Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T04:34:16.448Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
Series:   Elements in England in the Early Medieval World

Health and the Body in Early Medieval England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2024

Caroline Batten
Caroline Batten
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania

Summary

This Element explores ideas about the sick and healthy body in early medieval England from the seventh to the eleventh centuries, proposing that surviving Old English texts offer consistent and coherent ideas about how human bodies work and how disease operates. A close examination of these texts illuminates the ways early medieval people thought about their embodied selves and the place of humanity in a fallen world populated by hostile supernatural forces. This Element offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to medical practice and writing in England before the Norman Conquest, draws on dozens of remedies, charms, and prayers to illustrate cultural concepts of sickness and health, provides a detailed discussion of the way impairment and disability were treated in literature and experienced by individuals, and concludes with a case study of a saint who died of a devastating illness while fighting demons in the fens of East Anglia.
Get access

Keywords

Old Englishhistory of medicinehistory of the bodydisabilitySt Guthlac
Type
Element
Information
Series: Elements in England in the Early Medieval World
Online ISBN: 9781009246248
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 12 December 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Ælfric of Eynsham. Ed. Clemoes, Peter. Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The First Series. Oxford: EETS/Oxford University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Ælfric of Eynsham. Ed. Godden, Malcolm. Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series. Oxford: EETS/Oxford University Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Ælfric of Eynsham. Ed. Pope, John Collins. Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection. 2 vols. London: EETS/Oxford University Press, 1968.Google Scholar
Ælfric of Eynsham. Ed. Skeat, Walter W.. Ælfric’s Lives of Saints. 2 vols. London: EETS/Oxford University Press, 1966.Google Scholar
Ælfric Bata. Ed. Gwara, Scott, trans. Porter, David. Anglo-Saxon Conversations: The Colloquies of Ælfric Bata. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Asser. Trans. Keynes, Simon and Lapidge, Michael. Asser. Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.Google Scholar
Asser. Ed. Stevenson, William Henry. Asser’s Life of King Alfred. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904.Google Scholar
Bede. Eds. Bertram, and Mynors, R. A. B.. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Historica ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Bede. Eds. and trans. Foley, W. Trent and Holder, Arthur G.. Bede: A Biblical Miscellany. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bede. Trans. Kendall, Calvin B.. On Genesis (In Genesim). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Bede. Trans. Kendall, Calvin B. and Wallis, Faith. On the Nature of Things and On Times (De Natura Rerum and De Temporum Ratione). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Bischoff, Bernhard, and Lapidge, Michael, eds. Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Byrhtferth of Ramsey. Eds. Lapidge, Michael and Baker, Peter S.. Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion. Oxford: EETS/Oxford University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Carnicelli, Thomas A., ed. King Alfred’s Version of St Augustine’s Soliloquies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Chardonnens, Lászlo Sándor, ed. Anglo-Saxon Prognostics 900–1100: Study and Texts. Leiden: Brill, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clayton, Mary, and Magennis, Hugh, eds. The Old English Lives of St Margaret. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Cockayne, Thomas Oswald, ed. and trans. Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England. 3 vols. London: Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1864–6.Google Scholar
Colgrave, Bertram, ed. and trans. Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert: A Life by an Anonymous Monk of Lindisfarne and Bede’s Prose Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940.Google Scholar
