Crisis of Empire. Phil Booth
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In the subsequent miracle, the saints once again demand that a heretic, Stephanus, partake in the orthodox eucharist. Cyrus appears in a dream and says to the patient, “Truly, brother, I want more than anything to hear you saying, as you approach the temple, ‘Amen, amen, Lord.’” Then Stephanus “knew that he was talking about partaking in the mysteries of Christ.” “For,” Sophronius interjects, “this is what we say in response to the priests when they distribute the life-giving and salvific body and blood of Christ God, bearing witness with our own voice and confessing that it is true and called true that it is given by them for our spiritual nourishment [trophē pneumatikē] and release from sins [aphesis hamartiōn].”169 Stephanus partakes of the Chalcedonian eucharist and is cured of his blindness, yet the disease returns when the saints punish him for intending to revert to his former dogma. Then, “when the divine martyrs saw him sincerely promising and hurrying with all his might to honor his agreement with them concerning the faith, again they appeared to him in a dream, standing at the altar of Christ and offering bloodless sacrifice, which they brought and presented to him. And as he again partook of it they showed him the Church, Bride of the Savior, flashing in bright clothes, divinely ornamented and with an incomparable beauty that it is not possible to describe in human words. And coming forward to the august altar, she herself again took the mysteries of Christ that lay there and offered them to Stephen. And when the saints asked her if what was given sufficed for perfection [pros teleiōsin], she replied with these words: ‘I want him to abound in divine gifts, and to acquire more than what is given. For now I have received him as one who is enlightened, and from now on he shall be called my son.’ And having spoken thus to the martyrs, she hung from his neck a golden cross that shone with radiant precious stones about his chest, providing this as a proof of the illumination [phōtisma] that had been given to him.”170 Sophronius refers to the event as an “initiation” (mustagōgia).171
Conversely, those pagans and heretics who approach the eucharist without abandoning sin are punished. In Miracles 31 Sophronius relates the tale of one Theodore, who “while in the temple of the saints, after partaking in the life-giving mysteries of Christ—and whence motivated I do not know: either with something urging him on to anger or inflamed by some great mania and burning with the movement of simmering blood around the heart—the wretched, sorry man insulted the Divine by blaspheming, not by simple words or by abusing him as if he were a fellow slave but by sucking up air through the nostrils and making a noise like some terrible thunder, which forced everyone who was present, who saw it, and who unwittingly heard it, straightaway to shudder.”172 Sophronius then comments: “Many Christians do this, [not] realizing that they are blaspheming, as I see it; for they are completely unaware of what they are doing. If they understood it properly, they would not do it after a myriad tortures. Perhaps it is not pointless to describe this evil. For perhaps when some learn its nature, and that it is an invention worthy of pagan impiety, they will protect themselves against such folly. Porphyry says that when the pagans offer their polluted sacrifices to idols, they sneeze violently and produce such a noise through a forceful, powerful inhalation of the breath, [thinking that they thus] compose a sacred hymn. . . . This, then, is the nature of such noises, which exist for the service of demons, and which force those who produce them imperceptibly to celebrate the impure demons.”173 Returning to his tale, Sophronius thus relates how “Theodore used this loathsome and demon-pleasing noise after [taking] the food of immaculate communion, and immediately was deprived of his sight and blinded, finding a vengeance to accompany his blasphemy.”174
The same emphasis upon ritual purity occurs most emphatically within the next miracle, which again concerns a pagan. The silver seller Agapius is convicted of idolatry in Constantinople but flees to Alexandria, “thinking that he could here lie low and be hidden.”175 When he is then afflicted with paralysis (“the work of justice”), some people advise him to go to Saints Cyrus and John for a cure. Fearing lest in his unwillingness he be unveiled as a pagan (“for the wretched man was pretending to be a Christian”), Agapius acquiesces and travels to their shrine.176 “Not long after,” says Sophronius, “who he was became known to the [other] patients, for as in the manner of heresy he refused to partake of the life-giving mysteries, and much murmuring against him arose among those in the temple. When he realized this, wanting to avert suspicion, he partook of the holy mysteries of Christ. And swiftly after his participation in them, a savage demon fell upon him, exactly as Satan attacked the traitorous Judas after he took the bread that the Savior gave, having dipped it. . . . Tortured by the demon and continuously under its spell, even while asleep, if indeed he did sleep, he was convicted of approaching the mysteries not with faith but with hypocrisy.”177 Those around Agapius realize that the demon will soon kill him, and they remove him from the temple to travel to Alexandria to die. “But when he had left the saints’ temple, and traveled a short distance, he breathed his last in much pain, and thus obtained a death worthy of his impiety, for the demon choked him on the road.”178
For Sophronius the eucharist is the central marker of membership within the Chalcedonian Church. It has, moreover, a powerful and emphatic spiritual effect: it provides “illumination of the soul,” “spiritual nourishment,” “release from sins.” There is, however, a central paradox, for although Sophronius of all miracle authors devotes most space to the eucharist, and although he regards eucharistic participation as the central medium through which the boundaries of the orthodox group are constructed, it is nevertheless notable that mention of the eucharist within the Miracles of Cyrus and John occurs only in those cases where the supplicant is a heretic or a pagan (Miracles 12, 31, 32, 36–39). Eucharistic communion thus provides an initial moment of spiritual enlightenment in a context of conversion, but in no other instances (where the orthodox credentials of a supplicant are assumed) is there any mention of participation in the shrine’s eucharistic rituals. For most subjects, therefore, the purification of the soul (and thus appeasement of the saints) is achieved not through communion with Christ in the eucharist but through communion with Christ in ascetic imitation.179 Although the eucharist occupies a privileged position as a fundamental expression of orthodox belief, as a permanent mode of spiritual enlightenment (and thus also as a strategy for saintly appeasement) it here seems ineffective.180
THE MIRACLES IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
The general