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The Hungry Are Dying: Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia. By Susan R. Holman. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. xviii + 231 pp. $49.95 cloth.
The great Cappadocian Fathers-Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa-were pioneers. They forged the classic defense of the divinity of the Holy Spirit and put together the classic formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity. But their groundbreaking efforts were not limited to theology. Basil, for example, earned an international reputation for his work in organizing large-scale Christian charity. He devoted great energy to famine relief and built a large hospice complex-the "Basileias," as it was known-that served the needs of the poor and the sick. This new study by Susan Holman focuses on a closely related and equally original Cappadocian enterprise: constructing a public Christian discourse of care for the poor.
Holman situates her work within recent scholarly efforts to construct a "history of the body" in late antiquity. Where scholars have focused mostly on the ascetic body, a body honed by fierce rituals of renunciation, Holman charts images of the body of the involuntary poor. She brings unique skills to the table: she has both a degree in and experience with public health. This medical perspective gives her an eye for scenes and reports that the average patristic and classical scholar might well overlook. This is clearest in her analysis of...