Felix. Ed. and trans. Colgrave, Bertram. Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956.Google Scholar
Godden, Malcolm, and Irvine, Susan, eds. The Old English Boethius: An Edition of the Old English Versions of Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Gonser, Paul, ed. Untersuchungen zum angelsächsischen Prosaleben des hl. Guthlac. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1909.Google Scholar
Günzel, Beate, ed. Ælfwine’s Prayerbook: London, British Library, Cotton Titus D. XXVI/ XXVII. London: Boydell Press for the Henry Bradshaw Society, 1993.Google Scholar
Hanslik, Rudolphus, ed. Benedicti Regula. Vindobonae: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1960.Google Scholar
Krapp, George Philip, and van Kirk Dobbie, Elliot, eds. Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. 6 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1931–53.Google Scholar
Lantfred. Translatio et miracula Sancti Swithuni, in Lapidge, Michael, ed. The Cult of St Swithun. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Liebermann, Felix, ed. Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen. 3 vols. Halle: Niemeyer, 1898–1916.Google Scholar
Morris, Richard, ed. The Blickling Homilies of the Tenth Century from the Marquis of Lothian’s Unique MS AD 971. London: EETS/N. Trübner, 1880.Google Scholar
Niles, John D., and D’Aronco, Maria A., ed. and trans. Medical Writings from Early Medieval England, Volume I: The Old English Herbal, Lacnunga, and Other Texts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2023.Google Scholar
O’Brien O’Keeffe, Katherine. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 5: MS C. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000.Google Scholar
Orchard, Nicholas, ed. The Leofric Missal. London: Boydell Press for the Henry Bradshaw Society, 2002.Google Scholar
Pettit, Edward, ed. and trans. Anglo-Saxon Remedies, Charms, and Prayers from British Library MS Harley 585: The Lacnunga. 2 vols. Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Roberts, Jane, ed. The Guthlac Poems of the Exeter Book. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Scragg, Donald G., ed. The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts. Oxford: EETS/Oxford University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Sweet, Henry, ed. and trans. King Alfred’s West Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care. London: EETS/Oxford University Press, 1909.Google Scholar
Symons, Thomas, ed. and trans. Regularis Concordia. London: Nelson, 1953.Google Scholar
Tangl, Michael, ed. Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus. Berlin: Weidmannsche buchhandlung, 1916.Google Scholar
de Vriend, Hubert Jan, ed. The Old English Herbarium and Medicina de Quadrupedibus. London: EETS/Oxford University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
William of Malmesbury. Eds. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, Thomson, R. M. and Winterbottom, Michael. De gestis regum Anglorum I. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998–9.Google Scholar
Williamson, Craig. The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Winterbottom, Michael, and Lapidge, Michael, ed. and trans. The Early Lives of St Dunstan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.Google Scholar
Wright, Cyril, ed. Bald’s Leechbook: British Museum Royal Manuscript 12D.xvii. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1955.Google Scholar
Wulfstan. Ed. Bethurum, Dorothy. The Homilies of Wulfstan. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jakobsson, Ármann. ‘Beware of the Elf: A Note on the Evolving Meaning of Álfar’. Folklore 126 (2015): 215–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Arsdall, Anne. ‘Medical Training in Anglo-Saxon England: An Evaluation of the Evidence’. In Form and Content of Instruction in Anglo-Saxon England in the Light of Contemporary Manuscript Evidence, eds. Lendinara, Patrizia, Lazzari, Loredana, and D’Aronco, Maria Amalia, 415–34. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007.Google Scholar
Arthur, Ciaran. ‘Charms’, Liturgies and Secret Rites in Early Medieval England. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Atherton, Mark. ‘The Figure of the Archer in Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon Psalter’. Neophilologus 77 (1993): 653–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ayoub, Lois. ‘Old English Wæta and the Medical Theory of the Humours’. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 94 (1995): 332–46.Google Scholar
