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New book – Death and Disease in the Medieval and Early Modern World, Perspectives from across the Mediterranean and Beyond, Edited by Lori Jones and Nükhet Varlık for Boydell & Breyer

DESCRIPTION

This collection highlights and nuances some of the recent critical advances in scholarship on death and disease, across and beyond the pre-modern Mediterranean world, Christian, Islamic and Jewish healing traditions.

Across and beyond the pre-modern Mediterranean world, Christian, Islamic and Jewish healing traditions shared inherited medical paradigms containing similar healthy living precepts and attitudes toward body, illness and mortality. Yet, as the chapters collected here demonstrate, customs of diagnosing, explaining and coping with disease and death often diverged with respect to knowledge and practice.
Offering a variety of disciplinary approaches to a broad selection of material emerging from England to the Persian Gulf, the volume reaches across conventional disciplinary and historiographical boundaries. Plague diagnoses in pre-Black Death Arabic medical texts, rare, illustrated phlebotomy instructions for plague patients, and a Jewish plague tract utilising the Torah as medicine reflect critical re-examinations of primary sources long thought to have nothing new to offer. Novel re-interpretations of Giovanni Villani’s “New Chronicle”, canonisation inquests and saints’ lives offer fresh considerations of medieval constructions of epidemics, disabilities, and the interplay between secular and spiritual healing. Cross-disciplinary perspectives recast late medieval post-mortem diagnoses in Milan as a juridical – rather than strictly medical – practice, highlight the aural performativity of the Franciscan deathbed liturgy, explore the long evolution of lapidary treatments for paediatric and obstetric diseases and thrust us into the Ottoman polychromatic sensory world of disease and death. Finally, considerations of the contributions of modern science alongside historical primary sources generates important new ways to understand death and disease in the past. Overall, the contributions juxtapose and interlace similarities and differences in their local and historical contexts, while highlighting and nuancing some of the recent critical advances in scholarship on death and disease – two historiographical subfields long approached separately.

Content

 
Intersections: Disease and Death, Medicine and Religion, Medieval and Early Modern
LORI JONES, NÜKHET VARLIK AND WINSTON BLACK

PART I: DIAGNOSING, EXPLAINING AND RECORDING

1 Knowing the Signs of Disease: Plague in the Arabic Medical Commentaries between the First and Second Pandemics
NAHYAN FANCY

2 The Legal Foundations of Post-Mortem Diagnosis in Later Medieval Milan
ANN G. CARMICHAEL

3 Epidemic Illness in the Last Book of Giovanni Villani’s New Chronicle, 1345-1348: Warfare, Sin and the Heavens
NICOLE ARCHAMBEAU

4 Colours of Disease and Death in the Early Modern Ottoman Cultural Imagination
NÜKHET VARLIK

PART II: COPING, PREVENTING AND HEALING

5 The Role of Music in a Franciscan Liturgy for the End of Life, as Evidenced in Manuscript Newberry 24
ELAINE STRATTON HILD

6 Medical and Spiritual Healing of Death and Disease in Medieval Miracle Stories
JENNIFER C. EDWARDS

7 Infirmity and Death-Wishes in Medieval French and Italian Canonisation Processes
JENNI KUULIALA

8 Bubo Men? Repurposing Medieval Anatomic Illustrations for Plague Therapy in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
LORI JONES

9 Psalm 38 as Plague Diagnostic and Prophylactic in Abraham Yagel’s Moshi’ah Ḥosim (1587)
ANDREW BERNS

10 The Protection of Innocents: Red Coral as a Lapidary Cure for the ‘Children’s Disease’ and Conditions Related to Childbirth in Medieval and Early Modern England
NICHOLA E. HARRIS

PART III: STUDYING, ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING

11 Leprosy in Medieval Europe: An Immunological and Syndemic Approach
FABIAN CRESPO

12 Past Plagues: On the Synergies of Genetic and Historical Interpretations of Infectious Disease
HENDRIK POINAR

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
 

Authors

Lori Jones is a medical historian at Carleton University and the University of Ottawa, Canada. Her research focuses primarily on plague texts and images.

Nükhet Varlık is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University-Newark. Her research focuses on disease, death, medicine and public health in the Ottoman Empire.

New book – Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity, by helen Rhee, pub. by Eerdmans 

Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity

Helen Rhee 

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Eerdmans (October 22, 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 367 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0802876846
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0802876843

In this wide-ranging interdisciplinary study, Helen Rhee examines how early Christians viewed illness, pain, and health care and how their perspective was influenced both by Judeo-Christian tradition and by the milieu of the larger ancient world. Throughout her analysis, Rhee places the history of medicine, Greco-Roman literature, and ancient philosophy in constructive dialogue with early Christian literature to elucidate early Christians’ understanding, appropriation, and reformulation of Roman and Byzantine conceptions of health and wholeness from the second through the sixth centuries CE.

