The Hungry Are Dying: Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology) 0195139127, 9780195139129

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THE HUNGRY ARE DYING

OXFORD STUDIES IN HISTORICAL THEOLOGY Series Editor David C. Steinmetz, Duke University Editorial Board Irena Backus, Universite de Geneve Robert C. Gregg, Stanford University George M. Marsden, University of Notre Dame Wayne A. Meeks, Yale University Heiko A. Oberman, University of Arizona Images and Relics: Theological Perceptions and Visual Images in Sixteenth-Century Europe John Dillenberger The Body Broken: The Calvinist Doctrine of the Eucharist and the Symbolization of Power in Sixteenth-Century France Christopher Elwood Cassian the Monk Columba Stewart Human Freedom, Christian Righteousness: Philip Melanchthon's Exegetical Dispute with Erasmus of Rotterdam Timothy J. Wengert Primitivism, Radicalism, and the Lamb's War: The Baptist-Quaker Conflict in Seventeenth-Century England T. L. Underwood The Gospel of John in the Sixteenth Century: The Johannine Exegesis of Wolfgang Musculus Craig S. Farmer

Gerhard Sauter, Rheinische FriedrichWilhelms-Universita't Bonn Susan E. Schreiner, University of Chicago John Van Engen, University of Notre Dame Geoffrey Wainwright, Duke University Robert L. Wilken, University of Virginia The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition Richard A. Muller What Pure Eyes Could See: Calvin's Doctrine of Faith in Its Exegetical Context Barbara Pitkin The Gonfessionalization of Humanism in Reformation Germany Erika Rummell The Pleasure of Discernment: Gender, Genre, and Allegorical Rhetoric in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron Carol Thysell Reformation Readings of the Apocalypse: Geneva, Zurich, andWittenburg Irena Backus Writing the Wrongs: Women of the Old Testament among Biblical Commentators from Philo through the Reformation John L. Thompson The Hungry Are Dying: Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia Susan R. Holman

The Hungry Are Dying Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia

Susan R. Holman

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

2OO1

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan

Copyright © 2001 by Susan R. Holman Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Holman, Susan R, The hungry are dying: beggars and bishops in Roman Cappadocia / Susan R. Holman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-513912-7 1. Poverty —Religious aspects —Christianity —History of doctrinesEarly church, ca. 30-600. 2. Cappadocian Fathers. 3. Poverty —Religious aspectsChristianity — Sermons — History and criticism. 4. Sermons, Greek — Turkey — Cappadocia — History and criticism. I. Title. BR195-P68 2001 261.8'325'093934 —dc21 00-058877 Cover image: Gregory of Nazianzus giving alms to the poor, from a twelfth-century Greek manuscript of his sermon, "On the love of the poor." Sinai Cod. Gr. 339, fol. 341v.By permission of Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai.

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

Hunger with his grimaced face in eddies circles the unthrashed wheat. They search and never find each other, Bread and hunchbacked Hunger. So that he find it if he should enter now, We'll leave the bread until tomorrow . . . And we will watch Hunger eat To sleep with body and soul. Gabriela Mistral, "La Casa" trans. Doris Dana

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Preface

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any studies on Christianity in late antiquity consider the body in the social and religious context of all sorts of renunciation: voluntary fasting, ascetic eating, religious celibacy, and rigorous monastic exercises. For many people in the ancient world, however, such choice was a luxury. The involuntary poor lived, day in and day out, with circumstances that might make a zealous monk green with envy: readymade rags, stench, starvation, fiscal penury, and unbounded physical and social suffering. Yet this population has received less attention in religious history and scholarship than those who chose their asceses, and ancient sermons about the poor have often been neglected in favor of more "theological" themes. In this study I seek to redress this imbalance by looking specifically at a collection of closely related sermons on the poor that were written by three leading fourth-century bishops in the Roman province of Cappadocia: Basil of Caesarea, his brother, Gregory of Nyssa, and their friend, Gregory of Nazianzus. In exploring their "poverty sermons," I have been particularly interested in the identity of the body as it relates to the way poverty is constructed in these texts. Who was this "body" and how was it rhetorically depicted? How did these bishops — men educated in classical paideia, who also actively promoted voluntary asceticism — use both traditional rhetoric and theology to defend this population of individuals who had no such choice or education? These sermons date to an era when certain economic and moral mandates were undergoing radical linguistic and conceptual transformation, as Christianity became the dominant social force in the Roman world. Graeco-Roman society had always included those along the lower economic fringes, but until the Christian agenda began to energetically appropriate the poor for liturgical purposes, community identities had not so emphatically regarded this state of being as a categorical concept. In these Christian texts we find this transition at work. Needy members of—and outside of—the community are here labeled and appropriated in very distinct ways for this new society and dynamic of growing religious power. The involuntary poor in these texts are constructed in language that first locates

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them in terms of negative and negating space, defined by their advancing physical deprivations: into hunger, penury, and disease. They are bodies that have been pushed by the centripetal force of victimization out to and beyond the edges of the civic sphere. The sermons attempt to change the direction of this energy, drawing the poor back into the community as community itself takes on Christian language, affirming and shaping the social and religious significance of this body by giving them communal and redemptive power, albeit ever under the bishop's authority. Basil and his friends do this in their sermons through a variety of different images that reflect their very different personalities and ways of looking at social eschatology. Yet all three use a number of common and recurrent themes that reflect their specific location and upper-class rhetorical training. These themes include the language of leitourgia (liturgy/public service), the ideals of patronage and gift exchange so essential to affirming one's training in classical paideia, and the early Christian language of incarnation, profoundly relevant to any discussion of the redemptive body. In the chapters that follow, these interwoven themes are explored as they relate to each author and to their specific texts. While the phrase "the poor" can mean many things in such a study as this (and these multiple meanings are discussed in the introduction), for the most part I have tried to limit this phrase to mean simply those these sermons identify as such. The structure of this study is inevitably shaped by its origin as a dissertation, a form perhaps most evident in the introduction, which provides a broad conceptual background to the meaning and deliberate "placing" (or contextualizing) of involuntary poverty in traditional religious scholarship. This chapter looks especially at certain nineteenth- and twentieth-century themes as they fit the poor into various ideological frames. The introduction also briefly defines the terms leitourgia, patronage, gift exchange, paideia, and the therapeutic and incarnational language of fourth-century Christianity. In chapter 1 the reader enters the ancient world. This chapter, full of stories, traces the emerging Christian use of Graeco-Roman liturgical language between the first and sixth centuries C.E. and specifically explores the theme of leitourgia as it relates to dialogue about poverty in classical Greek and Roman authors, the New Testament, evolving Christianities, several Jewish texts from the rabbinic period and later, and dominant Christian texts from late antiquity. This discussion suggests that the"poor" —as a discrete group —moved from outside the social periphery of leitourgia in the ancient world into the very center, as they became an image for the Christian liturgical ideal. In chapter 2 we arrive in fourth-century Cappadocia. This chapter is concerned with the construct of the particulate, individual body. It specifically considers the famine of the late 3605 and Basil's purported role in relief efforts and in the establishment of one of the earliest institutional responses to destitution, his ptochotropheion, or "poor-hospice." He did not act alone nor think this all up by himself, and the general image that he did perhaps points to the role of ecclesial power dynamics in his famine activities. If he rose to power as a bishop on the wings of this oft-cited social action in the famine of 368-369, how might his texts on hunger and poverty be viewed as a lens for understanding the particular context at hand, particularly his construct of the starving body? In addition, how might modern biological, social,

