20. In “I Am Amazed,” the first work preserved in this volume of Dis- courses, Shenoute employs such illness imagery to bolster his heresiological attacks. Specifically, Shenoute draws on the types of medical metaphors popular among other fourth-century Christian authors, such as disease (nósov, Coptic jwne) and madness (mánia, Coptic libe), rather than the Ignatian pharmacological metaphors. So, several times in this extensive tractate, Shenoute characterizes heresy as a type of “madness” (libe) inflicted by Satan or demonic powers. Regarding those so-called Christians who have been taken in by secret (apokrufon) books and “their ancient authorities” (neuapyue narxaios)21, he addresses his audience directly: “And by the flame of the light of their [i.e., the prophets and apostles] teaching the truly Christian peoples understand the error of those who have gone mad (nentaulibe) and have been driven mad by them (nentaulibe ebol mmoou). I am speaking about the heads of the serpent and also his body, which are all heresies and their teachers22.”

18 Ign., Eph. 7, trans. STANIFORTH. 19 Ign., Eph. 20, trans. STANIFORTH. 20 So in Eusebius of Caesaria, DÖRNEMANN, Krankheit und Heilung, p. 183-84, and Gregory of Nyssa, ibidem, p. 268. Given the ubiquity of these themes, and the relatively full treatment they have received elsewhere, I will forgo any attempt to catalogue exhaustively the parallels. Fuller discussions of all these elements may be found in the bibliogra- phy above and ibidem. 21 Melitians are specified here as puffed up with “pride” (jojou) at their books, HB 22 = ORLANDI, Shenute contra Origenistas, p. 24. All translations of Shenoute are my own. For translations of other patristic authors, I quote published English language translations where available. For longer quotations of Shenoute’s Coptic in “I Am Amazed” I have included only those passages the are preserved in unpublished manuscripts, based on my own editions of the originals. The Coptic texts of other passages are available in ORLANDI, Shenute contra Origenistas, as well as in his electronic edition at the Corpus Manoscritti Copti Letterari, http://cmcl.let.uniroma1.it/. 22 HB 23 = ORLANDI, Shenute contra Origenistas, p. 24.

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He continues, condemning a variety of theologically suspect allegori- cal interpretations of scripture as madness: “And there are some who are in this same madness (peilibe nouwt), who speak of the Seraphim, of whom the holy prophets speak, that they stand around the Lord Sabaoth, with six wings on the one and six on the other, and with two they cover their face, and with two they cover their feet, and with two they fly, shouting one by one, saying, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Sabaoth. The whole world is filled with his glory.’ (Cf. Rev. 4:8-11) They interpret these [words] allegorically, that the Son and the Holy Spirit are the ones who stand. They have become dark in their thoughts23.” It was in such a state of madness that Origen and his followers made their heretical pronouncements concerning metempsychosis: “And [they say] that, ‘As for those who die, their souls leave them, and enter the bodies of those who have been born’, according to that which we have said now a number of times. Truly it is a mad and deranged spirit (oupneuma nlibe #ipwjs) that is within those who say these things”24. And Origen was afflicted with the madness of the Jews, thus ranking him even below Pilate: “And Origen says with a great madness (#^nounoö Nlibe) that his [Christ’s] kingdom will perish, with the result that even Pilate would accuse him (Origen), as he said to the Jews, ‘What I have written I have written’”25. More saliently, Origen was not only deranged, Shenoute says, but sick, “sick (jwne) with the same impiety of the Jews. For he does not understand (aisqane) Christ our Lord. When he went from the cross, which is filled with strength, he left for us a blessing”26. Further- more, Shenoute describes heretical opinion as “pestilential” (loimos), a favorite metaphor in Shenoute’s rhetoric also in the Canons27, and like

23 HB 25-26 = Ibidem, p. 26. 24 DQ 120-121 = Ibidem, p. 48. 25 DS 191 = GB-BL Or. 8800 f. 7v, unpublished; transcribed from manuscript by author: #wrigenys de éw Mmos #Nounoö Nlibe éetevmNter´ nawéN éekas erepkepeilatos nakatygorei Mmov eavéoos NNïoudaï éepen- taïsa@^V aïsa#V. 26 DS 190 = GB-BL Or. 8800 f. 7r, unpublished, transcribed from manuscript by author, auw evjwne #^nèm^N^tasebys Nouwt Ntenioudaï Û n^vaisqane an Û pex^s gar i^s penéoeis Nterevmooje ebol epes$O^s etme# Mm^N^téwwre evkw nan Nousmot. 27 “But as for us, we follow the saints who are strangers to pestilential opinion […],” anon de enouy# nsanetouaab eto njmmo etegnwmy nloimos […], DS 121 = ORLANDI, Shenoute contra Origenistas, p. 48. DS breaks off here. Parallel text with a slightly different reading is preserved in YU 50 = FR-BN 1316 f. 29v, unpublished, transcribed from manuscript by author: anon enouy# Nsanetouaab eto Nj^mmo eteïgnwmy nteïmine auw Nloimos. Shenoute uses loimos in Canons 6, 7 and 8, for example; cf. SCHROEDER, Monastic Bodies, p. 113, 196.

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a consuming wound: “Understand what I say,” Shenoute writes, “Know those in whom Christ speaks, and who speak in Christ, and those who speak through the devil, and in whom the devil speaks. Who are they that are not revealed [as such] before the wise, that their word is a cancer (ouamome), like gangrene (gaggraina)?”28 The motif of heresy as disease is especially apt for Shenoute in that it is through the real body and blood of Christ – denied by the heretics – that humans may receive healing of their souls and their bodies, and may gain eternal life. Shenoute again draws on widely shared motifs of Christus medicus theology to describe the Eucharist: “Or does [ordinary] bread and wine purify humanity of sins, or heal it of diseases (talöov #n#enjwne), and bring about for it a blessing of life? What is wrong with you? Did you not shut your mouth in accordance with what I had said previously, as you are saying to the Lord, ‘O Lord of the blessing, the bread of purification and immortality and eternal life,’ and ‘O cup of immortality and cup of the new covenant’”29. Thus, ironically it is their own pestilential and gangrenous or cancerous beliefs that prevent the heretics from receiving the saving medicine of the Eucharist30. Shenoute’s employment of illness imagery and related Christus medicus imagery to attack heretical teachings is not unusual. In fact, Shenoute writes within the mainstream of patristic heresiology and biblical condemnations of impiety. His characterization of the words of heretics as “a cancer, like gangrene,” paraphrases 2 Tim 2:17 (“Avoid profane chatter, for it will lead people into more and more impiety, and their talk will spread like gangrene” NRSV)31. The depiction of teach-

28 Shenoute alludes to 2 Tim 2:17; DQ 49 = ORLANDI, Shenute contra Origenistas, p. 44. 29 DQ 32 = Ibidem, p. 32. Cf. Ign., Eph. 20. 30 Worth noting here is Shenoute’s frequent use of dark and light imagery to describe heresy and orthodoxy (see the concordance in ORLANDI, Shenute contra Origenistas, p. 79, 96). While this is too commonplace to warrant extensive comment, dark and light imagery also functions as part of Christus medicus and cure of souls imagery, drawing metaphorically on Jesus’ healings of the blind, SHEMUNKASO, Healing in the Theology of Saint Ephrem, p. 15; and KNIPP, ‘Christus Medicus’, p. 24-89. 31 The Sahidic New Testament preserves the Greek gággraina. For ouamome as cancer (karkínov) or gangrene, see CRUM, Coptic Dictionary, p. 479a s.v. ouamome, and M.É. CHASSINAT, Un papyrus médical copte (Mémoires de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 32), Cairo, 1921, p. 106, 277. Also worthy of note here is the absence of 2 Tim 2:17 in the biblical index locorum in DÖRNEMANN, Krankheit und Heilung, p. 369. If Dörnemann’s survey is representative, it appears that this passage was not commonly cited by the patristic authors surveyed by Dörnemann (Ignatius, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Cyril of Jerusalem, among many others, see p. 101-273).

