Crisis of Empire. Phil Booth

reward the best but also to punish the worst. And in this they mimic Christ, their Master, who spreads out his kingdom to all but does not concede it entirely to all, but to those who heed it in his message and maintain both faith in what they do and his commands. But to those who are not such, he gives the sleepless worm, eternal hell, and external darkness. [Cf. Mark 9:43–48; Isaiah 66:24.] And to those on the right he says, “Come, receive your inheritance,” and to those on the left he shouts, “Go from me into the eternal fire.” [Cf. Matthew 25:35–41.] And through the prophet Isaiah he similarly said to all, “If you desire it and you hear me, you will eat the good things of the earth; if you do not desire it and you do not hear me, you will receive the sword. For the mouth of the omnipotent Lord told these things [Isaiah 1:19–20].” And let nobody reproach the saints as austere nor suspect them to be cruel or harsh when they follow in their master’s footsteps in doing good to the prudent and punishing the wicked.

      In approaching the saints, therefore, the sick anticipate their appearance before Christ upon the Last Day. Indeed, in several places within the Miracles of Cyrus and John, the saints themselves emphasize that it is not they who decide who shall be healed or when, but rather Christ, their master.¹⁴⁴ Before both the saints and Christ, those with somatic diseases are without blame, for such diseases are a product of our natural (and blameless) corruption in the Fall. Indeed, such diseases might even be conceived as a boon—“virtues and heavenly praxeis (aretai gar ekeinai kai praxeis ouranoi),” as Sophronius states in Miracles 13.¹⁴⁵ Those with diseases of the soul, however, are sinners, for such diseases are products of the will. Thus Miracles 16: “We shall give an account and stand in judgment at the tribunal of Christ, whenever the Judge descends from heaven to distribute to each according to his deeds, but not according to diseases of the body. ‘For we all must stand at the tribunal of Christ, so that each may receive his rewards for what he did while in the body, whether good or bad’ [II Cor. 5:10].”¹⁴⁶

      In order to appease both the saints and (by extension) Christ, supplicants must first demonstrate the virtue of their souls. For Cyrus and John, says Sophronius, “pay greater attention to the sinlessness [apatheia] of souls than the curing of bodies.”¹⁴⁷ As a basic precondition of the saints’ approval, therefore, patients must demonstrate a resolute faith (pistis) in God and the martyrs.¹⁴⁸ In Miracles 2, Sophronius thus relates the tale of one Theodore: “He also was from the same city of Alexandria but had a modest fortune, led a life free from anxiety [bios amerimnos], and best of all, enjoyed contentment with his lot [autarkeia].”¹⁴⁹ Theodore falls into an affliction of the eyes, and the doctors tell him it is incurable. And so “he went to the shrine of the martyrs, clothing himself in a single and unshakable hope, sincere faith in them and the vision that comes from them to those who believe in them thus. And so coming to the holy temple of the martyrs, he reaped the fruit of believing in them with his whole soul [tēs eis autous holopsuchou pisteōs]. For having spent the shortest time there, he obtained the fruit that had not been cultivated for a long time but tended in simplicity of faith.”¹⁵⁰

      By contrast, other supplicants must undergo an extraordinary test of endurance in order to prove their commitment to the saints. In Miracles 69 a blind Roman patient comes to the saints, but makes “the unshakable resolution” not to enter their temple until he has first set aside his disease. “For he sat before the doors of the temple, and lay, ate, and slept there. He was burned in summer and froze in winter. He was soaked by violent rains and scorched by fierce rays, since he had the sun blazing over his head during the day and the deliverance of the moon during the night. And he had thus completed eight years in the open air and had not dishonored his own promise, nor even considered dishonoring it up until then, or to abandon it, even if he remained blind for the rest of his life. Hence those who knew him judged him worthy of praise for such constancy of thought and steadfast judgment; and the martyrs judged him worthy of a final cure.”¹⁵¹ Such asceticism is a demonstration of resistance to the demons that assault the soul.¹⁵² Thus in Miracles 13 a leper comes to the shrine in hope of a cure. “But when a not inconsiderable amount of time had passed and still he had gained no profit, he grew despondent. For the saints manage their cures with a certain economy. Evidently he was suffering from a diabolical mind that wanted to prevent his cure and to eradicate the sympathy of the saints, and he was no longer able to remain in the temple. For the disease of accidie [tēs akēdias to pathos] is serious and greatly opposed to souls that love God, able to do them great injury unless they quickly extinguish it as an illusion of the midday demon [hōs daimoniou phasma mesēmbrinou].”¹⁵³