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and anthropological studies on starvation and famine improve our understanding of the stages in the Cappadocian crisis? To explore these questions, this chapter looks particularly at Basil's Homily 8, "In Time of Famine and Drought," a vivid sermon on starvation. Chapter 3 steps back from the individual body to look at the broader social issues into which Basil preached, here considering his sermons on fiscal penury and debt and his advocacy of material redistribution. The poor compose a fiscal body, defined by market images. As the most gifted administrator of the three men, Basil most naturally constructs the poor through a primary lens of civic liturgy, social order, economic balance, and administrative justice. This chapter focuses on his Homilies 6 and 7 and the two sermons on Psalm 14 (Psalm 15 in modern Bibles), relating them to similar texts on fiscal crisis and injustice by Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Ambrose of Milan. Chapter 4 considers the negative space of the homeless sick, in a careful exegesis of the constructed poor body in three sermons by the Gregories: two by Nyssen and one by Nazianzen, all traditionally titled "On the Love of the Poor." This chapter considers the friendship of the two Gregories and their influence on one another independent of Basil, and the way they image the destitute using theological and medical language of disease, healing, kinship, and incarnation. While each Gregory was certainly a theological giant in his own right, the two must be discussed together when it comes to these sermons on disease and leprosy. This chapter explores their image of the disordered body, especially as they package it in terms of theological and cosmic identity, as essential to others in the community who may — and indeed ought to — obtain redemptive healing through it. Chapter 5 concludes by suggesting that the location of this linguistic and conceptual transformation is as important as the transformation itself and inevitably shapes it. These bishops stood "between the courtyard and the altar," sometimes appearing to face one direction, out into the earthly city and sometimes the other, yet ever traversing the sacred space between them to bring together — and even to contain—city and altar in the very body of these poor. The images in Gregory of Nazianzus's In patrem tacentem (Or. 16), "On His Father's Silence," bring these themes together. It is curious, in the study of Christian theology, historically so committed to the redemption of body and community, that English-speaking religious scholars have to date so consistently failed to provide ready translations of these texts. I attempt to correct this in a very small way in the appendix, by supplying an accessible English text for three sermons where translation is long overdue: Basil's Homily 8 and Nyssen's two orations. No one is more acutely aware than I of the limitations of these renderings, and no one will be more pleased to see them superseded. One cannot study the history of poverty, hunger, and disease without standing consciously and simultaneously in several worlds, both past and present. This is not a subject that has historically inspired neat and distant objectivity, and scholarship in this area is full of lively and conflicting religious and political agendas. This locational challenge is further complicated in this case by the fact that I have, from the very beginning, found myself inevitably in conversation with two very different modern audiences as well. One is that of classical and patristic scholars, and in fact the

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study speaks primarily to this audience, as it explores the transformation of Roman and Christian culture and the place of poverty language in the development of fourth-century theology and Christianization. The other audience, at least as large and much more diverse, is made up of those who are, for many very good reasons, eager to apply these texts to a variety of modern situations, religious and secular, including relief efforts, policy development, religion and nutrition, religion and healing, and the history of public health. Such a double audience, though inevitable, given the nature of the topic, presents additional challenges. I have written chiefly to the first audience, but I deliberately include enough material directly relevant to the second to make it as useful as possible to both sets of readers. While the Cappadocian sermons may serve as models that inform modern dialogue about hunger, poverty, and human rights, certain precautions must always be kept in mind. The sermons function within a very particular historical and social context. The world of antiquity was neither the modern underdeveloped nation nor a prototype for contemporary urban poverty. These texts speak from and to a very specific politics of patronage, in which one's entitlements depended on one's associations, and developing Christianity affirmed these hierarchical structures even as it redefined them. Thus, my study seeks to contribute in some way to the broader dialogue of modern hunger, healing, and poverty relief, but its place in that dialogue is at best historical and suggestive. The sermons may in the end, like the poor themselves, be best understood by the very differentness of their perspective: the way(s) they differ from modern constructions of the problem of poverty and the way(s) the three Cappadocian bishops differ even among themselves.

Acknowledgments

t is a pleasure to express my appreciation here to those who have supported this Iacknowledged work as it has taken shape during the past decade. Many of these individuals are in notes. I first "discovered" the sermons while at Harvard Divinity School after several years as a public health nutritionist working among the urban poor; my concern for the right use of these texts and others like them is more than an academic caution. A class on the religious roots of social welfare and an enigmatic note in a nineteenth-century text led to a timely meeting with Susan Ashbrook Harvey, who subsequently served as an ideal mentor and dissertation director. She, along with Stanley Stowers of Brown's Department of Religious Studies and anthropologist Ellen Messer, then director of Brown's Alan Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Program, provided the positive intellectual space and a diversity of contexts from which to explore what sometimes seemed like wild possibilities, as well as the rigorous critique by which to make sense of them. Peter Brown read the entire manuscript most encouragingly at a key moment. It is a privilege also to thank Michael J. De Vinne, who generously allowed me to read his unpublished dissertation; Michael Foat, Brian Daley, S.J., Robert Mathiesen, and an anonymous Greek reader for their input on the sermon translations; Neil McLynn, for coffee and encouraging me to think more about Gregory and taxation; Frederick W. Norris, for his unfailing cheer and ongoing support of the whole work; the Rev. John A. T. McGuckin, for his generosity in dialogue, especially the opportunity to read his Nazianzen biography in manuscript — although I did not learn of it until this study was essentially complete, it has been a delight to find intellectual resonance along some of his trails connecting Gregory's life to his theology; and Annewies van den Hoek, who first led me — literally — to certain key library sources and introduced me to the Boston Area Patristics Group, which has served not only as a consistent forum for patristic discussion, but also as a community of friends. The material has been shaped significantly by a number of conference presentations and conversations, including the Conference on "Organised Crime in Antiquity" at the University of Wales, Lampeter; the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion; the New England/Maritimes Regional Meeting of the AAR in Boston; the Fourth Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Classical Tra-

