2024/07/25 by Heather A. Taylor · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/shm/hkae053
openalex publication_date 2024/07/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Summary This essay conducts a close examination of manuscripts of English provenance from the late Middle Ages which, while predominantly medical in nature, also contain non-medical charms and experimenta. It considers how these manuscripts might provide evidence for a particular type of medical practice, one which was founded in text-based learning, but which also sought to address the non-medical concerns and anxieties of medieval patients through the application of charms and experimenta not exclusively related to healing. This enables a more detailed picture to be drawn of medical practice in the Middle Ages but, more specifically, of medical practice within a particular stratum of society, whereby patients or clients may have looked to engage the services of a practitioner whose literacy and text-based knowledge afforded him status, but who also addressed issues that were perhaps more commonly treated by humbler diviners and healers.