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The Hungry are DyingBeggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia$
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The Hungry are Dying: Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia

Susan R. Holman

Print publication date: 2001

Print ISBN-13: 9780195139129

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003

DOI: 10.1093/0195139127.001.0001

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PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2019. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use. date: 07 December 2019

Hunger

Hunger

Famine, Relief, and Identity in Basil's Cappadocia

Chapter:
(p.64) 2 Hunger
Source:
The Hungry are Dying
Author(s):

Susan R. Holman

Publisher:
Oxford University Press
DOI:10.1093/0195139127.003.0003

This chapter places Basil of Caesarea's fourth‐century famine relief activities within the broader spectrum of the history of famine relief and the physiology of starvation. It summarizes what is known of his response to the famine of 368–69 ce and compares his sermon “In time of famine and drought” with a sixth‐century famine chronicle by Ps. Joshua the Stylite and Philagathos's eleventh‐century sermon on famine, considering these three texts in light of modern medical and sociological studies on starvation and hunger typology. Basil's texts from the famine crisis show him exercising a priest–bishop's politics of power, by evoking vivid images of the destitute compared with mourning infants, by insisting that the hungry are suffering unjustly, and by demanding grain donations as both a ceremonial gift exchange and an act of redemptive almsgiving.

Keywords:   almsgiving, Basil of Caesarea, drought, famine, gift exchange, hunger typology, Joshua the Stylite, Philagathos, relief, starvation physiology

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