TY - BOOK AU - Crislip,Andrew TI - Thorns in the Flesh: Illness and Sanctity in Late Ancient Christianity T2 - Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion SN - 9780812244458 AV - BR195.S93 C75 2013eb U1 - 261.8 32109015 23 PY - 2012///] CY - Philadelphia : PB - University of Pennsylvania Press, KW - Asceticism KW - History KW - Early church, ca. 30-600 KW - Diseases KW - Religious aspects KW - Christianity KW - History of doctrines KW - Human body KW - Suffering KW - Religious Studies KW - RELIGION / Christianity / History KW - bisacsh KW - Ancient Studies KW - Classics KW - Religion N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Introduction --; Chapter 1. Illness, Sanctity, and Asceticism in Antiquity: Approaches and Contexts --; Chapter 2. Asceticism, Health, and Christian Salvation History: Perspectives from the Earliest Monastic Sources --; Chapter 3. Paradise, Health, and the Hagiographical Imagination --; Chapter 4. Choosing Illness: Illness as Ascetic Practice --; Chapter 5. Pestilence and Sainthood: The Great Coptic Life of Our Father Pachomius --; Chapter 6. Illness and Spiritual Direction in Late Ancient Gaza: The Correspondence of Barsanuphius and John with the Sick Monk Andrew --; Conclusion --; Abbreviations --; Notes --; Works Cited --; Index --; Acknowledgments; restricted access N2 - The literature of late ancient Christianity is rich both in saints who lead lives of almost Edenic health and in saints who court and endure horrifying diseases. In such narratives, health and illness might signify the sanctity of the ascetic, or invite consideration of a broader theology of illness. In Thorns in the Flesh, Andrew Crislip draws on a wide range of texts from the fourth through sixth centuries that reflect persistent and contentious attempts to make sense of the illness of the ostensibly holy. These sources include Lives of Antony, Paul, Pachomius, and others; theological treatises by Basil of Caesarea and Evagrius of Pontus; and collections of correspondence from the period such as the Letters of Barsanuphius and John.Through close readings of these texts, Crislip shows how late ancient Christians complicated and critiqued hagiographical commonplaces and radically reinterpreted illness as a valuable mode for spiritual and ascetic practice. Illness need not point to sin or failure, he demonstrates, but might serve in itself as a potent form of spiritual practice that surpasses even the most strenuous of ascetic labors and opens up the sufferer to a more direct knowledge of the self and the divine. Crislip provides a fresh and nuanced look at the contentious and dynamic theology of illness that emerged in and around the ascetic and monastic cultures of the later Roman world UR - https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812207200 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780812207200 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9780812207200/original ER -