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ings as pestilential pervades heresiological discourse, and the treatment of heresies as diseases hearkens back to a long tradition in heresiology, such as Epiphanius’ Panarion, or “Medicine Chest,” against heresies, with which Shenoute may well have been familiar, as Janet Timbie has argued, although he does not directly follow Epiphanius’s attacks, as Timbie also notes32. A noteworthy difference between Shenoute’s terminology and that of Epiphanius in addition to those already noted by Timbie may be seen in his specific choice of illness and healing language. Shenoute prefers disease terminology, as I have shown: pestilence, cancer, madness, and illness, for which orthodox teaching is the cure33. Epiphanius, like Ignatius and many heresiologists before him, prefers the medical imagery of pharmacy: heresies are “poisons and toxic substances” (Proem I 1,2), and orthodox teaching their “antidotes” and “remedies for the victims of wild beasts’ bites”34. Regardless of such differences, Shenoute’s use of disease imagery in his attacks on heresy points to his engagement with contemporary theological literatures of the eastern Mediterranean, an engagement that is borne out throughout his theological argumentation in “I Am Amazed”35. Shenoute employs illness and healing imagery and elaborates on Christus medicus theology far more extensively in the following two treatises of this volume of Discourses, “The Spirit of God” and “A Priest Will Never Cease.” In these latter two treatises, Shenoute focuses principally on disciplinary matters, rather than issues of theology. In “The Spirit of God,” Shenoute focuses on Christ’s role as the physician

32 Janet Timbie identifies the allusion to Epiphanius’s Panarion 64 in “I Am Amazed” in J. TIMBIE, Non-Canonical Scriptural Citation in Shenoute, in N. BOSSON – A. BOUD’HORS (ed.), Actes du huitième congrès international d’études coptes, Paris, 28 juin – 3 juillet 2004 (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 163), Leuven, 2007, p. 625-634 (= TIMBIE, Non-Canonical Scriptural Citation). She further notes Shenoute’s independ- ence of heresiological argumentation from that of Epiphanius in J. TIMBIE, Epiphanius in the Library of the White Monastery: the Evidence of Shenoute, presented at the ‘2005 Meeting of the North American Patristics Society’, June 2-5, 2005, Chicago. I thank Dr. Timbie for making her now published and forthcoming articles available to me during the writing of this article. 33 Especially talöo, mton; see concordance in ORLANDI, Shenute contra Orige- nistas, p. 89, 116. 34 The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, trans. F. WILLIAMS (Nag Hammadi Studies, 35), Leiden, 1987, p. 3. 35 For instance, in his discussion of the resurrection, in which he engages with a variety of other theological opinions; see SCHROEDER, Monastic Bodies, p. 126-157; and EADEM, Shenoute of Atripe on the Resurrection, in Essays in Honour of Frederik Wisse, special issue of ARC: The Journal of the Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University, 33 (2005), p. 123-37.

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of disciplinary ills, while in “A Priest Will Never Cease,” as the incipit indicates, Shenoute focuses on the role of Christ’s earthly representatives as the iatroi to Christus the archiatros.

Christ the Physician and the wounds of wine and women

Of “The Spirit of God” little remains, and both the incipit and explicit are missing, the latter probably falling within a long lacuna of 43 pages in codex HB36. Nonetheless, even in the six pages that remain it is clear that the themes of illness and healing in “The Spirit of God” share much in common with both the preceding work and “A Priest Will Never Cease,” which follows. But here Shenoute draws on Christus medicus and cure of souls imagery for more prosaic disciplinary pur- poses than the anti-heretical Christology of “I Am Amazed.” In the sur- viving pages of “The Spirit of God” Shenoute focuses exclusively on issues of discipline: the dangers of wine-drinking and adulterous liasons with women. The target of Shenoute’s admonition is primarily nonmonastic men. While Shenoute does not make any distinction between monk and lay (the terms are not used), the context – especially of drinking-bouts and adultery – points to a primarily nonmonastic target audience. Such laity were frequent attendees at Shenoute’s church. Shenoute’s admonitions against adultery are clearly targeted at men, as is his treatment of wine-drinking, a gendered specificity that I have not tried to alter in my translations that follow. In Shenoute’s treatment, these two behaviors, wine-drinking and adultery, constitute two types of madness (libe), a manic derangement of Christian self-control, in contrast to the doctrinal madness (libe) that afflicted Origen in “I Am Amazed.” Shenoute draws on a variety of Old Testament passages to convey the manifold harms of imbibing: “Wine causes the eyes of those who linger in wine, who are looking for where the drinking bouts are, to become bruised”37. “Wine knocks man down,” “Wine burns man up,” and

36 The complicated codicology of the manuscripts of this volume of Discourses is described most exhaustively in EMMEL, Shenoute’s Literary Corpus, 293-308, 794-805, esp. 800-801 for “The Spirit of God” and “A Priest Will Never Cease.” 37 pyR^P ejavtrenbal NnetwS^K #N#enyR^P etjine éeeremma nsw najwpe twn erelelkyme, HB 162 = Am. 2.479, cf. Pro. 23:29-30, ma nsw translating LXX pótov (Am. 2 = É. AMÉLINEAU, Oeuvres de Schenoudi: Texte copte et tra- duction française, vol. 2, Paris, 1914) collated by author. Given the relative inaccessiblity of Amélineau’s edition I provide more extensive excerpts of Shenoute’s Coptic in the notes as an aid to the reader. Wherever noted I have collated Amélineau's text against the original manuscripts.

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“‘The drunkenness of wine plants intemperance in man,’ as it is written” (Loc cf. Eph 5:18)38. But ultimately the madness of wine-drinking leads the imbiber to neglect God. So Shenoute concludes his section on wine-drinking by quoting Isaiah 5:11-12: “Woe to those who rise at dawn, seeking after strong drink (sikeron), drunk until evening. For their wine will inflame them. [They drink] wine [with har]ps and [ps]almody and and drums and flutes. And they do not regard the works of God, and they do not reflect on the works of his hands”39. The ills posed by wine-drinking are significant: “Many are those wounded on account of wine, according to the revelator, having been destroyed (for I will not say that they have died)” (Sirach 31:25)40. Shenoute’s condemnation of wine-drinking shares thematic elements with the Apos- tolic Constitutions 8.44, a text transmitted in Sahidic Coptic and in Shenoute’s scriptorium, such as their shared citation of Proverbs 23:29- 30, Sirach 31:25, and Ephesians 5:18, but Shenoute’s discussion of drunkenness does not seem directly dependent on the Apostolic Consti- tutions. No less serious are the ills of adultery. Coming to adultery, Shenoute focuses less on the this-worldly repercussions of such behavior (as he does concerning wine drinking) than on the punishments to come in the next age. The madness of lust after women leads the man to “speak per- verse things”41, and causes man to burn, as Shenoute conflates the fires of bodily passion with the coming everlasting fires of hell: “But as for obedience to him who says, ‘Turn your feet from every evil way’ (Pro 4:27), it removes from man that madness, the love of women. It [love of women] has been equated with hell (cf. Pro 9:13-18?). And having been likened to the fire, as is written, ‘Hell and the love of women,’ have they not also said, that is, the scriptures, ‘It is an uncontrollable wrath, and it is a fire burning on every side. The place where he is going will burn him from his roots’” 42.

38 HB 162 = Am. 2.479-480, HB 164 = Am. 2.481. 39 HB 164 = Am. 2.481. 40 HB 164 = Am. 2.481. 41 HB 163 = Am. 2.480, citing Pro 23:33. 42 pswT^M de Ntov Nsapetéw Mmos éekto Ntekoueryte ebol #N#iy nim eqoou javvi ebol @^Mprwme Mplibe eT^Mmau pme Ns#ime. ntaujajv mnaM^Nte eauT^NtwN^V de epkw#t nqe etsy# éeaM^Nte M^Nnpme [l. tme] ns#ime. my mpouéoos ntov negrafy éeouöwnt emeuejama#te mmov pe. auw oukw@^T evmou# pe nsasa nim pma etevnyu eéwv javtakov éinnevnoune, HB 163-164 = Am. 2.480, collated by author. I have not identified the last two passages that Shenoute either quotes or eludes to; it is clear, however, that he considers them to be biblical; see TIMBIE, Non-Canonical Scriptural Citation. Identification of Shenoute’s biblical quotations and allusions can be difficult for a variety of reasons; hopefully the problem will be resolved.

