Médecine et Christianisme: Sources et pratiques is a useful and intriguing volume that ably meets its editors’ goal of providing an interdisciplinary study linking Greek medical ideas and Christian writers up to the early sixth century. The collection compiles nine papers from a 2016 conference organized by the Greek Medicine research group under the larger umbrella of the Orient & Méditerranée UMR at the Sorbonne.
There is a fairly neat division in the order of the articles. Following a foreword by Véronique Boudon-Millot, the first five chapters focus on the incorporation of Greek medical material in Christian texts. These survey the deployment of Hippocratic monetary ethics in Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nyssa, and Basil of Caesarea; the competing weaponization of medical language in Celsus and Origen; a reading of John Chrystosom's anatomical and medical rhetoric, especially vis-à-vis Galen; the Nag Hammadi Gospels’ portrayal of physicians; and a survey of three competing discourses about physicians in relation to God in patristic literature. Despite the material's chronological and geographic sweep, each chapter's clear focus and distinct approach help ensure overall cohesion.
The remaining four chapters shift to surveying the production of medical knowledge in increasingly Christian contexts. These are somewhat more scattered in scope, as there is a jump from the second-century Soranus's reception to two chapters dealing with the Byzantine period, with no intermission. Of the two Byzantine chapters, Ricciardetto's is perhaps the outlier of the collection, as he compiles and traces fifteen Greek medical terms used in letters from Byzantine Egypt, without a consistent connection to Christian discourses. Nevertheless, it is a very useful resource for medical philologists, especially when paired with the chapter that immediately follows, Grons’ succinct but comprehensive overview of the Coptic medical corpus.
Useful, if occasionally selective, bibliographies with each chapter confirm this collection's interdisciplinary appeal. Some wishes would be to include more material from outside the eastern empire and/or more material evidence. However, this remains a practical and helpful volume, relevant to both early Christian specialists and historians of late antique medicine.
