"Manichee!

": Leo the Great and the Orthodox

Panopticon
Harry O. Maier

"There is no one who does not feel hatred when hearing about the pseudo-bishops and
the Manichees." 1 Priscillian of Avila's comment is perhaps no place more true than in
Rome in the years immediately following the Vandal invasion of North Africa, when,
after the collapse of Carthage in 439, amongst the refugees who flooded into Italy
were Manichees. Once arrived, these established their own conventicles, presumably
in abandoned regions of the city. 2 By 443 Leo was urging his Christian listeners to
keep an eye out for them. Over the course of 18 months, in what has been called "le
premier monument de l'histoire de l'Inquisition," 3 he promoted a programme to
identify, extract confessions, try and exile his heretical opponents, and to burn their
books. Much attention has been given to Leo's campaign as evidence of robust papal
authority, resolute christianized romanitas, in the midst of profound social
disintegration. 4 But little study has been devoted to the social function of Leo's
persecution of the Manichees, nor to a close analysis of the strategies and rhetoric
deployed [End Page 441] by Leo to ensure that the "catholic" population would
actively cooperate in an anti-Manichaean campaign. The following seeks to move
beyond the more traditional doctrinal assessments of Leo's anti-heretical writings and
to place his persecution of the Manichees in a larger anthropological, social and
political framework, as part of what one might call, following Michel Foucault, the
"microphysics of power" in the dispute. 5 We are interested in determining how the
hatred of Manichees in Rome led to accusation, denunciation and betrayal, as well as
its place in a watchful, disciplined care of the Christian self.

Denounce, Betray, Renounce

By the 440's Manichaeism had become the favored target of imperial

persecution. 6 Suppressed by successive waves of anti-heretical legislation and vilified
by Christian theologians in the pre-Constantinian period onward, it had, by the time
Leo encountered it in Rome, come to embody all that was antithetical to the ideals of
a Christian society. Charged with secrecy, sorcery, the use of magical arts, and the
practice of sordid ritual, its crime was not so much that it was a heretical perversion of
Christianity--more dramatically it was depicted as a whole other religion,
quintessentially antithetical to the Church. Those Christians who were seduced into
Manichaeism were, according to its detractors, worse then heretics; they were
apostates. 7 It is in this long tradition of anti-Manichaean zeal and fear that Leo's
polemic finds its place. In six sermons and at least one letter 8 the [End Page
442] bishop denounces Manichaeism as a superstitio (Serm. 76.6; cf. Val. Nov. 18.1,
18.1.4), its adherents as guilty of impietas (Serm. 16.4, 34.4, cf. 42.5; Ep. 7.2). 9 A
plague (morbus, Ep. 7.1), contagion (Ep. 7.1; Serm. 42.5, 34.4) and pestilence
(pestis, Ep. 7.2; Serm.16.5), they pollute or contaminate unsuspecting souls by their
diabolical presence, sacrilege, and filthy acts (Serm. 16.5,6, 24.4,6, 34.4,
46.1; Ep. 7.1; cf. Val. Nov. 18.1, 18.1.4). Mad, blasphemous, and profane (Serm. 16.4,
24.4, 42.5) they are "most savage enemies of souls" (saevissimos animarum hostes,
179B) against whom all vigilance is to be deployed (Serm. 16.5,6; cf. Val. Nov. 18.1).
As an execrable and sacrilegious heresy (Ep. 7.2; Serm. 16.5, 24.4, 76.6; Val. Nov.
18.1, 18.1.1) the Manichees are to be shunned, publicly exposed, betrayed and exiled
(Serm. 9.4, 16.6, 34.5, 42.5; Ep. 7.1,2).

Of particular significance in this "repertory of defilement" 10 are the passages where

Leo accuses the Manichees of being deceivers who infiltrate catholic worship and
mislead unwitting souls by masquerading as showpieces of ascetical piety. Leo must
remind his flock of proper ascetic discipline: catholics rightly fast on Wednesdays and
Fridays and are not to be duped by the diabolical ascetical innovations of the
Manichees who have misled some to fast also on Sundays and Mondays (Serm. 42.4-
5). Such additions to catholic piety are inspired by Satan as a subtle perversion of the
truth to destroy unsuspecting souls. Similarly, he urges vigilance at the Eucharist
where Manichees have been participating (Serm. 42.5). The fact that they will receive
the bread but not the wine is further evidence of their diabolical intentions to infiltrate
the church and mislead people through subtle innovations of catholic discipline. Leo's
exposure of these intentions, together with his proclamation of the report of a
Manichaean orgiastic ceremony (Serm. 16.5; cf. Val. Nov. 18.1), is to catapult his
audience into vigilance [End Page 443] and denunciation. Manichaeism is a highly
contagious, not easily detected disease that seeks to gain entry to the community by
surreptitious means; it represents a mortal danger to the catholic community that must
be dealt with decisively.

It is by developing a portrait of dangerous infection, defilement, and deception that

Leo convinces his listeners to betray suspected Manichees to ecclesiastical authorities.
To date, much attention has been given to chronological, doctrinal
and traditionsgeschichtliche aspects of Leo's exhortations. 11 But there has been little
analysis of their more social dimensions. Social study of conflict and, more
particularly, of accusation, especially witchcraft accusation, 12 illuminates the
attempts of Leo to extirpate the "plague" of Manichaeism from Rome. From a social
perspective what is remarkable about Leo's description of the Manichaean presence in
Rome are his depictions of their participation in worship alongside the "catholic"
faithful. While Leo clearly wants his audience to understand the Manichees
theologically as heretical outsiders motivated by a desire to destroy the church
through secret invasion, socially they function as dissenters whose presence, ideas and
religious disciplines call into question the authority of Leo and his representatives as
the sole determiners of legitimate belief and practice. Considered from this
perspective, Leo's anti-Manichaean campaign had an important role in restoring
definition to a highly ambiguous social situation and provided a means of mediating
social relations in a tense socio-political climate. Leo's rhetorical depictions move the
Manichees from the position of dissenter within the community to heretic outside it.

In his study of conflict, Lewis Coser discusses the social challenge of heretics and
dissenters to religious communities and the role of violence in restoring definition to
uncertain social situations. 13 In what he calls "close groups," where the claim of a
community is on "the total personality" (as for example in religious communities) and
where members of a group perceive they have obligations of mutual care and
responsibility for group life, conflict is typically much more violent than in those
 instances where mixed [End Page 444] allegiances are permitted. Disloyalty in such
situations is perceived as a threat to group survival. The heretic "not only puts into
question the values and interests of the group, but also threatens its very
14
unity." Heretics are deserters who must be, often violently, denounced. Since, by
virtue of their continued existence alongside the group, they propose choices of belief
and practice where choices are claimed to be impossible, and because they hold up the
possibility of achieving the goals of the excluding community by innovative means,
heretics represent a profound threat to the community's ethos and its leaders. Great
effort, therefore, is made to suppress heretics and protect the community from their
influence.