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Thus the pains of this-wordly behaviors – burning, bruising, madness – will be revisited and magnified in the age of punishment to come. In respect to both adultery and wine-bibbing, Shenoute highlights three means of cure: teaching, the Word of God, and prayer. Playing on wine’s traditional use as a medicament in ancient medical practice and its sometimes controversial endorsement by the author of 1 Timothy43, Shenoute elevates teaching (tesbw) as the more efficacious medicament than wine: “As for teaching, it takes away every suffering (paqos) from man, and cools his heart, like cool water. It is better for matters of the soul to drink it than wine. It (wine) increases madness in man in two places”44. Furthermore, sound teaching is complemented by the Word of God. So Shenoute notes that while many have been destroyed by the impiety of wine-drinking, “But still, many are those who have been healed of the wound of impiety, and come to life, being (theretofore) dead in sin, by the Word of God, by hearing this, ‘the wise will gain direction’ (Pro 1:5?)”45. Again playing on – and undermin- ing – the biblical praise of wine as a gift that gladdens humanity, for example, “You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use, to bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the human heart” (Ps 104:14-15, NRSV), Shenoute points out that wine will not gladden anyone in heaven. Rather it is prayer and the Word of God that will provide the mood-enhancing and health-inducing effects cited in the Psalms and 1 Timothy: “But prayer gladdens the man who performs it all the days of his life, and will also gladden him in the kingdom of heaven. The drunkenness of wine plants intemperance in man, as it is written. But the Word of God removes wickedness, and fornication, and violence, and all evil deeds from the man who hears it with a good heart…”46. The sole manuscript attesting this portion of “The Spirit of God” breaks off at this point, and a 43-page lacuna follows (HB 164). It is most likely that “The Spirit of God” ends in this gap, and the following

43 “No longer drink only water, but take a little wine for the sake your stomach and your frequent ailments,” 1 Tim 5:23, NRSV. For ascetically minded exegesis of “Paul’s” endorsement of wine drinking, see John Chrysostom, Hom. de statuis 1 and Hom. de Tim. 16. 44 tesbw ejasvi mmau Mpaqos nim ebol #mprwme nsèkbo Mpev#yt nqe noumoou evkyv enanouv enoucuxy esov epyR^P javtajeplibe #mprwme mpsa snau, HB 163 = Am. 2.480, collated by author. The “two places” are this world and the next; cf. CRUM, Coptic Dictionary, p. 636a s.v. r #ae: “Mor 43 89 S avr. epsa snau in this world & next,” and p. 313a s.v. sa, “Pcod 2 S Judas r #ae epsa snau.” 45 HB 164 = Am. 2.481. 46 HB 164 = Am. 2.481.

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work, “A Priest Will Never Cease,” begins, but the relative placement of the transition in this lacuna is unknowable, not to mention what Shenoute might have had to say about Christus medicus and cure of souls theology. Yet, the themes that Shenoute touches on and the cure of souls metaphors that he employs to discuss the specific disciplinary problems of drunkenness and adultery will have an even greater role in the work that follows, “A Priest Will Never Cease.”

Christ, clergy, and healing in the Church

Shenoute takes up the healing power of Christ in a much more sustained manner in “A Priest Will Never Cease.” This work, in fact, comprises a lengthy elaboration of Christus medicus and cure of souls theology. Specifically, Shenoute engages not only in an extended comparison between the medical doctor and Christ, but also the techniques and locales of medical healing and the church. Much as he does in the remaining fragments of “The Spirit of God,” Shenoute draws on biblical proof texts throughout. So the preserved portion of “A Priest Will Never Cease” begins with an exegesis of Peter and the cripple of Acts 3:1-9. “If then because of an act of charity this cripple gained healing when he was placed before the temple entrance, then by how much will we gain healing, and blessing, and grace, and all good things pertaining to both bodily and spiritual things, pertaining both to the healing of our illnesses that are visible and the healing of our sins, while we struggle (agwnihe) to run to the Lord, to the church (ekklysia) so that we might pray, and to partake of his body and his blood?”47 In this opening in medias res, the thematic connections between “The Spirit of God” and “A Priest Will Never Cease” (and also “I Am Amazed,” given its Christological and Eucharistic focus) become clear as Shenoute identifies the real body and blood of the Lord as saving medicine. What distinguishes “A Priest Will Never Cease” from the Christus medicus and cure of souls imagery in the previous two tractates is Shenoute’s identification of the church or house of god as the locus for

47 ejée etbetloeiöe öe Noum^N^tna apirwme Nöale et^mmau è#yu Noutalöo #^mptreukaav #ir^mpro Mperpe, eïe ennaè#yu Nouyr Ntalöo #ismou #ixaris #iagaqon nim na Nswmatikon auw na Mpneu- matikon, naptalöo Nnenjwne etouon^# ebol m^nptalöo Nnennobe @^Mptrenagwnihe epwt erat^v Mpéoïs etekklysia etrenjlyl auw eéi ebol #^mpevswma M^Npevsnov, DQ 191 = BnF 78 f.41v, unpublished, transcribed from manuscript by author.

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healing: ekklysia and pyei mpnoute, terms that Shenoute uses throughout “A Priest Will Never Cease” without any clear distinction, as in DQ 191, in which he places the two terms in apposition, “…in the house of God, the church”48. While it seems natural that the church be characterized as locus for the cure of souls, it does not rank among the more common motifs in Christus medicus and cure of souls theology49. Yet the centrality, and necessity, of attendance at church forms the core of Shenoute’s argument in “A Priest Will Never Cease.” He continues: “Each one’s house is not the baptistery, nor is it the place for receiving the mystery, on account of the way that the Lord spoke to his disciples, ‘Go into the city to a certain man, and a man carrying a gallon of water will meet you. Follow him into the house that he enters, and say to the master of the house: It is the teacher who tells you, « Where is my dwelling place, where I will eat the Passover meal with my disciples? » (Mk 14:13-14).’ But the place into which the Lord will go with his disciples is the church. And the very disciples did not break bread in any other places except for the temple and the house in which they gathered. On the contrary, how far is the church from the house of the man? At the same time, who fills the church, who fills the monastic places, gathering in them and carrying out the holy mystery by the hands of the priests appointed for them, complying with the canons (nkanwn) of the church in everything, with this one faith, this one spirit, this one baptism, this one god, and this one lord, the father of everyone, he who is upon everyone? And…”50. A lacuna of 12 pages follows (DQ 193-204). Whether his elaboration of the Christus medicus theme runs throughout the lacuna is unknowable, but after the lacuna, Shenoute is still

48 A lacuna precedes this, so the precise context in not entirely clear. None the less, church (ecclesia) and house of God appear throughout his later discussion without any apparent distinction. 49 So note the lack of ecclesiological terminology in DÖRNEMANN’s survey, Krankheit und Heilung. 50 Mpbaptistyrion Û gar an pe pyï Mpoua poua Û oute ptopos an pe Néi ebol #^mpmustyrion Û etbeqe de Ntapéoeis éoos Nnevmaqytys éebwk e#oun etpolis Nna#^rnnim Nrwme Û Y éeouNourwme natw- M^N^TerwtN ereoujojou Mmoou #iéwv oue#tyut^n Nswv e#oun epyï et^vnabwk e#oun erov Ntet^néoos Mpéoeis Mpyï éepsa# petéw Mmos nak éeerepama Nöaeile twn pma eènaou^mppasxa N#yt^v m^nna- maqytys Û pma eterepéoïsnabwk erov m^nnevmaqytys Ntov pe tekklysia Û Ntoou de #wou Mmaqytys neupwj an Mpoeik #^nkelaau Mma eimyti #^mperpe auw #^mpyï etousoou# N#yt^v Û eretekklysia de #wwv ouyu Nouyr epyï Mprwme ú ama nim mou# Û Nekklysia Û ama nim mou# Ntopos Mmonaxos eusunage N#ytou auw eueire Mp(m)usty- rion etouaab #it^nNouyyb ettyj naueu#yn enkanwn Ntekklysia #^n#wb nim Û #^nèpistis Nouwt Û m^npip^N^a Nouwt Û m^npibaptisma Nou- wt Û m^npinoute Nouwt Û m^npiéoeis Nouwt Û piwt Nouon nim Û pet- #ié^nouon nim Û auw DQ 191-192 = BnF Ms. Copte 78 f. 41 v/r, unpublished, transcribed by author from original.

