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Healing Body and Soul in Early Medieval Europe: Medical Remedies with Christian Elements
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2022
Abstract
The early medieval period has been traditionally cast as the nadir of medicine in the West. Such an image stemmed in part from the negative perceptions of ‘superstitious’ charms and incantations, in which medicine was seen to be detrimentally affected by Christian and pagan influences alike. This outdated view has been revised substantially, and the intersections between medicine and religion are now understood to reflect a complex, multivalent approach to healing. However, this re-evaluation of early medieval medicine, and especially of recipe literature, has concentrated primarily on Old English material. As a result, the substantial corpus of early medieval Latin continental recipes found outside the established canon of classical and late antique texts has largely been overlooked. This article seeks to redress this imbalance, offering the first systematic investigation into the ways in which Christian elements appear in these comparatively understudied pharmaceutical writings. The article's findings have significant implications for our understanding of Latin recipe literature and of the evolution of medical knowledge in early medieval Europe.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 58: THE CHURCH IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH , June 2022 , pp. 46 - 67
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Ecclesiastical History Society
Footnotes
I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the organizers of the 2021 EHS Winter Meeting for providing the original platform for this piece, as well as to Rosamond McKitterick, Meg Leja, the anonymous reviewers and the editors for their immensely valuable feedback.
References
1 ‘[E]rba uittonica cum oratione dominica uncia. ii. ex melle accipiat /per dies viiii\’: St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. sang. 751, p. 409. All translations and transcriptions are my own unless otherwise stated.
2 Musa, Pseudo-Antonius, De herba vettonica liber, ed. Howald, Ernst and Sigerist, Henry E., Corpus Medicorum Latinorum 4 (Leipzig, 1927), 3–11Google Scholar, at 7: ‘Ad tussim: Herbae vettonicae uncias II cum melle accipiat per dies IX’. Note that the recipe in Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. sang. 751 uses the phrase ex melle instead of cum melle and could therefore mean ‘let the patient take two ounces from a honey-based mixture’; I have translated it as ‘with honey’ since it seems plausible that this represents a deviation in the Latin due to the indirect transmission of the text.
3 Contrast, for example, Grattan, John H. G. and Singer, Charles, Anglo-Saxon Magic and Medicine: Illustrated specially from the Semi-Pagan Text Lacnunga (Oxford, 1952)Google Scholar with Park, Katherine, ‘Medicine and Society in Medieval Europe, 500–1500’, in Wear, Andrew, ed., Medicine in Society: Historical Essays (Cambridge, 1992), 59–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Riddle, John M., ‘Theory and Practice in Medieval Medicine’, Viator 5 (1974), 157–84CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Van Arsdall, Anne, ‘Challenging the “Eye of Newt” Image of Medieval Medicine’, in Bowers, Barbara S., ed., The Medieval Hospital and Medical Practice (Aldershot, 2007), 195–206Google Scholar; Voigts, Linda Ehrsam, ‘Anglo-Saxon Plant Remedies and the Anglo-Saxons’, Isis 70 (1979), 250–68Google ScholarPubMed.
4 A few important studies are Peregrine Horden, ‘Sickness and Healing’, in Thomas F. X. Noble and Julia M. H. Smith, eds, CHC, 3: Early Medieval Christianities, c.600–1100 (Cambridge, 2008), 416–32; idem, ‘What's Wrong with Early Medieval Medicine?’, SHM 24 (2011), 5–25; Lea T. Olsan, ‘Charms and Prayers in Medieval Medical Theory and Practice’, SHM 16 (2003), 343–66.
5 For a list of ‘miscellaneous’ medical material, including recipes, extracts and dietary notes, see Augusto Beccaria, I codici di medicina del periodo presalernitano (secoli ix, x e xi) (Rome, 1956). On additional problems with the traditional philological approach to studying early medieval medical writings, see also Faith Wallis, ‘The Experience of the Book: Manuscripts, Texts, and the Role of Epistemology in Early Medieval Medicine’, in Don Bates, ed., Knowledge and the Scholarly Medical Traditions (Cambridge, 1995), 101–26.