Alongside the heretic, Coser describes the danger of the related figure, the
dissenter. 15 Dissenters represent a greater danger than heretics because, unlike
heretics who have formally broken with the community and therefore symbolize the
threat of competition, the dissenter remains in some way within the group and
threatens, by lack of allegiance to all the ideals of the community, to destroy the
group from within. It is unclear what the dissenter will do, why he or she remains
within or seeks affiliation with the group, what his or her motivations are. By
claiming the right of membership in or affiliation with the group on terms different
from the community's standards, or by introducing innovative practices where no
alternative practices are believed legitimate, dissenters call into question the
community's total control of its members. It is especially in these situations, Coser
argues, that violent heresy hunting arises. Violence functions to create and preserve
group allegiance. By encouraging members to participate in the suppression and
expulsion of heretics and dissenters, members are tied more closely together and the
ideals of the group are reaffirmed. 16

Coser's typology of the heretic and dissenter helps to draw out some of the social
aspects of Leo's program against the Manichees. We shall focus first on the
Manichees and their sympathizers as dissenters and then turn to the social function of
denunciation.

The Manichees, though from a doctrinal perspective heretics--even apostates--were

functioning in the Roman church socially much like Coser's dissenters. What is
notable in Leo's depictions of the Manichees is not so much his anti-Manichaean
rhetoric (though as we shall see, this too gets connected with other ideals in some
unexpected ways); surprising are the social situations where the faithful find
themselves in contact with Manichees. For it is clear from the descriptions Leo gives
in his sermons [End Page 445] and epistles that the Manichees he wants his hearers
to be most wary of are those who are present in his very own church. In fact, Leo was
not the first to discover Manichaean participants in catholic worship. It is perhaps
significant that we see similar complaints of Manichaean participation in the life of
the roughly contemporary North African church. In several letters, Augustine had
complained of African clergy supplementing the canonical lectionary with
Manichaean readings; he had even discovered one of his sub-deacons was a
Manichaean Hearer who had been teaching Manichaean doctrine. 17 The later
commentator Eutychius was no doubt exaggerating when he contended that the
majority of fourth-century Egyptian clergy were Manichees, but the references from
Augustine at least show that to some Manichaeism and the prevailing Christian
orthodoxy were not irreconcilable. 18 It is at least possible that when North African
Manichees fled to Rome and began to participate in catholic worship there, they were
merely continuing a customary practice. 19 In Rome, in particular, where anti-
Manichaean feelings had run high in the years leading up to Leo's pontificate, and
where a campaign had been launched as recently as 425 to cleanse the city of its
heretics, the climate for toleration of such allegiances was more hostile. 20 Such
divided loyalties, seemingly tolerated in North Africa, were treated much differently
in Italy. Leo thus presents his profile of dissent: Manichees in Rome attend catholic
worship, but do not partake of both bread and wine; they impress by their ascetical
discipline, but fast on days not set aside for abstinence. Clearly they have won some
sympathizers by their heroic self-denial. Leo explains to his audience that, like his
own flock, the Manichees engage in a battle with the flesh, but a [End Page
446] closer look, he warns, reveals that their ascetic discipline arises not out of a
catholic conviction to battle sin, but from their rejection of the evil material order
(Serm. 34.5, 42.4-5, 46.1).

The challenge of dissent was made more acute by Manichaean circulation in

households. The private meetings with Manichees that Leo denounces publicly in
sermons preached in official basilicas represents a continued problematization of
social space I have discussed in detail elsewhere. As in other instances from the time
of Constantine onward, and especially after the accession of Theodosius, the co-
existence of visible official gatherings and more hidden, often ascetic, household
movements emerges as a problem for Leo who seeks to extend his episcopal control
outside the sphere of official ecclesial space into the most private chambers of the
faithful. 21 Leo's anti-Manichaean preaching is another moment in an unfolding
development in which the official ecclesial establishment attempted to exercise
control over more private spheres and social networks. Leo has traditionally been
viewed as exemplar of robust papal authority, even the first "medieval pope," but
when seen from this perspective we may rather see evidence of a bishop trying to
secure power rather than exercise it.

As dissenters Manichaean luring of the faithful into private meetings undermine Leo's
hoped for control over his church. In social terms it is unclear what the Manichees are
hoping to achieve by participating in catholic worship, or to what end they practice a
discipline that looks orthodox. To bring definition to the ambiguity such dissent
represents, Leo provides his listeners with an interpretive schema designed to
convince them of the origin, character and intentions of the Manichaean presence in
Rome. His rhetorical depictions are designed to remove any social ambiguities
associated with the Manichees and to mark them clearly as the enemy within, an
enemy that must be singled out and destroyed.

Leo accounts for all heresy generally as originating in Satan's desire to destroy the
church. In the post-Constantinian era, the devil, no longer able [End Page 447] to
destroy the church by violent means, now tries to defeat it by heresy. 22 The
Manichaean presence in Rome is part of this larger strategy (Serm. 76.6). As the
devil's minions, they have set out to beguile the unsuspecting catholic faithful.
Through "deceitful keepings of sham and pretended fasts" and by "a cloak of piety
and chastity" they "conceal the filthiness of their acts" (Serm. 24.6, 207B). They fast
"with deceitful design" and trick by unorthodox dietary discrimination (Serm. 34.5,
250A; 42.4-5). They thus "stealthily burrow" and "take hidden root" in unsuspecting
churches, trying to pass themselves off as catholics to avoid detection and persecution
(Ep. 7.1, 620C; cf. 16.3); they participate in the Eucharist "to conceal their infidelity"
(Serm. 42.5, 280A). They "creep in humbly, they arrest softly, they bind gently, they
slay secretly" (Serm. 16.3); 23 they harm the unwary and delude the ignorant
(Serm. 34.5, 42.4-5). In this rhetoric, Manichees are never just observed, they are
always "discovered," "uncovered," or "detected." Developing a favorite anti-heretical
theme and exploiting a prevalent rhetorical depiction of the household meetings of
prohibited movements of the post-Constantinian era as evil, Leo warns that the
Manichees seek especially to seduce unsuspecting women whom they charm with
fabulous stories and so gain illicit entry into the homes of the faithful
(Serm. 16.5). 24 Leo's rhetorical depictions help to neutralize the social danger of the
dissenting practices of the Manichees.

