Abstracts
Matthew DICKIE
(University of Illinois at Chicago)
Eustratius, presbyter Constantinopolitanus, De statu animarum post mortem
Both in the Greek East and the Latin West the Christian writers who discussed the fate of the soul after death tended to maintain that the spirits of the dead were confined to the Underworld and would only reappear on earth when the last trumpet sounded. Their explanation for the shades that people encountered was that they were not the spirits of the dead, but evil demons that assumed the appearance of ghosts. There are exceptions to the consensus: Origen is one, but he is a Platonist, who supposed that base, earthly desires and passions left a defiling mark on the spirit that made it visible to the living eye. As a Platonist, he will also have taken it for granted that the spirits of persons who had given themselves over to bodily pleasures would be loath in death to leave the body that had been the seat of their pleasures and would, in consequence, have hung about in the vicinity of their grave. The prevailing view, nevertheless, amongst Christian thinkers is that the ghosts of the dead do not wander about on earth after death. It is therefore somewhat surprising to find in the 550’s a presbyter of the Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople writing a tract in which it is argued that the living do have contact with the spirits of the dead and citing the authority of the Old and New Testament and the Fathers of the Church for that position. This paper will attempt to explain why Eustratius felt it necessary to argue that the spirits of the dead and the living did interact.
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