Faith Healing In Late Byzantium: The Posthumous Miracles Of The Patriarch Athanasios I Of Constantinople By Theoktistos The Stoudite

Scholars in recent years have shown considerable interest in the writings and career of the patriarch Athanasios I of Constantinople, who has been shown to be both an ecclesiastical reformer and a precursor of the hesychastic movement. Although he was rejected by nineteenth-century Bollandists from the pages of the Acta Sanctorum as a schismatic (“Patet ver in nostro opere locum non esse concedendum vitae hominis schismatici”), Athanasios has long been revered as a saint by the Orthodox Church. The circumstances of the development of his popular veneration and canonization, however, have never been studied.

Over a decade ago, in the course of preparing an edition of the letters of Athanasios, I found at Dumbarton Oaks a microfilm of the Chalke manuscript containing the unpublished Logos of Theoktistos the Stoudite on the relics of Athanasios. Once I had completed my study of the turbulent life of the patriarch, I was able to turn my attention to the phenomenon of the growth of his posthumous cult and to prepare an edition of Theoktistos’ Logos which describes numerous miracles attested at the tomb of Athanasios in his monastery on the hill of Xerolophos in Constantinople.