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Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 23, Number 2, Summer

2015, pp. 189-211 (Article)
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The Health-Giving Cup:

Cyprians Ep. 63 and
the Medicinal Power of
Eucharistic Wine
JOHN DAVID PENNIMAN
Cyprians Epistle 63 represents the earliest extant account of the proper meaning and administration of the eucharistic cup. Against a group of Christians
who were taking only water, Cyprian argues that wine is necessary for the
ritual to be effective. While there has been much discussion surrounding
the biblical references marshaled by Cyprian to prove his point, this article
explores the extent to which those references are inflected through lexical
and conceptual categories relating to the medical usage of wine. Wine figured
prominently in literature on illness, health, and healing that proliferated during
the Roman Empire. This article locates Cyprian within that broader dynamic,
and argues that his emphasis on the health-giving effects of the eucharistic cup
in Ep. 63 reflects similar descriptions of the medicinal power of wine found in
manuals of Roman medicine and other folklore traditions.

Let this be borne in mind, while we observe that the whole

force of Cyprians reasoning, when he thus applies the Psalmists
words to the matter in hand, is derived from the particular
properties of wine, with its effects upon him who drinks it.1
An earlier (and more eccentric) version of this essay was presented at the 2012
Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting. Thanks to Colleen Shantz and Angela
Harkins, who chaired the section, for their encouragement to pursue the topic further. I am especially grateful to Andrew McGowan, Maureen Tilley, and Benjamin
Dunning for their conversation, comments, and questions throughout various stages
of research. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers at JECS.
1. George Ayliffe Poole, The Life and Times of St Cyprian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1840), 286.
Journal of Early Christian Studies 23:2, 189211 2015 Johns Hopkins University Press

190 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

JUST AS ORDINARY WINE . . .:

EUCHARISTIC RITUAL LOGIC IN THE THIRD CENTURY
In the middle of the third century c.e., Cyprian of Carthage penned a letter
rebuking Christians who were using only water in the eucharistic cup. The
identity of these water-drinkers, and the rationale behind their practice,
has been the source of much scholarly speculation.2 And while Epistle 63
offers a unique vantage into the diversity of early Christian ritual, the letter
also represents the earliest known attempt to establish the correct meaning and practice of the eucharistic drink.3 Cyprians argument hinges on a
panoply of biblical typologies about winetypologies that are drawn primarily from the Old Testament. This dynamic suggests that, for the wateronly Christians, the passages from the Gospels and from the apostle Paul
that came to form the basis of later eucharistic practice were not, in fact,
normative. Cyprian was forced to make a persuasive case for the usage
of a cup mixed with water and wine from disparate scriptural passages
against an opponent who, it seems, understood the ritual quite differently.
In this respect, it is worth noting that the traditional words of institution for the sacrament found in Matthew 26.2628, Luke 22.1920, and
1 Corinthians 11.2326 nowhere mention the contents of the cup. The
nearest we come is in Jesus proclamation that he will not drink from
the fruit of the vine ( ) until the
kingdom of Goda phrase that would seem to provide a definitive textual
2. For a helpful overview of the different theories regarding these water-drinkers,
see Gerard Rouwhorst, Lusage et le non-usage du vin, Rites de communion: Confrences Saint-Serge LVe Semaine dtudes liturgiques, eds. Andre Lossky and Manlio
Sodi (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2010), 22941. The definitive study
of the bread and water tradition is Andrew McGowans Ascetic Eucharists: Food
and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
3. See, for instance, McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists, 204. For recent scholarship
on Ep. 63, see Geoffrey G. Willis, St. Cyprian and the Mixed Chalice, Downside
Review 339 (1982): 11015; G. W. Clarke, The Letters of Cyprian of Carthage, vol. 3,
Ancient Christian Writers 46 (New York: Newman Press, 1986), 28889; FinbarrG.
Clancy,S.J., Imitating the Mysteries that You Celebrate: Martyrdom and Eucharist
in the Early Patristic Period, The Great Persecution: The Proceedings of the Fifth
Patristic Conference, Maynooth, eds. Vincent Twomey and Mark Humphries (Portland, OR: Four Courts Press, 2003), 12127; McGowan, Rethinking Agape and
Eucharist in Early North African Christianity, Studia Liturgica 34 (2004): 16576;
Allen Brent, St. Cyprian of Carthage: On the Church: Select Letters, Popular Patristics
33 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2006), 17187; Barry M. Craig,
Potency, Not Preciousness: Cyprians Cup and a Modern Controversy, Worship
81.4 (2007): 290313; Margaret M. Daly-Denton, Water in the Eucharistic Cup: A
Feature of the Eucharist in Johannine Trajectories through Early Christianity, Irish
Theological Quarterly 72.4 (2007): 35670.

PENNIMAN/MEDICINAL POWER OF EUCHARISTIC WINE 191

anchor regarding the usage of wine.4 Yet while Cyprian appeals to this
creatura vitis as a self-evident prescription from Jesus to drink wine, he
mentions the passage only once in the letter.5 Thus, it seems clear from the
wide array of other biblical references marshaled by Cyprian that there
were groups of Christians who did not read the fruit of the vine in such
termsor perhaps just ignored these passagesand that proof-texting
this reference alone would be insufficient to combat their error.6 Andrew
McGowan has hypothesized that the water-drinkers were, perhaps, following a different tradition altogetherone less invested in the cup as
a symbol of Jesus blood and sacrifice.7
It is therefore worth reconsidering the challenge Cyprian faced in writing
Ep. 63 and the discursive strategies he employed within its arguments. If
there were precedents for a mixed-cup in post-biblical Christian material regarding orthodox eucharistic meaning and practice, he either did
not know themfor he does not mention anyor he found them inadequate. The only traditions found in the letter are the errant practices of
his opponents and the catalog of disparate scriptural references to wine
from which Cyprian constructs his own response. The tradition to which
Cyprian appeals throughout Ep. 63 is, in fact, being built by him in media
res. His task was to offer a definitive reading of scriptural references to
wine in order to secure the proper meaning and practice of an inchoate
ritual that was, at the time, understood to do different things from one
Christian community to the next. In response to this diversity of meaning, Cyprian sought to establish the unique necessity of wine as a ritual
element. This required him to align his citations of wine in scripture with
his understanding of the effects that the eucharistic cup was supposed to
have upon those who drink from it.8 That is to say, for Cyprian, the act of
4. See Mark 14.25, Matthew 26.29, and Luke 22.18.
5. Ep. 63.9.
6. Paul Bradshaw has convincingly demonstrated how the New Testament generally cannot provide the firm foundation from which to project later liturgical developments. See his The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: Sources and
Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy, 2nd edition (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2002), 72.
7. McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists, 206. See also G.W. Clarke, Letters of St. Cyprian,
18889.
8. Here, and throughout the essay, I emphasize the effects of the eucharistic cup
as a crucial and under-analyzed dynamic in Cyprians ritual logic. I opened this essay
with an epigram from George Ayliffe Poole, written nearly two centuries ago, about
the importance of the particular properties of wine, with its effects upon him who
drinks it. However, for Poole, this theme was only explored in order to bolster his
polemical investment in an anti-Catholic rendering of Cyprian. More recently, Barry

