113. Sophronius, Miracles 30.9 [Marcos 304].
114. Sophronius, Miracles 30.12 [Marcos 305]. On Gesius, a famous fifth-century physician and therefore symbolic of the entire medical profession, see PLRE vol. 2; with Montserrat (2005) 239.
115. See, e.g., Sophronius, Miracles 10.6, 11.1, 22.3, 23.1, 27.7, 47.3–4. At Miracles 15.6 [Marcos 274] Sophronius tells his audience, “And I shall write of the remedy through which the martyrs easily cured this affliction, lest any officious doctor think the saints applied some Hippocratic principle, and thus contemptuously mock their ineffable power and proclaim Hippocrates or Galen as the author of the cure rather than the martyrs who actually performed it.” Sophronius describes the cure as “glass, which [the saints] converted into its old form, sand, after trituration [meta tēn leiōsin]” [Marcos 274]. Paul of Aegina 6.22 uses the phrase hualos chnoōdēs (lit. “fine-powdered glass”) to describe an absorbent of some kind. Speaking of the disease aigilōps (an ophthalmic ulcer) he writes: “And fine-powdered glass sprinkled over these miraculously dries them up, as does Aloe vera mixed with powdered frankincense” [Heiberg vol. 2, 62]. Pace Montserrat (2005) 238, who refers to the cure’s “bizarre nature.”
116. P. Brown (1981) 114f.; Horden (1982) 12; Haldon (1997) 44; Chirban (2010).
117. See Sophronius, Miracles 1.10, 8.9–10; 40.5.
118. For this process of etiological differentiation see, e.g., ibid. 26.2, 30.6–7, 41.3, 45.2, 54.5. In certain instances Sophronius professes some confusion as to the cause of a disease; see ibid. 23.1: “Thus the illness was terrible and unusual. Whether it was magic that produced it or some natural symptom, I do not know. For I was able to learn only of the disease and its treatment” [Marcos 285]; also Sophronius, Miracles 52.1.
119. Criticism of doctors is ubiquitous. For accusations of incompetence see, e.g., Miracles of Artemius 3, 4, 20; for rapaciousness, ibid. 23, 32, 36.
120. For this desire see the descriptions of the saint’s cures and surgical procedures within the various rhetorical excursuses that punctuate the center of the collection ibid. 24–32, and that explicitly attempt to distance the saint from accusations of dependence on medical procedure—e.g., ibid. 24 [Crisafulli and Nesbitt 143]: “So, where are the boastful Hippocrates and Galen, and the countless other doctors? Inasmuch as this kind of gynaecological disease is only a ruptured groin, such people maintain that one ought first to cut with force the patient’s folded skin wherever the outer membrane has been made to bulge because of the swelling. [Artemius] attended to none of these things.” On the antimedical nature of Artemius’s cures see also Déroche (1993) 104. For the simultaneous assimilation of the saint to doctors, as in other collections, however, see Miracles of Artemius 2, 6, 22, 38–42.
121. Cf. Miller (1985) 65f.; Déroche (1993) 105–7.
122. Haldon (1997) 52. For the same argument applied to the Miracles of Therapon see Haldon (2008). For a similar argument applied to Gregory of Tours’s Western narratives, see Van Dam (1993) 86–94.
123. See Miracles of Artemius 7 (lifting a weight), 21 (shouting and lifting a weight), 28 (falling out of bed), 30 (stretching while running), 32 (weight falling on stomach), 40 (heavy lifting). Cf. also Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 22, in which the patient is said to be afflicted with “a certain humor from bad regimen” (chumos tis ek ponēras diaitēs) [Deubner 157].
124. See Miracles of Artemius 17 and 37, in which patients who doubt the saint are afflicted with hernias. The same threat is made ibid. 8; the cause of a doubter’s hernia ibid. 15, however, is ambiguous. On sin within the Miracles of Artemius see now also Alwis (2012), who argues that the frequent reference to inflammation (phlegmonē) of the testicles within the text is “a metaphor for passion or excess.” For that metaphor cf. Sophronius, Miracles 1.6 [Marcos 244]: The saints “cured the swelling [tēn phlegmonēn] of his soul before they put an end to the inflammations on his bodily neck.”
