The Concept of ‘Christus Medicus' in St. Augustine

Abstract

Repeatedly in recent times attention has been called to the frequent use of the Christus medicus theme by St. Augustine. When a lucky archaeological discovery, made at Timgad in the spring of 1919, brought to light the fragment of an inscription, containing an invocation to Christ the Physician, P. Monceaux, in discussing the rare find, noted not only the popularity of the concept in Christian Africa in general since the days of Tertullian, but also its extremely frequent use by St. Augustine in particular, calling it ‘un thème dominant dans la prédication du grand évêque d'Hippone.’ He listed eight examples from St. Augustine's sermons, in which the notion of Christ the Physician, employed allegorically or metaphorically, to describe Him as the Divine Healer of mankind's spiritual diseases, occurs rather conspicuously. Monceaux's statement was repeated by J. Carcopino, H. Leclercq, and L. Olschki, all of whom refer to the texts collected by him. M. E. Keenan pointed out two allusions to Christ as the Divine Physician in St. Augustine's letters though the passages quoted by her refer rather to deus medicus than to Christus medicus. In a later study on ‘Augustine and the Medical Profession,' she excluded expressly allusions to Christus medicus ‘because of their frequency and unvarying character.’ The collection of pertinent texts has considerably been enlarged by J. Mohan who, in studying the titles applied to Christ by St. Augustine in connection with his Christological and soteriological doctrine, devotes two pages to discussing the Christus medicus metaphor, used by the great Doctor of the Church to explain the Mystery of the Redemption. The author owes the additional texts especially to Dom G. Morin's monumental edition of those of St. Augustine's sermons which have been discovered after the Maurists’ edition. P Mention must also be made of the valuable collection of texts by A. Koch in the section ‘Christus der Arzt’ of his Homiletisches Handbudi. Finally, in the list of pertinent texts given by the ThLL, s.v. medicina and medicus, St. Augustine easily holds the first place among those Patristic writers of the West who made use of the Christus medicus figure.