International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Holger Hespen
Central European University, Budapest, Hungary; 
[e-mail]
Does the Soul Need a Body? The Late 6
th
Century Debates 
about the Interaction between the Living and the Dead
In the last decade, the idea of a universal acceptance of the cult of saints in late Antiquity has 
been questioned by scholars. It has been shown that opponents of the cult (or some of its aspects) 
denied the possibility of an activity of the souls of the saints in the afterlife, let alone an activity 
that could affect the realm of the living. In his work “De statu animarum post mortem”, Eustratius 
of Constantinople, pupil of the famous patriarch Eutychius, refutes such doubts, referring to the 
authority of Scripture and the Church Fathers.
Eustratius’ work is, however, not just a defense of the established practice of the cult of saints. It also 
offers an insight into a heated theological debate about the relationship between body and soul and the 
consequences of its interpretation. Can the soul be active without the body or not, and if so, what kind 
of body is necessary for this activity? For Eustratius’ opponents, it seems to be clear that the death of the 
body leaves the soul without the vehicle it needs for action, and as a result any appearance of a saint on 
earth cannot be real. Eustratius, however, as a champion of the cult of saints, has to defend the idea that 
there is a possibility for the souls to be active in the physical realm even without the earthly body.
In order to convince his opponents, Eustratius provides examples that are supposed to illustrate 
a possible exchange between the two realms. He offers a theological explanation for this: in his 

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opinion, the souls of the saints are capable of these actions because they already enter the angelic 
state right after the departure from the body. As this recalls Origen’s teaching about the souls, it is 
not surprising that Eustratius is eager to emphasize its orthodoxy with frequent references to the 
fathers, mostly the Cappadocians.
Eustratius’ emphasis on the real presence of the disembodied souls and of the angels in visions 
leads to a problem: how can anything incorporeal be perceived in a vision with our corporeal senses? 
This question was discussed by other contemporaries as well: John Philoponus for example solves it 
with the introduction of a pneumatic body, similar to the Platonic ochema. Eustratius is of course 
aware of the consequences of a strict incorporeality for the cult of saints; he tries to solve it by claiming 
that the saints’ souls “create imprints”, “not physical, but nevertheless true ones”. It remains unclear, 
however, whether such action requires a certain kind of subtle body in Eustratius’ thought as well.
This controversy about the relationship between the body and the soul results from a broader 
intellectual interest in questions about corporeality and incorporeality in the second half of the 6
th
century. Famously, such questions are at stake in the debate about aphthartodocetism, and in the 
quarrel between Eutychius of Constantinople and Gregory the Great about the resurrection body. 
As a close associate of Eutychius, Eustratius spent large parts of his life in these circles. It is clear 
from his works that he was shaped by the teachings of his admired teacher and that he tried to 
defend them by all means against fierce criticism. By examining Eustratius’ background and setting 
it into relation with his argumentation in defense of the cult of the saints, this paper intends to 
clarify his ideas about the relationship between body and soul post mortem and its consequences 
for the interaction between the living and the dead.