ABSTRACT
The intimate link between familial and individual wellbeing comes at us from the literature of medical anthropology with great regularity, not least from the literature dealing with Africa. Byzantine evidence also shows aspects of the saint that Gregory does not bring out so well. First the living saint as counsellor and therapist, an all-purpose source of healing wisdom. Hypatius was clearly remembered as an effective counsellor. But the most versatile and best-documented Byzantine therapist of this kind was the sixth-century St Theodore of Sykeon. Sickness in Gregory is often a model of social disorder in a slightly different way. The sick are unable to work, sometimes unable to marry. They have no resources, often no supportive family, and they join the ranks of the local Church’s approved beggars, the matricularii. Their cure is not only bodily and spiritual, it is their reintegration into the community and often, in the process, into their family as well.