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engaged with the topic of Christ as physician. Over the course of the following eleven manuscript pages Shenoute draws a series of compari- sons between the medical healing of the doctor and the Christian cure of souls and the church as place of healing. So as “A Priest Will Never Cease” emerges from the lacuna Shenoute draws on the balm of Gilead of Jeremiah 8 to compare sound teaching and commandments (as in “The Spirit of God”) to secular medicines. Shenoute here introduces the first of a string of metaphors, setting in relief an aspect of medical healing with its analogue in the cure of souls. Each comparison is connected by the Coptic copula pe to form a complex nominal sentence51. The subject of the nominal sentence is lost in the lacuna, but it is comparable to the balm of Gilead: “…as it is written, ‘Why has the healing of the daughter of my people not come about?’ (Jer 8:22).” When understood in the context of the healing of Christ the physician, Shenoute writes, this scripture consists in (literally “is”) “not applying the word of teaching to it [i.e. the spiritual wound], and the commands, and all the other medicines (nkepa#re) appropriate for this illness (pijwne). And the command of the one who heals (rpa#re) us, namely that we apply the medicine (pa#re) on the wounds (plygy), is this: ‘My son, keep my words and store up my commandments with you,’ (Prov 7:1), and ‘Keep my commandments and live,’ (Prov 7:2), and ‘If you keep them within your heart you will benefit’ (Prov 22:18?)”52. But while Jesus Christ and the medical physician are analogues, Jesus the physician is far superior in every way, which Shenoute explains in some detail: “As for the doctor (psaein), he goes not simply to everyone in order to treat them (erpa#re eroou), for he scarcely attends to the magistrate (parxwn) and the rich man, who have many means. But Jesus Christ, the merciful, has come to treat (rpa#re) everyone who has been hurt by the devil. Lord Jesus is always near to everyone who hopes in him. For he fills heaven and he fills earth, but he came to us a single time, so that the whole

51 The pattern is the ternary nominal sentence, described in B. LAYTON, A Coptic Grammar, 2nd ed. (Porta Linguarum Orientalium, 20), Wiesbaden, 2006, §277; the closest example given in Layton’s Grammar is in fact from Shenoute, L.III 66:17-20. 52 nqe etsy# éeetbeou mpvei e#rai nöiptalöo ntjeere mpalaos. petmkw mpjaée ntesbw mnnentoly mnnkepa#re tyrou etna epijwne #iéwv. töin#wn de mpetrpa#re eron etrenkw mppa#re #i- énneplygy te tai éepajyre #are# enajaée auw #epnaentoly #a#- tyk auw ée#are# enaentoly tarekwn# auw éeekjankaau #mpek#yt knaè#yu, DQ 205 = Am. 2:228. It is perhaps noteworthy that Shenoute also cites the balm in Gilead passage in “Is It Not Written” in Canons 6, which Shenoute wrote during one of his own painful illnesses. I will return to possible connections between Shenoute’s elaboration of Christus medicus theology in the Discourses and his narrative of his own illness in his Canons 6 and 8 below.

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race of Christians might always run to him until the consummation of the age, for glory and exaltation, as the saint said, ‘You are my glory and are over my head’, and also, ‘The just will be exalted in the flight to him’”53. Also, “It is through his medicines (#nnevpa#re) that the doctor (saein) touches (or takes) this condition of sickness (evéipeira mpjwne). But Lord Jesus says to those sick with the disease (pjwne) of every lawlessness, ‘Your sins are forgiven you, and now they are healed (jautalöo)’ (Luke 5:23, paraphrase)”54. In this vein Shenoute continues: “The doctor (saein) similarly takes his fee. But Jesus gave himself as a ransom for everyone who has no hope apart from him. As for the doctor, his medicines are from things planted and also a multitude of compounds. But as for Lord Jesus, his medicines are from his mercies, his compassion, his goodness, his patience, his forbearance, his blessedness, and his love of humanity. As for the doctor, he washes out the wounds of the sick with water. But Jesus cleanses (kaqarihe) the wounds of our sins with his love. Those who are wounded are washed in water, given rest by those who watch over them, like the jailer did for Paul and Silas, having received them and cleansed them of their wounds, as is written (Acts 16:33). And they are also anointed with oil and wine as it is written in the Gospel about the Samaritan, who had mercy upon the one whom the robbers had struck with blows and went away and left him at the point of death (Lk 10). But it is Jesus who has baptized us in a Holy Spirit, teaching us, and having anointed us with the gift of his mercy, curing (qerapeia) the soul and the body of those whom the demons had left half dead by the wounds of sin”55. 53 psaein ejavbwk an eratv nouon nim #aplws erpa#re eroou mogis gar nvbwk eratv mparxwn y prmmao eteountou#a# nxryma. pex^s de ntov i^s pjan#tyv nnayt ntavei erpa#re eouon nim etouéi mmoou nöons ebol #itmpdiabolos. péoeis men i^s v#yn e#oun eouon nim nouoeij nim et#elpihe erov. vmou# gar ntpe auw vmou# mpka# alla avei jaron nousop nouwt éeerepgenos tyrv nnexreistianos nouoeij nim napwt eratv jatsunteleia mpaiwn eueoou mnouéise nqe ntappetouaab éoos éentok pe paeoou auw etéise ntaape auw on éendikaios naéise #mppwt eratv DQ 205 = Am. 2.228-229. I have not identified the (apparently) biblical quotations; on this general challenge in reading Shenoute see n. 42 above. 54 psaein evéi peira mpjwne #nnevpa#re. péoeis de i^s evéw mmos nnetjwne #mpjwne nanomia nim éenetnnobe ky nytn ebol auw nteunou jautalöo, DQ 206 = Am. 2.229. 55 psaein #omoiws evéi mpevbeke. I^s de ntov ntavtaav nswte #aouon nim etemmntou#elpis mmau nsabllav. psaein nevpa#re #enebol ne #n#entyö mn#enkeajy mmigma. péoeis de i^s nevpa#re #enebol ne #nnevmntnayt mnnevmntjan#tyv mnnevmntagaqos mnnevmnt#arj#yt mnnevanoxy mnnevmntxrystos mnnevmntmai- rwme. psaein ejaveiw ebol nneplygy nnetjwne #mpmoou. I^s de evkaqarihe nneplygy nnennobe #ntevagapy. netejauéeu#ensyje