6 On ingredients, see John M. Riddle, ‘The Introduction and Use of Eastern Drugs in the Early Middle Ages’, Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften 49 (1965), 185–98; Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce AD 300–900 (Cambridge, 2002), especially 708–19; Claire Burridge, ‘Incense in Medicine: An Early Medieval Perspective’, EME 28 (2020), 219–55.
7 It is difficult to estimate the total number of surviving recipes, since many have yet to be transcribed. The present article is based on a sample of over six thousand recipes from twenty-nine manuscripts.
8 Only six major recipe collections survive in Old English: three Leechbooks (Bald's Leechbook I, Bald's Leechbook II and Leechbook III), the Lacnunga, and translations of two late antique Latin recipe collections (the Herbarius of Pseudo-Apuleius and Medicina de quadrupedibus of Pseudo-Sextus Placitus). On these texts and their contexts, see, for example, Malcolm L. Cameron, Anglo-Saxon Medicine (Cambridge, 1993); Maria Amalia D'Aronco, ‘The Transmission of Medical Knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England: The Voices of Manuscripts’ in Patrizia Lendinara, Loredana Lazzari and Maria Amalia D'Aronco, eds, Form and Content of Instruction in Anglo-Saxon England in Light of Contemporary Manuscript Evidence (Turnhout, 2007), 35–58; Emily Kesling, Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture (Woodbridge, 2020); Audrey L. Meaney, ‘The Practice of Medicine in England about the Year 1000’, SHM 13 (2000), 221–37; eadem, ‘Extra-Medical Elements in Anglo-Saxon Medicine’, SHM 24 (2011), 41–56; Anne Van Arsdall, Medieval Herbal Remedies: The Old English Herbarium and Anglo-Saxon Medicine (New York, 2002).
9 See especially Meaney, ‘Practice of Medicine’; eadem, ‘Extra-Medical Elements’. I follow Meaney in using ‘extra-medical’ as a more neutral term to describe this type of material: ‘Extra-Medical Elements’, 42.
10 Ibid. 55.
11 Plinii Secundi Iunioris qui feruntur de medicina libri tres, ed. Alf Önnerfors, Corpus Medicorum Latinorum 3 (Berlin, 1964); Yvette Hunt, The Medicina Plinii: Latin Text, Translation, and Commentary (Abingdon, 2020); Physica Plinii Bambergensis (Cod. Bamb. Med. 2, fol. 93v–232r), ed. Alf Önnerfors (Hildesheim, 1975); Gerhard Baader, ‘Die Anfänge der medizinischen Ausbildung im Abendland bis 1100’, in La scuola nell'Occidente latino dell'alto medioevo, Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo 19, 2 vols (Spoleto, 1972), 2: 669–718; John M. Riddle, ‘Pseudo-Dioscorides’ Ex herbis femininis and Early Medieval Medical Botany’, Journal of the History of Biology 14 (1981), 43–81.
12 Regarding debates surrounding Marcellus's beliefs and the possible Christian elements in his work, see Miriam Ewers, Marcellus Empiricus: ‘De medicamentis.’ Christliche Abhandlung über Barmherzigkeit oder abergläubische Rezeptsammlung? (Trier, 2009); Anthony Corbeill, ‘Miriam Ewers, Marcellus Empiricus: ‘De medicamentis.’ Christliche Abhandlung über Barmherzigkeit oder abergläubische Rezeptsammlung?’, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2010, online at: <https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2010/2010.06.10/>, last accessed 19 January 2022. Notably, the two Christian invocations found in De taxone liber appear only in the manuscripts of recension α, which includes the Old English translation, and are mentioned by Meaney (‘Extra-Medical Elements’, 43) as exceptions in the Medicina de quadrupedibus; for the recensions, see De taxone liber, ed. Ernst Howald and Henry E. Sigerist, Corpus Medicorum Latinorum 4 (Leipzig, 1927), 227–32.
