Jessica Wright Between Despondency and The Demon: Diagnosing and Treating Spiritual Disorders in John Chrysostom's Letter To Stageirios

Copyright © 2015 Johns Hopkins University Press.
This article first appeared in Journal of Late Antiquity, Volume

8, Issue 2, December, 2015, pages 352–367.
This is a prepublication version. All citations must refer to the published version, which appeared
in Journal of Late Antiquity 8(2), Fall 2015: 352–367.
Jessica Wright
Between Despondency and the Demon: Diagnosing and Treating Spiritual Disorders in
John Chrysostom’s Letter to Stageirios
John Chrysostom’s “Exhortatory Treatise to the Ascetic Stageirios, Being

Harassed by a Demon” challenges its recipient’s diagnosis of his own spiritual
disorder. According to Chrysostom, the fundamental problem for Stageirios is not
the demon but the athumia (despondency or depression) that results.
Furthermore, Chrysostom argues, this despondency is not directly caused, nor
even warranted, by the demonic attacks. It is, rather, a product of the monk’s
attendance to his doxa (repute), as well as to that of his family. In consequence,
the therapy that Chrysostom recommends is not exorcism of the demon but
excision of the false beliefs and earthly desires that foster athumia. This study
teases apart the psychosomatic disorders variously recognized and dismissed in
this letter as diseases of the soul—demonic attacks, epilepsy, athumia—and
situates them within the context of contemporaneous medical and philosophical
traditions. In so doing, it suggests how Chrysostom both absorbs and subverts the
metaphor—traditional within Greco-Roman philosophy, and prevalent in late
antique Christianity—of emotions and desires as sicknesses of the soul.
In the early 380s CE, John Chrysostom, newly-appointed as deacon in Antioch, wrote a
letter to the monk Stageirios.1 His addressee had been suffering demonic attacks that resembled
the “falling sickness,” or epilepsy. Consequently, Stageirios had developed athumia—“lack of
spirit,” often translated as “despondency” or “depression”—and was experiencing suicidal
impulses. Chrysostom’s goal in this letter was to ease the monk’s athumia, through a mixture of
consolation and exhortation familiar within Greco-Roman philosophical traditions.2 In keeping

With thanks to those who read and commented upon this essay in its various permutations, especially to Heidi
Marx-Wolf, Kristi Upson-Saia, Noel Lenski, Brooke Holmes, Brent Shaw, Catherine Conybeare, Christian
Wildberg, Constanze Güthenke, Wendy Mayer, and Melanie Webb, as well as to all participants at the History of
Science Program Seminar and the Classics Department Dissertation Writers’ Seminar at Princeton University. The
essay has benefitted enormously from their comments and suggestions; the errors which remain are, of course,
entirely my own.
1
PG 47: 423-94. There is no critical edition of this text. The full title of the treatise is Λόγος παραινετικὸς πρὸς
Σταγείριον ἀσκητὴν δαιµονῶντα (“Exhortatory Treatise to the Ascetic Stageirios, Being Harassed by a Demon”),
and the abbreviated Latin title is Ad Stag. All translations are my own. For the date, see Soc. 6.3.10 .
2
See Gregg 1975 for an account of the fourth-century consolatory tradition and its philosophical roots. Gregg makes
the important point that although the earlier philosophical schools had taken different approaches to consolation in
accordance with their doctrine, late antique authors mixed strategies and tropes from different sources, drawing
especially upon Stoic and Platonist doctrines. Among more recent works, Baltussen 2013 provides a clear
introduction to consolatory literature, while Gill 2013 focuses on psychotherapeutic texts. Psychotherapy, according
to Gill, is distinct from consolation insofar as the latter sought to alleviate specific emotions (usually grief), while
psychotherapeutic treatises provided instruction for maintaining the health of the soul. Chrysostom’s letter falls in

1

Copyright © 2015 Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in Journal of Late Antiquity, Volume
with this tradition, Chrysostom viewed the affliction in medical terms, presenting athumia as a
pathos—an illness or affection—of the soul.3 “For those whose thoughts are lofty and not of
earthly things,” he wrote, “it is necessary to master not only anger (thumos) and desire
(epithuma) and the other affections, but athumia also.”4 Such mastery was achieved by means of
reason, the fundamental therapeutic technique being to examine appearances and demonstrate
that things are not as bad as they seem.5 As Chrysostom explained, “many seemingly terrible
things appear to be great and unbearable before they have been properly examined; but if one
examines these things using reason, one finds them far weaker than one suspects.”6
Recent scholarship on Chrysostom’s letter has focused on situating his approach within
this psychotherapeutic tradition.7 This is, indeed, a fruitful approach, explicating the continuities
between early Christian pastoral care and contemporaneous medical and philosophical
techniques. In focusing on just one aspect of Stageirios’s condition (affect), however, scholars
have not yet accounted for the other two “illnesses of the soul” at play in Chrysostom’s text—
demonic attacks and sin—thus obscuring Chrysostom’s critique of how different kinds of
spiritual disorder might be intertwined and conflated within the metaphor of psychic health.
Looking beyond traditional Greek psychotherapy, this paper examines the ways in which
Chrysostom differentiated between the “falling sickness,” falling into despondency, and falling
into sin.
Although Chrysostom disputed that the demon and the “falling sickness” were sources of
spiritual disorder, he nonetheless retained both as metaphors in his diagnosis. In so doing, he
sought to secure the boundaries of spiritual disorder, to map the relationships between the
various “illnesses in the soul,” and, in the process, to replace the illness model provided by
Stageirios with one he considered a truer account of spiritual disease. The pivot between these
models was causation: whereas Stageirios alleged external causation for his illness, Chrysostom
focused on internal factors. His point was that however much a bodily illness might “touch” the
soul, an illness of the soul itself was constituted solely by the malformation of attitudes, values,