125. Haldon’s argument is most applicable to John of Thessalonica, Miracles of Demetrius 3, in which the author describes the onset of a plague. Plague, however, was exceptional and demanded an exceptional explanation. Thus the protagonist of the previous miracle is “bright in birth, and even more resplendent in faith” but nevertheless suffers a “rupture of blood through the stomach” [Lemerle 69]. The latter must therefore be natural.
126. Sophronius, Miracles 16.1–3 [Marcos 275].
127. For such traditions see Temkin (1991) 8–17.
128. Sophronius, Miracles 21.1 [Marcos 282].
129. Sophronius, Miracles 14.2 [Marcos 271].
130. Sophronius, Miracles14.2–3 [Marcos 271f.]. Cf. Maximus Confessor, Centuries on Love 2.16 [Ceresa-Gastaldo 96]: “Passion is a movement of the soul contrary to nature.”
131. See Sophronius’s spirited defense of free will in the refutation of astrological predestination at Miracles 28.2–5.
132. Sophronius, Miracles 35.2 [Marcos 319]. See also Sophronius, Miracles 27.2 [Marcos 292]: “For we wretched men are accustomed to avenge ourselves on our fellow man not only with tortures and murderous instruments and swords, if he has done some wrong toward us, or being ruled by jealous hatred of our brother, even if he has done nothing wrong to us, still then to set upon him with poisons, abandoning our natural love for our neighbor.”
133. Sophronius, Miracles 34.2 [Marcos 315].
134. On this innocence of youth and the training of the soul cf. also Sophronius, Miracles 44.2.
135. Ibid. 38.9 [Marcos 334f.]. Cf. Sophronius, Miracles 37.7 [Marcos 331f.]: The patient “knew the cause, and knowing he repented, and repentant he obtained forgiveness, and with forgiveness he was corrected, and corrected he saw once again.”
136. See also Sophronius, Miracles 66.5–6, in which a healed patient undergoes a quasi resurrection.
137. Sophronius, Miracles 5.7 [Marcos 251].
138. Sophronius, Miracles 46.3 [Marcos 352]. Cf. Sophronius, Miracles 11.9, 23.3, 25.1, 37.9. See also ibid. 70.1–2, in which Sophronius presents the telling of his own miracle as a recapitulation of the news spread by the leper healed by Jesus at Mark 1:40–45. For similar statements cf. also Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 14, 15, 26.
139. Sophronius, Miracles 38.9.
140. Ibid. 30.8.
141. See ibid. 9.3, 23.2, 62.1.
142. See esp. Sophronius, Prologue to the Miracles 11 [Bringel 11]. Sophronius, Prologue to the Miracles 12–13 proceeds to describe how the divergent celestial and terrestrial persons and careers of the saints (Cyrus as monk, John as doctor) were brought into perfect union through Christ. Cf. also Schönborn (1972) 225ff., who applies a similar analysis to Sophronius’s patriarchal sermon On Saints Peter and Paul. Cf. below p. 233 n. 26.
143. Sophronius, Miracles 29.1–2 [Marcos 298]. See also Sophronius, Miracles 27.3, 34.7. Cf. Miracles of Thecla 28 [Dagron 364]: “For in knowing how to treat well those who have done some good in their lives and to punish the impious and those who dare the unholy, [Thecla] imitates, I think, the example of Christ king.”
144. See esp. Sophronius, Miracles 36.25–26, in which a patient sees an image in which the saints are supplicating Christ. Cf. ibid. 42.5–6 [Marcos 345]: “It is not us [the saints], O women, who are the lords of health, but Christ the provider and guide. . . . We offer prayers for everyone alike and cure and immediately release whoever our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, orders us to.” For a similar statement cf. Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 3. On such passages, which occur in all miracle collections, see also Maraval (1981) 388; Déroche (1993) 108–10.
145. See Sophronius, Miracles 13.1 [Marcos 269], speaking of Paul’s illness at Gal. 4:13–14.
146. Sophronius, Miracles 16.4 [Marcos 275].
147. Sophronius, Miracles 1.6 [Marcos 244]. Cf. the use of apatheia at Sophronius, Miracles 69.3 and 70.8, in which it appears instead to mean “freedom from [somatic] disease.”