Debby., Banham ‘A Millennium in Medicine? New Medical Texts and Ideas in England in the Eleventh Century’. In Anglo-Saxons: Studies Presented to Cyril Roy Hart, eds. Keynes, Simon and Smyth, Alfred P., 230–42. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Debby, Banham. ‘Dun, Oxa, and Pliny the Great Physician: Attribution and Authority in Old English Medical Texts’. Social History of Medicine 24 (2011): 57–73.Google Scholar
Debby, Banham. ‘England Joins the Medical Mainstream: New Texts in Eleventh-Century Manuscripts’. In Anglo-Saxon England and the Continent, ed. Sauer, Hans and Story, Joanna, with Wexenberger, Gaby, 341–52. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2011.Google Scholar
Debby, Banham. ‘Medicine at Bury in the Time of Abbot Baldwin’. In Bury St Edmunds and the Norman Conquest, ed. Licence, Tom, 226–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Banham, Debby, and Voth, Christine. ‘The Diagnosis and Treatment of Wounds in the Old English Medical Collections: Anglo-Saxon Surgery?’ In Wounds and Wound Repair in Medieval Culture, eds. Tracy, Larissa and DeVries, Kelly, 153–74. Leiden: Brill, 2015.Google Scholar
Barley, Nigel. ‘Anglo-Saxon Magico-Medicine’. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 3 (1972): 67–76.Google Scholar
Batten, Caroline R. ‘Dark Riders: Disease, Sexual Violence, and Gender Performance in the Old English Mære and Old Norse Mara’. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 120:3 (2021): 352–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Batten, Caroline R. ‘Lazarus, Come Forth: Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Life Course of Early Medieval English Women’. In Early Medieval English Life Courses: Cultural-Historical Perspectives, eds. Porck, Thijs and Soper, Harriet, 140–58. Leiden: Brill, 2022.Google Scholar
Bierbaumer, Peter. Der Botanische Wortschatz des Altenglischen. 3 vols. Bern: H. Lang, 1975.Google Scholar
Biggs, Frederick M. ‘Unities in the Old English Guthlac B’. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 89 (1990): 155–65.Google Scholar
Blair, John. The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bohling, Solange. ‘Death, Disability, and Diversity: An Investigation of Physical Impairment and Differential Mortuary Treatment in Anglo-Saxon England’. Unpublished doctoral dissertation: University of Bradford, 2020.Google Scholar
Bolotina, Julia. ‘Medicine and Society in Anglo-Saxon England: The Social and Practical Context of Bald’s Leechbook and Lacnunga’. Unpublished doctoral thesis: University of Cambridge, 2016.Google Scholar
Bonser, Wilfrid. The Medical Background of Anglo-Saxon England: A Study in History, Psychology, and Folklore. London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1963.Google Scholar
Borsje, Jacqueline. ‘A Spell Called Éle’. In Ulidia 3, eds. Toner, Gregory and Mathúna, Séamus Mac, 193–212. Berlin: Curach Bhán, 2013.Google Scholar
Brackmann, Rebecca. ‘“It Will Help Him Wonderfully”: Placebo and Meaning Responses in Early Medieval English Medicine’. Speculum 97 (2022): 1012–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brennessel, Barbara, Drout, Michael, and Gravel, Robyn. ‘A Reassessment of the Efficacy of Anglo-Saxon Medicine’. Anglo-Saxon England 34 (2005): 183–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooks, Britton. Restoring Creation: The Natural World in the Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives of Cuthbert and Guthlac. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019.Google Scholar
Brownlee, Emma. ‘“In the Resurrection No Weakness Will Remain”: Perceptions of Disability in Christian Anglo-Saxon England’. Archaeological Review from Cambridge 31 (2017): 53–71.Google Scholar
Bruce Wallace, Karen. ‘Intersections of Gender and Disability for Women in Early Medieval England: A Preliminary Investigation’. English Studies 101 (2020): 41–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calder, Daniel. ‘Theme and Strategy in Guthlac B’. Papers on Language and Literature 8 (1972): 227–43.Google Scholar
