Scriptural Protection and Healing in Early Christian Culture

It is widely known that scripture has been viewed as mediating Christ’s presence in a range of formal communal settings. Scripture has been processed and proclaimed in worship, used to effect episcopal consecration, enthroned at church councils and sworn upon at legal trials. In contrast, popular beliefs that Christ is present in scripture, and the faith practices and mobile artefacts associated with this belief, have been relatively neglected.

If scripture is seen as making Christ present, it is understandable that individuals in need of protection or healing have wished to bring it close to them. Scripture was borne with the aim of protecting livestock, stables, crops, trees and vineyards, and placed around the necks of domesticated animals to safeguard them from disease, fire and predation. The Psalter was also used for a variety of apotropaic purposes, which Klaus Schreiner justly accounts for on the grounds that the psalmody was understood as the voice of Christ.

In other instances, biblical texts weren’t carried by a person or animal but inscribed upon buildings. Biblical verses were carved into the stone lintels above entrances. Notable is the second half of Romans 8.31, ‘What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?’. Although relatively unimportant in the early theological exegesis of scripture, this text has been found to appear far more times than any other from a Pauline letter in this epigraphic setting. Inscribed directly above the threshold, through which evil was most likely to enter into a Christian house, this rhetorical text appears to have been used with the objective of preventing the devil, who was Christ’s generic personified adversary, from gaining admittance.

If scripture as a whole was believed to embody Christ, this conviction about its significance was even stronger in the case of the Gospel. Chrysostom presents the wearing of Gospel texts around the neck by women and children as a common Christian practice. Echoing Old Testament injunctions, he urges his hearers: ‘write the commands of the Gospel and its laws upon your mind’. Chrysostom also strongly promotes the internalizing of scripture and its moral precepts, similarly to how the Israelites are urged to love the Lord with heart, soul and might, to keep his words in their hearts and to discuss them at home and in society. In another homily, he refers to the ‘Gospel hanging by our bed’. While not directly interpreting the significance of this, he goes on to urge that not ‘even’ this is more important than an alms chest into which a sum is placed before each time of prayer, which will serve as a ‘defence against the devil’ and avoid the night being ‘troubled with fantasies’. This suggests that the Gospel above the bed was also seen to serve these functions.

Chrysostom adopts a similar approach in yet another homily, in which he acknowledges the belief that an entire house is protected from harm by the presence of a Gospel book. He writes:

"For if the devil will not dare to approach a house where a Gospel is lying, much less will any evil spirit, or any sinful nature, ever touch or enter a soul which bears about with it such sentiments as it contains. Sanctify then your soul, sanctify your body, by having these ever in your heart, and on your tongue. For if foul speech defiles and invites devils, it is clear that spiritual reading sanctifies and draws down the grace of the Spirit. The Scriptures are divine charms (theiai epodai), let us then apply to ourselves and to the passions of our souls the remedies to be derived from them."

Chrysostom again echoes the command to the Israelites to keep the words of scripture in mind and conversation, regarding the physical presence of scriptural texts as aiding this.

Individuals who were ill might be brought into contact with a Gospel book, which mediated Christ by making him, as Word, present. Augustine praises the person who, when lying ill in bed with a headache or other symptoms, places a Gospel book, rather than a non-scriptural amulet, at their head. John of Salisbury records that Cuthbert ‘placed the gospel of St. John upon the bodies of the afflicted and they were made well’. Women might use birthing amulets, containing texts such as the one describing Jesus’ exchange with the woman in a crowd who refers to the womb and breasts of Mary. Gospel amulets were prized possessions.

In other instances, whole Gospel books were deployed for healing purposes in ways that may be confirmed by physical examination. The Pürten Gospel book, originating from a parish in Upper Bavaria, was used with the intention of healing epilepsy and mental illness, being opened at the start of one of the Gospels, where its writer was pictured, and laid under the head for four nights while the patient slept. In this book, the image of John at the opening of his Gospel has been completely destroyed, indicating a strong preference by patients, or their ministers, or both, to sleep with their head in contact with this Gospel.

Ancient Gospel amulets frequently included the Lord’s Prayer or the opening verses of one or more of the Gospel texts. The specific verses chosen typically related to the purpose for which the amulet was required. For example, amulets used in exorcisms would be likely to contain either texts that described Jesus in direct combat with Satan in the wilderness, or verses that referred to Jesus exorcising others. Amulets deployed to prevent adverse weather, or to provide protection from this, included those making reference to Jesus stilling storms. In his discussion of these, Franz suggests that this selection was common during the tenth and eleventh centuries, whereas, by the twelfth century, the incipit of John, and then the incipits of all four canonical Gospels, came to be used. This, he suggests, indicates a shift away from concern with specific hazards towards a generalized notion of protection from demons and from danger.