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dition at the University of Tubingen; the University of New Brunswick-Frederickton Ancient History Colloquium; and the North American Patristic Society. Portions of this material have been previously published. Several excerpts from the translations are included in Robert Atwell, Celebrating the Seasons: Daily Spiritual Readings for the Christian Year (Norwich, U.K.: Canterbury Press, 1999). Part of chapter 2 appeared in the Journal of Early Christian Studies 7 (1999), 337-63. An earlier version of chapter 3 appears as chapter 7 in Organised Crime in Antiquity, ed. Keith Hopwood (London and Swansea: Duckworth with the Classical Press of Wales, 1999), 207-28. Most of chapter 4 appeared in Harvard Theological Review 92 (1999), 283-309 (Copyright 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted by permission). I thank the editors for their permission to reprint this material. Errors that remain are of course my own. Special thanks are due to Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai, and Father Symeon, Grammateus and Librarian, for kind permission to print the image on the cover, of Gregory of Nazianzus giving alms to the poor, from their twelfth-century manuscript of his Peri Philoptdchias sermon. The excerpt from Gabriela Mistral's poem "La Casa," translated by Doris Dana, is from the Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, Published for the Library of Congress, 1971), 73; published here with the permission of Joan Daves Agency on behalf of the estate of the author. On a personal note, the entire project would have been utterly impossible without those who empowered earlier beginnings. Thanks go first to my father, who has been ever supportive of my academic work and who so willingly joined the audiences in Wales and Germany. Eileen O'Connell first brought language to life; Claire Austin taught me to love the well-ordered footnote, and Bonita Rettman how to discuss literature with liberty; the Damary and Taylor-Levere families made miracles possible; and Richard Penta astonished me with the revelation that my love of scholastic learning for its own sake might be a worthy journey. The Benedictine sisters of St. Mary's Abbey in West Mailing, Kent, provided respite for re-evaluation at a critical stage early in the research; the Society of St. John the Evangelist has sustained me with its liturgies and silences, a constant reminder that not all monks dwell on power and patronage; Cynthia Read, editor at Oxford University Press, and her staff have walked me through a sea of details with unflappable grace; and the diverse parish of St. James's Episcopal Church keeps me ever mindful of community. My mother's rapid, unexpected death to cancer just as this book was going to press brought new meaning to the role of grace, courage, and dignity in the face of consuming disease. Finally, I owe much to many others I cannot name (most of them women) who have made the experience of poverty real for me. Throughout this study I have been especially haunted by the memory of a tiny, starving girl who had been placed alone on a slum wall in New Delhi. Her passive and eternal gaze met mine during a brief, private "tour" of the slum in 1988. Although I never knew her name —and was, in fact, curiously and adamantly obstructed from interacting with her —I dedicate this work to her memory, and to those who so strategically constructed her place. Cambridge, Massachusetts May 2000

S.R.H.

Contents

Abbreviations, xv Introduction: Placing the Poor, 3 1. Leitourgia and the Poor in the Early Christian World, 31 2. Hunger: Famine, Relief, and Identity in Basil's Cappadoda, 64 3. Penury and Divine Gift: The Poor as Fiscal Body, 99 4. Diseased and Holy: The Peri Philoptõochias Sermons and the Transforming Body, 135 5. Conclusion: Between Courtyard and Altar, 168 Appendix. Three Sermons, 183 A. Basil of Caesarea, "In Time of Famine and Drought," 183 B. Gregory of Nyssa, "On the Love of the Poor" 1:"On Good Works," 193 C. Gregory of Nyssa, "On the Love of the Poor" 2: "On the Saying, 'Whoever Has Done It to One of These Has Done It to Me,'" 199 Select Bibliography, 207 Index, 223

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Abbreviations

Most abbreviations of ancient sources follow either the Oxford Classical Dictionary or Lampe's Patristic Greek Lexicon. Where possible, I cite Loeb or translations from the Ante-Nicene Fathers and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series as the most accessible to English readers. Migne references are given for all the Cappadocian poverty sermons except Gregory of Nyssa's, for which van Heck's critical edition is widely available. See the Select Bibliography for other critical editions where Migne is not cited. i. General Abbreviations ACW ATO A/CN ANF ANRW ATR BBV

BCH BEFAR BKV CCSG CIG CIL CMG

Ancient Christian Writers (J. Quasten and J. C. Plumpe, eds. Westminster, MD, 1946 ff.) Amphilochii Iconiensis Opera (C. Datema, ed. and trans. CCSG 36. Turnhout: Brepols, 1978) American Journal of Clinical Nutrition Ante-Nicene Fathers (Alexander Roberts, ed., 1887 ff.) Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt Anglican Theological Review Jonathan Fedwick, Bibliotheca Basiliana Vniversalis: A Study of the Manuscript Traditions of the Works of Basil ofCaesarea, 4 vols., Corpus Christianorum (Turnhout: Brepols, 1993-99). Bulletin de Correspondance Hellenique Bibliotheque des Ecoles franchises d'Athenes et de Rome Bibliothek der Kirchenvdter, second series (O. Bardenhewer, T. Schermann, C. Weyman, eds. Kempten, 1911 ff.) Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca (Turnhout: Brepols, 1977 ff.) Corpus Inscriptionum Graecorum Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum Corpus Medicorum Graecorum

xv

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Abbreviations

CFG CT CWS DAC Ep./Epp. FC GNaz GNys GCS GNO GOTS HE Horn. HSCP HTR JAAR JECS J Peds JRS JSNT JTS LCC LCL LSJ NPNF1 NPNF2 OC OCA Or. PG PL PWK REA REAug RSR RevSR SC SEG TAPA TS

