I am a great supporter of interdisciplinary, collaborative work where experts from different backgrounds can contribute to our understanding of a topic. The greatest benefit is often sharing knowledge with those in different fields who may not otherwise encounter each other’s knowledge base in the traditional publications of certain fields. Some collaborative edited collections work better than others, often depending upon the breadth of contributions and the degree to which the expertise of the editors is sufficiently comprehensive to cover all the contributions. If not, then some papers may be of higher quality than others.
The aims of this volume according to the editors were to demonstrate some of the many ways in which wounds, wounding and wound healing were experienced and understood within medieval society. It comprises ten articles submitted following a symposium on wounds in the Middle Ages that was held at the University of Manchester in 2011. The two editors come from a background in art history and church history. The articles have been grouped together into sections on particular themes.
The editors should be applauded for including articles on a very broad range of topics related to wounds. There were a number of strong papers with interesting original sources and a clear message relevant to the theme of the volume. Cordelia Warr wrote of the spontaneous wounds that matched those of Jesus of Nazareth indicating the sainthood of worthy people, and how medieval people felt they could differentiate genuine divine signs from self-inflicted fakes. Louise Wilson discussed miracle healing and humoural healing in relation to St. Edmund of Abindgon. Karine van’t Land’s interesting essay explored Avicenna’s explanation of wound healing, even if the title did not highlight this. Mary Yearl’s article on medicine for the wounded soul was a study of the way in which the clergy used medical terms as metaphors to explain challenges to spiritual purity, and methods of curing the wounded soul. Hannah Priest explored the twelfth-century romance poetry of Chrétien de Troyes as sources for the attitudes to wounds and their treatment, their symbolism, and views on dishonourable wounding and torture. Jenny Benham compared the eleventh- to thirteenth-century laws in Scandinavia and England that concerned wounds in order to highlight the regulations on how they should be inspected, the procedure by which cases should be brought, the resulting compensation and punishments that could be applied to the perpetrator. Maria Patijn showed how the use of the crossbow to apply a sudden force to extract embedded weapons was probably more common than was previously thought. Lila Yawn completed the volume with a critique of the widely held view of the modern media that the medieval period was the most bloody in our past, arguing that in Europe there was probably little difference in the risk of being wounded at any time from the Roman to early modern period.
The strengths of this volume are its interdisciplinary nature, and the complementary ways in which medieval wounds can be viewed from different medieval and modern perspectives. Areas that might have been done differently include ensuring that there was a focus on primary medieval sources as evidence rather than secondary works (Chapter 1), that all papers had wounds as the focus of their narrative (Chapter 3), and that the proportions of original source material and of modern interpretations of that material are appropriately balanced to justify an article (in Chapter 8, the source concerning John le Spicer is extremely limited). However, we do all appreciate that the nature of edited volumes such as this will reflect the range of people who put themselves forward to take part in the original symposium. It is also entirely understandable that, even with two editors, in interdisciplinary volumes there will be some themes included that fall outside the expertise of the editors. Bearing this in mind, I think Anne Kirkham and Cordelia Warr have done well to bring together this interesting volume. I enjoyed the book, and am sure that all readers of Medical History will find chapters that educate and enlighten them.