between the two, consolatory in that it seeks to assuage athumia, and psychotherapeutic in that it offers resources for
ongoing spiritual health.
3
The concept of pathos (commonly translated as “affection,” less neutrally as “passion”) might be thought of as a
boundary object at the juncture of psychology, natural philosophy, and medicine. Deriving from the root pasch- “to
suffer,” it carried the core meaning of “things that happen to us.” Within ethics, pathos referred to emotions and
desires, such as anger or concupiscence, and sometimes to errors also, such as “love of money” (Hankinson 1993).
Within natural philosophy, however, pathos might also denote bodily sensation. For an overview with philosophical
references, see Peters 1967, 153-55. Doctors, meanwhile, used pathos to denote bodily injury or change: see, for
example, Gal. Symp. diff. 1.3 and 1.5 (7.43.17-45.5, 46.12-47.14 K.).
4
Joh. Chrys. Ad Stag. (PG 47: 452.2-4): τοὺς γὰρ τὰ ἄνω φρονοῦντας καὶ µὴ τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, οὐ θυµοῦ µόνον
καὶ ἐπιθυµίας καὶ τῶν ἄλλων παθῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀθυµίας κρατεῖν δεῖ. Cf. Athan. V. Ant. 21.1 (SCh 400: 192-93):
ἔστω δὲ ἡµῖν ἀγών, ὥστε µὴ τυραννεῖν ἡµῶν θυµὸν µηδὲ κρατεῖν ἡµῶν ἐπιθυµίαν. (“Let us struggle in the
contest, so that anger [thumos] may not tyrannize us, nor desire [epithumia] rule over us.”)
5
For Stoic therapy of the emotions, see esp. Nussbaum 1994 and Graver 2007.
6
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 427.24-28): Πολλὰ γὰρ τῶν δοκούντων εἶναι δεινῶν µεγάλα µὲν φαίνεται καὶ ἀφόρητα
πρὶν ἐξετασθῆναι καλῶς· εἰ δέ τις αὐτὰ τῷ λογισµῷ διασκέψηται, εὑρήσει πολλῷ τῆς ὑπονοίας
καταδεέστερα.
7
See especially Bardolle 1987; Samellas 2010; and Liebeschuetz 2011, 158–61. Bardolle locates the athumia of
Stageirios between the poles of “simple despondency” and “spiritual despair” (8) and presents Chrysostom’s
intervention as “brotherly therapy” (12). Samellas, meanwhile, interprets Chrysostom’s focus on athumia as the
demystification of demonic possession (173), and identifies his method as “depth-psychology” (174).
2

and expectations, in relation both to God and to worldly matters.8 In the case of Stageirios,
according to Chrysostom, spiritual illness manifested in persistent concern with doxa (“repute,”
encompassing both negative and positive valences), such that the monk might even be said to
have suffered from kenodoxia (vainglory), the enjoyment of “empty” (that is, human) glory.
In what follows, I first examine the illness model put forward by Stageirios and its
resonances in late antique society. I turn next to Chrysostom’s revisionist diagnosis, explaining
how Chrysostom defines and deploys the contested concept of athumia in order to insist upon
Stageirios’s own responsibility for his spiritual health. Finally, I analyse how Chrysostom
interweaves three strands that run throughout the course of the letter—athumia, doxa, and
kenodoxia—in order to construct his diagnosis. In conclusion, I consider the broader role of
sickness and healing in early Christian ideas about spiritual health, in order to clarify
Chrysostom’s intervention in this discourse.
“To the ascetic Stageirios, being harassed by a demon”

Chrysostom begins his letter by acknowledging the illness model put forward by
Stageirios: “It seems, therefore, that one underlying cause of your athumia is the madness of this
wicked demon. Indeed, one might find many troubles born in succession from this root.”9 Given
contemporaneous views about the relationship between illness and the supernatural, it is
unsurprising that Stageirios understood his sickness to be rooted in demonic attack.10 What is
surprising, however, is that Chrysostom does not once mention the naturalistic disease, regularly
discussed in ancient medical texts, which Stageirios’s symptoms most recall—that is, epilepsy.
This is all the more striking because epilepsy had long been associated, and sometimes identified
with demonic attack. It is also striking because the vivid symptomology which Chrysostom
provides echoes precisely what became the touchstone text on epilepsy and the supernatural from
the Hippocratic medical corpus, On the Sacred Disease (late fifth century BCE).11 Chrysostom
writes as follows:
…the wringing of hands, the rolling of eyes, the froth at the mouth, that ill-
omened and senseless speech, the trembling of the body, the prolonged
insensibility, that dream which appeared during that night; for he said that a wild
swine befouled in copious filth continually attacked and struck you.12
The most pertinent passage from the Hippocratic text runs as follows:

8
For sickness “touching” the soul, see Ad Stag. (PG 47: 491.11-13).
9
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 425.32-34): Δοκεῖ µὲν οὖν µία σοι τῆς ἀθυµίας ὑπόθεσις εἶναι τοῦ πονηροῦ τούτου δαίµονος
ἡ µανία· πολλὰ δὲ ἂν εὕροι τις ἐφεξῆς τὰ ἀπὸ τῆς ῥίζης ταύτης τικτόµενα λυπηρά.
10
Merideth 1999, 34-40.
11
Note that epilepsy (epilēpsia) itself is not mentioned in this text either. Laskaris suggests that “sacred disease”
(hierē nousos) might refer to a cluster of diseases that are differentiated in modern biomedicine, including strokes
and panic attacks, as well as epilepsy (Laskaris 2002, 1). It is also important to observe that On the Sacred Disease
did not gain the iconic status that it now enjoys until the Renaissance (Laskaris 2002, 59-62). Nonetheless, it was
known and read in Late Antiquity, and Bardolle argues, on the basis of a comparison of the two symptomologies
presented here, that Chrysostom had read either the Hippocratic treatise or a medical work influenced by it (Bardolle
1987, 8-9).
12
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 426.40-46): τὴν στρέβλωσιν τῶν χειρῶν, τὴν διαστροφὴν τῶν ὀφθαλµῶν, τὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ
στόµατος ἀφρὸν, τὴν ἀποτρόπαιον καὶ ἄσηµον ἐκείνην φωνὴν, τὸν τοῦ σώµατος τρόµον, τὴν ἀναισθησίαν
τὴν ἐπὶ πολὺ, τὸ ὄναρ τὸ κατὰ τὴν νύκτα ἐκείνην φανέν· ἄγριον γάρ τινα ὗν βορβόρῳ µολυνθέντα πολλῷ
συνεχῶς ἐπιπηδᾷν σοι καὶ προσπαλαίειν ἔφη.
3

