Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent

The Temple of the Greedy Belly: Gluttony’s Tale

This book, “The Temple of the Greedy Belly: Gluttony’s Tale,” studies how early Christians identified the concept of excessive or extravagant eating as an offense against God, and it argues for the significance of the category of gluttony in the formation of Christian culture. This book considers sources from the Latin, Greek, and Syriac traditions to show how gluttony becomes the “gateway sin” in Christian theology, leading to fornication in the individual and avarice in society.

Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent is an associate professor of Historical Theology and Syriac Patristics at Marquette University. She is the author of Missionary Stories and the Formation of the Syriac Churches (Berkeley, 2015) and co-author of The History of Mar Behnam and Sarah: Martyrdom and Monasticism in Medieval Iraq (Piscataway, 2018) and associate editor of syriaca.org. She is the general editor of Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies. She is interested in Early Christianity. She holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Brown University (2009), an MA from the University of Notre Dame (2002), and BA from Gonzaga University (2001). Her research focuses on hagiography, early Christian theology and practice, and Syriac culture and language.