Utilizing the contemporary field of medical anthropology, Rhee engages illness, pain, and health care as sociocultural matters. Through this and other methodologies, she explores the theological meanings attributed to illness and pain; the religious status of those suffering from these and other afflictions; and the methods, systems, and rituals that Christian individuals, churches, and monasteries devised to care for those who suffered. Rhee’s findings ultimately provide an illuminating glimpse into how Christians began forming a distinct identity—both as part of and apart from their Greco-Roman world.

 

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Health, Disease, and Illness in Greco-Roman Culture
2. Health, Disease, and Illness in the Bible and Early Christianity
3. Pain in Greco-Roman Culture and Early Christianity
4. Health Care in the Greco-Roman World
5. Health Care in Early Christianity
Conclusion
Bibliography
Indexes

 

More on the editor website: https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/7684/illness-pain-and-health-care-in-early-christianity.aspx

Colloque international organisé à l’Université de Lausanne en collaboration avec la Société Suisse d’Histoire Rurale (SSHR) – Sante des corps, salut des âmes, soins et religion en milieu rural (Europe occidentale, XVe-XIXe siècles) – 1-3 Septembre 2022

JEUDI 1ER SEPTEMBRE

13h30-14h00 Mot de bienvenue (Sandro Guzzi-Heeb)

Introduction (Aline Johner)

1) LE CORPS SAIN (1) : FRONTIÈRES ENTRE SAVOIRS ET SURNATUREL

14h00-14h20 Anne Bonzon

Les curés de campagne, distributeurs de remèdes (France, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles)

14h20-14h30 Questions

14h30-14h50 Madline Favre

Implication des ecclésiastiques dans la gestion de la santé de leurs paroissiens : le cas de Jean-Maurice Clément (1736-1810) en Valais et sa « chasse aux pratiques superstitieuses »

14h50-15h00 Questions

15h00-15h30 Pause

15h30-15h50 Marco Schnyder

Tomber malades en haute montagne – Santé, alimentation, environnement et foi (Hospice du Grand-Saint-Bernard, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles)

15h50-16h00 Questions

16h00-16h20 Kristof Smeyers

(Dis)locating « folk medicine » in the nineteenth-century edgelands

16h20-16h30 Questions

16h30-17h00 Discussion 1

Dès 19h30 Repas du soir commun

VENDREDI 2 SEPTEMBRE

2) LE CORPS SAINT : CONTRÔLE DES CORPS ET SALUT DES ÂMES

10h00-10h20 Dorothee Rippmann

Tauber Donations pieuses et relations entre la ville et la campagne : le cas de l’église collégiale à Bischofszell (TG) (XVe-XVIe siècles)

10h20-10h30 Questions

10h30-10h50 Alessandro Ratti

Des Alpes aux plaines, de la terre au ciel : les messes des dévots pour le salut des âmes des confrères défunts (XVIIIe-XIXe siècles)

10h50-11h00 Questions

11h00-11h20 Tine van Osselaer

Salutary suffering and miraculous cures. The Catholic patient in the nineteenth and early twentienth centuries

11h20-11h30 Questions

11h30-11h50 Ninon Dubourg

Jeûne et pénurie d’huile d’olive dans les régions froides au XVe siècle – santé et salut par la grâce de la Pénitencerie Apostolique

11h50-12h00 Questions

12h00-12h30 Discussion 2

12h30-14h30 Repas de midi commun

3) LE CORPS SAIN (2) : SOIN DU CORPS, SOIN DE LA TERRE

14h30-14h50 Omar Borettaz et Mauro Cortelazzo

Remèdes naturels et objets votifs sur les bancs d’un apothicaire de la fin du Moyen Âge, d’après une fresque dans le château d’Issogne, en Vallée d’Aoste

14h50-15h00 Questions

15h00-15h20 Damien Jeanne

Malades chroniques et malades temporaires : l’encadrement religieux par la culture du soin dans la campagne normande à la fin du Moyen Âge

15h20-15h30 Questions

15h30-16h00 Pause

16h00-16h20 Julie van Parys-Rotondi

Soigner la terre, les hommes et les âmes dans les Bokes of Husbandry de la première modernité anglaise

