For the critique of astrological predestination see Sophronius, Miracles 28.2–5; see also Maraval (1981) 389f.
103. See esp. Sophronius, Miracles 67.10–11 [Marcos 389], in which the saints round upon a janitor who has admitted a “quack” (iatriskos) to their shrine in an attempt to save a suicide.
104. For the saints’ shrine as iatreion: Miracles of Thecla 25; Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 9, 10, 12, 22. For Cosmas and Damian acting as doctors on their rounds, or performing surgeries, see ibid. 1, 17, 23. For the principle of superiority through assimilation see the discussion of Davis (2001) 76–77. Cf. Déroche (1993) 103 n. 22.
105. “Doctors”: Sophronius, Miracles 1.5, 4.3, 7.1, 8.5, 10.6, 23.1, 50.6, 52.2; iatreion: ibid. 10.6, 17.3, 42.4, 67.10. See also ibid. 33.8 (“in the form of doctors,” as master and apprentice), 62.4 (like doctors on their rounds). On assimilation to doctors cf. also Montserrat (2005) 238–40; Déroche (2000) 155–60. The latter argues that the authors of miracle collections, even though in competition with secular medicine, were forced to assimilate it to some degree, not only for the reassurance of patients and persuasion of the medically minded but also because such authors could not stretch the limits of what the public would accept.
106. Oil: Sophronius, Miracles 1, 3, 7, 22, 50, 65; direct intervention in a dream: ibid. 11, 12, 14, 16, 19, 21, 33, 53.
107. See ibid. 4.4 (citron fruit), 5.4 (dried fig), 8.14 (cooked peas), 10.7 (honey), 13.6 (camel dung mixed with water), 17.4 (salted cumin), 51.8 (Bithynian cheese), 53.2 (roasted pepper), 59.4 (raw leeks). The same is true of more exotic products: powdered crocodile meat (24.5), for example, or an unguent of salted quail (43.4). Such remedies (powders, unguents) are furthermore prescribed in technical language that reeks of the lexicon of secular medicine; see the cure ibid. 6.3 [Marcos 252], said to be a “compound [sunthēma] made from parsnip and honey and mixed through rubbing [dia tripseōs] with a bread to become from both a single plaster [kataplasma].” On the closeness of Sophronius’s cures to both contemporary technical and popular medicine cf. Marcos (1975) 136–52; Wolska-Conus (1989) 47–59; Montserrat (2005) 235f. For Byzantine materia medica see Scarborough (1984); Stannard (1984).
108. See, e.g., Sophronius, Miracles 20.4, 25.6, 36.8–10.
109. Ibid. 30.4 [Marcos 303].
110. Sophronius, Miracles 30.5 [Marcos 303]. Cf. Sophronius, Miracles 52.1 [Marcos 365] on the chief doctor (archiētros) Zosimus: “And he who had promised a cure to others was not able to help himself.”
111. Sophronius, Miracles 30.6 [Marcos 303].
112. Sophronius, Miracles 30.8 [Marcos 304].
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