13 Cameron, Anglo-Saxon Medicine, 36.
14 Consider, for example, research on Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc.Med.1, including Das Lorscher Arzneibuch: Ein medizinisches Kompendium des 8. Jahrhunderts (Codex Bambergensis Medicinalis 1). Text, Übersetzung und Fachglossar, ed. and transl. Ulrich Stoll (Stuttgart, 1992); Gundolf Keil and Paul Schnitzer, eds, Das Lorscher Arzneibuch und die frühmittelalterliche Medizin: Verhandlungen des medizinhistorischen Symposiums im September 1989 in Lorsch (Lorsch, 1991); Klaus-Dietrich Fischer, ‘Das Lorscher Arzneibuch im Widerstreit der Meinungen’, Medizinhistorisches Journal 45 (2010), 165–88; Joel L. Gamble, ‘A Defense of the Carolingian “Defense of Medicine”: Introduction, Translation, and Notes’, Traditio 75 (2020), 87–125. Although recipe collections in several early medieval manuscripts were transcribed by Henry Sigerist and Julius Jörimann in the early twentieth century, surprisingly little research has engaged with these publications: Henry Sigerist, Studien und Texte zur frühmittelalterlichen Rezeptliteratur (Leipzig, 1923); Julius Jörimann, Frühmittelalterliche Rezeptarien (Zurich, 1925).
15 Since a single recipe may include multiple Christian elements, the numbers of recipes belonging to the various categories described below do not add up to sixty-four.
16 The Antidotum sotira of Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. sang. 44, pp. 234–6, ends with the phrase ‘in nomine domini’, for example, while a recipe on pp. 339–40 opens with ‘IN CHRISTI NOMINE’.
17 ‘ITEM AD FICO erba losera que dicunt mentastrum idest menta alba collegis die iouis luna decurrente fasciculum cum oratione dominica piper grana. xxx. mastice grana xxx. \in/ uino distemperas et per tres dies bibat remedium. est’: Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. sang. 751, p. 383.
18 ‘AD LUNATICOS. ET CADIUOS. Herba lanciolata. uiscu. ruborio agrimonia. milfolio. ista. omnia cum oratione dominica colligis. et per quattuor lunaciones das bibere ieiuno cum aqua benedicta’: Cod. sang. 44, p. 358.
19 ‘Item collegis odecum idest euolus aput oratione dominica. et facis exinde ius ouo pleno oleo ouo pleno uino uetus ouo pleno totum insimul mitis et super sacerdos missa cantat ante a qui patitur triduana faciat et sic ieiunus bibat probatissimum est.’ The recipe is one of several listed under the heading ‘Ad demonio expellendo’: Paris, BN, Lat. 9332, fol. 233va.
20 ‘AD STOMACHI dolorem. facis crucem christi. super herba ceruis lingua et ipsam de mel unguis. et super stomachum ponis’: Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. sang. 44, p. 349.
21 ‘Remedium ad inmissiones diaboli. Herba quae dicitur paniscardi dies resurrectionis domini. hoc est prima pa\s/cha colligis ipsum cardo sine ferro uerticulo habet in suma radice et sit in altario. ubi ipsa die missa dicitur. et postea cui necesse fuerit. in aqua. aut in uino bibat. sanat’: ibid., pp. 346–7.
22 Ibid., p. 358.
23 For holy water, see Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. sang. 751, p. 396: ‘AD CADUCOS’, p. 419: ‘Ad caducas’; BAV, Pal. lat. 1088, fol. 33v: ‘Ad lunaticos et cadiuos’, fol. 62r: ‘Curatio ad omnes febres uel typos’ (specifically, the eighth recipe within a cluster under this title); Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc.Med.1, fols 39r–39v: ‘AD EPILEMTICOS’ (both recipes are found within a group of recipes under this title). For incense, see Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc.Med.1, fols 39r–39v: ‘AD EPILEMTICOS’; Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. sang. 759, pp. 67–8: ‘Ad mulierem ut partum eiciat’; BAV, Pal. lat. 1088, fol. 47v: ‘Ad omnes typos’; Reg. lat. 1143, fol. 109r: ‘Ad cadiuo homine’.
24 ‘Item incenso rubeo quantum duo dinarius pensant piper grana viiii gramastici granas viiii oleum benedictum quantum aestimaueris inter aqua exorcizata et uinum calices iii totum insimul mittat et deficiente luna ipsa die quando quinta est aut quando no[n]\u/a euenit quinta sic bibat’: Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc.Med.1, fol. 39v, in Das Lorscher Arzneibuch, ed. and transl. Stoll, 226–7.
