Meg Leja's masterful study is less about medicine in the early decades of the ninth century per se and more about the body's relationship to the soul and what medical attention to the body revealed about the symbiosis of body and soul. Embodying the Soul effectively demonstrates that “it was the ninth century that saw the true fulfillment of an inherited belief that medicine naturally paired with theology to treat the afflictions of body and soul, respectively” (12). Leja builds her argument block by block in a well-disciplined presentation of the evidence. A major strength of the book is the quality of the research, both primary and secondary. Leja has examined over fifty manuscripts from twenty libraries and archives. She works with little-known or rarely examined materials such as “deontological texts” (138). One does not find the expected dependence on traditional herbals and zootherapeutical works; rather Leja brings to bare theoretical works by classical authors along with lay and ecclesiastical letters, treatises, and handbooks.
Leja's elegant prose makes complex concepts accessible to specialists and amateurs. Her frequent clever turns of phrase are delightful. For example, she hesitates to “feed Galen's already oversized ego” (167) and refers to the “relationship between the soul and its own little home” (44).
In unit one, “Ever Closer Union,” Leja documents a concern that emerged in the early the ninth century regarding the nature of the body and its relationship to the soul. Inasmuch as there was “no definitive model of how the body functioned” (167), positions about it were diverse and inconsistent. Carolingian intellectuals held that the human being was bipartite. The soul was superior to the body, which, without the governance of the spirit, became unruly. The soul was essentially incorporeal, and it was centered in the heart, head, or throughout the body in the blood. Such views begged the question as to how an incorporeal essence could be contained by a physical entity, that is the body. Leja turns to four texts that document a discursive shift in Carolingian attitudes about the union of body and soul and the growing opinion that the body had a valuable role to play in the path to perfection. For Paulinus of Aquileia, the body and soul existed as a binary, but they were not on a par. The irredeemable body had always to be subdued by the soul. The second text Leja brings to bear on the composition of the human personality is the handbook Dhuoda wrote for her son in which she maintains that the body and soul work together in a harmonious relationship. Alcuin and Jonas of Orléans argued that the body and soul were parallel and that an innate and sanctified relationship existed between the two, but the body should always obey the soul.
Chapter three examines the dialectical tension regarding the meaning of illness. On one level, sickness was the result of sin, a spur to living a better life, divine punishment, or, as in the case of Job, a test of commitment to God. On another level, disease was understood in somatic terms as an imbalance. Leja puts right any notion that early medieval medicine was devoid of theory. The humoral makeup of the body was well understood in the ninth century. Illness had traditionally been an indication of the purity of one who mortified the body to allow the soul to shine. However, Carolingians were not impressed with the sickly saint or anyone who exerted individualistic and prideful ascetic virtuosity. Physical and spiritual health went hand-in-hand.
Unit two, “Medicine for Body and Soul,” begins with an apology from the preface to the Lorscher Arzneibuch. It was crucial that medicine be reconciled to its roots in pagan therapeutics so that “a pagan heritage . . . can be turned to Christian ends” (104) and align with Carolingian correctio. Leja discusses how the “magical” contents of medicinal works were neutralized by excising and altering questionable material and unapologetically spoiling pagan texts. Chapter five focuses on what can be known about medici in Carolingian society, which is not a lot. Doctoring was not “a profession but rather a skill set” (137). There were physicians at royal, episcopal, and aristocratic courts, and we also have evidence of well-educated itinerant lay physicians. Leja argues against the notion of Mönchsmedizin, according to which the transmission of medical texts and the practice of medicine were restricted to the monastery. However, I note that most of our information about those with medical training does come from monasteries.
Unit three, “Medical Order and Disorder for Self and Society,” places medicine within the liberal arts tradition, particularly with reference to astronomy. Leja centers her remarks on the works of the Astronomer and Walafrid Strabo, whose study of the natural world positioned the individual within a complex of planetary patterns. Medical recipes were found in astronomical charts, computus manuals, and prognosticatory literature. Lay elites had access to medical writings and understood that good health was both desirable and the individual's responsibility. Gluttony was deleterious for the stomach, “cooker of food” (197), and for the soul. Good dietary procedures such as fasting, bloodletting, purging, and taking “a little of wine for the sake of your stomach” (1 Tim 5:23) were all forms of worship.
Leja's understanding of magic could be better fleshed out. She contends that the Carolingians had a “fervent preoccupation” (114) with magic and magicians. In fact, the Carolingians were considerably less troubled about magic than early church or Merovingian Christians had been. All genres of literature, including major reform legislation, gave relatively short shrift to the problem of sorcery. Further, Leja might well have defined how she is using the word “magic.” She conflates “pagan heritage” and “magic,” which are quite distinct, and in one instance she inexplicably implies that using wolf feces in a recipe constituted magic.
In sum, the thesis of Embodying the Soul is original and substantiated by stellar research. The book is an important contribution to the history of early medieval medicine and to understanding the ninth-century theology of body and soul. No study of medieval medicine can afford to ignore this work.