But of course Leo goes much further than rhetorical depiction. He commands action.
Rhetoric serves the more particular aim of catapulting his flock into denunciation and
betrayal of suspected Manichees.

Lewis Coser identifies the role of accusation and denunciation in restoring definition
to uncertain social situations. Violence against the heretic or dissenter functions to
reaffirm and reinforce the commitment of group members to the ideals of the
community by helping to remove whatever ambiguities deviance has come to
represent for the group. This aspect of conflict is given fuller definition in
anthropological studies on witchcraft accusation. Mary Douglas has noted that
"witchcraft beliefs are essentially a means of clarifying and affirming social
definitions." 25 Anthropologists interpret beliefs associated with sorcery and
witchcraft as helping to mediate [End Page 448] human relations. They provide "a
means of expressing tense social relationships." 26 Accusations of witchcraft and
sorcery often arise in unclear or obscure social situations where there is confusion
over internal group boundaries or competition for resources within a community.
Where accusation is leveled at members who are perceived to belong to a rival faction
co-existing within a group, as they were in the case of the Manichees at Rome, it
functions to remove social ambiguities by redefining boundaries, controlling
deviance, and promoting factional rivalry. 27

Douglas argues that the way witches are depicted, how their sources of power and the
nature of their attacks are seen, "can be related to an image of community and the
kind of attack to which community values are subject." 28 In groups, for example,
where the witch is seen as an internal enemy, "the symbols of the attack by witchcraft
tend to make the body of the victim into an image of the betrayed community: its
internal strength is sucked out or poisoned by someone who can get into very close
contact." 29 Leo, as we shall discuss more fully below, interprets the danger of
Manichaeism as a pollution that threatens to upset the believer's carefully regulated
regime of self-purification, or as a contagion that endangers the believer's healing
from sin. Conversely, when he wants to depict the ideal community, it is in terms of
the body imagery drawn from I Cor 12: each member pure and functioning in perfect
harmony with other members (e.g., Serm. 18.2, 23.5; Ep. 10.1, 14.11). The use of
metaphors of disease or contagion to describe the threat of coming into proximity
with Manichaeism, images that describe a danger to the body, expresses the social
danger the Manichee represents for the community generally. More concretely, it is
no accident that Leo discovers in Manichaean fasting practices an especially sinister
threat, or that he interprets Manichaean presence at the Eucharist as part of a
 diabolical plot to destroy the church. As we shall see below, Leo's ideal of being a
purified member of the church is attained [End Page 449] by participation in a
disciplined regimen of fasting and worship. It is by means of fasting that one combats
against the flesh and participates in one's healing from sin and attains salvation.
Further, through fasting one shapes oneself into a loyal ecclesiastical subject thereby
fulfilling Leo's community ideal of the faithful as obedient sons and daughters of the
church. Thus where the Manichees tempt the faithful with innovative fasting
regulations they threaten to reverse the progress won in the healing of the flesh, and
call into question the total institutional hold the church exercises on believers. The site
of Manichaean attack is precisely at the point where the self combats and seeks to
control the flesh, and at exactly the place where the faithful transform themselves into
loyal subjects.

Again, Manichaean presence at the Eucharist, similarly a place where the faithful
participate in the healing from the disease of the flesh, is depicted as a site of attack.
Like fasting, participation in the Eucharist brings salvific transformation
(e.g., Serm. 63.7) and, again, shapes the faithful through disciplined participation into
ecclesial subjects. 30 By urging supreme vigilance for suspected Manichees at the
Eucharist (Serm. 42.5), and by railing against them for their pale faces and ragged
robes, the fruit of deceitful ascetic practices (Serm. 34.5), Leo protects and reaffirms
the community goals and ideals that are under attack.

An important function of witchcraft accusation is to polarize factions where there is

social confusion. We may see such an attempt at polarization in Leo's exhortations to
the faithful of Rome and the bishops of Italy to enter into a campaign of denunciation
and betrayal (Ep. 7; cf. also Ep. 15 to bishop Turribius in Spain). He urges his
audiences zealously to accuse, even to search out suspected Manichees (Serm. 16.5,
17.6; Ep. 7.1,2). The faithful are to inform their presbyters of their secret meeting
places (Serm. 9.4, 17.5), and to inform the authorities when they are detected at
eucharistic celebrations (Serm. 42.5). In the meantime they are to avoid all contact
with them (Serm. 16.3, 34.5), and, he warns, those who continue their associations
will themselves be expelled from the church (Serm. 34.5). Thus does Leo promote
factionalism and remove social ambiguity arising from the Manichaean presence at
Rome.

Accusation and denunciation were important means of neutralizing the threat of social
ambiguity arising from dissent in the Roman church. But there was another way, this
time not dependent upon the watchful eyes of the catholic faithful, but upon the
thoroughness of the religio-political authorities: [End Page 450] the way of
renunciation. In Serm. 17.4 Leo describes the confession extracted from a Manichaean
bishop and other devotees of their participation in a rite of sexual intercourse with a
ten-year old girl, born and raised solely, Leo alleges, for that purpose. The report is
impossible to harmonise with Leo's other complaints that the Manichees are rigorists
in their ascetic practices, abjuring the good creation because of their belief in the
essential wickedness of the created order.