25 ‘ITEM. aliut ad aurem eius. qui patitur in guttere spinam. dicis tercio. lenti. christus. de maria uirgi natus est’: Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. sang. 217, p. 260a.
26 ‘Breue quod facit pro temtamenta diaboli uel frigoras portit super se hec scriptura. Per crucem domini nostri iesu christi parce per sanguinem domini nostri iesu christi parce per resurrexionem domini nostri iesu christi parce per ascentionem domini nostri iesu christi parce non percutias famulo di illo neque omnes homines habitantes mecum inter dico tibi per patrem et filum et spiritum sanctum. Crux domini est signum mihi contra insidias tuas + crux quam ego semper adoro + Crux mihi refugium + crux uincit uenenum + crux superet gladio + crux uincit diabolo + crux aperit ianuas celi + crux adoranda per omnia deus benedictus in secula. obsecro uobis fortisimi et beatisimi harcahenli dei. michael gabriel rapahel oriel raguel tubel et cum uirtut[u]is dei et potentia spiritus sancti iubet <.>tis illo saluare noctibus ac diebus horis atque monementis de gladio maligno et de pustula et de omne contagione morborum ds [note: ‘ds’ is lacking a mark of abbreviation but is probably intended to be read as ‘deus’] forsimi adiuua illi’: Stiftsbibliotek, Cod. sang. 759, p. 91.
27 ‘Item rubus elixa et trita hoc facit. Post allei combusti puluerem uulneri asperge. sal tritum et in linteo ligatum et in aceto infusum. si ex hoc baptizetur uulnus uel infundatur. sanguinem eicit’: BN, Lat. 13955, fol. 147v.
28 ‘CONTRA RENES DOLOREM Erba sancta manipulos. iii. capillos ueneris manipulos de uino staupos. vi. de piper grana. lvii. teris et distemperas et potionem exinde facias et per sex manes bibis prima die dominico missa peracta in ecclesia bibat pleno staupo calido et postea a per ebdoma da et multum adiuuat’: Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. sang. 751, p. 407.
29 Siam Bhayro and Catherine Rider, eds, Demons and Illness from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (Leiden, 2017); Claire Trenery, Madness, Medicine and Miracle in Twelfth-Century England (Abingdon, 2019); although epilepsy and madness often occur together in early medieval recipes, they appear to have been perceived as distinct conditions in later sources.
30 Meg Leja, ‘The Sacred Art: Medicine in the Carolingian Renaissance’, Viator 47 (2016), 1–34.
31 Recipes with Christian elements intended to combat fevers can be found in Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. sang. 751, pp. 401, 407, 410; Cod. sang. 899, p. 84; BAV, Pal. lat. 1088, fols 47v, 61r, 62r. For non-specific treatments and general panaceas, see Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. sang. 44, pp. 284, 234–6, 339–40; Cod. sang. 751, pp. 398–9, 499. For haemorrhoids, see Cod. sang. 44, p. 242; Cod. sang. 751, p. 383; Cod. sang. 759, p. 67; Glasgow, UL, Hunter 96 (formerly T.4.13), fol. 156r (see Sigerist, Studien und Texte, 126). For wounds, see Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. sang. 44, p. 242; Cod. sang. 751, pp. 367–8, 399; BN, Lat. 6882A, fol. 8r.
32 A recipe for toothache, ‘Ad dentes ut numquam doleant’, with a Christian element (here, the Lord's Prayer) can be found in Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. sang. 759, p. 73. For headache, see Cod. sang. 751, p. 404, ‘Ad capitis dolorem’. To stop bleeding, see BAV, Reg. lat. 1143, fol. 150v, ‘Ad sanguine sta[n]gnandum’. For birthing difficulties, see Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. sang. 759, pp. 67–8, ‘Ad mulierem ut partum eiciat’. For incontinence, see Cod. sang. 899, p. 141, recipe added after ‘Ad eos qui urinam non continent’.
33 Additional examples appear in Stiftsbibliotek, Cod. sang. 751: p. 378: ‘Ad nesc<i>a rem probata’, p. 392: ‘De birbina dicitur’, p. 407: ‘Contra frigolas’, p. 410: ‘Ad frigoras cotidianas tercianas’, pp. 412–13: ‘Ad nescia rem probatam’, pp. 413–14: ‘Potio ad oua colobrina’.
