The Care of the Brain in Early Christianity

The Care of the Brain in Early Christianity is a history of the brain during late antiquity. Through close attention to ancient medical material and its transformation in Christian texts, Jessica Wright traces the roots of cerebral subjectivity—the identification of the individual self with the brain, a belief very much still with us today—to tensions within early Christianity over the brain's role in self-governance and its inherent vulnerability. Examining how early Christians appropriated medical ideas, Wright tracks how they used the vulnerability of the brain as a trope for teaching ascetic practices, therapeutics of the soul, and the path to salvation. Bringing a medical lens to the religious discourse, this text demonstrates that rather than rejecting medical traditions, early Christianity developed through creatively integrating them.