The product of conference sessions co-sponsored by AVISTA (The Association Villard de Honnecourt for the Interdisciplinary Study of Medieval Technology, Science and Art) and Medica: The Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages, this richly-illustrated collection of ten essays, prefaced by a substantial introduction by Lindsay Jones, is divided into two sections exploring texts and objects respectively. Immediately and deliberately, therefore, it calls into question the categories in the volume title, blurring the boundaries between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ and demonstrating that, in matters of health and healing, scholars need to look beyond the obvious sources of information in texts, that were themselves, in Jones’s words, ‘medieval interpretations of sickness and health’ (p. 2), and be equally attentive to material culture, environmental factors and what the texts do not tell us about. Iona McCleery, for example, sets an important agenda for research when she points out the serious lack of attention to a basic human necessity for good health – access to food. She wonders why the catastrophic effects of famine have not attracted similar levels of attention to those accorded to medieval plague. The latter, in this volume, is represented by Michelle Ziegler’s exploration of plague in Bede’s prose Life of Cuthbert, and by Ottó Gecser’s study of late medieval plague sermons and tracts, many of which were composed long after the Black Death. Both essays demonstrate that the traditional contrast drawn by scholars between medical and religious responses was by no means clear-cut. Leigh Ann Craig echoes this opinion in her chapter on late medieval resurrection miracles.
Several of the essays also caution against dismissing written and physical evidence that does not fit modern paradigms of what constitutes ‘medicine’ and ‘healthcare’, or seeing in that evidence the first seeds of ‘modern’ medical practices. Virginia Langum therefore explores the concept of anger/wrath as both sin and humoural imbalance in late medieval English medical and confessional texts, and argues that the relationship between the two cannot be easily disentangled into simple categories of sacred and secular. William H. York uses the case of Valesco de Taranta (fl. 1382–1426) to demonstrate that his medieval language of observation and experientia encompassed a far greater range of evidence and observation than the strictly scientific empiricism with which later authors credited him.
The four chapters in the ‘Objects and Sites’ section of the book further underline the danger of approaching medieval (and late antique) evidence with taxonomic preconceptions. Genevra Kornbluth makes the case that early medieval crystal amulets, for instance, were not regarded as ‘magical’, but simply as material objects that were considered to have natural powers. Only later did they come to be seen as magical and thus also as potentially dangerous. Yet, even in the later middle ages, as Nichola E. Harris points out, lapidary medicine was still popular, and she traces the long history of the use of eagle-stones and loadstones (magnets) in reproductive and obstetric contexts. Belief in the efficacy of physical objects extended to pilgrimage sites and the materials associated with them, as chapters by James Bugslag and Michael Lewis illustrate. Lewis, whose chapter on pilgrim badges acknowledges its debt to the work of, and pays tribute to, the late Geoff Egan, points out that the power of pilgrim badges rested mainly in the fact they had touched the shrine of the saint. The Church therefore sought to control what was a lucrative source of income by denying unauthorised badge-makers access to the shrine. The theme of control also permeates the study of pilgrimage sites by Bugslag, and he argues persuasively that we need to pay more attention to the scattered but plentiful evidence of what pilgrims actually did once they arrived. Rather than being passive and acquiescent recipients of miracles as presented by the texts, the sick and injured at shrines should be seen as actively engaged in shaping their own interaction with the saint, demanding space, taking dust and other materials from the shrine and/or leaving ex votos in thanks for cures. This is a ‘messier’ version of pilgrimage that draws upon anthropological studies and surviving practices (particularly within the modern Greek church).
Many practices, as the essays in this section in particular make clear, had very little to do with Christian religion or humoural medicine. Instead, they drew upon older, and well-established ‘knowledge’ of the curative properties of springs, trees, stones and other apotropaic objects (some of which Valesco de Taranta, for example, collected from his informants). This is a history that is clearly visible in medieval medical texts, but has suffered from the indifference of historians looking for early ‘medicine’, or outright condemnation of later writers, in particular those concerned with focusing the belief of the Christian faithful on the power of saints, mediated by the clergy. The value of this collection is that it implicitly replaces ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ simply with ‘belief’ – in self-care, saints, objects, doctors and healers – and demonstrates the continuing urgency of cross-period and cross-disciplinary dialogue to reveal the true richness of humans and health in the past.