Clavis Patrum Graecorum Codex Theodosius Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1978 ff.) Dictionnaire d'Archeologie Chretienne et de Liturgie (F. Cabrol, H. Leclercq, eds, Paris 1903 ff.) Epistula(e) The Fathers of the Church (R. J, Deferrari, ed. New York: Fathers of the Church, 1947 ff.) Gregory of Nazianzus Gregory of Nyssa Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller (Leipzig, 1897 ff.) Gregorii Nysseni Opera Greek Orthodox Theological Review Historia ecclesiastica Homilia(e) Harvard Studies in Classical Philology Harvard Theological Review Journal of the American Academy of Religion Journal of Early Christian Studies Journal of Pediatrics Journal of Roman Studies Journal for the Study of the New Testament Journal of Theological Studies Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953 ff.) Loeb Classical Library (London, 1912 ff.) Liddell and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, rev. Jones Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series (Philip Schaff, ed., 1886-1890) Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series (Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds., 1890 ff.) Oriens Christianus Orientalia Christiana analecta Oratio }. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus, series Graeca J. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus, series Latina Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll, Real-Encyclopddie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1893 ff.) Revue des Etudes Anciennes Revue des Etudes Augustiennes Recherches des Sciences Religieuses Revue des Sciences Religieuses Sources Chretiennes (Paris, 1942 ff.) Supplementum epigraphicum graecum Transactions of the American Philological Association Theological Studies

Abbreviations

TU VC ZNW ZPE ZSR

Texte und Untersuchungen ziir Geschichte der altchristlichen Literature (Berlin, 1883 ff.) Vigiliae Christianae Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der dlteren Kirche Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fur Rechtsgeschichte: Romanistische Abteilung

2. Abbreviations for the Sermons Horn. 6 Horn. 7 Horn. 8 HPs.i4a HPs.^b Or. 14 Paup. i Paup. 2

Basil, Homilia in illud: 'Destruam horrea mea (PG 31.261-78). Basil, Homilia in divites (PG 31.277- 304). Basil, Homilia dicta tempore famis et siccitatis (PG 31.303-28). Basil, Homilia in psalmum 14/153 (PG 29.251-64). Basil, Homilia in psalmum i4/i5b (PG 29.264-80). Gregory of Nazianzus, De pauperum amore (PG 35.857-909). Gregory of Nyssa, De pauperibus amandis i (PG 46.453-70) Gregory of Nyssa, De pauperibus amandis 2 (PG 46.471-90)

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THE HUNGRY ARE DYING

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Introduction Placing the Poor

You hear of The Poor, but you seldom see them. I don't mean just poor folks. I mean people whose vocation it is to be poor. Flannery O'Connor Not every poor man is righteous. Asterius of Amasea

T

he term poor in Christian history has carried a variety of religious meanings, and these meanings are not always necessarily associated with fiscal economics. As Flannery O'Connor's wry observation on "The Poor" suggests,1 Christianity has traditionally viewed "just poor folks" (the lower classes in general) as a separate and spiritually subordinate group distinct from those with a "vocation" to "holy poverty," although the vocation may or may not be a voluntary choice.2 Some scholars have regarded these two groups of poor as mutually exclusive. Karl Holl's 1928 thesis3 argued, for example, that poor as depicted by Jews and early (New Testament) Christians was nothing more or less than an honorific term for a holy person, entirely apart from economics.4 Dieter Georgi followed Holl on this point in his study of Paul's collection for Jerusalem. Faithful to this separation of religious and economic meaning, Georgi does not discuss economic poverty at all, noting that" 'remembering the poor' refers first of all to the eschatological title and priv-

1. Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, selected and edited by Sally Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1979), 487. 2. In the quote here she is speaking of a family afflicted with cancer who was enduring suffering in a manner that outsiders viewed as holy. 3. For his germinal article arguing that the "poor" in the New Testament ought to be defined religiously as "the chosen holy ones" rather than by economic criteria, see Karl Holl, "Der Kirchenbegriff des Paulus in Seinem Verhaltnis zu dem der Urgemeinde," in idem, Gesammelte Aussdtze zur Kirchengeschichte, II: Der Osten (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1928), 44-67. 4. The thesis is refuted in two articles by Leander E. Keck, "The Poor among the Saints in the New Testament," ZNW 56 (1965), 100-29, an d "The Poor among the Saints in Jewish Christianity and Qumran," ZNW 57 (1966), 57-78. 3

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Introduction

ilege the early church in Jerusalem prided itself on and for which it was respected."5 The historical understanding of the "Ebionites" also reflects this view, defining a religious group (historical or not) by the very phrase meaning "poor."6 HolFs thesis represents an influential position in the history of the theological understanding of poor. Even when religious scholars do recognize the economic nature of poverty, they may still give primacy to the voluntary poor. Thus much Christian discourse and scholarship about religion and poverty primarily concerns the poverty that follows voluntary divestment for ideological purposes7 rather than the poor who lacked the power to choose their lot and who appealed to the monastic "poor" (and others) for assistance. The Cappadocian sermons differ here in the positive value they place on the nonmonastic poor, and in their emphasis on this economic, involuntary poverty as it profoundly relates to religious meaning. The language of early Christianity concerning poverty and the poor (however this is defined) is rooted in biblical exegesis, but its expression is inevitably influenced by cultural factors as well; for most of the texts discussed here that culture is the Graeco-Roman world of late antiquity rather than, for example, contemporary Syriac or Jewish cultural influence. Although Jews were at this time, like Christians, engaged in discourse, perhaps similarly Utopian, about poverty relief, it is unlikely that the developing rabbinic thought of late antiquity overtly influenced the Cappadocians, given much fourth-century Christian hostility to Jews and the Cappadocians' relative silence about contemporary Jewish practices. Julian praised them for the way they relieved poverty within the Jewish community,8 and Gregory of Nyssa9 and Amphilochius10 each relate that Jewish youths were among those for whom Basil provided food relief during the famine of 368-369 (although Basil himself does not mention them). Since this passive identity is the only reference to Jews in these Cappadocian texts, the role of Jewish philanthropy, discussed briefly in chapter i, is not directly pertinent to the Cappadocian sermons themselves but only to their broader world. Scholars have yet to explore in depth the specific social and historical contexts of rabbinic responses to poverty in antiquity."