192 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

drinking from the eucharistic cup was supposed to produce a certain kind
of pharmacological effect that water alone could not achieve.
Given the paucity of textual evidence related to the eucharistic cup prior
to Ep. 63, the letter offers an important opportunity to explore the formation of a ritual and the logic by which it was made intelligible. As Catherine Bell has noted, the logic underlying a ritual practice is not a static
subject that can be objectively analyzed. Rather, it is something produced
by the embodied activities, discursive strategies, and cultural assumptions
that structure and govern its practice.9 Bell emphasizes what rituals do,
the kinds of identities they produce, rather than an inherent meaning that
can be excavated from within or beyond the practices employed. Thus she
prefers the term ritualization as indicating the dynamic, kinetic, constructive, and socially situated nature of ritual activities.10 We look in vain,
then, for a conclusive, a priori meaning to eucharistic drinking. To be sure,
the ritual logic governing Cyprians account of proper eucharistic drinking
was articulated through a cobbling together of references to wine scattered
throughout the biblical text. However, his expansive exegetical strategy
did not occur in a hermeneutical vacuum. The alignment of biblical passages about wine in Ep. 63 is pregnant with other cultural connotations
and discursive strategies that have yet to receive adequate examination.
This essay examines the extent to which the scriptural citations deployed
by Cyprian in defense of wine are inflected through popular notions of
illness, health, and especially the medicinal power of wine that permeated
the early Roman Empire.
Within Ep. 63, Cyprian himself prompts us toward such an analysis by
way of a provocative comparison offered at a crucial point in the argument:
Craigs study has also helpfully emphasized the wines potency in light of modern
liturgical practices (see, Potency, not Preciousness, 302).
9. See Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1992), 80. She describes ritual logic in the following terms: ... one could
not seek to construct a theory or model of ritual practice. Rather one could attempt
to describe the strategies of the ritualized act by deconstructing some of the intricacies of its cultural logic.
10. For more on her concept of ritualization, see Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice,
8893. Bell elaborates: The strategies of ritualization are particularly rooted in the
body, specifically, the interaction of the social body within a symbolically constituted
spatial and temporal environment. Essential to ritualization is the circular production of a ritualized body which in turn produces ritualized practices. Ritualization is
embedded within the dynamics of the body defined within a symbolically structured
environment (93). It is from this framework that I understand Cyprians Ep. 63 as
a kind of rear-guard form of ritual theoryan attempt to make intelligible and thus
normative a local form of a particular ritual practice.

PENNIMAN/MEDICINAL POWER OF EUCHARISTIC WINE 193

And just as ordinary wine (vino communi) has the power to loosen the
mind, relax the soul, and purge all sadness; likewise, by drinking the blood
of the Lord and his health-giving cup, the memory of the old man is purged
and we are made to forget our former lifestyle within this age.11 When
viewed through Bells notion of ritual logic as a byproduct of the practice
rather than the engine that drives it, the positive connection between the
effects of eucharistic wine and ordinary wine in Ep. 63 offers a unique
opportunity to explore Cyprians innovation regarding proper eucharistic practice and meaning that only later became the presumed universal
norm.12 If we take this comparison seriously, then Cyprians argument
for wine cannot be understood only in terms of the biblical warrant for
such a practice (though this no doubt remains crucial). Rather, the comparison raises the question of what precisely wine was thought to do to
ones body and mind as medicine in the broader social and historical
context of Ep.63. Indeed, Cyprians reference to the effects of ordinary
wine engages a discursive tradition stretching from the classical to the late
ancient perioda tradition in which the pharmacological power of wine
was widely understood as a potent, if at times unstable, curative drink.
In his assessment of the motivation behind those who drank only water
during the Eucharist, McGowan offers the following observation: While
concerns for food as a basis of medicinal and (individual) moral integrity
may perhaps have been implicit in the bread and water tradition ... they
were hardly prominent.13 Although we lack evidence to construct a more
complete picture of the identity and rationale of the water-drinkers, the
direct appeal to the effects of ordinary wine demonstrates that medicinal
concerns positively shaped Cyprians argument. He pairs the eucharistic
wine with the ordinary precisely because the analogy allows him to consider both in a pharmacological register. As we will see below, the power
of drinking the blood of Christ is, for Cyprian, grounded in traditions
about the medical effects of wine as a treatment for illness.
In light of Cyprians appeal to the power of ordinary wine, I will
argue that broad-ranging ancient concerns about wine as a mechanism
for medicinal and moral integrity are inextricably bound up in the biblical typologies that he offers throughout Ep. 63. To trace the contours of
11. Ep. 63.11.3 (G. F. Diercks, ed., Cyprianus: Epistulae 5881, CCL 3C [Turnhout:
Brepols, 1996], 404). This passage will be examined in detail below. All translations
are my own unless otherwise noted.
12. Here I follow McGowans call for further exploration of Cyprians role as an
innovator. See Ascetic Eucharists, 277.
13. Ascetic Eucharists, 216.

194 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

Cyprians medicinal concerns, I will first locate him within the Roman
imperial social world in which sickness, health, and healing emerged as
a normative mode of self-understanding. This also included a prominent
body of literature that cataloged the potent medicinal effects of wine.
Then, I will analyze the broader dynamic of sickness, health and healing
within Cyprians pre- and post-Decian persecution writings. In these early
writings, not only is sickness and health a recurring motif in Cyprians
understanding of the Christian life, but he also describes the Decian sacrificial offering as a lethal cupindicating a provocative corollary to
the effects of the eucharistic cup in Ep. 63. From this position, we will
be better able to assess the force of his emphasis on the medicinal effects
of wine within Ep. 63 and to evaluate the ways in which this dynamic is
crucial to his overall argument.
IMAGINE TWO WINE JUGS WHICH
HAVE BEEN PIERCED IN MANY PLACES:
THE POWER OF WINE IN ROMAN MEDICINE
In Thrasyboulos 1920, Galen describes the delicate constitution of the
human body and the ease with which it falls out of balance. If the human
body was not in need of a proper regimen of food and fluid, Galen observes,
it would not require continual calibration.14 But because it is constantly
falling into disrepair (), each person should have an overseer
who will attend to them and replenish whatever has been depleted in
their body.15 Galen then offers an analogy to further clarify his approach
to human health and the importance of a medical regimen:
Imagine two wine jugs ( ) which have been pierced in many places,
both full at first and losing wine through the holes at an equal rate. One
has an overseer () who always attends to it, replenishing the wine
as it is lost. The other, with no one attending it until it is sufficiently empty,
is replenished all at once only when it becomes obvious that the wine is
depleted. ... So it is in the case of healthy and sick bodies.16

The healthy body, for Galen, is like a leaky wine vessel and requires someone to stand over it, to monitor its levels, and to keep it properly filled at
all times. The sick body is a similar vessel left unattended and thus emp-

14. Galen Thras. 19 (C. G. Kuhn, ed., Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia 5 [repr. Hilde
sheim: Georg Olms, 196465], 840).
15. Galen, Thras. 19 (Kuhn 5:840).
16. Galen, Thras. 20 (Kuhn 5:84041).