He becomes voiceless and chokes, and froth flows from the mouth; the teeth
clench and the hands contract; the eyes roll, the patient loses consciousness and,
for some, a stool is passed below.13
On the basis of this overlap, Stageirios’s condition is commonly interpreted by modern
scholars—and may well have been understood by ancient audiences—as epilepsy.14 More
pertinent than this naturalistic diagnosis, however, are its connotations, which resonate
throughout Chrysostom’s letter.
On the Sacred Disease vigorously rejected a supernatural aetiology (that is, causation by
malign spirits or daimones) for the “falling sickness,” indicating that this was a common
explanation. Indeed, both illness models remained potent throughout antiquity: while the
naturalistic medical tradition developed a humoral, brain-centred explanation for epilepsy,
popular opinion persisted in associating evil spirits with the disease.15 Within the Christian
tradition, this is most explicitly displayed in Origen’s exegesis of Matthew 17.14-8, regarding the
boy assaulted by a demon (daimonion). According to Origen, the term used to name the boy’s
condition (selēniazomenos: literally “moonified,” commonly translated as “lunatic”) was a
common euphemism for epilepsy (epilēpsia).16 Within this framework of popular and theological
thought, Stageirios had ample reason for interpreting his seizures as demonic attacks.
A further connotation of epilepsy, especially pertinent with regard to Stageirios, was the
shame expected to accompany epileptic attacks.17 The implication of evil spirits opened up space
for suggesting religious pollution and contact with the devil; insofar as epilepsy injured the brain,
furthermore, it threatened psychic pneuma, the instrument of the rational soul, and thereby
affected the cognitive faculties of thought, perception, and voluntary motion.18 The disturbance,
humoral or demonic, of these faculties disrupted self-control in bodily movements and in speech,
and the shame associated with such disruption suggests a continuity between psychosomatic and
moral self-control which opened the way for epilepsy to function as a model for, and perhaps be
confused with, lack of virtue.19
The demonic and moral aspects of the “falling disease” go some way toward explaining
why Stageirios drew such a strong connection between his seizures and his spiritual health. This
connection is manifested in the first three of Stageirios’s complaints, which Chrysostom

13
Hippoc. Morb. sacr. 7.2-5 (Littré 1849 6: 372): ἄφωνός τε γίνεται καὶ πνίγεται, καὶ ἀφρὸς ἐκ τοῦ στόµατος
ἐκρέει, καὶ οἱ ὀδόντες συνηρείκασι, καὶ αἱ χεῖρες συσπῶνται, καὶ τὰ ὄµµατα διαστρέφονται, καὶ οὐδὲν
φρονέουσιν, ἐνίοισι δὲ καὶ ὑποχωρέει ἡ κόπρος κάτω.
14
Apart from the detailed discussion in Bardolle 1987, see also Samellas 2010, 160 and Mayer (forthcoming). Volp
2010 is unusual in both noting and seeking to explain Chrysostom’s avoidance of medical terms such as melancholia
and epilēpsia, suggesting that such sicknesses carried a stigma which Chrysostom was trying to avoid: “he
endeavors to relieve his addressee from any form of reproach”—the demon attacks Stageirios not in order to deliver
punishment but because it is attracted to Stageirios’s “extreme holiness” (283). What Volp does not account for is
the emphasis that Chrysostom places upon Stageirios’s personal responsibility for overcoming his spiritual sickness:
the avoidance of medical terms seems designed to highlight self-responsibility, rather than to circumvent it.
15
The fundamental work on the falling sickness remains Temkin 1945. See also D. Collins 2008, 33-42 for the
connection between epilepsy and possession visible in the overlapping vocabulary of medical and magical texts.
16
Orig. Comm. in Matt. 13.4.87-90 (ed. Klostermann, Teubner). See Kelley 2011.
17
Simon 1992.
18
D. Martin 1995, 21-5 describes “the pneumatic body” in ancient medical and philosophical theories. See also
Frampton 2008, 68-86 for a more technical discussion of pneuma in relation to voluntary motion.
19
On epilepsy as a model for moral and affective disorders, see Orig. Comm. in Matt. 13.4.34-44 (ed. Klostermann,
Teubner).
4

summarizes at the beginning of his letter: (1) The demonic attacks did not begin until after
Stageirios had adopted ascetic practice; (2) many others who are leading worldly lives have
suffered from the same disease but were cured after only a short period of endurance20 and are
now happily married with children; and (3) holy men have been unable to exorcize his demon,
although they have succeed in exorcizing others. The theme of these concerns is that the demonic
attacks should be precluded, or at least brought to an end by Stageirios’s spiritual discipline and
the spiritual resources available to him. As I shall discuss further below, Stageirios expects,
firstly, that ascetic practice guarantees spiritual health, and, secondly, that spiritual health
manifests itself in absence from demonic attacks. In other words, his seizures appear as a sign of
spiritual disorder.
While Chrysostom does not reject a demonic aetiology for Stageirios’s bodily seizures,
he does insist upon detaching the “falling sickness” from true spiritual disorder. He uses as his
entry-point into a discussion of spiritual disorder the athumia which Stageirios claims to have
suffered as a consequence of the demonic attacks. The remaining concerns of Stageirios are
outlined by Chrysostom as follows: (4) Stageirios suffers athumia and feels compelled to kill
himself; (5) his monastic peers enjoy euthumia (good spirits), while he remains trapped in the
prison of his disease; (6) he is afraid of his father, who did not want him to become a monk, and
whose own shame and athumia at Stageirios’s condition might drive him to act violently toward
his mother and the other monks; (7) Stageirios has no confidence in the future, since he does not
know clearly whether he will be released from his disease.21
As in his complaints about the demonic attacks themselves, Stageirios’s concerns about
his athumia are bound up in comparisons to the health of his peers (5). Indeed, his athumia in
general is predicated on his attention to people and situations outside of his control: the affective
response of his family (6) and the continuation of his physical disease (7). This is not the illness
model that Chrysostom deems appropriate for athumia. To the contrary, it becomes clear as the
text unfolds that athumia, at least in excess, represents for Chrysostom true spiritual disorder,
and that spiritual disorder is dependent only upon oneself.
Chrysostom on Illnesses of the Soul

