Description: In Thorns in the Flesh, Andrew Crislip explores late ancient Christian reflections on the meaning and value of illness in ascetic practice. Overturning earlier assumptions about early Christian theology of illness, he reveals illness to be a persistent and controversial concern in early Christian debates about sanctity and asceticism.
Review Quotes: "Thorns in the Flesh moves well beyond the generalizations of a long tradition of scholarship on early Christian attitudes to disease and medicine-disease as test, judgment, or sign to others; medicine as divinely provided remedy or diabolical temptation-to a specific and highly productive study of the ambiguous position of the sick monk. The book rests on close and extensive knowledge of the primary sources for early monasticism in Greek and Coptic and thorough, justifiably critical deployment of the secondary literature."-- "Peregrine Horden, Royal Holloway University of London"