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As a complement to his treatment in “The Spirit of God,” in “A Priest Will Never Cease”, Shenoute returns to the function of teachings – in addition to the Eucharist – as medicine. So the one who works on behalf of Christ and treats “this evil disease” (peijwne eqoou) “is the one who teaches us the medicines appropriate to it and through which he treats us. Take them and apply them to it [the wound], and let us not remove them from it”56. Receiving the teaching can also be prophylactic: “Therefore, as for those who receive these medicines (neipa#re), it is the cure (ptalöo) of their soul and their body that they receive. For those who receive them will indeed not enter into the grip of this disease (peijwne)”57. Shenoute draws an even finer comparison between “medicinal” teachings and more secular compounds. Teachings enter the hearer’s ears, but can be left there unapplied: “Oh, let us not receive them and leave them in our ears, like medicines in jars (#enpa#re #n#en- #naau), and not apply them to the wounds (plygy), lest we be exposed as hating our cure (mton). Oh, that we did not love our cure (mton) from all things, except for that of this very evil disease, so that we might escape from receiving blame for our disobedience”58. Not surprisingly the site of the healing process of teaching is the church, and Shenoute draws another set of parallels between the healing

ejauéokmou #noumoou eumton nau ebol #itnnetvi mpeuroouj nqe ntapet#iémpejteko aas mpaulos mnsilas eavéitou avéokmou ebol #nneusyje nqe etsy#. ejaupw#t de on eéwou noune# mnouyrp nqe etsy# #mpeuaggelion etbepsamarits ntavjan#tyv eémpentanlystys énav #ensyje aubwk aukaav evo mpjmou. iS de ntov entavbaptihe mmon #nouP^N^A evouaab eusbw nan eavpw#t de on e#rai eéwn ntdwrea mpevna euqerapeia ntecuxy mnpswma nnetandaimwn aau mpjmou #nnsyje mpnobe, DQ 206-207 = Am. 2.229- 230. 56 papetviroouj gar #aron etbepeijwne eqoou petsabon em- pa#re etna erov y etvrpa#re eron n#ytou, DQ 207 = Am. 2.230. 57 netnakw öe nau nneipa#re ntaukw nau mptalöo nteucuxy mnpeuswma. netnakaau gar nau nsenaei rw an etootv mpeijwne, DQ 208 = Am. 2.231. 58 mpwr öe tenou etrenéitou ntnkaau #nnenmaaée nqe n#enpa#re #n#en#naau ntntmtaau eénneplygy éennenouwn# ebol éea- non #enmastpenmton. auw #amoi on eanon #enmaipenmton an #n#wb nim jatmpapeijwne mauaav mponyron éekas ennarbol etméi mpeépio ntenmntatswtm, DQ 208 = Am. 2.231. Cf. 2 Tim. 4:3, “For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itchy ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires” (NRSV). Cf. also Apoph. Pat. N 509: “Such is what the adversary suggested to me so that I would not reveal my sickness to the physician and be healed,” in W. HARMLESS, S.J., Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism, New York, 2004, p. 230-231.

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event in the church and the healing event in the “doctor’s office”59. Given Shenoute’s technical, or at least culturally bounded use of medical terminology here and elsewhere, it is worth noting that Shenoute uses several similar terms, pma néipa#re [literally “the place for receiving medicine”], pma nèpa#re [lit. “the place for dispensing medicine”], and pma nrpa#re [lit. “the place of treating or practicing medicine”] to refer to the site of medical healing. So, for example, “The place for receiving medicine (pma néipa#re) and for treating (rpa#re) us is the church and everywhere they teach truthfully….”60 Do these places for “applying medicine,” “practicing medicine,” and “receiving medicine” entail a recognizable institution, a “clinic,” “sur- gery,” or “doctor’s office,” for example, like the Greek îatre⁄on? Such institutions did exist in the ancient world from the age of the Hippocratics on61. But while there is some detailed evidence for the îatre⁄on in the Hippocratic corpus, continuity between the age of the Hippocratics and late antiquity may not be assumed. Nonetheless, the Greek îatre⁄on was rendered at least in the northern Bohairic dia- lect of Coptic as ma ns(yini), according to Crum’s Dictionary62. Crum glosses Shenoute’s pma néipa#re as “place of healing,” but considers that pmaènpe#re (an obvious copyist’s error for pma nèpa#re) could be a place-name, at least outside the literary corpus of Shenoute63. Certainly, comparison of the church to the doctor’s office is represented in other writers, such as Origen, who more than any ancient author promoted the analogy of Christ as physician64. In his eighth Homily on Leviticus (on Leviticus 12 and 13), Origen (in Rufinus’ trans-

59 Cf. the discussion of ritualized roles and interactions of sufferer and healer in non- professional (or, more properly, non-Hippocratic) healing in the ancient Mediterranean world in R. GORDON, The Healing Event in Graeco-Roman Folk-Medicine, in Ph.J. VAN DER EIJK – H.F.J. HORSTMANSHOFF – P.H. SCHRIJVERS (ed.), Ancient Medicine in Its Socio-Cultural Context, 2 vols., Amsterdam – Atlanta, 1995, p. 363-76. 60 pma méipa#re y nrpa#re eron n#ytv pe tekklysia mntopos nim etouèsbw n#ytou #noume, DQ 208 = Am. 2.231. pma nèpa#re is used in DQ 209 = Am. 2.232, quoted and translated below. 61 G. MAJNO reconstructs the healing event in the Hippocratic îatre⁄on, The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World, Cambridge, Mass., 1975, p. 150-176. Such a reconstruction, he admits, is tentative, since “detailed descriptions of such cases, com- plete with treatment, do not exist in the Hippocratic books,” p. 150. 62 CRUM, Coptic Dictionary, p. 342b, citing Va 68.176; on doctors’ offices in antiquity and a comparison with late ancient Egyptian evidence see CRISLIP, From Monastery to Hospital, p. 123-24. 63 CRUM, Coptic Dictionary, p. 283a, citing C. WESSELY, Studien zu Paläographie und Papyruskunde, Leipzig, 1919, vol. 20, p. 218. 64 As D.G. BOSTOCK notes, “For Origen the art of medicine was the clearest possible parable of the Gospel in action,” Medical Theory and Theology in Origen, in R. HANSON – H. CROUZEL (ed.), Origeniana Tertia, Rome, 1985, p. 191-199.

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lation) writes, “Come now to Jesus, the heavenly physician. Intra ad hanc stationem medicinae eius Ecclesiam. [Enter into this medical clinic, his Church.]”65 Rufinus’ Origen provides useful theological context for Shenoute’s terminology, and his use of statio medicinae points to an institutional locus of healing similar to that under discussion in Shenoute’s work. It seems significant, to say the least, that throughout the sermons in this volume of Discourses Shenoute uses these terms (pma néipa#re, pma nèpa#re, pma nrpa#re) to the exclusion of the term he uses throughout the Canons, pma nnrwme etjwne, or “infirmary”66. I hypothesize that this is due to the public and largely nonmonastic audience of the works in the Discourses, in contrast to the predominantly monastic audience of the much Canons, especially those rules in which pma nnrwme etjwne figures prominently. That is, monks go to the infirmary (pma nnrwme etjwne), nonmonastics go to the doctor’s office (pma nrpa#re vel sim., îatre⁄on, statio medicinae). Thus, in the translations below I render the aforementioned terms more concretely than Crum’s “place of healing,” that is, as the equivalent of the Greek îatre⁄on, or “doctor’s office,” however that may have been construed in Upper Egypt. While he does not provide the sorts of telling details about the medical care and form of the late ancient “doctor’s office” (as he might have known of them) that we find in some of the early Hippocratic tractates, Shenoute does explain in considerable detail how he expects his audience to behave when they go to the doctor. Given the fact that ancient discussion of medical healing focuses more on the behaviors of the healer than of the patient, this is valuable evidence for the history of healing in Christianity. First, the patients need to arrive promptly at the doctor’s office, or else the doctor will have left already. They are sure not to anger the doctor (for in the ancient world as in the modern there was a clear power differential in the healing event). The doctor comforts them through the therapy of the word (a commonplace in medical and philosophical literature)67. The doctor covers their wounds while they heal. They follow doctor’s orders. They pay the doctor. They trust that

65 Hom. 8 in Lev. 1.3, 10-11, trans. G.W. BARKLEY, Origen: Homilies on Leviticus 1-16 (Fathers of the Church, 83), Washington, DC, 1990, p. 153 (= Origen, Hom. 8 in Lev., trans. BARKLEY). Latin critical edition in ORIGENE, Homélies sur le Lévitique, texte latin, introd., trad., notes et index par M. BORRET (Sources chrétiennes, 286-287), Paris, 1981. 66 Literally, “the place for sick people,” for which see CRISLIP, From Monastery to Hospital, p. 10-12. 67 See P.L. ENTRALGO, The Therapy of the Word in Classical Antiquity, ed. and trans. L.J. RATHER and J.M. SHARP, New Haven, 1970, especially p. 139-70.