As Volp has pointed out, “athymia is a concept that cannot be found in the bible.”22
Chrysostom finds it there anyway, in the sufferings of the scriptural exemplars (negative as well
as positive) who frame his therapeutic advice. Noah suffers athumia when his sons mock him in
his drunkenness.23 Abraham endures the athumia of childlessness.24 In the most literal example
of this, Chrysostom attributes athumia to the Israelites in Moses’s care, citing a verse which, in
the Septuagint at least, contains not athumia but oligopsuchia (“littleness of soul”): “For they did

20
Or perhaps “discipline”: the word is καρτερήσαντας; Volp 2010, 279 assumes that these individuals are ex-
anchorites, but the text does not explicitly indicate this.
21
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 425.37-426.24).
22
Volp 2010, 281. Volp here uses the alternative transliteration athymia, instead of athumia. I use the latter
throughout.
23
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 455.18-21).
24
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 460.56-461.4): Εἰ δὲ συµβαίη, γενοµένων τῶν γάµων, πρῶτον ἔτος ἢ δεύτερον ἢ καὶ
τρίτον παρελθεῖν, ἐπιτείνεται µὲν τὰ τῆς ἀθυµίας, τὰ δὲ τῶν χρηστοτέρων ἐλπίδων ἀτονώτερα γίνεται.
5

not listen to Moses…on account of athumia [Septuagint: oligopsuchia] and on account of the
harsh labours.”25
Yet, although Chrysostom sought examples of athumia in scripture, it was the Greek
intellectual tradition that provided the language and the authority for Chrysostom’s “retro-
diagnosis” of scriptural exemplars. As is now well documented, late antique clerics were deeply
immersed in the Greco-Roman intellectual culture they sometimes professed to despise,
especially the ethical, philosophical, and medical spheres.26 In the background to Chrysostom’s
discussion of athumia, then, are understandings of the affection developed and disputed in these
traditions.27
Even within the Greco-Roman traditions, athumia was an ill-defined affection. Neither a
core Stoic passion (pleasure, pain, fear, or desire), nor a defined medical condition such as
melancholy, it floated within the overlap of moral and humoral disorders of the soul.28 In ethical
works, it could denote a range of affective states, from clemency to cowardice, and from
indifference to despair. This scope was reflected in, and in part produced by, the range of
emotional states to which athumia could be opposed: thumos “anger, spirit,” prothumia “zeal,”
and euthumia “happiness, good spirits”—all of which suggest the Platonic thumos, the “spirited
part” of the soul in which the emotions arise.29 Athumia, then, might be thought of at root as a
failing (or an affection) of the spirited part.30
In Chrysostom’s Homilies on the Statues, the coupling of athumia and thumos was a core
rhetorical strategy, as Laurence Brottier has argued: here, according to Brottier, Chrysostom
extended the semantic range of athumia to include clemency as well as cowardice, by analogy
with the double-meaning of thumos (anger, spirit).31 In the letter to Stageirios, however,
prothumia and euthumia emerge as more salient antitheses.32 When Stageirios reports, for
example, that his uncertainty regarding whether his trials will ever end gives rise to athumia,

25
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 474.46-48): Οὐκ εἰσήκουσαν γὰρ Μωσέως…ἀπὸ τῆς ἀθυµίας [Septuagint: τῆς ὀλιγοψυχίας]
καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων τῶν σκληρῶν. Cf. Exodus 6.9. It is not clear whether Chrysostom adjusted the text of
scripture to model his own argument or whether his Greek translation differed from the Septuagint.
26
Elm 2012 is among the most relevant of these studies, focusing on events which coincided with Chrysostom’s
early intellectual development.
27
Harris 2001, 15-8 discusses athumia, providing medical and philosophical references.
28
The Stoic philosopher Chrysippus (c. 279-206 BCE) classified athumia as a subcategory of grief (lupē). See Fr.
mor. 414.24 (SVF 3: 100).
29
Galen located spirit (thumos) within the heart, the rational part of the soul within the brain, and the desirous part
of the soul within the liver. See De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 9.9.7 (CMG 5.4.1.2: 598.27-600.4), and also Hankinson
2006. Chrysostom explicitly adopted this Platonic/Galenic model only once in his extant corpus, in De inani gloria
et de educandis liberis: “the seat and home of spirit is the breast, and the heart in the breast, while the liver is [the
seat and home] for desire, and the brain for reason” (De inani gloria 65.788-90, SCh 188: 162-63).
30
In an influential discussion of the affections, bodily and psychic, the philosopher-physician Galen (c. 130–200
CE) defined pathos is a movement identified by one of two criteria: it is externally caused, or it is unnatural. The
pulse, for example, is an activity (energeia) of the heart, but an affection (pathos) of the artery on which the heart
acts. If the pulse is too strong or too weak, however, it is an affection regardless of perspective. In the same way
(Galen continues), thumos is both an activity of the spirited part of the soul (to thumoeidēs) but an affection of the
other two parts of the soul (rational and desirous) and of the entire body, which is carried away by it. Insofar as it is
immoderate or out of control, thumos is an affection by analogy to the pulse which is too strong, while athumia is an
affection like the pulse which is too weak. Gal. De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 6.1.1–27 (CMG 5.4.1.2: 360-67). Cf. Nem.
Nat. hom. 16, 73.20-75.6 (ed. Morani, Teubner).
31
Brottier 1998.
32
As also in Chrysostom’s letters to the deaconess Olympias—see Mayer’s contribution to this volume.
6

