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This chapter discusses Peter Damian and his views on the Filioque, Pope Gregory VII and Theophylact of Ochrid. Gregory VII was a pugnacious pope, resorting to the arm of authority in his determination to end simony and enforce priestly celibacy. Theophylact is a native of Euboea who came to Constantinople to study under philosopher Michael Psellos, became a deacon of St. Sophia and was promoted to Archbishop of Ochrid about 1090.

This chapter argues that the defence of the saints and their miracles visible in Gregory and Eustratius’s texts can also be found in other contemporary texts. For in both saints’ Lives and collections of saints’ miracles from this period, proponents of the saints had to defend their subjects against rationalistic counter-explanations for the miracles and wonders they ascribed to the saints. The chapter thus brings together a number of Greek hagiographical texts drawn from all over the eastern Mediterranean to establish the existence of a persistent and widespread questioning of the saints’ cult from the end of the sixth to the middle of the seventh centuries. These texts include: the Miracles of Cosmas and Damian; the Miracles of Cyrus and John; the Miracles of Demetrius; the Life of Symeon the Younger; the Life of Theodore of Sykeon; the Life of John the Almsgiver; and the Miracles of Artemius. The chapter also explores the role played by images of the saints in the defence of the saints’ post-mortem miracles.

In 11th-century western Europe there was a reawakening of interest in the solitary life. Not surprisingly, its main protagonists have much to say about the wisdom of a life which looks like sheer lunacy. The folly of the hermits is not a species of fanaticism, rather there is a gay, joyful, almost humorous quality in their writings and the accounts of their lives. This chapter explores the ‘merriment of the heart’ and folly for Christ's sake in the eremitical spirituality of the West in the 11th century, and especially in St. Romuald, St. Peter Damian, and the founders of the Carthusian Order.

Chapter 3 addresses the link between colonial ideas on femininity and period understandings of gendered physiology. Similar to their European counterparts in that they deemed women to have a weaker constitution compared to men, medical authors in New Spain, however, began linking arguments on the female body to American environments specifically. Descriptions of physiological processes favoured stricter controls of women’s diets and behaviour under the guise of ensuring their good health. The rising numbers of European women in Mexico are reflected in the fact that the two locally printed medical books that went into second editions in the sixteenth century—Alonso López de Hinojosos’s Svmma (1578, 1592) and Agustín Farfán’s Tractado breve (1579, 1592)—both revised and abridged their first versions in order to make way for sections focused on the treatment of women and children. My analysis traces notions on gender, particularly in the case of ‘exceptional’ gestational processes resulting in 'manly women' and 'effeminate men', showing how authors in the New World brought together under a colonial prism older medical traditions that had taken divergent paths in Europe.

Pesynthios's biography is preserved in Sahidic, Bohairic, and Arabic manuscripts, which will subsequently be referred to by means of sigla. Pesynthios, who did not aspire to the episcopal office, fled to the districts of Jeme (Western Thebes), but the clergy found him and brought him to Damian, patriarch of Alexandria (569–605), who ordained him bishop. Pesynthios probably continued to dwell in the Monastery of Tsenti, and was reputed for his prophetic gift and charity. The Sahidic, Bohairic, and Arabic versions display considerable variation in their titles and attribution. According to Górecki, Tomb 1151 may have served as a chapel, and Tomb 1152 appears to have been inhabited. In front of the entrance to this tomb was a tower almost six meters in height and built of mud bricks.

This chapter is in its entirety devoted to the debate between the miaphysite Patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, Damian and Peter of Callinicus. It is part of the tritheistic controversy. Damian accused Peter of tritheism while the latter thought Damian pandered to the heresy Sabellian. Much of the controversy turned on the interpretation of Cappadocian proof texts. It is therefore an excellent indicator of the extent to which these texts were the foundation of sixth-century debates. Damian identified hypostasis with the particular property. The three hypostases would thus inhere in the single divine substance. Peter objected that the properties were only characteristic of the hypostasis. Neither side was able to propose a plausible reconstruction of Cappadocian philosophy for the needs of the time, but their detailed discussions about universal substance, individual hypostases, properties, and substrates is indicative of the direction Patristic philosophy was taking at the time.