Leo was not the first to contradict himself on the matter of Manichaean
immorality. 31 His contemporaries often complained of Manichaean ascetic rigors
while at the same time accusing them of sexual depravity. The charge of illicit sexual
activity was a stock accusation in a long tradition of polemic aimed, in the pre-
 Constantinian era, by pagans at Christians and by Christians at heretics. 32 Whatever
basis such charges had in fact, their function was probably no different from that
identified by anthropologists who interpret charges of sexual immorality in witchcraft
accusation as a means of relegating someone outside a community by presenting him
or her as the embodiment of all that is antithetical to commonly accepted morality and
an offense against normal social relations. 33 The witch, and by analogy the heretic, is
thus made to stand wholly outside society, to inhabit a perverted world, transgressing
commonly accepted canons of decency. When, therefore, the Manichees were charged
with sexual depravity they were perceived to be fulfilling what was true of many
heretics, especially those associated with gnosticism, and such charges were a means
of relegating them to an outside, inhuman space. Filastrius accuses them of "bestial
immorality" (Diver. haer. 61.33). Cyril imagines rituals in which Manichees consume
pork dipped in semen (Cat. orat. 6.33); who would even dare to kiss a Manichaean,
Cyril wonders. Jerome's no less colorful imagination wanders when he depicts
Manichaean orgies where, once behind [End Page 451] closed doors, Manichaean
teachers throw off the disguise of ascetic rigor and "shut themselves up alone with
silly women, and between intercourse and embraces . . . enchant them with suggestive
quotations from Virgil" (Ep. 22.13.3). This, the same Jerome who complains of the
"gloomy and pale" appearance of the Manichees who go overboard with their ascetic
practices (Ep. 71.6). The contradiction was quickly pointed out in debate: when
arguing with Augustine, the Manichaean Fortunatus points out how the Manichees are
falsely charged with the practice of evil deeds, and Augustine must admit that when
he was a Manichaean he did not personally witness any immoral acts (Contra
Fortunatem 1,3). Yet Augustine will cite as certain evidence of Manichaean
immorality the legal testimonia extracted from Manichees by the political authorities
of their participation in sordid rites, including, again, the consumption of sperm as
part of a eucharistic celebration (De haer. 46.61-102). Not forty lines later (46.135-
141), he will contradict himself by complaining that Manichees condemn marriage
and sexual intercourse. For their part then, Leo and his listeners having "discovered"
the Manichees in Rome would have expected that under careful examination (here we
cannot exclude the possibility of torture, as in the case of the African Manichees
discovered by Augustine) 34 the captured heretics would eventually admit to some
manifestation of the sexually depraved behavior of which successive generations of
polemicists had been accusing them and thus conform to the popularly imagined
picture of the outsider. The trial simply uncovers a truth already known antecedently;
it invests the accused with all the deviance that, as a matter of definition, must belong
to him or her.

Again, anthropological study of witchcraft, especially witchcraft cleansing, is

illuminating. R. G. Willis argues that in trials of witches confessions characteristically
fulfill preconceived expectations about witch behavior. Further, the sanctions attached
to witchcraft are typically severe enough that the pressure is enormous to conform to
whatever one is expected to confess, the choice being (as indeed in the case of the
Manichees) exile or reintegration into the community. 35 Willis goes on to argue that
the value of the trial of the witch, usually following a ritualized procedure, is that
"it [End Page 452]endorses the truth and relevance of the witch image." 36 Later, in a
still more vigilant period of ecclesiastical history, "discovered" witches and heretics
would be found who would through torture confess to all the immoralities studiously
depicted in preceding centuries of anti-heretical polemic. 37 Then, as in Leo's time,
social necessity became the mother of ecclesial invention. Renunciation followed by
 the charge of sexual depravity and later confession under interrogation helped to
restore definition in an ambiguous social situation of dissent.

But renunciation followed by confession had another effect. Both served to endorse
the community's ideal image of itself free from all the inimical aspects discovered in
the witch or heretic. It is no accident that it is precisely those lusts of the flesh that the
ideal Christian conquers through his or her regime of faithful discipline that the
Manichees found themselves confessing before Roman authorities. Just as the
discovery and cleansing of witches through confession functions socially to
inaugurate the millennium, the "age of bliss . . . in which pain, disease, untimely
death, violence, war and hunger will be unknown," the detection and confession of
Manichees became the visible guarantee that the battle of the faithful against the flesh
could be won. It is to the relationship between ecclesiastical self-nurture and
accusation of the heretic that we now turn.

The Orthodox Panopticon

So far we have offered what might be called a "bird's eye view" of Leo's anti-
Manichaeism in our survey of the social function of his program. We turn now to
survey the scene from "the bottom up," or better, "the inside out." We have been
concerned with constraint through accusation and betrayal, trial, confession and exile.
We are interested now in the broader field of practices and self-conceptions of which
the threat of Manichaeism is a part--the fostering of dispositions, the use of tactics,
techniques, and [End Page 453] strategies; the "technology of the body" by which the
faithful transform themselves into willing objects of ecclesial constraint. In short, we
move now from punishment to discipline. Here we seek to explore a network of ideas
and practices that at first glance seem unrelated but upon closer investigation reveal
themselves to be part of the same site, standing alongside one another and belonging
together in the same field of relations. We are interested in the "microphysics of
power" in the dispute--the ways of envisioning society, the self, and participation in
community life that result in obedience to Leo's exhortations, not because
constraining power from above forces one to it, but because obedience is part of an
inner constraint, nurtured and disciplined in a thorough ecclesial regime, and because
accusation and denunciation express a way of relating to the self.

Leo repeatedly uses the metaphor of a watchtower when promoting his ecclesiological
ideals. He exhorts fellow clergy to be vigilant in their episcopal duties for they are
"watchmen" 38 who have been placed by God on a "watchtower" 39 to observe the
churches entrusted to their care. They are to employ all watchfulness and vigilance to
ensure that their churches remain free from contact with the "defilement" or
"pollution" of activities that destroy the church's purity. 40 For example, in a letter to
Anastasius, bishop of Thessalonica, Leo urges that his colleague, being placed on a
watchtower, should carry out his duties "with vigilance" and direct his "mind's gaze
around on all" in his charge; 41 with the "remedies of compulsion" he is to provide
correction to those who go astray. 42 Such watchfulness is only an earthly imitation of
the heavenly watchfulness of St. Peter [End Page 454] who stands guard as
indefatigable sentinel over the sheep of the Church. 43 As in heaven, so on earth, there
is to be a vigilant uninterrupted gaze, an all-seeing watchfulness that keeps track of
activities and registers deviance in and around the church. When Leo urges the
bishops of Italy to be watchful for Manichees and to employ great vigilance in their
 discovery (Ep. 7.1-2), 44 his exhortations are part of a much larger ecclesiology of
surveillance in which not only the activities of Manichees are to be charted, but each
Christian is observed in order to be channeled and directed in appropriate directions.

When we turn from Leo's letters to fellow clergy to his sermons we see the same
themes of vigilance. Like the clergy over them, his faithful listeners are to be on the
lookout for Manichees (Serm. 9.4; 17.5-6; 42.5). But the gaze is not only directed
outward. More importantly, it is turned inward. Leo warns his hearers to keep
continual watch against the devil, especially during Lent, when the faithful war
against their own vices and progress in virtue. His hearers are vigilantly to examine
themselves and keep watch lest "any spot should be exposed to the tempter's
snares." 45. In another Lenten sermon (43.1), he urges that it is "necessary for us to
work with vigilance so that the isle of our heart is not unworthy of its habitation . . . it
is necessary to bear a constant care that there be discovered nothing disordered,
nothing filthy in our souls." 46 Again, in Serm. 44.1, he interprets Lent as a time to
examine the vices--the maladies and wounds--that need "treatment." Listeners are to
become "masters of their secret thoughts," to search themselves to determine whether
there is something they can find to reprove. 47 He exhorts Christians to "scrutinize"
themselves [End Page 455] and "search severely" into their "inmost heart," to ensure
that they remain free from unruly desire (cupiditas) (Serm. 39.5). 48 They are to
engage in a disciplined and regular examen conscientiae, to withdraw from daily
activities "and steal a little time for promoting our eternal welfare" (mundanis nos
occupationibus subtrahamus, et aliquid temporis quod prosit ad bona aeterna
furemur). A necessary exercise, since "there cling to unwary souls for the most part
darker stains, which need a greater care to wash them out, a stronger effort to destroy
them" (Serm. 88.3, 442B; see also Serm.19.1). 49 Each one is to take time to examine
oneself, to weigh thoughts and actions, to investigate "the secrets of his or her
heart." 50

By directing watchfulness inward Christians engage in a disciplined care of the self.

