Saints in the Latrine: Between Revealing and Relieving in the Late Antique Miracle Collections

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Abstract The article analyzes evidence related to the latrine in late antique literature. It shows that the latrine was commonly seen as a demonic domain in both pagan and Christian thought of the period. The Christians gave the moral value to the latrine and associated it with the humankind’s sinful nature. However, there are two narratives from Greek collections of miracles that enter into the dialogue with the discourse on the latrine and exploit it for their own ends. These narratives are found in the Miracles of Cyrus and John by Sophronios of Jerusalem and the anonymous Miracles of Artemios. They depict the saintly epiphanies which take place in the latrine, thus exploiting its significance to the extreme. It is argued that they use this setting as a tool to show the elevation of a sinful individual from the lowest moral degradation through the intrusion of a divine agent who comes to his rescue. However, it is achieved in a subversive way. The miraculous process involves not only the appearance of the saints in the latrine, but even the suggestion that they use the latrine and thus degrade their position in favor of the miracle recipient. The article thus sheds new light on the concept of the sainthood, which, by employing scatology, reveals its subversive nature: the saints in the miracle collections are presented as trickster figures who are prone to reverse every situation and combine opposites, here linking the most sacred with the most profane.