The Care of the Brain in Early Christianity

311 Pages·2022·2.886 MB·English

by  Jessica L. Wright

THE CARE OF THE BRAIN
IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY
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THE CARE OF THE BRAIN
IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY
Jessica L. Wright
university of california press
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University of California Press
Oakland, California
© 2022 by Jessica L. Wright
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of
Congress.
isbn 978-0-520-38767-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-520-38768-3 (ebook)
Manufactured in the United States of America
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1. The Circulation and Performance of Medical Knowledge in Late
Antiquity 23
2. The History of the Brain in Ancient Greek Medicine
and Philosophy 43
3. The Invention of Ventricular Localization 64
4. The Governing Brain 93
5. The Rhetoric of Cerebral Vulnerability 112
6. Insanity, Vainglory, and Phrenitis 141
7. Humanizing the Brain in Early Christianity 172
Conclusion 203
Notes 207
Works Cited 263
Index 293
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the care, attention, and
nurturing of many people, only a fraction of whom I can name here.
Most immediately, I want to thank Eric Schmidt and LeKeisha Hughes
at the University of California Press, as well as the anonymous referees, whose
patience, guidance, and feedback has been unparalleled. Also fundamental to
the entire project are my doctoral advisors: Brooke Holmes, Brent Shaw,
Catherine Conybeare, and Christian Wildberg. Your probing questions and
your belief in this project carried me forward through seemingly impossible
stretches.
Formative to my thinking on medicine and religion in late antiquity was
my early involvement in ReMeDHe, the working group in Religion, Medicine,
Disability, and Health in Late Antiquity, and I remain immensely grateful to
Kristi Upson-Saia and Heidi Marx for inviting me in so early in my own work.
Also critically important were the Program in the History of Science, Medi-
cine, and Technology and the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton
University. Working across disciplines has for me meant feeling always like
an outsider: I am grateful for the friends and teachers I found in these spaces.
In particular, I want to acknowledge the contributions to my way of thinking
made by Emily Kern, Jenny Rampling, Katja Guenther, and Keith Wailoo.
During the writing of this book, I have been housed by a number of differ-
ent institutions—Princeton University, the University of Southern California,
the University of Texas at San Antonio, and Sheffield University. The material,
intellectual, and interpersonal support that each institution offered has been
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viii acknowledgments
vital to the completion of the project. I am especially grateful to Jill Fleuriet
and Şerife Tekin for their engagement with and support of my work, Jonathan
McLellan and Jessica Nowlin for welcoming me to San Antonio, and
Constanze Güthenke, Khristina Gonzalez, and Lisa Bitel for consistent
encouragement and advice. Beyond the institutional structures, this work
has also been nourished through the mentorship and friendship of
Helen Morales, Mike Chin, Nancy S. Rabinowitz, Shelley Haley, and Tina
Shepardson.
Audiences at numerous conferences, workshops, and universities have
sharpened and enriched my thought through their questions and suggestions—
in particular: Princeton University; University of Maryland, College Park;
Dartmouth College; Occidental College; Carleton College; Oberlin College;
University of Toronto; University of Texas at San Antonio; Trinity College
Dublin; University of California, Santa Barbara; University of California, Los
Angeles; and Colby College.
My students during this time have also shaped me, and none more so than
those I taught through the Prison Teaching Initiative. Their friendship, their
acts of solidarity, and their poetry remade my understanding of what it means
to teach and what it is to live an intellectual life.
Many friends and loved ones have sustained me, put up with me, fed and
housed me, and read or listened to my work over these years. Among those
closest to this project are Becky Jinks, John Boopalan, Ester Jamir, Sophie
Holmes, Mathura Umachandran, Naomi Williams, Emery Pearson, Anna
Diemar, Katie Kleinhopf, and the whole Tin House crew (especially Nadine
Monem, who wrote with me during the final stages). Others who have sus-
tained and cared for me over the years of writing include Philippa Gullett,
Hartley Miller, Helen Thomas, Helena Duncalf, Patrick Stockwell, Veronica
Diaz, Amers and Sam Goff, Jill Stockwell, Tom Sapsford, Eyo Ewara, Jo
Reyes-Boitel, and my Metanoia cohort.
Lastly and most of all: my family has offered unconditional support and
patience through years of distraction, including long periods of time overseas.
My parents, my stepmother, and my sibling have each in their own way
contributed to making me—and this book—what we are. Mel Webb was
there when this book began. Helen Flint has borne witness to its
conclusion.
This book is for my grandmother, Dorothy Wright.
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acknowledgments ix
acknowledgment of previous publications
Chapter 3 draws upon material from my chapter “Ventricular Localization in
Late Antiquity: The Philosophical and Theological Roots of an Enduring
Model of Brain Function,” in Imagining the Brain: Episodes in the History of
Brain Research, edited by Chiara Ambrosio and William Maclehose, 3–22,
Elsevier, 2018.
Chapter 4 draws upon material from my article “The Brain as Treasury
and as Aqueduct: Metaphors of the Brain in Theodoret of Cyrrhus,” Studies
in Late Antiquity 2.4 (2018): 542–66.
Chapter 5 draws upon material from my article “John Chrysostom and the
Rhetoric of Cerebral Vulnerability,” Studia Patristica 81.7 (2017): 109–214. It
also draws upon material from my chapter “Brain, Nerves, and Ecclesial
Membership in John Chrysostom,” in Revisioning John Chrysostom: New
Approaches, New Perspectives, edited by Chris de Wet and Wendy Mayer,
361–409, Brill, 2019.
Chapter 6 draws upon material from my article “Preaching Phrenitis:
Augustine’s Medicalization of Religious Difference,” Journal of Early Christian
Studies 28.4 (2020), 525–53.
Chapter 7 draws upon material from my chapter “Are We Our Brains?
How Early Christianity Shaped Western Ideas about Power, Morality, and
Personhood,” in Embodied Difference: Divergent Bodies in Public Discourse,
edited by Jamie A. Thomas and Christina Jackson, 37–58, Rowman & Little-
field, 2019.
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