Laudator Temporis Acti

M. David Litwa, "Deification and Defecation: Valentinus Fragment 3 and the Physiology of Jesus’s Digestion," Journal of Early Christian Studies 31.1 (Spring, 2023) 1-18 (at 4):

John Chrysostom (about 349–407 C.E.) declared that “the multiplying of luxury is nothing but the multiplication of feces!” (οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἐτὶ τὸ πλέον τῆς τρυφῆς ἤ κόπρου πλεονασμός).¹⁴

14. John Chrysostom, Homily 13 on 1 Timothy (Frederik Field, ed., Homiliae in Epistulas ad Timotheum, Titum et Philemonem [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1861], 111). In context, Chrysostom explains that excess food would lead to “putrefied heat” within the body, causing noxious fumes to affect the brain. He even asserts that the channels for feces, when blocked, force the feces up within the body. See further Teresa M. Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998), 131–39. Cf. Clement of Alexandria, Pedagogue 3.7.3: “dung houses expose the impurity of gluttony” (τὸ ἀκάθαρτον τῆς γαστριμαργίας οἱ κοπρῶνες ἐλέγχουσιν) (M. Marcovich, ed., Paedagogus [Leiden: Brill, 2002], 170).

Actually, in the Greek text of Chrysostom cited by Litwa, τροφῆς (nourishment) is printed, and τρυφῆς (luxury) is relegated to the critical apparatus.

Here is a translation of the phrase in context, from The Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Epistles of St. Paul the Apostle to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, Translated [by James Tweed] (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1853), pp. 112-113:

Consider what comes of food, into what it is changed. Are you not disgusted at its being named? Why then be eager for such accumulations? The increase of luxury is but the multiplication of dung! For nature has her limits, and what is beyond these is not nourishment, but injury, and the increase of ordure. Nourish the body, but do not destroy it. Food is called nourishment, to shew that its design is not to injure the body, but to nourish it. For this reason perhaps food passes into excrement, that we may not be lovers of luxury. For if it were not so, if it were not useless and injurious to the body, we should not cease from devouring one another. If the belly receive as much as it pleased, digested it, and conveyed it to the body, we should see wars and battles innumerable. Even now when part of our food passes into ordure, part into blood, part into spurious and useless phlegm, we are nevertheless so addicted to luxury, that we spend perhaps whole estates on a meal. What should we not do, if this were not the end of luxury? The more luxuriously we live, the more noisome are the odours with which we are filled. The body is like a swollen bottle, running out every way. The eructations are such as to pain the head of a bystander. From the heat of fermentation within, vapours are sent forth, as from furnace, if by-standers are pained, what, think you, is the brain within continually suffering, assailed by these fumes? to say nothing of the channels of the heated and obstructed blood, of those reservoirs, the liver and the spleen, and of the canals by which the fæces are discharged. The drains in our streets we take care to keep unobstructed. We cleanse our sewers with poles and drags, that they may not be stopped, or overflow, but the canals of our bodies we do not keep clear, but obstruct and choke them up, and when the filth rises to the very throne of the king, I mean the brain, we do not regard it, treating it not like a worthy king, but like an unclean brute. God hath purposely removed to a distance those unclean members, that we might not receive offence from them. But we suffer it not to be so, and spoil all by our excess. And other evils might be mentioned. To obstruct the sewers is to breed a pestilence: but if a stench from without is pestilential, that which is pent up within the body, and cannot find a vent, what disorders must it not produce both to body and soul? Some have strangely complained, wondering why God has ordained that we should bear a load of ordure with us. But they themselves increase the load. God designed thus to detach us from luxury, and to persuade us not to attach ourselves to worldly things. But thou art not thus to be persuaded to cease from gluttony, but though it is but as far as the throat, and as long as the hour of eating, nay not even so long, that the pleasure abides, thou continuest in thine indulgence. Is it not true, that as soon as it has passed the palate and the throat, the pleasure ceases? For the sense of it is in the taste, and after that is gratified, a nausea succeeds, the stomach not digesting the food, or not without much difficulty. Justly then is it said, that she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth. For the luxurious soul is unable to hear or to see any thing. It becomes weak, ignoble, unmanly, illiberal, cowardly, full of impudence, servility, ignorance, rage, violence, and all kinds of evil, and destitute of the opposite virtues.

Related post: On the Distance Between the Head and Certain Other Bodily Parts.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Labels: noctes scatologicae