16h20-16h30 Questions

16h30-17h00 Discussion 3

17h30-18h00 Assemblée générale de la SSHR Repas du soir libre

SAMEDI 3 SEPTEMBRE 4) AUX SEUILS DE LA VIE : NAISSANCE ET SALUT

9h30-9h50 Paul André Havé

Soin des âmes, contrôle des corps. L’organisation des pratiques des sage-femmes dans la Province d’Alsace à la fin du XVIIIe siècle

9h50-10h00 Questions

10h00-10h20 Charlotte Brewster

« Neighbourly » midwives and religious diversity in rural Essex and Suffolk

10h20-10h30 Questions

10h30-10h50 Suzanne Martin-Vigier

Objets passeurs d’âmes. Vierges d’accouchée – cires de deuil : la problématique du salut aux deux extrémités de la vie

10h50-11h00 Questions

11h00-11h30 Discussion 4

11h30-12h00 Conclusion (organisateur·rices) et discussion générale

Dès 12h00 Repas commun

Conference – IMC Leeds 2022 – Session related to Health, Illnesses and disabilities.

 

 

Session

510

Title

Byzantine Bodies, I: The Byzantine Body and Performativity

Date/Time

Tuesday 5 July 2022: 09.00-10.30

 

 

Sponsor

Cardiff Centre for Late Antique Religion & Culture, Cardiff University

 

 

Organiser

Larisa Vilimonovic, Department of History, University of Belgrade

 

 

Moderator/Chair

Shaun Tougher, School of History, Archaeology & Religion, Cardiff University

 

 

Paper 510-a

Bodily Performance in Ritual Contexts: Healing the Sick in Byzantine Hagiography
(Language: English)
Stavroula Constantinou, Centre for Medieval Arts & Rituals, University of Cyprus, Nicosia
Index Terms: Byzantine Studies; Gender Studies; Hagiography

Paper 510-b

The Scribal Act as a Gendering Act in the Byzantine Lives of ‘Cross-Dressing’ Saints
(Language: English)
Julie Van Pelt, Vakgroep Letterkunde, Afdeling Grieks, Universiteit Gent
Index Terms: Byzantine Studies; Gender Studies; Hagiography

Paper 510-c

Byzantine Femininities between Discipline and Punishment: Anthropology of the Female Body in Byzantium
(Language: English)
Larisa Vilimonovic, Department of History, University of Belgrade
Index Terms: Byzantine Studies; Gender Studies; Women’s Studies

 

 

Abstract

This is the first session in a series of panels on Byzantine Bodies. The session aims to map how concrete collective or individual subjects form their identities through various discursive processes (those that constitute religion, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender). It will focus on the performative aspects of gender in Byzantium, on gender fluidity, and on readings beyond binaries. The session also maps Byzantine masculinities and femininities and their relationships to normative power structures.

 

 

Session

716

Title

Breaking Down Disciplinary Borders: Connecting Historical and Archaeological Research, III – Medieval Dental Calculus, A Treasure Trove of Information

Date/Time

Tuesday 5 July 2022: 14.15-15.45

 

 

Organiser

Claire Burridge, Department of History, University of Sheffield

 

 

Moderator/Chair

Alison I. Beach, School of History, University of St Andrews

 

 

Paper 716-a

Dental Calculus as a Window on Medieval Urban Religion: An Interdisciplinary Study of Leicester’s Augustinian Friary
(Language: English)
Anita Radini, Department of Archaeology, University of York
Index Terms: Archaeology – General; Religious Life

Paper 716-b

Health and Healing Remedies in Medieval Leprosaria: The Contribution of Dental Calculus Analysis
(Language: English)
Elena Fiorin, Dipartimento di Scienze odontostomatologiche e maxillo facciali, Università degli Studi di Roma ‘La Sapienza’
Index Terms: Archaeology – General; Medicine

Paper 716-c

Dental Calculus as a Proxy for Oral Health in Medieval Danes
(Language: English)
Liam Lanigan, GLOBE Institute, Københavns Universitet
Index Terms: Archaeology – General; Medicine

 

 

Abstract

Analyses of dental calculus (mineralised dental plaque) are revolutionising the ways we can study past populations. The proposed session showcases new research involving the latest analytical methods, from light microscopy to palaeoproteomic and genomic techniques. Each paper addresses a different topic in the field, highlighting the ways in which dental calculus analysis can contribute to our understanding of oral health, medical practices, and monastic lifeways. Taken collectively, the papers demonstrate that this substance provides an unrivalled and, until recently, largely untapped resource for exploring the health and lived experiences of medieval individuals, and especially those unrecorded by the texts.