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they will be healed. They are joyful when they are cured. And they thank the physician. Such are the commonplaces of medical care in Upper Egypt as Shenoute describes them. Each of these aspects in the medical healing event has an analogue in the life of the church. For example, going to the doctor is much like going to church in that a degree of procrastination in going to either is certainly not unheard of. So, “And neglecting (amelei) to be early to the doctor until such time as he has taken his things (#naau) and closed the doctor’s office (pma nèpa#re) is those [thoughts?] that cause us to convulse in bestiality at the time to go to church until such time as they have finished reading and performing the mystery and everything else appropriate to do in the house of God. And abominations before God are the thoughts (logismos) of those who are thinking in this way, saying, ‘Let them finish reading the Gospel before we go in.’ And what are you going to do? You are early to the places of eating and drinking!”68 Parallels continue, as Shenoute now turns to the priest (as promised in the work’s incipit), as physician. While early Christus medicus and cure of souls theology focused exclusively on Christ, later theologians expanded the metaphor to the clergy, as iatroi to Christ the archiatros. The priest is the physician, and as in the doctor’s clinic the patient may not recognize or understanding the efficacy of the treatment, so in the church the member may not recognize the salvific medicine at work; but the priest does, effected through words of encouragement, much like the “therapy of the word” of medicine. “As for the words by which he gives us confidence, the blessing with which the priests bless us while we are going forth from him is a sign that this disease will not appear in us at all, as he treats us (rpa#re) in the doctor’s office (pma néipa#re), which is the church. If this work is ob- scure to the people, it is nonetheless clear to the one who treats (rpa#re) this disease (pijwne). For he rejoices at those who come promptly to him. I am speaking of those who are early to church morning and evening and noon, and the time that is appropriate every day and every time, so that they may receive the blessing from him first and last”69.

68 töinamelei de #wwv eT^MjorP^N eraT^V Mpsaein janT^Vvi Mmau Nnev#naau y N^VwR^É Mpma Nèpa#re pe ptren#ite @^NouM^N^tt^Bny M^pnau Nbwk etekklysia jantououw euwj y eueire Mpmustyrion m^n#wb nim etejje eaau @^Mpyï Mpnoute. auw e#enbote Nna@^R^M- pnoute ne Nlogismos Nnetmokmek Nteï#e euéw mmos éemarouw- jpeuaggelion MpaT^Nbwk e#oun. auw eteT^Naerou. teT^NjwR^P Mmw- T^N Ntov emma Nouwm #isw, DQ 209-210 = Am. 2.232, collated by author. 69 Njaée eT^Vètwk N#yt nan N^@ytou eumaein eT^Mtrepijwne ouwN^@ ebol N^@yt^n #olws pe pesmou etereNouyyb smou eron N#yT^V ennyu ebol #itooT^V evRpa#re eron @^Mpma Néipa#re etetaï te tekklysia. ejéepi#wb #yp enrwme vouoN^@ de n^tov epetRpa#re

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Shenoute identifies a series of more specific parallels between the Christian’s behavior in the church and the patient’s behavior in the doctor’s clinic. So, “Not to anger him [the doctor] in the doctor’s office (pma nrpa#re) is not to allow ourselves to forget the knowledge, that if our brother has something against us we should leave our offering at the altar and go first and reconcile with our brother. Then we should go and raise up our offering (Matt 5:23-24)”70. And regarding treatment Shenoute writes, “As for the thing (#naau) that he puts on us to cover this disease, which is of manifold appearances, before the scar of its wounds (mpateprwt nnevplygy) has come in and filled up, it is love, as it is written, ‘Love covers a multitude of sin’ (1 Pet 4:8)”71. Shenoute identifies further parallels in the medical healing event with the salvific activity of the church: “As for our trust that we will be cleansed of this entire disease (pijwne tyrv) through his medicines (pa#re), it is our perfect faith in him”72. And, “Our coming through it in joy upon the cure that he set for us is to hear the Lord saying, ‘Your sins are forgiven you’ (Luke 5:33)”73. Affection and gratitude toward the doctor naturally follow the healing, which again has parallels in the penitent Christian’s attitude toward Christ. So, “Our love for him who made us worthy of healing is to keep his words, as is written, ‘He who loves me will keep my words’ (cf. Pro 7:1, Dt 30:16 et al.), and also, ‘He who has my commandments and who

epijwne vraje gar eÉ^NnetjwR^P mmoou erov. eïjaée eneto njorp etekklysia #itooue auw #iprou#e mnpnau mmeere mnpnau etejje n#oou nim auw nsop nim éeeunaéi Mpesmou ebol #itooT^V Njorp, DQ 210-211 = Am. 2.233, collated by author. Cf. Apostolic Constitutions 2.59, which calls on the priest to exhort the laity to attend church every morning and evening. This passage, while not reflecting the explicit Christus medicus and cure of souls imagery found widely in the Apostolic Constitutions, is, like Shenoute, focused on the centrality of receiving the Eucharist in church. While it is yet unclear whether Shenoute was familiar with the Apostolic Constitutions, it was transmitted in his library, as reflected in the online Corpus Manoscritti Copti Letterari (http://cmcl.let.uniroma1.it/). 70 pT^MèöwN^T de nav @^Mpma NRpa#re peT^MtrenobJ^N Nsooun éeo- uNtepenson ou#wb e#oun eron etrenkw mpendwron #aqy Mpe- qusiastyrion nT^Nbwk NjorP nT^N#wt^p M^Npenson tote NT^Nei NT^Ntalo e#raï Mpendwron, DQ 211 = Am. 2.233-34, collated by author. 71 pe#naau Ntavtaav nan e#obS^V ebol eÉ^Mpijwne eto Nouype Nsmot #aqy Mpateprwt Nnevplygy ei e#oun y mou# e#raï pe tagapy Nqe etsy# éejaretagapy #wB^S ebol eÉ^Noumyyje Nnobe, DQ 211 = Am. 2.234, collated by author. 72 tenöintan#ouT^V de éeT^NnaT^Bbo ebol @^Mpijwne tyR^V #iT^Npev- pa#re petnpistis etéyk ebol e#oun erov, DQ 211 = Am. 2:234, collated by author. 73 tenöinei ebol #itooT^V Nraje eÉ^Mptalöo N^Tavta#on pe swT^M epéoeis evéw Mmos éeneT^Nnobe ky nyT^N ebol, DQ 210 = Am. 2.233, collated by author.

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keeps them, it is that one who loves me’ (Cf. Dt 11:1 et al.)”74. And what patient should not show gratitude for healing? So Shenoute writes, “Our giving thanks to him is to know all the good things that he does for us. For what do we have or is in our possession that is not his?”75 And as for the doctor’s payment, since doctors did not normally work for free, Shenoute finds a clear parallel in the life of the church: “And the gifts that are appropriate to be made for the one who cares (qera- peue) for the aforementioned disease (pijwne) are tithes and first fruits and offerings from just labors”76. Shenoute moves on at this point to other topics, especially the impor- tance of charity and the rewards that will follow in the next life, but Shenoute’s elaboration of Christus medicus and cure of souls theology over the course of some 16 extant pages constitutes a significant and sustained meditation on this Christological and pastoral motif. Of course, and as I noted previously, Shenoute is not unique in noting significant parallels between medical healing and the pastoral mission of the church. The Christus medicus theme pervades patristic literature, attested as early as Ignatius of Antioch, and is widely reflected in Greek, Syriac, and Latin literature in late antiquity. It features prominently in the writings of Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen, Ephraem, John Chrysostom, Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine, to name but a few of its elaborators. The closest parallels to Shenoute’s treatment of the theme, at least regarding the specificity of medical allusion and the sustained elaboration of the comparison and contrast of the medical doctor with Christ the physician, are Gregory of Nazianzus, Jerome, and Origen, on whom Gregory and Jerome in large part depend, and who did more than anyone to develop a Christus medicus theology77. While none of these (or any other author that I have identified) appears to serve as a direct source for Shenoute, it is worth noting very briefly some parallels.