5. Dieter Georgi, Remembering the Poor: The History of Paul's Collection for Jerusalem (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992), 157. 6. From the Hebrew 'evyon. For discussion see Keck (see n. 4); see also Gildas Hamel, Poverty and Charity in Roman Palestine, First Three Centuries C.E., Near Eastern Studies 23 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 190-91. 7. As for example Ernst Fellechner's Inaugural-Dissertation, Askese und Caritas bei den drei Kappadokiem (University of Heidelberg, 1979), which examines the communal and political implications of Cappadocian asceticism and monastic sharing of goods. 8. Julian, Ep 22; 4300. 9. GNys, In Basilium fratrem 17; for the critical edition see GNO 10.2 (1990), 124; for English translation, see Gnys, In laudem Basilii, ed. And trans. Sister James Aloysius Stein, "Encomium of Saint Gregory Bishop of Nyssa on his Brother Saint Basil," Patristic Studies 17 (1928): 38. 10. Amphilochius's encomium on Basil exists only in Syriac; see Amphilochii Iconiensis Opera, ed. and trans. Cornelius Datema, CCSG 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978); for the German translation see K. V. Zettersteen, "Eine homilie des Amphilochius von Ikonium iiber Basilius von Casarea," OC 9 (1934): 67-98. n. In brief communication Professor Isaiah Gafni suggested to me that such work is in progress.

Introduction

5

In the Greek texts of the first four centuries C.E., there are two common words for the poor person, penes and ptochos. Ptochos traditionally designated the destitute beggar who is outside or at the fringes of society, the "street person," the extreme poor. Penes, on the other hand, is used to indicate the individual whose economic resources were minimal but who functioned within society, the "working poor." The penetes differ from the ptochoi in that their social ties within the community remain intact: they retain their dwellings, families, and responsibilities, including their debts.12 Penes could also be a derogatory term for anyone forced to engage in manual labor for survival. Penes was often used in Christian texts as a generic term for all "poor" and might either imply the voluntary poverty of the monastic or even —with deliberate irony— the insatiable greed of the rich, penetes because they feel lack. Gildas Hamel13 explores the linguistic ambiguity of the two terms in earlier religious texts, particularly in the way that Jewish sources were translated into Greek. The Hebrew 'any, approximating penes, represents "the poor person seen in relation to other people . . . pressed by debts and dependent for the good grace of an employer or creditor,"14 while 'evyon, approximating ptochos, represents the poor "in the most extreme of circumstances," who "needed to be helped at once if he was to survive."15 Although the parallel meanings of these Hebrew and Greek terms are fairly clear, they seem never to have been considered limiting, and early translators did not consistently follow this pattern as if it were a fixed rule. For example 'any, which occurs 80 times in the Hebrew scriptures, is translated as ptochos 38 times in the Septuagint."5 Similarly 'evyon, which occurs 61 times in the Septuagint, is translated as penes 29 times and as ptochos only 10 times; other occurrences in the Septuagint are translated using a variety of Greek terms, most commonly endees, "needy."17 Later Jewish texts leaned toward use of only the broader of the two terms. 'Any is the most common term in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and halakhik midrashim.18 The Gemaras and Palestinian Targums use both 'any and misken/miskena', with miskena' preferred in the discussions and in translations of 'any. ' Evyon occurs rarely. Hamel remarks that Syriac texts similarly use miske.no as "the all-inclusive term. It appears to represent something like the penes of Greek sources."19 Thus the distinction between ptochos and penes was hardly absolute. The terms were convenient but not necessary ways to distinguish gradients of poverty rather than two discrete classes of "poor." Some sources seem to simply favor one word over the other. For example, the "poor" in the New Testament are almost always ptochoi.

12. For a classical distinction between penes and ptochos in the ancient Greek world, see Aristophanes' Ploutos, 535-78, where Poverty (Penia), personified as a woman, defends the virtues of poverty that is called penia and distinguishes it from that poverty known as ptocheia; this is discussed further in chapter i. 13. Hamel, Poverty and Charity in Roman Palestine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), esp. 164-77. 14. Ibid., 167. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., 171. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., 175. 19. Ibid., 176.

6

Introduction

This word occurs 24 times in the Gospels and 4 times in James; penes occurs only in 2 Cor 9:9. Yet patristic authors use both terms, retaining the classical distinctions between them. Basil show a clear preference for penes in these sermons; he uses ptochos only to make a point or to explicitly quote another source.20 To further nuance this ambiguity, ptochos might also mean one who was formerly rich, who fell into disaster, while the penes is one who maintains a stable state of social inferiority and material inadequacy. Origen and Basil both define the poor in this way. Origen remarks that "a ptochos is he who has fallen from [eKTUTtTO)] wealth, whereas a penes is he who earns his living by labor"; Basil seems to echo Origen's concept when he says, "I consider that a ptochos is he who falls from [Katep%o(J.ca] wealth into need; but a penes is he who is in need from the first and is acceptable to the Lord."21 This view is consistent with the general identification of the ptochos as one suffering acute destitution, but further distinguishes the two on moral grounds, the ptochos as the more contemptible. Gregory of Nyssa suggests the difference between the two terms in his comment that the penes who falls ill is "twice ptochos."22 As Evelyne Patlagean argues, all three Cappadocian bishops retain the classical distinction between the indigent, outcast state of the ptochos and the more economically integrated penes who is a stable member of society. While Patlagean does not specifically explore the Cappadocian poverty sermons, she sets the stage for further exploration of their relationship to what she calls "un equilibre culture! transitoire" of mid-fourth-century power dynamics and patronage.23 Basil is not alone in preferring penes; it is also the common term in texts by Julian, Libanius, and John Chrysostom. As Patlagean notes, "Christianization of the language does not alter the respective significance [of the terms.]"24 While I suggest that this may not be precisely true in the nuances of developing poverty images, the historically relative meanings of these two words themselves did not in the fourth century depend on one's religious affiliation.