Cameron, Malcolm L. Anglo-Saxon Medicine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Malcolm L. ‘Bald’s Leechbook and Cultural Interactions in Anglo-Saxon England’. Anglo-Saxon England 19 (1990): 5–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Malcolm L. ‘Bald’s Leechbook: Its Sources and Their Use in Its Compilation’. Anglo-Saxon England 12 (1983): 153–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Malcolm L. ‘The Sources of Medical Knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England’. Anglo-Saxon England 11 (1982): 135–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cavell, Megan. Weaving Words and Binding Bodies: The Poetics of Human Experience in Old English Literature. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, Catherine. Writing Power in Anglo-Saxon England: Texts, Hierarchies, Economies. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawford, Sally. ‘Differentiation in the Later Anglo-Saxon Burial Ritual on the Basis of Mental or Physical Impairment: A Documentary Perspective’. In Burial in Later Anglo-Saxon England, eds. Buckberry, Jo and Cherryson, Annia, 93–102. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010.Google Scholar
D’Aronco, Maria Amalia. ‘Anglo-Saxon Plant Pharmacy and the Latin Medical Tradition’. In From Earth to Art: The Many Aspects of the Plant-World in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Biggam, C. P., 133–51. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003.Google Scholar
Dendle, Peter. Demon Possession in Anglo-Saxon England. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2014.Google Scholar
DiNapoli, Robert. An Index of Theme and Image to the Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church. Hockwold-cum-Wilton: Anglo-Saxon Books, 1995.Google Scholar
Doyle, Conan. ‘Anglo-Saxon Medicine and Disease: A Semantic Approach’. Unpublished doctoral thesis: University of Cambridge, 2017.Google Scholar
Fay, Jacqueline. ‘The Farmacy: Wild and Cultivated Plants in Early Medieval England’. ISLE 28 (2021): 186–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fowler, Roger. ‘A Late Old English Handbook for the Use of a Confessor’. Anglia 83 (1965): 1–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garner, Lori Ann. ‘Deaf Studies, Oral Tradition, and Old English Texts’. Exemplaria 29 (2017): 21–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garner, Lori Ann. Hybrid Healing: Old English Remedies and Medical Texts. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gay, David E. ‘On the Christianity of Incantations’. In Charms and Charming in Europe, ed. Roper, Jonathan, 32–46. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerould, Gordon Hall. ‘The Old English Poems on St Guthlac and Their Latin Source’. Modern Language Notes 32 (1917): 77–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godden, Malcolm. ‘Anglo-Saxons on the Mind’. In Old English Literature: Critical Essays, ed. Liuzza, Roy M., 284–314. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grattan, J. H. G., and Singer, Charles. Anglo-Saxon Magic and Medicine: Illustrated Specifically from the Semi-Pagan Text ‘Lacnunga’. London: Geoffrey Cumberlege for the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, 1952.Google Scholar
Hadley, Dawn M. ‘Burying the Socially and Physically Distinctive in Later Anglo-Saxon England’. In Burial in Later Anglo-Saxon England, eds. Buckberry, Jo and Cherryson, Annia, 101–13. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010.Google Scholar
Hall, Alaric. ‘Calling the Shots: The Old English Remedy Gif hors ofscoten sie and Anglo- Saxon “Elf-shot”’. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 106 (2005): 195–209.Google Scholar
Hall, Alaric. Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: Matters of Belief, Health, Gender, and Identity. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Allan Richard. ‘Investigating Anglo-Saxon Plant Life and Plant Use: The Archaeobotanical Angle’. In From Earth to Art: The Many Aspects of the Plant-World in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Biggam, C. P., 101–8. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003.Google Scholar
Harrison, Freya, Roberts, Aled E. L., Gabrilska, Rebecca, et al. ‘A 1000-Year-Old Antimicrobial Remedy with Antistaphylococcal Activity’. Molecular Biology & Microbiology 6 (2015): 1–7.Google Scholar
