Peregrine Palimpsests
Three Refugee Bishops in the Body’s Unmaking
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22037667 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Susan R Holman (Valparaiso University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 39-66 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-02 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Early Christian History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2222-582X • E-ISSN: 2471-4054 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/2222582x.2025.2561545 |
| OpenAlex | W4415605319 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 44 |
This article follows three seventh-century monk-bishops and how each experienced bodily injury or sickness during crisis migration. It uses palimpsest manuscripts and metaphor to consider religion and medical health concerns within these narratives, practices, and interpretive legacies. Sophronius of Jerusalem, Theodore of Tarsus/Canterbury, and Cuthbert of Lindisfarne each endured forced travel as refugees, and each suffered illness or debilitating physical insult. Sophronius, known for his pro-Chalcedonian zeal, sought healing through what we might call folk medicine, and condemned professional physicians. Theodore, whose life and legacy reflects a diverse range of cultural and literary influences, supported Hippocratic-Galenic medicine in his ministry and teaching. Finally, Cuthbert, who practiced an elemental approach to healing, who welcomed both physicians and miracles, and whose post-mortem “incorrupt” body was unmade by pious friends and foes, offers a layered exegetical model of liturgical and therapeutic environmentalism. The palimpsest lens of these lives is compared here using three literal palimpsest manuscripts, each holding medical and scriptural texts within a pattern of disruption. This article’s multidisciplinary approach invites creative and serious discussions on the relationships between embodiment and scripture-based models for health equity and crisis response in religious history
Asylum seeker · Bishops · Immigration · Refugee · Literature and Cultural Memory · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Religion, Theology, History, Judaism, Christianity
The Syriac Galen Palimpsest
Oxford Medieval Texts: Symeon of Durham: Libellus de Exordio atque Procursu Istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, Ecclesie: Tract on the Origins and Progress of this the Church of Durham
The ‘Laterculus Malalianus’ and the School of Archbishop Theodore
Embodying the Soul
Medieval Islamic Medicine
Are You My Stranger? Developing a Biblical Pedagogy of Migration in Syriac Christian Sources
II.— On an Examination of the Grave of St. Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral Church, in March , 1899
Prison, Punishment and Penance in Late Antiquity
Memorializing Gregory the Great
Introduction
The Epigrams of Sophronius
Palladius of HelenopolisThe Origenist Advocate
Macrina's Scar
| Highly cited | No |
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