Chrysostom invokes prothumia as the alternative response: the wrestler who departs early from
the ring earns ignominy, he remarks, whilst he who fights prothumōs (“zealously”) wins the
crown.33 Prothumia is also the attitude with which the obedient patient must accept the therapy
prescribed by the wise physician—that is, God.34 For Chrysostom, then, prothumia describes the
unquestioning endurance of suffering for one’s own future good. As the opposite to prothumia,
athumia is the failure to endure appropriate trials, which in Stageirios’s case are demonic attacks.
In contrast to prothumia, euthumia represents, to Stageirios at least, a desirable emotional
state rather than a discipline, a motivating force rather than a goal.35 Chrysostom assents to this
distinction insofar as he argues in the second book of the letter that Stageirios should understand
his sickness to be cause for euthumia rather than for athumia, since earthly trials earn the glory
of heaven.36 Yet, while he acknowledges here that euthumia follows upon good circumstances,
he simultaneously suggests that one’s circumstances produce euthumia through the mediation of
individual perception. Stageirios is thus responsible for his own euthumia, insofar as he has the
ability to cultivate a more accurate perspective.37
Chrysostom’s assertion that athumia, and not the demon, is the source of Stageirios’s
affliction is most pronounced when he addresses Stageirios’s complaint that he suffers suicidal
impulses: “But this [suicidal impulse] is not the counsel of that [demon] alone, but of your
athumia also, and of the latter more than the former; indeed, perhaps of the latter alone. For it is
clear that many desire this without being harassed by demons, from grief alone.”38 It is not the
demon, then, but athumia which Stageirios must “cast out and drive forth” from his soul.39
Anticipating that Stageirios might ask how anyone could “escape this distress, without having
first escaped the demon who moves it,” Chrysostom reverses the trajectory of causation: “It is
not the demon which moves athumia, but [athumia] which makes the demon strong, and which
introduces the wicked thoughts.”40 Later in his letter, Chrysostom asserts that not only does
athumia nourish the demon, but it is the entry point for demonic attacks: “Excess of athumia is
more damaging than any demonic activity. In those whom the demon overpowers, it is through
this that it gains control.”41 In this we find echoes once more of Stageirios’s celebrated
predecessor, the Egyptian monk Antony, who argued that demons “approach us in a form
corresponding to the state in which they discover us, and adapt their delusions to the condition of

33
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 453.35-37). See also the opposition of athumia and prothumia in Chrysostom’s Hom. in Stat. 9.1
(PG 49: 59.19-21).
34
Doctor and patient: Ad Stag. (PG 47: 441.30-37). Prothumia also occurs twice in discussion of Abraham and the
sacrifice of Isaac: Ad Stag. (PG 47: 463.2-7).
35
See Stageirios’s comparison of his own athumia to the euthumia of his peers at Ad Stag. (PG 47: 426.3-7).
36
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 450.22-24; cf. 461.9-11).
37
In this, Chrysostom cleaves closely to the Greco-Roman philosophical tradition, which had long prized euthumia
as the goal of philosophical exercises and contemplation (Warren 2002), and which focused above all upon
discernment and self-knowledge as the tool for transforming or removing negative emotions.
38
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 447.53-448.48): Οὐ γὰρ ἐκείνου µόνον ἐστὶν αὕτη ἡ συµβουλὴ, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς ἀθυµίας τῆς
σῆς, καὶ ταύτης µᾶλλον ἢ ἐκείνου, τάχα δὲ καὶ µόνης ταύτης. Καὶ δῆλον ἐξ ὧν πολλοὶ καὶ τῶν µὴ
δαιµονώντων ἀπὸ τοῦ λυπεῖσθαι µόνον τοιαῦτα βουλεύονται.
39
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 448.48-49): Ταύτην οὖν ἔκβαλε καὶ ἀπέλασον τῆς ψυχῆς.
40
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 449.11-16): Καὶ πῶς ἄν τις, φησὶ, ταύτης ἀπαλλαγείη τῆς ὀδύνης, µὴ πρότερον τοῦ
κινοῦντος αὐτὴν δαίµονος ἀπαλλαγείς; Οὐχ ὁ δαίµων ἐστὶν ὁ τὴν ἀθυµίαν κινῶν, ἀλλ’ ἐκείνη ἡ ποιοῦσα τὸν
δαίµονα ἰσχυρὸν, καὶ τοὺς λογισµοὺς ὑποβάλλουσα τοὺς πονηρούς.
41
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 491.32-34): Πάσης γὰρ δαιµονικῆς ἐνεργείας βλαβερώτερον ἡ τῆς ἀθυµίας ὑπερβολή· ἐπεὶ
καὶ ὁ δαίµων ἐν οἷς ἂν κρατῇ, διὰ ταύτης κρατεῖ.
7

mind in which they find us.”42 While Antony (and his biographer, Athanasius) and Chrysostom
each acknowledge the presence and influence of demons on psychic well-being, they
simultaneously emphasize that it is poor psychic hygiene which allows entrance to demons, and
thus that individuals are ultimately responsible for their own psychic health.
Chrysostom emphasizes self-responsibility by reversing the order of causation proposed
by Stageirios, shifting the focus from an understanding of pathos as an externally-instigated
movement (the demon “moves” athumia) toward an understanding of pathos as an internal
movement which is unnatural or excessive (Stageirios allows himself be overwhelmed by
athumia).43 In so doing, he retains the threat to moral rectitude and self-control traditionally
attached to epilepsy and demonic possession but transfers it instead to athumia. Whereas one
might not be responsible for physical collapse (for example, if one has been pushed), one is
always and solely responsible for one’s affective condition.44
In order to demonstrate that choice and will are involved—indeed, are the determining
factors—in the experience of athumia, Chrysostom catalogues scriptural figures who suffered
athumia upon provocation, but did not yield to despair, instead maintaining faith in God.45
Among these, it is Moses who offers material for Chrysostom’s most sustained treatment of the
affection, and who proves most revealing with regard to its nature: “He suffered athumia, then,
because it is reasonable for one hearing and seeing such things to suffer athumia; yet he was not
overwhelmed by the affection, but remained unbowed.”46 In keeping with his exemplary
function, Moses feels appropriate grief, here for the evils of other people, but does not let the
affection dominate his soul. While Stageirios cannot control whether he is cast down by the
demon, he is, like Moses, accountable for whether his soul is overcome by the attack.
The importance of maintaining self-responsibility for affective states raised a problem for
philosophers and theologians alike. If psychic affections are to be defined by analogy to bodily
affections, and if bodily affections are typically outside of one’s control, then it is questionable
whether one can be held responsible for the emotions at all.47 For Christians, this problem
developed a powerful twist: if sin is a sickness of the soul, and one is not responsible for
sickness, then one’s accountability for sin itself is in question. In response to this problem,
Chrysostom insists that, regardless of bodily condition or external influence, one is always
responsible for sin. Some might complain, he remarks, that if God had destroyed the devil at the
beginning, then humans would never have been tempted to sin. This, Chrysostom argues, is
simply a disingenuous method of shifting the responsibility for human sins onto God. Indeed, if
it were appropriate or necessary to destroy the devil in order to avoid human sin, then we should
cut out our eyes and our tongues, since these are agents of sin also. Ought humankind,
Chrysostom asks, to do without either? What about feet, hands, and ears, food and drink, heaven

