On Whose Authority? Regulating Medical Practice in the Twelfth and Early irteenth Centuries

I will begin in the society I am most familiar with. In 1140 the patriarch Leo Stypes (1134-43) convened a synod in Constantinople to (posthumously) condemn the writings of a lay preacher, Constantine Chrysomallos.1 Chrysomallos’ writings were linked to the Bogomils, were duly anathematised and burned. Scholars have drawn attention to the fact that his texts are in fact quite close to those by the celebrated mystic Symeon the New eologian (949-1022), so much so that some of the texts attributed to Symeon may in fact have been written by Constantine.2