PENNIMAN/MEDICINAL POWER OF EUCHARISTIC WINE 195

tied of its vital contents. The image of the human condition in this section
of Thrasyboulos is one of precarious health, inevitable decay and disease,
and thus a condition in need of constant remediation.
Galens depiction of human health as vulnerable and in need of care
is indicative of a broader dynamic emphasizing illness and healing that
emerged during the early Roman Empirea dynamic in which Christians like Cyprian readily participated. Judith Perkins has convincingly
demonstrated how this was a period in which medical discourse took on
increasing importance: Medical narratives were offering inhabitants...
a self-understanding similar to that of Christian texts. These medical
narratives scripted a subject that was essentially a sick body located in a
flawed world.17 Specifically, Perkins has in mind narratives such as Aelius
Aristides Hieroi Logoi in which the author represented his self as a
body undergoing treatment. His relation with the divine was completely
derived from this doctor/patient paradigm.18 Whether through Aristides
relationship with the healing god Asclepius or Galens recommendation for
a personal physician who attends closely to his patients like a punctured
, medical care provided a new conceptual space and a new discursive register for locating oneself in the Roman Empire during the second
and third centuries.
In addition, Galens image of the human body as a punctured wine
jug in need of refilling is suggestive of Roman medical wisdom in a more
direct sense. The properties of wine as a pharmacological substance were
widely known throughout the ancient world, and its power is attested
across social, ritual, and medical settings.19 Around the same time as Galen,
Athenaeuss Deipnosophistae connects the power of wine to medicine at
the level of etiology in noting the widespread identification of the wine-god

17. Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the
Early Christian Era (London: Routledge, 1995), 142.
18. Perkins, Suffering Self, 177.
19. In Euripides Bacchae 28084, wine is presented as the surest way to ease
pain, forget troubles, and treat misery. In the course of Platos Symposium, one of
the recurring themes is Socrates seeming immunity to the pharmacological effects of
wine (cf. 220a). The sympotic setting was, in many ways, dependent upon a shared
intoxication: the erotic and intellectually stimulating effects of which helped to create a ritual space for self-expression, for festive license. On this point, see Richard
Hunter, Platos Symposium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 815. In the
Hippocratic treatise On the Use of Liquids 5 (ed. Paul Potter, Hippocrates, Volume
8, LCL 482 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995], 33033), sweet wine
( ) is presented as an ointment for the treatment of chronic wounds
( ) and equally effective as a potable remedy ().

196 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

Dionysos as physician ().20 In fact, the effects of wine upon mind

and body were among the first medical techniques brought from Greece
to Rome in the first century b.c.e. by Asclepiades. In the early part of the
following century, Pliny the Elder described Asclepiades as one who discovered a method for healing the sick with wine.21 Within the ancient
sources, he was so widely known as an advocate for non-invasive remedies that he earned the epithet The Wine Giver ().22 Indeed,
following Asclepiades, the medical literature of the early Roman Empire
was marked by a wide array of pharmacopoeiaa listing of drugs and
their effectsin which wine figured prominently.
The Compositiones of Scribonius Largus written between 44 and 48c.e.
represents one prominent successor of Asclepiades method. Scribonius
defends Asclepiades reluctance to administer harsh treatments unless
absolutely necessary, noting that wine alone is a suitable first remedy for
those who have a fever or are suffering acute pain.23 Later, he describes
how wine can be used to dissipate (discutio) an epileptic seizure and revive
(restituo) the mind.24 Celsuss De Medicina (c. 45 c.e.) records that wine
will help to resuscitate (reficio) those who are dying from loss of blood25
and can serve as a healing ointment for the skin or as an antidote to poisons of all kinds (quod omnibus venenis contrarium est).26
A contemporary of Celsus and Scribonius, Dioscorides produced perhaps
the most influential volume of pharmacopoeia in his De Materia Medica.
In a section devoted to wines, he describes the usefulness of a wine diet
for detoxifying the body: To be moderately drunk on wine for some days,
most of all after drinking water, is helpful. For it alters the pores, flushes

20. Deip. 2.36 (S. Douglas Olson, ed., Athenaeus: The Learned Banqueters, Volume 1: Books 13.106e, LCL 204 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007],
15557).
21. Pliny, Natural History 7.37 (Harris Rackham, ed., Pliny: Natural History,
Volume 2: Books 37, LCL 352 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942],
588). In this passage, Asclepiades is even said to have used such methods to revive
a man who was near death.
22. Anonymous Londinensis 14.31 (W. H. S. Jones, ed., The Medical Writings of
Anonymus Londinensis, Cambridge Classical Studies [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947], 95).
23. Comp. proem.
24. Comp. 12 (S. Sconocchia, ed., Scribonius Largus Compositiones, Bibliotheca
Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana [Leipzig: Teubner, 1983], 19).
25. Med. 5.26.25 (W.G. Spencer, ed., Celsus: On Medicine, Volume 2: Books 56,
LCL 304 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938], 90).
26. Med. 5.27.2 (LCL 304:112). Wine as a kind of antidote to poison will be crucial in Cyprians interpretation.

PENNIMAN/MEDICINAL POWER OF EUCHARISTIC WINE 197

out secretions ( ) blocking the senses and opens the

bodys passages.27 The medical method of Dioscorides (like that of Celsus and Scribonius) reflects Asclepiades emphasis on the opening and
closing of the pores as the key to human health.28 The detoxifying and
rejuvenating effects of wine were thus widely established within the basic
techniques of Roman medicine. The Alphabetum Galienia later text of
pharmacopoeia that represents an accretion of many previous drug-lore
traditionsalso describes wines power as a warming (calidus) agent, a
supplier of strength and motion to the body (vires atque corpori p
raestat),
a reparative (resumo) and restorative (reficio) substance.29 Across the
medical literature of the early Imperial era, verbs such as resumo, reficio,
and restituo appear regularly in descriptions of wines life-giving effect.
Galen himself, writing in the mid/late second century, also advocated the
power of wine to revivify: To those who are sleepless, grieving or overanxious ... to those who are fatigued () ... to those who have
been chilled... I give wine to drink to all such cases.30 Thus, in the lexical, medical, and symbolic worlds of Roman antiquity, wine was widely
recognized as a reparative, enlivening, and cleansing drug.
This dynamic of a sick body in need of care was therefore not unique
to early Christian self-definition. It represents the context for the proliferation of medical manuals and pharmacopoeia throughout the Roman
Empireand the pharmacological power of wine occupied a significant
space within that growing body of literature. Thus, even in the New Testament wine is presented as a handy first-aid salve for roadside wounds
(as mentioned in the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10.43) and
as a soothing tonic for stomach pains or other chronic internal illnesses
(as prescribed in 1 Timothy 5.23). Such references suggest that knowledge
about the pharmacological effects of wine was widespread in the early

27. Mat. Med. 5.6.13 (M. Wellmann,ed., Pedanii Dioscuridis Anazarbei de materia medica libri quinque, 3 vols. [Berlin: Weidmann, 190614], 3:10; trans. RobertT.
Gunther, The Greek Herbal of Dioscorides [New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1959],
606). For the classic study on this, see John M. Riddle, Dioscorides on Pharmacy and
Medicine (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), 14246.
28. For more on Asclepiades emphasis on the pores, see David Leith, Pores and
Void in Asclepiades Physical Theory, Phronesis 57.2 (2012): 16491.
29. Alph. Gal. 292 (Nicholas Everett, ed. and trans., The Alphabet of Galen:
Pharmacy from Antiquity to the Middle Ages [Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2012], 370 and 372 [Latin]).
30. Meth. Med. 8.3.55556 (Ian Johnston and G. H. R. Horsley, eds., Galen:
Method of Medicine, Volume 2: Books 59, LCL 517 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2011], 384).

