Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

794 26. holy men
Augustine himself believed that he had been cured of toothache by the
prayers of his friends at Cassiciacum, not all of whom were even baptized
(Aug. Conf. vi.xiii.23 and ix.iv.12). What Christian writers felt that they
needed to explain was not so much the miraculous gifts of the holy man
but, rather, why such gifts appeared to contemporaries to have drained
away from the average members of the community of believers on to the
persons of a few recipients of divine charismata (Apostolic Constitutions viii.1:
PG i.1061).
Low profile and intermittent expectations of help and comfort from
religious persons (pious men and women and members of the local clergy)
remained usual in any Christian community. The ‘religious person’, the vir
religiosus, the femina religiosa, was watched carefully by his or her neighbours
for evidence of virtue and, hence, of spiritual powers that might prove
useful to others. A layman complained to Barsanuphius about himself that
his retiring disposition, his unwillingness to get involved in local politics
and his unusual sexual modesty when visiting the public baths had already
given him an embarrassing reputation for being a holy person
(Barsanuphius, Correspondance 771, Regnault (1971) 472). The further step,
to a demand for a show of spiritual power, was a short one. Faced by a nest
of angry wasps, the harvesters of Besne, near Nantes, turned to Friardus,
half in jest and half in earnest:
Let the religious fellow come, the one who is always praying, who makes the sign
of the cross on his eyes and ears, who crosses himself whenever he goes out of
the house. (Greg. Tur. Vita Patrum x.1)
Only Friardus had the power to halt wasps.
Healing substances circulated freely. ‘Oil of prayer’ could be obtained
from the lamps around the altar of any number of churches, and might be
applied with the prayers of any person with even a moderate reputation for
holiness. 26 In his exile in Amasea (Amasya, Turkey) the patriarch Eutychius
of Constantinople settled down in his monastery to function, in a small
way, as a wonder-worker. A man blinded for perjury was healed by the
prayers of Eutychius after three days of anointing with oil. A woman who
had difficulties with breast-feeding ended up being able to act as wet-nurse
to all the children of her neighbourhood (Eustratius, V. Eutychii 58 and 60:
PG lxxxvi.2.2340a and 2341c).
In this world of unspectacular but constant resort to persons with a reputation
for sanctity, women, in certain regions, could be quite as important
as men, if not more so. Living at home or in convents close to the city or
village, safely protected from the very real dangers of the wild in which holy
men were supposed to gain their sanctity, holy women were as central to
26 Till (1960) no. 261, 64.
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