42
Athan. V. Ant. 42.5 (SCh 400: 248-51): Ἐλθόντες γάρ, ὁποίους ἂν εὕρωσιν ἡµᾶς, τοιοῦτοι καὶ αὐτοὶ γίνονται
πρὸς ἡµᾶς, καὶ πρὸς ἃς εὑρίσκουσιν ἐν ἡµῖν ἐννοίας, οὕτω καὶ αὐτοὶ τὰς φαντασίας ἀφοµοιοῦσιν. See Algra
2011 on demons and internal struggle in the Life of Antony.
43
Cf. Galen’s definition of pathos in De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 6.1 (discussed above, n. 30).
44
One is not responsible for being pushed: Ad Stag. (PG 47: 450.47-50).
45
Note that, as mentioned previously, none of these figures is described as suffering athumia in the biblical
descriptions of their lives—this is Chrysostom’s own diagnosis.
46
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 474.32-34): Ἠθύµει µὲν οὖν ὡς ἀθυµεῖν εἰκὸς τὸν ταῦτα ἀκούοντα καὶ ὁρῶντα, οὐ
παρετρέπετο δὲ ὑπὸ τοῦ πάθους, ἀλλ’ ἔµενεν ἀκλινὴς.
47
See Hankinson 1993, 192-97. For a contemporary consideration of this question, see Brennan 2004.
8

and earth, the sea, and the celestial bodies?48 Responsibility can be displaced neither onto God
nor onto the devil, nor indeed onto any other external cause, including one’s own bodily
instruments.
Chrysostom reinforces this argument through a detailed interpretation of Genesis 4.3-16,
the story of Cain and Abel. After failing to bring God a sacrifice as satisfying as that of his
brother, Cain became angry; from his thumos came athumia.49 It was on account of this
perceived slight that Cain murdered Abel.50 To those who might wonder whether Cain was
prompted by the devil to commit murder, Chrysostom responds firmly in the negative: God
allowed Cain to face trials and temptations for his own good. Moreover, Chrysostom insists that
the question is beside the point: even if the devil had “introduced the wicked thoughts,” it was up
to Cain to act upon or to resist them.51
This is the model that Chrysostom establishes for Stageirios: regardless of demonic trials
or temptations, one retains the choice to resist or to yield.52 While it is the demon which subjects
Stageirios to bodily trials, it is the athumia which offers temptation, “introducing wicked
thoughts,” in this case, thoughts of suicide. Thus, what initially appears to be the work of a
demon is actually the work of athumia, the roots of which lie within oneself.
Doxa and Kenodoxia

If the demon is not the cause of athumia, then what is? The answer is concealed within an
explanation not of the affection itself, but of the shame which Stageirios posits as a causal link
between the demonic attacks and athumia. Chrysostom writes:
Perhaps you are ashamed and blush, whenever it [sc. the demon] throws you
down in front of others? But again, this happens to you for this same cause, that
you have turned the matter over to the doxa of the many, and not to reason…Is
this not truly what it is to suffer a demon, to dispose the soul thus and to be
tripped up in your judgement regarding these matters?53
Doxa is critical here. Not only does it represent the “repute” with which Stageirios is so
concerned, but it also refers, as in philosophical terminology, to the “opinion” or “judgement” of
the many, that an illness such as that suffered by Stageirios must provoke shame.54 That this
opinion must be unfounded is guaranteed by its opposition to “reason.” Doxa trips up Stageirios

48
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 433.7-22).
49
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 430.43-44): Ἀπὸ γὰρ θυµοῦ ἡ ἀθυµία ἐκείνη ἦν. Cf. Ad Stag. (PG 47: 473.12-13). Note that,
once again, neither thumos nor athumia appear in the scriptural passage, as transmitted in the Septuagint.
50
Compare the frustration and envy felt by Stageirios because his sacrifice of worldly life has not brought the health
he desires. In these respects, Cain makes an unexpectedly pertinent model for Stageirios. Later in the treatise,
however, Stageirios and his demon will be compared to Abel and Cain, the latter jealous of the former for his
closeness to God (PG 47: 454.13-24).
51
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 434.24-30): ἐνταῦθα δὲ οὐκέτι, πλὴν εἴ τις αὐτὸν τοὺς πονηροὺς λογισµοὺς ὑποβεβληκέναι
φαίη, καὶ τοῦτο δὲ παρὰ τὸν καταδεξάµενον καὶ πεισθέντα καὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν αὐτῷ παρεσχηκότα τῆς ἐφόδου.
Ἀλλ’ ὅµως οὐδὲ οὕτως αὐτὸν εἴασεν ὁ Θεὸς, ἀλλ’ ἐπέµενε παιδεύων καὶ νουθετῶν, δι’ ὧν ἐδόκει κολάζειν
αὐτόν.
52
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 432.16-20).
53
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 450.28-31, 41-43): Ἀλλ’ ἴσως αἰσχύνῃ καὶ ἐρυθριᾷς, ὅταν σε καταβάλῃ παρόντων τινῶν;
Ἀλλὰ τοῦτό σοι πάλιν ἀπὸ τῆς ὑποθέσεως συµβαίνει τῆς αὐτῆς, ὅτι τῇ τῶν πολλῶν δόξῃ, λογισµῷ δὲ
οὐδέποτε τὸ πρᾶγµα ἐπέτρεψας. …Ἆρα οὐ τοῦτό ἐστι τὸ δαιµονᾷν, τὸ οὕτω διακεῖσθαι τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ περὶ
τὴν τῶν πραγµάτων σφάλλεσθαι κρίσιν;
54
See Peters 1967, 40-42 for the philosophical meanings of doxa.
9