34 Pseudo-Apuleius, Herbarius, ed. Howald and Sigerist, 15–225.
35 Gary B. Ferngren, Medicine and Religion: A Historical Introduction (Baltimore, MD, 2014), 95.
36 Don C. Skemer, ‘Armis Gunfe: Remembering Egyptian Days’, Traditio 65 (2010), 75–106; Faith Wallis, ‘Medicine in Medieval Calendar Manuscripts’, in Margaret R. Schleissner, ed., Manuscript Sources of Medieval Medicine: A Book of Essays (New York, 1995), 105–43.
37 Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. sang. 751, pp. 408–9. This cluster is bisected by a short group of recipes that use various parts of vultures as ingredients: see L. C. MacKinney, ‘An Unpublished Treatise on Medicine and Magic from the Age of Charlemagne', Speculum 18 (1943), 494–6.
38 On the origins and movements of Carolingian manuscripts containing medical texts, see especially Florence Eliza Glaze, ‘The Perforated Wall: The Ownership and Circulation of Medical Books in Medieval Europe, ca.800–1200’ (Ph.D. thesis, Duke University, 1999).
39 Janet L. Nelson, ‘Revisiting the Carolingian Renaissance’, in Jamie Kreiner and Helmut Reimitz, eds, Motions of Late Antiquity: Essays on Religion, Politics, and Society in Honour of Peter Brown (Turnhout, 2016), 331–46.
40 Horden, ‘What's Wrong?’, 17. On medicine in the early Middle Ages, and especially the Carolingian period, see, for example, John J. Contreni, ‘Masters and Medicine in Northern France in the Reign of Charles the Bald’, in Margaret T. Gibson and Janet L. Nelson, eds, Charles the Bald: Court and Kingdom. Papers based on a Colloquium held in London in April 1979, 2nd edn (Aldershot, 1990), 267–82; Glaze, ‘Perforated Wall’; Peregrine Horden, ‘The Millennium Bug: Health and Medicine around the Year 1000’, SHM 12 (2000), 201–19; Wallis, ‘Experience of the Book’; eadem, ‘Signs and Senses: Diagnosis and Prognosis in Early Medieval Pulse and Urine Texts’, SHM 13 (2000), 265–78.
41 Leja, ‘Sacred Art’.
42 Gregory of Tours, The History of the Franks, transl. Thorpe, Lewis (London, 1974)Google Scholar; Knipp, David, ‘The Chapel of the Physicians at Santa Maria Antiqua’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 56 (2002), 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ferngren, Gary B., Medicine & Health Care in Early Christianity (Baltimore, MD, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43 Horden, Peregrine, ‘Prefatory Note: The Uses of Medical Manuscripts’, in Zipser, Barbara, ed., Medical Books in the Byzantine World (Bologna, 2013), 1–6Google Scholar.
44 Glaze, ‘Perforated Wall’.
45 Regarding the dating and origins of these manuscripts, I have consulted Bischoff, Katalog der festländischen Handschriften; Beccaria, I codici; Wickersheimer, Ernest, Les Manuscrits latins de médecine du haut moyen age dans les bibliothèques de France (Paris, 1966)Google Scholar. See Sigerist, Studien und Texte for published transcriptions of recipe collections in Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc.Med.2; Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Phill. 1790; Glasgow, UL, Hunter 96; Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Cod. Aug. perg. 120; London, BL, Harley MS 5792; St Gallen, Stiftsbibliotek, Cod. sang. 44. See Jörimann, Frühmittelalterliche Rezeptarien for additional recipe collections in Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc.Med.2; cod. sang. 44. See Das Lorscher Arzneibuch, ed. and transl. Stoll, for Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc.Med.1.
46 Composite manuscript: the information regarding this manuscript's composition concerns fols 273r–276v.
47 Composite manuscript: the information regarding this manuscript's composition concerns fols 1v–26v.
48 Composite manuscript: the information regarding this manuscript's composition concerns pp. 186–368.
49 Collection of fragments: the information regarding this manuscript's composition concerns pp. 9–16, 19–22.
50 Collection of fragments: the information regarding this manuscript's composition concerns fols 26r–33r, 124r–125r.