Hill, Thomas D. ‘Invocation of the Trinity and the Tradition of the Lorica in Old English Poetry’. Speculum 56 (1981): 259–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hines, John. ‘Practical Runic Literacy in the Late Anglo-Saxon Period: Inscriptions on Lead Sheet’. In Anglo-Saxon Micro-Texts, eds. Lenker, Ursula and Kornexl, Lucia, 29–60. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horden, Peregrine. ‘The Millennium Bug: Health and Medicine around the Year 1000’. Social History of Medicine 13 (2000): 201–19.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huggins, Peter J. ‘Excavation of Belgic and Romano-British Farm with Middle Saxon Cemetery and Churches at Nazeingbury, Essex, 1975-6’. Essex Archaeology and History 10 (1978): 29–117.Google Scholar
Jesch, Judith, and Lee, Christina. ‘Healing Runes’. In Viking Encounters: Proceedings of the 18th Viking Congress, eds. Pedersen, Anne and Sindbæk, Søren M., 386–98. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Jolly, Karen L. ‘On the Margins of Orthodoxy: Devotional Formulas and Protective Prayers in Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 41’. In Signs on the Edge: Space, Text and Margin in Medieval Manuscripts, eds. Bremmer, Rolf H. and Keefer, Sarah Larratt, 135–84. Paris: Peeters, 2007.Google Scholar
Jolly, Karen L. Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Jolly, Karen L. ‘Prayers from the Field: Practical Protection and Demonic Defence in Anglo-Saxon England’. Traditio 61 (2006): 95–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karras, Ruth Mazo. Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing unto Others. 3rd ed. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kershaw, Paul. ‘Illness, Power and Prayer in Asser’s Life of King Alfred’. Early Medieval Europe 10 (2001): 201–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kesling, Emily. Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020.Google Scholar
Künzel, Stefanie. ‘Concepts of Infectious, Contagious, and Epidemic Disease in Anglo- Saxon England’. Unpublished doctoral thesis: University of Nottingham, 2018.Google Scholar
Lapidge, Michael. ‘The School of Theodore and Hadrian’. Anglo-Saxon England 15 (1986): 45–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Christina. ‘Abled, Disabled, Enabled: An Attempt to Define “Disability” in Anglo-Saxon England’. Werkstattgeschichte 65 (2013): 41–54.Google Scholar
Lee, Christina. ‘Disability’. In A Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Studies, eds. Stodnick, Jacqueline and Trilling, Renée, 23–38. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Christina. ‘Disease’. In The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, eds. Hinton, David, Crawford, Sally, and Hamerow, Helena, 704–26. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Liuzza, Roy M. ‘Prayers and/or Charms Addressed to the Cross’. In Cross and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies in Honour of George Hardin Brown, eds. Jolly, Karen L., Karkov, Catherine E., and Keefer, Sarah Larratt, 276–320. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Lockett, Leslie. Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Low, Soon Ai. ‘Mental Cultivation in Guthlac B’. Neophilologus 81 (1997): 625–36.Google Scholar
Lucas, Peter J. ‘Easter, The Death of St Guthlac, and the Liturgy for Holy Saturday in Felix’s Vita and the Old English Guthlac B’. Medium Ævum 61 (1992): 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKinney, Loren. Medical Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magennis, Hugh. Images of Community in Old English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Audrey., Meaney ‘Extra-Medical Elements in Anglo-Saxon Medicine’. Social History of Medicine 24 (2011): 41–56.Google Scholar
Audrey., Meaney ‘The Anglo-Saxon View of the Causes of Illness’. In Health, Disease and Healing in Medieval Culture, eds. Campbell, Sheila D., Hall, Bert S., and Klausner, David N., 12–33. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992.Google Scholar
Audrey., Meaney ‘The Practice of Medicine in England in about the Year 1000’. Social History of Medicine 13 (2000): 221–37.Google Scholar
Audrey., Meaney ‘Variant Versions of Old English Medical Remedies and the Compilation of Bald’s Leechbook’. Anglo-Saxon England 13 (1984): 235–68.Google Scholar
Metzler, Irina. Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking about Physical Impairment during the High Middle Ages, c.1100–1400. London: Routledge, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Metzler, Irina. Fools and Idiots? Intellectual Disability in the Middle Ages. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Stephen. ‘Leechbooks, Manuals, and Grimoires: On the Early History of Magical Texts in Scandinavia’. Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 70 (2015): 57–74.Google Scholar