198 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

Roman Empire, even among those who would have been less familiar with
technical medical literature. At the same time, Jared Secord has recently
outlined the ways in which Christians of the second and third centuries,
such as Hippolytus, were not only aware of this technical literature but
were also familiar with the public demonstrations of physicians such as
Galen in major cities around the empire.31 The prominence of these public medical demonstrations suggests that the discourse of medicine was a
cultural phenomenon to which early Christians from a variety of educational levels were exposed.
With this proliferation of medical traditions throughout the early Roman
Empire, reference to wines medicinal uses in scripture raises questions
about the reception of these passages in later interpretation. Biblical exegesis and moral exhortation were frequently mingled with observations,
both literal and figurative, about the health-giving aspects of wine. For
example, Clement of Alexandria opens a lengthy discussion on drunkenness in Book 2 of the Paedagogus with an appeal to 1 Timothy and a
rather straightforward discussion of wines medicinal power. Although he
is chiefly concerned with the danger of drinking too much wine, Clement
also recognizes its usefulness as a remedy ().32 He permits that
the drug of the vine safely rekindles the vital heat of the elderly33 and
that it is fitting to employ wine as a curative for the betterment of ones
health, since it has the power to relax and bring balance.34 Yet, in Quis
dives salvetur, Clement reads the administering of wine as an ointment in
the parable of the Good Samaritan as a symbol of Christs healing power.
Placing his audience in the role of the man who fell among robbers, Clement concludes that all people have been dealt many deadly wounds for
which Jesus is the only doctor ... who pours wine, the blood of Davids
vine, upon our injured souls.35 In this way, Clement demonstrates how

31. Jared Secord, Medicine and Sophistry in Hippolytus Refutatio, SP 65

(2013): 21724.
32. Paed. 2.2.19 (M. Marcovich, ed., Clementis Alexandrini Paedagogus, Supplements to VC 61 [Leiden: Brill, 2002], 79).
33. Paed. 2.2.22 (Marcovich, 61:81).
34. Paed. 2.2.23 (Marccovich, 61:81).
35. Quis div. salv. 29 (G. W. Butterworth, ed., Clement of Alexandria, LCL 92 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919], 330). Clements reference to Davids
vine ( ) in this highly symbolic rendering of the parable evokes Didache
9, in which the prayer of thanksgiving for the Eucharist begins: We give thanks to
you, our father, for the holy vine of David ... (Bart D. Ehrman, ed., The Apostolic
Fathers, Volume 1, LCL 24 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004], 431).

PENNIMAN/MEDICINAL POWER OF EUCHARISTIC WINE 199

exegesis that drew upon scriptural references to the medical power of wine
could slide easily between typology, allegory, and literal commentary.36
The pervasiveness of medical narratives of sickness, healing, and medication throughout the first few centuries of the Common Era opened a
powerful imaginative space for Christians who, like many of their contemporaries, sought to understand their place in a world marked by disease
and death. Andrew Crislip has persuasively demonstrated the legacy of
this phenomenon within the literature of late ancient Christian asceticism:
Illness has the potential to destroy and to transform the self: to lead painfully and inconsolably to the unmaking of the self, yet also to open up
new realms of experience and to create a new self, or at least to create the
space for the sufferer to do so.37 Cyprians account of the worlds sickness
and the frailty of the human condition engages this burgeoning medical
discourse. In order to see the precise ways in which Cyprian scripted a
subject in much the same way as Galens wine jug and its overseer, it is
important to foreground his emphasis on illness and medication in earlier writings.38
DEATH DELIVERED BY A LETHAL CUP:
CONTEXTUALIZING SICKNESS AND HEALING
IN CYPRIANS EARLY WORK
Cyprians understanding of the sacramentsand of the pharmacological
power of the eucharistic cup in particularwas rooted in his view that
humanity was, at its core, sick, frail, and lacking the remedies with which
to heal itself. This bleak diagnosis is offered throughout the writings that
precede Ep. 63 and must be understood in the context of the crises that
Cyprian faced prior to that letter on the eucharistic cup. In Ad Donatum
(246), one of Cyprians earliest writings, there is a suggestive antithesis to
the eucharistic cup. The world is, for Cyprian, a poisoned drink in which

36. See also Origen, Contra Celsum 3.61.

37. Andrew Crislip, Thorns in the Flesh: Illness and Sanctity in Early Christianity
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 169. In these later centuries,
Christian engagement with sickness and medicine also takes concrete expression
within the literature of the Church Orders. See also Ric Barrett-Lennard, The Canons of Hippolytus and Christian Concern with Illness, Health, and Healing, JECS
13 (2005): 13764.
38. On locating Cyprian within the broader values and worldviews of his time,
see especially Allen Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012), 26.

200 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

the lethal juices have been cunningly mixed with sweetness to hide the
toxin. This drink appears to be a healing cup (medicato poculo videtur
esse), and those who drink from it unwittingly ingest their own death.39
Even at this early juncture, Cyprian formulates the Christian life as a movement from poison-induced sickness toward restored health by means of
sacramental medicine. In Ad Donatum, conversion (and baptism in particular) is described as the cure. Thus, Cyprian refers to his second birth
as an antidote (auxilium), a drinking in of the Spirit that revived
(reparavit) him to a new humanity.40 The sacraments of the Christian
community serve as a curing remedy for the sick (in medellam dolentium) that can destroy the deadly poison (venenorum virus extinguere)
implanted by the evil of the world.41 While still inchoate, Ad Donatum
demonstrates the extent to which Cyprians understanding of the human
condition and the sacraments was informed by the medical narrative of
sick bodies in need of proper treatment.
Only a few years later, Cyprians image of a lethal cup cloaked by sweetness would prove prescient. After seizing command of the empire in 249,
the emperor Decius put forth his edict calling for a universal sacrifice in
250. Allen Brent has described this sacrifice as a kind of apotropaic
medicine, a social salve that was meant to bind the wounds of the past
and enact a new era of wellbeing throughout the empire.42 Those who
offered incense, meat, and a cup of wine on an altar dedicated to the
emperor recalled a golden age of Romes strength, embodied its unity, and
anticipated its future vitality.43 As someone whose career as a bishop was
defined by the deleterious effects of this sacrifice on the Christian community, Cyprian saw something toxic at work in the Decian cup. Is it possible
that what he saw was, in fact, a direct parallel between the poisoned drink
that appears to be a healing cup (mentioned earlier in Ad Donatum 11)
and the calamity caused by the imperial sacrifice? This connection, while
not provable, seems at least plausible given the intensification of Cyprians
medical terminology throughout his post-persecution writings, wherein

39. Don. 11.22732 (M. Simonetti and C. Moreschini, eds., Cyprianus: Opera II,
CCL 3A [Turnhout: Brepols, 1976], 10).
40. Don. 4.6062 (CCL 3A:5).
41. Don. 5.9299 (CCL 3A:6).
42. See Allen Brent, A Political History of Early Christianity (New York: T&T
Clark, 2009), 257. See also Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage, 20413.
43. On the sacrifice in this sense, see Clifford Andos description of the sacrifice in
Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire, Classics and Contemporary Thought 6 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 2089.

