Health and Healing in the Early Middle

Ages

What is the meaning of health?

Medieval ideas of healing are best described as a “marketplace” of possibilities. While much is still unknown about practice, it seems that traditions of literate medicine based on Galen and Hippocrates existed side-by-side with deep faith in the healing power of saints and relics as well as beliefs in the efficacy of magical charms and folk remedies.

Recent studies of disease and epidemics have brought historians into conversation with developing scientific methods to identify the ailments that human populations have historically suffered. We will consider the case of the Justinianic Plague.

Healing and Wholeness

The modern term “heal” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word haelen/hal, meaning “to make whole”

(in fact, the modern words “whole,” “heal,” and “hale” all come from this same Anglo-Saxon term)

The Justinianic Plague,

541-c. 750

“DURING these times there was a pestilence, by which the whole human race came near to being annihilated….For it did not come in a part of the world nor upon certain men, nor did it confine itself to any season of the year…but it embraced the entire world, and blighted the lives of all men, though differing from one another in the most marked degree, respecting neither sex nor age….

It started from the Egyptians who dwell in Pelusium…and from there it spread over the whole world…

Now some of the physicians who were at a loss because the symptoms were not understood, supposing that the disease centered in the bubonic swellings, decided to investigate the bodies of the dead. Upon opening some of the swellings, they found a strange sort of carbuncle that had grown inside them. Death came in some cases immediately, in others after many days; and with some the body broke out with black pustules about as large as a lentil and these did not survive even one day, but all succumbed immediately. With many also a vomiting of blood ensued without visible cause and straightway brought death.”

--Procopius, History of the Wars

541: Procopius mentioned a destructive and virulent plague in History of the Wars

6th - 7th centuries: plague also mentioned in many other sources

Historians guessed this was bubonic plague (like 1340s and 1890s outbreaks) based on medieval descriptions and modern epidemiological/etiological research; but there was no substantive proof

1990s: Development of new methodology to identify historic diseases using molecular biology and palaeopathology

- Find mass grave, consult historical record for potential as “plague pit”, examine skeletons for “ancient DNA” (aDNA) of plague bacillus (Yersinia pestis), compare isolated aDNA with database of genomes of strains

Some critiques of methodology (especially replicability), but this has established connections between the modern plague pandemic (since 1894) and the medieval pandemics (1340s and Justinianic plague)

December 2013: a team of researchers has mapped aDNA sequence of Justinianic plague from a series of skeletons in sixth-century Bavaria

Diagnosing the Justinianic Plague: An Unfolding Story

1. Location: Bavaria is not mentioned in any of the sources as a location of Justinianic plague. Was the plague then much larger than even the written sources indicate?

2. Does this put a different meaning to some of the catastrophes and collapses we have been discussing? Is the Justinianic plague the true “End of Antiquity”?

3. Can molecular/genetic/biological evidence augment the testimony of written sources? What are the ramifications?

4. A Global Research Effort: current endeavor to integrate the historical sources of places such as India and China with those of the Islamic, Byzantine and Western areas as well as the expansion of scientific investigations of other possible early medieval plague pits.

Do these findings change our view of the sixth to early eighth centuries?

Early Medieval Medicine

A Classical Tradition Survives

Latin translations and commentaries of the works of the Greek physicians (Hippocrates, Galen); typically copied in monasteries

New Format: Abridged versions (no theory), miscellaneous compilations, practical handbooks

The Four Humors: An Enduring Model

Blood (liver/warm and moist)

Yellow Bile (spleen/warm and dry)

Black Bile (gall bladder/cold and dry)

Phlegm (brain and lungs/cold and moist)

Treatment: modifying the humors through food intake, medical preparations of ingredients, or draining excess humors from the body (bloodletting, emetics, purges)

Practical Healing? Intersection of Medicine/Magic/Religion

Wood betony (stachys officinalis/betonica officinalis), seems to have been one of the most prevalent herbs in medieval medical preparations

Bede’s Life of St. Cuthbert

St. Cuthbert was a seventh-century monk and bishop of Lindisfarne; d. 687

The hagiographical Life of St. Cuthbert was written around 700

Divided into 45 chapters detailing life of the monk as a hermit, then as bishop

many chapters focus on healing miracles of St. Cuthbert

Bald’s Leechbook

Medical book written in Anglo-Saxon (Old English)

Probably compiled in the ninth century, but contains much older texts

Survives in only one manuscript

Divided into two books (external and internal disorders), each arranged in head-to-toe format; a third book of medical recipes (Leechbook III) is in the same manuscript

Based on Carolingian or Mediterranean medical books with similar format and contents

Anglo-Saxon Elf Charms

If a horse is [elf]shot [ofscoten]. Take then the knife of which the haft is a fallow ox’s horn, and on [which] there are three brass nails. Write then on the horse’s forehead Christ’s mark [cross], and on each of the limbs that you can press. Take then the left ear, prick through it in silence. This you must do. Take one staff, strike on the back. Then the horse will be whole. And write on the knife’s horn these words: “Benedicite omnia opera domini dominum.” [Blessed be all the works of the lord of lords.] Whatever elf is on him, this can be a remedy for him.

From Karen Louise Jolly, Popular Religion in Late Saxon England (1996), p. 152.

Next Class Monday: No Class

Thursday Read E. Brown, “Feudalism: Tyranny of a

Construct” (Ejournal)

Read short collection of feudal documents (online)