Moffett, Lisa. ‘Food Plants on Archaeological Sites: The Nature of the Archaeobotanical Record’. In The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, eds. Hinton, David, Crawford, Sally, and Hamerow, Helena, 346–60. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Murdoch, Brian. ‘Charms, Recipes, and Prayers’. In German Literature of the Early Middle Ages, ed. Murdoch, Brian, 57–72. Rochester: Camden House, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neville, Jennifer. Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Brien O’Keeffe, Katherine. ‘Body and Law in Late Anglo-Saxon England’. Anglo-Saxon England 27 (1998): 209–32.Google Scholar
Ogura, Michiko. ‘OE Wyrm, Nædre, and Draca’. Journal of English Linguistics 21 (1988): 99–124.Google Scholar
Oliver, Lisi. The Body Legal in Barbarian Law. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olsan, Lea. ‘The Inscription of Charms in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts’. Oral Tradition 14 (1999): 401–19.Google Scholar
Orme, Nicholas, and Webster, Margaret. The English Hospital 1070–1570. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Oswald, Dana. ‘Monaðgecynd and flewsan: Wanted and Unwanted Monthly Courses in Old English Medical Texts’. In Feminist Approaches to Early Medieval English Studies, eds. Norris, Robin, Stephenson, Rebecca, and Trilling, Renée, 223–52. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022.Google Scholar
Parker, Leah Pope. ‘Embodied Lives and Afterlives: Disability and the Eschatological Imaginary in Early Medieval England’. Unpublished doctoral dissertation: University of Wisconsin, 2019.Google Scholar
Paz, James. ‘Magic That Works: Performing Scientia in the Old English Metrical Charms and Poetic Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn’. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 45 (2015): 219–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Porck, Thijs. Old Age in Early Medieval England: A Cultural History. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Pratt, David. ‘The Illnesses of King Alfred the Great’. Anglo-Saxon England 30 (2001): 39–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pulsiano, Phillip. ‘The Prefatory Material of London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius E.xviii’. In Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and Their Heritage, eds. Pulsiano, Phillip and Treharne, Elaine, 85–116. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998.Google Scholar
Rabin, Andrew. ‘Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth: Parent-Child Litigation in Anglo-Saxon England’. In Childhood and Adolescence in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, eds. Rudolf, Winfried and Irvine, Susan, 270–90. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Richards, Mary P. ‘The Body as Text in Early Anglo-Saxon Law’. In Naked before God: Uncovering the Body in Anglo-Saxon England, eds. Withers, Benjamin C. and Wilcox, Jonathan, 97–115. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Roberts, Charlotte, and Cox, Margaret. Health and Disease in Britain: From Prehistory to Present Day. Stroud: Sutton, 2003.Google Scholar
Roberts, Jane. ‘An Inventory of Early Guthlac Materials’. Mediaeval Studies 32 (1970): 193–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roffey, Simon. ‘Medieval Leper Hospitals in England: An Archaeological Perspective’. Medieval Archaeology 56 (2012): 203–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosier, James L. ‘Death and Transfiguration: Guthlac B’. In Philological Essays: Studies in Old and Middle English Language and Literature in Honour of Herbert Dean Meritt, ed. Rosier, James L., 82–92. The Hague: Mouton, 1970.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubin, Stanley. Medieval English Medicine. London: David & Charles, 1974.Google Scholar
Rudolf, Winfried. ‘Anglo-Saxon Preaching on Children’. In Childhood and Adolescence in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, eds. Rudolf, Winfried and Irvine, Susan, 48–70. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Russcher, Anne, and Bremmer, Rolf. ‘For a Broken Limb: Fracture Treatment in Anglo-Saxon England’. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 69 (2012): 145–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sayer, Duncan, and Dickinson, Sam D.. ‘Reconsidering Obstetric Death and Female Fertility in Anglo-Saxon England’. World Archaeology 45 (2013): 285–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shakespeare, Tom. ‘The Social Model of Disability’. In The Disability Studies Reader, ed. Davis, Lennard J., 266–73. New York: Routledge, 2010.Google Scholar
