Medicine in Transition: Christian Adaptation in the Later Fourth-Century East

In the past decade and a half a number of groundbreaking studies have reshaped our understanding of the origins of formal health care and its locus in the eastern half of the Mediterranean in the fourth century. Among those that stand out are Merideth’s doctoral dissertation, Illness and Healing in the early Christian East, ¹ Crislip’s earlier book, From Monastery to Hospital ² and Ferngren’s monograph Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity. ³ The transition from the treatment of sick monks in the Christian monastery, on the one hand, and of the incurably ill and impoverished aliens in the Christian hospice, on the other, into the new social genre of the hospital as a recognisable institution is a significant shift that can be attributed to Late Antiquity. This chapter takes our understanding of this development one step further. By exploring precisely what was shifting at the heart of this development it can be seen that the transformation of what was received from the Greco-Roman past in this respect is located within a persistent continuity with it. In particular, what will be argued here is that the birth of the hospital is the visible sign of a more subtle transformation that was taking place in the late antique east that led to one particular strand of ascetic thought and that found its fullest expression in the late fourth century in the genre of the homily.