In 1865, the Hawai‘i legislature passed the Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy that made isolation enforceable by law. Hundreds of acres on Moloka‘i were secured for segregation. Queen Liliuokalani, in one of her first royal acts, despite numerous criticisms and concerns over risking her personal health, went to Moloka‘i to see her afflicted subjects. Pope was invited by the queen to accompany her so that quarantined school pupils could be consoled. A lengthy letter written by Pope includes first-hand impressions of the victims, Father Damian and Marianne Cope, offering an intimate view of this historical occasion.

Mission San Damian de Escambe was founded in 1639, after the chief of the village of Escambe, also known as Cupaica, was baptized in St. Augustine. It was home to hundreds of families during the peak of the mission period in Apalachee Province. In 1704, it was destroyed by forces marshalled by James Moore. The site was first identified by B. Calvin Jones in 1968 during a survey of proposed borrow pits slated for use in the construction of Interstate 10. In 2013, 8LE120 was investigated by BAR archaeologist Jerry Lee. This chapter re-examines both investigations and the resulting artifact assemblages to offer a more holistic interpretation of the site.

Chapter 1 traces the patristic and early medieval exegesis of Galatians 6:17. It assesses how language and imagery were appropriated and developed by eleventh- and twelfth-century monastic theologians (especially Peter Damian) into a soteriological system of penance and redemption that focused on Christ’s wounds. Significantly, it looks at examples of stigmatization before Francis of Assisi. These cases vary in their form; they gradually move from stigmata being almost exclusively associated with the sacerdotal order in the early Middle Ages to being linked to the laity by the early thirteenth century as with the cases of Peter the Conversus and Mary of Oignies.

This final chapter discusses the “Music of Buenos Aires.” It looks at three prominent tangueros flourishing and creating tango music today: Damián Bolotin, Sonia Possetti, and Juan Pablo Navarro. The authors and contemporary tango musicians call this music the “Music of Buenos Aires.” This style embraces tango fusions with jazz and classical music. The chapter concludes with a postre, an Argentine dessert, to summarize the case studies of the trajectory of Argentine tango.

I explore the depiction of the Miracle of the Black Leg by Saints Cosmas and Damian. This narrates the miraculous cure of a white verger with a diseased leg after the grafting of a leg from a dead African man onto his amputated stump. I show how the Greek, Latin and Catalan legends of this miracle give rise to different conceptions of the black subject defined either as a ‘Moor’ or as an ‘Ethiopian’ and I look at the violent sixteenth-century image of the mutilated African man, worked up by Isidro de Villoldo in Valladolid (1547) and the ways in which it was interpreted by other sculptors in Castile, and show how it drastically departs from the original literary and visual sources examined. I believe that there is a reference to the mutilation of limbs or ears suffered by fugitive slaves and I construct an account of the treatment of slaves.

Duffin explains her personal involvement as a hematologist in the miracle eventually ascribed to Marie-Marguerite d’Youville. She then describes her journey to Italy for the canonization ceremony. It involves robbery, storms, parties, and more saints. She visits the Cosmas and Damian Basilica in Rome and notices its proximity to the ancient temple of the twins Castor and Pollux. That observation that triggers the main project of this book. Were the medical twins simply a holdover from the ancient pagan religion? Upon her return to Canada, she discovers some authors have already wrestled with that possibility and she discovers the Toronto feast day celebration for saints Cosmas and Damian.

The life, death and subsequent veneration of Saints Cosmas and Damian is traced, from their origins in the 2ndC AD to their martyrdom in the Diocletian persecutions and extending well beyond to their sites of devotion. Admired by doctors and pharmacists, the medical saints become patrons of towns, schools, and professional organizations around the world. Duffin locates and interviews the founders of the feast day celebrations in Toronto that began in 1987. They locate the inspiration as their original home in Campobasso province, Italy, and they mention an older feast in Utica, New York. The Utica feast began in 1912 by Italian immigrants from Alberobello in Barí, who were striving to keep the traditions. Some claim to have experienced miracles. She also presents several theories that could help account for the transfer and revival of the cult of medical saints.