Contextualizing the Contextualizers Holl, Georgi, and even Patlagean contextualize poverty in a way that is inevitably influenced by their own cultural, political, and religious context. The study of poverty relief and the social identity of the poor is, in any age, characterized by ideologies, 20. Although he does use ptochos more frequently in his letters, usually in the context of the ptochotropheion. 21. Origen, Fragmenta in Psalmos 11.6, PG 12.12018; Basil, Regulae hrevius tractatae 262, PC 3i.i26oC; both trans. Hamel, Poverty and Charity, 196. Origen does not include the comment on God's pleasure in the penes, but he does go on to cite scriptural texts about God's punishing the rich by impoverishing them. 22. GNys, Paup. i (PG 46.46oA). I follow the critical edition of Arie van Heck, Gregorii Nysseni de Pauperihus Amandis: Orationes duo (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1964) = GNO 9.1 (1967), 98. Van Heck assigned new titles to Nyssen's two sermons, calling the first oration De Beneficentia and the second In illud: Quatenus uni ex his fecistis mihi fecistis, titles more accurate in terms of content but that have not been widely used by subsequent scholars. For clarity I have retained the more traditional title. Gregory's sermons contain no chapter divisions; references here are to page numbers in Van Heck's edition. 23. Evelyne Patlagean, Pauvrete economique et pauvrete sociale a Byzance xfi],61 "give also something to the soul" (Horn. 8.8), and Gregory of Nazianzus's parallel advice, [S6r|TiK6v 7ioif|0co(iev TO TOX> X,6you TipooiHiov.. ,"106 and the other says," 'E7ii8a\|/iX,et)eTa) jiot TO TOT} A,6yoi> npooiniov 6 TWV 7tpO(j)T)Twv 0i)|a7ta0e0TaTO 30:16, Eccles. 1:8, Isaiah 5:8 and 58:7. Only Naboth (i Kings 21:1) is explicitly discussed, briefly, as a biblical warning of the consequence of the rich man's greed. He also refers to "the Ecclesiast" in Horn, j, quoting Eccles. 2:18 and 5:13 as yet another brief warning, in this case against trusting wealth to one's successors. 25. Basil, Horn. 7.5; PG 31.293A-296A, selections.

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tronizes them by reducing them to slavery.26 . . . Your granaries of wheat are always full. You profit from inclement weather. . . . Alas, alas, you make the misfortunes of the poor an occasion to harvest money. You derive fruit from the misfortunes of others, from their extremity you gain new property.27

The commonalities between Basil and Gregory are clear in these parallel images of one small landowner victimized by his more powerful neighbor. Even the ironic allusions are similar; in 11.116-17, for example, Gregory says the rich "accumulate interest and nourish interest with new interest, and you are ever carrying this interest on your fingers," referring, as Basil and Ambrose state less poetically, to the costly rings the rich wear, rings with stones that might generate enough revenue to feed a city's starving people. While Basil and Gregory both concern themselves with threatening the rich man with the last judgment and eschatological loss, they both seek to make a more positive appeal as well. In describing the rewards of alms, Basil says, "If the joy does not lure you, then I am preaching to a heart of stone."28 The "joy" of redemptive almsgiving is based essentially on these promised benefits — to the donor — of treating the poor with justice. While Basil frequently speaks as if in the voice of the poor, understanding their plight, relating to their misery, sympathizing with their profound loss and sense of violation, and even depicting the body of their sorrow, yet all of his promises are, like his threats, directed at an audience with wealth. In Homilies 6 and 7, Basil calls for justice in terms that often seem to demand radical reform, such as his frequent references to the redistribution of goods. He is not, however, out to subvert the social order, but rather to apply a social control that reflects his own view of biblical justice. This justice requires an authoritative structure capable of directing the appropriate contributions of the wealthy to their civic communities, and of discerning the motives and moral qualities of suppliants seeking aid. His appropriation of this authority is a well-recognized example of Christians rewriting late antique society to fit their own moral model, with perhaps little actual change in the way things are done, despite the application of Christian language to the civic or ideological structure out of which they are done. This is particularly clear in certain of his correspondence with Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium, in the sixth chapter of his First Sermon on Psalm 14 (HPsi^a.6), and, as it relates to debt, in his Second Homily on Psalm 14 (HPs i/fb).

Civic Imagery: Amphilochius and HPs 143 Basil's correspondence with Amphilochius reveals Basil at what may be among his most unguarded moments: human, warm, frank, and even playful as he advises the younger man on practical theological queries. Amphilochius was one of Basil's most

26. GNaz, Ac/versus opem amantes, 11. 21-23, 3 2 ~5 2 > selections; my translation. For text and further discussion, see Bernard Conlie, Les richesses dans I'oeuvre de Saint Gregoire de Nazianze, Publications de I'lnstitut Orientaliste de Louvain (Louvain-La-Neuve, Catholic University of Louvain, 1985), 95-118. 27. GNaz, Adversus opem amantes, 11. 70-78, selections. 28. Basil, Horn. 7.6; PG ji^gyA.

no

The Hungry Are Dying

faithful and empathetic correspondents and, in all likelihood, Gregory of Nazianzus's cousin. Unlike Gregory of Nazianzus, Amphilochius never seems to have experienced any disillusionment or conflict in his interactions with Basil, although, unlike Gregory, he clearly regards Basil as a revered teacher and does not expect to be treated as an equal. Amphilochius's need to ask Basil how one ought to pronounce the word dyoY€] of the great Gregory" (Pierre Waltz, ed., Anthologie Grecque [Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1928] 6.81). His epigram on Basil and Nyssen's mother, Emmelia, says of her children, married and unmarried, that "three were priests; one (feminine) was the companion of a priest [iepfjoi; avfyyoc,]" (Epigr. 161; Waltz, 6.81). In Virg.T, Nyssen laments, "No one can climb up to [glorious virginity] who has once planted his foot upon the secular life. We are but spectators of others' blessings"; trans. Moore, NPNF2 5.345; the context includes a reference to marriage. Danielou accepts Gregory's marriage, suggesting that perhaps there were two Theosebias, and that the Theosebia of Nazianzen's letter was Nyssen's wife, with whom he continued to live in a conjugal relationship even during his tenure as bishop; see Danielou, "Le manage de Gregoire de Nysse et la chronolgie de sa vie," REAug 2 (1956), 71-81. Danielou does not consider Nazianzen's epigrams a strong argument for Theosebia being Nyssen's sister instead of his wife. Syzugos was most commonly a conjugal term. Perhaps, Danielou suggests, Gregory indeed had a sister by the same name who also married a priest. It is also not impossible that Gregory's wife might be called a "daughter" of her mother-in-law. It seems to me that these texts leave the question of Theosebia's identity open, although they cast no doubt on Gregory's assertion that he did marry (someone). For more on Gregory's rhetoric about celibacy and marriage, see Mark D. Hart, "Reconciliation of Body and Soul: Gregory of Nyssa's Deeper Theology of Marriage," TS 51 (1990): 450-78 and idem, "Gregory of Nyssa's Ironic Praise of the Celibate Life," The Heythrop Journal 33 (1992): 1-19. 14. GNys, Ep. 2 in Maraval, Lettres, 31-38; for English trans, see Moore, NPNF 2 5.382-83.