 

 

 

Session

806

Title

Borders and Bodies in Early Medieval Riddles and Beyond

Date/Time

Tuesday 5 July 2022: 16.30-18.00

 

 

Organiser

IMC Programming Committee

 

 

Moderator/Chair

Jennifer Neville, Department of English, Royal Holloway, University of London

 

 

Paper 806-a

Liminal Voices of Disabled Subjectivity in the Exeter Book Riddles
(Language: English)
Margaret McCurry, Department of English, New York University
Index Terms: Hagiography; Language and Literature – Old English; Literacy and Orality

Paper 806-b

‘[He] sægde him to sorge þæt hy sige-lease / þone grenan wong ofgiefan sceoldan’: The Porous Borders of Affect, Race, and Sovereignty in Guthlac A / B and Exeter Riddle 10
(Language: English)
Adam Darisse, Department of English, New York University
Index Terms: Hagiography; Language and Literature – Old English; Mentalities; Sermons and Preaching

Paper 806-c

Defining the Boundaries of Animate and Inanimate in the Riddles of Tatwine
(Language: English)
Alexandra Zhirnova, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, University of Cambridge
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Latin; Language and Literature – Old English; Rhetoric

Paper 806-d

Cynewulf’s Questioning of the Borders of Script and Orality in The Fates of the Apostles
(Language: English)
Jacob Wayne Runner, Institute of Liberal Arts & Science, Kanazawa University
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Old English; Literacy and Orality; Manuscripts and Palaeography

 

 

Abstract

Paper -a:
With their repeated imperatives to ‘saga hwæt ic hatte’ (‘say what I am called’), the first-person riddles of the Old English Exeter Book demand a dialogical relation between reader and speaker, subject and object, self and other. This task is complicated, however, by the fact that the speakers of the Exeter Book riddles are, in fact, not subjects, but objects that portray themselves in a variety of straitened circumstances – as impoverished foundlings, as being impaired physically and mentally, as dejected outcasts on the brink of death – in short, as disabled. This paper employs the theoretical lens of disability studies to examine the themes of marginalisation, expiration, and objectification that are voiced by the first-person speakers of the Exeter Book riddles and posits liminality as a conceptual space for readers to consider disabled subjectivity.

Paper -b:
Guthlac A/B and Exeter Riddle 10 are concerned with the porous borders of celestial/terrestrial spaces, Anglo-Saxon/indigenous identities, and affect/action. Ælfric’s ‘Sermo de Memoria Sanctorum’, which articulates the Eight Principal Vices and Virtues and links affect to claims of bodily and spatial sovereignty, offers a theological framework that complicates previous analyses of the way Anglo-Saxon’s perceived these borders. This paper investigates these texts – at the border between the genres of hagiography, poetry, riddle, and homily – and how theology was employed to erect and police the borders of bodies, spaces, and identities in Anglo-Saxon England. 

Paper -c:
This paper examines the works of Tatwine, an 8th-century Anglo-Latin grammarian and poet, whose collection of 40 Enigmata employs the paradoxical qualities of the riddle for a semantic investigation of the linguistic boundaries between animate and inanimate things. By comparing the riddles to his and others’ grammatical works, this paper aims to show Tatwine’s use of poetic devices to replace the harsh boundary between corporalia and incorporalia of antique grammarians with a continuum in which they can co-exist, reflecting a more general change in contemporary English thought.

Paper -d:
The four Old English poems that contain the runic Cyn(e)wulf ‘signature’ have continuously provoked debate as to the characters’ intratextual function and interpretation. Although a case has been made for alternative words indicated by initialisms (Niles 2006), the prevailing view is that they are logogrammatic and instantiate traditional runic names (e.g. Birkett 2017; Page 1999; Symons 2016). This paper presents a semiotic assessment of a single Cynewulf poem (‘The Fates of the Apostles’) and argues that the text’s inclusion of runes amongst the bookhand alphabet characters achieves a purposeful destabilization of the associative borders between the different scripts and between ‘oral’ and ‘transcribed’.

 

 

Session

1005

Title

Social Experiences of Disability

Date/Time

Wednesday 6 July 2022: 09.00-10.30

 

 

Organiser

Ninon Dubourg, Départment d’Histoire, Université de Liège

 

Adelheid Russenberger, School of History, Queen Mary, University of London

 

 

Moderator/Chair

Ninon Dubourg, Départment d’Histoire, Université de Liège

 

 

Paper 1005-a

Dante’s City: Unjust Exile and Disabled Life beyond the Border
(Language: English)
Catherine Bloomer, Department of Italian / Institute for Comparative Literature & Society, Columbia University
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Italian; Medicine

Paper 1005-b

The Borders of Disability and Ability, Ill Health and Health in Medieval Poland
(Language: English)
Magdalena Matczak, Department of Archaeology, Classics & Egyptology, University of Liverpool
Index Terms: Medicine; Social History

Paper 1005-c

Ill Health as a Space of Communication between Man and God in Ancient Rus’
(Language: English)
Natalia Pelezneva,
Index Terms: Hagiography; Medicine; Mentalities

 

 

Abstract

Disablility and impairment were experienced in, and created by, an individual’s social context. These three papers consider how Disability was constructed and used in three diverse contexts – Dante’s Florence, medieval Poland, and the medieval Rus’. Despite the geographical range, all three papers demonstrate how the experience of Disability was informed as much by an individual’s social position as much as the nature of their impairment.