74 tenagapy de e#oun epentavaan NMpja Mptalöo pe #are# enev- jaée Nqe etsy# éetetme Mmoï vna#are# epajaée auw on éepe- teouNtav naentoly et#are# eroou peT^Mmau petme Mmoï, DQ 210 = Am. 2.233, collated by author. 75 T^NöinJ^P#mot NtooT^V pe eime enagaqon tyrou eT^Veire Mmoou nan. ou gar peteouNtaN^V y petjoop nan éenouv an ne, DQ 211-212 = Am. 2:234, collated by author. 76 Ndwron de etejje etaau Mpetqerapeue mpijwne ne Nremyt M^Nnaparxy M^Nmprosfora ebol @^N#en#ise N^Dikaion, DQ 210 = Am. 2.232-233, collated by author. 77 PEASE, Medical Allusions; DÖRNEMANN, Krankheit und Heilung, p. 121-60, shows the extent of Origen’s elaboration of this theological motif, and now also see DYSINGER, Psalmody and Prayer.

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Origen, to start, includes several motifs in his Homily 8 on Leviticus that Shenoute later uses. Jesus Christ is a physician, and much as the medical physician treats the sick by medicines that frequently are compounded from bitter, noxious substances, that are unpleasant to the patient, and in fact would likely not be recognized as salubrious due to their “harsh and bitter odor,” so Jesus, “who is a doctor” and “is himself the Word of God,” “prepares medications for his sick ones, not from potions of herbs but from the sacrament of words. If anyone sees these verbal medicines scattered in- elegantly through books as through fields, not knowing the strength of individual words, he will overlook them as cheap things…. But the person who is some part learns that the medicine of souls is with Christ certainly will understand from these books which are read in the Church how each person ought to take salutary herbs from the fields and mountains, namely the strength of the words, so that anyone weary in soul may be healed not so much by the strength of the outward branches and coverings as by the strength of the inner juice"78. Also reminiscent of Shenoute’s later reflection is Origen’s insistence that sins resemble “wounds” or “scars” to be treated by the priests, a reading that Origen draws from the leprosy code of Leviticus79. It is worth noting here that Shenoute shares an interest in the leprosy code of Leviticus, although not represented in the work under examination here, but in Canons Book 8, which features Shenoute’s lengthy exegesis of Leviticus 13, interpreted in light of his contemporaneous suffering of a disfiguring skin condition. But despite the medical motifs shared by Shenoute and Origen, including the analogy of church and doctor’s office drawn in his Homily 8 on Leviticus, the specific reflections that Shenoute makes, as described previously, in particular his lengthy comparison of the healing event between doctor and patient, are not to be found in Origen’s Homily 8 on Leviticus, nor have I located parallels elsewhere in Origen’s corpus. With Gregory of Nazianzus, Shenoute shares the tendency to characterize the priest as physician of the soul and dispenser of spiritual medicines, as opposed to Origen who focuses on Christ or the prophets as physicians80. Some of Gregory’s other works were transmitted in Shenoute’s White Monastery scriptorium (when, however, it is not known), although Oration 2 is not attested81. None the less, Gregory’s

78 Origen, Hom. 8 in Lev. 2-3, trans. BARKLEY, 153-54. 79 Origen, Hom. 8 in Lev. 5.2-7, trans. BARKLEY, 161-163. 80 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 2.16-21. 81 According to the Clavis Patrum Copticorum of the online Corpus Manoscritti Copti

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emphasis differs significantly from Shenoute’s, focusing more on the longsuffering of the priest (i.e., Gregory), the physician of the soul. So in a passage that shares some elements with Shenoute, Gregory writes, first of the sinner, then of the healer, “For we either hide away our sin, cloaking it over in the depth of our soul, like some festering and malignant disease, as if by escaping the notice of men we could escape the might eye of God and justice. Or else we allege excuses in our sins, by devising pleas in defence of our falls, or tightly closing our ears, like the deaf adder that stops her ears, we are obstinant in refusing to hear the voice of the charmer, and be treated with the medicines of wisdom, by which spiritual sickness is healed. Or, lastly, those of us who are most daring and self-willed shamelessly bra- zen out our sin before those who would heal it, marching with bared head, as the saying is, into all kinds of transgression. O what madness, if there be no term more fitting for this state of mind! Those whom we ought to love as our benefactors we keep off, as if they were our enemies (cf. Shenoute above). For these reasons I allege that our office as physicians far exceeds in toilsomeness, and consequently in worth, that which is confined to the body"82. Yet again, no direct dependence is apparent. I suspect closer to home would be Athanasius’s characterization of Antony the monk, “It was as if he were a physician given to Egypt by God,” a passage that surely would have been familiar in Shenoute’s circles83. Regardless of any general or specific similarities, a discussion that I will refrain from expanding unnecessarily here, Shenoute gives no in- dication that he is quoting or paraphrasing any patristic texts when elaborating on Christ the physician and the cure of souls, as he does elsewhere when quoting the Fathers84. And I have not succeeded in find- ing any direct sources for Shenoute’s argumentation. The heart of Shenoute’s argument, specifically his lengthy comparison of the healing event between doctor and patient in the ma néipa#re or the church, are not to be found in Origen’s Homily 8 on Leviticus, nor have I located parallels elsewhere in Origen’s corpus, or anywhere else for that matter.

Letterari (http://cmcl.let.uniroma1.it/) Nazianzen’s De Baptismo, De Pascha, and In Athanasium were preserved and/or transmitted in the White Monastery scriptorium. Some of his Orationes may also have been transmitted into Coptic, but their locus of use or transmission is not clear at this point. 82 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 2.20-21, trans. by C.G. BROWNE and J.E. SWALLOW, Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen, in P. SCHAFF – H. WACE (ed.), A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd ser., vol. 7. 83 V.Ant. 87, trans. R.C. GREGG, Athanasius: The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus (Classics of Western Spirituality), Mahwah, N.J., 1980, p. 94. 84 As discussed in TIMBIE, Non-Canonical Scriptural Citation.

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It may be that this represents Shenoute’s original reflections on one of the enduring Christological tropes of the early Church. Beyond the significant interest of placing Shenoute within the context of the broader theological debates of the fourth and fifth centuries, Shenoute’s use of Christus medicus and cure of souls imagery is noteworthy as a discursive thread tied (in not yet clear ways) to other important parts of his literary corpus. I will touch on two: the great church of Shenoute’s monastery and Shenoute’s own illnesses. The church building – specifically the great church of Shenoute’s monastery (Deir Anba Shenoudah) –, which I have highlighted as the crux of Shenoute’s argument in “A Priest Will Never Cease,” figures prominently in other more well-known works of Shenoute, in particular his sermons in Canons Book 785. This means that we have in Shenoute’s works an extensive elaboration of Christus medicus and cure of souls theology, which focuses specifically (and distinctively) on the church building as site of psychic healing, written by an ecclesiastic who personally oversaw the construction of such a building. Connections between these two compo- nents of Shenoute’s writing in the Discourses and the Canons may well be a rich topic to explore in the future. Yet in the brief space available here it is worth noting that the language of pollution (éw#m) and purity (ouop), so central and particular to Shenoutian “subjectivity” in C.T. Schroeder’s recent book on the social “bodies” in Shenoute’s Canons – including the ecclesiastical “body” of the church building, is entirely absent in Shenoute’s ecclesiology and Christology in “A Priest Will Never Cease,” as well as in the closely related “The Spirit of God,” which precedes it the Discourses86. Another important discursive thread is Shenoute’s own illnesses, which he describes variously in several books of the Canons. This is a connection that may be paralleled in at least one of Shenoute’s contem- poraries, Jerome. While his literary corpus was undoubtedly unknown to Shenoute, an intertextual connection between one’s suffering and Christus medicus theology may also be observed in Jerome’s writings. Writing about Jerome’s adaptation of Christus medicus theology, classi- cist A.S. Pease observed, “A second important factor in [Jerome’s] interest in medicine is, I believe, to be found in his personal experiences

85 Addressed in C.T. SCHROEDER, ‘A Suitable Abode for Christ’: The Church Building as Symbol of Ascetic Renunciation in Early Monasticism, in Church History, 73 (2004), p. 472-521. 86 See especially Monastic Bodies, p. 90-125, on the church building, and p. 14-15 on Shenoute’s “distinctive Christian subjectivity,” to which Schroeder returns throughout the volume.