Leo in Serm. 39.2 describes how it is impossible to vanquish exterior enemies without
first conquering the self: "we have many encounters with our own selves," especially
warring ones, for the flesh and the spirit desire different things. 51 Indeed, the devil
uses the flesh to plot against faithful souls (Serm. 74.5). Against his attacks believers
"must keep careful watch" (sapienter . . . vigilare, 400A) so that their foes are
destroyed when he uses the flesh and its desires to attack (also 78.1, 87.1-2). It is
necessary, therefore, to train oneself (Serm. 42.2); to renew oneself by daily progress
and growth in piety (Serm. 59.8, 44.1); to nurture self-restraint in the desires of the
flesh (Serm. 68.4, 71.5, 88.2); to fight against the cavails of fleshly appetite
(Serm. 90.1); even "to accuse" oneself in confession (Serm. 26.4). 52 There is to be
"constant care" (multa . . . vigilantia) in controlling the self (43.1, 281A): Christians
are to use every opportunity to "polish the mirror of (their) hearts with a more
attentive care" (sollicitiore cura cordis nostri specula tergamus) (43.3, 283C). They
are vigorously and assiduously to apply themselves to purifying their conscience
(Serm. 50.1), correcting their bodies (Serm. 80.1), cultivating as spiritual agriculturists
the field of the soul, weeding it of the tares of uncontrolled lust sown by the [End
Page 456] enemy (Serm. 81.3, 14.1, 18.3, 20.2, 69.5). Thus the benefits of spiritual
growth are retained "with persistent care" (custodia; Serm. 71.1, 387A). In all of this
Leo echoes a long tradition in the care of the self, beginning with the Greeks,
transformed by Roman philosophers, and transposed again by Christian authors. In
 Leo's treatment, unlike that of the ancient Greeks and Romans of the early imperial
period, where the ideal is civic and, later, more individual, care of self is formulated
as part of a means of becoming a devoted ecclesiastical subject, engaged in the careful
interpretation of all the longing aches of the flesh. 53

By means of care of the self one participates in the creation of a disciplined regime of
scrutiny, a scrutiny of which the search for Manichees is an expression. Watchtowers
are deployed not only at each ecclesiastical office; they are erected in each Christian
heart. Each faithful son or daughter of the church becomes a kind of relay or circuit in
the surveillant power that circulates through the community. Watchfulness comes not
only from above, but it permeates the society of the church and becomes its hallmark.
The hunt for Manichees finds its place in this forest of eyes and is only one site of
many in an extensive ocular culture of invigilation. 54 Michel Foucault in his study of
the modern prison uses the term "panopticism" to describe a culture that "coerces by
means of observation."55 He describes the Panopticon, an architectural structure used
to control prisoners of the modern period by rendering them continually visible by
means of a central tower, as the mechanism that makes such coercive observation
possible. For Foucault, panopticism entails not only the strategies and structures
employed to keep an eye on the other, but the techniques and tactics that the watched
self uses to keep an eye on oneself. In the panopticon of the prison, one becomes not
only the object of a sentinel's watchful gaze, more importantly one transforms oneself
into the subject of one's own observation as one adopts the appropriate disciplines that
lead to one's own reform. Turning to Leo's sermons and letters, there is a similar
panopticism, a means of uncovering and rendering the self visible, to officials
certainly, but also to one's own self, and thereby of transforming oneself into a
faithful orthodox subject of the church. Watchfulness, Leo's ecclesiology of
surveillance, extends downward from the watchtowers of the vigilant clergy to the
body of each Christian. [End Page 457]

What techniques, tactics and strategies for self-observation are characteristic of Leo's
orthodox panopticism? What strategies does Leo promote to invest each ecclesial
subject with the coercion that comes from self study? We have already mentioned the
promotion of a disciplined examen conscientiae, the retreat from public life to
investigate how well one battles against the flesh. This is one of many practices that
are to be applied to the self in a regimen of vigilance, each of which represents a kind
of "technology of the body," a means of nurturing, tending to, combating, even
warring against the self. Leo is fond of depicting Manichaeism as the deceiving
instrument of the devil (Serm. 9.2, 16.3, 24.6). But Manichaeism is only one of the
devil's tools. He also uses the body's appetites. "He knows whom to ply with the zest
of greed, whom to assail with the allurements of the belly, before whom to set the
attraction of self-indulgence: he knows whom to overwhelm with grief, whom to
cheat with joy, whom to surprise with fear, whom to bewilder with wonderment . . ."
(Serm. 27.3, 218B). Within the flesh lurk drives and impulses, desires and motivations
that must be carefully interpreted and weighed. The stratagems of the flesh are
symptomatic of the disease under which all languish and from which Christians are
slowly healing. Disease and health recur as binary opposites in Leo's writings; they
define the predicament and goal of each Christian. If the Manichees contaminate or
risk infection with the contagion of false teaching they are only a single disease, one
virus of many, in the pathology against which Christians battle. Leo will offer his
listeners "healing remedies" (remediorum medicina; Serm. 9.2, 161B), healing of their
wounds (Serm. 39.6), a "cure" for "old-standing diseases," "remedies" to be applied to
the fresh wounds of sins, "restoration" to health. 56 Jesus is the physician who healed
"not only bodily infirmities, but also cured the wounds of sick souls" (Serm. 62.4,
352A). This "Almighty Physician" took on himself the disease of the world that he
might offer the health of himself in a happy exchange (Serm. 67.5, 37.1). 57