both in its manifestation of judgement of him (what I translate as “repute”) and of judgement
about how he ought to feel (what I translate, here, as “opinion”).
Beyond this, doxa stands crucially in parallel to the demon itself, insofar as it controls
the unfortunate monk’s body. Whereas Stageirios thinks that the demon is the source of his
bodily and emotional problems, Chrysostom insists that doxa—or, more precisely, acceptance of
doxa as true—is the true underlying cause of athumia.55 Instead of visiting holy men and asking
to be cured of the demon, Stageirios should set to work on himself, casting out both the concern
with doxa (repute) and the acceptance of doxa (opinion) that have together provoked his
athumia.
Yet, although doxa emerges as pivotal within Stageirios’s emotional response to the
demonic attacks, and in some sense even substitutes for the demon, it does not explain why or
how Stageirios’s spiritual condition deteriorated in the first place. For this we have to dig deeper
into Stageirios’s feelings toward his adoption of the monastic life, which coincided with the
onset of demonic attacks. Strikingly, doxa remains fundamental.
Toward the end of the first book of the letter, Chrysostom poses the question of why
those who walk uprightly before their trials subsequently fall down.56 The problem, he explains,
is that some are virtuous but lack humility, such that they practice virtuous behaviour for human
honour rather than for God:
For many people, although they appear to us to have endured many toils for the
sake of virtue, and have indeed endured them, since they did everything with a
view toward honor from humankind, rather than [with a view] toward God, are
allowed to fall into trials, so that they might be stripped of the repute (doxa) by
which they were injured, and, having learned its [sc. repute’s] nature—that it is no
better than a flower of the meadow—might attend to God ever after, and do all
through him.57
The perfected monk was understood to be particularly susceptible to the affection of vainglory
(kenodoxia).58 In contrast to the worldly vainglory displayed by those “lusting after power and
repute (doxa),” however, the vainglory suffered by the upright revealed itself as pride in one’s
rigorous discipline and self-sacrifice.59
Chrysostom makes clear that, with regard to ascetic practice, Stageirios is among the
“upright.” Once the laughing stock of the monastery, he has become so disciplined that he now
rivals serious ascetics, and his community is concerned that he might wear out his eyes with
weeping or his brain with sleeplessness and books.60 Yet the reason for this recent burst of

55
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 449.32-35).
56
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 445.34-36): τί δήποτε οἱ τὰ ὀρθὰ βαδίζοντες πρὸ τῶν πειρασµῶν µετὰ τοὺς πειρασµοὺς
κατέπεσον.
57
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 446.21-30): πολλοὶ γὰρ παρ’ ἡµῖν δοκοῦντες ὑπὲρ τῆς ἀρετῆς πολλοὺς ὑποµεµενηκέναι
πόνους, καὶ ὑποµένοντες δὲ, ἐπειδὴ πρὸς τὴν παρὰ ἀνθρώπων ὁρῶντες τιµὴν, καὶ οὐ πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν ἅπαντα
ἔπραττον, ἀφείθησαν πειρασµῷ περιπεσεῖν, ἵνα τῆς παρὰ τῶν πολλῶν ἀποστερηθέντες δόξης δι’ ἣν ἅπαντα
ἐζηµιώθησαν, καὶ µαθόντες τὴν φύσιν αὐτῆς ὡς οὐδὲν ἄµεινον ἄνθους χόρτου διάκειται, τῷ Θεῷ µόνῳ
προσέχωσι τοῦ λοιποῦ, καὶ δι’ αὐτὸν ἅπαντα πράττωσι.
58
Cf. Evagr. Pont. De or. 72 (PG 79: 1181.41-51). Leduc 1969 surveys the theme of vainglory in Chrysostom’s
corpus.
59
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 451.30): τοὺς δυναστείας καὶ δόξης ἐρῶντας. Over-enthusiastic asceticism, a familiar problem
in fourth-century monastic texts, was sometimes understood as the consequence of demonic attacks or vainglory.
See Brakke 2006, 68-69 and Crislip 2013, 81-108.
60
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 449.54-450.18).
10

discipline seems to be not devotion to God, but the monk’s desire to be rid of his demon.61
Although, as Chrysostom emphasizes, Stageirios does not act directly for human glory, his
motivations for seeking a cure include earthly concerns—in particular, shame at how he might be
seen and judged as an ascetic practitioner.62 Also symptomatic of vainglory is the monk’s
distress at the health of those who demonstrate lesser self-discipline: His worldly peers have
been healed, whilst he remains sick, even though he has “dragged out so much time in fasts,
nocturnal vigils, and the rest of the discipline.”63 Besides indicating Stageirios’s awareness of his
pre-eminence in asceticism, the contrast he draws here reveals the belief that spiritual discipline
should guarantee spiritual health, and furthermore that spiritual health should manifest itself in
freedom from psychosomatic complaints. Since dishonor attends a monk’s failure in spiritual
discipline, the demonic attacks are for Stageirios a source of shame. Note that Stageirios’s
concern is not how he might better care for his soul, but how he is shamed—in other words, how
his doxa is damaged—by the demonic attacks. It seems that Stageirios struggles with absence
rather than excess of (good) doxa.
Nor is the disappointment experienced by Stageirios in his ill-health fuelled only by the
bad reputation brought by the demon; he is also deeply concerned about the family reputation
which he has given up on entering monastic orders. When Stageirios first became a monk,
Chrysostom recalls, “I heard many mocking you for your desperation, blaming this on the
illustriousness of your family, your father’s repute (doxa), and your wealthy upbringing.”64 From
the beginning of his monastic career, then, Stageirios has been concerned for the repute (doxa)
that he has given up. Chrysostom’s advice to Stageirios is revealing: “Whenever you consider
that through Christ you have cast from your hands your father, home, friends, kin, unspeakable
wealth, and great repute (doxa), and still endure such suffering, you should not cast yourself
down.”65 Caring in excess about one’s doxa is the demon which causes the spiritual “falling
sickness” of which one ought to be ashamed.
Although Chrysostom is at pains to insist that Stageirios does not suffer from the inflated
ego of kenodoxia, he does make it clear that the monk’s keen interest in doxa has played a
consistent and incongruous role in his ascetic life: at first he struggled to maintain ascetic
discipline, perhaps because traces lingered of his family reputation; and now, although he has
developed advanced and even formidable ascetic habits, he nonetheless remains fixated upon the
shame of his psychosomatic condition, the threat to his father’s reputation, and the contrast