 

 

 

Session

1105

Title

Disability in Literature

Date/Time

Wednesday 6 July 2022: 11.15-12.45

 

 

Organiser

Ninon Dubourg, Départment d’Histoire, Université de Liège

 

Adelheid Russenberger, School of History, Queen Mary, University of London

 

 

Moderator/Chair

Wendy J. Turner, Department of History, Anthropology & Philosophy, Augusta University, Georgia

 

 

Paper 1105-a

Disabled Old Women against Romance: The Depictions of ‘La Vieille’, Frontier of Love in Le roman de la Rose
(Language: English)
Ninon Dubourg, Départment d’Histoire, Université de Liège
Index Terms: Gender Studies; Mentalities; Social History

Paper 1105-b

Eastern Infirmity and Unholy Suffering: Genealogy and Faith as Disability / The Borders of Ability and Disability
(Language: English)
Jeffrey McCambridge, Department of English, College of Arts & Sciences, Ohio University
Index Terms: Islamic and Arabic Studies; Medicine; Mentalities

Paper 1105-c

It’s All Fun and Games: Laughing at Newly Impaired and Newly Normative Bodies in Medieval France
(Language: English)
Heather Curtis, School of History, University of St Andrews
Index Terms: Language and Literature – French or Occitan; Mentalities

 

 

Abstract

These three papers examine the different ways in which imaginary accounts of Disability and impairment provided a means of expressing contemporary concerns, and how this literary use of Disability creates an insight into medieval cultural norms and thought. The papers’ literary sources range from French comedy and romance to Christian descriptions of Islam, and provide an opportunity to explore how and when Disability intersected with other social categories of gender, race, and religion.

 

 

Session

1142

Title

#DisMed 5: Disability and Accessibility in Higher Education – A Round Table Discussion

Date/Time

Wednesday 6 July 2022: 11.15-12.45

 

 

Sponsor

Medievalists with Disabilities

 

 

Organiser

Alexandra R. A. Lee, Department of Liberal Studies, New York University, London

 

 

Moderator/Chair

Jack Ford, Department of History, University College London

 

 

Abstract

Founded in 2017, Medievalists with Disabilities marks its fifth year at the IMC with another round table discussion. This round table discussion offers a chance for disabled medievalists and their allies to share and offer solutions for issues, as well as sharing best practice. We will be discussing accessibility in academia, with topics ranging from allyship and physical access to autism and memory, and the importance of community.

Participants include Hope Doherty (Durham University), Alexandra Lee (University College London), and Amy Louise Morgan (University of Surrey).

 

Session

1205

Title

Cripping Normative Time: Being and Becoming Disabled in Medieval Europe

Date/Time

Wednesday 6 July 2022: 14.15-15.45

 

 

Organiser

Ninon Dubourg, Départment d’Histoire, Université de Liège

 

Adelheid Russenberger, School of History, Queen Mary, University of London

 

 

Moderator/Chair

Adelheid Russenberger, School of History, Queen Mary, University of London

 

 

Paper 1205-a

Constructing Melancholic Time in Thomas Hoccleve’s Series
(Language: English)
Emily A. Price, Department of English, City University of New York
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Middle English; Medicine; Mentalities

Paper 1205-b

Boundaries between Age, Health, Ability, and Work: Aging in Medieval England
(Language: English)
Wendy J. Turner, Department of History, Anthropology & Philosophy, Augusta University, Georgia
Index Terms: Daily Life; Medicine

Paper 1205-c

Drawing the Borders of Crip Time in Women’s Monastic Life, c. 1200-1300
(Language: English)
Amelia Kennedy, Institut für Geschichte, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz
Index Terms: Gender Studies; Medicine; Religious Life

 

 

Abstract

Disability disrupts and challenges normative notions of time and personal development, just as the progress of time leads to impairment. These papers explore how time itself and social expectations of an individual’s life-time in medieval Europe could disable individuals; and consider how a Disabled individual’s own experience of time could challenge the artificial boundaries of normative time.