Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T07:21:18.069Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sin and mental illness in the Middle Ages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Jerome Kroll  and
Bernard Bachrach
Jerome Kroll*
Affiliation:
From the Department of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota Medical School, and the Department of History, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Bernard Bachrach
Affiliation:
From the Department of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota Medical School, and the Department of History, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
*
1Address for correspondence: Dr J. Kroll, Box 393 Mayo Memorial Building, University of Minnesota Hospitals, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Synopsis

The modern stereotype that in the Middle Ages there was a general belief that mental illness was caused by sin is reviewed. The authors examined 57 descriptions of mental illness (madness, possession, alcoholism, epilepsy, and combinations thereof) from pre-Crusade chronicles and saints' lives. In only 9 (16%) of these descriptions did the sources attribute the mental illness to sin or wrongdoing, and in these cases the medieval authors appeared to use this attribution for its propaganda value against an enemy of their patron saints, their monastery lands, or their religious values. The medieval sources indicate that the authors were well aware of the proximate causes of mental illness, such as humoral imbalance, intemperate diet and alcohol intake, overwork, and grief. The banality that, since God causes all things he also causes mental illness, was only used by medieval authors under special circumstances and in a minority of cases. It does not constitute evidence of superstitious and primitive notions about mental illness in the early Middle Ages.

Type
Research Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , August 1984 , pp. 507 - 514
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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.)

References

REFERENCES

Ackerknecht, E. H. (1982). A Short History of Medicine (revised edn). Johns Hopkins Press: Baltimore.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alcuin, (1954). Life of St Willibrord. In The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany (ed. Talbot, C. H.), pp. 3–22. Sheed and Ward: London.Google Scholar
Alexander, F. & Selesnick, S. (1966). The History of Psychiatry. Harper and Row: New York.Google Scholar
Anonymous (1969). Life of Saint Cuthbert (ed. Colgrave, B.). Greenwood Press: New York.Google Scholar
Anonymous (1973). Liber Historiae Francorum (ed. Bachrach, B.). Coronado Press: Lawrence, Kansas.Google Scholar
Bede, (1969). Life of Saint Cuthbert (ed. Colgrave, B.). Greenwood Press: New York.Google Scholar
Bede, (1974). A History of the English Church and People. penguin Books: Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Clarke, B. (1975). Mental Illness in Earlier Britain. University of Wales Press: Cardiff.Google Scholar
Cockerham, W. C. (1981). Sociology of Mental Disorder. Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs, N.J.Google Scholar
Doob, P. B. R. (1974). Nebuchadnezzar's Children. Yale University Press: New Haven.Google Scholar
Stephanus, Eddius (1965). Life of Wilfred. In Lives of the Saints (ed. Webb, J. F.). Penguin Books: Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Elbert, D. (1983). Sex, shopping and sin in Iowa. Des Moines (Iowa) Register and Tribune 08.Google Scholar
Fanning, S. C. (1981). Lombard Arianism reconsidered. Speculum 56, 241–258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felix, (1956). Life of St Guthlac (ed. Colgrave, B.). Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.Google Scholar
Flodoard, (1905). Annales (ed. Lauer, Ph.). Alphonse Picard et fils: Paris.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (1965). Madness and Civilization. Random House: New York.Google Scholar
Gransden, A. (1982). Historical Writing in England, Vol. 2. Cornell University Press: Ithaca.Google Scholar
Gregory of Tours (1974). The History of the Franks. Penguin Books: Harmondsworth. Latin edition: Gregorii episcopi Turonenses Libri X Historiarium (1951) (ed. Krusch, B. and Levison, W.). Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, Vol. 1. Hanover.Google Scholar
Jonas, (1905). Vita Sancti Columbani (ed. Krusch, B.). Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum. Hanover and Leipzig.Google Scholar
Klinger, C. F. (1978). Historical explanation in the Latin historiography of Anglo-Saxon England. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis: University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Kroll, J. (1973). A reappraisal of psychiatry in the Middle Ages. Archives of General Psychiatry 29, 276–283.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kroll, J. (1977). The concept of childhood in the Middle Ages. Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences 13, 384–393.Google ScholarPubMed
Kroll, J. & Bachrach, B. (1982 a). Visions and psychopathology in the Middle Ages. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 170, 41–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kroll, J. & Bachrach, B. (1982 b). Medieval visions and contemporary hallucinations. Psychological Medicine 12, 709–721.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacDonald, M. (1981). Mystical Bedlam. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.Google Scholar
MacDonald, M. (1982). Religion, social change, and psychological healing in England, 1600–1800. In The Church and Healing (ed. Shiels, W. J.), pp. 101–125. Basil Blackwell for the Ecclesiastical History Society: Oxford.Google Scholar
Neugebauer, R. (1979). Medieval and early modern theories of mental illness. Archives of General Psychiatry 36, 477–483.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Notker, (1969). Charlemagne. Penguin Books: Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Poynter, N. (1973). Medicine and Man. Penguin Books: Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Rippere, V. (1980). Some historical dimensions of commonsense knowledge about depression and antidepressive behaviour. Behaviour Research and Therapy 18, 373–385.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rippere, V. (1981). The survival of traditional medicine in lay medical views: an empirical approach to the history of medicine. Medical History 25, 411–414.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schoeneman, T. J. (1984). The mentally ill witch in textbooks of abnormal psychology: current status and implications of a fallacy. Professional Psychology (in the press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scull, A. (1975). From madness to mental illness: medical men as moral entrepreneurs. Archives Européenes de Sociologie 16, 218–251.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Temkin, O. (1971). The Falling Sickness (2nd edn.) Johns Hopkins Press: Baltimore.Google Scholar
Walker, P. D. (1981). Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zilboorg, G. (1941). A History of Medical Psychology. Norton: New York.Google Scholar