But this health is not received passively, this cure from disease is not given freely. It
is won. The faithful, Leo encourages, "may be cured by a little carefulness" (simili
observatione curemur) (Serm.39.1, 263C). In Serm. 15.1 (174C-175A) he prescribes
the three remedies (remedia) of prayer, fasting and almsgiving: when one applies
these, "the plagues which those [End Page 458] who battle against the invisible
enemy often contract" are healed (also Serm. 12.4). The seasons of fasting and regular
occasions for almsgiving that punctuate the Christian year provide strategies of
healing to deploy on the self, a technology to facilitate healing from sin, disciplines
for channelling and checking the diseases that lurk in the flesh. By fasting "the lusts
of the flesh are extinguished" (concupiscentia carnis exstinguitur) (Serm. 12.4, 171C).
Through this discipline, Leo promises, "we prevail against our own selves"
(Serm. 39.2, 264A). For it is "a salutary institution for the healing of soul and body"
(Serm. 78.1, 416A), "a remedy . . . for the correction of the body" (Serm. 80.1, 420B).
Indeed, the majority of passages cited above where Leo describes self-care have as
their context sermons instructing the faithful on the benefits of and need for fasting.
Further, almsgiving, besides helping the poor, more importantly "erases" (deleatur)
"every fault contracted on this earth" (Serm. 7, 159B) and frees one from the "unclean
leprosy of avarice" (Serm. 17.4, 182A). By both fasting and liberality Christians "take
pains to be set free from the filth of sins" (Serm. 78.4, 417B).

By these disciplines, expressing the watchfulness of the redeemed, Leo's hearers

transform themselves into subjects of the church. But, returning again to the
Manichees, it is also through the discipline of betrayal that they are similarly
transformed. It is first and foremost as "patients" under ecclesiastical care, battling
and recuperating from the disease of sin, that they act as betrayers and informants of
the Manichees. The soiled, deceptive, contagious Manichee, diseased and defiled, is
only the exterior and clearly visible manifestation of the interior, invisible enemy
represented in the polluting desires of the flesh. It is no accident, then, that Leo's first
advice to accuse and betray suspected Manichees occurs in the context of a sermon on
fasting (Serm. 16.2). There, as in other sermons on fasting, Leo warns that attempts to
battle the flesh through abstinence incite the devil to wage war more fiercely (16.3).
His hearers are asked to interpret the Manichaean threat as the exterior expression of
the fierce battle waged within each believer. Again, in Serm. 42, where Leo contrasts
catholic with heretical fasting, Manichaean ascetic innovation is interpreted as a
diabolical corruption of an otherwise salubrious practice, an embodiment of the
distorting effects of all sin. On this view, betrayal of Manichees becomes not only a
duty, but an act of saving piety, another in a series of strategies in the disciplined care
of the self, a visible flashpoint along the usually more invisible battleline of the
flesh. 58 Betrayal is salvific, again the concrete anticipation [End Page 459] of a
millennium when there will be freedom from sin and the flesh will be conquered.
Betrayal and denunciation belong to a larger discourse of nosology and hygienics: to
denounce, betray, inform upon is a less ambiguous means of attacking the enemy that
embodies exteriorly what lurks behind each craving, every desire, any appetite of the
flesh.
 Fasting, almsgiving, regular self-examination, denunciation and betrayal--these are
the techniques, strategies and tactics of disciplined watchfulness. Of course it is
impossible to determine the degree to which Leo's exhortations were followed. Again,
his commandments to be vigilant for the enemy within and without may reveal more
the absence of real power to survey, discipline and punish than its presence. On this
interpretation the arrest of Manichees and the extraction of confession is a means of
consolidating social power in an ambiguous social situation. At best Leo formulates
an ideal orthodox panopticon, a hoped for means of coercion by observation. In this
panopticism the one who watches out for Manichees is engaged in disciplines that
render the self visible. Just as one battles in Leo's war on heresy, so one fights in the
skirmishes with oneself and on both fronts uncovers the same dangers, plots and
schemes. The gaze inward and the gaze outward are one and the same. The discovered
Manichee, uncovered by diligent observation, successfully tried and exiled after the
extraction of a confession, becomes a visible guarantee that the battle against the
otherwise invisible parasite of the flesh can be won. Symbolizing all the chaos and
contagion against which one fights, the detection of Manichees in Leo the Great's
Rome would have had, paradoxically, a comforting effect.

Harry O. Maier is an Assistant Professor at the Vancouver School of Theology

Notes
Research for this study was made possible by a grant from the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada.

1. Priscillian, Tract. 2.50 (CSEL 18, 40-41), cited by Raymond Van Dam, Leadership
and Community in Late Antique Gaul (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1985), 84.

2. See Serm. 16.5 for Manichaean refugees. S. Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman
Empire and Medieval China: A Historic Survey (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1985), 164-68, presents a succinct summary of the situation in Rome.

3. Thus P. Batiffol, Le siège apostolique (Paris, 1924), 437; see also Erich
Caspar, Geschichte des Papstums von den Anfängen bis zur Höhe der
Weltherrschaft (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1930), 1:435.

4. Philip A. McSchane, La romanitas et le Pape Léon le Grand (Paris, 1979), 375-76.

5. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York:
Vintage, 1979), 26.

6. For a summary of the history of persecution, together with citations of imperial and
ecclesiastical legislation, see Lieu, Manichaeism, 91-116, 154-77. Em. de
Stoop's Diffusion de Manichéisme dans l'empire romain (Gand: Libraire scientifique
E. van Goethen, 1909), 120ff., traces its history in Rome from Miltiades (s. 311-314)
onward.
 7. Thus, for example, Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. 6.21: "Mani certainly does not come
from the Christians!"; Priscillian, Tract. 2.39.8-10: "The Manichees are no longer
heretics, but idolaters, sorcerers, and slaves of the sun and moon." Both passages are
cited by Virginia Burrus in "Naming the (Feminine?) 'Other': Heresy, Manichaeism,
and Sorcery in Late Ancient Christian Thought," Paper delivered at a meeting of the
American Academy of Religion, San Francisco, November 1991. C.Th. 16.7.3 (383)
distinguishes Manichaeism from heresy by discussing it, after treating other heretical
groups in a single section, in the context of paganism and Judaism. Burrus suggests
that the Manichees were "liminally positioned" (1), a phrase used to describe the
polemical allocation of them to a special category. This liminal positioning is
followed by Leo who distinguishes Manichaeism as a phenomenon distinct from other
heresies (Serm. 16.4, 24.5; Ep. 15.1).

8. To this list C. Callewaert, "Saint Léon le Grand et les textes du Léonien," Sacris
Erudiri 1 (1948): 35-132, at 85-105, adds prayers from the sixth-century Codex
Veronese, the so-called Leonine Sacramentary. Callewaert discovers in the rhetoric of
the Leonine's anti-heretical prayers echoes of Leo's anti-Manichaean language. But
the rhetoric is itself traditional and Callewaert is unable to demonstrate that the
prayers he cites use more than a tradition of polemic which was common to both Leo
and the authors of the sacramentary. It seems more prudent in what follows to limit
ourselves to writings unquestionably from Leo.