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and those of his friends. His own life seems to have been one of much illness, though aside from several references to troubles with his eyes… he is in most cases not very definite”87. Pease’s observation is well taken, and as in the case of Jerome, I suspect that Shenoute’s own strug- gles with illness could hardly not have informed or been informed by his theology of Christ the physician. Unlike Jerome, however, Shenoute is quite definite about the nature of his illness – the stench, the worms, the fever, the sleepless nights spent thrashing in bed, the festering ulcers, the flesh sloughing off and falling to the ground. He is also quite willing to speculate on its causes, although the causes are more theological than medical. In Shenoute’s experiences of illness we should not be surprised that Shenoute draws on the same imagery of wounds and illness that he used in “The Spirit of God,” “A Priest Will Never Cease,” and “I Am Amazed,” but employs the obverse of the Christus medicus and cure of souls rhetoric in his time of suffering: if Christ and his earthly representatives in the Church heal the wounds of sin, then Satan (and his worldly representatives in the monastery) cause, or at the very least become manifest, through sin. So Shenoute writes in “Is It Not Written” in the sixth book of Canons: “If Satan destroys the person through all sins, without him even knowing that he has been destroyed, because the wounds, the blows, and the strokes of sin are not visible on his body like sword wounds, then how much indeed will God destroy the evildoing person in the curse of the scriptures, without him realizing that he has been destroyed, because he does not see the blows, the wounds, and the strokes of the curse revealed on his body like sword wounds"88. He continues, a page later, “Treat (or heal, rpa#re), you, the eyes of our heart, that of mine and yours, with the words and the teachings of the scriptures, and let them become pure from falsehood and all the other evils, and we shall know every thing as we are recuperating (enmotn), as the eyes of the body are puri- fied of the blood and all the other diseases that occur in them; and the person will see everything, being recuperated"89. A few pages later in “Is It Not Written,” Shenoute continues, drawing on explicit medical imagery for his cure of the soul.

87 PEASE, Medical Allusions, p. 83. 88 “Is It Not Written,” Canons 6, XM 179-189 = Leip. 3.190. I have not included the Coptic text, as these selections are readily available in J. LEIPOLDT, Sinuthii Archimandritae Vita et Opera Omnia, vol. 3 (CSCO, 42; Script. Copt., 2), Paris, 1908 (= Leip. 3).

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“Observe: when the doctor applies the cooling or cool medicament (ppa#re nkbo y etkyb) to the wou[nd at] the moment [or hour] that it nee[ds] it, it [d]estroys (tako) it (the wound) and gathers together a multitude of worms. But if he applies a medicament that penetrates (pet- #ot#t) and a solvent (petouwm) on it at the moment and hour that it needs, and then applies that which cools at the moment and hour that it needs, then the growth (prwt) becomes visible, and the one who sees it rejoices because the wound has come out bit by bit […”90 All this is to suggest that understanding the use of illness and healing as theological metaphors is not only significant as a connection between Shenoute’s theological interests and those of the broader Greek, Syriac, and Latin cultures. It is significant as an intertextual connection between the public, theological face of Shenoute in the Discourses, the intra-monastic, disciplinary face of Shenoute in the Canons, and the life story of Shenoute as he actually lived it and told it.

Conclusion

It has become something of a cliché to describe Christianity as a religion of healing, perhaps even the quintessential religion of healing. Over a hundred years ago A. von Harnack described this distinctive feature of the nascent Christian movement in his Mission and Expansion of Chris- tianity: “Deliberately and consciously [Christianity] assumed the form of ‘the religion of salvation or healing’, or ‘the medicine of soul and body’, and at the same time it recognized that one of its chief duties was to care assiduously for the sick in body”91. As original as such a formu- lation surely was at the dawn of modern Christian historiography (Harnack found this observation significant and original enough to itali- cize the entire passage), Christianity’s status as a “religion of healing” has become so accepted as to warrant little debate. But overlooked in comparison is the observation that Harnack drew directly following: “Christianity never lost hold of its innate principle: it was, and it remained, a religion for the sick. Accordingly it assumed that no one, at least hardly anyone, was in normal health, but that men were always

89 “Is It Not Written,” Canons 6, XM 181 = Leip. 3.191. 90 “It is Not Written,” Canons 6, XM 190 = Leip. 3:195. The page is slightly dam- aged, and I have adopted Leipoldt’s minor (and eminently reasonable) restorations of the unclear portions. The text of manuscript XM breaks off here. 91 HARNACK, Mission, p. 108.

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in a state of disability”92. This observation is well borne out in early Christian reflection on the meaning of illness. If we take Harnack’s observations to heart, and we should, it is necessary to understand early Christianity not just as a religion that heals, but also as a religion that sickens: through a series of deft theological strokes Christian theologians rendered all of humanity spiritually ill and in need of a cure. The cure, of course, was available through a source exclusively administered by the representatives of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. It is in this context that Christian bishops and theologians developed the concept of Christ the physician. Reflection on Christus medicus, curer of souls, pervades early Christian theological and disciplinary literatures with a ubiquity that far surpasses the attestations of what a modern reader would consider physical healing (either “faith” or “medical” healing) in the literature of the post-apostolic church. The Christus medicus and cure of souls motifs were of great utility to the emergent church, especially in establishing and legitimizing the spiritual and temporal authority of the ecclesiastical leadership, whether that be a bishop like Ambrose or Gregory of Nazianzus, or a monastic archimandrite like Shenoute of Atripe. Shenoute’s writings provide a detailed and nuanced example of how one literarily prolific authority – one only now coming to light in histori- cal scholarship – in a little known corner of the late Roman Empire made use of Christus medicus and the cure of souls. Shenoute reflects a number of the common tropes in this medical Christology: condemnation of heterodox and non-Christian teachings as noxious spiritual diseases, regulation of the misbehaviors of laity that cause illness and injury in this world and the next, and promotion of regular and proper celebration of the Eucharist – as well as adherence to sound teaching and the Word of God – as central to healing the sick souls of the world. But Shenoute’s writings are not significant just to add to the significant corpus of ancient medical Christology. As I have had opportunity to highlight in this article, Shenoute’s particular elaboration of Christus medicus and cure of souls theology ties together important intertextual elements within his large and still imperfectly understood literary corpus, both his role in the construction of the great church of the White Monastery and his extensive reflection on his own experiences of chronic illness in several books of his Canons. As they appear in critical editions in the coming years, the Works of Shenoute of Atripe should

92 Ibidem, p. 108-109.

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offer important new evidence for the intersections of theology, illness, healing, and monastic administration in the history of late ancient Chris- tianity.

Virginia Commonwealth University Andrew CRISLIP Department of History 811 S. Cathedral Place P.O. Box 842001 Richmond, VA 23284-2001, USA [email protected]

Abstract — The present article explores Christus medicus imagery in several theological works by the Coptic monk Shenoute of Atripe (fl. ca. AD 385-465), a writer whose homiletic appropriation of the theme has been heretofore neglected. The primary texts under investigation here, “I Am Amazed,” “The Spirit of God,” and “A Priest Will Never Cease,” are connected bibliographically by their sequential arrangement in a volume of Shenoute’s Discourses. In these works Shenoute reveals himself to be actively engaged in theological issues and theological discourses shared among the theological cultures of the greater Mediterranean world, including extensive reflection on the Christus medicus motif, to which Shenoute adds his own personal and perhaps distinctively Upper Egyptian perspectives. Shenoute’s adaptation and deployment of Christus medicus theology is not only important for contextualizing Shenoute within the theological culture of late antiquity. Rather, Christus medicus theology as a discursive element runs throughout Shenoute’s varied works and reflects both the complex and multifaceted roles that Shenoute played in Upper Egypt and the significant place that illness and its meaning held in Shenoute’s long and still poorly understood career, as well as in the history of monasticism in general.

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