      Recalcitrant sinners are brought to obedience either through persuasion or through punishment.¹⁵⁴ Speaking of the obstinate heretic Theodore in Miracles 36, Sophronius describes how “When he had heard all these sworn pronouncements, he nevertheless remained disobedient and unchanged [apeithēs kai ametathetos]. The martyrs, therefore, since they were not able to persuade him using words, tried with the goads of illness.”¹⁵⁵ Those diseases that manifest on patients’ bodies (i.e., that occur as a form of divine paideia) are both punitive and positive. (Paideia itself means both “punishment” and “education.”)¹⁵⁶ “For the saints,” says Sophronius, “do this to help, as does the common teacher of all, so that those who undergo their punishments might be able to become conscious [of their sin] and thus demonstrate the proper repentance.”¹⁵⁷ In such cases, Cyrus and John “are sympathetic toward those who suffer and bestow their healings quickly upon them, unless they are unworthy of such things, or in need of a greater correction [paideia] through some irrationality and hidden sin that only the ruler of all knows, and those to whom he has imparted the knowledge because of their worthiness.”¹⁵⁸ But, Sophronius says in Miracles 17, the saints bestow healing “on all those who approach them without envy, turning nobody away from their gift, unless someone is particularly loathsome and unworthy of their goodwill, or through lack of faith has become unworthy, or obtained through evil deeds an incontrovertible will [boulēsis].”¹⁵⁹ Such instances occur twice within the narrative.¹⁶⁰ Elsewhere, the outward scars of a disease remain as an “edifying proof” of a patient’s reluctance to believe.¹⁶¹

      The route both to the immediate approval of the saints and to future resurrection, therefore, is through adoption of the virtues and resistance to sin. Christ himself provides the paradigm for humankind to follow: “The Lord first revealed to us the road of justice and first discovered the way to complete withdrawal from the diseases of the soul [tribon tēs apo tōn psuchikōn pathōn teleias anachōrēseōs], saying to all in his mercy, ‘Learn from me’ [Matthew 11:29].”¹⁶² Being without sin, Christ’s will is in perfect accordance with that of God. Sophronius thus quotes Christ’s words within the Gospel of John, “‘I have food to eat that you do not know’ (by ‘food’ meaning the salvation and sweet redemption of those who believe in him). ‘For my food,’ he says, ‘exists so that I may do the will [thelēma] of the Father who sent me and complete his work’ [John 4:34].”¹⁶³ The will of mankind, however, while free, is subject to temptation and to sin, a product of our imperfect postlapsarian condition.¹⁶⁴

      Within both the shrine and the broader Christian life, the Miracles emphasizes, eventual redemption is achieved through ascetic discipline: the faithful forbearance of natural corruption and constant resistance to the demons that assault the soul. The adoption of the “ascetic life [bios monēros],” Sophronius tells us in Miracles 65, “is for [the saints] a much-desired repayment from those they have cured,” and furthermore, “they receive such people with joy, and immediately release them in good health.”¹⁶⁵ The Miracles of Cyrus and John summons its audience to follow the example of Christ and the saints, to renew fallen humanity through obedience to divine will, withdrawal from sin (anachōrēsis), and the pursuit both of spiritual perfection (apatheia) and the life free from care (bios amerimnos).

      In the preceding chapter we saw how the dominant late-antique strands of Christian ascetic theory (the vocabulary of which Sophronius repeats in the Miracles) were eucharistically minimalist: that is, that such theories subordinated divinization through the objective power of the eucharist to divinization through individual spiritual endeavor. While Sophronius recapitulates such emphases in presenting ascetical self-transformation as the principal route to success at the shrine (and thus also to salvation),