Bianca-Jeanette Schröder - Medicine and Prayers in a Deacon’s Letters скачать в хорошем качестве

Bianca-Jeanette Schröder - Medicine and Prayers in a Deacon’s Letters

Medicine and Prayers in a Deacon’s Letters Magnus Felix Ennodius (473/4 - 521 CE) was first a teacher of Latin rhetoric, then a deacon of the church in Milan and later bishop of Pavia. He left a considerable oeuvre consisting of many different genres, in poetry and prose. Some of his texts are deeply religious (e.g., hymns), some not at all (e.g., epigrams on Greek mythical figures). In my paper, I will study how two elements of daily life are present in his letters (written when he was a deacon): How does he speak about illness and medicine and about prayers, and how do these two spheres interconnect? His letters are ‚real‘ letters, which means that they were actually sent and not revised for publication. So they can shed some light on topics and rules of letter communication which his correspondents we expected to share. In many letters Ennodius asks his correspondents to support him with their prayers, in various situations, not only in the case of illness. So we can observe in which practical situations he talks about prayers and if there is a certain recurring word usage or if his words vary substantially. Is there a difference between addressees, that is, men and women, officials of the church and those of the state administration? I will then compare a first result concerning the letters with a text in which he talks about some decisive events of his own life (the so called Eucharisticon de vita sua). Here he mentions an illness which brought him near to death; when the physicians had given him up and left, he anointed himself with a holy oil, prayed to Saint Victor of Milan, and recovered. Finally, I will try to understand in which situations Ennodius appreciates medicine, which kinds of remedies are useful, and at which point only prayers can help. Bianca-Jeanette Schröder (Ludwig Maximilians Universität München)