9. For dating and identification of Leo's anti-Manichaean sermons (Serm. 16, 224, 34,
42, 76, 9) and letter (Ep. 7; also, possibly, Ep. 15, though the named enemy is
Priscillianism), see A. Lauras, "Saint Léon le Grand et le Manichéisme
romain," Studia Patristica, no. 11- Texte und Untersuchungen 108 (1972), 203-9.
Further information concerning the arrival, discovery and trial is given in Val.Nov. 18,
and Prosper of Aquitane, Chronicon (PL 51.600B).

10. Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan (New York:
Harper and Row, 1967), 26.

11. Lauras, "Saint Léon," 205-206, is indicative, where the focus of study on Leo's
sermons is to determine the degree to which he borrows his polemic from Augustine.

12. Though charged elsewhere with sorcery, Leo does not persecute the Manichees
for sorcery or witchcraft, but because of their heresy. The following discussion
assumes that accusations of heresy and persecution of Manichees functioned in a way
analogous to the suppression of witches. The same analogy, with reference to charges
against Priscillianism in Gaul, has been drawn independently by Van
Dam, Leadership and Community, 78-87.

13. Lewis A. Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1986), 69-71.

14. Ibid., 69.

15. Ibid., 95-101.

16. Ibid., 71.

 17. For canonical readings supplemented by Augustine's colleague, Quintasius,
see Ep. 64.3 (CSEL 34, 231); for Victorinus of Malliana as sub-deacon and Hearer,
see Ep. 236 (CSEL 57, 523), the discovery having taken place sometime after 411.

18. For the claims of Eutychius, see PG 111, 1023. The suspicion of African clergy as
Manichees continued into the sixth century, when Gregory I advised investigating all
African clergy to ensure they were not Manichees before allowing them to enter Italy
(Ep. 2.37).

19. For fuller discussion of Manichaean-catholic détente in North African, see W. H.

C. Frend, "Manichaeism in the Struggle Between Saint Augustine and Petilian of
Constantine," in Augustinus Magister (Paris, 1954), 859-866.

20. Pope Anastasius (s. 399-401) refused to ordain any cleric from "overseas"
(presumably Africa) unless their orthodoxy could be certified by five bishops because
Manichees had been detected in Rome at this time (Liber pontificalis 41.2, ed. L.
Duchesne, vol. 1, 168.3-4). For the law of 425, see C.Th. 16.5.62. For a climate of
anti-Manichaeism in the late fourth and early fifth century, see David G. Hunter,
"Resistance to the Virginal Ideal in Late-Fourth-Century Rome: The Case of
Jovinian," TS 48 (1987):45-64.

21. For private meetings with Manichees, see Serm. 16.5. The theory is summarised in
my "Religious Dissent, Heresy and Households in Late Antiquity," VC 49 (1995): 49-
63, and applied to Rome in "The Topography of Heresy and Dissent in Late Fourth
Century Rome," Historia 44 (1995): 230-49. The profile of private meetings dovetails
nicely with the study of Manichaean disputation by Richard Lim, Public Disputation,
Power, and Social Order in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1995), 70-108. Leo's public condemnation of Manichees is another moment in a long
history of debate. For domestic ascetics and the problematic relationship of rigorist
domestic asceticism and the official establishment, see Peter Brown's essays on
Pelagius in Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine (London: Faber, 1972),
183-207, 208-26, as well as Hunter, "Resistance," 45-64.

22. For example, Serm. 16.2, in reference to Manichees: ". . . not allowed to attack
with open and bloody persecutions . . . for this work he (the devil) has heretics in his
service whom he has led astray from the catholic faith." See also Serm. 17.3.

23. 177C: Humiliter irrepunt, blande capiunt, molliter ligant, latenter occidunt.

24. Virginia Burrus, "The Heretical Woman as Symbol in Alexander, Athanasius,

Epiphanius and Jerome," HTR 84 (1991): 229-48, provides an excellent overview of
the accusations of heretical womanizing in the post-Constantinian period.

25. Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations (New York: Tavistock, 1970), xxv.

26. Max Marwick, "Witchcraft as a Social Strain Gauge," in Witchcraft and Society,
ed. Max Marwick (New York: Penguin, 1982), 293.

27. Douglas, Witchcraft, xxvii. Peter Brown in "Sorcery, Demons, and the Rise of
Christianity from Late Antiquity into the Middle Ages," in Douglas, Witchcraft, 17-
 46, applies this insight to the use of accusations of sorcery in the factional struggle
between the service aristocracy of the later empire and the older aristocratic class. In
this discussion we discover another kind of factionalism that arises for different
reasons, but which similarly is promoted by accusation of heresy.

28. Douglas, Witchcraft, xxviii.

29. Ibid, xxvii. See also Douglas' Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of
Pollution and Taboo (New York: Routledge, Kegan and Paul, 1966), 114-28, where
she shows how concerns regarding the rituals associated with the body symbolize and
mirror social relations.

30. Jean Leclerq presents a useful summary of Leo's sacramental theology in his
introduction to Léon le Grand: Sermons, vol. 1, SC 22 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1964),
40-50.

31. For some of what follows I rely on the sources cited by Van Dam, Leadership and
Community, 81-4.

32. More famous examples of pagan charges include Celsus' accusation cited in
Origen, Contra Celsum 6.27, 40, and that of Caecilius in Minucius
Felix, Octavius 9.7. The report of martyrdom of Christians at Lugdunum and Vienna
includes a charge of Oedipal intercourse (Eusebius H.e. 5.1.14). Irenaeus is a good
example of a heresiologist quick to charge his gnostic opponents with philandering
(especially, A.h. 1.13.1-7). For further discussion of these kinds of charges, see A.
Henrichs, "Pagan Ritual and the Alleged Crimes of the Early Christians: A
Reconsideration," inKyriakon: Festschrift Johannes Quasten I (Münster, 1970), 18-
25, and R. M. Grant, "Charges of Immorality against Various Religious Groups in
Antiquity," Studies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions Presented to Gilles
Quispel (Leiden, 1981), 161-70.

33. I. M. Lewis, "A Structural Approach to Witchcraft and Spirit-possession," in

Dougals, Witchcraft, 293-309 at 301.