PENNIMAN/MEDICINAL POWER OF EUCHARISTIC WINE 201

he increasingly adopts the tone of a diagnostician seeking to identify the

causes and effects of illness and offers suitable remedies.
In the aftermath of Deciuss requirement to sacrifice, Cyprians Christian
community was fractured in three: at one extreme were those rigorists
who shunned any former member that performed the offerings at the imperial altar. At the other extreme were the laxists who sought to assimilate these lapsed members back into the Christian body as quickly as
possible.44 As J. Patout Burns has convincingly narrated, Cyprians legacy
was to forge a middle way between these positions.45 One hallmark of
Cyprians middle way was his heightened emphasis on the efficacy of Christian sacraments in providing the purification and medication needed to
heal the frail and diseased Christian body. The sin of the lapsed, as a kind
of infectious disease contracted from the Decian cup, required an equally
potent regimen of treatment. Maureen Tilley has observed that Cyprians
fascination with purity extended to a consideration of sin as contagion.
It was communicable by both touch and proximity.46 This fascination
can be found in the dynamic relationship between ritual purity and medical health that sits at the core of Cyprians post-persecution writings on
the effects of the sacraments: to the extent that the rituals were performed
properly, the ritualized subject that emerged would be one of health and
wholeness.47
Cyprians preoccupation with purity, the risk of contagion, and the need
44. This is the terminology J. Patout Burns uses throughout Cyprian the Bishop
(New York: Routledge, 2002).
45. It is outside the scope of this essay to offer a substantive commentary on the
internal social dynamics of the North African Christian community. However, it is
important to note here that Cyprians own position was not fixed but rather shifted
over time away from the rigorists. It is notable, then, that as his position toward the
lapsed softened, his increasing investment in the categories of illness, health, and healing served to articulate a program of rehabilitation. For more on Cyprians shifting
position, see especially Patout Burns, Cyprian the Bishop as well as Brent, Cyprian
and Roman Carthage, and Maureen A. Tilley, The Bible in Christian North Africa:
The Donatist World (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997).
46. Tilley, Bible in North Africa, 37.
47. For Cyprians relation to Levitical purity codes, see especially Tilley, Bible in
North Africa, 3540 and Patout Burns, Cyprian the Bishop, 13250. The conceptual division of ritual purity and medical health is a modern construct foreign to the
thought-world of antiquity in which Cyprian was embedded. Dale Martin has helpfully
shown how, in ancient ideology, notions of ritual purity/contamination were not separable from those pertaining to medical illness. See Dale Martin, The Corinthian Body
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), esp. 13997. For further discussion of this
connection in antiquity (Christian or otherwise), see Walter Burkert, Greek Religion
(Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1985), 80 and Crislip, Thorns in the Flesh, 1535.

202 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

for treatment is evident in his response to the post-persecution crisis. This

is especially the case in De Lapsis, where the entire Decian persecution
is framed in medical terms. Cyprian refers to it as a medical examination
(probatio) that evaluates the onset of disease (correptio) and the severity
of the remedies (remediis severioribus) required for treatment.48 Expanding
upon his previous account of a poisoned cup in Ad Donatum 11, Cyprian
explicitly depicts the sacrifice of Decius as a kind of anti-eucharistic drink
in which death is delivered by a lethal cup (mors invicem letali poculo
propinata est).49 Here, the verb propino conveys a deeper pharmacological connotation that will reappear in Cyprians description of the eucharistic wine in Ep. 63. While propino generally indicates a drink offered or
taken to the health of another (as in a toast),50 it can also describe a drug
ingested as poison or medicine.51 The two senses are often conflated, as in
the Tusculan Dispuations where Cicero recounts the fate of Theramenes
(d. 404 b.c.e.) who drank a poisoned cup of hemlock for his execution
under the Thirty Tyrants. In a last act of defiance, he mocked his killer by
proclaiming, I take this [poison] to the health of noble Critias! (propino
hoc pulcro Critiae).52
Later in De Lapsis, Cyprian describes an antidote for the poisoned
cup of the Decian sacrifice. Only the rite of penance is able to provide a
health-giving medicine (remediis salutaribus providere) to the wounds
of lapsed Christians.53 Cyprian imagines the priest of the church as a
48. Laps. 7.12026 (R. Weber and M. Bvenot, eds., Cyprianus: Opera I, CCL 3
[Turnhout: Brepols, 1972], 224). See also Allen Brents rendering in St. Cyprian of
Carthage: On the Church: Select Treatises, Popular Patristics Series 32 (Crestwood,
NY: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2006), 1089.
49. Laps. 9.17072 (CCL 3:225).
50. For the use of propino as a toast or as the drinking of a common cup to
the health of someone, see Plautus, Curculio 2.3 (Wolfgang de Melo, ed., Plautus:
Casina, The Casket Comedy, Curculio, Epidicus, The Two Menaechmuse, LCL 61
[Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011], 270): I offered a toast with a
great cup: he drank it, put down his head and slept (propino magnum poclum: ille
ebibit, caput deponit, condormiscit). Even here, however, the soporific power of wine
follows close behind its usage in salutation.
51. For explicitly medical usage of propino, see Pliny, Natural History 20.42
(W.H. S. Jones, ed., Pliny: Natural History, Volume 6, LCL 392 [Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1951], 64) and 28.2 (W. H. S. Jones, ed., Pliny: Natural
History, Volume 8, LCL 418 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963], 6).
52. Tusc. Disp. 1.40.96 (J. E. King, ed., Cicero: Tusculan Disputations, LCL 141
[Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927], 114).
53. Laps. 14.280 (CCL 3:228). Brent nicely emphasizes the medical force of this
passage in his translation: So ought the priest of the Lord provide healing medicines of salvation instead of leading astray by compliance with their deceitful desires.