61
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 447.8-29).
62
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 450.47-9): “If my discourse were directed toward one of those more easily exalted, I would
remain silent regarding the things I am about to say to you” (Ἐγὼ γὰρ, εἰ µὲν πρὸς ἕτερόν µοί τινα τῶν εὐκόλως
ἐπαιροµένων ὁ λόγος ἦν, κἂν ἀπεσιώπησα ταῦτα, ἃ µέλλω πρὸς σὲ νῦν ἐρεῖν). Cf. 492.36-9: “But if there were
some desire and inappropriate bodily lust, or the tyranny of vainglory—a most stubborn evil—or any other one of
such affections, you might well be at loss for an escape” (Εἰ µὲν γὰρ ἐπιθυµία τις ἦν, καὶ σωµάτων ἔρως ἄτοπος,
ἢ κενοδοξίας τυραννὶς, τὸ δυσκαταγώνιστον κακὸν, ἢ ἄλλο τι τῶν τοιούτων παθῶν, καλῶς ἂν ἠπόρεις ὑπὲρ
τῆς ἀπαλλαγῆς).
63
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 425.47-8): σὲ δὲ τοσοῦτον ἕλκοντα χρόνον ἐν νηστείας καὶ παννυχίσι καὶ τῇ λοιπῇ
σκληραγωγίᾳ.
64
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 447.19-23): Πολλῶν δέ σε καὶ εἰς ἀπόνοιαν σκωπτόντων ἤκουον τότε, καὶ ταύτῃ τὴν τοῦ
γένους αἰτιωµένων λαµπρότητα, καὶ τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς δόξαν, καὶ τὸ ἐν πλούτῳ τετράφθαι πολλῷ. Cf.
Stageirios’s concern for his father’s anger over the ruin of family doxa at PG 47: 452.36-43.
65
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 438.1-4): Ὥστε ὅταν ἐννοήσῃς ὅτι πατέρα, καὶ οἰκίαν, καὶ φίλους, καὶ συγγενεῖς, καὶ
πλοῦτον ἄφατον, καὶ δόξαν πολλὴν ῥίψας ἀπὸ τῶν χειρῶν διὰ τὸν Χριστὸν, εἶτα τοσαύτην θλῖψιν
ὑποµένεις νῦν, µὴ καταβάλλῃς σαυτόν.
11

between himself and his peers. It is only by letting go of doxa that Stageirios will expel his
athumia, and so cut off the nourishment of the demon.
Conclusion
Chrysostom’s letter to Stageirios tries to cure a case of athumia. The first step is to
examine the causes that lie at its root. These causes, however, are not quite what Stageirios
expects: instead of confirming that the demon provokes athumia, Chrysostom reverses the
causation, attributing responsibility to Stageirios himself in his dependence upon human doxa
and the false perceptions he develops as a result. It is only by realigning his perceptions and
casting out his concern for doxa that Stageirios can heal himself of inappropriate shame and
athumia, and so obtain the euthumia and doxa of God.66
In this light, Chrysostom’s strategy sounds remarkably like the psychotherapeutic
traditions to which it has sometimes been compared. Importantly, however, Chrysostom is not
actually trying to remove shame; rather, he seeks to redistribute it. Shame and grief are the
pivotal points around which Stageirios’s psychosomatic illness becomes the spiritual sickness or
sin, insofar as they attend both psychosomatic illnesses and disorders of the soul. Indeed, it is by
retaining shame as a useful emotional response and then transferring it from the “falling
sickness” to its spiritual equivalent (falling into sin—that is, giving oneself over to doxa) that
Chrysostom insists upon responsibility even within the metaphor of sin as a sickness of the soul.
Immorality as a disease of the soul was a well-worn trope in Greco-Roman philosophy
from the earliest Platonic texts onward, and flourished in Christian literature particularly as the
pathē began to be remodelled as sin.67 Yet, for Chrysostom, psychic disease was not a metaphor
by which immorality might be better understood; rather, immorality displaced the “falling
sickness” and even the pathē as the true sickness of the soul. Sickness of the soul, Chrysostom
insists, is not the loss of psychosomatic control, but rather it is the failure to exert it. Spiritual
health, similarly, does not necessarily manifest as freedom from bodily disorders—even those
which touch upon the soul—but rather in faith in God and freedom from sin. In this way,
Chrysostom overturns the illness model proposed by Stageirios to suggest that the monk might
be consoled and exhorted in his sickness, but that the sickness is not quite what he thinks. The
“falling sickness”—insofar as it touches the soul—is comprised of expectations and self-regard
for which Stageirios is in control and which is, at least in part, the cause and the cure of demon
and athumia alike.
Princeton University
jwten@princeton.edu

66
Ad Stag. (PG 47: 453.26-37).
67
Sorabji 2000, 8, 343-99.
12

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14

Jessica Wright Between Despondency and The Demon: Diagnosing and Treating Spiritual Disorders in John Chrysostom's Letter To Stageirios

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This article first appeared in Journal of Late Antiquity, Volume

John Chrysostom’s “Exhortatory Treatise to the Ascetic Stageirios, Being

“To the ascetic Stageirios, being harassed by a demon”

Chrysostom on Illnesses of the Soul

Doxa and Kenodoxia

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