What conceptual frameworks did the inhabitants of early monastic communities carry into relationships of spiritual direction? What did they hope to achieve through confession and discipline? This study shows how early Christian writers applied the logic and pretensions of Galenic medicine to develop practices and concepts of spiritual direction.

Jonathan L. Zecher completed a BA in Liberal Arts at St. John's College (Santa Fe, 2003) and completed an MA and PhD at Durham University in Patristics (2012). From 2011 to 2017 he taught in the Honors College and Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of Houston. In 2017 he joined the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry at the Australian Catholic University. He is co-director of ReMeDHe, an international working group for 'Religion, Medicine, Disability, and Health in Late Antiquity.'

• Introduction


• PART ONE: LOGIC: BIOPSYCHOSOCIAL MODELS OF HEALTH AND ILLNESS


• 1: A (Relatively) Brief Outline of the Galenic Medical Art


• 2: Evagrius the Diagnostician or, What to Expect When You're Dreaming


• 3: Cassian the Oneirologist: So, You've Had a Wet Dream...


• 4: John Cassian's Nosology of the Soul


• 5: Pathologies of Passion and Embodiment in the Ladder


• PART TWO: REPRESENTATIONS: METAPHORS AND EXPERTISE


• 6: Trust Me, I'm a Doctor: Expertise and Clinical Relationships in Late Antique Medicine


• 7: Basil of Caesarea on the Spiritual Physician and his Galenic Competitor


• 8: Patient Physicians and Patient Disobedience in Cassian


• 9: A Physician, a Judge, and a Shepherd Walk into a Monastery...


• Conclusions, and Prognoses