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apparently uneventful except for a two-year exile, when the Arians at Nyssa deposed him in absentia in 376 over a charge of mismanaged funds. He returned from exile in 378 after Valens's death. Apart from his description of the warm reception he received on returning to his Nyssa,15 there is little information about his congregation, and we know nothing about its social structure. This unremarkable career is so smooth, at least in contrast to the public controversies and agonies that characterized Basil and Nazianzen, that it might be easy to minimize Gregory of Nyssa as a sort of administrative bungler, a passive, obedient brother to Basil, a holy fool of sorts in his commitment to peace and church unity, a people-pleaser, well liked but hard to pin down: a chameleon. He was none of these things. Only his Arian opponents charged him with bungling. Basil was exasperated with the forged letters, but only because he was deceived by them; the discovery of one forged letter may mark the bungler, but three seem more like a deliberate prank to try to defuse an otherwise tense situation. Basil was ready enough to protect his brother against municipal arrest in 376, possibly by providing him with his hiding place, and took responsibility for his own role in Gregory's appointment: "If anything was deficient in the canonical procedure, those who did the consecrating are responsible, not he who by every necessity was forced to undertake the service."16 Unlike Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa never speaks against Basil, although his treatise on Macrina frankly describes Basil's overbearing arrogance when he first arrived home after his education and travels.17 Gregory's skill as an ambassador (and repeated appointments suggests that he did have ability in this area), his commitment to church unity, and even his decision, against family pressure, to teach rhetoric rather than practice church politics and administration, suggest a strong, warm, sensitive personality who took as much pleasure in listening as in leading. This passion for a universal integration, so apparent in his low-profile, interactive approach to politics, is also a dominant force in his theology. It profoundly influences his view of creation, the incarnation, and the theological context of the destitute and sick poor. Gregory's surviving works are all dated after his ordination, but they consistently follow traditional rhetorical forms and reveal a solid education in classical method and sources. Both his Christianity and the individual personality of his correspondent influence his choice of texts: in a letter to Eupatrios, who eagerly pursued classical literature but cared little for Scripture, Gregory deliberately began with an image from Homer rather than his usual Scripture, telling Eupatrios precisely what he is doing here and why.18 One of his letters to Libanius19 is nothing more than an extended metaphor that likens the latter's letter to a rose and to romantic love: Libanius's thorny barbs only increase Gregory's desire for further dialogue. In this verbal sparring with an opponent, Gregory readily uses the courteous plays on words that typically characterized paideia. 15. Ep. 6 in Maraval, Lettres, 164-71 (= Ep. 3 in NPNF 2 5.529-30). 16. Basil, Ep. 225, trans. Deferrari, St. Basil: The Letters 3.325. 17. PG 46.965, cf. Callahan, V. Macr., GNO 8.1: 377, esp. lines 11-14. 18. Ep. 11, Maraval, Lettres, 184-89. 19. Maraval's Ep. 28, falsely attributed to Basil (Ep. 342).

140 The Hungry Are Dying

For the Cappadocians, and in fact any religious expression that is dependent on literacy, it is the letter, the written sermon, the treatise, that functions in society as what Marcel Mauss described, a social exchange, as a "gift" that is also a signifier of power. Like Mauss's shells and bracelets in Melanesia, letters in late antiquity were an exchange currency between the religious leaders, in this case bishops, supplicants, church groups, and those in civic administration. Like boxed presents, but unlike speeches, letters and treatises may be handled, owned, displayed, and passed on. To possess a theological letter or treatise was in some sense to participate in its essence either by agreement with its tenets or by use of it as a tool for constructing an opposing statement. To pass on a letter or treatise implied above all the transmission of meaning. As in Mauss's communities, correspondents and audiences in late antiquity were more than the passive recipients of the gift. Those who received these gifts —words delivered in rhetorical formulas, wrapped either in the live performance of the reading or in the exchange of a material object —were expected to act in obligatory response. Letters of recommendation created or strengthened an obligation of the subject to the author but might not obligate the recipient. Doctrinal treatises expected moral reform or response. In this way the rhetorical acts of traditional paideia were at the same time a gift exchange practiced by Christian rhetors to establish or strengthen relationships of power by perpetuating a cycle of obligations based in gift patronage. This is a dominant theme in all three Cappadocian bishops, and the language of the word as gift is one in which Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus especially seemed to delight. Gregory of Nyssa frequently refers to his letters or treatises as a "gift." The treatise against Eunomius is constructed as a gift for his brother, Peter, and his letter to the bishop, Eusebius of Chalcis, is presented rhetorically as an Easter gift: Now our offering which is tendered for your acceptance in this letter is the letter itself, in which there is not a single word wreathed with the flowers of rhetoric . . . to make it to be deemed a gift at all in literary circles, but the mystical gold, which is wrapped up in the faith of Christians, as in a packet, must be presented to you, after being unwrapped, as far as possible, by these lines, and showing its hidden brilliancy.20 In Nyssen's sermons on the love of the poor, the gift goes beyond the word to the power of the sick and leprous poor to effect spiritual and cosmic healing that is part of the greater gift of redemption.

Gregory of Nazianzus: The Gift of Words and the Body of Christ If Gregory of Nyssa is regarded as a diplomat and mystic, Gregory of Nazianzus is considered "the most important figure in the synthesis of classical rhetoric and Christianity"21 and "the greatest Greek orator since Demosthenes."22 He was the son of a bishop, trained in rhetoric and philosophy with Basil in Athens, an eager and devoted 20. Ep. 4, Maraval, Lettres, 148-49, trans. Moore, NPNF^.jzy. 21. Kennedy, Greek Rhetoric under Christian Emperors, 215. 22. Idem, A New History of Classical Rhetoric, 261.