Singer, Julie. ‘Disability and the Social Body’. postmedieval 3 (2012): 135–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skevington, Fay. ‘The Unhal and the Semantics of Anglo-Saxon Disability’. In Social Dimensions of Medieval Disease and Disability, eds. Crawford, Sally and Lee, Christina, 7–14. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2014.Google Scholar
Snyder, Sharon L., and Mitchell, David T.. Cultural Locations of Disability. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snyder, Sharon L., and Mitchell, David T.. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Storms, Godfrid. Anglo-Saxon Magic. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1948.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erin., Sweany ‘Dangerous Voices, Erased Bodies: Reassessing the Old English Wifgemædla and Witches in Leechbook III’. In Feminist Approaches to Early Medieval English Studies, eds. Norris, Robin, Stephenson, Rebecca, and Trilling, Renée, 253–78. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022.Google Scholar
Erin., Sweany ‘The Anglo-Saxon Medical Imagination: Invasion, Conglomeration, and Autonomy’. Unpublished doctoral dissertation: Indiana University, 2017.Google Scholar
Talbot, C. H. Medicine in Medieval England. London: Oldbourne, 1967.Google Scholar
Thacker, Alan. ‘Guthlac and His Life: Felix Shapes the Saint’. In Guthlac: Crowland’s Saint, ed. Roberts, Jane and Thacker, Alan, 1–24. Donnington: Shaun Tyas, 2020.Google Scholar
Thompson, Victoria M. Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Thun, Nils. ‘The Malignant Elves: Notes on Anglo-Saxon Magic and Germanic Myth’. Studia Neophilologica 41 (1969): 378–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Treharne, Elaine M. ‘A Unique Old English Formula for Excommunication from Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 303’. Anglo-Saxon England 24 (1995): 185–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trilling, Renée R. ‘Health and Healing in the Anglo-Saxon World’. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 3:13 (2018): 41–69.Google Scholar
Voigts, Linda E. ‘Anglo-Saxon Plant Remedies and the Anglo-Saxons’. Isis 70 (1979): 250–68.Google ScholarPubMed
Voth, Christine. ‘Women and “Women’s Medicine” in Early Medieval England, from Text to Practice’. In Feminist Approaches to Early Medieval English Studies, eds. Trilling, Renée, Stephenson, Rebecca, and Norris, Robin, 279–315. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wheatley, Edward. Stumbling Blocks before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
William of Malmesbury. Eds. and trans. Mynors, R. A. B., Thomson, R. M. and Winterbottom, Michael. De gestis regum Anglorum I. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998-9.Google Scholar
Wulfstan. Ed. Bethurum, Dorothy. The Homilies of Wulfstan. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bosworth, Joseph, and Toller, T. Northcote, eds. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Based on the Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth and Enlarged by T. N. Toller. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898–1921. https://bosworthtoller.com/.Google Scholar
Cameron, Angus, Amos, Ashley Crandell, Healey, Antonette dePaolo, et al., eds. Dictionary of Old English: A to I Online. Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project, 2018. https://doe.artsci.utoronto.ca/.Google Scholar
Frantzen, Allen J., ed. and trans. ‘Anglo-Saxon Penitentials: A Cultural Database’. www.anglo-saxon.net/penance/index.php.Google Scholar
Healey, Antonette diPaolo, Wilkin, John Price, and Xiang, Xin, eds. Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus. Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project, 2009. https://doe.artsci.utoronto.ca/.Google Scholar

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Health and the Body in Early Medieval England
Available formats
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Health and the Body in Early Medieval England
Available formats
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Health and the Body in Early Medieval England
Available formats
×