PENNIMAN/MEDICINAL POWER OF EUCHARISTIC WINE 203

medicusa doctor trained in the identification of illness and the proper

application of treatments. Without such remedies, the deadly poison of the
lethal cup remains deeply and profoundly entombed within the inner
organs (altis et profundis visceribus infixa) of those who failed the medical examination of the persecution.54 In several places, Cyprian describes
how those who carry the hidden sickness contracted at the Decian sacrifice represent a contagious threat to the rest of the Christian community
and face bodily harm should they ingest the Eucharist in their unworthy state.55 In response to such concerns of purity and illness, the depiction of the priestly office as that of a medicus (or an overseer of medical
health) emerges as a prominent theme in Cyprians writing following the
Decian crisis.56 The lapsed were essentially a sick group in need of healing
and, as Allen Brent has observed, Christ had granted to the church the
power of binding and loosing sins. And now, remarkably, it had occurred
to Cyprian that in order to make a second confession in atonement for a
failed first one, human frailty required strengthening with the very sacraments that both he and the [rigorist] Novatians had been denying the

It is an unskilled doctor (inperitus medicus) who examines the swelling hollows of

wounds (tumentes vulnerum sinus) with a hand that acts sparingly. He only increases
the infection shut up within in the deep recesses of the organs (in altis recessibus viscerum virus inclusum dum servat exaggerat) while he is trying to preserve them. The
wound requires opening up, and being operated on, and receiving treatment with a
far stronger remedy that involves the excision of putrefactions (putraminibus amputates). Although his sick patient, lacking endurance in his pain, initially screams and
cries out and complains, he afterwards gives thanks when he will experience his health
restored (senserit sanitatem) (Select Treatises, 118). Maurice Bvenot has argued that
Cyprians shifting position toward the lapsed can be seen most clearly in his approach
to penance. See Maurice Bvenot, The Sacrament of Penance and St. Cyprians De
Lapsis, Theological Studies 16 (1955): 175213.
54. Laps. 15.29597 (CCL 3:229).
55. See especially Ep. 65.3 and Laps. 25. In Ep. 65, Cyprian warns that those who
have participated in the Decian sacrifice will, if left untreated, defile the eucharistic
altar and spread their sickness to others. In the memorable passage from De Lapsis
25, he recounts the story of a young girl whose nurse gave her idol foodbread
moistened with wine, in factfrom an imperial altar during the persecution. This
child had ingested the wine of the lethal cup. After the persecution, her parents
retrieved her and took her to celebrate the Eucharist. Cyprian narrates how the girl
vigorously refused to drink from the cup, to the extent that the deacon force-fed her
the elements by pressing the cup to her lips and pouring the wine into her mouth.
This unworthy drinking had severe physical effects on the girl, including convulsive
sobbing and vomiting. Her contaminated body and mouth could not contain the
sacred drink. The eucharistic wine was expelled by the pollution infecting her insides.
56. See, e.g., Ep. 30.3.3, 31.6.47.2, 55.16.3.

204 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

lapsed.57 The binding and loosing of sins was, for the later Cyprian, an
act of therapeutic care.
In addition to the persecution, the sick body/flawed world paradigm
acquired an even deeper and more acute meaning for those in North
Africa during the early 250s. Concerns for medical health and healing
would have intensified during the outbreak of a horrific plague that spread
quickly throughout the region on the heels of the Decian crisis.58 Cyprians
most explicit descriptions of this outbreak are found in De Mortalitate59
and Ad Demetrianum,60 both of which were written during the ravages
of the plague. In addition, he evinces a deep sensitivity to the anxiety
(sollicitudo)61 among those under his carean anxiety instigated by the
rapid spread of the disease and the terrible suffering it caused. The harrowing spectacle of human sickness and the medical or folkloric methods
employed to stanch its spread perhaps provide further texture to Cyprians
understanding of the fundamental frailty of the human condition and the
necessity of a proper medical regimen.
Between the Decian crisis and the virulent plague, Cyprian had cause
for a growing concern about illness, purity, and healing treatments. The
churchas comprised of bodies susceptible to disease, contamination, and
deathwas itself a body ever under the threat of sickness and rupture.
Cyprians legacy as one who sought to establish the proper administra-

57. Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage, 13 (emphasis added).

58. Pontius, Vit. Cyp. 9.12.
59. See especially Mort. 14 (CCL 3A:24) in which Cyprian offersin rather unsettling and visceral detailan account of the grotesque symptoms of suffering (dolor)
caused by the plague. The faithful, for Cyprian, are not immune to this suffering.
Rather, they must endure it with hope and virtue. It represents a test of faith in the
same way that the persecution did. For a thorough study of Mort. that explores its
consolatory character, see J. H. D. Scourfield, The De Mortalitate of Cyprian: Consolation and Context, VC 50.1 (1996): 1241.
60. In Dem., Cyprians approach is that of an apologist. He defends the Christian community against the accusation that it is responsible for the pestilence that
has destabilized the peace of the empire (cf. Dem. 2.2430, 10.194202). There is
little literary evidence for the so-called Plague of Cyprian outside the writings of
Cyprian and his successors. Fifty years later, Arnobius of Sicca will adopt Cyprians
defense that Christians are not to blame for plague (Adversus Gentes 1.3). Despite
the recent pestilentiae, Arnobius observes that humanity has, throughout history, been
subjected to devastating sicknesses and thus Christians cannot be to blame for this
particular epidemic. In De Caesaribus 30, Aurelius Victor recounts how the son of
Decius, Hostilianus, died during an outbreak. For a brief discussion on Cyprian and
his plague, see Allen Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012), 14 and 106.
61. Dem. 5.8187 (CCL 3A:37).

PENNIMAN/MEDICINAL POWER OF EUCHARISTIC WINE 205

tion of the sacraments is, in this way, deeply invested in the discourse of
health and healing that so characterized his age. And while the immediate
context of Ep. 63 was neither the Decian crisis nor the plague, the power
of wine that it evokes reveals no less of a preoccupation with medical
careand with the treatment of sick bodiesthan the rest of Cyprians
writings from the early and mid-250s.
OFFERED AS A MEDICINAL DRAFT
TO THOSE WHO BELIEVE:
A PHARMACOLOGY OF THE LORDS CUP
It has been noted that Ep. 63, which was addressed to a fellow-bishop
named Caecilius, has the character of an encyclical meant to instruct
church leaders on the proper meaning and administration of the cup of
the Lord.62 There is little indication of the identity and motive of Cyprians
opponents. At one point, Cyprian speculates that in the past some have
been afraid of having wine on their breath early in the day (63.15)but
this is far from an unequivocal description of the water-drinkers rationale.63 The letter is difficult to date with any precision. Graeme Clarkes
argument for a later dating (c. 255) is compelling on several pointsmost
especially, the confidence with which Cyprian wields his episcopal authority (63.1), the fact that the Eucharist is presented as steeling the nerves
of Christians to face future persecutions (63.15), and the general eschatological anticipation that frames its outlook (63.18).64 A later date also
allows for a provocative connection between the healing power of the
eucharistic cup and the lethal cups mentioned earlier in Ad Donatum 11
and, especially, De Lapsis 9. With these references in the background, the
pharmacological aspects of the eucharistic wine found throughout Ep. 63
62. See Clarke, Letters, 288 and McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists, 205.
63. Clarke helpfully illuminates the crucial distinction between traditio and consuetudo made throughout Ep. 63. Cyprian deploys the former in order to establish
the God-ordained usage and efficacy of wine in the eucharistic cup, while the latter
becomes an epithet for newfangled customs and aberrant practices. Although Cyprian
readily rejects consuetudo at many points in the letter, he is surprisingly opaque in
describing the customs in any detail. While it may make sense that some Christians
saw too close an affinity between the offering at Decius altar and that of the Eucharist, we have no clear evidence that this was the primary point of contention with
Cyprians opponents. It seems possible that he was merely aware of the practice of
water-drinking and not actually familiar with the groups in question. On this point, see
Willis description of Cyprians opponents as some mysterious cranky sect (Mixed
Chalice, 110) as well as McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists, 2089.
64. See Clarke, Letters, 28788.