34. Thus Augustine darkly alludes to the confession of Manichees of immoral

activities: Ursus the tribune "with difficulty compelled Eusebia, some kind of
Manichaean nun" (Tunc Eusebiam quandam Manichaeam quasi sanctimonialem . . .
vix confiteri) to admit her sordid activities (46.72-3); cf. Caspar, Geschichte des
Papstums, 433-34, who is similarly inclined to think that torture was used to gain a
confession.

35. "Instant Millennium: The Sociology of African Witchcraft," in

Douglas, Witchcraft, 129-40, at 130.

36. Ibid., 130. There is good evidence that trials of Manichees had by late antiquity
become ritualized; "Commonitorium quomodo sit agendum cum Manichaeis qui
convertuntur" (PL 42.1153-6), attributed to Augustine, outlines a procedure of
accusation and confession, as does, more generally, "Forma epistolae quam dat
episcopus conversis" (PL 65.28-30). It is clear from Leo's letters that he also has a
 clearly marked procedure for receiving public confession (for example, Ep. 18.1,
where one is loosely outlined).

37. See H. R. Trevor-Roper, "The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and

Seventeenth Centuries," in Religion, the Reformation and Social Change (London:
MacMillan, 1967), 50-192, at 119ff., where witchcraft mythology is described as a
self-fulfilling prophecy.

38. Ep. 4.1, PL 54.610B (with reference to Ez 3.17): quae si non qua debemus
vigilantia resecemus, illi qui nos speculatores esse voluit excusare non
possumus; Ep. 167.2, 1201B: Quis . . . latronibus obsistet et furibus, si speculatorem
in prospectu explorationis locatum, ab intentione sollicitudinis amor quietis abducat?

39. Ep. 6.1, PL 54.617A: ad exercendae sollicitudinis vigilantiam officii nostri

consideratione compellimur ut in speculis; with reference to Leo, Ep. 68.1, 888B: he
stands quasi in quadam charitatis specula constituti apostolica illa cura ac
sollicitudine conclamatis.

40. For example, Ep. 16.1, 695C: Divinis praeceptis et apostolicis monitis incitamur
ut pro omnium Ecclesiarum statu impigro vigilemus affectu, ac si quid usquam
reprehensioni invenitur obnoxium, celeri sollicitudine, aut ab ignorantiae imperitia,
aut a praesumptionis usurpatione revocemus; also Ep. 4.1; 7.1, 2 (with reference to
Man-ichees); 67; 120.6; 136; 138; 143; 153.

41. Ep. 6.3, 618A: gubernacula pervigil tene, et mentis tuae oculos per omnia quae
curae tuae videas injuncta circumfer.

42. Ep. 6.1, 617B: et pro voto nostro currentibus rebus nostrum commodemus
assensum, et ea quae depravari aliqua usurpatione perspicimus, adhibitae
coercitionis remediis corrigamus.

43. Serm. 16.6, 179C: pro commendatis sibi a Domino ovibus indesinenter pastorales
praetendit excubias.

44. Especially, 7.2, 622A: debetis et potestis sollicitudine vigiletis ad investigandos

eos, necubi occultandi se reperiant facultatem.

45. Serm. 40.2, 268C: Semper quidem tibi, O anima Christiana, vigilandum contra
salutis tuae adversarium fuit, ne ullus pateret locus tentatoris insidiis; sed modo tibi
major cautio et sollicitior est adhibenda prudentia, quando idem hostis tuus acriori
saevit invidia; also, Serm. 74.5.

46. 281B: multa nobis vigilantia laborandum est ut cordis nostri receptaculum tanto
hospite non sit indignum. . . . ita jugi oportet sollicitudine praecaveri ne quid in
nostris animis incompositum, ne quid inveniatur immundum.

47. 286A: Si autem, quod experimentis probatur, talis conditio est eorum qui
concupiscentiis renituntur, qui iracundiae motibus reluctantur, et ipsarum quoque
cogitationum arcana castigant, ut numquam possint in cordibus suis non invenire
quod reprobent, et saepe aut fallantur occultis, aut graventur alienis; considerandum
 est hoc in tempore attentius, quae vitia, quae aegritudines, quantaque sint vulnera,
quibus austerior sit adhibenda medicina; cf. also Serm. 48.

48. 266B: Circumspiciat se omnis anima Christiana, et severo examine cordis sui
interna discutiat. Videat ne quid ibi discordiae inhaeserit, ne quid cupiditatis
insederit.

49. In his advice to retreat for self-examination Leo echoes pagan ideals; for
discussion of examen conscientiae in pagan and Christian authors, see Pierre
Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique (Paris: Études Augustiniennes,
1981); Ilsetraut Hadot, Seneca und die griechisch-römische Tradition der
Seelenleitung (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1969), and Paul Rabbow, Seelenführung:
Methodik der Exercitien in der Antike (Munich, 1954).

50. Serm. 48.3, 300A: Discutiant ergo se fidelium mentes, et intimos sui cordis
affectus vera examinatione dijudicent.

51. 264A: non aliter nos praevalere posse adversariis nostris, nisi praevaluerimus et
nobis. Sunt enim intra nosmetipsos multa certamina, et aliud caro adversus spiritum,
aliud adversus carnem spiritus concupiscit.

52. 215A: Accusantes enim nosmetipsos confessionibus nostris.

53. For care of the self amongst the pagans, see Michel Foucault, The Care of the Self,
trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage), 69-96; for Christian care of self, see my
"Clement of Alexandria and the Care of the Self," JAAR 72 (1995): 719-45.

54. For fuller discussion of ocular culture in late antiquity, see Elizabeth Clark, "Sex,
Shame and Rhetoric: En-Gendering Early Christian Ethics," JAAR 59 (1991): 221-
246, at 228-29.

55. Foucault, Discipline, 170-71; for panopticism generally, see 195-228.

56. Serm. 71.6, 389D: Et quia antiquorum morborum difficilis et tarda curatio est,
tanto velocius adhibeantur remedia, quanto recentiora sunt vulnera; also, Serm. 42.1.

57. For the tradition of Jesus as physician, see, generally, H. Leclercq,

"Médecins," Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie (Paris: Librairie
Letouzey et Ané, 1933), vol. 11, 157ff. Leo may reflect Augustine's influence in his
development of the motif, for which, see Rudolph Arbesmann, "Christ the Medicus
humilis in St. Augustine," Augustinus Magister 4 (1954): 623-29.

58. Thus Serm. 9.4, 163B: "It is naught but an act of piety to disclose the hiding
places of the wicked"; also Serm. 16.6, 179C: prayers, alms and fasts are made holier
(sacratius) by the act of devotion (devotionem) of searching out Manichees.