The Hungry are Dying

Abstract

The fourth century Christian sermons, letters, and poems of Basil, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, and their friend Gregory of Nazianzus, provide one of the best‐documented examples of early Christian responses to poverty. This book explores how these Cappadocian texts construct the body of the poor, socially and individually, in terms of hunger and starvation, economic penury, and medicine and disease. It especially considers three dominant themes: first, gift economics and patronage, especially in terms of liturgies (leitourgia); second, paidea and classical rhetoric; and third, Christian incarnation theology. Ch. 1 provides an overview of Greek, Roman, Jewish, and early Christian philanthropy. Ch. 2 examines Basil's famine relief efforts and the physiology of starvation, while Ch. 3 studies his sermons on economic poverty as they discuss debt, usury, and wealth. Ch. 4 considers Gregory of Nazianzus's and Gregory of Nyssa's three sermons on the homeless poor, particularly those sick with leprosy, sermons rich in social and medical images about disease, Christian incarnation, and healing. The book concludes with a consideration of Gregory of Nazianzus’ sermon addressing a potentially violent mob during an agricultural crisis, a sermon that brings together many of the themes discussed in previous chapters. An Appendix supplies provisional English translations of Basil of Caesarea's sermon “In time of famine and drought” and Gregory of Nyssa's two sermons “On the love of the poor.” The book argues that these Cappadocian texts provide a vital witness to the christianization process of late antiquity which appropriated the poor into civic and religious liturgies, thereby giving them a newly defined identity and gaining episcopal power over their social and physical body. The themes embodied in these texts continue to influence moral and social ethics, philanthropy, and the Christian theology of incarnation in modern religious practice.