Public Aspects of Pain in Late Antiquity: The Testimony of Chrysostom and the Cappadocians in their Graeco-Roman Context

Abstract

This article is a study of pain from a comparative perspective according to the criteria that have been established in the patristic, philosophical, and medical literature of late antiquity. My overall aim is to examine the mode of evaluation of the severity of a pain and, especially, whether Christianity brought about a change in the prevailing attitudes towards pain. On the evidence of the works of Gregory of Nyssa and Galen, it will be claimed that public calamities were deemed far more grievous than any private misfortune. I will also examine the medical and patristic sources that deal with disfiguring diseases in order to make evident that in the period under observation the homilies of the Church Fathers betray a novel sensitivity to the pain provoked by the isolation and marginalization of those in need. This new awareness, I shall argue, was related to the forging of a Christian emotional community of co-sufferers. Some key passages of Gregory of Nazianzus, but also of Chrysostom and Gregory of Nyssa, will show how the transformation of the ancient pedagogy of pain into a life-long martyrdom brought the Christians closer to the suffering body.