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monk, seeking the contemplative life but pushed into leadership roles by means he ever called unfair; perhaps Gregory's most assertive political act was his dramatic resignation as bishop of Constantinople in 381. His conflicts with Basil are infamous. His sense of duty to care for his aged parents clearly tortured him, although he presents himself as a classic image of the faithful son, and it was an image he was glad enough to use to avoid politics. Yet he was not a man who sought silence. He loved the paideia that so deeply formed his social and theological identity. He confesses his unrestrained fondness for the well-ordered word in his diatribe against Julian and Julian's law against Christians teaching the classics: I must carry back my words to the subject of words . . . and endeavor to the best of my ability to advocate their case . . . and let everyone share in my indignation who takes pleasure in words. . . . Words alone I cleave to, and I do not begrudge the toils by land and sea that have supplied me with them. . . . May mine be the possession of words and his, too, whoever loves me, which possession I embraced and still embrace first of all after the things that be first of all — I mean religion and hope beyond the visible world — so that if, according to Pindar "what is one's own weighs heavily," speech in their defense is incumbent upon me and it is especially just for me, perhaps more than anyone else, to express my gratitude to words for words by word of mouth. 2 '

Gregory saw no reason to reject classical paideia or any of the traditional forms involved in skillful dialectic. His theological orations against the Eunomians (Or 2831) are rooted in classical linguistic logic and rhetorical technique.24 "What can mean more to the Word than thinking beings?" Gregory asked, "since their very existence is an act of supreme goodness."25 A theologian and poet more eloquent but less "mystical" than Nyssen, Gregory of Nazianzus is deeply concerned to use paideia in Christian self-expression and theology. Norris identifies Nazianzen as a "philosophical rhetorician,"26 not because he wrote any handbooks of theory or the technical devices of philosophical rhetoric (he did not), but because the rhetorical expression of philosophical concepts intrinsically forms the manner of his own style and thinking. Although Gregory was ever fleeing center stage in terms of church leadership, it seems that he never once considered putting his rhetorical gift to any significant use other than the exposition of Christian doctrine.27 His ready supply of theological metaphors is evident even when he simply asks Amphilochius to pray for him when he is ill: For the tongue of a priest meditating of [sic] the Lord raises the sick. . . . Loose the great mass of my sins when you lay hold of the Sacrifice of Resurrection. . . . By your numerous letters you have trained my soul to science. Most reverend friend, cease

23. GNaz, Or. 4.100, trans. C. W. King, Julian the Emperor (London: George Bell, 1888), 67. 24. See discussion in Frederick W. Norris, Faith Gives Fullness to Reasoning: The Five Theological Orations of Gregory of Nazianzen (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991). 25. GNaz, Or. 28.11, trans. Lionel Wickham and Frederick Williams, in Norris, Faith Gives Fullness to Reasoning, 230. 26. Norris, Faith Gives Fullness to Reasoning, 25. 27. I mean in terms of vocational intent. Certainly he uses the rich metaphorical imagery of rhetoric constantly in even nontheological themes in his letters: to tease, chide, entertain, and praise.

142 The Hungry Are Dying not both to pray and to plead for me when you draw down the Word by your word, when with a bloodless cutting you sever the Body and Blood of the Lord, using your voice for the glaive.28

This ability of the Christian priest to use the spoken word to effect the power of the divine Word in society is, for Gregory, an essential part of that divine participation in incarnation that characterizes the Christian's sharing in God's gift to the human race. Gregory's sermon "On the Love of the Poor" (Or. 14), even more than Basil's sermons on poverty, functions consciously within the Christian application of classical paideia and its rhetoric. The language Gregory uses to defend his arguments for compassionate philanthropia and philoptochia consistently argues for the "rights" or entitlement of the poor to relief in terms of patronage, the gift of alms, essential kinship, and christology. Like Basil, Nazianzen's discussion of social issues depends much on the euergetism of the classical patron, but of the three Cappadocians it is Nazianzen whose sermon on the poor most fully identifies the body of the poor with Christ. This is most striking in the way he concludes Oration 14, with an explicit image of the poor as Christ: I honour that purse of Christ which encourages me to the care of the poor [7iTo>xoTpO(|>icK;].... I am fearful of that "left hand side" and of "the goats" . . . because they have not ministered to Christ through those in need. .. . [Wjhile there is yet time, visit Christ in his sickness, let us give to Christ to eat, let us clothe Christ in his nakedness, let us do honour to Christ, and not only at table, [or] with precious ointments [or] in his tomb [or] with gold, frankincense and myrrh, . . . but Let us give him this honour in his needy ones [Seouevrov], in those who lie on the ground here before us this day. . . ,29

This image of the poor body as Christ is present throughout Gregory's sermon. Those who share Gregory's compassion are "Christ-lovers and poor-lovers"(i4.9). The ultimate fate of material goods turns on the reality that "we must either leave all things for C h r i s t . . . or else we must share our possessions with Christ" (14.18). The audience, Gregory says, will show "reverence for Christ as often as you show your-

28. GNaz, Ep. 171, trans. Browne and Swallow, NPNF2 7.469. 29. GNaz, Or. 14.39-40, trans. M F. Toal, The Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1963), 43-64. Unless noted, all translations from Or. 14 are Toal's. A critical edition is wanting but forthcoming from Sources Chretiennes by Claire Helly (Marie-Ange Calvet, pers. comm.}; currently the most available Greek text is PG 35.855-910. For a newer English translation, see soon Brian E. Daley, Gregory ofNazianzus, The Early Church Fathers (London: Routledge, forthcoming). "Christ's body" had long been a standard Christian image for the involuntary poor, but Gregory seems to be among the first to express it so vividly in language "of the street." We find the same image again in Syriac texts. In the sixth century, John of Ephesus says of Euphemia's public appeals for aid: If someone resisted and would not give cheerfully, she made him regret the day with such words as these: "It's all very well for you to sit with your servants standing around attending you, bringing you successive courses of delicacies and wines and the best white bread, and very fine rugs, while God is overcome in the marketplace, swarming with lice and fainting with hunger. . . . " John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints 12, trans. Sebastian P. Brock and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 130; my emphasis.

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self a kind and philanthropic member of Christ" (14.37). Finally- those who suffer the fate of the goats rejected by divine justice in Matthew 25 are those who "have not ministered to Christ through those in need" (14.39). While all three men speak to, and perhaps in, a liturgical context, it is Nazianzen whose central identity within the church is seen here by his placement of the poor at the very center of all that the church means to him: the identity of Christ. Basil locates it more often in community outside the church: the hearth, the marketplace, the public roads. Gregory of Nyssa's construct of the poor, discussed later, is also integrally related to the incarnation, but he builds his argument in terms more of philosophic cosmos than on ecclesiastical location and behavior. Nuances differentiate the three thinkers from one another in their construct of the poor body even as they overlap on many other points. Nyssen is also concerned with incarnation, and Nazianzen with divine spheres of the sacred; both are profoundly concerned with community. Gregory of Nazianzus's Oration 14 is almost a third longer than Nyssen's two orations on the poor, combined. In some manuscripts it is titled ne.pl 7tT,a>%OTpoi,ci