206 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

can be understood as an additional element in Cyprians broader scripting

of Christians as frail subjects in need of medical treatment. The logic that
undergirds Cyprians rejection of a water-only Eucharist depends upon the
effects of the cups contentseffects that he describes, I contend, by way
of an innovative reading strategy in which biblical passages discussing
wine and its properties are inflected through pharmacological reasoning.
This dynamic is evident from the letters opening. Cyprian asserts at the
outset that the Eucharist must follow in strict accordance with what the
Lord Jesus Christ did and taught, who is the founder of this sacrifice and its
teacher.65 By situating his argument as following the authoritative teaching
of Jesus, Cyprian establishes a direct link between the sacrifice of Jesus on
the cross and the sacrifice of the eucharistic cup. The blood of the former requires the wine of the latterthough Cyprian immediately turns to
passages outside the words of institution to demonstrate this requirement.
His first reference to the Lords tradition (traditionis dominicae)66 is, in
fact, the identification of Jesus as the true vine in John15.1.67 But his
point here is not simply that, lacking wine, the cup lacks a symbolic connection to Jesus as true vine. Even more, Cyprian asserts that a wineless
cup fails to induce the proper anamnetic effect called for in the accounts
of Luke 22.19 and 1 Corinthians11.24.68 Without wine, the cup loses its
power to rescue (redempti) and vivify (vivificati) those who drink it.69 In
order to bring people to life, the eucharistic cup must contain a substance
that has the power to do so.
Having defined the basic parameters of the Lords tradition, Cyprian
pivots toward typologies of wine drawn from the Old Testament to bolster this tradition. The first two references are drawn from the account
of Noahs drunkenness (Gen 9.20) and then from Melchizedeks offering
of bread and wine (Gen 14.1819).70 The reference to Noah is almost
perfunctoryCyprian merely observes that Noahs inebriation due to wine
is both an anticipation and a form of the passion of the Lord.71 Next,
Cyprian explains in detail how the elements of Melchizedeks offering
signify the precedent of a sacred celebration (rite celebrari)one that is
65. Ep 63.1.1 (CCL 3C:38990). See also Brent, Select Letters, 173.
66. Ep. 63.1.1 (CCL 3C:390).
67. Ep. 63.2.1 (CCL 3C:391).
68. Ep. 63.2.1 (CCL 3C:391).
69. Ep. 63.2.2 (CCL 3C:391). This is consistent with the overarching approach to
wine lore described above. The lexicon of wines power in medical literature focused
primarily on its life giving capacity.
70. Ep. 63.34.3 (CCL 3C:39194).
71. Ep. 63.3.1 (CCL 3C:391).

PENNIMAN/MEDICINAL POWER OF EUCHARISTIC WINE 207

established (constituta) through the use of bread and wine. The elements
mentioned in Melchizedeks rite establish, for Cyprian, the necessary connection between bread/wine and body/blood in the Eucharist. Bread and
wine are offered (optulerat) by Melchizedek, while Christ offered (optulit)
his body and blood to God the Father.72
Drawing upon Proverbs 9.15wherein Wisdom proclaims: Come,
eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed73Cyprian discerns
another foreshadowing of Christs passion: the flowing together of wine
and water in the mixing bowl of Wisdoms banquet prefigures the wound
in Christs side in John 19.34 and thus necessitates a similarly mixed cup
in the Eucharist. But Cyprian inflects his typological reading here with the
lexical and conceptual categories of medicine. Thus, in the following section, Cyprian abandons the image of the crucifixion as a wine bowl and
draws upon the image of the crucifix as a winepress (torcular) in which
Christ is trampled and crushed (Christus calcatus ... et pressus) to produce
a powerful vintage.74 He goes on to explain that, like the blood pressed
out of Christ at the cross, the wine that flows from the wine press into
the Eucharistic cup is offered as a medicinal draft to those who believe
(quo credentibus propinaret). Here, as in De Lapsis 9 discussed above,
Cyprians use of the verb propino carries with it a pharmacological connotation, suggesting the administration of a medicine or drug. The deadly
effects caused by the cup offered to Decius are reversed in the administration of the Lords cup.
From the gruesome violence of the winepress, an elixir of life gushes
forth. On its own, water fails to provide the vivifying and healing power
of Christs blood. Cyprian bolsters his argument against the water-drinkers
by placing water within its own typological system: when scripture
appeals to water alone, he notes, it does so in order to symbolize the rite
of baptism.75 The drinking of water at baptism produces satiety (hence
John4:13 and the water which permanently removes thirst). The wine of
the eucharistic cup, by contrast, results in a continual thirst. This lack of
72. Ep. 63.4.1 (CCL 3C:393).
73. Ep. 63.5.12 (CCL 3C:395).
74. Ep. 63.7.2 (CCL 3C:397). Cyprian is prompted here by Isaiah 63.2 (Why are
your robes red, and your garments like those who tread the winepress?). Tertullian
also utilized the wine-press metaphor for the Crucifixion (see Adv. Marc. 4.40). Later,
Augustine employs the winepress image to describe those who imitate Christ through
martyrdom; such Christians are trampled under the foot of persecution. As a result
they shuffle off their mortal coil like a grape skin, allowing their souls to flow like
wine toward heaven (En. Ps. 8.3 [CSEL 93.1A:169]).
75. Ep. 63.8 (CCL 3C:397400).

208 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

satiety, for Cyprian, is a constitutive element and necessary effect of the

ritual.76 The Christian community must administer the wine regularly, as
a kind of medical regimen, while the waters of baptism are needed only
once to be efficacious.
The pharmacological inflection of Cyprians exegesis reaches its climactic expression in his consideration of Psalm 22.5 (Your cup is the best,
and extremely intoxicating).77 The psalmists emphasis on intoxication
prompts Cyprian to reflect explicitly upon the powerful effects of the eucharistic wine as an identifying characteristic of the ritual (he incredulously
exclaims: Water cannot produce drunkenness!78). To that end, Cyprian
contrasts the drunkenness of the Lords cup with that drunkenness that
comes from the wine of the present age.79 The mention of vinum saecularis
once again brings to mind the poisonous and lethal cups (described in Ad
Donatum 11 and De Lapsis 9) that slowly degrade a persons health. In
contrasting the calix domini to the sacrificial cup of the Decian persecution, we may better understand Cyprians meaning when he asks how
can we pour out our blood for Christ if we are ashamed to drink Christs
blood?80 Only a eucharistic cup filled with wine can produce the kinds
of Christians prepared to refuse the cups of the world and its rulers in
future persecutions.
It is precisely in this distinction between the calix domini and the vinum
saecularis that Cyprian makes his most explicit comparison between the
effects of ordinary wine and eucharistic wine.81 In order to demonstrate
the unique potency of the Lords cup and the inebriation it causes as specifically different from the inebriation of the present age, Cyprian unfurls
an elaborate account of the salutary power of wine that resonates with
the descriptions found throughout Roman era pharmacopoeia:
Those who drink of the Lords cup are intoxicated in order to become
sober, in order that spiritual wisdom may be restored (redigat) to their
minds and that they may recover (resipiscat) their understanding of God
from the sense of the present age. And just as ordinary wine has the
76. Ep. 63.8.4 (CCL 3C:400).
77. Ep. 63.11.2 (CCL 3C:403).
78. Ep. 63.11.2 (CCL 3C:403).
79. Ep. 63.11.3 (CCL 3C:404): ebrietas dominici calicis ... ebrietas vini saecularis.
80. Ep. 63. 15.2 (CCL 3C:412).
81. Cyprians logic is difficult to parse here. Does the vinum saecularis refer to
actual wine? Or is it a metonym for the deadly customs of the present age? That
Cyprian contrasts the inebriation of the present age from that of the Lords cup by
way of the effects that the latter shares with common wine suggests that this passage is a crucial, if slippery, moment in his argument.

PENNIMAN/MEDICINAL POWER OF EUCHARISTIC WINE 209

power to loosen (solvitur) the mind, relax (relaxatur) the soul, and purge
(exponitur) all sadness, likewise by drinking the blood of the Lord and his
health-giving cup (poculo salutari) the memory of the old self is purged
(exponatur) and we are made to forget (fiat oblivio) our former lifestyle
within this age. And our grief-stricken heart, which was previously choked
(premebatur) by suffocating sins, is remedied (resolvatur) and turned to joy
through Gods care. Therefore, drinking this wine in the church of the Lord
brings delight (laetificare), but only if it is drunk in accordance with the true
prescriptions of the Lord.82

The terminology Cyprian employs throughout his comparison of the

blood of the Lord to ordinary wine resonates with the reparative, enlivening, and cleansing effects described in the medical texts of Scribonius,
Celsus, Dioscorides, and Galen. Indeed, Cyprians argument against the
water-drinkers hinges on the expectationmade explicit in this passage
that the contents of the eucharistic cup must do something to those who
drink it. If the eucharistic rite is to produce the kind of effects Cyprian
thinks that it should, water becomes ineffectual and insufficient from a
pharmacological standpoint. The extreme intoxication mentioned in
Psalm 22 is thus both a typological justification for wine and an occasion
to draw out of that typology a deeper understanding of its specifically
medicinal potency within the Eucharist.
The poculum salutaris of Ep. 63 offers a stark contrast to the poculum letalis of De Lapsis 9 and the poisoned poculum of Ad Donatum 11.
Like Celsuss description of wine as cure-all for poisons, Cyprian depicts
the eucharistic cup as an antidote to the death and sickness caused by the
cups of the world. By it, the afflictions of illness, sorrow, and death are
soothed and cured. Indeed, for Cyprian, the afflictions of persecution and
of plague offered Christians an opportunity to create new spaces of selfunderstanding. Likewise, the health-giving wine of the Eucharist offered
an occasion for the regular restoration and ongoing maintenance of health
among those in the Christian community who had already received the
more intensive healing treatments of baptism and penance. The psychic
weight of the old self (veteris hominis) marked by illness and death is
purged, opening the space for a new self that is marked by healing care.83
82. Ep. 63.11.3 (CCL 3C:404).
83. The dual properties of the eucharistic drink function both as a symbol of and
a mechanism for ecclesial unity. The water (figured as humanity), when mixed with
wine (figured as the divinity of Christ), connects all believers to one another and joins
them to Christ as one whole, healthy body. Cyprian will draw upon biological language in order to emphasize this unifying power of mixed wine. Throughout 63.13,
he refers to the power of wine as producing a physical joining (copulo) on three

210 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

CONCLUSION
[Drinks] make an intelligible, bearable world which is much more
how an ideal world should be than the painful chaos threatening
all the time.84
Cyprians worldview was sensitive to the frailty of the human condition
and its susceptibility to disease, pollution, and death. This sensitivity was
not only born out of his leadership of a Christian community that faced
the twin afflictions of persecution and plague, but was also a product of
the diffusion of medical teachings throughout the Roman Empire during
the second and third centuries. Wine, we have seen, figured prominently
in these teachings and its effects were widely recognized. As far back as
George Ayliffe Pooles assessment in 1840, the particular properties of
wine and its effects have been identified as crucial components of Cyprians argument in Ep. 63. More recently, Andrew McGowan has observed
that Cyprian promulgates a teaching on the Eucharist with implications
that have as much to do with real power as with real presence.85 The goal
of this essay has been to take these observations seriously and to explore
more fully the ways in which Cyprians attempt to establish a scriptural
basis for the necessity of wine in the Eucharist is inflected in terms of its
medical potency.
When contrasted with the poisonous effects of the vinum saecularis
and especially when viewed in contrast to the cups mentioned in Ad
Donatum11 and De Lapsis 9the real power of the calix domini is
found not only in the anamnesis of Christs sacrifice that it induces but
also in the pharmacological effects it produces in the body and mind of
those who partake of it. Thus in light of Cyprians earlier discussions of
the healing aspects of baptism and especially penance, the function of the
priest or bishop as a kind of medicus takes on greater medical specificity within Ep.63. For priests, like the famous physician Asclepiades, are
wine-givers. Or, like Galens overseer in the metaphor of the punctured
separate occasions. Twice he describes it as a yoking together (coniugo)a word
suggestive of sexual union. And crucially, he imagines the effect of the mixed cup as
a blending of natures into an organic whole (conpage soliditum). For Cyprian, the
healing effect of the mixed cup upon the individual represents a microcosm of its effect
on the Christian community. For more on this, see also Brent, Select Letters, 182 n.8.
84. Mary Douglas, A distinctive anthropological perspective, in Constructive
Drinking: Perspectives on Drink from Anthropology, ed. Mary Douglas (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987), 11.
85. McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists, 208.

PENNIMAN/MEDICINAL POWER OF EUCHARISTIC WINE 211

wine jugs, they are vigilant caregivers to the Christian community, regularly administering the cup so as to prevent illness and maintain vitality.
As our earliest extant writing that attempts to establish the proper
meaning and practice of the eucharistic cup, Ep. 63 presents the ritual as
a regimen aimed at purging, relaxing, healing, and enlivening. The ritualized subject of Ep. 63 is not dissimilar to the subjects found in the medical traditions and pharmacopoeia that proliferated in Cyprians time.86
Within the broader narrative of sick bodies that populate a flawed world,
Cyprians insistence on wine in the Eucharist was predicated on the notion
that only this drink had the power to create a restored world, a healed
self, out of the diseased and dying wreckage of the old.
John David Penniman is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
at Bucknell University

86. There is more work to be done on the extent to which concerns for illness, health,
and healing contributed to early Christian ritual logic in the manner suggested above.
In Ignatius of Antiochs letter to the Ephesians, the breaking of bread is referred to
as a medicine that brings immortality ( ); an antidote ()
that allows us not to die but to live at all times in Jesus Christ (LCL 24:241). But
it is Gregory of Nyssas Catechical Oration 37 that makes the connection between
the bread and wine of the Eucharist and healthy human physiology most explicit.
In that passage, the ritual act of eating and drinking is framed as an antidote to the
bodys poisoned state. Drawing directly upon the medical lexicon, Gregory emphasizes how the divine nourishment contained in the material elements is metabolized
deep within the body, transforming its nature (see Raymond Winling, ed., Grgoire
de Nysse: Discours Catchtique, SC 453 [Paris: ditions du Cerf, 2000], 31424.)
The present essay is a first step toward a project that seeks to analyze the broader
significance of this dynamic in early Christianity.